Would that it were so simple.
I'm not against evil winning. I'm against evil's "evilness" being downplayed for the sake of Evil Is Cool, or good being dumb because heroes don't get their hands bloody enough. I actually think censorship permanently destroyed fiction because there has been a reaction where despicable people are heroes, honest and good people are dumb, and morality of any kind except the most twisted or insane varieties are scoffed at. I'm just saying that we have to be wary of Grimdark fiction — some of it can have a lot of depth, but more often than not, The Bad Guy Wins only because the story itself is the masturbatory writings of a writer with Black Shirt inclinations.
The last entries in the post-ROTJ EU were examples of the latter. They had no purpose in their grittiness except to attract the pimple-faced teenage comic-reading crowd of the era. Plot, characterization, and theme were thrown out the window simply so that the worst possible outcome could occur, where the story could show elected officials being morons, the heroes being dumb, the villain succeeding without actually having to work very hard or be very intelligent, and page after page filled with gratuitous torture, maiming, and at least one instance of a grown woman trying to seduce a teenage boy.
edited 19th Jan '15 8:50:31 AM by CrimsonZephyr
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
Just a harmless giant from a foreign land.
Define "good people", just out of curiosity
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Every mission's a suicide mission!
@Crimson
Out of curiosity, what do you think of the Warhammer 40k universe? It is the granddaddy of Grimdark after all.
edited 19th Jan '15 4:02:05 PM by Jenaiqueserasera
"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion."
Would that it were so simple.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Juvenile and without much depth most of the time. The Ciaphas Cain books makes it actually good.
Fuck you, Fascist sympathizers
I'll note that's a trend in a fiction universe i've been getting back into lately, the Shannara series. It could always get dark from way back, but the latest (completed) set of books was pretty remorseless about it. Failure Is the Only Option seemed to abound.
Overlording the Underworld
Of course. Enough people got sick of the Good Wins stories that it's become a trend in some circles. Burn down the good guys and show evil winning for once.
Except, when you're reacting to a bunch of old time stories that always made the bad guys lose and treated them like idiots, it's kind of hard to create skilled bad guys who win without being the kind of monsters that actually get your books banned for being too real.
PKMN Trainer
Of course, the issue now is that evil winning "for once," is that there are now tons of stories where it does just that, either with villains outright winning or the protagonists being scarcely distinguishable from the villains. I'm being a bit hyperbolic of course, but it certainly is a cyclical trend in the kinds of stories that are written.
Overlording the Underworld
Everybody does follow the leader. Once the first book came out, that was a tidal wave. Plain and simple. Just flow with it and read the stories you want, and leave the others for other people.
And if they overtake your favorite franchises like this one, just get good at writing and make your own fanfics. They're not all bad.
Every mission's a suicide mission!
@Journey
Yes! Burn the good guys, and up with the bad guys. 
I wouldn't say it's a trend really, though. The amount of literature in history that shows the "Good" side beating the "Bad" is countless.
Overlording the Underworld
Down with both and up with the neutrals who are only doing good deeds because they need them done. 
ETA: And let's please have plenty of stories in the new continuity that don't revolve around Force users or Mandalorians.
edited 22nd Jan '15 8:47:32 AM by Journeyman
Just a harmless giant from a foreign land.
I doubt that. Jedi have always be a big draw and Boba Fett is getting his own movie.
Lets just hope they keep Traviss away from the Nu!EU
"You can reply to this Message!"
Every mission's a suicide mission!
As long as they stay away from the Yuuzahn Vong or any of the Solo children storylines. To me those were about as horrible as Jar Jar himself.
"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion."
Overlording the Underworld
The Vong, sure. They can follow the Solo children if they actually reboot the stories and make them good.
Fuck you, Fascist sympathizers
The Vong just felt like a massively jumped shark. Not that everything has to be Jedi vs Sith, but they didn't need a group to be so alien, i felt. The Ssi-Ruuk struck a better balance earlier in the EU.
Overlording the Underworld
Is Tim Zahn the only one to use Admiral Thrawn or did anyone else write books about him? It'd be interesting to see his career during the Empire's heyday instead of just hearing bits and pieces from the Zahn books.
Thrawn pops up here and there. Like he has maybe ten sentences worth of dialog in the first Dark Forces book. IIRC it's like in the very first chapter, too.
The Permanently Confused
Not books, per se, but there was a fairly extensive campaign in the TIE Fighter game that used him IIRC.
I don't think a lot of other authors really "got" Thrawn.
Although at that point he was Vice Admiral Thrawn. :)
I imagine most authors would rather write about their own characters (or at least the ones that come with the setting), rather than use someone else's toys.
Overlording the Underworld
Other than his occasional leaps in logic, he was a good character. He needed to be made. That one exception to the human club that was the Empire's command ranks. At least he was made by a good author who knew how to use him.
Unless you're Karen Traviss and you feel like writing Mara Jade.... *Grumbles incoherently*
Overlording the Underworld
Is she the one who killed Mara in the Legends-verse?
The Permanently Confused
Yeah, and rather stupidly too.
Quite by chance I decided I'd take a shot at The Courtship of Princess Leia. I'm cracking up every other page. Is it the funniest SW book or are there other contenders?
Overlording the Underworld
Is it intentionally funny or just outright So Bad, It's Good?
Actually . . . yes, some people DO complain about kids getting delusions of dragons and such. Remember the Shitstorm hardliners threw over Harry Potter? They tried to get that series banned in schools because witchcraft is evil and they didn't want kids getting into it.
Nobody wins all the time. Good, evil, it really doesn't matter. There isn't going to be some bright and glorious day where God comes out of the Heavens and hands a You Win sticker to every good little boy and girl and man and woman. Nor a day when Satan comes along and burns the world down in the shape of a Game Over screen. Both sides win temporary victories, and then have the board turned over on them and have to go back to it. So yes, Bad Guys SHOULD win from time to time. Because it's not on fiction to be social engineering. It's on all of us to engineer our own lives for once.