The Town of Odyssey

ToOers, that grand day of friendly fighting is approaching once again!

Over the span of a few hours on the seventh of March 2012, bookworm and The Kings Daughter happened to appear on opposing sides of various discussions across a few different threads. Impressed by this concentration of debate, AE declared it the institution of a ToO holiday and it has been celebrated ever since with great ceremony.

Tuesday, March 7th, will be the fifth observance of Bookworm And Kings Daughter Beat Down Fight Day or BAKDBDFD (pronounced ‘backed-buh-duh-fuh-duh’)!

If you were around this time last year you may realize that we never observed this holiday in 2016. It wasn't because I forgot about it, in fact it was constantly in the back of my mind, but unfortunately the timing of various circumstances just never worked out to arrange something. The week of the holiday I was very busy and unable to host anything so I was going to do it later in the month, but then the Spring Social started up and I didn't want to distract from that roleplay event by holding another one so I waited until that concluded, but then as I was preparing to finally organize something a family emergency came up that I had to deal with for several months. By the time I could turn focus back on the ToO I realized we were closer to the 2017 day coming up than we were to the 2016 one that was missed, and while it bothered me greatly to skip a year I didn't want to hastily throw together an event simply to hold something for the sake of making sure something happened, so I turned my attention to planning this year's celebration.

To make up for the missed year, this year's event will run for longer than the usual one day! Mark your calendars and be sure to attend! Details will follow soon!


Previous BAKDBDFDs: 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015

Hurrah! I missed this last year.

Here are the details for the main event of this year's celebration!

I'm going back to the holiday's roots and organizing a multi-topic debate with subjects chosen by you the public and the side I argue chosen at random! Submit a topic (or more) that you want me to debate through PM from now until midnight.* I'll post the first one tomorrow morning and we'll kick things off!
For each topic I will flip a coin to decide which side of the debate I will take, and anyone who wants to jump in on the other side can engage. Once a debate is started anyone else is welcome to join in on either side of the issue to present their own points to backup the primary debaters. When one topic seems to have run its course we'll change to the next one and the event will run for as long as it takes to get to all of the prompts that were submitted!

PM a topic now, then come back tomorrow to watch and/or participate!

* Submission of a debate subject does not guarantee its inclusion in the debate. The submissions will be screened and final approval will be at my discretion.

Topics have been submitted.

I am very intrigued as to how this will play out!

*ducks behind a couch just in case things turn out less friendly than advertised*

Welcome everyone, to the celebration of the sixth Bookworm And Kings Daughter Beat-Down Fight Day!

As always the wonderful venue of Unnamed Arena will house our festivities. Please get your tickets punched and find a seat! The layout for this year is shown below:



As announced, this year's main event is an open debate on subjects submitted by the community. The first topic will be posted shortly and the debating will begin in the following manner.

I am positioned at mike A facing the bleachers. I will announce the topic and the side I am arguing, decided by flipping a coin. (Heads I argue for the subject, tails against.) The first person who wishes to take up the opposite position I have will take mike B facing me and state their opening argument. I will then engage and the debate will unfold as it will. Additional debaters are free to enter on either side of the arguments at any time. Participants joining my side of the issue will assemble on the left set of microphone stands and participants joining the other side will assemble on the right set so that the primary proponent of each side of the debate has their supporters on their respective right hand side.

We will debate the current subject until one of the sides runs out of arguments, one of the sides concedes, or another sign that the subject has run its course is observed (I will be the ultimate decider of this), at which time a new subject will be announced and the process will repeat as before. There is not a set time period for this event, we'll just see how it goes.

Fight! Fight! Fight!

The first debate: Are the Jedi actually the good guys?

I will be arguing no. Whoever wants to argue yes, begin!
Then anyone who wants to jump in on either side can.

I am arguing yes, they are indeed the "good guys". I mean, its either a team of devoted peacemakers (Jedi) or a bunch of dudes going around killing people and trying to take over the universe (the Dark Side)

'Peace' according to their views. In reality they're just trying to force (no pun intended) everyone to conform to their thinking. But as the Sith code says "Peace is a lie, there is only passion." Peace as a universal state is subjective, what people should be doing is thinking about their own being and the rest will follow. The Sith promote focus on the goals of the individual, the narrow views of the Jedi restrict free thought.

Although I admit the Jedi are slightly narrow minded and a bit arrogant, I also would like to point out that they genuinely care about people; although "loving" is forbidden, they are still, as you put it, the good guys in their actions. Here are some examples:
Obi-wan saved Jar Jar from becoming a puddle of goo
He also saw that Anakin had potential
Luke knew his father was not completely evil. In fact, several Jedi have believed there was "still some good in" several evil people
There are also several other instances where this type of actions occurs; however, it has been a couple months since I watched a star wars movie (other than Rogue One, which doesn't feature any Jedi), so I cannot remember any others at the moment.



*am i doing this right?

Certainly there have been Jedi who have shown care for other individuals, but their philosophy falsely simplifies what promotes a person's best interest and therefore is not caring for people as a whole. The Sith view seeks to strengthen and empower each individual, the result of which would be empowering all. They have the big picture view.

As explained in the analysis of Yuthura Ban, the Jedi mean 'peace' to be a lack of conflict in life. But conflict is the source of progress, it is what urges advancement. The Jedi want to hold the galaxy in a state of stagnation with no diversity of thought or ambition.



*Absolutely! There's no wrong way today!

The problem with the "big picture view" is that they don't care about the individuals. Indeed, when their Admirals or other people who served them (aka puppets) would make one small mistake, or something would happen that wasn't even that person's fault, they would punish them by choking them, giving them a slow, painful death while others were forced to watch with a straight face, full of fear that they would be next. Wow, that was a long sentence. In the end, the Sith Lords don't care about their Lieutenants or Admirals. They don't even see the people as people. They see someone they can force to do whatever they want them to do, using fear as their tool. They only care about getting what they want and doing whatever it takes to get it. For example, they blew up whole planets just to scare people and test out their new "toy". And all for what? World domination? Do they truly think people would want them to rule over them? And if everyone else just refused to follow the Empire, the Sith would simply use fear to get whatever they wanted. No one would be happy, and the galaxy would be one big miserable place. And that is why Sith are truly evil.

I understand your point to be that they were doing bad things in the name of the beliefs, but that is only the actions of a specific person based on their interpretation of the Sith tenets. I'm arguing the philosophy itself. People can use an ideology to justify bad acts, that doesn't always mean the ideology is bad.

The claim that there isn't care for the individual is completely false, the focus of the Sith ideology is exclusively on the individual. That is their primary opposition to the Jedi philosophy of trying to achieve a nebulous harmony among society in general. You're thinking about it as care for individuals (others), but what it's about is care of the individual (self). The Sith focus specifically on achieving the utmost potential in each individual, as an individual. And if everyone did that then the result would be a society of realized individuals, and thereby a realized society in total.

The Jedi viewed themselves as peacekeepers. But in truth The Clone Wars was their war. Yes they were being manipulated by Sidious but they still made all the decisions that lead to and continued a war that destroyed countless planets. Not only that they fought that war with an army of slaves. Slaves they chipped to make them more obedient. Dooku fought with robots. The Jedi fought with people. Who's the good guy there?

Okay firstly: where's my backup!?
Secondly: Can I please state the obvious? Thank you. Here goes.
1. They are on the DARK SIDE.
2. The Sith mindlessly kill innocent people and actually ENJOY it. I mean in the real world they would be considered worse than Luis Garavito, who murdered at least 138 people (Google him). The Sith destroyed whole PLANETS. That's about 21 billion innocent citizens, assuming there are approximately seven billion people on each planet (as is the case on Earth) and three planets are destroyed. This is called MASS MURDER.
3. That's all i can think of... I'm running out of arguments
Thirdly: I haven't seen the Clone Wars and don't consider them to be part of our debate, but that is a good point
Fourthly: uh... never mind

No one is denying that some Sith murder, but again I argue that the Sith philosophy itself does not instruct this, that is only their interpretation of how to follow it.

Okay, I am not changing my opinion, merely withdrawing from the debate. For although this is very fun, I think it should be someone else's turn. Also, if i was arguing in favor of the Dark side, it would be easier. BUT I still believe the Jedi are good. *Drops mic*


Don't worry, the mic was a cheap plastic one so don't sue me for breaking your microphone

-- 07 Mar 2017 11:15 am --

This was an excellent start to the celebration!

I'll leave this topic active for a while longer in case anyone else wants to jump in since not many people have seen that we're underway yet.

-- 07 Mar 2017 05:27 pm --

The second debate: Should humanity be attempting to colonize other planets as quickly as possible?

I will be arguing yes. Whoever wants to argue no, begin!
Then anyone who wants to jump in on either side can.

I say no, because I don't believe other planets exist. Space itself is a complete lie made up by evilutionists to disprove God. The Scripture tells us heaven is above our sky, so there is no reason to think space exists. This is just like that dumb view of tectonic plates and earthquakes, when we all know its Hitler trying to get up to the surface.