That Matoran with a Vahi

My collection... is a lot smaller than it used to be, since I sold a lot of it on ebay a while ago. What I have now consists of: All six Toa Mata, Turaga, Toa Nuva, 03toran, Toa Metru, Metruan, Piraka and Inika Five Bohrok Va, three Rahkshi, two Toa Hordika and both Hagah Mctoran Kongu, Idris, Gavla, Kiina Toa Inika, Hydraxon, Maxilos & Spinax, Brutaka, Roodaka, Makuta, 03 Takanuva Dume & Nivawk, Vezon & Fenrakk, Takua & Pewku, Jaller & Gukko Muaka & Kane-Ra, Manas, the Boxor, and Cahdok & Gahdok ...so it's not exactly small. But it's certainly less substantial than it used to be, and I keep them all completely assembled and neatly (for the most part) stored in two big boxes, one at the bottom of my wardrobe and the smaller one beneath my bed. Oh, and Mata Nui's little bug from TLR; wasn't he called Click or something? Got him too.

Yeah, I remember having that, too. I can't completely remember which ones had the wrong lids now, I confess that I threw the canisters out ages ago, but it was definitely an error I encountered. If memory serves, I seem to recall that of the two Bordakhs I ended up with, one had the correct orange lid while the other had a light-blue one; and similarly, my Keerakh had an orange lid as well.

I'm not sure this is the place to ask, but I can't see anywhere more suitable either. What if I wanted to write a Bionicle epic, but one where the characters were depicted as humans rather than bio-mechanical creations, and existed in a variation of the canon timeline? Would that be allowed in this forum? Or since the characters are no longer technically 'Bionicle', even though they are still canon characters and locations, did it ought not to be placed here? I'd just like to make sure that I wouldn't be posting something I'm not supposed to if I went ahead with this idea.

I started off in January '01, when a fascinating comic starring Kopaka came free with my Lego World Club magazine. Between that and the double-page spread of the Toa Mata, I was intrigued, and once I pestered my mum into taking me into town to buy Onua the next day, I was completely hooked. Over the course of the year, I collected five of the six Toa Mata and Turaga Vakama, and the decided that once I'd bought my final Toa (Lewa), I would stop there. The six would be enough for me. Of course, that lasted only as long as it took to find that the shop I usually bought them from had a buy-one-get-one offer on Bionicle sets, so when I bought Lewa, I got Tahnok half price (or free? I don't remember) as well. My interest in Bionicle was successfully sustained, although it wavered throughout the year due to my preoccupation with the release of Attack of the Clones (Star Wars, at the time, being my other major interest); the only other set I bought prior to the release of the Nuva was the Boxor. Then with the release of the Nuva - and the return of the free Bionicle comics with Lego magazine in early 03 - my interest was increased; by the year's end I owned all the Nuva, two Kal, the eight matoran (including Jaller, Takua - and, of course, their respective mounts - who had fascinated me as characters since I'd discovered they existed the year before), Takanuva, two Rahkshi, and the movie, which - naieve as I was - I thought at the time was the best thing ever (now it makes me cringe, but whatever). 2004, though, was the year my obsession with Bionicle really got serious; it was the first year I devoted myself to buying all that year's sets - which amazingly, I actually managed, from Whenua and Ahkmou in January, through to Vorzakh as the last one right at the very end of the year. Not to mention, the year I discovered BZPower and joined up; all in all, probably my best year as a far as being a Bionicle fan was concerned. In '05, my interest waned a lot. Less through any fault of Bionicle's own - though I found the Visorak to be particularly underwhelming to start with - than because the hype leading up to the release of Revenge of the Sith stole my full attention, more or less. I believe I still visited BZP regularly, but mostly, RotS was all I cared about for the first half of that year. Eventually, once I'd watched the movie and the novelty of the Star Wars saga being complete had worn off, I found myself perusing the Lego aisle again, and for whatever reason, the Hordika riveted me. I bought Matau straight away, and when I found out that there was another movie in production, my interest once again began to climb. '06 was another good year for the Bionicle fan part of me. At the time, I found the story captivating - it was the first year I cared to investigate the books - and the Piraka being the most interesting villains to date certainly played a part in that. Not only did I collect almost all of that year's sets at the time, that was also the year I discovered the joys of eBay, and decided it was time to try and complete my previous years' collections as well. Over the latter half of the year, I was buying Bohrok, Turaga, Visorak and others everywhere I could find them, building myself a substantial collection, though it wasn't until early 07 that it reached the state of completeness that I wanted. '07 was when my interest began to wane again, after buying all of the Barraki. I found myself not caring much about Bionicle as a whole, even fell away from BZ for a bit, though I came back to my interest again later in the year - when the titans appealed to me, I think. Still, though I made a point of buying all the books and sets if I could, I wasn't the fan I had been. It was, I suppose, the beginning of the end for me and Bionicle. '08, I enjoyed the sets, but I was less than impressed with the storyline. The Nuva were back, but seemed like much less interesting characters this time around, and around the middle of the year, I began to find interest in other things instead - such as, surprisingly, Disney films, which I'd never watched much as a child. I still kept on buying the sets and maintaining an interest for the rest of the year, though. Loved the fact that the story apparently ended with the villain winning - and looking back in the future, I would maintain that should have been Bionicle's epic ending. '09 was, frankly, when I really gave up. I was still a regular visitor to BZP, but the Bara Magna 'restart' didn't appeal to me much, and the one set I did by - Fero and Skirmix - was so underwhelming that I didn't bother with any of the rest of them. I only loosely followed the storyline, and didn't much care for the movie, but maintained to see Bionicle through to its end the following year, only buying two more sets (Kiina and Tahu Star) along the way. Once Bionicle officially ended was when I fell away proper; didn't bother with the serials or anything, wondered away from BZPower (and got caught up roleplaying on another site instead). That was it for me, mostly, with only the nostalgia of the years I'd loved left. I sold a lot of my sets on eBay, keeping only those who held the biggest pull of nostalgia for me - still a substantial number, all things considered. Over the last year or so, a spark of just casual interest has been rekindled. It's still mostly the nostalgia that keeps me with the fandom, since I can see how lacking much of the plot was nowadays, but I do enjoy looking back on the story from '01 to '08, messing about with it and the characters, hanging around on BZ again when I'm bored. ...wow, that came out a lot longer than I intended. You *did* ask for my autobiography, didn't you?

The black Pakari from Onua Mata; my first set.

Muaka and Kane-Ra. Same reason; I got them for Christmas in '05 or '06 after I found them on eBay and talked my parents into buying them for me.

I know I managed to beat Piraka Attack, but only after a LOT of tries. I seem vaguely remember finishing Matoran Escape once, too, but that was ages ago, so I could be wrong. I never managed to get anywhere at all on Island Assault.

...I'd actually like the idea of Lhikan's mask being cursed... XD But I dunno, maybe Kapura? Or at least, he could be the Toa of Fire... Kongu would have probably been the leader in that case; I seem to recall Jaller mentioning at one point that he would have been just as qualified as he was. 'course, this is just my personal oppinion, since Jaller's death is a huge nostalgic moment for me

Cool. And I still remember watching it for the first time. It was kinda awful, in retrospect; but it gives me the nostalgias, if nothing else XD Still... ten years. That's probably longer than the movie developers ever expected it to be remembered for.

I agree with that. Though as to the question of the topic at hand... I would just have rewritten the entire trilogy. Kept the same basic plot, maybe, and some of the scenes the same, just removed a whole bunch of the cheesy dialogue and added much more epic stuff in its place. That would probably be all for WoS and LoMN; though Mask of Light, I would make more changes to: make Takua and Jaller seem less childish, for one, they act like bickering children a lot of the time. And mess with the ending a lot - the Kohlii match, sure, could stand to be replaced with a proper fight, and the Nuva's defeat of the Rahkshi left a lot to be desired on the epic scale; but I'm thinking more after that. For example, I'd scrap Jaller's resurection; as much as I like him, I always thought bringing him back to life just nullified the significance of his death, which always bothered me somewhat, and it just went downhill from there. Got confusing, actually - I never understood what Vakama thought he was trying to achieve by pushing Jaller and Hahli onto the giant UUD symbol, or why that randomly resurected Takanuva and supposedly awakened Mata Nui even though later we would find it actually didn't - so I would have redone that part completely.

Aside from the obvious answer of MNOLG the original, my favourite online game was probably Piraka Attack. It was... frustrating at times, to be sure, but it was also sort of addictive after a while. I enjoyed it, at least. As far as video games go, I only had the two that were released on PC, and out of them, Bionicle: the Game was my favourite. Sure, it was easy to complete, far too short, the plotline barely existed and contained glaring continuity errors when it did, but it was such a fun little game. There was so much variety, each level was distinctly unique, and I think that, actually, is what I loved the most about it. Unlike, say Bionicle Heroes, where each level was essentially just a repeat of the one before in terms of gameplay, only in a different location.

I've only ever played the PC version. Partly because I don't own any other console besides a PS2, partly because I personally find the mouse/keyboard combination easier to use for gaming than any other controllers (I'm odd there, I know XD). I found the gameplay frustratingly repetetive, as each level consisted of doing more or less the same thing; though for what it was, it wasn't too awful a game.

In my case, it depends on the year in question. I would say I'm safely at a seven for the content of 2001 through 2006. I'm at a less confident six regarding '07-'08, and then at a pitiful three as far as the Bara Magna arc and beyond is concerned, because truth be told, I cared very little for those years ^^"""

I wanna say Homestuck, though it's nowhere near the sort of child-friendly material Lego likes to use XD The sprites look just PERFECT to be translated into the form of Lego minifigures with very little effort, though.

Well... Yes, I do still like Bionicle. But truthfully, I think that has more to do with nostalgia than anything else nowadays, for me. Bionicle was a massive part of my childhood, though, so I would safely say that I think its something I can never truly let go of, no matter how much I move on; I'll always hold an affection for it, even though I'm nowhere close to being the obsessive fan I was back in '03 through '06.

o_O And here, I've been labouring under the illusion that Blaster was the good one and Millenium the bad one ever since 2000...

Tales of the Masks always holds a special place with me; the interaction, and particularly the tension between the various Nuva was really what made the whole team for me, and it was captured perfectly there. Hapaka's books were never able to get that correctly, and in the later books the Nuva just seemed to get along with no problem at all, but I loved the way their various tensions with each other were played up in TotM. Time Trap and all five books of the Piraka arc are also ranked very high amongst my personal favourites too, though.

Last set I personally bought, I think, was the old Rock Raiders Loader Dozer that I bought off eBay fairly cheap a few years back. Either that or Tahu Star, back in '10. Mostly when I buy Lego sets now, it is just for the nostalgia, as the RR one was. Though more recently, I did recieve the newest Hogwarts Express for Christmas the year before last I'm a fairly new addition to the Potter fandom, don't mind me XD.

The January 2001 'Lego World Club' magazine had showed up on my doorstep, complete with a double-page spread devoted to the Toa Mata and comic one tucked inside its front cover. I was, shall we say, enamoured by the Bionicle sets - and even more so after reading Kopaka's exploits - and as soon as possible I badgered my mum into taking me to the local toy shop so I could buy Onua Mata. I think I chose him because in the initial picture of him, his design really confused me, so I wanted to see what he looked like in reality XD

The Exo-Toa. That is the one set that I never had the chance to buy, and even now I would still love to get my hands on it. Or maybe the '01toran. Just because of nostalgia and because they were kinda cute XD

Onua Mata, waaaaaaay back in January '01. Ah, the nostalgia...

None currently; right now, I'm in the flat I stay in while I'm at university, and nearly all my Bionicle sets are back at home. Takua's in the draw beneath my desk, though - and is the only set I have anywhere in the flat - so I suppose he counts.

Hardest; at the time, I have to admit, it was the Boxor vehicle. Bear in mind that I had only just turned eleven at the time, but all those little gears in it confused me no end back then XD;; Longest, definately Cahdok and Gahdok. This was maybe six years after they came out, so I wasn't that young anymore, but if that wasn't a tedious process... you build one big, time-consuming monster; then when you've finished, you find you have to repeat EXACTLY THE SAME PROCESS with her twin. Not what I'd call fun.

I don't really have any rare collectables; not that I didn't idiotically paint over when I was young and stupid and didn't realise how rare they were >_< If I hadn't done that, I think my misprint white ruru, which I traded from a friend, might have been, but... now it's now white anymore, and the paint refuses to come off *smacks younger self for being stupid* Inappropriate use of pain aside, my current rarest would probably be my Disc of Time, which I bought from someone in the Buy/Sell/Trade forum on here, or possibly my 2x infected Haus from the Muaka and Kane-Ra set, which my parents bought of eBay as a christmas present quite a few years ago. Or maybe the Ko-Metru great disk; not sure if the great disks were ever really counted as rare or not.