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will never get over the fact that i won't be a dark-haired teenage boy sharing a relationship with a light-haired teenage boy that surpasses love in every way (what comes after soulmates, again?)

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*At the dinner table*

Tamaki: Mommy, can you pass me the salt?

Kyoya: here you go, Daddy.

Haruhi, in her head: Am I the child in this situation?

Haruhi: Tamaki, I wasn't aware when I married you that we also married Kyoya

Tamaki, dramatically: don't tell me you didn't know Kyoya and I are a two in one package?

Kyoya: I thought I couldn't leave you alone with this idiot, so I strung along. There is no better motivator than self interest.

Haruhi: eh? Whatever.

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Just thinkin' about how showing your companions the Force in KotOR II is about healing, about teaching them to confront their traumas and cope with them in a healthy way, and on a Dark Side run, it's about yanking on that trauma and twisting it until it becomes all that they are.

Atton is a goddamn mess of a person. The war wrecked him and shaped him into a sadistic monster who committed mega war crimes until he met the one Jedi who forced him to see what he'd become. And instead of taking any responsibility, he bolted, coping by drowning out the world and doing his damnedest not to feel. The Exile forces him to stop running and confront himself – to face all those emotions he chopped up into little pieces and wore like masks, his guilt, his hate, his fear. I don't think Atton ever thinks of himself as a Jedi; him learning to use the Force is him learning not to be afraid of it, and himself, anymore. Atton decides he's going to finally try to do something with his life – maybe not for goodness' sake, but because he owes that last Jedi that much. And a DS Exile extinguishes whatever seeds of decency she planted, destroys his last remaining shreds of idealism, and convinces him not to fear himself in a much, much scarier way.

Bao-Dur is a genuinely good guy, but he's shackled by guilt. It's not straightforward, and it'd maybe be easier for him to deal with it if it was - Bao-Dur simultaneously regrets and doesn't regret what he did. He believes... not necessarily that Malachor had to happen, but that the war needed to end. But he's horrified that it was his hands and his mind that conceived the Mass Shadow Generator, can never banish the sight of so much death at his hand. And he can't reconcile how what drove him in the war was pure hatred, and the galaxy treats him like his service was a noble thing when he knows it was anything but. That rage hasn't left him even though he tried to move on and turn his hands towards kinder things. Through the Force, he's able to move on and at last find peace – but a DS Exile convinces him to give into his anger and let retribution rule him completely.

Mira is at her heart a scared little girl trying desperately to prove to herself that she's tough and capable – that she's over everything she's lost, that she's not alone and afraid. She tries not to care about anyone, because the galaxy certainly doesn't give a shit, but she does despite herself. A LS Exile teaches her how to come to terms with the things that hound her, and in that, find true strength. A DS Exile teaches her to cover up that fear by preying on others so that nobody ever has the chance to hurt her again, and convincing herself that hardness means strength until it becomes true.

Brianna has tried to find purpose in servitude, but she's isolated in an otherwise tight-knit unit. She's desperate to prove herself, but she's never good enough for anyone, and she knows why she continues to fail even as she's unable to let the source go. A LS Exile teaches her to transcend those concerns and be true to herself above all else – not only to follow her own path, but to find strength and value in herself, for the first time in her life. What Atris thinks, what her sisters think, is immaterial. A DS Exile doesn't free her from her mindset of servitude so much as twist her loyalties. That Brianna instead becomes convinced she's better than her sisters, better than Atris, and takes her anger out on her ex-family and beyond – becoming driven by scorn, seeing nothing but the failures of the Jedi to live up to their own standards.

Mical lost his future at a young age – something that probably saved his life, considering everything that happened in the following years, but which left him trailing in the shadow of the Jedi seeking answers nobody could give. He wants to believe in the Jedi Order, but recent history has left him with far too much evidence to the contrary. A LS Exile acknowledges the flaws of the Jedi teachings, even personifies those flaws through their history, but convinces him through their actions that their core still rings true and is worth striving for. A DS Exile utterly demolishes his faith in the same manner. Mical takes the Exile's fall as yet another betrayal by the Jedi, but it's the hardest hitting yet - this sheer debasement of the figure he idolized most. It finally extinguishes his idealism, even gnawing away at the compassion that defines him until he's yet another soulless cog in the Republic machine.

And Visas is already attuned to the Force, but a LS Exile gives her hope for the galaxy and teaches her of the beautiful little moments of connection and the greatness people can achieve together, where she'd become convinced that life was pain and the only thing any being could aspire to was an end to the suffering. What she witnesses is strong enough for her to come to terms with the death of Katarr and choose to keep going despite all that's happened. And a DS Exile... doesn't. They reaffirm her desolation and then give her the callous end she sought.

The Exile themselves went for ten years avoiding connections, and then the Force thrusts them back into the role of a leader – a role they've got decidedly mixed feelings about, when it was literally their empathy that caused their self-destruction in the Mandalorian Wars. Major YMMV on how you characterize your Exile's motives, but the way I saw it, a DS Exile isn't going to be hurt again. They're not going to get attached to their soldiers – they've made that mistake before and it brought them nothing. They know how to say the right words to get people to fight and to die for them, and that's all it is. And for a LS Exile... they know the danger of caring, but they won't allow it to stop them from living any longer, not after they've spent ten years dead to themselves. And it's the human connections they form that heals them, that allows for them to touch the Force once more.

Obviously a DS Exile is bad and they should feel bad. For a LS one, though - the Jedi Council's repudiation of your powers at the end of the game used to really bother me until this part clicked. You're all a bunch of broken people who find each other and learn to move on. Even if you're drawing them in with freaky black hole space magic, they are genuinely better off for your presence, and it's because of who you are as a person, not any way you've molded them through the Force.

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bastila watching amnesiac!revan "discover" how to use force lightning

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This is my emotional support assassin droid.

Revan, about HK-47

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To draw memes > everything

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I'm not sure you'll get the message

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Something I don’t see talked about often, probably due to how old KotOR is and the big Revan reveal overshadowing everything, is the excellent buildup for the Rakata.

First, we see the symbol of the Sith Empire on Taris. It’s a nice little design, but there’s no indication of what it means or how significant it is yet.

Then there’s an oddly similar symbol in the Dantooine ruins, which have been sealed for millennia. I’m sure that’s normal. And you talk to the droid, who only identifies an ancient species as “the Builders“, nothing more.

The buildup works best if you follow the intended order of Tatooine-> Kashyyyk-> Manaan-> Korriban. It’s on Tatooine you first see statues of the Rakata, left ruined in a cave, and the Builders are again referenced in the Sand People’s history.

On Kashyyyk, you find a computer projecting a hologram of this species, supervising another terraforming project. The species still isn’t identified, but this is the first complete representation of them so far.

On Manaan, there’s more evidence of the Rakata tampering with planets since before the Republic. Then on Korriban, you’re given the Box. You talk to a member of this unknown species, whose mind is imprisoned within and can’t recall very much. He speaks to you in the same language as the Dantooine droid, which Revan couldn’t understand at the time, foreshadowing how Revan’s memories are returning as this happens.

(I’m actually a little annoyed the character is named “Rakatan“ instead of something like “Prisoner“ because that name isn’t known yet, but anyway…)

Soon enough, you finally get to the Star Forge after gathering five maps. We all know what it looks like now, but most of us didn’t during the first playthrough.

It looks like those damn symbols. The mysterious superweapon everyone’s been searching for is on the Sith’s banner. Revan, you motherfucker.

You see the monument of the Rakata’s infinite power, then you get sent crashing down onto their homeworld for the first encounter with living, modern Rakata.

They used to rule the galaxy. Now they have swords and do spinny kicks.

Revan, you’d better be careful with that space station.

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This comic was brought to you by the suggestion of Vrook kicking his feet as he and the Jedi Council rearrange the letters from Revan's name in order to give them a new alias post brainwashing.

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while everyone else plays modern games with modern problems i have time traveled back to 2003 and am having a great time in kotor. i have one companion so far. every twenty minutes the game pans to him making a constipated face for thirty seconds and i say 'okay carth what's up, you've been sulking around behind me looking SO much like a guy who wanted to be asked what was up that the game noticed' and carth says STOP TALKING TO ME I HAVE TRUST ISSUES and i'm like 'ok that's fine' and he's like WELL IF WE MUST TALK and then goes on telling me about his trust issues for five more minutes. verisimilitude in gaming

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Would you slap Malak’s bald head?

Reblog to slap his bald head.

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on his way to find his true love

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watched the episode and i fear i won’t be okay for an extremely long amount of time. it’s the best and worst thing i’ve ever watched, i’m devastated beyond belief

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The way Eremin convo ended up more romantic than Eremika's tho 😂😂😂