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I am not. I go by the much dorkier name of "Sam from that racist Twitter account"

Also, are you Andre from the Bionicle Archives? Or a different Archivist lol?

That makes sense, I appreciate the explanation.

You are completely correct. Logically, morally, financially, correct. However, economics does not function by these arguments. I am not trying to be pedantic or start fights. I appreciate you, my dude/dudette, as well as tourmalinex. I'm trying to point out that "it shouldn't be that way, it's a bubble"-style arguments aren't meaningful in an economic context. You honestly believe a bunch of people are gunna panic on a long-term collectable item that takes up zero space in a drawer and doesn't degrade and suddenly dump pearl gold whateverthe******s all at the same time and frantically undercut each other until the price reaches $45 and we can all finish our collections? There are economic models for these style of collectibles and economic models for bubbles and the bubble "popping" will drop the price by ~50%, if that. Then it'll simmer for a while and skyrocket again to previously unforeseen heights by the virtue of the "it only goes up" recursive and self-fulfilling premise. This appears contradictory, but the contradiction never plays out. And while nobody can say exactly why, it would appear that humans value their own time, especially in a hobby they love, at a near-zero value. This means the contradiction is resolved by dozens of people saying "who cares if it takes 10 years to sell, I like the shiny mask and don't really care if I have to keep it". Played out dozens of times in other collectables.

Finally got around to reading this. Right off the bat, I love the idea of Berix taking on a more important role than the two-dimensional thief role he had in a lot of previous media. Seeing him take up chronicling is a neat way of demonstrating how the cultures of the MU and Bara Magna could cross over and influence each other. Telling the story from what's effectively an outsider perspective adds some impartiality to the story as well, and makes Miserix feel more sympathetic. Speaking of which, this is a fantastic portrayal of Miserix. There's this sense of world-weariness and despair to him that carries through in everything he says and does. It's a massive improvement over his relatively meagre role in the original story. I'm looking forward to seeing what follow-ups you might have planned.

Personally i think it was absurd to release all to have all those 300 kraata. The original 6 along with the purple shadow and the translucent orange kraata in the bionicle shoes should have been enough. 3 Kraata in 1 canister isn't a good value either. Should have been 5.

still crazy to pay that much

Yeah that’s the same seller marking it sold then relisting once the “buyer” never pays lol! This is exactly how we got into the PGK and TOK mess

Mismold masks were not released in a retail set

Just wanted to report this. Previously, they only sold for $150-200. A bunch of people listed them on BL for $600, but I considered that wishful thinking. EDIT: nvm im dumb

I could definitely be mistaken but I think the OBC title and Proto system was all manual changes staff made to users profiles, I don't think they were connected with any sort of automatic system. Way back when I first became a premier member, I remember having to talk to someone about getting my proto/rank changes associated with it. IIRC submitting news that ended up on the front page and I think winning some contests was the most common way to gain proto, though I think I also got a boost from reporting someone way back in the day that I found out was causing shenanigans pretending to be two separate people --Akaku: Master of Flight

Hmm, I recently located all my old Lego/Bionicle part bins, this might be the first BZP contest I end up participating in in over a decade, lol. Regardless, looking forward to see what people come up with! --Akaku: Master of Flight

Hey y'all! Been a while since I've really given much an update here. I know there has been a lot of these sorta posts here in recent years, but I figured it's my turn to sincerely thank you all for making this considerable chunk of my childhood so enjoyable. Seriously, I'll never forget the time I spent here, however brief and distant those days now feel. That so many people gave me nothing but support to my art in its earliest, roughest years, that my fiancée and many of my best friends I still have today I all met on here, I wouldn't be the person I am today without this place I feel that even though I was just a child, I should still apologize for much of the cringey, childish behavior I displayed back in those days. I've done a lot of growing up in the years following my first arrival here, to say the least. Rest assured, you wont have to worry about me writing such scathing set critiques as 'tahu sux', as was my very first comment on this message board, or shoehorning anymore UNSC Frigates into text based Bionicle RPGs when the GMs are asleep. Yes, I was one of those players, and I'm still deeply embarrassed (although admittedly now also amused) to think back about it. I'm honestly glad that this place is still around, even in its much quieter state, that we can still check in on each other from time to time. Who knows, maybe with the way social media's been going lately, there'll be a resurgence in smaller web forums? Wishful thinking I know, but who knows what the future holds. Since 2011 or so every few years I've just been kinda drifting from place to place on the internet. One thing I really miss from ye olde days was that you could actually get to know people, whereas places like twitter and reddit are just so huge that even the communities within those communities just never really felt like communities, if that makes any sense. Discord is a nice sorta middleground though, I suppose. So, what have I been up to? Well, after spending way too long trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, I eventually settled on taking some very lengthy and extensive courses for making what I make best, Graphic novels and comics. Those wrapped up a few years ago, and off and on I've been working on an original story ever since. There's been a lot of hiccups along the way due to all sorts of things from personal issues to family ones, to the pandemic to construction near my apartment driving me absolutely nuts. I never thought I could hate a sound so much as I do the sound of a pile driver... Thankfully, most of that is over with now, a lot of the biggest issues in my life all kind of resolved one way or another in the past few months, which has been really nice. If anyone's curious to learn more about the Graphic Novel I'm working on, Let me know and I'll make more posts going more in depth about it here! Long story short is it's a colonial-era fantasy/redemption themed adventure story with a good mix of serious stakes and some lighthearted humour, starring an undead knight and two adventurers that freed him from an ancient curse. Shoutout to @Inferna Firesword, @Lord Kini Hawkeye, and @Zahaki, they've all had a hand in helping me develop different aspects of it as its come along (And while I'm mentioning people: paging @Kagha, @Aych Ehn, @Repicheep - Toa of Irony, @Japoro - Toa of Ice, @Kothra, @Gavla, @Grantaire, @Zyrnix, @Cap'n Sparrow, @DYLAN the SINKING STAR, and @.:Zero The Vampire:.; even if its years from me making this post that any of you happen to randomly log on and come across this, I would love to hear how y'all are doing these days. It might take a while, but I guarantee I'll read it and get back to you eventually! Same goes for anyone else honestly, happy to hear how everyone is doing I just called out the above folks in particular because I haven't heard from any of them in around a decade, lol.) In any case, I think that's all for now. Hope anyone reading this has a great morning/afternoon/evening, wherever you are! (PS: Googly eyed Tahu is a treasure, and nobody can convince me otherwise ) --Akaku: Master of Flight

i'm not there yet, but i'm also not comfortable with how close i am to being there.

lol homestuck is a comic that i loved, then hated, then found myself loving again, if only because i can't not love something that's taken up so much psychic real estate. i still think about it sometimes; every now and again i pull up the soundtrack and, say, listen to Doctor and remember how i felt the first time i saw the Land of Wind and Shade. it was my last outing with fandom, but man, what an outing it was. i think the one thing that could get me so obsessively into a massive, sprawling work again would be if it were like homestuck, with the caveat that being "like homestuck" means also being unlike homestuck--part of why i loved it so much was because it was unlike anything i'd ever seen before, and so this hypothetical work would have to exist in some form that i can't presently conceive of. of course, homestuck was also the last cultural hurrah of the era of the web that i grew up in. it was a comic about a particular incarnation of the internet, one that i thought and think of as home. the world has changed; i am no longer in the thick of it, nor do i much want to be. so this successor might fail to draw me in, no matter its merits, on that basis alone.

if it's true, and i doubt it is, then it won't make much difference to me. bionicle's main value to me now is as a source of nostalgia, and this won't be the bionicle i grew up with as a kid--plus i'm no longer the kid who could fall in love with bionicle.

i kinda stopped being into "franchises" and i don't really involve myself in fandom anymore. i'm (ostensibly) an adult now, and i have a lit degree and everything. my relationship to fiction is different than it was back then, and grand, overarching epic narratives with sprawling canons (and don't get me started on those) just don't interest me the way they used to. the last thing i was big into, and this was when i was still a teenager, was homestuck. but that was years ago now. that's not to say i've quit consuming fiction; to the contrary, i consume more--and more varied--stuff than i did back as a kid. but the way i feel about it isn't the same.

i recently had an Actual Nightmare where I got banned from bzpower. like the kind where you wake up and have to check just to reassure yourself that it's not real. it's funny--it's not like i really come on here very much anymore. it's not like anyone comes on here very much anymore. if my account were to actually be banned it would make no difference in my life. when i joined bzpower, i was eight; now i find myself uncomfortably close to thirty. thirty still seems so old to me. i could never--not as a kid or a teenager, not even in my early twenties--conceive of being thirty. i still can't. and yet the calendar insists that there are just a few years left. as i get older, i find myself trying to hold onto tchotchkes of my childhood--things that have no functional value to me now except in the conveyance of memories. sometimes they appear in my dreams; bzpower is not unique in this regard. i want to remember who i was, where i came from, to keep from finding myself unmoored in time. when i was a teenager, i was glad that bzpower lost the old forums database and majhost went down and spared me the humiliation of knowing my awful attempts at a sprite comic or my execrable fanfictions were still out there somewhere. now i find myself saddened by their loss. no one else will mourn them, of course. (nor, frankly, should they.) none of these things had value to anyone but me. the banning of this account would represent a final foreclosure on that past, an admittance that it's over and done. realistically, that past is gone forever anyways and there is no going back--but while it exists i can pretend, if only for a moment, that it is still 2005, still 2008, still 2012, can step back into my old selves and see the world through their eyes. at least this blog remains, in its entirety. its first entry (actually, its first four entries) was posted the very day blogs were made available on this site. the things i wrote as a child survive, even with their atrocious spelling (faveorite???) and utterly vapid content (i was, in retrospect, not a particularly smart kid). by my teenage years i had mostly moved on from bzpower, but you can see bits and pieces of my adolescent struggle for self-actualization posted here. none of this will mean anything to any of you. this very post is nothing more than an exercise in self-indulgence. but it means something to me. i'm glad i'm not banned.

Thats why someone shelled out $1250 for mismold mask.

I know how hard this must be; cats truly can be such dear friends. 🫂

Why? I'm against the recent price bubble (won't last, keep scalping, nerds!), and would agree with this logic regarding non-Kanohi. However Bionicle is far from LEGO's first collectible item. The idea of "it shouldn't be that high" has been disproven repeatedly in other non-technic lines, why not bionicle? I work at an engineering firm and, while nobody collects Kanohi, they are all incredibly interested Bionicle prices and the fact that I collect "that toy from their childhood". In cases of MTG, minifigures, Marvel, and other collectibles, the general population's nostalgia and "holy ****** its $800? I used to own one of those when I was a kid!" factor is quite powerful in driving a price upward intangibly.

Bruh why is the Switch version download code only...

While I do plan to eventually play this game someday, it will not be anytime soon due to just how expensive the game is. I'll probably wait up to a year or two until Steam offers a sale on this game that I feel like I can afford. I'll make sure to get back to this topic when I eventually do get this game, I'll promise that much.

Haven't really looked into it at all myself. I was put off by the microtransactions, and I'm not one to spring for new games anyway.

I think the two 22 minute episodes was how it originally aired if my memory serves me correctly. It was broken up into 4 later. I'm surprised to hear you got so into the pilot. I barely remember what happened in it at this point. I think you'll like the 2012 season even more. It fleshes out the characters a lot more and I think it proved that a TV story for a LEGO theme could work.