BioGio

Ballom! I missed you, man; nice to see you again. I'll be sure to check out and review whatever epic you're currently working on. Fine, be that way. All enjoying your own actions and the features of this site. You, you... enjoyer. Huh, I don't remember there having been two Off-Topic forums (probably just bad memory though). I'll try to venture down.

I think most people have the problem with the other characters applauding the kiss. Depiction isn't endorsement, but uncritical depiction (i.e., characters do the wrong thing, everyone celebrates it by clapping and whooping) is at the very least severely flawed. (The classic endorsement-versus-depiction example is Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, which despite being narrated by Humbert is more overtly critical of Humbert than Green is of the Anne Frank House kiss.) Others object to the way Green draws parallels between death in genocide and death from cancer. This parallelism seems mostly just clumsy to me, like Green didn't quite think through the difference between racism and illness. - BioGio

This is actually true. "Female" and "male" are both terms for different sexes, though--not different genders. In animals that display sexual dimorphism, females and males can have rather substantially different physical characteristics. For example, male peacocks have colorful feathers used to attract mates; male black widows are much smaller than their female counterparts; only female mosquitos bite; and so on. There's also the matter of their primary sexual characteristics--their reproductive organs. But difference between male and female is certainly not a "fact of life" for a bacterium, nor for flowering plants, nor anything on Earth that reproduces asexually. Given that Matoran appear to be more or less created by Turaga, one wonders whether it would actually be a "fact of life" for Matoran that "females are different from males." - BioGio EDIT: Oh, also, pretty much what Humva said. (Hi, Humva! Nice job on the ninja-ing, and it's good to see you're still around.)

Pssst, dude, first rule of improv: always say "yes, and..." Gosh, with a move like that, you've made your character completely useless for the rest of this bit. I hope you're happy with yourself.

Not quite. When people said that the pronouns used to refer to the characters is what gave them their gender, they mean the pronouns that the books and authors use. For example, the narration always calls Tahu "he," so we know that Tahu is a boy. If some random Matoran were to decide to call Tahu a woman, or "she," that wouldn't make Tahu any less of a boy. We assume that the narration knows Tahu's true gender identity and selects the correct pronouns to fit it; we think this because the narration is generally omniscient, or told from a perfectly-informed outside perspective. Similarly, Dalu was always referred to using "she" types of pronouns. A sentence involving Dalu might read, "Dalu looked at her arms and saw she had been badly hurt." This shows that Dalu, as tomboyish and pugnacious as she may be, was still comfortable being a girl. After all, in real life, a boy can be feminine without considering himself a girl, or a girl can be masculine without considering herself a boy. Personality is much more complex than just "boys like to fight, girls like to cook"--and I think you'll agree that no one is really that one-sided. If we were, that sure would be boring! Now, I'm also somewhat sympathetic to the idea of each element essentially being a "gender" in Matoran society (i.e., a set of personality traits, societal expectations, etc.), but that still doesn't answer the question of what makes certain Matoran identify as "girls" and others as "boys." After all, if each element were distinct, we would need a dozen pronouns: one for Ta-Matoran, another for Ga-Matoran, another for Ce-Matoran, and so on. Instead, we only have the pronouns "he" and "she." Why are both Ga- and Ce-Matoran referred to using the "she" pronoun? So there's clearly more at work than just a split along elemental lines. Bionicle also had legitimate sexual dimorphism, particularly among the Skakdi, whose females were bigger/badder/meaner than the males. This gets into biological difference in addition to personality, so clearly there's something more to this equation than just the elemental stereotypes. I could go on, but I'm pretty sure I'd just end up repeating Alyska and Kitania et al. Oh, and as for how this relates to the rumored return of Bionicle, um, I'd personally like my own pet theories to come true (so, there, now this post is on-topic). - BioGio

Teenagers, do, however, generally really wish that they talked like that (or at least I know precocious little self-aggrandizing I used to). I once skimmed TFiOS and I tried to read Will Grayson Will Grayson (which qualifications I'm sure you'll find make me a bona fide John Green expert), and I've got to say that Green at least knows his audience very well. As others have said, Green is rather crass and manipulative (I think "crass and manipulative" is a quote from the Guardian's review of the TFiOS film) in much of his oeuvre, in that he knows exactly what teens want to read and how to give them the "feels." (Cf. also that stuff about teens wanting to talk like Hazel and whoever.) Then again, I'm a real lit snob, so I find most accessible and popular books to be some synonym for "crass." I also recall something about the Anne Frank House in TFiOS, and I recall that drawing some more moralistic outrage. How do you lean on that issue?

Hey. It's been a while since we've seen each other. How are you holding up? Are the kids alright? I still miss the littlest one. What did you decide on for the name--Jimmy? No? Oh, right, Timmy. Well... Kind of funny bumping into you here. You look great, by the way. Anyway, I should really be going. But we should get lunch some time--catch up. You should still have my number. Yeah, well, uh, see you around--I mean, maybe--if we do. Good-bye. ------------------- In all seriousness, though, now, I guess I'm back for a bit. What's with this new reputation thing on the posts? Is it like le epic Reddit upboats, and does it indicate who "reputationed" the post? Any other new features I should know about. (And I am very sorry for the above awkward-encounter-w/-estranged-person-dialogue-thing, which dialogue-thing didn't really stick to a solitary theme or storyboard and was generally kind of lamely executed. But it felt oddly fitting and humorous, and I find myself funny when I do stupid junk like that.) - BioGio

Title of topic is "Rumor: Bionicle's Return in 2015." Twenty pages of discussion (= 794 posts), including people arguing about which dictionary defines "sex" and "fact" best, and a skin-deep level of textual criticism I haven't seen since freshman English class. Never change, BZP. (just kidding, guys, ily, that's why I come back I think) Also to stay kind of on-topic: Makaru said a while back that Mata-Nui-being-the-universe could be dispensed with in a Bionicle reboot. While I agree that the "shocking twist" nature of this revelation couldn't work twice, the use of Mata Nui's "illness" as a metaphor should definitely be kept. The nature of this metaphor changed pretty dramatically throughout Bionicle's run (from Faber's early, rather symbolic/shrouded equivalencies like Toa canisters = pills, to Nokama revealing that Mata Nui is dying, to Mata Nui being a giant robot), but I feel like it ought to be somehow preserved. - BioGio EDIT: Jeez, there's like a standoff going on in this thread what with all those people just watching the thread and not posting. EDIT: Seriously, is everyone just staring at their screen hitting refresh compulsively and like hoping for someone to post first. Like, "Maybe a mod'll come in and have a real killer response." I'm imagining there's also a deeply introspective soul-searching-type process going on for some people, as in like "Should I post? And could posting serve as a way of imparting meaning on this discussion/my life, or is the concept of contributing to a conversation just a Stirner-esque spook? And even if I post what if my post contains private language and no one understands me because maybe my internal experience vis-à-vis Bionicle is nonsense as it cannot be verified by the other posters?" and then they probably go into some real hardcore solipsistic existence-questioning. Okay but I've been meta enough in this post, I'm done I swear. (I literally have nothing better to do than to mangle various philosophical concepts on a message board for building toys.)

Oh, man, you will not be let down--Apocalypse Now is one of the best American movies I've ever seen. One recommendation before watching Apocalypse Now: Be sure to have read Heart of Darkness, and brush up on some of T. S. Eliot's poetry (especially "Hollow Men"). Of course, the whole movie is just a parallel of Heart of Darkness set in the Vietnam War, and several Eliot poems are quoted in reference to Mr. Kurtz.

I decided a few hours ago to join NaNoWriMo 2013. I'm still not totally sure where I'll be going with this novel, but I'm quite satisfied with my first couple hundred words. I also don't know how much I want to write, and the tight structure with which I feel the need to write fiction will surely hinder me from reaching 50,000 words in the month. So, I don't have any definite goals--of really any sort--in mind. My only expectation is to return to fiction writing. Perhaps every week, I'll select a few short samples or a brief passage to share here, as a small incentive to continue. Would anyone find that interesting?

You actually want to know? There was a similar "Why don't Bionicle languages change?" thread a while back, and people were complaining about how the disparate roots in "Ba-Matoran" and "Garai" both seem to mean "gravity." A few people said that maybe "Barai" should have been the word for the Mask of Gravity. So, I suggested that it could have been in one dialect, while "Garai" could have been the word in another. Naturally, there needs to be an explanation for such a strange hypothesis, so I suggested that maybe both came from an older root, a labialized voiced velar stop. Now, real-world linguists generally agree that in the Celtic language family, one group of languages turned a labialized voiceless velar stop into a voiceless bilabial stop, and another group of languages turned the same labialized voiceless velar stop into a voiceless velar stop. In shorter notation,[kʷ] > [p] (P-Celtic) [kʷ] > [k] (Q-Celtic) My proposed sound change was, [gʷ] > (Standard Matoran) [gʷ] > [g] (Mahri Nui Dialect) Since [g] and are just the voiced counterparts of [k] and [p], this is plenty reasonable from a linguistic standpoint. So, I get that from comparative linguistics and a thread full of people complaining about supposed inconsistencies. I think that one Danish member, darthme, was also in the thread; it was actually really productive, especially since he also knows a bit about linguistics. We're both amateurs, though, haha. (You and fishers were also probably there, too, now that I think about it.) ~ BioGio EDIT: Good news, the thread was not lost after all!

Actually, it's not children who further linguistic evolution. Evidence from modern languages across the world suggests that sound change (one of the major driving forces of linguistic evolution) is in fact driven by well-connected, social women from the upper working class. Men, meanwhile, seem to pick up sound changes from their mothers. (One might find it funny that fashion tends to evolve in much the same manner!) Now, since BIONICLE lacks families for the most part, it is quite difficult to determine whether sound change and linguistic evolution would actually advance past the first stage of active middle-class women. Perhaps the fact that Ga-Matoran were often schoolteachers could advance sound change on Metru Nui, but that doesn't explain how linguistic evolution could occur on Spherus Magna. All of that said, I've actually proposed a few of my own ideas for sound change in the Bionicle Universe. For instance, to explain the Mask of Gravity's name being "Garai" even though "Ba-" is the prefix for gravity, I posited that both "ga-" [ga] (as in "Garai") and "ba-" [ba] (as in "Ba-Matoran") come from an earlier form "gwa-" [gʷa] (giving early forms Gwarai [gʷarai] and Gwa-Matoran [gʷamatoran]). In most dialects, [gʷ] became , but in some dialects (perhaps Mahri Nui's), [gʷ] became [g]. By the way, fishers, a couple of your examples in the first post aren't quite correct. I can't think of any dialect of English that does not retain "sought" as a preterite and past participle form of "seek." Also, "thou" did not change to "you"; it was replaced by it. Both "thou" and "you" were words in Early Modern English, but gradually "thou" fell out of favor, and "you" was used in its place. ~ BioGio

I had to learn "new math." But who deserves the credit, and who deserves the blame? Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky is his name!

Because they are wrong and because that is what they are? I think you may have misunderstood the entry. It clearly reads "what's the purpose of..."--not "why..."; Jink is asking what one gains by doing so. Your response appears to state that you gain some enjoyment by telling the truth. Is that the case?

Yes, there was apparently an incident this April Fool's Day that resulted in the deactivation of the account. Essentially, a hacker used the GregF account to pull a prank. As far as I can tell, that was the last activity on the account, so it was what caused the banning. Also, Greg F. (and all other LEGO employees) are restricted from communicating with minors under the age of thirteen--and thus prohibited to use sites such as this one--due to COPPA. By the way, it's public knowledge that Bob Thompson essentially created the first idea of BIONICLE, and Christian Faber helped to refine the concept to be more tropical in setting and tone: Thus, those two were the major players in the "idea to make Polynesian robots." ~ BioGio EDIT: Right, just under thirteen. (Thanks for the clarification, Kopekemaster.)

Actually, there are only a few sites with forums that are still filtered. The only major reason why you wouldn't be able to mention a forum would be if the forum is inherently unsuitable for minors (e.g., based on explicit topics). Just the other week, Black Six explained that we can even talk about 4chan, just not link to it. (Theoretically, one could even link to 4chan, if one were to find a thread without swearing or explicit images/language. Good luck with that.)

Isn't it clear from the post you quoted? I don't get what you mean. Perhaps you could help me understand though by answering a stock question that Greg himself has also usually advised which is, what specific advice for improvement do you have (keep in mind it's too late, but for sake of discussion)? What would you, specifically, do differently, and why? I don't mean to speak for Toa Zaz and DuplexBeGreat, but I think that your earlier response missed the mark a bit. I don't think anyone here would disagree with the notion that characters ought to have flaws (and they may even agree with the more forcefully-stated idea that characters are in many ways best defined by their flaws)--and if they would so disagree, that's a completely different discussion from this one. Rather, they seem to be trying to say that there is a marked trend towards female characters' possessing certain flaws: in this case, apparently passivity, hesitancy, and/or self-righteousness. Thus (particularly since characters are defined by their flaws), Greg can only write two female character types because all of his female characters have one of two particular flaws.Of course, male characters also can share in these flaws (e.g., Tahu's righteousness and Jala's hesitancy, to use your examples), but many male characters have completely different flaws as well. The central thrust of Zaz's and Duplex's argument as I understand it was that, while all characters are flawed, female characters taken as a whole show a marked tendency to possess one of two specific flaws (and thus personalities), while male characters show a much greater variety of flaws (and thus personalities).~ BioGio

Since this whole entry is so cagey and unspecific, I'll take your word and trust that you are totally correct in saying "objectively" wrong. (BTW, feel free to PM me to clear up anything that you feel ought to be cleared up.)

I know that feel. One always wants to be understood well, but unfortunately the Internet isn't particularly conducive to such complete descriptions; it's far more welcoming of snappy one-liners. (It's as if we have been collectively conditioned to expect nothing but ten-second AFV-style "fail" videos and cat pictures. One could also blame it on the glow of a back-lit screen, which glow becomes grating after a while.) Although, I feel strangely compelled here to comment: I do not know what this post was made in response to (and you are more than likely in the right here), but if you go into a discussion believing that the other person is "objectively wrong," then I don't think any style of writing is likely to get you to agree with them. In other words, the problem is not always the length of an argument; very often, it stems from mutual obduracy. (Of course, in this case, one can easily see that a tiresome, lengthy, protracted response greatly exacerbates the problem: Who, unwilling otherwise to consider another viewpoint, would not be further irritated upon having to consider--or at least observe--it at great length? Thus, any post would irritate, but a fourteen-paragraph one would be sure to aggravate.)

Yeah, I didn't mention Sand because Spherus Magna had Sand and Rock rather than Earth and Stone, but all four of those elements are pretty closely linked, so it's a bit difficult to tell exactly from where the GBs took their information in developing those elements. ~ BioGio

Could the reasoning for that have something to do with the fact that the "main six" elements were based on the elements of the Element Lords on Spherus Magna? The GBs would have probably been most knowledgeable about those six elements, and perhaps as a result most comfortable with and capable of replicating them in Toa/Matoran. Basically, there's more to go wrong when trying to create a power (e.g., Gravity) that one has never observed at all, compared to trying to create a power that is relatively well-documented. (Of course, Jungle/the Green is the exception to the rule, but the Green was rare in the MU because plant life was rarer there in general.) ~ BioGio

Too long; didn't read. It's just a blunt way of asking for a brief summary.

And this statement comes à propos of...? (I don't disagree with the sentiment, but I'm a bit perplexed as to your motives for bringing it up.)

Looks like you actually don't know that you know how.

...did they have bulldozers in the 18th century ? No. They also didn't have Nazis.