And I want to start with my main-grudges right away:
Comedies and Artwork III. Now, I do not want those forums to be gone, but there are things about them that haven gotten so lame they need a wheelchair with NoS boosters to keep up to speed. I remember back in the day there was TKs adventures of Makuta and Takanuva or Dark709's comics, and those were pretty funny for the incoporation of original elements. However, some people propably thought that Pie, Cheese and Cookies are the new "beeing cool in comics" and there was a great disturbance in the force. It felt as if hundreds of voices cried out in unison "D'oh!" before beeing silenced by the new obligatory insane food-addicted sidekicks. Bob, you're not alone. Unfortunately. I think the mental homes of Metru Nui must run out of rubber-clad cells soon. Besides owning a trading store and suddenly beeing raided by a horde of food-addicts more violent then zombies in Evil Dead doesn't sound very promising. One Vahki per food-store...dang, what's the world coming to?
And I am not basing the criticism on any fact from when I checked the AWIII forum regularly 2 years ago, I checked back and the madness is still rampaging. And good comics are hard to spot.
While we are in the comic-cast overused-lameness here: The evil mastermind plus dumb sidekick taking over the comics but failing everytime in a worse way then Arthur Peuty, the original 16-tons Pythons victim. Espescially when the mastermindedness is about either disguising and infiltrating the good guys or kidnapping one of the good guys, mostly the food-addict that nobody will miss anyway. Man you are SO evil. Espescially with that collective heap of unintelligence right next to you who in fact even has a good heart and makes friends among the good guys. Good luck. You won't have any.
The rest of the crew is more or less insane but that diminishes in the unpopularity of those mentioned above.
What else is there? Ah right. Setting: A building. Somewhere. Consisting of a single room. Maybe sitcoms are ok, but they have scenes playing in the kitchen sometimes too! Notice anything?
The comedies forum propably isn't any better. It is the same madness in written form. At least we can maintain eyesight due to the lack of cancer-causing colours, thank Mata Nui.
However, "Ask xxx" is not funny anymore. I doubt that there is any charie left in the Bionicle universe who didn't have to take part in the prose form of Jerry Springer yet. And I find it even more surprising that nobody has died yet through extensive mutilation during a vendetta of humiliated Bionicle villains who don't like beeing made fun of.
Now, on to the next bug that sticks here like a fly to the yellow paperstrips: Sig-fads.
And I am not talking about making tons of sigs for the joker from TDK or new bionicle sets and putting up quotes from movies. I am talking about these reoccuring things like: "ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US!" and "70% of xxx do xxx, if you belong to the 30% of xxx who don't, copy and paste this into your sig."
Let's start with the "All your base...", ok? First thing: I do not have a base. And I don't plan on buying one. Not now, not in the future, not in an alternate reality. And even if I did, I would have put up 40mm grenade launchers to protect it. You wouldn't be anywhere near my base, nor in it, and it belongs to me alone. Besides it doesn't belong to multiple you. You are not many. Unless you are schizophrenic. Tough luck. And I will not consider inviting you inside. Go build your own base.
And then the statistics: Did you know that 100% of sig statistics suck? Yes, it is a developement taking place here. Some years back only 75% sucked but the original users grew out of it. Rap might not be my favourite music either but it is music. Let people listen to it if they like (the poor fools). Also let people who like the Mistika like the Mistika.
Do you seriously think that people who are in an online Bionicle community will stop buying Bionicle because a small part of the online Bionicle community thinks so? Personally I own all the Mistika and all I think is they are cool though TLG could have done a better job with them.
Also, do not belive any statistic that you haven't manipulated yourself.
As we are already among the member fads, lets continue with another big one in S+T. So, there is our poor, spammed by hundreds of questions daily, Greg Farshtey who does a really good job at writing the stories and beeing active here, and yet every word the man says is made into a theory.
Posting a topic like "I think xxx works in x and y way because Greg said xyz in this quote, so it must be true" is not a theory. Did you see NtM's "Matoran universe guide". THAT is a theory, not only based on quotes but on a long time of thinking and figuring out stuff yourself and finding storyline evidence.
And while we speak of that, "I can't tell you about that" doesn't mean Greg is telling you you are right. It means he can't tell you at the moment. It's not a backwards approval of your theory.
And I think after he told us the first time "Matoro will not come back in any way" there is no need for a dozen of "RIP Matoro" and "How Matoro can come back" theories. This is war, charies die, deal with it.
And this didn't only happen with Matoro. Carapar: Dead, lots of topics in the aftermath. Botar: Dead, lots of mourning. The guy only appeared twice in the storyline so far. Like Omi once said: No need to celebrate a charies death like that of a real person. And he most definately is not in heaven alongside JFK, be realistic. It doesn't hurt.
Mentioning Omi leads to my next point of criticism: Praise the mods. They do their job and I am happy they do it well and that it worked out so far. But I see no need to carve every word by B6 into gold. He is a good moderator and admin and what he says is right often, but please stop the moderator-worshipping. I am pretty sure if you told them "OMG you are so awesome" a hundred times in real life just because they attended brickfair you would get snapped at. They are busy people who squeeze BZP and real life under one hat and if I was a Moderator or FA i don't think I would like groupies.
Especially when it comes to news reports. "OMG thanks Moderator xy for that find!" Excuse me. It was a member who found the news and reported them. The mods depend on the community to find news.
And besides, when did the idea occur that beeing the sherrifs' sidekick will get you a promotion? It is perfectly fine mentioning to others that they broke a rule, to link them to the topic with the rules and report a violation. This is helpful and good. Giving tips too. Busting into a topic with your caps-lock-gun cocked and writing "YOU CAN NOT DO THIS IT BREAKS THE RULES" is however, not helpful. It might be considered spam too. Especially when somebody who posted before you mentioned exactly the same thing in the helpful manner above.
Don't play Chuck Norris here, try to be helpful.
PS: Chuck Norris jokes have started to grow a beard as well. And there is no third fist behind it.
My next point on the list are RPGs. Leading one myself and having played in several others I noticed some things I do not really like.
And I am not talking about choices of characters here, that is ok. Most plots are cool too and are real fun to play.
I am talking about the dependency of players on the game-mods. It seems to me, as soon as an RPG Moderator dissapears for a week all action dies down. Even though you might have left tasks. For example in BK I left the players to search Metru Nui for a Matoran beeing chased by some Shadowcreatures because he is going to be important. I gave the setting and the task, but apparently it isn't cool to go and do such a thing as long as I am not babysitting the scavenger hunt. Or I am doing this wrong, I don't know. But it happened in other games as well where I tried to keep things going.
Thats why people are called players: To play. And thats why moderators are called moderators: to Moderate. Keeping the game going is the players task. Throwing them new tasks so that they can do that is the GMs task.
Another thing about RPGs: Naming things. Excuse the mods for not beeing deeply familiar with every MMORPG, tabletop and fantasy game out there. We also are no experts on ancient cultures and weapons. And espescially not on every Anime or Manga in existance.
So not everyone will know what a "Shuriken" is. And I don't feel like looking it up. And spare us describing your charie with foreign words. Just because you watch Naruto it doesn't mean you are a Ninja and can talk like one. Besides I am sure some native speakers will be quite ashamed of the abuse of their langugage.
Enough of RPGs, back to Artwork I.
I know there are a lot of kids on this site. I know there are a lot who are not DaVinci and might not be able to draw art like Nikira does, or colour something in Photoshop like Lyger or work a 3D program like Populus. But a stickman with two eyes and circle for a mouth doesn't make Toa Tahu. It is ok if you get a bit of perspective wrong or if you can only draw 2D. But take a look and notice that just because you have a scanner and know how to use it your stickman turns into a masterpiece. Or to be more fair here, I know art isn't easy, if you post your stickman and accept contructive criticism it is perfectly fine. But don't post your 5-minute instant Tahu and claim Van-Goghs throne.
Oh and by the way: Who are you to judge if someones art is bionicle enough or not? Or accurate enough or not. Who made you head of the storyline team so you can decide what Lariska has to look like and how not? And what is it with the extreme Phobia of female proportions? Take one look at Roodaka and be silent. And don't critizise someones style. Each has his/her own and us artists draw mostly for ourselves, not for you, at least not entirely. If you don't like someones art, go look at something else. (Yeah, I know it applies to me and the stickman as well, but first of all I give constructive criticism, or I keep my mouth shut and do look at something else.)
That's all I can think of now and it is more or less pet-peeves that annoy me and not something big and world-threatening.
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