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To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)

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To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest) Starfleet Ship Design Bureau, Refit ("To Boldly Go...")
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The First Great Galactic War has begun! Us vs spoonheads, pointy-eared bastards vs bastards with forehead ridges, everyone else is caught in the crossfires!
 
thamuzz said:
A bit late to the discussion, but here as an idea:
It's not that cannibalism is a niche thing among the Licori, but the pageantry around the cannibalism that makes the Kortonnen weird/vile in Licori eyes.
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Just when I get done spending a couple of days trying to develop at least ONE sympathetic character for the Licori, people start getting fixed on the idea of making them practicioners of ritual cannibalism...

All because someone portrayed literally the worst Licori ever as being one for the sake of deliberately amplifying their puppy-kicking evil factor.

[sighs, facepalming]

OneirosTheWriter said:
Sometimes event rolling goes badly enough that it makes a QM cackle. But sometimes it goes so bad that a QM starts contemplating mercy.

You guys are well well well into the latter right now. This is disgusting.
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o_O

...Karma eepy.
 
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Simon_Jester said:
Just when I get done spending a couple of days trying to develop at least ONE sympathetic character for the Licori, people start getting fixed on the idea of making them practicioners of ritual cannibalism...

All because someone portrayed literally the worst Licori ever as being one for the sake of deliberately amplifying their puppy-kicking evil factor.

[sighs, facepalming]
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Who says a cannibal can't be sympathetic?
 
Me, I just assumed that the mentat was a taste scientist, and that the Licori around the table aren't actually related to them.

Random Member said:
Who says a cannibal can't be sympathetic?
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The guy who's trying to write one without having his job be made needlessly difficult?

Could I do it? Sure. Do I want to? No.

I mean, if Iron Wolf had gone with the original source material and portrayed Baron Korannon Kortennon as a creepy pedophile... I'm pretty sure we wouldn't be having a long conversation about how maybe pedophilia is semi-normative for the Licori. The whole point of making him a cannibal was to make him degenerate and creepy and horrifying. Not to paint the entire Licori species as "oh yeah, they're the guys with the mad scientists and the funeral rites that involve eating each other."
 
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OneirosTheWriter said:
Sometimes event rolling goes badly enough that it makes a QM cackle. But sometimes it goes so bad that a QM starts contemplating mercy.

You guys are well well well into the latter right now. This is disgusting.
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Iron Wolf said:
​
A/N: Inevitably the Captain's log update after this: Atuin destroyed, Chad disgraced, gg no re
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Simon_Jester said:
Just when I get done spending a couple of days trying to develop at least ONE sympathetic character for the Licori, people start getting fixed on the idea of making them practicioners of ritual cannibalism...

All because someone portrayed literally the worst Licori ever as being one for the sake of deliberately amplifying their puppy-kicking evil factor.

[sighs, facepalming]
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I think it's mild speculation on how alien the aliens might be. You can even look at it as a writing exercise -- how much cannibalism is too much cannibalism to make our aliens sympathetic?

It's not quite cannibalism but I keep thinking of the scene in the His Dark Materials trilogy where the Polar Bear Dude eats the body of his cool companion bro basically right as he passes away. I remember being like 'yo that was pretty fucked up but you do you, Polar Bear Guy'.

Hazard said:
Also bad from a general health point of view.

You know what species' meat has the best adapted pathogens for humanity?

It's humanity itself.
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Damn humans, they ruined humanity!
 
Iron Wolf said:
I think it's mild speculation on how alien the aliens might be. You can even look at it as a writing exercise -- how much cannibalism is too much cannibalism to make our aliens sympathetic?

It's not quite cannibalism but I keep thinking of the scene in the His Dark Materials trilogy where the Polar Bear Dude eats the body of his cool companion bro basically right as he passes away. I remember being like 'yo that was pretty fucked up but you do you, Polar Bear Guy'.
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I can understand it, it's just... frustrating. It turns me off on the idea of trying to write Licori characters because I feel like exactly what I was worried about is happening: namely, the manifest vices of certain specific Licori are being interpreted as species-wide characteristics.

And sure, we can set this up as an exercise in making a species that has "does this thing we think is nasty, but are actually cool dudes" as their hat... but the Licori already have a hat that is making us a bit prejudicial towards them because we're scared that their science projects will blow up the quadrant.

Again, if you'd gone with "gratuitously imply Baron Kortennon to be a pedo," we wouldn't be having a conversation about how to make that normal in the context of Licori society. If you'd gone with "he likes to mutilate his servants and make them limp and lurch around while he watches because he finds disabled people hilarious," we wouldn't be talking about how maybe there's a Licori tradition of the comedy of the disabled and that it's normally harmless but the Kortennons just abused it. If you'd gone with "imply him to be a Bluebeard type who marries women, kills them, and leaves them in a trophy room," we probably wouldn't be having a conversation about how to normalize that. It'd just be "the head of the house that has been explicitly advised as being gratuitously horrible is a horrible person with gratuitous vices, who knew?"

So it's a bit frustrating to have this pop up and start shutting down my desire to actually portray an interesting or noble Licori character- the phrase "one you might want to sit down to dinner with" is actually explicitly in some of my descriptions- because of a random plot bunny that isn't even really in line with the internal logic that caused you to bring up 'Licori' and 'cannibalism' in the same sentence.

Yes, I'm cranky about it. I'm sorry, I just am. It's been a bad week and having my creative impulses slapped kind of stings. Sorry.

[sighs]
 
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Simon_Jester said:
I can understand it, it's just... frustrating. It turns me off on the idea of trying to write Licori characters because I feel like exactly what I was worried about is happening: namely, the manifest vices of certain specific Licori are being interpreted as species-wide characteristics.
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I think there's a way you could do it respectfully. I'd probably go with your original idea that it's part of funerary practices and not a thing people do day-to-day at all, hence why the Kortennons are such fucking weirdos. That being said:
  • I don't think anyone is seriously contemplating writing anything about this
  • I don't think the GM is remotely interested in writing or reading any omakes about this :V
 
OneirosTheWriter said:
Sometimes event rolling goes badly enough that it makes a QM cackle. But sometimes it goes so bad that a QM starts contemplating mercy.

You guys are well well well into the latter right now. This is disgusting.
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There is little better than experiencing some failures to spin an interesting narrative (and have some character development though that is less important in this situation).
 
KnightDisciple said:
I see a duck, a shark, and a stormtrooper helmet just chilling out...
I was about to question the Chicken Cages, but on a ship that retro it actually makes sense....

Is this the class that's kind of between the old Enterprise NX ships and the Connies?
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The one directly before the Connies was the Ranger. Essex was a Daedalus class, not sure what tactical role it performed.
 
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