#say what you will about karen traviss (she deserves most of it)

[syn0vial]

some snapshots of boba fett being a socially anxious mess in legacy of the force

facing some of the galaxy's most ruthless and hardened killers in combat? no problem 👌 having a heartfelt conversation in a room with friends and family? RUN!! 🏃🏃

"am i allowed to call my best friend by his first name when we're at his house? if i get the answer wrong, it is equivalent to me stepping on a landmine and exploding btw"

the thought of having anything like a family or social circle is terrifying to him. loneliness is a much more familiar and thus comfortable experience.

this is a sad one. trying to interact with other people in a way that isn't predicated on violence (whether for or to them) feels so alien and daunting to fett that he feels like he's incapable of it. (it's also one of the many moments in which fett is an unreliable narrator of his own character development bc what do you think you've been doing for the past three books, idiot)

and finally, one of the (several) moments in the series that implies he usually relies on beviin and/or medrit to handle daunting social interactions for him :`) he's very lucky to have them!

[mrbubblyurchin]

My thoughts on Imperial Commando and Republic Commando as a whole

RC

So, I started and finished Imperial Commando on an eight hour plane ride last night. This means I am done with the series overall and this will be me going over it and the characters. But let’s discuss my thoughts on this book first

Needless to say, I was disappointed. It’s not that it was bad or anything, it just wasn’t as good as Order 66 in my opinion, and, of course, even though it’s the last book of the series, the series was left incomplete, leaving me a bit disappointed in the end.

The author obviously planned on writing more Republic Commando books after this one, with how the Jusik and Arla plot line was set up, how the age reversing was going, and how Darman planned to kill the Jedi, but obviously, the sequel was never made, and thus, the overall story feels incomplete. But, enough about that. Let’s talk about RC as a whole.

Oh, and I’ll be completely omitting Karen Traviss from this conversation. She as a person has nothing to do with the plot or characters, which are the things I will be judging today. If you have a problem with me talking about the actual book and not ranting about the author who wrote it, then too bad. 

Let’s start off at the beginning. With Omega. Omega Squad was definitely a pleasant surprise for me. I enjoyed each of their characters and liked how most of them found peace in the end. That being said, I do have some notes.

The biggest is Atin. I feel like after Triple Zero he kind of fell into the background besides when he married Laseema in Order 66. (And his relationship with her fell into the background as well) And he felt practically invisible in Imperial Commando. And I get why Niner and Dar were more in focus for that story, but it would’ve been nice to see some Atin. Also, he’s he only OG Omega member who’s POV we never got to see. 

Next up, Niner. Niner got two POV’s in the series, in both the first and last books. And those books were where I enjoyed him the best. Niner was a solid leader for the squad, and was loyal to them through and through, especially in his friendship with Darman. He didn’t fade as much as Atin, but I still wish he had been a little more prevalent throughout the series.

Then we have Fi. Fi is my favorite from the squad still, and I love seeing him whenever he appears. His one liners are great, and to be honest, he’s kind of the opposite of Niner here. He was very prevalent for books 2-4, but fell into the background in the first and last book. He still appeared more than Atin in book 5, but I barely recall even seeing Parja. (Which was sad cuz I loved the two of them together)

The last of the OG Omega, Darman. Dar is definitely a strong character, and he has a very heavy theme of being used, manipulated, and lied to throughout the books. By the Kaminoans, the Jedi, and even Kal, Etain, and Niner at times! His mental resolve to protect Kad at all costs is what is barely keeping him together after Etain died, and while he does resolve to hunt Jedi at the end of the book, it’s a nice full circle moment to see that while Darman thought his one true purpose at the beginning of the series was to be a soldier, he now sees he was destined for a greater one all along. Being a father. 

Next let’s move on to Ordo, Corr, the Jedi, and Mandos. We got a LOT to cover here.

Ordo- Ordo is definitely one of my favorites. Him and Besany are cute and great and I love both of them. I like all the moments he gets throughout the series. However, I do think he was focused on a little too heavily. While I do wish some of the other Nulls like Jaing, Prudii, or Kom’rk had been given some time to shine, I still loved Ordo and I think he’s great. (That being said, I will be omitting the rest of the Nulls because I really only know enough to talk about Mereel and A’den for a couple sentences)

Corr- A really sarcastic, witty, and funny guy that did not deserve what he got. Losing both of his hands was tragic, but, with lost flesh, he gained a new family in Clan Skirata. He was a nice addition to Omega after Fi had to leave, and I liked him a lot. (He and Jilka were pretty cute in book 5)

Etain- So… Etain. I like her, I really do. But sometimes, there are some choices that I cannot get behind. (Like how she purposefully went behind Dar’s back to get pregnant in Triple Zero) But even still, she is a good person, and she just wanted to be a good mother to Kad and live a happy life with Darman, and she didn’t deserve to meet the end she got.

Bardan- An all around solid character. I liked his development from bright eyed Padawan to rugged ex Jedi Mandalorian, and I think his sense of responsibility to Clan Skirata and also to Kad is very important. He made sure to put others before himself no matter the consequences, a quality with several others lack. 

Walon- A hardened Mando bounty Hunter with good intentions at heart. (Probably). I mean, he did save Jilka, lend Kal credits, and he also did try to find Sev. He cares. Even if it is in his own twisted way sometimes. (Still, what he did to Atin was brutal)

Besany- Love her. Since the beginning, she was all about standing up for the clones and their rights. She cared about them as people and not as property, and she saw their differences as well, and what made them unique, and she really does love Ordo, and I think the two of them are very sweet.

Kal- Oh boy. Here we go. I know I’m gonna get hate for this. Here I go. Brace yourselves. If you need tissues to cry, grab them. 

I like Kal Skirata.

…

…

…

Okay. I’ll continue. I am not going to say I agree with him on everything, and I’m not going to pretend he is a saint or anything. But I like his character. He cares about his family, and he does make mistakes. Everybody does. The problem is everybody has gotten so used to pointing out Kal’s every mistake that they refuse to acknowledge anything he did right. And guess what? Kal makes mistakes. He’s flawed. He’s not perfect. And that’s the point. Characters are flawed. People are flawed. They aren’t perfect. And neither is Kal. And HE ADMITS THAT IN BOOK 5. In fact, NY ADMITS IT TOO! She acknowledges that Kal taking over the Nulls and not seeing the similarities to the Jedi taking children is arrogant! She acknowledges that! And Kal acknowledges that and his flaws later in the book! Kal is arrogant, yes, but he sees that! He knows it! So before you go around saying how Kal thinks he is some saint god or whatever. He doesn’t. And there is proof of that in the books.

So, uhh, yeah. Overall, I think the Republic Commando series was good. There were some things that definitely could have been improved upon, but I liked it. I liked the story, and I liked the characters, so yeah.

Thanks for coming to my TEDTalk.

[smhalltheurlsaretaken]

Stumbled upon your master list of SW meta you wrote, and enjoyed reading through some of them, especially the ones that examined and defended the jedi order. I point to the jedi order in particular because when you pointed out that the number of jedi in the galaxy are proportionally smaller compared to a planet with a population in the trillions, it reminded me of a bad take regarding the order (which is conflated with the whole "the jedi are actually the bad guys" in SW): that the jedi are eugenicists because their adoption of force sensitive children. This never sat right with me given that the jedi never seemed the type to be concerned with propagating their numbers in some form of "purity" (genetic or force sensitivity wise). Any chance you can gleam into the nitty-gritty of this take's unsavory implications?

OOf, that's an old ask, and that reminds me that I really need to update that masterlist 😅 (and me saying that is an even older draft, oops 😂)

Okay, the idea of the Jedi being *eugenicists* is SO out of left field that I feel like it doesn't even deserve to be really addressed so much as mocked, because words mean things.

To be quite fair, I don't think I've ever seen anybody seriously use that word. (It may very well have happened tho, I just can't remember somebody seriously making the claim and sticking to it.) Even the infamous KT rant (see below) doesn't call them that - the extremely weird and frankly absurd take is that they embody supremacist ideas and that people who are into them believe there is such a thing as an inherently superior person. She does use the word "Nazi" (just wow), but I don't think she was going for the eugenics part, just the run of the mill white supremacy theories. People on both sides of the argument may have misquoted/misinterpreted her on that though.

(Seriously woman, why were you even writing for Star Wars?! YOU DIDN'T EVEN LIKE IT!)

Now, eugenics? (This post is so weird to write, I can't even) ⇊

It is LAUGHABLE to use it in relation to the Jedi Order, because as you accurately put it, the Jedi just aren't interested in... making babies.

Do they force their members to procreate, even artificially? Absolutely not.

Are they seeking to improve the Order by only taking in the healthiest, strongest, most powerful children? No. They were ready to reject Anakin, for one thing.

Are they studying how to arrange reproduction in the rest of the galactic population? No.

Is there a ban on non-Jedi Force sensitives having children of their own? No. Are they forced or even strongly encouraged to have children of their own? No.

Do Jedi control who Force-sensitives are allowed to have children with? No.

Do Jedi test for Force-sensitivity and keep records of it? Yes. But they don't seem to keep genealogies - there's nothing that says the list in the Holocron is a permanent one either - rather, the way it's phrased and the way there's only babies on it, names are probably erased eventually. And the purpose of the list has nothing to do with increasing the occurence of Force-sensitivity.

Are non-Jedi Force sensitives forced by law to give up their kids? No.

Do Jedi automatically take in Force-sensitive children anyway? No. Bardotta and Dathomir are right there and nobody's bothering them.

Is the Order ableist? No. We even see plenty of disabled Jedi and nobody is throwing them out. (Amputees like Anakin and elderly people like Yoda and Tera Sinube, for starters. Also Prosset Dibs, or Tahl in Legends).

The Force isn't even proven to be reliably 'transmissible' from one generation to the next - the Force 'being strong' in particular families may just as easily be for more spiritual reasons depending on how you want to look at it. Because, you know, Star Wars isn't all literal.

IT'S JUST SO DUMB.

NOTHING ABOUT HOW THE ORDER WORKS HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH WHAT THAT WORD MEANS.

(I'm sorry I'm not dissing you for the ask I just don't get how anybody could ever have said that 😂😭)

[thebisexualmandalorian]

Inviting controversy by asking a controversial question which you may feel free to ignore but. Thoughts on Karen Traviss' Star Wars books, from the old EU? I assume you've got Opinions

BOY DO I

I'll probably forget to include everything, but I've gone on an hour long Rant before and I'll do it again lmao

Okay, so the good. There is good in these books and I'll drag it out with teeth and claws if I have to.

I love Kal Skirata. You can crucify me for that if you want to, but as a daddy issues having bitch, I want him to be my dad. He's a wonderfully flawed character, and he owns up to those flaws. He's made mistakes and he's grown and he knows he isn't perfect but by god, he'll try for his boys. He fights tooth and nail to protect them from what he can, and what he can't, he'll go through hell with them (literally, I can't remember the exact wording, but it's said in Hard Contact I believe, that any training he puts his men through, he does it himself first). He's overprotective because there's so much he can't protect them from, and it's clear that he loves them with all his heart.

The clone and GAR and Mando culture building. This is a grayer area for me because there is a lot of internalized bullshit KT is dealing with that I'll talk about later, but! We wouldn't have nearly the background we do for these cultures without her books. I love most of what she did with it, from the military worldbuilding to the Mandalorian culture and the different facets of it we see through the eyes of different characters. And the language! Mando'a isn't a heavily developed conlang, but the tools are there, and it makes sense within the world. And we have music! We have songs.

I love the characters. There are gray areas, no one is perfect, and they all get down and dirty when things call for it. They love each other deeply and make good and bad decisions, they're realistic. The relationships are tender and gentle, and I love the interactions between everyone, the loyalty and the devotion, and the overarching feeling of grief because we know how this ends.

The clones! I love them! They are wonderful and well developed, and I love hearing their thoughts on everything, and their bond with one another and those around them. I'm not coherent about this one because I think about them for five seconds and start making high pitched noises like an overexcited dog.

The descriptions are so deliciously visceral, and I love reading them.

The bad:

Another unpopular opinion: I loathe Vau. Hate him utterly. He's a good character but a deeply horrible man, and this might be my trauma talking but it's my opinion and I'll die on this goddamn hill. He's verbally and physically abusive, and sees absolutely no consequences (or even reproach) for it in the narrative, aside from Kal breaking his nose, and he deserved so much worse than that.

The misogyny. Oh, Karen honey. That internalized misogyny got you good, huh? The blatant way she treats Etain and Besany through the mouths of other characters is... oof. There's a little bit of reversal, but it's still pretty bad. Even though they're "not like other girls," it's pretty obvious that Karen has a lot of issues with womanhood. It was the 2000s, so I'll let some of it be with the caveat that the 2000s were pretty damn misogynistic in general, but goddamn. Also, on that note, she seems to be fighting herself on whether Mandos have a gender neutral society or not? Like, she'll say on one page that there's no difference between men and women, and then go on to say that men go out and fight but women stay to guard the home and raise the kids. I am putting my head in my hands.

On a related note, Karen is the Jedi who hurt you in the room with us right now? Why do you hate the Jedi so damn much? It doesn't make any sense in the story and it doesn't make sense on a metatextual level. Bro, are you good?

Anyway! Yes! I have many opinions about this book series and I'm sure I forgot to cover everything! Please feel free to ask more questions!

[hannagoldworthy]

Arrogant Kenobists like you drove Karen Travis out of Lucasfilm because you couldn’t stand hearing the truth about your precious Mary Suetopia, the Jedi Order. You don’t deserve to call yourself people, much less Star Wars fans!

….

I should block her. I really should block her.

….fuck it.

One: It’s Karen Traviss, with two S’s at the end. If you’re going to put a writer up on a (imho completely undeserved) pedestal, you might as well spell her damn name right.

Two: Karen Traviss was not driven out of Lucasfilm. She quit, because George Lucas decided to take Mandalorian culture and clone culture in a different direction that what she’d written in her novels and she was throwing a tantrum to try and change his mind.

Three: Mary Suetopia is such an antiquated term that TvTropes merged its page under plain Utopia years ago.

Four: AllTheTropes still has a Mary Suetopia page, and notably, the Jedi Order is not on it, but Traviss’s Mandalorian society is. This is because the Jedi Order does have a few flaws that make it feel like a natural, interesting society in Lucas’s films, while Traviss makes her Mandalorian culture so perfect, upstanding, and idealistic that it becomes uninteresting. And aren’t you the one who’s always blathering about perfect, heroic characters being uninteresting, Domina?

Five: And on that note, aren’t you the one calling yourself a Lucas purist on your Ao3 account? That would be as utterly nonsensical as if I were to say, “oh, I’m a Tolkien purist and I think Rings of Power is the most faithful adaptation I’ve ever seen of the Silmarillion, which I have totally read and understood.” Karen Traviss is not George Lucas; saying that her stories supersede George’s canonical vision necessarily makes you not a Star Wars purist.

And lastly: I meant it when I said to find something else to do with your time, Domina. If you can’t find work or a boyfriend, try a physical hobby! I like knitting and cross stitch, myself; maybe you could try crochet? Or macrame?

[padawanlost]

Hello there! I just wanted to ask about something that’s been confusing me real quick: did Anakin lord over others with his Chosen One status or not? Because I thought he was insecure, disliked all the expectations that came with it, and didn’t really believe in that old prophecy to begin with. But, in Jude Watson’s books he thinks he deserves all these things because of it and rubs that status in other faces? I just need some clarity please lol thank you so much and I adore your blog ❤️

No, not at all. If anything, one of Anakin’s biggest difficulties was to assert himself in front of others (specially people in power).

This is a man who is considered a hero of the galaxy, of the most powerful jedi ever, married, soon to be father, beloved and respect by his men and even complete strangers…yet…look at how easily he submits.

If Anakin had been anything like some ‘fans’ like to pretend he was, he wouldn’t be the character portrayed on screen. He’d more like characters like Tony Stark, someone who is completely confident in his abilities and is not ashamed to admit it. But that’s NOT the character we see on screen, or anywhere else for that matter.

The Jedi Council didn’t want me, either. Being the Chosen One didn’t count for anything. Master Yoda wouldn’t train me, or Windu. Every member of the Jedi Council had had something more pressing to do than help him work out what this terrible, galaxy-changing power of his meant, and how he should live in its shadow. He still wasn’t sure. Anakin recalled standing there in that grand, polished Jedi Council Chamber, surrounded by what felt like fear, and disdain, and bewilderment—who were those Masters to feel bewildered, that the only person there who cared if he lived or died was Master Qui-Gon Jinn. And they stopped him training the Chosen One. Qui-Gon hadn’t cared what the Jedi Council said. He’d trained him anyway, a Padawan in all but name. Why am I thinking of all this now? Haven’t I put it behind me? Haven’t I had enough bad memories since then to take their place? Haven’t I vindicated Master Qui-Gon? [Karen Traviss. The Clone Wars]

Anakin enjoyed praise from Obi-Wan, but often became sullen when he was reprimanded. Obi-Wan assured him that he himself had been frequently reminded by Qui-Gon to be more mindful of the Force, but somehow even the slightest criticism managed to leave Anakin feeling stung. First they tell me to do my best, then they tell me I’ve gone too far! ANAKIN SKYWALKER IN THE RISE AND FALL OF DARTH VADER BY RYDER WINDHAM

Despite Anakin’s desire to distance himself from the slave he had once been, he was unable, or unwilling, to shed the other aspects that had defined him on Tatooine. He still dreamed of glory, still craved adventure, and never lost his appetite for high-speed thrills and the desire to prove himself in competition. THE RISE AND FALL OF DARTH VADER BY RYDER WINDHAM

Anakin was liked by the other students, but he had no close friends. He was not loved. Obi-Wan told himself that Anakin’s gifts naturally set him apart. But in his heart, he grieved for Anakin’s loneliness. JUDE WATSON [JEDI QUEST: THE WAY OF THE APPRENTICE]

Just when Anakin thought he’d passed that elusive finishing line that said adult, experienced, seen it all, he realized he was still twenty, Jedi or not, and the wounded boy in him still rose to the surface—provoked into angry violence, scared of abandonment, and still in need of approval. KAREN TRAVISS [STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS NOVELIZATION]

[Obi-Wan] knew, glancing at his Padawan’s eager face, that Anakin meant well from the bottom of his heart. If Obi-Wan saw a shadow on that heart, he knew it would pain his Padawan to know it. In many ways, Anakin was still a boy. A wounded, loving, anxious boy with great gifts he did not fully understand. Yet he was also a young man, close to maturity, who could do great harm. To others, yes. To himself, most of all JUDE WATSON [JEDI QUEST: THE SCHOOL OF FEAR]

“I just…” Anakin stopped. He took a ragged breath. “I thought you would be proud of me.” I am proud of you. Obi-Wan wanted to say the words. They were true. He was proud of so much in Anakin. But now was not the time to tell him that. Or was it? JUDE WATSON [JEDI QUEST: THE SCHOOL OF FEAR]

Fixing broken machines was like a meditation. Fixing broken machines was an antidote to every pain, every loss, every fear, every defeat. Fixing broken machines kept him from going mad. CLONE WARS GAMBIT: STEALTH

You are very observant, Ferus, but you must accept that I know him better than you,” Obi-Wan said carefully. “Anakin can be arrogant. I know that. But he is also learning and growing. He is respectful of his great power. He does not abuse it. He is younger than you, but he has seen much injustice, many terrible things. I do not think it so wrong that he wants to change things. You must understand that it isn’t ambition that drives him. It is compassion. OBI-WAN KENOBI IN STAR WARS – JEDI QUEST: THE CHANGING OF THE GUARD BY JUDE WATSON

Taking them, she looked up at him and shook her head, even though it still ached. “It’s odd. You’re nothing like I expected.” “Why?” he said, perching on the edge of the nearby chair. “What did you expect?” “I don’t know,” she said, floundering. “I can’t say I’ve ever given the Jedi much thought. I mean, not as individuals. I never expected to meet one—let alone two. I don’t tend to go places where your skills are needed. But—well—you’re gentle.” That made him smile. “As opposed to what?” She swallowed the pain-tabs, washing them down with a mouthful of water. “Oh. You know. The HoloNet news—it portrays as you as this—this—heroic warrior. Larger than life. Charging into battle, lightsaber flashing. Scourge of the Separatists. That kind of thing.” She shrugged. [Karen Miller. Star Wars: Clone Wars Gambit: Stealth]

“Ten years in this place, and still he was an object of interest. Of speculation. All their hopes and dreams hanging on him like decorations on a bantha skeleton at Boonta Eve. He hated it.” [Clone Wars: Wild space, Karen Miller]

[Anakin] did not like the fact that he had won. It seemed wrong that he had stepped so far out of line, and yet had been retained as a Padawan. He did not like the unease this victory, if victory it was, produced in him. Above all weaknesses, arrogance was the most costly. They keep me here because I have potential they’ve never seen before. They keep me in training because they’re curious to see what I can do. I feel like a rich man who never knows whether his friends are true-or whether they just want his money. This was a particularly galling thought, and certainly neither true nor fair. Why do they put up with me, then? Why do I keep testing them? [Greg Bear’s Rogue Planet]

The only piece of media where Anakin is more ‘openly’ arrogant is in The Clone Wars (2008) but even then, he doesn’t flaunt his alleged ‘status’ over everyone. His arrogance is reflected more through his disobedience, not open defiance and antagonist behavior towards his peers.

But hey, what do Hayden Christensen, George Lucas and most Star Wars writers know? lol

PS: thank you! <3

[clonecumber]

Hi, I'm wondering if you know that Karen Traviss published on her website what she wanted to write about in unwritten Imperial Commando 2 book

Here's link if you want to check it: https://www.karentraviss.com/information/FAQ/index.html

I saw something about that way back when after her book series was first cancelled, I think. I don't really pay it much mind, but since you asked I took a peek? And, all right, this is pretty funny.

You’re anon so I can’t guess, and I don't know what you were hoping for in response, but you may not necessarily know about my opinions on KT's general authorial decisions (it's mostly negative), so since I responded to this very flippantly, I'm going to put it under a cut in case you don't want to see it:

Also, accepting that most of these were just notes and first draft style nonsense, so they might have been fleshed out or shifted when she actually wrote them. I can appreciate that. That said...

Good to see that's where the idea Jusik married a mind-rubbed Arla came from, though. That's...swell. (Ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ew-) (I hate this the MOST.)

Marriage, marriage, whatever, whatever...

I refuse to accept Rede dying. Especially for yet more Skirata nonsense. This plot line already exists, all right, she could have let him give an actual shit about Dov, if she wanted Skirata-killing-clones manpain. Look, I'm telling you, Niner just kidnaps Rede for a character development road trip where they both try to convince the other to join the dark side. It's canon. I say so.

Darman also doesn't kidnap Kad because...okay, I absolutely think he would try, fair enough, but honestly? He's trying to get to that kid past Atin and Laseema and Fi and Corr and Mereel and Ordo and-? The man gets tackled to the ground and sat on in true Null-style conflict resolution. End scene. Maybe he gets an escorted field trip with Kad away from Kyrimorut with his squad since we're going to respect that he doesn't feel like Kyrimorut is safe (and he's not wrong) but there's no way Darman's in a good place to take care of a toddler by himself even in the short-term. Kad doesn't deserve that trauma. Take a nap, Dar.

I will accept Maze and Zey duo-ing it up across the galaxy. That one can stay.

Lol the clan being forced to flee, though. We all saw it coming.

[bloodgulchblog]

Glasslands, Pt 3, Final

I suppose it was inevitable that at some point, I would have to talk about my opinion on Halo’s political/moral implications. Everyone congratulate my past self for this prank I played on my present self by deciding to discuss Halo at length to people.

I’ll keep it brief:

Halo is one of those stories that gives us permission to imagine a justified war in which the entire human species faces extinction at the hands of an implacable, nonhuman enemy. Halo also tells the story of an empire being challenged by rebellion in its colonies, these rebels are Bad Enough Dudes to be punished with violence, and these are colonies which did not require the subjugation of pre-existing native peoples in order to form.

None of these things is unique to Halo. It borrows a pile of classic science fiction tropes in order to create a world in which it can tell stories about cool space gun shoot times and Hard Decisions (TM) without it being too unpalatable for its intended audience. It does this by avoiding the real problems inherent in real war, empire, and colonialism.

I do my best to be an anti-war, anti-colonialist person, and it is my hope that some of the problems in these tropes are self-evident enough that I can get on with this post without having to belabor them. Is it weird that I’m into Halo like this? I don’t know, probably. The brain chemicals move in mysterious ways.

I don’t generally take being a fan of Halo, or even being a writer for Halo, as a red flag about a person’s beliefs. I think most people engaging with Halo also find something compelling in it (possibly just a paycheck) and I think it’s irresponsible to try to judge the inner lives of others based solely on the fiction they consume or produce. I mean, if Halo has problems and liking Halo is a red flag in and of itself, where does that leave me?

But that’s not to say one can learn nothing about what someone might be like from their fiction.

This brings me back around to our subject today.

Sometimes, in the course of reading someone’s work, something gives you such powerful bad vibes that you can’t help but start having suspicions. Glasslands is, for me, one of those books.

(It gets long here, folks.)

After reading Karen Traviss’s attempt to convince me that somehow ONI’s pile of war crimes were the cool and good war crimes, as opposed to Dr. Halsey’s bad and evil war crimes, I began to question whether or not the author... how shall we say, has a distinct taste for rubber soles and boot leather. This gave me pause, as all I know about her is one book and one short story. However, I have always heard rumors of her being a terror in another fandom.

So, I conferred with some Star Wars nerds. What did Karen Traviss do in Star Wars, and (importantly) was it more than just bros being nerdmad that a woman wrote a story they didn’t like?

Given that this is not my particular nerd lit poison, I can only tell you about it secondhand. Based upon my research, these are the things Traviss is most notorious for:

Passionately hating the Jedi (and talking about how Order 66 was deserved) while lionizing the Mandalorians (who had just as many problems, but they were her special favorites)

Giving people “ah, she’s a military fetishist with a bit of the fash” vibes

Ignoring canon details and especially bending pre-existing lore to make people she likes look good and people she hates look bad

Showing no respect for characters/lore other writers had created (including killing off a major character from another author such that he only found out about it after the book was published)

Bragging about not reading the work of other people working on the same canon

Flouncing from Star Wars when she felt like her contributions were being disrespected

Calling fans who didn’t like her the “Talifans” (as in the Taliban), meanwhile fans who liked her were the “Fandalorians”

Some of these antics absolutely form a pattern when one looks at what she has done in Halo as of Glasslands. To whit:

Passionately hating Dr. Halsey while lionizing Admiral Parangosky and ONI

Ignoring prior canon in order to make Halsey look bad and ONI look good (to her, anyway)

Importing her pet drama from Star Wars to Halo and ignoring prior canon to make it fit

What was her pet Star Wars drama? From what I can tell, two things: Believing the Jedi are evil elitist eugenicists, and that they are vicious slavemaster monsters because of the clone army. She had an FAQ page about hating the Jedi on her website for years where she claimed not to hate the Jedi, but drew parallels between fans defending the Jedi and actual Nazis. In an interview, she once said that Order 66 was deserved and that the only Jedi characters she didn’t want to “shoot on sight” were her own OCs.

It’s very weird compartmentalized thinking, honestly. In the same interview as the legendary Order 66 quote she talks about how she doesn’t believe in writing characters to be “villains” and how it’s important to her to make all her characters make sense internally to her, and to hear everyone’s side, but several paragraphs later she just goes off on a specific class of character that is totally okay to just violently hate. Her Jedi FAQ page had her talking about how it would be ridiculous to hate fictional things because they’re not real, and good grief was that rich of her based on the other evidence.

I don’t know enough EU lore to really talk about the contents of her work, given that Jaws was never my scene and I don’t like Star Wars. However, “the person I hate is an evil eugenicist because the Spartan program had genetic compatibility requirements, I am going to focus really heavily on the fact there was a kind of cloning, and I am going to make up a ton of shit and ignore details to make fetch happen” is absolutely her MO in Halo.

Let’s not pretend that Halsey is an innocent baby angel and the Spartan program was anything less than awful, but here’s the thing: Traviss wants us to sympathize with ONI (which has done even more and even worse bad things than Dr. Halsey) for being cool and necessary while hating Dr. Halsey for the Spartan program. She wants us to sympathize with a guy fantasizing about murdering her (when she is by this point completely repentant and cooperative) and comparing her to Dr. Mengele (an actual literal IRL Nazi whose crimes were nothing like this stupid shootmans game fictional character’s crimes.) Traviss pays lip service to more sympathetic points and has things like Admiral Parangosky talking about how she herself is going to burn in hell, but there is so much venom in this book. The framing of these scenes is so clear. We are supposed to like Parangosky and Vaz, we are supposed to hate Dr. Halsey, Traviss wants us to feel that so badly.

Halo has always had serious problems when you think about the ethics of what’s going on inside it, but for the most part? Halo doesn’t usually ask the audience to wrangle with them like this. A lot of the Halo experience is Halo going “Hey kid, you wanna hear about a fucked up situation? It’ll be fun for a couple hours,” and you go “Yeah, sure.” It’s not deep. Sometimes someone can get into real feelings when they engage with Halo sincerely, but for the most part I feel like Halo knows that Halo is on thin fucking ice when dealing with the origins of the Spartans and it behooves it to keep moving quickly.

The problem Traviss has is that Traviss wants you to take her seriously in Glasslands. Traviss wants to give you a real indictment of the bad shit in the heart of Halo, she means it.

The problem I have is that when I take Traviss up on her dare and hit it as hard as I can, it just flies apart for me. She does have some ideas that are enjoyable and some scenes that are fun. There are much weaker writers in Halo canon, lots of them. But what it comes down to is: they don’t ask me to actually think about important human things that matter for real when I’m reading them.

She tells me to look into Halo for the darkness inside of Halo, but it sure as hell feels like this author showing me the darkness inside of her instead.

When Halsey asks Parangosky what makes her so much worse, Parangosky tells her: Halsey lied to her about the clones. Let’s ignore that Halsey somehow successfully lying about the cloning to ONI is stupid and doesn’t make sense, and entertain this for a moment. Traviss throws up a smokescreen of going on about how bad and evil the cloning is, but it’s the lying. The lying is how she couches the final knife Parangosky is driving in, the particulars of the evil don’t actually matter that much compared to the lie.

ONI does evil every day of the week and twice on Tuesdays, but Halsey lied to the organization. Halsey was disloyal to ONI. When Halsey finally abandons ONI because she can no longer stand it, this is treated by Traviss as a despicable, self-deluding bitch martyring her conscience. She can’t actually mean it, she’s a self-serving disloyal monster that can convince herself of anything. Otherwise, she would have remained loyal to ONI: the sanctioned authority of doing horrible shit for “the greater good.”

The authority. The organization. It’s not ONI’s fault one of its actors did something beyond the pale (such as the pale apparently is for Traviss’s ONI), it’s one bad apple. Her manhandling of canon details is all about setting up this conclusion for us, and that’s because the institutional authority of ONI and the UNSC matters to Traviss.

And this is adjacent enough to some real world things to leave one with some very serious questions about who the person writing this stuff is. Laying aside anything else that’s gross in Glasslands (describing shooting an Engineer as feeling like shooting an autistic child absolutely comes to mind), this is the shit that eats me.

What kind of person’s work am I reading?

Well.

When I was talking to friends and working through my feelings about Glasslands and its author, one of my friends casually mentioned to me that Traviss’s twitter behavior (before she mostly quit using it in 2021) had demonstrated her to be a Brexit-supporting, transphobic asshole with bad opinions about covid. So, I went looking to see what her current Twitter likes are.

Here are some examples.

(Did I mention that she apparently has a ship named after Thatcher in one of her books? Yes? Sorry, gotta do it again.)

Much like I don’t think this about Halo as a whole, I don’t think that enjoying the Kilo Five trilogy is a sign that someone is a bad person. I don’t think it’s enough information to have to know anything of significance about somebody.

I also don’t think I could appropriately say I know, with certainty, who this author is on the inside just based on all the internet bullshit I could dig up.

But I certainly feel confident that I know enough about her writing and her behavior in social internet spaces that I think I would prefer not to have anything to do with her.

I’m updating my Halo author shitlist, Traviss absolutely takes the cake at the top now. Denning’s merely irritating to me by comparison, Traviss is actively gross.

Links:

The SWEU subreddit talks about Traviss

The legendary "Order 66 was long overdue" interview

The Jedi Hating FAQ Page

A Hobby Drama post in which Traviss features

[gffa]

Been looking into folks opinions on Karen Traviss, to understand the deal with her. Overall many agree she's a competent writer and get's the feel for military action down right but she needs to lay off the Mando worship, handle criticism better. However. Some of those same people say they like how she shined a light on the Darker side of the Jedi. Which is where they loose me. I don't think they get that the Jedi aren't supposed to *have* a dark side. Being flawed yes, but that's too far.

I have a difficult time with anything to do with Karen Traviss knowing how horrible her politics are (her Twitter is Something Else, yikes), in addition to how she has said things like, “If you disagree with me about the Jedi being Master Racers (as in they saw themselves as genetically superior to non-Force-sensitives), then you’re thinking like a Nazi, too.” and that the Jedi Order got what they deserved with Order 66. That’s the mindset that went into creating her content for Star Wars and so I feel pretty comfortable going N O P E at all of her stuff. Further, the thing about the Jedi and the dark side is that there’s often the idea that they want to deny that it existed or totally eradicate it--but the Jedi never say this.  They want to destroy the Sith (who are, via George Lucas, legitimately bad and really did need to be stopped), not the dark side. Instead, they teach their children that the dark side is part of them and something to guard against:

--Master & Apprentice Which is pretty much exactly what George Lucas says about how the dark side works: “Only way to overcome the dark side is through discipline. The dark side is pleasure, biological and temporary and easy to achieve. The light side is joy, everlasting and difficult to achieve.”  --George Lucas It’s also easy to go through the movies and TV show and look at the Jedi and see them showing negative emotions:

All from Jedi Masters, the characters most often associated with being “perfect”--negative emotions all over the place, but they’re not acting from those emotions, they’re not letting it sink its claws into their hearts. So, the Jedi struggle with the dark side, they experience it like literally everyone else, the whole idea is to rise above it, every day, your entire life, because that’s how the Force works and how the Jedi work and how George Lucas structured the way Star Wars works. The Jedi are sentient people and I think it’s a mistake to hold them up as literally flawless--both because they’re not and because that puts them on a pedestal and if they’re not 100% perfect, then they’re 100% trash--of course they have darker sides, literally every character who is worth their salt has darker sides!  We can point to literally any character in Star Wars and show their less attractive qualities, like, I could write you an entire essay on Ahsoka’s mistakes and flaws.  But that doesn’t mean the whole idea isn’t that she’s working towards being the best person she can be, she’s always walking the path she sees in front of her, just as the Jedi were doing the same, trying to find the best path forward that they had available and working every day to discipline themselves against the dark side that was in every single living thing. Because, as I always come back to this quote from a George Lucas interview:

There’s a good side and a bad side.  You have a choice between them, but the world works better if you’re on the good side. And that’s what the Jedi believe.  You have both within you, but the world works better if you choose the light and keep choosing the light.

[littlebitwriter]

12 DAYS OF STAR WARS: AN ORIGINAL FANBOY-DRIVEN BLOG SERIES “EPISODE 7: SOME OF MY FAVORITE STAR WARS EU CHARACTERS”

Here is a list not ranked of some of my favorite characters in the Star Wars Expanded Universe. Both canon and non-canon. *Specifically not gigantically main characters in the mainline saga films and ones who often have extensive material in tie-in media.*

GRAND ADMIRAL THRAWN

In terms of comparing Star Wars characters to archetypes, Grand Admiral Thrawn is the evil Sherlock Holmes of the Star Wars galaxy. The smartest, most tactical, perhaps the most shocking Star Wars villain is Grand Admiral Thrawn. A character with a unique philosophy and battle strategy. He looks at the art of a civilization or planet in the beginning of Heir To The Empire where he can tell/figure out something about that civilization/species through their art which is fascinating. He is a unique, evenly tempered character and listens to what people have to say if they have good ideas. Thrawn is a character who is evil who also has control of his emotions. He isn’t like Kylo Ren who flips out on his macbook pro or is like “Fire Everything!” Thrawn is ultimately the antithesis of that. He is the antithesis to Darth Vader and The Emperor in terms of their philosophy which is perhaps scarier and his philosophy is ‘don’t let your emotions consume you’ and is as level-headed as Darth Vader and is very much all about power. He is an incredibly unique character and villain unlike any other in Star Wars lore. There is so much rich Thrawn material out there, from the various novels by Timothy Zahn such as the original Thrawn Trilogy: Heir To The Empire, Dark Force Rising & The Last Command. As well as the Modern Thrawn Trilogy (set before the events of his appearance in Star Wars Rebels) Thrawn, Alliances and Treason. As well as many, many others I have not mentioned.

MARA JADE

She is a great character who starts from a very interesting place in Heir To The Empire who started out as a Force-sensitive Imperial assassin who is easily next to Thrawn, both are the best characters Timothy Zahn created in the Star Wars EU lore. She much like a lot of characters I will be talking about, are all truly authentic Star Wars characters. They all have the makings of a great iconic Star Wars character who went on an exciting redemptive journey across the EU from being an Imperial assassin who Palpatine wanted to kill Luke Skywalker to eventually become the wife of Luke Skywalker and mother of Ben Skywalker as a Jedi master. There was a lot that happened to her with the Yuuzhan Vong but everything about that outside of Mara Jade gives me a gigantic headache. Anyway she is a great character who should be integrated into the new canon and should be established to have been married to Luke. (In my personal headcanon Luke was married to Mara Jade in the gap between ROTJ and TFA) She just has one of the best character arcs in all of Star Wars and is a phenomenal character.

QUINLAN VOS

One of my favorite characters in the Expanded Universe is Quinlan Vos who has stories in the comics that came out during the time of The Clone Wars comics of the early aughts written by John Ostrander. The story of him really goes across The Clone Wars. He is an incredible character who is ultimately an exploration of the ideas of the Dark Side and the Light Side and the temptation of the Dark Side and he kind of rides that line between the two. He is very much a rogue Jedi and kind of goes with the dark and dabbles towards it but ultimately is a good guy. His story in the Clone Wars from Ostrander is very pivotal to his character. Also Dark Disciple is another Quinlan Vos story that is in canon that is based on unused scripts of the modern Clone Wars episodes and that is as well a good Quinlan Vos story with his unique relationship with Asajj Ventress.

CADE SKYWALKER

The main character of perhaps the best Star Wars things next to The Original Trilogy which is John Ostrander and Jaan Dursuma’s Legacy. He ultimately much like Quinlan Vos is an extremely fascinating character. He is a bounty hunter who has all but rejected his Jedi teachings and he does Death Sticks. He really dances on the line between Dark Side and Light Side in such an interesting way where there are things he does for good but he’s using Dark Side powers and bringing people back from the dead which is quote Palpatine in Revenge of The Sith “Unnatural…” He is a unique conflicted character and he is very much one of my favorite characters in Star Wars lore. He is very much like Quinlan Vos the archetypal John Ostrander dark Jedi character in a good way.

BOBA FETT

I love Boba Fett. He’s got a bad reputation now especially with a show about a super competent Mandalorian who is ‘The Mandalorian’ who is clearly not Boba Fett because of a thing that he does at the end of the pilot episode that Boba Fett would never do. Boba Fett ultimately unknown to the general mainstream public truly is not just a bum/incompetant clone/bounty hunter that ended up in Sarlacc Pit. He was once a and almost had a solo-novel written by Karen Traviss (A great Star Wars writer who wrote many great books such as The Republic Commando series, also has an obsession with Mandalorians) However in-canon as of now, Boba Fett died in Sarlacc Pit and ultimately the badass Boba Fett pre-1999 EU is now alive and well in The Mandalorian.

DARTH MAUL

One of the boldest creative decisions in all of Star Wars was in the fourth season of the modern Clone Wars TV Show which was a moment I remember seeing on television for the first time which is… The Return of Darth Maul. This led to what I call the “Maul Resurgence” where after I watched that story arc in television I was obsessed with Maul and had a connection to Maul outside of the double-bladed lightsaber and the spiky horns I was fascinated by his rivalry, connection and hatred of Obi-Wan Kenobi. I read the novel by Michael Reaves that was a prequel to Phantom Menace which was Shadow Hunter. Which established his backstory as being raised by Palpatine and was inflicted with Sith tattoos and was originally a Zabrak (which changed due to The Clone Wars he is now a…Dathomir. He is ultimately an assassin told he’s a Sith, not really a proper Dark Force user, he was a mad dog on Palpatine’s leash that became used everywhere. He is very much the prequel’s Boba Fett where he looks super cool and most of the public doesn't know he survived after his initial cheap death where they got a comeback and more development. In The Clone Wars He spent years in shame and squalor and when he gets power back and gains composure you see he learned the lessons Sidious/Palpatine taught him and that’s what makes his duel with him, Oppress and Sidious/Palpatine so impressive is that you can make the argument that Maul was legitimately a threat to Sidious. He is capable of being a thrilling and terrifying threat. As a Maul fan My favorite scene in Solo: A Star Wars Story is when you learn he is the head of the criminal organization of Crimson Dawn and the idea of him being a crime lord is genius. His story is ultimately perfectly wrapped up in Rebels in perhaps my favorite and in my opinion the most epic lightsaber fight in all of Star Wars which is his last battle with Kenobi. It’s an old-school epic samurai fight with such ambience and power and perfectly ends Maul story and captures the evolution of Obi-Wan and Maul’s relationship.

THE CHILD

The social media phenomenon himself gets what he / she deserves and is perhaps my favorite youngling in Star Wars lore (sorry, no disrespect to characters like Ashoka). It may seem like I’m hopping on the bandwagon but I really am not, outside of Yoda and Yaddle I believe, there is one other character who is of the same species who fans often mention and even casual or non fans mention a lot who is The Child. There is ultimately I think going to be a solid reason as to why he is such a phenomenon. Much like these other characters this is something about The Child that is distinctive and unique in that all of these characters are wholly their own and go on their own journeys and I’m sure The Child will be one of them. He is young for his species only fifty years old and has a long, long life ahead of him in a galaxy far, far away…

-LilBitWriter (12/19/19)

[nieithryn]

So in legends, the clones were programmed to ignore any clone injured and marked with a certain symbol. This was for clones that were either going to die, or too injured to be worth the resources to save them. If Tuan We was the head of the cloning program, it would make sense that she would have had to approve this. That isn't really the behavior of a loving clone mom

In Legends they also wanted me to believe that Commander “When have I ever let you down?” Cody would hear Sheev trigger 66 and be like “Well shit I just handed him his ‘saber, too bad let’s shoot him.”

No, more seriously/less saltily, most of what Legends gives us about clones is from Karen Traviss, and I mostly reject her works.  It’s fine if you don’t!  But I can’t get past her flagrant disregard for any other Star Wars authors works, her out of universe personality, and her blatantly anti-Jedi/“The Jedi deserved what came to them” attitude.  And so I tend to ignore most of her contributions to the EU.  All that being said, though, Taun We is from a culture where cloning is part of how they sustain their own population.  So being a clone doesn’t inherently disqualify personhood.

Taun We was in charge primarily of creation and ‘basic’ training; she isn’t qualified to teach arms mastery, or marksmanship, for instance.  And Kaminoan culture, much like Vulcan culture in Star Trek, prides itself on logic, not emotion.  Kaminoans often claim they have no emotions, but this is obviously untrue for Taun We.  Boba describes her as being like a mother figure, and even Jango acknowledges that she and Zam are the only positive female influences in Boba’s life, which implies that Jango considers her a good influence on his son.  I have my issues with Jango’s EU/Legends characterization myself, but his protectiveness is always spot-on.

I’m not saying Taun We didn’t make decisions that she emotionally struggled with, or that she was always kind.  Or even that, in the EU especially, she was a ‘loving mother.’  But what I will say, is that in canon we see Kaminoans replace eyes, and limbs.  Those aren’t cheap, even for Kaminoans.  So I’m hesitant to believe Taun We signed off on that.  Now it’s possible that a psychologist below her did, and she certainly applied stringent and perfectionist rules on clone creation.  But kaminoans apply that level of pickiness to their own species as well, so that’s not necessarily a sign of lack of love either.

Anyway, Nonnie, I’m not saying that Taun We is on Shaak’s level of clone baby love.  But I don’t think she’s actively cruel like fandom loves to make her, either.  And just because she has to be harsh, doesn’t mean she cannot have feelings outside of the limitations of her job.  She just culturally isn’t allowed to act on them but rarely.

[goodverbsonly]

Star Wars: The Clone Wars

Essays who? (Yes, you read that right, essays plural.) I have to talk about what is right now my favorite Star Wars novel, a book I read in two days after I bought it for Kindle on a whim on Monday night as I was, yes, trying to right my essays.

But I’m a Clone Wars kind of girl, and so this book. It gets me. I mean it really gets me. God, it’s like Karen Traviss reached right into my brain and pulled out exactly what I wanted out of a Star Wars novels years and years and years before I was ever even going to consider reading a Star Wars novel. Yet, here we are.

I’ve got some problems with it, of course, but I don’t want to start with that, so let’s just dive right in.

First of all, all Star Wars books read like middle grade books, for good reason; if it doesn’t read like it would be an easy read for kids between 4th and 9th grade, something enjoyable, manageable, but still challenging in some places, it would be for the wrong audience. I am a 21 year old English Major, but most of what I read and find “challenging” is dense and boring. Most YA is dramatic beyond comprehension. The language and the story in The Clone Wars is suitable for the reading level, and, it does a good job keeping pace with the movie. I for one, LOVE The Clone Wars movie (I love Anakin, I would do anything for him) but a lot of “problems” that the movie have are fixed in the book. Towards the end, the pacing gets strange, stranger than in the movie, and feels rushed. I wished we could have spent the time we did describing the Huttlet’s smell with Anakin having to confront Jabba. Also, a lost opportunity in having Anakin confronting Jabba from Jabba’s point of view instead of Anakin’s.

That’s also a problem I have with Star Wars novels I have in general. Except for Ahsoka, they all switch perspectives at least once a chapter. Wild Space and ROTS don’t do it as much as this book, which has two perspectives a chapter, but I remember when I was reading A New Dawn, this also being something that annoyed me. But unlike with A New Dawn, I had more than one perspective to look forward to.

Anakin’s was so wonderful. And I loved Rex’s. Ventress was good to start, but I grew weary of her. I wouldn’t have included Jabba’s at all, and umm, Obi-Wan was in the movie enough to at least get a couple of paragraphs devoted to his perspective. Palpatine was, as always, delightfully evil.

Before I get to GUSHING about Anakin, let me just say, one thing I really really really enjoyed about this book was how tired it made me. Rex’s narration was beautiful. It had a lot of his personality -actually a lot more of his personality than the show ever had the time to give us. He and Anakin both gave us a gritty look at what the Clone Wars were like, without verging on the grimdark that would make Star Wars unbearable. I laughed when Rex made a joke about taxes of all things, and Anakin saw Padme and thought “It’s Padme! That’s my wife! Padme” and when Ahsoka immediate realized that Anakin and Padme were a thing. It’s got emotional weight without being soul crushing, without crushing the utter ridiculousness of Star Wars. It’s a hard thing to balance, but this book does it.

Anyway Anakin right? Like right out of a fanfiction right? Like, I paid $10 for a fanfiction. I paid $10 for one of my fanfictions. Like. The very beginning, the first battle that occurs at the start of the movie, I literally felt like I was reading a well-edited version of my own fanfiction. Anakin spends a lot of his time in the novel dissociating, thinking about his mother, and generally having a nervous breakdown, and I am not complaining. It was Anakin’s narrations that gave the book a lot it’s emotional weight and made a lot of the action bearable to get through. The show doesn’t have the time or the audience to really devote time to having Anakin work through what he did on Tatooine during aotc, and also it’s obvious he doesn’t, but this novel was, in a lot of ways, really about that. If you think about the timeline of tcw, this book takes place right up against Episode II (which means Wild Space must take place not very long after it; hey! aren’t my boys still injured here?). These wounds are still fresh, and Anakin spends a lot of time worrying about if he’s a killer. At one point Ahsoka kills a droid, and Anakin has a moment. It never felt weird, or too much. Anakin spends a lot of his time worrying about Ahsoka while still testing the waters with her. Anakin spends A LOT of time angsting about Hutts, which also felt appropriate. At one point Anakin thinks that to get out of a situation alive he would need a lot of speed, a lot of nerve, and a lot of skill, and notes that he’s severely lacking in one of these. (In retrospect,  it’s probably supposed to be speed, but it reads a lot like nerve, because he is actively suppressing a panic attack at this point.) He loves and cares about his men (especially Rex DO NOT EVEN START), while lecturing Ahsoka about the Realities of War, and Anakin comes to the same conclusion that I did two years ago: HE’S TWENTY AND NEEDS A NAP.

I might be biased, but if there was anything else the narration could have given me from Anakin it would have just been more time. It dealt with a lot of the things my poor kid was dealing with at the time, the Ethical Situation of the Clone War and How Anakin Fit Into That, and a lot of time devoted just to Anakin’s Dramatics.

I would say a lot of my complaints are genuinely Obi-Wan centered. As in: Not Enough Obi-Wan (he was spectacular when he was around, obv), also that Anakin continously refers to Obi-Wan as Kenobi which is Dumb As Hell.

Other than that, the novel takes a clear anti-Jedi position, the one that I see floating around tumblr all the time, and while yes the Jedi were obviously stupid as hell for not obviously noticing the Palpatine was the sith lord, and yes, they maybe could have made sure Anakin was okay instead of just throwing a clearly traumaized teenager into battle and making him an officer and then giving him a 13 year old padawan to be responsible for (and oh yeah, how do you feel about rescuing a hutt, kid?), but they didn’t deserve to die, the Republic was corrupt, but it wasn’t any more or less corrupt than the CIS. I wouldn’t have even noticed, except that I spent about a year and a half on the anti-yoda bandwagon, and then I hopped the fuck off of it, because Yoda -doesn’t deserve any of this shit. (That’s an opinion for another day and one I came to by accident.) Ventress’ narration pretty much fell into this trap as well, for me. I liked her, but her insistence began to make me uneasy. I can’t really remember, even after getting her backstory in the show, ever feeling like she really had it out for the Jedi and more like she just wanted to cause like a lot of destruction and also she wanted Dooku to like her and be her teacher.

Would I recommend this particular Star Wars novels? Yes, absolutely! If you like tcw this book is for you. If you like Anakin’s Dramatics then this books is for you! If you love the Clones and Captain Rex, then this book is for you, only prepare to have your heart crushed.

NOW: If anyone wants to rec me Star Wars novels in the future, I would be VERY HAPPY to hear them, especially if they have Clones, Anakin, or Ventress. If anyone also has any FIC they’d like to rec me, then I would be happy to read that, also.

[izzyovercoffee]

RepComm for the fandom meme

send me a fandom and I’ll — meme

softly, with a lot of feeling: I’ve been waiting for this moment.

lmaoo not really but yes, yes really. I am here and I am ready for this. 

Thank you for sending this B’)

Republic Commando

the character i least understand

Karen “What Is Abuse I Don’t Know Her″ Traviss

Ko Sai. I think, for the most part, she was written with very alien motivations, and it was fairly successful, at least in conveying that it was difficult if not impossible to relate with her on any level. 

I’m sure if I spent more time thinking and writing about her I could maybe attempt to understand her character … but for the most part I don’t really “get” her, and I think that’s the point.

interactions i enjoyed the most

Mereel and Ordo are endlessly entertaining. 

Any of the Nulls together, individually or clusters or all six in one room.

Mereel and Etain have had some very, very touching, emotionally deep moments — the kinds of scenes KT generally doesn’t allow any of her characters to have between two characters that aren’t romantically involved.

tbh this list is gonna be very long so to sum up: everyone with everyone else, when they’re allowed to be individual characters with separate personalities and motivations recognized, instead of twisted into very specific moral representations that KT pushes towards the end.

the character who scares me the most

Walon Vau is reasonably frightening, though really he should be. He is about as cold blooded of a killer as you’re going to get, and he doesn’t make threats, he makes promises. B’) 

Plus he’s also very difficult to get into the mental space to write, because he’s a legitimate Bad Person, and trying to write characters like him can be difficult.

it’s also a good idea to maintain a healthy fear of the nulls, if only out of respect of their potential for sudden and extreme violence. They’re not as “unpredictable” as the text says, though.

the character who is mostly like me

mmm … actually, I’m gonna go with Kal. this is probably gonna garner some “whaaat? but you HATE him?” 

Yes, I do hate him. but let me list some similarities lmao:

perpetual limp due to a bad ankle and persistent injury that never healed right / properly (partially kept as a constant reminder for a mistake)

short and angry, like all the time

compartmentalize everything and everyone

obsessive about caring for and protecting family, literally does everything for family

extremely secretive, to the point of never telling anyone the full story or full truth, everyone just get bits and pieces that seem complete. no one ever seems to realize this.

self sacrificing to the point of martyrdom, especially for family

these are all pretty negative, but … unlike Kal, I am actually self aware lmao and am working on these things, and have for the most part listened when other people criticize me so that I can continue to work on being better. it’s a daily process, you know, so I don’t hurt the family I care so much about.

Kal starts off terrible, and the writing implies that he might learn from it … but then instead of him learning and growing like everyone needs him to, the narrative instead makes excuses for him, everyone suffers, and Etain dies.

it’s unfortunate bc people like him exist, and you can’t coddle them if you want them to survive life. and yet everyone coddles Kal. Fandom, in general, coddles and makes excuses for abusive men. Full stop.

but like, here’s the thing:

He is a grown man. He is not a child. Don’t treat him like one.

I hate him partially bc the entire fandom excuses his behavior when it is, ultimately, inexcusable. He is not a child. He is a man, who has undertaken a huge group of extremely vulnerable people under his care, and he ultimately hurts them all. Severely. And TBH Kal deserves better than to be coddled and all his boo-boos kissed away by a fandom who says they care about the rest of the clan, but cannot see the sheer world-shattering damage Kal committed on them, regardless of intention. 

You can like a character, and still hold them accountable. Fandom, somehow, seems incapable of this level of nuance, especially if they’re a father and shown as sympathetic in any way.

hottest looks character

Mereel, obviously. lmao

No but like, consider: he dyes his hair (and his skin, and his eyes) and has a full wardrobe for all situations. 

He’s the (Daniel Craig) James Bond of the Grand Army of the Republic.

But I also headcanon Jilka and Besany to be incredibly fashion forward. Besany usually embodying the Career Professional woman, with very sharp, very perfectly tailored outfits that allow no room for nonsense.

Jilka also perfectly tailored, though her wardrobe is potentially more fun, visually, and incredibly flattering in all the right ways — but still very sharp, and very much professional when necessary.

one thing i dislike about my fave character

Mereel, light of my life, sun of my sky, salve of my wounded and broken heart, peace at the eye of my storm …

why are you like this?

lmao. On a more serious note, I can’t outright say I dislike anything about Mereel, but his inability to share what really goes on in his head with … well, anyone. The only time we see a truthful admittance to weakness is that single moment with Etain, when he admits that he’s still human. That he’s not perfect.

Every other time, and I know I say this a lot, but every other time … he deflects any serious conversation with a joke — and usually a joke that the speaker wants to hear (even if they don’t know they want to hear it). He doesn’t let anyone in, not even his brothers, and that’s … got to be a lonely sort of suffering. 

The kind of internalized suffering I’m sure he’s learned from Kal, both in the how to do it, and the reason he does it. bc Kal does internalize a lot of his suffering and doesn’t share it, burying weakness while in the same breath saying that he’s experiencing it and letting it go. He doesn’t, it’s just a different sort of self-delusion and deflection, and Mereel echoes it to a painful degree.

And then, of course, there’s Mereel learning that he needs to do it, bc Kal only accepts a certain kind of visual presence of mental illness and suffering, otherwise the person is “damaged” in some way and will never be “okay” for whatever understanding Kal has given okay. (view, for example, how he sees Ordo vs how he sees Mereel. He sees Mereel as stable, bc Mereel is extroverted, outgoing, and “always positive.” It’s not something intentional, but it’s still damaging, to all parties.)

one thing i like about my hated character

I might hate Kal Skirata, but I also love him. He’s a fantastic character. He is so so so flawed. His flaws make him interesting, and he tries. He tries so hard. He cares so much. He cares too much, even. His dedication and his love for his family are all encompassing, to the point that he can even be blinded to their faults because he loves so strongly.

But that love is a sword. One might even say it’s a triple-edged blade.

Love, as bright and fierce and consuming as it is, does not make someone right. It does not make their actions excusable when it leads to hurt, or even someone dying needlessly. It does not make one’s choices correct.

Love does not excuse abuse. And I really wish fandom would, at the very least, make the attempt to understand that.

a quote or scene that haunts me

Yes, I know how the Kaminoans did it. They used our genes against us, the ones that make us bond with our brothers, make us loyal, make us respect and obey our fathers—that’s what they manipulated to make us more likely to obey orders. They had to remove what made Jango a selfish loner, because that makes a bad infantry soldier, and you can tell from the Alpha ARCs that the Kaminoans weren’t wrong. But there’s one thing I don’t know yet—and that’s how they controlled the aging process. That’s the key. They robbed us of a full life span. But we will not be defeated by time, ner vod.

—ARC Trooper Lieutenant N-7—Mereel—in an encrypted transmission to Captain N-11, Ordo

a death that left me indifferent

mmm, Sev, actually. Like, in the game? I went through the whole grieving process after I finished Republic Commando. 

The way it was written? idk. It did nothing for me.

This probably is an unpopular opinion lmao but honestly, that scene? did not hit me anywhere. it just kinda left a bad taste in my mouth … much like Etain’s scene, except that I was actually pissed off about Etain lmao to the point that I still rant about it bc of how little sense it made.

a character i wish died but didn’t

I mean I could go the obvious route and say Kal, but I actually don’t wish Kal died. I just wish he’d learn from his mistakes and people would point out how he’s hurting his family lmao?

who do I actually wish died? any of the nulls, even if they don’t die die. They’re presented as these entirely Untouchable cast, to the point that no one really expect any of the Nulls to so much as get a paper cut — because how can they? they’re presented as close to perfect (obviously not in the mental illness department, but they do inhabit this space of being invincible).

and for any of them, even temporarily, to die would have had incredible emotional impact — moreso than Etain’s. It would’ve really brought home the threat on all their lives in a way that Etain’s death could never convey. 

but I’m asking nuance of a writer who clearly overwhelmed herself with a cast much larger than she could handle in writing, and who started all these incredible thematic arcs only to abandon them, forgotten, over the course of the series.

my ship that never sailed

I have a lot of ships, tbh, but it’s kinda like … weird? to talk about? as if I expected them to sail and then they just simply didn’t. 

I don’t have any ships that I expected to happen or be recognized and simply didn’t. I mean … Fi read as if closeted, so I was kind of hoping he would maybe realize he was attracted to men, but then of course he was paired off with his caretaker, and my god there are so many consent problems with that. 

[gffa]

Ooh now I’m curious about your issues with Karen miller’s writing!

Hi!  I haven’t done a full reread in awhile (especially since I settled into my views on the canon and the themes of SW and characterization, etc.) so I can’t pick out specific quotes, but in general she tends to do a lot of “attachment = love” or “the Jedi aren’t allowed to have feelings/they’re repressed”, despite writing them as generally pretty good people and that I think it comes from a place of “I really want to write emotional whump, so I need them to be repressed to write the iddy stuff I enjoy”, which, you know, I don’t feel is coming from a bad faith place, even if I disagree with it! Wild Space is forever my favorite SW book because there’s a ton I really love about it (it’s the single most quotable SW book, I really enjoyed the conversation Bail and Obi-Wan had, I thought the Padme stuff was actually excellent, given the looming context of ROTS and what that says about her narrative unreliablity, etc.) but it’s also a book that I don’t feel like it earned its ending, it felt like two separate books stitched together, etc. Miller’s writing (for me) tends to be very “I wrote this to please my id” and I’m usually pretty onboard with that (whether or not my id matches the author’s) except that I don’t think it’s particularly true to the canon and, when you’re writing an official tie-in novel, there’s a certain level of putting aside your own id that should be done that I’m not sure I agree was done here. So, I’m not ready to chuck them out the window, like a I do with Karen “you’re thinking like a Nazi if you disagree with me about how the Jedi deserved genocide” Traviss (and also her IRL really bad politics she supports), but neither can I say that they’re my favorite.  But I don’t object to others loving on the books, because honestly I get it, they have some amazing stuff in them (or sometimes people just, you know, disagree with me about how Miller’s writing comes across and that’s understandable, too!), so it’s not like I’m holding a grudge or anything.  I just personally tend to see them as “some of the most fun SW books ever, but not ones I take particularly seriously because I think she gets the Jedi wrong sometimes”. (To be fair, she also is the one who gave us the amazing, “Only a fool or a troublemaker think the Jedi are baby thieves.” so you know I love her for that, too!  I think she’s coming from good faith, I just disagree a bit.)