There's a disturbing tendency that the people who defend Traviss' Star Wars work have to try to change the topic, make attacks against other people's character or descend to petty insults in order to bully people around to their way of thinking or make them quit the debate outright. A lot like Ms. Traviss herself, now that I think about it. I hate to see this because if they could actually bring some concrete evidence to the table and present it in a polite and constructive manner then these debates would be a lot more enjoyable. Instead, most of what I see refuting my posts is "Nuh uh! You're wrong lalalalalalalalala!"

And I still don't see how your disingenuous accusations of hyperbole and making things up prove my point of the Mandalorians not having a very good (read: terrible) record of fighting Jedi. Because they don't. If you're not going to contribute constructively, don't contribute at all. The facts stand as this: Mandalorians have an absolute crap record of when they, as a people, go up against Jedi or Sith, with Jango Fett being an outlying factor, he was just that good. Boba Fett, the supposed best person to learn how to hunt Jedi from, has one Canonical capture under his belt, and that was against a half trained Padawan. Jaina could have learned how to beat Jacen from her uncle Luke, who had already won against Jacen in a Lightsaber fight once already, but Karen Traviss absolutely needed to inject Mandalorians into the plot line because she's absolute pants at writing anything else (not that her Mandalorians are all that well written in the first place...). Whenever the Mandalorians ragged on the Jedi around Jaina, which includes everyone in her family except her father, I might add, she offered absolutely no rebuttal and in fact just sat there and contemplated the mighty Mandalorian's words. Jaina was so lax in defense of her family and way of life I'm surprised she didn't start saying "thank you Sir may I have another". Karen Traviss wrote Luke Skywalker, Mara Jade and a few other characters as actually thinking like a Mandalorian, a culture with which all of these characters had absolutely no interaction with beyond either temporary alliances or from opposite sides of a conflict. She completely ignored the entire New Jedi Order with how she made Jaina unable to fight against enemies who wore Lightsaber proof armor, and who's intentions she was unable to sense in the Force. Jain developed the tactics with which the Jedi used to fight the Yuuzhan Vong, overcoming (and thriving against) the exact same deficiencies that Traviss imposed upon her. She completely re-wrote Mara Jade's personality, making her bumble around like that white girl in horror movies that you just know is going to trip at the worst possible moment and get killed. Not only that, but she also made Mara's death absolutely meaningless as a sacrifice to Jacen's Sithy credentials when she later had him reason away that he killed her in self defense, completely negating the sacrificial part of killing her. Not that it was a big sacrifice to start with, seeing as how he had a wife or daughter that would have done much better. I don't care if other people like her, that's their business and they can have whatever preferences they want, but to pretend she didn't rewrite established Star Wars Canon and trample all over other author's characters is complete willful ignorance on anyone's part.

Love that picture. But yea, back on topic, Karen Traviss is a terrible author (in the Star Wars genre) for the reasons stated in this thread (and then some).

I'm sorry

"We'll try not to splatter any blood on you, ma'am" is my favorite so far.

Well, Halo sucks and SPARTANs are a bunch of sissies, so there.

It was a dramatization.

We'll just have to agree to disagree on the Halo thing, I always thought that the SPARTAN project was a blatant and thinly disguised rip-off of Warhammer 40K's Space Marines.

Yea really. The funny part is, I would have been perfectly fine with her as an author if she just stuck to writing Mandalorians, wasn't allowed to write Force Users (Given her painfully obvious hate for them) and if she didn't try to inject political narrative into pretty much all of her dialogue. If she'd owned up, and just admitted that three million clones was a ridiculously small number for a galactic military (Over SIXTY MILLION people died in World War II alone), and didn't try to pass off the Clone Wars as a "small brush fire war", then she never would have compared people that disagreed with her to the Taliban (because you know, everyone that has an opinion is a mass murdering psychopath). Gah, I'm just so happy that she's writing for Gears of War and Halo now, the lore for those series can't get any worse anyway.

*accepts* Don't even get me started on Traviss originally saying that the Mandalorians, a culture of warriors, mercenaries and soldiers didn't have a way to express time because they thought it was unneeded. My. GOD. This is a woman that served in the military (granted, as a journalist) and she's trying to tell us that a warrior culture didn't have a way to express TIME?! "When are we supposed to flank them again?" "Soon, don't worry." "Yes, but WHEN exactly, are we supposed to attack?" "...?"

And they got absolutely whipped every single time they ever went up against the Jedi. In fact, Jango Fett killed more jedi in that one battle (that bare-handed killing crap) than the entire other compliment of Mandalorians present combined. The Mandalorians as a culture had a big fat goose egg (and still do, really) as far as fighting Jedi and Sith went, until Karen Traviss came along with her "cannot sense intentions in the Force" fighting style, which the Jedi had already faced in the Vong (couldn't sense the Vong at all, in fact, which is even worse) and made it so that Jaina's "trainer" stomped her into the ground. Because, you know, Lightsaber resistant armor and not being able to sense her opponent's intentions in the Force were so new to Jaina "Sword of the Jedi" Solo. I can't believe people are actually still trying to excuse Traviss' total (and seemingly gleeful) curb stomping of established Canon.

I'm saying he wouldn't be able to touch her. There is absolutely no canonical evidence in the history of Star Wars that Boba Fett has any success in fighting fully trained Jedi Knights (or even partially trained, in the case of Luke Skywalker on Tatooine), the best he's ever done is capture a padawan that never completed her training. And this is Jaina "I kill Vong for a workout" Solo. Its so clear that Traviss had no freaking clue what she was doing or what she was writing about when she wrote this line. That right there tells us she knows next to absolutely nothing about the entire Yuuzhan Vong conflict. It further says that she shouldn't ever be writing for the Star Wars franchise until she either ate a slice of humble pie and learned how to write other characters (other than Mandalorians, and even some of them were horribly written) without utterly butchering their personality, or should have been forced to read a whole ton of Star Wars Extended Universe along with the Movie novelizations. After all, this is the lady that proudly stated that the only Star Wars novels she'd ever read were her own.

Well aren't you a Negative Nancy? What would you have named them, Mr. Published Author? Really, if you can't at least criticize constructively, don't do it at all.

I'm not. I honestly can't say that I've enjoyed much of Karpyshyn's writing for a really long time. I haven't even been able to finish the Jedi Knight story.

I cried manly tears of sorrow when

Here here! Revan had a Canon identity the moment they started writing the game, it wouldn't have been approved otherwise, stop complaining and move on with your life already.

What really kills it for me is that there are actual Sith, aliens though they may be, that speak Huttese instead of Basic in the xenophobic Empire.

Hey BioWare, gotta say that I've been loving the game since the start of Early Access until now. There's just one thing that's really, really gotten to me in the course of leveling three characters to 50, and that's all the humanoid aliens that are capable of speaking Basic (unlike Rodians, who aren't) that speak Huttese. The second I see a Chiss or Twi'lek or anything else start to speak Huttese, it just an invitation to start hitting the space bar. You've created a wonderfully vibrant Star Wars experience here, BioWare, with absolutely fantastic dialogue (especially for an MMO!), but when I'm on Hoth as an Imperial, and I see citizens of the nicely isolated Chiss Ascendancy (or whatever their current government is) speaking Huttese instead of the Basic of their allies, it really starts to kill the immersion. Yes, I know that Immersion is thrown around a lot to justify things but when I'm running around Coruscant and all of a sudden there's a whole slew of Aliens that should be perfectly capable of speaking Basic (Twi'lek, Zabrak, Togruta) all speaking Huttese, it just kills my gaming experience so hard. Now I'm not saying that all humanoid Basic capable sentients should speak Basic in-game, a Hutt slave girl would be perfectly in-character speaking Huttese, but when I'm talking to a Chiss Lieutenant on Hoth and all of a sudden he starts throwing this alien gibberish at me, a Sith Lord, my shoulders just slump and I start reading as fast as I can so I don't have to listen to his stupid voice.

We're talking about movies, though. And a surprisingly large number of people don't even know that the Star Wars trilogies had books that came out before the movies. On the front of Movies though, I actually enjoyed the Bourne trilogy more than I did the Lord of the Rings trilogy, simply because they left out so much from the books that it was almost painful for me to watch. And I'm glad that Harry Potter lost, those movies are freaking terrible.

Not really. Reapers are extremely specific in their technology base. Mass Effect is really far down on the Science Fiction food chain as far as VS goes, and the Reaper's main weapon is the Mass Relay network and reliance on the Citadel, without that, they don't stand much of a chance at all.

Galactic Empire all the way. The Sith Empire just doesn't have the resources (of any kind except Force users) that the Galactic Empire does.

Not unless you know of someone that's stashed away clones of the original cast. Knowing Star Wars fans, I wouldn't be surprised if someone has.

Aren't you a negative Nancy.

Not with Drew writing it.

My vacation wasn't nearly as relaxing as it should have been. But good to be back.