"Will of the force". What does this mean?

Any number? Fine. Give me one. Name ONE book where Dagobah is presented that way. Its an easy challenge...I have just about every EU book, so, all you have to do is provide a book name and page number, so I can look it up for myself...clearly I completely missed how Dagobah was presented the 5 times I read each book...Otherwise, I have to completely agree with Sinister and Arawn, you are just making things up.

Again...source? Please, since you seem to have a very different interpretation of the EU, help us out...tell us which books you read that state the creatures on Dagobah are full of the dark side. I am sorry, PerfectCell, but every claim you make gets shot down by Sinister and Arawn, and they are providing something you are not...evidence. If you claim that the EU presents Dagobah as being a dark side planet full of dark side creatures, help us all out by providing the names of books where you got that idea from. As long as you make claims and refuse to back them up with anything, you just look like some Star Wars noob who thinks they know everything, when they know next to nothing. Thats probably not the case, but, your arguments on this thread make it seem that way. All I am asking for is provide evidence, thats all...not generalizations. If you claim you read it in one or multiple books, fine. Which books? If you are telling the truth, and the books really do present Dagobah as being full of dark side creatures, and not one lone dark Jedi, it should be quite easy to shut everyone who disagrees with you up...just provide some evidence to back your theory up.

 

No, those are not the same. To say "we don't know everything about subject X" is very different from "we have no idea about the nature of subject X".
In fact, no one knows "everything" about a given subject.

In your black-and-white view of things, if someone doesn't know every possible thing there is to know about a topic, then they have "no idea". Because Obi-Wan stated the obvious -- that they do not know everything about the Force -- you seem to think that's tantamount to "we don't really know if there is a dark side or not". You're way off.

And again, Matt Stover wrote that passage. In a book whose stance on the existence of a dark side is very clear.

 

What's idiotic? The concept that the Force has two sides and a will or the policy of Lucasfilm about the eu?

I have presented facts that are concrete. The tree cave on Dagobah. You have yet to provide concrete facts that Yoda or Luke were projecting their feelings into the cave, because it looked sinister. As to Lucas commentary, they are talking about what is happening in the films. What the motivations of the characters are and why these scenes take place the way they do.

 

Prolly good to be skeptical about the 'will of the force', but I think the WOTF is a pretty solid concept. WOTF seems like fate, destiny, luck, whatever you want to call it. It only applies to things out of your control, like . . .

- Anakin being a slave
- Qui Gon meeting Anakin
- Yoda / Palpatine fight

These things are completely out of anyone's control, for the most part. Now if we find out that Palpatine somehow set up Qui Gon to meet Anakin, then it wouldn't be fate, but I'm assuming that didn't happen.

Anakin finishing and winning a pod race for the 1st time, even though Sebulba sabotaged his pod, seems like fate. Rolling the chance cube, that wasn't fate, Qui Gon just tricked Watto and got away with it.

Maybe the WOTF is always happening, but you only notice it when things are completely out of your control. And a lot of moments / situations in life are completely out of your control. You might call things coincidence or dumb luck, but if you're spiritual or philosphical, like the Jedi, then you feel like there's some order to the universe, and things don't just happen for no reason. But whether you believe in some order or not, you can't deny the coincidence when it happens, just the meaning of it.

The absolute best example ever captured on film has to be in Pulp Fiction. With the Travolta and Jackson characters in the apartment doing their hitman gig. Suddenly some guy jumps out of the bathroom and fires practically point blank at Travolta's character at least 6 times and completely misses with every shot. After, they argue about it. Travolta thinks it's just a meaningless coincidence and Jackson thinks it's significant, a miracle. They agree on what happened, no one denies what just happened, but they have different beliefs and interpret it differently.

The Yoda / Sidious duel would be in the same league, IMHO. Basically, the fight didn't come down to skill, it came down to who had a railing to grab and who didn't, when they were falling. Yoda could acknowledge it, Anakin couldn't. Yoda survives, Anakin doesn't really. The same goes for Pulp Fiction, Jackson's character survives and Travolta's doesn't make it to the end of the movie. It always seems like the non-believers get toasted in movies, seems kind of unfair, but ah well.

 

QFT. This sums it up perfectly.

 

So Yoda didn't lose to Palpatine in RotS it was just the will of the force

 

No, I'm not way off. The Jedi state that they don't know everything about the force, and with something as large and vast as the force that is tantamount to knowing nothing about the force. Every piece of literature ever written about the force and even the films themselves clearly convey that while force users of any type know how to use the force for their benefit they don't have any idea as to the true nature of the force.

In that book he writes characters that do believe in a light and dark side yes, but that's to be expected when he is writing a book full of Jedi and Sith.

The canon policy of LFL, I would never call the duality view of the force idiotic. I don't agree with it, but it's not idiotic.

You haven't presented any concrete facts about the tree cave on Dagobah, you gave assumptions and thoughts on the tree cave, but no hard facts, because no hard facts about the tree cave actually exist. The commentaries don't matter at all, they are words that you can take into account if you so choose, but they are not an integral part of the work and they are not words that you have to go by.

 

No, you're making that up. I've never read any source that said that, and it's not in the films. Your belief that the Jedi have no idea what they're doing is exactly what you accuse Yoda of: projection. You have no evidence.

Not knowing everything is not tantamount to knowing nothing. Here we go again with your binary view of knowledge.

"I don't know everything about subject X."
"That means you know nothing about subject X."

No one knows everything about a given subject. By your logic, someone that does not know everything about a subject knows nothing about a subject. So, by your logic, no one knows anything about anything, because no one is omniscient.

Now how did I know you were going to say that? Except you completely misunderstood. You thought I was talking about the characters in the book who speak of the dark side. But they know nothing, right?

The book's stance on the dark side is clear, even when there are no characters speaking or thinking. The book itself -- in the voice of the author -- refers to an externalized dark side. So it's not a good source for your Potentium theory.

 

But my point is that all of it was written by Matt Stover in the same manuscript. The Obi-Wan quote you mentioned, the references to the dark side by characters, the references to the dark side by the author's voice. You don't really think a quote by Obi-Wan in the novel supports the Potentium theory when that theory is contradicted by other parts of the same novel, do you?

 

Obi-wan's comments come earlier in the book, when he has not yet spoken to Qui-gon. Once he has spoken to him and later, become one with the Force, he understands.

 

You can say that he understands, but we have no evidence that he understands. When he shows up again in SW he is still preaching the same Jedi rhetoric as he was in the PT. Although I will give him credit for going against Yoda in the OT, since Yoda was still far too rigid in his views for what the situation called for.

 

How did Obi-Wan go against Yoda in the OT?

 

The "Jedi rethoric" is an example that what Qui-gon taught him was pretty much the same. That the Force still exists as an internal and external source. That's why it doesn't seem to change. Qui-gon largely taught Obi-wan and Yoda how to retain their identities upon their death. Their methods for Jedi training remained the same, except for letting the children grow up with families first. Qui-gon never once teaches them that their view of the Force was wrong.

 

When Yoda doesn't think Luke can be taught, and when Yoda thinks Luke is too headstrong on multiple occassions.

 

Obi-wan doesn't go against Yoda. He just reminds him that he was no different. That he reckless as well, once upon a time. Yoda was always going to train Luke, he was just disappointed in how Luke turned out. That's why he tested him to be sure that he wasn't going to create another Darth Vader or Darth Tyranus.

 

Yoda didn't want to train him because he wasn't a typical Jedi student, and that was not what Yoda wanted, he was still far too rigid in the way he viewed the Jedi.

 

I think Yoda was going to train Luke no matter what. It wouldn't make sense for Yoda to hide Luke and Leia and waste 20 years, then turn around and say Luke is too old to begin the training, when Yoda is the one who decided not to train the twins from birth and wait until they get older.

 

Actually that's the exact reason why I think he was considering not training Luke. He didn't want another Anakin, and the traits that Luke displayed were very similar to the traits Yoda had seen in Anakin.

 

Yoda had no choice but to train Luke. He might not have wanted to, but he had to. The only other viable option was Leia and she was the same age as Luke and had the same characteristics as Anakin. Those were the only two people who had a familial connnection to Anakin and enough Force ability. If he didn't want anger in Luke, maybe he should have reconsidered leaving Luke in a hell hole like Tatooine, while putting Leia in a palace.

 

That is all true, but I still think that Yoda looked at Luke and didn't want to train him because he was hoping that Luke would have come to him more like a Jedi of old than a rebellious figure like his father was. That's one of the reasons why with the inclusion of the PT Obi-Wan's line about Luke being reckless like he was really doesn't wash. The PT did a very good job of showing Ob-Wan as being a different Jedi than most, and that the rest of the order was pretty standard fare compared to him.

 

That's true, the line doesn't really make any sense. Obi-Wan was never reckless and in fact backed down a few times when I would have kept arguing, especially concerning Anakin's training and the level of responsibility he was given. As to Luke Yoda probably did hope that Luke would become more like Obi-Wan than Anakin. However I think he realized that he had to get off his ass and do something and training Luke was that something.

 

Yoda knew that Luke was one of two people in the entire galaxy that could do the job that needed to be done. He was not going to reject training Luke, even if he was the most spoiled brat alive, regardless of how impatient he was, regardless of "being too old to begin the training", regardless of any other excuse you can come up with. Yoda pretty much had no choice but to accept Luke as his student, he was just being cranky with Kenobi.

 

Excatly.

 

The only thing I'd add is that it was also a test/lesson for Luke.