#pallon

I've just had way too many feelings recently about redemption arcs and how frequently they're limited to alloromantic characters, and how being alloromantic in itself is used as a plot device that allows them to ~find their goodness~ or humanity or whatever bullshit

I already have it planned that he leaves the Sith to join the Jedi so he'd be a perfect candidate; even in the original idea he was going to leave everyone behind so it was never redemption-through-romance, but it would mean so much more to me to allow that kind of story for an aromantic character.

I still have a million feelings about his relationship with Vette; my headcanoned version of the SW story has so many parallels and mirrors to her and their dynamic is what I'm looking forward to most in the whole story, but every time I think of it in a romantic context it gets so tropey and skirts so close to story elements that I hate

Also I have a million feelings about aro- and ace-spectrum characters in the Jedi order since the series is WAY TOO STUCK ON focusing the conflict of being a Jedi around romantic/sexual relationships.  He faces a lot of struggle and turmoil when he joins the order, but it revolves around his history as a Sith, and the fact that the very survival mechanisms that kept him alive so long in the Sith are what he needs to unlearn the most. 

oh my god OKAY TADPOLES IT IS

Cyrelle was always a climber.  There wasn’t much in the way of furniture to clamber over in her parents’ tiny apartment, which meant there was a lot of running off into Coruscant’s grubby pipe systems—which she was very much not allowed to do but since when did that ever stop anyone

Pallon was one of those kids where they’d eat a paNTRY FULL OF FOOD AS SOON AS YOUR BACK IS TURNED.  Which doesn’t work so well with a dirt-poor mirialan family living in the Coruscant slums, and took Cyrelle taking him aside and Carefully Explaining Things since his parents seemed reluctant to talk about it, after which he dutifully joined their efforts of trying to make it all last the month

A monster, a monster I've turned into a monster

He hadn’t expected to face a Jedi this soon.

He knew he might have to, one day. Cyrelle knew, too; they never said it out loud, could never bear to, but when the pounding on their door began and the shout of Imperial voices outside rang out, Pallon knew that first look they shared had nothing to do with them—the memory of a child with wide gray eyes, face nearly forgotten, toddling behind a Jedi master leading him by the hand barely flashed through their minds before the door was forced open.

“Don’t forget,” she’d said, the last words before the shuttle door closed. They knew what it meant.

“I won’t,” he answered, and wasn’t sure if it was a lie.

It was easy for her. Take a job or leave it. It hurt your reputation, sure, but there might even be a few employers out there who’d respect a hunter who didn’t want to accidentally kill a long-lost brother. Even gangsters could be sentimental, sometimes.

Pallon knew what the same sentiment would earn him here.

“You are young enough, new enough, to be considered a plausible traitor; not to mention he might expect such weakness from your kind,” the inquisitor was saying as he nodded along. She strode next to him in long, confident steps, eyes straight ahead; he tried to do the same, to not peer ahead towards the cell doors, dreading a glimpse of green skin or wide gray eyes—

He exhaled in relief at the sight of an ashen face, reddened by the containment field. He knew the chances of it being Carson were slim, perhaps nonexistent—but Fate was a strange thing, and had never favored him.

The inquisitor looked at him sharply, eyes narrowed. “This task,” he hurried to say. “What is its purpose?”

She looked ahead again. “The misinformation he’s been led to believe will lead to the lowered defenses of several outlying colonies. This will allow us to crush the colonies, and defeat their Jedi defenders. It will be a great blow against the Jedi.” The corner of her lip curled up in a smile as she spoke, and he fought to keep his face straight. Not a trial against one Jedi, one chance in millions to dread—

So soon, why did this have to happen so soon?