#but sw as a franchise is very...archetypal and mythic and i think this is...the sw way of approaching this topic. if that makes sense

[princess-stabbity]

that is very much along the lines of how i interpret the force, explained much more coherently than i am capable of today, thank you (my sleep schedule right now is….not. it’s just not a schedule. i’ve been up since midnight).

i think part of why i like the interpretation of kreia staging that final confrontation is because i like framing the overarching narrative of kotor 2 as being about someone overcoming trauma. (insert caveat here that i have not experienced ptsd, and the person i’m closest to who has was largely able to heal and move on by the time i was old enough to be aware of it, so my understanding is a secondhand, academic sort of one, and i may have some things wrong)

the source of the trauma is obvious. malachor. the main symptom is also pretty obvious, namely cutting themself off from the force (read: self-isolation, avoidance). also, implicitly, literal self-isolation, given what little is said about what they did during their exile.

it’s also worth noting that, like revan, most places we go in the game have some sort of personal relevance to the exile and their past. they were trained on dantooine, they fought on dxun, they cut themself off at malachor. the others are less obvious, but i would argue nar shaddaa with its refugee population and telos with its rebuilding efforts tie in in a general sense, as aftermath of the wars. and korriban...well, let’s be honest, korriban barely counts as a planet in its own right, and probably mostly existed because they needed to reuse some bioware assets. but even there you go on a sort of vision journey into the past when you explore that tomb.

you could interpret it as the force drawing them to these places. iirc, kreia implies as much. but she also tells you point-blank at malachor that she has been manipulating events this whole time. so it’s possible she was intentionally trying to make you confront your past in this way. it aligns well enough with her philosophy-- “The true war is waged in the hearts of all living things, against our own natures, light or dark.”  “It is the internal struggles, when fought and won on their own, that yield the strongest rewards.”

if read as a narrative about trauma: the jedi exile experiences an intensely painful event that causes them to shut themself off from all stimuli, both good and bad, in order to survive. then, over the course of the story, they process and make peace with their past, and gradually open back up to the world and learn to bond with other people again. they’re not the same person they once were, and that’s okay. i like that way of looking at it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

mind you, even in this interpretation, i don’t think what the exile ultimately becomes is what kreia pictured from the start. in fact--not to get too deep into the weeds about the exile’s abilities and their implications here, but--i think the kotor 2 era jedi and sith both incorrectly shunned connection for different reasons (for the jedi, out of a fear of the excesses of passion; for the sith, as you said, the individualism and selfishness inherent in their ideology). to me, part of how the exile succeeds kreia--surpasses her--is in the embrace of connection. the jedi and sith share a reliance on the force, but they also share an unwillingness to accept its interconnected nature. kreia can overcome the first limitation of these seminal ideologies, but not the second (except, arguably, in her own love for the exile).

so…i suppose, to summarize, i think there are multiple valid interpretations based on contextual evidence. i happen to like this one the most because i think it has the most internal consistency and creates an overarching storyline i find more meaningful than the more commonly accepted ones. i doubt it was the intention, but i think it’s better than the intention probably was, and also fuck that guy anyway, y’know? also horses belong in fallout. bite me, CA.

ok, i have a bit of a lore request? do you think you could explain what exactly Kreia had planned to DO with the Exile in KOTOR2? it's something i still haven't been able to parse enough myself to actually understand. i know she saw in the Exile the potential to 'kill' the Force, that the Exile was "an emptiness in which its will might be denied", but i never understood HOW, exactly. lots of small pieces that i've never been able to connect. like, just what was going ON in that whole situation??

Wow, this is a fun one. Do I think I could explain it? Like, authoritatively? Absolutely not.  I wonder a lot about how much of it was left intentionally mysterious or open to speculation/interpretation and how much was down to inexpert writing, the limitations of the medium, or KotOR II being rushed to release in an incomplete state. 

Kreia might intend to use the Exile and their metaphysically unique situation as a focus for a ritual that would destroy the Force or cut off its influence on sentient beings, but we…never really get any details about how that’s actually supposed to work.

There’s plenty of latitude for you to read that any number of ways from “Kreia has a detailed, realistic itinerary to execute this plan that she’s not sharing with you for OpSec reasons,” to “Kreia is feeding you information that she expects will cause you to react a particular way that serves her Actual Real Ultimate Goal,” to “Kreia’s plan is an underpants gnomes gambit and she legitimately has no idea what she’s doing”  to “Kreia just loves you and wants you to achieve your highest potential, and this whole field trip has been her abusive, nightmarish take on a Socratic dialog,” some combination of all of those, or other stuff entirely.

She certainly orchestrates opportunities for conflict with representatives of the Jedi and the Sith, but that’s not the same thing. She also goes on at length about how the Exile’s existence puts to lie all of the doctrine that the Jedi and Sith have accumulated over millennia, and it’s left to you to decide whether she genuinely believes that and there’s something of substance to it, whether she genuinely believes it and it’s delusional, whether she’s lying to you and why/to what purpose, whether Kreia knows she’s a character in a video game and she’s actually addressing you, the player (”There is no great revelation, no great secret. There is only you.”), or what.