shittywebcomics:

personally, I don’t really give a shit how “empowered” a character is, because the term is absolutely meaningless in fiction. women have never been held back in any form of fiction, going all the way back to the time of greek myth with athena and aphrodite.

anyway, I would prefer to focus on actually interesting characters, my true benchmark for how well represented the female gender is in video games. bastila shan from knights of the old republic is in fact a powerful jedi who is personally responsible for helping the republic defeat the forces of evil before the game even begins, utilizing a unique ability called battle meditation which helps strengthen whichever faction she chooses. most light side jedi are insufferable goody two shoes, but bastila is way more complicated than that. in fact, to go into all the plot turns and character elements would take a really long time, and I didn’t get into contributing to a webcomics blog to do work. but um, I guess I could do a brief summary.

she’s introduced early in the game as your basic guide to the jedi, telling you all about the jedi order, the strictures and how they are expected to conduct themselves. like the other jedi, she was taken to be trained from a very early age, but she chafes under the authority of the order. some spoiler stuff happens that I won’t mention, mostly because it would take even longer to explain it all.

she’s a genuinely complicated and interesting character. she’s also pretty hot and kicks a lot of ass. she can be snooty and stuck up, but it’s much more within reason than morrigan from DA:O who keeps the snark dial cranked to 11. it would have been nice to see more of bastila in kotor2.