Thread:Sakaros/@comment-29301-20180903145046/@comment-104549-20191119234700

Preliminarily, an apology—your uploading Torchbearer unfortunately coincided with my deciding to learn Daz3D and starting a new playthrough of Final Fantasy X. The time this has taken is not a reflection on the story.

Now then, feedback. These will be in no logical order:
 * First and foremost, it felt like a Star Wars story; it's an intangible quality, hard to nail down, but Torchbearer has it.
 * The introduction with the various dating systems reminds me of the proclamation at Midnight Mass on Christmas—was that the inspiration?
 * Characters
 * Kaevee was a fascinating choice of main character, not only because she got so little screen time in KotOR II, but also because she's kind of helpless. But she worked as a character, and was a good foil for Atton and Atris.  I also really like that she doesn't speak Huttese; we're so used to Jedi being bilingual or more that it was a good, subtle way to show she's bush league compared to even ordinary Jedi Knights.
 * From its first appearance on the Ebon Hawk, I thought of the laigrek as "evil Gizmo".
 * I think you nailed Atton's characterization. The pazaak counting got a little repetitive after a while—you might've mixed that up more with doing maintenance or other humdrum tasks in his head.  Intriguingly, all the non-original characters are largely static—Visas and Atris don't seem to change at all, and Atton only softens a little toward Kaevee.
 * As a single exception to nailing Atton, there's at least one point where his narrative refers to Ecksee as "he" rather than "it"; I thought that didn't fit his anti-droid philosophy, unless he's softened toward droids and is maintaining his external gruffness toward them as a species of hypocrisy.
 * I suspect Lord Silbus was an author favorite? I found his internal narrative a little ponderous the first time around, but over time I began to appreciate how it supports his characterization; it's the same reason Narasi's internal narrative has contractions and Tirien's doesn't.  He was a much richer character than Visas, despite her posing an arguably greater threat to the protagonists throughout.
 * I was intrigued that you took KotOR II as hard canon for your story in that Brianna (apparently) wasn't in Meetra's party. Not good or bad, just an interesting authorial choice.
 * None of the others really stood out to me, although I think Cole Terrick (related to Booster?) was convincing as a normal Joe way, way out of his league. Speaking of which, I really liked the aftermath of the Sith attack among the Republic soldiers, and how they had to deal with the grievous wounds lightsabers leave.
 * Big picture
 * The story works and flows logically. The Big Damn Battle is sufficiently epic and well-constructed.
 * You've left yourself some good sequel hooks, not least resolving many unanswered questions about Revan, Bastila, Meetra, HK-47, T3-M4, and Mandalore (and potentially Brianna). It also wasn't a hundred percent clear to me why Atton turned on Meetra.  I like the subtle implication that Atton is the chink in Meetra's armor.
 * Some grammatical and structural things:
 * Far and way, what threw me most was dialogue-narrative-dialogue-narrative (or more) in a single paragraph; I know I've probably done it once or twice, but it's atypical structure (as opposed to D-N, N-D, or at most D-N-D), and seeing it so often was jarring. It went from jarring to completely throwing my focus when you did it with more than one speaker.
 * Once or twice you used second person in narrative.
 * Star Wars-specifically, most of your references and allusions were solid and enriched the narrative—probably part of why it felt like a Star Wars story. Specific thoughts:
 * Trandoshans only have three fingers, not five.
 * The prison of Star's End wasn't built until the Golden Age of the Republic—I know, because I've had to check my own instinct to use "Star's End!" as an exclamation more than once.
 * Measurements in feet are at once easier for the (American) reader to understand and distinctly not Star Wars-y. By the same token, "off the radar" sounded Earthy too; I know that, but I would've gone with "off the sensors".  Maybe just a personal preference, though.
 * I loved Atton's definition of "Jedi truth".
 * I don't remember who made the observation about the "unknown" in "Unknown Regions" not being synonymous with "empty", but was that a deliberate allusion to Darth Krayt?
 * Miscellanea
 * I liked the whole side mission about stocking up the Ebon Hawk; it's a reminder of the little details in the galaxy far, far away, and you know my love for minutia and realism.
 * Speaking of realism, though, if they were in transparent cells on the Republic cruiser, that might have made using the refresher a bit awkward...
 * Atton's internal snarkiness usually made me chuckle, but him thinking the words "Force mana" was a bridge too far for me—I get the concept you were going for, but "mana" is an out-of-universe concept that wrenched me right out of the story when I read it; my notes to myself about it actually end with an interrobang.

Overall, I enjoyed it. It was solidly "Gray and Grey Morality", but Atton & Friends were believable as the Gray of the two. If it becomes a series, you'll have plenty to work with, and I'll look forward to reading the next installments.