I'm going to take this way too seriously for a minute, because it's fun.
HoodieDM wrote: ↑Thu Apr 15, 2021 10:17 am
AllenGould wrote: ↑Wed Apr 14, 2021 5:12 pm
HoodieDM wrote: ↑Wed Apr 14, 2021 4:41 pm
but if Gracie is pregnant, then theyd of had to "mate"
But sex != romance.
According to the rulebook it does though. James even linked it.
*or, per the Glossary list of synonyms, that they are "husband", "wife", "mate", "married", "wedded", "imzadi", "beloved", "bride", "mistress", "widow", "divorced," and/or "boinkbuds" to one another. ”
And according to the definition of "mate"
each of a pair of birds or other animals.
True, but "mate" has several other definitions. Where relevant to this rule, the game has always used "mate" in the sense of Oxford English Dictionary definition #6a:
A partner in marriage; a husband or wife. Later usually: a person regarded as a suitable marital partner. Also (now chiefly North American): a lover.
This fits the pattern with all the various K'Ehleyrs, Grilka, and Seska -- the current "mates" in the game.
We may just be in uncharted waters. In Star Trek, sex equals feelings equals love
mostly equals commitment. That's good, IMO! It warms my heart that Star Trek is so wholesome. There are rapes in Star Trek, but they are either unsuccessful and off-screen. There are one-night stands in Star Trek (grumble), but they usually seem to come with some kind of feelings + commitment.
Off the top of my head, I'm not sure we've ever seen a situation on Star Trek where two named, on-screen characters explicitly had sex but weren't romantically involved in some way. The closet I can think of right away is Captain Kirk and Drusilla in "Bread and Circuses," which is only implied, and Etana Jol's exploitative one-night stand with Will Riker -- which, interestingly, the game does
not consider a romantic partnership. Otherwise, there's usually some romantic commitment, even if it's a drug-induced one ("Elaan of Troyius", "Bound") or a super-dark one based on evil power dynamics and manipulation ("Wrongs Darker Than Death Or Night").
So it's not clear that a pair of "boinkbuds," with no further romantic link or commitment, would really qualify as a romantic partnership in game terms, but it's not clear that such a pairing exists in Trek, so we'll probably never have to find out.
My use of the word was, of course, a joke, mostly to see who was actually going to read my whole long list of synonyms. My wife advised me to just put "boinkbuds" into the Glossary to find out who actually reads the Glossary, but I said I could only do that if the Rules Committee agreed it was a good idea, and approval would take several weeks. My wife then called me lame.
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