Why doesn't anyone like Juhani?

"i always kill her because then she would stand around in my ship and just look ugly"

.....I'm sorry, WHAT?!

As you guys know by now, I've just recently finally got around to playing Star Wars- KoTOR for the first time, and I love this game. I'm not going to repeat myself much, though. I want to talk abut someone in particular... Juhani, the Cathar.

I'm going to be honest. Juhani is probably my favorite companion character in the game. HK-47 is an EXTREMELY close second, and I can't get enough of the guy, but as far as the other characters go, I just latched onto Juhani more. When Bastilla and Carth (wearing Mandalorian armor) weren't tagging along, HK-47 and Junahi (weilding a double-bladed purple lightsaber) were.

There's a lot of things I love about the characters in this game. How could I forget listening to Canderous' amazing war stories, resolving Zalbaar's troubled history with his family, or helping Carth find the only family he has left? I actually really like most of the characters in this game. There isn't anyone on the Ebon Hawk that I find particularly annoying.

What strikes me about Juhani, though, is just how... REAL she feels. While she has a troubled past and can lash out at times, she's just so sincere and warm and soft-spoken and, at times, even humble. And yes, I know about the whole lesbian relationship she starts with you if you play as a woman, and that in most versions of the game, she doesn't feel that way if you're a guy, but you know what? It doesn't bother me. Cause even if you play as a guy, she still cherishes you as one of the most important people in her life at the moment. Heck, there's a line near the end where she says that she needs only look at you, as someone who's rejected the dark side, and she feels like she can do anything. She's just sweet, and when I learned about her past on Taris an' all that... I felt genuinely BAD. I just... I wanted to give her a hug, you know?

And then, when we meet Xor... hoooooooh boy, I swear I have never been so mad at a character in a videogame in my life. Of course I kept telling Juhani not to give in to her anger an' all that, but if this was all REAL and I was put in that situation... I can' be certain things wouldn't have gone differently.

I also think she has a great design. Yeah, she has a big chin and a bulky face, but given that she's a cat person, I think it fits. It makes her look TOUGH like a lion, and still graceful. And they don't go TOO far with the whole furry-ness. She still has a normal looking mouth and a normal looking nose and normal looking enough eyes to be overall humanlike enough to be easily relatable on a purely visual level. And yeah, I'll say it... in her own way, I think she's pretty. It's just a great character design.

So yeah, I'm done fanboying over Juhani. You all know I think she's a great character, like just about everyone aboard the Ebon Hawk. So boy, was I surprised when I found out that... most people who've played this game CAN'T STAND Juhani. They find her annoying and ugly to a point that some have even said she's the Jar Jar Binks of KoTOR.

Come on. I don't think ANYONE in this game deserves that, least of all, her. It just really strikes me as odd that people find it so much harder to sympathize with her than, say, Bastilla or Mission. I mean, hey, everyone loves Twi'leks. You don't get called a furfag for liking someone with tentacles on their head, but give someone pointy ears and stripes and WOOOOOAAAH TOO FAR, MAN. I don't think it's even so much that she's a cat person, I think people just don't like that she has a big chin and looks too manly or whatever. Some have even called her things like an aggressive BEAST. They sound no different than that sick fuck Xor or the bigots on Taris using words like that!

But you know what? It's FINE if people don't like her. I'm not trying to change how they feel about a fictional character in a videogame. I just can't, for the life of me, understand... WHY they feel this way. HOW they can feel this way. It's really strange to me that if you make a character just a little too "alien" or whatever, people suddenly have a hard time sympathizing with that character, in which case, I think there's a big part of Star Wars and sci-fi stuff in general that they quite simply don't "get."


I guess the thing about me is, like I said, Juhani feels REAL to me. That meaning I can EASILY imagine someone being like her in real life. Someone very flawed, but very giving. In fact, I DO know people like that in real life. Maybe I've known someone like that in person, and I wouldn't say that they're annoying or stupid or would make a bad character. Maybe Juhani reminds me a lot of that person and that's what drew me to her? Maybe that's why I had an easier time relating to her than a lot of people apparently do. I dunno. That's the most sense I can out of all of this.


OH, and on a side note... Ron Perlman would've made a PERFECT Canderous if there was ever a live-action KoTOR film.



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