waifus Lana

Lana is different than most Sith. If Sith are evil because they kill wantonly, lie and murder their way up the ranks, and treat others poorly, then a Sith who happens to forgo these behaviors wouldn't be as bad. If she abstains from the behaviors that make Sith evil, then she could be a alright person. This applies to any Sith who makes the personal decision to not act this way. You could say that a Sith who doesn't murder and treat people poorly isn't really a Sith, and that is somewhat true, and that the very process of not being evil would make a person not really a Sith anymore, but that's another whole conversation.

But don't get me wrong. Lana still does some of the things that a Sith upbringing and education leads to. Many of her suggestions throughout Revan and FE/ET favor quick and practical solutions over what is just. Someone who lets people die or some other unjust thing for the sake of being faster or easier has a character flaw, and might not be a "good" person without other extenuating circumstance (which Lana does have). An easy example of this is letting the reactor explode during your first mission on Zakuul, but there are others, where she simply says to let people die because it's inconvenient to save them.

So Lana isn't totally evil like most other Sith, so that's great, but she's also not totally good like a jedi. She's actually somewhat well-written in that regard, and it's one of the reasons I like her. She has those Sith education holdovers where only "important" people matter and everyone else is expendable, but she has either a self-taught or other morality where she understands that it's not really ideal to go around killing. Maybe it's just practicality, since killing your neighbors and underlings creates issues and she only cares about practicality even in this, but for whatever the reason, we can be glad she's not your average Sith.

It's more than that though. You don't like someone just because they're not a psychopath. That's not really a great standard. What makes Lana truly special is that her worldview is from individualism. She grew up on Kas and went through the Korriban trials, and by every means had a Sith education growing up, yet she found it within herself to not fall into the Sith habits that her peers share. That's more meaningful than simply not being a psycho. An individual arriving to convictions regarding theoretical morality on their own, contrary to their peers and elders, is more remarkable than someone simply being taught superior morality than their peers. So this is another example of her being smarter than your average cookie.

Another reason to like Lana is Lydia Leonard. She's very enthusiastic about Star Wars and has talked about how much she likes working on swtor and doing fun scifi stuff, since most of her tv roles have been period piece dramas. She has a sexy accent and she's been doing this character for a long time, and it shows. It's nice when an actor gets into a character, and I think it makes a difference.

Another of the main reasons to like her is her actions. We first meet her when she decides to put together a team to go fight the Revanites. She's fed up with the inaction of her peers, so she just leaves and does it herself. Yet another way she is superior to her peers. While they bicker and point fingers and blame, she's out there actually doing something about it. Leaving behind that bickering and rising above it is one more admirable thing about her, and being proactive like that is a positive trait.

There's also the fact that she saves the galaxy. She may not be a great outstanding moral individual on a personal level, but I don't really know how many times someone has to save the entire galaxy before they can be considered an at least alright person. The Revanites, Revan himself, Arcaan, then Vaylin, then Volky, the number of times she risks her life to take on the next galactic threat right there next to the player really says a lot about her. A lesser person would be off scrabbling in the crab bucket in the empire.

Finally, she has an interesting and unique take on the Force. She still has a Sith education, so she still believes the Force is a tool to be manipulated by people, but she doesn't use her hate, anger, fear, etc to fuel her powers, she explains that she uses her passion for her duty and to others to give her the passion to use her powers. This is not only the likely explanation behind why she doesn't have very much darkside corruption, but it's also another example of her coming to these very individualistic conclusions on her own that aren't really widespread teachings, and being smart and perceptive enough to understand that the way most Sith live is unhealthy.

So there are many reasons to like, or love, Lana.


>But why is she light side?
There's no such thing as a lightsided sith. You cannot hold sith philosophy and use the light side. Sith philosophy is inherently about using the force like a tool, while light side is inherently about channeling the will of the force. They are completely incompatible, and someone who uses the light side of the force would discard sith philosophy in the process, and vice versa.

But I know exactly what you meant, I'm just clarifying. She's not lightside, she is dark side, but she's smart and pragmatic so she's not a psycho, so people often shorthand that as saying she's lightside, even though that's a misnomer.

The thing with Lana is that she is fully Sith, she holds sith philosophy and she is highly educated regarding what it means to be Sith, but she doesn't have many of the cultural trappings of Sith that people have attached over time. In order to be Sith, you have to seek self improvement, use the force as a tool, enforce your will upon the galaxy, and revel in freedom. Lana does all of these things, and these are the things involved in the Sith philosophy. The problem is that other people over time have tacked on several behaviors and cultural mores onto what it means to be Sith, stuff like being a backstabbing ambitious psychopath. These aren't actually in the sith code, they're tacked on by people after the fact. Lana does embody the sith code, she does not embody the sith culture that has arisen around the sith code. She is pragmatic, intelligent, foresightful, calm, introspective, and many other positive traits, so she's very counter-cultural so to speak, but she still seeks self-efficacy and freedom and believes the force is a tool to use, so she checks off what it means to be Sith at the core of the philosophy. This is why people say she's not very Sith-y. That is true when looking at Sith culture that morons like naga Sadow and Vitiate made up, but she is very Sith-y when it comes to the actual core philosophy.