Karen Traviss vs Clone Wars Season 2

I started listening to the ForceCast again (out of nostalgia maybe) and found out that Karen Traviss has washed her hands of her EU novels and quit writing SW books (for Gears of freaking War no less, ugh).

http://www.theforce.net/podcast/story/Weekly_ForceCast_August_14_2009_125655.asp
http://karentraviss.typepad.com/blog/2009/08/end-of-one-era-start-of-another.html

Anyhow, the podcast raised the interesting point that this is the first time where there's been a clear conflict between a "canon" source like the Clone Wars cartoon and the EU and that this is a good thing because it sort of forces everyone to re-evaluate the place that the EU has in the overall Star Wars franchise.

Also, apparently their forums are aflame with EU fans pissed off that the cartoon basically forced Traviss out of the universe.

I haven't followed the EU in a long while, but does anyone here have an opinion?

 

It's finally putting an end to the whole "Everything is canon in the Star Wars universe" debate I think. I doubt it'll affect the profits of the Expanded Universe, but it may be interesting to see the short term and long term results.

Apparently this all stems from (in her novels) there are no Mandalorians but in Clone Wars Season Two there will be a Mandalorian main character.

 

I've never really cared for Traviss' writing, honestly, and all tie-in writers serve at the whims of the rest of the franchise and always risk being overridden, but I respect the moral stand she's taking here in opting out of further novels and leaving the work she has done in this time period with its integrity intact.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

Travis is alright, but Gods help us can she shut the fuck up for 5 minute (literary speaking) about how short sticked the clones got it. It was a slog to get through "Order 66" and so damn anti-clamatic that it was one of the worst SW novels I've read since the Legacy Series and Anakin-redux Jacen Solo.

 

She has too much of a hard on for the Mandalorians to the point that becomes overly excessive. The Legacy of the Force storyline went overboard with the Mandalorians in her books, I felt. I know they were important, but it seemed she spent lots and lots of time on stuff that, in the end, didn't really matter.

 

Traviss killed the Mandalorians with over explanation. They went from dark, brooding, ass kicker, name takers, to be Klingons in armor. Seriously, replace The Mandlorian names with Klingons names and you've got a trek story.

 

Wow then I must offer a gigantic salute to Clone Wars S2 and whoever is the head writer there. Let me make something clear I always hated that Boba Fett was resurrected in the EU after ROTJ.

I never liked it all. I felt the character appeared he got punked out by a blind Han Solo and he died. THE END. Then it just snowballed into writers creating this whole backstory about him and the Mandalorian culture and all this other gibberish bullcrap. The Legacy of the Force novels by Traviss nearly pushed me over the line of sanity. I'd look over at Theforce.net and read fangirls and fanboys just gushing over her and it made me want to vomit. She clearly wanted to tell a certain story about a certain group of characters and really didn't care how it fit into the Star Wars Universe. She tried to force her views into the Universe and shove it down everyone elses throat.

I felt bad for the other two writers in Legacy of the Force because the last 2 novels both of them had to pretty much retcon or attempt to things that she did in her novels because they just took the scope away from the story and onto her personal fetish for the Mandolorians.

 

See I wonder if she "quit" or if she got the ye' olde boot. Didn't she get into some online drama with fans of at TFN or SWcom a while back? I remember something about her calling a bunch of people "talifans" and causing the shit pot to boil over.

 

What are talifans?

 

Fans that don't like Karen Traviss's books.

This looks like the drama that I heard about.

 

Uhm.. wasn't it standard procedure and well known fact that anything coming from the big bearded, flannel shirt wearing top guy overrules anything written by someone else?

I seem to remember that there was something like a tier system for SW canon.. Tier 1 being the movies and anything written directly by George, then official movie and (later on) tie in books, than approved EU stuff etc.

So if this is true (and my source is old.. 90s perhaps) why is she making a fuss.. she should have known about it. It's not her universe.. she was merely allowed to play in it so it seems she's a little bit too attached for a commissioned writer.

 

Damn right.

BTW, everyone on Jabba's Sail Barge, that Luke didn't slice open first, blew the hell up, lovable blue elephant organ player and (barely seen) reptillian bounty hunter Bossk included. It's over. They are dead.

 

The woman is a fucking drama queen. How she ever got to be a professional writer, much less survive as she did under the guidelines of Lucasarts, is a mystery to me.

And yeah, SW still uses the tier canon: for now. There was an article a while back (TFN I think) about them moving away from that seeing as Lucas himself doesn't use it.

But, but, what about Jawa #3, you know he survived.

 

Well, Traviss's wrote on her blog that she was tempted to re-write her book but with so many other projects on her slate, she decided not to. Take that as you will.

When you get involved with an established franchise like SW, you know that your stuff can be overriden. Now, in all fairness LFL could have told her what not to focus on but still...a writer has to know what they're getting into.

Don't read Post-ROTJ books (comics excluded) but I've liked what I read from Traviss. She always wrote a great Vader and I liked her work on the clones a lot. Particularly liked her recent CW book No Prisoners. Although the anti-Jedi bias she had really got on my nerves and was complete overkill. The Jedi brought a lot of problems onto themselves but they weren't the Sith. You would never know with her writing.

 

Geez, there's even EU drama in the SW community. It's both awesome and sad at the same time.

 

Thank God she's gone. Her books were painful to read with her perverse Mandalorian fetish.

 

Karen Traviss is gone from the Star Wars EU?

This will be a day long remembered.

 

The problem wasn't just that it would require changes going forward, but that there was stuff in the prior six books that was incompatible with the new direction. Faced with a choice of a book series doing a 180 midway through, and a consistent book series that didn't quite reach the end, she took the latter.

She's telling the truth, from a certain point of view.

 

This is way I dislike SW novel series that run for more than 2 or 3 books.

 

Exactly!