ToM Dracone

Turns out the new masks will fit neatly onto any piece that's two studs wide with either axle or pin holes on each end. They'll lock in place if they're axle holes and swing loosely if they're pins. It's pretty neat. And thank you! The wings I got in a Chima set I picked up randomly earlier this year, but they're also in the purple Mixels.

Now that I've had a chance to sit down and play with some of the 2015 Bionicle parts I got from New York Comic Con, here is a thing that uses a few of them! I was fiddling with Onua's mask and the purple/trans-purple pieces I picked up and decided to build Onepu. Except, of course, the new Pakari doesn't come in purple, so I had to figure out other ways to make his head primarily purple like it used to be. (click for Flickr gallery) Ended up deciding, after his head went the direction it did, that this Onepu is a chieftain of the village of Earth on Okoto. He wears the mask of a Skull Spider on his shoulder as a trophy of battle. Also where I realized just how few Hero Factory parts I really have. Maybe need to fix that. (Also also, hello everyone! It is nice to finally have something to post here again.)

Wow so I haven't posted anything on BZP in forever! I've been drawing a lot in the last few months now that I have regular free time in my life again and, of course, eventually lots of it ended up being Bionicle. Micah convinced me that I should maybe perhaps post some of it here so here goes! (click for full view) As is generally abundantly clear, 2001 remains my favorite year and I still can't stop drawing Mata Nui/the Tohunga/the Toa/literally anything from then. One day last week I was inspired to draw the beach of Ta-Koro (the scene of, really, one of the defining moments of my childhood) so here it is! Probably I will post more things soon I guess?

(this is totes a pan pun thank you for noticing :3 ) (also don't worry about the date I get excited about new comments no matter what) (you are most welcome I'm glad to be of service <3 ) it's also better than most of the skillet-based puns out there

I was seriously hoping this was an awesome 'pan' pun Please tell me I'm right (edit: wow I didn't realize this was from July, now I feel like a creeper. That's what I get for not going on BZP in months…)

Mrow I say Colonist Ruthless Adept because that seems like an interesting combination Your name should be Bobbert

THAT HAT. It makes me think of Carmen Sandiego at a gay pride parade, which is one of the best combinations of things that it is possible to have. When was that?

Welcome to my life. I'll be walking through a department store and walk past the multifarious sections for women and all I can think is all of this is so pretty why don't men's clothes come in these colors/patterns/etc P.S. I miss you.

I'm Yanni and I approve of this message!

Fantastic! I'm so glad this all came together so well in the end, the result looks good. Thanks so much for asking me to be a part of this, again — I'm really happy to have contributed. (Also because it got me to get up and do something artistic for the first time in a while!)I also snuck around and looked at the upcoming months, heh, and everyone else's stuff looks good too. Here's hoping more people see this!I do have a couple questions about the titles my pieces ended up with, though...

I love these a great deal. And yeah, attempting to cover every single possibility, while awesome, tends to create things that are really exorbitantly long... alas!

Yeah, as you're discovering, all it takes is a bunch of practice. Your eyes will eventually get used to them, I swear. I've had them for almost four years now (... wow) and it takes zero effort to put them in and take them out now. I actually got them at first because I look better without glasses than I usually do with them, but since then I've discovered that I see much better with contacts. I think it's just because with contacts, I can see sharp -everywhere- I look, whereas with glasses the very sides and top and bottom are blurry since the lenses don't cover those parts...

Heh, yeah, sorry about the huge wall of text. It's just that this is kind of a big question. There are entire fields of study devoted to the question of what gender is and how society deals with it, so it's a little difficult to summarize that in a comment on a blog entry, see. And yeah. I wish Lego would actually make the gender ratios equal, but I realize that's never going to happen as long as their target audience remains boys. I'd like a 2-4 ratio if not actual equal numbers, but there are times when I'd really just be happy if we'd consistently get at least one female per team, you know?

The reason there are female sets is because there, well, are females in the world. It's really as simple as that. Even in a toy line targeted at boys, where they're going to relate most easily to male characters (usually), if you want the world you're creating to be in any way believable, then you're gonna have to include females in it. I would also say that the problem isn't that Lego makes its female sets more masculine than the males (generally), but rather that they almost never differentiate between the two. There was nothing making, say, Gali Mistika more or less masculine than Tahu Mistika; the two had the same build in just about every way. The same could be said of Toa Nokama or Gali Nuva or Hahli Inika – they just had the same build as the rest of their group. The problem with these female sets is that the default proportions for most Bionicle/Hero Factory sets are masculine. In the way of human proportions, most adult males have shoulders wider than their hips, whereas most adult females have shoulders and hips of nearly the same width. The vast, vast majority of Bionicle sets have had shoulders wider than the hips, and once we got to the Inika and beyond, the shoulders were waaaay wider than the hips – so, exaggerated masculine proportions. The only set we've ever gotten with realistic feminine proportions was Kiina with her narrow shoulders. And then Breez and her 2.0 form follow the same pattern. So, though I see what you're saying, I don't think it holds water – it's not that Lego is making their female sets more masculine in order to appeal to their target audience, it's that Lego isn't bothering to differentiate between male and female as far as set design goes. As I said before, the main characters need gender to be relatable. If they were all just referred to as "it," we humans wouldn't feel much connection to them. And if you then gave the heroes all male names, and called them all "he," then one, the absense of females would be notable, and two, it would – as Night Fury pointed out – be incredibly sexist. edit: also, guys, just a pointer – the word "feminism" refers to the school of thought that women deserve equal rights and treatment as men. I'm at a loss for a single word to mean "the state of being female" except maybe to say "femaleness" – but not feminism.

Smeag, this is bad, even I get Maddison's reference. Silly boy! (also, I am nigh-infinitely jealous of both of you because you got to hang out with each other!)

Paaaat. I miss hanging out with you so much. This entry reminds me of why. Brickfair 2011 can't get here anywhere near soon enough. Love you and hope 2011 is as good as 2010 was!

Do remember that it's the same thing if you try to go from Macs to PCs, after all. I'm so used to Mac keyboard shortcuts that I try to do them reflexively on Windows, and then, obviously, they don't work. Both OSes do the same things, for the most part, just in different ways. (still love my Macs, though <3 )

:: :: Kind of like Knives. Knives Chau, that is. Except his name's actually just Matau. Not Sawblades. There's also this one if you want an alternate view. He's still a WIP because his back needs filling in and I'm not 100% satisfied with the torso, but I wanted to post something before I'm separated from my pieces for six weeks... Apparently this is what happens when I finally acquire the Turaga's Kanohi. I don't remember how exactly the idea for his weapons came to be, but it involved the concept of the Toa versions of the Turaga having tools that resembled their staffs. And somehow that turned into giant buzz saw nunchucks of doom. Not that I'm complaining. Also, it should be pretty obvious that we're ignoring Metru Nui right now. This is a Toa Matau strictly from the jungles of Mata Nui. Also also, I go back to college tomorrow. Aaaaahh!! ~ ToM

:: :: Brought to you by too much Scott Pilgrim and friends who like Pokemon. • YANNI learned SASS • YANNI learned FLIRT _____-> CHARM INCREASED • YANNI completed mission: CANVASSING _____-> EXPERIENCE +999 _____-> RESUME +1 • FRIENDS +7 • BZP MEMBERS MET +24 • YANNI attended BRICKFAIR _____-> AND HAD AN AWESOME TIME _____-> AND CAN'T WAIT FOR NEXT SUMMER Days left until I leave for college again: 1.5 ~ ToM

Woah, that is rather a mess. But I'm glad it's going to work out! My advice is to search around for discounts on textbooks. There are a fair few sites where you can get really big discounts on them; I use a site called Chegg where you can rent textbooks for a semester, and you can get those big expensive ones for like half-price, you just have to send them back after the semester. For the smaller ≈$20 ones, you can usually get them used for pretty low prices on Barnes & Noble or Borders. Have to pay for shipping, but it still saves you money.

I just realized I don't think I've blogged about my summer job at all this year. Huh. But then, I haven't blogged too much in general. Anyway! I did the same thing as I did last summer, working for NYPIRG (the New York Public Interest Research Group), canvassing again – going door-to-door, for those not in the know – raising money for environmentalism and other awesome things like that. The difference being that now I'm better at it, so it took me three weeks to earn what I did in the month and a half I worked there last year. I work on commission on what I raise, see. And if it doesn't come too close to bragging, I had three weeks this summer where I raised more than $1000 in one week – kind of a big deal. I didn't even know that was possible last year. But, now that I've done this for two years, I'm not sure how I'll ever be able to stand having a normal job. I really like sleeping in every day, being able to talk back to and make fun of my boss, and going out and having adventures for like two hours before we really start work. It'll be nice to eventually have hourly wage and maybe be home for dinner on weekdays again, but I like having a job where I'm out there actually making a difference and working for something extremely important. It's gonna feel weird if I ever work for some big corporation where I actually deal with consumerism or have a real boss or whatever. Also: this summer confirms that Boulevard of Broken Dreams is the perfect song to describe canvassing. You're walking down a street, all alone, facing rejection at door after door... ~ ToM

I always go back and re-read my work at least once. This is because I've discovered that when I do that, I catch all the odd phrasings or areas where something is unclear that I didn't notice the first time, because I was focusing then on getting it written and didn't notice that a phrase might not make sense to someone who doesn't have in their head what I did when I wrote it. So my essays and such aren't drastically improved, but they do become clearer and better-stated when I re-read them. Which is worth it, to me.

Andrew, you're so mysterious. What on earth could this possibly be?