StarDestroyer.Net BBS

While they were never great, they weren't really any worse than other run-of-the-mill Star Wars "literature," and they were quite a bit better than some of the worst stuff. But I feel like I've seen a lot of dislike for them around here. What is the cause for that?

It has been a good few years since I read any of them, so it's entirely possible I would dislike them too if I hadn't been twelve last time I read them.

From what I recall, around here it was a mixture of the cardinal sin of minimalism, and not bringing the milwank so many people wanted.

Being a woman probably didn't help it a lot either as this place was awash in angsty teenagers.

Well, this is but the first reply, but I thought the problem was too MUCH milwank. Republic Commandos, Mandalorians being nigh-invulnerable, namely. She got ahold of ideas that are applicable to modern militaries and tried to apply them to a scenario where it doesn't really make sense, and she didn't do the legwork to get it to match the rest, either.

She was also INCREDIBLY rude about criticism. Kevin J Anderson and other writer who were reviled got less flack in part because they didn't threaten their critics or compare them to the Taliban.

Gandalf wrote: ↑2020-09-22 11:55pm From what I recall, around here it was a mixture of the cardinal sin of minimalism, and not bringing the milwank so many people wanted.

Being a woman probably didn't help it a lot either as this place was awash in angsty teenagers.

Please. Plenty of people criticized most of the old EU on those grounds, but no one outside of weirdly obsessed people hated Zahn because he wrote a story where three hundred out of date capital ships were supposed to swing the course of a galactic civil war. Throwaway line about how misogynistic the forums you were perfectly happy to participate in were, that had a lot more to do with the fact that he didn't publicly fantasize about ripping his critics tracheae out than anything to do with gender.

In novels....
#1 - She took minimalism to a an entirely new level.
#2 - Mando-wank. Basically one clone was worth 1000 droids, because they were cloned from a Mandolorian

As a person
#1 - Questionable grasp of tactics while claiming otherwise (most writers will admit to a lack of any knowledge)
#2 - She was actually openly and aggressively hostile towards critics, no matter what their criticism was, or how they phrased it.
In many ways, it was the 'violently defensive crazed fan' turned on it's head.

Solauren wrote: ↑2020-09-23 07:36am#2 - She was actually openly and aggressively hostile towards critics, no matter what their criticism was, or how they phrased it.

This was the core of the reason Traviss got the strength of opposition she did. Reacting to an opinion that her numbers seemed a bit small with "my gut reaction is that they all need garrotting" and "driven to the point of ripping someone's trachea out their pitiful unworthy neck" is not going to win many friends.

Yeah it's not so much what she wrote in the books (I'd say the first Republic Commando book was "ok") but rather she represented herself falsely as an expert and couldn't handle criticism at all.

Wasn't she going around contacting website and message board owners asking them to ban people who criticized her at one point?

Ralin wrote: ↑2020-09-23 03:11pm Wasn't she going around contacting website and message board owners asking them to ban people who criticized her at one point?

She might have. I remember hearing that rumor. Of course, a website owner could have claimed that because they disliked her.

Captain Seafort wrote: ↑2020-09-23 09:45am

Solauren wrote: ↑2020-09-23 07:36am#2 - She was actually openly and aggressively hostile towards critics, no matter what their criticism was, or how they phrased it.

This was the core of the reason Traviss got the strength of opposition she did. Reacting to an opinion that her numbers seemed a bit small with "my gut reaction is that they all need garrotting" and "driven to the point of ripping someone's trachea out their pitiful unworthy neck" is not going to win many friends.

She also doubled down on her stuff in her writing.

Solauren wrote: ↑2020-09-23 04:55pm
She also doubled down on her stuff in her writing.

Which was probably the biggest factor, truth be told. Authors being dumbasses on their personal blog or a message board is one thing. Escalating it by trying to rewrite a shared continuity to win an internet fight is throwing out any pretext of being a professional and going full out ego nut.

Solauren wrote: ↑2020-09-23 07:36am In novels....
#1 - She took minimalism to a an entirely new level.
[snip]
As a person
#1 - Questionable grasp of tactics while claiming otherwise (most writers will admit to a lack of any knowledge)

Would you (or anyone) elaborate on these two points? I don't recall her minimalism being particularly unusual at the time, and if she only claimed military proficiency then I fell for it.

For the minimalism, in one of her books she claimed that there were only 3 million clones. Period. The fact that we see more than that on screen was irrelevant to her. When someone pointed that out, she wrote a short story where it was possible because the Jedi were colluding with Palpatine.

KraytKing wrote: ↑2020-09-23 11:17pm Would you (or anyone) elaborate on these two points? I don't recall her minimalism being particularly unusual at the time, and if she only claimed military proficiency then I fell for it.

Something about her having experience as a combat reporter back during her 'journo' days.

Also she claimed that each of the clone troopers was a Mandalorian super soldier who could personally destroy millions of droid troopers, and replied to calls of bullshit by saying that would be considered libeling someone's professional abilities in real life or something to that effect.

phred wrote: ↑2020-09-24 12:30am For the minimalism, in one of her books she claimed that there were only 3 million clones. Period. The fact that we see more than that on screen was irrelevant to her. When someone pointed that out, she wrote a short story where it was possible because the Jedi were colluding with Palpatine.

Did we? I only remember the arguments against clones being in the millions was one of scale, that the galaxy would have millions of planets and the army should be much bigger.

the 1.2 million number is based directly off AotC dialogue though people try to rationalise that to fit their ideas of the scale better.

Regardless, Ralin I think has the right idea. The minimalism itself isn't the issue, but the hostility to the fans was. Matthew Stover for example uses the 1.2 million number in Shatterpoint (though he does understand the implcations of this army size and treats the clones as special ops while the fighting is mainyl done by partisan militias) and doesn't face nearly as much criticism. that Traviss engaged back was the big issue,

Crazedwraith wrote: ↑2020-09-24 10:26am the 1.2 million number is based directly off AotC dialogue though people try to rationalise that to fit their ideas of the scale better.

I think the line was something like "There are three million units ready, with another three million on their way." Which Traviss interpreted as three million clones. Which I guess qualifies as 'based directly off' movie dialogue, but that's still an unnecessarily dumb read on something that could just as easily have meant three million battalions or whatever.

Ralin wrote: ↑2020-09-24 11:51am

Crazedwraith wrote: ↑2020-09-24 10:26am the 1.2 million number is based directly off AotC dialogue though people try to rationalise that to fit their ideas of the scale better.

I think the line was something like "There are three million units ready, with another three million on their way." Which Traviss interpreted as three million clones. Which I guess qualifies as 'based directly off' movie dialogue, but that's still an unnecessarily dumb read on something that could just as easily have meant three million battalions or whatever.

The direct quote is:

INT. TIPOCA CITY, PRIME MINISTER OFFICE - DAY
The door slides open. OBI-WAN and TAUN WE enter and cross to where LAMA SU rises, smiling, from behind his desk, which, like all the furniture on Kamino, seems made out of pure light.

TAUN WE
May I present Lama Su, Prime
Minister of Kamino... and this is
Master Jedi...

OBI-WAN
Obi-Wan Kenobi.

LAMA SU
Please...

LAMA SU indicates a chair. OBI-WAN sits. TAUN WE hovers. The room is bathed in brilliant white light. The whole place is ultra high-tech.

LAMA SU
I trust you are going to enjoy
your stay. We are most happy you
have arrived at the best part of
the season.

OBI-WAN
You make me feel most welcome.

LAMA SU
And now to business. You will be
delighted to hear we are on
schedule. Two hundred thousand
units are ready, with another
million well on the way.

OBI-WAN
(improvising)
That is... good news.

from here

The 1 unit doesn't mean 1 clone thing, is the popular handwave, given the scale issues of militarising the galaxy and given that 'unit' is never defined by Lama Su, there is wiggle room there.

But I personally always assumed it mean 200,000 individual clones and that the writers of AotC just didn't appreciate the scale of the galaxy either.

Oh, huh. Could have sworn it was three million and that Traviss doubled that later.

I distinctly remember 3 million from somewhere, but I could be wrong. I'll echo that the problem wasn't the ridiculous minimalism and wankery, it was her reaction to being called on it.

I certainly took issue with her portrayal of Mandos as utterly indomitable, but I largely agree regarding reassigning clones as special forces capable of causing enormous casualties. Not only does it match the scale, it also matches the fact that they were trained for ten years. But, of course, she fucked up by making it only the Mando-trained clones that were that awesome, the rest were still basically line infantry. Boring.

KraytKing wrote: ↑2020-09-24 09:07pm I certainly took issue with her portrayal of Mandos as utterly indomitable, but I largely agree regarding reassigning clones as special forces capable of causing enormous casualties. Not only does it match the scale, it also matches the fact that they were trained for ten years. But, of course, she fucked up by making it only the Mando-trained clones that were that awesome, the rest were still basically line infantry. Boring.

Over time I came to like the idea of a small military of genetically designed super soldiers, because one could argue that it matches the setting. The Jedi seem to serve the role of weird Federal police while also being wizards for the proverbial thousand generations. So if that same society went to make an army, they might make one along the same line of thinking. Mass combat might not have occurred to the Senate, or whoever signed off on the clone army after they first appeared.

I've always wanted to see that movie that Poe made, "Travissty" wasn't it? Did anyone manage to save that one before it was obliterated from the Internet?

There were a few things going on with Traviss.

1) Minimalism. Gone over already, but this alone wouldn't be enough, because as pointed out before she was hardly the first, and wouldn't be the last.

2) Mando-wank. This was just egregious, warping the setting to make Mandos important to everything, elevating them to the level of Jedi and Sith, etc. Especially bad when she had Jaina Solo basically getting beaten around and talked down to by the (male) Mandalorians. Yes, she had a previously strong female character getting repeatedly humbled by a bunch of males from her Super Soldier Master Race. And that got a lot of negative pushback. So stick that in your "mean misogynists" pipe and smoke it, Gandalf.

3) Jedi-hate. Tied in to the above to the point they could almost be the same thing. She hated the Jedi. Hated them. She thought Order 66 was a good thing. Her actual novel titled after that event was especially bad, to where she has a (female) Jedi who has fallen so in love with her Mando boyfriend that when some Clone Troopers try to execute a group of Padawans for the mere crime of existing this Jedi tries to defend the Clones from the Padawans and gets herself killed. No, I'm not making that up.

And that's just her writing. All the fan-related stuff merely added fuel to the fire, and (arguably) ended up being reflected in her writing, though only on the aggressive minimalism aspect; the Mando-wank and Jedi-hate would likely have happened regardless. It also didn't help that she proudly stated she knew nothing about the franchise before writing for it, which also extended to her writing in Halo and a bunch of fans over there got annoyed when she would warp the setting and characters to fit her own conceptions.

Sadly the new format the TFN boards use cuts off YodaKenobi's epic review of Revelation but I dug around the Wayback Machine to find it: https://web.archive.org/web/20081030022 ... 8128642/p5 (you'll need to scroll down a little bit)

I recommend giving that a read, as it really does a good job showing the problems that people had with Traviss, at least for points 2 and 3 above. Point 1 didn't factor into that book very much.

It's worth noting that, even now, most people agree that the original Republic Commando was a good book, and her second book Triple Zero wasn't quite as good but not bad, either. So she wasn't hated from the get-go, and even after everything that happened fans can still be reasonably objective and not hate her initial entries into the franchise.

I'd say that the Jedi hate was actually the biggest problem, even if it came after the minimalism one. While there are legitimate criticisms to make about the Jedi, especially in the Old Republic, she was at the point she considered the Jedi to be the true villains of the franchise and that the Mandalorians were the only possible saviors(with clones as part of that group by proxy despite their status as war criminals).

Also the Jaina Solo thing was utterly horrible, as a consequence of the above, given that she was probably the best of the next generation characters of that era. What is a woman who was experienced in battle from her teen years onwards going to learn from a group of fairly conventional warriors? How can learning from Mandalorians help her with the emotional control she would need to avoid dark emotions when fighting her twin brother, after he had killed her aunt and primary mentor as a Jedi?


Minimalism is something that comes with the Star Wars EU in general, to the point that it is better if you just accept it to some extent. Some of my favorite Star Wars novels were extremely minimalist(like the Wraith Squadron or Darth Bane series), not to mention that it really did more or less follow from the numbers given in the movie. But the difference is that the movie was smart enough to not be entirely explicit, so that there was a bit of wiggle room for fans to work with. Units can be an extremely callous description of individual clones, or it can mean a group of them as a core unit.

It also doesn't tell you just how long the cycle time is for new clones. If the first group of 200k clones is the first batch, with a million more coming off the line every couple of weeks, that is vastly better than if we're talking about a line that has about three million total for the height of the war.