Why all the Karen Traviss hate?

So, for what I see almost anything bad about KT can be resume in "you are writing for Star wars, but you are really writing Warhammer 40.000 books" because that pro-militaristic sociaty would work way better in this setting than SW.

Not really. Her books are written for aggressively hypermasculine military men. WH 40 K treats Grimdark with a fair bit of Black Humor. Traviss's Star Wars work is loved by the really gung-ho members of the military, who love how she glorifies all things military. It's like Star Wars military porn. She aspires to be the next Tom Clancy, but just ends up sounding like a moron.

edited 8th Jan '16 8:19:57 PM by CrimsonZephyr

So, she writes like the imperium of men is totally right and the good guys(to said something)? I see.

I never understand the need of military fiction in Star wars which clearly is more about heroes and being heroic fantasy in SPACE!

Traviss Mandalorians are basically the Spartans from 300 (the film version) with laser guns. Xenophobic, militaristic, jerkasses to a man. If shooting something doesn't work, plan B is shoot it WITH A BIGGER GUN. Everyone else either wants to be Mandalorian or is too stupid to know that they SHOULD want to be Mandalorian.

What tips it over the edge is her diving straight into fan hater territory. If you find the Jedi at all sympathetic, you support real life slavery. That is a paraphrase but a sentiment she has herself expressed.

Well, Don't Shoot the Message. Military fiction in Star Wars has its place, and people like Timothy Zahn and Michael Stackpole wrote it masterfully. I'd just rather not read a story from a woman with a Colonel Kilgore-like fascination with it.

Zahn's an interesting example, because some of his non-Star Wars books are higly militaristic. The Cobra triology in particular, which - except for the first book - revolve around the concept that a military aristocracy is the best form of government and anyone who questions it is either a bitter reject or a clueless civilian.

But in the Thrawn Trilogy, which is pretty much the foundation for EU canon (and in its successor the Hand of Thrawn Duology), he writes stories that fit the themes and emotions and tenor of Star Wars. He makes idealism, kindness, and trust the foundation for the heroes' victory. In short, he respects the setting and universe in which he's writing, and doesn't try to impose his own opinons on it. (This changes a little in later books like Outward Bound, where he's more openly pro-Thrawn.)

The refusal of many authors to do this is why most books set after Zahn's Hand of Thrawn Duology don't feel like Star Wars.

edited 10th Jan '16 7:41:20 PM by Galadriel

I do think generally speaking that it's worth pointing out that Traviss DOES write well, in her particular style, but that style is very distinctive and highly divisive. The people who like it like it a lot, the people who don't generally loathe it; she's not an author you get shrugs about when her name comes up.

I mention this because I only recently got passed a stack of Legends EU material by a cousin and Hard Contact was one of them. It's really not too bad mostly because the Jedi don't actually appear an awful lot and thus bashing is kept to a minimum.

edited 18th Jan '16 1:24:40 PM by jakobitis

So she is a very good author and could be very enjoyable if she kept her lady-boner for everything with a uniform and a gun?

Never read her Star Wars stuff but I've read her independent work and I don't see hyper-militaristic streak in that. Yes, it's military fic but not to the level of say Ringo or Kratman.

Ringo, oh god Ringo.

I enjoyed the first Troy Rising until about 2/3rd's through until I read here that he was a self-identified Tea Partier. I couldn't unsee all of it after I began to see it in the book and never continued the series.

I would say so, yes. Or perhaps if she had a self-created universe where her opinions would be the sole canon instead of trampling over contradictory pre-existing works for the sake of an author filibuster.

Troy Denning splashed ASOIAF into Star Wars, to disastrous effect. I'm a fan of schlocky EU material, and I read NJO obsessively. I didn't really like Anakin Skywalker all that much when TPM came out, but found Anakin Solo to be an alternative that I related to more.

I'll never forgive what Denning did to Anakin Solo. He gave him an epic death, that I will agree with, but it was a waste to replace a dynamic, flawed hero like Anakin with navel-gazing Jacen. At first I was sold. Traitor, the Jacen-centric book set up an awesome, different, post-modern Star Wars hero. Then, of course, he fell to the dark side for stupid reasons. Stupidest character in literature. Jeez.

The tone of the entire novel series took on the Denning timbre. He loved writing this strange, over-sexed version of Leia that was downright weird. He liked writing about characters really struggling through terrible circumstances. He loved beating the shit out characters physically. Bringing on Traviss was very reflective of that tone that Star Wars became bogged down in.

Also, she used the weirdest terms for things. Like, when one character ordered their Star Destroyer to attack, they screamed "Take, take, take!"

WTF does that even mean?

Take what?

edited 27th Jan '16 4:07:47 PM by sarcastibot

Ironically, the only author who knew how to write Jacen was Kevin J. Anderson, the Uwe Boll of the Star Wars EU. Denning made him, alternatively, a total wuss and a fucking sociopath. Anderson made him a genuinely likable guy, albeit one with a fondest for the lamest jokes.

edited 27th Jan '16 9:53:22 PM by CrimsonZephyr

Anderson's main weakness in the Young Jedi Knights books (and in all his other Star Wars books, for that matter) was writing villains who were utterly incompetent. It makes life easier for a mediocre writer, because you don't need come up with any particularly complicated strategies for the heroes in order to have the heroes win. If the villains are smart, then the heroes need to be smarter, which makes designing the plot more challenging. (The Jedi Academy Trilogy and Darksaber as bad or worse about this.)

He did a decent job of writing Jacen, Jaina, and Tenel Ka. Tenel Ka in particular was one of my favourite characters.

edited 28th Jan '16 7:43:57 PM by Galadriel

Tenel Ka was great before she became Queen of Hapes — then Hapes became a Mary Suetopia and the most important place in the Galaxy. What single entity gave the greatest fleet contribution to the Galactic Alliance? Hapes. Where did the Jedi Order relocate after being driven from Coruscant, not once, but four times? Hapes. The plot twisted inwards and outwards to include Hapes in the story.

Hapes was the Naboo of Star Wars Legends.

I liked Anderson's comics.

@sarcastibot I think you should direct some of that hate towards George Lucas. Originally, Jacen was going to die and Anakin Solo was going to be the hero of the war but George Lucas veto'd it because he thought having two heroes named Anakin might be confusing.

I agree that Tenel Ka was great in Young Jedi Knights, not so much in New Jedi Order. But then, NJO screwed up pretty much everything.

edited 31st Jan '16 6:13:45 PM by Galadriel

TL;DR

Karen Traviss is a decent enough writer when you give her an open world to create for herself. Her Gears of War novels are very popular because the games kept their lore open so writers could fill it in.

Her novels in the Star Wars and Halo universes are different though. There is a great deal of established lore, character development and motivations that she either ignores, retcons, or throws away in order to tell her stories. Much character derailment and canon discontinuity ensues.

She has also compared Jedi to slave owners for leading the clone army into battle. (Disregarding in universe laws and lore.) And she has compared fans that like Jedi to Nazis, since they are worshiping and promoting "genetic superiority." (Her words, not mine. http://www.karentraviss.com/page22/files/Is_it_true_you_hate_Jedi_.html )

I think it boils down to the fact that Karen went after the Jedi and Doctor Halsey, two people with big fandoms as well as thumped the "military is awesome" bandwagon a great deal. Then again, I think Halo took a serious nosedive after Reach so any new ideas were good.

I liked her Republic Commando books. I alway had the opinion that her characters views on the Jedi were incorrect,but were meant to show another perspective, this was the fact that she never got into the heads of the characters she portrayed negatively.

As for her Halo novels, I remember Grasslands being more boring than anything else, I actually liked Thursday War, but after that I started to get the creeping sensation that Osman, ONI, Peringosky, and crew were supposed to be right about Halsey and The Elites. Also I did not appreciate the Arbiter being made out to be such a wuss in Thursday War.

Karen Traviss has gone on record in saying they are supposed to be right about Halsey and the Elites. The problem being that it was ONI who sponsored Halsey's experiments and she was the only one who showed them anything resembling humanity.

And in the post referenced in @269 she was entirely wrong when she put all the onus for that on the Jedi. Either ONE Jedi (manipulated by the Sith) or a Sith using the name of an already murdered Jedi ordered the clone army, on the instruction of Palpatine. In either case, the first any Jedi not named Sifo-Dyas ever heard of the clone army was when Kenobi stumbled over it looking for something completely unrelated. The Jedi treated the clones like humans right from the beginning - the Jedi encouraged individuality and the use of names not numbers, there was a Jedi at the clone training facility to rein in the bounty hunters and mercenaries doing the majority of the training. Yes, clones did die in the war... because that is what happens in a war.

(Not to mention her rather hilarious hypocrisy in her strawman 'Jedi Fanboy' which could easily be describing herself and the really hardcore fans of hers if you just swap 'Jedi' for 'Mandalorian.')

Give Traviss her own universe to play in and she's a perfectly competent writer. Let her anywhere near anything with an established canon though and she will fuck it right up.

edited 30th Nov '16 2:03:07 PM by jakobitis

To go along with that, Traviss has a weird habit of Misblamed as a real-life thing about fictional tropes.

The Jedi are hated for using a Clone Army but no one really calls the Senate to task for it.

Halsey is hated for the Spartan project but ONI is let off scott free.

She did the same thing in Gears of War as I understand it.

Remember this is from the POV of characters who do not know the full story. One can take a very death of the author prospective and think Skirtita and his family are wrong about the Jedi.

Didn't somebody say she refuses to read up on the franchises she writes for before she writes for them?