RepComm for the fandom meme
send me a fandom and I’ll — meme
softly, with a lot of feeling: I’ve been waiting for this moment.
lmaoo not really but yes, yes really. I am here and I am ready for this.
Thank you for sending this B’)
the character i least understand
Karen “What Is Abuse I Don’t Know Her″ Traviss
Ko Sai. I think, for the most part, she was written with very alien motivations, and it was fairly successful, at least in conveying that it was difficult if not impossible to relate with her on any level.
I’m sure if I spent more time thinking and writing about her I could maybe attempt to understand her character … but for the most part I don’t really “get” her, and I think that’s the point.
interactions i enjoyed the most
Mereel and Ordo are endlessly entertaining.
Any of the Nulls together, individually or clusters or all six in one room.
Mereel and Etain have had some very, very touching, emotionally deep moments — the kinds of scenes KT generally doesn’t allow any of her characters to have between two characters that aren’t romantically involved.
tbh this list is gonna be very long so to sum up: everyone with everyone else, when they’re allowed to be individual characters with separate personalities and motivations recognized, instead of twisted into very specific moral representations that KT pushes towards the end.
the character who scares me the most
Walon Vau is reasonably frightening, though really he should be. He is about as cold blooded of a killer as you’re going to get, and he doesn’t make threats, he makes promises. B’)
Plus he’s also very difficult to get into the mental space to write, because he’s a legitimate Bad Person, and trying to write characters like him can be difficult.
it’s also a good idea to maintain a healthy fear of the nulls, if only out of respect of their potential for sudden and extreme violence. They’re not as “unpredictable” as the text says, though.
the character who is mostly like me
mmm … actually, I’m gonna go with Kal. this is probably gonna garner some “whaaat? but you HATE him?”
Yes, I do hate him. but let me list some similarities lmao:
perpetual limp due to a bad ankle and persistent injury that never healed right / properly (partially kept as a constant reminder for a mistake)
short and angry, like all the time
compartmentalize everything and everyone
obsessive about caring for and protecting family, literally does everything for family
extremely secretive, to the point of never telling anyone the full story or full truth, everyone just get bits and pieces that seem complete. no one ever seems to realize this.
self sacrificing to the point of martyrdom, especially for family
these are all pretty negative, but … unlike Kal, I am actually self aware lmao and am working on these things, and have for the most part listened when other people criticize me so that I can continue to work on being better. it’s a daily process, you know, so I don’t hurt the family I care so much about.
Kal starts off terrible, and the writing implies that he might learn from it … but then instead of him learning and growing like everyone needs him to, the narrative instead makes excuses for him, everyone suffers, and Etain dies.
it’s unfortunate bc people like him exist, and you can’t coddle them if you want them to survive life. and yet everyone coddles Kal. Fandom, in general, coddles and makes excuses for abusive men. Full stop.
but like, here’s the thing:
He is a grown man. He is not a child. Don’t treat him like one.
I hate him partially bc the entire fandom excuses his behavior when it is, ultimately, inexcusable. He is not a child. He is a man, who has undertaken a huge group of extremely vulnerable people under his care, and he ultimately hurts them all. Severely. And TBH Kal deserves better than to be coddled and all his boo-boos kissed away by a fandom who says they care about the rest of the clan, but cannot see the sheer world-shattering damage Kal committed on them, regardless of intention.
You can like a character, and still hold them accountable. Fandom, somehow, seems incapable of this level of nuance, especially if they’re a father and shown as sympathetic in any way.
No but like, consider: he dyes his hair (and his skin, and his eyes) and has a full wardrobe for all situations.
He’s the (Daniel Craig) James Bond of the Grand Army of the Republic.
But I also headcanon Jilka and Besany to be incredibly fashion forward. Besany usually embodying the Career Professional woman, with very sharp, very perfectly tailored outfits that allow no room for nonsense.
Jilka also perfectly tailored, though her wardrobe is potentially more fun, visually, and incredibly flattering in all the right ways — but still very sharp, and very much professional when necessary.
one thing i dislike about my fave character
Mereel, light of my life, sun of my sky, salve of my wounded and broken heart, peace at the eye of my storm …
lmao. On a more serious note, I can’t outright say I dislike anything about Mereel, but his inability to share what really goes on in his head with … well, anyone. The only time we see a truthful admittance to weakness is that single moment with Etain, when he admits that he’s still human. That he’s not perfect.
Every other time, and I know I say this a lot, but every other time … he deflects any serious conversation with a joke — and usually a joke that the speaker wants to hear (even if they don’t know they want to hear it). He doesn’t let anyone in, not even his brothers, and that’s … got to be a lonely sort of suffering.
The kind of internalized suffering I’m sure he’s learned from Kal, both in the how to do it, and the reason he does it. bc Kal does internalize a lot of his suffering and doesn’t share it, burying weakness while in the same breath saying that he’s experiencing it and letting it go. He doesn’t, it’s just a different sort of self-delusion and deflection, and Mereel echoes it to a painful degree.
And then, of course, there’s Mereel learning that he needs to do it, bc Kal only accepts a certain kind of visual presence of mental illness and suffering, otherwise the person is “damaged” in some way and will never be “okay” for whatever understanding Kal has given okay. (view, for example, how he sees Ordo vs how he sees Mereel. He sees Mereel as stable, bc Mereel is extroverted, outgoing, and “always positive.” It’s not something intentional, but it’s still damaging, to all parties.)
one thing i like about my hated character
I might hate Kal Skirata, but I also love him. He’s a fantastic character. He is so so so flawed. His flaws make him interesting, and he tries. He tries so hard. He cares so much. He cares too much, even. His dedication and his love for his family are all encompassing, to the point that he can even be blinded to their faults because he loves so strongly.
But that love is a sword. One might even say it’s a triple-edged blade.
Love, as bright and fierce and consuming as it is, does not make someone right. It does not make their actions excusable when it leads to hurt, or even someone dying needlessly. It does not make one’s choices correct.
Love does not excuse abuse. And I really wish fandom would, at the very least, make the attempt to understand that.
a quote or scene that haunts me
Yes, I know how the Kaminoans did it. They used our genes against us, the ones that make us bond with our brothers, make us loyal, make us respect and obey our fathers—that’s what they manipulated to make us more likely to obey orders. They had to remove what made Jango a selfish loner, because that makes a bad infantry soldier, and you can tell from the Alpha ARCs that the Kaminoans weren’t wrong. But there’s one thing I don’t know yet—and that’s how they controlled the aging process. That’s the key. They robbed us of a full life span. But we will not be defeated by time, ner vod.
—ARC Trooper Lieutenant N-7—Mereel—in an encrypted transmission to Captain N-11, Ordo
a death that left me indifferent
mmm, Sev, actually. Like, in the game? I went through the whole grieving process after I finished Republic Commando.
The way it was written? idk. It did nothing for me.
This probably is an unpopular opinion lmao but honestly, that scene? did not hit me anywhere. it just kinda left a bad taste in my mouth … much like Etain’s scene, except that I was actually pissed off about Etain lmao to the point that I still rant about it bc of how little sense it made.
a character i wish died but didn’t
I mean I could go the obvious route and say Kal, but I actually don’t wish Kal died. I just wish he’d learn from his mistakes and people would point out how he’s hurting his family lmao?
who do I actually wish died? any of the nulls, even if they don’t die die. They’re presented as these entirely Untouchable cast, to the point that no one really expect any of the Nulls to so much as get a paper cut — because how can they? they’re presented as close to perfect (obviously not in the mental illness department, but they do inhabit this space of being invincible).
and for any of them, even temporarily, to die would have had incredible emotional impact — moreso than Etain’s. It would’ve really brought home the threat on all their lives in a way that Etain’s death could never convey.
but I’m asking nuance of a writer who clearly overwhelmed herself with a cast much larger than she could handle in writing, and who started all these incredible thematic arcs only to abandon them, forgotten, over the course of the series.
my ship that never sailed
I have a lot of ships, tbh, but it’s kinda like … weird? to talk about? as if I expected them to sail and then they just simply didn’t.
I don’t have any ships that I expected to happen or be recognized and simply didn’t. I mean … Fi read as if closeted, so I was kind of hoping he would maybe realize he was attracted to men, but then of course he was paired off with his caretaker, and my god there are so many consent problems with that.
