From Central California and Northern England, two aspiring writers natter and share a blog. We like to talk about our disparate but oh-so-similar lives, offer opinions on literature and movies... and endlessly reminisce about Bioware RPG's.


We hope you haven't had enough of our disingenuous assertions. If you have, please don't hit us.

Saturday, March 19, 2011

Quoth Darth Revan...


I know what you're thinking - once again these chuckleheads are talking about Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Talking about it with barely contained tears in their eyes, talking about it like it's their first wife who died tragically and who was also their childhood pet. Talking until either they die from talking about it too much, or else Bioware hires them to write a second sequel.

Every time I write a piece of fanfic, I tell myself, that's it. No more of this, now. I'm 26 years old, and it's time I put all my efforts into writing actual fiction, instead of flash fiction about Jedi knights.

Well, I've given up trusting myself on that one, but with a ny luck, this one will be my last fanfic. If so, I'm glad it's about Revan, and extremely glad it's a collaboration with Anthony Lowe AKA Knightfall 1138. See, it was Knights of the Old Republic that brought me to Bioware, and indeed to Star Wars, and then to fanfiction, and then to writing fanfiction, and to my transatlantic friendship with Knight, and to writing, full stop.

All those things will no doubt continue to be big parts o f my life, but I think it may be time for me to leave KotOR alone, and shut up about it.


Over the past week or so, Knight and I have been writing two short stories (which link up together, much like Voltron), in the 1st person and from the perspectives of (almost) all of KotOR's party members, remembering moments from the game, and giving a 'eulogy' to Revan.
The Summer of Applejacks. Notice how Zaalbar is gleefully preparing to decapitate Mission with a machete in this picture.



Here is Knight's - 'Of the Sacrifice'
And then mine - 'Of the Fall'


They're just little scenes, but we enjoyed writing them quite a bit, maybe because they allowed us to say 'goodbye' to a fantastically good Star Wars character, who we now accept is almost certainly not coming back from 'the unknown regions or something, I think he said he was out of cocoa' (thank you again, Obsidian).

It's about Revan - his adventure or her second fall to the dark side depending on which of the two versions you read. But it's told in the 'voices' of the other crewmembers and really (not so subtly) it's about how much Knight and I cherish that videogame, and miss those characters.

If you miss that game too and happen to read it, I hope you notice some of the little nostalgic details we put in there, and go, 'Oh yeah, I loved that conversation / planet / scene too'.

If not, thanks for reading this, the latest in my series of overly sentimental theses about pop-culture and computer games. One thing that I love about KotOR, and its sequel, is how beloved they are, by so many people. When I was looking for a picture for this article, I found hundreds of drawings of Revan and the rest, some of them slightly disturbing and most of them a bit odd, but all of them showing the same love we're trying to reflect with these stories. When we posted the first chapters, they were swamped and covered by competing KotOR stories within hours. Annoying, but wonderful.

I love that people are still going on about this stuff. You know that Revan will make appearances of some kind in the upcoming MMORPG The Old Republic, as he already has in the adverts for it.

But you won't get anywhere sitting around here, chatting up old men all day! Shoo! We should return our thoughts to the mission, please, you know? I will leave you be. I'm here, if you want something done right! You got it. Whatever HK said. Dwooooo.



Once again, here are the links- Of the Sacrifice, and Of the Fall.

We have two chapters each up so far - there will be about five each eventually, and will finish uploading soon.

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