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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

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

Discussion in 'Literature' started by Pyrotek, Nov 28, 2011.

  1. Contessa

    Contessa Jedi Master star 3

    Registered:
    Nov 28, 2013
    I know right? I think it's great that they found somebody who can write good romantic domestic violence scenes to compliment Denning's sexy child molestation scenes. Golden was a great fit for FOTJ.
     
  2. patchworkz7

    patchworkz7 Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Mar 26, 2004

    I honestly think Denning gets too much crap for that scene with Ben considering Ben is pretty much of age and has assassinated planetary leaders at that point. It's pretty unfair to call that child molestation.

    Now, all the creepy Freudian stuff in his writing, which I could get a paper out of what he did to Alema Ra alone...I mean a character whose loss of limbs and growing instability/insanity is played for laughs by the "heroes" of the piece, including the loss of part of her nervous system...and especially a part that governs sexual gratification? Then look at how many other characters seem to loose body parts and the way it's treated? Eeep! That stuff seems to get ignored. I'm honestly still a little weirded out by how Alema Ra was handled, tbh.
     
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  3. TheJediBrah

    TheJediBrah Jedi Knight star 1

    Registered:
    Oct 6, 2013
    Travis was terrible at writing star wars. But at least she had a grasp spelling and grammar greater than that of an adolescent monkey. My 5 year old nephew could write better literature than Golden. The entire time reading her books was one giant facepalm.
     
  4. Revanfan1

    Revanfan1 Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Jun 3, 2013
    Let's not forget that Golden was the one who wrote Luke as saying "Compassion is for those who deserve it." Yep, she's totally better than Traviss, who wrote this:


    Yep. Golden's way better.
     
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  5. _Catherine_

    _Catherine_ Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 16, 2007
    Sacrifice is comedy gold.
     
  6. Revanfan1

    Revanfan1 Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Jun 3, 2013
    There are, admittedly, some cringe-worthy scenes, but overall it was good until Mara decided to go off and fight Jacen without telling anybody. After that it kind of spiraled downwards. The rest was, at least, enjoyable. Like the snippet I posted above. Way better than "compassion is for those who deserve it." Hint: One of these is written like Luke, one of these is not. :rolleyes:
     
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  7. _Catherine_

    _Catherine_ Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 16, 2007
    It's just funny to me because after that scene where he reaffirms his heroism and proactiveness he just stays home and does nothing for the rest of the book except revenge-kill his ex for something she didn't do.
     
  8. Revanfan1

    Revanfan1 Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Jun 3, 2013
    Although, really, he was in his X-wing searching for Mara when he sensed her death. So he was out doing something, he was just in the wrong place. He actually didn't stay home, he just wasn't where he needed to be–and that was Mara's fault, not his. Inferno did a good job of "Luke does stuff instead of sitting around" too. And in Fury, when he attacks the Anakin Solo's bridge with Ben and Saba. And props to Revelation, when he went out and tried one last time to redeem Jacen. Invincible he was pretty nothing-y, though.
     
  9. CT-867-5309

    CT-867-5309 Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Jan 5, 2011
    Fixed.

    I mean, how the hell do you hear Luke's voice when you read that? That's not how he talks. At all.

    You know who it does read like? Karen Traviss.

    Especially this:

    "Yes, management: that was it."

    ^I feel like every character she writes uses that "yes, that was it" line.

    I can't believe you posted that passage as an example of good writing. It's stilted, the tempo is just way off, there's too many commas, it's too formal, it doesn't flow like Luke.

    Golden is terrible and it's grievous that she's allowed to hand in her first drafts, so saying KT is better than her isn't saying much.

    If I had to choose between Christie Golden and Karen Traviss I'd choose to stop reading Star Wars. Which is exactly what I did.
     
  10. anakinfansince1983

    anakinfansince1983 Skywalker Saga/LFL/YJCC Manager star 10 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Mar 4, 2011
    The only one of her books I read was No Prisoners, and I only remember a few things from it: a pretty sweet Anakin/Padme scene, Anakin feeling pressured as a military commander, Anakin whining that the Jedi are big meanies and he should be allowed to do whatever the hell he wants (and no, he can't leave the Order because the Force is "in his blood" or something), and Pellaeon telling Ahsoka that Dave Filoni is not the captain of this particular ship and she is not "all that" here.

    If she wrote a story about a mother thinking that the Jedi are going to steal her baby, I know I'll pass.
     
  11. Revanfan1

    Revanfan1 Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Jun 3, 2013
    Okay, so it's a bit too formal in wording for Luke. But the feeling is right. He feels like a hero, someone who's realizing that he's been doing the wrong thing for a while (DNT and early LOTF are looking at you, Luke. Hard.) and wants to fix it. "Compassion is for those who deserve it" sounds like what Luke might've said if this had been written during Dark Empire, maybe. And yes, you're right, she does use "yes, that was it" a lot. But she's a British writer writing in her own style, what're you going to do?

    It is true that her stuff will not be for everyone. I think that No Prisoners is her third-most neutral book–it still has a measure of Jedi hate, but at the same time it shows good Jedi going along with them–Anakin, Ahsoka, the Altisian Jedi. Her TCW novelization does a great job of depicting the Jedi as the good guys for once, and Hard Contact does, too. Bloodlines comes right after NP, too.
     
  12. anakinfansince1983

    anakinfansince1983 Skywalker Saga/LFL/YJCC Manager star 10 Staff Member Manager

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    Mar 4, 2011
    I did like TCW novelization, particularly as it addressed Anakin's guilt over the Tusken slaughter.

    But if No Prisoners is considered "neutral" toward the Jedi...holy ****.

    As far as Luke saying "compassion is for those who deserve it," I take it as yet another example of Mara turning Luke into someone I neither like nor recognize as Luke.
     
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  13. Revanfan1

    Revanfan1 Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Jun 3, 2013
    I didn't say it was neutral, I said it was third-most neutral. It had its fair share of Jedi bashing. :p

    Also, if you were ever to go into Traviss' books, remember that the Jedi hate in those books is actually from the perspective of Mandalorians, so at least it makes sense in that they're people who could conceivably hate Jedi–and I think Anakin did too, but it was taken a bit far.

    Actually, it was after Mara was dead, about two years after. So that doesn't apply. ;)
     
  14. Gamiel

    Gamiel Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Dec 16, 2012
    No, Luke would not have said something like that in Dark Empire


    Also: I have some questions about the Altisian Jedi, in which thread can I ask them?

    EDIT
    my bold
    Is that really in character for him at this stage in the story? I know he complains a lot and think that the order is to ridgedandrolefollowing but is it not a bit to early for him to really dislike the order?
     
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  15. Revanfan1

    Revanfan1 Force Ghost star 6

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    Jun 3, 2013
    He basically was just complaining about not being able to marry Padme publicly. Over and over again. Nothing unusual.
     
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  16. patchworkz7

    patchworkz7 Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Mar 26, 2004

    You might as well ask them here or in that lesser Force traditions thread, but essentially Djinn Altis is Rabbi Hillel; "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn." and "As Hillel the Elder had stated, whosoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whosoever that saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world."
     
  17. Gamiel

    Gamiel Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Dec 16, 2012
    But I don't consider them a lesser Force tradition, they are jedi, unorthodox may be but still jedi, and I don't want to talk about jedi in the lesser Force traditions thread.
    Also I don't want to derail this thread more than I usually do with questions about the Altisian Jedi who, to my understanding have also appeared in works by other then Traviss
     
  18. patchworkz7

    patchworkz7 Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Mar 26, 2004

    Yeah...the only thing is that the Altisian Jedi were really just a retcon to explain why Callista's memories of Jedi training contradicted the PT as well as it already being canon that there were several....non-heretical (not dark) Jedi offshoots like the Corellian Jedi and the Almas Academy.

    ETA: while Altisian Jedi Calista shows up in the Bantam era, there's really not a lot outside Traviss' works dealing with Altis and his group as "Altisian Jedi", iow, as a group with different beliefs. Those beliefs can pretty much be summed up by Hillel's quotes, and the fact that Altis seems happy to allow any to question his view of the force and takes a seemingly Buddist view of things mixed with a sort of scholarly rabbinical edge.

    If you want to bring it back to Traviss, one of the points in NO PRISONERS is Altis' frustration with Yoda and the orthodoxy of the council who are don't yield on points of order except for rare cases like Ki-Mundi being allowed wifes to procreate. It's amusing to look at how many unorthodox Masters and Knights were in the Order in the generation before the Clones Wars; Qui-Gon, Sifo-Dyas (if we consider the new canon that he was real), and Djinn Altis himself must have come out of the Order.

    Altis wonders what drove his former friend Dooku to quit the Order in No Prisoners and mourns for the man he remembers as a noble soul while wondering whether the orthodoxy he ran from will be the undoing of the Jedi and wonders at how a being like Yoda with hundreds of years of experience, knowledge, and study in the force must see the world and people. However, we also learn that he's kept in contact with Yoda and the two trade letters discussing matters of ethics and the Force.
     
  19. Sniper_Wolf

    Sniper_Wolf Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 26, 2002
    Posts similar to this makes me truly wonder if any person on this board ever had sex. I'm still shocked six years later that anyone remotely believed Tahiri would have slept with Ben, also known as most fourteen year-olds would have sticked their penis anything attractive.

    @ Gamiel (did I get it right?) The main point of "Odds" struck me as a some people are figuring out the Clone Wars is a fraglecarb. By having hundred of millions of mentally incompetent droids versus quintillion mentally incompetent droids you see the war is, per Stover's words, the revenge of sith, not a true war of secession. My response to fanboys going anal, say let us use the verpine shattergun. At my height I owned over fifty EU novels, around thirty trade paperbacks. A good number of the Fort Scott Public Library's EU novels used to be mine because I donated them due to the old ones being held together by tape. I remember ma mère telling me oh, don't buy this hardback because it will be paperback in a month yet I bought it anyways (Star by Star, so a portent of things to come). Guess what, I had to look the shattergun up when someone compared it sodomizing their dog or some nonsense. Proper thesis, over annotating can be bad.
     
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  20. anakinfansince1983

    anakinfansince1983 Skywalker Saga/LFL/YJCC Manager star 10 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Mar 4, 2011
    I was having sex before a lot of people here were born, and I still found the Tahiri/Ben scene creepy as hell. Granted I've only read the scene in isolation and not read the entire book but I can't imagine any context that would make me change my mind.

    When I was 30, I was teaching middle school, i.e. 13- and 14-year-old boys and...ugh, no. GOD no. Under no circumstances should Tahiri have been doing what she did.

    The fact that she was once in love with Ben's cousin just makes it worse.
     
  21. Revanfan1

    Revanfan1 Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Jun 3, 2013
    This.
     
  22. Gamiel

    Gamiel Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Dec 16, 2012
    What's the business with verpine shattergun?
    Also: no you did not get it right
     
  23. patchworkz7

    patchworkz7 Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Mar 26, 2004

    I think Sniper_Wolf wasn't sure how to spell your name, but he did get it right, unless you mean he put a space between the @ and the name.

    Anyways, the verpine was KT using it even though a role-playing game guide said it wasn't available to players until the Rebellion era. Not that it didn't exist, just that players couldn't use it. This was in the time when she posted to fan boards, and she stated she had asked Leland and he had said it wasn't violating anything, and then she explained that even if it were not available to players in the form we see explained in the RPG, that guns usually don't just appear from nothing, and since it's the Verpine shatter gun and the Verpine were one of the few who traded heavily with Mandalore, it was entirely reasonable to think that Mandalorians would have the weapon earlier than others.

    Some people were very upset by this, since the RPG excluded the shattergun for anyone until the rebellion era, and it eventually ended up that Traviss wrote a short piece in her faq explaining the reasoning behind why it didn't matter, at which time people got smug that she addressed it because...the internet.

    She could have called it a Mando coil rifle and no one would have blinked, but because of a chart in one rule book, people thought it was an absolutist rule and a sign of the end times.

    So, I believe Snipepr_wolf's point is that the sort of literalism we see can get in the way of people enjoying something, and in a franchise like SW where retcons are rife and one moment the tech is chemical propellant AA guns with a line about lasers just being invented and the next shows lasers being used for thousands of years...well, sometimes it pays to remember you're reading fiction.
     
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  24. Gamiel

    Gamiel Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Dec 16, 2012
    I meant that he put a space between the @ and the name, which he spelled right

    Thanks for the explanation, also:
    Were/when were this established? And what did the mandos have that interested the verpines ?
     
  25. patchworkz7

    patchworkz7 Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Mar 26, 2004
    I think it was less trade and more protection, but the Mandalorians had their Mando iron ore which they traded before the Empire strip-mined them, and the trade resumed after the new deposits were found thanks to Vong planetary bombardment opening up new fissures.

    I think Swarm War as well as LoTF mention mutual aid pacts, and Roche is right next to Mandalore. ISTR at least a passing mention prior to Swarm War and the LoTF books, but Verpine weapons and tech were all over the galaxy as was.

    It was also more that the shatter gun was only not released to RPG players because of an arbitrary chart in one RPG guide. It wasn't "does the gun exist"? It was just a game mechanic. And game mechanics shouldn't kill stories. It's not like the calender rolled over from 1bby to 0ABY and suddenly the gun/tech was everywhere ;p

    Like I said, KT could have just called it a "Mandalorian Coil Gun" and no one would have blinked, but it made more sense to tie it to the universe and create something more than just another weapon. And she checked with Leland and all to see if she wasn't violating canon, and at the end of the day she thought it was a cool weapon. This was in the early days before it became obvious how serious business some people would take a single chart or line in an RPG supplement.
     
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