A thought about lightsabers

[cnoocy]

It's official canon that a lightsaber is a short beam of very powerful destructive force, like a chainsaw or a blowtorch. Only Jedi (or Sith) can use them because you need the skills of a Jedi not to injure yourself or someone else with such a powerful weapon.

But what if it's the opposite?

It actually makes more sense to me if the blade of a lightsaber is an extraordinarily weak, but extremely precise force. The Jedi are so attuned to the Force that they can find the spaces between individual atoms and sever the bonds holding a wall or an arm together. Similarly, they can find the force of another lightsaber and block its passage. But a non-Jedi like me or Admiral Ackbar would find it easier to injure someone with a laser pointer.


This idea is based on the Taoist text Cutting Up an Ox in which a butcher explains that his skill at ox-dividing is due to the Way. He sees the "spaces in the joints" and makes so little effort that his blade is still sharp after 19 years of use.

Comments

[rikchik.livejournal.com]

Does it still look cool when wielded by a non-Jedi? I guess it must, based on farmboy Luke playing with his in ANH.

I guess I need a blog where I can post ideas like this - I have this great idea about the Chameleon Circuit.

[cnoocy]

Though keep in mind that Farmboy Luke is already sort of force-attuned, with superhuman piloting and shooting skills.

You just need to express your idea as a picture, and then you can post it.

[jordanwillow.livejournal.com]

I begin to wonder why Jedi even need lightsabers.

And then I start thinking about shooting lightning out of my finger. That's a good trick.

[mrmorse.livejournal.com]

Jedi need lightsabers because lightsabers are awesome. Given that they can use them, why would they choose not to? (If not using lightsabers means there are more opportunities to shoot lightning from your fingers, that might be a good reason.)

[cnoocy]

I think Jedi need lightsabers for the same reason we need styluses and carving tools when we make designs in clay. Human fingers are just too wide for some tasks.

I'll have to think about the lightning.

[jordanwillow.livejournal.com]

Is it only Sith who shoot the lightning, or did the good guys ever do it? I can't remember.

(Where is my Jedi icon?! In a pinch, Eomer...)

[mrmorse.livejournal.com]

I believe the only character in the movies (even counting the prequels, and I try not to) who shoots lightning is the Emperor. I can't speak to the books (or the video games, assuming they even count as canon). Any discussion I've seen of the subject always assumes that lightning is serious Dark Side stuff.

[joxn.livejournal.com]

I had a similar thought -- that lightsabers might be a beam of, uh, force, but you need to specifically and precisely use Force powers to tune them to a cutting edge. So in the hands of some non-Force-user they would act like low mass, high-rigidity bonkers. That way, baby Jedi are unlikely to cut their own limbs off; and also it would make sense that a Jedi might try to knock some high-mass thing flying towards them away with their saber (if they were successful in cutting through it they'd just have TWO lower-mass things flying at them...)

[cnoocy]

Interesting. It occurred to me that we often see baby Jedi using their lightsaber to interact with lightsaber-specific training equipment. Things like the training ball Luke uses on the Millennium Falcon may be designed to send bolts that can be deflected by an inexpert lightsaber user.

[joxn.livejournal.com]

Or it could be that in their high-rigidity, low-mass bonker mode, they are very good at deflecting other low-mass objects. Anyone could use them to deflect blaster bolts, but then you have the problem that you start to need need (presumably Force-enhanced) coordination / precognition to do it successfully.

[cnoocy]

True. I think it was the GURPS Space Opera book where I first saw "Precognitive Parry" as the skill used to block blaster bolts.

Isn't deflecting moving objects with minimal force part of non-Jedi martial arts practice as well?

[lapak.livejournal.com]

I hate to disagree, but doesn't Han using a lightsaber to cut open the Tauntaun (or however it's spelled) pretty much disprove that theory?

[mrmorse.livejournal.com]

The real tragedy of science: the slaying of a beautiful theory by an ugly fact. I just wasn't going to bring it up.

[cnoocy]

If you wanted to stretch, you could assert that Luke (or hell, Leia (or Obi-wan)) is guiding Han's hand at that particular moment.

[nerdranting.livejournal.com]

And cnoocy goes for the fanwank and ... it goes wide!

(Sorry, dude, I'm not buying it.)

[cnoocy]

I acknowledge that it's a stretch. I may come up with something better.

[mrmorse.livejournal.com]

Apparently I can't sleep and am overly hung up on the concept of the Star Wars canon. For me, the Star Wars canon consists of three (and only three) movies. However, my interpretation of the movies is heavily colored by many sources I was exposed to more or less contemporaneously with the movies, not limited to the Marvel comics adaptations of the movies, the Marvel comics spinoff series, the Kenner toys, the "Making of Star Wars" and "SPFX: The Empire Strikes Back" documentaries, the Bantha Tracks official fanclub newsletter, the Star Wars arcade game, The Empire Strikes Back Atari 2600 video game, and fanzine fiction.

There are many other materials that could be considered part of the canon, including the novels, the Star Wars Christmas Special, the Ewok movie (or movies?), the prequel trilogy movies, the Clone Wars TV series and movie, the video games, the role playing game, the Dark Horse comic series, and Star Wars reference books. (And even things like fan edits of the prequel trilogy, which can't be said to be the canon but potentially change the interpretation of the canon.)

All of these sources have varying degrees of authority and "officialness", and indeed how official they are has changed over time. I don't know if Lucas asserts an official Star Wars canon, and I'm tempted to not give his assertion any weight anyway. (I prefer to think of the prequel trilogy as fan fiction written by someone who is, ironically, not a fan.)

So when you assert that there is a canon explanation for how lightsabers work, I find myself wondering about your source. As far as I can recall, there's no explanation for how lightsabers work in the original trilogy. Any attempted explanation should account for the fact that the only people we see who choose to use lightsabers on a regular basis are Luke, Obi-Wan, and Darth Vader, but also that Han does use the lightsaber to cut open the Tauntaun in The Empire Strikes Back, as mentioned above.

I remember having conversations about this last fact before Return of the Jedi came out, in which it was suggested that having control of the Force was a necessary condition for using a lightsaber and therefore Han had at least some control of the Force. But (again, as far as I remember. Sadly, I do not have instant recall of every event in the Star Wars movies) I don't think there's a textual justification for the idea that you need to be able to control the Force in order to use a lightsaber. The closest you get is that Jedi use the Force and that the lightsaber is the weapon of choice for Jedi (and they are apparently not used by non-Jedi, although I don't believe there is direct textual support for this).

So, is the Star Wars canon well defined? Given a definition of the canon, is there a single non-self-contradictory explanation for how lightsabers work? If there is an explanation for how lightsabers work, how reliable is it? (If the source is an omniscient honest narrator, it is more reliable than if it is the characters' possibly flawed understanding.) Once we have these basic issues established, we can move on to alternative explanations and possible implications.

[cnoocy]

I have to think more about canon when I've been awake for more than 10 minutes, but my source in this case for official canon was Wookieepedia.

[mrmorse.livejournal.com]

Late update: Wookieepedia has a long page on the definition of the Star Wars canon. However, I'm not sure whether this provides a coherent resolution to what the Star Wars canon is, and I'm not convinced that Wookieepedia has any more authority as to what the canon is than any other potential authority.

[cnoocy]

I think that "canon" is always going to be defined somewhat subjectively. Some definitions are more concise and elegant than others, but it's always going to be a bit messy, especially with extended texts like the Star Wars universe.

[cnoocy]

Also checked on Wookieepedia before posting: the fact that Admiral Ackbar did not turn out to secretly be a Jedi.

[silkblade.livejournal.com]

I bet Chris Johnson would know!

[cnoocy]

That's a good point. I should put a link to this post on my facebook.

[nerdranting.livejournal.com]

So what you're suggesting is that lightsabers are like the Subtle Knife (aka Æsahættr)?

[cnoocy]

I think so. The end of that book upset me so much that I don't remember it as well as I might. (It's the only book I've ever actually thrown across the room.) But if I recall, it's a very similar sort of concept.

[nerdranting.livejournal.com]

Which book upset you, The Subtle Knife or the Amber Spyglass?

I know a lot of people were upset by the early part of the Subtle Knife, and a lot of people (arguably including me) who were disappointed by the end of The Amber Spyglass, but if it was The Subtle Knife's Ending that upset you, that's the first I've heard of that happening. (And my books have yet to be unpacked, so I can't go look to see what happened right at the end.)

[cnoocy]

The end of The Subtle Knife contains an event that the entire book has been leading up to, only to deny it in a particularly "the universe is a cruel place" way.

[nerdranting.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah, that. :-/

I felt that the retconning of the background of that event was annoying enough that the event you refer to almost felt like it cleaned up the loose plot threads.

[cerebralpaladin.livejournal.com]

I don't remember why I had this reaction, but when I read The Subtle Knife, I turned to my wife and said something like, "I would throw this book across the room, except that it's your book and I don't want to damage somebody else's book." But I was really tempted.

I suspect I may have been reacting to the same thing, but I don't recall much of anything about the plot/events of the book, and I can't see it benefiting me to try to remind myself.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_opus_/]

General Grievous was not a Jedi, nor was he attuned to the Force. But he appears to have decent control of a lightsaber.

Now, spinning a lightsaber really quickly, one could theorize that he severs those atomic bonds through blind luck multiplied by an incredibly high number of attempts.

Still doesn't explain Han, though.