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PA comic: Wednesday January 25, 2012 - Hope Springs Eternal
Bogey
I'm back, baby!Santa Monica, CAModerator mod
I'm back, baby!Santa Monica, CAModerator mod
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3DS Friend Code: 2165-6448-8348 www.Twitch.TV/cooljammer00
Battle.Net: JohnDarc#1203 Origin/UPlay: CoolJammer00
I thought Gabe's hair was clipping out of the roof of the car.
Steam: Chagrin LoL: Bonhomie
So if I called my Sith Inq or Warrior Fruit, got him to the end of Act 1, got the legacy name Basket (I could later on make a BH called Muffin...?) then just achieve title Darth...
brb...
btw- cooljammer, in regards to force lightning, look up Plo Koon.
your = belonging to you
their = belonging to them
there = not here
they're = they are
I do agree wholeheartedly about Karen Travis. Her portrayal of Jacen Solo's fall to the Dark Side and him becoming Darth Caedus was brilliant. She even made the lame death of Mara Jade somewhat redeemable. Boba Fett was written like, well, Boba Fett, but with depth. Her Republic Commando novels are just perfect Star Wars reading. She was easily on par with Timothy Zhan in her understanding of what makes Star Wars "Star Wars." So, of course, LucasBooks had to go and piss on her and, understandably, she took her great writing and left. Now the Halo and Gears of War Universes have her. Damn it.
As to the audio books, it's kind of hard to make a lot of the Lore in Star Wars not sound over the top when it's being spoken aloud outside of a setting like, say, The Clone Wars television series. The fact is, when you're reading the novels or comics to yourself it's easier for your mind to process some of the more outlandish stuff, like Sith names for instance. Also, have to call out Gabe for a second. While the names the Sith choose can sometimes be...quirky, you have to keep in mind that most people they deal with don't know them by either they're true names or Sith names. Often they'll go with aliases aplenty or work through agents.
Also Sith names have improved greatly over the years...especially those not chosen by George Lucas. Anddedu was actually something of an inside joke that somehow became canon in the EU. Now you've got Sith names like Krayt, Maladi, Talon, Scythe and so forth. And when it comes to the Sith, they're power *comes* from evil, and being open about that evil. When it comes to behind the scenes machinations, yeah they stay on the down low, but when it comes to dealing with people directly by then those people know it would be stupid to cross this person so the Sith Lord acting evil only cements the threat he/she represents. Anyway, long story short, *reading* Star Wars novels are better then listening to them. Sorry Audible.com.
edit: While "I've never read a Star Wars book I didn't write" is an actual Karen Traviss quote, I might have made up the second one.
As it happens, I've heard Denning described as on par with Zahn too... whereas actually the only one REALLY as good as Zahn is clearly Allston :P
All three of the Legacy writers had their pet characters, I like humour and Wedge so I like Allston's books; I don't like how Traviss Marie Sues all her characters while derailing and stupidifying characters of other writers she gets her hands on to make her pet Mandalorians look better (ex: Jaina can't beat her brother until she is trained by Mandalorians to fight while fueled by rage like they do - not to be confused with the rage that Vergere taught Jacen to fight with, part of his path to becoming Sith; Mara is incredibly dense in Revelations) while doing her best to paint the Jedi as fundamentally flawed and responsible for all the bad stuff going on in the galaxy.
She is technically a proficient writer, but prone to a lot of mistakes, she has a tendency to tell rather than show (Jacen was angry) and makes all characters sound the same (probably why she likes writing clones and people with the same mindset). More importantly though she considers canon optional, so she has Luke acting like Sith such as Palpatine are fallen Jedi, and that there's no fundamental difference between them and Jedi... except for Jedi being fundamentally powerless and incapable of matching Sith Jacen (incidentally, this is precisely the opinion of the Mandalorians). She forgets what certain characters know or don't know (Like... why would Han even have heard of Jango Fett and be making cruel jokes about his death to Jaina?), there's a lack of consistency in characters knowledge (Jaina can't beat a Mandalorian warrior armed with a stick because he's waring armor, and that changes the rules of combat... if only she had spent about 17 books fighting enemies with lightsaber resistant armor, heh), memories and motivations (Ben Skywalker is more motivated to fight Jacen because of the death of Lekeuf - a minor character, but one of Traviss's own - than because of his mother's murder) and all this can get very aggravating. Actually I'm half convinced that a lot of the 'oh he's so deep' contradictions in Jacen that show him going insane are just her forgetting what she wrote before.
Hell, maybe she'd catch more of a break if she didn't call the people who disagree with her freakish interpretation of the SW (e)universe the Tallifan and had some respect for other writers - she didn't even tell Zahn about killing Mara Jade, he ended up finding out from a Del Rey editor when he went looking for information about the then-upcoming books because he needed to know about stuff happening there while writing his own set afterward.
There's gotta be something good in there if hundreds of books have been written by many different authors. You know... something akin to the whole monkeys+typewriters=Shakespeare thing.
It made me practically itch with compulsion to get home to a computer with photoshop.
Gabe, please check out Zahn's Thrawn trilogy and the Hand of Thrawn duology if you haven't already. I know you like Karen personally, but please stop holding her up as an example to follow.
I would be shocked if he hasn't.
Technically, it only screws up all the stuff KotoR 2 added to Revan. KotoR 1 barely gave any info on Revan other than the fact that he went to fight the Mandalorian War and then fell to the dark side.
Care to elaborate? I thought it was pretty well done, compared to most of the "Grrr, I want more power because MORE POWER" falls from most of the EU, which really seem more like stepping off a curb than anything else. I haven't read it in a while, though, so if there's a breakdown of the stupid, I'd love to see it.
your = belonging to you
their = belonging to them
there = not here
they're = they are
I'm about halfway through it and surprisingly, I really enjoy it. Yes, it does go on and on about politics, but in this case I find them really intriguing unlike The Phantom Menace, any of the political episodes The Clone Wars, and those post-ROTJ books I dropped. Sure, the names are pretty goofy, but that happens in Star Wars all the time. I mean, Death Star? Really? However, the Sith names aren't what they go by when mingling with others, that's kinda why they have the whole secret identity thing going on.
All of that, said, I did find the comic funny. I just find it odd that this book is considered one of the bad ones. I'm probably going to check out more of Luceno. I have Labyrinth of Evil and Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader in paperback so I shouldn't have any problems. Should probably try Hand of Thrawn again too...
That's my main problem, the "stupid" in question. Traviss tends to shove the Idiot Ball into people's hands to make her plots go forward. Jacen decides he can pretty much make the same choices his grandfather did, and remain himself because...a Sith (Lumiya) told him he could. Idiot Ball. Mara Jade and Luke Skywalker don't notice their nephew is going dark-side and leave their son in his care, despite both being Jedi Masters who really should notice a gradual slide to the dark side as opposed to Anakin Skywalker's one-night tumble. Idiot Ball. Mara then decides to run off and confront Jacen about his ne'r-do-well ways when she finally figures it out, without telling anyone else what's going on. Idiot Ball. Jaina decides she can't beat her brother in a straight fight without learning to fight from Traviss' Mando-Sues, despite the fact she fought her way through the Yuuzhan Vong war, the biggest war in the Star Wars canon, and the fact she's already an accomplished lightsaber duelist. Idiot Ball, and shameless pushing of Traviss' pet Mandalorians. Boba Fett is allowed to sucker-punch Jaina in a sparring match because...jeez, I don't know why. Jedi have the reflexes to swat blaster fire out of the air with a lightsaber and have precognition so they know something's going to happen just before it does. Yet Ol' Boba gets a cheap shot in. Idiot Ball. Tahiri, another Jedi, joins Jacen because he shows her a hallucination of his dead little brother, Tahiri's lover, and convinces her he can use the Force to go back in time to when he was alive. Idiot Ball, and WTF for good measure. She goes on to kill Admiral Pellaeon because he won't back Jacen's power play. Pellaeon commands the Moff Council to stand against the Sith, yet they immediately jump into the Sith camp when he croaks, despite knowing how untrustworthy the Sith are, because they think they can play telepaths to their own advantage. Idiot Ball. Daala getting played up as a genius strategist despite the fact she's lost every major campaign she's started in the EU. Idiot Ball on Traviss' part, and another thing that shows she doesn't do the research, because her stuff is paramount, and no one else seems to matter.
It's stuff like this that just drives me absolutely insane, and some people say Traviss is an exemplar of good writing. It's not like she uses any new plot devices. Ever. Need tension and drama? Kill off an established character. If you don't want a Star Wars example, try Gears of War 3. Dom does a suicide run into a refinery to blow a bunch of stuff up when a well-tossed grenade or rocket would have worked because...drama! She writes him as near suicidal because she wants/needs to kill someone off, and the fans voted not to kill off Carmine, so someone else had to go, and Dom was conveniently without any hanging plot threads. I haven't read any of her work in the Halo series yet, and to be honest I'm dreading what she does with it. Who's gonna die for the sake of drama? Who's going to lose half their IQ points for the sake of the plot?
(deep breath) Sorry for the essay.
In the podcasts Mike and Jerry talk a few times about Karen Travis and her books. I've read them, they're fine for Star Wars books. Attempting to lionize Timothy Zahn as some kind of literary god in retrospect will not make Star Wars: EU any better than average franchise fiction - that's what it is. I would be shocked if most of the authors didn't feel the same way.
Hundreds of thousands of original works of fiction not based on established properties and written by committee.
Any of them, for real. At least tell me no one reads actual Gears of War fucking novels.
I was just about to post that. High-five gaming nerds!
"Sodomized"? Really?
Well, they did pretty much ignore all the development that were given to Revan and the True Sith.
The True Sith were supposed to be a threat to the ideological foundation of the Republic and the Jedi. Revan sacrificed himself to the dark side to unite the galaxy against that threat.
So, yea, this is going to be long, but it doesn't represent anything more than me having nothing better to do at one in the morning than to sit here and write a big ass post about how I feel. I hope it will be interesting to someone, perhaps even enlightening. This is an accumulation of thoughts I've had for years as a member of the Star Wars community and a person living in geek culture. The things I have to say are not directly in response to Gabe or the comic, but rather that Gabe's words and the comic inspired me to voice my opinions. These opinions are directed toward the geek community and people in general. I do not hold Gabe responsible for the things that bother me, his words strike me as merely a symptom of a much larger issue.
So TLDR: This post is in two parts. Part 1 is about the fact that I like Star Wars, how other people tend to make me feel bad for liking what I like, and how I think that's unfair. It also touches on how I think it's odd that people seem to expect more from Star Wars than it has ever promised. Part 2 is about why I and other Star Wars lore fanatics dislike Traviss' work in the EU.
Part 1: Star Wars hate
I live, breathe, and bleed Star Wars, so this kind of talk really does bug me. I love the guys here at PA, and they could outright say they hate Star Wars, and while it would hurt, it wouldn't change my love for them. Their comics make me laugh, their blog posts make me think, and PATV shows me what wonderful people they are and what wonderful people they surround themselves with.
That said, as a die hard Star Wars fan who loves most of what comes out of the Star Wars universe, it's hard to bear assaults on the IP I love from every direction, at all times. In geek culture, one of the most popular things is to hate on anything Star Wars that isn't the original trilogy. As someone who enjoys the EU, reads the comics, plays the games, even likes parts of Episode 1 and 2, and thinks Episode 3 is the best of the movies, it's tough to exist in this culture without getting bitter.
The problem isn't that most people don't like or enjoy what I like. That's fine, it's not my business what you like. The problem is that it's so popular to paint the idea that what I like is crap as fact. It's that in a culture I normally feel comfortable and at home in, the topic of one of the biggest IPs on Earth can come up, and suddenly I feel like an outcast.
People don't address their dislike of the less popular aspects of the Star Wars universe as matters of taste. They talk about them as if it is undeniable fact that they are terrible. They speak to people who defend them as if they are fools, and should be ashamed for what they love. They ostracize the fans of this material as possessors of terrible taste, as if that were possible.
Terrible taste? What does that even mean? How can my taste be terrible? It has served me well. It has allowed me to enjoy dozens if not hundreds of hours of entertainment. What more can I ask of my taste in entertainment than to be entertained? What makes it terrible? That you personally don't appreciate the things I do? Why does that matter? Isn't the world big enough for both of us to have and enjoy what we each prefer?
I'm not saying that this was Gabe's intent. I'm sure he didn't mean to offend. But when you call something I enjoy "stupid" what do you expect? When you call something stupid, you imply that only stupid people would like it. I take offense to that, because I know for a fact I'm of above average intelligence and that my taste in fun fiction has no bearing on that fact.
I enjoy Tolkien, I enjoy David Weber, I enjoy Asimov, I enjoy Glenn Cook, I enjoy G.R.R. Martin. I love fiction that is of high literary quality. Just because I like some silly stuff that is admittedly nowhere near a literary masterpiece doesn't mean I don't know "good" when I see it. I can find enjoyment in both a gourmet meal and a fast food cheeseburger, and depending on my mood, I may just prefer the cheeseburger.
Star Wars is fun. I enjoy it for the same reasons I enjoy silly action movies. They are fun and entertaining. I don't always need my entertainment to be gritty, real, mentally engaging, realistically characterized, or masterfully dramatic. I'm able to suspend my disbelief and enjoy these stories for what they are: Fun, silly, fairytale space operas about space wizards and laser swords.
I don't know why anyone would go into Star Wars expecting anything but villains who are clearly villains, heroes who are stereotypical, archetypical heroes, and a world that's colorful, vast, and fun, but not very realistic. Star Wars is a world where a bumbling Empire can't find two silly droids, the most elite warriors in the galaxy can't hit the broad side of a barn, good and evil is black and white, the wisest man in the galaxy is a senile muppet, and the fate of the galaxy hinges upon one farm boy and his friends.
Why do people continue to be surprised about what Star Wars is and is not? Yes, Star Wars has mature elements, bits and pieces that are meant to appeal to the grown up or at least adolescent in us, but as a whole Star Wars is meant to be fun and appeal to the kid inside you. Star Wars is the fairytale of our generation. There's other literature out there for when you are looking to be mentally engaged on a more mature level.
I could go into all sorts of in universe explanations for how the Dark Side is like an addictive drug that gives it's user power, but as a side effect twists and corrupts them into overt sociopaths or psychopaths. I could explain how by the time a Sith takes up the mantle of Darth, he has been taught to feed and rely upon hatred and disdain for all but himself, so why would he take anything but a name that would exemplify this? I shouldn't have to explain that though, because people should get what Star Wars is by now. People should understand that yea, this guy is obviously a villain and things wouldn't work this way in real life, but that is the point. These books are easy reading fairytales for young teens and adults, why do people in their 20s and 30s continue to read them expecting something more?
Worse, why when their hopes are inevitably dashed, do they come out with disdain towards the books and the fans of the books?
It's the main reason I can't have General chat on when I play SWTOR. It's nothing but people bashing each other for what parts of the huge expansive universe they like, arguing over the value of various pieces of literature, and hating on everything they don't personally like. It's constant accusations of horrible writing, both in the game and in Star Wars in general. It's non-stop hatred.
I've searched long and hard for a place to discuss Star Wars with people like me who enjoy most of it for what it is, but any place where those people exist, they quickly get drowned by people who call themselves Star Wars fans, but detest 90% of what Star Wars has become. Worse, those people do nothing but spout their hatred. It's incredible, I doubt even Twilight fans have to deal with such hatred inside their own community. It's one thing for popular opinion to hate on you and the things you like, but when you have to be careful what you say to someone who complements your Darth Vader shirt, it's a sad state of affairs.
Now, Part 2: Karen Traviss
It's no secret Traviss is a friend of the guys, so I can forgive his looking at her work through rose colored glasses. The truth is, Traviss is not a bad writer. Quite the contrary. She's a good writer. She knows how to inject human drama into a fantastic setting. Her first couple RepComm books were great illustrations of this fact. I've heard good things about her work for the Gears of War series. I don't deny her ability to write, and anyone who does is, in my opinion, just fostering a grudge.
That said, one thing Traviss is not, is good for the Star Wars lore. She was, in my opinion, a poor choice for Star Wars in general. When she got the job of writing the RepComm novels, it made sense. She was doing what she did well, military sci-fi. She infused the clones with a sense of personality, and built a culture for both the clones and Mandolorians that endures to this day. It was a good thing.
However, that's where Traviss fits into the Star Wars universe, and trying to give her greater access to the universe at large was disastrous. Traviss herself admits to a distaste for the superhuman. She likes telling human stories, and for her, that means human limitations. She has a certain animosity toward superhuman characters that almost comes across as jealousy. This doesn't really work in her favor in a universe where the stars of the universe are superhuman, where the primary mechanic of the universe is a super power.
Early on in her work for Star Wars, Traviss' distaste for the Jedi became apparent. While I understand her characters' feelings on being what basically amounts to a slave army for the Republic, she fails to present it in an appropriately nuanced light. Very rarely were there clones who were satisfied with their lot in life. Very rarely were there Jedi who could manage to do their duty, serve the Republic, respect the choices that had to be made, and still treat clones like people. It was very black and white. Even loyal clones quickly became disillusioned and unsatisfied with their lives. Never mind that these clones were raised since birth to believe in what they were doing. Never mind that these clones were genetically engineered for unfaltering loyalty. In an effort to get us to sympathize with the clones and to inject humanity into the situation Traviss felt it was necessary to write these clones as downtrodden and oppressed.
It was a good story, and it made sense if all you consider are the bullet points of what was going on in the Star Wars universe. Truth be told, however, it did not make sense in the context of true lore. First of all, the Jedi are not the "owners" of the clone army. The clones are the Grand Army of the Republic. The Jedi themselves are not even a governmental branch. They are an order of Knights, independent of the government, who believe the Republic is the galaxy's best shot at peace, freedom, and equality. They are sworn to defend the Republic, but they are no more a part of the Republic than any other civilian.
It is true that because of their position as defenders of the Republic, the Jedi were given the rank of General when serving with the Grand Army, however, these were not paid positions, they were merely a way to insert Jedi into the rank structure of the military so that they could assist in critical missions. Traviss' clones paint the Jedi as their oppressors, when the Jedi had little role in the conditions under which the clones served. Their only role in the use of the clone army was in telling the Republic of it's existence, and not explicitly standing against the creation of the Grand Army. The creation of the Grand Army of the Republic was a Senate matter, and the decision to use the clones to fill it's ranks was voted on and approved by the Republic government. So for the clones to paint the Jedi as their oppressors was ignorant at best, unrealistic at worst.
But OK, the Jedi are strongly tied to the Republic government, and lead clones into many major battles. So we can gloss over how foolish it is for the Jedi to shoulder the blame for the disillusionment of these clones. What is much harder to forgive is Traviss' portrayal of the Jedi themselves. Traviss' portrays the Jedi as overly self-rightous, ignorant, and intolerant. Her Jedi heroes abandon the Jedi Order because they "see" how the Jedi are corrupt and wrong. The Jedi heroes in her stories blame the Jedi themselves for the use of the clones to staff the Grand Army, even though they should know better. Her Jedi are either heroes who abandon the order, or villains who treat the clones as tools instead of people. Nowhere do we see Jedi like Anakin, who was fiercely loyal to his troops, valued each of their lives, and fought alongside them as brothers, yet also was determined to hold up the ideals of the Republic, and felt what they were doing was right. Granted, it's hard to write a Jedi like that when you write all your clones as victims who don't really want to be there.
The truth of the clones before Traviss got to them was that they were proud to serve the Republic. They were bred to serve, it was their culture, they were warriors and they were proud. Just like anyone raised within any culture, they accepted and embraced the ideals they were taught. Sure, like any culture it would make sense for a certain subsection of the people to be subversive and disenfranchised. Absolutely the conditions of their service, the involuntary nature of their enlistment, and the ethics of genetically engineering people for the sole purpose of war deserve exploration. Traviss took those concepts, however, and based her entire story around them. Worse, she didn't accurately represent that the feelings and motivations of her characters were biased and not shared by most clones and Jedi.
And all this is in reference to her books that I actually enjoyed. Despite the glaring flaws, these books were solid stories, and the flaws could be hand-waved away because the books existed in their own little corner of the universe. I'm still not sure why Traviss felt it was necessary to go in this direction. Books have been written about patriotic, loyal clones who live to serve, and they have been good. They tell stories of a band of brothers, fighting for ideals they believe in. The villains of these books are their enemies, not their superiors and the heroes of the galaxy. They face adversity and tell human stories through the harrowing experience of a terrible war no one wants to be involved in. I don't understand why Traviss walked away from that perfectly good story to tell one of subversion, perceived oppression, and desertion. Still, I did enjoy the books and they were written in such a way that, while they never represented the other side of the coin, they could still be taken as just a small, unique story in a much larger picture, rather than an accurate representation of the clones and the Jedi as a whole.
So the question becomes, why did Traviss make so many mistakes, and why did her books paint such a strange picture of the Star Wars universe? Traviss provided the answer to this when she honestly told her readers that she had never read a Star Wars story before writing her books. Traviss' books felt like they were a distorted view of the Star Wars universe based upon bullet points because that is exactly what they were.
This became even worse in Legacy of the Force, which I also enjoyed, but for me it was despite Traviss, not because of her. Traviss took a Jedi Knight in her 30s of established accomplishment and skill, and made her come across as an inexperienced teenager. Instead of having her train under Luke Skywalker, Grand Master of the Jedi, the most powerful person in the galaxy, and the man who has killed or defeated more dark Jedi and Sith than any other one character in the entire lore, she was sent to train under Boba Fett because Traviss would rather write about non-superhuman characters and she loves Mandos. To justify this, she made the in universe claim that Boba Fett had killed more Jedi than anyone else, a claim which was simply not backed up by the lore, because Boba Fett had rarely killed any Jedi. By the time Boba Fett was of fighting age, there were barely any Jedi left in the universe, and he certainly didn't hunt Luke's Jedi, or there would have been major problems and certainly Luke's niece would not train under him.
As part of her training, she made the woman who was appointed "Sword of the Jedi" a terrible and unpracticed swordswoman. She made this woman who had been flying starships since before she was old enough to like boys not understand how to use a headset communicator. She made one of the most fiercely devoted and loyal Jedi Knights in the entire order question the Jedi ways and remark on how the Mandalorians seemed to be better people.
Worst of all, she killed one of the most beloved EU characters in an unnecessary and contrived way. She took one of the strongest female characters and made her act against her character and against logic out of emotion, in direct conflict with how Jedi are supposed to act, and killed her for it. This action was taken without the consent of the character's creator, who happens to be the most celebrated Star Wars author of them all, and thus ruined his plans for future novels featuring that character.
She called the Jedi the "Bathrobe Brigade" and publicly stated her distaste for Jedi, leaving many to wonder why someone would agree to write for a series in which she hates the protagonists. This dislike led her to fabricate a reason to include Boba Fett and use him as the shoehorn to drive Mandalorians into a story in which they did not belong in such a prominent role. She referred to fans who disagreed with her as "Talifans." Yes, she equated fans who didn't like what she was doing with their lore to terrorists. While she was twisting and warping lore to fit her needs, when George Lucas - the owner and creator of Star Wars - came out with a project that counteracted her work, she quit in a huff and left her RepComm series unfinished. When the heat on the internet over her behavior got too hot to handle, she deleted all her blog and forum posts on the matter and pretended it never happened.
It's understandable that a Star Wars fan who isn't necessarily a lore buff might really enjoy her work, but many lore buffs, us Star wars fans who devour every detail and can describe to you how the Star Wars universe works in greater detail than we can our own countries' political systems, see her work as a mangling of something we love. I know Gabe is a big Star Wars fan, and I would never try to take that away from him, but being a fan of the Star Wars universe doesn't make you a fanatic of the Star Wars lore. It's like the difference between a Warcraft fan who loves the idea of Orcs versus Humans, and a Warcraft fan who knows Thrall's real name, the origins of the Horde, and the politics and histories of the various Human kingdoms. Just because you love lightsabers and the force and space ships doesn't make you qualified to judge the quality of an entry into Star Wars lore.
Anyone has a right to judge their personal enjoyment of a story, and anyone has a right to like what they like. But when you start to hold one work as an example of quality against other works, it's necessary to really know what you're talking about. If you want to hold up a Star Wars novel as a barometer against which to compare other books, it should clearly be Heir to the Empire and it's successors. Timothy Zahn is a nearly universally acclaimed author within the Star Wars EU community, and the Thrawn books are widely lauded as the best Star Wars stories ever written. They are so good and well loved in fact, that they have recently been re-released as 20th Anniversary editions with footnotes and commentary from Zahn.
Regardless, I love PA, and I understand that not everything I love is for everyone. I just wish it wasn't so popular to bash on my favorite fictional thing in the world. I especially wish it weren't so popular for people who call themselves fans of Star Wars to hate 90% of it. It's really annoying, and it makes me feel bad for people who genuinely enjoy things like Twilight. Just because you don't like it doesn't make it bad. You don't get to make the rules on what is and is not OK to enjoy. It doesn't matter if you understand how someone can like it, it doesn't matter if it's filled with the kind of content you hate, that does not make it bad. It's not fair for you to call any piece of art bad because it doesn't live up to your standards, or even generally accepted standards. It's even less fair for you to make people who enjoy that stuff feel bad about themselves for liking it. It's a terrible thing to make someone feel as if they are wrong or broken because they have differing tastes than you.
Let people enjoy what they enjoy, and stop feeling the need to call everything you don't enjoy bad. It's just not for you, and that's OK. Even with my paragraphs upon paragraphs of criticism of Traviss, you'll notice I didn't say her books were bad. I merely laid out the reasons why I personally, and many others in the EU fanbase, do not appreciate her work. It's OK to like them, wonderful in fact, that's what they are there for. I'm happy for anyone who can derive enjoyment from any piece of entertainment, whether I like it or not. I just wish that view were more common among my peers. I wish people would stop focusing on things the dislike, and using that dislike to deride those things, and start focusing on the things they love, using that love to elevate those things.
Darth Fruitbasket.
darth carmen miranda by Trevor H, on Flickr
So I'll defend Traviss on the strength of her GoW books. She may have changed Star Wars canon or whatever, but I'll bet it was a good change. ;D
While I doubt it'd change one's perspective on tie-in fiction, if you're the sort of person who does enjoy tie-ins -- and Star Wars EU, in particular -- then Darth Plagueis is a rather good book: the best Star Wars novel there has been in years, actually (which isn't saying much, but independently of that, it's still good). Especially for those continuity-minded fans who "know their stuff", in the sense that it not only respects, but embraces the decades of material that came before (there are references ranging as far back as the positively ancient WEG RPG sourcebooks, all the way up to TOR and TCW) , and weaves many disparate (and in some cases, previously contradictory) threads together.
But, really, what's most frustrating is that Gabe's criticism is embarrassingly wide off the mark. The narrator identifies the Sith by their Darth titles (and, yeah, there are some terrible names in the book)... but the Sith themselves (with the exception of Sidious, Maul and the Trade Federation: which is a TPM thing and hardly something the book could alter) never use anything but aliases outside of private conversation.
More importantly, the Sith -- especially the titular Darth Plagueis, for whom both immortality and a "Grand Plan" of enlightened rule of the galaxy as a philosopher king is the goal -- don't think of themselves as evil. Nor do they "advertise" themselves as such.
That they are very bad guys despite this, and clearly so, is as it should be. To suggest that every great villain has to define and justify his actions as right within the conventional parameters of morality (the only way I can make sense of Gabe's complaint) is... odd.
Yeah, this is like the very definition of "Damning with faint praise."
Welcome to the world all Star Trek fans lived in until the Abrams movie came out. Star Wars fans were openly derisive of Trek fans until the prequels came along and they suddenly didn't have a leg to stand on. It's okay for a franchise to have less than stellar entries. Star Wars just got away with not having any for a lot longer than most other franchises, and when people turned on it, it happened in a world that now had the Internet. So the hate wasn't contained to your local circles, you were now seeing the hate from all over. It's been like this for every franchise.
Keep right on loving Star Wars, but take it less seriously. And that's something every fan of every franchise should do as well.