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Roablin

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Year 14

About Roablin

  • Birthday 02/03/1996

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    Male
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    A chessboard
  • Interests
    Lord of the Rings
    Minecraft
    MNOLG
    Bookses
    Eggses

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    http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=371903
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    tahtorakroar

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  1. I'm glad you feel so strongly about this, and again, I'm sorry that I offended you. I'm also glad that there aren't any hard feelings between us as people. However, I still feel like what I said is being pulled out of context. I never said or implied that Obama's election changed my worldview. I would have been totally happy to have a black president at any point in history before now. All I stated was my tendency to create stories within the universe we live in. It is a preference for a type of story, not a type of reality. Am I a ###### writer? Totally, I only just started after all. I need to improve in just about every way. But if I am to follow your reasoning, every story with a white president before 2008 is bigoted. Every story that did not contain progressive themes in the areas of gender or sexuality is bigoted. My whole point coming into this discussion was that old lit can be good too. TV shows I don't have an opinion on, I don't watch many of them. But you cannot look at LotR, Les Miserables, The Book Thief, or at any other of a great number of books that reveal beauty within a broken reality, and tell me that their existence harms society. Also, I'm totally curious. Why do you have variations of your name crossed out twice at the end of your entry and "St. Francis" at the end?
  2. Oh please. We were having a polite discussion until now. But perhaps I made myself unclear. In reality I hold no preference as to race, gender, etc. in the presidency. And actually, if I was to make a story in the future, I would probably make a woman president just to spice things up. But if I was to write a fictional story set in our current time (and I added the qualifier, before our current president), then I would have had a white male president. This is NOT because I prefer white males in the presidency, but because fiction that I read and write tends to mirror reality in all things but specific things with a purpose. It's basically a desire to suspend the reader's disbelief about even the smallest details (and I do believe that race or gender is a very small detail in the president considering that it should impact none of his decisions or actions). I did not intend to offend anyone in any way and I will give you the benefit of doubt since I probably did not make myself clear. I must have missed something. What exactly is the old system that you speak of and how is it ineffective in debate? The section of my argument that you quoted speaks of Tolkien's system of writing a universe from scratch or my system of only changing a few things and preserving logical consistency. I haven't seen anyone argue against this, and I don't think any argument against it could hold water because writing is a free pursuit and the works I have spoken of are absolutely beautiful in terms of conveying the truth of the human experience and in terms of providing an entertaining story. Also, I'd like to thank Fisher and everyone else who posted for the interesting discussion.
  3. I just did a bit of research on the wage difference between males and females in the acting industry. Until today, I wasn't aware that female actors made so much less than males. I consider myself more informed now, and I would completely agree that that should stop... except that they are paid ridiculously high amounts anyways. The articles I found only described actors and actresses that earn tens of millions. I would be inclined to reduce the wages of male actors to lessen the wage gap, but I don't really want to ask that someone be payed less than they are just to even a score. Does anyone know if there is a significant wage gap between lesser known actors and actresses? If it exists among people who actually struggle to make a living, than reducing that would be a cause I could get behind, especially because I know several girls who are going into acting. I totally agree with you there. I just think it's important that we don't treat traditional roles like they are a bad thing, even though they result in fewer women taking a limelight in the media. @Humva You make some interesting points. But the reverse of your argument holds true by the same logic, and I think your metaphor with the president clarifies this. If a character is a good character regardless of gender, than it doesn't matter at all what the ratio is. Most great books that I read follow this logic, which is why I am a bit puzzled by efforts to provoke change where it is not necessary. For example, before our current president, I would have made any president in a fictional story a white male unless I had a specific reason not to. If making the president a black women would add something tangible to the narrative, be it amusement, intrigue, drama or whatever, then of course I would give him those attributes. Otherwise, my natural preference is to make him standard in ways that audiences would expect. You can consider this a difference in tastes, but I usually build stories from the ground up, changing only one or two things in reality to make it my own universe but then discovering where the story naturally flows from there. And because I believe that women are just as important as men, I don't object to putting genders where they would logically find themselves. I just don't find a universe without women in the direct limelight to be a universe without important women. Perhaps this is because I myself do not wish to be in the limelight of our universe. I get what you are saying about total escapism, but that is just a difference in tastes, with me preferring the the meticulously calculated fantasy of Tolkien. I am not against changing more, I am just puzzled by the need for it.
  4. I think part of the reason that society has less women in commercial jobs than men (and why by extension, the media depicts fewer of them) is because in traditional families, the woman will raise the children while the father earns the bread. This seems obvious to me, but some of you seem to dislike this reality. What is so wrong with this? Why should our society place a greater importance and emphasis on working in the field than on raising the next generation? I hope no one minds more references to Tolkien, but I feel that he really illustrates my points. The men are the warriors in LotR, but does that lower the importance of women? I think not, because they are the ones that raise the next generation. The men are essentially sacrificing themselves for a greater cause: the continuation of their race. And the women are an integral part of that cause. And of course, we see that women can excel in positions that men traditionally fill, such as when Eowyn kills the Witch King. However, I think it is clear that Eowyn is not more important than any other woman just because she can fight. Because she had no children, she was completely free in choosing her path, but the fact that she chose a nontraditional role does not make her "better" than the other women who stayed behind, it just means that she will be mentioned in history books. And that is the way of life.
  5. Of course it isn't wrong. I was just clearing up the misconception that some people were against the idea of having a 1:1 ratio in the next Lego movie, when that isn't the case and the discussion had actually branched out further than that. The key question for the discussion you read is whether the need to have a 1:1 ratio pertains to all modern stories. I would submit that it isn't necessary, because I have personally enjoyed many stories with higher male ratios and many with higher female ratios. I believe that writing is a creative medium and I would like writing to remain free. However, there are some very interesting and impassioned arguments for the other side, and you should go and read those as well. And yeah, the 5:1 ratio was undeniably excessive, mostly because it harmed the creative efforts of the community to make stories within the universe.
  6. My only disagreement is with the "one destiny" thing. I know it wouldn't really work for HF, but it the linear flow of the Bionicle story is something I very much enjoyed, and I don't think I would have stuck around until the end without it. In addition, once the story opened up, I think there was plenty of room for fans to make their own story lines and characters. The gender issue was still a limitation, but most people, like me, just ignored it or made up new elements.
  7. Actually, I don't think anyone is saying that it isn't fine and dandy to include more girls in the next Lego movie. What you have been reading is an emergent discussion about whether it is right and necessary to have a 1:1 female:male ratio in all modern stories regardless of author, genre, plot etc. I should probably shut up and see the first Lego movie, since I am sure it will be awesome.
  8. When it comes to my amateur stories, I find myself writing more males than females into the narrative simply because it reflects the environment in which I live. I have four brothers and the majority of my cousins are boys. Perhaps most importantly, I am myself male, so it only makes sense for me to draw on my human experience when developing main characters. I realize that this probably only speaks poorly to my ability as an author, but conforming to "idealistic" gender ratios is something I haven't much considered, and not something I believe would help my stories. When I consider this topic I always think of the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, especially The Lord of the Rings. Although it is not a historically representative text like the Vietnam war stories or what have you, the context of the story demands a male cast that outweighs the female cast. It is still a work of incredible beauty and reveals great truths about the human experience, but the idea that "men and women need to be the same in every single way" isn't present, and I don't believe it is worse for that.
  9. Wow, that is a pretty fantastic offer. I hope things will look up for you in the future.
  10. Roablin

    Physics Jokes!

    Why do chemists call helium, curium, and barium the medical elements? If you can't helium or curium, you barium!
  11. I finished Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card, part of the Ender's Game Series. I have to say that it's my favorite of the books I've read of it so far. I'm also on the last chapter of Xenocide, which is standard Orson Scott Card material. By standard, I mean intriguing and epic, of course. Never before has a sci-fi book led me to contemplate science, philosophy, and religion in such a manner.
  12. I felt much the same way about the movie, I think they really hit most of it spot on, but it definitely had trouble with pacing. I really didn't mind, because I had a foreknowledge of everything that filled the gaps. For me it was just good to experience scenes from the book visually. It is unfortunate that they had to skip all of the discoveries and revelations that the protagonists uncover in the book. Visually, the movie was fantastic, and I loved the scenes of the orbiting space station and of the shuttle launches. My one real qualm with the movie is that I feel great moral crisis is presented poorly. I felt that the film overdid the portrayal of the human race as monstrous by the end of the film. In the book, it was a reasonable course of action that people took to defeat the perceived foe, and was monstrous only after they gained more knowledge. In the film just about every person other than Valentine made it their responsibility to beat up Ender, and then beat up the buggers. Once again this was probably unavoidable with the pacing, but the book definitely did illustrate the theme of people having both flaws and virtues better. Xaenger, what do you mean when you say that they couldn't do anything new with the material? Regardless of the fact that you didn't like the book, isn't it good for a book to film adaptation to remain true to the source material or do you think something needed to be changed? (I assume that statement had nothing to do with the politics but with creative license... if it was political, then ignore my question)
  13. If they added the talking wallet to the troll scene it would have been Christmas. I am glad to hear they introduced the Goblin Town song. I'm disappointed though that they left out a very important part that I think would have only been natural for the extended edition; talking eagles.
  14. That's my only experience with wine as well. Except that at my church I know it's real red wine, and because of it I'm looking forward to having a larger taste or red wine when I come of age.
  15. Have you only played one bot game so far? You gotta get some more experience asap. Anyways Roablin is my name on LoL so I am sending you a request.
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