attonposting

[attonposting]

I tend to think that for the most part, Atton has the Ebon Hawk's crew fooled. He's not perfect, he lets things slip, but overall he is good at playing the scruffy smuggler and the people around him don't see him as anything more than an unreliable and annoying pilot. Give credit where it's due, this guy managed to fool Kreia for the entirety of Telos, and then she cheated by using the Bash option on his brain while the Exile was stuck with Security: Impossible for a couple of planets.

Obviously those two know the truth, and Brianna had the benefit of Echani training to sniff him out, but that's not the baseline. Atton got astonishingly unlucky with his company between probationary Sith Lords and empathic black holes. I generally don't think anyone else looks at him and thinks something doesn't add up… minus one.

I really love Mira. I definitely have a thing for the scrappy irreverent ones, and Chaotic Good will always be my favorite flavor of hero-adjacent. But I'm not just playing with my favorites like a bunch of dolls (...though I also do that.) Mira outright calls Atton out on his bullshit in one of the Ebon Hawk 'btw, your crewmates hate each other' cutscenes, alongside roasting him within an inch of his life like he deserves, and even threatens that she's going to figure out what his deal is. She doesn't know what's up, and I don't think 'elite Sith assassin' or 'ex Jedi hunter' is high on her list of guesses. But she knows that something's wrong with the picture.

Part of it is that like him, Mira's very observant. Setting aside the actual Mandalorian slave childhood of working with explosives, wherein you are either alert or very dead... it's a simple fact of life on the Shad that you either shape up or you end up under someone's boot, and one of the first lessons the Smuggler's Moon teaches you is to keep both eyes on everyone around you. She watches people – heck, casing people is explicitly her Special Unique Force Power. So when Atton accidentally shares things he shouldn't know, Mira's watching.

But she also has the dubious benefit of keeping company with bounty hunters… and as she personally notes, the profession has, in recent history, lost its way. To the current guild, there's very little difference between a bounty hunter and an assassin, and many of her competitors on Nar Shaddaa are straight-up contract killers. I know that this was meant to be part of a cut plot involving the GenoHaradan... but also consider that a decade of full galactic war just ended, and there's a lot of restless ex-soldiers filtering into every profession where being good at killing is a job requirement.

So I think she'd recognize pretty quick that while Atton plays the idiot, when there's an actual situation underway, the act chinks. He's way more competent in a fight than your standard freighter pilot should be, illegal cargo or no. He's not especially strong or anything - if you've got a stuck jar of space pickles, you go to Bao-Dur - and his accuracy is decent but she's known better shots, but that's not really it. It's the way he moves. Mira's seen it before. It's too efficient for some two-cred Exchange runner. He's got professional training, and she's pretty sure they don't teach you to snap necks like that in the Republic Navy.

All of that to say, she's pretty sure he's on their side, or at least the Exile's side... but she's always got one hand near her blaster where he's involved.

#atton rand #mira #mira the bounty hunter #kotor ii #kotor 2 #how do you tag mira... #girl get yourself a last name

[attonposting]

Wow, okay. I installed the Extended Enclave mod for the first time yesterday, and dang, chalk up another point for Atton's suicidal tendencies.

These are his thoughts after he's been told the Exile is dead, by the way. Yeah. God, I will never, ever be over how Atton stonewalls you the entire game, filling his brain with card games and porn, dropping sarcastic quips at every opportunity, and when you actually do get a glimpse into his head at the end, it's just... this. This unrelenting bleakness. And to think this is all cut content! In the release game, we wouldn't have known any of this, not even his real feelings towards the Exile! Rush deadlines are a crime.

But also, this may clarify what happened to him on Malachor V? He was definitely deployed above the planet, and his ship was failing; either he was in one of the cruisers and got an escape pod, or he was in a fighter and managed to claw his way out of the gravity field before the controls shut down entirely. The emphasis on drifting/staying in the ship is interesting, and makes me wonder if he spent time adrift before someone looking for survivors towed him in. If so, then there's some serious nightmare fuel involved, not to mention the fun/horrible parallels to when he was trapped on Peragus.

#atton rand #TW suicidal thoughts #kotor 2 #kotor ii #extended enclave mod #screenshots

[attonposting]

Okay, so Carth keeps coming up lately, both by people who love him and people who don't, and I thought I'd throw my two cents into the ring.

People complain that Carth is sexist, a lot. And I get where that's coming from, I've got the same issues with his romance as anyone else. I love the bones of Carth's character and remember him very fondly – he's tied for my favorite character from KotOR I, even! But the writing is... flawed, to say the least, and in a way that goes past just 'poorly aged.' I don't think his lines themselves ever go worse than awkward, but there's some more fundamentally unhealthy stuff written into his relationship that I suspect wasn't intentional.

What I find interesting, and what a meme just very succinctly pointed out, is that many of the same people who have beef with Carth are cool with Atton. Who is definitely the more sexist of the two, both incidentally and deliberately. And it's a really interesting differentiation between the two pilots/f!PC love interests/earlygame buddies, because I think their palatability comes entirely down to how the games portray that sexism. So this is my attempt to figure out why one thing works and the other kinda doesn't.

Carth Onasi is introduced as a stand-up guy. He stays behind as long as he possibly can to save other survivors on the Endar Spire; he believes in the Republic wholeheartedly, he serves to protect and approves when you do the same, and other characters sing his accolades. He's supposed to be wholesome, but with PTSD-related trust issues that cause friction between him and you.

Atton Rand is the opposite of that. You find him in a jail cell, he's untrustworthy and a cad, at any given moment he's either abrasive or lying through his teeth, he complains when you help people, and when you get to the bottom of his trust issues, you find out he's a worse guy than you ever could have imagined.

It's much too oversimplified to say that Carth is supposed to be a good person and Atton is not, that's not where the problem comes from, but it will become relevant later.

When Carth starts flirting with you... okay. The biggest, most obvious problem is that the game wants you to be into it. Carth flirts and continues to flirt after you can tell him to stop. Sure, whatever; that's not egregious. You can respond to Carth's flirting positively or negatively, and that's great... but when you do respond negatively, the game loves to pull you into these playful insult exchanges where your PC shouts and pouts while Carth taunts you. There's where the issues start. Even when the player is trying to shut him down, they get dragged along for the ride anyway, and the narrative decides that this is also romantic. Thus KotOR I only has a shallow understanding that it's presenting a situation a woman may want nothing to do with. It's kind of impressive that you can actually call Carth sexist in-game, and yet it doesn't feel like the game actually understands that he is in fact being sexist.

Actually, no. Maybe I'm reading too deep into this, maybe this is why I'm so forgiving to Carth as a character, but I don't think the problem is Carth, I think the problem is that the game is being sexist in this particular spot. I was more annoyed by my own return dialogue options than anything Carth said to me - especially the ones where I was being mean. It felt like f!Revan was being pigeonholed hard into the writer's idea of 'women', that it was not an especially flattering or nuanced view, and there wasn't anything that I actually wanted to say. Definitely the writer did not understand my perspective as a player – but that's not a problem unique to K1 and it's one even the sequel is super guilty of at times, so I'll move on for now.

When Atton makes skeevy remarks, you always have at least one dialogue option to call him out for it, and you cannot ever react positively to what he says. Either you smack him down or you ignore him. This is extremely important. Yes, you could argue that it's not as accommodating to how different players might react... but what this establishes is that the game is self-aware. It does not think what Atton is doing is in any way attractive, or that it should be interpreted positively. Instead it acknowledges what a lady's probable reaction to his unwanted advances would be and encourages the player to express it, and the way that's written isn't a playful back-and-forth, it's the Exile snapping at him and Atton backtracking. Atton's being a piece of shit, but instead of stirring up chemistry, the narrative goes out of its way to mete out karma – hence everyone else on the ship mocking him, or the comically topical details like him being an unwashed loser who smells terrible and scratches his junk in public. Whether you like Atton or not, the game wants you to know that it thinks he sucks, and you are never left feeling like there is an unsettled score.

On the contrary, this lack of self-awareness is what makes Carth's romance in K1 hard to swallow if you didn't start out receptive to it. When you can react negatively to Carth's comments, it doesn't feel like you can do so in an intelligent way. The tone is very “Ugh, MEN, amirite” rather than “I don't like the turn this conversation has taken and would like to just be your colleague again” or just “Stop.” - which is probably what you wanted to say if you were just platonically enjoying or less-amicably bickering with your dorito-jacket companion when the gorgeouses started coming out of left field.

Worse, when you actually can shut Carth's romance down, it involves being a dick to him and stomping hard on his personal issues. Like I'd understand if a player was angry with him at this point, because again, you've been forced into a romance arc even when you were telling the game no as much as it would let you - but there's a huge difference between wanting to tell a guy to back off and wanting to shit on his dead wife or his Sith kid or his blown-up planet. I dunno, I'm not that vindictive! I think there's only a couple of options at the very end of his romance tree where you can turn him down... not even amicably, it's still rude, just without being a Grade-A asshole, and by that point, you have been through a lot of flirting you presumably didn't want to be involved with. Generally, the game won't let you break things off with him without being a dick, even if you never agreed to board that train in the first place. Now loop back to the way that K1 unfailingly portrays Carth as a great guy, whose flaws have nothing to do with his upstanding sense of morality, and there's where the dissonance comes from. Not only does the game push you into his romance after you said no, it makes you the bad guy for trying to get out of what he initiated.

But there's another issue in the timing of the Carth relationship. He starts his flirting while he's expressing intense distrust and standoffishness with your PC. With Carth's nonstop skepticism about your trustworthiness, and constantly bringing up his issues with you... at least during Taris and Dantooine, it comes off more like his attraction to you is superficial and not as a result of him growing to like you, something that's pushed by how it's always focused on shallow hooks like your appearance or your 'cute' attitude. It's very awkward. I do not think this was the writer's intent. I think Carth's supposed to be captivated by what he's seen you do, and that's just going in recursive loops in his paranoid little brain and making things harder for him. By the end of the romance, it's extremely clear that Carth's into you for you. But it's clumsily handled at the start.

Contrast this with Atton, who starts off aggressively sexist towards a female Exile, fifty times more offensive than anything Carth ever does. Literally the first line he gets is leering at the PC's forced state of undress, mocking her vulnerability, and he continues in that vein for much of Peragus. He creeps on your nudity at least four times off the top of my head, he ogles you, he complains about women, he tries to hit on you, he even contemplates the possibility of Sexy Kreia (which is a level of dickery I can scarcely comprehend.)

But that tapers off and disappears around the time he starts showing actual romantic interest in your PC, like when Kreia threatens him and it's revealed how much your opinion matters to him, or when he asks Bao-Dur for advice. And a female PC never sees it again. This creates the opposite impression – that Atton's attraction is a result of your time together. Sure, he's still a pig, but it follows that he wasn't making serious passes at you on Peragus because his behavior now that he is actually interested in you has changed. And it implies that in an actual relationship, that would not be how he'd view or treat you, which I think is crucial for how willing people are to ship Atton with their Exiles.

Now, this is all a product of how K2 did not actually answer that question and let you romance Atton, because with Carth, it's the opposite and you see exactly how he behaves once he gets into a serious relationship. It involves spanking. Things could be very different if K2 actually had fleshed out romances. It's hard to say, because both the PC and the crew were very thoughtfully written (I will take a bold step here and say that K2's characters were on the whole written much better than K1's), but on the other hand, Atton is still the worst and I'm pretty sure the game would want to remind you of that if you agreed to play tonsil hockey with him. And it may have crashed into the same pitfall that Carth's did; if the game railroaded your interactions with Atton up to some point, it'd leave a bad taste in anyone's mouth who wasn't already signed up for the ship.

With the way things are, Atton not only gets a free pass to be interpreted as generously as his fans want and easily ignored by those who weren't keen on him, he even gets an interest boost from this because people will always want what they can't have.

Anyway. With a male PC, you'll continue to see Atton make sexist remarks towards other female characters and can even have a wingman chat with him that is entirely him projecting his issues all over women. He doesn't make these comments with a female PC, suggesting that he's on his best behavior... but that he'd still totally be a leering asshole if he wasn't trying to impress you. With a male PC and Carth, his sexism is nonexistent, again probably because he was never intended to be sexist and it's a product of clumsy/oblivious writing.

There's an additional layer with Atton and the question of how much anything he does is an act, but that doesn't exonerate him from any of the crap he says. I could write a separate essay on Atton and his relationship with women, but the guy is very much a womanizer who's terrified of the idea of intimacy and has a lot of shitty opinions that stem from his defensive need to believe that nothing emotional is ever real or relevant to him. He might've been casing the Exile on Peragus, but his chauvinism is genuine.

But I digress. The tl,dr; is that Atton acts less sucky the more he crushes on you and Carth acts more. Combo that with how their respective games make Atton pay for being creepy but give the strong impression they want you to go along with Carth's nonsense, and it's a little less mystifying why Carth gets so little benefit of the doubt while the King of Trash enjoys fandom sexyman status. His romance is almost predicated on the fact that he's a scumbag, where Carth's is very confused to whether the awkward parts should exist or not.

There's a bit more that kinda hurts Carth. The flirting... well, from what I remember it just got “wow, okay then” later on, and I found it way more silly than offensive in any way, but him repeatedly bringing up how you remind him of his dead wife doesn't help the relationship much and suggests that Carth may be projecting someone else over you. I can live with that, drama's tasty and it doesn't prevent a real connection from burgeoning. You can make the exact same argument for Atton anyway, and I think his is way worse. My major issue is at the end of the game. Mr. Trust Issues does not react well to the events on the Leviathan, when it turns out he was right to have kept an eye on the PC all along. It's great payoff! And I absolutely adore his discussion after that, when he admits his struggles to reconcile you and Revan, how he tried but he can't hate you, how helping you gave him something real when revenge only left him hollow. Seriously, for all the shade it gets, there's some really great stuff in his romance too - you just have to stick it out long enough to see it. But then, on Rakata Prime, Carth seems to reconcile his crisis of faith and finally, wholeheartedly decide to love you in a way that falls flat on its face. He confirms you're a good person because you're not Revan anymore, like Revan is some purely evil part of you you've now cast off, when... that really seems more like denial than anything else, and not the foundation for anything healthy.

Seriously, I wish they'd handled that with more nuance. It would have counted for so much in my books.

All of that said. I know I just went after the man like a vending machine with a stuck bottle of chocolate milk, but I think the sexist vibes in Carth's romance are worst at the start and that he does not deserve the sheer amount of flack he gets. I've seen far worse offenders in the world of video game romances, and this might drive some controversy in and of itself, but I vastly prefer Carth x f!Revan to Bastila x m!Revan. There's a whole 'nother pile of issues in K1's other official ship (f in chat for Juhani), and I think those are much harder to deal with than the ones here. If anything frustrates me with Carth's romance, it's how unnecessary all of the bullshit is. I really want to get into it! The concept is perfectly fine! I love the character! There's good stuff in there! And when I replay KotOR, it's not that difficult to close my eyes to the bleh parts and enjoy the rest, especially once the first couple of conversations are past. Again, all Carth needed was a more conscientious writer at the wheel.

I'd be really interested in hearing other people's takes, both on how they interacted with either of those romances or where their interpretations differed from mine. I only have my own perspective and that of a few people I've talked to over the years, and I'm given to understand this is something of a fandom hot topic!

#carth onasi #atton rand #kotor #kotor 2 #kotor ii #basically a dissertation on how framing makes all the difference #i'm sorry carth #i love you a lot but your writing is so bad #kotor remake pls fix

[attonposting]

Can we stop to talk about the conversation with Atton where he rambles about women and the idea of love? Because good lord can this man project like a movie theater. We're talking fractal projection. Give him a frickin' medal, because it's projection all the way down.

It's a very missable bit of dialogue. You can only get it with a male Exile, and only then if you've cheesed off Brianna by causing her influence to dip 30 points below Visas's. Unfortunately, this also causes Brianna to permanently stop talking to you, so this is something you're only ever gonna see by accident. I only learned that could even happen pretty recently, and that's with maybe 6 male Exile playthroughs under my belt. I guess I'm just very thorough about exhausting everyone's dialogue options all the time.

So. Brianna's permanently cut herself off as a companion, courtesy of Kreia whispering in her ear, and that sucks. But at least your trashman pilot has something to say about it... and whoa boy is it a consolation prize. Atton proceeds to launch into an arm-around-your-shoulders buddy talk that has exactly nothing to do with your problems and everything to do with his personal issues.

Exile: The Handmaiden lost her temper with me.

Atton: Oh, there's a surprise. Trust me, she's a handful - all warriors are. They're not used to dealing with things they can't punch, kick, or break. Look, I know how it is. Me, there's no denying that I'm a good-looking guy. You have it worse, because even though you might not be as good-looking as me, you have that whole tortured past, that command presence. Women want to save you. They think they can help you.

Exile: What are we talking about?

Atton: They think that everyone can be redeemed, and that they're the only ones who can do it. And you don't know if it's you, or the idea of you that they love.

Exile: [Awareness] Are we talking about me or you?

Atton: We're just talking. Like I said, I've never understood women. It's possible they don't love you at all. That they just want to help you... help you hear yourself if you've gone deaf to your own voice. We all lose our way sometimes, and we need someone to pull us back.

Exile: [Awareness] Sounds like you've had that experience before.

Atton: Don't remember. Truth is, I still don't listen to my conscience even when it's shouting. I think there's times I'd rather be completely deaf than hear it. But all this talk doesn't matter. I'm not qualified to give advice. Besides, when I open my mouth, I'm usually lying anyway.

Like. Just. Holy shit, Atton. Yeah, he's clearly talking about the Jedi who tried to save him, but there's so much more to unpack in here. Let's break it down.

“Women want to save you. They think they can help you.” - Atton wants to save you. He wants to be the hero to your story, something he projects at Mical (to the latter's confusion), but which can also be read into a lot of his actions – when he starts taunting the assassin on Telos to draw heat off you, when he runs out on Nar Shaddaa to give you medpacs and do the same thing with the bounty hunters. The hard evidence is on Malachor. If Atton dies, he says it outright: “Did I save you yet?” And if he falls to the Dark Side, he tells Mical that “he wanted to protect [the Exile], to help her” before he lost his chance.

“They think that everyone can be redeemed, and that they're the only ones who can do it.” - Yeah, it's not really about helping the Exile. Atton needs to be the one that 'saves' you, as a balm to his own lack of purpose and self-worth, and he gets real pissy if anyone else does a better job helping you – or god forbid gets close to you. He's constantly insecure, he's unhappy with most new party members when they join up and, and seriously, the only crime Mical ever committed was being a genuinely good dude in a crew full of misfits. Too bad the galaxy's greasiest pilot reads that as a threat.

“And you don't know if it's you, or the idea of you that they love.” - Atton's attraction to you in a nutshell, and that's before you get the question of Force Bonds involved. Like, seriously. Does he genuinely love you as a person, or is he in love with you as an ideal – as someone who could stop running and face the music for their unforgivable crimes, as someone who actually tries to fix the damage they did? As someone who can still find it in them to care about people after the war broke them down? As a Jedi that actually lives up to the ideal both the Council and Revan failed to? As someone he believes he can relate to, because he thinks he knows your reasons for what you did? Are you a stand-in for his dead Jedi and his hundred conflicting feelings over her? Is he just in love with the idea of having a purpose and wants someone he can bury himself in? Is the idea of martyring himself and finally dying for a reason what he's really obsessed with? Pick your flavor, because who knows! He certainly doesn't!

“It's possible they don't love you at all.” - While this has a lot to do with him wondering why the hell anyone would have tried to save him, I also think this is him reflecting on his own confused feelings towards the Exile. They might not be romantic with an M!Exile (or if they are, he's having intense bi denial), but they're absolutely there and he does not know what to make of them.

“That they just want to help you... help you hear yourself if you've gone deaf to your own voice. We all lose our way sometimes, and we need someone to pull us back.” - This has nothing to do with the Exile, the Handmaiden, or anyone who isn't an ex-Sith assassin who had empathy forcibly shoved into their brain after years of progressively more fucked-up descent into all-consuming hatred.

“Truth is, I still don't listen to my conscience even when it's shouting.” - He almost gets away with this one, but Atton's deep in denial here. He doesn't want to hear it, but he can't turn it off, the same way he can't stop feeling things when he used to have total control of his emotions (because he barely felt anything at all.) It's all why he can't go back to who he was, even though he badly misses the certainty he used to feel. Atton is a pro at ignoring his conscience, which definitely has nothing to do with how much he hates himself, total coincidence... but as soon as the Exile gets involved, that goes out the window, because Atton's self-preservation glitches out. Their Force wound tugs on his better nature... or it yanks at his opposite. And if that happens, Atton is very aware of what's happening to him. He succumbs, but he has more to say on the Exile's fall than anyone short of Kreia. And light or dark, his (im)moral compass gets jarred from 'cover my own ass' to 'protect the Exile' and he repeatedly sticks his neck out for no gain, so yeah, I call bullshit here. He's smack in the middle of his biggest crisis of conscience since the Sith.

“Besides, when I open my mouth, I'm usually lying anyway.” Well, at least he admits it.

#kotor ii #kotor 2 #atton rand #disaster man extraordinaire #slaps ribbed jacket #this bad boy can fit so much projection in it #you can also get atton to say she woke him up inside and i cannot possibly react to this in any other way than yelling evanescence lyrics #happy may the 4th! #have some highly specific analysis on a 19-year-old game

[attonposting]

One of my favorite little moments in KotOR II is how when you're picking your team leader for the Tomb of Freedon Nadd, there's a quick line about how each of your Padawan-friends has the skills or trustworthiness or moxie to be up for the challenge. It's nice! Reinforces that you're a general and that you can identify where strengths are best used, and it also feels like a little reaffirmation or growth on your companions' parts.

And then you get to the end of your options, and it's just like, “just make Atton do it.”

I swear, Kreia must've handed the narrator a roll of credits at the start of the game and told them to go nuts.

#atton rand #kotor ii #kotor 2 #even the narrator knows he has no redeeming qualities #between that and “you cannot take anyone you love” “yeah sure atton you can come” #the “my friends and zoidberg” energy is off the charts

[attonposting]

Something I don't see many people invoke when writing Atton, and I wish more would, is the fact that his exiled Jedi crush is the General who pulled the trigger on the Mass Shadow Generator. That is a big deal! Him blowing up at the Exile over Malachor is nearly lost in the rapidfire shitstorm that's his whole confession, but Atton's on par with Mira for having personal beef over Malachor V. His headspace beneath the pazaak routine must have been a confused and angry mess once he learned that this ex-Jedi he was carting around was General Meetra Surik, or whichever name you gave your Exile.

Like, Atton was coming to grips with the fact that the Exile used to be a Jedi. They seem decent enough... clueless, and too much of a bleeding heart for their own good, they're the type of idiot who paints a target on their back every time they get out of bed, but at least they were a veteran instead of one of those worthless trust-in-the-Force types and they're not afraid to get their hands dirty when there's people that need to be shot. And hell, if the Jedi kicked them out, that's a point in their favor – maybe even enough for him to worry for them late at night after the juma's really kicked in, because sometimes they just seem so goddamn worn-down and look, he's not totally heartless. Anyone with eyes can see that they're lugging around some heavy shit; of course he's gonna wonder. And then he gets smacked with that.

Malachor V was huge to Atton. It's that theme of all of the crew's stories coming back to that single moment in time. Now, it's important to establish that Malachor is not a single event that broke Atton. He was already in bad straits by the end of the Mandalorian Wars, and heavily disillusioned by all he'd witnessed and done during them. It's not the end-all-be-all of his fall to the Dark Side and it may well have happened anyway. But Malachor was the capstone – a single terrible event that shattered the remainder of his faith. Atton was present during that battle (“You weren't there. You have no idea what happened.” -> “Oh yeah? Shows how much you know. Maybe you're wrong about a lot of other things, too.”) and alludes to trauma over it (“Wish I'd died there, that the storms had dragged me down into Malachor V”). My take is that he was among the forces arrayed for the space battle and barely managed to fly his way out of the gravity well, but you can interpret many different experiences from the loose constraints of canon.

No matter how you slice his involvement, though, Atton felt utterly betrayed by Malachor V. He'd already felt that the Republic was mismanaging its troops, that guys like him were being served up as cannon fodder while useless senators waffled over the measures they desperately needed on the ground and the Jedi sat on their Council thrones offering platitudes of protection while failing to lift a finger in anyone's defense. But here was the absolute worst of it – command straight-up lied to him, him and everyone else in that stars-damned clusterfuck, and sent them out as sacrificial lambs. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers laid out as bait for a goddamn trap. Didn't even get a chance to fucking fight, just a tongue-in-cheek “thank you for your sacrifice”, because if they'd signed up to fight then he guesses that meant they were already dead on paper anyway.

I think it's likely that the way Malachor ends up attributed to Revan was revisionism that happened later, in the same way that Revan accumulated blame for the actions of Malak in the Jedi Civil War. Revan definitely had a lot of blame for what happened at Malachor, but Atton would have hated whoever made that call. Whether he chalked it up to Meetra Surik or Insert Better Exile Name Here or just the Republic in general, he was a furious, bitter mess... and I don't think he would have been so quick to follow Revan if he'd known just how much of a hand they had in Malachor's planning.

Fast forward a decade later, when he meets the person behind that call, the Jedi behind that call, and they're nothing like he would have expected.

And he knows this because he's already seen them in action, gotten to know them a little – likes them, even, and isn't that a damned thing he tries to avoid. Unless your Exile is unusually chatty, Atton probably learns this sometime on Telos; possibly from Lt. Grenn when they get arrested (specifically the fact that the Republic wants to meet with them, that'll set off some alarm bells, and possibly bring in the Exile's full/real name), possibly when they meet Bao-Dur and his habit of using military ranks, possibly from the Handmaiden Sisters when they end up in Atris's Academy, and definitely from the holorecording of the Exile's trial if he hasn't already clued in. If he'd known who they were on Peragus, Atton might've used them to get off the station and planted a vibro in their back as soon as he didn't need them anymore, but now he's seen the kind of person they are – the parts that are just like him, the parts that are better than him – and he doesn't know how to feel.

I like to think that while Atton comes to terms with it, and probably a lot quicker than he was expecting... he doesn't forgive the Exile for Malachor. And it's the same as how forgiving Atton for his crimes is missing the point, and not what he wants anyway. It's more about moving on. The war is always going to be there, but it doesn't matter anymore, because they're not the same people who made those calls. What's important is that he understands. And in the end, not forgiving them might even be comfortable for Atton. He feels closer to them – both on a personal level and an aspirational one – in that they've both committed truly terrible crimes, things that cannot ever be made okay, and the Exile still managed to pick themselves up and keep trying. He's got mixed feelings about the charity act, but the fact that they were able to stop running and face the music for what they did is what captivates him, because that's something he never had the grit to do.

#atton rand #the jedi exile #malachor #kotor ii #kotor 2

[attonposting]

Okay, so canonically the Jedi Exile fucks off to the Unknown Regions to go find Revan and leaves their half-dozen adult padawans to spend the rest of their lives wondering when Master's gonna come home with the milk. And in the cut content, Atton squeezes himself along for the Exile's next misadventure, and they go off to have KotOR III instead of some novel we don't talk about.

But in my headcanon, he turns that ship around to Alderaan and forces the Exile to take a vacation for one kriffing moment in the overstuffed responsibility conga line that is their life, and it's peaceful and awkward and maybe a little disastrous at times and romantic if that's your flavor because it's definitely mine, and Drew Karpyshyn can pry that from the rigor mortis of my death-grip fangirl fingers.

Sure, Revan's still on the todo list, but the galaxy's greatest problem causer can wait until the Exile's had their horribly overdue mental health month.

#the jedi exile #atton rand #atton x exile #kotor ii #kotor 2 #just. give the exile a goddamn vacation 2k23 #they need one SO BADLY #and on atton's part alderaan is the one place that ever felt safe to him #even if that's more due to how he changed after he left it #and he never went back because it felt kind of sacrosanct and he didn't want to ruin it with what he'd become #even if he just told himself it was smarter to be places he wouldn't be recognized #but for the exile he'll offer up anything he's got

[attonposting]

Atton Rand is such a hot mess of contradictions that his state of war with himself is practically the thing that defines his character. Seriously, just look at him:

-He wants closeness with the Exile, but he's terrified of attachment. He tries to push them away and plays a mean game of “we're not friends and I'm bailing as soon as I get the chance”, but at the same time, he's desperate for a meaningful connection with them.

-He wants to be appreciated and respected for his skills, but wants to keep a low profile and pretend he doesn't have them

-He's calculating and a skilled cold reader, but he constantly says the wrong things anyway

-He complains about selfless do-gooding and believes it's a ticket to ending up taken advantage of, if not dead in a ditch somewhere, but secretly he really admires it

-He's a deserter, but he's loyal to the point of self-destruction

-He's very afraid of the Exile finding out what he was, but once the topic is broached, he's desperate to show them everything he did, to make them see exactly how ugly of a person he is. He doesn't want anyone to see into him, but he wants to be understood. He really doesn't want the Exile to hate him, but he also really does.

-He's crippled with guilt over who he became even as he remains proud of what he did

-He's a coward with a keen nose for danger, but he walks straight into it anyway

-He'll do anything to survive, but he lowkey wants to die

-He despises Jedi, but devotes his life to one and becomes one himself

Is it any wonder this dude has no idea who he is?

#atton rand #kotor #kotor ii #kotor 2

[attonposting]

Had a nasty little 2 am idea last night that refused to let me sleep until I scrawled it down. I'll take ”fics that would physically hurt me to read, much less write” for 800, Alex.

Premise starts with the endgame. Atton loses the fight against Sion and is tortured to the point of death. The Exile finds him fading, and he confesses to everything – confesses to something that was reciprocated, even, it was just never the right time and now the end of the road is staring them in the face way too soon. And he's so desperate not to die like this, and the Exile so desperate not to lose him now of all times, that he stumbles onto what Sion did. He grabs a hold of his suffering, his spite at the universe, and uses it to power through. He doesn't heal, not really. But he gets back up.

It's fucked up, but so's everything right now. The Exile's gonna take what she can get. They're both alive, and it's all over, and she just wants to put Malachor behind them. So she tells herself that Atton always gets back up. Nothing's okay right now, but nothing would be – she just discovered she's a wound in the Force, revisited the site of all their worst mistakes, was forced to kill her teacher after she tried to kill her in turn! They're both wrecks right now. It will be okay, eventually.

'Okay' keeps her waiting. The dust settles, and it just reinforces the niggling feeling that something's off. Atton's no less devoted to her – fixated on her, really, and of course there's the question of how much of that is him and how much of that is her influence. But he's on edge all the time now, angry at everything that isn't her, and on paper that's no different from how he's always been. But it is.

They chart a course for the Unknown Regions and prepare for another wild gizka chase across the galaxy. They visit new planets. Trouble follows them the way it always does, and seeing the way Atton interacts with the locals, the way he moves to handle things? Gets that off feeling sharpening fast. It's like they're fresh off Peragus again, except this time Atton isn't shy about sharing what's really on his mind. She's getting worried that his near-death experience seriously traumatized him – and trying to convince herself that a near-death experience is all it was, because he's ashen as hell (but he nearly bled out and he's still recovering, that's normal) and he's got lines and veins he didn't before (but of course he does, Sion cut him up everywhere, there was no falling back on his pretty face after that.) So she tries to talk to him, and he's a brick wall. The Exile doesn't know what to do. She's waiting for things to settle into their old equilibrium, and they don't. They just keep deteriorating, until there's one too many fights, or cruelties, or sex that's not quite lovemaking, and she finally has to admit it.

He's less of the Atton she was starting to fall in love with every day. Definitely not the one she empathized with. She sees few of those sides of him she'd started to unbury after Nar Shaddaa, once she got past his guard and found the contradictions hiding beneath. Instead it's all of his worst, callousness and spite and seething nasty vindication, and beyond that, something new and cold that genuinely frightens her. Whatever spark they have falls apart fast if she's fortunate, turns downright toxic if she's not. Disagreements grow into arguments grow into bitter drawn-out fights, and sometimes he goes past shouting.

And there's one point where the Exile actually gets through to him. It chinks the rage that keeps him going, makes him realize what he's becoming. Atton falters... and he starts to die. All those old not-quite scars open back up; he can't breathe anymore. Self-preservation kicks in, because that's what he does best, and the moment's over.

That's when she has to face the music. There's no fixing this. Atton was starting to become someone else, being with her, but that's not possible anymore. He's sustained by the Dark Side now, all hate and pain and sadism strung together by one all-consuming obsession, and that's physically all he's capable of - a headlong plunge to his worst self, orbiting the person he loves and hates and wants to preserve and take apart most of all.

There's only two ways it can end. It's Sion all over again, just with a man she could have loved. Either she talks him into accepting his death, or she has to put him down by force... as many times as it takes for it to stick.

#atton rand #atton x exile #but not like fun happy atton x exile #tw toxic relationship #i'm sorry guys my brain insisted #maybe now it'll leave me alone #look the atton/sion parallels fascinate me and i'm wholly convinced in another life he would have become sion #his superpower is refusing to die through sheer stubborn determination #he's already halfway there

[attonposting]

Some Atton headcanons

-Atton was a mouthy kid and always had an independent streak that got him into trouble, but he used to be much more of a social animal than he is now. His Alderaanian upbringing and the cheerfully patriotic Republic recruitment drives left him ill-prepared for the reality of the front, and Atton got very attached to his bunkmates in the days that followed. He used the friendly faces in his squad to keep himself grounded from the shit he saw on a daily basis, found that fighting for them was easier than fighting for the ideal of the Republic itself... and one by one, turnover replaced them with new faces. Eventually he started holding his comrades at arms' length because it was easier than getting to know them. No point when they'd all be dead in six months anyway.

-Continuing on that note, it wasn't much of a leap when the Sith taught him to harm and kill innocents as bait. His service had already led him partway down that slope by the time he left the Republic. Ignoring the mass sacrifice at Malachor, which he was present for and which killed what was left of his faith, Atton would have been made to bomb some difficult targets in a desperate and losing war - camps with slaves and children, Mandalorian-overtaken civilian targets, overrun ground battles that still had friendlies on the ground. It didn't take much mental gymnastics to justify his actions when murder was already a well-trodden reality of war.

-Atton's eyes used to be brown. During his Sith days, he began showing dark side corruption – not heavily, as his Force sensitivity was only nascent, but his eyes started to lose color, alongside paling skin and darker, thinner hair. It receded in the years following his desertion, but his eyes never quite returned to the way they used to be, which is why they're a very washed out hazel now.

-Atton sees himself as a deserter, but he's actually fiercely, dangerously loyal to anyone he thinks has earned it, and that's the reason he signed on with Revan in the first place. He's just never had a cause that didn't let him down in the end, and he walked out of the Jedi Civil War too damaged to put his trust in anyone or anything before the Exile and their literally magnetic personality sucked him in.

-He's compulsively aware of ways to kill the people around him, an awareness that's fluid with the environment, all equipment in reach, and the distraction and emotional states of all parties involved. Intrusive thoughts up the wazoo.

-Between the above, the anxiety, and the self-hate, he's usually in a pretty bad mood. The pazaak and other techniques aren't just mental shields for the purposes of keeping out Jedi, they're also tools to help him cut off his thoughts and get out of his head.

-Banter is another mental defense of his. He incites stupid, meaningless arguments to pass the time and occupy his perpetually overclocked brain. Doesn't really matter what he's saying as long as it's something, you know?

-It's hard to say which was worse for his hypervigilance – his days in the Sith, between the cutthroat politics and hunting down literal telepaths, or his days after it, on constant lookout for Republic and Sith alike. Atton's pretty good at keeping his twitchiness under wraps, since his entire shtick is method acting being something he's not. If you startle him out of sleep, though, you're liable to end up in a headlock for the couple of seconds it takes him to get his bearings. It's hard to sneak up on him, but his reaction to being genuinely spooked is vicious. Not a guy to throw a surprise party for.

-Atton's never had a real relationship. If he's 29-32 in 3951, he would have been 16-20 when he joined the Mandalorian Wars, which doesn't leave much room for anything past high school sweethearts. And he was way too broken when he left the Sith some seven-eight years before the events of KotOR II – between the barely contained self-loathing, the walling off everything that might be a real emotion, and the running, there was no way Atton was making connections that he wouldn't compulsively sever. So when he asks Bao-Dur for romantic advice, it's genuine. Atton may be a master of the one-night stand, but he has pitifully little idea what to do about feelings. He swaggers and plays confident, but if the Exile actually took him up on his flirting, he'd be completely flat-footed.

-Though several parts of his dialogue allude to a death wish, Atton isn't suicidal, per se. He may have been in the immediate aftermath of his desertion from the Sith, and he doesn't think he deserves to live... but dying now would just make that last Jedi's sacrifice even more of a waste than it already was. I think he sort of sees it that he doesn't have the right to it either way, and at the end of the day, it's not in him to give up. It's more of a recklessness, a fascination with the knife's edge that keeps drawing him towards the situations his instincts scream warnings about, and that's why he can't help pissing off dangerous people, why he keeps taking risky jobs he knows don't add up. Atton's addicted to the thrill of fighting for his life, of only having his wits and skills between his head and the barrel of a blaster. Flirting with death excites him on a pretty unhealthy level, but he only rarely acknowledges it for what it is – just that it makes him feel something other than his usual.

#atton rand #kotor ii #kotor 2 #meta

[attonposting]

The last time I played KotOR II, it really struck me how much Atton and Bao-Dur have in common. They don't especially get along, which is fair – almost nobody on the K2 crew likes anyone other than the Exile. It is not a friendship cruise. And neither of them want to talk about the past, so it's understandable that they never manage to cross the threshold where they realize the other is a kindred spirit. But think about it.

Both of them were young men that got swept up by the Mandalorian Wars, chewed up, and spat out as broken wrecks. And this is true of most of the cast of K2, and a big chunk of the galaxy as per the game's theme, but Atton and Bao-Dur might have closer stories than anyone else in the crew, because they share hatred as their driving force. The guilt that haunts them isn't what they did in the war, it's why they did it and how they felt during it. Bao-Dur saw the destruction of his people and came to hate the aggressors for the senseless violence - Atton saw the destruction of his comrades and came to hate the so-called protectors that could have changed everything but left them to die, and had the gall to claim moral superiority for it. That hate festered and led them to commit mega war crimes that finally collapsed at one focal atrocity. Obviously Atton's path was a lot darker than Bao-Dur's, and his crimes were far more visceral, cruel, and repeated until he met the Jedi that broke him right back, while Bao-Dur built one immensely, unimaginably terrible thing that only he was capable of, and left a bloody and inescapably personal handprint on the fate of the galaxy.

But either way, they had the same response – an inability to find peace, a lot of self-loathing with no outlet, and a ton of drifting until they found the Exile. And their demons aren't so much regret for their actions as it is horror at the people their hate made them into – which is a really important distinction to make, because blowing up a planet with tens of thousands of friendly forces on it and torturing Jedi sound like things that characters would regret at face value, and in a lesser piece of writing, that would probably be the end of it. Not so, in KotOR II. Bao-Dur still believes the war needed to end, and neither of them hates any less now than they did then (though in Atton's case, it's important to note that his hatred of the Jedi later expanded to encompass hate for the Sith as well. He wouldn't do his actions over again, assuming neutral/LS, but it's less out of regret and more out of “fuck you all, you weren't worth my life.” The only action he actually wishes he could take back is killing that last Jedi. Everything else is just disgust and fear at what he realized he had inside him - and like Bao-Dur, that's not something he can unlearn, no matter what he does now.)

They are also unique in that they are the only two crew members that joined the Exile with no ulterior motives. Kreia is an ulterior motive, T3-M4 wants to bring aid to Revan, Brianna joins as a proxy for Atris, Mical is a scout for Carth Onasi, Visas is there to stop Nihilus, Mira is there because nobody else is going to horn in on her bounty, Mandalore is there for the clans and to find news of Revan, Hanharr was forced into servitude, G0-T0 is there to dole out orders, and HK-47 wants to pin down his clones (as well as engage in some good old-fashioned bloodshed, which he'll surely get next to such a walking storm.) These two boys are just deeply in love with the Exile, be that romantically or just a pure, rare bond of shared understanding, and follow them because it's the clearest way to make up for their past, but also because nobody else could get them so deeply.

Just... geez. These boys would have a lot to talk about over a bottle of Corellian whiskey if they only had a reason to open up (and one of them wasn't violently allergic to emotional honesty.)

#atton rand #bao-dur #kotor #kotor ii #kotor 2

[attonposting]

Atton/Exile gang rise up, I made breakfast

After the reunited Jedi Council ends in disaster, the Exile wants nothing more than to be alone. Atton disagrees. Things get heated.

#atton rand #the jedi exile #meetra surik #atton x exile #kotor #kotor 2 #kotor ii #fic #warnings in the tags #be warned all ye who enter here #i'm longwinded and unapologetic #maybe a little apologetic #playing with the very very squiggly line between force compulsion and honest change #if you see any mistakes let me know

[attonposting]

It is stupidly important to me that Atton be unappealing. Like, he can be handsome – and let's face it, he is, even in janky 2004 graphics and with that inexplicable line on his forehead. He can be sweet, in his overprotective, pathological liar way. He can do stuff that is unexpectedly really thoughtful and moving; he is both smart and observant and he cares a lot more than he's willing to let on. He is unquestionably my favorite romance option out of the four KotOR II presents, and I think it's because he fundamentally gets the Exile and their trauma better than any of the others ('cept in Visas's case, where the issue is the power dynamics.) Do not mistake me; I am one hundred percent behind the Exile smooching this awful war criminal full on the mouth.

But he's still the kind of guy that hits on random ladies, and scratches his junk in public, and generously showers once per week, and snores like a chainsaw, and flies into a jealous snit whenever another guy looks his not-girlfriend in the eyes. Forget stubble, this guy's loaded up with blackheads. He chews with his mouth open. He says incredibly obnoxious things about women. He smokes inside the ship, recycled air or no. And he's spent enough time in the Red Sector to fill out a catalog of space STDs, because seriously, it's Nar Shaddaa, you really think there's industry standards?

For every “You'll be right here with me, playing pazaak, where they can't reach you,” I need a “So, uh, must be tough being a Jedi... no family... no husband...”

You get me? His uncharmingness is a vital part of the charm.

#atton rand #atton x exile #kotor 2 #kotor ii #all i'm saying is don't be afraid to make atton a little bit awful #i'm into it

[attonposting]

Confession: Every KotOR fic I have written, either posted, trashed, or still WIP, started out in my docs with a paragraph of Atton ranting about something.

#atton rand #man can really Go Off #and i'm addicted to it #currently working on a version of the post-dantooine scene #but with atton instead of visas or mical #probably been done before but watch that stop me

[attonposting]

Ever just think about how Nihilus spared Visas with 'the last shred of feeling that existed within him?' A man abandoned on Malachor when the planet died screaming around him, feeling only a resounding silence where the Force had flowed, trapped and alone and crushed alive beneath a gravity well and a desperate emptiness.

That man's anguish grows to devour a planet, and he finds a lone survivor prone in the wreckage, after the planet died screaming around her...

#kotor #kotor 2 #kotor ii #darth nihilus #visas marr #like i'm not saying anything that happened in that relationship was remotely okay #i'm just SAYING #he saw a kindred spirit #someone who might understand #even if sharing that understanding was far crueler than simply letting her die

[attonposting]

You ever think about what would happen if at key points of KotOR 2, certain characters got Force visions of what would happen on an opposite alignment playthrough?

Like take dark Bao-Dur or dark Mical, watching in despondency as their beloved General/teacher slips further and further into callous depravity, but stubbornly seeing visions of what the person they once knew would have done in their place. A light Exile having nightmares of cutting down the Jedi Masters in rage, of tearing their energy from them and feeling somehow fulfilled for it. A dark Exile dreaming of those Masters admitting that they were right, that the Council had been wrong, simply saying that they were glad to see them again, and then waking to bitter reality. Or light endgame Brianna seeing what she could have done to Visas in her blindness and jealousy... or Atton, who was just beginning to think he'd put that self behind him, seeing just how little it would have taken for him to go straight back with Mical...

#kotor #kotor 2 #kotor ii #you could get plenty of mileage out of this with kotor 1 too #the dark side ending is highkey nightmare fuel #or what can happen to juhani #i just don't have the same level of brainrot that consumes my every waking thought

[attonposting]

I think it's really important to distinguish that even a light side romanced-the-Exile Atton isn't motivated by goodness for its own sake. He has a stronger sense of responsibility than before, yes, and he'll get involved when the whim strikes him - and a light Atton will have more of those occasional chivalrous, or maybe just cocky, impulses than the keep-your-head-down man he was at the start of the game.

But he's still a scoundrel by nature, horribly jaded, very comfortable with problem-solving via murder, and he believes in neither the Jedi Code nor the pursuit of atonement. His morality is more Exile-centric than anything else, as in “I'm going to do this to protect them” or “I guess I'll do this stupid dangerous thing because they'll think I'm cool.” Love doesn't make Atton a better person, but it puts him through the motions (and if reciprocated, it'd make him a happier one, which would at least improve his behavior a bit.)

All in all, it's something where I think the game's alignment system can be misleading. People look at Atton mirroring the PC's alignment with that big beam of light behind him and go “he's a good guy now!” But nothing in-game really supports that. Does he approve of a LS Exile's actions? Yes, even if it confuses him and he's tsundere about it. Would he do the same thing in their shoes? Nope – that's why he's so inspired by them. Because they went through the same shit he did and still held onto the things he couldn't. Because he fought alongside Jedi in two wars, watched the pacifists cower as the galaxy burned and watched the war heroes turn into psychopaths, and he doesn't trust it at first, but this carved-up shell of a Jedi, the one who pulled the plug at kriffing Malachor V, is the closest thing he's ever seen to what the Jedi were supposed to be. Atton's portrait is gonna be pretty dang light sided while he's ranting at your Exile that all the Jedi who died on Malachor deserved what they got, and he means what he's saying. The game can stick him wherever on that bar it wants, but it's not serenity and goodwill that fills him, it's a messy morass of poison he's been choking down for years.

His arc is more about ceasing to run from himself, sorting out his feelings and his fears, and finally being able to move forward than it is about redemption. You figure he already had his big worldview shift years ago and made zero attempt to make up for any of what he did or mirror the grace he was shown, and, like... Atton's motivations start and stop with the Exile. Everyone else in the party has some other allegiance or some further goal that shapes their path. Bao-Dur wants to rebuild the planets destroyed in the war. Mira wants to reunite the families it broke. Atton wants to help the Exile, and if they're a lady, he wants to get together with her. That's all he wants out of life... unless he goes dark side, which gets ugly real fast.

While a dark Atton crashes straight back down to the bottom of the bar, I think the lightest Atton realistically gets is the grey background with a dusting of blue at his feet. It's like Kreia says – his potential lies downward. Dark Atton is terrifying, a proto-Sion, a hollowed-out obsessive shell of a man who can only feel anything through tearing Jedi down to his level. Light Atton is just a guy.

It's for this reason that I have trouble seeing him helping to rebuild the Jedi Order as canon implies. He never stopped hating the Order, and he has no stake in it anyway, only you – heck, if you look at becoming a Jedi as the pivotal moment in all of the Lost Jedi character arcs, Atton's decision to become a Jedi is so he can better protect the Exile. It's only a personal choice inasmuch as he's decided this is how he can live with himself, offering his life to someone who's truly proven to him that they're worth it. He's got nothing else anchoring him, to the point where I think he really is better off with the Exile than left to his own devices, even accounting for the influence warp and the probable imminent death. And I think it's telling that Kreia will only predict his future when he has motivations that don't include the Exile.

#atton rand #kotor #kotor 2 #kotor ii