#my kotor meta

[renegade-skywalker]

kotor 2 brainrot on main but just thinking about how kreia works so hard to blackmail atton into staying on despite disliking him so much but then realized that it's not just about her knowing that he has some part to play in what's to come but also that he perfectly embodies her own philosophy about the force (which she very likely hates lol) in the sense that he rejects the fact that he has any innate connection to the force at all because he didn't choose this which is basically kreia's entire thesis and the whole reason she wants it all to end so... yeah

[lesbiannova]

In Defense of Peragus: it's not just well-designed, it's a uniquely good level too

The Peragus level of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords is disliked by many players, even those who otherwise like KotOR 2 as a whole.

However, I am among the minority that genuinely enjoy Peragus, to the extent that I never even considered using any mod to skip the level, and I replay all the hologram recordings throughout Peragus and the Harbinger every time I replay KotOR 2.

Here is an excellent essay on the KotOR subreddit that goes into detail in explaining why some of us actually find Peragus a good level: https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/129co74/in_defense_of_peragus_its_not_just_welldesigned/

[nimata-beroya]

Note: Since my old masterlist is getting notes again (and I'm hosting @tbb-appreciation-week this year), I thought it's a good time to release a new version with a lot more resources. If any of you know another site or thing that it's missing from the list, let me know and I'll include it!! [Altho, I'm getting this close 🤏 to the hyperlinks limit on this thing 😆]

Note 2: To avoid tagging the 3 people from whom I got multiple resources repeatedly, I've placed 1-3 asterisks between square brackets after the links, depending on the OP. I give the respective credit to them in a legend at the end of the post.

PLACES / TIME

Interactive Galaxy Map by Henry Bernberg

Map of the Galaxy

List of planets and moons [Wikipedia /needs expanding]

Planet Name Generator 1 [SciFi Ideas]

Planetary System Generator [Donjon]

Tatooine Location References [*]

Various locations Cross-Sections (Jedi Temple, Palp's office, Tipoca City & more) [**]

Republic - Separatist - Hutt space during the Clone Wars

Hyperspace Travel Times (to calculate how much time would take to go from point A to point B within the GFFA)

Standard Calendar and Holidays [including month names!]

Galactic Standard Calendar [wookiepedia // including week day names]

Date converter according to SWTOR [Google sheet]

Dated Star Wars Chronological Order (Movies + live-action shows + animation)

TCW Chronological Timeline by @mauvrix

Estimated date for: shared by @spectres-fulcrum

Partisans' attack on Onderon

Siege of Lasan

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT

General

Star Wars Name Generator 1 [Donjon]

Star Wars OC flow chart by @thefoodwiththedood

Star Wars Name Generator 2 [FantasyNames]

Star Wars Name Generator 3 [FantasyNames]

MetaHuman [Unreal Engine]

The character creator

Droid Name Generator

Star Wars Randomizer by @aureutr

Character Picrew [Twi-leks, Zabraks, Torgutas and Nautolans] @/megaramikaeli

Jedi

Taking a Closer Look at the Jedi Order in Star Wars Canon [Meta/Reference Guide] [**]

Jedi Order Structure Flowchart by @rileys-nest

Mandalorians

Mandalorian Armor design by MandoCreator

Keepers of the Way (Mandalorian Lore) [*]

Clones

Complete List Of Named Clone Troopers shared by @propheticfire (Organized by Unit)

Clone Creator [MandoCreator]

Clone Picrew

Star Wars Character Templates by SmacksArt [the ULTIMATE battery of template for any human/humanoid original character in any era. From troopers to droids, from Jedi to Sith, from KOTOR to the sequel Trilogy. 100% RECOMMENDED]

Basic Guide to Clone Trooper Armour by @odekiisu

GAR structure summary by @intermundia

The Clone Wars Republic Military Hierarchy Flowcharts [***]

Clone Trooper Lore [*] [Ranks, Culture, Training, Organization, etc.]

Clones and Kamino [*]

The Bad Batch Characters Concept Art shared by @shadowthestoryteller

MISCELLANEOUS

Star Wars Character Age Comparison Chart by @the-yearning-astronaut

Tusken Raiders lore by @snarwor

Materials (fabrics, leathers, silks, plastics, construction, metal composites, etc.)

Materials in Star Wars by marvel_dc_heart_throbs

Star Wars Fashion [*]

Leisure, Art, Musical Instruments, Ethnography [*]

Political and Criminal Organizations in the GFFA [**]

Financial reference about credits by @thecoffeelorian

List of TCW Opening Quotes

Transcripts of all the TCW episodes shared by @book-of-baba-fett

Star Wars Crawl Creator [not exactly writing-related, but just for fun]

HEALTH AND MEDICINE

Canon Medical Lore [*]

Real World reference for Field organizational structure for corpsman (medics) [*]

Kaliida Shoals Medical Center (Republic Haven-class medical station) shared by @clonewarsarchives

GAR Battalion Aid Station [*]

GAR Clone Medic Q/A [*]

More combat medicine, shipboard medicine, veteran issues, and military culture [*]

SHIPS AND VEHICLES

Ship Generator 3D

Ship Name Generator

All Terrain Tactical Enforcer (AT-TE) shared by @stairset

Republic Vessels Reference [*]

Low Altitude Assault Transport/Infantry (LAAT/i) [*]

List of GAR Flagships in the Clone Wars by @meandmyechoes

Layout of the Havoc Marauder

Dimensions of various ships from the Clone Wars [**]

FOOD AND DRINKS

Star Wars Menu Generator

In-Universe Alcoholic beverages

Canon Cocktails (recipes) [*]

Another In-Universe Drinks list shared by @systemic-dreams

Teas in Star Wars by marvel_dc_heart_throbs

Foodstuff [*]

Canon Star Wars Holiday Recipes [*]

Trask Chowder Recipe (from The Mandalorian) [*]

LANGUAGES; PHRASES AND SLANG; VOCABULARY

Languages of the Galaxy [*]

Script of different languages in the GFFA by @lucif-hare-blog

In-Universe phrases and slang [Google sheet]

List of phrases and slang [wookiepedia]

List of equivalents to real-world objects [wookiepidia]

Talk Like a Clone Trooper shared by @archeo-starwars

Aurebesh Translator [Aurebesh.org]

Learning Aurebesh Tools [Aurebesh.org] Reading - Writing.

Mando'a Database [Mando.org]

Mando'a Transcripticon [MandoCreator] (Create your own text in the Mando'a script.)

@project-shereshoy (Blog that collects and posts sources for Mando'a from all over the internet.)

Mando’a Categorized Spreadsheet

Learning Mando'a Tools [MandoCreator] Reading - Writing.

Setting Thesaurus Entry: Spaceport [Writers helping writers]

Fan-created Conlangs

@dai-bendu-conlang (Jedi Culture Explored) (This blog is the home of the Dai Bendu Conlang, invented by the Archive of Our Own Users aroacejoot, @ghostwriterofthemachine, and loosingletters for the Jedi Order in Star Wars.)

Lasana Lexicon by Anath_Tsurugi (fandom lexicon of the Lasat Language)

HELPFUL BLOGS & SITES

The amazing @fox-trot, who not only makes astonishing art and write an amazing fic, she also responds to medical questions and gives all kinds of references for writing medic characters. Check her #medicposting tag and you'll find tons of information. Also check #star wars reference and her art tag while you're at it.

@writebetterstarwars, which seems to be inactive, but there are a bunch of references there.

@howtofightwrite The place to find out how to write a good fight scene.

@scriptmedic no longer active, but it has a great deal of useful information.

@scripttorture for your whump needs. Major trigger warning for all its content.

@sw-anthrobiology A blog dedicated to collecting headcanons about the biology and cultures of Star Wars species.

@archeo-starwars In-universe sources on culture and history.

@clonewarsarchives Resources & Concept Art Blog for The Clone Wars animated series.

Wookiepedia If you don't find something in here, it's probably because it doesn't exist, neither as a canon nor legends reference.

Star Wars Databank: The official Star Wars website's reference guide. All canon.

WRITING IN GENERAL (For those who don't want to die like Stormtroopers)

SlickWrite: Completely free; online. Checks grammar, punctuation, flow, and writing style according to different settings (including fiction writing).

ProWritingAid: [RECOMMENDED] One of the most thorough online proofreader I've ever used. Although when using a free account gives extremely thorough feedback, with +20 different in-depth reports, for only the first 500 words. However, you can earn a premium account license (for a year or for life) if you get 10 or 20 new users signing up for free; (if you wouldn't mind doing so using the link above and help me earn mine, please). The settings allow you to check your writing according to your needs, from general to formal to creative. It has a bonus that you can check depending on the genre you're writing. For example, in creative, you can choose romance or sci-fiction (there are 14 sub-genre in total). And just like google docs, you can share a document, and people can view, comment or edit it too.

LanguageTool: [RECOMMENDED] Another excellent proofreader. It also has a word limit in free accounts, but if you use the add-on for Google Docs, it counts each page as a new document, so hitting the word limit is nearly impossible. It helps you to rewrite a sentence (3 a day), even if it doesn't raise any flags; it's very useful for when your sentence is grammatically correct, but it doesn't feel quite right.

Grammarly, Hemingway Editor: No so great, but they do the basic job.

Legend

[*] Shared by @fox-trot [**] Shared by @gffa [***] Shared by @cacodaemonia.

[imfromthemiddlekingdom]

If I had the time I would go through video and debunk all of the jabs the OP unsubtly digs at the Jedi masters.

Legit the first minuet in and he calls Ki-Adi-Mundi a psychopath. Like bro. I don’t think you armchair psychologists actually understand the words that passes through your mouths.

Looking at the comments I’m filled with rage ngl.

There is no tapping into the dark side for the good of others. The dark side isn’t some quaint power boost that people can use Willy nilly and come back without consequences. It corrupts absolutely. There’s no such thing as “oh lemme just tap into this side of the force that corrupts absolutely to save people uwu” when it would usually become “oh shit I tapped into the dark side cuz I wanted to save people but it twisted my desires and in the end I ended up not only not saving the people I wanted to save, but also wrecked destruction onto other innocents.”

Also congrats on grievously misunderstanding what Vaapad is OP. It’s a twist on Form VII the Ferocity form (aka forbidden Jedi kata since if the practitioner isn’t firmly in the light the passion channeled can and will corrupt absolutely). Mace Windu created this form as a way to channel his own personal darker emotions. It doesn’t control him as the original form VII does. Literally we have Sidious saying that Form VII is closer to a Sith Form than a Jedi Form since it can and will corrupt the practitioner. Mace Windu did not use the dark side when using Vaapad. There’s a reason that the other “co-creator” of Vaapad when he fell to the dark side and tried to use Vaapad to defeat Mace still failed. It’s because Vaapad is a firmly light side Form and using the dark side of the force when using the Form will mean you fundamentally fail At understanding the base of the form.

Why can’t Star Wars fans understand that there is no “balance” between the light side of the force and the dark side? The light side is balance. The dark side is an abbreviation on the natural state of being. And comparing Emerald Lightning that Plo Koon uses to Sith lightning, a technique that is STATED, to be a twisted abomination of five usage, is disingenuous and a bad faith reading of the comics.

I could screenshot every comment on this video and write essays on how they’re wrong but I actually value my time and I really do not want to engage in media that I disagree with. Blah blah echo chamber, what of it? If people can be blinded by their own beliefs that grey Jedi exist I can also refuse to engage in it. I clicked on the video thinking it would be a nice meta explaining the different colours we see in KOTOR and the new Ashoka show but instead I get a very thinly veiled Jedi bashing video.

[susandsnell]

hey coco! hope ur having a good day! was wondering if u’d like to talk about why u like and what u find compelling with atton/exile? do u have a particular route or headcanon underwhich u prefer them or is it more of an overarching meta appreciation?

Hi, friend!

Thanks so much for the well-wishes. My day's kind of ehh due to continued Issues but the weather's nice and I'm feeling a little calmer. Hope your day is good!

Thank you so much for sending me this and enabling me shamelessly. I've been ride-or-die for Atton/Exile (which is M/F if you played the Jedi Exile as female, which I did and which is 'canon' but let's not talk about the latter lest we kick the hornet's nest) since summer 2011, which is almost 13 years now? Wild. Literally half my life. Anyhow, my reasons/headcanons have changed and evolved just as I've done a lot of growing up since the time I was first obsessed, but I'll do my best to synthesize/organize my thoughts! (Assume all the Restored Content is canon). More under the cut because 'synthesis' is still essay-length for me, God help me.

First off, I tended to play the Jedi Exile as light-sided and Revan as dark sided; I find the narrative of both games to be the most meaningful with these choices. This post basically puts into words why Revan works better as a Dark Sider, but the Exile, to me, as Revan's foil and mirror, works inversely best as a light sider. The game seems to want you to play her light-sided given how Kreia's best stuff/approval lies in that path. KOTOR II is one of the darkest entries to the Star Wars universe by far, but with a light sided exile, it's a story about how moving through life with an unyielding belief in love and justice for others in your heart will ignite that light in the people around you, and repair a broken world/galaxy.

Enter Atton.

KOTOR II is great in that you technically have such a wide range of shipping dynamics/options, and exactly none of them are functional, largely because it's one of the Star Wars media entries with the most harrowingly realistic depictions of war and its psychological impact on the people it touches. Atton Rand happened to be my favourite of all the love interests at the time because of his voice and his snarky meta-jokes (I was a Daria fanatic almost 2 decades too late, what do you want). Nowadays, I love him because his character basically took the Star Wars expanded universe requirement for Han Solo expys and went off the rails with it, making his 'scoundrel' archetype half-his charming and humorous personality, half-a facade to cover severe and quite realistically portrayed war PTSD as well as his actions as Jaq, the torture-happy mercenary. It's "what if the self-serving charming rogue during wartime archetype was brought to its logical conclusion" and I am here for it.

So first you have the parallels and contrasts - both committed atrocities during the Mandalorian wars, but while Atton was loyal to Revan after their fall and never faced justice for his wrongdoings, the (light-sided) Exile turned from Revan and still was scapegoated by the Council. Atton is a character mired in his own bitterness and cynicism, and you have the option to choose to play the Exile as a character driven solely by her morals, even when she'll suffer unconscionably for them, and it is through this unflinching clinging to her morals that she gains the idealism necessary to survive everything she goes through. Atton once sought to rip freewill away from his victims; the Exile unconsciously, slowly saps it through the cipher.

As a young teen, I admittedly was starry-eyed over the 'sheltered good girl manipulated and hurt by so many meets sexy bad boy recovering from his own past and they protect each other as a power couple' archetyping, but it does go a lot deeper than that. Their dialogue options have easy, natural, sexy chemistry that draws you in, but I do think my appreciation goes deeper. This isn't a simple 'fixing the bad boy' because of the narrative device of the Force cipher meaning you quite literally have "I can fix him" and "I can make him worse" as your game mechanics, lol. You get your surface-level fun of their interactions between the proper, well-mannered Jedi and the flirtatious rapscallion, but you also have two people who, for the reasons I outlined above, fundamentally understand each other after harrowing lifetimes spent alone in their pain and trauma.

I'd go so far as to say Atton is the best-placed of anyone to understand the Exile; the Sion ship is compelling and squee-worthy to any Phantom fangirl worth her salt (as I was), but she's everything he couldn't be or fathom, Visas may have felt closer to the pain the Exile did over Malachor V but her worst actions were committed under duress as a captive of Darth Nihilus and not of her own volition (so I argue she's a lot more morally innocent than Atton or the Exile), Mical/The Disciple is the innocence and warmth of the Exile's upbringing untouched by how the Mando wars reforged her and while Brianna/The Handmaiden is excellent as a potential parallel for specifically the Exile's abuse at the hands of the Jedi (Atris in particular), she's still similarly sheltered to Mical. Bao-Dur was with the Exile during the war but the game didn't develop him enough and understands that aspect of her, but they canonically per the dialogue emotionally distanced themselves given the circumstances, and Mira the Bounty Hunter is cool sister-zoned, but I suspect her family being victim to Malachor V would drive a wedge no matter how much forgiveness the game preaches.

Meanwhile, Atton knows and/or loves not pieces of the Exile, but as she is; the battered and betrayed veteran with a lifetime of wrongdoing to atone for that he recognizes in himself, and the naive Jedi she was before that the charming flirt in him likes to tease. And although his backstory is a revelation, and a harrowing one to the Exile, who sees what she might have become had she stayed with Revan, this is what their relationship is; seeing someone in their totality, and loving and honouring the worst with the best. Despite knowing what the Exile's done, Atton values her enough to still care about how she views him that he begs Kreia not to tell her the truth about his past. The two are instantly drawn to each other on Peragus, not just out of necessity but genuine, instinctive protectiveness, attraction, and a deeper sense (be it Force-Assisted or not) of understanding. Atton refers to it in his death scene (if you count that) as love at first sight, and while there was probably initial infatuation, I think there was just such an instant magnetism that grew and grew between them through shared experience. "Don't give up on me now, dammit!" and "You want her, you get through me." come to mind. Atton is the only party member that asks her to train him in the Force, whereas she has to prompt and convince the others into their awakening. He's deeply scarred by his experiences with the Force, not to mention it's actively dangerous to train as a Jedi due to the Exchange, but he's willing to face that for the Exile - he tells her that part of why he wants to train as a Jedi is to be better able to protect and fight for her. One of the first things he does is teach her to play Pazaak in her head to prevent from psychic attacks through the Force/harm through Kreia's force bond - the exact weapon he wielded against others. The tragedy of any Jedi Exile ship is the constant insecurity created by the force-wound/cipher; how much of anyone's choice to follow in their footsteps or love them is their own free will? What power dynamics, unspoken or obvious, arise from it? But Atton's fierce independence and selfishness almost serves as the clearest answer to this. He willingly reawakens himself to the Force to connect with her, to be better able to fight for her. He chose her, a thousand times over, and whatever role the Force Wound plays, he accepts her influence out of admiration for that steadfast-to-a-fault morality I talked about before.

This isn't some corny gender essentialist "she is his redemption" nonsense either, although redemption is a major theme of a light-sided KOTOR 2; by training Atton and others as a Jedi, the Exile is actively doing the work to heal the galaxy she helped to break. By protecting and teaching and bonding with the Exile, Atton is regaining his own humanity through recognizing hers, over and over, the way he failed to recognize those of his victims. They're together in this, in their recovery, in how they've experienced all extremes of morality. Love, in this story, isn't about fixing someone or breaking them, it's about meeting them where they are and walking alongside them, hopefully to someplace better than where you were when you both met. Is it any wonder that he's the one she walks away with in the end? (As if he'd let her walk alone ever again.)

With all this being said, and to address your question, while the route/headcanon preferences I prefer for Atton/Exile create, I think, the richest narrative with what's there, I've definitely got an overarching meta appreciation for them too. I spent my teen years eagerly eating up every possible iteration of them as a couple, and much of what I described above can hold true in a different aspect if people prefer to play them dark-sided, if people hold the tragic dying in your arms ending as canon, and so forth. They're compelling any way you slice them.

[unleashthegoats]

Hey y'all! Loved the new episode, and wanted to chip in on one of the later points - videogames, especially in relation to the "Grey" Jedi concept. Knights of the Old Republic II really did some irreversible damage in that regard, as much as I love the game (though I prefer the first one). Kreia is one of the most central characters in regard to shifting morality debates in Star Wars (in universe and from fans alike) imo, and I'd honestly be super interested in hearing you three cover either or both of the games in the podcast, although I understand that's highly unlikely since none of you have played them. But she is extremely relevant to this topic because she preaches about neutrality and that there's more than just ~dogmatic thinkings of light and dark~, and your relationship with her suffers if you are kind and altruistic and get too rooted in the light side and she's like...one of *the* characters that kind of gets credited with developing a "grey" philosophy in-universe? But people always bring her up as if she's this great point of sensible consideration and not actually, as it turns out, a master manipulator trying to purge the Force from the galaxy (or something like that at least? It's been a while since my last playthrough lol) that lies to you all the time to get you to do what she wants (because she was so crazy bananas both the Jedi and the Sith said "no thank u :)" - well, with a bit more nuance but you get the gist). Really, it's a bit like people falling for Palpatine's anti-Jedi points all over how they talk about her philosophic arguments without bringing that up. But yeah, I thought you might be interested in that. Also, I think KotOR might be what people meant with being able to unlock Dark Side powers as a Light sider but you are absolutely correct that it's a mechanics vs story issue (especially since some powers are indeed alignment-locked AND making dark side choices does impact the character (apart from story, ending and relationships to your party members). It's a bit of a simplistic gimmick, of course, but the further you get into the Dark Side on the alignment, the more it's visible - sickly skin colour, cracks in the skin and flesh, your eyes change...stuff like that. I don't think using Dark Side powers actually pushes you further down the alignment, but the intent is obviously not for Light Siders to mix and match however they like).

Anyway, I'm so sorry for rambling on for so long, but I thought you (or someone, at least :D ) might appreciate that additional info. Keep up the good podcasting! :)

OUR FIRST ASK! I'm so glad you're enjoying the podcast, thank-you so much for listening to us ramble on for an hour once a month!

This is all really interesting! I've read a few metas about the Star Wars video games and the characters within them which is partly why I chose to briefly include them in the episode (and also because I am familiar with Jedi: Survivor which has its own "dark side" mechanic for the main character that was relevant to the discussion). Aside from Jedi: Survivor, I wasn't necessarily referencing any one specific video game, I assume it's probably a thing that's come up more than once.

As far as my reaction to Kreia goes, just based on your description of her, the idea of there being "too much light" just isn't how Lucas's own worldbuilding worked. It's clearly trying to hit on the idea of "balance" being equal amounts of light and dark usage, as opposed to balance being acknowledging darkness EXISTS (in yourself and in the universe) in order to keep yourself from acting on it. There just isn't a way to be "too light" or something like that, there's never "too much" kindness and compassion and selflessness in the world. In this sense, the video games are just going to fall into the same category as the rest of legends and EU stuff, in that they often just do their own thing based on their own interpretations of Star Wars, but it doesn't mean it actually fits with what Lucas himself was trying to get across about the philosophy of the Force and the Jedi in his own stories, and that's primarily what we're using as a base to discuss Star Wars from.

If any of us ends up playing KOTOR, we can certainly try to bring it up more often. I don't think we have any plans of doing more video game stuff currently, but if the KOTOR remake ever comes to pass, maybe I will!

-Mod Sugar

[queen-scribbles]

For the OC asks, here's a couple!

Who was your first OC you developed? What was that process like? What did you start with?

Do you have a favorite OC? What do you like most about them?

What's most important to you when exploring a new OC, or when creating a new story or situation for them?

Do you give them, like, specific meta or in-universe meanings to background things, like birthdays, favorite flowers/foods/scents, etc? What do those generally mean to your OCs?

(I need to read up on your OCs, hence these types of asks!)

Hey, thanks for the ask! And for your patience while I try to give these very good questions equally good answers

1. My first OC I developed is fuzzy. It's either Kenna Tasman(canon Revan) or Rahna Tabris (canon Warden), bc I was a latecomer to the world of RPGs and it,uh, took me a few times through KotOR before I realized you could a) talk to your companions without the game prompting and b)romance Carth, so Kenna's game and subsequent fic happened at about the same time as Rahna's. xD Started with thinking about what traits I wanted to give them and how I wanted them to interact with the world/characters around them. They're both snarky, Kenna has a terrible sense of humor, flirts via playful insults, and is such a goody two shoes it was SERIOUS cognitive dissonance to picture her as a Lord of the Sith. Rahna is outspoken, impulsive, and determined to be kind, be good despite the harsh circumstances of her growing up. They sort of developed and picked up additional tics and foibles as I played them through their respective games and started writing them. (Iirc, neither of them can cook, and they're both very quick to form friendships)

2. Obligatory caveat I love all my children and hate picking a fave, there's several in tight competition for the title etc etc, but I think I gotta go with Trinne(Amell). Largely bc she's always the first to pop in my head when people ask me this question, even if AJ or Tragen or Vica or Tavi is only milliseconds behind. I've had her for a very long time(12-13 years) and she's gotten a lot of character/personality development. I think one of the things I love the most about her is she has obvious flaws to go with her virtues. She's compassionate and smart and wants to help and not afraid to speak up for other people, but she's also stubborn and reckless and has a temper and makes snap judgments she has to undo later. Once she's your friend she's ride or die for life, she's creative, she's impulsive, she's too zeroed in on the little picture to consider larger consequences.

basically she's the most well-rounded of my characters, and also she's how I met one of my best friends, so that definitely biases me in her favor xD

3. How they interact with other characters in the world. Companions/NPCs in the case of game characters, established cast in the case of my original writing. I love character interaction(there's a reason banter and combat are my favorite things to write), so working that out is a big focus when I'm fleshing out now OCs, and then for new situations, it's how how are they going to feel and react? How are they going to interact with the people around them in reaction to the new situation? I feel like thinking of it that way really helps me focus on/flesh out their virtues/flaws/quirks.

4. Sometimes. I'll frequently make the day I created them(or in-universe equivalent) their birthday. Favorite foods etc are frequently ones I love(Tragen loves sopapillas, AJ and Kasey are coffee fiends, pretty much any of them in a modern universe/AU would love pineapple on pizza bc I do). Same with quirks; AJ and Jaaide are fans of mismatched socks bc I do that all the time. Hobbies/talents are either ones I do/have do or wish I did(a whole bunch love to read, anyone artistic/good at singing is me wishful-thinking a talent I don't have onto one of my children xD). Sometimes though it'll just strike me that due to X about their circumstances, Z hobby or talent is a perfect fit(Vesper loves to explore so of course she learned how to draw all the flowers/plants she found).

Thank you so much for your interest in my OCs! My OC page still needs a lot of fleshing out, but there are links to the tags for all my "big ones" if you want to read up on them.🥰

[pretz3l-log1c]

7 and 12 for the ask meme?

7. Oooh worldbuilding. That I'm proud of. Hm.

Well as far as tongue-in-cheek meta worldbuilding goes, I really am fond of "Taung were Space Emu Dads" that I posted on @feelinkeeli . It's silly and a bit absurd but also feels like it makes sense for how the Taung got around to developing the Mandalorian culture the way they did and why Foundlings and how to handle them is such a big cultural deal.

For stuff I have written... it doesn't feel right to say the Dathomir content I wrote for my one Savage WIP "Not an End, But the Start." . That's a lot of blending of Legends and Canon material on Dathomir to try to explain the stark difference between ancient Dathomir in Legends and 'present day' Dathomir in canon. But I do like it and am fond of it. I will probably use it in other fics if I ever get in the mood to focus on anything Dathomir or Nightsisters / Nightbrothers.

My straight-up made it all up, worldbuilding that I am proud of is Keldabe being a largely underground city for my Fives time travel fic. I designed it that way because Mandalorians use jetpacks. Traditional castles and fortresses make no sense when you have to account for enemies that can simply fly in. Keldabe is Mandalore's historical capital, and Keldabe translates to fortress. It makes sense for the city to have been planned and built with defense in mind. At least initially.

12. Any tropes I disliked but I have grown to like?

Uh... eldritch horror? Or at least playing with the concepts of something Eldritch. I don't know, I thought Kotor 2 and similar games I played were more outliers than they actually are. I am cautiously exploring the trope now because body horror and gore can squick me out pretty easily, and that seems to be common tropes combined with Eldritch horror.

[allronix]

I have my run of KOTOR 1 (LSF protagonist) and I'll be starting the Brotherhood of Shadow mod around 5:15pm PST tonight.

I know this mod is one of those "love it or hate it" things. Due to its size, it also tends to cause clashes with other mods, which prevents others from playing it. So if you'd like to see a run of it to see the storyline or decide if you want to put it on your own game, might as well extend the invite.

Oh, and I welcome and encourage sounding off in the chat. Questions, comments, snark and meta.

[carterhaughs]

Kreia and Atton and the Will to Power

I wrote this post years ago on a mostly unused blog so I thought I’d re-share it here, given the number of good recent meta posts I’ve seen within the Knights of the Old Republic (2) fandom - I’d like to throw my hat into the ring and get in on the discussion too. :D 

Kreia and Atton have one of the most interesting relationships in the game because through their interaction, certain core qualities of their characters and an important similarity between them - their uncompromising will to survive - is revealed. I’d like to discuss this cutscene, in which Atton tells Kreia, “You and me - we’re done,” with regard to her blackmailing him into the Exile’s service on Telos (I think the particular version of the scene I’m discussing only occurs if the Exile is Light-sided).

She responds with mocking incredulity that she never “truly held” him, which made him more of a fool than she thought, and goes on to say that it was he who truly held himself because she “once held the galaxy by the throat, as you once held her by the throat and let her die slowly. And your emotion at that point is what you fear.” This is an interesting comparison and perhaps it alludes to Kreia’s feelings about her own brush with the Dark Side and how, like the Light Side, she does not want to be beholden to it or the strong feelings it imparts. She wants to be able to stand back and assess the situation, manipulate it to her liking, and be beholden to none - the Dark or the Light - but herself, despite the fact that she ”wielded power like you cannot imagine,” through which all “was awash with possibilities, spreading outwards, touching everything else.” At this pinnacle of her power, she saw “all that the Force is,” but “only when it was ripped” from her did she “truly see it.”

I’m not sure if my interpretation is what the developers intended, but this experience of hers is something that she seems to be comparing, whether consciously or unconsciously, with Atton’s experience with the unnamed female Jedi. Kreia wielded the great and terrible power of the Dark Side and was unknowingly beholden to it, realizing the extent of her enslavement only when that power was taken from her. After that, she hated the Force and wished to destroy it (or at least that’s my understanding given the few spoilers I’ve encountered by accident, as I am only partway through Dantooine and did Nar Shaddaa first). Atton, on the other hand, was deeply indoctrinated by Sith assassin training which, combined with his righteous fury towards the Jedi, who had deserted the Republic in its hour of greatest need (aside from Revan and Malak and their followers), led him to his fall - but not so far that he could not be saved. Like Kreia, he had a moment of clarity after being deeply affected by the Force - in Kreia’s case, that had involved being severed from it, and in his case, it had involved feeling it for the first time and ultimately deciding to open himself to it to protect the Exile. Kreia’s experience led her to loathe the Force, but Atton’s led him to desire an understanding of it, though not right away - his anger and indoctrination led him to lash out against the compassion of the Light Side that he’d likely held in contempt for some time based on his exposure to Sith teachings and his own hatred for the hypocrisy of the Jedi - like he says to the Exile, he was “afraid” of the Force then and didn’t want to be “changed into something else” (even though the Dark Side was already changing him into something else - he just didn’t have the perspective to see it - and likely considered the Force to be something beyond his ken and better left alone given his hatred for Jedi).

This is why he still killed the unnamed Jedi, even as she opened his eyes to his own Force-sensitive potential and to his future as a mindless tool of the Dark Side, were he not to defect from Revan’s ranks. In his emotional turmoil, he fled to a place where he could hide and remain a non-entity - Nar Shadaa - and indulge the repressed emotional impulses that the unnamed Jedi had reawakened in him. Prior to this encounter he’d been a cold, unfeeling husk for some time now, taking joy only in the deaths of the Jedi he hunted, but most of all in filling them with despair by forcing them to see things from his bleak, depraved perspective before finishing them off - to him, that was the “best part.” The walls of “lust, impatience,” and “cowardice” he’d thrown up in order to confuse Jedi with the chaos and intensity of his “surface thoughts” were not initially true emotions that affected his mental state - they were merely “strong emotions and feelings” he faked to throw his prey off his scent and make them think he was harmless (or, I would argue, a “fool” as Kreia considers him to be - though during the second “listening lesson” with the Exile, she admits that he might be “cleverer than he feigns to be” because of his ability to shield his thoughts).

But Atton ultimately became the mask he wore - the feelings he’d faked to cloak his presence had become a part of him or perhaps, as he says, “Maybe it was always me. It’s hard to tell sometimes. I haven’t known who I am for years.” It would make sense for someone with Atton’s particular combination of virulent hatred and survival instinct to give in to their baser impulses as part of a larger philosophy of uninhibited self-gratification - seeking to satisfy their each and every whim, whether it be murdering Jedi, profligacy at the Pazaak table, or hitting on every good-looking female individual in the vicinity. The emotional walls Atton put up were likely urges repressed by his Sith training, compartmentalized and instrumentalized for assassination purposes. Clearly, Atton has problems controlling his impulses, and although he’d used them as emotional walls merely to confuse his prey during his time as a Sith Assassin, when the unnamed Jedi showed him the Force, all those lusts and cravings melted away to be replaced by “the kind of love where you’re willing to give up everything for someone you don’t even know.”

The compassion the Jedi had shown him was something he didn’t think he could ever deserve, and as much as he hated himself for his actions, his self-pity and instinct for self-preservation would not allow him to take that lesson of compassion to heart. As a result of his encounter with the Force all the feelings he’d previously used as mental walls “kept tumbling out” and he “couldn’t stop feeling things” and he could no longer use them as tools, “orchestrated to get close” to his quarry. That touch of the Force had forced him to confront his true self, a self that desired compassion and love, but had rendered itself undeserving of both and now drowned in “lust, impatience, cowardice.” So despite his disbelief (or desire to disbelieve, as he tells the Exile might have been the case) in the Jedi’s assertion that if he remained a Sith Assassin, Revan would turn him permanently to the Dark Side in the Unknown Regions, he became a scoundrel, loving and fighting fiercely for only himself…until the Exile came along.

Atton thought that “maybe [the unnamed Jedi] had saved me so I could help [the Exile],” and decided to ask the Exile to teach him how to use the Force - “I want to learn how to use the Force to protect you.” It’s interesting how Atton approaches the Force - he’s still wary of it, still constantly reminds the player of the disturbingly invasive powers it confers on sides both Light and Dark (i.e. the injudicious use of Force Persuade), but he’s finally willing to open himself to its inherent compassion because of the connection he feels with the Exile. I think this comes through in his dialogues with her about how the “glow” he sees surrounding her is “inspiring.” She embodies all that the unnamed Jedi had shown him - all that he had recoiled from in righteous anger and fear because it had shown him just how far he had fallen.

The Exile was for Atton, as she was for many of her companions, a mirror in which they saw their true selves reflected back at them. She helped them accept the truth of what they saw as she had done after Malachor and helped them realize what they wanted to see, and how, through compassion, they would behold all they imagined. The Exile was not a mindless devotee of the Republic or an arrogant, inflexible adherent to the Jedi Code - she was a responsible and pragmatic leader who owned the decisions she made and learned from them, an empathetic confidant, a fearless crusader for the downtrodden, and a true and loyal friend. Through her boundless capacity for empathy, she was able to convince them that they were deserving and capable of becoming their best selves.

This is what Atton was so afraid of losing. After he’s told the Exile about his dark past and she has accepted it and his will to atone, he thinks Kreia will no longer be able to hold him in her thrall. But, as Kreia tells him, ”I know what lies buried within you. That you hide with your desperate thoughts, your guilt, your lusts. I can unlock that part of you anytime you wish. It is a simple thing, the human mind, once it feels something strongly, it becomes etched in the memory, the subconscious. Shall I show you? The part of you that hungered to kill Jedi, that took pleasure from it? Or perhaps you will continue to listen to my counsel and I shall ignore your pathetic attempts at freedom.” She is threatening to take away the sense of self the Exile has helped him build - a sense of self that Atton very likely still considers a fragile work in progress. What if it could not withstand exposure to the specific emotion that he felt when he held the unnamed Jedi by the throat just as Kreia had once held the galaxy, an emotion Kreia claimed to be able to summon at will and use to control him? But as Kreia said, she’d never truly held him, it was he who had held himself. Could Kreia really have subdued Atton and made him a slave to her will in this way? I am uncertain. At this point, I believe that Atton’s love for the Exile was a stronger force than either Atton or Kreia realized, and Kreia has been known to bluff. But this was one wager that Atton Rand - notorious gambler - was unwilling to make. The stakes were simply too high and he would not allow himself to lose that sense of self the Exile had helped him build nor his connection to her. And so he remained under Kreia’s control. What did that entail, exactly? I don’t really think the game makes this clear, as I believe Atton had decided at this point that he was with the Exile for the long run, for good or for ill, having decided to open himself to the Force - a power he still didn’t entirely trust - just for her. So there was no need for Kreia to blackmail him into staying. Perhaps Kreia simply wanted him to believe that he would have to do as she asked if the time ever came when she called upon him if he wanted to preserve that sense of self and his connection with the Exile - her well-being and her belief in this best version of himself are what Atton values more than his own life, as is made clear by how many of his Influence opportunities involve trust.

It is interesting, in light of all I have discussed, to reflect once again on the juxtaposition of images Kreia used when comparing Atton to herself - she "once held the galaxy by the throat, as you once held her by the throat and let her die slowly. And your emotion at that point is what you fear.“ Kreia is, I think, revealing something about herself here. As I said before, like Atton, she does not want to be beholden to the thrall of of the Force, and in the moment she held the galaxy by the throat, she was beholden to the Dark Side, just as Atton was when he killed the unnamed Jedi. She, too, fears her "emotion at that point.” The touch of the Force that the unnamed Jedi left in Atton led him to ultimately embrace the Light Side, liberating him from the “lust, impatience, cowardice,” and rage to which he had been shackled for so many years. And the absence of the Force led Kreia to believe that she - and the galaxy as a whole - were better off rejecting both sides of the Force. For each of these characters, a critical encounter with the Force, or lack thereof, threatened to break their sense of self - but because of their dogged will to live, it ultimately led them to remake themselves, for good or for ill. Kreia sees Atton’s brief flirtation with power as crude - he was nothing but a “murderer” giving in to his impulses, while her purpose was to shape the galaxy through the power she amassed. But she has a certain begruding respect for Atton’s unflinching self-preservation, a quality she prizes in herself - he is nothing if not remarkably self-sufficient - “a fool the Force looks out for.” Kreia recognizes in Atton what she knows to be a part of herself, and as is her wont, manipulates him accordingly. There is little the self-reliant fear more than being deprived of their strength of will - the will to be the man deserving of the Exile’s compassion, and maybe someday, her love.

[renegade-skywalker]

about me ~ my writing

my (old) poetry blog my cats🥰 ginger tabby: Kaito, 4 years old white&black: Chani, 7 years old white&grey tabby: Finn🌈2016-2022 (little love of my life)

Interview with the Vampire/Vampire Chronicles

In Her, I Had Eternity (Claudia/Madeleine, one shot, POV Madeleine)(AO3)

BG3/Gale x Tav fics (AO3 links)

Home is Wherever I'm With You

Another Night With You

Let Me Count the Ways

Experiments in Idle Pleasures

Forgive Me

Submission and Surrender

Sweetness of a Waking Dream

Heat of a Stolen Moment

A Soft Proposal

One of Many Mornings

Tav/OC Meta

Merit Meadowlark 1/2/3/4/5

Lyric/Durge 1/2

Kotor 2 / Atton x Exile fics (AO3 links)

On Call

A Fool's Wager

The Scoundrel and the Jedi

Best Left Unsaid

The Calm Before the Storm

Before You Go (Prompt: "I fucked up")

"You'd hate it here,"

"There are those who wage war, and those who follow them."

"Figured I'd find you here,"

Other Kotor 2 Fics

Out of the Abyss (my ~400k+ word still-ongoing magnum opus lol) (AO3)

A Curious Thing (this is Mira/Brianna but Atton/M!Exile is still implied; completed) (AO3)

Ghost in the Machine (rebuilding HK-47, Revan reveal) (AO3)

Dragon Age fics (older ones are on AO3, c. 2014)

What You Take With You (DA2, multi-chapter, in progress, Carver/Merrill)

The Rains of Highever (DA:O one shot, vengeful Cousland, POV Morrigan)

The Splendor of Lost Hearts (DA:I multi-chapter, completed. Blackwall character study)

more under the cut!

SW fics/meta/prompts (older, pre-2018) (AO3 links)

Warm (Finn/Rey)

Midnight Flight (Finn/Rey)(link is to the final chapter on tumblr but the post includes an entire fic directory and the AO3 link(s))

Fatal Flaw (Bodhi Rook/Galen Erso character study)

Like My Mother Before Me (Luke and Padme character study)

A Heavy Inheritance (Leia and Padme character study)

What I Meant to Tell You (Finn/Rey)

Free (Finn character study)

Random Kotor/SW meta posts

"Well he definitely gets that from me," (my most popular post for some reason...)

thoughts on kotor 2/TLJ/Atris and the Jedi

I'm a Mira/Brianna truther at heart

Vader recognizing Padme and himself in Leia

Luke Skywalker feels

Revan vs the Jedi Exile and the kotor-era Jedi Order

Kreia thoughts

Mical/The Disciple Appreciation Post

More Mical love

How Atton factors into Kreia's end game plan

Why Finn and Rey should have been co-leads in the sequel trilogy

My AO3 (all of my stuff is site-locked btw so you'll need to be logged in to see it all)

❤️ttfn :)

[gizkalord]

I’m soooo obsessed with atton’s backstory.

made it his talent to cut himself off from the world, from his emotions, from people so he could carry out his purpose without reservation. and then when it’s forced back upon him, when he can no longer turn his eyes away from the consequences of his actions, he just snaps. kills the person who did that to him. strangles them to death. he kills her because he loves her, because he hates her. he kills her to thank her for saving him. he kills her bc facing his own sins all at once is too much, so he‘s desperate to do something, anything to shut it all out again.

but his eyes have already been opened, and he finally sees that this person has suffered so much at his hands and will surely continue to suffer a drawn out death regardless of his participation, and so he kills her. and in doing so, he delivers mercy for the first time in his life.

[azems-familiar]

i think an aspect of what being a Jedi means that is often overlooked is that it is about acceptance of your place in life. walking the path the Force has placed in front of you, even if it may not be the path you wanted, even if it may not be the easy path, even if it may not be anything like the path you thought you would take as a child. there is only the present you are facing - the here-and-now that is, not the here-and-now that could be, or that you want to be. because Jedi have to be capable of being objective at all times, because they are peacekeepers and mediators and they cannot bring their own biases into this, because when a Jedi puts their own feelings and the presents they want to be true over everything else we get the destruction of Malachor V, we get Revan's corruption arc, we get Anakin's fall, we get Luke almost losing himself to the Dark multiple times. and so much of this is because of an inability to accept what is placed in front of them as the path they must walk.

the present is all you have and the future is always in motion and it is when you try to force them to be something other than what they are and what they will be, when you try to change the course of the path itself, that you fall.

[thearrowavenger]

All right folks. My usual not-fic partner has abandoned me, so now you all get to suffer through my spam ramblings.

Tonight’s thoughts are brought to you by the Missed Worldbuilding Potential of Knights of the Old Republic

Seriously, I have so many questions and so many things I wanna see from KOTOR?? So, in no particular order, a list:

I really want to know what the ancient sith academy looked like, i mean really looked like. It was an academy. Give me details. I want the daily functions! It couldn’t possibly have all be torture and all the time

what a true sith empire looked like, wherein there were many sith lords and many worlds under their control and like the armies that fought under their flags knew they were fighting for the Sith--like what do regular sith empire citizens live like? What are their thoughts on the Sith, the emperor, and the Sith lords?

Also I just keep thinking about the rest of what you could do to actually make the whole huge time difference make sense. If this all takes place 4k years before the rebel alliance era, what does everything look like?

Like, I would love to see the Hutt Empire about to enter its golden era--not a bunch of cartels, but a lush society of Hutts

and how has technology changed--can ships travel as fast? is medicine as good? Are prosthetics different? alternatively--are there tech advancements that were lost to time after this period? (and yes, I know about kolto and all that, but tbh it’s BS--it’s literally just bacta but with a different name)

I would be absolutely obsessed with Coruscant not being entirely built up yet. There's a mountain in the senate district that, by the time of the fall of the republic, has been entirely built over. Imagine the mountain still being visible? There still being local farmland, rather than greenhouses/imports/whatever the heck “modern” Coruscant uses to feed it’s trillion strong population?? Plus, where is the water? Are there oceans that weren’t yet built over or drained or whatever?

Give me more worldbuilding!!! I have thoughts and feelings now. I want to actually see the difference four THOUSAND years makes! I mean, our one planet looks nothing like it did 4k years ago. Why on earth does KOTOR want me to believe that the culture of the galaxy is largely the same? Their clothes, their language, their politics, their technology--that has all had 4,000 years to evolve! It should be wildly different!

[paradife-loft]

so I'm like... a little less than halfway through the Poppy War books rn, and I think one of the most interesting topics to me so far is the ambiguity and unreliable narration (by virtue of having really only individual characters' experiences and opinions to go on) surrounding interaction with the gods and what it "does" to you, whether drawing on gods' power to bring it back down to earth is inherently a corrupting and destructive process?

like the Phoenix for example - Rin (and Altan) experience the Phoenix as a destructive urge outside of themselves, constantly telling them to go farther and farther in burning down everything around them and giving in to their rage. but how much does that tell you about the Phoenix as an entity, as opposed to the nature of the repeated traumas and constant warfare and abuse they're subject to? how much has the Phoenix been shaped by its symbiotic link to a people that have been fighting, and being used, and dehumanized and discriminated against, and ultimately destroyed by genocide, for hundreds of years?

(I mean, for one thing, in the collective memories of the Speerlies' spirits that Rin experiences, there's clearly evidence of them being a happy and functioning society as much as any other, and not just a caricature of violent rage monster ""savages"" that Nikara colonial propaganda shows? Queen Tearza was afraid of the bargain the Phoenix would require of her to use its power to keep Speer free, but does it make more sense that this would be the daily bread and butter of what Speerly shamanism entailed, or that it would be a reflection of the magnified needs and consequences of an international armed conflict, and part of the warning we see her speaking to Rin is about the way spirits linger consumed by the conditions at the time they died, and worry specifically about the particular reasons Rin needs the Phoenix's power from a place of trauma to fight a brutal war?)

likewise, the rest of the Cike are also rejects and outcasts, people who've been imprisoned, and had their people turn against them, and who now ultimately are used as killers - no matter what their gods are like, that's not a great place from which to develop a stable relationship with a nonhuman force of nature that has a will of its own but no particular regard for human society or individual people as anything besides conduits. (and obviously, getting interred alive and cut off from your power has never helped with anyone's sanity, or their interest in helping out other people in the world, has it? like, it's very understandable, I feel.)

and so it's like... I don't know that I necessarily buy Jiang's party line from the first book, that basically you Should Not Ever try to use the gods' powers as weapons, it's Inherently Bad? (because at least from the bits and pieces we saw of him, he also has hella baggage, and seems to have reacted to unspecified past trauma stuff with avoidance where some of the other characters respond with murderrage) - I think it's just.... there's a whole lot that's really tricky about mixing volatile, violent situations likely to cause psychological damage, with entities that inherently aren't Interested in the things that make human societies stable and flourishing (in the same way that physics and chemistry aren't!) - not least because the power offered by these entities, while easiest to misuse in such situations when you yourself are probably all sorts of fucked up, is also often the most sorely needed to affect the world during those times? Rin talks repeatedly about how she wants and needs the Phoenix's power for succeeding in her own life goals, and for being able to match an enemy that's much better outfitted than the people she's fighting for - and it ends up fucking her over, but she's also not wrong? do we remain inactive in the face of certain pain and destruction and atrocity because taking the power to fight those things is likely to also have shitty consequences (personally or societally)?

anyway, I have a lot of thoughts & feelings about how these books are exploring societal trauma and power and the various narrative and historical metaphors happening. we shall see if/how my thoughts in this area change as I continue books 2 and 3.

[lee-scribbles-and-doodles]

So aside from having three recruits survive with Carth another thing I really hope to do with my fic is discuss, to at least some extent, the duality of the Jedi. Because in the games one of the key viewpoints we get of the Jedi of this Era is the Council, with the other's being Jolee, who abandoned the order for his own reasons, and Bastila and Juhani, two students of the Order who are very clearly used to varying extents.

Jolee, Bastila, and Juhani are all very clearly good people who do their best to follow and uphold the code (arguably less so with Jolee since he's a Grey Jedi but the point still stands). The council however? Not only do many members fail to follow the code (to varrying extents), but they're hypocrites. The vast majority of them sit upon a high horse, and look down on the others for not reaching their impossible standards that they themselves do not meet.

They claim to not kill, yet they effectively killed off Revan (if you go LS) by erasing their personality, and then what's left of the council after Katar tries to kill Meetra for... having bonds? Which are strengthened and empowered by the Force? And for being a "wound" in the force?

Their behavior towards her is especially jarring if you play LS, as she's effectively the only thing who can put an end to the Sith threat. Which, in this instance, threatens to devour all life in the galaxy. But no, killing a good person because of her force wound and her ability to connect deeply with others is more important than helping her destroy the cosmic horror that wants to eat everyone's life force.

They also actively cause harm to their other students, such as Juhani, often for asinine reasons. Then when they're called out on it they shrug and claim it all as "the will of the force."

So I think the way I'm going to portray the order is that the individual knights and padawans are typically relatively good people doing their best to live by the code, but that the majority of the council are pompous windbags who are blind to their own hypocrisy. Who will go to extremes that break the standards they hold everyone else to. And who are wrong about things more often then not.

Because the only way I can see the Jedi Order falling is either due to extreme circumstances such as Order 66, or from poor leadership by the council (which the sith or any other enemy can then use against them). And the KOTOR Era council are terrible leaders who abuse the power they hold over the others more often than not.

TLDR: The Jedi Council is full of abusive hypocrites but the Order itself is full of good natured people who a trying their best to help others and uphold the code.