#the will of the plot

[inklesspen]

A thing you see a lot in Star Wars material is "The Will of the Force". It's simply taken for granted a lot of the time. Oh, Jedi can argue about what the Will of the Force is in a particular situation, but nobody (except Kreia, I suppose) is ever seriously arguing that maybe the Will of the Force shouldn't automatically be obeyed. My guess is that this has something to do with how the Will of the Force is often synonymous with the Direction of the Plot. It's certainly convenient, but it raises ethical issues with which Star Wars rarely if ever bothers to engage.

“Well, the Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It is an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together.”

I was thinking about how you can have a Jedi take direction from the Force in a way that's generally reliable (after accounting for individual error), but which doesn't require setting the Force up as a moral authority, and I came up with this:

To begin, let‘s suppose that part of how the Force interacts with sapient beings is that when you make choices — when you settle on an intent — that creates a sort of “status effect” in your connection to the Force. Even if you have no idea how to wield the Force, you‘re still leaking out that intent. And part of what a Force adept can do is basically query the intent states of sapient beings in her vicinity. This is generally done at a subconscious level. A Jedi wants to be able to intervene in unjust situations? Well, then her connection to the Force is basically running a query across all the nearby Intents, looking for someone Intending to do unwarranted harm (according to the Jedi‘s moral guidelines). This is less a "configure search agent, send it to search the net, read results later" scenario like we‘d see with technology and more like a constant feedback loop between the Jedi‘s moral instincts and the collective Force auras of everyone in town. And this produces what the Jedi senses as "the Will of the Force". (We can also say it‘s slightly acausal, allowing Jedi to react to Intents that haven‘t actually been formed yet.) But the same function that queries Intents can also “broadcast”, which is how Obi-Wan mind-tricks the stormtroopers, and part of how Battle Meditation probably works, and so on.

He called upon the Force, gathering it to himself and wrapping himself within it. He breathed it in and held it whirling inside his heart, clenching down upon it until he could feel the spin of the galaxy around him. Until he became the axis of the Universe. This was the real power of the dark side, the power he had suspected even as a boy, had sought through his long life until Darth Sidious had shown him that it had been his all along. The dark side didn’t bring him to the center of the universe. It made him the center. He drew power into his innermost being until the Force itself existed only to serve his will.

The Sith warrior, of course, has other priorities. He will certainly want to keep abreast of certain Intents in the Force, but he‘s doing a lot more spamming of his own Intent upon others. It won‘t always work, but he only has to overpower someone once, right?

Which brings me to a thing that I‘m pretty sure is just fanon — the idea that beskar‘gam can protect a mando‘ad‘s mind from jetii tricks (or, that someone wearing real Mandalorian armor is effectively a void in the Force). If this is true, then someone wearing beskar‘gam isn‘t radiating their Intent into the Force like everyone else does, though a Jedi can still sense them, if imperfectly, by the way their actions influence other people‘s Intents. Still, if you have to go up against a Force adept it‘s worth it to wear beskar if you can, because it effectively removes their precognitive sense; they can‘t react to your Intents until you‘ve acted on them in a way others can see.

So what about droids? There‘s a lot of stuff in the Clone Wars show about the battle droids being fully sapient, with feelings and fears and individualized reactions. But they‘re still networked, still driven remotely.

And that‘s because, yes, a droid can have an Intent in the Force too. Not every droid; not the little mouse droids, or at least they only have small, simple Intents. But a droid with a complex personality, like Artoo? Sure thing. He presents in the Force like any other living being. And the battle droids are getting up there in complexity.

So what do you think happens when a droid has an Intent aura, but doesn‘t do what that Intent would suggest? When a droid wants to do anything other than run headlong at the lightsaber-wielding maniac and the legion of clone troopers, but is forced to do so anyway by its programming?

I think the result is a lot of Jedi being badly served by their instincts. They know what the droid wants to do, and they want to react to what the droid wants to do, but the droid doesn‘t actually do that thing, so they have to force themselves not to react that way. They have to force themselves not to pay attention to “the Will of the Force”. And doesn‘t that sound just like something Palpatine and Dooku would want for them? The better they get at killing droid armies, the worse they get at being Jedi.

[nondelphic]

sometimes the best writing advice is "just let it be bad." revolutionary. terrifying. but it works.

[asteroidtroglodyte]

[lgbtlunaverse]

The world exists in such a baffling state of simultaneous sex-aversion and sex-hegemony. Every social platform on the internet is trying to banish sex workers to the shadow realm but I can't post a tweet without at least two bots replying P U S S Y I N B I O. People are self-censoring sex to seggs and $3× but every other ad you see is still filled with half-naked women. Rightwingers want queer people arrested for so much as existing in the same postal code as a child and are also drumming up a moral panic about how teenage boys aren't getting laid enough. I feel like I'm losing my mind.

[tis-the-boards-season]

I just saw a theatre almost entirely full of men very audibly gasp and/or moan at the site of a shirtless Hugh Jackman and let me tell you it was a religious experience

[beaft]

it is legit bizarre to me how hard video game creators and film directors and showrunners try to pretend that fat people don't exist. can you think of the last time you saw a fat person in a lead role? god forbid a fat woman? i can walk down the street or go into a shop or restaurant and see fat people everywhere but then i switch on the tv and suddenly it's like a glimpse into an alternate universe where no one has a bmi over 24. insidious and weird

[mychemicalbrromance]

Guys ive been reading peak

[bethanythebogwitch]

Some writers: *meticulously plan out every plot point and the tone and meanings before they start writing*

Me:

[thechekhov]

I've had this little idea in my head for a while now, so I decided to sit down and plot it out.

Disclaimer: This isn't meant to be some sort of One-Worksheet-Fits-All situation. This is meant to be a visual representation of some type of story planning you could be doing in order to develop a plot!

Lay down groundwork! (Backstory integral to the beginning of your story.) Build hinges. (Events that hinge on other events and fall down like dominoes) Suspend structures. (Withhold just enough information to make the reader curious, and keep them guessing.)

And hey, is this helps... maybe sit down and write a story! :)

[psychemochanight]

When the League meets Baby Robin(Dick), they are genuinely surprised, as it seems impossible that Batman is raising this little ray of sunshine who appeared from between his cape and then proceeded to greet them with the brightest smile they've all ever seen, completely adoring Superman, saying how great Wonder Woman is, and actually laughing at Barry's jokes.

Bruce takes care of his work, but occasionally stops to, in fact, help Robin who is trying to do his English homework. The other members also help out, of course.

So, Hal arrives at the Watchtower, and Robin, seeing the man his dad mentor has been so grumpy about because of the last meeting they had (Hal doesn't understand that Batman is the best at his job and is the one giving directions for a reason, duh!), decides he will exact revenge.

He carries on a normal conversation with the man just as he did with everyone else, subtly leading the topic until Hal falls into the trap:

Hal: What about your mom? I can't imagine anyone putting up with the old bat.

He speaks with all mockery, but then his smile freezes when he sees the tremor in the little boy's shoulders.

Dick: *shuddering and holding back a little sob* my mummy died in front of me a few months ago.... I...

Hal is pale now, because the child actually sobs, and runs off to hide in the cape of Batman, who was now standing, ready to stitch up his child.

He's not the only one, Superman and the others are already there too, looking at him angrily because he made the little bean cry.

Hal is in a panic.

And if he sees how the boy smiles at him when no one is looking, sticking his tongue out at him while moving his lips to send him the message "Don't bother my dad", no one would ever believe him, not while the little boy is now clinging to Batman tightly as he slowly blinks away tears that not even the best actors could ever pull off.

Only Hal knows the devil behind that angel face.

Batman knows it too, but he adores his precious little demon.

[clownboybebop]

if you’re ever in the position to choose between giving up and accepting defeat, and actually trying to fight the ancient unkillable god that is about to peel apart reality like a string cheese, remember this: scientifically speaking, you might as well give it a shot!

1.there were trees at the beginning of the world! there were trees so long ago that they predate bacteria that causes wood to decay. when a tree fell, it would lie there in stasis and there wasn’t any way of breaking down wood xylem on a molecular level in that way.

2. it seems obvious to say, but wood eating bacteria are literally incapable of comprehending what they’re breaking down. It’s just not information conciously available to a microorganism. they don’t know what they’re deconstructing, where it came from, bacteria have no way to even fathom the existence of a tree as a concept.

3. Regardless of the facts above, the world we live in today is a world where wood inevitably decomposes

it is worth fighting the unkillable god no matter how pointless it seems. it is worth taking the risk even though youre trying to accomplish something impossible. the reality in which you live was also once reality in which trees didn’t rot. You live in a reality that allows for existence before the possibility of destruction. you live in a reality where uncomprehending microbes break down matter that is so far beyond the scope of their comprehension that it feels comical to specify something so obvious. you live in a reality that occasionally allows unshakeable physical truths to be altered with no warning.

It is worth fighting the unkillable god because trees are so old they predate the source of their destruction, and it still did not spare them. It is worth fighting the unkillable god because bacteria rots unthinkingly, because there is room in our cosmos for destruction without comprehension on the part of the destroyer. It is worth fighting the unkillable god because now and then reality retracts the promise of immortality without fanfare, and when that happens there is no mercy for the ancient. the unmaking is not softer for the desecrators ignorance. for all things, existence is endless until the exact point where it ends.

so you might as well try to kill the unkillable god. it doesn’t seem likely, but at the beginning of the world, trees didn’t rot. so you never know! you never know

[rae-butter]

Honestly, I love it when characters relapse. When someone who’s gotten over their anger issues falls into a situation so out of their depth they fall back on their old habits. When someone who’s learned to open up becomes a recluse again in order to cope with something outside their control.

There’s just something so horrible, so toxic, about watching a character grow and then slip back into their old selves in order to cope, bc you know they still care, that they’re the same inside, but watching them hurt so hard they don’t know what else to do brings a sense of catharsis.

[nondelphic]

i sit down to write and suddenly i am the most distracted human alive. the chair is uncomfortable. my coffee is too hot. my playlist isn't quite the vibe. i need to research what victorian houses smelled like in 1872 for exactly 45 minutes even though my story takes place in space. and yet the moment i'm trying to fall asleep? every single sentence i've ever needed just lines up perfectly in my brain like some kind of creative parade i'll never get back.

[apollos-boyfriend]

we have GOT to kill tiktok/twitter self-censorship i just witnessed a grown adult say the word “smex” out loud to our professor

[gongyussy]

deepthroating a gun without breaking eye contact...... he put his entire gongyussy into that | SQUID GAME 2

+ the video because the sound he makes when he puts the gun in his mouth? [redacted]

update: he improvised that. the man really said i'll go full slut.