TELL YOU ABOUT TENEL KA, YOU SAY?
LET ME EXPLAIN TO YOU A THING.
You’ve heard of the “strong female character” trope, yeah? Yeah. She had that going on in 1995-1996, in young-adult fiction. So, she’s a teensy bit ahead of her time, actually. She’s INCREDIBLY well thought-out and is often struggling with who she is. She also doesn’t really get humor. People would tell her jokes. She’d respond with something along the lines of, “I don’t get it,” and then when it was explained to her she’d say, “oh. yes, that is funny,” very flatly. Humor just isn’t really her thing, and I love it.
She’s also incredibly multi-faceted LIKE THE TIARA ON HER FUCKING HEAD. Oh wait. That’s right, it was never on her head because SHE SMASHED IT TO BUILD HER LIGHTSABER WHEN SHE FINALLY ACCEPTED HER HAPAN HERITAGE.
Here’s the thing— her mother was a Dathomiri Witch, from Dathomir (obviously) and her father was Prince of the Hapes Consortium. She grew up on Dathomir mostly, RIDIN’ AROUND ON MOTHERFUCKIN’ RANCORS ALL DAY FOR FUN.
And also because the indigenous people of Dathomir have a very strong cultural reverence for rancors, so actually she probably didn’t ride around on rancors too much because she respected them too much to do that.
Fun fact— she as a near-human, she’s identical in almost every way. The difference between the people of Dathomir and standard humans? Dathomir have poor night vision— that’ll come in later.
So, she trained to be a Jedi Knight. Started around the age of 13-14 on Yavin IV on Luke’s Praxeum there. Dathomir culture is heavily inspired by Amazonian women. Look it up. This is part of the reason why I always imagined her as a WOC. Unfortunately, she is not, but SHE IS GORGEOUS NONE THE LESS HERE HAVE A PICTURE
So. Young Warrior Princess. She always had faith in her abilities— and she never abused the Force. Some slackers (read as: jacen solo) might’ve used the force to get chores done more quickly so he could have more time to play with animals. Not Tenel Ka. She would push herself to the limits. She CLIMBED A FUCKIN TEMPLE USING VINES and refused to use to Force to make the climb easier, relying solely on her mucles, even though she knew she might be light for class (she wasn’t). Where was Jacen during all this? I dunno probably chasing one of his dangerous pets around because it had broken out (read as: crystal snake, it’s venom would put you to sleep for huge stretches of time while it ate you. like half-day periods). Oh and yeah that happened. His crystal snake bit a student and let me tell you that was a disaster and a half, and he was nearly late for class because of it. Not Tenel Ka because SHE WAS CLIMBING A TEMPLE.
Fun fact, Jacen also accidentally cut off her arm at the elbow in a sparring match with lightsabers, AND SHE REFUSED A PROSTHETIC BECAUSE SHE WAS LIKE “HELL NO I’LL BE STRONGER THAN ALL OF YOU WITHOUT THAT ARM. LET’S GO!” And she was.
So that whole less-than-stellar eyesight at night. One time Jacen and Jaina got in a whole mess of trouble. They were caught in the forest by an Imperial fighter pilot who crashed during the Battle of Yavin 20 years earlier, who had NO IDEA that the Empire had been defeated. He kidnapped Jacen and Jaina while and forced them to rebuild his TIE fighter. This little scrapper? When they tried to escape, SHE DID. Along with Chewie’s nephew Lowbacca. But TENEL KA RAN INTO THE WOODS AND WHEN NIGHTFAL CAME BRAVED A SCARY CAVE THAT PROBABLY HAD BATS AND LIKE VORNSKR TIGERS IN IT OR SOMETHING I DUNNO I’M NOT A XENOZOOLOGIST I DON’T KNOW WHAT SORT OF ANIMALS ARE ON YAVIN IV I WILL FIGHT YOU.
Bottom line: Tenel Ka is freaking AMAZING and if you don’t like her I’m sorry but you’re wrong.
Fan ideal of Tenel Ka. Profanity. But good.