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Jean Valjean

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About Jean Valjean

  • Birthday 08/12/1993

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    Iowa
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    Emperor Kraggh is a storyteller of various mediums, from the realms of literature to the stage, screen, and the RPGs popular on BZPower. He takes the art of story very seriously and makes sure that its function isn't lost in the forms that manifest it. Through story, Kraggh wishes to convey universal, archetypal themes such as life, death, friendship, trust, understanding, faith, happiness, belonging, imagination, curiosity, serendipity, peace, and love.

    When not storytelling, Kraggh is often known for analyzing literature, movies, and art. Though brutally honest in his opinions, Kraggh nevertheless maintains a positive focus and will never intentionally bring someone down.

    Kraggh is the resident philosopher and known for his ramblings. In real life, more so than even on BZPower, he is constantly in deep thought and contemplating matters such as life, faith, and the soul.

    Finally, bowties are cool. He wears them all the time.

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  1. Thank you. That has been incredibly helpful. Granted, the official MP3 is a slightly different version of the song, that ends with a fade instead of some heavy head-rocking, but I downloaded the music video directly from BioMedia, which is probably the best that I'm going to get. Certainly, it's better than any of the uploads to YouTube. 24601
  2. A quick nostalgic refresher: Alright, now that we're on the same page, where on earth would I find an M4A file of this song? When I look up this band, I found a topic on another forum wondering whatever happened to to them, so I'm not alone in wondering where I can get high quality files of their songs. I've heard some say that the band only existed within the Bionicle creative team,that they were formed to write a couple of songs for marketing, and then disbanded. Some additional searches seem to suggest otherwise, since I can find a couple of other songs by them ("White Chrismas" and "My Way" released on 2011). Anyway, I was wondering if I could find an album anywhere that has this particular song. It's been nagging me in the back of my mind forever. 24601
  3. I'm not saying Bionicle Go necessarily. People think AR medium and immediately think that there's only the Pokemon Go genre, but the medium is still developing and people have only just begun to figure out some of its applications. For example, maybe there would be an app that could take a picture of your MOC and help deconstruct it, or plan the construction of your MOCs, or turn an MOC into a 3D avatar for an MMO, or imagine what they would look like recolored, or create Bionicle-themed animojis (without calling them that, because the name is copyright). LEGO would have to acknowledge the technology in some way in an ever-changing world. I think that there are applications to AR that are quite complementary to Bionicle's constructive and creative nature. When it comes to adventure, though, I'm with you; Bionicle doesn't need a Pokemon Go knockoff, in part because those games are becoming overdone anyway, but logically because such games complement franchises that take place in Earth or Earth-like settings. An actual Bionicle adventure experience would best be suited for an MMO. I do, by the way, definitely agree that G3 could stand to one-up G1. I'm in the came that thought that G1 was great in the first three years,and then lost something when more of the true nature of the world was revealed, like Makuta not being the Makuta, and Mata Nui being a giant robot, and the two not being brothers...eh. I would probably want the twist to validate the supernatural pitch that drew people in, though. That is to say, Makuta and Mata Nui would have to genuinely be brothers and genuinely be deities, but there's more to the story. One franchise that did this really well was Avatar: The Legend of Korra. It took the spiritual roots of the franchise and delved deeper into the implications. In the case of the Legend of Mata Nui and its essential elements, I can see a few areas where a twist could be fit in that fit in completely with the preestablished information. For example, if Mata Nui and Makuta were brothers, could they have a sister? What about the Great Beings and their motives? What if Mata Nui isn't asleep, but dead? What if Mata Nui had unfinished business before going to sleep? What if the story was far more literal than at first thought, an Makuta and Mata Nui were literally imponderable supernatural monoliths? 24601
  4. Welcome to BZPower! I wish you a great time in developing this concept; you can post about it once you're ready in the Epics Sub-forum. You can either "illustrate" your epics with your MOCs or, even better, post links to them in Bionicle-Based Creations so that people can comment on them individually. Keep it up, and you'll find yourself the world's friendliest audience here. 24601
  5. @Sir Keksalot: My opinion is that, since the initial pitch of Bionicle was the island setting and that was what has been proven to be able to get this unique property rolling, it's probably best and most essential to go the mystical/cultish rout with the original Mata Nui storyline. The first year of the multi-media project by necessity has to be the basic pitch for the consumers/audience. @Makaukau Nuva: That basin sounds interesting. It takes the ancient proto-religious superstitious Polynesian feel of G1 and adds some of the proto-religious tropes from Mesopotamia, which I find fitting. Perhaps I do disagree with you a little on one particular point; I'm not entirely sure if the secret has to be answered. It probably depends on how you interpret the mystery of G1. I tended to interpret it as something generally mysterious, inviting speculation, and not a high-concept mystery where the audience was intended to ask a specific question of the setting. With that having been said, perhaps most other people interpreted it differently. Anyway, on my own end of things, I was thinking about this at work today and realized something. Bionicle is a multimedia project, and therefore must take advantage of new media since 2001. What has changed since 2001? In a word: smartphones. They have become a major part of how we consume media, and every franchise today must find uses for that media. IP that hasn't adapted to smartphone media has gone the way of the dodo; I'm looking at you, Neopets. Additionally, tablets are mainstream and no longer a gimmick. Tech companies have compressed technology to such sizes that today's watches are yesterday's supercomputers. Microsoft is releasing a new foldable tablet. Cars now have infotainment systems, and houses now have virtual assistants. If Bionicle were to comeback today, it would enter a completely different world than when it first came to. Only, a G3 Bionicle wouldn't come into being today. LEGO will inevitably wait for a little while to give the franchise some rest and time to accrue nostalgia. Let us say that, at the very earliest, LEGO released G3 full-throttle at the beginning of 2025. What will new upcoming technology allow? MicroLED screens are projected to be the norm by then, and so will 5G connectivity and high refresh-rate monitors, so expect that to affect the way that Bionicle animation is presented. There will be a new standard of Bluetooth by then, and older devices will probably use at least Bluetooth 5.0. What does this mean? I'm not sure, but conceivably more electronic sets like the Manas could take advantage. We don't know where virtual reality is heading in the near future, but presuming that it's still a gimmick with a small audience, it's still a gimmick worth exploring. After all, if G3 lasts for ten years, it should anticipate the growth of such an upcoming market. I'd personally love a VR experience for MNOG (I don't think that the medium lends itself to an MMORPG; that's best for laptops and desktops). Most significantly, I think that since Augmented Reality is becoming a major part of the phone market, Bionicle should create an AR experience that complements the physical sets, and fundamentally modernizes the way that people play with their product. 24601
  6. Yes, that was clearly the case, canonically. Were a G3 to get a little more imaginative with the Matoran language, I would change that. Within the context of the Bionicle universe, something divisible by 6 makes more sense, so I'm imagining either base 12 or base 36. My preferences are for 36, although as Planetperson said, the writing system as it currently stands really lent itself to 12. Were a reboot to write numerals in essentially the same way, then 12 would probably make the most sense, and it would also probably tie more into the sets, since there are 12 released per year. 24601
  7. Because I want this guy to love me. That's all I ever wanted. Why, TMD, why?!? Which is a humorous way of getting atan underlying truth: for whatever reason, we here in BZPower who were here a long time ago came to know and understand each other on an individual level. The bond was especially strong, I think, because even when Bionicle ended, we still had common interests because Bionicle was such a franchise that it attracted a very particular subset of creative types, and a lot of them convened here. I, in particular, made a few strong bonds with fellow writers and worldbuilders. Nowadays, we mainly communicate over Skype. Also, for all I know, there may be a Bionicle G3. And if that ever happens, I hope to have a voice, however small, in ensuring that it's as beautifully conceived as possible. BZPower was a surprisingly influential fanbase that Greg Farshtey reached out to quite a bit. 24601
  8. Oddly enough, I was just about to leave a post saying that I was planning on doing a Paradox Games mega-campaign from CK2 -> EU4 -> Vic2 -> HoI4. I had been interested in getting these games fora mega-campaign for along time, and I figured that I simply couldn't make it worth my leisure time. Partially, that's because I don't have any friends who are into that kind of things. As it turns out, I'm wrong about that, because I do have a friend who's into it, because he just recently tried out HoI4 and is trying to put together a full party of players to engage in a long-term campaign. I also made a new friend who's interested. Personally, I will only engage if we can start out from CK2 or EU4 and work our ways through a mega-campaign, but if we did, it would be a great way of keeping in contact with my increasingly long-distance friends. Anyway, I'm still working on the idle, graphics-free Kittens Game. Plus, I have an idle clicker game on my phone at the moment, where literally all I do is gradually wait for my resource production to double, and then double again. How hardcore I am. Oh, me! 24601
  9. My understanding is that you can construct a spinner if you're a Bara Magna resident, but the only people who will have a physiological reaction to it are Protodermis-based lifeforms from the Matoran Universe. I'm not a story expert (goodness, I'm not; the books never sold in my area), but to me it sounds like this is comparable to a disease bred in a lab. You know what, I think I'll expand on that analogy with a specific hypothetical scenario. Indulge me for a minute. Let's say that during World War II, German scientists experimented with biological warfare to create a virus that could annihilate entire populations. Unfortunately for them, probably due to their cumulative medical knowledge being incurably tainted with research tainted by certain presuppositions about what kind of people were worth their attention, their most efficient virus only really worked on their own gene pool — the German gene pool. They snuff out the virus, but true to their character, they keep all documentation. Not only is the data useful for further development, but such a virus would still have its uses in a worst-case scenario. Among the most fanatical members of the Party, there was a commitment that Germany should be the preeminent world power, or it may as well not exist at all. I know that this sounds rather extreme even by World War II standards, but the political elites of Germany at the time were genuinely crazier than what the movies depict. So, leading up to the Fall of Berlin, though the officers and the true fanatics were quite willing to distribute cyanide tablets among themselves and their families in order to avoid judgment for their war crimes, getting everyone else to go along with this was a different story. Hence, this hypothetical virus would have been the ultimate fail-safe. Something happens, and they aren't able concoct a batch on time. When the Soviets occupy Eastern Germany, they confiscate the virus and all related research. They do not use it, but it is kept around as a fail-safe of their own. The U.S.S.R. was, at the time, paranoid that Germany would rise again. Perhaps they weren't paranoid — history will never know what Germany could have been capable if the Soviet Union didn't go overboard with preemptive measures such as deporting every last German from Prussia and importing an entirely Russian population to make sure that Germany would never, never, never ever have any Prussian generals again. In this analogy, the virus is the Rhotuka Spinner. It was created by Germans (the Protodermis-based lifeforms) who, given their limited reality, only knew about German (Protodermis) genes. Their virus therefore was designed purely to destroy the gene pool that they best understood, the German (Protodermis) gene pool. However, the Russians (Bara Magnans) could still use the virus (Rhotuka) to affect Germans (Protodermis lifeforms). The main difference is that the Bara Magnans can still find other uses for the Rhotuka. I mean, there's nothing stopping them using them in a game of Ultimate Kanoka Golf when they couldn't get any Kanoka Disks because all of the Matoran called dibs on them. Not surprisingly, those Matoran didn't want to touch the Rhotuka, and it's like that situation where everyone at the Thanksgiving family reunion gets to the turkey before you can, but the vast majority of them are lactose intolerant, and so you have the tasty but not-quite-as-festively-appropriate cheese pizza instead. Eh, long story short, if the energy required to charge a Rhotuka is biological, then only creatures with a Protodermis-based biology can charge them. It the energy isn't biological, then I could see it being like the virus analogy where Group B recreates a virus invented by Group A that only affects Group A. I err toward the latter, because something about the Toa Hagah shields screams, "This tool does not have to be tied to biology!" A more story-savvy fan can correct me if I'm wrong. 24601
  10. Thanks. That's some pretty awesome information, and a detail that I actually quite like. Personally, that settles it for me that I like Base 36 the most for Bionicle. If there's ever a G3, I would love to see them incorporate that in somehow. Combining LEGO and math games for the win. 24601
  11. Holy cow. I really, really with that this guy's designs were sets that I could just buy. They are BEAUTIFUL. I especially like how consistent the colors are. 24601
  12. I just realized something. You said that it's the Disney Canon for STAR WARS, and yet it's set during the George Lucas era. Although, I'm purely thinking of canon in terms of films. I don't watch the other stuff. I'm one of those guys who treats STAR WARS as a purely cinematic experience. I might change my answer, thinking through the exact nature of your premise. You're saying that they would befighting the people of Spherus Magna while also engaged in their Galactic Civil War. Well, they lost that war. So in this scenario, they lose even without matching up against the Bionicle. Since they've already lost, if you add in Bionicle as their enemies, they only lose harder. The only question is whether or not, in the Disney canon, there are enough remnants left for the First Order to rise up. In keeping with my original answer, I would say "yes." The Bionicle universe simply isn't populated enough to change much about the reorganization of a portion of the galaxy. 24601
  13. It's from earlier this decade, and I think that it's the one that they made in the first half of 2014, according to the tech support guys who sold it to me. There have been a few major discounts coming from their office, selling used Macbooks for a couple hundred dollars and stuff like that. Not just anybody can buy them. In any case, the takeaway here is that I have a Mac. Specifically, a five-and-a-half-year-old Mac Mini, with some dismal I/O and a little bit of dust inside. However, it was only $50, and when I looked up Macs from when this model was first made in 2012 (this was made in 2014, but it didn't refresh the 2012 design; also, it looks like someone expanded the memory on it), the price of refurbished 7-year-old Mac Minis is nine times as much as what I paid. So I got a pretty good deal. Not that I'm using it. I'm giving it as a gift to a friend whose old computer broke down, and I'll let him assume that I paid the standard refurbished price for it, somewhere around $500. If he wants to pay for my next few meals, then my purchase paid for itself. 24601
  14. My goodness, I honestly didn't know that he still answered questions. A quick Google search shows that he's still employed by LEGO and works for their editorial board, so I guess that an answer from him would carry the authority of canon. 24601
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