Ner Trikar: Belated Bad News
I think I might cry.
http://karentraviss.typepad.com/blog...
What the frak? Seriously, what the frak? But her books were so good!
Arrgh! Why are people stupid?
And what is with the Mando-hate?
Hey, di'kute! You've known all along that Jedi aren't frakking invincible, and that Mandos are badass folks who've taken them down in the past. Why are you all of a sudden having conniption fits because details are finally being shown in the books? Why are your shorts up your shebs because you're being shown Jedi who aren't perfect--there have been un-perfect Jedi before, hello, where you been? (*cough*Luke*cough*Vader*cough*Obi*cough*) Why is it some big frakking "insult to the honor of Star Wars itself" or whatever for a Jedi to learn something from a...dare I say?...flatscan bucket-head, be they clone or Mando?
Seriously is there anyone who did not think that it was immensely cool and totally frakking badass when Jaina went off to get trained by Boba Fett in the fine art of Jedi-killing?
Haar'chak! How does it threaten the Jedi to give them enemies that are actually dangerous and who aren't basically mirror-images with different color sabers and added lightning? Story-wise, are not heroes "only as good as their villains" and vice-versa? Are not badass Mandalorians a good thing for everyone? (Well, aside from the characters themselves...heh) Bic ni skana'din.
And that's another point! Finally SW has an equivalent response to the Klingons of ST! All we had before was an alphabet! (A cool alphabet, but still just an alphabet.) Little snippets of Huttese, basically just enough to tell someone off or threaten them with a long and lingering death in a digestive track. (Granted, cool. But not very versatile.) Now thanks to the Mando'ade and KT, we have a language and a freaking fully-fleshed culture and...and...and now you just want us to abandon it? Because, what, your precious Jedi were getting pouty because they actually have to sweat a little? Because they sometimes actually get their asses kicked, and I don't mean just the canon-fodder plainrobes dime-a-dozen knights who get stomped on so the Hero Jedi can come rescue them, I mean the Hero Jedi themselves--I'm sorry, but I like stories where the hero doesn't always win! When they have to work at it! And excuse me if I'm bringing up the irrelevantly distant past, but was that not the entire bloody point of the fnarling "New Jedi Order" osik we put up with a few years ago? Was that not the entire point behind the editorial decision to off Chewie? Up the stakes by showing that the heroes could not only lose but even die? (Stupid, shock-value tactics, cheap and tawdry and I disapprove, but the point is, you bloody well got what you wanted and you got it better than your original "plan" anyway so now why are you whining?) And now we have unprepared Jedi running a war they weren't ever equipped to run, never getting the chance to stop and think (which is what they're best at, after all: using their heads and listening to the Force) because Palpy's got them running around overwhelmed and overworked and--lo and behold, we find that they are, in fact, not perfect? Why, do you think that might explain somewhat how a Sith Lord was able to seize the Republic, orchestrate a massive war, and then betray and murder them all before they ever saw it coming? Noooo, of course not. Jedi have to be perfect and peerless and utterly unimpeachable. Except when they fall to the Dark Side. Or get chopped into tiny pieces by red lightsabers. Or don't notice the Sith Lord right in front of them. Or make bad tactical decisions because they're used to planning strategy for one or two people, not two thousand. Or let their own allies shoot them in the back because they've gotten too complacent about the clones' bred-in loyalty genes. Or...oh, wait. Does that mean that maybe Jedi are just people? Seriously cool, seriously powerful, seriously brilliant people?
Naaaaah. Of course not.
But all that's just tangential rant. That's just my pissed off response to a bunch of whiny little chakaare online. Like the Jedi would be any fun at all if they were all-powerful, totally perfect, omniscient little fraks...please. I like Jedi, too! Like Tholme and Quinlan and Aayla, who kick ass and screw up and keep on doing their best anyway. Like Leia and Mara, who are frakking badass and don't pretend to be perfect but are actual fully-rounded people and are thus awesome. Like Shado Vao and K'Kruhk and A'Sharad Hett. Like Nomi Sunrider and Ahsoka and Etain, who frak up and learn from it and get awesome. Like Plo and Kit and Obi; talk about skills. I have nothing against Jedi at all. I like Jedi! I dress up as a Jedi(Aayla)! And I love Mandos! And I love the way the two cultures interact, for good and for ill; I love when they're fighting each other, and I love when they're working together. They're just awesome foils for one another. And when KT wrote uncomplimentary things about the Jedi, you know what she was doing? She was having her characters speak their thoughts about the Jedi! Okay, the whole point of the latest huge SW series is about how the galaxy doesn't understand and kind of fears the Jedi! Gee, wouldn't it be nice if we could see some examples of ordinary citizens, people without Force powers, being a little bit confused or even creeped out by the mysterious, spooky, crazy-powerful Jedi in their midst? Oh wait, we had that...and we got grumpy about it. Well gee-frak, folks, of course Kal Skirata is going to think uncomplimentary things about the Jedi! He's a shabla Mando! A pre-Clone Wars Mando who had a bunch of friends frakking exterminated by Dooku's little Jedi army! And now an old-school shabuir soldier made of grit and guile and crotchety affection appears to not worship the Jedi? Le gasp, I am in shock! If Kal Skirata does not like Jedi, why, it must mean that the whole universe will come crumbling down because everyone loves the Jedi! Yeah, they loved them so much they had a frakking Purge in their honor.
Seriously, people. Seriously.
Grow the frak up.
Pull your panties out of your butts, and then pull your heads out of your butts, and chill the hell out. No one is attacking Star Wars by saying that some grumpy old Mando'ade don't like the Jedi. The Sith don't like the Jedi, and everyone was cool with that! Why is it such a threat to you people when the enemy is "ordinary" folk (with seriously intense armor and weapons and grit and really the only reason the word "ordinary" can be applied is because they don't have midichlorians)? Why is it a threat to you? You didn't used to get pissy about Boba Fett when it was just him. You knew all along that he wasn't just a random dude in armor, but a guy in Mandalorian armor, a specific kind of armor from a specific culture, a warrior culture, a group of people. Why are you threatened now?
Stop whining. Sit down. Extinguish the lightsaber. And let's all just get along, 'lek? No reason why we can't. We all love Star Wars, and I think we're all in agreement that there wouldn't be much of a "Star Wars" without the Jedi. Fandalorians aren't trying to shove the 'saber-and-robe crowd out, we're just enjoying this new (and long-awaited) attention being paid to the buckets-and-blasters gang. We can have both! Okay? Seriously! Stop being asses. (You're all acting like Windu. Stop being an arrogant SOB and pull the purple stick out, vode.) The cooler Mandos are, the cooler Star Wars is. Any part of the universe gets better, it all gets better! How is that hard to grasp? How can that possibly be a bad thing?
And now that I am done ranting (sorry about that, really. I don't know exactly where that came from. I guess I was more pissed about that whole internet morass than I thought I was) let me get onto the point of this post: Karen Traviss is done with Star Wars!
And it turns out she announced this in August, but I did not know about it. I totally missed the whole explosion of controversy and bad-continuity and general crappiness and only just found out tonight when a friend mentioned it online. And I almost actually cried. Her books were so good and there was so much left to tell! Okay, bad enough she was stuck with trying to clean up after Troy Dennings and leaving the lot of us with bated breath as to how (and if) she was going to salvage her ongoing Mando/Clones plot from way back in the first RepCom book all though LotF. Bad enough we still don't know what happened to these people (thanks, Dennings. You're a peach. The nanovirus was a great idea. I'm so glad you do your research and pay attention to what your fellow authors are working on. Ass.) but now we maybe never will! And even if we do, it will not be the same if it's not KT. Dammit, I wanted to know about Venku/Kad! I wanted to know about Mirta and Ghes and Sintas and Bob'ika! I wanted to know about Beviin and Medrit and who's going to be the next Mandalore. I wanted to know about Ordo and Bardan/Gotab and Fi and all the clones who defected and settled on Mandalore. I wanted more and now there won't be any.
And you wanna know why? Why there won't be any more KT Mando/RepCom books? Why the Boba Fett book that I was both dreading and anticipating won't be happening? You wanna know why? Because for the cartoon they decided they want to make the Mandos pacifists!
Yehbuhwhathefrak?
I'm sorry, I don't think cinnamon buns go with buckets. Mandalorian-pacifist is like...like...I can't even think of a contradiction big enough to use as an example. Mandalorian pacifists?
Okay, I heard about that before--another friend told me, back when Season Two was just starting and the rumors were flying--and I was thrown for a hell of a loop, but I was willing to wait and see. After all, The Clone Wars cartoon was awesome so far. (Cad Bane is my new second-favorite bounty hunter. Lee Van Cleef, whoo!) And it could work...ish. Yeah, the Mandos have splintered before. This could be like the Death Watch only, you know, the opposite of that. And they were on a planet that had been nuked? Well that's kind of cool. Pacifist Mandalorians in a post-apocalyptic wasteland? Okay, I'll bite...show me what you got.
Umm. But you don't have to break continuity to do it, kids.
You know? I mean, it's not like they were saying "oh hey, this big plotline we're starting to think up is gonna totally not work with this one little e-book that was out a while ago...we'll just make the e-book into an Infinities, mmmkay?" No, they're saying "so hey, yeah, we're gonna like trash a super-high-selling series and oh yeah it's also gonna frak up one of our major storyline events in the SW EU but no big, right?" I'm sorry, I thought the big thing now was that continuity would not get broken like whoa anymore, because editorial was going to be paying attention and keeping tabs and working things out and all that kind of stuff.
And they could have worked this out! Like I said, Mandos have splintered before. Make them an off-shoot sector; it's a nomadic culture, after all, spread over a couple of planets. Easy fix: these are Mandos living on Dxun or somewhere else, which was nuked, and they have their own personal Mandalore and ignore the rest of the Mandalorians, who respond in kind. Live and let live, that's the Mando way, at least until someone offers money for slaughter and destruction instead. Maybe they split off after the Sith War way back when, that would be kind of cool. Or it's a recent development, and doesn't last--cause okay, how long do you think Mandos could go being pacifists? A month? A week? I give it one game of cu'bikad or smashball myself.
The point is, they could have done this weird pacifist Mando-thing in the cartoon and not broken continuity everywhere else! But nooooooo, we can't play together, we can't get along, we can't adhere to frakking established continuity, oh no! No no no, let's not talk crazy here! Totally a much better idea to just throw out tons of awesome material and frak up current continuity in the EU like crazy rather than just slide this in alongside it. Which, by the way, they wouldn't have even have had to mention in the cartoon episodes! Just change the name of the planet to something other than Mandalore, and let assumption carry canon until someone can write up a side note in some book or magazine article or something explaining how the Mando-pacifists were in fact a splinter group of--EXCUSE ME, but JANGO wasn't a pacifist! Hello! Dooku? Army of Jedi? Slaughter on both sides? The Death Watch? Jaster Mereel? Open Seasons? Any of that ring a bell at all? Arrrrrgh...so unnecessary. There is no reason to break canon! No reason! They could have worked it out! Easily! Hell, I just did it in a few sentences, and I don't even have all the details yet! But I'll bet anyone a bonafied No Prize that after the episodes come out, I'll still be able to tweak up a solution that will make both canons work! Hell, I read X-Men, I can reconcile splintered continuity in my sleep.
But instead my beloved Mandalore is broken, and KT is gone, and the Clones are left bereft and rudderless, and Bob'ika and Mirta and Sintas are drifting; if there are buy'cese in the Fate of the Jedi they will be pale, empty things--ori'buyce, kih'kovid. And the delight of a galaxy with Mando'ade on the political stage will be gone. And it was so, so pretty an impending chaos, too.
You know, it wasn't too long ago that I was posting with glee about Mandos in the Legacy comics. I miss that glee. I'm gonna go wallow in my sorrow for a while.
The last time I felt miserable like this, I had just had a dream about finishing reading the latest Star Wars book (I was halfway through it at the time) and Fett died in it and when I woke up it took me like an hour to realize it was a dream. It was horrible. And felt really real. Like, I didn't dream what happened next, I actually dreamed the process of reading it. Kind of spooky, actually. And left me miserable and hollow inside. Kind of like this. Books, burc'ya. They'll frak you up.
Well. Happy holidays, mando'ade. Don't worry, gar nu kyr'adyc, shi taab'echaaj'la.
http://karentraviss.typepad.com/blog...
What the frak? Seriously, what the frak? But her books were so good!
Arrgh! Why are people stupid?
And what is with the Mando-hate?
Hey, di'kute! You've known all along that Jedi aren't frakking invincible, and that Mandos are badass folks who've taken them down in the past. Why are you all of a sudden having conniption fits because details are finally being shown in the books? Why are your shorts up your shebs because you're being shown Jedi who aren't perfect--there have been un-perfect Jedi before, hello, where you been? (*cough*Luke*cough*Vader*cough*Obi*cough*) Why is it some big frakking "insult to the honor of Star Wars itself" or whatever for a Jedi to learn something from a...dare I say?...flatscan bucket-head, be they clone or Mando?
Seriously is there anyone who did not think that it was immensely cool and totally frakking badass when Jaina went off to get trained by Boba Fett in the fine art of Jedi-killing?
Haar'chak! How does it threaten the Jedi to give them enemies that are actually dangerous and who aren't basically mirror-images with different color sabers and added lightning? Story-wise, are not heroes "only as good as their villains" and vice-versa? Are not badass Mandalorians a good thing for everyone? (Well, aside from the characters themselves...heh) Bic ni skana'din.
And that's another point! Finally SW has an equivalent response to the Klingons of ST! All we had before was an alphabet! (A cool alphabet, but still just an alphabet.) Little snippets of Huttese, basically just enough to tell someone off or threaten them with a long and lingering death in a digestive track. (Granted, cool. But not very versatile.) Now thanks to the Mando'ade and KT, we have a language and a freaking fully-fleshed culture and...and...and now you just want us to abandon it? Because, what, your precious Jedi were getting pouty because they actually have to sweat a little? Because they sometimes actually get their asses kicked, and I don't mean just the canon-fodder plainrobes dime-a-dozen knights who get stomped on so the Hero Jedi can come rescue them, I mean the Hero Jedi themselves--I'm sorry, but I like stories where the hero doesn't always win! When they have to work at it! And excuse me if I'm bringing up the irrelevantly distant past, but was that not the entire bloody point of the fnarling "New Jedi Order" osik we put up with a few years ago? Was that not the entire point behind the editorial decision to off Chewie? Up the stakes by showing that the heroes could not only lose but even die? (Stupid, shock-value tactics, cheap and tawdry and I disapprove, but the point is, you bloody well got what you wanted and you got it better than your original "plan" anyway so now why are you whining?) And now we have unprepared Jedi running a war they weren't ever equipped to run, never getting the chance to stop and think (which is what they're best at, after all: using their heads and listening to the Force) because Palpy's got them running around overwhelmed and overworked and--lo and behold, we find that they are, in fact, not perfect? Why, do you think that might explain somewhat how a Sith Lord was able to seize the Republic, orchestrate a massive war, and then betray and murder them all before they ever saw it coming? Noooo, of course not. Jedi have to be perfect and peerless and utterly unimpeachable. Except when they fall to the Dark Side. Or get chopped into tiny pieces by red lightsabers. Or don't notice the Sith Lord right in front of them. Or make bad tactical decisions because they're used to planning strategy for one or two people, not two thousand. Or let their own allies shoot them in the back because they've gotten too complacent about the clones' bred-in loyalty genes. Or...oh, wait. Does that mean that maybe Jedi are just people? Seriously cool, seriously powerful, seriously brilliant people?
Naaaaah. Of course not.
But all that's just tangential rant. That's just my pissed off response to a bunch of whiny little chakaare online. Like the Jedi would be any fun at all if they were all-powerful, totally perfect, omniscient little fraks...please. I like Jedi, too! Like Tholme and Quinlan and Aayla, who kick ass and screw up and keep on doing their best anyway. Like Leia and Mara, who are frakking badass and don't pretend to be perfect but are actual fully-rounded people and are thus awesome. Like Shado Vao and K'Kruhk and A'Sharad Hett. Like Nomi Sunrider and Ahsoka and Etain, who frak up and learn from it and get awesome. Like Plo and Kit and Obi; talk about skills. I have nothing against Jedi at all. I like Jedi! I dress up as a Jedi(Aayla)! And I love Mandos! And I love the way the two cultures interact, for good and for ill; I love when they're fighting each other, and I love when they're working together. They're just awesome foils for one another. And when KT wrote uncomplimentary things about the Jedi, you know what she was doing? She was having her characters speak their thoughts about the Jedi! Okay, the whole point of the latest huge SW series is about how the galaxy doesn't understand and kind of fears the Jedi! Gee, wouldn't it be nice if we could see some examples of ordinary citizens, people without Force powers, being a little bit confused or even creeped out by the mysterious, spooky, crazy-powerful Jedi in their midst? Oh wait, we had that...and we got grumpy about it. Well gee-frak, folks, of course Kal Skirata is going to think uncomplimentary things about the Jedi! He's a shabla Mando! A pre-Clone Wars Mando who had a bunch of friends frakking exterminated by Dooku's little Jedi army! And now an old-school shabuir soldier made of grit and guile and crotchety affection appears to not worship the Jedi? Le gasp, I am in shock! If Kal Skirata does not like Jedi, why, it must mean that the whole universe will come crumbling down because everyone loves the Jedi! Yeah, they loved them so much they had a frakking Purge in their honor.
Seriously, people. Seriously.
Grow the frak up.
Pull your panties out of your butts, and then pull your heads out of your butts, and chill the hell out. No one is attacking Star Wars by saying that some grumpy old Mando'ade don't like the Jedi. The Sith don't like the Jedi, and everyone was cool with that! Why is it such a threat to you people when the enemy is "ordinary" folk (with seriously intense armor and weapons and grit and really the only reason the word "ordinary" can be applied is because they don't have midichlorians)? Why is it a threat to you? You didn't used to get pissy about Boba Fett when it was just him. You knew all along that he wasn't just a random dude in armor, but a guy in Mandalorian armor, a specific kind of armor from a specific culture, a warrior culture, a group of people. Why are you threatened now?
Stop whining. Sit down. Extinguish the lightsaber. And let's all just get along, 'lek? No reason why we can't. We all love Star Wars, and I think we're all in agreement that there wouldn't be much of a "Star Wars" without the Jedi. Fandalorians aren't trying to shove the 'saber-and-robe crowd out, we're just enjoying this new (and long-awaited) attention being paid to the buckets-and-blasters gang. We can have both! Okay? Seriously! Stop being asses. (You're all acting like Windu. Stop being an arrogant SOB and pull the purple stick out, vode.) The cooler Mandos are, the cooler Star Wars is. Any part of the universe gets better, it all gets better! How is that hard to grasp? How can that possibly be a bad thing?
And now that I am done ranting (sorry about that, really. I don't know exactly where that came from. I guess I was more pissed about that whole internet morass than I thought I was) let me get onto the point of this post: Karen Traviss is done with Star Wars!
And it turns out she announced this in August, but I did not know about it. I totally missed the whole explosion of controversy and bad-continuity and general crappiness and only just found out tonight when a friend mentioned it online. And I almost actually cried. Her books were so good and there was so much left to tell! Okay, bad enough she was stuck with trying to clean up after Troy Dennings and leaving the lot of us with bated breath as to how (and if) she was going to salvage her ongoing Mando/Clones plot from way back in the first RepCom book all though LotF. Bad enough we still don't know what happened to these people (thanks, Dennings. You're a peach. The nanovirus was a great idea. I'm so glad you do your research and pay attention to what your fellow authors are working on. Ass.) but now we maybe never will! And even if we do, it will not be the same if it's not KT. Dammit, I wanted to know about Venku/Kad! I wanted to know about Mirta and Ghes and Sintas and Bob'ika! I wanted to know about Beviin and Medrit and who's going to be the next Mandalore. I wanted to know about Ordo and Bardan/Gotab and Fi and all the clones who defected and settled on Mandalore. I wanted more and now there won't be any.
And you wanna know why? Why there won't be any more KT Mando/RepCom books? Why the Boba Fett book that I was both dreading and anticipating won't be happening? You wanna know why? Because for the cartoon they decided they want to make the Mandos pacifists!
Yehbuhwhathefrak?
I'm sorry, I don't think cinnamon buns go with buckets. Mandalorian-pacifist is like...like...I can't even think of a contradiction big enough to use as an example. Mandalorian pacifists?
Okay, I heard about that before--another friend told me, back when Season Two was just starting and the rumors were flying--and I was thrown for a hell of a loop, but I was willing to wait and see. After all, The Clone Wars cartoon was awesome so far. (Cad Bane is my new second-favorite bounty hunter. Lee Van Cleef, whoo!) And it could work...ish. Yeah, the Mandos have splintered before. This could be like the Death Watch only, you know, the opposite of that. And they were on a planet that had been nuked? Well that's kind of cool. Pacifist Mandalorians in a post-apocalyptic wasteland? Okay, I'll bite...show me what you got.
Umm. But you don't have to break continuity to do it, kids.
You know? I mean, it's not like they were saying "oh hey, this big plotline we're starting to think up is gonna totally not work with this one little e-book that was out a while ago...we'll just make the e-book into an Infinities, mmmkay?" No, they're saying "so hey, yeah, we're gonna like trash a super-high-selling series and oh yeah it's also gonna frak up one of our major storyline events in the SW EU but no big, right?" I'm sorry, I thought the big thing now was that continuity would not get broken like whoa anymore, because editorial was going to be paying attention and keeping tabs and working things out and all that kind of stuff.
And they could have worked this out! Like I said, Mandos have splintered before. Make them an off-shoot sector; it's a nomadic culture, after all, spread over a couple of planets. Easy fix: these are Mandos living on Dxun or somewhere else, which was nuked, and they have their own personal Mandalore and ignore the rest of the Mandalorians, who respond in kind. Live and let live, that's the Mando way, at least until someone offers money for slaughter and destruction instead. Maybe they split off after the Sith War way back when, that would be kind of cool. Or it's a recent development, and doesn't last--cause okay, how long do you think Mandos could go being pacifists? A month? A week? I give it one game of cu'bikad or smashball myself.
The point is, they could have done this weird pacifist Mando-thing in the cartoon and not broken continuity everywhere else! But nooooooo, we can't play together, we can't get along, we can't adhere to frakking established continuity, oh no! No no no, let's not talk crazy here! Totally a much better idea to just throw out tons of awesome material and frak up current continuity in the EU like crazy rather than just slide this in alongside it. Which, by the way, they wouldn't have even have had to mention in the cartoon episodes! Just change the name of the planet to something other than Mandalore, and let assumption carry canon until someone can write up a side note in some book or magazine article or something explaining how the Mando-pacifists were in fact a splinter group of--EXCUSE ME, but JANGO wasn't a pacifist! Hello! Dooku? Army of Jedi? Slaughter on both sides? The Death Watch? Jaster Mereel? Open Seasons? Any of that ring a bell at all? Arrrrrgh...so unnecessary. There is no reason to break canon! No reason! They could have worked it out! Easily! Hell, I just did it in a few sentences, and I don't even have all the details yet! But I'll bet anyone a bonafied No Prize that after the episodes come out, I'll still be able to tweak up a solution that will make both canons work! Hell, I read X-Men, I can reconcile splintered continuity in my sleep.
But instead my beloved Mandalore is broken, and KT is gone, and the Clones are left bereft and rudderless, and Bob'ika and Mirta and Sintas are drifting; if there are buy'cese in the Fate of the Jedi they will be pale, empty things--ori'buyce, kih'kovid. And the delight of a galaxy with Mando'ade on the political stage will be gone. And it was so, so pretty an impending chaos, too.
You know, it wasn't too long ago that I was posting with glee about Mandos in the Legacy comics. I miss that glee. I'm gonna go wallow in my sorrow for a while.
The last time I felt miserable like this, I had just had a dream about finishing reading the latest Star Wars book (I was halfway through it at the time) and Fett died in it and when I woke up it took me like an hour to realize it was a dream. It was horrible. And felt really real. Like, I didn't dream what happened next, I actually dreamed the process of reading it. Kind of spooky, actually. And left me miserable and hollow inside. Kind of like this. Books, burc'ya. They'll frak you up.
Well. Happy holidays, mando'ade. Don't worry, gar nu kyr'adyc, shi taab'echaaj'la.