“Now, what if the soldiers were citizens of the Republic of China (Taiwan) and the ships were an invading fleet from the People’s Republic of China?”
- I’d say good on Taiwan for defending themselves. :-p

Here’s an interesting observation for you… when I imagined the soldiers to instead be from -China-… I actually found myself literally wondering if those ships were perhaps civilian instead of military(and now that i go post this, i see Magnus had a similar itch too)… and being shot at for, say, coming to close near restricted coastal areas.

Apparently i have a certain preconception of China(‘s military) doing ‘bad things’ (invade; shoot civies) sooner than ‘good things’. – To be fair though, that bias hasn’t been built up entirely on fiction…

i’ll also say, one thing that makes this a lot more palpatable than the previous image, is that this seems much more like a clear-cut war image. There’s ‘warring going on’. The other, you question if the event is even starting out as a genuine war-situation, let alone continuing as one.

But. But… after having now had my above ‘China-switch’ revelation, i find myself re-examining the above image oncemore, wondering how I even know for sure there’s true symmetrical warring going on there (as in army vs army (more specifically navy)), since all i see is two blurry ships, one tan/red, the other grey/black – and i’m just -assuming- that the grey/black is probably a naval ship, since those tend to be grey with perhaps black markings… But that still doesn’t answer what the tan/red ship is… what exactly got hit in the explosion… simply put ‘what happened here, actually?’

So i guess in the end, you really can see anything you want in this, including a ‘flame war’. And someone already did. ;-)

I’ve always like TBB for not being afraid to discuss important real world themes – to me it isn’t about hijacking a LEGO blog with a political agenda, so much as discussing how our hobby interacts with the world around us. And the last few long discussions have been great, with respectful and intelligent contributions from all sides. So I say keep it up!

@ Starwars4J: I don’t think any of the arguments and discussions earlier in the week were flame wars. I was impressed with the tone that people took, even when strongly disagreeing with each other. It was interesting for me to read comments by people I disagree with that were very well-reasoned and insightful, and also comments by people who I agreed with about their conclusions, but I didn’t like how they got there.

/stirs doodoo

Success, in my mind, is bringing the observer to a place or situation. Where is this builder bringing us? I didn’t know until you lead me a little with the question. So I guess the question IS the context now which is why I suggested “forcing”. The controversy part was in light of all the fun this week which can be a bit additive on the boards.