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PhilosopherOfSorts wrote:No dude! I like Halo, but the books are bad enough as it is, keep this idiot bitch away. In fact keep her away from as many franchises as possible.

No shit. Someone needs to commit this bitch before we find out that every war in science fiction and fantasy was won by a tiny band of supersoldiers. In the 41st century, there is only...oh wait, there's no war at all, because everyone was simultaneously defeated by half a dozen Mandalorians.

DesertFly wrote:I admit my memory's a little rusty, but the gist of it remains the same: humans with their wanky little battle suits were able to do things in the book that are far beyond anything similar characters are capable of in the games that the books are based upon.

I was happy to see in Halo 3 that there was no fall damage. It would have had made zero sense to have an opening cutscene where someone survives a fall from orbit, only to be killed by jumping off a 20-meter cliff.

Actually, Karen really had some things going for her with military science fiction. As everyone says, before she gets obessed by depicting the Mandalorian culture and the like, she does a very good job of developing military characters.


And frankly, she should stick to that, and work on simply writing good fight scenes. The politics and other stuff she writes about is pure shit........

I mean, we already had the trend in military science fiction where wars are won by small bands of super soldiers as it is. Its not a real problem as long as you write a good story based around it. After all, the Jedi themselves are supersoldiers, and let's face it, the EU already was biased towards small supersoldiers numbers. They just go by the name Wedge, Rogue and Wraith, with Kyp Durron and Corran Horn for extra spice and kick.

She may be a good character writer, but it's clear now she lets her personal agendas and fetishes dominate everything she writes - it's not even specifically Mandalorians anymore, it's a disturbing fixation with elite warrior races dominating all.
Which would be okay enough if she was writing her own stuff, but the shitkicker is how she simply has to warp established universes into her single-minded mold no matter how much it contradicts the established lore.
And then she gets upset when the fans say "hey, this is bullshit."

Darth Onasi wrote: Which would be okay enough if she was writing her own stuff, but the shitkicker is how she simply has to warp established universes into her single-minded mold no matter how much it contradicts the established lore.

The sad thing is, she can't even seem to make it (though I've only read odds, I wouldn't pay for this stuff) come off as cool.

("We have five million cybermen, how many are you?" "Four!" "You would destroy the cybermen with four daleks?" "We would destroy the cybermen with one dalek! You are superior in only one respect!" "What is that?" "You are better at dying! Raise communications barrier!")

I've seen space-opera super-soldiers done immensely well, but she doesn't even seem to be able to make them that likeable, from the few times I've flicked through her books, they're endlessly moaning bastards. It seems to be endless diatribes about how unfortunate the mando'a clones are while they're being so badass, or how everyone, including the jedi, is out to get them, and thus the jedi are evil, and in league with palpatine.

Peptuck wrote:They have to tie down the Berserkers to be able to impregnate them; apparently, they're so violent they kill the male before he can impregnate her.

Yeah.

Wow...that's just incredibly asinine.

Peptuck wrote:

The Vortex Empire wrote:

e.g. Locust have to reproduce via rape

There are no fertile Locust females, so they have to abduct and forcibly impregnate humans?

They have to tie down the Berserkers to be able to impregnate them; apparently, they're so violent they kill the male before he can impregnate her.

Yeah.

This sounds like it belongs in one of the Gor books.

Actually alot of what Traviss writes is no different from most "military fiction" writers - many of them seem to get a hard on for their pet branches/services/whatnot. Dale Brown has a hardon for the B-52s being the most notable example (or Tom Clancy's Americanowank). Traviss's writing is no different even if its a sci fi setting.

Now I'll echo Painrack and say that she can write well, given certain conditions. If she was more strictly editied (which she isn't) her quality probably would improve (again like most of the aforementioend writers). But she isn't so she's free to run rampant on her pet topics. (leading to stuff like we saw in LOTF.)

I think it says something about Traviss' special forces wank when in Aspho Fields she has a half-dozen Gears be a more vital strategic target than the critical food supply convoy they were guarding, and the characters actually believe this, and Hoffman actually agrees with that line of reasoning.

I mean, I just....what the fuck.

Connor MacLeod wrote:Actually alot of what Traviss writes is no different from most "military fiction" writers - many of them seem to get a hard on for their pet branches/services/whatnot. Dale Brown has a hardon for the B-52s being the most notable example (or Tom Clancy's Americanowank). Traviss's writing is no different even if its a sci fi setting.

Right, but again I think the main issue is she's doing it to other people's worlds.
Tom Clancy may wank like it's an olympic event but at least he does it with his own stories and characters, Traviss perverts established characters and worlds into her line of thinking, so we have uber clone squads and Jedi who fully acknowledge they're evil, corrupt, useless and weak and with Gears of War it seems she deliberately undermines the entire universe in order to artificially bolster the importance of the Gears (which is utterly unecesarry) and then introduce her own pet warriors.

Darth Onasi wrote: Right, but again I think the main issue is she's doing it to other people's worlds.
Tom Clancy may wank like it's an olympic event but at least he does it with his own stories and characters, Traviss perverts established characters and worlds into her line of thinking, so we have uber clone squads and Jedi who fully acknowledge they're evil, corrupt, useless and weak and with Gears of War it seems she deliberately undermines the entire universe in order to artificially bolster the importance of the Gears (which is utterly unecesarry) and then introduce her own pet warriors.

Well, that's actually secondary. The main issue is after Hard contact and Triple Zero, she utterly went on a crazy spree to show and support her agenda in the SWU instead of focusing on the story.

You know, the Ryan Kaufman spin that talifans shouldn't focus on the numbers but on the stories...........

The style you describe is more why so many fans hate Kevin J Anderson.

Reading the novels prior to the Insider article, the only main flaw that Travis had was her tendency to be wordy folksy in narrative and being somewhat weak in describing fight scenes, t his when her novels were filled mostly with them.

PainRack wrote: Reading the novels prior to the Insider article, the only main flaw that Travis had was her tendency to be wordy folksy in narrative and being somewhat weak in describing fight scenes, t his when her novels were filled mostly with them.

Yeah, that's another weakness in Aspho Fields, too. The gunfights are just not described very well at all. There's this part where Marcus does something that would be absolutely badass -
Spoiler - but it comes off as absolutely underwhelming because it all happens in the background and there's no real description of it taking place. And that's more or less how all the battles happen in the book, with the exception of a few instances of chainsaw combat, which are almost disturbingly visceral.

Peptuck wrote:They have to tie down the Berserkers to be able to impregnate them; apparently, they're so violent they kill the male before he can impregnate her.

Yeah.

I dunno, that kinda makes sense. It sounds like they just don't want to be raped.

Shadowtraveler wrote:I dunno, that kinda makes sense. It sounds like they just don't want to be raped.

But how would a species evolve that way? It'd be one thing if they instinctively killed the males after they fucked them, or even if they killed the males and then fucked the still-twitching dying headless bodies like preying mantises (I'm not kidding!), but for them to kill the males before they can impregnate them just makes no evolutionary sense whatsoever.

I guess you could write it up to selective breeding for insane agression or something. I'm not familiar with the universe at all, I'm just going off what's been written in this thread.

Junghalli wrote:

Shadowtraveler wrote:I dunno, that kinda makes sense. It sounds like they just don't want to be raped.

But how would a species evolve that way? It'd be one thing if they instinctively killed the males after they fucked them, or even if they killed the males and then fucked the still-twitching dying headless bodies like preying mantises (I'm not kidding!), but for them to kill the males before they can impregnate them just makes no evolutionary sense whatsoever.

I guess you could write it up to selective breeding for insane agression or something. I'm not familiar with the universe at all, I'm just going off what's been written in this thread.

Mating is one thing. Forced mating is another. And the Berserker solution to most problems is senseless violence.

Hence Junghalli's question because as per the information presented in this thread forced mating is the ONLY way the Berserkers can mate and one does indeed wonder how such a species would develop. A species where the female has to be FORCED to mate is going to become extinct pretty quickly.

The expansion from 'berserkers in Gears' to 'all females are berkserkers' is unfounded. Turns out she invented a whole bunch of stuff about the locust lifestyle that Epic is going to totally ignore.

Looks like Epic is way smarter than LFL then.

Batman wrote:Looks like Epic is way smarter than LFL then.

Eh they just don't give two shits about the EU as long as it generates money; if Lucas went and made another movie for instance I'm sure he wouldn't have any qualms about trampling all over Traviss' so called work just like Epic don't.

Edit: For that matter the high attrition rates in the Clone Wars series spit in the face of her "lolz 3 million clones fake war elite mand'oa" crap.

Darth Onasi wrote:

Batman wrote:Looks like Epic is way smarter than LFL then.

Eh they just don't give two shits about the EU as long as it generates money; if Lucas went and made another movie for instance I'm sure he wouldn't have any qualms about trampling all over Traviss' so called work just like Epic don't.

Edit: For that matter the high attrition rates in the Clone Wars series spit in the face of her "lolz 3 million clones fake war elite mand'oa" crap.

Frankly, every single novel and series would spit on her fake war elite mand'oa' angle. To put it simply, its simply too restrictive an angle and prevents anyone else from writing any story............ ASIDE from her mandalorians elite angle, which she parked her niche in.

So, while you might find Shatterpoint and other novels respecting the 1.2 million and etc, no other EU series would touch on how the Clones are surviving being 3 million clones and the other crap she rationalised. The closest is Shatterpoint how the Republic is being forced to do various strategies and tactics to compensate for the CIS numbers..... which is simply nothing more than a slapstick on the story angle.

Again, numbers are nothing when compared to the story. The Executor length for example was a relatively minor problem whoose main issue was the limitation on the Empire scale. Which even KJA ignored with his thousands of starfighters. Its importance should be tied to to coherence and intergrity of the story. The 17km is simply a realisation of the Empire scale and resources/power scale.