|
Are the clones even fertile in the nu-canon? Feel like the urge to gently caress would be something the Kaminoans would have edited out right quick e: wow this is my worst snipe ever
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2023 16:08
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 1, 2024 03:50 |
|
|
ninjahedgehog posted:Are the clones even fertile in the nu-canon? Feel like the urge to gently caress would be something the Kaminoans would have edited out right quick Yeah there's at least that one deserter in Clone Wars
|
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2023 16:17
|
|
|
StashAugustine posted:Yeah there's at least that one deserter in Clone Wars Cut is the stepdad isn't he?
|
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2023 16:18
|
|
|
Just rewatched recently, the kids are clearly intended to have a mix of colorful Twi'lek skin tones and Jango Fett skin, but also they're like 5 and 8 and the Clone Wars only last three years, so who the gently caress knows. EDIT: Perhaps not only fertile, but advanced aging is hereditary? This goes to some dark places.
|
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2023 17:30
|
|
|
Yeah, Cut's the stepdad for timeline reasons, but the way the episode is designed it definitely feels like you're supposed to read him as the biological father as long as you aren't thinking about the details too much. Maybe the kids were younger in a previous draft, or growth acceleration was going to be an inherited trait or something. The Legends continuity definitely didn't have sterile clones though - apparently a web blog addendum to the Essential Guide to Warfare explained it as the Kaminoans discovering that making the clone troopers genetically sterile also reduced their effectiveness as soldiers, so left in the ability to reproduce but added a warning label instructing the Republic to not tell them what their dicks were for.
|
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2023 17:37
|
|
|
Karen Traviss has a clone get his Jedi commander pregnant and then goes into explicit detail about how the Jedi was totally fine having a relationship with a ten year old. You are correct. I should not post at 3AM.
|
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2023 17:38
|
|
|
Kanan and Hera’s son looks like bad fan art. I can’t believe they went ahead with that. Edit: I forgot the kid’s name is Jacen. Casimir Radon fucked around with this message at 18:14 on Apr 25, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2023 17:40
|
|
|
Arquinsiel posted:Karen Traviss has a clone get his Jedi commander pregnant and then goes into explicit detail about how the Jedi was totally fine having a relationship with a ten year old. Lmao i missed that. Incredibly funny how she was actually right about how hosed up clone armies are (though that's also kinda the point and not unique to her) and then just completely undercuts it so the heroes can get laid
|
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2023 18:20
|
|
|
While Karen Traviss has mentioned in interviews how much she loves retconning things, clones being able to reproduce actually predates her, when The Cestus Deception had a clone hook up with Jango's ex-girlfriend and get her pregnant.
|
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2023 20:53
|
|
|
Robot Style posted:The Legends continuity definitely didn't have sterile clones though - apparently a web blog addendum to the Essential Guide to Warfare explained it as the Kaminoans discovering that making the clone troopers genetically sterile also reduced their effectiveness as soldiers, so left in the ability to reproduce but added a warning label instructing the Republic to not tell them what their dicks were for. If poor sex education stopped unwanted pregnancies the US wouldn’t be having issues with teen pregnancies.
|
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2023 22:03
|
|
|
StashAugustine posted:Lmao i missed that. Incredibly funny how she was actually right about how hosed up clone armies are (though that's also kinda the point and not unique to her) and then just completely undercuts it so the heroes can get laid
|
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2023 23:45
|
|
|
There's definitely a discussion when Etain first reveals her pregnancy to Skirata about her just kind of unilaterally deciding that Darman would become a father without consulting him, and her actions are framed as a result of her Jedi upbringing rather than just because she's a young woman who didn't think things through.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 01:25
|
|
|
Space Robot posted:If poor sex education stopped unwanted pregnancies the US wouldn’t be having issues with teen pregnancies. That's at record lows actually. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-r...h%20Statistics. I have two of the NJO books, I think I'm going to see if my local library has any more and embark on them.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 02:11
|
|
|
Hello! Newcomer to Star Wars stuff here. My fiance and I are watching the movies prequels first and watching the Clone Wars show, and that got me to go rustle up the two Star Wars books I own - Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter, and Republic Commando: Hard Contact. I remember the Darth Maul book (and its bonus novella) as being a fun Terminator esque hunt as Maul finds two poor people in a long chase through Coruscant and deals with 'em. I haven't read the other. Upon doing some googling, it seems that Traviss has a reputation - and like, I don't think I've ever seen an author this virulently hated without being some kind of sex pest ala MZB or the Belgariad guy. What horrific crime did she commit?  Can someone give me the details?
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 14:18
|
|
|
There’s some discussion of this on the last page in the context of the New Jedi Order and a few other works from the old EU, but the very short version is Traviss basically hated the Jedi and was cultish toward her own version of the Mandalorians, which showed in later her works (I think Hard Contact was one of the first Star Wars books she did), among other issues. She also did novels for Gears of War and Halo and IIRC she ended up having sorta similar issues with them too. I never read them, but I heard her Gears of War books are quite  at times.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 14:46
|
|
|
StrixNebulosa posted:Upon doing some googling, it seems that Traviss has a reputation - and like, I don't think I've ever seen an author this virulently hated without being some kind of sex pest ala MZB or the Belgariad guy. What horrific crime did she commit? Her thing, which she's done in multiple franchises from Star Wars to Halo to Gears of War, is writing infallible noble warrior subcultures that are being oppressed by some sort other cartoonishly evil group, usually doing so with zero regard for (and often in direct contradiction to) how those characters had been previously portrayed by other authors for that franchise. In Star Wars, it was Mandalorians (specifically clones, who adopt Noble Warrior Mando culture) being oppressed by the moustache-twirling evil Jedi. She was also pretty active in official Star Wars forums at the time and was really toxic to anyone who criticized her writing which led to a lot more backlash and vitriol in the fandom than was directed at other (mostly also bad) EU writers.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 14:50
|
|
|
Whoof, okay. That explains it. Thank you! I'll give her book a shot since I already own it, because why not? The clones are a fascinating tragedy.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 14:57
|
|
|
I reread Hard Contact recently, and I think it still holds up. Most of the problems that define her work don't really come until the later books.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 15:09
|
|
|
Also Traviss’ has really whacked out politics which aren’t really all that surprising if you’ve read some of her work. The Darth Maul book was written by Michael Reaves who just passed away from Parkinson’s. He was one of the really good EU authors.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 15:14
|
|
|
Yeah Hard Contact isn't bad, Traviss can write some fun milSF when she wants to and the brain worms hadn't set in yet.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 15:16
|
|
|
All of the Clone Commando series are fun reads, even if by the end you get into the problems I was talking about upthread. It's worth bearing in mind that she did press stuff for the British Royal Marine Commandos so a lot of the "sci-fi" vocabulary in there is just British military slang.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 15:40
|
|
|
Moose King posted:She was also pretty active in official Star Wars forums at the time and was really toxic to anyone who criticized her writing which led to a lot more backlash and vitriol in the fandom than was directed at other (mostly also bad) EU writers. I recently read Hard Contact and wanted to see what people back in the day thought of it, before Traviss had acquired her reputation in the fandom. So I went back to the old thread on theforce.net about the book when it was first released, only to find her there the day it came out, getting into posting arguments about whether or not certain gun would be available in the Clone Wars. Her tactic was to tattle to Lucasfilm until they agreed to change the continuity to make her right.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 16:56
|
|
|
I think it's also useful to compare her response to one of the core fan complaints to fan-favorite Matt Stover. In Shatterpoint, Stover mentions that there are only 3 million clones in the republic army. Fans online complained that that number was really stupid for a galactic conflict, and Stover's response was basically just to say, "that's what Lucasfilm gave me and I had to go with it," and fans forgot about it and moved on. The same thing happened with Traviss in her books (forget if it was Hard Contact or the second one) and her reaction was to double down, compare her critics to the Taliban and Nazis, say you're a virgin loser for reading Star Wars books to begin with, rename her blog "Noble Three Million" or something like that, and just repeatedly bring up the number in every single subsequent book with dumb Jedi being in awe of how dangerous an army of three million mando clones was. Also, I just remembered she wrote a story that was basically the Star Wars equivalent of a 9/11 Truther conspiracy where the three million clones made sense because there were actually almost no battle droids on the other side and all the battles of the war were actually lies invented by the failing HoloNet News to boost ratings and the gullible Jedi fell for it. She did something similar in her later books with Mandalore, I forget exactly but I think she tried to make it so that the Mythosaur wasn't real, it was an amusement park ride or something and the Imperials were so dumb they believed it was a real Mandalorian animal.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 17:08
|
|
|
it sort of makes sense for the numbers to be weirdly small because star wars is about naval battles and sheevy p is trying to manufacture a war as cheaply as possible while still seeming like a major galaxy-wide calamity. keep the numbers small but blast a lot of poo poo from orbit to make everyone afraid and willing to bow to the empire when the time comes. does this square with literally any depiction of the clone wars including traviss's? no, that poo poo's all about ground action obviously
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 17:16
|
|
|
Although Jedi Trial is a terrible book, one thing I do appreciate about it is that it's maybe alone in trying to depict what a ground-level battle in the Star Wars universe would be like. Does it do it well? No, but at least it was an attempt.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 17:33
|
|
|
Robot Style posted:I recently read Hard Contact and wanted to see what people back in the day thought of it, before Traviss had acquired her reputation in the fandom. So I went back to the old thread on theforce.net about the book when it was first released, only to find her there the day it came out, getting into posting arguments about whether or not certain gun would be available in the Clone Wars. Her tactic was to tattle to Lucasfilm until they agreed to change the continuity to make her right. Chairman Capone posted:I think it's also useful to compare her response to one of the core fan complaints to fan-favorite Matt Stover. In Shatterpoint, Stover mentions that there are only 3 million clones in the republic army. Fans online complained that that number was really stupid for a galactic conflict, and Stover's response was basically just to say, "that's what Lucasfilm gave me and I had to go with it," and fans forgot about it and moved on. These two posts boil down the issue with Traviss, to me, before even getting into her books. Stover had the right approach to the whole 3 million clones thing (that's the number given to me, and does it really matter?), and like you said, everyone was ready to move on. But Traviss getting into arguments with fans on the day of her book's release, and freaking out on fans about the clone number, is just nuts to me. She took it the whole thing way too seriously, in a series where most answers can legit be answered by, "A wizard did it," which lead to antagonizing fans for no actual benefit. There were also problems in her books IMO, but that's a different topic altogether, and is more up to taste. I get liking her books if that's your thing. But I don't think many people would agree with her weird tirades online.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 18:54
|
|
|
Most of Traviss's big issues rear their head in the Legacy of the Force series. For the most part the Republic Commando books are innocuous. There's issues, absolutely, but they're easier to swallow coming from her own incredibly biased original characters than they are coming from the mouths of established EU icons. I'll write up a bit more later, since I'm the weirdo who has read a lot of her stuff. For now, the first two RepCom books are fun reads. The third one isn't as good, Order 66 is pretty weak and Imperial Commando was the start of a two part story that had the second part canned when Traviss left Star Wars. Arc Hammer fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Apr 26, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 19:23
|
|
|
Her weird fashy anti-Jedi stuff also makes a lot more sense in the RepCom books where all the POV characters would have that perspective, but when Luke F-ing Skywalker is embarassed he doesn't know the difference between the Jedi and Sith and talks up the Mandos as the true heroes of the galaxy, maybe it's time to send the manuscript back for another round of edits. e: or yeah, exactly what you said
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 19:32
|
|
|
Legacy of the Force was a mistake. Shitcan six of the books and should've let Allston just write a trilogy about Wedge and Han becoming leaders of the glorious Corellian Revolution.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 19:33
|
|
|
It is kind of funny that Traviss was so happy to overwrite other people's stories, including mentioning in interviews how much he enjoyed retconning things, but then left the franchise in a huff when George Lucas decided "most Mandalorians are pacifists during the Clone Wars". She compared it to writing a series set in World War II and being told partway through that the publishers had decided Hitler no longer existed.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 19:39
|
|
|
Given the context that raises serious questions about how she views Hitler
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 20:37
|
|
|
Robot Style posted:It is kind of funny that Traviss was so happy to overwrite other people's stories, including mentioning in interviews how much he enjoyed retconning things, but then left the franchise in a huff when George Lucas decided "most Mandalorians are pacifists during the Clone Wars". She compared it to writing a series set in World War II and being told partway through that the publishers had decided Hitler no longer existed. In retrospect that should've been a big clue.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 20:37
|
|
|
Arquinsiel posted:Given the context that raises serious questions about how she views Hitler I mean she is a tory brit.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 21:42
|
|
|
Anyhow I said I'd write up something about Traviss's novels. So, as people have correctly said, Traviss has a particular theme in her books, that of the noble soldier society. In Star Wars this was the Mandalorians. In Gears of War, they're the Pesanga. In Halo, they're the Spartans. In each of these franchises Traviss heaps a huge amount of praise onto these elite soldiers and writes other characters to idolize them even when it feels out of place. I'm hazy on this but I think I remember reading somewhere that Traviss had done journalism on the British SAS and was friends with a service member, so she's been rather enamored with special forces who don't play by the rules and it shows. The from her Gears of War novels is the concept of birthing camps. In Gears of War the majority of humanity is already dead, so she wrote about how the Coalition of Ordered Governments issued orders for surviving women capable of bearing children to report to camps to help repopulate. This is a rather horrific idea for a number of reasons, and it is frequently pointed to as Traviss writing her own hosed up ideas into a story to force a narrative she wants. In Halo, her novels follow Kilo-5, a black Ops team working to disrupt the aliens governments thst remain following the destruction of the Covenant in Halo 3. These books managed to piss off Halo fans because they feature a character named Serin Osman, a Spartan candidate who washed out of the program. Serin works for ONI, the same organization that runs Kilo-5, and she hates the Spartans and especially hates Dr. Halsey, the woman who ran the Spartan program. People don't like this because in the Eric Nylund novels it's said that all the Spartan candidates loved Halsey and that Serin hating her was inaccurate to canon. Here's the thing about that horrible stuff in the Gears of War books and the stuff in her Halo books, and even the stuff in her Republic Commando star wars books: her protagonists are working for fascists or soon-to-be fascists. They're bad guy governments in any other setting or situation. The COG in Gears? Literally straight up fascists who just ended a decades long war with communists and then indiscriminately glassed 90% of their own planet to fight the Locust Horde immediately afterwards. The UNSC in Halo originally ran the Spartan program to make supersoldiers to oppress human colonies who didn't like the government. The Clone Commandos? Part of an evil space wizard conspiracy to kill all the Jedi. The birthing camps are not presented as a good thing. They are not presented as a necessary thing. They are explicitly called out as a horrendous policy enacted by literal nazis who would cut off their own nose to kill a cold. The Spartan washout who now hates the woman who crippled her? She now works for the Halo equivalent of the CIA and is actively helping backstab humanity's new allies the Sangheili because the UNSC is a fascist military state that argued that any means were justified if it meant survival of humanity. I'm not about to defend Traviss's hosed up politics or her behaviour interacting with fans. There is plenty of stuff to criticize her over, but I do chafe seeing the same points brought up again that don't really hold water. From where I'm sitting, Traviss doesn't particularly like fascists or governments much at all, and her obsession lies with soldiers who are stuck working for weak rear end politicians or corrupt assholes. The noble soldier often criticizes these politician and those who support them because the noble soldier is the Hard Man Making Hard Decisions. That's why the Jedi are hated in her novels, why the brainwashed Spartans who unconditionally love being kidnapped child soldiers are tragic victims of an evil woman if onyl they could see it, why the heros of Gears are bound by brotherhood more than loyalty to the COG. The noble warrior society is admired because it can break free from the weak and evil government through their own ingenuity and prowess. Kilo-5 might work for baddies but they're given free reign to do what they want. The Mandos and Commandos recognize the Republic as a dying beast and decide to desert because it doesn't deserve their sacrifices. Delta Squad from Gears and their buddies the Pesanga know that the COG is a bunch of assholes and do their best to survive between the genocidal dinosaur monster men and the genocidal nazi monster men. Her reputation from Star Wars novels carried over to Gears and Halo and to be honest I think a lot of criticisms are unwarranted. Some people seem to feel that depiction = endorsement, so they latch onto rape camps and non-standard depictions of Spartans as proof that she wants women to be baby makers and that she doesn't get Halo lore. But the same people who rip on her Gears stuff don't seem to mind that she was also the writer for Gears of War 3 which most people agree had the best story of the series up to that point. Halo games have shied away from outright examining how fashy humanity is in the setting and the first few novels played things incredibly straight. The Eric Nylund novels are good fun but don't go into then expecting a story about kidnapped children turned into cyborg supersoldiers to stop and say "this is kinda hosed up, isn't it?" The Spartans are the heroes and any critical examination is low priority. Gears of War was already stuck with a reputation of being low brow bro-tier writing and fratboy Xbox party material. But the fascist subtext and outright text has always been there. Traviss just extrapolated on it further and made it an actual focus. I don't write all this to say that Traviss is actually a misunderstood genius or that her Gears of War and Halo novels are works of art. They're serviceable genre fiction with some typical military SF hang-ups, albeit with a bit more self awareness than usual regarding the hosed up fascist governments that are present in their respective franchises. Some people don't like it when they have to ask Hans if they're the baddies. Arc Hammer fucked around with this message at 04:51 on Apr 27, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2023 04:42
|
|
|
Jazerus posted:it sort of makes sense for the numbers to be weirdly small because star wars is about naval battles and sheevy p is trying to manufacture a war as cheaply as possible while still seeming like a major galaxy-wide calamity. keep the numbers small but blast a lot of poo poo from orbit to make everyone afraid and willing to bow to the empire when the time comes. Yeah Stover's take on it was to say that because that's a ludicrously small number, clones must be only the tip of the spear and most of the garrison and smaller actions are being fought by guerilla wars
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2023 12:02
|
|
|
Arc Hammer posted:I'm not about to defend Traviss's hosed up politics or her behaviour interacting with fans. There is plenty of stuff to criticize her over, but I do chafe seeing the same points brought up again that don't really hold water. From where I'm sitting, Traviss doesn't particularly like fascists or governments much at all, and her obsession lies with soldiers who are stuck working for weak rear end politicians or corrupt assholes. The noble soldier often criticizes these politician and those who support them because the noble soldier is the Hard Man Making Hard Decisions. That's why the Jedi are hated in her novels, why the brainwashed Spartans who unconditionally love being kidnapped child soldiers are tragic victims of an evil woman if onyl they could see it, why the heros of Gears are bound by brotherhood more than loyalty to the COG. Not familiar with her Gears or Halo work but I think this is a fair point. However, the reason she still sucks isn't because she calls out the weird fashy stuff in the universes she works in, it's because it's only in support of her pet warrior societies that also wind up being incredibly fashy but in a way that seems cooler to her. Like, the Jedi are completely hosed up and evil for leading an army of child soldiers into battle, but it's incredibly cool and good to have children born and bred into Mandalorian mercenaries because reasons.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2023 14:48
|
|
|
Oh no arguments there. Each evil government that her characters oppose need to have some line that is crossed that justifies every dickish thing her warrior societies do. Who cares if the rogue ARC Troopers torture a kaminoan and make leather gloves out of her skin? The Republic used a slave army so their revenge is justified! Who cares if Kilo-5 backstabs the Elites and makes the galaxy a worse place after Halo 3? The UNSC used kidnapped child soldiers and that's worse! Who cares if the Gears use the doomsday laser satellite grid? Any ethical quandries about it were wiped clean when the COG used it first and killed most of the planet! It doesn't justify the hosed up things her protagonists do, no sir. But that goes back to her blind spot for special forces. They get a carte blanche and a get out of jail free pass on morality because they do the job s that must be done and that is noble and brave.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2023 15:21
|
|
|
i think she's trying to draw a distinction between klingons and nazis. mandos, gears dudes, john halo, they're noble warriors trying to fight wars but not the bad wars, and the evil fascist system is making them fight the bad wars instead of the good wars. it's bullshit because there's a direct throughline from the "noble warrior" philosophy to fascism but what can you expect from someone who idealizes the SAS
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2023 15:22
|
|
|
I think it's just a pretty straightforward "troops are good but politicians are evil" stance
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2023 15:42
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 1, 2024 03:50 |
|
|
StashAugustine posted:I think it's just a pretty straightforward "troops are good but politicians are evil" stance Which gets expanded into "and anyone who believes in these government institutions is therefore also evil until they stop believing in them and join are troops"
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2023 15:57
|
|