Talifan Retrospective

[2046]

"Are you a Star Wars fan who was quite involved in following the Karen Traviss "controversy" in fandom (i.e. the divisiveness among fandom over her books, the "Talifan" comments, and then the controversy surrounding her no longer writing for Star Wars, including her explanation later)? If so, you can email your thoughts to beyondthefilms@starwarsfanworks.com. We may include those in our show on the Karen Traviss situation as we look back on it, or we may at least make sure diverse opinions are represented. Heck, we might even decide to have you on to discuss if it seems it might make a better episode. Email, though. Don't post here."


My take:

The idea of a Traviss vs. Talifan retrospective at first seemed to be premature when I heard of it, but with the recent end of the StarWars.com forums where some of the action occurred I suppose now is as good a time as any.

Though not intimately involved with every facet of the struggle, I had been deeply involved with many if not all of the small cadre known as Talifans from a number of prior engagements over matters of Star Wars canon and technology and so had offered words of encouragement to Traviss. I had watched the cadre's personal attack and harassment tactics evolve over time from simple insults, insulting groupthink swarming, sock-puppetry and board invasions, to the posting of people's personal information, maps to their targets, open discussion of home visits, harassing calls, calls to employers, peculiar death-wish CGI videos, and so on.

Indeed, when in recent weeks the "SWATting" technique made news, wherein leftist radicals have been spoofing 9-1-1 to report violent crimes in progress at the homes of political adversaries in the hope of getting said adversaries arrested or shot, my first thoughts were that I was glad this technique was not known to the Talifans in years past, because it would've been right up their alley. That's actually why this is my first public comment on the technique in this context ... I did not want to give them ideas. But it hit CNN in the past couple of days so the cat's out of the bag.

How sad, though, for that sort of concern to be necessary in the context of Star Wars fandom.

Traviss correctly ascertained that this was a very small group of a dozen or less main actors, with a handful of hangers-on and a mass of sock-puppets and alternate personas across different boards rounding out the mix.

For all the wailing and gnashing of teeth, though, they accomplished nothing. Their fight was against numeric minimalism in Star Wars (e.g. 3 million clones), favoring instead the Saxton approach of putting a dozen extra zeroes behind every figure, but between the EU thereafter and the TCW show their preference gained no traction and most technical-minded fans don't accept their view. And as Pablo Hidalgo noted, nothing ever crossed anyone's desk regarding all the meaningless sound and fury.

More importantly, the outcome, looking back, was actually quite favorable in some respects. Brought out into the light, many true Star Wars fans recoiled in horror at the twisted faith of those who would harass in their name. The Talifans were marginalized and ostracized and no longer wage such campaigns so openly. (If they were involved in the recent Twitter harassment of Katie Lucas, for instance, I am not aware of it.) Some of the Talifan whose names were known have publicly abandoned Star Wars altogether, which if unfortunate from a revenue perspective is probably better for the fandom overall.

Such so-called fans poison the Star Wars experience for many, and the less access and involvement such people have, the better. But if their actions have prevented just one talented author or creator from interfacing with true Star Wars fans, then everyone has lost.

Ironically, though, her later departure was, in many ways, based on the same thought process behind the Talifan assault. That is, both wanted Star Wars to represent their vision of it rather than the vision of Lucas. It cannot and must not. It was thus, to that extent, an internecine battle for the control of the EU. Both dislike The Clone Wars on that basis, and I for one daresay that if you set yourself against the creator of what you want to be a fan of while it is being created, you may have larger problems. It is, to quote the common refrain, just a TV show.

[2046]

Anyone wanna post what they saved/archived ?

I feel there should be more history and links given to them.

[SpacePaladin]

What I find funniest about the Talifan is their position that "Karen Traviss is a lowly C-Canon author and doesn't have the right to impose her work on the higher canon"/"Karen Traviss doesn't have the right to override the pre-established canon".

I say this having read the AOTC movie novelization, which speaks of "Trillions of commonfolk" (AOTC ch. 5), which means that according to the Saxton works, there would be something like a million combat droids for every man, woman, and child. It also speaks of "units" in the context of product (AOTC ch 16), and associates the terms "a million more well on the way" with "a million clone warriors" (AOTC ch 18). Again, there would be trillions of droids for every clone. I've joked about how if the Separatists wanted to make money, they should just cut back on the number of droids they owned.

All this ultimately means is that Traviss was far more correct in her numbers as movie novelizations are higher canon than she and those she went against in this. Granted, from what I understand, Traviss got her numbers from her superiors, so it only amounts to Traviss being better at following instructions with regards to the numbers. But at least her numbers were grounded in the fictional reality that had been established.

Now, I agree on the very basic premise that the numbers are a load of bunk, but going after Traviss is like threatening the mailman because the product the company sent you didn't work the way you wanted. Even though the product was explicitly stated not to work the way they wanted.