VOY: The Eternal Tide by Kirsten Beyer Review Thread (Spoilers!)

[Galekarens]

Yes, people can post disagreement w/ others' opinions but when they start calling them names (like silly or maybe worse) then that to me and many others is unacceptable. And the opinion that Janeway fans didn't receive a bunch of grief just for advocating her return (besides other details) is to me and I'm sure others quite untrue, and I bet there could be found a number examples of that, starting w/ a few days ago here and even today it would seem. Actually I seem to remember some anti-return people before being warned by a mod to stop being rude. Well, was thinking people were actually being reasonable here concerning Janeway's return, but it seems was unfortunately mistaken. Still the proof is in the printing, KJ IS back, and even after so many people vowed that would never happen. That her fans still seem to be discounted is a shame for Trek, and I can say that from (the perspective of) being a loyal fan for over 40 years.

[shanejayell]

*rolls eyes*

Well, I FINALLY got a copy and am reading. (What is up with Canadian bookstores lagging?) So far, liking it quite a bit.

[Scout101]

Galekarens wrote:

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Yes, people can post disagreement w/ others' opinions but when they start calling them names (like silly or maybe worse) then that to me and many others is unacceptable.

Oh, get over yourself. Honestly, if the best you can find (and several people just repeated it, keying off my post) is SILLY, the persecution complex just doesn't fly. "calling them names", "unacceptable" ? Come on.

At the very least, one of you could have had the decency to actually quote my post. But then you'd have seen that I called the BOYCOTT (and reasoning behind it) silly, not any poster. But that doesn't play into the persecution as well, and can't very well use THAT to justify wanting to strike back at the other side, huh?

I'll repeat it, so it gets across: Thought it was SILLY to boycott Full Circle (and books following) because you're Janeway fans. Had you been reading them instead of formenting a boycott, you'd have seen that Janeway did better in that book than she'd done in YEARS. Hell, she was even alive for a good chunk of it, albeit in flashback sequences. Like I said, it felt like claiming to love someone, and blowing off their wake. You were making the right noises about loving the character, but skipped out on her big moment, and a few books that really showed how important to the rest of the crew she was. You know, the thing you were saying you wanted...

That, and thinking that an extremely small boycott would even get noticed by TPTB. Your right, I guess, but no impact. Books actually went on an uptick, if I recall the news correctly, so if you want to say your impact was felt, it was in that the uptick wasn't as large as it could have been (but still overwhelmingly positive). Add in that it turns out that half the people making boycott claims turn out to have been buying and/or reading these books anyway, and, well....

Silly seems to fit, IMO.

And again, read the afterward for TET. Kristen went out of her way to make the statement that she brought Janeway back for creative reasons, and NOT because of any internal or external pressures. You're trying to equate what you did to what happened, and the author herself went out of her way to explicitly state that that wasn't the case...

[Christopher]

Galekarens wrote:

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Well the proof is in the printing, KJ IS back, and even after so many people vowed that would never happen.

Nobody ever "vowed that would never happen." That is a falsehood. As I said in my previous post, and in the first linked post therein, there was never any official statement from Pocket Books that it would not happen, and the editor in charge at the time made a statement that pointedly did not rule out the possibility of her return. Beyond that, the discussion simply consisted of various posters on this forum expressing their opinions about whether or not it should happen -- or about whether resurrections in fiction are a good idea as a general rule. Nobody ever "vowed" anything, certainly not anybody who was in a position to make any decisions on the subject.

That her fans still seem to be discounted is a shame for Trek, and I can say that from being a loyal fan for over 40 years.

Again this myth that Janeway fans are being persecuted, or that this is some grand ideological battle. That's a fantasy. I'm a Janeway fan myself. I quite liked her as a character, and I liked Kate Mulgrew as an actress. But that doesn't mean I will tolerate other Janeway fans distorting the facts or making false accusations because they're upset about what happened to her in a book.

[Relayer1]

I'm just waiting for the 'I'm boycotting Voyager until they kill off Janeway again' campaign... : )

For the record, I'm really not a fan of Janeway, but Kirsten handles the character and the events well and I enjoyed it !

[teacake]

Scout101 wrote:

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You're right, Kristen DID comment on it. Believe it was the notes at the end of The Eternal Tide, essentially stating that she wasn't pressured or influenced into having Janeway return, and to please not view the return in that light, but that she did it for her own creative reasons. (Paraphrasing, don't have it in front of me)

I read that as her being worried that people would think that things like your boycott and 'buzz' influenced this decision, and wanting to disuade people of that notion...

And directly responding to your posts isn't the same thing as people "still commenting on it". You said something, i responded to it. Didn't create some big movement that's in people's consciousnesses, and we're still buzzing over the impact.

Either way, that was kinda the minor point in my post, in favor of the bigger part you didn't seem to want to address. Janeway was more a part of Full Circle (and treated better) than in the Spirit Walk books before, but no protest to her being shunted aside and being useless there. Why not? Didn't miss her then, but kill off (with the obvious Q out that was there, even) a character that's alternating between not being used, and used badly, and it's end of the world? Were you ENJOYING Janeway's story before her death?

And the boycott was kinda all over the place anyway, when the people that have chimed in so far have said they read them all anyway, but maybe got from the library instead of buying, or got from used book store. I applaud the purchasing of several copies of TET to attempt to use your wallet to show approval of the return, but suspect the couple extra copies will have about the same impact as the refusing to buy the last couple books until now. That is to say, little to none. Suspect TPTB will just see it as approval of how Kristen has been doing all along, as believe her numbers for all the books in this run have been pretty good.

Here Scout I am quoting your entire post to me since it seems to bother you when people reply without quoting.

Thanks for applauding me and my wallet! That's great to know.

Now to the bolded (by me) bits. I have said from day one I was protesting her death, that she was a minor character in Spirit Walk etc.. was not an issue to me. If she becomes a minor character in the rest of Relaunch from this point on is not an issue to me, I recognize that Relaunch has gone in a lot of directions that include new characters and not all characters get a major role in it. I have said many times that if they give her a desk job I will be content just to have her alive and back in Treklit land. That is ME, I don't speak for everyone. Saying that my agenda is not worthwhile because I didn't have a previous worthwhile agenda (protesting her lacklustre appearance in previous relaunch) just doesn't make sense to me.

It also does not make sense to me that you even care about my boycott which you have gone out of your way to tell me was useless and made no difference to anyone.

btw when I said that Kirsten commented I meant in these threads, and in the VOY forum thread where she came in and asked directly for feedback and questions about the future of Voyager relaunch. Had no one ever said a damn thing about Janeway being killed do you think she would be posting in the VOY forum to us and asking for feedback? She noticed there was a reaction from a segment of fandom and she very nicely engaged that segment of fandom in discussion. So yes, the boycott was noticed a helluva lot more than if no one had given a damn that she died.

[Christopher]

^But I think the unhappiness with Janeway's death would've been noticed just as much even if there'd been no boycott, if it had just been an active online debate. After all, the point of a boycott isn't to get attention, it's to attempt to cut into a company's profits as an incentive to promote a change in policy. If all you want is attention, then just expressing your opinions emphatically online can achieve that, and did achieve that. (After all, we've had similarly intense debates about Trip, about Data, about the quality of the 2009 movie, etc., and those have gotten plenty of attention without any boycotts being involved.) So whether or not there was a boycott would've probably made no difference in the actual response from Kirsten or Pocket or anyone. The only people you affected by boycotting the books was yourselves.

And if anything, by not reading the books, you and others only hurt your position in the debates, because you weren't able to address the books' content in an informed way but were left making guesses that the people who had read the books knew to be wrong. You probably would've been able to make your points a lot more persuasively if you hadn't boycotted the books.

I can understand being reluctant to admit that something you invested so much emotion in doing turned out to have no real impact whatsoever. But ultimately, the whole thing was pretty much unnecessary, if not counterproductive. The emotion was valid, but the boycott was not an effective or useful way of channeling it.

[teacake]

Well I very much enjoyed my boycott. Did I think it was going to plunge Treklit sales into the gutter? No, LOLOL of course not. That was not the point. It was my choice what I spent my money on and I enjoyed choosing not to buy Treklit which I have at least 150 titles of, most bought new. It was a focus point beyond whining on the internet.

I do not understand why something that detractors say was worthless and had no impact bothers them so much, enough to keep repudiating it online.

[Christopher]

Well, I'm just having this conversation because I'm analytical by nature. I'm trying to evaluate the situation and offer what I think is the most likely interpretation of it. My analysis of the situation is that the discussion online is what Kirsten reacted to rather than the boycott, so I was simply offering that as a clarification of the matter (although I probably shouldn't speak for Kirsten). I wasn't trying to "repudiate," just evaluate.

[teacake]

I've been very clear about what difference I think it made. Certainly just whining a whole lot may have achieved the same level of attention as far as internet discussion but the word "boycott" is a useful focal point and a useful rallying cry.

One problem with these discussions, and I will probably piss someone off here, is that both sides of the discussion have had posts that cross lines and are either very rude or make accusations that could be seen as and may be false. Both sides can then focus on that and lump everyone into these categories.. I am a crazy BBKJ woman who accuses Pocket Books of conspiracies and you are a rude asshole who vents his anti KJ spleen in these threads. I don't think either of these things are true and I'm at times a bit bemused to find people responding to me as though I said every single thing that's been said on the topic personally.

[JD]

Galekarens wrote:

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If people didn't want to read Voy. books without Kathryn Janeway alive it was their concern and it's not for someone to tell them they were wrong or “silly”. I DID read Unworthy and found it rather uninteresting without KJ, but won't go into other details because this is not a review thread for that particular book. BTW her name was mentioned but 13 times there (out of almost 400 pages) and only half of that by the crew who were so upset by her passing a short time before (thank goodness for Tom/B'Elanna), hardly a large presence. I then, after looking into Children of the Storm, where only about half of it was set on Voyager, decided wasn't too interested in reading it. Now I think might read some of it, well maybe just the Voyager parts, to get information about the other canon Voyager characters. And I checked, Janeway's name was mentioned 8 times in COTS (mostly in passing), again not much of a presence; it seemed to me that KJ was going to be forgotten.

So the only way you could have possibly enjoyed the book was if Janeway was in it? Isn't that a little narrow minded? What about all of the other characters from the show, or new characters? What about Kirsten Beyer's skills as a writer?

[teacake]

Why in the world do you care what people enjoy? I'm sure there are things in Treklit you don't enjoy and no one calls you narrow minded.

[JD]

Yeah, but I usually have more of a reason than one character not appearing. I just think it's sad to write off a whole book because one character doesn't appear in it.

[teacake]

Why is it sad that my reading taste has resulted in my choosing to not buy a book without a character? Other people don't read some series because they focus on characters they don't like, or are have too many new characters in them.

I'm just confused at the emotive words used to describe my reading choices. It's not "sad", it just is.

[BillJ]

teacake wrote:

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Why is it sad that my reading taste has resulted in my choosing to not buy a book without a character? Other people don't read some series because they focus on characters they don't like, or are have too many new characters in them.

I'm just confused at the emotive words used to describe my reading choices. It's not "sad", it just is.

Well, the character was in both Full Circle and Unworthy.