#anyway atton is not nice

[thatwitchrevan]

The star wars dichotomy of 'loving droids to indicate high compassion and empathy' vs 'hating droids to indicate high Trauma'.

[enby-ernhardt]

Some things I’d like to see in the KOTOR remake(s), assuming they actually get released. I know some of it is a bit idealistic, but I can dream 😆

More customisation: maybe your character has a larger body, or freckles, or the braided hairstyle but blonde. They’re Twilek, Mirialan, or Zabraki! Non binary! Asexual! Anything goes, babey!!

Improved graphics and animation: ok, this is practically a given, but still. Have you seen characters get killed, then stand back up so they can die properly? Or characters knocked down when frozen getting back up and re-freezing (in that ridiculous pose) 😆. Revan’s dance moves stay, obviously, they’re just smoother.

Companions can roam ship/have schedules: Mostly they’ll be where they are now, but sometimes you’ll find Atton taking a nap, or Mission at the food replicator, and so on. Maybe you’ll even see someone patching themselves up in the med bay after a particularly rough battle.

Seperate the first name/last name fields: Sometimes I find a good first name but want to randomise the last. Also, giving every character my full name whilst trying to stay under the radar is counterintuitive. 😄

Romance: make Carth and Bastila bi, improve Juhani’s romance options (keep her a lesbian though), and add romance to the Kotor 2 characters (and Canderous in K1 because I know some people want that). You should be able to turn them down at any point though if you want.

Hide weapons unless fighting: We’ve all had a character stab themself when meditating or something. Also this

Small decorations: just having little trinkets and stuff appear throughout the game as you complete various tasks. Maybe you could keep one gizka, or pazzak cards/credits stack up as you win more games, or you get a sticker saying “Visit Manaan!”, etc.

Containers say when empty: this one is just here because I’m stupid and can’t remember shit 😆

[K1] Change Tach sound: those seconds between descending into the shadowlands and finding the mute button are the longest seconds of my life. (I know there’s mods, but they aren’t available on console)

[K1] Influence system/relationship changes: It really doesn’t make sense that Carth and Bastila will watch you do something dark sided and just make a small comment before pretending it never happened. Lightside companions should become more wary of you the darker you get, with Bastila giving you more lectures, for example.

[K1] Solo/not mc sections: I really like these sections in Kotor 2, so it’d be nice to have some in the first one too. Maybe someone could deal with the Mandalorian raiders while you’re training as a Jedi, or Canderous does the Genoharadan quest. Or entirely new stuff.

[K1] Change equipment on the Hawk: Also from Kotor 2. It’s very annoying to keep taking characters off the ship just to give them better stuff

[K1] Cutscenes on ship: yet another thing from Kotor 2. Carth asking Bastila how she got captured, Carth and Canderous’ Warrior or Soldier discussion, and Mission asking Bastila about using the force for fun could all easily take place on the ship, along with other convos.

[K2] references to/import data from K1: I’d like to see people talk about the time Revan saved/destroyed Hrakert rift and affected the kolto, or about them being swoop champ, and stuff like that.

[K2] Finished product: all the stuff the Restored Content Mod deals with should be there from the beginning, no need for mods or dlc *cough* Switch port *cough*. I know we’re going to mod the game anyway, but it should be for fun stuff and minor bug fixes, not restoring half the game!

[sovonight]

i did have A version of this in my head before the whole disney prince doll thing, so this isn’t Just bc of that, but. anyway:

au where mical's a prince, cela is mical's personal protector/knight and childhood friend. cela finds atton slinking out of the castle one day and immediately labels him as a suspicious threat, but mical stops her from bringing him to the guards. it turns out that atton's an assassin/jack of all deception trades who's been hired to be mical's body double, since there's a great threat to mical's life on the horizon. mical doesn't like the dishonesty, but since the king & queen seem so genuinely worried for his safety, he's gone along with it. cela's skeptical about the whole plan, and atton, whose collar is still in her fist, pokes fun at her armor, saying the helmet's a poor attempt to make her look more intimidating. she drops him.

a spring celebration arrives, where the castle gates are opened and the whole kingdom is invited to celebrate, nobles and commoners alike. since most people who'd come into contact with the prince on a day like this would be strangers to him, it's a safe occasion for atton to make his debut as mical's body double; the transformation happens via a potion of disguise brewed by kreia, the court wizard. cela spends most of the day attending to mical, who's confined to his room since he's not supposed to be outside, but as the day goes on mical urges her to go out and enjoy the feasting and festivities even if he can't. cela's hesitant to leave him alone, but mical's like, you spend most of your time watching over me, i want you to take a break for once. cela's reluctantly convinced--she has always loved a particular dish that's only made for this celebration, but isn't so bold as to make a selfish request of the delivery boy from the kitchens herself--and she promises to be back in an hour. she almost leaves in her armor, but mical's like, nope, if you're in your armor, you're beholden to act like you're on duty, and you're supposed to relax. cela sighs and relents, saying she'll leave the armor behind, and mical's like, oh, and here's a gown i had made for you for special occasions. cela's like, what? and mical's like, well--you always wear common clothes to these events if you're not in your armor, and i thought you deserved something fancier than that, especially for your rank. cela thanks him, but when she unwraps the gown later, she thinks it's far too extravagant.

half an hour later, cela's heading back from the feast with a decadent slice of her favorite pie when she nearly physically runs into mical. cela backs up, apologizes--then notices this mical is dressed formally, and must be atton. atton stares at her, and cela thinks it's lax of him to not have the act on just because there's no one else in the hallway--doesn't he know anyone else could pass by at any time?--but atton unfreezes and acts as if they're strangers, asking if she's lost. cela's like, wh, lost? and atton's like, the gates are closing, most of the people living outside the castle have left. atton offers to escort her out and cela realizes that he really doesn’t recognize her, and she has a rare opportunity to assess atton's capabilities for herself, so she accepts. they end up taking a roundabout, scenic route out through the castle gardens--cela asks herself to get more time to investigate, and atton doesn't tell her that there's a better path in the other direction. they end up having a nice conversation, with atton’s real personality shining through beneath his polite princely mannerisms, until midnight draws near and the disguise potion starts wearing off. atton makes his excuses to get away, and cela lets him, knowing what's happening to him. she returns to mical hours late, to find mical already asleep, surrounded by empty dishes sent up from the kitchens; cela looks at him fondly and realizes that she never actually ate her slice of pie, herself. it's cold now, but she still eats it. her assessment of atton is that he wouldn't fool anyone who knows mical, but it's good enough for brief encounters--and that she should tell atton not to have such long conversations again.

the day after, atton's in a meeting with the advisors, who've assessed his performance. cela's elbowed her way into attending the meeting too, even though she has nothing to do with it, and she's back in her armor, so atton can't recognize her. the advisors agree the results of the experiment were satisfactory, and that this plan can continue until the prince's birthday. cela's curious about the birthday part, but the advisors just sweep by and ignore her with the meeting adjourned. atton's hanging back with her, and only leaves as cela leaves. cela starts to wonder if he figured out who she was, but atton's like, you know, as a royal knight and everything, you must know a lot of people around here... right? nobles and servants and all? cela's like, ...yes, and atton's like, i wonder if you could tell me about someone. there was this woman i saw... dark braided hair, fair skin, in a fine green dress--but almost too fine, like it was at odds with the rest of her. do you know who that might be? cela recognizes herself, is kind of annoyed at atton's description of her, and says, that's vague, but i think i do. she's no one--an orphan, adopted into high society. atton's like, really? since she's a noble, will she be at the prince's birthday celebration? (which is coming up in about a month.) cela’s like, yes--but why are you asking? she has no ill will towards the prince--she's not a threat. you don't need to focus on her. atton looks at her and is like, you really care about the prince, huh? don't worry--i was just curious. i won’t let how much i like her distract me from the job. cela's mind skips on that last sentence and she’s like, what?? what do you mean you like her? you can't like her. atton stares at her confused, and cela's like, the--the prince is already betrothed! what would people say? and atton laughs and is like, an engagement doesn't stop other people--but you're right. i bet she only talked to me because i was wearing the prince's face, anyway.

birthday celebration arrives, and cela's serving as a knight again, guarding atton playing as mical. they're alone, and atton's looking out the window at the guests who're milling around below, waiting for the "prince"'s appearance. atton comments that he doesn't see her anywhere--cela asks, who's her, and atton's like, you know, that woman i met, the orphan. what was her name, by the way? and cela isn’t about to give her own name, so she's quickly like, i'm sure she had another engagement. atton's like, what could be more important than attending the prince's birthday? wait--she isn't betrothed too, is she? and cela's like, hurry up and greet the guests--you shouldn't keep them waiting. as cela watches atton act in front of the guests, she's noticed that atton’s a lot more composed in front of the crowd, and even kind of overdoes the gentle and kind prince charming thing--but it's nothing that will hurt mical's reputation, and the guests love it. soon, the guests move from having tea on the terrace to a stage that's been set up in the garden. there's a magician's performance scheduled, the kind of performance that cela knows mical would like to miss anyway; these stage magicians are fakes, and the real magic that mical is fascinated with is something else entirely. still, the performance wows the audience more than wizard like kreia would have, through their showmanship alone. the prince is called onstage as a volunteer for their final trick; atton goes, and with a flashy explosion of lights, everyone save the presenter disappears. the presenter bows and thanks them for watching; the audience claps, delighted, believing it to be part of the show; and after a split second of confusion and fear, cela storms up and grabs the presenter by the collar, but he gives a sheepish/panicked smile and bursts into light in her hands, disappearing as well. cela opens her hand to find that only the metal pin on his collar remains, with a simple symbol on it representing the troupe.

the advisors meet over this disappearance. cela's in the meeting as well, and kreia, who's claimed the metal pin after the advisors have stopped looking at it, and is currently doing some sort of magic spell to it; cela can't tell. the advisors come to a consensus and are like, honestly, atton's expendable, we need more time to evaluate all angles of this threat, if atton dies in the meantime then he'll have died performing his use. cela finds that unacceptable and is like, no, we have to act now. the potion only lasts until midnight, if we do nothing they'll know soon enough that they've captured a fake, but if we act now and retrieve atton alive he'll be able to tell us more about them than we'd learn through research--it's his job to gather this kind of information if he's captured. the advisors are like, really, you don't think he'll break the second they threaten his life? and cela's like, even if he does, what will it say about the royal family that they don't care that their heir has been kidnapped? are we going to reveal to the entire kingdom that we put this plan in place, that mical's life is in danger? and kreia's like, she's right. send her and two of your best knights after the troupe. i've divined their location. it may be that they've already figured out that atton is a decoy, and they may attempt to breach the castle walls. prepare your knights here as well.

on atton's end, he's been brought to some location outside the city, and he hasn't been tied up or anything. the performers are really chill and nice and are honestly just glad to have such a high paying gig--they're not only being paid for the performance, but also the extra pizazz of kidnapping the prince. atton's tried to convince them to let him go, but they refuse--apparently they've been given instructions to only return him the next day, and won't get paid their second half until then. atton considers knocking them out and escaping himself, but there are too many witnesses here who still think he's the prince, so he's trapped into continuing to perform mical's level of nicety. they offer him food and drink, and bring out this expensive wine that they were apparently instructed to treat him to, since it's "the wine the prince is accustomed to for every meal". atton doesn't know anything about that, but he sees no reason to refuse a good meal, especially when he has no reason to think they've done anything to it, so he eats--but when the wine hits his tongue, he notices a particular aftertaste to it.

meanwhile, cela's en route to the performers' hideout. they've left the city walls and ventured into the forest, when suddenly her two companion knights turn on her. turns out they've always disliked how she got the position they wanted, a cushy, high ranking job where she never gets sent out on stupid quests because her duty is literally just to protect mical, and they especially don't like that she's just some no-name orphan when they, third & fourth sons from noble backgrounds, clearly deserve the honor more than she. they fight, cela wins, but her armor is damaged and her helmet is ruined. she drags herself up to the troupe's hideout, where half of them have passed out due to the drugged wine, and the other half immediately surrender at the sight of a knight wielding a sharp sword, covered in blood, and looking very, very angry. atton's kind of woozy and out of it, having spat the wine out but still feeling effects from the trace of it on his tongue, and as cela carries him out atton looks up at her and is like, oh, i should've guessed it was you. where's kreia? and cela's confused, and asks, what does kreia have to do with anything, and atton's like, it's kreia, it's been kreia the whole time. then he passes out, the potion finally taking full effect.

back at the castle, cela finds someone to stick with atton until he wakes, and runs into the advisors right after. they ask what information atton provided, but cela only shakes her head and asks them where kreia is--and receives only confusion and shrugs in response. she pushes past them and runs up to mical's room, and the advisors call after her that he's perfectly safe, his room is guarded. when she gets there and pulls open the door, though, there's a spiral staircase sunk into the floor--and one of the guards outside the door comments that he didn't know mical's floor could do that. cela ignores them and descends. the stairs are narrow, fit only for one person, and pass between the inner walls of the castle because she can hear threads of conversation through the cracks in the stone, the guards reporting mical missing, the advisors exclaiming that it shouldn't be possible, footsteps rushing across the floors in panic. but soon, the walls sink into silence, and cela realizes she must have passed beneath the dungeons, beneath the castle's foundations, passing further into the earth. the distant echoes she'd heard from above are gone; now, she hears echoes from below.

anyway, it turns out that originally, there was a prophecy with ambiguous wording that suggested that mical would die on his __th birthday. the king & queen automatically ascribed a foreign threat to the prophecy, but it's really just kreia. kreia's only part of the court because of mical's deep interest in the magic--the kingdom was founded with it, and the castle itself is said to be built upon a font of magic that draws from the veins of the earth itself. mical's room used to be a wizard tower of sorts, and has a direct path to the central underground chamber where the font resides. all inhabitants of the kingdom have the opportunity to draw on the magic slumbering in the land, but the way to access it has been forgotten over the years, and it requires a level of sincerity and pureness of heart to wield it directly. kreia used to have this ability, but the land took it away from her when her heart changed, and now she seeks to kill the land itself--by using mical to unlock access to it for her. anyway, insert scene where mical nearly dies/does die/"dies", the magic is unlocked and kreia gets her magic back, cela atton and maybe mical fight her (atton shows up because it turns out there's multiple ways down here (of course) and he remembered from some nerd book that mical showed him once that a certain symbol was scattered around the castle and atton just pulled the bricks out until he saw the secret passageway), if mical died for real cela ends up reviving him with a sincere wish to the land for him to be returned, and of course the actual guards/knights/etc only get there after kreia is dealt with and mical is fine. afterwards, mical gets to study magic for real though the king & queen still worry a lot for him; atton gets some kind of official job around the castle; he and cela finally have full conversations where he's Not in disguise; and they kiss maybe. the end

[k-she-rambles]

Because I cannot just let this go: KOTORxSongmaster AU

Warnings for war, mentions of genocide, medical abuse, depression, vague implications of past assault (Atton is your friend but uh, he is not Nice), characters who don’t want to talk about sex talking about sex/infertility/impotence (it’s the repression paradox: the Forbidden Topic is talked about a lot because it’s Forbidden) and fantasy ableism. It’s Orson Scott Card. There’s Awesome and Ehh... NB: this is not how puberty blockers work IRL. I’m pulling things both out of my tuchas and from a work of fiction.

.

.

It takes the Exile hours to realize what is distracting her, but also warning her of approaching droids, this foreboding that has burrowed under her skin.

She can hear the Peragus mining facility singing.

The creak of metal, the sizzle of lasers, the klaxon of the alarms. The oppressive silence that is more than the silence she is used to. And below that, fear.

It has been five years since she has heard anything sing.

§

(The Exile hears no songs.

She is not deaf, in the peculiar way the Songhouse reckons deafness –-not as the quality of being unable to hear with your ears, but being unable to hear your own nature, sung.

But it is not just herself she cannot hear.

The Exile hears no songs.

It is as if the universe and everything in it is dead. When Master Vrook speaks, she cannot hear what he really means, below the dry bluster. Kavar’s tone is neutral in a way that is entirely different from his Control. Atris’ voice has a song like bright wind over snow, but only in the Exile’s memory. When she speaks, it’s only a voice.

The Songmasters sing Malachor. They sing warmongering, betrayal, the Dark Side, and over all, loss. The Exile only hears it in a recording, years later: the loss of music meant the loss of songtalk.

At the last, the Exile ignites her lightsaber, and drives it into the stone. The sound is empty, empty, empty.)

§

Kreia’s Control is incredible, and so it is always gratifying when she reveals something of herself. When she speaks, she never uses songtalk.

Come to think of it, Atris doesn’t either.

§

It’s the holos of Malak as a Sith Lord that bother the Exile the most.

It isn’t that he was the first padawan to show her around the Jedi Songhouse enclave on Dantooine when she arrived. He took himself too seriously, even as a child, but he was kind. He asked her the questions the adults hadn’t thought to, and answered, unprompted, the questions she was afraid to ask.

It’s his jaw. Malak was a songbird, though the songmasters never placed him out. (It was always Malak who was the songbird, not Revan, who grew into her voice only as an adult.)

But the horrifying idea of Revan taking a songbird’s natural voice away isn’t it either. It’s that the Exile doesn’t believe for a second that it was to teach him a lesson. It’s easier to believe that Revan loved him, and that changes things, morphs the horror into pity for them both.

It it so wrong, she catches herself thinking, the impulse to silence a song that is in agony? To hear the pain which you have caused, and make it stop?

§

“Soo...” says Atton, nudging a broken piece of droid with a toe. “Songhouse, huh?”

“Mm.”

“Must be hard. No family, no, ah --”

The Exile snorts. “Typical.”

“No? ‘Cause I heard--”

“The Songhouse is a family, Atton. When I was brought in I was adopted. Legally.”

“...okay, so how does an ancient, galaxy-spanning organization legally adopt a kriff-ton of kids?”

“Illegally.”

Atton smiles at that, and it’s almost honest. No teeth.

The Exile relents. “It depends. The other thing, I mean. Species, biological sex, whether they thought you’d be a songbird when you were adopted.”

He makes a vaguely interested noise.

She continues breaking down the blaster rifle in her hands. “Once the puberty blockers wear off, those who might have borne children generally find they can’t —hence the Songhouse’s aggressive adoption practices.”

“Oh. That’s not too bad, then.”

She looks at him coolly until he flushes, two spots of color on a face that might have once been tan.

Sallowed by dissipated living. A follower. Without someone to lead him all he is is appetite –-that is Kreia, in her mind’s ear. Had it not been part of her gift of the voice, the Exile might not have separated Kreia’s words from her own thoughts. True, Atton looks like he hasn’t seen sunlight or a nutritionally balanced meal in years, but there is...

You have no natural talent for healingsong, says Kreia sternly, but does not correct the Exile’s assumption.

Atton is still babbling. “Not that, uh, I’m in a position to say.”

Her laugh is a small huff of air. “It’s what I grew up with. They say Ancient Selkath doesn’t have a word for wet.” She tries to sing Modesty, and doesn’t even get as far as don’t stare before her voice cracks and the song turns to ashes in her mouth. Stupid. Like poking at a missing tooth. She’d never had a problem not trying to sing when she was traveling alone.

“I know that one,” says Atton. “I meant...the rumors get really uh, colorful. I was being stupid. Earlier, I mean. I was –I meant to be filthy but didn’t mean it to be nasty if it’s something you can’t—”

She puts down the rifle. “I won’t die if I have sex, Rand.”

Atton looks anywhere but directly at her. “Right. Stupid.”

§

After years of silence, the music is distracting. Eddies and curls, the ticks in the hyperdrive, T3′s gears, Atton’s constant mindless not-quite-spoken chatter. Bao-Dur doesn’t realize he hums as he works, but she can pinpoint his location, his mood, and a sense of what he’s working on anywhere in the ship.

“I will teach you Control,” says Kreia, and the Exile bristles. She is not a Bell or a Breeze, learning how to breathe, learning Control for the first time. But she keeps Control, and obediently sits down to meditate.

She tries to imagine a lake in the mountains, surrounded by the walls of her Control, and fed by the meltwater of her life, just as she was taught. It is the reservoir of her songs, released only when she chooses, not in tears, or sudden flights of passion.

She hasn’t done this in years. Who knows what that lake might contain.

The image won’t come.

“Let go of what ought to be,” says Kreia. “I am only interested in what you are.”

The deep lake has become...something else. A marsh, a bog. The sweet, thick smell of decaying plants feeding the living ones. There is a sense of wet, but there’s no sign of where the water comes from, and no sign of what makes it stay. It’s like nothing she has ever encountered. “Is that...good?”

“It is you,” says Kreia.

§

Years of doing everything but sing with her voice have left their mark. Lightsong and darksong both sound mangled, strained. Once, the Exile could fill a room with sound, to the edges and no farther, with no distortions. Now, she is lucky to hum a healing without her voice cracking.

She doesn’t exactly regret not keeping her voice conditioned –-she could have sung in exile, technically. Did, once or twice—sung a familiar tune for a drink or a job, sung a lullaby to calm a crying child.

She could not bear it for long: a tone-deaf stranger pulled from the street would still sing from the overflow of of the life they bore inside them. She does not.

There was nothing there. She sounded like a corpse trying to carry a tune, no matter how correct her notes.

She tells herself the song would have only sounded like Malachor, anyway.

§

Atton has Control.

There are hints of it on Telos, but —

No. Atton sings.

The realization hits the Exile like a ton of bricks. Atton sings. It is not the same as having a song, for all living things (and many things that aren’t alive at all) have a song. Atton sings: with his body, with his thoughts, keeping his mind and his hands and his mouth vacuously busy in ways that any songmaster would call “wasting your songs.” But he’s doing it on purpose. He lets those who listen, listen, but they listen to a tune of his choosing.

It’s a gift of the voice. They aren’t rare, but there’s no usual form they take, and so they can be mistaken for other talents. Revan had a gift with languages. Poor Bastila had been saddled with battle song in a time of war. The Exile herself had a gift: the ability to catch the thread of any song and the power behind it, to harmonize with anyone, of any skill.

§

Revan was quick to sing of herself. You never knew all of what was going on in Revan’s head, but you always knew who and what you were following.

§

(“If a place there is not for the songs to come out,” Master Vandar says in her mind’s eye, one of her earliest lessons as a padawan, “Drown you will in all the things you cannot express. Inflict them you will on others, without knowing them yourself. A grave affliction it is. Even Sith songmasters sing. Sing we must, even if the tone needs correcting. Our debt to the galaxy it is.”

“What happens to padawans like that?” Revan asked.

“A question, that is not,” said Vandar, “for so many young ears.”)

§

(Don’t tell Alek, Revan had sung, a rare concession to ignorance over knowledge. They’d given Revan a name, at the Songhouse. They called her after her favorite historical figure. They’d called her Fiimma, the one who had to know Ansset’s song, who’d changed the course of the Songhouse by disobedience, courage, love. (which one depended on who you asked) Don’t tell Alek.)

§

On Goto’s ship, Atton finally sings of himself in his own voice.

The Exile hears war, hears following Revan, even as she changed, because she was worth following. She hears death, hears killing, and hears the part of him that loves death, that loves killing.

Atton sings, and the Exile hears Control, perfect Control, the kind that takes all emotions in and gives back nothing genuine, nothing uncalculated, nothing of his. High walls, a deep lake, cold and remote. A place of the drowning of the soul.

And then the singer, his singer, the one who let herself be caught, the one who broke open his Control by force. She sang the love song as she died –as Atton killed her, singing it back without voice, singing it back with a knife.

The Exile sings back her shock, wordless: Only one Songmaster of the High Room on Coruscant in recorded history had ever dared such a thing as his singer dared, and never by force.

“I won’t say that it is not –-” Atton’s songs are raw and awkward things, coming from a spring he did not carve, flowing through him like water, like smoke. He would not sing at all except he must. It feels like weakness, a bleeding wound, like something of his was taken away, even if he doesn’t want it back. “You’re not wrong, but –-” He sings, wordless, and she understands.

Atton knows, then, what Vandar had eventually told her, told Revan: a singer with Control who does not sing is a shame. A singer with Control who cannot sing is already dead. Marked for death. His singer had broken her Jedi oaths to save a single life.

It is no wonder that Atton has had such an uneasy relationship with songs and singers.

He wants the Exile to teach him anyway. He could be a shield, a knife in her hand. He wants to be.

She knows where to start. I will never hurt you, I will always help you. Atton sings it with a ferocity that takes her aback. Love does not end.

§

The Exile’s breath control gets stronger, her tone more clear. She hears Nar Shaddaa, hears the Ebon Hawk. More, she can hear and sing her companions. I’m glad to have you with me, she sings, and Bao-Dur’s and Atton’s backs straighten, despite only having a rudimentary grasp of songtalk. Maybe we can be friends. (Maybe, hums Mira, but it is open to the possibility, less hostile than it was.) I care about you, not the ways you are useful to me, the Exile sings, and Visas frowns, as if she doesn’t understand, as if songtalk were not the first language of all Miraluka.

I am listening, the Exile sings to Kreia, Your songs are full of distortions, but I hear you.

“Do you?” Kreia murmurs, gratified.

§

“What if there are monsters in the lake?”

In her memories, the Exile can never remember which of the Breezes she was meditating with had asked the question. No name or face gives her comfort. Bastila, about to be graduated early into Stalls and Chambers because of her gift, and already using ego to mask her fear? Juhani, who had come to the Songhouse late, and whose mood swings made her songs tempestuous? Belaya? Yuthura?

She was not wise like Vandar, or kind like Kavar, or firm like Songmaster Vrook. She had only been in the latter part of Stalls and Chambers, then, taking advantage the privilege of older padawans to teach the younger. It prepared them for adulthood, when they had to decide what to do with grown-up voices. She still wished they would have asked Master Zhar.

But they had asked her, and they deserved her answer.

“The monsters are songs, too,” she said, after a moment. “The ones you are afraid to sing.”

She meant to say don’t be afraid. She can only guess what the young ones heard.

§

Visas’ Sith songmaster master would sometimes take her voice, preventing her from singing the grief of her dead world. He is a hungry silence, more anechoic chamber than man. He drains the music from whatever he touches, chasing the echo of death, feeding on songs cut short, ended, lost.

Visas rarely sings her own songs, now. She sets them aside in favor of others’ --the Exile’s, or the echo of Nihilus’ power. It is not quite as viscerally terrifying as Atton’s song of Control: Visas instinctively knew that Control and Song are hand-in-hand. She does not keep Control when she cannot sing.

It is why, perhaps, she hides herself away and veils her face: emotions are strange and wild things, when you are used to singing them.

The Exile teaches her all the exercises and songs she remembers from childhood, and thinks of the Songmasters, trying to lose themselves on Nar Shadda, on Dantooine, on Onderon.

She does not think of years spent being a ringing silence herself.

§

Mira hears songs of individuals over distance, hears the distortion of people who aren’t home.

The Exile hones her pitch, teaches her how to grasp the song heard faintly and amplify it, singing it back so that it can be heard and healed. She teaches Mira posture, courage, how to stand and sing in any situation, even when you cannot stand: feet rooted, alert spine, breathe out, not up. No fear.

When Mira reappears after the Sith tomb on Dxun, joking with Bralor in his own tongue, there is a sense of something finally settled, a rhythm finally found.

§

“What did you learn in your exile? Visas asks.

The Exile rolls Visas’ lightsaber crystal in her hand, thinks of the smells of decay and of growing things, of water soaking up from the ground. She presses the crystal into the Miraluka’s palm.

“It is something like you learned, I think. I am alive. Song or no song or song-deaf. I am still here.”

“You think that is a good thing?”

“Why?” says the Exile, lightly. “Have you changed your mind about me? Are you going to lead me in chains before your songmaster?”

Never. The note is short and sharp, but there’s something the Exile can build on, there. My life for yours.

If you are frightened, I’ll be your friend, the Exile sings. The love song.

Visas scoffs, not recognizing it. “I do not fear death.”

Neither do you wish to live, the Exile does not say. “But you fear mine?”

“I regret it. I would delay it, if I could.”

The Exile smiles. “Then you’ll just have to keep keeping me out of trouble.”

§

The Exile had hoped to never set foot on Dxun again. It’s just as loud as she remembers, even with her dulled senses. It is not just the jungle --the moon rings with the memory of death and mines and fire and water, even though the fighting has long ago stopped. It’s either the echo of what came before, or the silence, after.

“It’s hard to hear myself think sometimes,” says Bao-Dur, “But being around you helps.” And: “I’m glad you let that old warrior go. I’m not sure I would have wanted to do the same.”

“It’s not always about what I want,” she says, gently. “There has been enough death and hatred, I think. So I chose.” She runs a towel over her hair, uselessly trying to get rid of some of Dxun’s damp, and adds “You wondered how I made it through without my songs. You don’t have to hear the song to make a choice.”

§

“Her influence threatens the integrity of the other students’ music!” says the recording of Songmaster Vrook. “She is like Ansset, and could doom us all.”

“That is a myth,” the Exile growls.

“Ahh,” says Bao-Dur, observing her without judgment. “I’m pretty sure Ansset was a real person. Last of the Three Imperators and one of the founders of the Republic? Ring a bell?”

The Exile crosses her arms. “He was a Songbird first and last. One of our greatest. The stories say,” she says, drawing the last word out, “that he could change people’s songs, even without singing. Make them feel whatever he wanted. Make them become what he wanted.”

“Creepy,” says Atton, at the same time Bao-Dur says “You’re nothing like that.”

“No?” says the Exile, and Atton is not sure if she is angry, or if that is some kind of loss or hunger in her face, her eyes.

Atton scratches the back of his head. “Well, sure. You can harmonize with nearly anyone. Even Kreia. You said that was your gift, not changing the songs of others.”

“This Vrook person called you dangerous in the same breath as average and disliked,” says Bao-Dur. “Are you sure he has even met you?”

She exhales, a small laugh. “He never liked me.”

“Then he is letting his personal feelings cloud his judgment, and you have your answer.”

§

Mandalore is deaf to songtalk, but his awareness is exceptional. “Your teacher is a fine hand at blocks, Exile.”

The Exile starts. She hadn’t thought of that, despite how teaching her to hear the thoughts of her companions exactly resembled shifting a block.

“Is there anything --”

“I’m not a doctor or a singer,” he says quickly. “You’d know more than I. But no, I don’t think she has bound any of us with anything stronger than blackmail.”

But she could, if she was resisted, lays unspoken between them.

§

The Exile came home, with the singers who would become Revan and Malak, once, four months before the full council sanctioned the intervention that had been going on eight months already.

Eight months of the background noise of war, strategy, and troop movements.

There were children practicing in the courtyard. Stalls and Chambers, she guessed, most with their own lightsabers. They wore white tabards over their tunics.

One of them tried to catch her eye, aware of where she had been and brimming with questions. He was good at noticing patterns in music. She’d tutored him on using that skill to hearing the harmonies between people, to expand it further, outwards, and notice patterns on the large scale. “Sing with us!”

The Exile shook her head. She hadn’t needed Revan’s warning: she knew war had changed her songs. To sing with anyone younger than Singer would be to threaten the purity of their self-expression, Revan had said, so perfectly mimicking Vrook that both the Exile and Alek had doubled over laughing. Revan had meant it, all the same.

“I don’t think I should.”

Words were enough, with his keen hearing, or perhaps it was her gift combined with his, and there was a harmonic between them already. The padawan sang it back: took what he heard in her voice and expanded on it, sang you are a shield for us, even in your silence, you couldn’t just do nothing, you will do it because you can.

There was something new in his voice, a thread of determination backing up his joyful curiosity. Here was one who could see a threat to all he had ever known and still sing in the face of it.

But the echo of death rarely came to Dantooine, in those days. He’d never seen it. She had.

The Exile sighed, all caution made useless. “Your chamber-master is going to kill me.”

“What is Atris going to say?” he said, amused. “I chose to sing it, so it is part of my song now.”

§

“I don’t hear anything different,” says Vrook. There’s no lie in his voice. “Your voice is not as good as it was, and you still have no songs.”

“But I sing!”

“I can’t deny that I see the effects of music. You make sounds, and things happen. And yet it is difficult to believe.”

The Exile waits. Perhaps Vrook’s lack of affection for her will allow him to tell her something that Zez-Kai Ell and Kavar could not.

“I see that you wrap the songs of your companions around you, but can you sing me a song of yourself?”

“And influence your songs, Master Vrook?” says the Exile. Her Control holds her steady enough to give her space to wonder why the question made her afraid, and, because she was afraid, angry. “‘Corrupt the purity of your self-expression’ with something you were never meant to know?” If she sang of Malachor, like Ansset sang of his life when he returned to the Songhouse, would it be mercy or cruelty? Even in Ansset’s time, it had been a close thing, a knifeblade either way, and it had been the experiences of one man, one who had never known war.

She carries Malachor around her like a cloak. A thousand songs in agony, a thousand voices silenced at her order. It is foolishness to think she does not.

“Hmph,” says Vrook, but there is a grudging and temporary respect as he gives her one last lesson.

Kreia, on the other hand, is incensed. “What fool denies wisdom offered to them? The tree that does not lean into the wind, does not withstand the storm. This planet and it’s people have seen pain, and is he processing it, or his own? Pah! He is ‘keeping his songs pure.’ And you,” she says, rounding on the Exile. “Do not think you are protecting anyone by your silence. They will learn or they will break.”

§

I’m sure I know you, the Exile sings, from behind the Disciple.

“I am sure I just have one of those faces,” he responds.

“That was songtalk.”

The Disciple turns around, his expression wry. “So it was. You do remember me.”

§

She does remember the padawan in Stalls and Chambers who sang her own song back to her, and he remembers her.

“The music, that is easy to forget,” he says. “With no need for Control to store your songs, and no need for singing. The stone of the Songhouse is my childhood home, my foundation, but when I grew up became a soldier, not a singer.” And: “The songmaster I would have chosen, the one meant for me, was lost.”

Lost, not dead. Her decisions had echoes she had not accounted for. “I’m sorry.”

“It wasn’t all bad,” says the Disciple. He gestures to the rubble around them. “I left the Songhouse before all of this. I had skills the Republic could use. Besides, I had already begun to have doubts when the Songmasters couldn’t hear the purity of your intentions. I did not want to be a part of the Songhouse if it would punishyoufor doing the right thing.”

“Purity of intentions does not mean I did the right thing,” says the Exile. “It’s easy to lose sight of what the right thing is in war.”

His amused smile hasn’t changed at all, nor his habit of hearing what she won’t say. “It would not kill you to admit that you have definitive opinions on the justice of your sentence.”

“Do you still wish to come with me?”

“I do.”

She takes his hand. “Will you sing with me, Mical?”

§

She finally gets a long conversation with Kavar.

It is good to see a friendly face.

He says much of the same things Vrook had: that her songs are a casualty of the war; that mortality is not conducive to song. His song is placid, calming. He is not lying, but he is not telling her everything, either. I can wait, the Exile thinks.

No. It is what Kavar is singing. You can wait. All things in time. The threat will reveal itself in time.

Not everyone has that luxury, Songmaster, she sings. Some who think they do, do not.

“How do you know what would have happened?” he counters. They are definitely not just talking about whatever is hunting Jedi. “Do you see what was lost because of Revan’s recklessness. Yours?”

“Do you not think I know what I did? Do you not think I carry it with me?”

I know you do, he sings. The apology is genuine, but it is as much apology as she is ever going to get. There is a sadness there, too, as if she has failed to learn something vital.

“The future is in flux and the past is a song already sung,” says the Exile. What’s done is done.

“Oh, my dear,” says Kavar. “Nothing is ever done.”

§

Someone, it seems, either in the Songhouse or in the Republic army, has taught the Disciple how to lay and remove blocks, and with his reopened connection to his songs, he is quickly combining the two, to devastating offensive and defensive effect.

In time, she thinks, the others will seek him out, let him sound out the shape of their minds, and make sure there are no nasty surprises there. Ask him to lay a few blocks of his own, against horror, against paralysis and confusion.

Well, she thinks. Everyone but Atton, who dislikes the Disciple, blocks, and people who deal in them.

§

“A word, songmaster?” says the Disciple.

She steps into the medbay.

The Disciple places his hands behind his back, but not before she can see that his hand is injured. “It’s about our pilot.”

Wonderful.

“He was asking some rather pointed questions, and I --” he clears his throat. “What I mean to say is that I’ve been away from the Songhouse long enough to know what is and is not my business.”

The Exile hums her confusion.

Mical shifts his weight onto his right foot slightly, and back again, a strange break of Control, for him. “For all that Atton’s ignorance of Modesty is startling, his song for you is-- what I mean is that there will be no back-singing from me, songmaster.”

The Exile pinches the bridge of her nose, comprehension finally dawning. Were they in the Songhouse, they would have never broached this subject. “Are you expecting a thank you?”

The Disciple lifts his chin, but blushes.

§

After that, it’s not entirely a surprise when Atton wanders into the cockpit with a cold pack over his eye --kolto is too valuable to waste on inter-crew spats. He waves off her hands when she takes off her gloves and reaches for him. He sits, and hums his own healing, looking pleased with himself when it works.

“All right,” says the Exile. “What happened?”

Atton looks sheepish, the mirror to Mical’s blush. “Uh. You remember the question I asked you, when we first met? About growing up Songhouse?”

“...yes?”

“Well you didn’t answer it all the way. You said how it worked for you, and said it was different for others. So I asked Mical.”

Sithspit. She stares at him. Asking questions, Mical had said. A startling ignorance of Modesty. Mical was trying to be gracious. “You deserved that.”

“Yeah. Well. I know that now. Matter of fact, I now know a whole hell of a lot of things I didn’t need to know, because after punching me in the face on principle, and explaining why you never ask a Songhouse kid that question, Mical treated me to a very nice lecture on the science of pain receptors and their connection to hormones, all the drugs you and he are allergic to, and a graphic theory on what happened to Darth Malak’s face. Which I really did not need to know.”

He has a point. “Sorry.”

Atton leans back, bracing his feet against the bottom edge of the control panel, and putting his hands behind his head. She knows better than to think he’s actually relaxed. “Why’d you answer my questions the first time, anyway? I probably would have wound the Disciple up about it, just to be an asshole, but I do like to know how much of an asshole I am before I really commit.”

“I don’t know,” she says, honestly. There’s no answer that she wants to give that is satisfactory: they either say too much or too little.

“I’m sorry. That those things happened, I mean,” he adds, when she raises an eyebrow. “To you, to Mical, to kriffing Darth Malak and Revan, even. Family should make you stronger, not...not limit your choices like that.”

“Ancient Selkath doesn’t have a word for wet,” she reminds him, softly.

“I know that,” he says, pulling his feet down from the ledge. “That doesn’t mean that wet didn’t actually exist.”

She is going to have to think about that one.

“Really makes me think, though. I’m not sure that I’m comfortable joining the Songhouse, if this...you know, big on bodily autonomy, me.” The last part twists, discordant, both truth and lie.

The Exile sighs. “I was disowned when they cast me out, Atton. If you want to join the Songhouse, you’re going to have to ask someone else.”

He snorts at that suggestion. “Not likely.” His clothes rustle as he squirms in his seat, crossing his arms and looking away. Rather follow you, he adds, singing so softly that the Exile can’t be sure if he sang with his voice or his mind. “Besides,” he says, louder, a bit too rapidly, “pretty sure they’re going to have to welcome you back, anyway. They’re a few singers short of a full chorus, and you’re the only Jedi Singer I’ve met with any sense.”

“Har, har,” she says, nudging his seat with a toe. “You’re right, you know. If the Songhouse survives all this, things will have to change.”

Atton swallows. “You know,” he says slowly. He still doesn’t look at her. “You know. If it’s worth anything, the Disciple told me he cleared all his medical checks when he left the Songhouse. You couldn’t hurt him. Unless you were into that, I guess.”

The Exile opens her mouth. Closes it. “Atton –”

“Don’t make fun. Kid’s got a heart like a star and the song in it is yours. Kriffing annoying, but if you haven’t heard him, you haven’t been paying attention.”

She throws her gloves at him and flees the cockpit.

§

The so-called Lord of Pain wraps himself in music, is barely anything besides song stitched together with veins of Control. He is loud, too much. He makes the Exile’s bones ache. Silence, she sings, breath, darkness.

Life without song, he sings. Impossible. Death.

Not death. Something else.

There is nothing else. Only hunger, only void. I do not wish to die.

You are not at peace.

Are you?

§

“Were you Revan’s teacher?” the Exile asks.

“Revan had many teachers,” says Kreia.

The Exile waits.

Kreia looks at her a long time, and then opens her mouth and sings Revan.

At least, as well as Revan can be sung by someone who isn’t Revan herself. Her song always lent itself to being projected upon by others.

It is answer enough.

§

Malak sings action over the Jedi Council’s inaction. Malak sings of the Mandalorians, sings rumors of death on the Outer Rim, sings innocents in danger, sings the Republic asking for help and finding none.

Outrage, sing the singers on the Exile’s left and right. War.

War, sings Malak. War. Outrage. The Songhouse has failed.

Illusion, sings the Exile. The figures on her left and right ignore her. Malak looks at her with a twinkle in his eye.

She’d forgotten what a pompous bastard he could be. “Alek, this is not the song we sung.”

Something had to be done.

“That’s true. But we set out to save the Republic, not throw down the stones of the Songhouse.”

Malak smiles at her, as if he knew she would agree with him, eventually. “You know that was never Revan’s desire. If you had heard what Revan heard...”

“If I had heard what Revan heard, I wouldn’t be here,” the Exile snaps. She hears the truth in it as she says the words. “If I had been following Revan, and not myself, do you think she still would have chosen you over me?”

She’s made him angry now, the line between memory and vision blurring. “They will remember me, little sister. They will not remember you.”

The Exile closes her eyes. Opens them. “I decided that Revan would not arrive with reinforcements. And so I closed the trap. I destroyed the Mandalorians. I destroyed my own forces. I won the war. But Revan delayed. I was loyal to the cause, not to her. I wasn’t intended to survive. I know that now.”

What Revan had heard had altered her song, even as it remained wholly hers, like hearing Ansset’s had changed little Fiimma’s.

Revan had not been able to hear the change.

“I don’t have to justify myself to you, Malak. I don’t have the luxury of saying I did what I was told, or that I was hoodwinked, somehow, by Revan’s charisma. I chose, and I can’t change the past. But my choices were not your choices. My reasons were not your reasons, nor should they be.”

“Wake up,” says Malak, almost pitying. “You have to wake up.”

You were going to be the songbird of Taris, Alek, she thinks. What was it that tipped the scales? Following Revan to Korriban? What Revan found in the wreckage of Malachor V? What happened after the Mandalorian War ended? Where did you go?

She ignites her lightsaber and grits her teeth, staring the illusions in the eyes.

She loses.

§

She hears the fear in the voices of her soldiers, and thinks she understands. “Let me go up, Captain.” I will do it. I will do it. Her voice cracks. She remembers the loyalty of her soldiers, the songs she had with them. Dxun was full of life, just as it was full of death.

She disables the mines by hand.

Was it wasted? Her soldiers ask. Did it mean something, in the end? Did we matter?

§

“I can’t. I won’t.”

Apathy is death, sing the illusions, a drone that rattles her bones.

The Exile almost drops her lightsaber.

Refusing to die is not quite the same as choosing to live, but she wouldn’t call it death. A stupor, a blindness, a sleep, part infection and part choice.

Kreia was right to ask if she’d found what she was looking for among the dead. Mical was right to chide her about sidestepping. It had been so easy to not to care, not to matter, not to remember that at the core of her was cold Songhouse stone, warmed by many hands.

Had she always been strong enough to bear it, or is she stronger, now?

How does this song end? asks the illusion of Kreia. The illusion uses songtalk where Kreia would not. The effect is unsettling. “Either you conclude it, or the echoes go on forever, unfinished.”

§

There is nothing in a dark nexus that you do not bring with you.

She crosses blades with the apparition of what she might have become, had she truly been Revan’s left hand as Malak was her right, and thinks it again, a mantra: There is nothing in a dark nexus that you do not bring with you.

She has always been able to sing in the face of death.

There is nothing in a dark nexus that you do not bring with you.

So what is this? She ducks her own blade and makes a run for it. She can’t keep her breath enough to sing.

Of course she’d seen the changes in Revan and Malak. She’d seen the changes in herself. But she had set her face long before Malachor: she had always intended to present herself for judgment. She had broken faith with the Jedi Council, and she believed she was right to do so, but such actions always had consequences.

She would not have followed Revan into the outer reaches of the darkness. She already had followed her to Dxun, to Malachor V, and through the nothing beyond. There has to be something she is not seeing.

The eyes of the specter are empty. There is no song in her, though her songs are as solid and cool as stone.

It is frightening, in an abstract way, but the Exile finds herself oddly detached from the fear. As if this battle is familiar.

There are no songs for this.

It is time to go home.

§

She hears the Disciple’s confession, and it occurs to her that Mical is angry. Angry in the same way that Atris was angry. Atris chose not to follow, and Mical had been too young to. That for all his Control, for all that he thinks and thinks and thinks, turning his problems over in his mind note by note, his sunny disposition is fought for, and won.

Mira calls Mical a tame kath-hound.

She is right. May the fates help whoever tries to take what he defends.

“The Seeker who brought you to the Songhouse named you well.”

“Do you think?” says Mical, and the song in his voice is bitter. “I always thought it was cruel. Someone who doesn’t look like much, named after the Emperor of the Galaxy. Mikal the tyrant.”

“Father Mikal,” says the Exile, gently. “You are an historian. You know this.” History had recorded Emperor Ansset’s heir, Ephrim son of Josif, as the first Supreme Chancellor of the Republic, but it was a Republic that the tyrant had dreamed of. The Songhouse remembered: Mikal was the father of the Republic. The tyrant who loved the greatest Songbird in history as a son.

“Do you not think,” says Mical, slowly, “that you will make it through this?”

“Something is coming,” she says, finally. And then, pitching her song to cut through the ambient noise of the Ebon Hawk: I have given each of you all I can. The legacy of the Jedi is in your songs.

Bao-Dur snorts, softly. He heard the undercurrent of the song. She suspected he would. He closes a panel on Remote, and she hears the same tune back. He has been listening to her lessons with the others.

Mira nods decisively at something. Time to stop running.

Visas waits. It will come when it will come.

Atton slams a storage compartment, suddenly, inexplicably, and incandescently furious.

§

“Wait, General,” says Bao-Dur. The Exile turns, and words seem to fail him then, because he sings: hope and anger, weariness and rest, vengeance and choices, all rolled up into a question.

She considers him seriously, and presses an off-hand lightsaber into his palm. “Your choice, of course,” she says, lightly, warmed by his trust, his faith. “But you’ve always seemed to thrive on the impossible. If you think you can defend the innocent with song, without malice against the enemy, then you can.” I believe in you.

Bao-Dur bows his head.

The Exile ignites her lightsaber. “Now, are you going to show me what you’ve learned from spying on everyone else, or are you going to stand there and let me lecture you?”

Bao-Dur laughs, his dry, quiet laugh so like her own, and it sounds like try me. “I’ll take practical experience any day.”

§

All she hears in this place is loss.

She takes off her armor, stashing it quietly in an anteroom just inside the door of the enclave. There is power running now, and she hears the fountains ahead, signs of human habitation. Signs of life.

There is an ache in her chest. She breathes deeply, slings a robe over her shoulders for the first time in nearly a decade. She is not part of the Songhouse, but she is a singer, and songmaster to other singers. She respects the wisdom of the Songmasters, but the near extinction of the Songhouse and her exile have made her a peer.

It is good to see things rebuilt. The green of growing things, the sounds of the fountains, the murmur of voices waiting for her.

But all she hears in this place is loss.

It is strange: conventional wisdom holds that grief unharnessed weakens song, but her heart is full to bursting with something indefinable. She could sing here, and shake the walls down.

She forges on, past the fountains. She does not hear Kreia follow her, nor Visas follow Kreia.

§

The Songmasters tell her of the gathering on Visas’ homeworld, of songs not just cut short, but emptied.

They’d seen an echo of something coming for them, and had gathered, thinking numbers might clarify the vision.

No, Atris had suggested numbers might clarify the vision.

It was Atris who had convinced the Republic to contact the Exile.

Atris, the historian, the archivist, who could not justify leaving her post and following her heart. Atris, whose song, in the Exile’s memory of their last encounter, spoke of bitterness. Atris who surrounded herself with Handmaidens who were deaf to song. To the changes in a song.

I was an historian, Kreia had said. I found more questions than the Songhouse could answer.

§

“Songmaster,” says Mical, turning back towards the dormitory. There is resolve in his tone. “It is not Kreia who has shaken you so.”

She gives him a level look, already seated on the meditation rug Visas bought for her on Onderon.

He tries again. “What did the Songmasters say to you?”

“The Songmasters are dead.”

“And Atris has betrayed us, yes. Songmaster.”

The Exile sits back. “Why are you here, Mical?”

“I was worried about you.”

“No, why are you here? I influenced your songs as a child. What is to say I’m not doing so now? Do you not wonder why you follow me?”

You are a parasite, spits Vrook in her mind’s eye. Forming bonds, leeching off the connections of others. Your gift of the voice has always given you undue influence over the minds of the young and wayward.

“I follow you because I believe what I heard from you all those years ago, songmaster,” says Mical. “I see with my eyes that it is still the case. I admire you. But the galaxy does not revolve around any one person, though any one person can dedicate themselves to defend it. You taught me that.”

The Exile fixes her gaze somewhere above his left ear. “At Malachor, it was –I assumed my songs were taken away, or that I was deafened by what I heard. But I stopped my own ears. The other side of my gift of the voice: if I can harmonize with anyone, I can also not.” She looks down, at the rug, at the decking. “I knew. I’d always had a knack for that trick. I pulled it on Revan once, right before a performance. I don’t remember why. Got the mother of all lectures from Songmaster Sunrider. But I knew, if I would have let myself remember.”

Mical sits in front of her, legs crossed. “You heard something you could not bear. To hear so much death at once would have killed you.”

“But to cut myself off from all song to stop listening? You can imagine the Songmasters’ reactions.”

Mical does not smile at this. “They thought you were the source of the echo of death that has followed us.”

“I am the bait. And I do carry something with me.” She looks away. “Malachor V is not gone. The song of the universe is suffering there, and I carry it, not as a cloak, but inside...”

It is like Mical cannot hear it. The Exile’s voice is empty. There is nothing of herself in it. What she has become is worse than what Atton was before: Her true song is the death of song, and the songs of others. She grows in strength from death, and from her companions. She uses her gift of the voice to sing what she hears, to sing her friends voices, their songs, to sing to the living. Everything in her song is chosen, gathered, borrowed, stolen. Not hers.

“And you think that is a matter of accident?” says Mical. “That you sing of life and living when you know also the songs of death and ending? That you spin songs from what you hear, and from the people who love you?”

She thinks of the twisted brightness around a black hole. She thinks of a bog, the water coming up from the ground, and the ground itself made of drowned plants. Death feeding life feeding death, on forever.

Mical nods, satisfied. “It is possible to be afraid of death, and so delay to make choices that will save more lives. That is why the Songmasters have failed where you have not. You know what it will take, and you are not afraid.”

“I am afraid.”

“But not of dying.”

No. Never of that.

§

She follows Kreia to Telos, to Atris.

The cacophony of darksong around her is unbearable. The Exile stops her ears and listens to the frightened woman in front of her instead.

She does not think to query the voices around her.

§

I have authored so much death, sings Bao-Dur. Let my song end saving something instead. I will die in a different way if I do not.

§

I do not fear, for in fear, lies death. I am not afraid to die, but no longer do I loathe my life. I ask you, finally, to forgive me for the path I took when I lost my way. It has taken time for me to return here. I’ve been stronger for the journey. What happens now shall not be done out of hate, or revenge, but for the sake of all life.

This body is a prison no longer.

Visas stands. “Let us go.”

§

“And so that is why you fight,” says Visas. “To prove Revan wrong.”

“Not Revan,” says Mandalore, rising.

§

Darth Nihilus is a hunger, a void with will, an eater of songs, a silence.

He dies like a mortal man in the end.

§

There is a place, the Exile knows, beyond all song. Beyond light, beyond dark, and in which there is nothing but oneself.

It is not this place.

The Exile stalks the broken surface of Malachor V. She stalks the halls of the Academy, the crucible Revan found and founded, a festering wound the Exile created. This is a place meant to break the innocent, to drive them to let go of song, or grow stronger in defiance. To change, or die.

She thinks of Atton’s songs, grown strong in spite of everything. Mira standing tall. Visas singing to herself of small pleasures. Bao-Dur surrounded by green and growing things. Mical, looking to the future clear-eyed and singing anyway. Mandalore’s steadiness. HK. T3.

She thinks of the echoes of Malachor V. Lives lost, future lost, a planet in agony, only held together by residual gravitic anomalies, the echo of the weapon that won the war.

(She can only hope Remote has found its way)

She will sing here.

She will shake the walls down.

§

She sends her students back to the ship.

Her face is set towards Trayus Core.

She does not notice Atton turning back.

§

“Wish I’d...never met you,” says Atton, and it sounds like I will always help you.

“You’re a damn liar,” says the Exile, trying to ignore the blood, trying to sort cauterized and uncauterized wounds, praying Kreia’s tutoring in healingsong will be enough. There’s nothing she can do for his eye, and likely not his arm either, but she was just fast enough and it is possible if any of them die today it might not be him. “You are never where you are supposed to be and you have always been a pain in my ass.”

“Ha-ohh, it hurts to laugh.” He reaches up a hand, and touches two bloody fingers to her cheek before it falls heavily back again. “At least I’m…good, good at it. Save...save your strength. Sion’s still out there.”

“He had better be,” the Exile growls. “You’re going to have a few dashing scars.”

“Liar. Was always ugly. Now my outsides...match my insides.” He hums and the song is his. Just his. “Thought I would never see...another face again. And then you were there again. Thought being a Singer was like breaking Control. Like giving up. But it made me more myself. You need to go.”

She’s aware that she is crying. She needs Control. “Don’t be a fool.”

“There are worse...things I could be.” His face twists. “Wish I could...have told her that. Sounds different...when you say it. Like you’re saying...something else.”

§

The Exile methodically weakens Sion’s Control.

In the end, he goes.

In the end, she sings Farewell for him, too.

§

Kreia hates Song, even as she sings, even as she knows that all living things have song, whether they hear it and sing it or not. Kreia loves the Exile, even as she tries to kill her.

§

You don’t have to hear the song to make a choice, the Exile sings, in a brief respite from whirling lightsabers. Life does not only consist of struggle. The answer to life’s betrayal is not silence. No silence is absolute. There is always something left. There are echoes. Nothing is ever done.

There is only yourself.

No. That which you cannot touch still exists.

§

I do not want your mercy, Kreia sings, though I thank you all the same. “I imagined this day, and wondered if you would offer. I wanted you to say those words. I did not imagine that I would lose the thread of all my desires and plans. That I would spurn my defeat. That in the end all I would want is for you to be complete.” You have been the best of them.

The Exile nods.

“Farewell, Exile,” says Kreia, and it sounds like the love song.

§

Atton leans against the doorway, a Jedi’s cloak shrouding the ruin of his arm. There’s a kolto patch over his eye again. The Exile listens, and hears the echoes of Mikal’s grudging acceptance that nothing short of sitting on the pilot’s still-healing gut wound would keep him from waiting.

Everyone is waiting.

“Mira said someone ought to see if you needed carried out,” he lies.

The Exile raises an eyebrow. From the way he’s swaying, she is the one who is going to be doing the carrying.

“Don’t just stand there, we have a bomb about to go off. And I see that look. I figure we have a long way to go to get to wherever we are going next. If you, you know, happen to need a pilot.”

§

The song of Malachor V ends, its echoes no longer unfinished. They are carried forward in the voices of the lives it touched; the memory of song.

§

I will never hurt you. I will always help you. If you are hungry Ill give you my food. If you are frightened I am your friend. I love you now. And love does not end.

[girlbob-boypants]

Star Wars fans are so fucking stupid and cannot read and it literally never changes

[startravellers-a]

( @desrter liked for a starter ! )

In the past, there were a great many options available to a stranded Jedi. One could contact their conclave, or even Coruscant, for assistance. One could request help from the local Republic embassy. Or, if one was wanting to manage the situation alone, one could easily generate credits by bounty hunting.

But, to Bastila’s misfortune, it was no longer the past.

There were no conclaves, and the temple on Coruscant was empty. Informing the Republic of her presence would do nothing but put the soldiers in danger, and attempting to collect any bounty was a risk when it was the bounty hunters, themselves, who were searching for Jedi.

So her options were limited. Waiting around and hoping that a way off-planet would land in her lap wasn’t something that Bastila was eager to do, and so reluctantly Bastila found herself in a seedy, grimy Cantina, a Pazaak game set up before her.

The night started well - very well, in fact, though it wasn’t due to luck or skill. Or, at least, not the type of skill that was expected to be used in Pazaak.

With a touch of Force, it was easy to win any game, and Bastila’s credits were starting to collect. She didn’t have enough to get off-world, but it was a start, and, as the night went on, she found herself becoming more confident. She began to relax, finally feeling as if things could turn out as she wanted.

Then, she lost a game.

Bastila stared at the cards for a moment in shock, her brows furrowing as she tried to work out what had just happened - had she lost concentration?

“It seems that you have disrupted my winning streak.” Bastila said, begrudgingly handing over the credits she had bet. “Perhaps you would be willing to give me the opportunity to reclaim my victory?”

[freckledbastard]

unintentionally funny moment from kotor 2 was definitely the twileks warning avalon not to trust atton and she IMMEDIATELY turns to ask him about it and he has a breakdown and starts talking about all the ways he's killed and tortured jedi and how fucked up he is and meanwhile the twileks are still right! there! we didn't move away or anything they're listening to all this their character models are still in frame!!

[cliocodex]

Fireworks

A wee Meetra/Atton Rock AU snippet written for the 30+ fanfic discord server prompt "fireworks".

One day, @arturas-writes and I will ...ahem...publish more of this universe. But for now....

They’ve gotten good at it, wandering off to the edges of an event before disappearing together in the shadows. That Atton hates the social game as much as she does gives Meetra a new confidence to bail - no matter Revan’s insistence that it “matters for the band.”

It’s yet another industry gala - New Year’s Eve this time. Plenty of good champagne at least and if she’s overindulged a bit….well, just makes it easier to smile and pretend to like kissing ass and making nice.

But now they’ve found their spot away from the noise and press of people, this time a walkway along the river. The lights and din of the party are just on the edge of her perception here; the relative dark of the river and crisp, cold air fill her senses instead.

And Atton. She’s wrapped around him, head on his shoulder as they look towards the dark of the river. Her lips rest in a lazy half-kiss at the back of his ear; their fingers thread together across the solidness of his chest.

“Your hands are freezing.” The warmth of his mouth pressing gently against her fingers makes that even more apparent. They’d grabbed their coats on the way out, but she’s feeling her lack of layers. Cocktail dresses don’t make logical sense in winter, do they? She vows silently to spend next New Year’s in the Southern Hemisphere.

“Wanna go back?”

“Not really.”

“Ok.” Atton spins her around and pulls her inside his own coat, rests his forehead against hers. The fog of their breath mingles in the fraction of space between them as her eyes flutter closed. She can feel his hint of a grin, the one she can no longer imagine not waking to, the one she kisses each night as she falls asleep.

A little laugh escapes at the thought of her unexpected sentimentality. Still a wonder this. A wonder, too, that she understands the “ok,” that they can just know without the words what the other needs or wants.

At that thought she moves closer, nuzzles against his neck, feels his arms wrap that much tighter.

A sudden crackle-boom and brilliant flash starts them out of the embrace. It must be midnight. Faint cheers from the party reach her ears as she burrows back against Atton’s chest.

Fuck fireworks.

Even before Malachor she’d hated them - too loud, too showy, too…too much she couldn’t control. But now they just remind her of the blinding light of prematurely launched pyrotechnics and the cacophonous squeals of amps blowing in rapid succession - sounds of falling, of fucking up beyond repair.

There’s another thing she doesn’t have to put to words because Atton just knows. She feels it in the strength of his embrace, in the way his hand traces down her back and across the curve of her hip to draw her that much closer.

“It’s next year, babe. Happy next year.”

Something in his voice or maybe the way he holds her helps her ignore the flashing crackles above the river, makes the faint party noise fade altogether. And they kiss. Because it’s the new year, because it’s midnight, because they are stupid in love and can’t seem to get enough of the taste of each other.

She whispers into their kiss, “Take me home, flyboy, and I’ll show you proper fireworks.” It’s a bad joke and their smirks say they both know it, know it ….and love it anyway.

Her hand finds his and she turns to pull him towards home…the car anyway, but he catches her from behind and kisses at her ear before they get far, “I’d rather show you the stars, angel.”

They melt together, linger for just a moment more before finding their way towards home.

Meetra’s always loved the stars.

[thepunchingbag]

Close Quarters

Fandom: Knights of the Old Republic: The Sith Lords 

Pairing: F!Exile/Atton 

The full fic is on AO3

Pain shot through his abdomen. The sensation was quickly followed by a heady feeling of dizziness. Hot bile crept up his throat, and Atton forced himself to swallow it – he wasn’t interested in throwing up all over the ship’s control panel. He had enough on his plate without adding “clean up blood and vomit out of the FTL processors” to the list.

Well. . . he still had all his teeth, at least. Atton rubbed his tongue over his front teeth again, just to make sure. Yep. Still there. Maybe one of the back molars was a little loose, but he could deal with that.

Considering the massive beating he’d had back on Malachor V, Atton had to admit things could have been a lot worse. Sion had an impressive knack at breaking bones, I’ll give him that. Dueling Sion was certainly the most brutal fight Atton had ever walked away from . . . and if you were going to get technical, it wasn’t so much “walking away from” as running away while bleeding profusely.

Then again, pride was a luxury Atton had never really been able to afford. He ran away from that vibroblade freak the moment he had the chance. Ran away from Kreia, too.

On one level, he guessed it wasn’t the most honorable thing for a Jedi-in-training to run away with his tail between his legs.

But, if he’d been honorable, he’d probably be dead right now.

Anyway, it all worked out in the end. Right?

Sounds of hard, purposeful footsteps approached the cockpit. Her footsteps. Not difficult to recognize, honestly. Considering how long she had been out of the military, it was interesting how she still carried herself with the gait of an officer.

Hell, sometimes he had the irrational fear she would write him up for being out of uniform or she’d notice that his blaster hadn’t been re-zeroed.

“Nice weather we’re having. Just a spot of lethal radiation and flying debris from the imploding planet below us. Kind of a nice view though, actually.” Atton said, attempting to hide any physical pain he might be in from her. It’s true, Malachor V had a nice green fireball where that horrible planet had once been. Good riddance.

Atton didn’t even need to turn around to know that she was frowning at him. At times, he found she was easily irritated (a bad trait, even for an ex-Jedi), and the idea of pushing her buttons amused him more than it really should. Anything to distract himself, he guessed, from the fact he suspected a few of his fingers on his left hand were probably broken or at least severely sprained.

“Atton,” Her voice sounded slightly harsh, another one of those remnants from her officer days, “You’re in no state to be flying a ship. Get up from that chair immediately.”

“Is that an order, ma’am?”

“You’re bleeding out, how in the hell are you managing to still sass me?”  

The full fic is on AO3

[jedilukeskywalkers]

Hellsing fixing Dracula’s mysogyny problem.

I tried to watch BBC Dracula but i just failed because well, violence against women, and after Alucard i just cant stomach more of the same old take of this man brutalizing women in a sexualized way. 

But it brings me back to this two beautiful moments in Hellsing that turn upside down the disgusting mysogyny sorrounding the character in previous encarnations: 

First, His baby girl, his daughter, Seras: 

There will not be a time in my life when i just dont squeal to think: Fuck what a good parent he turned to be. His relationship with Seras is all NURTURING all the time. Nurturing and then letting her go to take her own choices and navigate the world as she pleases. His dinamic with her is all kindness and care. 

And that moment just cements so many things in their relationships because he is just coming back from abroad and all hell broke loose but he is not worried that his master is injured because he is thinking: How can my master be injured if i let my daughter to take care of her? My daughter is a natural born badass. But he comes back and sees her, this daughter of his finally turned into a fully fleshed vampire not because he demanded it of her but because she took a choice. And he thinks in that moment: “Hey...me good parenting here...” 

I think all of what Alucard learned in his years of bondage and torture and abuse with the Hellsings. All his reflections at his misgivings and wrongdoings were poured out in Seras nurturing. He just lets her breathe man!. Like he literally got mad once because she was being a baby and he literally stopped and said “okay no this is wrong this is not what i planned for you. Leave i take care of this people”. And you can see he reflects on his violent nature there and takes the concious choice of not doing it again. 

Then, the cherry on the pie that at the same things seems like the most conflicting? Integra. 

Oh man (im using this pic because the marriage metaphors are off the charts). This is such a hard egg to crack because Their relationship is fucking messy in general but completly backwards? She is the one holding all the power. She is his Master. The femdom to end all femdom. 

And as most know i cant bring myself to think what the Hellsings did to Alucard in anyway helped him heal or attonent for his sins. It was bondage and torture and no end abuse. 

But enters Integra and i think the turning point in their relationships is that Integra doesnt lock him and Integra lets him have Seras. Im sorry people just ignore the fact that this is a creature that never owned anything not even his own thoughts since he was captured. One day he turns this child he found in the woods and brings her home and he need to check with Master Integra if he can keep it. 

And im sorry but people ignore that conversation that is so loaded to me with the lingering feeling that Integra could order him to kill Seras. She feels no simpathy for vampires and is in no way obligated to entertain his impulses and generally she doesnt. But she does here. She lets him have Seras. 

Maybe its because she sees Seras is kinda Integra but soft and less scarred and burdened. A child of sorts for both of them. Maybe its because this is the only way we realize Integra Hellsing shows kindness doing weird acts of mercy. Giving quick death to dying soldiers, handing a gun to a man to defend himself in the face of death, saying “have a nice death” to someone that betrayed her, allowing his broken slave companionship. Integra’s brand of kindness is always so related to war. Man im sure that turns Alucard a lot. 

But, going back to Alucard relationships with her. Maybe she is the first master he actively chooses to comeback? Its a theme repeated during the manga and show. “His countess”, the “equals” theme that resounds with us. Its not him lowering himself to her is basically her saying “Hey, we can be equals you depressing warlord” 

Because for Alucard Integra is all there is okay? And i dont mean in a romantic way. Integra is MASTER. Her will is all there is in his mind. And he kinda loves that kinda cant help because he is conditioned to it but seeing this legendary monster who has done anything but brutalize young women willingly (kinda) its just such a power trip women are not used in narratives regarding Alucard? 

And it is not because he is subdued by love. She has fucking earned that. He is is awe of her power, her leadership how fucking superior to him he is in all matters. 

What an original concept for a Dracula story. I will never stop seeing it that way. 

I might finish BBC Dracula but i cant help but think fuck...Hellsing will always be the best deconstruction of this mythos even if most of it in our minds.

[edendaphne]

Who are your favourite KOTOR companions and why? (You can pick multiply ones because their all so good.)

(Sorry it took me so long to answer this!! I forgot all about it til just now) Anyway, here are my faves!

Carth: DUH, cuz love interest plus witty dialogue XD

Jolee: I love that his character alignment is neutral because I feel it keeps him pretty balanced and non-judgmental. He wants to share his knowledge but lets you make your own decisions. Plus he’s a grumpy old dude with hilarious commentary

Mission: My smort daughter, I max her dexterity and raise all her tech skills so she can unlock stuff for me and hack computers.

Zalbaar:  Stronk wookiee frond, I like bringing him when I have to beat up squishies 

For dark side playthroughs I take Canderous and HK-47 because they don’t judge me for being evil. XD  I NEVER take Bastila because I absolutely cannot stand all her preachy lectures and sanctimonious Jedi judgey-ness (also contrasts heavily with Jolee’s teaching methods). Juhani annoys me because she’s super insecure and lashes out at you a lot, plus her stats are pretty mediocre.

Atton: cuz my garbage husband

Bao-Dur: for all my technology/computer/etc needs

Disciple: I pour all his points into healing/party buffs and strength, so he’s kinda like a paladin

Visas: needs to be protected at all costs; I wanna give her ice cream and all the nice things

[thatwitchrevan]

more KotOR 2 snippet but it's actually new this time!

-

“You wouldn’t have liked me when I was a teenager.” Meetra’s tone was matter-of-fact, but there was a ghost of a grimace across her face for a moment, a classic signal of adolescence remembered. 

Atton sat down on a crate with one leg half propped up, his face upturned to her. “Why not?”

Meetra sighed. “I was so pretentious. And I had to be involved in everything. If Kreia thinks I take on too much now, she should be glad I’m not a padawan anymore.”

Atton’s head cocked, sly smile spreading. “Yeah, I’m not hearing much difference between Baby Meetra and Now Meetra.” 

“Shut up.”

“Hmm.” His eyes were warm, like he found her adorable even covered in dirt and sweat. “You know, for all your annoying qualities, I somehow can’t imagine the other Jedi disliking you. Aren’t you all pretentious busybodies anyway?”

Meetra huffed. He would find the most backhanded, insulting way to compliment her. “Yes, we are. You’ve gotten a pretty accurate impression from this lot,” she added, jabbing her finger in the general direction of the Hawk. “But you’re wrong on the first part - there were definitely Jedi who didn’t like me. Hell, I just know we’re gonna run into Vrook any minute. You’ll see.”

Atton raised a brow, waiting for her to elaborate. 

Meetra studied him, holding back another sigh. She’d gone most of her life without complaining about the way Vrook had treated her - Atris had been fair game, but her and Revan had usually avoided talking about it. It would be sort of nice to vent those feelings. But she was an adult now, and besides... She was still deciding how much of that life she wanted to share with Atton. Funny, that she was alright bringing a potential bounty hunter around the remnants of the Jedi, but not telling him the most mundane details of their history. Or maybe some things just belonged to the past. 

“He was hard on everyone,” Meetra said, understating. “Probably still is. But he hated me in particular for some reason. And some of the other kids did, too. Said I was bossy or something.”

Atton laughed. “You? Bossy? I can’t imagine.”

“Again: shut up.”

“Yes, ma’am. I take it back. Not bossy at all.”

“What were you like as a kid, then? Annoying?”

Atton shrugged. “If you mean charming and hilarious, then no. I was a boring kid. Always reading.”

Meetra snorted. “You? Reading?”

“Ha, ha. I grew out of it, I promise. You about ready to get moving again?”

Meetra thought about it. She didn’t want to go back to the main compound right now - the eyes following her were too much, even though there was work to do there, even though she owed it to them to do the work and endure the stares. There was nowhere to go on this planet that wasn’t a torment, but there was somewhere that she could get away from people and satisfy her curiosity. 

“I want to go to the Enclave.”

Atton’s brow furrowed, just a little. “The one that’s rubble and full of wild animals?”

Meetra smirked, punching him playfully on the arm. “Don’t tell me you’re scared.”

“Not of laigreks, but if there are any Jedi ghosts I’m out.”

Meetra rolled her eyes. “If there were, you wouldn’t even see them, you wuss. Come on.” She tugged him up off the crate, cutting off any further negotiations. Maybe he was right about her not being so different. 

She wasn’t entirely sure why she wanted him along, aside from as backup for the monsters. Maybe to see how he’d react to the place that Jedi used to live. Not that it would tell her anything. He wouldn’t be going with her if it would.

Maybe she just didn’t want to go down by herself. She had left the Enclave with friends, and she would return with Atton.

[consulaaris]

❤️ 💝 ☔️ for katyan!

ty chrissy!! :D

.

❤️- How do they most often express their love? Verbally or through actions?

very much through actions! katyan’s primary love languages are acts of service and physical affection. primarily it’s service though- she cares and shows her love in the little details of things, and she’s never felt like words and empty promises have meant much to her anyways (but especially after revan’s- her sister’s- betrayal).

.

💝- What are their best qualities as a partner?

kat is very attuned to her partner’s needs! as mentioned above her main love language is acts of service, so she’ll always try and do nice things for them whenever she gets the chance- like bringing atton a cup of kaf in the morning, or just doing lots of thoughtful little things to remind him he’s on her mind. she’s is also very easy to talk to, and especially if her partner is struggling she’s good at listening and gives pretty decent advice. once in a relationship with atton she’s also a little goofier with him that she is with most people, and so will encourage him to do little things like dance with her in the cargo hold; and she’s perceptive enough to know when he’s struggling and how she can lighten the mood (while he knows her well enough todo the same for her).

.

☔️- What are they like when they’re emotional? How quickly do they recover?

for better or worse, one of katyan’s defining character traits after the mandalorian wars is her passivity- so when she gets really emotional, she tends to withdraw into herself, refusing to act on it, and often it appears to those who don’t know her well that either nothing is wrong or she simply doesn’t care. kat is relatively quiet anyways, but it’s... a different kind of quiet, and she definitely becomes more subdued and doesn’t like to talk about her feelings during those times (although she appreciates efforts to cheer her up that don’t involve the person prying!). however, when she reaches a boiling point-however rare- it can result in a pretty furious outburst. definitely not a healthy way of managing her emotions LOL but she does get better after the events of the game. although it depends on the situation, katyan outwardly tends to recover pretty quickly when she’s upset like that, assuming people notice something’s wrong in the first place, but she does tend to internalize her emotions and holds grudges.

[sovonight]

i wanna do an Evil Atton Run with a light side exile and low influence atton but it’s hard bc not only can i not fathom the idea of treating atton poorly but i don’t think anyone’s ever cared to document all influence losses

[takirasu]

mightve scrolled throu your blog a little bit, so without wanting to be too noisy here futaba, akira and kawakami for the ask persona 5 ask game tell alot about someone i really enjoyed your content pls do more for the fandom xx

To be honest I had totally forgotten about this ask, since I wanted to answer it when I’m on PC! :(

Thank you for your kind words, dear! I’m trying to do stuff for the fandom. It’s just a little far from what I usually do so it’s a little complicated. For my other fandoms I install camera mods, reshaders etc. and edit to find either small details in games or show the cutscenes in a different way. Editing and video game photography have become a big hobby of mine. As for Persona 5, that’s a little harder. There is no PC version, so I took some screenshots from Scramble’s switch version and enhanced their quality. I want to do more cool stuff, but it’s limited TT Atlast what I’m planning to do is play Scramble on YouTube when it comes out! Also for Scramble the in-game cutscenes have become way better. I might be able to do something about it. But enough rambling

Futaba: Favourite Palace?

This will be very boring since it is a popular answer as far as I have seen, but Sae’s palace, the casino. Kamoshida’s and Madarame’s are very close, but Sae’s has everything to me. The casino aesthetics are so beautifully done and the whole concept was thought through. You enter and have to obtain a members card which I found very interesting. Instead of just letting you pass and do the cool puzzles, this is your first job. When that is done, you need to obtain the High Limit card. This is all very casino-like. You have to play games to obtain it, but it is rigged. It is impossible to win and it is a hell lot of fun to see the casino workers losing their shit about you actually winning since you let Futaba hack the control panels, which by the way are the only part I did not enjoy. I looked for the red or green one for ages and almost died, because I kept running and circles. I’m good at reading maps, so I was surprised. This was the first palace where I kept going in circles and couldn’t find my way back -  twice! I don’t remember a puzzle I didn’t like. I enjoyed both. The house of darkness as well as the Battle arena. The house of darkness gave me major amusment park during halloween season flashbacks. I love visiting haunted house, so this whole part just felt like something I would’ve loved doing in reality anyway and now I can enjoy it as a game with a fantasy aspect to it. It was really cool that without using Third Eye it was actually pitchblack - which I hadn’t expected from the developers. It was intriguing. When you went further, the casino lights came back, but enemies where around every corner. I loved it! The battle arena just felt epic to me. I liked how Joker had to fight alone, making it the first time the player is forced to do this alone, especially since you get tricked once again. The Phantom Thieves are told it is a 1v1 fight, but it’s not. Joker has to fight against two shadows, which is a major disadvantage. The boss fight was fun to me as well. It was the first one where I didn’t get angry, but felt like I was actually gambling. To think about if I put high risk high reward and might end up losing my life or if I play safely. Instead of just having to think about the combat strategies, you now had to think about how to gamble. Rather than getting mad, I got stressed - in a good way, what gamble does. Giving you adrenaline when you win, but making you fall even harder when you lose. I ended up playing safely and winning, so I thought let’s go high risk high reward - I died. Lastly, this palace is what ties everything together. This is what you see when you start the game and you finally get context to it on why Joker is running away - especially alone! - and how he gets arrested. The whole built up is nicely done and it feels satisfying, more than any other palace to me. Instead of just continuing with the story, you get so many answers on top and from then onwards the game takes a whole twist and becomes even darker.

I also really liked Madarame’s musuem, but hated the boss fight so it would never become my no1. For Kamoshida, I love the castle design and aesthetics. And since it is the first palace, you have so many memories with it. I started my second playthrough a week later and for some reason got all happy and excited during the first time you enter the castle. The beginning of Persona 5 just has a certain charm to it for me.

Akira: If you had a palace, what would it be?

Damn I never thought much about it. I read alot of headcanons for palaces for Akira and thought about them - I love the theater idea by the way, fits him a lot - , but never thought about my own. I think, without making this too personal, I would have a palace in this world. I definetely would. Probably an amusment park, an arcade or something along the lines of things going up and down, moods going up and down quickly as well as the way I view myself, my emotions and life. Just in general something where you can do a lot of different things and feel a lot of different, intense emotions but with an aspect that’s alot me. It would be a turbulent, kind of sad yet kind of fun palace. This would get hella personal, so I’ll stop here, but these two would be very fitting ^^ I might need to write it down one day for myself. It’s an interesting thought!

Kawakami: Most surprising scene?

It is either when you meet Akechi on Shido’s cruiser or the way end of the Yaldabaoth fight. As for the scene with Akechi, I was just exhausted. It was really late and I hated the mice puzzles. I died to the caretaker three times and was reliefed when he finally let us go. I thought Okay all that is left now is get back to the safe room and sleep in reality. My friend had warned me and told me to tell her when I’m in the engine room. After the caretaker fight being so hard for me, I thought this was what she had wanted to talk about. But well...then you leave the room and meet Akechi. I thought we would either never meet him again and he’d think Akira is dead until the very last minute or we meet him at the end somehow. It was surprising to me and seemed so random, until you find out Akechi’s real motives towards Shido. In general, I was just pretty dumbfounded at this scene. Didn’t die once against him, but it was a tough and kind of scary battle. Made me emotional and I went to sleep having nightmares actually. I felt bad for not being able to save him as well as I did in my dreams and cried in there. I don’t like him as a character, but stated in my analysis before that he is really interesting. My friend and I kept on saying ugh can he just leave or die he is so annoying, but when he died my first thought was that this ain’t how it was supposed to end. It’s not fair, not even to him. I wanted Akechi to attone for what he did. To get to jail with Shido together and then get help, but with  genunine concern. This is what I wished for this character. As for the Yaldaboath fight, I died three times and got pretty angry. I was pulling an all-nighter to finish the game, it was 5AM and I had been emotional all day. When I finally had him down enough, I thought the Phantom Thieves would just kill him like normal and that’s it. Then this whole scene happens where all the people cheer them on and Akira has his second awakening, unleashing some freaking demon god. I was screaming to my friend. It looked so cool and it made me so emotional. Also, unpopular opinion, but I love the anime scene a lot for this. It’s beautifully done (it’s an OVA which have better graphics so be sure to check it out!) and made me feel a lot.

Thank you for your message! It was fun to write this.

Send me a Persona 5 character name for the ask game if you’re interested about my thoughts!

[allronix]

KOTOR 2 Replay

I’m actually running KOTOR 2. And it’s going to be my first run with the MASSIVE TSL Restoration Project installed. And because canon blows, I have a male Exile. Name of Cian Li-Bek (pronounced as “Key-An Lee-Beck)”  Face is one of those “Ambiguous Brown” ones with a nice beard. (Odd as it sounds, Oscar Isaac would actually be a good match for a fancast)  Sentinel because my Lady Revan was the ultimate Consular and Malak was a total Guardian, so why not use the third edge of that sword? 

Observations below 

1. Oh, dear Force they really know how to start you off letting you know that your ride is a handbasket to Hell. You see your “home” from the first game as bombed out ruins. T3 is barely limping through. Everyone is dying or dead (or feigning it...fuck you anyway, Kreia). Creepy banging from what was Juhani’s room...and oh, shit. An HK-unit. 

2. And from there, Exile wakes up alone in the medbay with everyone else dead and everything way too quiet. Sorry, you’re gonna wish you died in the wreck. 

3. I like the mechanical changes, like the fast weapon swap and flagging empty containers. The workbench upgrades are also wonderful. Also think making implants based on constitution instead of requiring burning feats was a great idea. 

4. Ah, Kreia. Gotta love the creepy shutta. She knows how to make an intro. My Exile already would like to drown her. 

5. Every time the old bat says “echoes” or some variation, take a shot. You will likely be dead of ethanol poisoning before leaving the first planet. But hey, no more listening to Kreia! 

6. Okay, while Atton’s initial comments about Revan are the first indication of the guy’s...it’s not issues, it’s a magazine stand..I do have to give some props to Obsidian for handling how the whole “tell us what your Revan was” thing. 

7. He’s not nearly as creepy/sleazy to a male Exile, but...y’know, wouldn’t take much in the way of slash goggles to go there, and I kinda do. 

8. Ten to one Atton was “the guy” that Coorta had called to deliver Exile’s unconscious hide to G0T0 for a large wad of cash. It would explain what he’s doing there, why he’s in the cell, and his “past life” gives him the needed skillset to handle a Jedi prisoner. 

9. I gotta facepalm at just how stupid the person who thought giving a strange “protocol droid” access to sensitive systems without proper vetting was. That’s like clicking “Yes” to every damn popup or plugging in a thumb drive you found on the street! BASIC computer and system security would have kept those people alive, or at least alerted everyone to a threat.