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

Robimus, "it's over 9000" is an old internet meme.

 

There is zero canonical ambiguity about the Altis Sect. We're discussing the Star Wars EU, not if George Lucas approves of something or not.

 

That's what you think.

You can't use an example to argue against "no attachments" when the example was created before "no attachments" even existed.

Or you can, I just won't take you seriously.

 

So just to be clear, canonical examples of the Altis Sect provided in source books, novels and the like that have been published since the Prequels came out don't count. Nor do books published before the Prequels which were the sources for the material.

She's not the only one apparently.

 

I actually approved of this and it changed a lot of my opinions on KT.

The Altisian Jedi go a long way to explaining how Darth Vader and the Jedi Purge could require a bunch of Inquisitors.

 

Recruiting civilians to be in the military, and toss the clones into a bio disposal furnace?

I mean, they have starship captains and pilots, they have mercinaries and soilders of fortune, they have small militias on planets, and they cant create and armed force without cloneing it?

 

Well they had no federal army (that's what the GAR was for) only the PDFs (Planetary Defense Force) and they were not likely to want to leave their own planet under-defended. Plus can you imagine the political power battle/major time wasting that would happen when they had to decide who would be in charge of this army composed of various units taken from diverse PDFs?

By taking the clones, they could leave the PDFs to defend their worlds and thus have a defensive army already in place while the clones would be used as a mobile strike force to attack CIS planets and to beef up the PDFs when needed.

At least on paper because the way the media has shown the war, the PDFs are almost non-existent and the clones are doing all the work.

 

I'm not sure how it could have been any worse. The genocide of the Jedi Order, a Sith taking control of the galaxy with no one capable of opposing him. Presumably trillions killed.

Certainly the Jedi tried to do what they felt was right but in doing so they played right into Palpatine's hands. Palpatine, by his own words, feared an unending civil war if the Jedi were not destroyed.

And the Jedi made it easy for him. If they would have followed their own ideas from the films, like Mace Windu's "We're keepers of the peace, not soldiers" who's to say the result wouldn't have been different?

 

You have to look at it from the Jedi POV rather than the reader's POV. Yes, we know that the entire thing was a setup by Palpy. But, from the Jedi POV, they don't believe the Republic is controlled by the Sith until LOE. As far as they're concerned, the Separatists are the Sith's plan, and to not fight them would be to lose the galaxy to the Sith.

It was a perfect trap by Sidious because the Jedi couldn't afford to not fight the Separatists, and they couldn't afford to not use the clone army.

 

It's odd to say it but the sense I got from Traviss was that, for all her supposed journalistic objectivity, she took it all too seriously and that's where she went wrong.

 

It would not have been different in the slightest, beyond Palpatine manipulating the public into seeing the Jedi as having abandoned the Republic and being in league with Dooku; all that would have been needed was for Palpatine to let leak who he was and the end results-Anakin choosing the dark side, Order 66, and the Empire-would all have been the same. As long as Dooku is alive and visibly in charge of the Seps, painting the Jedi as traitors in league with him is pathetically easy.

 

Why couldn't they afford not to fight the separatists? They're "keepers of the peace, not soldiers." What did the Jedi Order have to lose with with the fall of the Republic anyway? If they all actually felt they had no other option than to use the grown army then everything Traviss claims about Jedi is plain right.

I think so too. A sense of humor will save you. I would think that's how EU writers survive Star Wars.

 

For the Jedi it was a choice of evils:

The evil of the Sith and the dark side versus the evil of war and use of a clone army

The Jedi saw fighting the Sith as the greater which necessitated the lesser evil of war and use of the clones, of course, that a Sith in the Republic had engineered the entire situation they never noticed until it was too late...

 

Sadly, that's true of a lot of people, fan and author alike...

 

Yeah, but do even we look at this stuff and approach it deadly seriously as if this stuff was real? Like really real life? I'm not sure anyone does that where entertainment is concerned, do they?

 

"Recruiting civilians to be in the military, and toss the clones into a bio disposal furnace?

I mean, they have starship captains and pilots, they have mercinaries and soilders of fortune, they have small militias on planets, and they cant create and armed force without cloneing it?"

No, that's not something the Jedi can do diffdrently. the Jedi cannot do that at all. The Jedi do not have the power to create any armed force; the Senate has that power, or HAD it and turned it over to Palpatine. The Jedi are severely limited in what they can do, in large part due to the Ruusan Reformations.

and no, I did not mean Barbara Hambly. Hambly's altis was just a background name-drop; there was nothing she wrote indicating Callista, Geith, and Callista were not part of the mainstream Order, because when she was writing she didn't know the character background details wouldn't mesh with the mainstream order as George later defined it. I think it was NEGC first indicated Altis was somewhat rogue, but its karen's novel that really definses the Altisian Jedi as a large and separate "heretical sect"

and the comment that not all 2,000 altisians were Force-sensitives is correct, so my bad on that!

 

This is basically my point, they were created before the "no attachment" rule and organizational structure of the Jedi Order as seen in the prequels, which makes KT's use of them as an example of light sided married Jedi seem underhanded. It's no coincidence that they were pretty much buried before KT brought them back, because they didn't mesh well with the prequels.

Everything involved with adapting them into current continuity, such as making them a rogue sect, is a retcon.

It's simple, she brought them back to serve her purpose, even though they are an outdated relic of the pre-prequel EU. Of course the Altisian Jedi were allowed to marry and have families, Hambly didn't know the rules.

KT might as well tell us that Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader really were two separate people based on what Kenobi said in ANH, or claim the Jedi were totally into incest based on Luke lusting after someone who was not intended to be his sister.

 

Exactly. It's not that people disliked what Traviss may or may not have done. Nor was it a problem that Traviss disliked how Star Wars fans viewed central elements of the franchise universe.

It was a problem for Traviss and Star Wars Fans alike that she felt a need to hold such disdain for those fans, and do so in quite the public forum. I mean for crying out loud, there is no better text book example of Godwin's law in practice than several of the worst of her rants -- about fans' opinions -- and the resulting effect they had.

For the most part, Star Wars fans are a reasonable lot; and they have to tolerate a lot in their love of the universe.

But, I think in that case, there were some pretty unreasonable things. One could say, "But look at the fans -- see what she had to deal with." And there was a lot said against her that wan't right. But, I think that'd be a fallacy. It's not a level playing field. To some degree, it's cool that she would jump into the pit, reach down, pick up a big handful of it and spread it all over her, and wallow around the filth. There is a certain measure of respect.

But, in the end and in hindsight, I think the more reasonable expectation is to stay above the fray. She is, after all, certainly more of a representative of the universe than those she was railing against. And that behavior drags it all down.

 

Actually, that's endemic in fandom, generally speaking. Even in something fun and deliberately silly, rabid fans find something to fight about - witness MST3K and the endless Joel vs. Mike debate that was one of the earliest huge flamewar on the Internet. (And no, that's not an invitation for someone to derail the thread about that subject... )

 

Sure it could have been, its all open to the imagination.

The only thing that we know for a fact is that the Jedi failed. Saying there was nothing 9000 to 10,000 Jedi could have done to change the outcome had they stepped away from the Republic on moral, ethical or even religious grounds just doesn't compute.

Maybe the end would have been the same or maybe it would have been completely different. The idea that yourself and others are presenting is that the Jedi did everything right, that their every choice was perfect. Unfortunatly the end result was the complete destrcution of the Jedi Order and the handing of the keys to the galaxy to their ancient enemy.

I just don't see how that can be viewed as a win for the Jedi. The Jedi lost, and in losing there is always an examination of what they could have done differently to get a better outcome.

 

True.

Also, after someone above linked her site, I read some of her blog and FAQ entries. It's really no wonder she's so disdainful of her readers, given how proud she seems to be about never reading novels.

 

It absolutly would have been better if she had not made her OOU comments, or perhaps had made them in a more appropriate manner, though I personally suspect that wouldn't have mattered.

The comments that most fans were critical of, in my experience, were those revolving around how she felt about the Jedi Order. Her views of the Jedi Order were not a direct insult towards any fan, they were not a personal attack, yet they seemed to by far stir up the most contention.

I don't think that many people actually cared about her name calling and anti-fan friendly behavior, it was her writing that upset them. It was her take on what the Jedi were, it was her take on the Mandalorians, it was her overwriting of canon that really made some fans dislike her.

I never saw a single fan threaten her over the Talifan comment, but I saw a bunch that threatened to hunt her down when she changed Spar's backstory. Go figure.

The OOU comments didn't help anything but to me it is the content of her novels that really seemed to anger a great many people.

 

That's a good point. Is it fair to Traviss to expect her to "be the better person?" Her doing so would only have helped and could not have hurt anything.

I guess it's not fair, but for her, that's the price of doing business. Gripers paid her to make the comments they did. Did she give the same treatment for calling people nazis?

I mean, really were things so bad -- so much worse than, say, Mark Twain's criticism (read "flaming" in today's terms) of James Fenimore Cooper? Not at all. No one in the mix was Mark Twain. And even at her best, she wasn't Cooper. So, let's put things into perspective.

Jedi Ben, I think had it exactly right. She took things too seriously. It was reflected in her OOU opinions, certainly. But, when it was reflected in her IU writings, that was likely the last straw.

 

Yet your idealistic assumption here is that there was a better outcome available! For all her supposed realism I get a very strong vibe of "there's always a better way" from Traviss in her outlook. That's nice but one lesson life teaches is that, sometimes, there isn't.

The PT did that very well indeed, there was imperfect choices atop imperfect choices. The Jedi did the best they could with the outlook and information they had, but it was a rigged game from the start so they couldn't win. It was: Choose A or B, I win either way. Now, if you're arguing there was an option C or D that was far superior to what was presented in the PT, well OK, but what is it?