bonesiii

Interesting point -- and vehicles do definately make a lot of sense as a "proper place" for a style that's all about machinery, after all.

Maybe only you and me, cuz I wouldn't mind it, but I'm pretty sure it would bore everybody else.

So what do you guys think about me running a blog contest where you guys design Bionicle-style faces in Powerpoint, and somehow or another, at least a few winners are picked? Using the methods I explained in these two guides: Powerpoint Art Guides: ● Vector Art In Powerpoint: Quality, Inexpensive, Easy ● Coolifying With Powerpoint Vector Art But what should be the prize? I don't think I can do another sidebar gallery -- I've got enough images over there as is. And last time I made the images as an award -- this would be you guys entering the images. And obviously some rare people don't have Powerpoint so couldn't enter -- if anyone has a better blog contest idea, feel free to suggest. -------------------------------------- In Other News, I totally just now noticed that "In Other News" written as an acronym spells "ion". Ironicles! *ahem* I am hoping to have time soon to run another S&T contest in spring/summer, hopefully the first Expanded Universe one. Whattayall think -- "Design a Xian Weapon"? Winners would hopefully become official weapons from Xia, and all qualifying entries would become part of the EU. Or would yall prefer a character-making contest first, or sommat? (Note that I have another classified S&T contest idea for much later this year, like around Christmas. Can't announce that yet. But I'd like to do one before then too, as it will be very unique and "standalone".)

Maybe, Arpy, in an image category, though text based wouldbe the focus since it's not a BBC/Art contest. Cap'n Bionicle -- The EU isn't dead; we just haven't had time yet to launch the first contest of the sort announced in an article last year. But I'm about to have that time, and a contest seems to be the way to get interest up. Island is something I'd want to steer clear of because it's too large-scale to be official probably. An OoMN spy is an interesting idea. (Personally I love weapons -- maybe that's just me though. )

It's totally up to you, but lemme just say that there's no age limit. I'm in my twenties and still a fan, still enjoying it. And you don't have to buy many sets or follow it obsessively either. I've had times where other demands have made me "lose interest" but it was more temporary, and usually all I have to do is read/buy new stuff when I'm bored to feel interested again.

Why can't place names be just that, and nothing else? ~D Has that ever been done, anywhere? I can't think of any examples... Pretty much everything is named after somebody or something else, innit? It wouldn't make sense otherwise, and it would lessen the meaning of the name. Instead of "Mountain named to honor a good friend who is no longer with us," it would be "random jumble of letters for this place cuz I couldn't think of anything else."

It loaded instantly for me. Yall's connections are slooooooooooow. I didn't understand the image. I saw an improved Jaller -- because he had wings and a tail. I didn't see any signs of evil.

Maybe it's because the button to close a topic says "Close this topic" and the button for locking entries says "Lock entry"?

I'm not totally sure I understood this -- are you disputing that Bionicle moved away from Technicism? Since it's about what Aanchir and I were talking about, lemme for the record sum up the history that led to these vehicles: First of all, you read the entry already so know about the original Technicism mistake, the poor Rahi, Bahrag, etc. sales, and the subsequent move away from that style. Now, during all of this, there was a fairly vocal, seemingly sizeable minority that actually did like Technicism (one being MercenaryXero, also including much of our staff, and many prominent MOCers). Many of them see Technicism as Bionicle, unlike the majority. A lot of them have also seemingly been among the most loyal to the fanbase, at least in online participation. These fans, fairly I think, often ask LEGO to give them treats. I think it fair for the reasons I gave in my "Bring Back Gears" blog entry. The caution being -- they have to be careful not to demand too much and keep in mind that they are a minority. One other factoid is that vehicles apparently have sold well when tried thus far, as long as they were cool -- Ussanui and the Sea Sled are examples. Ussanui I know sold very well, although Takanuva was a big reason for that. So this year, Bionicle is doing more of a treat for these minority Technicism fans by including a lot of Technic-style elements in several vehicles, most of them pretty large compared to past vehicles. The danger here is that large sets tend to be seen as "too Technic" by the majority fans and sell poorly (the Rahi, for example, most of which were actually smaller than Axalara, although probably about the same considering there were two in each one). The advantage this time is that these vehicles (mostly anyways) are more stylized than the Rahi or Bahrag. So the tests are going to be if 1) enough minority fans buy these to make up for the majority fans who won't, 2) enough majority fans like them enough for the "Bioniclism" in them to buy, and 3) if the smaller ones will do better than the larger ones (Axalara mainly). Jury's still out. As I commented above, these are able to feature action features without a loss to poseability. (In all honesty, how much poseability can a vehicle have? ) The same was evident in other inanimate objects in BIONICLE, such as Karzahni's trap, Lesovikk's sled, and of course some of the playsets. I have better hopes for this than are expressed by Bonesiii, and not only wish for the success of this experiment for reasons of having fallen deeply in love with most aspects of Rockoh (ohhhhhh... the styliiiiistic consiiiiistency...), but also foresee its success for the same reasons listed above, as well as the compatibility of these sets which was absent from the playsets, which is a potential benefit to sales. Good points there.

Today the Bones Blog brings you the text of the most important history of changes in Bionicle, with small modifications since posted several months ago on the forums. This is intended to provide the context for a major change in Bionicle that is often cited, but rarely understood, by complainers/nostalgics. For the sake of clarity, the two major styles will be referred to as "Technicism" and "Bioniclism." 2001 LEGO assumes, incorrectly, that Bionicle will be popular with Technic fans, so markets towards them with Rahi and gimmicks like gears, but adds storyline aspect and a "coolified" element in the set design with the concept of canister sets. Instead, Technic fans look down on Bionicle for the most part while the storyline aspect and coolified elements draws roleplayers in. Rahi sets sell poorly, gears are unpopular. Collectibles also sell poorly. Most fans are drawn to the unique aspects of Bionicle, like the canister sets, the more style-based designs of the Toa, and some aspects of Turaga and other sets, seeing this as "Bionicle." (For sake of clarity, this will be called "Bioniclism".) However, there are always exceptions, and a rare minority of Technic fans who love the Rahi and gears, etc. becomes very emotionally invested in Bionicle. They make up most online membership while the main fans mainly roleplay on their own. This minority often associates 2001 aspects with "Bionicle", often not realizing that most fans disagree. Sales overall are strong thanks to Toa, but bogged down by "Technicism". 2002-2003 LEGO still tries some Technicism sets like the Bahrag, but they continue to sell poorly. LEGO strengthens the popular canister sets by extending it to villains. Also falls into a clonism trap. Sales decline to the low point in 2003, bogged down both by Technicism and clonism despite initial success with the innovative canister villains (Bohrok). Bionicle's future is severely threatened and faces the choice to improve or die. Majority fans are bored, displeased, but excited at the rare exception like the Rahkshi which used much "Bioniclism" over "Technicism", seen in elements such as increased balljoint articulation, stylistic spikes, etc. 2004-2005 Begins to listen to the majority fans, and remove Technicism. Technic titans are replaced with more "coolified"-style, smaller, less expensive titans, and phases out unpopular gears. Also intros popular projectiles in full force, not just features of promotional sets like McToran. New fans begin to replace aging fans in greater numbers than ever before. Majority fans love the changes. The rare Technicism fans strongly dislike the changes and post litanies of illogicial complaints (which I promptly take apart, being our resident logician), though also some reasonable ones too asking for "treats" which LEGO still seeks to give these devoted fans. Sales begin an upward climb and Bionicle's future begins to look more stable. 2006-2008 Technicism largely gone, and LEGO begins to remove clonism. Articulation reaches a near-ideal state that's hard to improve on. New fans almost totally replaced older fans, and much 2004-05 fans getting older and moving on from toys too. The rare Technicism fans grow rarer as many move on to other things, but those that are left are more displeased than ever. However, proportionality-wise, they are a tinier minority than ever before. (Most of them make the typical mistake of assuming their tastes = quality, so they assume Bionicle has gone downhill. But in reality, they simply happen to be wired differently from most fans, which LEGO cannot control, and many come to see this fact as I keep on explaining it, and come to accept the reality for how it is and be at peace with it, even if they understandably wish reality had been different.) Majority fans more pleased than ever with sets much more geared towards what they want -- roleplaying, Bioniclism, projectiles, variety, etc. Also, during 2008, Toa apparently undergo a change from a more "Ruthless Elegance" style which most fans seem to prefer in villains, to "Noble Heroism." But that's a blog entry for another time. [Edit: Also see this comment for the history related to the 2008 vehicles, which I forgot to mention here.] Sales go through the roof, though admittedly facing some challenges in an increasingly tough toy market and with rising resource prices. Bionicle's health is strong. Challenges I Foresee With Bionicle moving even more in line with what most fans want, the biggest challenge to its future health is probably going to be nothing fancier than price of oil, steel, plastic, etc. With this and with the rest, Bionicle MUST remain willing to be flexible, and not fall into the rut of tradition, no matter how loud the nostalgic critics shout. This is because, while the above history discusses what majority fans want as if it is stable, my opinion is that it isn't really stable. It's just that, major upheavals in that sort of thing seem to be caused by society going through a major change, such as a technological one. IMO, having lived through the nineties and since, 2008 really isn't all that different from 2001, societally. So while today's kids still want roughly the same thing, with perhaps more strictness towards the "Bioniclism" side, that could all change in the future. I think we are beginning to enter a new technological revolution with HD everything, and the beginnings of the move to things like TiVo, much faster computers, much more advanced video games, etc. I'm not going to predict what that will mean for what future kids' majority tastes will be. I can only throw out possibilities -- maybe actually abandoning plastic in favor of virtual toys, maybe putting computing technology in every LEGO brick, or maybe something as simple as red going out of style. But the point is, the tastes might shift, and Bionicle needs to shift along with it if it happens -- there's a danger of getting too used to the winning formula for today and actually locking that in as The Formula. Good news for now -- I don't see the current leaders of Bionicle making that mistake.

Exactly. I liked the move from the Nuva to the Metru, and I was expecting something equally awesome in the move from Metru to Inika. While there were improvements in that change , there have yet to be drastic changes in basic torso/limb styles since the Inika for the Toa, which is a slight disappointment to me. But, oh well. Nice entry. Well, there's rarely ever a significant change in set articulation except between story books. If next year we see no new innovation, I will be disappointed, but of course with all the changes in story (a feature to which we have been treated at the start of about every story book), it's hard to imagine not seeing changes in sets to accompany those. Anyway, Bonesii, I daresay I have to agree on most of this stuff, with the possible exception of the 2006-2008 section, as I believe with Takanuva and the Mistika "ruthless elegance" may be making a comeback. Likewise, you may be counting your chickens about this section when it comes to the further elimination of Technicism, as most of the vehicle sets this year would appear to indicate a return to action feature, which is welcome by me-- after all, it's not like there's much to be gained by replacing vehicle functions with articulation. (I can see it now: Rockoh T3! Vehicle features ADJUSTIBLE MIRRORS! ) With luck, the vehicles will be just what we need to strike a balance and reestablish that lost aspect of play value which complexity is able to bring. Nevertheless, good job for the most part. Waist artic in canisters is the main thing I'm hoping to see in the future. I'm very curious what you mean about the Mistika. I agree ruthless elegance is still present, but mainly in villains and some titans -- remember Takanuva is a titan this year. The Mistika are actually the ones I was talking about as going away from it, and more towards "Noble Heroism." Tahu's ninja mask being perhaps the biggest example. Although that shield spinny thing is pretty ruthlessly elegant. I didn't go into detail on this one though, 'cuz there's another planned entry coming soon related to the topic I started about this a while back. Yes, the vehicles are experimenting with basically what I'm seeing as the fusion of Technicism and Bioniclism in a large set. I didn't mention that, you're right. Probably forgot it because the results are still very very up in the air about them, and I do suspect, unfortunately, that it might fail. But I'm cautiously hoping that it won't, at least for the sake of Technicism fans. But good point, regardless. Also not sure what you meant about play value. I could guess, but I'd rather hear you say it. What that line refers to is that in 2001, the villains were titans (the Rahi), not canister sets, and not clones. It's true that each Rahi set came with two Rahi, with only slight differences, so they could be thought of as clones within the set, but that's not what "clonism" is -- clonism refers to different sets being clones. Meaning you would have to make two seperate purchases, like the blue Bohrok and the red Bohrok. With the Rahi, Tarakava were not clones of Nui-Rama, etc. But in 2002, Bionicle introed the Bohrok, which were the first canister villains, and they were also clones. The line about the clonism trap refers to clonism from 2001 being used again in 2002, rather than improving, and actually getting a little worse. It doesn't mean there was no clonism in 2001 -- there was. As you say, the Toa and Turaga were mostly clones (although neither were quite as clony as the Bohrok). Also, the Mctoran were clones. Hope that helps.

He actually has a character flaw which makes him not really care too much about the universe as long as it's working. Really? Can you provide a quote for that one? I'm curious about the "too much" part. 'Cuz it's always sounded to me as if his will is a big part of why the OoMN, Toa, etc. exist as orgs. Which would imply caring, to me.

Mata Nui is good. First of all, where did you hear that he doesn't care what is happening in his universe? I can guarantee you that was a false rumor. Second, the last phrase in this part of what you said is what Mata Nui's job is, not what he "only cares" about. Look at it this way -- a police officer's job is to police the "homeland" -- like a city. Yet the policeman isn't overseas fighting a war. Why not? Because that's the job of soldiers. You can't expect one person to do everything. Thirdly, keeping the universe from collapsing is pretty important, isn't it? Isn't it also something "happening"? Are you saying he should have? At the expense of the universe? Mata Nui should let the universe collapse so he could take over the job of Toa and others who are tasked with dealing with enemies, etc.? That wouldn't work. I might as well argue that when there was a holdup at a bank near your area, you did nothing, so that makes you somehow selfish. That's a rather silly argument, don't you think? Because they don't want their universe to collapse! How is that selfish? Sorry, but you're not making any sense. You state that as if to say "because they wanted them to be the 2007 villains." You didn't mention that the Barraki only escaped because Makuta caused the Great Cataclysm! That's Makuta's fault. What? The Toa Mata have not yet awoken Mata Nui. That is what they're trying to do this year, in 2008. Are you saying Greg should have told a story in which no sacrifice is required, nothing bad ever happens, etc? That would be unrealistic. All you're doing is citing bad things that happened, ignoring the good things, and apparently implying that you have an alternative in which nothing bad ever happens and there's no conflict. That would be a really boring story, don't you think? It's also a common tactic used by irrational critics of someone, or something, who don't understand that everything has both pros and cons. This is usually done by someone who simply hates the someone/something and wishes to discredit them for personal reasons. Dunno why you'd be doing that. But you need to understand that realistically, there are pros and cons to everything. For example, say your boss asks you to work overtime. Con: you work more. Pro: you make more money. But by your logic, it would be selfish because you would look only at the con and complain about it. That makes no sense -- and the alternative suggestion would be what? To make extra money for no work at all? Not happening. Nor can he ever stop working. He's basically a slave, is he not? What if he gets tired of that job, and wants to retire on some surface island, and just let the Matoran universe rot? Wouldn't that be selfish?? Instead, the guy slaves away for his entire existence trying to keep everybody alive, and you call him selfish for it? I hope I've been able to help. I'm not sure why you seem to have something against Mata Nui, so I'd ask you to calm down and think things through a little. He's only a fictional character, so it doesn't make sense to have a vendetta against him, man.

Dude. For some reason, it reminds me of ET. The movie, not the member.

Best explanation yet. But even my casual posts kill conversation. People learn. Post by TtW = topic will soon close. Habit, see?

Got tired of maj being offline so put the craft pic on bshelf for now. 1) Not if they're scouts, though I think you might have been joking. 2) Pretty sure that is where most sightings are, yes. But there have been exceptions. 3) Haven't seen footage no. But what kind of craft was it, and BTW, we can't assume all UFOs are from the US. There are other people in the world yanno, lol. But assuming for the sake of discussion that it was ours, I doubt the plan was to let it be seen. Missions of any kind, classified or not, can easily go wrong (and do). Well of course they're "real." Classified vehicles would be "real", no? And governments cover stuff up all the time. Part of their nature. CIA, yanno? If you had deflector arrays like in Star Trek, though, or forcefields of some powerful kind, debris wouldn't be an issue. And lol.

So I wanted to post something besides the usual essay today but couldn't think of anything fast enough. This is a fallback I've had ready for a while, ever since an old (dead) COT topic. Plus someone else was blogging about UFOs so why not (see Czar's blog). Now, the UFOs in question here aren't the flying saucers. It's the giant, silent triangle craft with three running lights. There have been sightings all over the country, and I even know someone who claims to have seen one. This description is near-universal. It seems unlikely to me that it's made up. Well, a few months ago, there was an episode of Mythbusters that gave me an idea: Why I Think This is Plausible First of all, everybody's probably going "But what about ET?" Well, the answer is ET is working for us, and Rahkshi don't have running lights last I checked. But seriously, I don't think any of the alien ideas are actual plausible theories. That doesn't mean it's impossible -- believe me, I'd love it if there were aliens and if they had wacky enough technology to actually come here. But there's three huge problems with the idea: 1) Statistics. Statistically the chances of life-supporting planets being close enough to us for a sublight trip here (and then only to fly around trying not to be seen) are pretty unlikely. Never mind the fact that in both major origins worldviews, logically, it's unlikely that aliens exist at all, but that's a subject we can't get into here (and is full of confusion among the populus). Statistics for the homes of aliens are an even bigger problem. 2) Travel time. Let's assume that there's an intelligent, highly advanced alien civ on a planet on the other side of the galaxy. Unlikely, but pretend. They would have to spend hundreds of thousands of years to get here as sublight speeds, since there's an upper speed limit called the speed of light. Matter cannot reach or surpass this speed. So unless some aliens figured out how to make warp drive a reality, it's unlikely they'd come here. 3) Least likely scenario. There's two main possibilities for these UFOs IMO: (1) They're classified aircraft, and (2) They're aliens. Since we know the US de-classifies aircraft every once in a while, we can assume they have classified aircraft right now. So for both the silent triangles and flying saucers, isn't it logical to conclude the UFOs are most likely classified aircraft? The argument I see so often is "Here's evidence that there's really a UFO.... Therefore aliens are real." That makes no sense, really. Evidence that an unidentified flying object really is flying, and really is unidentified, is just that -- evidence that something's in the air that we don't know what it is. It's a giant logical leap to say it proves aliens. No, I would argue that it barely even implies them. I think a much better argument is "Here's evidence of UFOs, and also, we can assume USA has classified aircraft. Putting two and two together, UFOs are probably just classified aircraft." And then, the triangle shape of this theory would explain one of the types we hear about so often. *waits for government to storm house* ----------THIS PRESENTATION SPONSORED BY:---------