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Is the Dark Side stronger? Yes Luke, yes it is.
08-09-2013, 08:21 PM
I was thinking about this recently, and if you look at it objectively rather than in the words of the Jedi masters, the Force is pretty much inherently evil, light side or no.
Jedi must live as ascetics or fall to the dark side - positive emotions are just as bad as negative ones
Mind tricks and telekinesis are the two basic powers, aka imposing domination over thought and action
That's not even going into messing with time and probability for pre/postcognition and Battle Meditation
Even Jedi Grand Mas
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ter Yoda pulls out the lightning, a signature Dark Side ability, when a fight gets serious
The darksiders all seem to take a running dive into BWAHAHA FOR TEH EVULS! territority almost immediately. The Sith are most noteable for their ability to keep the tendency under control, and failing at it is what leads to the deaths of pretty much every one of them we see, as they start getting sloppy
And those fallen Jedi? Notice how damn hard it is for Lightsiders to detect them through the Force, let alone take
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them down
The highest acheivement of the lightside 'Living Force' is to cheat death - not that I actually have a problem with that, but for the supposed manifestation of nature, it does seem a little off. I mean, what does Yoda say, right before pulling that trick himself?
... dammit, I had two or three more but running out of text box distracted me.
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Herr Bad Moon
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Are... are you drunk?
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Thinking like a Sith, you are. Quote:Jedi must live as ascetics or fall to the dark side - positive emotions are just as bad as negative ones
Not true. Allowing your emotions to rule you is what causes problems. Most Dark Jedi fall because they give in to their emotions... and then die because they cannot control them. The reason Sith are so much more dangerous is because they have some measure of control over themselves.
The first line of the Jedi Code was originally "Emotion, yet peace". The idea was that you reached the serenity needed to use the Light Side- not by denying yourself the ability to feel emotion, but by having the control to be serene despite your feelings. Attachments were permitted back then. Quote:Mind tricks and telekinesis are the two basic powers, aka imposing domination over thought and action
First, I dispute your categorization. If anything, the most basic power of the Force is awareness (which is morally neutral, if slightly more in line with the Jedi philosophy). TK is one of the more basic methods of using the Force to alter the world, yes, but mind tricks? That's got to be a third- or fourth-order power.
Second, why do you assume that TK has to be a domination of the natural order? It makes thematic sense for the Jedi method of TK to be more Taoist- to act without acting, convince the world around you to change- that sort of thing. Very Zen- fitting, since SW draws deeply from Eastern philosophy. Now, I could see Sith acolytes trained to force the world into the shape they desire...
As for Mind Trick, when you look it up on Wookieepedia, you'll see three different forms of it. The Jedi use Force Persuasion, which is described as being more like attempting to convince the target to agree with the user than anything else. Even then, they're taught to never use it for personal gain, and even then, that it should only be used when absolutely necessary.
The Sith (aside from tossing around FP like candy) use Affect Mind, or its more powerful form, Dominate Mind. That's real 'impose your will on others' stuff, right there. The Jedi form is closer to Force I-Implore-You-To-Reconsider, especially since it only automatically influences the weak-minded.
Quote:That's not even going into messing with time and probability for pre/postcognition and Battle Meditation
Pre/postcognition isn't actually a type of time shenanigan at all. It's awareness of the Force... which handles the time part of things for you, by being connected to the past, present, and future.
Battle meditation? Seriously? Look it up. Sith battle coordination is done by imposing the will of the user upon their soldiers, forcing them to fight as extensions of one mind. Jedi battle meditation is part offering feelings of confidence and hope to your troops, and part linking them together, so that they can achieve a level of harmony that allows them to fight as one. That one's explicitly spelled out. Quote:The darksiders all seem to take a running dive into BWAHAHA FOR TEH
EVULS! territority almost immediately. The Sith are most noteable for
their ability to keep the tendency under control, and failing at it is
what leads to the deaths of pretty much every one of them we see, as
they start getting sloppy
And those fallen Jedi? Notice how damn hard it is for Lightsiders to detect them through the Force, let alone take
them down
The highest acheivement of the lightside 'Living Force' is to cheat
death - not that I actually have a problem with that, but for the
supposed manifestation of nature, it does seem a little off.
I'm going to take the last part of this first. The ability is pretty explicitly not 'cheating death'. It's becoming One With The Force, surrendering yourself to the universe, and by doing so, gaining the ability to appear to those who yet live. Note that you never see the shades of Anakin, Ben, or Yoda do anything other than communicate. They have no power of their own.
The Sith have ways of becoming Force ghosts, able to affect the world around them, possess bodies, and basically continue on. That's a bit more like what you're thinking of, eh?
As for the Jedi
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No, I'm not drunk. I find the taste of alchohol loathsome. Most of B_M's points I'll let stand on their own aside from saying that I had misunderstood Barrle Meditation, because they are also reasonable enough if from a different point of view, but on force-ghosts, what you're sayibg is that the Sith do that too, only better? Maybe I am thinking like a Sith 
Heaven knows I'd be a horrible candidate for being given phenomenal cosmic power - that was actually what prompted the thought, ideas for one of th
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ese SIs that are getting popular again, inserting in the form of my character from Dragonflight's campaign but with the magic system from my own partial homebrew system, getting stuck with the 'evil' Void affinity, with most of the SW Force tricks except healing, which is the domain of opposed axial element Wind (the Cyclic Elements are Water-Wood-Fire-Earth-Metal by production/reinforcement order.) Cross that with FF8 style spell hoarding and you have the basic idea, initial insertion in the ruins of
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London post the new DLC "F*you fanboys" bad end for Mass Effect 3. Within minutes of waking up, "I" get mauled by a pack of feral Yorkshire Terriers, too unfamiliar with body and powers to fight effectively, (LOLs.)
Obviously, even if I beat enough of the suck out of the concept to take forward, it won't be until I am freed of these ridiculously short post length limits.
So basically, chalk it all up to whimsy and boredom, two forces more powerful than any alchohol and more evil than any dark wizard.
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The odd thing about how the Jedi work is how underwhelming they are.
Really, you have an order that acts as 'the guardians of peace in the Republic', has supernatural powers of perception- to the point of precognition, postcognition, and scrying... and all they do is police and diplomat work. Really, Lucas? Was that the *best* you can do?
If you look at their philosophy, power set, and stated goals, the Jedi should really be played as two parts feng shui master, two parts Sidereal viziers, one part mobsters, and one part canon Jedi. When you consider the possibilities granted by Jedi senses, the Order should be able to build titanic economic power and influence... and then put it to work solving crises before they happen.
The mediator who came out to negotiate an end to your war? Padawan.
The mysterious investor who convinced BlasTech to open a new office on your planet, just before Czerka's corporate takeover of the local government was supposed to start? Jedi Knight.
The wizened bald smiling man who sent a postcard to his granddaughter two years ago, and is now watching an entire Hutt cartel break itself instead of developing his favorite vacation spot? Master.
If the lightsabers come out, you are doing it wrong.
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I have said repeatedly that the fundamental problem with the philosophy that the Force Wielders all seem to buy into is a sort of bizarre bipolar disorder. As long as you're up, your fine, but the moment you stumble slightly it's almost inevitable that you spiral quickly down into the Dark Side.
Gryphon's take in UF and Scribbler's in Terran Jedi seem far more reasonable (and healthy!) to me.
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08-12-2013, 02:52 PM
If the Jedi had moved with a unified agenda to actively meddle in Republic affairs the movies wouldn't have required the Empire to be the villain. Princes Leah's consular ship would be boarded by a Jedi commando squad intent on regaining their plans for Galactic Peace & Order. Darth Vader would be the Jedi's Lord High Executioner. Maybe the Emperor gets to be heroic in this variant as the leader of the Rebellion against the machinations of the Jedi council. This is beginning to become quite Frank Herbert-y. I may have to plot it out further for fun.
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The Jedi were the only Force-users not hiding in the darkest holes they could find for thousands of years - the fact that they didn't immediately ship Anakin off to the agrocolonies or quietly make him dissapear at the first inkling that this kid who showed up might be some prophesized figure who'd "bring balance to the Force" is the prime proof that they were actually good guys. He did it, too - as of ANH, two Jedi there are, a master and an apprentice - well, Grandmaster and Knight, anyway.
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...you know, we see a lot of Jedi hiding. Yoda? Hiding in a hut. Kenobi? Hiding in the desert? The Masters in KoOR 2? Hiding all over the place. One could even make a case that the Jedi in the prequel trilogy were hiding, in a metaphorical way, from the world... but that's a stretch.
As for 'bringing balance to the Force', the canonical explanation is that the Dark Side is an imbalance, and the Light the natural, balanced state of things. While I like the concept, as it fits the rest of my understanding of the Jedi, Anakin reeeeeeeeeeally didn't do too good a job of it, judging by all the BBEGs still hanging around...
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...I always understood the "bring balance to the Force" as "the Force was tilted too far towards the Light, with the Jedi so dominant and the Sith by their nature so few, so he restored balance by wiping out most of the Jedi".
IOW, nobody ever said bringing balance had to be a good thing.
I like what you describe as the canonical explanation, but I don't recall anything to indicate it as being canonical (though there's a lot of potentially-arguably-canon material I'm not familiar with), and at a glance it doesn't seem to fit as well with what actually happened as my own understanding did.
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I'm half wrong, it seems. AT ONE POINT, that was the canon explanation, and it is apparently still the canon Jedi interpretation of the prophecy, according to Wookieepedia.
The current canon explanation is now much more like what you and CD describe.
My SW understanding is apparently WAY out of date... and I'm honestly not too unhappy about that. A lot of the newer stuff is sort of nuts.
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Yeah, I pretty much consider the SWEU material to be on the level of fanfiction - the only solid canon is the movies, the rest can occasionally be drawn on for idess but is utterly ridiculous in some places, contradicts itself in others, and twists the genre too far toward angst or horror in a few more. I do like Ahsoka though.
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By the movie canon, there's no such thing as a 'Light Side' of the Force. There's just the Force, and the Dark Side, which is a corruption of the Force. A lot of the EU authors didn't understand that, so they thought of the Dark Side as being opposed by a 'Light Side' that were opposite and equal to each other, instead of the Dark Side being a sort of 'tumor' on the Force, that twisted and distorted it.
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... you know, that's actually a much more interesting interpretation than a dualistic power with enforced morality. Kind of ruins the duck tape analogy, but requiring more thought than "there's good guys and bad guys, smack the actoonfugres together a few times then the bad guys fall down" is probably what gets the concept diluted.
ETA - Oh Primus, that typo! I'm leaving it, that's too hilarious.
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