I usually only have thirty minutes to an hour a day to play, so I really have to prioritize. However, taking each quest in such a small bite actually helps keep track of what's going on.

Ah, okay. But yeah, called it that the Jedi were at least involved. They wouldn't miss killing off all the Sith for anything, it's the next best thing they have to a wild party. Yeah. Or at least until the Sith institute a rule of two, and a young Jedi accidentally-on-purpose convinces his Sith father to off both the remaining Sith. But maybe that was a reconciliation in a way. Although I guess there's technically other Sith groups out there after that.

Not sure what that last line is supposed to mean... An insult? Look up Zeus and Ganymede. Zeus and pedarastry were connected, and it was used as a religious justification for the mentorship system you just mentioned. You used Zeus as an example of age differences between gods and mortals in mythology getting a brush off, and I mentioned a true fact that Zeus is a really bad example for your argument. These stories emphasize the age differences - though they present them as an ideal, in opposition to our modern value systems. So far the conversation has been about age differences in romantic relationships in general, and not specifically about conception with very young humans - I'm not even sure where that came from, or why you would think my counter-argument against the Zeus example is outside the scope of the discussion. In any case there is no reason to make whatever personal allegation that was that you added at the end. However, if you don't want to fathom my point of view, that is fine and understandable, as I'm not sure I want to understand what you're accusing me of. I will again leave it at that.

And sometimes with the Jedi too. Since I suspect that the "KILL THEM ALL SCOUR KORRIBAN" idea probably CAME from the Jedi. They can be over-reactive towards what they consider dark side threats.

It's a spy counter spy thing. Trying to identify Republic spies via drawing them out.

I think there probably are some parallels between the Nazis and the Sith - the cutthroat merit system comes to mind, as well as the racism and use of slave labour, though the Nazis liked to call those concentration camps. But overall, I'd probably call the Sith Empire a theocracy - they are ruled by priests and warrior monks believed to have special or divine powers, and the head of state comes from the same group and has created a cult of personality around himself. Benign? Spartan males had to assassinate a helot before they could be considered "men" and accepted into the military. There's a lot of Sparta in the Sith Empire as well. However, Sparta was actually less misogynistic than other Greek City States, as women were allowed to own and manage property and have a say in civic policy. On the other hand, Spartans also believed that rape was marriage. Ancient Greece kinda sucked.

Your least favourite companion gets put on stable duty. Also Varactyls. That is all.

Oh, actually that angle totally existed with Zeus. You realize that many of those stories rose to popularity when pederasty in Ancient Greece started being endorsed by the big famous philosophers? Pederasty was kind of a thing in Greece already, but when this happened whole cults of pederasty sprang up with these stories at their center.

Ah. Then yeah, basically. Nazis might have used some socialist ideas but despite the name (which was a remnant of socialists being in the party, very few of which were still around by Hitler's time) most of them didn't identify as socialists and really didn't like socialists. Hated Marx. Put socialist political dissenters in concentration camps.

It's half incorrect. The Nazis were kind of this weird merger between socialist ideas and fascist ideas - they had the health care and welfare systems and big civic programs like socialists for members of the party, but the brutal jackboot police state thing and their attitudes towards workers, businesses, and military conquest were fascist. Hitler himself even expressed the idea that Nazism was a merger between both hard authoritarian left-wing and hard authoritarian right-wing ideologies with strong dose of cult-like nation and state worship, which just goes to show that if people go too extreme one way or the other, they end up going full-circle. (TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY OFF TOPIC sorry) As for the Empire, I might suggest that rampant sexism against women could lead to reduced homophobia and more tolerance towards homosexuality. This combination of attitude was fairly rare, but I can think of an example in Ancient Greece where this was common.

Vampires man. Don't even get me started on all that. They're corpses, I mean, how does that kind of pairing even WORK when one part of the couple has insufficient blood flow? Though I guess they could compensate with rigor mortis... Why am I TALKING about this? Okay, yeah, this is the reason why vampires and many other things usually get consigned to my "do not think too hard about this" file. I think it might be best for me to leave this discussion about Vampires, Chiss, and Sith/Imperial practices and culture there, before the W T F overdose strikes me down. We are in my Apocalypse Now, and as I gasp out "The HORROR", clawing up at the air as I lay dying, you're standing there and you're saying "calm down, for ****'s sake calm down." And then the credits roll.

Just because something might be a worse issue doesn't mean something else isn't an issue. And I'm not okay with the slavery. I have only one character who tolerates it even a little, and they're kind of an arrogant jerk. I'm also not okay with the mass murder. Lastly I just HAD this conversation in the general forums when someone said that discussing race themes in Star Wars shows that I am "sick and wrong" because I wanted to discuss that issue instead of the RPG killing when no one else up to then had been talking about that in the thread. Yeah, no, that argument doesn't work. It's more like the idea of rampant underage abuse in the Empire hadn't occurred to me, and it weirded me out. And I'm a pretty cynical person, I'm usually on the leading edge of evaluating all the possible ways that a situation could suck and how people might take advantage. I'm somewhat shocked that I had such a blatant oversight here. Plus it was less the sixteen year olds, and more the realization of what the Sith might do with their five to ten year old new trainees that got me. Ugh, as if there weren't enough unsettling parallels between the Sith and Sparta. I really wish I could unhear this. Now I'm going to see weird kinky stuff between Palpatine and Darth Maul and Anakin and I just do not want.

^Well and good, unless you have to clear out an elite or two or a champion first and might die if you just go for the objective. Or if the objective doesn't allow you to interact with it while in combat, which happens sometimes. The cool thing is not to ninja. Simple MMORPG etiquette. It only takes a second to notice if someone is putting in the effort to get something - they might not own it, but taking it anyway is leeching off their work.

This one time, someone was ninja'ing me and a friend constantly. Then they asked us for an invite when we decided to do a heroic. We refused, steamrollered through a four person heroic with two people instead and had a lot of fun and didn't have to deal with any grief or stolen loot rolls or some entitlement jerk who leeches off other people. That's how you deal with it. You can also ignore them so that you don't forget and accidentally group up with them later. Though you get bonus points if they then ask the general chat if anyone wants to group up for that heroic, and then everyone tells them off. A bad reputation can be a hard and hilarious thing. Telling gen chat that that everyone does it or that no one minds on the other faction is not helping the case.

Do we know this? Granted, being a child is not necessarily exclusive to being traumatized, adults can be and are traumatized as well, but there's something unfortunate about that happening to a child, because they're someone who is so young. I can't really explain the logic behind that, but it seems like an accurate assessment. A Chiss, who is ten, but looks twenty, going to war or being forced into it, kinda raises the same question. Red Sith who are part of the Empire start training young, and do things that most of us would consider pretty adult and not appropriate for children. It is their culture, and their activities while young shape them into what they become. They do this, or they die. Biologically, they aren't mature at the time, but in the course of what they go through, do they become mentally mature early? Hard to say. Yes, hormones etc. The problem we're running into is that human children below a certain age probably aren't fully developed brainwise. But with other species, that seems to become subjective. Some species are depicted as naturally "wiser" and more "mature" than vanilla humans by human standards, even if they are younger (biologically and timewise) than the comparable human and might not have gone through changes that an older human has. Chiss might mature faster than humans both biologically and mentally, but at their age of consent, based on their quick maturing, they could be at a disadvantage to a member of a different species. This is fair. Perhaps this is the primary source of my reaction.

Probably lucky at that. Lot of arguing on some of them, not a lot of understanding or listening.

Which is pretty much what we've said. It also doesn't mean that NONE are. I think there is still a bit of misunderstanding here about the purpose of the thread. I don't think anyone is complaining about the depicton of racism in any story so that everything should be some sort of happy happy censorship effort with rainbows and bunnies so we can bury our head in the sand. Exploring a theme philosophically and comparing it to real world issues and influences kind of requires that theme to exist in the media. I can also see that the useful lifespan of this thread has expired.

And thank you for being willing to participate. These can be pretty tricky conversations to have. I really try not to judge people and their relationships, having once been a precocious kid myself, if I'd had that inclination it would have annoyed the heck outta me to be told what I could and couldn't do. Mostly I'm just interested in exploring the logical basis of those rules, while acknowledging perhaps they are not universal, my initial reaction about the Sith aside. Agreed. I have no problems with this interpretation.

I thought the point was that a big show of saying "racism is bad" is kinda undermined when the lore/franchise/medium itself tends to paint races with one stripe. Not that the OP is claiming that it's not racism to stereotype like that, which would be incorrect, or that they're saying racism isn't bad. Although at this point I think everything that can be said about that has been said. I kinda figured there'd be more mileage out of this conversation.

Or, a replay option. That wouldn't involve rerolling either. But yeah new content good.

That's actually something that happened to me. I was playing and I'm not into the romance, but I realized "I wouldn't get into this relationship, but under these circumstances this character totally would." And then there it all went. It was like watching a movie, an enjoyable movie, and I could keep playing, because that character wasn't me.

Kinda think so, yeah. Wasn't what I was saying. Was saying that despite being physically and mentally mature, such a species would lack the equivalent life experience (and very likely accumulated wealth) that an older person of a different species would have. Thus inherent inequality. And in the case where we can say someone much younger has been through more life experiences, packed more into those short years, like a child soldier, even if that's a cultural norm for them it's still kinda iffy, because it's potentially added onto psychological trauma and adding complications that someone that young doesn't need to deal with. But this raises a problem with the internal consistency of this rule. I brought up the issue of a reverse scenario where one species ages and physically matures slower, but perhaps gains emotionally maturity and memories at the same rate. Mentally that person could be an adult. Physically they would look very young. So, use the legal standards we've developed, even if they might appear underaged (problems)? Consider them not human and not subject to our standards (problems)? Consider them mature by mental maturity, or biological (problems)? There's really no good way to deal with the issue of differing rates of aging. And that's not even getting into the goldfish-Asari scenario mentioned in the post above me.

On one hand, yes, kinda. But imagine if you shifted both ages about ten years younger. Still the same spread difference in ages, but suddenly it seems less okay. I actually think that the origin of these rules is because of the inherent inequality created by a big age gap, and so it extends even beyond just kids. Theoretically when both are "adults" they can choose for themselves but that doesn't completely eliminate the problems. It's just that those problems at that point become personal relationship problems instead of a society wide concern. Some people even believe in an equation, that if someone multiplies the younger relationship by two and subtracts seven, that represents the oldest possible age that younger person can be involved with before the relationship becomes a little sketchy. Obviously this breaks down at very young ages, and very old ages, so there's limits to the application. And as you get into the upper biological age limit, the situation reverses itself - it becomes the elderly that society becomes concerned that the younger partner might be taking advantage of. But large age gaps appear to be enough of an issue that our culture has come up with additional measures about what is or isn't inappropriate. Here, imagine a different situation between human cultures on earth. Some cultures think that humans become adults when they finish puberty, which might be as young as thirteen. They even use thirteen year olds as child soldiers, and people we consider children have seen more terrible mature stuff than older people from another culture. They get married at thirteen, have children at thirteen. On another angle, some thirteen year olds, male or female, sometimes look much precociously older than they actually are - biologically, they appear to be mature. A Chiss is ten but looks twenty, their culture considers them an adult. I'm prepared to claim it's probably still a little iffy for a twenty year old to date a ten year old Chiss.

Not always. The problem with these kinds of age difference relationships is they represent a major gap in experiences, and one side as such has a major advantage over the other in terms of dominance, how established their personalities are, the wealth they might have accumulated... It's inherently unequal, even if you factor in different species having a different biological rate of maturing. Culturally we deal with this by making a certain age group off limits, which is the best solution we've managed to come up with. There are problems of course with this blanket system, such as parents who disapprove of a relationship abusing the law to get an 18 year old with a 17 year old partner in trouble, but that's beside the point. Still the best option we have. There are major issues with a human being involved with a Chiss who is ten, even if the Chiss looks 20 years old and is considered an adult by his or her people. An opposite situation where a species ages slower than others and so someone past the age of consent looking like a child getting into a relationship with an adult of another species would also be questionable.

Agreed. Not really that fair to put people through 1-50 content with them hoping for some outcome, then implement the stuff they want then say lol nope gotta reroll to see it. The boards would turn into an inferno.