Noxryn

my resolutions are more or less:

- buy and get more clothes i like (ie: more skirts, blouses, dresses maybe)

- learn makeup, acquire makeup and hair things

- would really love to go on hrt if that’s possible this year, hopefully sooner than later

- lose weight

- more selfies, maybe???

BZPower hasn't really had a reference section on par with other sites, like BS01, for a long while. When the site was younger and there weren't these other resources purely dedicated to reference it was nice to have since it helped compile information about the story and, over the years, it proved beneficial enough to continue granted how complicated and large the story was getting with all of its jargon and characters.

But yeah, like Wally mentioned, the updated logo replaced the "reference" portion and the reference keeper team was disbanded a fair while ago.

it's very dark and rather stripey

hope you had a lovely birthday tuck!

- A lot of chocolate, like Reeses and mini M&M's

- Guardians of the Galaxy and Wreck it Ralph

- Earbuds

- Some scratchoff lottery tickets and some slippers that fit me.

I bought myself a skirt and am tempted to use some of the money I received to buy some makeup and a more proper blouse, but I'm still waiting on that.

 

- Kinda bummed that Gali's mask isn't translucent. Not sure if that costs the company more money to implement or if it was just an aesthetic design choice, or if it's an impossibility with the plastic the masks are made out of (if it's different from the rest?). I always liked the translucent water masks.

As I understand it, the masks are made out of polycarbonate just like most other constraction parts. It's certainly not impossible to make transparent masks in the new style because the LEGO Group gave out transparent Masks of Fire at NYCC that work just as well as their solid-colored counterpart. And I can't imagine cost being a factor. I think it was an aesthetic choice more than anything else.

 

I wonder if perhaps future versions of the Toa might have transparent masks (or solid and transparent blends) for an "energized" look.

 

For some reason I entirely forgot about the trans orange Hau's and the transparent ones, but in that case I do hope they make some translucent masks in sets in the future. Always liked how they caught the light and filtered it.

I don't own any of the sets so anything I say is likely to change at some point, but right now:

- Kinda bummed that Gali's mask isn't translucent. Not sure if that costs the company more money to implement or if it was just an aesthetic design choice, or if it's an impossibility with the plastic the masks are made out of (if it's different from the rest?). I always liked the translucent water masks.

- The yellow on the gearboxes kind of clashes with a lot of color schemes, but it might grow on me or prove to be really easy to gloss over.

- There's a lot of silver, I'm not a fan of the amount of silver on some of the sets and I do wish the feet came in more colors.

- I'm not really the biggest fan of all the villagers/protectors having the same shape and mold of mask, but it's something I can gloss over and ignore. Besides, at least we get a lot of the masks in different colorations.

But that's about it. It's all subject to change when I actually get one of the sets, but those are just what I'm like "eeeehhhh" about.

Transforming the main cast seems to be a pretty recurrent theme in Lego's CCBS/constraction themes (and it was a huge recurring plot device in the old Bionicle series). So it's very likely going to happen. Won't say it will since I don't know, maybe Lego will try something different, but I'm pretty sure we'll be seeing some sort of "Nuva" versions later down the line. Whether they call them "Nuva" or not I dunno, but all I hope for is that they don't make the masks large and unwieldy again.

Personally, I kind of hope they use a different plot device or at least don't make transformations a massive story cornerstone, but at the same time they are a toy company and their goal is to sell new toys every year and not the same set of six. But, if/when they do I do hope they make it distinctive and interesting, story-wise at least.

I know you decided and everything, but I got Lifetime back like... 200... 7? Maybe. Somewhere around there. The larger inbox was lovely, I never had to delete messages, the blog is wonderful to have to sort of just write and put whatever you want in there, provided it's within the rules. Rank images, poll privileges, game privileges, I never took advantage of and never really cared enough about to take advantage of. Supporting the site, having a blog and seeing my name more clearly was worth it enough for me at the time.

It's snazzy and nice, and a great way to support the website if that's what you want to do.

 

the very idea of there being such a thing as valid and invalid headcanons is laughable. it's contradictory to the entire point of headcanons. stop telling people their headcanons are wrong - it's nothing but obnoxious and rude.

 

Oh, I excel at obnoxious and rude.

 

And stop putting words in my mouth. I never told anyone their headcanons were wrong. I merely explained that their ideas didn't exactly fall into the category of headcanon. The whole point is that they're neither right nor wrong. Interpret the story whatever way you want. The best part about fiction is that you can play around with it in your own mind.

 

I don't see words being put in your mouth when you posted: "And for what it's worth, your headcanons aren't "valid" headcanons either." Considering one of the antonyms to valid is "wrong" she's not putting words in your mouth: you completely said "your headcanons are invalid" which is the same thing as saying "your headcanons are wrong."

And at the end of the day no one asked you to police the thread over petty semantics and, if in the end, they're neither right nor wrong then why make a giant stink of it in the first place? If you truly feel a post doesn't belong, report it and don't be outwardly rude to other members?

Let people have their fun, have their headcanons, without trying to falsely one-up them about it.

Wow, you sure were quick to tell me how much of a jerk I am. I'm not arguing against Lalonde's headcanons specifically. And for what it's worth, your headcanons aren't "valid" headcanons either.

"Headcanon" has replaced canon in various different contexts and is a term that's come to cover how one individual perceives canon regardless of what is or isn't established in the actual canon (like the provided definition implies). Either way, you're wrong to say that all of Arc's headcanons don't fit your specific view of what a headcanon should be, and no one asked you to police the thread of who has "wrong" headcanons as that is rude and unnecessary. It sounded like this was supposed to be a fairly lighthearted, "what do you think?" thread and not one for members to go at each other over semantics.

Either way:

"Headcanons" I have; I choose to ignore any canonizations BZPower made to the series, I choose to ignore the official canon where it says only Ga-beings are female, and I choose to fill in some blanks with characters with the transgender headcanons some members have come up with.

hope you have a very happy birthday gsr c:

I'd like to think Gali is a little more sophisticated than some random 20 year old on Tumblr. Also, NO she isn't transgender. Who the heck came up with that in the first place?

nah she is. the fact you're getting your mind twisted in a knot because of it is really telling (who came up with "she's cis" anyway? because whoever had that idea totally had a totally original rare idea that speaks to an entire subset of people who are never spoken to ever).

I came up with Kitania from Titania, the Queen of Faeries from Shakespeare's A Midsummernight's Dream, coupled with my name (Kit) which I came up with years ago. It's sort of used as a confidence and morale booster, though there have been other characters named "Titania" throughout various shows, books and other forms of media and I generally find them the most relatable.

My point still stands. It doesn't matter how she's voiced. Gali's a woman, and I don't know why people are making all these wild transgender theories.

They're not wild theories, they're about as possible as if she wasn't. Even if so, she is a woman and trans women are women so I don't even know what the point of this specific line is other than to insult people and imply they aren't women.

I'm sorry, but it seems you're just trying to shout me down instead of actually listening to what I have to say.

 

I have been trying to explain to numerous people that Gali sounds like she does because of a shared narrator voicing every character. When people start saying "it's because she's canon trans" it makes that job a LOT HARDER. Headcanon is fine but when there are so many people who haven't been paying attention to what's confirmed in the canon and what's not it CAN be confusing if people start asserting that something is "canon" even though it's no more than a headcanon or personal theory.

 

Regarding the trans/cisgender thing, I RECOGNIZE that Gali would be female either way. But I thought the POINT of such a headcanon would be to add greater representation to the cast. To that effect, I would think that whether the sole female character is trans- or cisgendered DOES make a difference. Consider the tired trope of having an improbably multicultural cast for a cartoon (e.g. one black, one Jewish, one gay, one paraplegic). But imagine that instead of that you had five white, heterosexual Christian characters alongside a single black Jewish gay character in a wheelchair. I would think that'd be undisputably worse, since instead of making the cast as a whole more diverse you're making it more homogenous by only including a single character who's any different from the others. This is obviously an extreme example, and considering Gali to be trans isn't nearly as problematic. But that's not to say that it's the best choice either.

 

I don't know. I'd probably have been better off not giving any recommendation as to what people headcanon, since that's really none of my business. But I WOULD appreciate if people would stop referring to their headcanons and theories as actual canon, even jokingly. It has the potential to cause the same problem as this topic's title, which instead of asking a question or proposing a possibility seems to assert an untruth, an untruth which I've had to correct offsite several times already.

It's not your job to explain to other people that it's a narration that lead to the deeper voice. You can, but when other people come up with their own explanation for it that fits and doesn't actually hurt anything or anyone, while giving themselves a character that's more deeply relatable, why fight against it? Gali is just as much cisgender as she would be transgender as far as canon is concerned: we didn't see her born, didn't see a Bionicle equivalent of a doctor exclaim "girl!" and then see a reaffirmation of that assignment by the character later on. To insist she cannot possibly be transgender in the canon is doing the same thing you're purporting to be against: forcing a headcanon into canon and onto other people. Except your version of it takes away representation from a marginalized group of people who are excited and happy to be able to point at Gali and find a new way to relate to her character.

So what if people insist it's canon? It changes nothing? She's still a girl either way. All that's being done is adding a trait to her that makes her more relatable to a group of people who need more to relate to, as there is virtually nothing out there that isn't a disgusting joke.

In the end I don't care if it makes "your job" harder to explain to other people "oh no it's just the narration" because the representation that others see in the character trumps your mild inconvenience.

 

you fellows

courtney and i are girls. please don't misgender us.

 

Mm, I second Borox here, I do believe fellow can refer to someone of either gender, unless I'm mistaken. I don't mean to mis-gender either of you! I just tend to speak that way.

 

It doesn't matter how you view the term, if it's making someone feel uncomfortable to the point where they ask you not to use it you simply apologize, remember not to use it, and move on. You don't argue.

Regardless, as for the animations themselves, I wasn't off put by the deeper voice. On one hand it's the narrator doing the voices, it's likely more cost efficient for the small screen time, and on the other hand I wouldn't really be off put if Gali did have a lower voice in general. It's not like every woman speaks with the same pitch and intonation.

If anything, they should be big bulky titans. Think Axonn.

Eh, they seem more like Protector-sized in the animation and I'd rather Lego make them more affordable than not if they can pull off the design in that scale. Makuta maybe, since in the animation he physically becomes larger and his color scheme changes, but I don't see it making much sense for Ekimu to match his size unless Ekimu undergoes a similar transformation (part of me hopes not, since it seems a little early to be altering and changing appearances of characters past the prologue, even if it'd be in summer).

With some established characters but the others' appearances not established, you might see a few people who think of making artwork of the whole team or of the unestablished individuals, but now that details like mask and tools are being established, a lot more fans could be inspired by those descriptions to motivate making such artwork.

but it's completely fair to those earlier artists to tell them that a bunch of fans on BZPower said no to their interpretation and ran to Greg with their own to get their own, personal, version canonized so now people can lord over their art and point out the story inaccuracies, or say "well I like your art but the person who begged Greg did a much better, accurate representation of these characters."

like there's absolutely no forcing of anyone's personal preferences on anyone else here, is there?

I completely agree with this.

I remember at one point I was constantly harrased, similiar to now, about how I go straight to Greg with my questions trying to extort an answer out of him. I've been accused of allegedly trying to trick a forgetful author. Suggestions they made to me were to bring these stuff to BZP so we could discuss it and what-not. Lookey here. There are polls for the community to decide. Yay everyone wins. No. There always are going to be problems no matter what, and that wont change.

Okay, but here's a huge problem with how you went about these polls:

- A thread was created with the intention to discuss the possibility of these canonizations, with hot topic level debate going on for both sides. Some want, some don't. A poll shouldn't have been made with this going on.

- In the midst of this discussion suddenly polls are made to canonize the masks, without heeding anything an entire subset of members had to say. Ignoring, also, all of the people offsite. All of the fans elsewhere who do not like the rampant canonization BZPower has become infamous for. This is not only rude and dismissive, but it clearly shows you do not care what other fans think or feel on the subject. I don't care what history you have on the LMB, but when people are talking about canonization and a significant portion want less of it and you essentially state "I don't care what you want, this is what I want" then yes, that will tick off a lot of people.

- Anything you come up with is your own content. Greg can't answer questions about the Fikou-Nui, the Fikou-Nui can never be used in the story to further any narrative, no members will be able to use it in their fan work unless you don't care if they go an entirely different direction with the vision (or if they outright remove it from ever existing). So, what was the point of forcing it to exist? And giving masks, essentially faces, to characters others imagined differently and saying your interpretation and the interpretation of the incredibly small population of this forum is more important than anyone else's interpretation is not only putting your story perspective on an undeserved pedestal, but it's taking the story away from so many people who have just as much claim to it as you do.

As a side note: none of this is "world building" either. I'm so tired of seeing that word misused in such a manner. World building is when you design the world to, as DV said, further the narrative and fill in the reasons and tensions and motivations of why things are happening, why groups are doing and behaving as they are, why individuals are acting as they are, why certain events are happening, why certain events cannot happen, to explain the symbolism and the impact certain events have on the world and why it matters.

Making up a face for a character in the background is hardly world building. It's a joke to call that "world building." Canonizing random rahi and random creations and random powers for random masks that serve no purpose in the overall narrative is not "world building." That is creating trivia. Tons of useless trivia. It's making a story, a world, more complicated than it ever needed to be. It's barring fans from understanding the world as a whole, it creates a divide where some fans believe they are "truer" than the person who never read one article on this forum.

BZPower does not deserve to canonize whatever it wants. BZPower has never deserved that. All we are is a subset of fans. A very. Very. Very. Small subset of fans. We deserve to effect the canon as much as anyone else does, which is to say not really at all, unless every single headcanon is canonized into official canon... which can't happen for obvious reasons.

Even then, plenty of people on this site are done with this canonization that has gone on rampantly for years now.

I would absolutely love it if Greg came out and said "No more questions about Bionicle G1" if only to avoid the canonization plague that's affected Bionicle for the last ten years.

I would not, personally, like a fan canonization of the rest of the Toa Mangai. There is no point to it, at present, and it only takes away the creative freedom other fans may wish to have to reimagine, or simply imagine, the Mangai as they would see fit. The only people really benefited by the knowledge, at present, are people who have an urge to collect and archive every possible tidbit of trivia and information, no matter how large or how small. In my opinion, something like this is best left to the writers to decide on: it's best left to their discretion and whether they would ever wish to tell the story of the Toa Mangai, or if they would rather keep them shrouded in a sense of mystery the fans can ponder over and create their own interpretations of. Either way, fans can be quite creative and create better interpretations than the story team would create on their own, though it is a little unfair to uphold one fan interpretation as canon when there was no reason to do so. No purpose.

The old story is done, for now. There's no point in going back to revisit and create, canonically, things that only serve to affect the history and atmosphere of the world -- things that many fans prefer to do on their own, to have some artistic freedom to do and to create. The amount of possibilities are endless, so why not allow them to be so? Why put a period on something that has so much potential, so much variance, so many different stories that could be told and drawn? Why rip away the creative freedom people have in order to sate an insatiable knowledge for something, while at the same time forcing through a "canon" perspective not everyone may like or agree with? There really isn't a point to it.

A lot of people seem very passionate to have it, and while they're free to have their opinion, I'm free to disagree with that position. I, personally, feel more would be harmed story-wise than not if this was canonically done by the fans as more aspects free for fan interpretation and creative expression would be stripped away. And, after all, Lego is about imagination and creation, so why shouldn't a prior story it had stay true to such a view point? To keep some things off the record, shrouded in mystery, in unknowing, so the fans can fill in the blanks as they wish with their own creative imaginings?

All of the canonizations I've seen done for Gen 1 Bionicle either took away the imaginative aspect of the series (such as giving side character Official Appearances, or giving side masks never mentioned or used and that are unique in design their own special powers and names, or digging so far down to get into nitty gritty details that don't add to the story but simply make it more convoluted, more complicated and more little things to remember, or to be expected to remember, when it was only the big picture in that instance that mattered). I don't mind some canonizations: the Krakua contest, the Tahtorak, etc... as they're rare and bring a bit more detail to something important that happened in the story... and they're rare.

All of the attempts to canonize so many little things, so many little things that have no weight on the overall story and do very little to actually enhance or enrich the world or story, is cumbersome. It's simply more useless details being added to a story already absolutely full to the brim of useless details. It rips out the ability to imagine things differently, to have your own personal theories and explore them.

We're also an incredibly niche audience of the Bionicle line. There are many, many others who are a part of the fandom and don't have the say in the lore making we have received in the past; it's not entirely fair for their experience that their experiences might be dictated by fans on a website they've never heard of. That their thoughts, theories, explanations and ideas are already old news since someone canonized that one little detail that nullifies the entire thing.

I'd much rather any canonizations to be done be done through official Lego contests or, at least, with some deliberation on the matter when they're brought up.

I definitely do not want to see the Bionicle Story Squad ever exist in any capacity ever again, however.

you're so boring and you're content with being boring. pokemon is comparable to call of duty in the sense that it's repetitive but call of duty at least has the decently to switch up it's level design. here's a thought i hope you don't think is too blasphemous; what if they came up with new ideas for objectives beyond the same formula they've been using since 1996. they clearly don't need to; they just rearranged the order of the objectives in one game and you wrote a paragraph commending that brilliant decision. it's an unnecessary and rigid rulebook they're following arbitrarily.

to be honest call of duty as a game franchise is probably one of the most guilty of constantly reskinning their own game every year (and writing terrible excuses for campaigns, at that). while pokemon does a lot of stuff similarly from game to game, a lot of that is core to the games' identity -- namely: having a team to fight against, having gyms to defeat, having pokemon to catch and level up, having rivals, having a professor/parent (because the character is a ten year old, technically speaking), having a pokemon league and legendaries involved in the story (which are generally the driving point of the plots). and, over the years, they -have- provided unique and different stories while using the same formulas, creating varied and unique characters, stages, gyms, and introducing new types, new evolutions, new features that still allows them to keep their games identifiable as pokemon games.

yeah the basic core of the game will feel the same every time but the basic core of any FPS is the same thing every single time no matter which one you pick up (shooting things).

taking away the teams, or taking away leveling pokemon, or taking away the gyms, the pokemon league, the catching of pokemon, the rivals, the professors, etc... would be like removing guns from call of duty, or the entire military schtick they've been using for countless years.

If they brought back in another sentient, fully conscious being to become the main enemy for a story arch then I would hope the story team would take the careful time and put in the resources needed to make sure that the villain wasn't a flat, scary looking cardboard cutout that they insert over and over again whenever they need a menacing front, or a menacing reason for something. Hopefully they would give a villain, not godly powers unless they were, in fact, the equivalent of that, but an actual purpose, an actual reason, an actual motivation and an actual goal. I want to see the villain fail, I want to see the villain succeed here and there, I want to see the villain change and act as a dynamic character.

I don't want to see another Makuta. I don't want to see the same character from 2015 in 2021 who merely cackles and takes the credit for all the wrongdoings in the world because he's a jealous gas creature.

Give the villain some life. Some of their own struggles, their own ideology, their own reasons for why they're doing what they're doing, why they believe in what they're doing, why they believe what they're doing is ultimately the better and correct way to solve a problem that's persisting in the world. Give them a character, an ideology, that ultimately clashes with the heroes, but give the villain room to change, room to grow and develop as well.

i really like the original kaukau, partially because of the goggle/breather design of it but mostly because it's translucent and i was/am a huge fan of the translucent masks (sadly i never got other copies of the kaukau from mask packs and the one i did find i turned into a store clerk because i thought keeping it was considered shoplifting when i was like... five?). but it's why i like the Nui-Rama's ruru eyes and the TNGM (i think i have two?) mask a lot.

kinda also why i was interested in the clear Hau (and really think the trans-orange ones are rad) for the new line, but im not quite willing to pay $30 for the clear one, lol.