ToM Dracone

I suppose I should mention once again that yes we have decided what the other prizes are; we just have to finalize them.

If you feel like donating something, that would be totally awesome, but if all you have is a suggestion... frankly they get a little tiring after a while. No offense intended towards the people who have offered ideas; ideas are great, but seriously, we've known what we're doing for a while, okie?

Ignoring my position, I'd like to point out that skin color, which comes from one's ethnicity, isn't that comparable to preference. If somebody is born African-American, for instance, they will forever be African-American. Surgery can't change that; there are no cases of people changing ethnicity. (I'm not ignoring the Michael Jackson case; he didn't change ethnicity, merely his appearance.)

 

There are plenty of cases, however, of people's preferences changing. And that's what homosexuality is: a preference. One can claim to be "born homosexual," but there is no proof that that actually happens. Also, there are many cases of people who were homosexual becoming "straight" and vice versa, which further establishes homosexuality as a preference as opposed to a "born" condition. Therefore, you cannot really compare homosexuality and ethnicity as closely as you did.

 

I hope I don't sound like I'm simply putting down your arguments. If I understood you correctly, though, the main argument of your blog entry was the correlation between homosexuality and ethnicity, and I disagree that this is a strong correlation.

(Just because I've seen how quickly people's tempers can flare up on this website, I'm including a smiley for the good feelings it conveys. Like Jinzo said, can we have some peace?)

I... I'm not even sure what to say to that.

Certainly there are cases of a person being mistaken about his or her orientation, hence the whole notion of someone "discovering" that he or she's gay. There's also the possibility that the person in question is bisexual but might not identify as such. And I'm sure there are people deviant enough to flip around on both sides just for the heck of it. But at any rate, ask most any gay guy or lesbian or bisexual off the street whether they ever had any choice in what gender they felt attracted to, and I can nearly guarantee the answer will be "no."

But.

There is no way an open discussion of sexual orientations is going to end well. And frankly, there's only a tiny step between broaching this subject and getting into content very strictly not allowed on BZP, so I am declaring this subject matter closed.

Actually, this whole entry is walking on thin ice to begin with... If people stay completely civil and respectful, it could go fine, but it could also go into the more offensive end very easily. So I'd keep a close watch on this if I were you, mmkay?

We'll get there, eventually. Society changes slowly, but it does change, and we've been making some lovely progress in recent years as far as the acceptance and rights of LGBT folk goes...

Though... why do you think the staff's 'perception' of the situation is wrong? Whenever people have posted gay love stories, or even just talked about being gay in blogs, other people have gotten incredibly rude and started flaming them or sent HH angry PMs. I'm not quite sure how that could be misinterpreted. And one runs into the same sort of thing again and again and again out in the real world.

Now, disagreement over how to handle that, that's another thing. Which has been gone over quite thoroughly many times now and does not need to again.

Avak: Now with less Avak!

These are by far the most interesting parts of him. Though I'm wishing I had gotten those Piraka feet now.

I beat you to the Maha =P

 

Yours is more game accurate though =P

Yes it is. Interestingly, yours was otherwise the exact color scheme I had on the Maha I built last summer...

Could you take a picture of Vorox with the dark tan joints?

I could, but I suspect the black Inika torso and Metru arm would ruin the effect.

And yes, we must have some more dark tan pieces.

All I'm going to say is I don't get it. Can't we all just go along with each other's ideas and quit arguing?

That would be so wonderful. We wouldn't need half the rules we have if the world at large could just learn that trashing someone for having a different viewpoint only makes a mess of things where there was absolutely none in the first place.

Unfortunately, many people have yet to learn this basic lesson. Sigh.

(in reference to deleted comments)

Aaand Pintsize and Eranok, we really didn't need to go there. If you'd be so kind in the future, those of us who are atheists don't particularly appreciate the implication that everything we write must be bad, okie? Try to be more considerate.

@ Janus: Show me how to make a frog-shaped familiar and I will. Make one, that is. Not cry.

In the interest exclusively of accuracy, I think Lyg's got it right. By way of comparison, the no-religious-discussion rule has been extended to ban both any religious discussion and also discussion of evolution. Since these are, broadly, the two sides of that particular topic, the rule is quite impartial. With love stories, the two halves are gay and straight, so allowing straight love stories but not gay ones creates the apperance of favoring one side over the other. Thankfully, that's an inaccurate appearance (which is why I don't mind the rule that much), but still.

Contrast with the various rules against more extreme levels of things. Some degree of violence is allowed, but there's a problem if it gets into excessive gore or graphicness. Romance is great, but not if it gets in any way sexual.

So that's why I personally disagree with the rule, but, like I said, the reasoning behind it is actually quite good, since this -does- generate an awful lot of unnecessary controversy. Alas that it must be so.

At any rate, the reason I was going to post here in the first place was to congratulate everyone on actually keeping this discussion civil and for the most part quite rational. I wouldn't have thought it was possible on the internet... (Now, don't go and prove me wrong. That wouldn't be very fun.)

She's a lesson in why you should not accept candy from beautiful strangers.

I thought we already learned this in Narnia?

 

BtB

This is true. Incidentally, the White Witch is the only character I actually like in Narnia. Hm.

I might foray into MOCs, but not an epic. And these ideas would require new molds, anyway, so that makes MOCing them slightly difficult. But I can always draw...

... I was thinking "wha?" to those, but then I realized that you were doing (possible) derivations rather than words taken directly from Latin, which is what I did.

Gresh could indeed come from gressus, "step," but that's much less certain, though Tarduk from tardus, "slow," seems probable. And I knew I had forgotten something; Certavus is not actually a Latin word, but it probably is related to certatio, "contest" or "competition."

But where are you getting Strakk from?

Well, all I'm saying is that taka has an -association- with light because of Takanuva. It doesn't have to hold up to a canon explanation for Takadox to have been given the name because his set glows in the dark.

There's also the possibility that the name "Takadox" was made up the same way Helryx and Mazeka and Sarda and so many others were, and was just assigned to him arbitrarily.

I'd say that if you've searched for so long and still haven't come up with any obvious real-world derivation, then it's probably one of the above. Though I wouldn't call "Takuidae" a terrible stretch; after all, Antroz does not look very much like the bat Family he's named after...

These are all good questions. My own rationale is that this shouldn't be a sensitive topic, and the only way that'll change is if people get used to seeing it. But, the reality is that this is an explosively sensitive subject, and we have to accommodate that reality somehow. There are various ways to do that; this one was chosen.

I could go into more detail, but that would only provide more material for people to object to, and that wouldn't be a very wise.

Oh, believe me, I agree with you. We agree with you. I do not like this rule one bit. I wish we didn't have to put it up. I utterly hate having to suppress stories about this, because it sends -entirely- the wrong message about how we (me, HH, the admins, others) feel about this matter.

However, I understand -completely- the reasoning behind it, and it's very very good reasoning. I have seen firsthand how hurtful and homophobic some people can get. (and that's -not- directed at you, Lady K, you're respectful about just about everything!) It's the same rationale as why we don't allow discussion of religion, because while some people can be completely reasonable and respectful about the subject, there are a lot of others who act in an absolutely despicable manner and quite honestly we don't want to have to deal with the carnage that ensues.

It's one of those things that's been up in the air and left never quite settled for a very long time, and it went pretty smoothly that way, but a few recent incidents forced a decision to be made. It's not the decision I'd have made, but it had to go one way or the other, with perfectly reasonable arguments for both sides. The final result isn't very fair, no, but I quite respect Six's decision, because of how rational it is – and because it wasn't made out of homophobia, which is the important part.

Perhaps it'll be reversed some time. If you really feel strongly about it, I absolutely encourage you to take it up with the admins, as HH has advised. They're the ones with the decision-making power in this.

I think GregF said something about "Taka" not relating to light, when talking about a similar theory tied in with Brutaka.

 

-CF

Yes, but there's no reason there should necessarily be a connection there. Brutaka was, after all, pretty clearly taken from the word "brute," so the taka in his name could quite easily be a coincidence. After all, it's not like the word "risky" is related to "sky" or "defeat" to "eat."

Now, Takadox could of course also be a coincidence, and his name could have just been made up like so many other Bionicle names, with no root anywhere at all. But the fact that he and Takanuva have a connection by both being associated with light makes it more -likely- that Takadox's name was based on "Takanuva."

Just a note, if you're not allowed to talk about something on BZP because of the filter, you're not exactly supposed to circumlocute about it either. Processes of elimination that leave little doubt what you're referring to tend to fall into that category.

But we do it all the time with talking about piece orders and videos....

And Arpy has his OTC "button."

Sorry.

-CF

Commissioned Homer fanfiction. But yes. It basically is.

Oh, the Aeneid. How I love you.

We have a restriction that for some period of time you can only have two people who aren't relatives in the car, I guess until you turn eighteen. I'm not sure. And I'll be 18 in a month anyway.

... which my friends -definitely- obeyed -all- the time after they got their licenses, of course...

Edit: Janus, dangit now I have that song stuck in my head.

Sure Valcanus isn't from "Valcano"?

And where did "Volcano" come from?

And why are there extra a's in there? At any rate, the fact that its spelling is identical to the name of the god (rather than being Volcanus, which would suggest a volcanic origin), seems to point to its being taken from Latin rather than modified from English.

Perditus can also mean "destroyer", or, as an adjective, "infamous" or "lost". Only time will tell which meaning was intended.

Technically it would have to be perditor to mean "destroyer", since perditus is strictly passive. But yes, those other two meanings are also possible, transferred from the most literal meaning.

On that note, did anyone ever figure out where Takadox's name came from? The other Barraki were easy; he puzzles me to this day. I've looked through several mantis shrimp scientific names (and some species have eerie similarities to the blue Barraki), but come up with nuth'n.

We've been over this before. I'm pretty sure it's related to Takanuva, since both of them have to do with light. Takanuva is Toa of Light, so "taka" becomes associated with light, and Takadox's set glows in the dark. That's certainly the simplest explanation...

So, just glancing at these, I like Tuyet a lot. Her 'boots' and skirt jump out at me in particular. And her trident is awesome. But I'm not so sure about the red. I'll get back to you on that once I see her with the proper light blue in her arms; it's sort of hard to judge with the white and medium blue in there.

But Nidhiki just makes me think "no." Lime and silver do not go together like this. Part of the problem is that they're both the same value (meaning the lightness or darkness of a color), though now that I think about it the same is true on Tuyet. I think it's more pronounced here because lime is a much brighter color than light blue, so the combination of it and silver is a bit much, since there's no contrast to either of them.

What would be pretty cool is dark green and Mata green. Sand green's an awesome color, but in the distribution you edited in, I feel like it's in competition with the silver.

Also, he's flat. Way too flat. And next to the delightfully adorned Tuyet he seems overly simplistic. He could do with at least a little more to him, particularly in his chest, since though it's deeper than an Inika chest, it's still way too thin compared to the shoulders. The shoulders and their width being the greater problem.

I do like the Viking horns stuck in his mask, though.