Lit Traditional Darkside powers can be used by the light?

Writing the force as D&D Magic I think is something that plagued a lot of writers in the EU's later years.

For example when Jacen killed Mara he unlocked Sith battle meditation-that was clearly D&D influence.

 

Troy Denning in particular had written a lot of D&D books by that point. Not so much Traviss & Allston.

 

I understand that Force Lightning is a perversion of the Force so MAYBE there is a lighter version of Force Lightning but we wouldn't recognize it as Force Lightning because it's twisted.

Many terrible things have been done under the guise/belief that it is for the good of others. Blood has been shed, histories have been destroyed, wars fought and lives left in ruins.

 

The short first-person story about Plo Koon using lightning in Jedi vs Sith: The Essential Guide to the Force basically takes this option. While there's a certain amount of unreliable narrator implications built into the story (it was set not long after The Stark Hyperspace War and noted that other people were worried about him not taking enough time off afterwards), the technique he creates is still different from what Sidious does in a couple of significant ways.

-Sidious creates a giant messy ULTIMATE POWAH storm. Plo's technique is a single focused bolt, so precise he was able to headshot a man without harming the target's hostage.

-Sidious' lightning is a drawn-out, ongoing torture/kill power. Plo's technique is a glorified stun gun that's over in an instant, after putting the target on the ground. I'm sure it doesn't feel great, but neither does getting punched or having your arm cut off with a lightsaber.

Like I said, the story is intentionally open-ended as to whether Plo was as emotionally okay as he believed he was, and there's no indication that he actually passed on this risky knowledge to either of his padawans after that point - probably rightly recognizing that just because everything came together just right and worked out well for him, that doesn't guarantee other people in other circumstances could do the same.

But if I were going to bring "light side lightning" into the new EU, this is the story I'd take it from. None of that "it's the same as Sidious', or the same as Sidious' but this one's green" stuff. It comes from a different mindset and creates a different effect, even if it's still considered worrisome and hazardous.

 

Lightning even used by Plo Koon for incapacitating a target is still an offensive power and in the end the Jedi believe in defense not attack.

 

The problem with the "defense not attack" line is that people will take it overly literally and contort it to the point that doing anything other than sitting on the ground letting people punch you in the face is an attack and therefore the dark side. I'm pretty sure all it ever actually meant was "Jedi won't start trouble, but they'll end it - with as little pain/death as possible, but they'll end it."

Harmlessly knocking out a murderer holding a blaster to a hostage's head seems plenty defensive to me.

EDIT: I mean, yeah, both I and the original story acknowledged that a lot of Jedi didn't think it was great - questionable at the least and probably too risky to teach to others - for various reasons. But the whole "everything is an attack!!" thing is a pet peeve of mine.

 

He has 2 Dark Side Points in his WEG stats for end-of-ROTJ. One for the choke, one for the attack on Vader that cost the latter his hand.

 

Speaking of Caedus as the anti hero-I guess you could write the Jedi and the confederation from an unsympathetic viewpoint. Make them terrorists, and the Jedi treasonous. It would have added so much more to LOTF.

 

It loses something when you see Caedus burn an entire planet to the dirt, choke a loyal officer to death and blast cities to dust. Hard to cheer for a guy like that.

 

Caedus choking that officer was bad writing, the Kashyyyk thing-well the Wookiees had been supporting the confederates IIRC, and the with Fondor-they were a strategic target.

Compare Leia and Han-committing treason, the Jedi desertion and assassination, and the confederates open rebellion. LOTF should have been more morally ambiguous and it was so in the beginning but by Inferno the writers wanted a clear cut villain.