#ask spell something

Luke gets rescued after his 12th swlf sacrificing stunt of the month and all he hears as he's dragged off to the Executor is Vader muttering about damned Naberrie genes

I don't think Vader would ever speak a word against Padmé haha. If Padmé was reckless, well, she was brave and bold and brilliant, wasn't she? If Anakin was reckless, what an idiot. So I definitely don't think he complains about Naberrie genes. I think if he looked at Luke he'd find a way for every single feature about Luke he liked to have come for Padmé, while every feature that worried him came from Anakin.

So I think he definitely looks at Luke's insane shenanigans and thinks, "He's such a Skywalker." BUT! There are two other important influences to add to the equation! He definitely blames Kenobi. And he probably blame the Lars family as well.

For Owen and Beru, this is patently unfair and hypocritical. I frequently think about that post that talks about Owen Lars holding the longest record for holding off Skywalker bullshit. I think Vader is out here complaining that growing up on a crime hole like Tatooine, Luke has clearly picked up horrible habits, a disregard for his own life, an unnervingly familiarity with recklessness - clearly this is all those farmers' fault. Which is so not fair! Luke grew up on Crime Planet but in fact did not see anything of it until his aunt and uncle died. I would argue that the only instincts of self-preservation that Luke has, he has because Owen and Beru drilled them into him.

But for Obi-Wan? Yeah, that's fair. Biggest hypocrite of them all. He complains about Anakin being reckless and is afraid of Luke being reckless, but then in a day he undoes all of Owen and Beru's hard work by taking Luke to a wretched hive of scum and villainy, introducing him to the worst smuggler in the galaxy, and getting him captured by the Empire. Also, in this time he has taken Luke's dreams of adventure and dialled them up to the max by telling him all about his father so Luke wants to be cool and adventurous like him.

Wow, I had THOUGHTS about this one.

Honestly? I'm not a fan of the assumption in a lot of fic and by fans that it's super easy to passively sense someone in the Force. I have used it myself, of course, but I say from experience it restricts writing a lot while... not actually having a ton of backing in the films? (I'm referring to the films here, not to any other media, just because when I want to analyse lore, I only take them as canon; when I'm just looking for cool worldbuilding for a fic, though, anything goes.)

It's not just Leia that Vader doesn't sense on the Death Star. He doesn't sense Luke either, even though Luke is right there screaming when Vader kills Obi-Wan. It's more of an issue with Leia ofc because he literally used the mind probe on her but only finds that "her resistance... is considerable". An easy answer is that I headcanon Leia is a naturally good shielder, which is why she was never found on the Death Star and also why all of the Jedi in ROTS were surprised there were two babies - Leia had been naturally shielding herself, so they just sensed Luke.

But if we go more in-depth into the films' representations of the Force, Vader only senses Luke when he's actively chasing him as a pilot; he comments that "The Force is strong with this one" only when Luke is using the Force to aim and fire his shot. For me, this implies that you can only sense other Force users powerfully or distinctly when they're actively using the Force. I know why fic prefers not to go that way - I for one have used the "Vader senses Luke immediately" plot to get Luke captured many a time - but it's a fun thing to consider. Also, the Force is a soft magic system. It does functionally whatever the story needs it to.* Which is why Vader can sense Luke approaching Endor in ROTJ when Palpatine couldn't, but he had to be told by an officer when Luke's ship was approaching Cloud City in ESB.** There are many examples where a Force user just didn't sense someone else. Luke not sensing Yoda in ESB, Obi-Wan not sensing Dooku's presence on Geonosis, the Jedi non sensing Maul in TPM, the Jedi not sensing Palpatine for the whole prequel trilogy.

You could argue that those examples are of trained Force wielders shielding themselves, but I would argue that Qui-Gon can't sense Anakin in TPM. He doesn't show interest in Anakin until after they've left Watto's shop and Anakin starts talking to him. Anakin is the literal son of the Force and the most powerful Force wielder ever, but Qui-Gon was talking to Watto for a while without batting an eyelash at the small supernova in his shop. He didn't start to suspect until he heard about his racing, his instincts, spoke to him to notice his insights. Then still he spoke to Shmi about him to confirm his suspicions that "he can see things before they happen", watched him while he flew, and took a midichlorian count. I think the Force might well have been nudging Qui-Gon to look at Anakin, to suspect something, but I don't think he sensed Anakin himself as Force sensitive - at least, not immediately. Which is how I think you can explain all the instances of people going "I felt his presence." They were either using the Force, or familiar as Force sensitives to the person sensing them, or the Force wielder in general had an instinct that there was something special about this person, I should pay attention...

This has been a long ramble, but the short answer is: I headcanon Leia as naturally good at shielding. I think it fills multiple Star Wars plot holes.***

But I think it's also worth interrogating the fact that fandom seems to approach and conceptualise of the Force as a hard magic system, with clearly defined rules, rather than the soft magic system it is.**** Anything goes in Star Wars! It can be annoying if the writing doesn't sell it well enough, but I really love that aspect of the worldbuilding. And considering that the Force is a big fat plot device as well as giving people magical instincts for things that are Plot Relevant and things that aren't, I think it's a lot more interesting to consider that the Force isn't a superpower that lets you sense everything. Vader didn't detect Leia simply because he didn't. Sometimes they fail to do that. And it allows you to show growth in character and situation when that fact changes. Vader doesn't sense Luke in ANH until he's Plot Relevant to Vader's personal story. He doesn't sense Luke until he's fighting him in ESB. But in ROTJ, once they're both invested in their relationship and fated to meet, they're drawn together like stars caught in a mutual orbit.

That's the explanation I prefer. Because although it's less consistent, it's not unbelievable. It leaves uncertainty, mysticism, the chance for exploration in the galaxy. And most importantly, it tells a damn good story. Which, while this may not be true of people who love collecting lore and figuring the galaxy out, is ultimately what I'm here for.

*This is why so many random new powers can get added and explored in later movies and such, and also why I don't really get het up about it when they do add them. It just depends how you incorporate that new power. Usually, if a villain suddenly has a new power no one knew about (like Palpatine's lightning in ROTJ) it just ups the stakes, while if a hero suddenly has a new power it can feel like it cheapens their victory, like they haven't earned it; a deus ex machina. So messing about with Force powers is fine, it just depends how you incorporate them in the story.

**Admittedly this can be explained by the bond being formed when Luke learned the truth, but you know what I mean.

***I was only talking about the movies here, but there's also that moment in the Kenobi series where she's captured by Inquisitors and still no one notices she's Force sensitive??? There's just a lot of moments like this littered all over Star Wars, so this headcanon covers a lot of them.

I'm a Yoda fan myself! I see a lot of AUs put him with Obi-Wan, if he had access to the whole of the PT Jedi Order for traditional training, but I think that's less interesting, although there'd definitely be a lot to unpack there.

In thinking about it for fic purposes, I've also thought about Mace - I don't think that would go badly at all, and it would be interesting to see what Mace's hardline attitude and firm commitment to the Jedi and to justice would manifest as in Luke "I can save him" Skywalker.

There's other masters who I think would be interesting if handled in a way that teased out their characters - Luminara Unduli, Depa Billaba, etc. - but while I know a bit about them as people, I don't know them quite as well fleshed out, their strengths and foibles and so on.

Honestly, I keep swinging between "it would totally change the worldbuilding" and "it wouldn't change it much" (which is why I'm responding to this two years later...) My, admittedly limited, understanding of the stress response is that it give you hysterical strength and adrenaline as you said, but only for a very short time, and after that it begins to damage your body because your body is just not built to be in that sort of fight-or-flight situation for any extended period of time. You can hurt yourself and push through it so you don't feel it until later, possibly aggravating the injury, and it's the prime example of how we're wired to survive as best we can and have built in mechanisms to keep us going even in moments of crisis.

Which is fascinating if you apply it to the dark side! The idea that you can use your heightened emotions to achieve power you didn't have before, but it comes at a great cost and you'd constantly be chasing it, is largely what the dark side is about. Who needs Jedi training and discipline when you can access the dark side by drawing on an artificial fight-or-flight response? It fits into the "quicker, easier, more seductive" definition of the dark side and especially fits the fact that people are more likely to fall to the dark side when they're desperate, or when they're in a natural fight-or-flight response (see Luke beating Vader in ROTJ because he threatened Leia, so Luke's anger and protective instincts kicked off). It makes a lot of sense!

But another important aspect of the dark side imo is the moral aspect. You don't just get power from your own suffering and your own desperation; you can draw power from others' suffering. You get power by causing others' suffering. That's why the Sith are evil: because the dark side twists and corrupts the user's mind in the pursuit of power, so they cause more and more suffering along the way. The dark side is what would happen if, after experiencing the stress response for the first time, the person enjoyed feeling strong so much that they sought to induce the effects in them again, and again, caring less and less about pain and more and more about the power, and hurting people in order to achieve it.

If the dark side was just a matter of the stress response in Star Wars, it would change the worldbuilding a lot because I think those that use it wouldn't be ostracised in the same way. In real life, people get pushed too hard all the time, and have to have care and support to recover from the health impacts of that. If a Jedi was near death and used the dark side in a specific situation, if it was just a magical version of the stress response, the power would fade, and I imagine the other Jedi would come in to help them recover, not hold it against them, and simply be happy they're still alive. I imagine the dark side wouldn't be a moral issue, but rather a danger issue - it's not that you can't use it, it's that using it burns you through, so only tap into it if you absolutely have to. (Especially since Force powers are dangerous, so if you're near death and you're suddenly wielding ridiculous magic powers, someone near you could get very hurt indeed.) It would be more in line with other magic systems where there's this deus ex machina-style power that competent magicians can use, but shouldn't use extensively, to protect their bodies and minds.

Meanwhile, I imagine that the Sith in this scenario would be more along the lines of a religious organisation that do induce artificial stress responses in themselves to achieve short bursts of enormous power at great cost to themselves. The Jedi would be against the Sith because they teach children from a young age to harm themselves in order to gain power, functionally teaching them to be walking Force bombs into the future. Think teachers irl who think students work best under enormous pressure vs teachers who actually provide learning support. Worldbuilding like this would be a really interesting way to look at pedagogy and health and creativity! The idea of the tortured artist who can only produce masterpieces when they're struggling with demons or something is really powerful in pop culture, so writing a story with this sort of worldbuilding could be a really fun way to explore that.

This has taken me two and a half years to respond to, but I finally got to work on it! I took some liberties with the plot from what you said here, but I present to you:

Into the Vaderverse

I'm assuming that in this case, Padmé doesn't know Vader is Anakin so thinks Anakin is dead. I don't think she would remarry or move on if she knew he was alive and evil, both because I think she would think there was still good in him, like in ROTS, or because she knew that would put a massive target on the back of whoever she married lmao, and she's got a strong enough sense of duty and responsibility that she'd want to avoid this person she's starting to love getting pulverised by her ex. (Which would be a fantastically angsty story, actually!) But those are just my opening thoughts - I'm of the opinion that I'll believe any character did anything so long as you sell it well enough in the fic itself.

But in fics where she thinks he's dead, I think she would move on! According to the extra books and materials, there were loooots of people in love with Padmé. I can't blame them; I'm included in that number. It would definitely be a very different style of relationship to what she had with Anakin, but considering she previously dated Clovis and Palo, both of whom were very different to each other as well as to Anakin, she'd definitely find someone she liked. (If she has the twins with her, bonus points if that person is good with the twins and they like them a lot.) I just think that while Padmé is clearly devoted to Anakin, after 10 years or something she'd be healthy enough to move on.

Have a line I just wrote this evening!

“The credits will be enough to buy another farm,” she said to Luke. “On another planet. Where water falls from the sky.” Luke’s lip curled. “What use will a moisture boy be on a planet like that?”

(Meanwhile Vader afraid to look too hard at sonboi in case it drives him away)

((I should really go to bed))