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Welcome to the review topic for my new story, On the Run: A Hero Factory Story. This is my first attempt at HF fanfiction. Let me know what you think below, and expect weekly updates.

This idea came to me based on my reading of the fifth book in the Hero Factory Secret Mission series, Mirror World. It will definitely be a different and perhaps more realistic interpretation of Hero Factory. I welcome any comments and constructive criticism. On the Run: A Hero Factory Story Chapter 1 Gregory Wane glanced over his shoulder, doing his best to not look like he was glancing over his shoulder. Makuhero City was one of the busiest population centers in the galaxy, which gave him the advantage, at least for now. He shared the walkway with hundreds of robots, dozens of whom matched his rough size and build. The problem was what he had that all those other bots didn't: a sizeable "H" built directly into his torso. At the moment, a brown cloak draped over him hid the insignia from view. Fabric-based clothing was a rarity among the robotic populace of Makuhero City, though. Of the crowd of about 2,000 that filled the plaza and surrounding walkways, only a small handful wore anything resembling his cloak. In the center of the city, a massive tower arrogantly displayed the same "H" symbol: the Assembly Tower of Hero Factory. Excited schoolbots waited in line for guided tours of the facility, while screaming fans pushed and shoved for just a chance to see Stormer or Valor. "Hero Factory," came the voice of Mr. Akiyama Makuro, booming from a state-of-the-art sound system. "We build Heroes." Lies, thought Wane bitterly. Heroes cannot be built. Lifeforms can be build, that much Wane would agree. But a Hero was a specific type of being, and no amount of artificial intelligence or proper coding could make a Hero where one was not meant to be. Wane remembered vividly his first day off the assembly line, those few months ago. To other beings, it might not have been a particularly long stretch of time, but to him it was his entire life. He had sat in class with a group of other rookies, listening to the instructions of their teacher, a veteran Hero named Richard Fuse. "When you're up against monsters, space pirates, whatever," the instructor was saying, "you might be scared." As he spoke, holographic images of some of the galactic criminals already locked up by Hero Factory flashed before them. "The citizens around you will definitely be. It's up to you to put up a brave front, until you really aren't scared." Another rookie, Von Ness, meekly raised his hand. "Excuse me, Mr. Fuse," he asked. "How will we know when to stay and fight, and when to escape and get help?" The black-armored Hero was braver than Wane. Wane never would have been bold enough to ask a question like that, even if he was thinking it. If Fuse respected Von Ness' question, he did not show it. Instead, his hover-podium floated uncomfortably close to the rookie. Since Heroes were all built the same size and did not biologically grow, Fuse was physically no taller than Von Ness, but his hover-podium kept him far above the young bot. "We're Hero Factory," was all the instructor had to say. "We are the help." *** Less than a month later was the now-infamous "New Stellac City incident." On the surface, to the public, it was nothing but another successful mission. Team Leader Thresher and especially rookie Preston Stormer received formal commendations from Mr. Makuro himself. Von Ness, though, was nowhere mentioned in the press releases. In fact, no one in Makuhero City even mentioned Von Ness after that. While the battle against the drone was publicly a stunning success, it was an open secret that something had gone wrong. All rookie classes were doubled, with particular emphasis placed on duty, discipline, and sacrifice. It was at that point that Wane realized something about himself: he did not want to be a Hero. He realized, even as he thought the words, what a petulant child they made him sound like, but it was the truth. While no official account of what happened to Von Ness existed, Wane had put together this much: Von Ness wanted nothing more than to live to see another day. That, in Wane's opinion, was nothing to be ashamed of. When the criminal Von Nebula appeared, Hero Factory at first tried to deny it was the same Von Ness. It was to no avail, though, and Makuro quietly stopped trying to convince the public otherwise. Von Ness was an aberration, a single Hero gone wrong, Makuro emphasized. It had never happened before; and Makuro was especially firm on this point, it would never happen again. After that, the curriculum at Hero Factory changed again. This time, their evaluations were more psychological in nature. New scenarios were loaded into the Training Sphere: A supernova is about to engulf the entire system. Do you take the Hero Craft and flee, or stay to save more civilians? You witness an innocent construction bot being followed by a strange figure. Do you follow, or ignore it? Wane made a decision. He was going to his instructor to tell him how he felt. The galaxy did not just need tough robots with powerful weapons. Wane could be an inventor, or a musician. Choices that maybe Von Ness could have made, were he not forced into a role that he did not want. It was pure dumb luck that another rookie, Petunia Fall, came to the same conclusion as he did. Fall shared her plan with him the day before she went to the instructor's office to voice her concerns. Wane agreed to wait for Fall to tell him how it went before he arranged his own meeting. Fall went into the office, and that was the last Wane saw of her. *** It was not just her. Other rookies began disappearing, and Wane knew they were the ones who had the same kind of reservations. They were not selfish or evil. They did not choose to be built by Hero Factory and forced to fight whoever some uncaring Mission Manager decided they should. Let the galaxy save itself, Wane decided. If he did not look out for himself, he realized, no one would. In truth, Wane only stopped by the Assembly Tower to see it one last time. Through underground channels, and in exchange for a small fortune in credits, he had obtained passage on a ship to the frontier worlds. It would be easy for a bot like him to disappear out there and never be heard from again. He was not going to become a violent criminal. He was no more a villain than he was a Hero. He wished it was the kind of choice those like Makuro would understand, but deep in his CPU, he knew it wasn't. Wane made his way to the spaceport. If he did not know better, he would say a few of his fellow passengers in line looked just as nervous as he did. Maybe all of them had secrets. His was that he was built to do something he did not want to do; it did not matter to him what everyone else's were. Taking one last look at the tower he was built in, Wane displayed his forged credentials and boarded the ship. Review Topic

The Shadowed One's real name. We really screwed that one up by being so salty about Teridax.

Hello, it's nice popping back on one of my first online homes again. Hope all is well. I hope I'm posting in the right forum (admins/mods let me know if I goofed up). Over the past year or two I've come across a refreshing revision of the Matoran alphabet devised by Kaikue/the-big-kahooner which transforms it into a syllabary writing system, making each "circle" a combination of vowel and consonant. To differentiate between this new system and the classic Latin-based alphabet, I'll refer to the new script as "Matoric". Basic recap: And here are examples of diphthongs, with 6 additions to represent all possible combinations: Despite these being theoretically available, it's possible that some of the extra diphthongs are less practical than just writing the vowels separately ("Toa" for example to be written as "To-a") And now to the extras: 1. 4 additional vowels created by diagonally aligning the "vowel circles". These sounds can be found in several European languages among others: 2. "Reverse" Diphthongs, wherein the order is flipped and the second component vowel is blacked out to differentiate from the regular diphthongs: 3. Consonants created through depicting existing consonants as being "aspirated": (I am being rather flexible with this addition as I don't think it accurately depicts the actual linguistic relationship between the sounds. "Sh" for example is not an "aspirated S", and "Kh" could just be an aspirated "K" as in the example "Artakha", though both sounds could exists as belonging to different dialects of Matoric perhaps.) 4. Consonants created by combining existing coda consonants: 5. Punctuation symbols for Matoric: 6. 8 additional consonant[?] symbols created by half-lines, not unlike the long arm of a clock. I'm not sure what these could represent, numbers or even symbols for some of the sounds I've listed above?: With my additions come obvious issues with readability. For example, writing "dio" using the "io" diphthong would generate this: The vertical line of the "d" consonant is mostly hidden by the "i" vowel and could be missed. A possible solution to this would be to decrease the size of the "first vowel", in this case the "i": Here's an example which I took from from the 2021 Matoric booklet (by BZP's very own JRRT) to showcase a simple Matoric sentence: Monograms: Monograms to those unaware are symbols "made by overlapping or combining two or more letters or other graphemes to form one symbol". Matoric's structure makes it theoretically possible to create unique symbols for names or concepts, which I've done in 2 different ways. 1. Adding successive syllable circles within each other. For example, "John Cena" (The large black syllable is "Jon" and the two red ones inside are "Sina"): 2. Slapping every syllable circle together forming one single symbol (overlapping vowels can be resized to fit within each other such as the double "a" in the second example of "Makuta"): I personally find the 2nd method to be quicker as the 1st would require modifying the sizes of each syllable. However, there are instances in which consonants with similar appearances would disappear within each other, such as the name "Kazi": Combining "Ka" and "Zi" makes the monogram look like it says "Kai", as the "z" essentially disappears from view. This is where creativity helps add some individuality to one's symbol, such as simply moving the "z" around to symbolise that it's there: Ultimately, Monograms would probably serve best for signatures and artistic works, as I cannot see an instance in which they would be used in practical writing due to the ambiguity in their pronunciation (I don't think you can't expect most BIONICLE beings to make out your name from a monogram). There may be cases where they could represent universally-known concepts or beings, in which case they could be used in a manner similar to Kanji in Japanese. I hope I was more or less understandable and that you've found this an interesting read at the very least. Credits and MASSIVE thanks to Kaikue and JRRT for their creations and for inspiring me. They're the ones who should be thanked.

I mean it's no weirder than the names I thought up. Kultatrix Kixik Kalax Ku-Xek

I filled this out this morning. The survey mainly asks about opinions on what kind of Lego-related merchandise people would be interested in buying - shirts, hoodies, plushies, coasters, vases, lamps, books, etc. - and what kind of style or content people might want to see on those items. Bionicle is only very briefly mentioned as one of several possibilities for t-shirt designs featuring "vintage themes", so don't get too excited.

if I said kraxxion is the shadowed one's real name, would you believe me? Ah yeah, that's a big one. I was thinking about that the other day that Greg could have revealed it anytime in the last five years and literally nothing would happen, but nope we're never going to know. Probably starts with K and has a X in it.

R.E.V.E.N.G.A. Mk. II Since the Galidor torso that I used as the centerpiece to create the first model of this robot also exists in black, I decided to create a new variant for this guy. I imagined that the body is its main source of energy and that all the limbs are magnetically connected to it. I also added some iron elements to his feet to better enhance this magnetic aspect of the robot. 22/02/24

of corse he isn't. Lenny is more than content to try to get others to do his work for him.

Well I also bought this to resell, I didn't want to get lowballed by the store when I sell them. So I was pointed here by another shopper.

I'll probably be purchasing the guide book next, it looks like there are several cheap eBay listings for it for cheap. I'd really like to get Secret Mission #2 and fill out the collection, but that one's still more expensive for some reason.

The other stuff.... A lot of it...

Thanks to the diligent record-keeping of the Bionicle community, we actually have those things already. BS01's gallery lists about the same amount of concept art for The Legend Reborn as it does for the other media, and G2 got an entire physical artbook released to show off its concept material. And all of the relevant songs and soundtracks can easily be found on Youtube.

Is the theme of the drugbots my fault for blogging medical content with prescription names? Did they generate based on this?

With a purposeful grimace and a terrible sound He pulls the spitting high tension wires down

(I don't think you're supposed to copy-paste the same text in two different topics.) I don't think any of this is realistic. I guess it would be cool to see some more shout-outs in other sets, like the BIONICLE mention in the new DreamZZZ/Ninjago crossover.