JAG18

"bleach" - Luna Shadows. "You want all of the love and none of the pain You, you live to let me down and let me down again You're fading me out like bleach, I'm a stain And you don't wanna talk about it now"

I spent so long reading books that I ended up not finishing, that when I did finish one I had forgotten that this topic existed. So, here are the last two books I read. "Jess" - Daphne Paige Now, am I only reading this because it was written by my cover artist? No, it's because I got the eBook on sale and one of my friends reviewed it before that, but anyway point is I might be biased. This book is about a weird encampment in the woods for homeless teens where two of them (Jess and Olivia) are having a "will they or won't they" moment when someone starts killing the teens. It's a short book which I appreciated, so there's not a ton of detail or depth but it was a good read. I liked the romance between the two and while I would have liked if the murder happened sooner so the mystery could get on sooner which was the thrilling element of the book. 3.5 stars out of five. "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" - Lewis Carroll This was my first time reading this despite it being a children's classic. I read this only because I discovered the American McGee's Alice video games which are amazing (said the guy who still hasn't played either). But I did like this book, I understand why the imagery and symbolism as become so iconic that it's shown up in countless works of art over the centuries. I like the humor and the "idea" of the characters, but I didn't like how much grief the Wonderlandians gave Alice who's just an 8-year-old girl who sometimes says the wrong thing. I saw someone say that's the point because the theme of the book is to show what children think of all the rules of being an adult. Ironically, what I also like about this book is that there's no obviously or widely agreed upon message or moral unlike children books today which is are just adult trying to drill a message into the minds of kids. Anyway, I got what I wanted out of this but ran out of interest and already abandoned the second Alice book. In fact I've lost interest in this post and will just post it without any editing.

"The Wanderer" is an Anglo-Saxon poem from a long time ago. It tells the thoughts and feelings of a warrior whose whole tribe has been wiped out and how he's now forced to wander the earth alone without a home or place to belong hence "The Wanderer". While always famous among Anglo-Saxon literature, it's probably best known today because J.R.R. Tolkien (who as a professor of Anglo-Saxon taught and loved the poem) adapted some of the lines into "The Lord of The Rings". The lines in question are of the wanderer looking back on what his life once was: "'Where has the horse gone? where is the rider? where is the giver of gold? Where are the seats of the feast? where are the joys of the hall? O the bright cup! O the brave warrior! O the glory of princes! How the time passed away, slipped into nightfall as if it had never been!" (I actually like the translation in the video more but this was the easiest to find online) And a deleted scene from the second LOTR film includes a variation of the book lines (I set the time at the right place): "How did it come to this?" Near as I can tell, this isn't from the original poem or LOTR, but I'll get back to it. Over the last few years visiting BZPower and reading the topics more often than not makes me feel like the wanderer, "Where are the children playing with Legos?" "Where are the stories to distract us?" I know I was only a kid when Bionicle was alive and even in the later years between Bionicle's twilight and revival there was some talk of heavy topics on BZP which acted as an introduction to them for preteen me. But, I'm talking about how BZP has gone from a place of fun to a place of longing. I know it's the nature of time to grow old and feel nostalgic except it's not the nostalgia of sitting on your front porch seeing your grandkids playing in the yard and thinking to yourself, "I used to play in the yard once...". It's more like "The Wanderer" reflecting on how something went horribly wrong, that the life we had is no more and the life we thought we'd have not only doesn't exist but may never. Of course, they are far worse things in my life and the world that make me lament, "Where is the horse and the rider?" and this entry could have been very, very different (and probably too political), but the point is it seems Bionicle has gone from a place of refuge to yet another corpse on the battlefield stretching endlessly into the distance. Yes, I know the fourth Bionicle movie has a moment like this, when Kiina is telling Berix that the secret lab was her place to hide from the ugliness outside. I could have just quoted that scene to avoid having to make you all read old English, but despite Spirit's hilarious joke about it in his spoof* I find myself saying "Where is the horse..." almost every day now. And unlike the wanderer there was no great battle and slaughter that clearly and forever let him know why his life is like this. Instead it seems like we just woke up one day and saw things weren't right. "How did it come to this?" -Jag *Berix: Ugliness? I was outside your cave! Kiina: My point exactly.

"In The Stars" - Icona Pop. "It’s in the stars, it’s who we are We’re blowing up, blowing up the door Blowing up, blowing up, we are Blowing up, blowing up the door, yeah Sky is open, where we going? It’s in the stars, it’s who we are" For the past six or seven years that I've been listening to this song I always thought it was "glowing up the dark". Weird.

TBF, we were this close *spreads hands apart as far as possible* to getting Takanuva in The Lego Movie 2.

TPAM is a master expert at applying makeup.

I mean, good luck with that but I'm skeptical you'll find anyone who cares enough to want to spend time on this. Most lost media hunts are driven by the desire to either enjoy or preserve said media, but we already have the song. I know this is the same situation as "Subways of Your Mind" but in that case, you hear the song and you want to know more, but as Master Inika's comment shows, when you hear the Piraka Rap...not so much. I know Bionicle fans want to know, but I don't know what the overlap is between them and Reddit sleuths. And like I said, other than hacking into a company's records (which I do not condone attempting) or starting a campaign to get the singer to reveal himself, this could be genuinely unsolvable. Or maybe this is what gives Bionicle the internet clout it needs to become semi-popular again. That'd be the plot twist of the year and it just started.

Obviously, we need to recruit the guys who found "Subways of Your Mind" - Fex (the most mysterious song on the internet). But seriously, they heard a recording off a cassette tape from the 80s and managed to find and connect the band 40 years later. But that's been done before and there are still many "mysterious" songs. By contrast, all we know is Lego released "The Piraka Rap" to their website in 2006 and except for archives it disappeared when...the site was updated for the 2007 storyline? Was it still up until the Bionicle website was taken down? Anyway, I vaguely remember this coming up a few years and the best idea anyone had is to contact Advance or Lego asking if they still have records from 20 years ago of who they hired for probably one time. Which is a terrible idea because there's no reason why a company would give that kind of info to randos on the internet. The next best idea is to get the singer to come forth themselves, but if they have an NDA that Lego is still willing to enforce, it might just encourage a fake to take credit. Ok, rambling over. I'll admit this is the most interesting Bionicle project I've heard of in years but also one that seems impossible to solve. Edit: found the topic from 2020 when this was last brought up (I assume) and it includes a link to the only other time BZP members tried to solve this.

"New Year's Eve" - Pale Waves (as is tradition on this day).

Beauty In The Garden - Atmospheric Female Vocal | Fantasy World Ambient Music (I'd post it but don't want stretch anyone's screen today haha)

I like how both my IG accounts ended up here 😝. My plan was to read them on my personal acc (because back then it was easier to log in to it on desktop) but sometimes if I saw it while browsing with my writer one I couldn't help but like it. (That's my way of saying I'm just skimming these entries now because I already read and liked them all earlier this year. 😅)

"It's Not Christmas Till Somebody Cries" - Carly Rae Jepsen.

"motions" - Mothica. "If I don't laugh I'll cry, at least I'm getting by." I'm writing my 2025 recap right now so I need some appropriate music.

I've found the easiest way to explain Bionicle to people who have no idea what it is, is to start with, "Bionicle walked so Ninjago could run."

12:30 AM, aka the witching hour aka in the morning aka it's too dang early for this stuff.

"Card Castles in The Sky" - Jason Tai (Alice: Madness Returns soundtrack). An oddly relaxing song from a video game I had never heard of until this week but have become obsessed with. Now... "Unethical" - Faouzia.

I think of it more like a lot of artists at that time (and really especially in the 90s) wanted to make everything dark (deservedly or not) and in this case Lego didn't veto it maybe because their marketing told them a lot of media was dark at the time. Although, edge has limits since I'm guessing they vetoed a disassembled Turaga Dume. Also, after thinking about it for a bit, the Piraka: Their name literally means "thief and murderer". Casually joked and bragged about killing Toa. Hakann killed a herd of animals for the lulz. Enslaved a bunch of Matoran. A Matoran they were forcing to work fell into the volcano and Thok made a joke about it. Heavily employed gang-like imagery. Zaktan told an illusion of his species' boogeyman that he was scarier than him. Plus some more stuff I'm probably forgetting. You can argue that Gen 1 Bionicle always had dark moments (from a bunch of Matoran freezing to death off-screen in MNOG to Tuyet getting cut in half in 2008) but I feel like the Piraka were the most in your face about it.

Because the mid-2000s were the height of "edge" (exhibit A: the Piraka).

"It's Gonna Be Okay, Baby" - MUNA. "It's gonna be okay, baby It's gonna be okay (It's gonna be okay) It's gonna be okay, baby It's gonna be okay (It's gonna be okay)"

"earn a living" - tiLLie. "Give it up, gotta be kidding I don't got the money, but least I've got the feelin' You can't take what's God-given You say I gotta earn it, but I'm already living"

I'm pretty sure the spinnies represent the year anniversary of THE SITE not Bionicle. Or at the very least I'm sure they were chosen in the year of the anniversary. The 3 year was in 2004 when Toa Vakama was the face of the franchise so they used his mask.

Glad, I wasn't the only one. 😝 I got really lucky when they made posts in G&T count. Probably a 1/3 of all my posts came from that. I feel ya on that last part. I'm thinking of all the ways the modern internet doesn't hit the same as this place or forums in general. Meta admitted in a lawsuit recently that 85-90% of Facebook and Instagram users just watch videos and the places that should have replaced forums (Reddit and Discord) can be uh iffy places to hang out in. Of course, I don't know if BZP was cool because of the way forums are different than all those places, or because of what we talked about, or because of the members, or maybe even because nostalgia makes as forget BZP had some bad stuff too. [Random musings over]

Funnily enough, posting this increased my rank to Mata Nuian Protector Defeated, lol. Anyway, good luck. I can't remember the last person to hit 10K or if anyone's done it since the site declined in 2019. Maybe since Bionicle got rebooted. And that sounds cool! My booklet doesn't have any drawings period good or not.

The last thing I'm going to mention from my recent(ish) dive into the archives (box of old stuff). I made this circa 2009 or at least I'm pretty sure it was before Bionicle ended the first time. Being blunt, I was around 13 at the time and BZPower had been my favorite spot on the internet for a couple of years already despite the fact I was only a "lurker" as the term was in those days. I knew my parents would never let me join back then so I didn't even bother asking and (probably related) I can't understate how important BZP was to me back then because of how it opened up a whole 'nother world to younger me. Honestly though, considering how cringe and (somehow) even more awkward I was back then, it's probably for the best I didn't join BZP immediately after discovering it. So, the info in this booklet is very brief but it's still a blast from the past seeing the old forums and old staff titles. Admins, global moderators, forum leaders, forum assistants, forum mentors, reference keepers and blog moderation team. BZP Q&A was New Members Q&A, the discussion forums were listed above the creative ones. There were Bionicle Sets, reference center, collectables, promotions, software, movies and books, a voting booth, and no Off Topic Culture. Equally weird and nostalgic is reading about things that don't exist anymore like proto energy, limits on new members, privileges of premier members and even how much it cost ($7 for six months, $11 for a year, and $35 for lifetime). I guess lifetime was worth it if you got it 3-4 years before premier privileges were extended to all members. And of course, a chart on how much you need to post each day/week to get to 10,000 posts. People rag on modern day influences chasing Instagram likes, Reddit karma, and TikTok views, but I know from experience people have been chasing vain internet status points since day one. Of course I don't care anymore that I only got 1/3 of the way to 10K. This book is an artifact and nostalgic piece, but I completely forgot I made it in early 2014 when I actually did join BZP a few months before after my 18th birthday (hence JAG18). But reading it right now, I realized I left a couple of pages in the back blank. I love the idea of putting some kind of message there now that I've been on the site almost 12 years, but what could I write? What possibly needs to be said? This entry is long enough, but someday I want to write an entry(s) on random BZP memories I have. From the important to random, just things that have stayed in my mind after years or decades in some cases. Maybe another time. -JAG

Yeah, I think so. Despite it being so different from the previous films being part of why I like it so much, I think it works well as a standalone sci-fi action film.