Juuust a forewarning, since I don't know if you've seen much of my typical rambling, but I have a contentious relationship with Kal Skirata, so. Be warned? Also trying to talk about this without dipping into a bit of TMI is impossible. If you don't want to deal with that, skip the first two impressions, please!
First impression : I first read these books up to True Colors (O66 and 501st came out later) all together when I was a young teenager nearly a decade before I'd finally start being able to admit to myself that I had been abused, and I adored Kal Skirata. I wasn't capable of daydreams involving myself, but I obsessively re-read the part where he took in the child!Nulls. He was just like my mother, except in the ways he was so much better.
Impression now : No argument that KT's main strength is her ability to create vivid characters. Kal as a character is incredibly important to me because he's one of the most perfect characterizations of an (unintentionally but still very) emotionally abusive parent I've ever read. He's toxic. He's harming everyone around him. And as a person, using Kal - a fictional character - as a proxy to sort through my own understanding of my own treatment and my own mother is a useful exercise. The fact Kal doesn't ever do it on purpose is what matters to me too, because it's too easy for people to decide toxic people are that way by some grand calculating plan, deliberately maneuvering everyone around them like expert chess masters, when really it's usually just because they're damaged, frightened people lashing out and grasping on instinctively, who aren't capable of recognizing the harm they're doing. Like the emotional equivalent of a drowning person latching on to anyone nearby and not capable of realizing when they shove them down under the water. It's the human desire to be liked and appreciated absent the ability to self-reflect and cope in a healthy, productive manner, and an unwillingness to self-correct when their own lacking behaviors are pointed out to them. Kal wants to be a good person. He wants to do right by his kids and be super-dad and all of that. He really, really wants it, and that makes it easy to excuse him, because his intentions are so good. (Except he's also got a bit of a white savior thing going on, but I digress.)
The fact that being seen as that person (so that he can see himself as that person) matters more to him than actually doing the hard work of correcting his behaviors so he can be that person is where he fails. He wants without putting in any actual, productive effort. If it doesn't make him feel better about himself, it scares him, and he does his best to ignore it away and make everyone validate him so he can pretend he never did anything wrong to start with. This man gaslights like he breathes. He uses dramatic shows to "erase" damage he's done without actually taking into account if the person he's trying to "make amends" to actually feels better after he's done (see: Darman). He can spin the narrative of self-improvement, but he wavers at actually walking it. It's human. It's very, very human. It's the way humans hurt other humans, especially ones as vulnerable as children. And it's a narrative that's sorely lacking, I think, which is why I cling to Skirata's.
And most importantly, that whatever else might have happened in Skirata's life to harm him, whatever his intentions were, that doesn't matter. People aren't allowed to hurt you just because they don't mean to, or because they've been hurt themselves.
Favorite moment : Okay, so after he shakes hands and leaves Altis's ship and realizes he's still contagious with the vaccine-fever and he just looks at his hand in disgust and then mutters something like, "I should have charged you." I laughed.
I really, really like when Kal actually is the put-out old crook dragged kicking and screaming into something approximating morality by his love for six little boys, and I wish he'd been written that way more often, because he talks about himself that way sometimes but too obviously views himself as more-moral-than-thou at literally all times, not helped by KT warping reality around him to always make sure he's the most right and moral character in the series. I wouldn't actually give him up as he is though, because, again: I think his narrative is rare enough to be very important, for all that this is an obscure Star Wars book series in a universe with space wizards. I'm attached.
Idea for a story : Sort of brainstorming this for a little while now, but: Time travel. Falin gets dumped on Ordo shortly after being found by Munin but before Munin manages to erase his name, or Ordo travels back and stumbles across little Falin and promptly kidnaps him because Munin is a Hard No. It'd be about breaking the cycle of abuse, Falin/Kal getting a better start after the hell he had to deal with and deserving much better than fucking Munin, and Ordo/the Nulls having the opportunity to recognize Kal's bad treatment through having to parent Falin/realizing where Kal came from and grappling with their own unwillingness to pass those things on, and coming to terms with why they don't want to pass those things on. And also trying to cope with realizing some hard facts about a parent's treatment of you after they're already gone somewhere you can't get to them, and how rough that can be. For obvious reasons, them coming to terms with their own abuse, and not really being equipped to deal with Falin's trauma, means there would have to be a broader cast to provide support, possibly even take over as Falin's primary caregiver for awhile (good luck getting past a freaked out and protective Ordo, but like many things, I'm willing to throw Laseema at the problem and assume it will work out) but that's more detail than I've got so far. Point is the Nulls (especially Ordo) coming face-to-face with Falin.
I'm actually sort of attached to Laseema recognizing aspects of Falin's treatment and actually being a good point of connection for him. She understands better than anyone else in that house exactly what sort of thing Falin's gone through, I think. At least the losing everything parts, and being taken, and being expected to perform to a new expectation by these strangers you have no power to combat, not even to keep your own name. I have an image of Falin nursing a wild bird back to health, and, being Kal still, wanting to keep it forever even once it's healed, and Laseema walking him out into the yard, and talking to him beyond the range of the Nulls' hearing, and eventually convincing him to let it go.
Unpopular opinion : *shrugs* Kal's a polarizing character. I'm very critical of him and want him to face some hard consequences, which is going to be very unpopular with some people, but not others.
Favorite relationship : Vau. They're both shitty old people and their relationship is hilarious. Literally the only character Kal doesn't have any sort of hold on, and they fight like cats and dogs but with the impression that they'll be shoulder-to-shoulder at the pub later or something. Angry old couple who fight all the time. I do, in fact, find myself shipping it sometimes with a sort of fascinated horror.
Favorite headcanon : Not 100% of the time, but this just said "favorite" not "permanent": He has a very, very repressed crush on Vau. Vau sometimes has a significantly less-repressed crush, but knows it would go over like a lead balloon and be less fun that way anyway, so instead he just hangs around and riles Kal up and that's basically enough for him.
Kal Skirata
Juuust a forewarning, since I don't know if you've seen much of my typical rambling, but I have a contentious relationship with Kal Skirata, so. Be warned? Also trying to talk about this without dipping into a bit of TMI is impossible. If you don't want to deal with that, skip the first two impressions, please!
First impression : I first read these books up to True Colors (O66 and 501st came out later) all together when I was a young teenager nearly a decade before I'd finally start being able to admit to myself that I had been abused, and I adored Kal Skirata. I wasn't capable of daydreams involving myself, but I obsessively re-read the part where he took in the child!Nulls. He was just like my mother, except in the ways he was so much better.
Impression now : No argument that KT's main strength is her ability to create vivid characters. Kal as a character is incredibly important to me because he's one of the most perfect characterizations of an (unintentionally but still very) emotionally abusive parent I've ever read. He's toxic. He's harming everyone around him. And as a person, using Kal - a fictional character - as a proxy to sort through my own understanding of my own treatment and my own mother is a useful exercise. The fact Kal doesn't ever do it on purpose is what matters to me too, because it's too easy for people to decide toxic people are that way by some grand calculating plan, deliberately maneuvering everyone around them like expert chess masters, when really it's usually just because they're damaged, frightened people lashing out and grasping on instinctively, who aren't capable of recognizing the harm they're doing. Like the emotional equivalent of a drowning person latching on to anyone nearby and not capable of realizing when they shove them down under the water. It's the human desire to be liked and appreciated absent the ability to self-reflect and cope in a healthy, productive manner, and an unwillingness to self-correct when their own lacking behaviors are pointed out to them. Kal wants to be a good person. He wants to do right by his kids and be super-dad and all of that. He really, really wants it, and that makes it easy to excuse him, because his intentions are so good.
(Except he's also got a bit of a white savior thing going on, but I digress.)The fact that being seen as that person (so that he can see himself as that person) matters more to him than actually doing the hard work of correcting his behaviors so he can be that person is where he fails. He wants without putting in any actual, productive effort. If it doesn't make him feel better about himself, it scares him, and he does his best to ignore it away and make everyone validate him so he can pretend he never did anything wrong to start with. This man gaslights like he breathes. He uses dramatic shows to "erase" damage he's done without actually taking into account if the person he's trying to "make amends" to actually feels better after he's done (see: Darman). He can spin the narrative of self-improvement, but he wavers at actually walking it. It's human. It's very, very human. It's the way humans hurt other humans, especially ones as vulnerable as children. And it's a narrative that's sorely lacking, I think, which is why I cling to Skirata's.
And most importantly, that whatever else might have happened in Skirata's life to harm him, whatever his intentions were, that doesn't matter. People aren't allowed to hurt you just because they don't mean to, or because they've been hurt themselves.
Favorite moment : Okay, so after he shakes hands and leaves Altis's ship and realizes he's still contagious with the vaccine-fever and he just looks at his hand in disgust and then mutters something like, "I should have charged you." I laughed.
I really, really like when Kal actually is the put-out old crook dragged kicking and screaming into something approximating morality by his love for six little boys, and I wish he'd been written that way more often, because he talks about himself that way sometimes but too obviously views himself as more-moral-than-thou at literally all times, not helped by KT warping reality around him to always make sure he's the most right and moral character in the series. I wouldn't actually give him up as he is though, because, again: I think his narrative is rare enough to be very important, for all that this is an obscure Star Wars book series in a universe with space wizards. I'm attached.
Idea for a story : Sort of brainstorming this for a little while now, but: Time travel. Falin gets dumped on Ordo shortly after being found by Munin but before Munin manages to erase his name, or Ordo travels back and stumbles across little Falin and promptly kidnaps him because Munin is a Hard No. It'd be about breaking the cycle of abuse, Falin/Kal getting a better start after the hell he had to deal with and deserving much better than fucking Munin, and Ordo/the Nulls having the opportunity to recognize Kal's bad treatment through having to parent Falin/realizing where Kal came from and grappling with their own unwillingness to pass those things on, and coming to terms with why they don't want to pass those things on. And also trying to cope with realizing some hard facts about a parent's treatment of you after they're already gone somewhere you can't get to them, and how rough that can be. For obvious reasons, them coming to terms with their own abuse, and not really being equipped to deal with Falin's trauma, means there would have to be a broader cast to provide support, possibly even take over as Falin's primary caregiver for awhile (good luck getting past a freaked out and protective Ordo, but like many things, I'm willing to throw Laseema at the problem and assume it will work out) but that's more detail than I've got so far. Point is the Nulls (especially Ordo) coming face-to-face with Falin.
I'm actually sort of attached to Laseema recognizing aspects of Falin's treatment and actually being a good point of connection for him. She understands better than anyone else in that house exactly what sort of thing Falin's gone through, I think. At least the losing everything parts, and being taken, and being expected to perform to a new expectation by these strangers you have no power to combat, not even to keep your own name. I have an image of Falin nursing a wild bird back to health, and, being Kal still, wanting to keep it forever even once it's healed, and Laseema walking him out into the yard, and talking to him beyond the range of the Nulls' hearing, and eventually convincing him to let it go.
Unpopular opinion : *shrugs* Kal's a polarizing character. I'm very critical of him and want him to face some hard consequences, which is going to be very unpopular with some people, but not others.
Favorite relationship : Vau. They're both shitty old people and their relationship is hilarious. Literally the only character Kal doesn't have any sort of hold on, and they fight like cats and dogs but with the impression that they'll be shoulder-to-shoulder at the pub later or something. Angry old couple who fight all the time. I do, in fact, find myself shipping it sometimes with a sort of fascinated horror.
Favorite headcanon : Not 100% of the time, but this just said "favorite" not "permanent": He has a very, very repressed crush on Vau. Vau sometimes has a significantly less-repressed crush, but knows it would go over like a lead balloon and be less fun that way anyway, so instead he just hangs around and riles Kal up and that's basically enough for him.