Leaderboard

The shore was quiet, the water still, the stars soft and light, and there was absolutely nothing to do here why am I stuck on this Nui-forsaken rock?

Hey BZPower! As a writer, style is very dear to my heart. Another thing dear to my heart is having fun. While I was working on some basic sentence manipulation exercises this evening I had a thought: wouldn't it be cool to see how different people treat the same sentence? Yes, yes it would! Take the following sentence and modify it stylistically. Yes, feel free to add a bit more detail, but the main focus of this little game is how you manipulate what's already here. "The shore was quiet and the water was still and a soft light glittered across the black surface." GO! What will you do?

soon ...

Man, I remember seeing that in theater. Still one of my favorite movies. I actually didn't find the timeline difficult to figure out. Takuma Nuva

Welp, my work here is done.

Having never seen this movie, this made me stop for a moment and realize: I want to see it now. Like, right now.

The night was quiet; one could almost hear the stars singing over the sleeping ocean.

IIIIIIIIT'S BEEN ONE WEEK SINCE YOU LOOKED AT ME

I like him as both an imp and a regular human. Either way he's pretty selfish and incredibly dangerous, but still has the ability to pour on the charm when necessary and make you trust him. Carlyle plays him beautifully, and If I'm going to be honest he's probably the only reason why I'm still watching the show. Although I did like the actor who played Pan. The scenes with him and Carlyle are easily the highlights of the season for me. Oh yeah, I forgot about Red and Snow. The actress who plays her (Red) was cast in another program (Intelligence) so her appearances had to be turned down, hence her fading into obscurity. It was cancelled, though, so maybe that means she can return for S.4.

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."

Ye cruel and heartless person! XP This isn't as much that as people misinterpreting what you said to their hurt. It's clear that your comments (in the hypothetical scenario) were intended to help and were actually kind, but that you unwittingly opened a wound the other person which is keeping your kind words from having their intended effect. So you want to blame yourself for opening the wound, but the feeling never fully gets there, because you know you were trying to do right. Of course, if you never tried to correct someone who was wrong but instead laughed in their faces for their moronic stupidity of not finding the truth that you obviously know and is evident to all people with a brain, you wouldn't have this problem. (You would have a very different problem! ) But this feeling can actually come from this: People: > Me: Why are you angry? People: *explain* Me: That's not really something worth getting angry over. *launches into explanation of why* People: *insert long string of insults and colorful language here* Me: *laughs* I'm sorry, I should not laugh...*insert feeling here* *tries to concede to the other side a bit/explain my perspective to stop people from hating me* People: *still mad* Me: *still laughing* *makes bad jokes to myself about those people all day* *still has lingering feeling, made worse by the jokes* If those bad jokes actually come out of my mouth, that's when the real damage happens. Don't look at me, I never have any of these. Past is dead; keep the good stuff and valuable information/life lessons, let the bad stuff go. Saves on overcrowding.

Yesterday I wrote a blog entry about what Bionicle did for me. I finished it, looked at it and deleted everything. It was just over emotional and cliche garbage. So I scrapped it. Then, earlier today, I watched the Bohrok Animations for the first time(Yes I know, tie me to a cross and burn the blasphemous). But while watching it I realised. Screw what Bionicle did for me. What about what Templar Studios did for Bionicle? They made the characters of Bionicle not just boring robotic heroes, but actually beings that had compassion just like people. My favorite scene in the whole of any MNOG product was the Po-Koro scene in the Bohrok animations. So much is happening with the characters in such a short space of time and its gread. First of we have a bit of humour when Hafu realises he has to break down his statues. I want to point out MNOG humour is just the best. But that humour soon vanishes as we actually see Hafu breaking down his sculptures in order to same Po-Koro leaving him trapped on the outside. Then we cut to Hewkii screaming about Hafu. So we see, just by that these two have a strong friendship. I think I love the fact that Hafu knows hes going to die in this scene and he is willing to sacrifice himself(and his pride and joy) to save his home and the Matoran inside. If thats not Bad*** I dont know what it. But then Pohatu saves the day by getting Hafu back into Po-Koro with the help of Hewkii. Then the two Matoran hug each other which is actually really touching. I know it may sound a little far fetched but Im not sot sure if the Bionicle story would be what it was if not for MNOG. I actually think they single-handedly set the tone of Bionicle with providing a template for the atmosphere. It also made us aware that these were characters on not just toys

I'm sorry, but the words of a "brony insider" who "interacts with them daily" is not a valid point of view from which to stand and nobly defend the movement. I have zero problems with bronies on an individual level- but you cannot stand here and claim that there is not a problem with sexualizing a young girls' show, with attempting to make mainstream the takeover and appropriation of something that was created for a often-ignored demographic, with the rampant misogyny promoted by the "herd". You can claim "not all bronies are like that" and, well, no duh. But the movement as a whole is often heralded the most loudly by those groups, and the onus is not on me to explain why that is problematic- it is on you and the community you are trying to represent to change that. Bronies, as a movement, as a group, whatever, are deeply problematic. There are reasons they are spoken of so negatively, and it has nothing to do with the idea that guys can't like girl things. It has everything to do with a large segment of your community fetishizing a young girls' cartoon, being unable to keep said works in appropriately tagged, hidden, or otherwise safe environment. I do not care if there is a big project to hide that work- that it needs such a group project in the first place is entirely the problem. I applaud you for doing that kind of work- it is, after all, about time the brony community admitted they have a problem with this, but seriously, that this work even exists is... seriously, why does anyone have to explain this??? From there, you can hem and haw all you want about the goodness of the group because they allow kids to speak first at conventions. In another entry, you had bronies saying that kids shouldn't be at these conventions to begin with, and parents were foolish for allowing their children around such things. But here you talk about kids being welcome and invited and excited- pick one, you can't have both. You talk about the erasure of female fans (the "pegasisters"), but the documentary (which I have seen, by the way) does that itself. Two women interviewed- and one only exists to basically pimp her fiance's involvement in the fandom. And that doesn't even begin to touch on the big blowup over that one blog being shut down. You know which one. As for the Young Justice and Green Lantern stuff, Paul Dini has worked on almost every DC show outside of Young Justice for almost two decades. He's won Emmys and numerous awards. He is as industry-insider as it gets when it comes to animation, especially when it comes to superhero shows. While I'll concede he didn't work on Young Justice, the show was clearly modeled after work he and Bruce Timm did on the mainstream DCAU, and his involvement with Green Lantern TAS, and with DC as a whole, speaks volumes to... everyone in every article on the subject except for you, apparently. (Also, to say Young Justice's ratings were bad on their own ignores entirely the way CN handled the airing of the show itself. A year and a half in to the show's running, and they had not finished airing the original 26 episodes, after pausing to air their own in-house shows instead. That's not how you get ratings.) I never said "only male projects get funded on kickstarter" (that would be silly considering the handful of successful feminist and female-produced content projects I've contributed to myself). Narrow the argument back to the core: when men (bronies) became vocal supporters of something aimed at young girls, the show adapted and made them part of the demographic (I never said they became the core demographic, but as was said in another blog entry by another vocal brony, they are indeed a target demographic that gets catered to intensely). When a large vocal female fanbase developed for YJ and GL:TAS, CN execs rationalized that women don't buy product, so they refused to invite those persons into the fandom, and the lack of toy sales was enough to torpedo both shows, as merchandizing supplements the show costs. The bias really runs up to the executive level on both counts. One decided "hey, having dudes like this is good for business, let's run with it" the other decided "hey, having girls so into this is bad for our business, we don't want that." (Also, the MLP documentary was partly produced by Tara Strong and Lauren Faust, and so the whole "entirely fan-produced and backed" thing isn't true enough to merit the push you're making.) You're being disingenuous. The framing of this argument isn't broken- your intent is to protect the group you belong to at all costs. I will gladly admit that it is nice to see a brony who does indeed admit to the problematic areas of the community, but the "not all bronies" thing reads just like the "not all men" meme, and like those who proclaim "but not all men are like that!" it misses the point and just invalidates the feelings of those hurt by that group's actions, and the inactions of those affiliated with that group who won't stand up to it. So kudos to you for taking that stand. I really really mean that. But that doesn't go far enough in acknowledging the misogynistic, ableist, homophobic, etc problems with members of the community.