YMMV / Star Wars Paranormalities Trilogy

• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Emperor Valkor: A Well-Intentioned Extremist who's desperately seeking peace by robbing people of their free-will, but has gone insane from carrying out his goal for so long with no end in sight? Or is it just a false pretext for universal conquest and he's merely a sadistic hypocrite?
  • Gahmah Raan: A Cloud Cuckoolander who just happens to be smarter than he makes himself out to be? Or an emotionally damaged man who hides behind a mask of silliness? Or both?
• Ass Pull:
  • Parodied by Zolph in the epilogue of Episode I, when Maesterus reveals that he is a distant ancestor of his. Maesterus points out that he would have told him sooner had Zolph just cooperated with him. This is also an aversion at the same time, as this was hinted at several points throughout the story, even justifying a bit of the tension going on between him and Maesterus.
  • Parodied again in Episode II - Chapter 17, when after Gahmah Raan kills Gestroma, the former gets a last-minute reason to want to kill Masochus in the form of Masochus hiring Gestroma to kill Gahmah's hunting partner, Violo Jod, who wasn't mentioned at all until that chapter. Appropriately, Gahmah's too late to get a piece of the revenge pie, as Masochus has already been killed by Grein and Armogeist - two characters who had reasons to hate him already established in advance - when he catches up to them.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • Grein describing one of her part-time jobs on Sleheyron to Hiriss, and Zolph's reaction to it.
  • Some of Will Helms' deaths fall into this territory. On one instance, R9-C4 tore out his spinal cord and beat him to death with it, and he was still alive to experience it. Under normal circumstances, being alive after having your spine torn out would be horrifying. But since it's only heard over comlink and the description of what's happening is so over the top (never mind that an astromech droid was able to rip through body armor), it ends up being funny instead.
    • Helms' recollection of his earliest deaths (including one that happened pre-birth) in Episode II's prologue would be horrifying since they involve the death of a child (and they did horrify his parents). However, not only did he obviously reincarnate every time, Helms is very nonchalant in his recollection, including citing the time he wandered into a zoo's Nexu pen as an example.
  • While Masochus is one of the most morally repulsive characters in the series, creating an undead army by killing Lieutenant Helms over and over again and using his corpses is hilariously over-the-top.
• Fridge Logic: Lampshaded early on when Zolph wonders why someone would invent life sign-linked bombs, when he inadvertently puts the ship he's aboard on a collision course after cutting Admiral Gravlek's limbs off.
• Growing the Beard: To an extent, the early chapters were almost script-like instead of actual prose. This was eventually remedied by Chapter 7 of Episode I.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Gahmah Raan asking if he could have Maesterus's wings back in Episode I Chapter 10 (which was just a case of Gahmah being Gahmah) becomes a lot darker after Emperor Valkor cuts off Maesterus's wings before killing him in the final chapters of Episode II.
  • Gahmah Raan (the character) frequently feeling that there was a larger amount of time than there actually was between his encounters with Zolph — which were intended as self-deprecating Leaning on the Fourth Wall humor over the time it takes to post chapters — can feel a bit harsher after the rate at which Gahmah (the creator) posted chapters slowed down drastically during the early chapters of Episode III, with Chapter 3 of Episode III taking over two years to release.
  • In Episode II's prologue, Sergeant Will Helms recalls some of his earliest deaths, and in one of the later edits to the chapter, Helms casually mentions one of them being a result of wandering into a Nexu pen at a zoo as a child. In the second episode of The Bad Batch, Omega almost gets attacked by a wild Nexu and is only saved by Hunter and Suu chasing it off. While Helms' encounter was treated as extreme Black Comedy due to him relaying this story as an adult (and being one of his many deaths), Omega's is treated with all the impact such an encounter would entail since it happens in the moment.
  • Traitor Among the Chiss — a flashpoint in Star Wars: The Old Republic that was added in 2017 — reveals why Force-sensitive Chiss are rare: Force-sensitivity was persecuted among the Chiss and considered a genetic impurity to the point that Chiss who exhibit it either are exiled, forced to suppress it, or executed. A few years earlier in Paranormalities, Grein — a member of a rare purple-eyed subspecies of Chiss - reveals later in the story why Chiss of her kind are a rare sight: in what would be over 300 years before the events of The Old Republic, the red-eyed Chiss orchestrated a Witch Hunt against Chiss with other eye-colors — after genetic discoveries of them being more likely to be Force-attuned than they are — leading to the purple-eyed Chiss being scattered across the galaxy and becoming an Endangered Species (other Chiss eye-colors are now extinct) in the present day. Supplementary material also reveals that some purple-eyed Chiss sided with the Republic when they learned that the Chiss Ascendancy was allied with the Sith Empire, and seeing how in that time period they still persecuted Force-sensitivity, they had every right to be worried.
  • There are quite a few instances throughout the story where it's noted that there are some injuries that the most basic applications of Force Healing cannot fix — such as Forceless hosts having their internal organs rearranged to be dependent on the symbiote to live — nor is every Jedi featured a master healer (the most basic form of Force healing is treated like first-aid). The story addressing these facets of Force healing are almost prophetic about the criticisms that would emerge following how The Rise of Skywalker made use of that power (such as asking why it wasn't used in other situations throughout the Skywalker saga).
  • When the final chapters of Episode II were written in 2014 and 2015, Matt mentioned that Masochus being a Psychopathic Manchild who was willing to murder people over trivial matters (such as the renaming of Korriban) was meant to be a Take That, Audience! at the worst elements of the "Bring Back Legends" movement. After 2017, the polarizing reception of The Last Jedi, and toxicity in nerd culture becoming a hot topic (with the Star Wars fanbase being one of the most-cited examples, with reports of actors and Lucasfilm alumni being harassed or even getting death threats), Masochus's character is disturbingly applicable to an even wider range of toxic fans. It also doesn't help that Masochus is a Politically Incorrect Villain, as a large portion of the harassment was also motivated by racism and misogyny.
• Ho Yay: Gahmah Raan was initially a case of this towards Violo Jod due to the lack of information at the time of Violo first being mentioned, due to how fondly he remembers Violo and his anger towards those involved in his death (and there was also the time that Gahmah mentioned flirting with Rakan the Devourer while drunk). Eventually, Matt noticed and the side-story Odd Partnerships confirmed that Gahmah was indeed in a relationship with Violo and to avoid conflicting with him being married to Nazeen, that he was bisexual and that the Krishari are polygamists.
• Moral Event Horizon: Emperor Valkor (AKA Yalbdalaoth) has gone to incredibly cruel lengths to defeat Zolph, but he still got to claim he was eliminating a barrier to his idea of universal peace through any means necessary. However, what he does on Christophsis is considered this In-Universe, as it undermines almost any pretense of him being a Well-Intentioned Extremist. He had Mortaqa (who was actually Emilin under the possession of Facadma) Life Drain almost every living thing on the planet except for Zolph and the Valkoran forces, only sparing the former initially just so he would know how he was going to die and make him feel the psychic backlash of multiple people dying at once. The in-universe part kicks in when not only are a good number of the Valkoran forces on Christophsis horrified by this, half of the Valkoran Empire defects and follows Maesterus's leadership in protest within one month.
• Paranoia Fuel: Sleeper symbiotes. The ability of Forceless symbiotes to possess living creatures is already scary on its own, but sleeper symbiotes can be placed inside them without their knowledge, lay dormant inside them for a long time — being able to even mask their presence from even Force users — and then suddenly possess them on a whim. As the last chapters of Episode II show, a good number of people from the Valkoran Empire have had a sleeper symbiote placed inside them, whether they were loyal to Valkor or not.