The Corporal wrote:I'm sure that's all been done. The board was only disrupted for perhaps an hour thanks to the use of the report button and members turning off images in posts.
Not surprised. Incidentally, I'm sort of curious now - could someone give me a total number of staff on SDN?
I think it's more that (in my case anyways) that her reaction to the criticism was over the top.
It was pretty clear she hadn't been adequately prepared for dealing with a vigorous fanbase. In the land of "Greedo shot first!" and "He killed Chewie off!!! Nooo!!!" you really need to anticipate that some pretty vociferous folks will come out of the woodwork at the oddest times, passionate about the oddest details.
Really, Traviss was best served by ignoring them and letting third parties (e.g., SW.com moderation staff) dealing with them - which she
eventually did. Perhaps if she were more experienced in the field, she wouldn't have taken so long to figure it out.
City of Pearl (her debut novel) came out in 2004, and her first
Star Wars book also came out in 2004.
Saxtonite hostility towards her positive reception among other fans - i.e., Fandalorians - was nearly immediate, and the "Talifan" saga started in 2005 at the very latest. Maybe even 2004 with private correspondence that hasn't been published by either side, to gauge from the tone of the opening. I've watched the "Talifan" video. I've discussed the whole affair with Mr. Poe (mostly on, of all places, ST.com).
My impression remains - after reviewing
all of Mr. Poe's story published on his website - that Traviss got a hostile reaction from Saxtonites early on, made the mistake of actually responding to them, and then lost her temper a couple times before wising up (probably on advice from others at LL).
Poe seemed not to realize how [in]appropriate anything he said or did was. Judged by the standards of SDN, after all, it was all appropriate. To Poe, her fuming frustratedly on her own livejournal about "certain fans" and wanting to rip their throats out was equivalent to producing a violent-fantasy CGI video that barely even paid lip service to anonymizing its object.
Never mind the one requires just a few minutes of angry posting on a site only a few fans would ever stir themselves to look at (an author's LJ), which of course she later regretted and removed from public view, while the other required hours of work and was promoted as widely as possible.
Now imagine, for a minute, that instead of Poe leading a charge of vitriolic angry fans saying misogynistic things (since that's what they do when it's a woman they disagree with) and getting themselves in deep crap with the moderators, that it had been just people like me disagreeing with Karen Traviss. Polite, reasonable, willing to discuss and exchange information without belittling or insulting her.
Worst case scenario? If she's the person Poe claims she is, she loses her temper anyway. I keep mine. End result? She looks bad, I look good - relatively speaking, at least - and the whole of LucasCorp wouldn't feel the need to circle the wagons around her in response to crazed fans attacking her.
And IIRC Saxton had recieved a research offer or other employment in his actual field of study and took them up on it.
Probably better for him. It's never a good sign when an academic is more famous for a hobby than their "real" work.
At any rate, after seeing the crap that was shoveled out for The Force Unleashed I really want nothing else to do with SW. It's a cool set of movies but there's other sci-fi out there.
I'm sorry you feel that way. Computer games sometimes have pretty bad stories behind them. I expect good things to come out under the
Star Wars label from time to time in the future, and I will cheerfully appreciate them as they come my way.
I will spend much more time on other science fiction than Star Wars
and Star Trek put together, of course, as I always have.