#karen traviss wrote republic commando without even wanting to

[chocmarss]

Once you read as much Star Wars books as I do (nothing compared to the hardcore fans who read all of legends and disney canon tho), Legends or Disney canon, you get to weed out all the authors you don’t like and you realise hey, they’re anti-Jedi! Or just don’t like Jedi because of [checks list] things they obviously don’t want to agree with. They either villainise the characters or make them downright ‘bad’ for the readers because, get this, they think these characters are a bunch of jackasses when in reality, that’s not what it is. Or they’d outright say, hey these Jedi mfs are a bunch of fucking baby snatchers! And murderers! Yes, I’m pointing at you Karen Traviss, the bane of all Star Wars books.

[padawanlost]

I have a couple of questions about Karen Miller/Traviss (are they the same person?) who wrote the Clone Wars novels. Are they still considered canon? Also, I heard that Karen Traviss was abused online or something, was that over her Star Wars novels? Really, I mean that just takes toxicity to a new level.

This is a hot topic but one that desperately needs to be explored because to this day people are still spreading misinformation about that happen as a way to ‘defend’ their points. So, here we go:

Karen Miller and Karen Traviss are not the same person.

Karen miller wrote novels like  The Clone Wars: Wild Space and the Clone Wars Gambit series.

Karen Travis wrote novels like The Clone Wars movie novelization and the Republic Command Series.

Both, in my opinion, are very talented writers but both also suffered thanks to sexiest and overzealous fans. There are many reason why they became ‘infamous’ but the main reason is their political stance. They both had a lot of sympathy for the clones and the enslaves citizens of the GFFA, and both were not shy about calling out the Jedi Order and the Senate for their inaction. Of course, jedi stans hated them. To add insult to injury, Karen Traviss was the writer who ‘killed’ Mara Jade (btw, this wasn’t her idea but she’s still hated for it).

Karen Miller ‘crimes’:

Her biggest ‘offense’ was being mistaken by Karen Traviss (more on that later). Beyond that all she did was write Anidala and portraying Anakin and Obi-wan as good but flawed people. This is the kind of stuff she wrote:

“Coruscant was out there. Padmé was out there. There was a heart in his chest, beating, but it was only an echo. She was his true heart. She was his home.”  - Karen Miller’s Clone Wars Gambit: Siege

“He saw himself a candle. He saw himself behind a wall. Brick by brick he tried to raise it. Brick by brick, it was destroyed. Every death was a hammer blow. Every loss a chisel. The Sith were a wily foe, they knew where and when to strike. They were drawn to weak places, to old griefs and unhealed wounds.” - Karen Miller. The Clone Wars: Wild Space

To weep for a fallen comrade was to display unseemly attachment. A Jedi did not become attached to people, to things, to places, to any world or its inhabitants. A Jedi’s strength was fed by serenity. By distance. By loving impersonally. Karen Miller. The Clone Wars: Wild Space

Nothing particularly edgy or offensive. Imo, she’s one the best prequel writes in the game.

Karen Traviss ‘crimes’:

Beyond killing Mara Jade, she’s known for being critical of the Jedi and Republic and advocating for clone wars. She supported the highly offensive and controversial idea that clones were human being who deserved the freedom. She also believed that love (romantic or platonic), family and friends were not inherently evil and that Order made mistake by banning them.

Karen Trraviss is also know for writing so much of what we know of Mandalorian culture and she struck a nerve that too.

She wrote things like:

“The only thing [the clones] all had in common was their appearance—although they were starting to age differently, she could see that now—and what the Republic had done to them. Apart from that, they were individuals with the full range of virtues and habits of random humankind, and she now felt completely at home with them. If she had a side in this war, this was the one she chose: the disenfranchised, unreasonably loyal, heartbreakingly stoic ranks of manufactured men who deserved better.”  Star Wars - Republic Commando: True Colors by Karen Traviss

Serenity, my backside. Passion. Passion and anger and love. That’s what this galaxy needs, not serenity. Passion for change. Anger at this brutality. Love-buckets of it, for everyone, love between child and parent, between spouses, between brothers and sisters, between friends. We need more attachment, not less. Attachment can stop us from tearing ourselves apart. The Clone Wars: No Prisoners by Karen Traviss

He wanted to ask her why only a handful of Jedi objected to a slave army, and why they could claim to believe in the sanctity of all life and yet treat some life as being exempt from that respect. [REPUBLIC COMMANDO: TRUE COLORS BY KAREN TRAVISS[

Fandom (over)reaction:

Because of her ‘polemic’ takes, she started getting a lot of hate from the fandom. She used to interact with the fandom and her reward was to get constant death and rape threats. Some fans threatened her with ‘corrective rape’ to change her mind about the Jedi Order and other topics. Apparently, she responded by calling these fans ‘talifans’.

And the fans used that reaction to further vilify her. she was accused of hating the Jedi Order, of favoring Mandalore over them, getting the size of the clone army wrong, of ruining the OT by killing Mara Jade and now, of attacking fans. She was basically bullied out of the franchise.

However, her depictions of Clones and Mandalorians as heroes, while portraying the Jedi as petty or villainous, frustrated some fans, who felt that her stories and characters were counter to Star Wars. These fans wrote negative reviews of her books, and created a petition to George Lucas to stop Traviss from writing further Star Wars books. Traviss also received rape and death threats. Traviss wrote about these experiences on her blog, attacking the fans who created the petition, and likening them to Muslim extremists by calling them "Talifans." Traviss ultimately retired from Star Wars writing due to the threats she received.  [x]

It got to point where she had to write an open letter to the fandom explaining she DIDN’T hate the Jedi Order, she just didn’t believe things like war crimes and slavery should be so easily overlooked.

“No sane human can hate someone who doesn’t actually exist. From a writer’s perspective, the more super-powers characters acquire, the harder it is to develop logical story arcs and true human drama…but I don’t have any real feelings about fictional characters that stay with me once I step out of character-point-of-view-writing mode and get on with my life […] My real problem, then, is not with fictional Jedi, but with the people who refuse to believe they can do wrong. – Karen traviss [x]

If you want to know more about this, check this out :)

Now, back to Karen Miller

A few years ago, a popular sw tumblr tried to discredit Traviss writing by spreading the info that  she was a sexualizing Ahsoka with Bail so people started hating her for that too. Thing is, Karen Miller was the one accused of doing that but here is the deal:

Neither Karens ever wrote Ahsoka interacting with Bail Orgarna. What actually happened was that someone wrote a fic about Bail sexualizing Ahsoka on fanfiction.net, someone read it and decided the writing style was similar to Karen Miller’s so OF COURSE it must be Karen Miller who wrote the fanfic. Thanks to that genius level of deductive work, over the time people started saying that Karen Traviss wrote about Bail wanting to fuck Ahsoka as extra proof that SHE IS EVIL and should not be taken seriously.

Conclusion

Regardless of what you feel about someone writing, it’s NEVER okay to send them rape or death threats. Never! unfortunately, some hardcore jedi stans still spread the ‘karen traviss was attacking us’ without explaining exactly transpired between her and the fandom. According to their narrative, she was the *only* one in the wrong. That’s why there’s so much misinformation about her and what truly happened online.

My take on this ‘controversy’ is very simple: stop sending rape and death threats to women. I don’t care if you agree with her or not. The moment you believe a women *deserve* to be rape or killed, or support those who do, you lose any more ground you might think have. The situation becomes even more dire if it’s done to protect FICTIONAL CHARACTERS. 🤦‍♀️ I swear...this fandom....

[theconstitutionisgayculture]

i am so sorry to do this to you and please don't feel like you even have to post this, but i have got to get this off my chest cause it's driving me insane - one of my very favourite authors (she wrote the republic commando series) gets torn apart by her supposed 'fans' to the point where i can't even participate in the fandom, and half of it is - i am not kidding - bc she used the shorthand 'trannies' as the clones' slang for trandoshans in the first book (published in 2004), much like they call separatists 'seppies'. and then she stopped using the word as soon as she was told it was making readers uncomfortable. so according to the entire 'fanbase' on tumblr, she's transphobic. which - that word is shorthand for transmission, and originated as shorthand for transmission and transistor, and it's still used as such today. and she quit using the word. but it's not enough; i'm just so tired of these people being so holed up in their echo chamber of a 'queer community' (i'm sorry isn't that, itself, a slur??) that they literally cannot imagine another way of thinking, but then get angry at everyone else for not thinking their way, and i am so so so tired of woke people ruining fandom. i know it's beating a dead horse at this point but i wish to goodness there was a way to get away from them. i just want to be excited about my favourite books with someone and instead all i see is 'books bad, author bad, and if you don't say so you're bad, too'. it's so freaking depressing

The Star Wars fandom is gross and toxic. And it's sad, because there are a lot of us who just want to enjoy Star Wars and not have bitter losers who don't live in the real world ruining everything with their gross woke bullshit. And the irony is, these people should be licking Karen Traviss's bare soles. She went into the supposedly "male dominated" space of Star Wars creators and created, from scratch, the entire culture of the Mandalorians, one of the most popular sub-groups in Star Wars history. The same culture that was used as a basis for the Mandalorian culture in both the canon Clone Wars show and The Mandalorian. That was her. And she's one of the most popular Star Wars writers because of it. But no, instead of celebrating that they have to wet themselves because an in-universe word she used decades ago is considered a slur now. But then again, these are the same people who want to ban The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn because it has characters saying the N word. So it really shouldn't surprise me. As much as I hate echo chambers, we really need more fandom spaces for people who just want to talk about the thing they're a fan of without any politics or social crap allowed.

[padawanlost]

I think I once saw Karen Traviss say Order 66 was necessary or some form of apologism for it but that was over a decade ago (oh god, Republic Commando books were that long ago...) but that's pretty much ut

‘Fun’ fact about Karen Traviss: some jedi fans threatened to rape and kill her for writing negatively about the Jedi Order. 

[Traviss] depictions of Clones and Mandalorians as heroes, while portraying the Jedi as petty or villainous, frustrated some fans, who felt that her stories and characters were counter to Star Wars. These fans wrote negative reviews of her books, and created a petition to George Lucas to stop Traviss from writing further Star Wars books. Traviss also received rape and death threats.[x]

I haven’t read all of her books and i know she has said some controversial things but i do not accept any of that as valid justification for rape and death threats. 

She’s very critical of the Jedi Order but I don’t remember ever reading anything like that (but, again, I haven’t read everything so…who knows?). either way, she got so much hate she ended writing a long letter explaining she didn’t hate the Jedi Order, she only didn’t agree with some of their methods. And still, to this day, fans still trash her and her work for that even after YEARS without writing anything for Star Wars. 

‘Now, if you like Jedi because Luke is basically an ordinary guy who finds the hero in himself, great. If you like lightsabers and impossible martial arts moves, bully for you. If it's just fun for you, and you don't feel mortally wounded when someone suggests that the Jedi might not actually be completely perfect, fine. You pass the harmless test. But once you're past the age of puberty and you start arguing passionately with me that the Jedi were right to accept a slave army of cloned human beings and use them in war, and cloned humans aren't proper humans like us, and it was too bad the clones died, and the Jedi had no choice - well, sweetheart, I want to run a mile from you. Not the Jedi, who - just to remind you - are a figment of various writers' imaginations, just like the clones. You. If I see that you really mean it, and you're making excuses in your own mind for the Jedi just following orders on that delicate point, then you scare the living crap out of me. For real. Because it's clear to me that you believe deep down in real life that some human lives are worth less than others, and so it's okay to end them. Whether you realise that or not. Because if you don't believe it at that fundamental level, then why do you get so damned angry with me when I rock the boat of your fictional beliefs? It's just a kids' fantasy story. You could shrug and move on. But the fact that you rage about it means it's hit a real nerve in you, in the core of your real beliefs.’[x]

I think she hits the core of the issue here. the problem is not the people who love the jedi and enjoy them as they heroes. the problem is the people who get offended by notions like that clone lives were as important as jedi lives or people who blame characters of color for their lack of enjoyment of a tv show. This is not about jedi being good or evil, that’s not the debate. It’s about the situation these characters are in and your responses to these situations do say a lot about you. Fiction is fiction, of course, so 99% of the people will simple ignore it as fiction. the problem is the 1% who sees someone saying ‘slavery is wrong’ and are *personally* offended by the notion. They are the ones sending threats and hate to people.

And even if she did write something like that, it wouldn’t have mattered beyond showing the depths some folks will sink. I mean, some sw writers wrote some pretty nasty shit: child slavery, sexual abuse, racism, etc. but isn’t it suspicious how only talking negatively about the Jedi Order inspire such violence, defensive response? If people were THAT passionate in real life tackling issues like abuse and human trafficking as they are about ‘defending’ a fictional Order that’s not even under attack we would be living in a much better place.