Thread:Sakaros/@comment-29301-20180903145046/@comment-29301-20191121185028

I thank you most sincerely for your feedback. As for your questions and a few of your other points:


 * Introduction, Dating Systems: That may very well have been an influence, but it wasn't a conscious one. My aims were twofold; to spell out the story's temporal position relative to the games, and to drive home the point that this is not in continuity with the movies (hence "Age of the Republic" instead of "Before the Battle of Yavin").


 * Kaevee: I'm glad you think her character worked. Writing her was a serious exercise in balance, and I had anxieties about it from time to time. I had to keep her from being too incompetent, too morose, too whiny, etc. The worst thing that could happen would be for the reader to throw up his/her hands and ask why she's the protagonist at all.
 * As for the laigrek, I myself was rather amused when I first read Grim Tidings and found that your own series' starry-eyed Padawan was also going to have a bizarre pet. I considered having the laigrek survive longer into the series, but it would be a chore to be always contriving ways to fit it into fight scenes. Plus, I thought killing it off fit with the theme about how Kaevee has to move on from her past.


 * Atton and Droids: One of the things I wrestled with in this story was who thinks of droids as "it" and who doesn't. It didn't help matters when I combed through TSL and found that it's inconsistent on this; here he calls T3 an "it", and here a "he". I therefore thought that it would be acceptable to be inconsistent on purpose in this case, though it seems I was mistaken.
 * This is somewhat related: I'll admit, I was apprehensive about what choices to make for how I alter the prose based on whose POV it is. So when the story follows Silbus, it takes after his blustering, theatrical mode of speech (which, as you may have discerned, I perhaps enjoyed too much). Another example which you may have noticed is that Atton-Prose never (or almost never) uses semicolons, but Kaevee-Prose does. I never felt like I'd completely found my footing with little decisions like that.


 * Other Characters: I'm of the opinion that Atris' presence is one of the weaker parts of this story, and Visas as well. By the time I began to think this, however, I was so far into the process that altering the plot so they'd have more things to do, or adding more scenes which could shed light on their personalities, would have set me back I don't know how many months. One more danger when dealing with a story of such length.


 * Brianna: To be honest, I did consider adding her to the party in the backstory, but I couldn't think of any interesting way for her to fit, either in said backstory or in the present of this series. Way back in my earliest brainstormings, I even considered using her as the protagonist before I settled on Kaevee. But until and unless I come up with any good ideas for her, she's simultaneously alive and dead - Schrodinger's Albino.
 * I'll give you a peek behind the scenes at something similar. In earlier drafts and outlines, before Silbus was added to the story at all, the other main Sith villain besides Visas was going to be, of all people, Mical. I was gonna have him either chasing down the heroes too or else holding the fort down at Trayus Academy. I'd never read a fan fiction where he turned into a dark side minion, so I felt like being contrarian and giving it a whirl... But in the end, I could not think of anything actually interesting to do with him or his personality; so I put Silbus in his place, leaving Mical in narrative limbo for the time being.


 * Cole Terrick: I did take the name from Booster Terrik, but no ancestral link is actually intended. I was just trying to think of a normal-Joe-kinda name that still sounded Star Wars-y.


 * Big Picture, Point 2: Yes, the reason for Atton's defection is one of many things left deliberately ambiguous. I hope those ambiguities didn't prove a distraction. As for Revan and the rest of the All-Star KotOR Games Cast, most of them won't be appearing in person for a little while.


 * Prison Refresher: Ah, yes, it seems I misstepped there. See, I thought "refresher" referred to a bathroom in itself rather than literally just a toilet, so what I pictured in my head was a door leading to the refresher. You know, I know it's another galaxy and shit, but sometimes it does bug me how Star Wars has these goofy names for things that exist in real life. (It's not paper, it's flimsiplast.)


 * Dialogue-Narrative Thing: Yeah... I think I do have a problem there. To be honest, I have no idea why the Hell I started writing dialogue like that. I've never seen anyone else do it that way.


 * Unknown Regions: Yes, I stole that from Darth Krayt. I don't like that I did it, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

I want to ask you, what's your take on what I did with Mira? In TSL, having her join your party and then turning to the dark side results in Kreia predicting that she'll become a predator; and she's had six years for her personality to change. But I'm still curious as to whether it's jarring, the way I wrote her in this story.

Again, thanks so much for reading.