 |
| Chiana, a Nebari Female |
What I discovered was that this is a living website. By that, I mean that it is constantly being read and remade by fans all over the world. A couple of the reader comments I published were responses to documents written by Adam back in August of 2009. Now, four years wasn't that long ago -all things considered, but I was curious that folks were still commenting on those old pages. So I started looking through them.
Almost every page written on this site has comments, and some of the comments represent ongoing conversations that have been going on for a while now. Some of them are mere seconds apart, while others are separated by months and even years. I chuckled to see comments from Mauler, whose name I often see on the Natfka's site. Hope you're still reading, friend.
But this one comment stuck in my head (not from Mauler). One of our readers commented that what turned him on to the Tau was their remarkable similarity to the Nebari, an alien race in the SciFi mini-series Farscape. The Nebari are a chaotic race whose leadership uses Orwellian methods (including chemicals, mind control, and surgical alteration) to control their otherwise ADHD-overloaded population. You can read more about the Nebari here. In his comment, the reader implied that the Tau were loosly based on the Nebari.
 |
| Earth Caste Smurf... |
No. That is wrong. This logic is called 'post hoc ergo propter hoc.' I remember this from a logic and reason course I took at university 20 years ago... Anyway, this way of thinking is called a logical fallacy that states "Since event Y followed event X, event Y must have been caused by event X." Nothing could be further from the truth--one did not influence the other, any more than the blue coloration being influenced by smurfs (even though the smurfs came first).
Here are some inconsistencies in that argument as it relates to the creative origins of the Tau.
- Tau are blue. The Nebari are silver.
- Tau women are ugly (regardless of caste). Nebari women... are anything but ugly.
- Tau society is socialistic and based on castes. Stabilized Nebari exist in an autocratic neo-theocracy and un-stabilized Nebari are complete anarchists.
- Tau do not have noses. Nebari have sexy noses.
- Tau, in most cases, have no or very little hair. Nebari have lots of hair, and two different colors (black and platinum)
- Tau are conquerors, empire builders, and civilizers in a dark universe that knows only war. Nebari are a powerful race that maintain the ruse of being a demure, subjugated race within a greater galactic autocracy, but secretly attempt to run everything indirectly through deception, nuance, and treachery.
- Tau are orderly and loyal to the Ethereals. Nebari are hedonistic by nature, or sycophantic once 'stabilized.'
I disagree with the commenter, but I appreciate him reading the blog and reminding me that the site lives --even now, over a year after Adam stopped writing. I also appreciate the commenter for reminding me of how hot Nebari women are, particularly Chiana, one of the leading actors in the far-fetched series.
There's a photo of Chiana on this page somewhere. I'm not sure if it was the platinum colored hair, or the perfectly smooth silvery skin, the tight leathery outfits, or her rapid onset self-destructive schitzophrenia that made her so attractive, but I never missed an episode. The commenter made me think, and for that I am thankful.
Adam's original post was intended to explain how the Tau appealed to a specific slice of the wargamer community. GW wanted to add a race to the collection, and their target was males born in the 70s or 80s who had been influenced by Turrican and Gundam, and the models borrowed a number of aesthetic elements from Robotech and Voltron. Though released in 2001, the development cycle went back way further than the 1999 release of Farscape.
Ok, So, I have done my part. I posted. Now what about your part?
What or who are some of your favorite aliens, and how did they contribute to your love affair with our fishy blue space communists? Seriously, drop us a line in the comments, maybe a URL to a pic. Then I will gather it all up and publish a page on the blog.
FYI, one of my favorite alien races of all time are the Cardassians from Star Trek TNG. The males are calculating, manipulative, and treacherous, and the females are... well, you know... beautiful, but disgusting. (come on, work with the pun...)My favorite STTNG episode was "The Wounded" with Mark Alaimo. It was political, intriguing, and exceedingly well done, and it encompassed the true nature of the relationship between the Federation and the Cardassians. On the other hand, "Keeping up with the Kardashians" was pure rubbish. Easy on the eye, in fact quite pleasant in that regard, but you have to watch it with the volume turned all the way down --otherwise listening to them speak would reveal the stupidity and plasticity endemic to the women and the show, and thus would burn all the goodness of their outward beauty away.
At least Mark Alaimo's plasticity was limited to cosmetic scales and brow ridges for artistic effect.
-----------------------------------------
On another note, well, just some statistics about the blog. We have 251 posts, 399 followers. I have deactivated three and archived four that were not about the Tau, which is our main focus. We have 1390 comments. Our blog hosts between 800 and 1200 posts per day, with a ten-day average of 879 per day. Obviously we have more views on the days we actually post something new... We had 24,961 page views in October, and 1,238,397 in the last 12 months.
Most of our readers this week are from the United States, The UK, then Mother Russia, then Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, Singapore, and Sweden (in order). Aside from that one guy in Brazil, South America looks pretty bleak. Vamos mis hermanos, haz que tus amigos latinos de revisar el sitio... Por el bien común (for the greater good).
I play Tau, (but that may be because there are no Nebari models available, and they have no rules -at all).