JAG18

Dark and Trippy Sci-Fi Music Inspired By The Three-Body Problem ("Remembrance Of Earth's Past"). 

"Spooky" - Poppy. 

ASMR Alise rambling (technically the video is word association, but I'm still right).  

I liked it when it was airing and some of the episodes lived rent free in my head for years to come.  I stopped watching before the series ended and didn't even know they made a sequel until late 2022 when I decided to look up the show for old times' sake.   For whatever reason, the episodes I wanted to relive the most were the ones where the monsters got into the real world and the alien movie one. 

The animated action adventure genre (AtLA, Ben 10) is my favorite TV genre and I think "Code Lyoko" was one of the better shows in it.  I wish it got more love aside from showing up on the occasional "TV shows that deserve a second chance" video on YT. 

Happy birthday!  🧁

An orange...SHADOW LEECH!  Knew I could remember it without going to BS01. 

Quote

if I said kraxxion is the shadowed one's real name, would you believe me?

I mean it's no weirder than the names I thought up. 

Kultatrix
Kixik
Kalax
Ku-Xek

4 hours ago, Master Inika said:

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

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.   

8 hours ago, Nato G said:

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 there anything the Bionicle community hasn't done yet?  (Except discover the identify of who sung the Piraka Rap obviously)

Should have named it "The Corpsemobile 2.0".  

But no seriously cool little moc, really like the wheel design.   

"Hush" - Ricky Himself feat. Kailee Morgue. 

"FAMILY TREE" - R0RY. 

Out comes "The Wheel of Time" series.

In goes Lewa's Air Katanas. 

"Made Me This Way" - Jasmine Clarke; Absofacto. 

"all round me (Flyleaf cover)" - Maggie Lindemann.

IT'S THE BEST DAY OF THE YEAR. 

I also went as Toa Hordika Vakama once, but nowadays I mostly just dress up as a ninja and hand out candy.

My favorite candies are York peppermint patties, Reese's, and anything chocolate.  I avoid anything really sticky like Dots or Tootsie rolls because they're the worst for your teeth.  :/

Wow!  Very cool.  I was expecting a brief background cameo, but it looks like he might even get a throw line. 

"Is that really LEGO?" 

"You do not want to start that debate." 

I'm also impressed they made a BIONICLE reference that isn't the Toa Mata or Takanuva.  Sure, Tuma was the main villain of 2009 and has minor role in the last movie, but he's not what most non-fans think of when you say BIONICLE. 

Lots of interesting stuff here.  I'm a bit surprised there's not more dislike for the serials since I've seen at least one person blame them for Bionicle getting overly complicated.

Everything here has also reminded me of an article I read once, but foolishly forgot to save, but the main point of it being: "In the age of the internet the author is never dead until they actually are." 

Obviously, this isn't unique to Bionicle.  I have a vague understanding that J.K. Rowling has been adding details to HP for decades and most of it the equivalent of the Toa Cordak/Mangai or which Makuta made what Rahi.  The fandom I know where this is a big problem is the Ben 10 fandom.  You'd think a canon consisting of four TV shows, would be relatively easy to understand, but the topic of so-called "crew statements" can be a divisive point in the fandom. 

Basically, a lot of people have worked on the shows over the years and some (usually show runners or art directors) answered fan questions on various forums.  Many writers on the franchise did the same on twitter.  The result is many arguments over canon can break down into people throwing crew statements at each other or trying to invalidate certain statements through a variety of ways.  As you can imagine, the canon reached the point where a lot of fans choose what they want to be canon...but then again is that really uncommon in fandoms?  Star Wars probably reached that point around the time of the prequels and honestly I'm sure plenty of Bionicle fans treat some of Greg's post-ending canonizations the same way.

I don't know what the answer is here.  If you weren't there, it's hard to keep in mind the internet was still young during Bionicle's first run and it was pretty cool being able to reach (some of) your favorite authors over the internet.  Obviously, this isn't a super new phenomenon.  Tolkien answered plenty of fan letters, although I don't enough about them to know what exactly he said in them or how they affect the LOTR canon (if at all).  I know there's the (in)famous letter 192 in which Tolkien said Gollum didn't slip into Mount Doom, but God pushed him.    Of course, before the internet such statements wouldn't have spread far, but today  I can imagine if Tolkien tweeted something like that out it would spread across the internet in minutes. 

15 hours ago, Nato G said:

A lot of modern Lego themes have a TV series of some kind, with the books and comics not being as essential to understanding the main storyline. I think if Bionicle had gone that route it would've been far easier for new fans to catch up on everything.

I've always been a little salty about how LEGO started handing out TV shows after Gen 1 ended.  I understand it wasn't really something LEGO could have done in the early '00's, but still.

I like your thoughts on the Barraki, but it brings up another point about what made Bionicle's story...not complex just a little weird.  How the story would have to change to fit the sets.  I get without the sets the story wouldn't exist, but sometimes it gets old there always has to be an explanation for why the Toa look different, why they have new weapons, or a character (usually a titan set) has to be shoehorned into the story because they're a set.  Story wise, I like your idea of having the Piraka come back in '07, but I'd personally have trouble accepting that Hakann is now a squid. 

And if so how?

Yes, I'm working from the assumption that the story was too complicated/complex.  If you want to argue that point go ahead, but I wanted to get some opinions and viewpoints on this topic.  

Alright, that's what I wanted to ask.  Feel free to ignore my stream of consciousness below.  I'm just trying to sort this out for myself.

What made the story so complex?

"Bionicle made you work for your story."  This is something I heard in a recent(ish) BIONICLE video, but I can't believe I didn't realize it sooner.  
I think it's fair to say Bionicle was trying to imitate Star Wars (ironic considering the role SW played in Bionicle's conception).  In the late eighties to early nineties no new SW content came out (the so-called "dark time"), but that ended with the Dark Empire comics and Timothy Zahn's Thrawn trilogy.  By the mid-nineties, Lucasfilms was organizing the official multimedia project "Shadows of the Empire" and afterwards a lot of people involved were excited to make another one centered around the "New Jedi Order" books.  Then the prequels came out and threw a wrench into the plans.

Either way, Bionicle came out right in the middle of this and honestly it did a good job of being its own multimedia project.  That right there made the story complicated.  True, any long running book series or TV show can produce a lot of lore, but at least it's easy to follow if you're willing to put in the time and effort to read/watch the whole thing.  But, if you want the whole Bionicle story you need to jump between several different mediums.  Most of it told out of order.

I know you technically just need to read the comics and watch the movies and bam you got the entire story.  Add in the books and you're even better off.  Then it gets trickier the more you add on.  The games?  Only certain ones that you need to check BS01 to know which ones are canon or not.  Add in the serials and of course Greg quotes and it starts to get complicated.  Which brings me to...

Canon Questions:

Aside from having to work to find out what is and isn't canon (usually games) you also have to deal with two sources contradicting each other (how were the shadow Toa defeated?)  This isn't unique to Bionicle.  So many games and stories told the story of how The Death Star plans were stolen that eventually someone had to come down and say, "They each stole a part of the plans."  George R. R. Martin had to deal with questions in the lead up to the show "House of The Dragon" about whether it was a separate canon from the source books it's based on or the "real" version.  
But there comes a point when it feels like you'd better off just reading a ton of BS01 articles to learn the entire story, which sounds a little ridiculous (and this is coming from someone who enjoys getting lost on a good wiki).  Maybe the answer is just enjoy whatever Bionicle content you want.  Play the games, read the books or comics, watch the movies and not really care if you get the entire story.

As someone who followed the story pretty closely from '07-'10 I know it was hard to keep all this straight and I'm sure plenty of people at the time acted like that and just didn't care about this or that Greg quote.  

Bionicle's Legacy:

Something I've been dancing around is, should I look at this from the perspective of someone who grew up in the time of Bionicle or someone born later who discovered  Bionicle recently and wants to enjoy it now.  I know it can be hard to do that for anything that lasts a long time and some things you just had to be there to experience, but I do think Bionicle is a unique challenge.
But then, maybe that's not the point.  Arguably pointless revelations like the Av-Matoran Bohrok connection seems pointless let alone every add-on canonization that came later, but I do think there were a lot of people at the time who wanted Greg to define everything so they could rush over to edit BS01.  Maybe it's OK Bionicle was so confusing because at the time they were a lot of people who loved it for that.  Most stories are lucky to have a huge and devoted fanbase during their run let alone to be able to gain fans years down the road.  

My Answer:
Just have fewer extra-material things.  Or in other words, Greg could have shown more restraint in canonizing things especially after Bionicle ended.  I appreciate Greg spending so much time answering fan questions, but I do think that'd help the problem a bit.
The bonus for this is it doesn't cut any actual Bionicle content.  You can enjoy the serials, books, short stories, and more, but at least there aren't a dozen-and-one facts you'd only learn by browsing BS01.  

What do you think?

"My Mother Told Me (Time Traveler's Version)"

"Gone" - So Below. 

"Counting on Hearts" - Icon For Hire. 

7 hours ago, confused piraka said:

thanks mushy means a lot! @JAG18thats the piraka rap isn't it

No, it's from Bionicle Heroes, but we can play both. 

The perfect video for this and happy birthday!