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theorizing about the Force (crack at no extra fee)
Anyone who follows my journal has probably realized that I love-hate Return of the Jedi and hate-hate the prequels and EU. You probably know that when it comes to things that don’t really fit with previously established canon, or that I just find awful, I prefer (1) objecting at great length and (2) assuming they never really happened anyway, to finding some way to integrate them into the same canon, rationalizing the inconsistency away. I go for tossing things into the Discontinuity Bin over Canon Welding any day.
But not this day! This day, I’m taking advantage of one of the (comparatively) few things I enjoy about the prequel trilogy: the scads of material for wildly complicated theories about the GFFA and its inhabitants. The original trilogy provided vaguely outlined space, yes, but the prequels offer details. Details upon details upon details.
Okay, fine, many of them don’t fit very well with even the vague outlines from the OT. The nitpicky side of my brain hates that. But the part that loves making paper dolls and reading elaborate fan theories is occasionally okay with it. (They both prefer to ignore the EU, because mofferences.) So, as some ideas were percolating through my brain, I found myself coming up with my very own cracky canon-welding headcanon.
It’s hard to put into words, but it goes something like this:
Anakin Skywalker is the Force.
Okay, not hard. But let me explain how it works in my strange purist fangirl crack theorist brain.
The Force is the object of an interstellar religion. The way people talk about it in the original trilogy makes it quite evident that it is a religion, and the rigidity we see in the prequel trilogy does little to reduce that impression. There’s a temple. There are rigidly defined rules. There’s a divine will that can only be sensed by the clergy, a small, elite group chosen byGod the Force, and permitted to tap into its power. Their interests are tightly bound up with politics, but they effectively answer to no one.
At least, that’s how I see it - the Jedi are not the congregation, they’re the clergy. That is, they are far from the only adherents to the faith. Everybody who is seen to worship anything worships the Force. Ordinary people appeal to the Force, allude to it in casual conversation, follow all the appropriate forms.
Forms being the relevant word. Eighteen years later, all belief seems to have been wiped out. Many of the people who openly question the Force are old enough - some of them more than old enough - to remember when it was near-universally worshipped. Even if the Empire’s been actively discouraging belief in the Force for all of that time, it seems unlikely that they could quash all belief among trillions of worshippers.
But maybe the Force wasn’t a deity worshipped by trillions. Maybe it was more like the Great God Om.
In one of my favourite Discworld books, Small Gods, the god Om is worshipped by a large and immensely powerful church. Except not. In fact, the church worships … the church: the hierarchy, the rigid forms of worship, the various rules and regulations and catechisms and so on. Om himself is little more than a figurehead.
Now, since this is Discworld, his power is directly proportional to the amount of worship he gets. So as the Omnian church has grown, he’s actually lost power, going from an immensely powerful smite-happy god to a frail shadow with only one true worshipper left.
Suppose that the same thing has happened with the Force. People say “may the Force be with you” and bow to the Jedi, the Jedi themselves follow the Code religiously (...er), but the forms that they’re following aren’t the Force. They’re just forms. So when the Jedi are wiped out and the forms vanish, well, there’s nothing left. Eighteen years later, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker, Yoda, and (perhaps) Palpatine are the only true believers left in the galaxy. Eighteen years before, there may not have been many more.
And where would that have left the Force? It’s probably not a straightforward Gods Need Prayer Badly. The Force is generated by life itself, not belief. It’s still there. It still works.
Ish.
It’s a little out of whack, is all. And, since it is generated by the living, all that stagnation and decline and general Lawful Stupidity has an effect on it. It’s getting a bit weaker, a bit warped. A bit, dare I say, imbalanced.
Balance is not about equal numbers of Jedi and Sith, or actually balancing the Dark Side with the … not Dark Side. The Dark Side shouldn’t be there at all! It’s a perversion of the Force, a sort of parasitic growth. Its very existence is an imbalance in the Force.
I imagine this sort of thing happens reasonably often, people being people. And there’s a mechanism for dealing with it. I imagine it as a cross between the Avatar and Cyradis of Kell. The Force incarnates itself into corporeal form, and the decisions made while in that form define its nature in the wider galaxy. And inevitably, it’s faced with a choice. Or rather, a Choice. It may be may be years in the making, but it must be made. And the final shape of the Force is decided by whatever choice its avatar makes.
c wat i did thar
However, I think it’s usually a bit more … localized, as it were. A particular population throws some aspect of the Force a bit out of whack, that aspect incarnates itself among the population, the avatar makes the appropriate choice and the imbalance rights itself. Or everything is horrifically awful, of course, and kept together only by the Living Force and the Unifying Force.
Long ago, I imagine, the Force produced these two manifestations of itself - not aspects, the actual, legitimate sides of the Force. Sort of. Their power is drawn directly from it, but it also depends on them in some ineffable way. At one level, they’re separate from the Force (Prime), and each other, albeit with considerable overlap, and at another they’re simply divisions within it and part of the whole that is the Force. Basically, it’s all bound together in this complex cosmic cyclic feedback loop … thing1.
I suspect these distinctions only really coalesced when the Force started incarnating - sometimes as divine, sometimes as mortal, but the latter has become more common over time. Since the Force (at all levels!) is partially shaped by the beliefs of its worshippers, being worshipped in a specific incarnation can be dangerous. Besides, it works better as a mortal, anyway.
Anyway. This time, the dysfunctional population in question is the entire galaxy. And when it comes time for the Force to incarnate itself among its faithful, there’s a certain … dearth of options. Perhaps not so desperate as Om’s, but - not by much. A devout young slave girl is informed of her impending pregnancy.
I suppose that makes Shmi Skywalker basically Brutha. And Mary, of course. But Brutha.
So Anakin is born, grows up, is taken up by the Jedi. He is chosen, beyond anything that any Jedi could imagine: the ultimate avatar of the Force. His decisions determine the shape, not of some aspect of the Force, but of its entirety. They’re headed into a choice of Dalasian proportions - as they’d say, the final EVENT.
Anakin takes his first steps towards the Dark Side, and the Force is shrouded. He falls, and the Dark Side triumphs - almost. Whatever happens to him carries over into the Force, and some sliver of goodness remains in him, enough to delay the ultimate choice. And his children are born.
For eighteen years, the Dark Side dominates Anakin Skywalker, and therefore the Force. Leia is kept safely untrained - there’d be no hiding her. Luke begins his training, and when his path crosses with his father’s, Anakin/Vader instantly announces that the Force is strong with him.
It is.
Between then and the Battle of Hoth, the Dark Side’s dominance is disturbed by - something. Palpatine seems to pin it on Luke, and perhaps Vader does as well. He’s lying through his teeth, so it’s hard to say. But Vader is increasingly ambivalent, enough that Luke senses it even in the heat of the duel. Perhaps the disturbance is his own, echoing throughout the Force as it always does. (When he lost his mother, his grief could be sensed from across the galaxy - even the dead felt it.)
The Force is strong in my family, Luke tells his sister. Well. Yes.
In the end, of course, Anakin’s choice can’t be prolonged any further. He’s favoured the Dark Side, certainly, but never made the final choice; there was always some part of himself that he held back, refused to commit wholly to one thing or another, delaying his choice as long as he lived. But in the end he chooses to abandon it wholly.
Killing one incredibly evil man does not bring balance to the entire Force. Even sacrificing his own life doesn’t seem inherently Force-balancing. What he does is wholly turn his back on the Dark Side. When it ceases to exist in Anakin Skywalker, it ceases to exist at all. Thus, he’s fulfilled the prophecy: the Force is finally, ultimately balanced.
And there are no Sith Lords ever again.
-----------------
1Coincidentally, avatars of the Force each seemed to produce a pair of twin children. Thanks to its flirtation with corporeal divinity, they showed up in any number of mythologies and precipitated entire scholarly careers.
But not this day! This day, I’m taking advantage of one of the (comparatively) few things I enjoy about the prequel trilogy: the scads of material for wildly complicated theories about the GFFA and its inhabitants. The original trilogy provided vaguely outlined space, yes, but the prequels offer details. Details upon details upon details.
Okay, fine, many of them don’t fit very well with even the vague outlines from the OT. The nitpicky side of my brain hates that. But the part that loves making paper dolls and reading elaborate fan theories is occasionally okay with it. (They both prefer to ignore the EU, because mofferences.) So, as some ideas were percolating through my brain, I found myself coming up with my very own cracky canon-welding headcanon.
It’s hard to put into words, but it goes something like this:
Anakin Skywalker is the Force.
Okay, not hard. But let me explain how it works in my strange purist fangirl crack theorist brain.
The Force is the object of an interstellar religion. The way people talk about it in the original trilogy makes it quite evident that it is a religion, and the rigidity we see in the prequel trilogy does little to reduce that impression. There’s a temple. There are rigidly defined rules. There’s a divine will that can only be sensed by the clergy, a small, elite group chosen by
At least, that’s how I see it - the Jedi are not the congregation, they’re the clergy. That is, they are far from the only adherents to the faith. Everybody who is seen to worship anything worships the Force. Ordinary people appeal to the Force, allude to it in casual conversation, follow all the appropriate forms.
Forms being the relevant word. Eighteen years later, all belief seems to have been wiped out. Many of the people who openly question the Force are old enough - some of them more than old enough - to remember when it was near-universally worshipped. Even if the Empire’s been actively discouraging belief in the Force for all of that time, it seems unlikely that they could quash all belief among trillions of worshippers.
But maybe the Force wasn’t a deity worshipped by trillions. Maybe it was more like the Great God Om.
In one of my favourite Discworld books, Small Gods, the god Om is worshipped by a large and immensely powerful church. Except not. In fact, the church worships … the church: the hierarchy, the rigid forms of worship, the various rules and regulations and catechisms and so on. Om himself is little more than a figurehead.
Now, since this is Discworld, his power is directly proportional to the amount of worship he gets. So as the Omnian church has grown, he’s actually lost power, going from an immensely powerful smite-happy god to a frail shadow with only one true worshipper left.
Suppose that the same thing has happened with the Force. People say “may the Force be with you” and bow to the Jedi, the Jedi themselves follow the Code religiously (...er), but the forms that they’re following aren’t the Force. They’re just forms. So when the Jedi are wiped out and the forms vanish, well, there’s nothing left. Eighteen years later, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker, Yoda, and (perhaps) Palpatine are the only true believers left in the galaxy. Eighteen years before, there may not have been many more.
And where would that have left the Force? It’s probably not a straightforward Gods Need Prayer Badly. The Force is generated by life itself, not belief. It’s still there. It still works.
Ish.
It’s a little out of whack, is all. And, since it is generated by the living, all that stagnation and decline and general Lawful Stupidity has an effect on it. It’s getting a bit weaker, a bit warped. A bit, dare I say, imbalanced.
Balance is not about equal numbers of Jedi and Sith, or actually balancing the Dark Side with the … not Dark Side. The Dark Side shouldn’t be there at all! It’s a perversion of the Force, a sort of parasitic growth. Its very existence is an imbalance in the Force.
I imagine this sort of thing happens reasonably often, people being people. And there’s a mechanism for dealing with it. I imagine it as a cross between the Avatar and Cyradis of Kell. The Force incarnates itself into corporeal form, and the decisions made while in that form define its nature in the wider galaxy. And inevitably, it’s faced with a choice. Or rather, a Choice. It may be may be years in the making, but it must be made. And the final shape of the Force is decided by whatever choice its avatar makes.
However, I think it’s usually a bit more … localized, as it were. A particular population throws some aspect of the Force a bit out of whack, that aspect incarnates itself among the population, the avatar makes the appropriate choice and the imbalance rights itself. Or everything is horrifically awful, of course, and kept together only by the Living Force and the Unifying Force.
Long ago, I imagine, the Force produced these two manifestations of itself - not aspects, the actual, legitimate sides of the Force. Sort of. Their power is drawn directly from it, but it also depends on them in some ineffable way. At one level, they’re separate from the Force (Prime), and each other, albeit with considerable overlap, and at another they’re simply divisions within it and part of the whole that is the Force. Basically, it’s all bound together in this complex cosmic cyclic feedback loop … thing1.
I suspect these distinctions only really coalesced when the Force started incarnating - sometimes as divine, sometimes as mortal, but the latter has become more common over time. Since the Force (at all levels!) is partially shaped by the beliefs of its worshippers, being worshipped in a specific incarnation can be dangerous. Besides, it works better as a mortal, anyway.
Anyway. This time, the dysfunctional population in question is the entire galaxy. And when it comes time for the Force to incarnate itself among its faithful, there’s a certain … dearth of options. Perhaps not so desperate as Om’s, but - not by much. A devout young slave girl is informed of her impending pregnancy.
I suppose that makes Shmi Skywalker basically Brutha. And Mary, of course. But Brutha.
So Anakin is born, grows up, is taken up by the Jedi. He is chosen, beyond anything that any Jedi could imagine: the ultimate avatar of the Force. His decisions determine the shape, not of some aspect of the Force, but of its entirety. They’re headed into a choice of Dalasian proportions - as they’d say, the final EVENT.
Anakin takes his first steps towards the Dark Side, and the Force is shrouded. He falls, and the Dark Side triumphs - almost. Whatever happens to him carries over into the Force, and some sliver of goodness remains in him, enough to delay the ultimate choice. And his children are born.
For eighteen years, the Dark Side dominates Anakin Skywalker, and therefore the Force. Leia is kept safely untrained - there’d be no hiding her. Luke begins his training, and when his path crosses with his father’s, Anakin/Vader instantly announces that the Force is strong with him.
It is.
Between then and the Battle of Hoth, the Dark Side’s dominance is disturbed by - something. Palpatine seems to pin it on Luke, and perhaps Vader does as well. He’s lying through his teeth, so it’s hard to say. But Vader is increasingly ambivalent, enough that Luke senses it even in the heat of the duel. Perhaps the disturbance is his own, echoing throughout the Force as it always does. (When he lost his mother, his grief could be sensed from across the galaxy - even the dead felt it.)
The Force is strong in my family, Luke tells his sister. Well. Yes.
In the end, of course, Anakin’s choice can’t be prolonged any further. He’s favoured the Dark Side, certainly, but never made the final choice; there was always some part of himself that he held back, refused to commit wholly to one thing or another, delaying his choice as long as he lived. But in the end he chooses to abandon it wholly.
Killing one incredibly evil man does not bring balance to the entire Force. Even sacrificing his own life doesn’t seem inherently Force-balancing. What he does is wholly turn his back on the Dark Side. When it ceases to exist in Anakin Skywalker, it ceases to exist at all. Thus, he’s fulfilled the prophecy: the Force is finally, ultimately balanced.
-----------------
1Coincidentally, avatars of the Force each seemed to produce a pair of twin children. Thanks to its flirtation with corporeal divinity, they showed up in any number of mythologies and precipitated entire scholarly careers.