Ta-metru_defender

It'd be Weekend at Kelotu's.

It's times like these I realize I never learnt the Okotoan script and don't ever intend to.

Isn't there a Macku version as well? Bionicle's not gonna be the vanguard of solving the gender balance issue.

Same thing I always wish for: A Metru-style Great Akaku.

Sure.

Essays, Not Rants! 258: Spoiled Endings I really liked Rise of The Tomb Raider up until the last thirty-odd minutes. Everything’s coming to a head, set ups are paying off, there’s a boss fight against a principal antagonist. You go to the next area and… There’s a cutscene, and in that cutscene the game ends, wrapping up most of the plot points with a tidy bow but still leaving a bunch frustratingly hanging for the inevitable sequel. You get another nice little plot button if you continue the game to find some more of the collectibles, but narratively, that’s pretty much it. Which is a bit of a bummer. Everything has been rising to a crescendo, but the last playable moment is a boss fight that you’re pretty sure is just the prelude to that Epic Climax that, well doesn’t really happen (another tip: in video games that Epic Climax should be playable). In any case, it’s a fairly anti-climatic ending. Some of the more interesting plot points brought up (who/what is Trinity? Holy crud Ana is such a villain) don’t get much pay off within the game’s narrative (not with all that potential sequel money). And the thing is, that bummer of an ending retroactively colors my entire perception of the game as a whole. I really liked it, but the lack of a return on my emotional/temporal investment leaves a poor taste in my mouth. I wanna go back and get all those collectibles and stuff, but right now I’m not sure I can be bothered. It’s odd, the way a failure to stick the ending can affect your perception of a piece. Mass Effect 3 is really solid game, but it’s best known for its disappointing ending. Never mind some of the great highlights (and the brilliance of the Citadel DLC), Mass Effect 3 is known for reducing the game’s climax to a choice of color. I didn’t dislike it as much as some did, but it still took me a couple years to return to the game’s story mode and clear it with my other two characters. This doesn’t just apply to video games; I loath the final half-hour-or-so of How I Met Your Mother, and that in turn makes it hard for me to revisit the show as a whole. I love how Lost ended, but some people hate the show just ‘cuz how it ended. And think about it, how many movies were ruined for you in the final act? At first blush, this doesn’t make much sense. A really lousy middle doesn’t necessarily ruin a movie, not to the degree an ending does. But here’s the thing, the ending is how it ends. Duh. But it’s what the ending has to do: it brings together everything that comes before and provides that oh-so-important catharsis. Flub that and things feel unresolved; you don’t get the catharsis that lets you leave it behind and get on with your life. I’m not really sure this blog post has much of a big point besides stressing the importance of an ending. Rise of The Tomb Raider is still an excellent game, exploring, hunting, gunplay, and everything else is so much fun – and nothing beats the aha! moment of solving a puzzle, but the disappointing ending took the wind out of my sails. In the case of this game it’s doubtless because of the developers’ want to provide a hook for the franchise, but there has to have been a better way to end the game than with its rushed climax. There’s a difference between leaving your audience wanting more and not giving them enough to feel complete.

FYI, we've the Batman plush at the LEGO store I work at, so they are showing up stateside.

Well I for one still want to know about this hat Purple has.

Eh, wrong kind of bottle caps to be of use to me.

This makes me happy.

I got into when they opened for RK in 2008. Colors Run is an excellent tableau of an album, but End is Not The End may still edge out Suburba for my favorite one of theirs.

Lots of Server Busy messages. So many Server Busy messages.

Should we vote, mafia style? Would that really be any more than a formality? - It is not uncommon for those in times of trouble to grasp on to whatever strands of normalcy they have left.

Should we vote, mafia style?

Purple has a hat?

Essays, Not Rants! 257: Stuff From 2016 I Wanna Talk About Every year I do a thing on this blog where I list my top nine movies. Thing is, movies aren’t the only things that come out in a year. So here’s a list of a bunch of stuff in a bunch of different mediums that came out last year that I really liked that I wanna talk about. They may not be the best thing to come out of the year, but it’s stuff I want to talk about. Book: Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi I talked about this book when I first finished it, and I’d like to bring it up again to talk about how magnificent it is. It’s a concept album made book, where each chapter/short story stands wholly alone, yet is enriched and inseparable from what comes before it. Plus, it’s a novel about the African Diaspora which, really, isn’t a thing that gets explored nearly enough in fiction, especially at this scale and yet so intimately. Album: Colors Run, by House of Heroes …while on the topic of concept albums, I’ve gotta mention House of Heroes’ Colors Run. I haven’t listened to it enough yet, I don’t think, but it’s an interesting album that crafts its narrative through implication. It mayn’t be my favorite album this year (Run River North’s Drinking From A Salt Pond and Barcelona’s Basic Man are two strong contenders there), but it’s one that’s really been sticking with me. Video Game: One Night Stand, by Kinmoku I’m a sucker for a video game that goes somewhere most games don’t. One Night Stand has you waking up in a stranger’s bed and piecing together how you got there. It’s essentially a point-and-click by way of a choose-your-own-adventure game, but it’s set apart by how warmly and sweetly it handles its subject matter. Plus, the rotoscoped graphics make the game feel like a sketchbook come to life. Comic: Mockingbird, by Chelsea Cain, Kate Niemczyk, et al. I mean, duh. But so we’re clear: wonderfully funny comic with a savage feminist streak that has a lot of fun in a comic book world. It’s too seldom we get to see women as fully-fleshed out characters in comics, and Bobbi Morse is so winning its hard not to love it. Also, major props for being one of the first Marvel comics with an all-women creative team. Man, I really wish this comic was still going. Television Show: Stranger Things, by the Duffer Brothers I’m a sucker for 80s movies. I’m also a sucker for movies like Easy A and Super 8 that have their own takes on the aesthetics of those movies. Super 8 marches brazenly into that field with a dose of horror. So yes, there’s D&D and 80s movies references galore, but what really makes Stranger Things better than being just an ersatz Spielberg film is its characters. Be it the boys and the new friend Eleven, Hopper and Joyce, or Nancy and Jonathan; the show is filled with those quiet relationship moments that made 80s films so wonderful. That it tells a delightful science fiction story in the process is just the icing on the cake. Play: Vietgone, by Qui Nguyen Look, theatre’s really white. Sure, you’ve got Hamilton flipping things around, but, that’s the exception that proves the rule. So along comes Vietgone, which features a mostly-Asian cast that tells a love story set against refugees immigrating to the US after the Vietnam War. Besides its fantastic use of language to invert the typical understanding of the other, it tells a darn sweet story in its own right – that features people who don’t look like your usual romantic leads from a unique background. It’s plain wonderful, and also the only play I’ve paid to see more than once.

Accessory packs are something I often see proposed, but something Lego doesn't often go for. There's a simple reason for that—any accessory pack that is designed specifically to augment a particular set is only going to have appeal to a fraction of the people who bought that particular set. Even the collectible packs in Bionicle were made possible in part due to cost-saving measures (using the existing molds used for other sets, and in the case of the Krana and Kraata, randomizing the shapes of the parts in both sets and accessory packs so that every one of the shape variations could be molded simultaneously on a single mold), and their abandonment in later years suggests that they were not all that successful in the long run. By contrast, most Star Wars headpieces are both character-specific (i.e. you couldn't necessarily just use recolors of existing parts for many of them) and expensive (being large parts that generally are printed, molded in multiple plastic colors, and/or preassembled). The cost of the Star Wars head molds is offset by their inclusion in larger figure sets—including even the existing ones in smaller accessory packs, let alone exclusive ones, would result in a highly priced set with a pitifully low part count, which would have no appeal except for people who already had the existing figure sets and were still not satisfied with those options alone. That's why I think the one it would make sense for would be for Phase II armor, where the biggest difference for a lot of them is the color or accents of the armor. A few different shell pieces and a helmet with a different print and you're good to go.

Hey dude, double posting, remember? But accessory packs: maybe? For different variations of Phase 2 Clone Armor, I suppose? But Scout- and Stormtrooper armor are a little too different, as with AT-AT Pilots and the like.

I didn't realize how much I wanted a bus until I saw that bus and now I really want a bus.

Not Nexo Nights?

I don't think the Toa Nuva would have pillows. 2/10.

Something to do with Galaxies, I think.

It's the gears thing, innit?

I understand where you're coming from, but part of being a professional artist (which I'll admit I haven't accomplished quite yet, but I'm getting there) is understanding that passion and dedication, while essential, aren't generally accepted currency. Passion is the engine, but it needs money to fuel it. Or maybe it's the other way around. You can't do without either, regardless. In this case, I'm not really sure I could get this project done in a timely manner without donations. Admittedly, I jumped the gun in putting up a donations page before I had anything more than a cover picture, but I should be able to show off some semi-presentable Toa soon. The murkiness comes out of the fact that this is a fandom. Folks have been writing epics and building MoCs for years, for no other reason besides wanting to. Start the project first, get some traction going, show us your serious and worth our time; then start a Patreon or whatever for us to support you.