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

Thanks, I could not figure out how to quote everyone.

 

You keep saying that the only thing that makes something star wars is the space opera feel, good triumphs, evil loses and nobody changes who they are in the end, "ethos".
Just because the style is different, that it doesnt follow the same story arc as the movies doesnt mean its not star wars.

A show that has a police box doesnt mean its Dr who, But a show about a time traveling alien with two hearts who frequently visits modern day london and has a couple of sidekicks is. Even if they revamped the show and took him down a darker grittier path you wouldnt go around saying thats not dr who.

You might like the old Dr who better but that doesn't mean the new style is no longer qualified as Dr Who.

A book written about star wars characters, in the star wars universe, with star wars jargon, is star wars.
Star Wars has been gritty before (bounty hunter wars) and it didnt suddenly not Qualify as star wars.
The only thing that can disqualify it is if it went against established canon,and showing a different opinion about the holiness of the jedi is not a reason. Neither is failing to meet some checklist of "star warsian".

 

Let's just say the Vector Prime Wars never really ended....

That said, I'd have to agree the stuff brought up here apart from Traviss' books - Shatterpoint, Deathtroopers etc - are tangent, lower-tier experimental works that can be so because they're not deemed a Big 3 book. People's responses to such experiments are going to vary, some succeed, some don't. I don't tend to object to stuff like Deathtroopers because it clearly is a tangent and isn't going to try and takeover the franchise. I certainly got that sense from NJO!

EDIT: Re: SW / Not SW

If you define an identity, any identity, then you have to include some aspects and exclude others - you can't have everything. It'd be like playing Mass Effect and saying you want all the skills of all the classes! You have to choose one, with a certain skill set and exclude.

For all that SW' identity has a fair amount of flexibility, it isn't infinite - where's the controversy in this idea?

 

NP.

Another way you can go about things is to just click the reply button as you go along. Each time the new post you're responding to will be added to the bottom of what you've already written.

I didn't realise that myself until about three months ago, embarrassingly.

 

I have not come that far in her work for my voice to really count but it feels a bit like she don't really like the "fantastic" elements of SW, like the Force, and consider it some kind of cheating that should not stand up to "real" training and equipment - a bit like some of those people that think that the Punicher should be able to take out big parts of marvels superhuman community if he just put his mind to it.

I will have to disagree that the Prequels was more "grim and gritty" then to Original Trilogy, and had not the EU already begun to walk a darker path with the way things was developing in the NJO-series?

This on the other hand I agree with

 

You're confusing my point. I'm not saying that the 'style of writing' is off for me, what I am saying is the ethos (the ethics, the soul, the spirit) behind the story is different. I would argue that your statement about a book written about star wars characters, in the star wars universe, with star wars jargon is false. IS Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter historical fiction? I would argue no. Just because a story has lightsabers and blasters and Jedi and clones does not mean that the story fits. And no, a story about a time traveling alien with two hearts who frequently visits modern day London and has sidekicks is not Doctor Who either, because the ethos behind Doctor Who is so much deeper than that. What if you took the same concept and the Doctor's sole mission was to go into time and assassinate key historical figures at key points in history as to bend the progression of time to a probable future that he deemed better than what happened? It would not be Doctor Who because it would not BE Doctor Who, and I know of no Whovian who would agree with that interpretation of The Doctor. (how many times can I say who in a sentence?)

Back to my point- Star Wars is a limited perspective story. First, it is an Epic tale focused on the Heroics of the main characters, and the story is, again simple- good vs. evil. While yes, there are other characters within the tale that we explore, their stories should also still follow this formulaic example, otherwise they depart from the spirit of the origin.

 

I should make a 2015 resolution not to talk about the NJO.

But I'd argue the NJO is more tonally Star Wars than any other novel or book series.

The problem is what "feels" like Star Wars is wholly subjective.

 

Precisely - no matter how elaborate the arguments may become, it's all going to be very much subjective.

Which is why it's quite mystifying to me that difference of opinion forms such a problem for some people. So others aren't as big a fan as you of story X? So what of it?

Tell you what - you make a resolution not to talk NJO, I'll do the same for DE and then we watch each other break it within 24-48hrs!

 

Nah I like DE too.

 

Oh boyyyy......

http://www.newsarama.com/21648-novelist-promises-the-fall-of-g-i-joe-in-comics-relaunch.html

 

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

 

I wonder if Snake Eyes and the other ninjas will be her mandos or her jedi?

 

Sounds fine to me.

G.I.Joe has been constantly re-envisioned over the years. In more current times Cobra being a political movement seems all the more realistic.

 

Can you tell me what you mean by the NJO being more tonally "Star Wars?" I'm curious as to the argument.

 

Ok, I've broken out the beers, got the cookies prepared.... This'll be gooood.

Off you go guys!

 

I mean, I really don't care, I haven't followed GI Joe for years and we've already had two "blockbusters" try to bring the franchise mainstream (one stupid and loud, the other bland and boring). There's been versions of the franchise all over the map in terms of tone and style; heck, GI Joe Resolute was done by Warren Ellis and, between it and the live-action films, the franchise has already gone down the darker, more realistic and corpse-filled path. I honestly don't think there's any more deconstruction Traviss could do if she were so inclined. And I'd be legitimately curious to see how well her prose style translates to a comic page, if I actually bothered to read comics.

 

Yeah I want to point out that TCW did a lot to undo the wrongs Traviss did to the universe, and I understand it annoyed her how they just looked at her work on the Mandos and went "ha! No, I think not". Which I'm ok with .

 

I am Right now reading Triple Zero and I am wondering how old is Etain supposed to be? The impression I got from Hard Contact was that she was around 14 to 16 year old but now, less then one year later she is a knight! So how old is she or is the order that desperate?

 

IIRC, the Order was fairly desperate, although I got the impression that she was slightly (a year or two) older.

 

Then how long was she a padawan? It did not feel like she had been with Fulier for much more then a year.

 

There's no precise information, but promotions can happen fast in wartime. Normally Padawans got assigned to Masters (and went on missions with them) from around age 13.

 

It's the only story in the novelized format which follows a hero's journey in the same vein as the original trilogy, which ties together cohesively a war plot (Galactic Civil War vis-a-vis the Yuuzhan Vong War) with a more mystical subplot, the resolution of the latter directly contributing toward the resolution of the former. Nonviolence is the boon of both hero's journeys, Luke throwing away his lightsaber and Jacen failing to catch the one Luke tosses him, instead allowing the antagonists to destroy themselves, Palpatine through his apprentice and Onimi through his own violence. Redemption both for Anakin Skywalker and the Yuuzhan Vong.

I don't think there's anything "darker" or "more mature" about the New Jedi Order than we got in the PT or even the OT, whether it be the Jedi purge, the brutal deaths of Luke's aunt and uncle, basically The Empire Strikes Back in its entirety... maybe the NJO simply has the solemnity of The Empire Strikes Back throughout (I think it's a good comparison, that the NJO is TESB spread out across nineteen books), but both still have their moments of levity. The films have their major and violent deaths in Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, Dack, and Mace Windu. The Battle of Hoth is grim.

But at their core, both the films and the NJO have themes of compassion and love.

"One of the things that I think defines the original trilogy of Star Wars is that incredibly painful things happen to these people, just terrible situations they're put in... tortured, kidnapped, frozen, enslaved by a giant slug, Luke has his only family that he's ever known murdered in front of him and the only other family he's ever known gets killed on the Death Star in the first movie... The point is that these are the kind of emotionally scarring things that really drive most of the books that I write, but in the original trilogy all these characters... have this unquenchable optimism, this feeling that as long as they stay on their toes, keep afloat and keep on moving they will somehow find a way to make everything turn out okay."

 

True but they should not be that desperate jet

That was what I thought and one of the reasons why I thought she was rather young since, at least to me, she felt very inexperienced in HC, not someone who have been in the field for years.

 

I also like it because we see the next generation of NR politicians take over from Leia, Mon Mothma and Ackbar. Yeah they go for their own ambitions and thus the New Republic fails but if you want something to continue working you have to work at it. Well I like that detail anyway.
Also we see Luke's Jedi Order face its first true threat and it survived! Continues the story from the PT where the Old Republic and Jedi Order fell, and OT where the Empire and Palpatine were overthrown and the Republic and Jedi Order were about to be rebuilt. We also see what happens when a new alien threat comes into the galaxy after decades of warfare and Palpatine fracturing the galaxy and runs rampant. Also could the Empire have handled things better?

Well I think that stuff is important anyway.

 

I have to admit that I haven't thought on the NJO in this fashion, I may have to re-read and see if I can come to this conclusion. I personally do not like the depths of despair that the heroes are thrown into, and I still think that it goes deeper into the depths than the OT, however I can't argue with this perspective, because as I think about it, it does follow the heroic journey as a whole.


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