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There has been so much drama in the blogs lately, and I'm not going to get involved in it, I just want to throw this out there because I've seen a certain individual or two forget the latter, and pretty much everyone involved forget the former.

i like how the non-bigotted old-fashioned example is literally old fashion

Yo, Reznas. - Claiming women aren't fit for the battlefield is an example of a bigoted old-fashioned standpoint. (One you defended in the thread it occurred in). I have no idea where you're going with "But some are good!" when the specific instance where this occurred on site was not that case in the least, and this defense is used like... all the time before someone says something that is sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic and so forth. - Those viewpoints are actually harmful because they lead into stereotypes, societal expectations and reinforce meaningless gender roles that only serve to blockade individuals from what they may want to pursue or do. - I don't even know why you're claiming your freedom of speech is being curbed, when technically none of us have that on BZPower because BZPower is not a public forum owned by the government and is a private forum owned by individuals. Or, do you just not have valid responses to why old fashioned values are by and large bigoted and harmful in some manner, as seen on this very website?

There is a very big difference between "old-fashioned" and "outdated and bigoted", and for some reason people who are the latter like to claim they are the former. I'm here to point out the difference between the two that I thought was very clear, but for some reason people like to muddy. I'm going to give you some examples of worldviews, and then explain whether it's old-fashioned, or just straight-up bigoted. Let's start easy. People of different races are fundamentally different in ways that makes one or the other superior. Got an answer? Well, I hope it was "that's racist" because that is exactly correct. If you hold the above opinion, you are not old-fashioned, just racist. Let's try another one. I prefer the way people dressed in the '20s. That one's a bit trickier, but I believe that's simply old-fashioned. Preferring a dated method of dress doesn't perpetuate harmful myths. It's just a taste in fashion. Women are not fit for combat. This is the one I wanted to get to, because I have seen someone on this very site say it and defend it as being old-fashioned, and I am here to tell you it's not. It's just sexist. There are many, many women who serve in the military or who can defend themselves or wield a weapon or do any of the things men do in combat situations. Women are not more delicate, more in need of protection, or weaker than men. That is a stereotype perpetuated by society to make men seem superior to women. I'd love to go on, but this entry was really just to hit that last point, and to push anyone who defends their beliefs as simply being old-fashioned to look at what they believe, and ask themselves, "Is this really just old fashioned, or is this belief actively hurtful to other people?" I'm leaving this entry open in hopes there will be some good discussion. Be cool, y'all.

You know I've always tried to be an honest person. And while I'm certainly not perfect at it I'd like to think I've done an okay job. Except with one person, myself. I've denied the truth about myself, subconsciously or otherwise. Thinking back I realise I've been doing this for years, probably since 9th grade. I'd tell myself day by day that was completely comfortable with who I was, what I believed, and that I didn't care what others thought of me. That I always acted like me even if it got me weird looks or if I got called a 'freak' or a 'goofball' or whatever the ###### they came up with. I could roll with the punches, laugh at almost everything said about me, and tell everyone I didn't care what people thought of me. That I wasn't going to conform to make other people around me happy. Well, as a certain Tyler so elegantly put it once, I'm a moron. I cared what people thought of me, I still care what people think of me. I can tell myself all day long that I don't but that's just not true. I do. I want to be liked and loved just like any other human being. What people say about me does affect how I act, what I say, and probably even what I think. Sure, I've always kept up the facade that I couldn't care less what people would say, and maybe sometimes I really didn't, but the truth of the matter that every insult, compliment, or criticism affects me in some way or another. I may laugh it off or just act indifferent but inside it still hurts. I love getting attention, especially the center of it and I'd probably say any stupid thing to get it. I've always been the cheerful, generally optimistic, carefree person that I've expected myself to be. That's okay, it's part of who I am, it's not something I can just change, or would ever want to. I've done a pretty good job of maintaining that over the years, but on the inside I feel things that I rarely, if ever speak of, even to myself. I hate yelling, no I'm not talking about your everyday yell of alarm or trying to get someone's attention. I'm talking about that deep, loud, terrifying blood curdling scream that only the grouchiest, meanest of people can summon from their throats. Well, hello to my late grandfather, who I lived with till I was about 13. Now I loved my grandfather, but the man had anger issues like no one I've ever met since. And naturally who was the person who was on the receiving end of this howling? Well if he and my dad weren't busy screaming at each other it was me. I probably don't need to say it sucked. Kind of makes you feel like fleeing in terror and hiding where no one can find you. I don't even know why I'm talking about this, maybe I just need too. I tend to act like I'm not afraid of anything, truth is I feel absolutely terrified on some level. It might not come out every day, or even every week, but it's there somewhere. I'm afraid that people won't like me, hate me, think the things I enjoy are stupid, and I'm pretty sure I could cry if the right person decided to start screaming at me. It used to happen all the time. For a guy who's pretty much declared war against conformity, I'm pretty guilty of it. I've conformed for friends, strangers, my parents, pretty much everyone. So to really start changing all that I'm just going to flat out admit something. I'm genderfluid. Since around my early teens I've been obsessed with the idea of being a woman, I don't think a single day has gone by since then that I haven't at least thought about it once. For a long time I've kept that mostly to myself, sometimes I've wondered if something's wrong with me, or if I need help. I don't even want to think about how my parents would react if they knew how I felt. Well, I'm pretty much sick and tired of hiding it. So I've decided to just outright admit it. I'm genderfluid, might even be a transsexual I don't know. All I know is I've needed to admit it for long time. It's taken me years to get the guts to do this, and you guys were a large part of it, especially my peeps on Skype. <3 So there, my darkest secret is out, yay. God...I'm actually posting this.

THIS HORSE IS GETTIN SMALLER SMALL HORSE now the horse is very small and you need to get really close to hear it neigh too far away and you might squish it DONT SQUISH THE IMMEASURABLY TINY HORSE

... Gravity rats?! Where?! AAAAAAAAAAAAAA (Congrats on the stone btw. I prefer amethyst myself, but to each their own)

I feel I should point out that what was actually said was basically "don't talk like you have the moral high ground" which is not necessarily the same as "don't talk like you do". Also I'm having trouble thinking of pretty much any "old-fashioned" values that are actually good. Most of them stem from some type of sexism, racism, oppression of some group or whatever. Really style is the only one because it's nothing to do with moral issues.

Bigots are old-fashioned people, but not all old-fashioned people are bigots.

TOAVAKAMAJAI - THE PROPHECY I'akua, taka-kui rayaku. Amaja lhikai-na rokha: Toa Mata Nui haya. Ivaha, nga roraga-rhui. Still, all hope was not lost. Legends tell of six mighty heroes, the Toa, Who would arrive to save Mata Nui. Time would reveal that these were not simply myths... -- Toa imahra voya, kouya, Ceura, aku-rhui. Mata Nui'ai Matoroi Ikraaka hau takaya. For the Toa would appear on the shores of the island, it was said. They would arrive with no memory, no knowledge of one another – But they would pledge to defend Mata Nui And its people against the darkness. -- Tahuwaha, Onuwaha, Galuwaha, Lewaha, Puahatau, Kuahapaka, Wahata ika'a-nui, inaka voya. Tahu, Toa of Fire. Onua, Toa of Earth. Gali, Toa of Water. Lewa, Toa of Air. Pohatu, Toa of Stone. And Kopaka, Toa of Ice. Great warriors with great power, drawn from the very elements themselves. -- Ikaita'a, maita-na Ivaita-nga: Makuta zya, Mata Nui haya. Nga ro amaja. Together, they were six heroes with one destiny: To defeat Makuta, And save Mata Nui. This is their story. -- Na suvaha Bionicle. This is the way Of the Bionicle.

Hmm...I'm going to say...you're the book, and he's the fountain.

HATPIIIIIIIIIIIIILE

TRY AND STOP ME

'Grats

If you have to defend yourself by citing freedom of speech, you're using the defense that "TECHNICALLY IT'S NOT ILLEGAL TO TALK" Which is, you know, pretty weak.

And some of those values would be okay - if they still didn't go hand-in-hand with the bad old-fashioned values that are still prevalent today. -Tyler

I'km practically obsessed with bows and swords and I can't sharpen a pocket knife. There is something so wrong with that statement. I've been trying for hours and have made literally no progress. (Except cutting my fingers.) Excuse me while I go sit in shame.

I got that kind of PM once. It was dumb, meant to silence me, and clearly made to avoid any sort of repercussions from the public.

You know, it's quite sad that people have to indirectly call people out in their blogs nowadays. Why can't you just PM the person that you have this issue with instead of publicly calling him out? -Rez

It is really bugging me now that I did not recognize Unikitty's VA's name, because her voice was disturbingly familiar.

I just hit 1,500 posts. Seems kind of minuscule compared to so many other's post counts, but I'm happy to hit such a milestone. -Rez

As far as I can tell. I already registered myself so things better not fall through. :T

Essays, Not Rants! 110: Of Ludonarrative Dissonance I say again and again on this blog that video games are a truly unique medium especially when it comes to storytelling. Thing is, storytelling in games is inherently weird. What you do in the game doesn’t always quite line up with the narrative it’s telling. Clint Hocking dubbed it ludonarrative dissonance, TV Tropes calls it Gameplay and Story Segregation. As narratives in gaming become more complex, this dissonance becomes steadily more pronounced. Much of Among Thieves, the second Uncharted game, has Nathan Drake chasing after war-criminal Zoran Lazarevic (and Shambala too). Drake, the wise cracking treasure hunter, is the clear good guy since, well, Lazarevic is a war criminal. At least that’s what the narrative says. During gameplay the player will wind up shooting quite a few bad guys. And by quite a few I mean easily a couple hundred. See, Among Thieves is an action-adventure game and, like many games in its genre, a frequent obstacle for players comes in the form of enemies. There’s some platforming, some puzzles, and several bouts of shooting. It’s fun, but it does make it weird to have Drake calling Lazarevic out on him being a ruthless killer at the end. To the game’s credit, Lazarevic responds by calling Drake out on it too. But that’s not much, seeing as Drake’s, y’know, mowed through a small army. There’s a lot of writing on this, actually, a quick google of “Uncharted body count” brings up as much. I always justified it for the most part by using the cutscenes as the actual story and the gameplay bits as more gamey bits. When Nate, Lazarevic, and the others prepare to enter Shambala there are only a handful of henchmen in the cutscene, despite the several dozen you encounter in firefights. The gameplay and story are segregated. Is it a perfect solution? No, not at all. Is Among Thieves still a phenomenal game? Yes, but the argument is no less valid. Some people feel that this dissonance is a big problem with stories in games. Way they figure, for a game to really tell a good story, gameplay should be story and vice-versa. An open world game, like Skyrim, attempts to reconcile all this by giving the player a ridiculous amount of freedom in their actions. Though there is a main story, the player is under no rush to complete it and can even ignore if they wish. Skyrim becomes a sort of choose-your-own-adventure story, wherein you tell your own story through your actions. Journey takes the opposite route. In the award-winning independent game, the player can only do a few things (jump/glide, move, and chirp; compared to jump, move, roll, climb, shoot, hit, etc in Among Theives) and follows a very linear path. The story is simple, but incredibly heartfelt. The simplicity of the narrative and gameplay allows for little ludonarrative dissonance. It works, but it just doesn’t have the depth that Among Thieves has. So what’s the solution? There are some who say that video games are simply ill-equipped to tell stories at the present (I believe Johnathan Blow said something to the effect of to truly reconcile gameplay and story we’d need an incredible AI to be able to adapt to player input much the way a Dungeon Master would in tabletop). Steve Gaynor, who did Gone Home, thinks that one of the most unique ways games can tell stories is through the environments. Exploring a virtual space can be a story in its own way. I think ludonarrative dissonance is something that has to be accepted. Among Thieves would be a very different game were it have only a few firefights. They have to be accepted as part of the game. Furthermore, to remove the game’s linearity (something that does come up) would wreck the finely crafted narrative. Games are, and I say this a bunch, a very nascent medium. Designers and players are finding new ways to tell stories and hear them told, be they procedural like Among Thieves and Journey or emergent like in Skyrim and The Sims. Unlike much of film, tv, and books, wherein the strength of the work is primarily found in the story; games are not beholden to it: Pacman and The Last of Us are both great games, one has no plot and the former has one that rivals — and beats — what you see in theaters. Video games allow for works all over the ludonarrative dissonance scale; what’s wonderful is that they can be good no matter where they fall.

Clearly I know both you and your brother all too well!

HATPIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIILE

dem tags have some truth to them

blorp

now you've done it

The outline for Book 2 of Bionicle Mafia Uprising is complete, and is over 5000 words long itself. I am still debating about whether an additional narrative POV would benefit the story; if I decide it will, then the outline is still incomplete. It will be at least twice the size of Book 1, for those who felt that Book 1 was rather short. I shall begin writing Book 2 proper this week; for now, enjoy a brief teaser of what else is coming: Mayhem.

The thing I'm teasing is a real beauty too Oh don't worry, there is much you do not know

Too much wordplay I can't keep up with it all

Interesting design, and good proportions. I typically liked to style my own Matoran drawings after the 2004 Matoran shapes and proportions. 2001 Matoran were cute, and 2003 Matoran did a good job beefing them up while maintaining similar body proportions, but I feel like the designers realized after Mask of Light that more lifelike proportions were more conducive to animation. I wasn't nearly so fond of the increase in height in 2008 — I preferred the slightly dwarfish legs of the 2004–2007 Matoran, since it made the characters look short even without a Toa standing next to them for comparison. The BIONICLE Stars did a good job demonstrating why this was necessary. Unless you compared them to previous sets like the 2006 Piraka or 2009 Glatorian, there was nothing about their size or proportions that looked unusually small. Of course, this worked to the Stars' advantage — not so for the 2008 Matoran. This drawing of mine from 2009 shows the Matoran and Toa designs I sought to emulate in my drawings at the time. I used those proportions for this Macku drawing which I'm still fond of, as well as my Jaller drawing from the BZPower Flash Fire contest. I look forward to seeing what other drawings you might create based on this one. I'm curious, though: what do this Matoran design's feet look like? I hope you keep the two-toed look that characterized all Matoran from 2001–2006, as I was fond of that.

That's actually pretty cool. It would be awesome if you did make something with organs included. Even though it is supposed to be more organic than canon Matoran, it looks to me like a good representation of them anyway (except I'd put more pistons and the like on, sort of similar to mechanical muscle tendons).

Good to know... -Rez

Mostly a desire to be snarky.

I don't have a personal agenda. I'm not trying to advocate for anyone. I just happen to know why you posted this and who you targeted it at. What's wrong with old-fashioned values? A lot of them are very solid. Sure, back in the day people were bigoted towards anyone different than them, but there are still some very good values they partook in. The issue is already being resolved in the topic it's being discussed in. People have already acknowledged it. You already made your point in the other discussion. If you need to go further, I'm just saying that PMing the person you have the issue with instead of publicly calling them out would be nicer; at least in my opinion? I can talk however I want, just like you can. If I can't talk like I do, why can you talk like you do? -Rez

I don't have an issue with the person so much as the oppressive worldview that would otherwise be allowed to persist, which I imagine is your goal as there is no other possible reason to object to making a blog entry saying "don't perpetrate oppressive worldviews". Maybe talking stuff like this out in private is one of the harmless old-fashioned values. I don't know. It's certainly not one I live by, though. When injustice rises, I feel the need to smack it down in a place that makes it clear to all where I stand on the issue. You don't have the moral high ground here by asking me to resolve an issue of sexism quietly so nobody else has to acknowledge the issue. Don't talk like you do.

Austin is one of the coolest cities you could possibly be living in. I would be more jealous if I weren't in Portland. I cam this close to living there once-upon-a-time. You should talk to Adrian, he lives there now.

I have one and it usually wakes me right up, and if it fails the other ten alarms that go off every ten minutes usually do the trick. And then some days I either sleep right through all of them, or I unconsciously turn them off as they start to ring with no memory of it when I wake up. Obviously the solution is to actually go to sleep at a reasonable time, but I never do and it's almost never a problem and I probably won't do that until finals are over and I can relax

Yo. I know moving for a job is a crazy stressful thing. I'll be doing the same later this year, and even though it's with a company I've worked at before and in an area I've spent the summers over in the past, it's still really freaky. All I can say is - when you get there, start branching out. See if IBM's got any interest groups, even if it's something as casual as board game nights or something. I'm not saying you'll meet your new BFF first week in town, but meeting new people is doable. Similarly, for the job - yeah, your team's probably expecting things of you, but if they're anything like where I work (and it wouldn't surprise me if they are) they'll be willing to help you learn the ropes. Don't be afraid to ask for advice or resources. They know you're fresh out of college and that this is your first time working with them; on balance, teams tend to be more reasonable than not about this sort of thing. My first software dev job was in a field I'd never worked in before in a language I'd never used, and while it was a bit overwhelming at first, you'd be surprised at how quickly you pick up on stuff. The short version is I guess - yeah, it's freaky, but moving and working has a lot of upsides to it. Drop me a PM if you ever want to talk about the industry/etc. - I've never worked at IBM, but it sounds like I've had some similar experiences to what you will.

http://www.theverge.com/2014/4/26/5656288/construction-workers-unearth-legendary-cache-of-atari-games-in-new Do these fools not realize the unholy evil they have unleashed upon the world by unearthing the ET game?

I think we're going to need a lot of exorcisms after this is over.

KEEP SHINING YOU CRAZY DIAMOND

That is all.

While I haven't done the former ( ), I've definitely misplaced years before. I'm pretty sure that in the forum mentor days, I got a couple messages telling me I reported something from a year ago. XD -Rez I mean that there was a post from February 2012, and a reviving post from March 2014. I thought the topic should have been left open lol. Also, I'm probably the only BZP member who reported herself for flaming. (newb days. )

I'd much rather get a report for something a month old than the kind of action taken by a lot of other people around here... Takuma Nuva