I know I promised to go over my Thanksgiving exploits today, but that will have to wait for Friday as the photographs are still on the beasty's camera. Let's move on.
Guess who was given access codes to The Old Republic beta? No, not me. While my darling little netbook does so many useful things, it does not handle complex games. Beasty's computer, however, does quite well, and so he alternated between Jedi Knight and Trooper for most of this past weekend. I was perched nearby, curiously watching his progress, and decided to pop on to the Star Wars wiki page, Wookieepedia. I think it started with me asking if there was something about being a Sith that made you get ugly and go bald, and the beasty told me to go look up his favorite Sith, Darth Talon. After giving him the "God, you're so male" glare, I decided to actually read the article about the busty, tattooed Twi'lek which of course led me to clicking on several links as I'm not very familiar with the Star Wars 'verse outside of the original three films.
I proceeded to spend the next few hours reading article after article about the absurdly complex universe the Star Wars fandom has built. I would also like to say in my defense that I had a nasty cold and wasn't up to doing anything more strenuous than reading anyway. One article would inexorably lead to another, and I learned more about the Sith and Jedi in one evening than I have in sixteen years of being besties with a hardcore Star Wars fan girl. Said wiki-walk has left me very disappointed with the Sith. But let me tell you why!
First, for those of you who have no idea what "Sith" means, go here. I'll wait. The rest of the class will have a spot of tea whilst you educate yourself.
All set now? Good, let's plunge ahead.
Let's start with the Code of the Sith. I have no problem with the code, and in fact I honestly prefer it over the Jedi code, given my nature. It is as follows:
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
While the potential for power-hungry ego-mania is certainly inherent, overall it's not that bad. Yet, after an evening of reading, I have yet to see a single Sith actually live according to their own code. Seriously, the Wiki even describes "most Sith" as being "cold and dispassionate". Furthermore, they don't seem particularly "free". Most Sith are unswervingly loyal pawns to their Masters, except for the few who rise up and kill their Masters usually (it seems) on the orders of another Master. Moreover, it seems the greatest thing any Sith can devote his or her unnatural, dark life to is the destruction of Jedi. That's it. You have all the power of a dark god and you're going to waste it hunting down these guys over here because of their vastly different philosophy. Apparently all Sith are cold, psychopathic zealots who worship their dead leaders and have nothing better to do than wage holy wars.
I guess, in the end, I was hoping for something more interesting. Now, I understand that the Star Wars universe needs a BBEG (or fifty), and that Sith make good BBEGs, but here's the thing. There are passionate people with limitless resources who don't decide the only thing to do with their energy is go kill a rival sect or take over countries. And I imagine that there's something about the Dark Side of the Force that makes all Sith into horrible, evil people who have no ambitions outside of accruing more power to kill more Jedi. You're welcome to try to explain it to me, my minions.
In the meantime, I'm going to throttle down my urge to start writing fan fiction.
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