BioGio

Sorry for the late reply. Okay, but existentialism does not entail a belief in a "spiritual world." Absolutely no existentialist believes that the physical world does not exist. Rather, they believe that it exists before it has "essence." Further, I honestly have no idea what you're talking about when you mention a "spiritual world." (The closest thing I can think of would be the world of forms, but Platonism is a metaphysical position and therefore completely unrelated to existentialism.) I take it you're referring to bonesiii here? I've never seen him refer to himself as a logical positivist. (To be perfectly honest, I've never seen him refer to belonging to any particular school of thought, though, so he could be a logical positivist. It's probably worth noting that logical positivism is somewhat rare currently.) You do realize that logical positivism is a very specific school of thought, right? Also, to be clear: I do not hold a degree in philosophy. If you'd like, I could probably put you into contact with some people who do. What I'm getting at is the fact that logic is an actual field of philosophy. It takes on a variety of forms, but all of them are extremely rigorous and scientific. On BZP in general, people seem to think that in order to "know logic" you just have to know a list of informal logical fallacies and know how to spot them. This is actually a pretty common attitude on the Internet overall. I've seen websites that have pages on "logic" that are nothing more than a collection of fallacies. (They make my stomach churn.) If you'd actually like to learn about the still-unsolved problems that logicians are struggling with, I'd recommend asking around on websites with actual logicians. I think Reddit has an "ask philosophers" forum that should have professional philosophers to give you a decent overview. A decent problem to start of with would be the problem of induction (which I referred to in my earlier post). It's sort of a shame that DV didn't go into any detail about his criticisms of "logic" on BZP (if those are indeed his!). I'd love to know whether we're talking about the same thing. You're not supposed to agree with Meursault's decision to shoot the Arab, for the record. Throughout The Stranger, Muersault is alienated from society and from his own emotions, only capable of expressing vague physical discomfort. The shooting of the Arab because of the heat of the sun is simply the most extreme example of this alienation. This also gets into that whole "literature-as-exercise-in-empathy" thing: even though you realize Meursault's made an awful mistake, you should to see how he did so. I'm really not sure what you mean by a lot of this. Literature does require a fair amount of interpretive thought (so "emotional reasons" for characters' behaviors aren't plainly clear, but they do exist). And anyway, a big part of "literature-as-an-exercise-in-empathy" involves confronting the characters who think differently than you do. If you just get irritated whenever someone acts "stupidly illogical" and can't empathize with them, then you are really missing out on something. Incidentally, I've never heard anyone say that logical fallacies are the cause of negative emotions. I guess you'd have to ask a psychologist about this, though. But to talk about literature, Meursault doesn't give up hope at the end of The Stranger. The final words of narration are tremendously, powerfully hopeful: Meursault expresses the desire to be greeted with "cries of hate." It's a strange thing to hope for, but that's precisely the point of the novel. I probably should have been more clear here. I was referring to your statement that "And then, if the true point of literature is some philosophical point, the only thing that should matter is having the correct viewpoint, as opposed to all the wrong ones, and getting everyone to agree (nobod does). Instead, literature class throws looking for truth and real answers out the window under the "we have to 'expand your horizons with varying perspectives'" excuse." It seems like you were trying to say that, "Since literature class doesn't make everyone agree on everything, it does not impart knowledge of the truth." I was trying to say that if you believe that, then you must also believe that logic does not impart knowledge of the truth, because logic also doesn't make everyone agree on everything. It would certainly be a good idea to get better informed about the field of logic. But please, please, please, please do not be so arrogant as to "laugh at [the debates in the field]." Realize that there are people who have given their entire lives to the serious study of logic, performing countless hours of research in the field, and they don't necessarily agree with each other. Bear in mind that you probably do not know better than them.

You're mixing up several different philosophies and treating them as though they were all one thing. Existentialism is the belief that existence precedes essence, so there is no inherent meaning in anything. An apple, for instance, exists before it has a purpose; so does human life. Since these essences do not exist independently, they must be created through human thought and action. For instance, I give apples the purpose of being eaten at breakfast. (Absurdism takes basically the same approach; whether they're the same philosophy isn't quite clear. Camus was hesitant about applying the label "existentialism" to his philosophy, but then again so was Sartre, for a while.) But then you bring in all this stuff about a "spiritual world," and you've completely lost me. It sounds like you're making reference to some type of Platonism--perhaps taking "essence" to mean the same thing as "Platonic Form"? Or maybe that's an oblique reference to something about Christian existentialism? Existentialism certainly does not require the existence of a world of forms in addition to the physical world (the Theory of Forms). And I don't get why you bring up the idea of "projecting" to be able to live after an attack by sledgehammer. Is this a misunderstanding of radical freedom? The "projecting" involved in Platonism is not at all a conscious decision, but rather a function of the universe. You don't have to agree with this. The whole Analytic camp (and particularly logical postivists) hated existentialism. I've had the pleasure of meeting people (online) who still turn their noses up at any reference to "Continental philosophy"--and some of those people were even PhD's in philosophy! And I'm sure you could write a stellar essay disagreeing with Camus. Any decent literature class ought to allow for serious criticism of the works read. That's pretty much the entire point of a lot of literary theory (e.g., deconstructionism or Marxist critical theory). You shouldn't, however, reject serious philosophies out of hand. It's tremendously dismissive to simply ignore a viewpoint with which you don't agree, and it's both rude and quite insulting to do this when you clearly do not understand that viewpoint. That isn't unique to Continental philosophy or literature. There are real, serious unsolved problems in the field of logic. You have your typical examples like the problem of induction, of course. (What wide-eyed philosophy undergrad hasn't read Hume and suddenly fallen prey to the belief that the Sun may not rise tomorrow?) Then there are matters like falsificationism vs. verificationism, where scientists often have a different opinion than philosophers. (I think Neil DeGrasse Tyson recently attracted some bad press for making some comments about philosophy that are rather reminiscent of your opinions.) (Incidentally, this is something that has bothered me for a long time about the way that we talk about "logic" on BZP. There's this sort of cartoonishly simple view of logic as being basically a knowledge of informal fallacies and not a lot else. There's no appreciation for the actual complexity of the field of logic, so a lot of people end up thinking that just "thinking things through" is equivalent to "being a logician" or whatever. You might say that it's enjoyable to read about characters who use logic, but when the author starts peppering their book with predicate calculus and lengthy proofs, that enjoyment would almost surely evaporate. I totally admit to having that perspective not too long ago, and I'll be the first to kick myself for that--but BZP seems to propagate that view a lot. I think that DV's made some similar criticisms of BZP, particularly S&T, although I can't recall when I saw him saying so.) Along the same lines, I am positive that your literature curriculum is not solely comprised of existentialist works. For instance, nothing written before the life of Soren Kierkegaard can be reasonably categorized as existentialist. Heart of Darkness is relatively pessimistic, but Conrad isn't generally grouped as an existentialist. (And given that the novel's subject is the brutal colonization of the Congo, it has good reason to be less than cheery.) It uses a fair amount of dreamlike scenes that convey a sense of confusion--but not to the point that Conrad is trying to undermine his reader's belief in logic. There are surely happy endings in your literature class's assigned readings. The most obvious example would have to be any of Shakespeare's comedies. Or Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which I don't think "paints life as worse than it is" (unless your life has been really fantastic). For what it's worth, I completely disagree when you say that the purpose of fiction is to "entertain" and "escape from real life." That may be all you look for in fiction, but that's not the end-all-be-all. Fiction is a spectacular way to learn about other's experiences; it's a means of practicing empathy. (I think David Foster Wallace said something to this effect, and that's now one of those quotes people like to throw around.) Beyond that, truths about philosophy and, well, "real life" can absolutely be communicated through literature. Fiction allows one to present realistic scenarios that encapsulate a particular outlook or theme. Just because not everyone believes the same thing doesn't mean that literature is futile. If that were the case, then logic would be pointless, too! As I said before, there are still major debates (and resulting discoveries) taking place in the field of logic. It would be tremendously imprudent to completely ignore these. -------------- Incidentally, I don't get what you said about catharsis at all, and I'm saying that out of sincere confusion. Whatever you meant, it's probably a good idea to be careful applying Aristotle to the entire body of literature that you read. -------------- EDIT: Yes, this is a very long post. I originally just intended to make some small corrections to some of what you said about existentialism, but I feel like you have a fair amount of misconceptions about literature and philosophy (particularly logic and existentialism, of course) that really ought to be addressed. Sorry for the rant. EDIT 2: Sorry for butting in and doing all the major disagreeing, Ballom--I somehow missed your post! I loved both your comments, and I must admit I envy your succinctness.

Wait, was your original post not supposed to be humorous? Because what you said is correct (and I don't think either of the people in that thread disagreed with you), but you phrased it in a funny way.

I've always loved seeing Toa Team MOCs, especially the really coordinated, set-like ones. The subtle variations in the characters' limbs and heights, as well as the larger distinctions created by their tools, really make the team come together without being identical. Pomos's tool is particularly neat. I wonder whether you should have used something other than grey for the joints (e.g., perhaps light blue on Xyleke) to add a bit more visual interest. You wouldn't have even needed to add a tertiary color and could have used black/dark blue for the joints. I was just never one for excessive grey in sets. Then again, the use of grey joints is a unifying feature here, so it doesn't hurt much. An idea that would similarly cause a bit more individuality: All of the Toa have very wide shoulders, so perhaps a different build could give Kolasi a more feminine and distinct appearance. (This could be accomplished either by using different armor on her shoulders to shrink the "deltoids" or--more radically--by attaching the arm in a different fashion.) I only bring this up because you already have some diversity in the chests' appearances, and the shoulders are basically most easily modified part of the team's shared build. Ultimately, though, that's just me tinkering with your designs via text. The team already clearly fulfills its aesthetic goals, so I can't really see any reason for a change. By the way, did you build the Suva for them? -BioGio

>showing your powerlevel

This one time, I heard someone say "Some infinities are bigger than others," and I got really excited and started talking about transfinite numbers and nondenumerability. I wound up taking half an hour to explain, and they just said, "Yeah, and the amount between 0 and 1 is more than between 0 and 1/2." The moral of the story is, The Fault in Our Stars seems to misrepresent both William Shakespeare and Georg Cantor. Also, showing mathematical proofs to strangers is time-consuming.

Nope, jerk was a plain old ####### filter. Which was especially frustrating if you used "jerk" as a verb (as in, to tug or shake), because it would look like you were saying... something a whole lot less wholesome. "Oh, just give it a quick ####" or "the creature began to #### violently" or... you get the idea. BZPower's old filter would have made Jimmy Kimmel proud. What others haven't been mentioned yet? BL. S###### still filters though. - BioGio

It looks like I'm the only one who said "method of reveal" (joined now by two others), possibly because I kind of misunderstood it. In general, storytelling relies more on execution than on the motivating idea. (It's sort of like how Jorge Luis Borges said he was unimpressed by Finnegans Wake, but believed Lewis Carroll had done the same sort of wordplay better. Even if you love the idea, and even if the idea comes from a genius, the execution really determines the quality of fiction.) So, even if I had loved the idea of the Red Star resurrection glitch, I wouldn't have enjoyed the plot point if the story around it were poorly written. But if this just means the fact that Greg had to post on the forum, then I guess neither method nor idea had precedence for me. By the way, this poll is so unscientific, lol. It shouldn't even be used to generalize about people who browse the S&T forum. - BioGio

If you want to talk about the past, the late Winfred Lehmann's theory is that Indo-European languages derive their gender systems from three endings. These three endings (-s, -m, and -h) didn't really make up a gender system in Proto-Indo-European (the common ancestor to all modern-day Indo-European languages, from Farsi to English, which was spoken around the 4th millennium BC). Then, in every Indo-European language except Hittite, the -h disappeared and instead lengthened the preceding vowel. For some reason or another (likely due to pure chance), the consonantal endings became associated with masculine referents, while the nouns ending in long vowels became associated with feminine referents. In other words, no linguistic gender does not develop due to sexism. That's not a direct answer to how we started saying "he" for unknown persons, but we lack first-hand data on Proto-Indo-European pronoun usage (for the obvious reason that it was never written). In short, this is a linguistic issue, and the consensus in that field of science is that linguistic gender and sexism are not as closely related as they seem. Also note that "language" does not inform what we use as the gender of unknown persons. Each individual language does, so treating "language" as something monolithic here ignores real-life linguistic diversity. Would you say that the Maasai people believe women to be the default and men to be "other," based on their language's gender system? Do you believe the Finns are (or were) less sexist than the French because Finnish lacks a gender distinction in its nouns and pronouns? Now, there are certainly linguists to subscribe to linguistic relativity in its various forms. However, the claim that a language's gender system is the product of (or causes) sexism is mostly a myth among lay-people--a very prevalent one. In general, the "Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis" (quotes because that's not the technical term, but nonetheless the popular one) and various over-stated versions thereof are popular among those who don't know much about linguistics. Thanks, by the way, for the definition of the intentional/unintentional split. I felt it was a bit odd to call LEGO's conscious decision to make most characters male "unintentional sexism," but now I see that it's sort of a matter of (un)intentional spreading of sexism. - BioGio (P.S.: As for that "not a chance" line, I'm reminded of a friend, an attorney who loved sharing stories from the trenches of the courthouse. He loves to say that when a lawyer asks "Is it possible that XYZ happened?" or something similar, the only correct response is "Yes, and it's also possible that there are aliens on Mars." Don't try this at home, though, kids; contempt of court is a real thing.)

I understand that this was posted like forever ago (i.e., 5 hours ago), but I can't help myself. The particular case of generating pronouns has a lot to do with how a particular language's gender system works and not all that much to do with sexism. An unknown person has to be assigned a gender if the personal pronouns are to be used. These are the pronouns used when describing a person whose gender is unknown, like talking about the driver of the car next to you if the car's windows are heavily tinted. In English, "they" and "he" are most common, but usage in formal writing is the subject of a centuries-old argument in prescriptivist circles. I recall reading about a particular sub-dialect of AAVE that used "yo" for unknown persons. (I haven't encountered much about people using pronouns such as "ze," as their appearance seems to be an extremely recent development that hasn't spread to many idiolects, let alone dialects/sociolects.) Polish uses the neuter singular, a rough equivalent to "it" (or "they," if you happen to use that word in the singular). Other languages don't have gender at all, like Finnish and Turkish. They're just fine with having only one third person pronoun, and they'll use it for everyone. Cross-linguistically, it seems that masculine pronouns are most popular. However, languages such as Seneca and Maasai use the feminine gender. Any random speaker, regardless of his/her own gender, will consistently produce a sentence such as "She went to the store" or "She may have been in an accident." That doesn't necessarily mean that people from certain parts of West Africa or North America are any more or less sexist than speakers of other languages! The Maasai still practice quite rigid gender roles. It just means their languages handle these things differently. Basically, linguistic gender and sexism aren't necessarily related. Linguistic relativity holds that a language's structure can influence non-linguistic behavior, but that claim is far from axiomatic. Looking at sentences like "He went to the store" is a really inaccurate way of determining whether a culture or individual is sexist. (The same goes for that old myth that French and Spanish are somehow more sexist because every word in those languages is assigned a grammatical gender. Saying "la silla" and "el ratón" doesn't ultimately mean much of anything about how Spanish speakers think.) While I'm still here, I noticed that some people (The Kumquat Alchemist and one or two others) have been making the distinction between intentional and unintentional sexism. Would you mind elaborating on how you draw that distinction, and what difference it makes whether sexism is intentional or not? - BioGio EDIT: Addressed a bit more about grammatical gender because I'm a dweeb.

I'm not on Tumblr at all, so I really don't know what happened there. Regardless, I think people should have kept their responses to you on BZP, since going to a completely different website seems rather unproductive and somewhat like talking behind your back. That said, since you did put your idea on the table, are you willing to discuss it further? Kitania and Pomegranate obviously dumped a ton of stuff for you to read and respond to, so I hope you don't see me as wedging myself in when I ask if you'd be willing to respond to my questions back on page one. I legitimately do want to know more about your opinion because I somewhat agree with your comment that fiction doesn't necessarily have to teach the consumer anything in particular. - BioGio

This is kind of the classic "vote with your feet" issue. Using Eurobricks/Tumblr/Pinterest/whatever instead of BZP is pretty much the clearest and easiest way to get what you want. Eschewing BZP in favor of other sites has two effects: allowing you to have the leaked content discussions you want, and indicating to BZP that people are willing to leave out of frustration with the leak policy. If enough people dislike the current policy, and if enough of them leave, then there is an actual reason for the leak policy to be lifted (i.e., an attempt to gain or regain traffic from those looking to discuss leaks). It's not a guarantee that something will change on BZP, but at least you will get to discuss leaks on your new favorite site. - BioGio

ESPN is actually Disney's largest source of revenue (including all of their TV channels, the magazine, website and other media). (Source: Met the managing editor of ESPN.com about a year ago, and he liked bragging about this.) - BioGio

@Banana Gunz: Since you're back in this thread, would you mind speaking a bit more to your original experiences with gender in Bionicle? That's what I had really thought were the most interesting parts of your original post, but also some of the most confusing. Like bonesiii brought up, you could have ignored the canon story had you wanted to, and as you said, you know that you can pretend to be whomever. So how exactly did the canon story impact your view of gender (particularly but not necessarily in regards to Bionicle)? After all, Bionicle was always for children and consumed mainly by children, so it's pretty important to hear about how children viewed the line and its gender ratios. I think Lady Kopaka and a few other posters also brought up their childhood experiences. (Not to say that that's the only perspective that matters, but it's a pretty important one.) - BioGio

I recall there being an old thread about the other languages BZP members speak. It could be interesting to compare the languages we all speak/write/read/understand here, and perhaps also discuss methods for learning other languages. Foreign languages and linguistics are two of my biggest passions, and it'd be great to see who shares them. So: 1. What languages do you speak? 2. How did you learn them? 3. What are your current goals or challenges with other languages? I'll start: I speak English natively and Spanish quite well (as a result of taking several years of Spanish in school). I'm currently learning German (started around the beginning of summer) and increasing my skills in reading French. Has anyone else tried learning to read a foreign language without learning to speak it? I always feel like my French is sub-par because I can write a bit as a result of reading so much, but I regularly mangle the finer aspects of the grammar (e.g., using y and en). I know several people who can speak other languages but not write in them--such as my friends who grew up speaking with immigrant parents but never having to write except in English. - BioGio

Your whole family has excellent taste.

Is your dad a big Tom Lehrer fan?

That's awesome. Under what circumstances did you meat him? A book signing? (Incidentally, has BZP gotten more lax about posting in other languages?)

Huh. I kinda thought there were other difficulties with us becoming Toa. Kidding... but really, canon facts are not magical tyrant-land rules that somehow affect your own imagination. Just headcanon it differently. LEGO never intended "how it is in canon" to be "how you MUST imagine it." But no, they didn't think it through very well. Most fanfics, except those that are trying to stay closely canon-fit, tend to abandon it, or just turn it into tendencies. That's what I did in my Paracosmos fanfics and so far no magical LEGO rule enforcers have shown up. Going off of Banana Gunz's profile (which states he's currently 15), he must have been at the oldest 11 when he became a fan of Bionicle and wanted to be a Toa of Water. (Bionicle was cancelled in 2010, right?) Since Bionicle is aimed towards children as young as 7 (and is enjoyed by even smaller kids), he could easily have been much younger. It doesn't really do much to tell a 15-year-old to imagine Matoran's gender differently; his problem is in the past. In other words, the advice here is useless, because it's years too late and directed at the wrong person. And it's not really the TFOLs and AFOLs who are affected by these "magical tyrant-land rules." Certainly now you and I know better than to take all of Bionicle canon literally, but plenty of children will do so nonetheless. LEGO's intent (which of course isn't really the matter at hand when discussing the success of a work of fiction--link semi-facetious) has little bearing over this, as kids aren't always going to know that intent and may easily misinterpret it. Some kids take the rules of fantasy-land very seriously, and it really doesn't make much sense to say that they're somehow wrong for doing so. I know when I was little, I'd get mad at my playmates when they "broke the rules." As far as I was concerned, we couldn't play superheroes if they were going to make-believe that Superman had random new powers, or if they changed something about Spider-Man's backstory. That's how some kids play, and I'd think a well-established company like LEGO would know that much. Some kids will want to follow the "rules" LEGO sets out, even if they dislike them. OP wasn't somehow wrong or misguided (or, based on the tone of your "magical LEGO rule enforcers" comment, somewhat paranoid) for playing a certain way. Anyway, I think that the most important line from the original post wasn't about Banana's wanting to be a Toa of Water. It's where he says "It's especially hard on girls because they have such a limited amount of elements to choose from!" Children see Bionicle as saying that girls can be Matoran of Water, and that's it. (Later years, of course, added Av-Matoran and Ce-Matoran, as well as a few minor characters like Roodaka, but 2001 Bionicle still restricted females to only the Water element.) Girls only had Nokama, Gali, and a few villagers to identify with (and, by extension, to role-play as). I think that's also the thrust of Pomegranate's excellent use of the Spock quote. EDIT: I nearly forget to ask you what you meant by "they didn't think it through very well." I'm not sure what you were referring to here. There were several unintended consequences that came from the gender ratios (e.g., kids taking them too literally, the story imparting some "kind sexist" messages as a result, etc.). I'm not sure exactly what you meant by this parenthetical comment. What "last one" are you referring to? (I may have just not been around for that thread; I took a break from BZP for some time. Do you mean the brief discussion in the thread about Bionicle's rumored return?) Why exactly did you bring up the "last one"? Got some clarification. Why was it necessary to remind people of the rules? I assume that there have been no posts that clearly violate the rules thus far, or else they would have been deleted. Have there been posts bordering on rule-violations (including any potentially or somewhat disrespectful comments) in the thread already? (If the thread hasn't yet descended into near-rule-breaking, was this comment a matter of prudence based on how the "last one" turned out?) - BioGio

My first thought on seeing this topic's title was one definition of "eternal": existing outside of time. For instance, Platonic Forms would be considered to exist outside of time (and space); it's not just that they keep on existing forever, but that they are perfect and exist independent of time and space. The circle is a Form, but the circle you can draw is just an imperfect representation of that Form. The circle that you draw exists in time (it comes into existence when you draw it, and you can erase it), but the Form has neither beginning nor end. (With my sincerest apologies to nominalists.) As for how exactly this relates to the Vahi/MU... I suppose a timeless MU would be an abstract object/Form/set of Forms, whereas the real MU is a predicate? I don't exactly have a degree in Matoran philosophy, so I'm not quite sure. - BioGio

¿Desde cuando hablás vos el idioma español? How long have you been speaking the Spanish language? (voseo because I felt like it) And I see that this is a dumb question because you are from Colombia. Oops. Well, I've never seen a Spanish-language AMA before, so I've got to ask, are they called HCPs?

*raises hand* I got into BIONICLE when I was four years old. As soon as I discovered the basic story and learned that Gali was the only girl, I thought, "Huh, that doesn't seem fair", so I decided that Lewa and Kopaka (and by extension, Wairuha) would also be female. Unfortunately, as I got more involved with the novels and comics, this headcanon became harder and harder to maintain. But it was nice while it lasted. It was a time of blissful innocence and ignorance of the wider ramifications of these ridiculously skewed gender ratios. (Nice rebuttal to Jim, BTW.) Well, I guess the real shock here is that you can't very easily stereotype people--including young boys! (What's the deal with that?) And that was emphatically not a rebuttal. I sincerely wanted to see what he actually thinks on the matters he/I brought up. I will read his responses (hopefully, I'll get a response to all of my questions) and do my best to talk about them further. - BioGio P.S. Just looked at your post about Korra. Can't say I totally agree: there are other reasons for not liking LoK (but none of them relevant to the topic here). #ATLAForLife there are also many many more reasons for disliking the recent seasons of Spongebob

I've got to say that I really enjoy a few of the OP's comments, particularly the one about feeling stymied by the gender rules. It goes to show that not all young boys liked the male-skewed gender ratio. Perhaps LEGO wasn't completely correct. Well, it's true that fiction doesn't have to be didactic to have value, but wouldn't you agree that teaching children to be (more) "nice and fair" is a good thing? If BIONICLE were "90% equal," could it be improved by making it 95% equal? Would you necessarily support this increase in equality? What if BIONICLE were 10% equal and could become 15% equal? Under what circumstances would BIONICLE become worse as a result of more equality? All of the above questions also apply to teaching kids to be "nice and fair." Would you support BIONICLE if it taught kids to be mean and cruel? What if it had no moral message? What do you define as "BIONICLE's job"? You've said what it is not, but what is it? (I'll pass over the obvious comment about Onua and Kopaka.) First of all, I'm not sure where you're getting the "don't upset any different groups" thing from. Do you believe that female characters were only included in BIONICLE because not doing so would upset girls in real life? (And conversely, do you believe that male characters were only included so as not to upset boys?) If not, why do you think different genders were included in BIONICLE? Similarly, what do you think is the purpose of having racial diversity in other stories? Do you believe different races are only included in fiction for the sake of not upsetting people? What about diversity in gender? Appearance? Personality? Second, the very matter of including different groups or characteristics (be they gender, skin color, ethnicity, eye color, or what have you) isn't really at hand here. BIONICLE already has both men and women. No one is asking for females to exist in the BIONICLE canon; the topic is about the amount of female and male characters. Have I misunderstood your point in asking this rhetorical question? (Incidentally, I don't necessarily believe we can measure equality, kindness, or fairness, but really I'm just kind of riffing off your "100%" statements.) - BioGio

What's the strangest thing in your home/place of residence? What is your elevator pitch for this blog entry?

This is why I always drive home at 2:00 A.M. in the afternoon.