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LewaLew

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Year 17

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  1. Judging by your join date, I would have left to focus on college around the time you joined, so I'm not surprised.
  2. I come here every few years just to see what happened. It is like returning to a hometown that never existed, and all the people were fictional characters you made up as imaginary friends, and only a few straggling ghosts roam the grounds as though nothing changed. I post this just to see if the ghosts can hear. The sensation of wandering in here ever since 2013, when I left the staff, has been haunting.
  3. On a whim, I turned up today wondering what became of this old place. Is it better? Worse? The same? More bitter or less? BIONICLE-focused or not? Also, I kind of regret not having been here to run the BaseBlog in The Year. We did it! The Cubbies finally won! Anyone can have a good century! EDIT: Wow. Some cursory googling reveals some pretty insane stuff happened here. I'm glad I was gone when people started to go bonkers. It's sad that I've never been able to come back to the way I remember BZP. Or maybe it was never that way to begin with. I don't know. But it is disappointing to see how many people are gone or damaged. This was such a fun place. And I'm sorry for the part that I had in encouraging the chaos, even when I thought I might help to subdue it.
  4. The most fun you can have with your Canadian friends is to take potshots at each other's countries. Particularly when you're a professional history textbook editor and know more about their country than they do. Honestly, Canadians are great. I can't wait until we annex them to replace California.
  5. Quite frankly, I'm surprised it's not gone already. There didn't seem to be much excitement over G2 when I popped in, given that this has generally been a story-focused forum, and G2 was kind of weak on that. And while it wasn't the reason I left, the forum was prone to toxicity after BIONICLE ended. I guess that tends to happen when the forum is focused on a dead story. Not that I've poked around that much, but is Ninjago helping this place stay afloat? I was just thinking about it after I saw some ninjas on one of my church's staff's fridge, and I realized that Ninjago's been around longer than I was following BIONICLE. Which makes me feel old, but also proud of LEGO for catching lightning in a bottle twice, and perhaps more successfully the second time. Also, hai.
  6. I'm trying to find the BZP staff history topic, but the search engine isn't doing me any favors. It used to be in General Discussion, right?
  7. I wouldn't take BZPower's continuance for granted. Sure, I don't expect it to just keel over like a bug in a jar of nail polish remover, but G2 definitely did not regain the full following that G1 had, and a fanbase is naturally expected to decline as the years go by without new content. After all, BIONICLE is not Star Wars, and even they survived primarily due to EU works like the Thrawn trilogy and having an iconic pop-culture film trilogy. BIONICLE has none of that. It does have the internet and websites like BZP, but I doubt the BZP-BS01 community's ability to serve as life-support for five to ten more years that I would expect BIONICLE's second hiatus to last. And, of course, if it doesn't come back within that time, there will not be much purpose in holding the torch anyway, and after that point, I would put the BZP-BS01 community on death watch. There is a possibility that BZPower could abandon its BIONICLE identity and try to create a bigger tent as a pure LEGO site, but there's already more than a few forums like that, which means it would be an uphill path to make a new name amongst fierce competition.
  8. It seems to me that more than a few people here are voting from within a BIONICLE-fan echo chamber. BIONICLE has never had a tremendous fanbase--not like Ninjago or non-LEGO properties. It has had a very devoted group of fans, as BZP and BS01 illustrate, but one problem has been that enthusiasm does not equal profit for a toyline. Even the most devoted fan is unlikely to buy more than one of any particular set, and some of them only bother to get one or two out of a series of six toa. Enthusiasm is only profitable for the sake of good word-of-mouth, but BIONICLE's fanbase has never been big enough to generate that kind of publicity. Not to mention that BIONICLE's heyday predated the social media era, which really increased the value of a strong online fanbase. If G1 had come out around the same time as Facebook and Twitter, it might have been a different beast, similar to other toylines like MLP that exploded thanks to social media. As it stands, BIONICLE is a fairly small IP that has had its unique traits coopted by other LEGO themes, and I don't expect it to return unless LEGO is willing to completely blow up the tether to G1 and make it a new theme that is BIONICLE in name only. I believe it should also be said that many older users of BZP had predicted long before that G2 would not be as deep as G1, since that depth is what led LEGO to cancel G1 in the first place. If there is a G3, I expect it to be simplified even more, not less.
  9. When Gen 2 was announced, I had been pleased to see people looking forward to it rather than behaving like genwunners. I'm disappointed to see that didn't persist. I haven't delved into Gen 2 like I did Gen 1, largely because I can't afford to anymore, but it appears to be exactly what I and many other Gen 1 vets expected. It wasn't Gen 1 because it wasn't supposed to be. They didn't do a deep story because they were "lazy." They kept it simple because the deep story eventually bogged down BIONICLE. It was an advertising campaign that outgrew its own product, which is bad business. If they were in the entertainment industry, that would be great. But they're not, and never have been. But to take this company which did everything they could to provide fanservice and appeal to a nonessential audience just because we were faithful customers before and accuse that company of laziness is petty. Gen 2 is dying for the same reason Gen 1 did. You can't sell an unpopular toyline to a shrinking nostalgic market, and that's even more true if the nostalgic market is unwilling to accept changes made to acquire new audiences. And this attitude predates Gen 2 and Hero Factory. It's existed since at least 2004, and has only grown as nostalgists increase and new fans decrease. Gen 1 was a unique franchise that can never be repeated and will never be continued in a way that will appeal to everyone through their personally-adjusted nostalgia goggles. If you want BIONICLE back in a way you like, you'll have to do it yourself. That's the way it's always been since Makuta got beaned in the head.
  10. I would be shocked if Fates fails internationally. And, while I've been avoiding spoilers as best I can, it sounds like Corrin is one of the most popular characters within his game (moreso if he is a she). As for the future, yeah, we can't tell yet. And no, his dragon form doesn't spoil anything. It was already in the trailers. Omega Yato, I don't know, but people have told me that doesn't really spoil anything either. The ballot apparently only affected two characters: Cloud and Bayonetta. (He mentioned that Cloud was the most requested Squeenix character.) I'm sure Sakurai noticed, otherwise Geno and K. Rool wouldn't have gotten Mii constumes. But apparently only one character was going to win, and that was Bayonetta. I'm sure he'll keep some of those characters in mind for Smash 5, but that's no guarantee, either. They haven't built the rails for that train yet. But the tracks are being mapped out on the NX Railroad. Choo-choo!
  11. Well, except Corrin's game does exist. In Japan. And it's taking far too long to get here.
  12. There were plenty of people who wanted Corrin. For Smash 5. We didn't think that it was even possible, so many Corrin fans didn't even vote or campaign for him. Sure, there's a ton of others I would have wanted more, but this is fine. I think K. Rool and Isaac suffer from a lack of appearances. Obviously, with the way DLC has gone, there are virtually no "rules" about who can and can't be in Smash, but Sakurai does seem to be avoiding retro characters unless the characters themselves are classics--not just their games. Duck Hunt and Little Mac match that. K. Rool, unfortunately, hasn't even appeared in a DK game since the N64, and he hasn't appeared in the DKC series since Retro got a hold of it. Isaac, meanwhile, was only the main protagonist of one game. As I recall it, Sakurai once said in an interview that he almost passed on Ganondorf because he wasn't sure if he was likely to appear in another game besides OoT. But as a Ridley fan, I wouldn't take Sakurai at his exact words. He's dreadfully inconsistent.
  13. Can you imagine how much more salt there would be if he had made a new FE stage, too?
  14. It's hilarious that all of these characters that people have been pining for for years are Mii costumes. I try not to have fun in others' disappointment, but just the fact that there are so many strikes me as funny. It helps that my favorite character didn't even get that, but a Ridley costume would have been pretty ridleyculous. Unless they were to make a quadruped Mii. Nah, it would still look ridleyculous.
  15. I can't remember enough from the books. All I can remember is that I didn't like some of the things the characters did, even though I liked the characters. Like Jacen Solo becoming Darth Caedus. Skywalkers turning to the dark side was old. In the movies, though? Hard to say. I don't hate Jar Jar as much as most, or ewoks. I'd probably go with Jabba's monkey-lizard. And Darth Vader agrees with me, if his comments about Crumb in his comic are any indication.
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