So Bad It's Bad: Grimdark & Star Wars

Since I ended up writing that post on the canonicity of videogames, and Star Wars in particular, I figure now is as good of time as any to write that pair of Star Wars posts I've been meaning to write, and make it into a trilogy (My enthusiasm for which has already been seen). Thus I again present you with two things I "like" and why they do not at all go together: The idea of "grimdark" and, again, Star Wars.

My interest in the grimdark has been more recent, stemming from things like Gears of Wars, various zombie things, war movies, and most particularly all the 40k stuff. Obviously there's a limit, and it has to be handled well, but a certain level of this works extraordinarily well in certain circumstances. Lots of examples exist, and while I don't think the majority of the media I consume could be labeled "grimdark," I definitely enjoy the genre (style?).

I've been a fan of the universe for as long as I can remember, although my actual count of watching the movies is relatively low; I've always been much more focused on the Expanded Universe, particularly the novels and short stories, and to a lesser extent things like video games, comics, the original Clone Wars shorts, etc. I devoured things like the X-Wing series and everything Timothy Zahn wrote, and supplemented it with anything I could find. If my memory serves me correctly, releases were fairly small while I was growing up, and there weren't so many spin-offs as there are now. I could be wrong.

However, all this changed with New Jedi Order. Although the writing team didn't use the word "grimdark," they specifically stated the goal was to make the Star Wars universe darker/grittier, which is why the series opens with the still controversial death of Chewbacca.

My opinion of the series is actually on the whole positive. Some of the stories are better than others. Some moments are treated amazingly, like Anakin's martyrdom, while others don't get nearly what they deserver, like the death of Tsavong Lah. Some of the stories, particularly the early ones, are forgettable to a large extent, while others (such as Traitor and the two by Aaron Allstone) are still worth rereading even out of order.

So yes, I think they achieved what they wanted. They wanted to get away from the predictable, the "Han/Leia/Luke get in trouble but everyone knows they'll barely make it out because we can't kill off those characters." I can understand some frustration from a writer's standpoint, wanting to do something different in a universe so many people love. And as I said, I think they handled it extremely well, for the most part. It was a good series, I don't regret reading it, and it definitely made for a different feel than the other works.

What I object strongly to is that now, since the NJO series sold so well, the writers seem to think that the rest of the books need to be grimdark in order to sell well. I read the Dark Nest Trilogy, which is the immediate sequel to the NJO series, and it basically said "let's take everything they resolved, destroy it, and have 3 of the strongest people in the entire SW universe fall victim to bugs... after defeating Force-blank extradimensional aliens."

Ya. That makes a lot of sense.

I honestly can barely remember anything from the series, because it was so bad both in terms of content, character believability, and actual writing style. I only finished the trilogy because I have some Completionist in me. I almost started reading the Legacy of the Force, only to read some of the plot summaries online, and then declare the entire series Excommunicatus Hereticus and thus non-canon (I would have burned all copies too, if I had the resources).

To give a summary of why I hate this book so much, I refer back to a book I referenced earlier, namely Traitor. It may be, in my mind, the best book of the series. It focuses on Jacen on occupied Coruscant, and his journey to come to terms with the Yuuzhan Vong, their alienness, and their lack of the Force. His descent into madness, confusion, and eventual reemergence as perhaps the wisest of the Jedi is one of the best stories I've read, period. It's philosophy and introspection through a Star Wars lens, and confronts the grimdarkness of the Yuuzhan Vong and takes from it something positive. Alien, but positive.

Jacen's key discovery is that the idea of the Light and Dark side of the Force is a farce. The Force is living energy; energy cannot be good or bad. What the Jedi refer to the Dark side is merely the evil within Force users themselves. Not only is such labeling detrimental, but by doing so the Jedi have blinded themselves to the full spectrum of the Force and cannot reach their whole potential.
Jacen solves the problem of the Vong Force-nakedness. He uses a Vong symbiot to fix his lightsaber, and becomes deeply in tune with it as as a result (as well as a symbiote implanted within him). He then becomes able to dimly, but still somewhat, sense the Vong in the Force. It's a huge breakthrough, and Jacen spends the rest of the series (although this book is 20/26, so towards the end) contemplating the Force and trying to learn as many of the non-Jedi Force-user cults as he can (such as the Dathomir witches).

Cool idea, right? Like I said, it's really well executed, an amazing character development and motivation for Jacen (who'd prior to that been Animal Boy, i.e. Pretty Boring). So what did Legacy of the Force do?

"Olololol I troll you! He's gonna become a Sith because he needs to learn ALL kinds of Force!"

"But wait, didn't he learn that the Dark side of the Force didn't really exist? What kind of motivation could he possibly have for this?!" you say in confusion and betrayal.

"I TROLL YOU" shouts Karen Traviss and Troy Denning.

So yes, Legacy of the Force (and everything else post NJO) is stupid. Stupid stupid stupid. You'd think that the fact that pretty much every SW novel, no matter how grimdark or whatever, is a bestseller would clue the writers off that it doesn't NEED to be grimdark. In fact, while NJO was a nice change, I prefer the traditional type. Star Wars was ABOUT the heroic, the traditional happy ending story; Han may be frozen in carbonite, all may seem lost, but they'll come through eventually. It's a good feeling to know that. And if you really want to kill people? Be like Aaron Allstone or Michael Stackpole, or Timothy Zahn, and make some compelling characters that sometimes become more popular than the movie characters (I'm looking at you, Mara Jade and Corran Horn) and then you can kill them off.

Also, in that vein, Karen Traviss, you f***ing leave Timothy Zahn's characters alone. He writes infinitely better and more interesting stories than you do.

Anyway, sorry for the long and rambling post, but I've been bottling this up for a long time. Grimdarkness is good, and it has its place, but that place is not Star Wars. I'll get that fix elsewhere, and meanwhile I can go to Star Wars getting what I'm expecting. I mean, I'd be upset if I read a 40k novel where every character lived; likewise I'd be upset if I read a SW novel where EVERYONE DIED. So get back to your roots. Side stories featuring none of the movie characters can be awesome (again, see the Rogue Squadron series). Write more of those or something. If nothing else, it's getting silly that Han and Luke are the only two people in the entire galaxy who can handle some things (didn't Luke make that Jedi Academy for this reason?)

I welcome your thoughts, and thanks for bearing with me through all this.

-HTMC