Lit The Silver Linings Thread: things you unironically love in stories you hate

I'm a big fan of Plo Koon and all the Clone Commander in TCW. I like all the middle-management Sith in FOTJ.

 

I like almost all of the covers and LOTF and FOTJ. Speaking of FOTJ, I thought the slave subplot was'n't bad at all. Too bad it didn't have any significance at all in the final scheme of things.

Oh, and Vestara and the Lost Tribe were pretty cool concepts, IMO. I like how the Keshiri had developed their own culture that was very different from the standard Darksider's. And Vestara's character arc and role in the Jedi/Sith relation with Ben were things that hadn't really been done before. Previously, redeemed characters had always started out as good guys, this is the only time that I can recall that someone who was Sith from the start was 'redeemed.'

 

I'd argue that Tahiri's trial was the only really enjoyable part of Allies.

 

Vestara was interesting until her character completely regressed in Apocalypse

 

And then murdered a couple hundred thousand people in Crucible.

 

TOR's timeline videos. TOR itself screwed up what was meant to be KOTOR 3 and took all the worst aspects of KOTOR and amplified them (example: Malak was bad enough in his similarity to Vader, and then TOR gave us Malgus). However, the timeline videos expanded the lore of Star Wars and made the Old Republic era seem more interesting.

 

I didn't like LOTF, but I liked the original basic premise of a rift between the GA and Corellia, a major disagreement that didn't have an obvious good guy and bad guy.

I didn't like FOTJ, but I enjoyed the Imperial Remnant making a transition to democracy and holding its first elections.

I didn't like the Legacy comics, but I freaking love Ania Solo.

I found The New Rebellion pretty boring, but liked the insights into Han's past life, and the notion that a lot of the community Han used to hang out with hated him for his good (if not "honest") streak.

I didn't like the Bounty Hunter Trilogy, but I loved the chapter-long conversations between the Emperor, Vader, and Xizor.

 

I dislike the Legacy era, but I like the Imperial Knights. They're a cool new sect of Force-users.

 

Korriban in Empire's End. Empire's End is an absolute disgrace to Palpatine, but it was fun seeing Korriban in "modern" times and seeing Sheev interact with the ancient Dark Lords.

 

I only went through the abridged audiobooks of LotF because I wasn't sure how much I could stand JINO. And even with the abridgment, I only just got through those books this past week. However, Sacrifice wasn't as bad as I'd feared in part because there were legitimate glimmers of Jacen Solo actually being a cool cunning diplomatic bad guy. For example, after the military coup, there were protesters outside the building, and he goes straight up to them, and talks them down. Shakes their hands, invites them into the building to show them how above board everything is. He plays the good guy, says all the right things. He convinces people that, even if they still think he's wrong, that at least his heart is in the right place...or so they're lead to believe.

In moments like that, Jacen was truly evil, but without being a mustache twirler. That was the Jacen who knew that willing allies are far more useful than unwilling allies. That was the bad buy I was hoping for when the series started. I wish we'd gotten more of him.

I also liked seeing Mara Jade acting like the old spy she used to be. Sure, her going off to kill Jacen by herself was dumb, but most of the other stuff seemed pretty cool to me.

 

On the subject of Jacen and villainy, although the path to the moment was not earned at all, I do think most of the Kashyyyk stuff in LOTF worked well. The battle was exciting and felt like a real tragedy.

 

Yeah, for all that literally everything around it is immensely stupid and wasteful, firebombing Kashyyyk with a Star Destroyer named the Anakin Solo is like the ONE legitimately badass Sith thing "Darth Caedus" ever did that was, as it were, uniquely effective coming from him.

 

I wanted to throttle him for that.

 

I do think that Sacrifice, Inferno, and Fury had the best Caedus. Sacrifice mostly for his political savvy, Inferno for actually showing him do some villainous things like having Kashyyyk bombed, and Fury because I just think it was the best-written of the middle part of the series. If you're going to ignore the NJO then LOTF isn't that bad; if it were anyone but Jacen, even taking NJO into account, it wouldn't be bad. But it being post-NJO Jacen is what makes it bad.

Also in Fury Caedus is betrayed by his cape.

 

wasn't it in the next book that Fondor surrendered but he wanted to "punish" them in a wholly impractical sense?

 

Can't believe they put that on the tassels and went through with it.

 

See, the thing is, I don't actually agree. Even taken purely on his own terms, Caedus is an extremely inconsistently written character and rather pathetically ineffectual as a villain. But there are a few moments - just a few - where he does manage to appear somewhat menacing, and Kashyyyk is probably my favorite of those.

(Incidentally, I think he was written much more interestingly posthumously in FOTJ, as a figure who was actually reminiscent in some ways of Dune's Leto II, sacrificing his own morality to push the galaxy as a whole down the path to a brighter future. But I don't really think that belongs in this thread, because it mostly just made me annoyed that they had to introduce that characterization largely via posthumous retcon).

 

yeah the Leto II thing would have been interesting if it was actually used when he was alive

I mean all we got was "Luke died"

 

I think it's because he's Jacen. Half the time they tried to write him as villain, the other half they almost seemed to be trying to write him as a sympathetic anti-hero or even protagonist (see: any time he's with Tenel Ka or Allana). If this had been someone created specifically to be a villain? I think it would've worked out a lot better. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with a sympathetic villain. But that's not what we got. We got either a villain or a sympathetic character, but almost never both at the same time.

 

I don't think Caedus was a protagonist when he was with Tenel Ka and Allana anymore than Anakin was a protagonist when he went to Padme after killing the younglings.

I mean, he did kidnap Allana.

and stuffed her in a cardboard box or something iunno

 

True dat. He was acting like he was on some extremely bad drugs from the street and the pharmacy as Caedus. Made me scared for Allana.

 

The only drug he's on is Darth Caedus.


He takes a lot of Darth Caedus.

 

I used the wrong word when I said protagonist, I think. More like, the authors were trying to remind us of the Old Jacen in these scenes as if redemption was a possibility. Then they jerked that rug out.

 

We got a petulant villain, and the inconsistencies made him look like he had more severe mental issues than he probably had. I don't think he had much of an excuse for what he was doing. He could have all the good intentions in the galaxy, but the way he was going about it was just terrifying. It was as though his mind had splintered into more than one identity. Jacen was obviously influenced by Vergere and Lumiya, but for all their faults and terrible crimes, they came off as knowing who they are and they were more in control of themselves. Jacen/Caedus really should have become more of a complete villain like Palpatine--an evil mastermind--or some type of tragic Byronic hero or antihero. The way they tried to write him as a Darth Vader-like antivillain could have been better. I understand he was traumatized by the loss of his brother, the Yuuzhan Vong War, and other bad things in his life, but Caedus was a man in his thirties who was acting like a sociopathic adolescent at times. I get the notion that he was really desperate to be special, to save and to perfect the galaxy, albeit in a perverse way, and to be this grand savior of history, but his desperation and obsessive justifications come off as poor writing. There was a way that Jacen/Caedus could have turned to the dark side to try to be all he wanted to be that wouldn't have come off as this jambled and bizarre. I mean, even the characters in his own family, like Han and Leia, struggled to cope with how Jacen became Caedus, and a lot of that is writers trying to explain the abruptness and weirdness of the whole thing, I'm sure.

On the other hand, let's keep it real. Sometimes people go through a second adolescence, and sometimes people in their thirties, forties, sixties, or whatever just snap and they lose it. But the thing is that real people who act like Jacen/Caedus sometimes have experienced trauma and abuse as children. And Han and Leia and the rest of the family treated Jacen, Jaina, and Anakin wonderfully. Well, unless you have anti-Jedi sentiment, then you could argue that they shouldn't have introduced them to the Force.

I think someone once said that Jacen did not do as much damage to the galaxy as his grandfather, nor as much as Sidious, Count Dooku, or other Sith. That's debatable. I think the idea of hero who had crushed Onimi, the guy who had learned all these amazing things about the Force during and after the Yuuzhan Vong War, breaking and becoming this obsessive, needy Sith Lord who wanted to save the galaxy again after decades of conflict could have worked. Good people change and can become bad. Perhaps they should have gotten different writers to handle this. I imagine Luceno, Zahn, Reaves, etc. could have done a better job, though I have no objection to Traviss myself. However, I doubt Zahn would have tolerated a storyline involving Jacen killing Mara, but that's another story. Gotta feel sorry for Zahn, since Mara is such a great character. At least she didn't wind up so different than she once was like other characters.

 

I got some good laughs out of the blob race in the Jedi Academy Trilogy. That was the best-written scene in all 3 books.