#oc: hestera soral aka revan

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Happy birthday!

*quietly goes to scream forever*

It’s her, it’s her, it is so exactly her in ways even my mental image wasn’t, I love it so much and I am going to melt into a defeat emoji immediately,

Like. Like! The smirk! The rim lighting! The absolute blackness behind her—no aura, no visible source of light, just her and her terrible halo and the endless depths behind her. It’s perfect.

And because everyone deserves to see the absolutely stunning work @stellorc put into that jawline and fabric drapery, here is a slightly lightened version:

(look how defined everything is, it’s glorious and I can’t let people Not See it, and I know the pain of “I put a bunch of effort into this and then the lighting/shading covered it up)

In short: thank you so much ilu I will make squeaky noises and lie on the floor at you now. ;;;-;;;

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@aurrieccentrics how could you call me out like this

its NEVER gonna stop being funny to me how many star wars prequels / original trilogy fics there are whose main plot driver is that someone has been thrown backwards in time to stop anakin from doing his bullshit and/or stop the jedi council from doing their bullshit bc its just this long cry for help from a fanbase forced to watch 8 hours of an incredibly preventable car crash

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I’m the devil, living in the pride

I’m the devil, no one’s hands are tied

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we are dragging tor hell kicking and screaming into ck3. and also there are medieval Revans now, for fun.

(actually the way this armor is constructed is making me have thoughts about variations on the traditional Revan Armor)

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it is a beautiful day in the jedi temple and you are a horrible padawan

[link]

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some Revans, courtesy of this picrew

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meta asks-

20- Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?)

21- What other medium do you think your story would work well as? (film, webcomic, animated series?)

20. Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?)

Oh stars, there is so much of this, though. I am a very meta-heavy writer. Which is a lot of why I can (excepting snippets) generally only write linearly.

… The number one bit of “simple” symbolism is that fire is Important in Ahene and Sirue’s arcs. Not physical fire, necessarily, because I’m really not a fan of physical symbolism; unless supernatural forces are currently acting on the world in a big way, the world contorting itself to fit metaphor breaks my suspension of disbelief. But metaphorical fire is a large thing. Fire is anger, yes, but more than that, fire is sacrifice. Fire is the part of you that grabs the lit end of the saber, that raises the stakes, that accepts that the victory and the cost are not separate things. And being willing to burn for something is always a kind of defiance.

Velnira and Orinara, meanwhile, get a related-but-different metaphor. Theirs is the concept of the sun, which is glory and unrelenting gravity and sheer intense force of personality. It’s… maybe not wholly a dark symbolism, but it usually is. Suns are meant to be suns; people are generally not. Orinara is consistently described as a sun by others—she’s not a diplomatic character, but she still has a great deal of charisma, and her personality exerts a kind of gravity on the people around her. Velnira is trying to avoid it, despite having the will and the charisma and the persuasiveness to be the center of other people’s worlds. A sun casts light, but it does not serve the Light.

(Yes, suns are also necessary for life. Suns are meant to be suns. The metaphor is about people, as compared to something enormous and inhuman and influential-just-by-existing.)

21. What other medium do you think your story would work well as? (film, webcomic, animated series?)

Honestly, I feel like Liminality would lose something as anything but prose? Seeing an animated-series adaptation would be visually stunning, and it would capture nuances of expression and body language that I can only sketch out with prose, but there is a whole lot of interiority involved. Especially with Ahene, where the disconnect between her outward/inward personas is so important. A comic could get some of that, but not as well, and animation would… struggle.

If I really think about it, I think even a different kind of prose medium would have issues? The story relies on being web fiction, which isn’t paced like a set of novels—web fiction can be to novels what novels can be to novellas, and while the book-length arcs do ramp up and hit closure points, they wouldn’t be… entirely satisfying as books. And the story is very long. Book series are only very rarely that long, unless you’re trying to write the next Wheel of Time. But the most famous web fiction tends to be that long; look at, say, Worm or A Practical Guide to Evil. Which is why I say “web fiction” and not “fanfiction”—there are fanfic novels and novellas and short stories! But that is not what I am writing.

Webcomics are probably closest? I feel like a webcomic could follow the same story effectively, since they’re frequently paced more like web fiction than anything else is, and could use the medium well. An animated tv series could use the characters fairly well, but would probably end up straddling the midpoint between what I’m writing and the original game. Anything else would end up in “this version of the cast and plot is inspired by the original, but they’re very clearly different people” territory, I think.

… on the other hand, my KotOR fic might work better as an animated series in the Clone Wars/Rebels vein. The character arcs are important, but their theme is much more “you are the things you do” and much less “the person you are inside and the person acting on the world are different people, and neither one is more or less you than the other.” The characters’ personalities track their exterior actions, the characters’ actions define their beliefs about the world. No one is desperately clinging to the belief that their actions are wrong, or presenting an outward self that wildly differs from the person inside—or, in the non-Ahene cases, just having character arcs that are far more about how they think about the world (and themselves) than how they interact with it.

Revan falls because of what she’s willing to do; Revan falls because you are your actions is her deepest guiding principle. No one’s arc is really refuting that principle, because it’s the moral theme the fic is working off of! The fic is about Revan’s fall and, uh, reformation (not, she would like to make it clear, redemption). It’s about choosing to do things differently this time. It’s not about how you feel about it, except in being about… it not being about how you feel about it, if you get what I mean. You can choose to do the right thing and not repeat your mistakes and still not know if you can touch the Light anymore, and it doesn’t matter, it is not the thing that matters, the thing that matters is that you are choosing to trust someone else more than you trust yourself and you have never done that before.

…um. Ahem. *clears throat* That was perhaps the meta question again, wasn’t it. Anyway, moving on. I think all of that works very well in a visual medium because it’s about things that are seen and done.

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so @siq-art did a shaded bust of my Revan and she looks perfect, look at that tired amnesiac bastard. you can just feel the moral dubiousness radiating off her.

(and here’s a link to their commission info for others who might be interested)

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yep! it makes me cry :')

also my main consular is emphatically eventually going to be consigned to her holocron partly in order to avoid her (despite all Jedi tradition) deciding to show up as a ghost and adopt a small zabrak disaster child

someone else already adopted that disaster child

that's Hestera's disaster child now

she doesn't need two ghost mentors

Fun Star Wars/SWTOR Fact

In LucasArt’s 2003 video game Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy there is a late-game mission where the player character - Jaden Korr - visits a tomb on Chandrila belonging to a Jedi Master from an older era of the Jedi Order. It was later revealed in Star Wars: Force and Destiny Corebook that this tomb belongs to the third Barsen’thor, also known as the Jedi Consular player character in The Old Republic.

(I should also add that if you haven’t played Jedi Academy or any other games in the Dark Forces series go play it now)

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there is something Kreia says about Revan that lives rent-free in my head but, like, in a way where I know my Revan very much would not agree with her:

“The difference between a fall and a sacrifice is sometimes difficult, but I feel Revan understood that difference, more than anyone knew.”

and, like, that… works, kind of? that’s just close enough that it makes a great deal of sense that Kreia would interpret it that way. I am definitely not complaining about the line. but I have been unable to escape the nagging feeling that it would drive my Revan up a wall to have it described that way.

and then it just clicked what she’d say if she could somehow respond.

if you ask my Revan, the difference between a fall and a sacrifice is whether you intend to survive it.

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I think a lot about the medal ceremony in the kotor light side ending and Hestera just. not showing up to it

and instead she gets drunk in the cargo bay of a Republic frigate and tells Jolee that she’s pretty sure she killed the person she loved most in the whole galaxy and she can’t even remember why she cared about him, and he tells her more about his dead wife, and she says that she understands now what he meant when he explained why he left the order

and they get to have some kind of bonding moment about grief

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post-reveal Hestera occasionally flashes glowy eyes and I think that is very valid and attractive of her

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sometimes being extremely clever and competent just means being a dumbass on a much bigger scale

this is how we got the jedi civil war

revan is a verifiable genius in multiple ways and yet radiates pure chaotic dumbass energy 

its truly inspiring

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writing Hes through Yara’s eyes is always the most fun thing because Yara’s general opinion of Hes is “you are always going to be my shitty ex-girlfriend and I keep thinking I might not be over you until you open your mouth and I remember that I am, in fact, over you”

except it’s also combined with “but I kind of would like to have my childhood friend back, at least”

and “you are very possibly the only person in the whole galaxy who understands the injustice of which of us got punished”

it’s like. lovers to frenemies arc. it’s two people who were incredibly bad for each other as partners trying to figure out how to not do that again. and having a really rough time of it because they have the interpersonal skills of a pile of dead fish. I love it.

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I don’t know exactly how the final(?) chapter of Anamnesis goes but I now know it’s called “Be All My Sins Remembered” because I’m a dramatic kind of person

(aka the chapter where Hes refuses to let anyone give her a medal and probably flat-out tells someone that she isn’t redeemed and doesn’t think she can be, but she intends to do better by the galaxy anyway)

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untitled kotor ficlet

***

An unnamed colony

Shortly after Cathar

“If I say we couldn’t have done anything,” Alek asked, lowering himself onto the rubble beside her, “would you believe me?”

Revan closed her eyes, as if blocking out the physical portion of the devastation would help. It didn’t. “No,” she said, quietly. “I don’t think I would.”

He squeezed her shoulder. “I don’t think I would either,” he admitted. “But it was worth a try, hm?”

“Can’t blame you for trying,” she agreed. With a hollow chuckle, she leaned forwards, folding her arms on top of her knees. “Can’t blame any of us for trying. Void…”

“Oh, little asteroid gods. Do not start sulking on us, Revan, not now.” His grip tightened, fingers pressing in against the hard muscle of her arm, but his aura was only worry. “We all need you too much…” He sighed. “We did save the hostages, you know. That wasn’t for nothing.”

“Damn it. You’re right, on both counts, I know. But… damn it.” She opened her eyes again, feeling something grim and cold behind them. Don’t look away, she thought. You did this; don’t you dare look away. “I’m going to have to talk to them. I’m going to address this. I’m going to have to say—” She let out a breathy, bitter laugh, her vocoder turning it into a sound like the hiss of steam. “This wasn’t right. That’s the problem, Alek. We didn’t do the right thing.”

“You think we should have let them die?” It wasn’t quite an accusation, from him. Just curiosity, bland and patient in his presence, and a reserving of judgement. (He was never so patient with anyone else. He didn’t have the same faith in their answers.)

“I think… yes. I think so.” Revan pressed her lips together, rolling her shoulders just slightly as she straightened. “I had too much faith,” she said, “that we could save both. The hostages and the city. Fewer lives now and more later. As if we—I—could not fail. And so we were too late.” She put a hand on Alek’s, thinking steadiness, thinking strength, and she stood. “That was the Council’s idea of being a Jedi. That a few people meant more than ten thousand, just because we would have to see them die. How could that ever be right? If that’s our principle, then we’re—idiots, firstly—and a liability to the war. We were played, today. We were blackmailed.” Her breath was slow and even in her throat. “We won’t be again.”

“Good speech,” murmured Alek. He moved to follow her towards their camp, the vornskr-shadow at her back. “Think the others will listen?”

“Yes.” There was a durasteel certainty in her voice. “They’ve seen what happened here. They can feel it almost as well as I can. They’ll listen.” Revan frowned, behind the mask, at the camp silhouetted against the ruined horizon. “And if they don’t,” she added softly, “then they shouldn’t be here anyway. Not now.”

“Mm.” He tipped his head to the side, as if conceding some point. “I feel like it won’t be a problem.”

It was comforting, on a deeply-ingrained level, to have his presence beside her. Sometimes, it still seemed like the only way to keep her thoughts from running away with her completely was to let him hold them—like he had done since they were children, since she had first come back to their bunkroom with an armful of the older students’ textbooks. He was an anchor back to that time. Her presence mixed with his as they walked, sharing in the raw tiredness neither of them could show, leaning against him without them ever touching. I’m here. I’m here.

And so was he. Always.