random survivor rewrite thoughts that came to me at work
the theme of safety vs freedom at the heart of everything.
kata is safe, so long as bode keeps her isolated from the world and the atrocities he commits to protect her. she's safe, but not free. and bode is free to put himself in danger time and time again, because it's all for her.
cal is a free spirit, quite literally, roaming the galaxy fighting the good fight, with nothing tying him down--no home, no family, no people. and he's not *safe*--he constantly puts his life in danger without thinking twice, but at least he's free to do so.
dagan was *safe* in stasis, but he was a prisoner in every sense of the word, trapped in his own mind for hundreds of years. of course he craves freedom, of course he seizes it the moment he has it again, of course he'll burn down the galaxy to keep it. he isn't safe, but goddammit, he's free.
(and, arguably, santari gave up the potential freedom in a future with dagan, with tanalorr, for the safety of the jedi order. she made her choice and knew she had to live with it, and maybe she recognized that the "freedom" dagan promised wasn't all it was chalked up to be.)
(there are definitely otber examples, but the parallels with these characters drive me nuts)
and tanalorr is ostensibly both--a safe haven and freedom from the empire--but is it really? it's a graveyard of a planet stuck behind an impenatrable abyss. you can find your way there, sure, but good luck leaving if you don't know the way. but still, its allure is the promises it whispers to its visitors--*they can have both,* it says, *they just have to stay, stay, and never leave.*
