Thread:MPK/@comment-3528596-20151216222036/@comment-29301-20151231234328

Perhaps I should clarify some things (necessitating an edit of said chapter, which screw it I can do that later eventually). The Force bond schtick is fine, and even the romance (either one) is fine, but only provided it takes place within the timespan of the actual game itself, the mission for the Star Forge and whatnot. What I meant to say, about Revan's character arc being altered by what we experience in TSL, is that any romance having to do with him detracts from him if it persists long past the events of KotOR and particularly his disappearance. It's okay if he smooches with Bastila or whatever before that. But after the "extension" of his mission by the whole True Sith shindig, the only proper route for either romance subplot (in my opinion, obviously) is to have it go unfulfilled or be cut short. He's got to disappear his angsting arse off into the Unknown Regions. Ain't nobody got time for chicks when he's got that to do. Which is why I really like the little scene in TSL where Carth talks to Bastila about Revan. It transfers the overall melancholy (if that is the right word) of TSL into their situation in a way that doesn't feel forced or artificial.

On another note, back in the day I encountered a surprising number of fan fics whose authors thought it would be a great idea to write Revan and Bastila having a thing as far back as the Mandalorian Wars or even before that, because they knew each other as kids or some malarkey. I find such a move to be more witless and out-of-place than even the clumsiest and most meandering post-KotOR romance.

As for your second question, well, in my own fan writings dealing with Revan (of which I only ever got around to writing one, Through Glass), I deliberately wrote the character as a woman for reasons similar to that - I think. At any rate, I observed a trend in which my fanfic ideas (written and unwritten) all seemed to focus on tortured, brooding male Jedi, and for whatever reason I figured that writing a female protagonist for a change would force me to think more carefully about how I wrote her so that she wouldn't become a carbon copy of others I had done. Another reason was to sidestep the whole romance issue, since as I mentioned in my second essay I don't have the skill or inclination to include such a subplot; so I made her a woman and just ignored the question of Carth. As for the actual content of your second question, though, I haven't thought about it much lately, but for some reason I do have a vague intuition that yes, the relationship between Revan and Bastila, Force bond stuff and all, works a lot better (read: is just more interesting and less "I-could-see-that-from-miles-away") as a sort of Platonic love (or sisterly love, or whatever you'd call it) between two women than what you get in the conventional Dude-Revan playthrough. So yeah.