#kotor 2 lightsaber parts

[sovonight]

24 hrs later the custom character mod finally runs!

but of course i need custom textures and to attempt to edit the anims so i’m extracting the game and just downloaded a hex editor

[redjennies]

all i knew before playing kotor 2 was that people loved kreia so i was surprised i didn't much care for her except for a couple memorable scenes. meanwhile atris had me on a chokehold the whole time. the scene where you assemble your Backstory on the fly while having a bitter argument with her is still one of my favorite bits from any game.

it's SUCH a good scene! I love how you can start out that conversation so penitent, so much older and wiser since you were first exiled, but the more you argue with her the more the dialogue gets drawn into that argument. by the time you're interrupting her, you've entirely relapsed into that same person you were when you stood before her and the Council. you stop being the sorry Exile and start being that person "who was so right," again, and it perfectly mirrors Atris' own deeply held convictions. at that moment, neither one of you can really let it go.

it lays out the relationship so well in a way that makes it easy to imagine why she and the Exile were so close in the first place. you can easily imagine this tendency to debate was always part of their friendship. they both have this same stubborn, overdeveloped sense of what is right, and that strong sense of morality ends up being both of their undoing. the Exile, defined by their empathy and emotional impulsivity, simply fell first and therefore, has had time to grow from it. for better or worse, they are different now, even if progress isn't linear when you're in a bitter argument with your ex.

Atris, on the other hand, is intentionally cautious just as she has been taught to be. if the Exile is the prodigal son, Atris is the good son. she has always held fast to her teachings and done what was expected of her. unlike the Exile, she did not go to war. unlike the Exile, she does not let her feelings get the better of her. unlike the Exile, she can stand next to the Sith and not feel their influence, right? surely, of all people, she has the willpower to resist, right? after all, she's doing all of this to eradicate the SIth and save the galaxy from their destruction. (but when you think about it, is Kreia not trying to do the very same thing?)

and so Atris falls, not in spite of her piety, but because of it. and it's so good! it's so compelling! not because "bluh bluh, huge bitch. she's self-righteous and she got what was coming to her," like the fanboys of yore would tell you, but because Atris is a historian. she carries your old lightsaber as a reminder to never be like you. she is nothing like you, and she is exactly like you. she is a part of your backstory, and she is your backstory, repeating. and she's a fucking fantastic character. 10/10.

[mmoxie]

so i finished kotor 2 for the first time (this is a long post but it's fun) good game 10/10 everyone was right about it

my exile is a woman named kleio kel who may've once been a jedi but stuck pretty strongly to the "they fired me" mindset and never let anyone call her that again

she wields a short-bladed white lightsaber, which symbolizes a kind of Stacker Pentecost "i bring nothing into the drift" mentality- wielding her lightsaber indicates nothing about her, it is a tool- and with its short blade is a tool largely for turning away other weapons

her two best friends are visas marr and hk-47- she's gonna give visas everything and hk makes her laugh

there were no good decisions on onderon, but she ended the monarchy with the hopes that the military would coup itself down to uselessness in time- unfortunately her old boss was pals with the queen, so they had to duke it out

dantooine was a little more straightforward- these people are trying, help 'em try

the greedy cunts that wanted to take over local government just because they can were lethally pranked into walking directly into a battery of laser turrets

she danced for a hutt which was more than a little embarrassing but a small price to pay to get some fuel to the nice space station where they jail you in a free apartment

but the whole time she was asking "wait i bought a dancing girl's billet back at that station to get her away from her neglectful idiot boyfriend and her terrible boss, why can't she come here and dance"

alas, that girl's afraid of spaceships i think, she ain't going nowhere

after every gang in nar shadaa tried to pick a fight with her, she packed up her bags and headed to korriban to do a little light archaeology

she got attacked by a bunch of ghosts but came out of it smelling like roses with a bunch of fresh lightsaber parts for her trouble, which she used to upgrade her unassuming little shoto into a mean little disarming stick- with its thin blade and easy handling, she could simply aim for the emitter on an opponent's lightsaber and cut right through

and listen.

she tried really hard not to kill her old bosses. there were no hard feelings, REALLY

she refused to kill atris, and on dantooine offered not to fight the old boys in brown, but they swung on her, so... y'know,

listen this whole campaign was self defense.

eventually she squared off with darth nihlus and was extremely motivated to defend her new girlfriend, which resulted in his death as well as visas getting to breathe easy and come to terms with some of her traumas she experienced at his hands

and then it was time for kreia.

c'mon kreia i was so nice to you.

we both hate the force, but it's like being an american and hating gasoline alright

hating it won't make it suck any less

you're making yourself sick obsessing over it when you could be like, i dunno, teaching responsible minimization practices

instead you're questioning its motives and it's like

girl

that's the force

it "wants" balance like an apple "wants" to fall from a tree

that's not a will being imposed by god that's just events playing out toward equilibrium, the apple would keep falling at the rate of gravity if it didn't have someone's head to hit

the fact that the galaxy appears to balance is just the organic reaction- you cause a wound, it scabs over, alright

like kreia come on you're SO smart how can you not see this are you just too fucking mad

i tried to talk her down all the way to the very end, but she sicced a cloud of floating lightsabers on me so i had to clean up shop for the safety of everyone involved

even in her last moments i was doing my utmost to be kind because she was just so so so miserable and had some pretty bad brain poisoning

she succumbed to her injuries from the fight and carth i mean atton walked me out of there

so i could go catch up with atton i mean carth at the space station and listen to him talk about

whoever revan is

she didnt factor into my day to day on this adventure very much she's out there doing whatever but these people are OBSESSED

afterward i bought visas a sexy party dress and retired to the pazaak dens to live out my days partying after a job well done

[ryssabrin]

finished kotor 2! that last like two hours of the game really drags lol. having a game where the combat system revolves around a party of companions and then having levels where you’re left by yourself can be fun and interesting but not for the entire ending of the game. i had to do the first phase of the final boss twice bc i slipped up right at the beginning of the second phase and died without saving. really annoyed when i figured out how much easier the second phase is lmao. for some reason my lightsaber attacks were just not doing any damage at all (they kept missing? no idea why) so all i could was slowly chisel down her health with all of the two offensive force abilities i had and rage every time she spammed the life drain ability. anyways. now that i’m done venting about that wow! the story was so good!

i think you can def tell it switched developers part way through bc parts of it feel very bioware and parts feel very obsidian. all of the companions have really interesting story hooks but either i sucked at progressing their dialogue or they’re just not written with much depth past a certain point. atton and kreia get a lot of focus and then mira gets a decent amount (but feels much less connected to the main story), but bao-dur, visas, mandalore and the droids get hardly anything. (why was hk-47 even there?) i did dantooine last so i didn’t see much of the disciple (slight blessing in disguise bc i was not expecting smellis to be in this game lmao), but he seemed like he might have had more focus than the droids. i know some of it is tied to your force alignment but still lol. loved what was there in terms of the character writing but a lot of it felt half baked, unfinished, or just missing key moments. there being no loyalty missions of any kind is very felt. i just barely managed to make atton a jedi right before the part of the game where your companions just aren’t there anymore.

if they’re ever able to remake the kotor games, the first one would be pretty easy to just one-to-one remake. add a voiced protagonist, dialogue wheel and proper character creator, beef up the gameplay and cutscenes (and flesh out the romances) and that’s it. but kotor 2 i feel like would need a full restructuring. the main story around the exile and kreia is so good. the way it digs into how different force users experience and relate to the force and how that affects them is good good star wars content and obsidian really nailed that. i wish sion and nihilous were more fleshed out and actually interacted with the exile more to really hammer home that idea and atton’s addition shouldn’t be locked behind figuring out his weird influence gains lol. anything that doesn’t tie in to that kind of falls to the wayside though.

i think it work better if it were less of an rpg. keep the player on their own for the most part with some story sections giving you different companions as uncontrollable npcs. you can keep the sections where the party splits up and you play as a diff character but have it be a set character with a similar moveset. keep the companions in set locations, maybe on the ship maybe not (mira really doesn’t have a reason to leave nar shadaa and mandalore doesn’t need to leave dxun tbh), and have them each have a questline. that would allow the player to engage with the companions as much or as little as possible and focus in more on the exile as a character and their interactions with kreia. the exile could honestly stand to be more of an established character with less player input as blasphemous as that sounds lol. keep most of the dialogue choices and the ability to play it light side or dark side but anything about the exile’s past should be set. and the planet order shouldn’t be variable. i followed the “best” planet order according to google and i didn’t like it actually lol. korriban should absolutely be last as it’s the only planet where you don’t get a companion, you fight sion for the first time and it has that whole optional vision quest thing. dantooine or possibly nar shadaa could be first and the other second with onderon third.

all in all i’m very happy i finally got to play this game and would be so stoked if it got a remake but i don’t think i’ll be doing a dark side run anytime soon lol.

[artemissoteira]

ok only tangentially related but the kotor 2 soundtrack on spotify has a lightsaber for the little scrubber bar that shows the duration of the song??? that shit slaps

ID: screenshot of the audio controls on spotify showing the scrubber bar beneath the shuffle, skip, pause, and loop buttons. the usual simple grey bar showing the duration has a lightsaber hilt placed over the starting end, and the elapsed part of the bar is filled in a glowing white, making it look like the lightsaber is igniting. end ID

[perpetual-fool]

I mentioned this to someone once, more or less. It went very poorly, so I assumed I must've been lying. But I'm trying to imagine positive interactions now and I'm pretty sure it's true.

The only part of me I know really is still me is my sexuality.

I'm trying to imagine someone being accepting of me. I don't want it to be all about sex, but I don't know what else there is. And I'm not sure there is anything else. I mean, not to say that I'm just a soulless fuck machine at heart. But, well first, what does it mean for someone to be who they are? I think it must be how a person interacts with the world. Like, anything you do, you could just stop doing for one reason or another. So something like 'writer' isn't something that you are. But maybe you'll make up stories about things whether you share them or not, so maybe 'storyteller' is. But I haven't been allowed to do anything like that. I don't really interact with the world at all. So, as of yet, I am nothing. And I don't really know what 'something' would be.

And I could not have been something, previously. Having an instinctive need for belonging yet being fundamentally different, the 'love' and 'support' of others would have ground me into dust regardless. Other people just seem so fake. And so stupid, for lack of a better word. And vile. Like, that 'stupid' would be be met with a 'how dare you' or 'you're not better than everyone else' or something. People would mutilate it and throw it back in my face, not even knowing what it means. The best response I've gotten about the phenomenon is an endless string of excuses implying that this thing that's completely fucking up my life and has been since my earliest memories, just isn't happening. I would fucking hate them for that were it the whole story. I can tell myself they can't help it, that's just what they are. But it doesn't seem to help. Is it better to be hopeless than angry?

Anyway, having imaginary conversations with my imaginary companion, I feel like this is what a 'friend' is supposed to be like. I'm not sure how I'm making that assessment, as that's not something I could possibly know. Maybe it just fits the story of 'friend'? It's having a profound effect on me just imagining that someone is actually following what I'm saying. Which aside, has to mean that people really aren't understanding me, which means their assessments of me are not valid. Not that knowing that changes how I feel. But, these interactions feel more real than the ones I have with real people. With actual people it's like I'm dealing with something pretending to be human, but which doesn't quite understand what they're like. But I'm the outlier, so maybe I'm the thing which isn't quite human.

It's not entirely dissimilar from the wrongness I feel about the violin. Like, violin is a tiny, shrill viola. And standard viola is a fat violin, but not fat enough for the role it's supposed to fill. The true instrument is the five-string viola, of which the other two are a perversion.

And that doesn't feel all that different from trying to figure out the perfect combination of lightsaber parts in Kotor 2. Although I wouldn't be able to explain that very well, so instead I'm gonna use the example of trying to figure out builds in New Vegas. A bit of a fool's errand, as in both cases the games were not designed to allow for 'perfection'. I was looking for something like, a build focused entirely on crits, which had enough dps to take on the hardest area in the game. But also, a path to get to that point, from the very beginning through the very end. All all of that with nothing superfluous. Like you'd start the game with crit-weapon, put points into crit-skills, collect crit-equipment, and eventually everything will be in perfect alignment with this one purpose. And nothing at all is actually like that. The games where it's even a possibility are the ones where anything goes and you're intended to follow whatever whims take you at that moment. It's not 'min-maxing' though. I'm not trying to make a character with as much dps as the game allows. I'm trying to make everything fit perfectly.

I'm not sure what this is, but I think this is who I am.

[consularmain]

i did as you asked, so long ago.

[sleepymarmot]

Jedi: Fallen Order liveblog

Warning: there are a lot of complaints here. A lot. Seriously, I’m a glass half empty person, and I wrote down everything that annoyed me. I’ve done the first objectives on Zeffo and Kashyyyk, and I have no problems with what little of the story I’ve experienced, but I’m not happy with the gameplay-story balance and many things about the gameplay itself.

Anti shout-out to whoever packaged the game because 1) installing it took 45 minutes with my CPU loaded to 98-100% 2) it tried to restart my PC after installation. What the fuck? I guess if you can’t buy a game legally you have to pay with bullshit instead...

Would it have killed them to accompany the tutorial level with a, you know, actual tutorial?! I kind of figured you jump with the spacebar because it’s common across games, but I had to open a walkthrough to find out, after about 5-10 minutes of walking around and dying repeatedly, that there’s a rope somewhere in the dark (foolish me following the game’s advice on brightness settings) and you also jump onto it with the spacebar. Dropping down from the grates didn’t work with the specified key either, I had to mash the whole keyboard in blind rage until something finally worked. And then the game froze on the “lock target” tutorial, twice.

Am I or, for that matter, the other characters really supposed to believe that a normal, non-force sensitive person can perform all these feats of acrobatics?

Ideologically it’s very funny you’re supposed to replenish the force meter by attacking enemies. Are you sure I’m a light-sider?

Alright, the droid is super cute.

I am continuously amazed at how well-animated and expressive Cal is. (I’m so spoiled by good mocap in newer games; if the next DA game won’t have it I’m going to be disappointed.)

Once again, a tutorial that doesn’t fucking tell you what to do...

At first I had flashbacks to a certain planet from KOTOR, but now I’m more reminded of Inquisition (especially due to the art style) and Andromeda (the Vault, huh). Nothing new in video games...

Why would there be a list of force-sensitive children if the Jedi take infants as soon as their force sensitivity is discovered?

Oh cool, I can customize my lightsaber already!

God I must have done the jump with two ropes about 20 times... The one time I got to the other side I got immediately overpowered by the enemies. The second successful attempt was many reloads later. At least there's a save point right before it... Oh god this was so fucking stressful. I made a series of successful jumps and then failed some and then I had to walk a pretty long way with literally zero health and healing items knowing I’d have to redo it all, possibly several times... I was so relieved to get to the meditation point at last.

Sick of getting killed by these stupid rams. I’m switching to story mode.

Finally! I was getting sick at looking at these pushable objects and being unable to push them.

And here we go to Kashyyyk again, hunting down memories encoded in mysterious orbs. It’s as if I never left KOTOR. Diversity win: an ancient sage interred in this sarcophagus used they/them pronouns.

I managed to lock myself in a fucking tomb?? After a few minutes of panicked running around the small chamber and slashing at the bars, I reloaded and redid the last step of the puzzle before that, then watched a walkthrough. Apparently, the chamber was supposed to lock, because it’s actually an elevator, but in my case it didn’t seem to activate. (This part of my gameplay was sponsored by the Buried and Edgar Allan Poe. Legitimately triggered my normally nonexistent claustrophobia...)

I LOVE it when I try to wall run and instead I smash into the wall and am thrown into the abyss.

I had to read the walkthrough and backtrack from the crash. Why give me access to an area if I can’t explore it?

This planet took FOREVER. There’s way too much stuff and almost no plot. And after that hell, it’s very immersion-breaking to see Cal swagger onto the ship and casually chat with Cere. He should be falling onto the nearest surface and sleeping for 8 hours! Also, aren’t you all on the run from the empire, why aren’t you rushing to buckle up and escape into hyperspace?

I do not understand what the fuck I’m supposed to do. 

Oh hi Saw Gerrera! I just saw you in a movie yesterday!

I see, it’s a “fuck the arachnophobes” planet.

The lack of the current quest objective on the HUD or at least somewhere in the menu hurts sometimes. Coming back to the game in the morning, I couldn’t remember what I was supposed to do next, and had to look it up in a walkthrough.

Fuck these double ropes and whoever designed them! After about 20 tries, several deaths and two videos I finally figured out that you need so swing not only forward but also backwards to achieve enough momentum, and even after that I needed several tries to actually execute it. Sometimes I couldn’t even grab onto the rope properly: jumping onto it didn’t work, and instead I jumped straight up and fell to my death. I couldn’t figure out by myself the puzzle with the propeller you need to activate either.

Had to go revenge-kill a security droid for the XP and then got to the roof for the surprisingly huge fight and had to take another one of those again -_- As usual, enemies that specialize in CC are infuriating. How dare you hold me in the air by the neck, you stupid Vader wannabe?!

My Inquisitor from DAI, now in third person! I had to listen to this random NPC’s voice for a few seconds before I figured out who it belonged to.

There’s another tomb? Another area of the same size on that godforsaken planet?

Omg, this cute critter is now mine? :O

The game wanted me to go onto the ice slide. I did it flawlessly on the first try. Then I walked in a dark corner, it turned out to be an elevator, and it brought me... back to where I started. I thought “well it’s an elevator, I’ll just get back down on it” but it didn’t work. I had to slide on the ice through spinning turbines again, and this time I fucked it up several times. Then I fell off a wall. Then I got killed by a ram. Rinse, repeat, get killed by the same ram again. Then I gave up on the XP and decided to get to the objective a different way. I tried to trek around the entire area I’ve already seen just to get to a place I’d already visited but couldn’t do shit because it became accessible before it became plot relevant. Then I realized that the way I got to the crash site seemed to be blocked now, wandered around for a long time looking to a way back, then discovered with the help of a video walkthrough that the only way out was to go forward through a ton of environmental obstacles like the damn pulverizers and the double ropes I complained about earlier, and make a giant loop... ending in the same place in the ice caves with the turbines, the elevator and the ram. So, lots of time wasted for nothing. Great game design, folks!

---

Alright, I reached the quest area and I'm going to pause there. It’ll be a few days until I can play again, so here are some of the impressions outside of what I wrote about in the liveblog:

Exploration: Way too much work for almost no reward. The more I play, the more frustrating the collectibles and echoes become. If 99% of unlocks are cosmetics, couldn’t you make them varied and interesting instead of recolors and tiny pieces of lightsaber decor you never see anyway? Echoes are so flavorless and empty it feels like the writers are afraid to step on the canon’s toes. As for the level design, see the numerous complaints above. I do like that the items and pathways are color-coded to indicate whether you can interact with them right now or not. I also like that, at least so far, there’s no pressing emergency “save the world”-type narrative that would conflict with the incentive to explore.

Mechanics: There is way too much parkour and, unlike combat, you can’t turn down the difficulty. Well, maybe “difficulty” is not the right word, because my real problem is how unreliable and unresponsive it often is. The difference between failure and success can be a split second or a camera angle, and you get no indication of what you did wrong. In combat, I keep attacking air even after turning the auto-targeting on. The skill tree doesn’t have much to be excited about. Unlike many other games, I don’t look forward to coming back to the game just so I could use a favorite combat skill of mine. Fus-ro-dah-ing enemies off of ledges is fun, but I can also do that in Skyrim or Mass Effect. I do enjoy that we can use the same skills on both in combat and on the environment. It’s good that the enemies aren’t health sponges, and that difficulty settings are about something other than HP numbers. I appreciate that respawning doesn’t undo your progress, but the lack of inability to make multiple manual saves makes me nervous: what if I get stuck, or what if my only save gets corrupted?

Story, progression and immersion: The story is hard to judge at this point because there’s been so little of it. At the beginning I was excited, but turns out, it was just an intro, and the main part of the game is 95% gameplay (which I’m not a fan of). I’m glad the PC isn’t immediately overpowered, but it’s immersion-breaking how he can dispatch trained anti-jedi troopers but has problems with wild animals, and especially how he takes so much time to remember and relearn the basic things he learned years ago. Seriously, it’s been so many hours and I still can’t pull things with the force! The writers also didn’t make even the slightest attempt to justify the respawn mechanic in-universe. The planets look more like playgrounds than real places; at some points stormtroopers yell something like “how did this guy get in here” and honestly I sympathize, but also, how do you get places, did you hang up all of this parkour equipment for yourself? At least for the first tomb they gave the excuse that it was something like a training ground. Another shadow hanging over everything is that during the OT there aren’t supposed to be any Jedi except Luke, so should I not get attached because all of these people are going to be dead within 15 years? 

Overall, the game manages to remind me of half the games I’ve ever played even though I have not played anything from the genres it belongs to according to the internet. It feels more like Generic Video Game than like Star Wars, at least so far. When I think Star Wars, I don’t think “parkour and grinding for collectibles”, you know? I have problems with pretty much every aspect of game design; the older I get, the less patience I have with the games that fundamentally don’t respect the player’s time. When I looked up the playtime for this game, I assumed it would be much, much tighter. I don’t know how much time I’ve spent on it so far, but I doubt my playthrough is going to fit within the 17-30 hours that the internet described. People have called it “story-driven”! If 90% gameplay/10% story is story-driven then what counts as not story-driven, irl Lego?!

Still, I am not frustrated enough to quit. I look forward to exploring the next areas and experiencing the story by myself instead of relying on random youtubers. I’ve seen too many spoilers already, and I hope to encounter them in the actual game sooner than later.

[allronix]

Carth and Force Sensitivity (crossposted from Reddit r/kotor)

This is for @k-she-rambles:

Okay, so while we're shooting the bantha crap over on KOTOR fan theories, u/134340Goat mentioned my all time favorite "Have you been chewing spice?!" fan theory when it comes to KOTOR: Is Carth Force Sensitive?

So this one starts with a story. I mentioned my brother in law, who is pretty much Keeper of the Jedi Archives. Seriously, he's an English teacher and my sister is a librarian. They met at a sci fi convention and their first date was Phantom Menace. We're taking not just geeks, but geeks who can throw the damn bookshelf at you. Brother in law bought KOTOR on the day it launched and turned it into a week long binge watch at his house. And because brother in law is that kind of geek, he's translating the characters into the West End D6 system. I'm watching him do a playthrough, and he's got Canderous and Zaalbar at Ajunta Pal's tomb.

Allronix: Huh. That's odd. Why aren't commenting on anything when Ajunta is speaking?

Bro in law: Oh. They can't even see Ajunta. You have to be Force Sensitive to see a Force Ghost The stronger your Sensitivity, the better you can see it.

Allronix: Really? Then how come Carth can see it?

Bro in law (gets the "holy shit, I gotta confirm this" look): Really?! He just sees something out the corner of his eye or something?

Allronix: No, he sees Ajunta just fine. Understands what the dude's saying too.

Bro in law instantly rolls back to his last save, swaps Zaalbar for Carth, and sees the bit in question.

Bro in law: Oh. Dear. (Goes over to make some quick scribbles on Carth's character sheet)

Okay, so maybe that was a lore fail. I didn't really think about it too much until I hit that False Level Up glitch and ran around with Carth and Mission as Sentinels. Now, while I couldn't really see Mission as a Sensitive, that little bit with my bro in law nagged at me. And became a "once you see it you can't unsee it." Apologies to TV Tropes, where some of these were my additions to the Wild Mass Guess entry on this topic.

Any one of these on its own is pretty easy to blow off. After all, man is career military, and knows All this Shit is Weird. I also like to think of Sensitivity as a spectrum and not a switch. If all life is connected by the Force, then all life would be Sensitive to some degree or another. It’s just a matter of to what degree. It’s only as the list gets longer and longer does the case start looking damning...

What are the odds of surviving that attack on the Endar Spire, getting to the escape pods, sharing the last escape pod with the mindwiped Sith Lord, piloting through the chaos, landing in what passes for the "good" part of town, remaining uninjured, pulling the badly injured mindwiped Sith Lord from the wreck, evading Sith detection while all this is going on, and just happening to find a dump of an apartment where the landlord's not asking questions? That is one amazing string of coincidences and good luck. Get that many in Star Wars, and it's definitely The Force sticking its nose in things.

Piloting the escape pod to land in the Upper City, piloting the Hawk through the Sith Blockade of Taris, the random Sith patrols, the escape from the Leviathan, and the fleet around Lehon along with the crash landing that left the ship easily repairable. Now, compare to Atton who we know to be an excellent pilot and drawing on The Force who still manages to crash the ship at least three times.

He's a scary good judge of character if you're interacting with other NPCs. If you watch him with other NPC characters, he's got a pretty good compass as to which characters are being helpful and which ones are full of shit. The only one he calls incorrectly is Rukil, who is probably also an untrained Sensitive (the age, the "marked" comments) and half senile, which is probably throwing him.

Related to that, his distrust and wariness about something not adding up with the PC, the Jedi Council feeding the party a line of bull, that things just aren't adding up. And on all of it? Dead on. He's 100% right about the Player Character, he just expected something a little less crazy than "that's Darth freaking Revan."

If you play Female Revan, then Carth's the one who gets fried in the torture cages on the Leviathan. Saul comments how strange it is that Carth takes so much punishment and still remains conscious. Now, this is a low level thing, but in lore, Force Sensitives have drawn on it to keep them alive or conscious under duress. Explicitly, the first sign we got that Leia was a Sensitive when she withstood the Imperial torture droid.

Another of his scary ass judge of character feats? In the comics, Zayne (who is on the run from the Jedi, who framed him for the murder of his classmates) has a vision that Mandalorians are coming for Serroco. Saul? Laughs it off, throws Zayne in the brig. Zayne's own friends don't even believe him. Carth gets one of those creepy hunches and starts calling in "duck and cover" sirens as far as he can broadcast, which sends seventeen cities and millions of people heading for shelter. It saves their lives and Carth is called a hero for it. Armed with another hunch, he disobeys Saul (remember this is before Saul nukes Telos) and lets Zayne "escape" from custody. Mind you, not even the Jedi or his party members believed Zayne. Carth did.

Carth makes a lot of creepy weird offhand predictions about the future. He says he knows on some level he'll be there when Saul dies. That certainly pans out. He makes an offhand prediction that the Jedi have set the party up to take a fall. Right again. He tells a female PC that she'll have to make a choice soon, one she can't walk away from. And then we get the temple top. He even blurts out that "I sensed you would have to make a choice soon, and that was it*, I can feel it!"* If you specify a LS Female Revan, his recording for T3-M4 says he's had a hunch Revan would leave without warning. Again, spot on.

Specify a LS male Revan, and Carth will remark to Bastila that seeing the Exile reminds him "there are worse things to lose." The only other people who can see just how screwed up the Exile is are the Jedi Masters, Chodo Habat, and the Force Sensitive party members.

Specify a LS female Revan, and Carth will insist that he would know if Revan were dead (again, scary ass intuition) and that there's an "emptiness" where she used to be. Now, remember one of the things about a broken Force Bond? It would simply be "empty, a wound."

You know how your party members in KOTOR 2 feel upset or even horrified as they realize they feel compelled to protect Exile and can't being themselves to leave, even when said actions are kicking puppies? And how they swing wildly from being crazy, almost stalker level possessive of them to being scared out of their wits and clamming up when you try to pry anything out of them? And the more potent (and untapped) their Force Sensitivity, the more they get hammered with the effect? (Mira and Atton in particular) Yeah. Now, Carth's "I don't wanna talk" looks a bit different, doesn't it? It could also account for that romance arc, especially if you roll a DSF Revan and go for that "everyone dies" ending.

Again, Ajunta Pal. Seeing a Force Ghost? Yeah. Some degree of Sensitivity needed. Understanding what he's saying? Yeah. Takes a bit more than that. And Carth makes a weirdly insightful comment about the Dark Side on top of it.

Notice that this a wall o text argument already, and I'm now just getting to the "Yeah, his kid is able to throw around mid-level Dark Side powers and packing a red lightsaber." Given the jawline and the muleheaded attitude, no way Morgana was fooling around with the pizza delivery boy. That's definitely Carth's kid, and that's definitely Force Sensitivity. Now, while it can skip a generation (see Theron Shan), it tends to run pretty heavy in families.

Lastly? Gee. He comes from a planet settled by and heavily populated by descendants of Force Sensitives who failed their training. I'm also willing to bet some bastard children of Jedi get passed off as "foundlings" and "orphans" and dumped there, too. Jedi are forbidden attachments, but not sworn to celibacy, so...yeah, bastard kids are gonna happen. There's probably a Jedi or two in that family tree. It's circumstantial evidence at best, but it still supports the case.

Now, any arguments I missed? Counterarguments?

And the million credit question: If there's a character who gets to break this news to poor Flyboy, who do you think would actually take that on? How do you think Carth would take that kind of news? And what, if anything, would come of it?

I kinda figure Jolee might be the only one nuts enough to poke that with a stick...I also kinda figure "Sentinel" would fit best. Consular? Hell no. He hired Mical for that. Guardian works with the feats, but the whole "ferreting out deceit and injustice?" Yeah. That's Carth.

[duelofthefatesmp3]

thinking about that part in kotor 2 where atton asks the exile what their lightsaber was like and if you choose to say a double bladed lightsaber he goes "isn't that the one that makes the greatest damage in fights", the exile goes "yeah ♥️" so he just goes "cool :)"

[jakkujunktrader]

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[shadowstalker732]

ALRIGHT LETS GIVE THIS POSTING THING A GO

MY REVAN TIME (one of them at least)

Also spoiler warning a guess for a game over a decade old? (Am I meant to say spoiler warning? Who knows not me)

(Please don’t yell at me about stats I do what I want)

Anyway first playthrough where I don’t stop and hard restart Tarris or Dantooine 13 times because choice reasons and me forgetting that stealth is useless and just letting the game auto level for me (learnt that the hard way), I’ve basically done Tatooine but I haven’t beaten the dragon yet cos I wanted to bugger off to another planet first and chose Kashyyyk. And I’m down in the shadow lands now (do not worry Zaalbar I WILL GET YOU BACK) and yeah that’s where I’m at.

ANYWAY, Shay or Shar Stalker (because the game won’t let me do non-binary) is a light side Revan. Good of heart dumb of ass and yet will still rob you dry if you place bets on a strategy game against them. Height wise around the 1.6m mark (5′3″ for the Americans). Prefers the double lightsaber look (currently got a short green one and a normal blue one for amnesia version). Not a flirt but definitely had something going on with my Exile in the past but that ended in the Mando war at some point… teenagers in war don’t usually do well mentally wise.. back story and post events of Kotor under the cut (also warning it’s long, like super long, and goes into their future story? As well)

SO BACKSTORY,

Shar got some Mando blood floating in their veins from some ancestor and that causes them to go full buir sometimes hence why Mission, Zaalbar, HK-47, T3-M4 and Juhani get bed time stores aboard the Ebon Hawk and chocolate space milk whenever they stop (Rev gets some too because who doesn’t love some good old Choccy milk), droid duo get cleaned basically daily while Bastila gets the bird for even thinking that this is a waste of time and resources.

Wait I said backstory… TEMPLE LIFE!

Rascal trio with Exile and Alek at their heels. All three, good of heart dumb of ass. Shar was a prodigy and excelled in basically all Jedi subjects at the time, was pretty popular with most people and just a nice person who didn’t stand for bullshit. Got into a few “heated” (honestly that’s an understatement) arguments with council members about how some things in the galaxy were handled but mostly had a positive response from people. At this time their main saber was purple and their off hand a short cyan. Joined the Republic in the Mandalorian wars a few months before their 17′th birthday. Didn’t not return to the Temple once after leaving for war.

The War 

(I should mention I get most of my knowledge from wiki skims (not deep reads) and other Tumblr posts so if it’s off canon… it’s my story and Star Wars is my sand box so I MAKE THE RULES HERE BABY!)

After many battles and the relationship between the battle trio growing stronger with time it was also weakening. At one point Shar and Exile had a romantic relationship going but only kept that going for a few months, they both decided that this was not the time to be doing this and if they both survived would actually give the lovers thing a shot (doesn’t happen). Throughout the war all three realise that they must make sacrifices to stop the war, the old saying “sacrifice one to save the many” is said often between the three at first before it becomes second nature. During one of the battles Shar’s cyan lightsaber is completely destroyed including the crystal being completely shattered. After taking the mantle of the Revanchist only uses the name Revan and never removes the helmet unless it’s only the trio and only then will respond to their old names. All three are slipping mentally in this war but have all managed to hold onto the Light side by trusting each other. After the mass shadow generator event Revan looses all contact with Exile (force and otherwise) and assumes death, despite it being Revan’s own order it’s a major pushing point towards the dark.

The End of the War

Revan faces off against Mandalore the Ultimate and slays him, in his dying breathe speaks of the Sith Empire growing in the Unknown Regions and how this war wasn’t only about giving the Mandalorian’s a good fight but also to weaken the republic for Ultimates Empire allies. Not many Mandalorians knew of the Sith truth behind the war and just followed their Mandalor’s word that this war would bring them the honour of a good fight, and it did in a way. After Revan learns of the empire growing hidden amongst uncharted routes, knew that the council would never believe them and so took matters into their own hands. Taking a fleet and insisting it was to chase down the last of the Mandalorian high command, Revan left for the unknown regions.

The Unknown 

Yeah everything went to shit. Rev and Alek get captured and Sith tortured and kind probed by old man Sith Emperor but in that time Revan gains acute knowledge via reverse mind prob, of how the Sith empire is running, where resources are coming from and key weak points. During this time Alek falls completely and Revan fains it for now. Torture continues for a good while until Revan makes the choice that they have been making all through out the war “sacrifice one to save the many”… Revan embraces the dark side and makes a plan, a plan to empower the known galaxy enough to destroy the “true” Sith empire by uniting it as their own Sith empire. Revan knows light will always rise to face the dark and that the light side is strong, someone will rise to take them down after the “true” Sith empire is defeated and only in death will Revan have fulfilled their promise to the unknown Mandalorian and finally be able to be one with the force. Revan embraces the dark fast and is soon sent off by the Sith emperor who thinks Revan is under his control to take control of the star forge and start building the Sith army in the known galaxy, Revan assumes command with now Malek as their right hand.

Beginning of Darth Revan

Basically what is described in the first Kotor game, Darth Duo go find star maps, get to forge, start fucking up the galaxy yadeyadeya. Malek pulls a sick move and fucks up Revan’s plan to stop the Sith Emperor and boom Amnesia time baby. Oh also during Sith times used a red and their old purple lightsaber but when they got captured by Bastila both lightsaber’s goy yoinked and locked up on Coruscant for simple reasons. 

No Memory Time Baby

Council is smart as fuck and call them Shay Stalker AKA their old name to see if that will reawaken light memories or thoughts in Revan and basically try and nudge amnesia Rev to stay lightside cos they don’t want to see their lost padawan fall back to the dark, (Jedi are a complicated subject), also ONLY SHAY no mention of their other name Shar at all! So that will cause problems later for poor Rev when they start remembering things :), basically the game from here on. Memories of a calm life on a farming planet before joining the military, lost both their siblings (AKA Alek and Exile) while away on service. Joined to stop the Sith from taking any more innocent lives. Throughout the game Shay try’s to help as many people as they can and choose the option that will benefit good and innocent people, constantly says fuck to corporations and nasty people, is not afraid to kill a bitch. As I haven’t completed the game fully (but I am planing a lightside finish and I’m not exactly sure when the “I am Revan” bit comes in I’m gonna leave this as it is. Oh and blue main saber and a short green saber with a crystal they managed to purify (AKA was red but returned to its natural colour through meditation and force cleansing, also helped by Bastila)

Memories

Like I said I haven’t finished the game yet BUT after the whole “oh fuck oh stars IM REVAN?????” Lots of shit starts to make sense and the force “spell” (I’m gonna call it spell) that repressed Revan’s memories had already begun to weaken somewhat before this point but this kinda opens the flood gates but not too far just enough for it to not make any sense at all. Team is there for Rev and the game finishes lightside. (Also I know I said this rev not gonna romance but this is post game stuff now and I just don’t wanna romance Bastila in game so yeah) ANYWAY, Revan and Bastila build a healthy relationship together and Revan starts to regain a lot of memories that their friends help them through. Revan remembers why they took the name Revan and actually goes to Coruscant to the high council to explain why they put on the helmet in the first place and the Council adheres to Revan’s request and returns the original helmet. The Star forged one stays in storage for now. Revan also requests their old armour and lightsabers to help regain memories as to why they fell, the council is hesitant at this request and only allows Revan to meditate with their old things at the main temple with a council member present. Over one or two years a lot comes back but there is still a few key dates, names, moments and details missing. Oh and Revan uses force powers to make Bastila preggers. IF BOBA FETT CAN SURVIVE A SARLAC AND PALPATINE CAN EXIST IN THE SEQUELS. REVAN CAN PULL FORCE BULLSHIT TOO!

The Unknown part 2: Electric boogaloo 

Revan finally remembers what made them go dark and realises they fucked up their own plans pretty bad and the Republic IS WORSE OFF THAN HOW IT STARTED COS OPPS REVAN ACCIDENTALLY KILLED A SHIT TON OF FORCE USERS LIGHT AND DARK SO yeah. Bastila was holding the brain cell of the force bond in this moment and Revan decides the best course of action is to go face the Emperor alone… fucking brilliant Revan how the fuck did you win the Mandalorian wars again my good sir? Revan tells Bastila that they (Rev) has been assigned a mission to infiltrate the remanence of Revan’s old Sith Empire and basically destroy it from within and that this mission is basically so hush hush that Bastila isn’t meant to know but Revan thought it only fair to say that they would be gone for potentially a long time for this mission and Bastila, unaware that this would be the last time she saw them, accepted this goodbye and hoped they would return before their baby was born. But Revan has always been a good lier… even to themselves. Without anymore fuss they left the Known Galaxy leaving all their friends and family behind never to be seen again to face off against the bitch that started it all. (I haven’t read the novels or played the SWTOR game and never plan to do either so again I say this is wiki knowledge that I’m doing what ever I please with that knowledge because Star Wars is a sand pit and I’m the kindy kid that’s decided to sit and play with it today)

Mmmmm Watcha SaaaaaaaAy

Revan gets their ass handed to them and imprisoned for three hundred years and tortured and mind probed AGAIN. Also cut off their connections to any other force user to ensure old dude couldn’t get to them as well. Absolutely not having a good time here. After the 300 years of PAIN the force within Revan gets so fucked up that their physicality splits into two entirely separate beings, Dark Revan and Light Revan. When this happens the prison breaks and Light Revan makes their escape and gets out barely alive while Dark Revan hangs back and swears allegiance to Sith Empire and starts plotting to overthrow old dude cos Sith. Light Revan makes it back to the council and they heal them and have a very hard time believing they are Revan until Revan perfectly describes a gift they gave Bastila before they left that now a descendent of Revan now owns. The council doesn’t understand how Revan split into two entire different beings but accept “the force acts in mysterious ways at times”. Revan is FINALLY given knighthood and helps prepare the republic for the Sith Empire that hasn’t attacked yet but definitely will soon. And this is where Tarre comes in.

Mando Time Yeah!

My Tarre will get his own beefy post (def not as big as this one) maybe tomorrow or the next day so for now it’s just what Tarre does and means to Revan. ANYWHO, Tarre becomes Light Revan’s padawan. (I should mention that Light Revan despite being called Light Revan is leaning towards a grey area within the force but isn’t down right evil like dark Revan is. Dark Revan is killing puppies of an endangered species cos their bored evil). Tarre is Revan’s padawan and becomes a knight. Revan enjoys teaching Tarre about the force and understanding how Tarre was brought up a Mandalorian and with the peace between Jedi and Mandalorian’s at this point was welcomed into the Jedi temple later than most. Revan raises Tarre like he is their own son/little brother and they form an extremely powerful force bond because of it. I’ll go in depth on Tarre’s post but Tarre still gets Mando training for 4 months of the year but the jedi training is the rest of the year. Revan joins Tarre when he return to Mandalore to continue his Mando training and learns more about Mandalorian history and culture while there. While on Mandanlore Light Revan truely feels relaxed for once despite random Mando’s sometimes jumping out and challenging them to fights because apparently Revan is now a ghost story and a feared mighty warrior legend and when anyone finds out that Revan is “alive” immediately tries to prove that they are stronger than Revan (which they are not). A few years after Tarre is knighted the war with the True Sith Empire begins.

I don’t know what to call this bit sooooo UWU

Battles, fights, old shit, it’s a war. Revan proves to be supper fucking useful in leadership but doesn’t do as much “sacrifice one to save the many” moves anymore. Revan keeps predicting what the Sith are gonna do an THATS cos Dark Revan is leading the, and Revan knows Revan best but not the reverse. Light Revan knows how Dark Revan will act but Dark Revan doesn’t know how Light Revan will act since Light Revan technically includes Shay/Shar, Mandalorian War Revan, Amnesiac Shay, and post Amnesia. While Dark Revan is only really Darth Revan and post Amnesia so Light Revan technically outweighs Dark Revan. I’ve probably butchered that explanation or done it too late but that’s how it’s gonna be cos it’s midnight and I wanna finish this and post it today. ANYWAY, final battle between the Revan’s. They have a massive duel on the battle field and eventually Light Revan strikes Dark Revan down but also receives some pretty nasty injuries. Light Revan understands the need to be whole again and as Dark Revan “dies” reunites with that half of the force and Revan returns but Revan is so done, so fucking done with living and trying and they had a good run and now they have what was Dark Revan’s and Light Revan’s injuries all on one body and sure if Rev really tried they could probably suck the life force out of some Sith warriors to keep themselves alive but… they just don’t want to. Eventually Tarre finds the fallen Revan reunited at last and stays by their side as Revan finally lets go and becomes one with the force. After the battle Tarre brings Revan’s body back to the Temple to be burnt as Revan had requested but their armour, lightsabers, and other possessions would be taken to a place only Tarre knew of to be sealed away until a far descendent of Revan’s comes along to claim them as their own. The war isn’t over and Revan’s passing only fuels Tarre further into defeating the Sith empire that the republic eventually does after 20 years of war. 

Conclusion 

And that’s the overall story of this Revan, I know very long, very deep, wtf this is your second post after a what? 1 year break? Actually let me check… yeah nope about a year has passed since my Crash post. If you have made it this far thanks for reading my first ever “decent” post about something I’ve been developing for a while now in bits and pieces. Sorry it was so long but then again I did miss a lot of shit. If you want to interact and ask more questions about this Revan go ahead my ask box is open (don’t be weird tho and just cos I post long doesn’t mean you have to ask long unless it’s legit). I’ll try and get the Tarre post out tomorrow around this time too or earlier depends. Thanks again for taking the time to read my word vomit. Also sorry if there are any spelling mistakes I have missed.

Have a good one!

[dgcatanisiri]

I’ve said before, the kindest I’ll be to TLJ is to say that it’s a decent first draft, but... It’s DISCONNECTED from TFA, the movie that IMMEDIATELY precedes it. No one brings up Starkiller - not even pointing out that Poe’s actions and reactions could easily be considered PTSD from the torture and trauma if they wanted to frame him as being in the wrong, no, he’s just written off as a hotheaded maverick who needs a lesson in humility from Holdo - Finn shakes off the coma in moments, Rey has no reason to give a bisected fuck about Kylo, yet immediately becomes infatuated with him, Luke left a map in TFA but wanted to just be left to die in TLJ... Nothing in this movie has any ties to the movie that came before. Which, honestly, just meant that, to conclude the story of the sequels, the one TFA started, TRoS basically had to downplay things left over from TLJ - hell, TRoS at least ACKNOWLEDGES events in TLJ, which is honestly a lot more than TLJ seems willing to do with TFA, despite, again, taking place almost immediately before it.

And then there’s the internal plot - the timeline is a convoluted mess (the Resistance is under an explicit sixteen hour ticking clock, yet Finn and Rose jaunt off to and back from Canto Bight - a disposable point in the plot ANYWAY, considering that Finn and Rose don’t even accomplish the goal they went there for - in the middle of a fuel crisis, AND Rey’s training is explicitly taking place over days if not weeks, but she manages to arrive in the nick of time, while still having real time Force communication with Kylo, who is with the ships chasing the Resistance). The First Order has the military might and strength of the Empire with no acknowledgment of the personnel loss that losing Starkiller - a weapon built out of a goddamn PLANET - must have been. Leia and Holdo both hold Poe losing people against the dreadnaught against him, when a) one man fighters have been established in this universe to be hyperdrive capable in all trilogies, so there was no reason to hold the fleet there, b) taking out the dreadnaught made tactical sense, given the firepower it had and the manpower on board - 200,000 crew! Combined with Starkiller, that should be a MAJOR blow to the FO, but, because this is TLJ, the FO just has infinite resources from no where, and c) the dreadnaught is the kind of target you’re SUPPOSED to use those bomber fighters for, if they couldn’t take going up against it, they should have been scrapped for parts ages ago.

Like... I’m sorry, but if you want to trashtalk Rise of Skywalker on the plot level, you have to start with the fact that TLJ left them with no real conclusion to be had - the Resistance is left with enough people to be carried in the beat up weed van that is the Millennium Falcon, while the First Order SHOULD have been reduced to maybe a cruiser’s worth of troops. Because they weren’t the Empire, built on the bones of the Republic that had stood for a thousand generations. They were a fringe group, pushed out to the margins of the galaxy, where they built in secret - which means that if they’d made a major production push of a fleet capable of taking on the New Republic, which DID get a lot of the resources of the Empire as it collapsed, SOMEBODY would have noticed it and done something. When TLJ closes, both sides are basically at a stalemate with neither of them capable of striking back. They just don’t have the manpower or the resources anymore. I’ve said for years, when TLJ, I do NOT feel a sense of hope for the future, like the previously downbeat endings in this franchise - AotC may have started the Clone Wars, but Anakin and Padme get a tender moment together, a respite in the storm. RotS has the Empire ascendant, but Luke and Leia are with loving families and the new hope is intact. ESB has Lando and Chewie heading off to find Han and Luke has been fitted with a new hand - they’re ready to keep going. TLJ just feels like both sides played out the fight to the inevitable conclusion of everyone being left with nothing but ash.

TLJ was F - L - A - W - E - D. And I’m not saying that TRoS is beyond reproach or anything - I’m pissed that they reduced Rose to basically nothing, Palpatine didn’t really need to be there, Finn deserved to do more than shout “Rey!” through most of his screentime, especially when they had the stormtrooper rebellion subplot to work with... But a lot of the plot level flaws of TRoS stem out of the way that TLJ left things. Not all, but it was NOT this groundbreaking thing that changed the game. I honestly end up with the feeling that it was just a first draft that, due to the ridiculously fast pace of pumping out this trilogy, went straight to filming with like no editorial oversight. 

Which is a failure when we’re talking about movie two of a trilogy and movie eight of a saga. The whole trilogy fails to be a cohesive whole, in large part because for some ungodly reason, the plan had been to rotate writers for each part AND give those writers almost no time to weld their stories together. JJ Abrams and Rian Johnson, say what you will about them as storytellers or people, are both VERY different in their styles, and making the two try to mesh... doesn’t work. Lord knows what would have happened if Trevorrow’s ideas had made it out of the concept phase, but it wouldn’t have been better, just had more tonal clash, because, again, we have a different writer with a different style who sees different things out of the movie and the franchise.

The problems of the sequels are foundational. But the movies ALL have their own individual problems. You can shake off most of the problems in TFA by viewing it as set up... But then TLJ tosses aside a lot of what is being set up - TFA is clearly setting up a Finn-Rey dynamic, but, to fit the way that Rian Johnson’s already planning TLJ, Rey has to go off on her own. TFA has Finn wielding that lightsaber multiple times, so VERY clearly indicating he’s Force sensitive, to the point of being narratively framed as the counterpoint to Kylo, but they never interact again and TLJ reduces him to bumbling comic relief. TFA speaks of the Knights of Ren, presumably students from Luke’s academy who joined Kylo, but then they’re gone in TLJ and are functionally replaced with the Praetorian Guard. Snoke gets a lot of fanfare as being this hidden manipulator of Kylo from birth, then gets tossed out of the plot in TLJ with no explanation of his motivations.

Just... Look, I get that TRoS was a disappointment in a lot of ways, but it really was, for the most part... Honestly, all we were ever going to GET after TLJ. Because there wasn’t a continuation offered by TLJ, other than reusing the characters. TLJ was telling a story all its own, unconcerned with connecting with the rest of the series. It wasn’t a deconstruction with intent to reconstruct, in the way that KOTOR 2 was. It was demolition, taking a battering ram to the established foundation, trying to build something ELSE in its place.

[greyias]

@shanfamilydrama​​ asked:

Also I'm 👀👀 for more Grey Dantooine backstory/headcanons, pretty please!

Ask and ye shall receive! So I have this document in my sprawling, semi-organized SWTOR Scrivener file titled “Highwind Family History” that I apparently created *checks date* in May of 2017. And it is somehow over 4400 words long. (I will spare everyone and not copy pasta the thing). But it is interesting how pieces of 6.3 do dovetail into many aspects of it!

So, in fic form, I’ve hinted at Grey’s backstory, and talked about aspects of it here and there, but the entire story hasn’t come out yet -- mostly because it comes as a reveal in the story introducing her brother Draike, as part of an explanation on why their relationship is so strained and antagonistic.

But the TL;DR version of it is:

Grey was born on Dantooine, the second of Davin Onasi and Vainas Highwind’s three children. She grew up in the small farming community of the Khoonda Plains, in the wide countryside where an abandoned Jedi Enclave always loomed on the horizon. In some ways, the ruins always called to her, tantalizing and mysterious, promising adventure.

From the moment Vainas told little Grey of the Force and her adventures as a Jedi during the Great Galactic War, the little girl decided she would become a Jedi. In the way that some children want to grow up to be firefighters, Grey dreamed of being a hero just like her mother, of venturing out into the galaxy and saving the day. Lightsabers sounded so cool, the Force so amazing, it had to be her destiny. Why be a farmer when you could wield a laser sword? 

Her mother taught her the basics of the Force, mostly boring meditation. She dutifully attended those lessons, in the hopes that one day her mother would teach her the more advanced things. And maybe she’d have her own lightsaber and go on adventures too!

And then one fateful day, she got her wish.

(or, as a small snippet from an extensively reworked piece I wrote a few years put it:)

Grey took another deep breath in, feeling the warmth and surety of the Force as she followed its pull towards the old ruins of the abandoned Jedi Enclave. It was technically against the rules to be here, she’d been told time and time again that the area was off limits — too ancient and dangerous to be explored unescorted. But just as many times that her mother had warned her away from the ruins, she’d also talked about the importance of listening to and obeying the will of the Force. And so if the Force knew everything, then maybe it knew when there was an exception to her mother’s rules. And today the Force was practically singing from the ruins, telling her to follow her mother’s impossibly tall Togruta Jedi friend. Every step she took, she could feel the deep voice of the universe beckoning her further. Humming on some inaudible frequency that today was finally the day.

Her adventure as a Jedi was about to begin.

The Togruta Jedi mentioned here is Thyos Dae, and Vainas’s former Padawan. You see, Thyos came to Dantooine because of an Ancient Artifact McGuffin I hadn’t quite figured out, and had meant to beat a Sith and his followers there to remove said McGuffin from the Enclave. However, he gets sidetracked almost as soon as he lands, meeting up with his old Master (whom he thinks of like an older sister) in the marketplace. Vainas invites Thyos to stay with them since they live close enough to the ruins to give him a home base of sorts.

And so over the next few days, he divides his time between the ruins, and catching up with Vainas and bonding with her family. Until one of those days at the ruins, he finds he’s been followed by a curious little girl who is not as good at hiding as she thinks she is. Being a responsible adult, he resigns himself to escorting little Grey back, but on the way, something... feels wrong. So wrong, at one point, Grey stops heeding his advice and starts running.

And by the time they get back to the Highwind homestead, the house is ablaze--and the yard is littered with bodies. Of Davin. Of Vainas. And several felled attackers.

While he was away, that (currently unnamed) Sith had finally tracked down where the mysterious Togruta from the marketplace was staying, thinking that said McGuffin Artifact might be there. There were individuals strong in the Force inside, so to them it made sense to attack first, and ask questions later.

Curiously, the two Highwind boys are nowhere to be found -- and the search for them becomes Thyos’s personal mission. As well as taking care of the now orphaned Force sensitive child who is desperately shaking her mother’s body in an attempt to wake her.

Thyos, of course, feels responsible for all of the children. He feels that this is his fault, that he led his adversary here -- and he spends the rest of his life trying to do his best to parent all three of them in Vainas’s stead. 

Grey takes away a different lesson, though. She’d disobeyed her mother -- and in doing so was robbed of seeing her again, of ever getting to say goodbye. She had ignored the rules, and somehow, this is what happened when someone broke the rules. If she never disobeyed again, if she followed every single rule, then maybe no one she loved would ever die again. If she became the perfect Jedi, if she focused every bit of herself on that, then she could make it up to her mother.

And maybe if she was good enough... one day the Force would bring them back together. Because there is no death, there only is the Force. Or so she was told. And so she would tell herself every time she recited the Jedi Code.

This is of course, just the rationalizations of a traumatized child who has just lost her entire world. Trying to make sense of what is ultimately a senseless act. Outside of herself, no one would begin to blame her for something that is obviously completely out of her control. And so she creates this perfect ideal of a Jedi in her mind, a child’s idea of a hero that she never really shakes, even as an adult. It may not be who the Jedi really are--and she may rationalize anything to the contrary of this fragile world view. 

(Granted, the events at the end of Chapter 2 do a pretty good job of shattering that on their own. But I mean, at that point she’s COMMITTED.)

WHICH... brings us to 6.3! And with all of the above in mind, why this dialogue exchange unexpectedly punched me right in the feels.

Like I know it’s not the exact same, but as I was going through that scene, all I could think of was that Grey was not thinking about the events of KOTOR 1 or 2, but her first attempted, ill-fated trip to the ruins. (Something that she might have been thinking about the entire time, but trying to push to the back of her mind.) She thinks of the strange pull the Enclave had on her as a child, she thinks of the pain and suffering, the senseless deaths that were connected to this place.

Not the lives ended by an orbital bombardment, but the lives of two people she misses very much, even to this day.

And yet... she continues to walk further into the ruins, and closer to the darkness that Malgus has unleashed inside. Because she’s still not convinced she’s done enough, still hasn’t measured up against that childish ideal quite enough to make her mother proud.

[lesbianrey]

i just think a kotor 2 mini series would fuckin slap so hard for many reasons but for one in particular that i’ve been thinking abt: like the exile doesn’t have a lightsaber for a significant part of the story right so she’s just clapping ppl with blasters and sick force moves and every episode we’re all waiting for the moment when she gets a lightsaber and then WHEN SHE FINALLY DOES and it would be like

[knightotoc]

Anakin Blogging:

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Gay/Emo Shit About Han Solo

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Catawampus from Star Wars:

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