Lit The Official The Old Republic: Revan Discussion Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

I'm a bit miffed that Revan's Coruscant of 3954 BBY seems to be exactly same as SWTOR Coruscant of about 3641 BBY. Revan goes to a same cantina as the player characters, Dealer's Den, and nothing has changed in over 300 years. A bit too much Ruins of Dantooine...

BW seems to me to be set to retcon again Sith and Jedi history, and with DH's DotJ comic, we might have a real canon collision coming. For example, when visiting Darth Nyriss the first time, Scourge looks back at the only actual book in the Sith Academy on Dromund Kaas that was "over ten thousand years old" - so from 14 000 BBY at least - and came from the "first Dark Jedi on Dromund Kaas". This doesn't really fit with either the old Legions of Lettow or the later Hundred Year Darkness founding stories for the Sith Order.

 

I can't comment specifically on that, as I haven't yet reached LOTF or FOTJ, but with Luke it's worth noting that he completely rebuilt the order, and probably had at least some hand in training every single member of the order. Most of "Luke's Jedi" were not trained from an early age, but came from backgrounds like soldier, mercenary, pilot, and son, and were essentially shown how to use the Force. I'm not saying have a Grandmaster is a good thing, but I definitely think it makes more sense to have a leader with the NJO than it does with the Jedi of the past.

Of course, you could argue that Luke also learned to use the Force late in his life, but that's opening another can of worms.

For the record, is "Brie" pronounced "Bree" or "Bry"?

 

Now that NaNoWriMo is over, I feel the need to share my thoughts on this book. Warning: this is long (hey, I've been churning out 1700 words per day for a month ). Disclaimer: this may also compare things to fanfic a lot, which you may not care about, and can in fact choose to disregard totally. But, as a consumer of a lot of KOTOR fanfic, I can't really help comparing them, so please bear with me.

Breaking it down by topic:

The treatment of women.

This book seems to have a distinct problem with women, and I'm a little surprised no one has brought this up yet. Let's examine the major female characters, shall we?

Bastila: Knocked up and left behind, never to properly Jedi again. This is not the Bastila I remember from the games. I accept the idea that she and Revan reproduced- it was an extremely popular trope of KOTOR fanfiction even before the MMO was announced, and it's no surprise that canon decided to make it official. What does surprise me is that they opted to handle the storyline in a way that made both characters come off as kind of unsympathetic, and, in my opinion, weakened Bastila substantially. This should have been a major discussion, instead of, "Hey, I'm pregnant." "That's awesome! But I must leave to save the galaxy and stuff." "But can't I-" "No, you must protect the baby! And I know you are too responsible to do otherwise!" "Well, okay. And since you're leaving me and maybe never coming home, we should go make sweet, sweet love. Right now."

First of all, Star Wars has never been scared of sending its pregnant women into battle, so I don't know why they had to start with Bastila, other than they needed a reason for her to stay behind. But if that was all they needed, there were a million ways to do it that don't involve defining her by single motherhood. Maybe she needed to stay and help shore up the Jedi. Maybe her battle meditation, which was not mentioned at any point in this book for all the brouhaha it caused in KOTOR, would be more useful to the Republic military than it would be to him. Maybe their spawn was conceived on their passionate night of goodbyes. This could have all worked in a way that didn't completely undercut Bastila's character, and yet they chose to make her pregnant and thereby apparently useless. Good job.

Veela: Stuffed in the fridge. Canderous' wife, for those of you who don't remember who that name belongs to. I actually had to go look it up, because that was her primary defining trait. She didn't live long enough to make many impressions besides a) she was a no-nonsense Mandalorian, b) she was married to Canderous and they spent some quality time in her tent, and c) she hated Jedi. As far as I can tell, the only reason she existed was to up the drama so that when they killed off Clan Leader X, it would have more emotional impact.

All of this was unnecessary. KOTOR 2 always gave me the impression that Revan told Canderous that he knew where the mask was, and that he needed Canderous to unite the Mandalorian clans. And Canderous would do anything for Revan. No need to involve the clans at all, really, but if they really wanted to, did it have to be his wife they killed off? Not at all. It could have been any two bit Mando, but they made sure that said two bit Mando was the love interest. That we barely knew.

The Exile: Also fridged. And to advance the plot of Scourge, no less. I don't mind the idea that she dies, but this was pretty poorly handled. Her death warrants all of three lines, accomplishes nothing, and I can only imagine the MMO didn't really want to have to deal with KOTOR 2 very much, so killing her off was the easiest way to go. Maybe if the other women in the story hadn't been handled so badly, I could see some dramatic irony in her death, but as it stands, it's just the icing on the cake of awful.

Scourge

I have to say, I disliked him from the moment he stepped on

 

^ I rarely read walls of text, but Commander_DWH, that was a great synopsis.

I haven't finished the book yet, but so far it just doesn't seem like the two KOTOR games to me. It's Drew's KOTOR maybe, which I suppose I should have expected, but the characters all seem off. Not just Revan.

I definitely saw this with Bastila. I didn't even like Bastila in the game, but Housewife Bastila is even worse.

 

And yet, the times when you pointed out the flaws of the book (and there are MANY flaws to be had) on their own merits instead of talking about fanfiction came off a lot more compelling. Particularly things like the observations about Bastila, for instance.

 

Hey, I fully admit that not everyone finds said points as compelling as I do. But I still feel the compulsive need to make them, and that they are pretty reasonable points to make.

 

In a way, Revan is the "Man with no Name", since Revan is just a nickname, and we don't know his actual name. Like Clint eastwood's character in the "Dollars Trilogy", in which the names he uses, are implied to be just nicknames.

Revan should wear a poncho.

Although i have not read the book, im wondering why we were never told his real name. Why is revan hiding it. Shouldn't at least his girlfriend bastila know it?

 

He ain't like that, anymore.

 

I find it a needlessly vague sentiment which could apply to...anything in the canon. LOTF, FOTJ, the prequels. Or anything written, really. It's possible to write this post differently.

And bear in mind that I, too, have read fan fiction of this story that I enjoyed more.

 

I'll rely on my German background and suggest that Brei is pronounced "Bry" and Brie is pronounced "Bree."

Well, I didn't think Bastila was all that good a woman or Jedi in her original source. Mandalore called her a "Jedi Princess." HK-47 viewed her with derision. And it's not like you can dismiss those opinions as being dark side trash, either. Mission generally held the same opinion. And in response, she was hyper petty in her actions towards them -- tripping Mission anyone?. Bastila was the worst aloof Jedi stereotype and the worst high-maintenance woman stereotype rolled up in one. What really says all one needs to know about her was her response to the ribbing post-Taris swoop race about losing her lightsaber and getting captured by a swoop gang.

So, I disagree that this characterization is somehow wildly out of whack. Certainly, there's been a good measure of "slash" Ravan/Bastila romance; and for years there's been a great groundswell of romanticized view of their relationship. I don't disagree that marriage was the logical extension; further I'd say that it was the only logical extension. But, one can separate that idealized view of the collective Revan and Bastila romance from Bastila the woman. Bastila the woman in-game was an annoying harpy for about three-quarters of the time, and generally for most everyone she interacted with save for a few brief private moments with Revan.

To be fair to that whole plotline. They were both Jedi. They have both been at the center of Sith invasions of the Republic. That's to say they both know the high stakes in play. This is not the typical expecting family facing a relocation due to work and needs to have the "family discussion" to determine the next course of action. ALL OF LIFE WAS AT STAKE. EVRYTHING. Revan knew that. Bastila knew that. Their decision was not unreasonable.

I didn?t see a problem with Veela. She is the typical Mandalorian that I would expect post-Traviss. There may have been shades of such a marital relationship in the original game, but one would certainly have to extrapolate it pretty far from Canderous' other anecdotes. But, regardless, Veela as a character and woman were spot on for a Mandalorian in contemporary EU.

Unfortunately, I think her problem was that she got involved with a man who cared about Revan more than anything, or anyone else. That's not to say he's a bad guy. But, if you want to settle down in a peaceful life raising Mando rugrats to a ripe o'le age, then Canderous is not the one for you. And it's not like it was all one-sided.

But, I can't put it all on him. Where he owed allegiance to Revan. She owed allegiance more to the Mando way -- the Clan way. And clearly also more than their marriage. As a true Traviss-esque Mandalorian would do, I guess. Even as he believed in Mandalorians, Canderous was never a Clan-ish sort of guy. Even his group was gathered from those like him -- dregs in the Republic society; all people who had left the Clans, and were not out there searching for the mask

 

"Darth" Voren Renstaal wasn't Revan's apprentice. He was the apprentice to one of Revan's "Sith Knights".

 

Darth Bandon, I hope, comes from Abandon. He, a Jedi padawan, had abandoned the Order, after all.

 

He was a Jedi named Brandon.

Revan was Evan.

 

Darth Voren's story isn't that impersonal a relationship to Revan. He learned vigilantly from one of the Sith Knights under the direct command of Darth Revan and typically remains aboard the dark lord?s flagship to help control the ship?s security forces.

 

Repeat

 

Yeah? Still wasn't his apprentice.

It doesn't help that I really rather dislike The Betrayal of Darth Revan. It's pretty obvious in KotOR that there are only two Darths: the Dark Lord and his apprentice. But nooooo, we have to have "Darth Voren", too. *spits*

I'm still not convinced he wasn't just a jumped up idiot who called himself "Darth" when no-one important was listening in.

 

I don't think I could have said it better GrandAdmiralJeollo.

 

Exactly. I understand that the fan-fic community wants to idealize certain aspects, and even the whole relationship. "Oh Revan. Oh Bastila. :: Smooch smooch ::

But, the reality is that 10 / 12ths of the way through their KotoR courting, Bastila tells Revan that she never made it past the rank of Padawan, and that she should have left him at Dantooine!?! Love at first sight, it definitely wasn't. Then as long as Revan doesn't mock her for the crazy beyotch that she is, it takes at least another two conversations to pry the legs apart. 12 or 13 tries at that well?!? Bastila is waaaay high maintenance.

And one cannot forget the family environment her upbringing has on Revan and Bastila's happiness. Revan is a mystery. But Bastila isn't. She was clearly the product of a broken home -- her parents were simply abhorrid people. Her mom was sickening: as a human being, a mother, and as a woman. And her dad? Not much better. That's the environment Bastila was raised in. One cannot ignore that as if it won't have any effect on the family life that Bastila will provide with Revan.

But Bastila held a certain level of denial about it all. And certainly egged on by her mom -- they held a level of denial that certainly didn't want to admit its brokenness, because it felt it was above such a station when it really wasn't. Embarassment? Perhaps. See Leonard's mom for the environment for an understanding of what Bastila is the product of. "Buck up." Or "Buck up, Sissy Pants!" That's where Bastila is coming from.

 

Yeah, I never found Bastila a particularly sociable character either. She was the quintessential TOR Jedi snob before there were TOR Jedi snobs. Don't get me wrong, I liked her as a character, but I'm not surprised that in the novel she reaffirms her more unfavourable qualities. She was never the happy go lucky Mission of the party, but the devout Catholic schoolgirl clinging to her chastity ring and quoting the Bible to Revan.

As much as we may ask "Why did the Exile go alone?", I've been saying the same thing about Revan ever since we saw Bastila in KOTOR2, since Revan running off and leaving her at the altar was established in KOTOR2, so not much Karpshyn could do about the timing of Revan's departure. In the novel, he was always going to leave Bastila as soon as he'd knocked her up. Having said that, Revan was a soldier of the Force, and soldiers often have no choice but to leave their wives behind and return to the front lines, so I can't really blame Revan for doing his job.

 

Yeah, the harshness on Bastilla is a WAY over the top here.

Especially the comments about well, sex.

Really, Revan and Bastilla's relationship was meant to invoke Han and Leia. They're a definite case of "Slap, Slap, Kiss." The reason for Bastilla not being too open with Revan, of course, is that she KNOWS he's the Dark Lord of the Sith. That, for me, seems a good reason to be emotionally distant to someone. However, she WAS meant to be the embodiment of a Jedi conservative.

Still, she wasn't without a sense of humor and snobbish or not she was a lot of fun.

I don't know if she was a Jedi Knight either because Carth Onasi basically calls out the jedi council for sending a newly minted jedi knight and bastilla on such a dangerous assignment. It wasnt because of lack of skill however, it was because bastilla was an emotional time bomb like anakin - as we see with her ready conversion to the dark side.

 

Explaining why Bastila didn't follow Revan in 3954 BBY is easy and the reason quite logical, but explaining why she didn't go looking him with a select group of old friends in about 3935 BBY after her kid was adult is another thing. I think that the Bastila we knew from KOTOR I would not have stayed eternally as a Penelope waiting for her Ulysses but would have gone an odyssey of her own, even when the trail was getting cold.