The Karen Traviss Database

[Fire Fly]

Hell, this board could have come up with a better guide to the GAR than Kaufman and Traviss did.

Its actually not difficult to realize the clone army must be enomrous. You only need to make some very basic and reasonable assumptions and then infer a lower limit based on what you have.

[Lord Revan]

you need common sence for and it's seems dispite it's to be quite uncommon, I mean Finland has about 5.000.000 people and we're a small country, to say that the Clone Army has less trooper then Finland has people and still able fight what suppose look like a big war in a galactic scale just makes no sence.

[Lord Poe]

Traviss continues her bullshit:

+http://blogs.starwars.com/karentraviss/130/comments

I'm assuming you mean the row over the clone numbers. Which, as anyone who can check back to 2003 will know, were established in Shatterpoint, and Matt got the same kicking that I did about it. Matt told angry fans what I told them. The millions - not billions, quadrillions, or buggerillions - is LFL's number, and from On High.

Now to the row. Yeah, a lot of garbage has been thrown at me. Some of it libellous. But how big is the row? You'd think it was thousands of angry fans, right?Fury, smoke, flames, deafening noise...fog of war. You know how many folks are driving this "war"? The size of the fandom that is "up in arms"? I counted them, with a little help from my friends. It's between 7 and 12 individual people. It always has been.Seven to twelve, on a good day. Ample and ironic proof, I think, of how a tiny force can look an awful lot bigger than it really is - like the GAR. Funny, eh? And in another three years, another author daring to stick to the figures laid down will no doubt be accused of trashing all the other authors for their own weird agenda...including that nice Traviss. The airbrushing of history will always happen, and it isn't only Stalin and Palpatine that do it. Now, where were we?

And because there are several hundred thousand readers out there buying my books, and a dozen or less individuals screaming for my immediate execution.

Then, she calls to Dark Moose to ban one poster that objects in the smallest way:

..a Moose.

* sweeps up broken glass and fanboy fragments *

Folks, if anyone else thinks that baiting a VIP will give them fame and visibility, note that it gives you instant invisibility.

(Thank you, DM.)

[Mange]

...between 7 and 12 individual people. It always has been.

Someone should point out that 30 people have said that the number of the GAR is too small, including people in defense of the figure, and that only 7 favor it.

EDIT: On second thought, don't. Anyone doing so will undoubtedly be accused of "harassment" and "baiting" as evidenced with the summary ban of Blue leader46.

[Master of Ossus]

Wayne, what did the member who she banned say?

[Jim Raynor]

Wayne, perhaps you could poke fun of Karen's claims of having less than a dozen detractors by comparing her to another famous BSer.

[Imperial Overlord]

The Matt Stover point is a red herring. This was back when the LFL was interpretting the AOTC quotes with "units"=individual soldiers. Stover said publicly that he thought the number was far too low, but that he had to work with it. Of course that's changed now. I'll see if I can find a link.

[Pablo Sanchez]

The characterization of the Clone War as a brush-fire conflict just boggles my mind. I think the most salient problem with that is the opening of Ep.IV, wherein the Separatist Forces are able to launch a major attack on Coruscant, the most heavily defended system in the galaxy. If that's a "brush war," one wonders why the Boers didn't stage a surprise attack on London and kidnap Queen Victoria.

Furthermore, three million men is grossly insufficient even it were a brush war. The Vietnam War, a "brush-fire conflict" fought in a highly localized and rather small area of one planet, required a peak commitment of ~1,100,000 men (500,000 US, 600,000 ARVN, 61,000 allied). Even making the assumption that advanced technology would drastically cut the number of clone troops needed for each commitment--which doesn't really follow, since the Separatists would be equally technologically advanced--3,000,000 clone troopers might be sufficient to secure one planet.

It might be argued, of course, that Vietnam was a very exceptional war and can't be used as representative. But of course, there's other examples. Peak British military strength in the Second Boer War was around 500,000 men--500,000 men to secure an extremely isolated, lightly populated, quite tiny (the whole of South Africa being roughly equal in size to the state of Pennsylvania, and the area in contention being perhaps a quarter of that), corner of the world.

But, you might say, Vietnam and South Africa don't really represent what's going on. Maybe it would be fairer to use the Anglo-Afghan Wars, or another minor example.

The one problem with that is that it's fucking retarded. The ratio of strength between the Separatists and Republic cannot possibly be that unbalanced, or else the Separatists would have either been unable to mount that attack on Coruscant, or would have been completely exhausted by the effort. Neither of that is true.

[Master of Ossus]

Incidentally, I've noticed something very odd about that old thread, here:

+http://boards.theforce.net/Literature/b ... 19/p9/?214

Several times, early in the thread, people refer to my posts in saying that they agree with me, yet my early posts (in which I recall going through multiple calculations to show the absurdity of the 3,000,000 figure in context with the quadrillion droids) do not appear. I suspect that they were later deleted. Can anyone confirm? If they were deleted, though, one has to wonder why they were deleted and by whom. Why were the math posts so much more offensive than anything else in the thread?

I think that I've used up my favors with the mods there. If anyone is on good terms with any of them, still, can you PLEASE ask them about this discrepency? Reading through the thread, it's apparent that I was posting MUCH earlier than my earliest recoverable post.

Edit: the posts that refer to my presence in the thread, before my earliest readable post, are as follows:

The 3 million number would have to be for one "Grand Army", with others in existance in order to justify this incredibly low number. The problem there was the whole speech with Palpatine creating a "Grand Army of the Republic" (singular). Further, I don't see how the movies themselves even support this 200:1 kill ratio or what have you. We saw many clonetroopers go down in battle with the droids and not kill 200 each time. Unless the clonetroopers that we see in actual battle is somehow not indicitive of their actual abilites.

Quite frankly Ossus nailed my feelings on it as well.

[snip]

I hope that, in time, you can see where you have gone wrong. Occams's Razor alone should compel you to realize that there is are simpler explanations provided in the article. You think 3,000,000 is too few? FINE! Karen and Ryan provided for more clones if you JUST LOOK! You think 3,000,000 could do the job? FINE! That is the beauty of what Karen and Ryan have done. And there you sit on your narrow-minded-"I'm-so-freaking-smart"-stoop missing the whole point. You should apologize to all those you have insulted in your previous posts in this thread. You, sir, have an opportunity, here. Will you make the most of it...?

As Master of Ossus explains, even after taking all their assumptions, it doesn't work.

[Master of Ossus]

Here are Karen's comments on her "retcon," as quoted by 000, here. [TFN thread.]

Let's not [debate the clone number again]. I have nothing to hide, but I deplore ideological battles of orthodoxy and I've said so from day one.

So I'll answer it here, because there will be an end to this, period.

I've never gone public on this. I will in the next few weeks. A number of folks - including Abel Pena and others -have seen my solution, which has been around for a fair old time, and said; "Oh! Never thought of that..." It's actually surprised some people, although I'm not sure why.

The answer is very, very obvious. To me, anyway. I'm not being a smart-a$$ - but I genuinely don't understand why nobody saw this. I hinted and hinted and hinted, but nobody got it. I didn't spell it out at the time even though it might have stopped the garbage that Ryan and I were getting, because it could have killed a story. Merc as that sounds, I have to eat. Names will never hurt me, but starving will. wink I even gave a huge hint in my recent SW blog, but...nothing.

The answer is there in the title of the blog entry.

And it's has been on our TVs and in our newspapers for three years solid, and probably will be for years to come, alas. And still nobody is making the connection. I think this is because I have such a different professional background to most folk, and so such a different take on life, that I see things that others don't. (Just as others see things that are obvious to them and not me. That's life.) I've spelled out every single piece of evidence about this except one - the screamingly obvious one as far as I'm concerned; it was my first thought and apparently everyone else's last. I accept that might be because I'm weird. But there were even hints in the GAR article: one of my writer buddies reminded me of that. Ryan and I did lay the ground...


But remember two things: what I do know very intimately is politics and military, and that the mindset I used for this was Palpatine's.

Read Odds when it comes out in Insider #87. I know some will prefer never to accept it, and that's their choice. But to me, and now others, it made perfect sense in a much wider strategy aimed at creating a totalitarian empire.

One thing I'll say: Palpatine was a very, very shrewd player with a very long game plan. Getting in his head - not for the POV, for the research - was educational. Respect, Palps, And that's praise indeed coming from an old spin doc. We're still seeing the aftermath of what you did.

I won't be getting into long debates about this until April 1, because I'm way behind on a book that has to be with my other publishers by the end of the month at the latest. So if discussion takes place, you'll have to wait for me to show up at the party .... wink

Once again, I bolded the sections I found interesting. Once again, she claims that flaming her does not hurt her. Also, she appears to take credit for ideas that were, at least in their infancy, proposed in the TFN thread I dug through.

[Jim Raynor]

Good sleuthing, MoO. TF.N may be an even shittier cesspool of corruption than we thought.

I hold no favor by the mods, but I'm willing to volunteer and ask them about this. That is unless you would rather have someone who is on good terms with them do the asking.

[Master of Ossus]

Good sleuthing, MoO. TF.N may be an even shittier cesspool of corruption than we thought.

I hold no favor by the mods, but I'm willing to volunteer and ask them about this. That is unless you would rather have someone who is on good terms with them do the asking.

Meh, if you're willing to present the evidence to them then more power to you. I really want an answer, though. I didn't even come CLOSE to flaming anyone with those posts--they consisted entirely of relentless mathematics including differential equations to show that there was no way the clones could've won.

[FTeik]

I'm currently banned at TF:Net, but this evening i looked through the AotC:VD and on page 36 it says something about the kind of fights and battles the clone-army is designed for. Something about massive attacks and maximum thrust.

Sounds similar to the Blitzkrieg-concept.

Another intersting quote is about their armor enabling them to walk through deflector-shields.

[Jim Raynor]

I got your answer, MoO:

(yes, they modded me)

Off-topic. No one will answer you here.

[Covenant]

How incredibly self-delusional! If this was, like, a person's office we could all go and say "Here's like 50 people, and none of us think you're close to right." But on a board that might be considered harassment. I bristle at being called mentally incompetant just because she feels there's merit to her idea. If she could present it against the facts she'd see it's a dramatic and sweeping re-writing of events. Just because LucasStuff signed off on it doesn't make it reasonable, and I believe that's one of our oft-dreaded fallacies, right?

Appealing to a false authority? "They said okay, so every word I write is now true and makes sense!" It's fairly obvious that the EU is given wide, wide range when making their stories up, and that just because it comes into print it does not inherently carry weight within Star Wars canon, let alone within the realm of realistic probability. It's just a coward's way out. If another author's book stated that there were three million corps or divisions or 'units', or if three million were the numbers of Acclamators and each Acclamator had one 'unit' of troops--so that around ten units were deployed to Genosis, for example--would all of her work explode into flames? Clearly, until Lucas himself and his battery of legal taskmasters comes to her board and claims her work is schlock, she'll say whatever she wants.

That's fine and all, she's writing a story. If she doesn't strive for canonical realism, she should just say so, and remove the debate completely. If you write some science-fantasy in Star War's setting and decide to make it much more abstract, I think fans would accept it--even welcome it, assuming it was well written and interesting--but you need to be honest about what you're actually producing. You cannot claim an interest in realism by rewriting technology, reforming the language, and ignoring the numbers. I'm just waiting for her next book when the jedi trainee Karin Mar-Ysue saves Kenobi, Yoda, and adopts young Boba Fett. And is beloved by all three million Clones.

[Master of Ossus]

More good stuff.

I wouldn't normally revisit old news, but I've had a fair bit of e-mail from very kind people about the recent aggro that Ryan Kaufman and I have had from a few folks. These readers have gone out of their way to be kind, reassuring, and to apologise for the behaviour of others, which they really don't have to do. I sincerely value these messages, as does Ryan.

But they make me feel guilty, too, because some readers who have defended me have become upset about it on my behalf. That's not good. So now it's my turn to reassure them.

Friends, I'm a journalist by trade, and one who worked in a very hard, very political environment for...well, I started work on my first newspaper in 1976. Journalists have hides like elephants; sensitivity is not a word we understand. In my career, I have been chased, threatened, thrown out, had doors slammed in my face, and taken more abuse than you can shake a stick at. That didn't shift the needle, so a little name-calling doesn't even make me blink. It just makes me look at my watch and think of better ways to spend my time.

I am not anonymous - by choice - and all this is part of the territory of being visible to a lot of people.

I am, however, not blessed with patience. Few journos are. And that's not always a bad thing.

My time is scarce, and getting more scarce with every passing year, so I won't waste a second of it dealing with the tiny minority of people in life who are just plain rude. I walk away. I don't respond. It's not worth my time. And it's not worth yours. Your time is as valuable as mine, and there's never as much time to spare as you think.

As my mum always says, civility costs nothing.

The vast majority of people who have disagreed with Ryan and I have done so politely. They're passionate, as are we all, but they've stayed courteous. Let's not lose sight of that. Only a very small number haven't behaved well. Aggressive people look much bigger than they really are through the magnifying effect of the internet, and its anonymity appeals to them. If you respond to them in kind, you help magnify them, and then you hand them the power to make you react. Don't let them - not about Star Wars, not about politics, not about anything.

So please, don't waste any precious time getting upset on my behalf - even though I'm truly humbled by your friendship and support. Nothing short of a direct hit from a serious piece of ordnance would ever stop me doing what I want to do. Because 99.9999% of you make it totally, overwhelmingly and endlessly worthwhile, and have given me the best job in the world.

Vor'e, burc'yase!

[Noble Ire]

Journalists have hides like elephants; sensitivity is not a word we understand. In my career, I have been chased, threatened, thrown out, had doors slammed in my face, and taken more abuse than you can shake a stick at.

Evidently, vague intonations of incompetance on her part, and simple questions on her highly suspect arguements can pierce her "elephant skin".

What a hypocrite.

[Master of Ossus]

Evidently, vague intonations of incompetance on her part, and simple questions on her highly suspect arguements can pierce her "elephant skin".

What a hypocrite.

Where's that from?

[Sir Sirius]

Where's that from?

She accused Jim Raynor of libel (see the first page of this thread) or at least that is what I belief NI is talking about.

[Noble Ire]

Where's that from?

She accused Jim Raynor of libel (see the first page of this thread) or at least that is what I belief NI is talking about.

That, and the seemingly dozens of other cases where she freaks out in such cases, demanding users be banned, screaming about sexism, etc. Hell, as I showed with my emails on the other thread, a simple request for confirmation of a point counts as "Harassment" with her.

[Lord Poe]

Wayne, what did the member who she banned say?

He said: " Must...resist....criticizing Traviss...." in her blog quotes. Then Traviss made a call to her suck up. Moose earlier blocked his blog because he dared say anything about Traviss. So Moose labelled him a troll, and banned him. All can be found here:

+http://forums.starwars.com/thread.jspa? ... 5&tstart=0

[Mange]

(No message.)

[Master of Ossus]

Wayne, what did the member who she banned say?

He said: " Must...resist....criticizing Traviss...." in her blog quotes. Then Traviss made a call to her suck up. Moose earlier blocked his blog because he dared say anything about Traviss. So Moose labelled him a troll, and banned him. All can be found here:

+http://forums.starwars.com/thread.jspa? ... 5&tstart=0

Crikey! Be sure to write that up!

Also, Surlethe managed to save part of the TFN Community Sound-Off thread.

I'm reasonably sure he'd be happy to have you republish it.

[Mange]

I'm getting so tired of this bullshit with "Kodak moments" and that fans who are vocal in their criticism wants "fame and visibility".

[Lord Poe]

Gents, this weeked has been extremely busy, but eventually, you'll find the full database here