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PaperclipPerfector  17d ago (text post)   2909 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for March 14, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Like, Luke is never actually tempted by the dark side. There is nothing the dark side ever has to offer him that he wants

It's not much, but he does show a lot of curiosity with Obi Wan about his father. I imagine that's the tentation, to get to know about his father. The movie doesn't do a good job of showing the internal struggle, but when he confronts Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back, at that point, he has lost his uncle and aunt, he has lost Obi Wan and the closest to a father figure he has left is a tiny green puppet who talks funny with the same voice actor as Miss Piggy.

Even if he did obey the Emperor and strike down Darth Vader in anger, there's no plausible reason he would switch sides, he'd just strike down the Emperor too.

I think the point is a variant of the idea of "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house". It could be taken in a philosophical sense, that if Luke strikes down Darth Vader in anger, he'll probably strike down the Emperor in anger too, and will be going down the path of normalizing striking down his enemies in anger, which will eventually lead to him becoming just as bad as Darth Vader and the Emperor. Letting the anger drive + the overwhelming power of being a trained force user = bad times for everyone. This is the what the prequels show with Anakin, the turning point that sets him down a dark path is getting revenge on sand people (who most likely had it coming, this is before primary canon had shown the sand people to be anything but murderous barbarian raiders). It also makes the "Only Siths deal in absolutes" quote stupid because Jedi deal in absolutes all the freaking time; it's their commitment to absolutist ethics that seemingly keeps them from turning into power-hungry murder machines.

Then there's the more literal sense of it, that if Luke had stricken down Darth Vader in anger, that this anger through some force bullshit would somehow literally feed the Emperor's power and Luke would then lose the ensuing battle. Maybe it'd give the Emperor a hold to Force Mind Break him or something.

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