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First off: The Chima RPG Collab Contest-esque Thing (Contesque?) is heading into the home stretch (well, more accurately, it tripped over its own feet about a foot away from the home stretch and kind of laid there in the street for a week or so), so if you have any general ideas to input, this is your last chance! A full RPG opener post should be getting cobbled together in the near future. Second off: I'm bluer. Whoops. You won't see me around Q&A or Comics as much anymore (insert "when were you around comics" here, nyuk nyuk nyuk), but I am now FL for the Library as a whole, plus the Bionicle and Lego RPG forums. If you ever have any concerns, suggestions, or questions about those forums, please feel free to reach out to me - I'm listening! And while this has always gone as long as I've been staff, if you ever have any concerns about BZP as a whole, a member's behavior, or anything at all, my PM box is always open; I want to make BZP a welcoming and safe space for people. Third off: I'm in the middle of finals week (my final finals week, actually), so if I'm a little slow to respond to messages, that's why. I should be free done about a week from today. Fourth off: I wrote a thing again. When I get a chance to catch my breath, I'll probably have more to say about the process of writing Krahka and Onewa, but all that really matters is that Janus is the world's greatest editor. Think that's it for the moment. Happy springtime! ("But it's been spring for a while," some of you say. Some of you don't live in a frozen nightmare.)

Last final is over. I AM FREE ...At least for the summer. And probably not even that because I have my internship. Still, I am done with this semester, and it is good to put it behind me. Free time to work on music and stuff!

Got to admit, when I first saw this, I thought "well, no kidding, you live in a zoo." Well yeah, were you expecting a pond? I'm a classy goose. - Indigo Individual EDIT: to clarify, my local ponds are much worse. They throw bread at your face. At your face.

Got to admit, when I first saw this, I thought "well, no kidding, you live in a zoo."

soon ...

So many people I know are in school and I'm just like "Cool story, bro," as I get off work. Anyway, enjoy your free time.

To celebrate me wasting 700 blog entries worth of my time, I've decided to give you a quick update on my next epic and another short teaser from it. The update: I have changed the series title to simply "Bionicle Mafia". Makes it a bit less of a mouthful. Following up from that, the title of Book 2 is... Bionicle Mafia Book 2: Extraction And now, of course, a quick scene: --- The Ba-Matoran glanced down to his right arm – he had been fiddling with the Repulsor Arm again. Clearing his throat, he said: “It’s called the Repulsor Arm. JiMing – one of the Matoran that was at the conference – built it before he was killed. It’s... difficult to explain, but basically, I can do this.” Raising his arm to the sky, Voltex fired a beam straight into the air before lowering his arms and crossing them, giving a shrug to Canis, who, alarmed, had taken a step back and had a hand resting upon his holster. “Don’t worry,” Voltex said. “It’s like... I can control it. It fires when I want it to. It’s wired right into me.” “It’s pretty advanced,” Canis noted warily. “Yeah,” he agreed. “It’s just a prototype, though – the blueprints JiMing had... it’s supposed to be armored on the outside, probably to protect the circuitry and everything. But it’s worked well enough for me this far.” Canis nodded. “While we’re on the topic... I’d like to ask you what happened. We’ve been trying to get into the conference hall for several days now – needless to say, we have been unable to.” “Why did it take you so long to get here?” Voltex asked, ignoring the question. “We had... other issues to attend to,” Canis said, before prompting, “the conference?” “Right...” Voltex said, trailing off. “Basically, Xaeraz seized control, and a Makuta blocked the entirety of the conference hall with shadow from the outside. He forced us to partake in this ‘game’ after killing all but twenty-three of the Matoran at the conference – five of us were traitors selected by Xaeraz to kill the others.” “And that is why there are only seven of you now,” Canis guessed. “Yeah... we had to execute each of the traitors, and we got some wrong,” Voltex continued. “But there are more survivors – although none of them are nice. One of the traitors had designed this device that helped him come back to life, and he’s gone missing since then. The other two – Makuta Luroka and Sumiki – disappeared before we could execute them, right after the shadows came down. All three of them are probably still on BZ-Koro, but... where they are is anyone’s guess.”

I stared out at the deathly silent shore; it was eerily calm (never a good sign in my experience) and the only disturbance being the shimmers of light that contrasted its dark depths. I tried.

The shore was quiet, deathly quiet--as quiet as a tired beach, or perhaps a sleeping coast, one could say--since the water that usually beat against it so earnestly was this night so flaccid and lazy one was inclined to wonder how many swimmers it had swallowed this day (surely a sizable amount, for it sat in a satisfied, full stupor) and, reflecting off the dark, murky surface, the indifferent glance of the moon illuminated the ocean with the same enthusiasm the water showed in loud and rapid movement. ?????

In the loosest sense of the word. I've been wanting to make my Arduino do MIDI for a while but blah school and finals and stuff. Now that I'm almost settled into the summer routine of doing nothing other than working all day and making the frequent walk to buy groceries, I can do more things. Going to be working on the Spirit headpiece too, and maybe some other things.

Congrats on 700 entries. Also, much excite for Mafia.

At first I was going to comment about the lack of comfy furniture, mahogany bookshelves and reading lamps in the library, buuut then I saw that "Frozen Nightmare" comment, and, well... Carry on.

Here is my entry! I have the black on white version on my computer, but it's a massive file, so I won't upload it here. BZPower 2014 T-shirt design.

Oh hey look someone else who watches this show. Anyway, I don't really care much about any the character relationships (it's not why I watch the show), but we'll see how things go.

Congrats! That's good to hear! I, unfortunately have a few more classes... But my writing class is done so that's behind me... My grade isn't final and I'm on the brink of failing... I hope you had better luck than me...

GET OFF MY L-waitaminute... Where am I? (I acknowledge that I shall grow old. If I am not senile by then, I shall act as such to troll the younger generations)

Greetings all! I'd like to submit my entry into this year's contest. Best of luck to all who enter this year. 2014 BZPower T-Shirt Contest Design

The zoo where I live is not that great. It has a fair amount of animals, you might learn a little, but overall if you've gone to it once you've seen pretty much everything it has to offer. However, I want to speak up in favour of my nearest aquarium, which has been under threat of closing for some time now - I have never left it without a great deal more knowledge than I had prior to entering. While it isn't great for keeping the animals in large environments, and I don't know enough about fish to say reliably whether or not the environments are suitable, it is brilliant for education. I guess there's just that difference between different managements that causes some zoos/aquariums to be educational and some to be smelly and unsatisfying, although as far as I know most zoos have made strides toward becoming the former. This comment may not be as well-articulated as some of the others, but I just wanted to chime in with my own opinion. - Indigo Individual

I'm glad that the zoo you volunteer for is doing what it is. I guess from my experience of zoos, I haven't really learned much information. I tend to learn more from reading and research than from the zoos I've been to. But maybe I just haven't been to many of the informative zoos. I've been to the Denver zoo a million times, but that was when I was younger. Maybe my idea of zoos is stimulated by my perception of them from my earlier years? I haven't been to an American zoo in years. -Rez

I spent fifteen minutes of my life making lightsaber sounds after assembling a crude mockup with a cardboard tube and a mini-bat. Remember kids, I'll be considered a legal adult in two months.

I agree that the correlation between the two events is shaky at the very best, since you're right that a privately-funded "documentary" has no reason to be compared to the decisions made by a giant corporation. CN's action shows run largely on toy sales, not necessarily ratings. As both CN and DC are owned by WB, DC cartoons are cheap to produce and air since it is basically in-house (though not to the same degree as Adventure Time and Regular Show, and there are a lot of hints that CN hates the corporate tie between them and DC and has been purposefully torpedoing DC products, but that is neither here nor there). Green Lantern didn't get toys at all, because retailers weren't certain consumers could differentiate between the show and the movie flop. But Green Lantern TAS had a huge following amongst the female demographic, and CN didn't know how to harness that through product because their entire operations is geared at boys right at or right before the cusp of puberty. Paul Dini has been very vocal on this topic, and he's done numerous interviews on geek podcasts about it. He talked to Kevin Smith about it at length in one. He's been pretty willing to talk on behalf of the Young Justice guys too. So the bottom dollar can be the reason the shows were not renewed, but the reason the bottom dollar was low was because CN refused to target toys and merchandise to a female fanbase that was outside their normal fanbase and marketing tactics. As such, neither shows' had production costs subsidized by product sales, so the bottom dollar was affected. The ratings were pretty on-target for where the shows had been projected by WB. On your number three- look it up. Regardless of how unequal of a comparison the two things are, there is a societal expectation here that no amount of "but these things are different" can explain away. When a large group of vocal men became interested in a little girl's show, they were catered to by the production company and became part of the target audience, and indeed the overall "brony" community sees themselves as more important than the under-represented group the show was conceived for. They have effectively appropriated it, which is my largest problem with the group. The men became part of the focus because regardless of "traditional masculinity movements", the truth is, if men want to like something non-masculine, society adapts and twists the definition of masculinity to accept it. "Oh, it's actually just men who are even more manly because they can accept pink and girly things without worrying, look at how secure they are. Much manly. Wow." Whereas when girls become interested in something "traditionally masculine" (such as superheroes, video games, geek culture in general), they are told the do not belong, that they are not supposed to be there, that this isn't for them and to stop trying to make it "about them" (even when they are not). This has manifested itself in the "fake geek girl" and "fake girl videogamer" memes. Even though girls and women have been a huge part of most of these movements since they began, they are treated as outsiders, objectified, etc. (So what a surprise that when men became interested in a little girl's show, the first thing a bunch of them did was sexualize and objectify the characters and rob them of so much of their female agency.) That was the real point behind this entry, and while the comparison on its face is a poor one, the societal reasons behind them are very real and very important.

to declare my absolute loathing for the sound of lawnmowers

obligatory

Specifically, with regards to the gender imbalance in modern media: I'd like to see a story where, during the writing process, the characters are completely fleshed out and developed. Genders would be assigned at random at the end by computer generation, so as to avoid any unwanted author-based prejudices. Obviously this example refers to a book, but the same process could go for anything. (I was going to say more, but I think this pretty much speaks for itself.)

BZPower is the only place on the Internet where I feel as if I can truly state what I feel without fear of someone seeing half a sentence and assuming something terrible about what I'm trying to communicate. I take a middle-of-the-road approach and try to see the good in people, and I feel as if BZPower is the only site that won't blow up in my face when it comes to moderate viewpoints. - - - - - Well, the latest firestorm of drama hit BZP earlier - this time on representation in media. It's a change of pace from what these flare-ups are normally about, but that doesn't mean that it's not an important and hot-button issue. My three major points are bolded. There is no excuse for not having female characters in modern media. None whatsoever. First, though, let's look at what representation really is. Representation is, for the most part, determined from capitalistic tendencies. Once the media gets in its collective head that the men are the people they should be focusing their energies and spending their money on, the vicious cycle begins. This goes for race as well - I was watching an episode of the brilliant late '90s sitcom 3rd Rock from the Sun the other day and the main characters - aliens in the show's narrative - said that they'd chosen to be white because that was the color of everyone on TV. While a throwaway gag in the context of the episode (one which poignantly highlighted the inherent absurdity of racism), it stuck with me. Women make up half of all the people on Earth, so it's much easier to explain a male-dominated media as an offshoot of a patriarchal society. But if we defocus the issue from one of representation of women and into representation as a whole, things get quite a bit dicier. People of all races, genders, and orientations exist. I mean, there are over seven billion of us now, so even the most minor of minority groups have significant numbers. One would think that what would follow would be representation for every group equal to their number. Unless you've been living under a rock, however, it's clear that it hasn't happened. So ... why? Some point to internalized prejudices. While this could account for some media behavior, I harbor serious reservations that it accounts for all media - and all media are affected by this. What, then, is the most logical explanation? Like I said - by following the money. If you're a member of a group, you're going to want to get a cut of the majority. In America and much of the West, this means white people. If you're the biggest ethnic group, people who want to market stuff to the mainstream will probably market it towards you, because that's where the money lies. If you're a member of a minority group, I think it's only fair to have media representation for you. The culture that led to the situation we're in has to change. When minorities appear, they are often in token form. I shouldn't have to explain why this perpetuates stereotypes, but if we look at this from the broad view that I keep trying to get at, then we see that the smaller the minority, the less of a chance that a character from that minority will appear in media. Why? Again, money. If you're a studio executive and you want to make a movie sell, would you include characters that the perceived "majority" would relate to? Most of them answer "yes," because it's the easy way out. Only now are we started to see the inklings of a fundamental change. The more bits of media that have minorities that are successful, the more that the people who are in charge of the media will see the fundamental error of their ways. Here's another thing to keep in mind here: Representation does not always mean positive representation. Let's take The Big Bang Theory. Among its quartet of protagonists, a trio represent some sort of minority: asexuals, Indians, and Jews. All of which are, at some point, played for laughs - or for whatever the writers think is funny. (It's not funny.) When the most prominent asexual character in modern media is Sheldon Cooper, you know something's gone off the rails somewhere along the line. While gay characters are on the rise, a lot of them are accompanied by harmful stereotypes. Don't even get me started on bisexual erasure and the dearth of pansexual characters. Hypothetically, every movie and book and TV show could change tomorrow to one where women outnumber men, but yet the women are always portrayed with harmful stereotypes. Let's imagine the same with sexual and ethnic minorities. You'd have more representation, but if it's with even more sexism, racism, and homophobia, how is that better? Mathematically speaking, it's actually worse. Let's not support mere representation. Let's support good, positive representation. Let's prove to the media that they don't have to follow where they think the money is, but rather, where the moral thing to do lies. I welcome discussion on these issues, but I am not afraid to defend myself if I see something I wrote taken out of context.

I try not to get involved with flare-ups here in the blogs, because I know there's a good chance that if I do I'll wind up with my foot in my mouth and egg on my face. This isn't an exception to that - instead I'd just like to say something important that I hope people already know but I'd like to reiterate given there's been a lot of LGBTQ+ discussion lately. If you are LGBTQ+, I support and accept you. As someone outside of these groups, I don't have the personal experience that many others here do, but I am always willing to talk and listen. And if I say or do something insensitive or hurtful, let me know, because I recognize this is a complicated topic and my knowledge is limited. I say this both as a person who supports LGBTQ+ rights, and as an FM who wants to be sure that everyone feels welcome and safe to come speak to him if they need someone to talk to. That's all.