A fandom puzzle...complaint....wish?

[smurasaki]

First off, I'm a heretic.  That is to say, I'm a fan of both Star Wars and Star Trek, and have been since I discovered science fiction space adventure (and shortly there after fandom, when I went to my first con).

But...

Star Trek fans seem to be more about the fun.  Yes, yes, there are the serious ones and all, but I noticed right away - on buying

Comments

[baeraad]

Hmm. It's odd, to be sure. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Star Wars is set in what is fundamentally a random and meaningless universe, where clever plans tend to fail miserably and everyone is ultimately at the mercy of blind chance and maybe of some hotshot Jedi's sense of morals and intuition? Whereas Star Trek is set in a universe where important things are possible to achieve through intellect?

It's not quite the same as pessimistic/optimistic, because things tend to end well in Star Wars just by sheer happenstance... but if you are afraid that the universe wants to screw you over, then Star Trek is the series where you may have a chance of fighting back? ;) I don't know.

[smurasaki]

Do plans really fail at a greater rate in Star Wars? ... Wait, how often does anyone plan anything in Star Wars? So, I'll grant that people's cleverness in Star Trek leads far more often to actual plans and less to winging it. But...and this could just be me...the heroes of Star Trek are a lot smarter than the heroes of Star Wars. If you adjust for relative intellects, both series involve success by cleverness

[baeraad]

It's always seemed to me that nothing ever goes according to plan in Star Wars, yeah... There is always some engine malfunction just when you need to jump to light speed, you're always too late to save your buddy from being frozen in carbonite, the battle droids always kick the Gungans' ass and the only reason the day is saved is because some kid accidentally got into a ship and accidentally got launched at the Federation mothership and accidentally ended up where he could blow up their core... Heck, even prophesies are iffy. Yoda might warble about how Luke has to stay with him even though that means that his friends will all die, because if he goes something worse will happen - but not only does something worse not happen when he does go, but it also seems very much like they would have survived even if he hadn't gone

[smurasaki]

Hmm, I think there's some miscommunication. I don't think Star Wars is more like reality than Star Trek. Far from it. I do think that, in reality, there is a certain degree of, well, sometimes crap happens for no reason. (I mean, there are reasons, always, but not in any kind of cosmic making sense sense. Planes don't just burst into flames and fall out of the sky, but they sure do if some lazy jerk loaded operational oxygen generators into the cargo hold because they couldn't be arsed to do their job right. From the point of view of anyone on the flight, it hardly matters, it's just random shitty luck that they were on that flight.)

Fate is somewhat more of a dick in the Star Wars universe. (And may indeed be running everything if one considers the prequels. I don't remember them well enough to run through them in my head, which may be part of why we have different feelings about how things work in Star Wars. I've jettisoned some of the evidence due to not caring enough to see those movies more than the once