I want to talk about spiritual and pragmatic presentation in the context of star wars and I'm going to treat midichlorians as an actual serious concept so. This won't actually be all that long. IT GOT LONG
I think there's a sort of fundamental disconnect with the Star Wars universe between what the characters experience the general tone of their world to be, and what we, the audience, observe.
You don't want to skew too far into the character presentation, I think, when writing them, because if you get too real it stops being fun-- it stops being Star Wars.
For example, there's a war, and that's awful, and most Jedi that come of age during the war....ie, most of those we get to actually see, are going to be fighting in it during their student years.
The prequels do not do a good job of portraying the numberous subtle and gross ways that his life might have screwed up Anakin, or how he might feel about it, but it's not as if they don't show any of it.
The tone for the audience's sake is happier, more like a pulp adventure novel, a space opera, while the facts of life for the characters are considerably more grim.
But they can't react to the grimness of their reality too hardcore, because that brings down the tone the audience sees. Which causes the weird disconnect I started with.
But you can't imagine that a Jedi sees it that way. You can't have a pseudo-military organization going out and performing what amounts to morality audits on behalf of the senate for more than a thousand
It was definitely a narrative misstep, but from the perspective of the characters, it makes perfect sense. They have to have a way to justify taking people's children to become Jedi.
In Star Wars, there would be some military and political pushback, and it's really hard to fly off with some babies when their mom cocks her shotgun and asks you which nut you wanna keep.
I mean, as much as the economy of Harry Potter bothers me, they have got magic so much that it's used to do dishes and sort out the sewage system and make candy
maybe that's a bad example, a lot of the worldbuilding in Harry Potter is really more of a kinder surprise than a nice thick layer-cake. There's only a shell there.
I mean, we assume that Luke's training is similar in its basics to what old republic Younglings are taught, but I feel like maybe it's more like being in a martial arts class than Yoda's School Of Zen
I'm just trying to think out how I want to portray it when RPing Obi-Wan, because in the past I've just written whatever feels sort of correct, but I wanted to be more
Obi-Wan is.... a weird guy, for a Jedi? He sort of lives his life very much according to the spirit of the Jedi Code, more than the letter. That's gotten him in trouble.
He's a spiritual kind of guy, he percieves the Force in the way most people understand religion, but at the same time he's fairly precise and scientific in his approach to life.
But at the same time, is it really? I mean, the Force isn't like praying in church and getting a subjective personal enlightenment. You can test for midichlorians and get a rough estimate of Force-sensitivity.
I guess when writing Obi-Wan, and conceptualizing the Jedi Order in general, it's difficult. Some Jedi are very philosophical and mystic like Yoda. And some are more like Ashoka, who seems to treat the Force
like nothing more than a compass or a weapon. For her the philosophical ramifications of things might be conceptually important, but they're practically-speaking irrelevant.
It's hard in RP, because you want to honor the canonical tone and intention, while still portraying the character's world from the character's perspective.
(Young Wizards, thankfully, has clearly defined that all of the spiritual stuff is very tied into the workings of the universe on a physical level so that saves that headache at least.)
But you know, I don't know that this particular disconnect is strictly avoidable in all cases. The purpose of a work of fiction is rarely to portray character perspective in a realistic manner.
I mean, you want to have a certain amount of that, or the characters are unable to be taken seriously as characters, but that's just set-dressing to talk about how wonderful it would be if we could
I want to talk about Young Wizards too, because I keep coming back to wanting to rp Roshaun somewhere. (i already have the best journal for him) but I think I need some time to gather my thoughts
They might have access to the knowledge, but it might not be important to them. Qui-Gon explains the midichlorians to baby anakin as if the midichlorians cause Jedi to have Force abilities
but that doesn't make any sense, and I've always heard that as "I'm explaining this to a child, so" and the actual function is just midichlorians as a diagnostic indicator
maybe you're tested as a baby as part of the usual round of childhood medical nonsense, and if you don't come up Jedi within the Jedi-preferred time period, you just never get trained.
And then somewhere down the line some unsuspecting asshole gets born with enough midichlorian-attracting Force-juice to ping the Jedi and you get an offer from the Temple to raise the kid for you
This is probably where most of the Jedi come from. Force-sensitivity is common/recessive in the Star Wars universe, but actually using the Force is rare.
Coming back to this, I mean-- Luke and Rey both grew up without what someone like Obi-Wan would consider as proper Jedi training. They were no less Force-sensitive just because of that.
After all, the precognitive abilities of the Jedi are only useful if you actually listen to them. And the rest is only helpful if you believe utterly. If you don't think it's even possible, why would you try?
The use of Essence in Exalted has a mystical aspect to it, but at the same time it can be used as an almost-science and developed in certain ways with well-understood training regimens and so on.
This won't actually be all that long.IT GOT LONG