[HARD CONTACT] Chapter 2: Zee arrived at chapter 2???

Did I actually arrived at chapter 2 in book blogging? XDDD I can't believe it. Someone please have a beer with me in celebration. 

 

One of the thing I hate uploading character theories on tumblr, because when I acquire new informations from the source material, or I sit down to read the source material with an entirely different headspace, my vision about the character changes, and I can't delete those posts permanently.

 

I remember writing an analysis in the past about Arligan Zey where I mentioned how Karen Traviss writes her characters either with civilian mentality or soldier, no in between, and I put Etain also into the soldier category, because I at that time interpreted some of her actions in Hard Contact as PTSD reactions. With my curren headspace, I don't think Etain is behaving like a soldier, or written as a past-child soldier (she is not, but she felt like she was written as such!). I made the mistake that I took Etain's narrative about herself at face-value what is her role in the Jedi Order, but after rereading those parts in the book, I realized that there is so much more in Etain that she is willing to acknowledge. 

But what about Arligan Zey? Because I put Arligan Zey into the soldier category too in the past and in some way I still think he is written soldier-ly like, but I want know for sure if my vision had change about him too with the time, or remained the same. Zey is introduced in this chapter and we won't see him again until the second book so every infomation crumb counts. :D

[Brainjuice] Repcomm Force lore is based on KOTOR

My attempt to save one of my post from one of my dead account. In any case i tag this as [brainjuice], just to be on the safeside, this is a theory of mine. 

 -- RepComm's Force lore is based on KOTOR --

I just want to share my theory how the Force works in RepComm universe. 

Topics: 

─── Force is a SPECTRUM

─── Force doesn't give a damn about morality (+ Etain character study)

─── Dark & Light = BALANCE

•───────•°•❀•°•───────•
Vau was all brutality and expedience, as clear an example of the dark side for a Jedi as any she could imagine. And yet there was a total absence of conscious malice in him. She should have sensed anger and murderous intent, but Vau was just filled with … nothing. No, not nothing: he was actually calm and benign. He thought he was doing good work. And she saw her supposed Jedi ideal in him—motivated not by anger or fear, but by what she thought was right. She now questioned everything she'd been taught.

Dark and light are simply the perpetrator's perception. How can that be right?

How can Vau's passionless expedience be morally superior to Ski rata's anger and love?

-- Etain Tur-Mukan's POV, Republic Commando: Triple Zero, chapter 10
•───────•°•❀•°•───────•

The first thing that made me realized that RepComm is playing in the KOTOR universe is how Etain sensing Vau and Skirata (non-force sensitive people) in the Force. 

 

In Knight of the Old Republic universe, the Force is a SPECTRUM and not black & white thing with two extreme ends like in the trilogies. 

•─────⋅☾ Force is a SPECTRUM ☽⋅─────•

In the KOTOR companion Force Alignment you can see what place's the character have in the Force. Of course the non-Force user character cannot use the Force and it shouldn't affect them, but what it is actually affect them in the gameplay is morality. Basically Carth Onasi or Canderous Ordo having respectively Light Side and Dark Side Alignment gives you a clue that values these characters are representing and what is their preferred interaction through out the story either with them or NPCs. 

(Also you need to know that Bioware made tons of rpgs in the DnD universe in those days. They couldn't use the DnD Alignment chart, so they had to come up with a new morality system for a Star Wars game.) 

The way I see it, in RepComm universe, Karen Traviss kept the spectrum, dropped the morality alignments and focused on EMOTIONS:

-- Vau doesn't get "Dark Side points" for torturing people because he has no extreme emotions attached to it therefor Etain feels him Light Side aligned. Walon is sure about himself, he knows what he does servers the greater good. His mind and will is unshakeable. He can show his care but you wish he didn't. -> by this logic: If Vau tortures people out of sadism and joy, he would get Dark Side points. But because he tortures them for the greater good in mind, he doesn't get corrupted.  

-- Kal often making hot-headed decisions that is resulting in hurting people therefore he gets Dark Side points. Kal is constantly angry when he thinks about his sons and how the world is treating them bad. He is angry, he succumb to it, he gains strength from it. His armor is literally vengeance. -> If Kal was a Force-sensitive, he would be a perfect Dark Side user actually. 

-- Etain also sensed the Nulls Dark Side aligned because they are very disturbed and very emotional under the disciplined surface -->But Doctor, I'm not mentally ill, I just joined the Dark Side of the Force! 

-- Arligan Zey would sacrifice his two member of the Order to save millions of clones (saving Etain and Fulier was not priority) and this would make him remain on the Light Side because he is pragmatic about it. No emotions. He is also a greater good-guy, just like Walon Vau. 

•─────⋅☾ Force doesn't give a damn about morality ☽⋅─────•

Karen Traviss stated multiple times that she is not fond of Black & White polarized mindset regarding worldbuilding because she prefers realism where people are nuanced. Basically you can't just put characters into only Light and only Dark , and this is why I also have problems assigning DnD morality alignments to RepComm characters. It's futile. I gave up. 

Now take a look at this description from KT's blog and then back to Vau: 

•───────•°•❀•°•───────•
I realise that kids read my books, so on balance I believe that showing violence and warfare for the ugly, terrible things that they are does children more good than feeding them sanitised and frankly dangerous notions that decapitating someone with a lightsaber doesn't hurt and is okay because the "good guys" do it. 

-- Karen Traviss, karentraviss.com

•───────•°•❀•°•───────•

If the Light Side of the Force is totally okay with killing and torturing people, then you have to make it sense somehow. Therefor the Force is not give a damn about societal morality. And in my interpretation this is what she meant by this: You can literally make up thousands of excuses why is it okay to kill people. It doesn't make them less dead. Or less tortured. 

So to make sense of this loophole, - in my depiction - she made a twist: KT made the Force totally okay - or at least indifferent - with killing and torturing people = " it's okay for good guys decapitating people". Because the Force doesn't corrupt them! They do it from self-defence, they do it with clear mind, it doesn't matter. 

•───────•°•❀•°•───────•
Ripping into Orjul's soul had been even harder than outright physical violence. She had stolen his conviction from him, which was no great evil until set in the context of the fact that he would, she knew, die very soon without even the comfort of his beliefs, broken and abandoned and alone.

Why am I doing this? Because men are dying.

When do the ends cease to justify the means?

She vomited until she was convulsed by dry heaves. Then she filled the basin with cold water and plunged her head into it. When she straightened up and her vision cleared, she looked into a face she recognized. But it wasn't hers: it was the hard, long face of Walon Vau.

Everything I've been taught is wrong.

-- Etain Tur-Mukan's POV, Republic Commando: Triple Zero, chapter 10

•───────•°•❀•°•───────•

Unless they feel regret, shame, anger, or similiar extreme emotions. 

•───────•°•❀•°•───────•

“So you still don't find it any easier, then,” said Darman.

“What?”

“Giving in to anger. You know. Violence.”

“Oh, any Jedi Master would have been proud of me. I did it all without anger. Anger makes it the dark side. Being serene makes it okay.”

Darman & Etain, Republic Commando: Triple Zero
•───────•°•❀•°•───────•

Etain had a goal in mind. Meeting with clones gave her a life purpose too. Something she lacked before. This is why she was able to torture that person without any emotional attachment. Exactly like Vau (or Zey existing with his pragmatic mindset). Having a greater good in mind. 

•───────•°•❀•°•───────•
Etain had struggled for years with her own anger and resentment. The choices were to be a good Jedi or a failed Jedi, with the assumption—sometimes unspoken, sometimes not—that failure meant the dark side awaited.

But there was a third path: to leave the Order.
•───────•°•❀•°•───────•

Etain was always lacked of self-esteem as a padawan and according to this segment, and all her life she believed if she fails being a Jedi she will be corrupted, she'll become evil, and most likely she will be killed or jailed. By failing, her life will be over. And now she meets with people who are - according to the Jedi textbooks - supposed to be the enemy of everything she believed in and the Force doesn't punish them for doing evil deeds. Something like this can really fuck up the mind. 

This encounter with the prisoner, the very encounter with the clones, with the Skiratas, with Vau changed everything she knew about the Force.

 

 

•─────⋅☾  Dark & Light = BALANCE ☽⋅─────•

So I don't see why KT couldn't use spectrum with the Force too. It's surely interesting to think about, because it means that in RepComm universe, Grey Jedi is a thing!

Originally the Grey Jedi are everyone who are not Dark Side users but opposed the views of the Jedi Order in anyway and refused to accept the hierarchy and rigid traditions. Qui-Gon Jinn is a Grey Jedi, probably the first in canon in this definition. In this definition in RepComm Bardan Jusik is also a Grey Jedi too because he left the Order. 

But they started to use this term for a Force users too who are wielding both Light Side and Dark Side of the Force, like Darth Revan, protagonist of KOTOR. (Or my personal all time favorite Jedi Master later in the rebel era, Kyle Katarn).

Meaning, this universe doesn't treat Dark Side as the ultimate CORRUPTION and Light Side as BALANCE in the world. It looks like that KT gained inspiration from the Eastern cultures and religions where together Dark & Light = BALANCE. 





Yin and yang are a concept that originated in ancient Chinese philosophy that describes how opposite or contrary forces may create each other by their comparison and are to be seen as actually complementary, interconnected, and interdependent in the natural world, and how they may give rise to each other as they interrelate to one another.

I'm fond of Eastern religions (not follower, just personal interest) and philosophies, so I never found it disturbing or blasphemy when I noticed the similiarities in the books. 

But it definitely feels like that the Jedi Order here doesn't hold the ultimate knowledge about the Force. They are just one Jedi sect that interpret its working somehow, this particular one became the popular one, made a school around it and passed it generations to generations. This explains that the books mentions multiple little orders with different teachings and traditions, who didn't wish to participate in the One Big Centralized MegaChurch. So I can totally see that they have different approach about the Force too.


Ok so, conclusion or what, I just wanted to point it out that RepComm universe uses different rules regarding the Force than the original movies and one of the reason I wanted to do this because I always hear takes how "the books butchering the Jedi lore". It's not butchering. Just takes inspiration from a different continuity. 

There are several clues in the books that Republic Commando plays in the Knights of the Old Republic universe, starting from how Kal named Ordo ORDO, or Roly Melusar's background from Imperial Commando: 501st, who is from Dromund Kaas, which used to be the seat of the Sith Empire thousands of years ago. 

In any case, I wrote this, because I wanted to make sense how exactly the Force works in these books. 

[HARD CONTACT] Chapter 2: Intelligence Officer Arligan Zey

Clone personnel have free will, even if they do follow orders. If they couldn’t think for themselves, we’d be better off with droids—and they’re a lot cheaper, too. They have to be able to respond to situations we can’t imagine. Will that change them in ways we can’t predict? Perhaps. But they have to be mentally equipped to win wars. Now thaw those men out. They have a job to do.

—Jedi Master Arligan Zey, intelligence officer

Secure briefing room, Fleet Support, Ord Mantell, three standard months after Geonosis 
•───────•°•❀•°•───────•

So I mentioned a here that I find Arligan Zey a little bit written-as-a-soldier character. Not because he actually is a war-veteran or something. But for me, Zey insantly give me the impression of a very pragmatist person.

I want to talk about this Chapter 2 intro quote a lot regarding how he speaks about the clones, but I will examine this from a different angle later. Now let's concentrate on the title INTELLIGENCE OFFICER. 

Arligan Zey is a very interesting case, we don’t know his background, we don’t know what role he had in the Jedi Order before the Clone Wars started, but when we meet him in the books, he takes the role of an Intelligence Officer.

In the old canon/Legends, the closest the Jedi Order has for “intelligence officers” are the Jedi Sentinels and their sub specializations, the Jedi Shadows, who are skilled in infiltration, intel gathering, sabotaging, and often dancing in the fine line between Light and Dark side.

Master Zey isn’t named as such in the books, but he already acts like he has experience in such things, despite never leading an army before or participating in a war. This theory about Arligan Zey being a Jedi Shadow is my similiar "hear me out" like how I think Republic Commando is plays in the same universe as Knights of the Old Republic. (Jedi Shadows were introduced in this Universe too)