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ToM Dracone

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Blog Comments posted by ToM Dracone

    Kakaru

    Posted

     

    I was seriously hoping this was an awesome 'pan' pun

     

    Please tell me I'm right

     

     

    (edit: wow I didn't realize this was from July, now I feel like a creeper. That's what I get for not going on BZP in months…)

    (this is totes a pan pun thank you for noticing :3 )

     

    (also don't worry about the date I get excited about new comments no matter what)

     

    (you are most welcome I'm glad to be of service <3 )

     

    it's also better than most of the skillet-based puns out there

    Turakii #1 Lavasurfer

    Posted

    Yeah, as you're discovering, all it takes is a bunch of practice. Your eyes will eventually get used to them, I swear. I've had them for almost four years now (... wow) and it takes zero effort to put them in and take them out now.

     

    I actually got them at first because I look better without glasses than I usually do with them, but since then I've discovered that I see much better with contacts. I think it's just because with contacts, I can see sharp -everywhere- I look, whereas with glasses the very sides and top and bottom are blurry since the lenses don't cover those parts...

    Sumiki

    Posted

    Um ... wow. Really wasn't expecting large walls of text but your comments are very much appreciated.

    Heh, yeah, sorry about the huge wall of text. It's just that this is kind of a big question. There are entire fields of study devoted to the question of what gender is and how society deals with it, so it's a little difficult to summarize that in a comment on a blog entry, see.

     

    And yeah. I wish Lego would actually make the gender ratios equal, but I realize that's never going to happen as long as their target audience remains boys. I'd like a 2-4 ratio if not actual equal numbers, but there are times when I'd really just be happy if we'd consistently get at least one female per team, you know?

    Sumiki

    Posted

    The reason there are female sets is because there, well, are females in the world. It's really as simple as that. Even in a toy line targeted at boys, where they're going to relate most easily to male characters (usually), if you want the world you're creating to be in any way believable, then you're gonna have to include females in it.

     

    I would also say that the problem isn't that Lego makes its female sets more masculine than the males (generally), but rather that they almost never differentiate between the two. There was nothing making, say, Gali Mistika more or less masculine than Tahu Mistika; the two had the same build in just about every way. The same could be said of Toa Nokama or Gali Nuva or Hahli Inika – they just had the same build as the rest of their group.

     

    The problem with these female sets is that the default proportions for most Bionicle/Hero Factory sets are masculine. In the way of human proportions, most adult males have shoulders wider than their hips, whereas most adult females have shoulders and hips of nearly the same width. The vast, vast majority of Bionicle sets have had shoulders wider than the hips, and once we got to the Inika and beyond, the shoulders were waaaay wider than the hips – so, exaggerated masculine proportions. The only set we've ever gotten with realistic feminine proportions was Kiina with her narrow shoulders.

     

    And then Breez and her 2.0 form follow the same pattern. So, though I see what you're saying, I don't think it holds water – it's not that Lego is making their female sets more masculine in order to appeal to their target audience, it's that Lego isn't bothering to differentiate between male and female as far as set design goes.

     

    As I said before, the main characters need gender to be relatable. If they were all just referred to as "it," we humans wouldn't feel much connection to them. And if you then gave the heroes all male names, and called them all "he," then one, the absense of females would be notable, and two, it would – as Night Fury pointed out – be incredibly sexist.

     

     

    edit: also, guys, just a pointer – the word "feminism" refers to the school of thought that women deserve equal rights and treatment as men. I'm at a loss for a single word to mean "the state of being female" except maybe to say "femaleness" – but not feminism.

    Nuju Metru

    Posted

    I know people love their Macs for whatever reason, but whenever I try to use one I can never get the hang of it (especially since half of my movements and transitions around on a computer are done with keyboard shortcuts).

    Hope it pays off for you!

     

    -CF

    Do remember that it's the same thing if you try to go from Macs to PCs, after all. I'm so used to Mac keyboard shortcuts that I try to do them reflexively on Windows, and then, obviously, they don't work. Both OSes do the same things, for the most part, just in different ways.

     

    (still love my Macs, though <3 )

    Lady Kopaka

    Posted

    Woah, that is rather a mess. But I'm glad it's going to work out!

     

    My advice is to search around for discounts on textbooks. There are a fair few sites where you can get really big discounts on them; I use a site called Chegg where you can rent textbooks for a semester, and you can get those big expensive ones for like half-price, you just have to send them back after the semester. For the smaller ≈$20 ones, you can usually get them used for pretty low prices on Barnes & Noble or Borders. Have to pay for shipping, but it still saves you money.

    ChocolateFrogs

    Posted

    I always go back and re-read my work at least once. This is because I've discovered that when I do that, I catch all the odd phrasings or areas where something is unclear that I didn't notice the first time, because I was focusing then on getting it written and didn't notice that a phrase might not make sense to someone who doesn't have in their head what I did when I wrote it. So my essays and such aren't drastically improved, but they do become clearer and better-stated when I re-read them. Which is worth it, to me.
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