Jump to content

Opinion: Its time to stop the large Brickset lore dumps


Xboxtravis

Recommended Posts

I don't know how many people will see this, but I feel like its worth sharing an opinion I have that is particularly directed towards the Bionicle fandom.

As some of you may know, the Lego fansite Brickset has a "Random Set of the Day" feature were a bot selects random sets and shows them for a day on the website, of course Bionicle fans are more than happy to see a Bionicle set chosen. In part, this is because people enjoy sharing a bit of what they love about the characters and the settings; hopefully to encourage non-Bionicle fans who might see the comments to take up some researching into the theme themselves. 

However, lately going through RSotD feeds on Brickset the Bionicle fans tend to post entire BioSector01 length lore discussions, that are multiple paragraphs long and exceed Brickset comment lenght limits (I probably have been guilty of doing it once or twice myself I am sure if I dig far enough into my own comments there). This is becoming a repeated problem on these Brickset articles though, since the Bionicle fans are just creating walls of text. Some recent examples can be seen in the last few Bionicle RSotD selections: https://brickset.com/news/category-Random-set

If the goal is to introduce non-Bionicle fans to Bionicle, then we are failing spectacularly. This would be the equivalent of somebody trying to introduce their friend to Lord of the Rings by handing them a copy of The Silmarillion, or by trying to get somebody into Star Wars by handing them the entire library of Canon and Legends books. We are creating walls of text that are unreadable, and discouraging people's natural curiosity to research the subject themselves. Please, while I would love to see the lore dumps continue on Brickset RSotD articles, we need to keep them brief and direct them to investigate on their own; not teach them the entire Bionicle story in one comment thread. 

  • Upvote 1

52641688958_d61c0bc049_w(1).jpg.c0871df0de376218d7ca2bc4f409e17d.jpg

All aboard the hype train!

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

After taking a quick look at the most recent examples I could find: the Nui-Jaga, Nuparu Inika, and Lewa Nuva, it seems like the huge lore posts you're talking about were overwhelmingly coming from just one user. There's a few other longish comments I can see, but they're mostly one-offs of people sharing their memories about that particular set.  

It seems to me you'd be far better off taking your complaints to that one person making all of the frequent massive comments, or the staff/moderators/forums on Brickset, rather than here on an entirely unrelated site.

  • Upvote 4

Embers - a new Bionicle Epic - Coming 2024 

Class Is Out - A Farewell To Corpus Rahkshi - Chapters/Review

BZPRPG Characters - Minnorak, Kain, T'harrak, Savis, Vazaria, Lash

BZPRPG Mercenary Group - The Outsiders - Description - History - Base

Ghosts Of Bara Magna - Ash Tribe - Precipere - Kehla, Somok, Skrall, Gayle, Avinus, Zha'ar

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah it's all from one guy lol

#makeBionicleG1andHeroFactorysharethesameuniverse and #giveBionicleansHeroFactorytheirownliveactioncinematicuniverse 
GENERATION 5: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social experiment.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 10/3/2021 at 1:35 AM, Heyzorks said:

the real question is:

who is it? and is he on BZPower?

It's me.

  • Like 3

#makeBionicleG1andHeroFactorysharethesameuniverse and #giveBionicleansHeroFactorytheirownliveactioncinematicuniverse 
GENERATION 5: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social experiment.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I can kind of see both sides of the coin. On the one hand, I don't often read through the full lore-drops myself (with exceptions for things I'm really curious about like the in-depth analysis of Matoran biology, for example, which I found downright fascinating). But on the other hand, looking at the comments on today's set, and even on previous sets sometimes, non-Bionicle-fan members are voicing genuine appreciation for them. I think many of these people ordinarily wouldn't pick up a Bionicle novel even if it was right in front of them - the site admin, for example, has been famously dismissive of Bionicle in the past, and didn't include them in the Random Set of the Day algorithm at all until people specifically asked, and yet even he's stating his support for the lore drops - so the fact that they're appreciative may be seen as a minor victory in and of itself.

I think, in fact, that it's partly because we're already Bionicle fans who know a lot of the given lore already that we can be a bit resistant to such drops; few people want to read through multiple paragraphs of information that they already know, without having a good reason to do so. But for someone who knows nothing and cares nothing about Bionicle, it's probably fun to get such a deep-dive into a miscellaneous piece of lore every now and again. Many traditionalist Lego fans see Bionicle as weird and nonsensical, so letting them see that there's a real coherent story behind it can nudge them gently towards seeing that that isn't the case.

I feel like on earlier Bionicle RSotD posts, the lore given was a much more brief and basic overview of any given character, and reactions could often essentially be paraphrased as "haha that sounds dumb". It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but if those same people find the more in-depth lore appealing in contrast, that sounds like a good thing to me.

Just my two cents, though.

Edited by That Matoran with a Vahi

Banner.png.3e903c5c49a30ba9503c72b2d57066b0.png

"New legends awake, but old lessons must be remembered.
For that is the way
of the BIONICLE."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 hours ago, That Matoran with a Vahi said:

I can kind of see both sides of the coin. On the one hand, I don't often read through the full lore-drops myself (with exceptions for things I'm really curious about like the in-depth analysis of Matoran biology, for example, which I found downright fascinating). But on the other hand, looking at the comments on today's set, and even on previous sets sometimes, non-Bionicle-fan members are voicing genuine appreciation for them. I think many of these people ordinarily wouldn't pick up a Bionicle novel even if it was right in front of them - the site admin, for example, has been famously dismissive of Bionicle in the past, and didn't include them in the Random Set of the Day algorithm at all until people specifically asked, and yet even he's stating his support for the lore drops - so the fact that they're appreciative may be seen as a minor victory in and of itself.

I think, in fact, that it's partly because we're already Bionicle fans who know a lot of the given lore already that we can be a bit resistant to such drops; few people want to read through multiple paragraphs of information that they already know, without having a good reason to do so. But for someone who knows nothing and cares nothing about Bionicle, it's probably fun to get such a deep-dive into a miscellaneous piece of lore every now and again. Many traditionalist Lego fans see Bionicle as weird and nonsensical, so letting them see that there's a real coherent story behind it can nudge them gently towards seeing that that isn't the case.

I feel like on earlier Bionicle RSotD posts, the lore given was a much more brief and basic overview of any given character, and reactions could often essentially be paraphrased as "haha that sounds dumb". It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but if those same people find the more in-depth lore appealing in contrast, that sounds like a good thing to me.

Just my two cents, though.

Yeah Huw's defense of it surprised me, and honestly has made me reconsider if I was too harsh in my initial opinion. 

52641688958_d61c0bc049_w(1).jpg.c0871df0de376218d7ca2bc4f409e17d.jpg

All aboard the hype train!

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...