What's Veeky Forums's opinion/perspective/interpretation of the Force?

The Force is mysterious and enigmatic and shit, so only wrinkly old people have insight into its true nature. Therefore if you wanna play a 20-something gray Jedi with a totally speshul and unique perspective of the Force, you can get fucked.

From a behind-the-scenes perspective, the Force is the plot. It is the driving force behind evil rising to power again and again, and the protagonists landing just the right shots at just the right moment again and again. The Force exists so that good stories can be told. Being favored by the Force means being favored by the plot.

This means that Star Wars works best as a "nobledark" setting: A small bunch of rebels performing near-impossible feats and destroying the overwhelmingly powerful vast evil.

Read some anarchist authors, user.

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The Force simply is and when people refer to the "light" side of the force they mean "the force in it's natural state". The dark side of the force is a corruption of this state disturbing the balance using strong emotions to produce results that are atypical of what the force should do. If you try to straddle between the two, you are still imbalancing just to a lesser degree.

It's a religion. You can believe it or not, and not everyone that believes in the force actually has the innate talent to become a jedi/sith. Those who do are highly sought after but may not necessarily believe in the Force or the teachings of one order of the other, and simply live on his life as a normal person with a very strong sixth sense and some unusual luck

>What's Veeky Forums's opinion/perspective/interpretation of the Force?
Probably wrong.

Force is neutral, the 'sides' come from within an individual. Both the Jedi and Sith hold extremist positions on it. Neither side is inherently good or evil.

Fight me.

>Read some anarchist authors, user.
Swallow a Frisbee

What is the Force in its natural state? What makes something "atypical" of what it should do?

From an in-universe perspective, the Force is an all-encompassing and inherently good energy that can be experienced and tapped into. You can let it flow through you while leaving it in its natural state, or you can bend it to your will by abusing it and disturbing the balance.

The Jedi and the Sith are two philosophical or religious dogmas that teach one of those two extremes. Whether you label any of the approaches as good or evil really depends on your personal conception of good and evil.
>Read some anarchist authors, user.
I recommend "An Anarchist FAQ" for entry level. They quote most of the important literature at some point throughout the text.

...

The Force having a "Dark Side" was the greatest trick that the Dark Side Disciples have ever performed. Its language that corrupts because it implies that the Force is a dualistic force. It is not. The Force is the Harmony of all living things and the Dark Side is the Discord of those who would tear themselves away. There is no Light Side. There is only The Force. Bringing balance to The Force means ending the Discord of "The Dark Side". Not an endless dance between the agents of good and evil.

So long as the good Force Users teach there is a "Dark Side" rather than a perversion of the Force, there will always be more evil Force Users. The Dark Side is akin to splitting an atom. There is so much power in the links between the living that shattering them creates an explosion of power.

This

Not that user, but there is nothing that the Force usually "should" do - there are just things that the Force usually DOES. The Force, in and of itself, binds everything together in an unending process of cooperation and competition. It does NOT naturally empower a single individual with an obscene amount of dark side abilities. It DOES, however, naturally aid those fighting against beings with extreme power.
Yeah, and what said.

>t. Jedi

Well yeah if everything and the everyone is dead then I guess it's technically "peace".

>It DOES, however, naturally aid those fighting against beings with extreme power.
And it does this by creating beings with extreme power? If this is just what it naturally does, why are there Jedi when there are no Sith?

Nah, I like that position.

The Force is the Force. To try too hard to define it, is to fail to feel it. And you can only understand it by feeling it. That is why all the minmaxing faggots in games fail to play a decent Jedi or even a Sith. They try to overthink it. To break it. To define it. You don't do that.

Every attempt to force (all puns intended) it into doing tricks merely makes one weaker. That's why Yoda didn't use it to help him walk all the time. Despite the fact that using it all the time SHOULD have made him stronger in it's use, by moron thought...

As you become stronger in the Force, you use it less, and sense it more. Unless you go down the dark path. Then you try to force it, and it struggles to get away. That is why you can't heal with the dark side. Otherwise Vader would have been whole a long time ago. Especially with the bullshit vampiric darkside healing in some interpretations. Think of all the minions and fleet officers he would have used it on. He would be the picture of perfect fucking health.

This is also why Anakin was less powerful then Palpy. Anakin used it constantly, never reallly growing in the Force. Palpy rarely flexed his muscles, and when he did, he was powerful enough to defeat anyone head on. Only betrayal and surprise killed Palpy.

So, as you can see, I follow the original trilogy interpretation. And fuck all the mitochlorians, EU, and mouse bullshit.

But it doesn't create beings with extreme power, it simply aids them in their time of need then leaves as quickly as it comes.

Except for the trillions of non force users that will still want to kill each other

Idiot

The point was not to kill everyone, it was to blind them to the force, to prove people would still be able to live without the force and its will being thrust upon them.
The true victory is to see the enemy see your point of view, not to destroy them completely.

If the force does not "naturally" empower a single individual, then why does the Force simply not reject dark side users?

..."mouse"?

No the greatest trick was giving the light and dark side unique powers, which leads brainlets to believe they are different, and not simply a metaphor for the different ways people use power.

There is zero difference between sith and jedi, they are both manipulators of the force. It's like comparing a great leader to a terrible leader and trying. Both had power, they just used it to accomplish different goals

Most people assume it's just some weird thing some cult that used to kidnap children uses.

The Force is symbolic rather than supernatural. The stories about lifting fighters from swamps, shooting lighting etc are about what's required to accomplish stupendous acts of spirit, good or bad, rather than literally doing those actions.

Disney user

But as demonstrated by the very planet they stood on it would more likely wipe out all in it's path, because only one person's involuntary reaction saved them. The rest died, also the exile wasn't blinded to the force, she was a wound that everyone who knew how to look saw the death of the force in her. Krei's point was flawed and misguided due to her hatred of the sith and Jedi because both cast her out. Also simply being blinded means nothing, the force is in everyone, even if you can't see it, it still can act through you.

Women can use Force powers without any training because they're better.

This.
Yin/Yang, that concepts of balance tends to derive from, is NOT about good and evil, and the dark side is objectively evil.

The Jedi don't monopolize the Light.

Jedi aren't beings of extreme power without the Force. The Force also doesn't care about how they use it, either. They mind trick people and do things like levitate pears. The Jedi also don't just stop existing when there are no Sith. And when the Jedi needed the Force most, when Palpatine was engineering his rise to power, the Force was actually failing them. The Jedi aren't the chosen heroes of balance aided with semi-divine intervention.

>Except for the trillions of non force users that will still want to kill each other

At least they'd kill each other not on the whims of a bunch of celibate monks and sadistic sorcerers

t.Brainlet

The Force flows through and is a part of everything, especially living things. It connects it all. That's why being sensitive to it lets you fling around lightsabers without lopping off your own limbs, or fuck around with someone's mind, or hit a really small opening a targeting computer was having trouble with. And it's more than just information that can be accessed, it can affect the physical world. Tossing around objects, feeding a microorganism, making people capable of cuhrayzee physical feats, and more.

The 'Light Side' and 'Dark Side' aren't inherent to The Force, those are just ways to handle The Force, and maybe not the only ones. And while the Jedi aren't perfect, the Sith are so shitty it makes the Jedi look like saints. Like knights, if you're into unsubtle symbolism. There's no cosmic reason that the Jedi are in the right, it's just that they tend to oppose the edgelords that like to subject the rest of the galaxy to tyranny. Between that and generally being decent people, they got a good reputation.

>tfw liar-waifu is no longer canon

There is the light side of the force: the Mind, the knowledge, the compassion, the calmness
There is the Dark side of the force: The body, Passion, the strength, the action

And then there is the is the dark side in an of it self: the cancer, the apathy, the hate and the fear.

The dark side of the force and the dark side in an of itself are often confused. If you cannot control and take ownership of your darkside, the evil space cancer will corrupt you and warp you and inevitably destroy you. The Jedi knew this, but in their hubris, they forgot to control their darkside and instead casting it out for the sake of what they deemed balanced, thus being warped by the actual dark side. The light side and the dark side are one in the same in balance in which they make the Force, but the actual darkside is the cancer that wishes to unbalance the force and warp the reality it sets itself on.

You must not cast away your emotions and your passions, but never forget that they should not take priority over peace and mind. This is the burden you must bare. There are no "grey Jedi" or "Sith", only the Jedi and the warped corpses wishing to destroy them.

Similar question, what Force powers and abilities are you okay with?

And this is somehow better, because

The sex ones

The way I home brewed it for Star Wars Saga edition, if I remember correctly, is that your alignment influenced your use of the force and using some force powers could slowly change your alignment.
Most healing powers were light side, most harming powers were dark side, and mental type powers were neutral.
If you had a neutral alignment all powers cost their listed price to use, if you were evil dark powers cost less and light more, opposite for good characters.
Using light or dark powers would give you light or dark counters that would cancel each other out, but if you got enough of one color it would move your alignment towards good or evil and then reset the count. The more good or evil you were the more counters you needed to shift alignment. You could also burn away counters with exp through meditation.

Lastly, Iron Knight best knight

Bumpin' the thread as I read.
Have always been casually interested in the starwars setting, but fans have always... 'turned' me off of it due to their fanaticism.

It's basically just a quirk of the universe that the life energy of things is accessable. the Jedi basically just dip their toe into using the Force because it needs to be sustained at that new level.
The Dark Side should almost always be stronger than the Light because it uses far more life energy at the cost of needing to be sustained and weakening/mutating your own body
For JJBa fans it's something like Kars going from normal Kars to Stone Mask Kars and killing the other Pillar People

This was always the original intent. The Dark Side of the Force in the original trilogy and the prequels is malignant. Just tapping into it fucks you up in a bunch of different ways, like when it fucking melted Palpatine.

The Jedi order in and of itself was dedicated to balance; the order ultimately lost touch of it's original intention and mistook balance for stagnation, but the Dark Side was never a part of balance; it's an inherently disruptive part of the system.

Kylo Ren is my ideal archetypal darkside user. Full of emotional turmoil, temperamental and full tantrums self pity and self loathing, with relateable human goals beyond 'power'. Pathetic, but also scary and compelling.

Kylo is the only redeeming part of NuWars. It's a shame they fucked up the old characters and Finn. I was hoping for a nice Stormtrooper story this go around.

>What's Veeky Forums's opinion/perspective/interpretation of the Force?

I've had a skim through the thread and I've got a couple thoughts:

First and foremost is I disagree with the meme that the Light and Dark side are good and evil or that one is right and one is wrong. I acknowledge both have positive and negative aspects and realistically to be the 'best' SPACE WIZARD (not a jedi or a sith) is to embrace both sides in complete kind of self-awareness and not give into EXTREMES and worse yet, not give in to STRUCTURALISM.

This is getting into movie/narrative, but I think one of the biggest threats towards the force that they've demonstrated (well, George Lucas at least) was that it was WRONG to try and institutionalize or bring structure to the Force: It was wrong to kidnap children to train into jedi, it was wrong to rationalize midi-chlorians, it was wrong to not let jedi love, it was wrong to police the galaxy with jedi, etc.. I think Yoda best demonstrates this and not just cause he fucked off to a swamp planet. Yoda gets it. Yoda is always right post prequels; listen to Yoda.

I guess that's the extent of intelligent discussion I have concerning "The Force".
Oh, uh, that and I like the midi-chlorian explanation, but on the basis that it's a tool to demonstrate the stupidity/ignorance of the system in place, I.E: they're trying to measure, rationalize, study, something as ominous and paranormal as the force so, again, it can be institutionalized and made mundane by their own means ultimately causing the 'death' of the force.

Good taste, Satan.

It's a power that Jedi have that lets them control people... and make things float.

Nobodies from nowhere get off Veeky Forums.

I think that hokey old religions isn’t a match for a good blaster at your side.

I agree with everything except the midi-chlorian. We get it explicitly from Lucas via the Clone Wars TV show that while, midi-chlorian are correlated with the Force, they do not cause a person to have Force-sensitivities, and simply the link between the Cosmic and Living Force.

They accumulate in people with the more Force-sensitive people attracting more.

Midi-chlorians are pointless no matter how you spin them.

>Hey let me scan your power level right quick buddy

I never liked star wars, The only game I have related to it is imperial assault because I needed a dungeon crawler in my collection. That said, I have several friends that fucking LOVE it. One even is registered in the Saber guild where they hit each other with "battle sabers".

What they keep telling me is that the force always looks for balance, that's why Anakin exists. He was born because the scale was greatly tipped in the jedi's side. So it will always look to have the same amount of sith as it has jedis. Which is in part interesting, but I feel it can get old fast.

>Thinking of them as power levels

That's your own fault brainlet

I like to assume that all this shitflinging about how to interpret the Force and the setting at large actually happens in setting and should be treated as such.

Is the Force a dualistic force?
Is the Force naturally harmonious with the dark side as a cancer?
What are midi-chlorians?

Assholes discuss these things within the setting.

Literally what the Jedi do with them.

>His midi-chlorian count is even higher than Master Yoda's!

expanded midichlorian theory.

midichlorians are everywhere and in everyone in the galaxy. they generate an energy field that bind everything and everyone. the force. if you have more midichlorian, you can access this energy more. the force is a hive mind, connected in the entire galazy. the dark side is a cancer in this hive mind that corrupt what contact it, willingly or not. races like the hutt that are relatively new to the galaxy are resistant since they arent yet totaly assimilated by this minor galactic hivemind.
force ghosts happen when someone with lots of midichlorian die, the midichlorians retain the person's personality and some knowledge. there is no sith ghost because their midichlorian are corrupted and die with no biological life to leech from.

the hivemind also have its own likes and dislike, force lightning is never cool but force pushing someone in a wood chipper is ok if you do it not too often.

if taking legends into account, the force hivemind is spreading too, the vong galaxy had it.

Because they would kill eachother and have free will while doing it. Kinda like now. Shit would be worse if right now we had universe-wide conflicts of two "opposing" esoteric space wizard factions that are controlled and control to an extent the living fabric of the universe, lots of people die for no good reason, since there hasn't ever been an agreement or a new faction that can mend the problems of the Jedi or Sith effectively.
It's like a forced dichotomy which really gets nobody nowhere.

>This whole thread is just a few Jedi assholes talking in the council chambers

This is generally how I approach these kinds of questions in campaigns, because its more interesting. Unless its something that NEEDS an answer form the Narrator, the answer to these kinds of metaphysical questions is "Talk about it IC, not OOC"

The manifestation of the force, the moving of rocks or throwing of lightsabers and the like, are not spells one can cast simply as they please. They, themselves, draw you to the light or dark. The grey Jedi who supposedly make use of "force powers" such as lightning and claim they are not affected by it are without question pulled to the dark side everytime they do.

This is a dumb concept that corrupted the concept of the Force. The reason certain powers are termed light or dark is because USING the powers requires a certain frame of mind.

To use Force Lightning requires you to concentrate your hatred of your foe and your anger, so Dark Side users find it easier then one of a serene mind. That doesn't mean the same mental technique cannot be used another.

This isn't Call of Cthulhu where casting certain spells gives your Corruption points. I realize some of the RPGs work that way, but that is dumb.

>There is zero difference between sith and jedi, they are both manipulators of the force.
>There is zero difference between fire and human beings, they both consume oxygen

But as you say, they're irrevocably tied to mindset. Being in those mindsets skews your own being. Anger and suffering, love and loss.

...

Exactly, but its not poisonous in a direct sense, only in the indirect sense of requiring a certain frame of mind.

A Gray Jedi can use Lightning and be unaffected in the same way a man can drink in moderation.

>Luke, help!
>we were discussing the force and Yoda flipped out and started burning things!
>we didn’t even know he could do that!

And you can drink small amounts of mercury and be fine, but over time it adds up. Conjuring up more and more feelings of hate and rage corrupts, slowly and relentlessly.

Except that is not true. There is nothing accumulative about the feelings of hate or anger. There is nothing accumulative about a serene mind. The accumulation occurs not in the feelings, but in the will in respect to these feelings and in both cases, Sith and Jedi, the emotions must be controlled and funneled to get any traction.

Even a Sith views it as a BAD THING when his anger controls him, instead of the other way around.

It's the seagulls.

Tell that to the several dozen interpretations and philosophies of attempting to understand the force that exist. Being a 20-something Jal Shey or Fallanassi means you probably will have a kind of unique take on the force, at least compared to the rest of the galaxy; you might not understand it all yet, but you've at least taken your first steps on the road to understanding.

"Once you have used the dark side of the force, forever will it control your destiny."

The force is an experience bar.

You put points into your force powers.

Light and dark have nothing to do with it. It has no bearing on your character. Trying to RP as such is dumb.

A powerful character needs to be able to heal and lightning blast. Light side or dark side has no effect on your point division.

>there is nothing accumulative about feelings
Read any study on depression and anger issues. It's insidious. It's grating. It wears own psyches. You can not simply call on anger when it suits you, you build it inside you and cage it, but the cage cannot be emptied simply by saying things or even exercising violence. It keeps with you.

Also, while I'm here, what's the census on force use amongst people who... Just don't know it's the force? Like, it's just magic to them or whatever?

Are there many backwards or ignorant yokels who practice the force ambivalent of it's greater significance? I feel like while Jedi and Sith get the majority of the spotlight but in the background there's probably MILLIONS if not BILLIONS of normal people just "making rocks float and getting people to do things" while being ignorant of any "The Force" narrative?

The the Force is like water. It flows into the vessel that contains it. Looking through it refracts, reflects, and distorts the image you are looking it and depends on the angle you are looking from.

Most force users draw from the well. They build reservoirs and dams and reserves and all the water wants to do is flow back toward the ocean. Sith build large dams, they stop the rivers, and pressurize the water until they let it go. Jedi channel the water, building irrigation ditches and canals. There are force sensitive users who float on the oceans and in the river and simply feel the Force.

But the Force doesn't actually care. Eventually it will make it's way back to the rest of the ocean.

There are other force traditions. Witches of Dathomir, for instance. Started from a Jedi, but rapidly descended into tribalism and near mysticsim.They tended to skew torward dark or light depending on the nature of their practice.

Light side: letting the force flow unimpeded through stuff, like a normal poop, or even diarrhea for the powerful stuff that leaves you breathless after
Dark side: blocking up the force, to get more out at once, possibly in a more solid or overly solid manner. Whatever it is it definitely makes your face go all red and veiny like you are bearing down to hard when you do it.

The way I've described characters feeling the force has always been as seeing light coming off all things.
Every living thing, from people to plants, the greatest to the smallest things, all give off this radiance that you can see and feel, like a warmth in you. When you focus, you can see and hear and feel all the little strands that gently push and pull on each other, and upon you. As you reach out to feel these things, you can feel more and more how everything is connected, how it all becomes part of this ever growing light that goes across even the darkest of spaces, to light even the darkest moments.

When you're using the force, a light sider can influence these things subtly, able to feel the power within them the force grants and, if they're stable enough, use it.
A dark sider feels that warmth as a fire, burning at them, tearing away at what they are. It might feel good at first, that raw potential - but you'll soon find it hurts.

>If you're trying to sit in the middle, you don't get to do anything except continue existing for a while.

The largest display of raw force power in the entirety of Star Wara (canon) was displayed by "the one in the middle." The force punishes anyone who strays fron balance, aka, the middle.

>The largest display of raw force power in the entirety of Star Wara (canon) was displayed by "the one in the middle."

Who?

The Bendu. Was able to blast apart AT-ATs and starfighters with ease when he was pissed off.

Still was no match for Thrawn.

Kreia was projecting herself onto the Force to try to excuse herself being a useless old fuckup

>Luke, that’s not helpful!
>Qui-Gon’s beard is on fire, and your father is getting flashbacks!
>all we wanted to do was discuss the force!

[distant, pained, agony-filled screams of "SAAAAAND!" echo through the chambers]

>Mace Windu keeps swearing at everyone

>it's over 9000!?!!

Kreia, leave this board immediately.