Alyska

I think in the old topic there was a list of stories, MOCs, and artwork by female BZPers, which naturally had some overlap with what you're suggesting. Combining the old and the new forum content in a list might work, but there's the slight inconvenience of getting logged out of the new forums evry time you visit the old ones- Maybe we could have two separate lists?I agree with the bit about strong, brave female characters, and I think that's a direction Greg's trying to go in with his more recent characters. However, there are also several other personality types I'd like to see. For example, Bionicle has never really had a female comic relief character. Probably the closest we've come is Varian, but I don't think we'll ever be seeing her again.To be fair, I think writing female characters must be an absolute minefield for male writers. If Greg was to create a team of six Toa, with one female, and said female was the ditzy comic relief character who was always getting into trouble, I'm pretty sure that some readers would say stuff like "Hey! You made the girl Toa dumber than all the guys! THAT'S SEXIST!". As a result, a lot of writers are reluctant to give their female characters significant flaws, which is why many females end up relegated to the "Voice Of Reason" role.Of course, the easy solution is to have at least two females on your team, who balance each other out personality-wise. But Lego doesn't seem to like that option very much...

How many people have actually bought any of the toys? Are any of them any good?I don't think I'd ever buy one of them for myself (although, when I was a kid I think I may have had the G1 Twilight as a hand-me-down). The reason I ask is that my mum has a seven-year-old goddaughter and Christmas is coming up. I know she likes Littlest Pet Shop, so she'd probably like ponies.To be perfectly honest, though, I don't have a very high opinion of most "girls' toys" in general. There doesn't seem to be a lot of potential for playability or creativity in most of the toys I've looked at. Basically, you can swap their accessories around and that's about it. Now I remember why I started liking Bionicle...

On the DW, I always end up going in the Spooky Manor. How do I get to another place? :/

It depends entirely on luck, but if you have fewer Dream points, you'll also have fewer areas available to you, which increases the chance of getting the same area again and again.On the plus side, someone with very few points would have a one in three chance of going to Rugged Mountain, while someone who's unlocked everything has only one in five.

Is there anyone who doesn't like saying "Gadunka"?Gadunkadunkadunkadunka!

So, we've had an episode about Sweetie Belle, and an episode about Apple Bloom... Is it Scootaloo's turn for the next one, maybe?

To address the concern about violence/gore, you could have it as part of the story that zombies could be cured of the infection, which is what the human characters would be working on. Their weapons could be designed to stun and trap, rather than kill. You could also have a set of a post-apocalyptic looking underground lab/base, where the human protagonists would bring the zombies to try and cure them.I'd like to see a Zombie circus set. With zombie clowns.

Except that Magikarp is already available in the Dream World... I suspect that most people (especially young kids) don't vote based on ability, they just vote on their favorites, which is why Mudkip and Pikachu are there, along with all the legendaries. And a bunch of people picked Magikarp for the lulz.Anyway, I got to the Dream World this morning, to see the new Rugged Mountain area. It then proceeds to send me to all four of the other areas, multiple times. By the time I got to the Rugged Mountain area, it had stopped producing Pokemon and items.So I wake my Pokemon up, put it back to sleep, and try again. Once again, I get sent to each of the other four areas, twice each. Then, with five minutes left of dreaming-time, I get to the mountain again.... And there's no Pokemon there. Again.I don't get why they don't just give you a choice of which area you visit. At the moment, it all seems a bit too much like hard work.On the plus side, apparently Analytic Magnemite is available! And evolutionary stones! Finally...

Actually, after re-watching, I noticed that only the bowling balls in Apple Bloom's imaginary backgrounds had the holes. The "real" ones didn't. I wonder what that says about AB's imagination...

Don't mind me asking, but what exactly is so great about this series?

Here.I'm never gonna get tired of that...

Ah... but think about WHY those bowling balls have three holes...

Alrighty, let's try this again!I tried making this topic when the forums first came back, but it got swamped pretty quickly under the influx of all the other new topics being posted in COT. Now that things have calmed down a bit, let's give it another go...Here's what I posted last time:

Hi all! Welcome back. I couldn't find an "Official Bzpower Girls' corner V", so this can serve that purpose until it's back up. Here's the info from the front page of the last one:

Let's face it, folks, boys and girls are different. And that's a good thing.This topic is a place to post links and discussion by, about, and for the feminine side of Bionicle and BZPower. Boys and gentleToa are welcome to join in too, but please remember to wipe your muddy feet on the doormat. (Oh, sorry, that was sexist.)This is the fourth incarnation of the Girl's Corner tradition first established by the distinguished BZP member GaliGee. Some of you might be wondering "What happened to the BGCIII topic?" and "Where in the Mangaia is GaliGee?" Well, with RealLife increasingly encroaching on her online time, our beloved patron decided to step down from the duties of maintaining the topic, particularly the ever-growing submission list. Thus the topic has now been reborn once more under the govern of a group of dedicated BGCIII regulars."But didn't this use to be the Bionicle Girls' Corner?" and "Wasn't it in GD to begin with?" Due to a number of developments in the BGCIII topic, it was moved to CoT and had a name change to accommodate a more flexible discussion content. So here we are! At its heart, this is a topic intended for ...

• [*]Discussion of Bionicle and the other various fictitious worlds of LEGO, particularly in relation to the female characters[*]Female BZPers (quite a minority here on BZP) to meet others of their kind and perhaps not be such a minority for once[*]Keeping track of the various artistic pieces submitted regarding female characters in Bionicle and other LEGO franchises (once again, quite a minority)[*]Meeting people, talking, and having fun, but with Bionicle- and LEGO-related discussion generally at the epicenter.

Here's hoping it's just as awesome as before!

One thing I remember we were talking about a lot pre-downtime was where exactly this topic belonged and what could/should be discussed in it (Should it be limited to Bionicle and Lego, or can we talk about femininity/gender issues in general? Can we discuss the big issues in a sensible way, or is that just asking for trouble?)At first, I was wanting it back in GD, where it would get visited more often, but now I think being in COT allows for a wider range of discussion topics.What do you think?

Rankings updated again.Arceus is still winning, Ditto is still second......but what on earth is that Magikarp doing in the top ten?I guess that just goes to show how many trolls there are in the world...One hour til the Dream World update!

Apple Bloom actually did get "a hammer on her flank" during the episode! I think this is further foreshadowing into what her true cutie mark is (I believe, something to do with capentry).Is anyone else bothered by the fact that the bowling balls have three holes? Then again, I suppose that if that bothers me, then a whole bunch of other things should...

Cutie mark? Probably a random, colourful mess of paint smudges or something else art-related.As for people finding out... If they caught me watching the show I'd probably just start gushing about the animation quality, given that I'm into Flash animation myself. It'd probably be a bit easier for me, being a girl and all, but it's still be roughly the equivalent of a twenty-year old guy liking something like Bionicle.And if they tried to insist that the show was lame without having watched it, I'd pull a Twilight Sparkle and... lecture them! Specifically, the rant about people assuming that shows aimed at girls are automatically lame, and the sexist, outdated attitudes that blah deh blah blah blah! (BZPower has given me plenty of opportunities to practise this rant. You have all probably heard it before.)

I once saw a video with a guy sarcastically claiming that cutie marks encouraged young girls to get tramp stamps.

More Pokemon for the Dream world expansion have been announced: Mankey, Burmy, Cacnea, Spinda, Skorupi, Torkoal and Rhyhorn....oh, well. Maybe they'll have some good items available (especially evolution stones).And Magnemite. They'd better have Magnemite.

Somebody say devil ponies?

No love for Pewku?

I do want to see more of Gelu, although the serial hasn't provided a lot of opportunities for fun, lighthearted moments so far, so I don't think we're seeing the best of him yet. He seems very serious all of a sudden...I agree with the bit about wanting to know more about the Great Beings' thoughts/motivations. When Greg set them up as having those sexist opinions, I assumed it was setting the up for some sort of closure where they face their creations and are fored to confront all their misconceptions (As in, you set up a stereotype, and then in later chapers, you work on subverting it). But given that Greg's said he's not going to write about gender relations any more because of the reaction he got, it's unlikely that we'll see anything like that.Add that to the fact that Greg's not allowed to reveal much about the great beings, and it looks like the new Toa may not succeed in their quest to find the GBs at all.

^I made a reboot topic a while ago. I don't think it's died yet, so if you search back a few pages in GD you should find it.

_{I think some Bionicle-related content still fits here, if only because it doesn't seem to go in any other forum. But with Bionicle all but gone, most people are now just left discussing BZP fads or talking about the new forum features.But even before the downtime, I have to agree that the level of discussion just wasn't equal to that of the S&T or CoT forums. It may be in part due to the topics of discussion, but I was comparing my recent "Bionicle for girls" topic with the old "Bzpower Girls' corner" in COT of the old forums, and the discussion back there is just so much more interesting and in-depth, and it doesn't have any of the "ewww, girls"-type posts that my topic gets. People were there because they really cared about the topic, and weren't just trying to post in every topic to raise their post count. I used to argue that the girls' corner belonged back in GD, but I think it was better off in CoT.}

So, if it's legal to use content from most wikis, does that mean that someone could take all the online serials from BS01 and put them in a book legally?

Trouble is, I think the pace of this serial is a lot more rushed than usual. When you're at this stage of introducing new characters, their every action is going to affect the audience's perception of them. A particularly clumsy example was Chiara spontaneously deciding to ZAPPA THE LIZARD! as a way of wrapping up a conversation, causing many fans to think she was a ruthless killer.While it's true that in real life, killing a lizard doesn't make you a terrible person, in fiction, such an act is referred to as a "Kick the dog" moment. It's a random, unprovoked act of violence against an animal or minor character that doesn't really impact the plot, but is used to establish a character as morally unscrupulous or aggressive. (Greg knows this- he used it when the Piraka were introduced.) Greg then backtracked and said that Chiara isn't like that. It seems he was just trying to wrap up a conversation about gender stereotypes in a way that made it clear that he didn't support them. Of course, many fans still missed the point, so he possibly could have been a little more obvious about what he was trying to say.

Ninjago having a TV show is a huge step to set it apart from the way Bionicle did things, as is the more episodic story format (ie, that each year of story is independent from the last). So, I'd say that Lego is learning from its mistakes, but it seems to be happening at a fairly slow pace considering that so many other toy companies are way ahead of them (Hasbro has an entire TV channel now, for crying out loud!) Another thing that they need to realise is the potential to attract a broader audience. While we know that something like Bionicle can appeal to older fans, the only reason most of us oldies are here is that we liked it as kids, as opposed to new older fans (?) being brought in.

... But that's a bit like saying "It's Bionicle! It doesn't have to make sense!"