Lit A question on Karen Traviss and her work(s)

Mando'a was almost entirely her invention, too, wasn't it?

 

I think she built on some pre-existing words, but mostly hers yes.

 

Fair enough! And if you read through TZ and didn't like anything but HC then I would probably say she's just not a writer you'd like, and life is too short to try to force yourself to read something you know you're just not going to engage with.

 

I was very pleased she drew so much from Maori culture, stemming from the film's portrayal by Maori actors. Would love to see a Mandalorian haka...

 

To be fair to whomever said it wasn't in the campaign, they're kinda right. There's the interrogation of Halsey at the beginning, but Halo: Infinity, or the Spartan Ops mode, is a separate bit that's designed to be co-op multiplayer and expands the story of Halo 4 and takes place after the campaign. IIRC, the first two episodes were included on disc and then you downloaded the rest for free as a kind of serial adventure.

If you didn't bother playing the Spartan Ops stuff you would have missed the developments with Halsey, but the massive scope of the story seems to indicate that this had been planned for some time.

 

Well, that's what happens when you do franchise fiction. I'm sure there's lots of angles she would have covered differently. Had she gotten to use Delta Squad and specifically Sev the way she wanted, which it seems like she got word she couldn't late in the production cycle, the whole second half of O66 would have been vastly different.

You can really can't have loads of Jedi "following their hearts" or it undercuts the main story which is partly about the Jedi being blinded to what's happening and their own rigid rules not allowing them the flexibility to deal with things.

I think when she discovered the Altisian Jedi and the fact that there were non-council Jedi it gave her room to play a little more with characters other than Bardan, who just comes off as a zealot, because he IS a zealot, because converts tend to be so.

I know a lot of people don't like her work, but she was constantly gaining new readers and higher sales and placing higher and higher on the bestseller list. Which the fact that an entirely new sub-franchise and fandom was created inside SW with novels not connected to the Big Three or any movies and they were hitting NYT and other best seller lists and had increasing sales with every book....

I just wish that Del Rey had taken that lesson and learned that they could do that with other authors and subjects.

I'd kill to see someone develop the Antarian Rangers in novel form, or a series of books from the perspective of smugglers (Firefly of the SW universe). Like or hate, I think at the very least Traviss showed that non-Jedi, non-movie, non-Big Three books could not only work and sell, but do so on a large scale.

 

I don't have Live, so no I haven't played Spartan Ops yet, though I have of course heard about all of this, but I want to see it for myself in order to come up with my own opinion on the matter, because it sounds to me like it could go either way. The thing is, I hate the idea of an ethically questionable ONI as much as I do any anti-Halsey nonsense, because ONI to me is people like Veronica Dare, so even if she is following a plot from 343i on the anti-Halsey business, I will still probably dislike her stuff.

 

I don't have Live, so no I haven't played Spartan Ops yet, though I have of course heard about all of this, but I want to see it for myself in order to come up with my own opinion on the matter, because it sounds to me like it could go either way. The thing is, I hate the idea of an ethically questionable ONI as much as I do any anti-Halsey nonsense, because ONI to me is people like Veronica Dare, so even if she is following a plot from 343i on the anti-Halsey business, I will still probably dislike her stuff.[/quote]


It's hard, because ONI has always been ethically dubious, but it does seem like when 343 took over they discovered the knob that goes up to 11.

I think the anthology EVOLUTIONS was after the hand-over to 343 and that had stories where ONI was spreading Flood infections on purpose and some other really sketchy stuff. Nylund's ONI were never pure as driven snow types, but even when they were killing insurrectionists there was a sense that they were no worse than an intelligence agency dedicated to protecting the interests of earth would be.

That's why I made it clear if you just played the Halo 4 campaign you wouldn't have seen how 343 treated Halsey and the way it made it clear that it was a storytelling choice on their end to further their meta-plot.

OTOH...no matter how you justify it, Halsey was party to some pretty ethically reprehensible things, whether she's being used as a scapegoat or not.

 

Can't say that I found anything particularly wrong with Dare–except for the whole "lying-to-her-boyfriend-and-his-whole-team" thing. But of course, that's typical intelligence agent stuff. In fact, ODST might as well have been a Traviss study on military vs. spooks.

 

Totally cool. And I would be the first to say that her Halo stuff and probably her Gears of War stuff just wouldn't be your bag. The Halo stuff for reasons mentioned and the Gears stuff...it's grim. Although the whole point of the franchise was that it's supposed to be pretty grim as humanity defends the last safe city on their planet from creatures who may or may not be mutated humans and have an underground civilization. Regardless, it's pretty grim stuff and I try to prepare people for that, even Traviss fans.

OTOH, her Gears characters are probably some of her most likable ones, it's just that they're put in the worst situation imaginable.

Bottom line, there's loads of good stuff out there by other people to read, and I wouldn't recommend something to someone when they have different tastes.

There's a couple authors I've struggled to read due to friends recommending me or them working for franchises I like and...the experience was not pleasant.

 

I've kept reading and am 3/4s of the way through Triple Zero. It's not as good as Hard Contact, which I expected thanks to you guys, but I am just really invested in the characters so I have to keep going. I like the way Mandalorian culture is developed, Skirata and the borrowing from Maori culture - I'm Australian, not Kiwi, but it's still nice to see Indigenous people and their culture represented in a way that's not horridly tokenistic. I also like how she sketches out a culture that's very warrior-oriented, but still driven by family values.

Should I stop reading after True Colors if I don't want my heart broken?

 

It's...hard to say. At least without getting into spoilers. If you're attached to the characters, then there's undeniably going to be some heartache ahead. Even in True Colors. But the main source of hurt in True Colors carries over into Order 66 in a way that's really heartening and emotionally healing. And while Order 66 is not without its own fresh pains, pains which aren't so easily come to terms with, there's something very powerful in watching a family hit its darkest days and weather them with the love and support family is best at providing. Imperial Commando: 501st is much less emotionally taxing, instead focusing primarily on the continued fallout from Order 66 as the characters attempt to solve the problems left in the wake of the last novel, while also laying the ground work for moving on and forward with their lives. 501st's only real drawback is that it's the setup for the second, "Imperial" half of the Commando series, a second half which has, as of yet, not come.

 

Purely as a matter of curiosity: Do you think you adjusted your expectations going in due to the various posts you read here?

 

This. TC and O66 both have some very hard times for the Skirata clans, but despite them I loved every second of it because we see sheer hard-headedness and love for one another overcome things that would make a normal family crumble.

 

Then why did Jango reaction go something like this: The Fuzz! Shot them!

 

Because the Jedi were wielding lightsabers and threatening to arrest them for a crime they didn't commit...?

 

Sorry but that is really what struck me from her summary, that so many people in RC/IC was paired up

That don't give him reason to fire upon them! That is like saying that you have full right to fire on the police when they want to arrest you because you are innocent for the crimes they suspect you for

And now when I think about it that's maybe legally right in Florida...

 

It's what happens in every stereotype "crime he didn't commit" show or movie. Look at Mission: Impossible with Tom Cruise. The director guy thought he was the traitor, so he blew up a fish tank and ran away even though it made him more guilty. Innocent people accused of a crime, especially those with the personalities of Jango Fett or Ethan Hunt, aren't interested in getting dragged away for interrogation. They want to either get away or (in Ethan's case) prove their innocence. And besides, Jango and the Mandalorians wouldn't have been found innocent...the Death Watch had provided all the
"evidence" the Jedi needed by killing women and children and framing the Mandos for it.

 

You don't have any respect for the jedis investigating ability I see

 

It's not that I don't have any respect for it, it's just with dead women and children, and probably some conveniently-placed "footage" by Death Watch, they probably have all the proof they needed to arrest and incarcerate the Mandalorians. They didn't even know Death Watch existed, at least not as a separate faction from the Mandalorians, and all the proof they found would've pointed to Jango's group.

 

But Jango should have receipts and reports that show that he was hired by the governer and other things that shows that his Mandos was there legaly

 

I don't think mercenaries keep receipts. They go where they're told, shoot who they're told to, take their money, and leave.

 

If you do jobs for the goverment you better keep receipts. That is the difference between real mercenaries and cannon foder

 

The point is that Jango got spooked, realized the Jedi would probably find them guilty–the Mandos had been suckered–and reacted.