Perhaps they'll move somewhere closer to the west coast so I can attend.

Oooh, even better - Gencon should take this guy up on his offer:

Senator Steve Hobbs invites Gen Con to Washington

Seattle is more than big enough to handle a convention of this magnitude - PAX and Emerald City Comic Con are just as large - and they're upgrading the Convention Center next year. They should totally move here in 2020 when the contract is up!

I'm curious as to whether the contract also requires it to be Gencon that runs a convention there - if the wording was muddy, and merely required them to hire the space, they'd be entirely within their rights to subcontract it to a different organisation that wanted to use the convention hall, and host Gencon elsewhere.

I'm curious as to whether the contract also requires it to be Gencon that runs a convention there - if the wording was muddy, and merely required them to hire the space, they'd be entirely within their rights to subcontract it to a different organisation that wanted to use the convention hall, and host Gencon elsewhere.

Non-assignment clauses aren't necessarily uncommon.

Oh noes!

Quick! Man the lifeboats! The franchise is doomed

Oh noes!

Cineflix are reporting that Moff Mors, the first canonical LGBT character in the Star Wars Universe , is going to cross over from the books into one of the live-action movies, most likely the spinoff film Rogue One .

Quick! Man the lifeboats! The franchise is doomed

Awesome

Well, just finished reading Sith Lords and guess what - the franchise didn't burst into flames, there weren't pages and pages of a rampaging gay orgy and absolutely nothing happened other than a bog standard Star Wars adventure. The passage that caused the kerfulffle? Barely three lines, about Moff Mors lamenting that her spouse had been killed some years before, causing a self destructive cycle and her eventual reassignment to a dead end backwater world like Ryloth.

And that's it. So no, she doesn't go full on Captain Jack . She's not waving a queer banner in the halls of the Imperial Palace. She's just a corrupt Moff like any other in the Empire.

So, nothing to see here. Move along.

So basically exactly what it was supposed to be I guess.

You never know. Now that canon has been reset and the future is open, we could see some drastic changes. Luke could now be a homosexual Jedi hiding in the closet in The Force Awakens for all we know. Or maybe Han and Chewie finally consumated their relationship and got married. Or R2D2 an C-3P0 adopted a Rodian baby and are now raising him making sure he doesn't miss out on his own culture.

Don't know if the book is any good. . . .

By the way, to answer the question: it was middling. It wasn't great, it wasn't terrible. I was hoping for more interplay between Vader and Palpatine, more moments getting into their respective heads, seeing behind the scenes in their relationship. What we got was a pretty mundane Stern Chase punctuated with political double dealing and lots of fights.

So: Meh.

I still haven't finished the book, but the first chapter (which I think is available free online) is a classic example of Vader being a badass. But Desslok isn't far off. It's okay. I'm enjoying it but it doesn't grab me and pull me in.

I read through a good bit of this thread, but not yet all so I apologize if this has already been addressed...

Aside from purposeful attempts to mimic our own cultures (which, in context of Star Wars is a very valid reason) would homosexuality automatically be an issue for the Galaxy Far, Far Away?

In our own short history on this one planet dominant cultures have gone back and forth (so have sexism and racism, but they have a much more entrenched history).
Arguably, a writer would have to devise a reason for homosexuality to have become an issue for the Empire and that would seem more forced, by comparison.

found this thread a little late and made it through the whole thing. (thanks, falcon for bouncing it up)

dante rotterdam, you are a fine human being!

on a completely unrelated note, is there a block-function here? if there is, i seem to be unable to find it.

on a completely unrelated note, is there a block-function here? if there is, i seem to be unable to find it.

It's been said that there is an Ignore option. I could teach you...

please do!

my force senses must be blinded by all that bigotry.

At the top of the page just above the search bar is your avatar name with a drop down menu. One of the selections is "Manage Ignore Prefs". Click on it to input anyone you want to ignore.

dante rotterdam, you are a fine human being!

Thanks, but I am a bit of an ass at times as well so don't praise me too much...

dante rotterdam, you are a fine human being!

Thanks, but I am a bit of an ass at times as well so don't praise me too much...

who isn't?

admitting that fact is something the real ******** never manage. i really understand where you are coming from. there can never be tolerance for intolerance and we always have to keep fighting. the language we have to use to battle bigoted ***** is never pretty. trust me, i am usually much less restrained than you seem to be in these kinds of discussion.

it's a pleasure to see that on this forum decent people make up the majority. that's unusual in gaming forums unfortunately.

At the top of the page just above the search bar is your avatar name with a drop down menu. One of the selections is "Manage Ignore Prefs". Click on it to input anyone you want to ignore.

thanks a lot!

I'm baffled. Why is this even news? Why is someone's sexuality turned into a polarising statement and how is this good?

I do not care about a fictional character's sexuality, and I seriously doubt the majority of writers associated with the Star Wars franchise did either. I see no "uphill struggle" for gays, transexuals etc. in Star Wars. I don't see it IRL either (in any scale that would matter) and I'd probably know, because I came out of the closet long before this was even a thing on the net. Why is this fictional construct of "oppression vs homosexuals" so overblown and out of proportion? We're not oppressed. We have the same rights anyone else does. We can get legally married. We do not pay more taxes than straight people. We have access to exactly the same benefits and most people you meet on the street could care less which way you swing.

So, seriously, why is this even a thing? What purpose does over-emphasising it do, beyond annoy people who would otherwise be indifferent?

So, seriously, why is this even a thing? What purpose does over-emphasising it do, beyond annoy people who would otherwise be indifferent?

In the novel, it wasn't a thing.

Oh thank god. I do not need bad stereotype flashbacks from 50 years ago anymore. Thanks for letting me know!

I'm baffled. Why is this even news? Why is someone's sexuality turned into a polarising statement and how is this good?

I do not care about a fictional character's sexuality, and I seriously doubt the majority of writers associated with the Star Wars franchise did either. I see no "uphill struggle" for gays, transexuals etc. in Star Wars. I don't see it IRL either (in any scale that would matter) and I'd probably know, because I came out of the closet long before this was even a thing on the net. Why is this fictional construct of "oppression vs homosexuals" so overblown and out of proportion? We're not oppressed. We have the same rights anyone else does. We can get legally married. We do not pay more taxes than straight people. We have access to exactly the same benefits and most people you meet on the street could care less which way you swing.

So, seriously, why is this even a thing? What purpose does over-emphasising it do, beyond annoy people who would otherwise be indifferent?

This is disturbing.

Are you referring to the "not IRL either" part? That's the one that made me scratch my head.

Some people are lucky and have never experienced an -ism in any great form. I've been alive too long (almost half a century) to not have. I don't begrudge them their luck. It also doesn't mean it's not out there either. I still meet people who discriminate or whatever but nowhere near on the level I once did. Something I consider a good thing. I still like to see things like this becoming more mainstream, though.

Oh, I've faced plenty, but never because of sexuality or gender choice, be it myself or friends of mine who decided one day they would rather live as women. Bigotry over what you do in the bedroom or who you marry simply isn't a thing here. We have plenty against foreigners, though. That's something that actually is still an issue in some places and needs to be addressed in a manner that is not polarising or antagonistic, but educational and illuminating. Part of the reason I dislike this...sensationalism over a lifestyle choice or calling is because it polarises what I personally feel should be seen as normal, and I fear may lead people back to treating it as a big deal.

The few, isolated incidents I've had where someone actually took offense to my homosexuality were allevated and defused by not treating it as a big deal, not getting mad on my part, and with a bit of good humour on the side. If I'd gone full tumblr on those people, I am fairly certain I a) would have justified the person's irrational fear (and more often than not, bigotry has its root in fear ) and b) would not have helped other gays by doing so.

Bigotry, in the modern age, is a social defect, and just like any other social defect, you do not resocialise people suffering from it by antagonising them. If that is your M.O., you are part of the problem. I quit the Antifa ages ago for that reason and they're still throwing rocks and making no difference today (it's just different people; eventually, everyone quits).

You defuse and resocialise these people, who often dwell in isolated fringe groups themselves, by including them, befriending them and showing them that your way of life is normal and 99% of the time no different than their own. Once they realise something is "normal", they tend to accept it. And it works. The most prominent example being, a while back, a black man who joined the KKK and reintegrated a bunch of Klansmen who suddenly had to face the reality that what they hated was simply...normal.

However, the moment you treat something as "special", "extra-ordinary" (it's right in the word there, "not ordinary") or worthy of a huge amount of news coverage, you polarise people. Take the Christopher Street Day or the Love Parade. I know many, many people who have nothing against individual ravers or gays, but massive, attention-grabbing stunts like that tend to bring out commentary such as "Oh great, it's those junkies again", "Can't those faggots ever shut up?" or "no sleep tonight, the nutcases are dancing again" and so forth. Hence my initial distress when reading yet another of the growing frequency of articles that addresses something as a "problem" that has not been one for years. Even if the article is LGBT-friendly, putting things on a pedestal leads to inevitable backlash. I am dead sure, that the majority of the people who are shitposting against gays in the feedback there would not even think of doing so, if they didn't encounter an over-emphasis of the subject matter in their media. If you walked up to these people and started a conversation, 90% of the time, you probably would not even hear a single homophobic slur.

At least, before folks started jumping down their throats about it all. Sometimes, people create their own demons. It's sad.