Stereotyping would involve many people in that specific group having those qualities, but the overall group being diverse. Alien species in Star Trek are giant monoliths where everyone thinks, acts, dresses, and in many cases looks the exact same, and often to overly exaggerated levels. That is fantasy racism.
Stereotyping, whether the aliens are diverse or not. Also, it is never actually true that we know enough about the aliens to even know if they are diverse, as ST doesn't have the time to do a deep dive on every alien culture, it gives us a quick oversimplified view of them.
Again, I don't care about GW2 races. They are utterly irrelevant. That some people will never play X race because of their philosophy is a given, and there is NOTHING WE CAN DO ABOUT IT. Klingons are part of Trek canon, not something Cryptic can rewrite to make it appealing to more people. That can't be worked around, so why keep talking about it?
They aren't though, because many of the reasons why races are popular there apply here. And, in case you forgot, your original post that started this whole conversation was about trying to boost KDF numbers to the point they see more development. That isn't going to happen because people simply don't want to play them.
Really?... You seem to think that the only real reason people don't play KDF is because they don't like them. That implicitly means that nothing about the KDF losing its unique mechanical points affected the numbers of people wanting to play KDF, thus meaning there is no real difference over the years as people only really care about the philosophy not the mechanics. However, you have zero evidence to back that claim up.
This is just a straw man. At no point during the part you quoted did I ever state, or imply, that the only reason why people don't play KDF only because they don't like them/ In fact, as I explicitly pointed out, the very first sentence of my post mentioned some people played KDF for the unique mechanics, just not a lot.
I mean... really? You know full well I'm not mischaracterizing what you are saying, nor is that a strawman. If you want an actual strawman, its your argument, suggesting that GW2 polls are relevant here, trying to use what people think of the Charr to justify anything regarding the KDF.
Again, you said... You have zero evidence to support your claim that the main reason people don't play KDF is because of the Klingon culture. There is no such polling to back that up.
The sum total of your argument is to do jack all about the KDF and let it rot. I on the other hand believe that changes to make the KDF actually unique would improve them, and you want to argue that it won't while also claiming you aren't arguing that mechanical differences won't help the numbers.
I have plenty of evidence, the game itself. Way back when Klingons did have unique mechanics, like carriers, few people still played them. So obviously giving them unique mechanics isn't going to draw many people over to them. Most people don't want to play Klingons, and would instead prefer to sit around and ask for things to be added to their side instead of making a Klingon.
Yes of course, because when the KDF had uniqueness to it, it also had no other problems that would keep people away? I can't imagine why anyone would think that a lack of missions, mission replay for the few they did have, and being forced to either PVP or grind away in the KDF version of exploration clusters to level up would keep people away from the KDF early on, in spite of any unique mechanics. Clearly the only variable is the few unique features the KDF did have and nothing else significant.
And that's another straw man. I never said anything about letting Klingons rot. All I said is that most people don't want to play them, so they aren't going to even if you try to give them unique mechanics, or ship types. Not to mention, trying to give faction unique mechanics like that just leads to those mechanics rarely, if ever, being updated because devs have to focus on content everyone can play, and have little time to make everything unique for everyone. This would mean everyone would be getting less overall, compared to if everything was made for everyone where its easier to give everyone everything. You are ultimately asking for less on the Klingon side in the long run.
Again, that is not what a strawman is. It is entirely fair to summarize your argument that way because you insist on suggesting that people do not play the KDF because they simply don't like them. This means there is nothing that can be done to attract players to the KDF thus nothing should be done. Your only point is to assume, absurdly using 'evidence' from another IP entirely, there are so many people that actively dislike Klingons that nothing should be done.
Furthermore, this past year has more than proven that Cryptic is entirely willing continue to develop 1 faction only content whether its DOFFs or a multitude of ships, to the exclusion of the other faction. There is still no excuse to not give the KDF a set of lower decks DOFFs, with at the worst generic KDF DOFF portraits and just the unique abilities, nor access to MU ships, as they obviously aren't produced by the Federation, thus have zero reason to be Federation only.
Do you not understand that you are comparing apples and oranges? You are attempting to use polling data (from possibly nonscientific polls) from another game completely unrelated to Star Trek, about a completely unrelated species to Klingons, and suggesting that it tells us anything about why people don't play as KDF in STO.
Furthermore, I already agreed on the concept that some people do not want to play Klingons because of their philosophy. How many? No one knows! But why talk about them? Those people can't be won over! There is no point to discussing them, because the KDF philosophy isn't changing at all.
Now how many players don't play KDF because they've determined there is nothing unique enough to the playstyle of KDF and KDF ships to warrant it? Those are the ones that matter here, and those are the ones that can be won over with changes to ships and mechanics if they make the KDF have some unique toys again.
Star Trek isn't some magical, holy, thing, whose fanbase shares zero qualities with people from any other group in the world. There is nothing apples and oranges about comparing things in Trek canon, to those outside Trek canon. You are comparing two races whose culture is exactly the same, and both have the same general lack of interest from overall people, for similar reasons.
And again, we are talking about people who wont play Klingons because of the philosophy, and that is generally the number one reason why people don't play other characters in games. Which relates to KDF faction numbers being low, which is the point of this discussion.
Yes, actually it is a unique thing with a unique fanbase. Do Charr have their own language that real people can learn and speak? Can you walk into some office building dressed as a Charr and have someone immediately recognize and know what you are? Klingons are a well recognized part of the culture thanks to Star Trek. Charr are most definitely not.
STO does not do Klingons particularly well, not the least of which is because they play identically to the Federation. How does someone approach a 4/4 ship? Does it actually matter which side? Only with respect to how difficult it is to get particular ship traits.
Furthermore, they most definitely do not have the same culture at all, based on a quick look at a wiki. The Charr are far less fleshed out, and significantly different than Klingons. The only thing they have in common is a militaristic focus in the culture. They appear to lack any serious development beyond that, whereas Klingons have honor, rituals, religion, poetry, and opera that show us far more than being a simple warrior culture. If you want to insist on calling it fantasy racism to suggest that an alien species is one dimensional, well check the mirror, because Klingons are definitely more than just warriors and are arguably the most developed ST species besides humans.
The word you guys are looking for to describe the "fantasy racism" is trope, it is used by storytellers to quickly bring the audience/viewers/readers up to speed about a race or faction or whatever without spending a lot of time away from the plot talking about it, especially for throwaway characters who only get used once. Done well it adds depth and provides a reasonably solid base for the race or whatever for the storyteller to build on (or build a contrasting deconstruction on), done poorly it results in flat generic stereotypical ones.
And Star Trek is rather unique in that the fans tend (or at least the old core ones anyway) to analyze the technology, society, and other points significantly more than fans of other shows, and it was the first show to have anything like the TOS contempt that split the fanbase into "trekkies" and "trekkers" when the movies and TNG came out. The core fans tend to treat the Star Trek timeline as a solid history of the setting instead of the capriciously mutable whatever-is-needed-by-the-current-script canon that the movie division (and now CBS) likes to do.
While TNG and later tended to stereotype more, the factions in Star Trek have always been complex and dynamic even when it was not always explicitly pointed out in the scripts. Hints that something like the later defined Klingon Great House structure must exist was evident even in TOS (though it actually was a case of different interpretations of the series bible description of them as an allegory for the Soviet Union with a Mongol flair) but not recognized, codified, and built upon officially until TNG.
Applying the Great House structure to TOS, Kang's house were the odd ones at the time in that they embraced the Mongol trope more than the others and went the "honorable space barbarian" route more than the other two. Oddly, they seemed to the ones who tended more to mixed-sex crews and a science/engineering focus compared to the other houses shown in TOS.
Kor's house was very much the modern Soviet Union style (except that their crews seemed to be all male), with a dash of Orwellian surveillance culture thrown in and was more pragmatic than strictly honorable, while Koloth's house seemed to be between the two culturally but the most human looking physically. Those differences in look, culture, and to a smaller extent uniform, make the three houses distinctive enough to recognize that Kras (from Friday's Child) is probably from Koloth's Great House.
The most reasonable in-universe fan theory for why none of the later styles of Klingon were seen in TOS was that for some reason the Klingon council decided to put the houses with more of the humanlike Klingons in it on the Federation front (probably since they seem to understand Human thinking more than the later types do. In fact Kor seemed particularly adept in seeing the human viewpoint which is an advantage in dealing with them (know thy enemy an all that).
STO could add that variety of the original to the TNG and later series renditions of the Klingons to get something with even more depth and breadth of culture and history than is typically shown in the Federation (if CBS lets them) by adding episodes with a variety of style and feel without too much trouble.
That variety would help with the cloying monotony of the narrow way the KDF is portrayed so far which quickly bogs down into an odious grind. Frankly, the last few episodes of the J'ula stuff have been just different enough that they are more interesting than most of the other KDF episodes, even after running the things more than a dozen times each during the events.
As for Worf, he was more Klingon than the Klingons as far as their ideals go, which is something that occasionally happens in the real world with some kids who are raised outside of their native society so they don't see what really happens there in day to day living, but are exposed to an ivory tower version of the ideals of their nation of birth.
As for comparing STO with GW2, I have not played it yet but it is one that I was looking into so I am at least vaguely familiar with it, and the structure of the games appear to be totally different. STO is a wide cosmopolitan view of Star Trek where the races are more cosmetic than functional, with the only major difference mechanics wise a few pre-selected traits (and you can do 'Alien' and pick your own) and most everything else is freeform up to and including making your own custom races.
GW2 on the other hand is narrowly focused on five distinct races which are tightly bound to their own unique styles and societies. And on top of the warrior thing the Charr have the fact that they are furries working against them, same with the Asura since they look like earless rabbit anthros even though they don't seem to have actual fur.
A lot of people just wont play furries, or even the more exaggerated human anime types like chibi regardless of what they might think of the cultures the characters are supposed to have. The fact that the Sylvari are essentially dryads would turn off some players too (though I find them rather interesting myself).
^^ this ... klingon cleavage dammit lol ... all kidding aside (not really kidding) ... i would like to see more cryptic original designed kdf ships Bops , warships , frigates . Never mind the discovery stuff . Someone chain Hector to a desk ... A Hector Ortiz original design kdf bird of prey ...Take my wallet right now .
THere hasn't been any new KDF only content in a very long time. Rehashing missions, further butchering the story of the neglected faction doesn't help. If the content was interesting enough and plenty of it. Then there might be more interest in the KDF side of things. Even before PWE and Atari, the KDF side has always been neglected by comparison.
Look at the Klingon clothing options and then pay a visit to the tailor. Most of the costumes clip badly in some way, shape, or form.
The attitude from the development team comes off as, KDF should consider themselves lucky they even bothered.
The word you guys are looking for to describe the "fantasy racism" is trope
Tropes can be racist.
Irrelevant. I never claimed that they could not be racist, just that in storytelling tropes are used as a form of shorthand so people have a good idea of what the character or whatever is without spending a lot of time explaining it.
No it isn't, and no they don't. Star Trek races and technology have been as flat as cardboard since TOS. It wasn't until DS9 that sufficient depth was added to anything to really analyze it, because, before then, it was so one dimensional there was nothing to analyses besides what little there was presented in the one off narrative. And old fans HATED DS9 because of how different it was.
By that I take it you were never involved in Trek fan circles in the 1970s. Where do you think the analytic nerds that Galaxy Quest spoofed came from? The Trek analysis and fanfic actually tapered off somewhat during TNG, not the other way around. But I know you will ignore that fact.
And if you think TOS was as flat as cardboard then you are just not looking at it right. Some of the Berman-era fans do think that since in TOS they did not stop to browbeat the viewers with long jags of technobabble to explicitly draw attention to various things that they never did anything advanced or scientific. I guess you are one of those.
While TNG and later tended to stereotype more, the factions in Star Trek have always been complex and dynamic even when it was not always explicitly pointed out in the scripts.
No they weren't. The factions in Star Trek were very flat, and static, because Gene Roddenberry notoriously hated any sort large scale narratives that are necessary to actually flesh them out. the same is true of main cast memebrs like Kirk, Spock, Bones, Riker, etc. It wasn't until DS9, once Gene was out of the picture, that races got enough screen time to have any real depth, taking the flat portrayals of Klingons, Cardassians, Ferengi, and Bajorans in TNG, and making them really "full" in DS9.
No, what Roddenberry hated was what is now called "technobabble", as he put it a cop on a cop show does not pull his weapon and start explaining it to the viewers so a Star Trek character should not stop and talk about how a phaser works or about things the viewers should pick up from context.
And TNG actually flattened the various cultures at least as much as they deepened them since they seemed to think that interstellar empires were like city states and everything about them was homogenous. They even fell into the idiotic notion that you could destroy an entire people just by destroying their "homeworld" regardless of how many colonies they had out.
As for Worf, he was more Klingon than the Klingons as far as their ideals go
He was actually LESS Klingon then most Klingons because he legitimately believed in the BS all the other Klingons knew was BS. What defines a group is what the overwhelming majority of said group agrees with. And Worf was in the minority, but better for it because the majority of Klingons were awful.
This point depends entirely on how you look at it, an "is the glass half empty or half full" thing depending on whether one is comparing Worf to the Klingon ideal or the Klingon day to day reality. This is one point where we are actually saying the same thing, just in two different ways.
As for comparing STO with GW2, I have not played it yet but it is one that I was looking into so I am at least vaguely familiar with it, and the structure of the games appear to be totally different.
A. We weren't talking about the structure of the games.
B. Even if we were, the fact that KDF players can make aliens of their choosing should mean that the Klingon faction would be just as appeasing as the Fed side, but it isn't, showing that isn't a factor.
C. Asura are actually the 2nd most played race, even above the Norn who look like humans, but bigger. Sylvari are also above Norn. And, funny enough, the most common complaint about both the Norn and Charr is the fact that their societies are both warrior based, and come across as stupid because of it. Charr being a massive war machine state ala the Klingons, while Norn are more solitary hunters seeking glory ala Hirogen.
A. The structure of a game actually has a lot to do with the feel of a game and the choices people make when creating characters.
B. The KDF has a very different style of episodes, that does not change with a custom race. I mentioned the custom races simply to illustrate that STO is less race dependent that some other games like GW2.
C. It may be one of those cases were the high-tech intellectual type is apealing enough to override the anti-furry/chibi/whatever prejudice that so many other games are subject to, which is a good sign. In Tera playing Elin and Popori is a sure way to get a lot of nasty messages from the bigots for instance.
By the way, it's 'Year of Klingon' with no 'the' in it.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
> @somtaawkhar said: > The problem with using Worf as an example of a Klingon is that Worf wasn't really a Klingon.
This gets away from the point that more hair options and unique dialogue—would be some of the problems that KDF players would like solved.
But to sidestep the “Worf is not a Klingon argument”... I really mean Dorn’s character opened up chances to use the “Klingon “ sets and engage with those environments.
Som, you often argue a mission fighting Klingons equals Klingon “content.” I agree that when the enemy is not a 2-dimensional foil, and we get to see sets artifacts, and paraphernalia of the culture it is more rewarding for seeing “world building“
So Worf’s contribution is threefold perhaps: 1) he gives us some insight to “Klingon” 2) he gives us opportunity to interact with other “Klingons” 3) his “morality play” to accept or reject the “Klingon” as “real” or “genuine” or “just” or “human”—this just makes it a more engaging story.
To see culture as “what the majority ascribe to” is foolish though. In anthropology culture is not seen as static nor a reduction to the popular. The anthropologist gains her insight as an outsider—shows flaws in the system, psychological power plays, and the fragility of the culture she analyzes.
You like to create absolutes and axis...but I tend to think showing culture lies in the nuance and the “humanization” of the “alien”—and I think that is where Star Trek works best.
It is not with technobabble and exploding dilithium—not with crying over manufactured trauma—but about overcoming differences in our existential crisis.
You have no weakness...so there is little personaly to overcome...only the march to hegemony.
> @somtaawkhar said: > No, I argue that a mission whose main story revolves around development in the Klingon Empire is Klingon content.
That is fair—half of the New Frontier Arc is very, very Klingon. I agree. Are those depictions about bloodthirsty Klingon monsters, that no sane human would ever join?
The state of the game right now is even if there was something I wanted to get I couldn't get because I am not going to be motivated enough to spend real money or grind the amount of proportions they are expecting especially with this 500 dilithium to zen exchange now. Then admiralty week again where a lot of us have 5-10 mil unrefined dilithium from the last one still left. This might be that end to the YoK lol. The empires coffers are no longer able to afford to feed the targs.
I'm with the others who want more outfit variety on the KDF side. It's funny how much more options my Starfleet characters have when it comes to looking cool and neat, despite Starfleet supposedly having a more rigid uniform code than the loose KDF forces. Of course, I understand that it's because there were so many more uniforms and costumes made for Starfleet and UFP worlds on the TV shows and movies... but it'd be nice to have more customization choices for KDF characters.
I'm with the others who want more outfit variety on the KDF side. It's funny how much more options my Starfleet characters have when it comes to looking cool and neat, despite Starfleet supposedly having a more rigid uniform code than the loose KDF forces. Of course, I understand that it's because there were so many more uniforms and costumes made for Starfleet and UFP worlds on the TV shows and movies... but it'd be nice to have more customization choices for KDF characters.
maybe unique outfits to represent your great house allegiance, like something similar to Worf's clothes for Mogh allies, Disco Klingon clothes for Mo'Kai allies, something similar to the Duras twins for Duras allies, ect, ect.
Comments
Stereotyping, whether the aliens are diverse or not. Also, it is never actually true that we know enough about the aliens to even know if they are diverse, as ST doesn't have the time to do a deep dive on every alien culture, it gives us a quick oversimplified view of them.
I mean... really? You know full well I'm not mischaracterizing what you are saying, nor is that a strawman. If you want an actual strawman, its your argument, suggesting that GW2 polls are relevant here, trying to use what people think of the Charr to justify anything regarding the KDF.
Yes of course, because when the KDF had uniqueness to it, it also had no other problems that would keep people away? I can't imagine why anyone would think that a lack of missions, mission replay for the few they did have, and being forced to either PVP or grind away in the KDF version of exploration clusters to level up would keep people away from the KDF early on, in spite of any unique mechanics. Clearly the only variable is the few unique features the KDF did have and nothing else significant.
Again, that is not what a strawman is. It is entirely fair to summarize your argument that way because you insist on suggesting that people do not play the KDF because they simply don't like them. This means there is nothing that can be done to attract players to the KDF thus nothing should be done. Your only point is to assume, absurdly using 'evidence' from another IP entirely, there are so many people that actively dislike Klingons that nothing should be done.
Furthermore, this past year has more than proven that Cryptic is entirely willing continue to develop 1 faction only content whether its DOFFs or a multitude of ships, to the exclusion of the other faction. There is still no excuse to not give the KDF a set of lower decks DOFFs, with at the worst generic KDF DOFF portraits and just the unique abilities, nor access to MU ships, as they obviously aren't produced by the Federation, thus have zero reason to be Federation only.
Yes, actually it is a unique thing with a unique fanbase. Do Charr have their own language that real people can learn and speak? Can you walk into some office building dressed as a Charr and have someone immediately recognize and know what you are? Klingons are a well recognized part of the culture thanks to Star Trek. Charr are most definitely not.
STO does not do Klingons particularly well, not the least of which is because they play identically to the Federation. How does someone approach a 4/4 ship? Does it actually matter which side? Only with respect to how difficult it is to get particular ship traits.
Furthermore, they most definitely do not have the same culture at all, based on a quick look at a wiki. The Charr are far less fleshed out, and significantly different than Klingons. The only thing they have in common is a militaristic focus in the culture. They appear to lack any serious development beyond that, whereas Klingons have honor, rituals, religion, poetry, and opera that show us far more than being a simple warrior culture. If you want to insist on calling it fantasy racism to suggest that an alien species is one dimensional, well check the mirror, because Klingons are definitely more than just warriors and are arguably the most developed ST species besides humans.
And Star Trek is rather unique in that the fans tend (or at least the old core ones anyway) to analyze the technology, society, and other points significantly more than fans of other shows, and it was the first show to have anything like the TOS contempt that split the fanbase into "trekkies" and "trekkers" when the movies and TNG came out. The core fans tend to treat the Star Trek timeline as a solid history of the setting instead of the capriciously mutable whatever-is-needed-by-the-current-script canon that the movie division (and now CBS) likes to do.
While TNG and later tended to stereotype more, the factions in Star Trek have always been complex and dynamic even when it was not always explicitly pointed out in the scripts. Hints that something like the later defined Klingon Great House structure must exist was evident even in TOS (though it actually was a case of different interpretations of the series bible description of them as an allegory for the Soviet Union with a Mongol flair) but not recognized, codified, and built upon officially until TNG.
Applying the Great House structure to TOS, Kang's house were the odd ones at the time in that they embraced the Mongol trope more than the others and went the "honorable space barbarian" route more than the other two. Oddly, they seemed to the ones who tended more to mixed-sex crews and a science/engineering focus compared to the other houses shown in TOS.
Kor's house was very much the modern Soviet Union style (except that their crews seemed to be all male), with a dash of Orwellian surveillance culture thrown in and was more pragmatic than strictly honorable, while Koloth's house seemed to be between the two culturally but the most human looking physically. Those differences in look, culture, and to a smaller extent uniform, make the three houses distinctive enough to recognize that Kras (from Friday's Child) is probably from Koloth's Great House.
The most reasonable in-universe fan theory for why none of the later styles of Klingon were seen in TOS was that for some reason the Klingon council decided to put the houses with more of the humanlike Klingons in it on the Federation front (probably since they seem to understand Human thinking more than the later types do. In fact Kor seemed particularly adept in seeing the human viewpoint which is an advantage in dealing with them (know thy enemy an all that).
STO could add that variety of the original to the TNG and later series renditions of the Klingons to get something with even more depth and breadth of culture and history than is typically shown in the Federation (if CBS lets them) by adding episodes with a variety of style and feel without too much trouble.
That variety would help with the cloying monotony of the narrow way the KDF is portrayed so far which quickly bogs down into an odious grind. Frankly, the last few episodes of the J'ula stuff have been just different enough that they are more interesting than most of the other KDF episodes, even after running the things more than a dozen times each during the events.
As for Worf, he was more Klingon than the Klingons as far as their ideals go, which is something that occasionally happens in the real world with some kids who are raised outside of their native society so they don't see what really happens there in day to day living, but are exposed to an ivory tower version of the ideals of their nation of birth.
As for comparing STO with GW2, I have not played it yet but it is one that I was looking into so I am at least vaguely familiar with it, and the structure of the games appear to be totally different. STO is a wide cosmopolitan view of Star Trek where the races are more cosmetic than functional, with the only major difference mechanics wise a few pre-selected traits (and you can do 'Alien' and pick your own) and most everything else is freeform up to and including making your own custom races.
GW2 on the other hand is narrowly focused on five distinct races which are tightly bound to their own unique styles and societies. And on top of the warrior thing the Charr have the fact that they are furries working against them, same with the Asura since they look like earless rabbit anthros even though they don't seem to have actual fur.
A lot of people just wont play furries, or even the more exaggerated human anime types like chibi regardless of what they might think of the cultures the characters are supposed to have. The fact that the Sylvari are essentially dryads would turn off some players too (though I find them rather interesting myself).
^^ this ... klingon cleavage dammit lol ... all kidding aside (not really kidding) ... i would like to see more cryptic original designed kdf ships Bops , warships , frigates . Never mind the discovery stuff . Someone chain Hector to a desk ... A Hector Ortiz original design kdf bird of prey ...Take my wallet right now .
Look at the Klingon clothing options and then pay a visit to the tailor. Most of the costumes clip badly in some way, shape, or form.
The attitude from the development team comes off as, KDF should consider themselves lucky they even bothered.
Irrelevant. I never claimed that they could not be racist, just that in storytelling tropes are used as a form of shorthand so people have a good idea of what the character or whatever is without spending a lot of time explaining it.
By that I take it you were never involved in Trek fan circles in the 1970s. Where do you think the analytic nerds that Galaxy Quest spoofed came from? The Trek analysis and fanfic actually tapered off somewhat during TNG, not the other way around. But I know you will ignore that fact.
And if you think TOS was as flat as cardboard then you are just not looking at it right. Some of the Berman-era fans do think that since in TOS they did not stop to browbeat the viewers with long jags of technobabble to explicitly draw attention to various things that they never did anything advanced or scientific. I guess you are one of those.
No, what Roddenberry hated was what is now called "technobabble", as he put it a cop on a cop show does not pull his weapon and start explaining it to the viewers so a Star Trek character should not stop and talk about how a phaser works or about things the viewers should pick up from context.
And TNG actually flattened the various cultures at least as much as they deepened them since they seemed to think that interstellar empires were like city states and everything about them was homogenous. They even fell into the idiotic notion that you could destroy an entire people just by destroying their "homeworld" regardless of how many colonies they had out.
You and your headcanon nonsense. As usual you simply did not get the point I was making so you resort to claiming it is "headcanon".
This point depends entirely on how you look at it, an "is the glass half empty or half full" thing depending on whether one is comparing Worf to the Klingon ideal or the Klingon day to day reality. This is one point where we are actually saying the same thing, just in two different ways.
A. The structure of a game actually has a lot to do with the feel of a game and the choices people make when creating characters.
B. The KDF has a very different style of episodes, that does not change with a custom race. I mentioned the custom races simply to illustrate that STO is less race dependent that some other games like GW2.
C. It may be one of those cases were the high-tech intellectual type is apealing enough to override the anti-furry/chibi/whatever prejudice that so many other games are subject to, which is a good sign. In Tera playing Elin and Popori is a sure way to get a lot of nasty messages from the bigots for instance.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
> The problem with using Worf as an example of a Klingon is that Worf wasn't really a Klingon.
This gets away from the point that more hair options and unique dialogue—would be some of the problems that KDF players would like solved.
But to sidestep the “Worf is not a Klingon argument”... I really mean Dorn’s character opened up chances to use the “Klingon “ sets and engage with those environments.
Som, you often argue a mission fighting Klingons equals Klingon “content.” I agree that when the enemy is not a 2-dimensional foil, and we get to see sets artifacts, and paraphernalia of the culture it is more rewarding for seeing “world building“
So Worf’s contribution is threefold perhaps: 1) he gives us some insight to “Klingon” 2) he gives us opportunity to interact with other “Klingons” 3) his “morality play” to accept or reject the “Klingon” as “real” or “genuine” or “just” or “human”—this just makes it a more engaging story.
To see culture as “what the majority ascribe to” is foolish though. In anthropology culture is not seen as static nor a reduction to the popular. The anthropologist gains her insight as an outsider—shows flaws in the system, psychological power plays, and the fragility of the culture she analyzes.
You like to create absolutes and axis...but I tend to think showing culture lies in the nuance and the “humanization” of the “alien”—and I think that is where Star Trek works best.
It is not with technobabble and exploding dilithium—not with crying over manufactured trauma—but about overcoming differences in our existential crisis.
You have no weakness...so there is little personaly to overcome...only the march to hegemony.
Good Luck
> No, I argue that a mission whose main story revolves around development in the Klingon Empire is Klingon content.
That is fair—half of the New Frontier Arc is very, very Klingon. I agree. Are those depictions about bloodthirsty Klingon monsters, that no sane human would ever join?
maybe unique outfits to represent your great house allegiance, like something similar to Worf's clothes for Mogh allies, Disco Klingon clothes for Mo'Kai allies, something similar to the Duras twins for Duras allies, ect, ect.