Recluse was ripped off.

Boba Fett? Where?

Heh. Shows you've been paying attention.

If you include the latest films, the clone wars series, and the novels, there are a lot more female role models in the Star Wars Universe.

I think Leia would still be the top choice...unless you're really a Mon Mothma kinda gal

Padme would be a good choice too - she gets to sleep with Hayden

Personally, I agree that Hades is generally portrayed as the most down-to-earth (your groan here) of the Olympians. The idea of Hades as a villain is very much a modern, not an ancient, idea. He spends all but one day a year in his grey, sunless realm, watching over the shades, while the rest of the family is off gallivanting around, turning themselves and/or their romantic partners into bears, ilex trees, insects, snakes, or some combination thereof. He's like the one brother in a family of celebrities who decides to become an accountant and spends all his time at the office while the rest of the family is off wrecking Hummers and having stories about them printed in the tabloids. I guess this befits the oldest and therefore the most "mature" of the Olympians.

However, this isn't the only interpretation of the "Persephone Among the Dead" story. There's another that fits the savage, dangerous warrior society of early Dark Age Greece that produced it very aptly. I won't discuss it here since the auto-censoring would render my rendition incomprehensible, but you can probably find it on the internet someplace. (Incidentally, it's used to good effect in the "WebMage" series of novels by Kelly McCullough, which, despite having kind of a goofy premise, contain some excellent characterizations of the various Olympians.) Let it suffice to say that it reflects VERY badly on the Lord of the Dead.

This is definitely the spin (your second groan here) put on things in The Web of Arachnos. One interesting idea for an alternate dimension, instead of having it ruled by yet another Evil Statesman or Nemesis Variant, would be to have Stefan Richter transformed into some completely different kind of monstrous form. In fact, one of several possible origins mentioned in my Arachnos Widow's bio is that he comes from a dimension where the organization ruling the Rogue Isles is called "Skorpios" and based on scorpions rather than spiders. (Yes, I know scorpions are technically arachnids, too.)

I'm more surprised that Statesman isn't based on some character from the first generation of Greek deities than that Recluse is based on Tartarus.

And yet some utterly disagree on just what that objective moral truth should be. Which, you know, kind of scores a point for moral relativism.

"If you're going through hell, keep going."
Winston Churchill

Problem here: That's not a moral villain. Morals are not the same as ideologies or independent beliefs. A moral villain is the guy who travels back in time to put a bullet in the skull of innocent baby Hitler in an effort to save millions of lives. Moral villainy almost exclusively aims at justifying destructive actions with the greater good. World War 2 is full of examples of this, by the by.

Recluse could be seen as moral because his actions are beneficial to people. Granted, in his case it's not a lot of people they're beneficial to, but here you go: In the Rogue Isles, anyone possessing the will and fortitude to succeed can do so. You just need to grit your teeth and be willing to step over the corpses of your friends to get what you want, and it can be yours.

This creates unbiased opportunity for everyone. It doesn't matter who you were or where you came from, in the Isles you can be whatever you want, provided you have the balls. You say it's Social Darwinism, I say it's the American Dream post Capitalism. Neither side is wrong.

"If you're going through hell, keep going."
Winston Churchill

If there was no absolute good/evil, there would be no basis upon which moral decisions could be judged. This is the argument from Moral Relativity.

Moral Objectivism and Absolutism differ on their view if there are rules that if you break them you are immoral. Example: For the Absolutist, killing is always wrong (how to determine these rules depends on the moral theory in question). For the Objectivist, killing is generally wrong, but there may be exceptions (exceptions vary depending on the moral theory in question).

By your definition.

Most everyone around these forums was raised in a country the legislature and culture of which was influenced by one of the Judeo-Christian religions. We've grown up with certain ideas of morality, reinforced by our parents, teachers and even the media. And most of us have been lucky enough to grow up in a time and place where people could afford to pride themselves on their morality and did not have to see it tested by a lack of basic necessities.

Some moral impetus is natural, yes, but it could be argued away as a survival instinct. Social animals generally fare better. The pack will cover for its sick for a time, coordinated hunting is more efficient and the pack can band together for mutual protection. Thus it is necessary to condition one's self to not stepping too far out of line with regards to what the pack agrees on is acceptable behaviour. If abandoned by the pack, your chances of survival decrease.

But the rest is just trained reflex. Indirect indoctrination. You grow up in a given culture, you take on some of its traits, it's just the way things work. Yet at the end of the day it's just someone's mental excretions forced into your brain.


Alan Turing's case made the news a day or two ago, and it's hideous. The man was found 'guilty' of being a homosexual and chemically castrated, prompting him to commit suicide in 1954. A mere 55 years ago, within the lifetime of most players parents and/or grandparents if not their own, this was considered 'moral' while his behaviour was considered 'immoral'. Not just the opinion of a few bigots living behind the moon but apparently generally accepted ideas of decency. It took another decade for homosexuality to become 'legal' in the UK.

Absolute good and evil? Hardly.

"If you're going through hell, keep going."
Winston Churchill

GG, we have no more "developed beyond" our animal nature than a bacterium has. What we developed was a complex mental/verbal communication ability that allows us to make excuses for our bad actions. There is still crime, violence, and useless war in this world. That would not be the case if we were "beyond" our animal nature.

The wicked do rule this world, but they hide behind honeyed words and practiced smiles. We are still the bloody-toothed pack

But we don't want to be.

Good and evil are abstract concepts created by humans to justify our own instinctual behaviours and even then we can't stick to them. And that is that.

Just because there are still evil things in the world, that doesn't mean we're still animals - the fact that we can recognize them as wrong and bad shows that we're not.

Is that an absolute "that is that", or an abstract "that is that"?

We do things that go against animal instincts because we know that those instincts are primitive, and aren't suitable for us anymore - we know right from wrong, but animals don't.

That's what we'd like to think. Complicating something is not the same as stepping beyond it.

Humans form packs and hunt together. Only that humans don't go for meat but resources and our packs are called companies. The basic idea however is the same.

There's a whole list of animal behaviours that are still strikingly apparent in human behaviour. Mating is a very obvious one. The way men and women find partners is not really all that different from how it works in the animal world. We just complicate things by throwing in random legal ages and silly dating games, but it comes down to the same, really.

Feminists, take heed. Most women want a man who will build a nest for them to raise their brood in and defend lavish them and their brood while they're at it. Most men want to spread their seed around as far as they can manage, and they want partners capable of actually having healthy children. Aberrations notwithstanding, this is still the norm.

The only human kind of behaviour I can think of that is very rare in animals is overindulgence. Granted, there's the thing with the drunk monkeys, but animal instincts seem to know when enough is enough most of the time.

"If you're going through hell, keep going."
Winston Churchill

Actually, by that yardstick we're worse than animals, also see Planet of the Apes. It is very rare for animals to kill members of their own species regularly. Yes, lions eat their young, but only in very certain circumstances and for an understandable reason. Understandable in Darwinian terms at any rate.

"If you're going through hell, keep going."
Winston Churchill

No we don't. We first define what is right and wrong based on our own ideas thereof. Then we follow the rules we ourselves made. The most basic of which, as I already pointed out, are also upheld by social animals. Not because they believe in morals for all we know, but because they are conducive to pack cohesion and survival.

I stand by my earlier Turing example. Fifty years ago, people 'knew' that homosexuality was an aberration of the worst kind and needed to be stamped out. Their moral imperative was to torture, humiliate and dehumanize anyone violating this ethical standard. A couple years earlier, people not only in Germany 'knew' that Jews were to blame for the great depression and many other ills and it was their moral duty to protect their children and eradicate them. These jokers as well as people in other countries practicing racial segregation 'knew' that mixed-race dalliances were immoral and needed to be discouraged, by force if necessary.

People have always held moral beliefs that we today might find ridiculous at best, monstrous at worst, and I presume coming generations will likely think similarly about us.


Seriously. There's a whole laundry list of moral ideas that became outdated as times changed. Morals are fashioned by the people, not the other way around.

"If you're going through hell, keep going."
Winston Churchill

Do we now? I could inundate you with a ton of things from the last ten years that were both illegal and morally questionable by mainstream mores, but were cheered by millions of people nonetheless. However, all of these would fall under discussing politics or religion, neither of which is okay.

You may not have noticed, but noone in the real world who's in their right mind ever claims they're evil. Everyone always claims the moral high ground for themselves, and honestly feel they have it, too. But of course, two conflicting ideologies can't both be morally right, can they now? Unless of course, oh, I don't know, morality was subjective maybe?

"If you're going through hell, keep going."
Winston Churchill

I have to disagree. There's nothing sane about Peter Noone. Have you ever listened to "Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter"? Stop the insanity!