Lit Flow-walking

Is it possible to affect the past with flow-walking? Can someone from the future talk to someone in the past?
I can't remember, but in one of the novels, didn't Jacen appear to his mother from the past of something?

 

I think it is murky. It was initially implied yes, however I think that near the end of Jacen, it was implied that one could only observe. However, didn't Raynar have a vision of himself or something that created some kind of time loop?

 

It's from The Joiner King. Jacen finds the crashed Tachyon Flier on some planet and 'flow-walks' back to see what happened to the ship. Raynar is escaping the burning ship and sees Jacen watching him. A little later in the scene, Jacen sees an image of Leia looking down at the crash site. Seeing her son, she makes the comment that 'Jacen has been here', and he knows that he has 'flowed' forward in time. He uses the opportunity to tell her to head to...whatever planet the Killik's were on. (I'm lousy with names.)

Anyway, from this example we are presented with a flow-walk technique that, while useful, has implied limitations. The most obvious being that the 'flow-walker' is only there in corporal form and cannot actually physically touch anything. The second is that this 'flow-walker' also has to physically be AT the location in order to observe it's timeline.

To me, the SW universe is most appealing when everything has limitations. The Force can only be used to influence the weak-minded, 'the Future is always in motion', that sort of thing. When first described, flow-walking seemed to fit into this nicely. Later, in LotF, this SAME author drops these limitations; enabling Jacen to physically interact with where he 'flows' to and also 'flow' to locales that no longer exist. Jacen takes Tahiri back to the worldship over Myrkr, he observes his grandfather at the old Jedi Temple; neither of which should have been possible. Why? They no longer existed.

 

To be fair, he still had to go to the specific place where those events took place. So it wasn't like he could flow walk to a place on the other side of the galaxy.

 

But to be critical, in LOTF is was use as a crutch.

The modern jedi temple is an Exact replica on the same spot as the old jedi temple? Because of his fascination with a man who not only died before he was born mentioned all of 5 times in his characters history.

Tahiri going crazy despite the fact she works through her issues over the course of 3 books in NJO.

Flow walking ws used in LOTF the same way Magic is used in Marvel comics. A vast retcon paintbrush to alter things to fit the authors particular vision.

 

I wonder if this technique could be used after E7 to recon the EU somehow. Two timelines maybe... like they did for Star Trek. That way much of the EU can remain canon.

 

In INVINCIBLE, Jacen reveals to Tahiri that you can never change the past using Flow-walking, just your memory of the past.

 

Yes i remember that, and
That is in itself a continuity error as in Dark Nest Jacen does change the past, because Raynar remembers him being in the crash giving him energy or whatever.

 

"My name was Ben?"
"No, dear, you only remember your name being Ben..."
"Huh?"
"And your mother... she wasn't really called Mara, you just remembered that because someone flow-walked..."
"So everything I remember is a lie...?"
"From a certain point of view... yes, I guess."
"But I'm really an adult, right?"
"No... you only remember the Vong War lasting that long... it really lasted five months, not years."
"I'm confused..."
"We all are. Now you know why poor Voren makes so many mistakes."

 

Yup.

While it's likely that, as originally written, flow walking was meant to allow true influence on the past (though only the sort that engendered a closed causal loop/ontological paradox) LotF makes it abundantly clear that only the memory of the past is being changed. Indeed, there's that moment in Inferno when Jacen is concerned about making sure... urm, some dude (I forget) doesn't see him and Tahiri, because if he does, he'll suddenly get a new (and very obviously new, rather than a "it was there all along") memory of Jacen and Tahiri's appearance, and realise what they've done.

I still think it'd be funny if really strong flow-walkers were capable of outright replacing certain memories of the past, though. I'm expecting to find out that Anakin Solo faked everyone's memory of his death.

 

Personally, I think it is deus ex machina that was totally unnecessary and only used for a little while as part of the Jacen downfall, but will be discarded as "forbidden" as the ability would really screw up the EU. It might potentially become the deus ex machina that could help resolve the inevitable sequel retcons necessary if the EU is to be preserved at all.

 

I liked the idea at first back in DNT but grew out of it by the end of LOTF. It's not necessary. Not needed. If Jacen hadn't learned it a lot of things could have been averted, hopefully at least

 

Flow-walking is just a Jedi euphemism. They aren't allowed attachment, so they require some other form of release.

 

No he didn't. He 'took' Tahiri to the worldship when they were sitting in his office on Coruscant; again, that worldship, nor the Jedi Temple where he observed Vader existed any more.

Here's the thing: Jacen, by 'traveling' back in time to the wreckage of the Flier, doesn't change Raynar's memory; he becomes part of Raynar's memory. Raynar has NOT travelled in time, so has no previous memory of the event. Therefore, his seeing Jacen IS his memory of the event.

 

yes that's what it was retconned to be. But it still doesn't quite fit the story if you take The Joiner King by itself.

 

Exactly; which is why I think 'flow-walking' is such an interesting plot device within the context of the limitations we were originally presented with. It was a tool to observe, nothing more.

 

How about Jacen's flow walking into the future? Was there anything Leia could have said to him to change his present/Leia's past?

 

I don't understand. I've not read the books in question, but it seems like the 'event' would be changed? If 'originally,' there was no incorporeal presence of character x at location y at time z, and after flow-walking there is such a presence, such that the other characters present at the location have the possibility of reacting in any way to that presence, then the event has been changed. Unless it's a "it was always that way" model, whereby the presence and reaction was always there. Kind of like if the characters treated the incorporeal presence of character x as a vision, and later it turned out that they were in fact flow-walking from the future.

Or does it mean that if someone flow-walked back to the celebration on Endor at the end of ROTJ, no one would have seen their apparition at the time, but if you asked Lando, Han, Leia, etc, afterward, they would "remember" having seen said apparition?

 

Okay, next question. Why does it work this way?

Is the flow walker:

(a) actually "going back in time" and really being present at the place, and the Force blocks the other participants' memories for a time (until the point in time from which the flow-walker is doing the walking?)? Is this just a 'The Force Protects Chronology' conjecture? Would those blocked memories, assuming it works this way, be available to a Mind Probe, as in ANH?

Would a flow-walking apparition be visible on recording devices?

OR

(b) Is the flow-walker really just using the place as an anchor by which to simultaneously pull from the memories of all who were present at that time and place - including those still living and those who have become one with the Force - and building a type of consensus-vision of what happened from that collection of memories? This would explain why the apparition doesn't appear at any time or place, but rather in people's memories: the apparition wouldn't be traveling through time at all, but would be accessing the memories of people and of the Force itself.

 

It's basically (b), yeah.

(And you've probably just explained it far, far more simply than the books ever did. )