Same gender romance discussion

[Palar]

I didn't even know about a new animated series. It was my understanding that possible new animated serieses would be tied into the action of Star Wars VII, which will be released somewhen in 2015...

 

Not a lot of info on it yet, but I think they scrapped Clone Wars just so they could jump ahead to the gap between trilogies.

[Tatile]

Not a lot of info on it yet, but I think they scrapped Clone Wars just so they could jump ahead to the gap between trilogies.

 

Some pictures of the Inquisitor have been released (unsurprisingly he's a dude.)

[Seireeni]

Seems likely Disney will just say "the movies, and anything we do from now on is capital C Canon - you nerds can pick and choose EU things to fill in the blanks, but we're not touching it."

 

Exactly the reason why I couldn't be less interested in the new stuff Disney is going to do. Unless they decide to hire Zahn to do something for their "new" canon.

 

Anyway, it would be pretty interesting if the females were that important and powerful when it comes to Force sensitivity, since in pretty much every sith/jedi council there seems to be much more males than females. Not to mention that the most powerful force users seem to usually be male. People like Yoda or Sidious.

Anyway, if females with two force sensitive x-chromosomes were especially powerful, would it explain the "special" powers i.e. Jaesa and Bastila had as a padawan?

[Joushigun]

It would be interesting to see how sexist (whether in-world, or as a result of almost exclusively male writers) the Jedi and Sith are, particularly if we agree that (cis)women are inherently more powerful, or have a better connection to the Force.

 

I'm sure most of the people involved in the Official Canon would be scrambling to say "We're not sexist, it's just... uh... um..."

 

You just illustrated one of my pet peeves- just because media depicts something does not mean it's sexist or misogynistic. Quite often, it isn't. In fact, it can often be a statement about misogyny or sexism, but what one has to do is look over the whole of the whatever before looking at the particulars. Most of the time, people don't want to bother engaging their brains and analyzing what is in front of them. They just want to criticize.

Edited November 28, 2013 by Joushigun

[fabiyun]

Wow really off topic now. But I don't see such a huge problem with canon in SW. I have over two-thirds of all EU literature, and the EU does what a lot of sci-fi does, offer multiple angles of exploration of a topic. I often see people put question marks at different explanations of the force, but really, it's been said often enough, everyone's perception of the force is different. I also like that different series offer different holistic views of the force. So while some novels deal with a single person's view of the force, others deal with the jedi's taught view of the force, others deal with the teaching's view changing, the Sith's view of the force and then there is the Yuzhang Vong which puts the force itself into a dualistic perspective.

 

The only major problem I have with SW Canon is the Clone Wars CGI rubbish, it completely broke with already established canon, both the movies and the books, and turned SW into a childish bit for grown ups.

 

As for the process, I've chatted with some of the authors before (if you like Star Wars Books on Facebook, there's opportunities to do so every so often), and they mostly write what they want to write. At Lucas Arts there's a department that deals with Canon and EU Literature. They pick sci-fi writers by their previous work. Some authors have some privilege, they get to throw ideas in and write a single book about what they want, but they are always checked with the canon, before, during and after it is done. The canon is kept up to date, and organised like the Wookieepedia entry says it is. There's also editors from Lucas Arts, they are really on top of what is, and what isn't Star Wars and canon. Mostly, EU literature is progressed through series. For a series LA gets a group of writers together, they all brainstorm in sessions and set up a general outline for the entire series. From there they start writing, the general story line is kept across books, but each book can go astray as much as a writer likes, given that it won't interfere with anyone else's task and conflict canon. There's been some interviews with all authors where they talk about this process, and being surprised by the turns another author takes and where they will need to pick it up and or rewrite bits.

 

Anyway, the problem IMO is heteronormativity. People only have experience with their own lives, and especially in segregated murica, for most, LGBT people might as well be aliens. I wouldn't be surprised if the vast majority of these authors hasn't ever experienced a queer gathering with queer peoples and families.

People write from their own experiences, and their experiences are heterosexual. Karin Traviss is a whole different story, she's European, and.. gasp, a woman. Her lived experiences are very different from the majority of American men writing these stories.

 

David Gaider has said lots of things on this subject as well. He really is the exception, who thankfully, encourages others to follow his lead. But he's also spoken of the difficulties, of not knowing how or what to write, and the many mistakes that are made and corrected. Writing inclusive, is a process.

 

But anyway, EU literature and SW games are different beasts though. Literature is written by sci-fi authors, that's what they do for a living, write sci-fi, their own sci-fi, only for SW with some SW flavours. Game writers do not have that kind of freedom. They are restricted by game systems, engines, what producers and others want. They get specific assignments about what to write. That is also exactly why I think that one of their assignments has to be to be inclusive. Any author publishing a book, is as many like to write on these forums, an artist. And while a game writer might still be an artist, they do not have artistic freedom, they are on assignment, one checked, directed and monitored more tightly than a stalinist regime. For these works to be exclusive, is therefor an excersice of that regime, and I do tend on keeping the regime of Bioware:Austin accountable for the lack of inclusiveness.

[Kioma]

You just illustrated one of my pet peeves- just because media depicts something does not mean it's sexist or misogynistic. Quite often, it isn't. In fact, it can often be a statement about misogyny or sexism, but what one has to do is look over the whole of the whatever before looking at the particulars. Most of the time, people don't want to bother engaging their brains and analyzing what is in front of them. They just want to criticize.

 

Indeed. If the media portrays something it implies only one thing without question: that it is profitable for the media group to do so.

[Kioma]

Regarding SW canon, I don't necessarily see it as being poorly organised. Rather I see it as being unique among fiction canon by being broken into parts. Both Wookieepedia and LucasArts support this: there is more than one kind of Star Wars canon.

 

In all other works of fiction - that I've seen, anyway - there is only one accepted canon. Everything that falls within it is canon; everything that doesn't is non-canon (or dubious canon if it hasn't been confirmed or denied by the creator/s). But in Star Wars there are multiple levels of canon, several different levels of reality as it were. The Holocron Continuity Database was created with several different forms of canon in mind.

 

It's important to understand, in any discussion of Star Wars continuity, that continuity in one canon stream doesn't necessarily mean continuity in another.

[fabiyun]

Regarding SW canon, I don't necessarily see it as being poorly organised. Rather I see it as being unique among fiction canon by being broken into parts. Both Wookieepedia and LucasArts support this: there is more than one kind of Star Wars canon.

 

In all other works of fiction - that I've seen, anyway - there is only one accepted canon. Everything that falls within it is canon; everything that doesn't is non-canon (or dubious canon if it hasn't been confirmed or denied by the creator/s). But in Star Wars there are multiple levels of canon, several different levels of reality as it were. The Holocron Continuity Database was created with several different forms of canon in mind.

 

It's important to understand, in any discussion of Star Wars continuity, that continuity in one canon stream doesn't necessarily mean continuity in another.

 

Right, but I think that also has to do with mass appeal of Star Wars. I am invested in the EU literature, I tried reading the comics, but they are really not my thing, likewise I cannot stand the Clone Wars CGI. I think this goes for the vast majority of Star Wars fans. They either like the novels, the comics, or the TV Series, and are not invested in the rest. You see this represented in the hierarchy of the canon. The canon has also been revised multiple times. The Clone Wars has moved up above the EU, but I see this as temporary, it makes them the most money at the moment. When this stuff ages, it'll very likely move to the bottom. Because fans of literature and comics are far more loyal than a CGI TV series that will not stand the test of time.

[Kioma]

Oh, people are going to have preferred canons, don't get me wrong, I fully agree there. I just often see a lot of people having, shall we say, difficulty coming to grasp with factors from different canons that conflict with one another (such as the canon elements introduced in episodes I, II and III when contrasted against the EU). It wasn't a pointed comment at you, fabiyun. It was more a gentle reminder to people in general that when people say 'the canon needs revision' one then needs to establish which canon and how one thinks it needs to be revised.

 

I mean... if they're completely separate does the canon really need to be revised or is it just a matter of accepting that they're separate (whether one is said to be 'more canon' or not)?

 

Either way the only people who can actually revise the canon or say what should or shouldn't be in it are the creators. Fans can make suggestions and have opinions but in the end that's all they are - opinions and suggestions. Even if the ideas we come up with seem to make sense they aren't anything more than head-canon.

[Palar]

My head's starting to ache from ambient canonicity levels... so I'm just going to reserve the right to dismiss anything outside the movies.

 

(Except the Ewok TV movies - I don't care what anyone says, I loved those as a kid.)

[Rabenschwinge]

“Luke, you’re going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.”

 

Though we're not talking about truth here, just fiction.

[copperjack]

Right, but I think that also has to do with mass appeal of Star Wars. I am invested in the EU literature, I tried reading the comics, but they are really not my thing, likewise I cannot stand the Clone Wars CGI. I think this goes for the vast majority of Star Wars fans. They either like the novels, the comics, or the TV Series, and are not invested in the rest. You see this represented in the hierarchy of the canon. The canon has also been revised multiple times. The Clone Wars has moved up above the EU, but I see this as temporary, it makes them the most money at the moment. When this stuff ages, it'll very likely move to the bottom. Because fans of literature and comics are far more loyal than a CGI TV series that will not stand the test of time.

 

I don't think it's likely to officially move below the EU because of how the official canon system works. It might get less popular and eventually fade into obscurity, but I'm pretty sure it will always be a higher canon than any of the books or comics.

[NyxNoxNothing]

I may not be conveying what I am trying to say properly. What I was trying to convey is that there was no arbiter of what was or was not canon. This created a situation where everything was largely made canon without regards to any kind of internal consistency.

 

If you look at the Star Wars universe right now, by the time we reach the Battle of Yavin, the universe should have largely collapsed with next to no resources available for continued development. I know that Lucas was not the best storyteller to have, but there needed to be a bit more to deciding what is or is not canon or you end up with a situation where you are going 'why in 4000 years haven't droids hit the point where they are demanding equal rights'. When Lucas pulled back from the series, a lot of stuff kind of got thrown into the series that really didn't need to be included or just really mucks things up down the road.

 

Well resources shouldn't be an issue since for every inhabited star system there are tens of thousands of systems full of energy sources and matter to work with. It seems the most limited resource in the Star Wars universe is creativity. Over many thousands of years involving dozens, if not hundreds, of technological species galactic civilization seems to be stuck in recurring behavioral loops of roughly the same level of technology and organization. Even down to government symbols and starship designs closely mimicking those of previous loops from thousands of years ago. Star Wars definitely has more than sufficient technological resources to emulate Banks' Orbitals or classic concepts like O'Neil Cylinders, but we're left with almost all civilization of any significance being confined to a double handful of planets or so out of hundreds of millions of stars. My theory is that it's the Force that caps galactic development; perhaps for reasons similar to Alistair Reynolds' Inhibitors. The Force channels and limits galactic sentients to stop them from influencing the larger structure of the galaxy, sort of like how human immune systems limit the activities of our symbiotic bacteria; the abilities of those who can achieve minor access to the force is a minor side effect. Without the Force to limit them galactic civilizations could easily start restructuring or even moving entire star systems, which would disrupt the current galactic structure. That's the actual balance that the Force seeks and the reason why anyone who doesn't practice rigid self-control and denial of emotions is pretty much guaranteed to spiral into the darkside. Plausible, no?

 

I can figure out what the second censored word was, but I'm still not sure about the first. The censors here really get in the way sometimes. It even censored the wikipedia link :/

 

First word: Well thorn is a noun, and something with thorns is frequently described as <censored>. Thorn is a noun, <censored> is the adjective version. It can be a <censored> problem to have an intelligent conversation when a fairly innocuous word that normally is usable even in children's programming is censored even as a string of characters inside a longer word. Really, the prohibited words on the forums are bizarre and somewhat beyond draconian sometimes.

 

------

 

All this is a bit of sidetrack from the actual focus of discussing same gender romances, but i guess there's not a lot to be said on the topic at this point except to note that while other Bioware games have at least kept pace with changing social norms it seems like SWTOR continues to lag behind. It's still a fair bit ahead of where things were socially when the first Star Wars movie came out, but now seems close to a decade or more behind compared to changing mores in most of the Western world and the US in particular.

Edited November 28, 2013 by NyxNoxNothing

[Tatile]

You just illustrated one of my pet peeves- just because media depicts something does not mean it's sexist or misogynistic. Quite often, it isn't. In fact, it can often be a statement about misogyny or sexism, but what one has to do is look over the whole of the whatever before looking at the particulars. Most of the time, people don't want to bother engaging their brains and analyzing what is in front of them. They just want to criticize.

 

Fair point.

[copperjack]

First word: Well thorn is a noun, and something with thorns is frequently described as <censored>. Thorn is a noun, <censored> is the adjective version. It can be a <censored> problem to have an intelligent conversation when a fairly innocuous word that normally is usable even in children's programming is censored even as a string of characters inside a longer word. Really, the prohibited words on the forums are bizarre and somewhat beyond draconian sometimes.

Ah, thanks. I get it now.

 

I remember hearing about a filter that didn't just censor words, it replaced them with what it determined was the 'polite' version. And it would also pluck them out of context from within larger words, so you'd get posts talking about 'the buttbuttination of Abraham Lincoln' or the various articles of the consbreastution. At least the censor here hasn't reached quite that level of absurdity.

[Tatile]

But learning about the ButtButtin class would be amazing. ButtButtin PvP: 101, ButtButtination like a pro. How to ButtButt from the Shadows.

 

At least then you could have semi-intelligible sentences, rather than having to guess whether ***** is ***** or *****, especially when stuff like **** is the most flexible word in the English language.

[NyxNoxNothing]

But learning about the ButtButtin class would be amazing. ButtButtin PvP: 101, ButtButtination like a pro. How to ButtButt from the Shadows.

 

At least then you could have semi-intelligible sentences, rather than having to guess whether ***** is ***** or *****, especially when stuff like **** is the most flexible word in the English language.

 

Yes, it's true. i laughed and giggled a bit when i read this. So immature. And i don't even have a Buttbuttin of my own. Still, buttbuttinating from the shadows sounds very naughty.

 

It's really odd how only some character sequences are auto-censored within larger words, especially since the censored word is so mild even if used inappropriately and has far more common usages that aren't even vaguely naughty. i'm actually becoming somewhat curious about what flavor of censorware and thought processes BW uses for all this.

[Tatile]

Really bog-standard US-based filter. They don't even include minge. Edited November 28, 2013 by Tatile

[Palar]

Why did I roll Sorcerer? I could have had a Sith Buttbuttin!

[Tatile]

Why did I roll Sorcerer? I could have had a Sith Buttbuttin!

 

Petition to rename Assassins, ButtButtins.

[Joushigun]

Fair point.

 

Don't worry about it too much. I've spent so much time in academia and doing critiquing that I tend to see a lot of things people overlook. Most people aren't really taught true criticism. Instead, they're taught 'criticism by numbers'.

 

I once short circuited a conversation about the Bechdel Test by laying out a scenario that, according to that test, would be totally sexist, except that, when looked at as a whole, it wasn't. The scenario was about two women discussing how to break their squadmate, a male, out of an enemy encampment.

[NyxNoxNothing]

Really bog-standard US-based filter. They don't even include minge.

 

Actually it's more than a bit overzealous and arbitrary by most US standards based on the filters of other game forums i've been on. Those forums were far more international and nuanced in their approach to banning actual naughty words. (Perhaps i've just been lucky until now.) Still, the vocabulary level of the forums here is much more N for neurotic as opposed to the T for teen i've usually encountered elsewhere. Hyper-obsessed with banning words that barely qualify for being even slightly naughty in US English while completely missing words that are rather profane in the other flavors of English. And the rules for censoring character strings within words is a bit arbitrary unless it's some sort of tug of war between a whitelist and blacklist. "Ban this string of characters unless it's within these explicitly permitted words." Overall it results in a filter that appears to be flailingly inept and arbitrary.

 

Much like BW's approach to same gender romances.

Edited November 29, 2013 by NyxNoxNothing

[helloder]

Support it, cause current way is no longer relevant to RL, plus I would like to see paid faction, gender change sooner

[Palar]

Don't worry about it too much. I've spent so much time in academia and doing critiquing that I tend to see a lot of things people overlook. Most people aren't really taught true criticism. Instead, they're taught 'criticism by numbers'.

 

I once short circuited a conversation about the Bechdel Test by laying out a scenario that, according to that test, would be totally sexist, except that, when looked at as a whole, it wasn't. The scenario was about two women discussing how to break their squadmate, a male, out of an enemy encampment.

 

The Bechdel's one of those well-meaning things which doesn't really work. Take your example, and a conversation about shoe-shopping and the price of lip-gloss: the stereotypical, vapid one will beat out the military dialogue.

 

I see BW shut another SGR thread in General - a polite disagreement was grounds enough. Not even the old "move to Story and ignore it" approach anymore... yet we can still say minge with impunity.

[Tatile]

The Bechdel's one of those well-meaning things which doesn't really work. Take your example, and a conversation about shoe-shopping and the price of lip-gloss: the stereotypical, vapid one will beat out the military dialogue.

 

I see BW shut another SGR thread in General - a polite disagreement was grounds enough. Not even the old "move to Story and ignore it" approach anymore... yet we can still say minge with impunity.

 

Actually I think it was more because I started to discuss the failings of the English secondary school curriculum and its achingly boring obsession with reminding us about the terrible, terrible nature of the Nazis, but not the terrible, terrible nature of the British Empire.

 

Edit: I actually told Mr. Musco in a recent PM that they're letting British swear words like 'minge' and racial slurs (that probably seem cute and quaint to an American audience) through the filter, so the fact that I can still use the word 'ming'e is proof of what I've been saying all along - Bioware ignore me (us)

Edited November 29, 2013 by Tatile