quarrel | Star Wars Gay-laxies

Several people I know have gotten into the MMORPG Star Wars Galaxies. I myself haven't because the monthly fee can't be bundled into Sony's other subscription games, but a friend recently gave me a week-long "buddy code" to try it out for free.

Let me say up front that Sony has done a wonderfully innovative job adding social elements seamlessly to a genre of game that traditionally has been all about tactical combat and mechanically turning numbers into bigger numbers. However, after playing the game for a bit, I can only conclude that their plans are larger than they first appear. They aren't merely trying to dovetail online role-players and number-crunchers into the same game. Like Michael Eisner's Disney, Sony's ultimate goal is nothing less than the full integration of alternative lifestyles into the population at large.

As part of my one-week trial, I decided to sample the Entertainer class. Simply looking over the class's abilities should have given me my first warning. The four core abilities of an Entertainer are dancing, playing a musical instrument, healing mental fatigue, and...hair styling. Seriously. An entire one-fourth of the class's development focuses exclusively on, and can only be developed by, changing the appearance of other characters' hair.

I ignored this and made one anyway. I rolled myself up a male Bothan, a short, anthropomorphic race that looks like a cat, a dog, and a camel all blended together. My first surprise came upon initially appearing in the world. During character creation, I was given control of various aspects of my character's physique, but my character was wearing very loose-fitting generic clothing at that stage and most of the adjustments I made to weight and muscle mass had no visible effect. The decision to be an Entertainer was made later, and replaced those garments with white slacks and a skin-tight shortsleeve muscle shirt that put his heretofore unnoticable tight abs, broad shoulders, and the visible sheen of his fur on prominent display. I had created a studmuffin.

But enough drooling! There was money to be made. Improving one's skills in SWG requires credits, and credits are earned at the early stages (mostly) by completing missions. In the game are computer terminals specializing in entertainer jobs, so I found the nearest one and started browsing. Dance mission...dance mission...dance...dance... Refresh. Dance, dance, dance... Refresh...

Try as I might, the terminal refused to list musician jobs, which was annoying since I wanted to be a musician and dance experience can't be applied to that. But I had the skill for it, and money is money, and, hey, I'm just trying things out, right? Consoling myself to the fact that the game forces beginning entertainers to dance for money, I took the job, went to the required address, and started shaking my groove thang. And stared. I stared even harder as various dance moves had my character squatting low, grinding his hips, and slapping his ass. Thirty seconds later, the first coherent thought to wander back into my mind was, "Could he possibly look more gay?"

At that point, I took his shirt off and had my answer. Yes. Yes, he could.