• dgmib@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Owen didn’t pay for C3PO twice.

    Anakin built 3PO for his mom Shmi, who was a slave to Watto. Cliegg (not Owen) bought Shmi out of slavery. C3PO was already Shmi’s.

    • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Ok, but Owen grew up with C3PO. Threepio was his mother’s protocol droid, and he was around long enough to meet Beru as well.

      Maybe he didn’t recognize the new plating, but he should have recognized the name. He would have talked to it almost every day for his entire life.

      • AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Do you specifically remember your old smartphone model LG KU2100? Could you identify in a stack of other smartphones? You used to use it every single day.

        Droids in Star Wars are appliances. Nothing memorable.

        • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          If I had a talking appliance, with a unique name and a personality, I’d probably remember it. If someone tried to sell you an old game console, and it had your gamertag saved on it, you’d probably recognize it. Or maybe you named your first car, and 20 years later someone tried to sell you the same model and mentioned it was called Cecilia, you’d be like “I used to have a Honda Civic named Cecilia! What a coincidence!”

          • AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            Again, you’re making droids a bigger deal than they are in Star Wars. To us they’re characters. To them they’re toasters.

            • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
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              1 year ago

              You’re being down voted, but you’re absolutely right. More characters are shown straight up ignoring the droids except when they need their function than talking to them like people. Even Anakin himself doesn’t seem to regard 3P0 as a friend, or even as valuable, once he grows up a bit.

              • tias
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                1 year ago

                That’s not how humans work though. Just look at how people get worked up over ChatGPT conversations or romantic relationships with Replika. So at best, the Star Wars characters are not credible.

            • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              I’m really not. I’m using appliances in my examples. If your toaster had a name and a personality and you had to ask it to make you toast every day, you’d probably recognize it if it showed up 30 years later, even if it was now gold instead of gray.

              • Sarsoar@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                1 year ago

                That name and personality is like the name and personality of siri or google assistant. I wouldn’t be able to differentiate my old note 10 in a stack of SM-N970U’s even if the assistant on it remmebers my preferences on news feed and autocorrect words and whatever. Even the wallpaper may be a default and stuff like that.

      • marcos@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Tatooine is clearly an acient-Rome like place where slaves own property, so only Anakin would have brought C3PO, as parts.

        And those 4 letter names couldn’t be very unique…

        • Nouveau_Burnswick@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          And those 4 letter names couldn’t be very unique…

          36^4 for four alphanumeric (a-z plus 0-4) characters is 1,679,616 combinations.

          • HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            How many billion people can live on a planet and how many billion planets are there in a galaxy? How many of them have how many droid slaves? Divide that by 1.7 million and you’ve got it.

              • marcos@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                If 20 years from now you meet somebody named Sandra with a completely different face, coming from a completely different place, would you guess it’s her after a plastic surgery?

                • Nouveau_Burnswick@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  If they said “hey, it’s me, Sanda” then probably.

                  Obviously C3P0 should have done more to identify himself to Owen as well.

                  This is all before we consider that droids can face memory wipes.

          • Draedark@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I am not sure each droid has a unique name. Are the designations basically not a model number? I.e. there are many c-3po and r2-d2 running around.

            • Nouveau_Burnswick@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Depends on the droid. C-3PO is a 3PO class droid. R2-D2 is an R2 class droid. So there’s only 36 designations for 3POs and 1,268 for R2s.

              BUT, designations don’t always have to follow the standard scheme. For example HELIOS-3E is IG-86 class droid. And we’ve got Chopper (C1-10P) a C1 class. We’ve also got R0-GR, a B1 series; though my head canon is that all B1s are jammed Roger, so when they say “Roger Roger” it’s actually “Roger, Roger”.

              • Draedark@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                So yes. Yes is what I am reading. The designations are more like generic “make/model” numbers and not unique “serial” numbers or names. Thanks for the reply!

                • Nouveau_Burnswick@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  No, the designations are unique names.

                  Droids being given shitty names that are often just their make/model mostly has to do with how droids are treated in the Star Wars universe.

                  Sentient organics are enslaved in SW; droids gather even less respect, particularly from humans.

                  • Draedark@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    If C-3PO is a 3PO series protocol droid, I would find it hard to believe that only 26 (36)? were ever made and each one had a unique name. R2 is an R2 series astromech droid. I would plead a similar case there as well. Especially given the probable number of astromechs built/needed.

      • dgmib@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        We don’t know what Owen’s relationship with Shmi was. Maybe he left home before Cliegg remarried, and was only there when we see him in episode 2 because he came when his dad contacted him in a panic after discovering Tuscan raiders had taken step-mom captive.

      • Ddhuud@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        In episode 3, when Senator Organa sent the droids to have their memories erased, they also used the force to make everyone (including Vader) forget about them.

    • Björn Tantau@swg-empire.de
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      1 year ago

      Well, technically Cliegg bought 3PO when he bought Shmi. So in a roundabout way the funds of Owen’s family went twice to acquiring 3PO.

      Three times if you factor in the costs of however Anakin acquired the parts.

      And then Owen’s moody half-brother and his rich girlfriend just stole the droid.

      • dgmib@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I disagree with your interpretation that Cliegg “technically” bought 3PO.

        We don’t know the legal rights of slaves in that universe, but presuming this is like slaves in ancient Roman times and they can own property, then 3PO was Shmi’s from the beginning. Buying a slave wouldn’t automatically give you possession of the slave’s property, therefore it was always Shmi’s droid and Cliegg never owned it.

        It’s possible that in this universe, slaves can’t own property and Cliegg bought 3PO from Watto in addition to Shmi. But I think it unlikely that Anakin would have built 3PO “to help his mom” if Watto automatically owned it. If Watto owned 3PO he would’ve sold it long before Cliegg bought Shmi.

        We also don’t know that Anakin stole 3PO. If it belonged to his mom, he could have simply inherited it when she died.

        One could also make the argument that 3PO was always Anakin’s property, and he just left it behind when he left Tattooine.