Trilla - Tumblr Posts
One of the most heartbreaking things about Trilla, really, is that–if you watch her, as the game progresses, it becomes so crushingly obvious that Trilla Suduri was never a warrior.
Like, this isn’t me going “oh poor little baby,” this isn’t a desire to woobify, I really genuinely do not think Trilla handled the war well at all. I don’t think she was a fighter. I don’t think she was even a passable soldier. And I think that fucking broke her before the Inquisitorius even got the chance.
It’s hard to articulate because all the evidence for it is like…it’s a thousand tiny moments and all of them sound very thin in isolation, but the thing is they’re consistent.
Like, okay, an example:
(source)
Compare that to Trilla’s fine control and carefully deliberate stances in a duel. Compare that to literally every other experienced Force-user we’ve ever seen deflecting blaster bolts.
That’s fucking sloppy.
Those are massive, messy, energy-inefficient, time-wasting movements that leave her wide open.
Trilla was a padawan during the Clone Wars. As best we can figure, she would have been about 17; just around Ahsoka’s age, a little bit younger but not by much. An older teenage padawan who served in the Clone Wars should be better at deflecting blaster bolts than this.
It’s not an animation error or something, we see characters animated with precise and controlled motions in this game. Trilla is just really bad at the one thing that should be subconscious muscle memory.
(And how stressful must that have been to her master? Cere, who’s extremely gentle and selfless but still a fighter, a survivor, a field commander, with this sweet girl she half-raised who seemingly cannot learn a basic survival skill but is expected to lead battalions?)
(Even aside from that and allowing for the handicap of that fucking helmet, Trilla’s reactions in combat outside the tightly-controlled arena-like environments she arranges to face Cal in…well, you see it up in that gif, a bit. She looks over her shoulder, she stops in unwise places, she doesn’t actually have good battlefield instincts. I think Cere reflexively ripping Cal out of the way to open fire–stop staring and take cover, damn it, padawan–was a very practiced move for them, during the Clone Wars.)
Anyway: The fact that Trilla is absolute dogshit at blaster deflection despite the timeline…says something, about her. About what she would have been like as a padawan. Her suitability in a martial setting and her inability to adapt to it.
Don’t get me wrong, she’s a great duelist, certainly–but saber-on-saber dueling was like…academic, in the pre-war prequel era. The Sith were gone, nobody but Jedi used lightsabers, so the odds of you ever actually needing to know how to handle yourself in a saber fight were basically nil. Who are you going to actually fight? It would have been a sport, a form of meditation, an art form, but it wasn’t…real. No competition fencer is training with the intent of someday having to fight for their lives.
Combine those things and what I hear is: A nerd. Fairly sheltered before the war, probably easily overwhelmed, not terribly confident (except, probably, in the duelling ring, because that’s a hobby, it’s a meditation, it’s a martial art that deepens her connection to the Force and gives her a physical outlet and it’s not real.)
And then, solidifying that, we have our flashbacks from Cal accidentally overdosing on the psychometry–Trilla’s own memories of Cere’s abandonment, the raw panic in her voice, the hyperventilating, the way her voice shakes, the way she sobs in open fear before the torture has a chance to start.
Of course she was barely more than a child; of course none of this is a criticism. She was alone and afraid in the middle of the fucking apocalypse, and the fact that she wasn’t defiant and confident in those circumstances is not evidence of anything, really.
Except that, well, we have seen what typical reactions to stress and fear from other wartime padawans look like. There’s fear, there’s pleading, there’s “wait, master, don’t go”. And then there’s the wild incoherent terror of “DON’T LEAVE US,” the way her voice is high and unstable as she tries and fails to reassure her younglings, the fact that the softest and most tender we’ve ever heard Cere’s voice is when she’s explaining her plan to her padawan–whom she is clearly used to having to calm down in overwhelming situations. We see Trilla instinctively grip Cere’s arm and then let go, which also hints at a reflexive pattern–something she’s done before.
(The fact that Cere’s last words to her are not “protect them” or “get them to safety”. Cere’s last words to her are “stay with the younglings, Trilla”. I don’t think she meant anything by that. I’m not sure Trilla shares my confidence.)
Trilla’s responses in a highly traumatic situation are completely normal reactions…for a civilian child who’s in way over her head. Not a military commander in a war zone.
Trilla was never a warrior.
But the Inquisitorius didn’t need Trilla Suduri, did they.
#SHOWING US THIS FROM TRILLA’S POINT OF VIEW #THE TORTURE YOU SEE FROM HER POSITION #THE WAY PICKING UP THE INQUISITOR’S HELMET IS SO MUCH MORE INTIMATE #SEEING CERE BEING TORTURED #GETTING KNOCKED DOWN IN CERE’S ANGER #LAYING THERE HELPLESS WHILE SHE EMBRACES THE DARK SIDE #GOD THIS GAME WAS SO EMOTIONALLY BRUTAL
Cal Kestis! How predictable. Oh yes, I know your name. Your past. And most importantly, about Cordova.
[ID: A digital illustration of Star Wars character, Trilla Suduri, poised with her lightsaber in hand, this is an AU where she does not fall to the dark side. She has a dark brown cloak that is opened to reveal a brightly patterned tunic. She also wears a belt where one of her other lightsabers is secured and inactive, tied with red ropes.]
One of the submissions I did for the Fashion In The Stars Zine: link here!
Indulge me in an AU where Trilla escapes during the Rebellion era and goes off into a remote village on another planet where she learned to dye and make patterned fabric and now takes all of that with her wherever she goes.
