Master Inika

The best thing about Breakout for me is the Cryoshell song. That's one of few HF things at all that seemed truly BIONICLE to me. As for the sets, the villains that year were pretty good. I personally always find HF villains way more interesting than heroes. I guess the set designers were just more comfortable being experimental with the bad guys. Jawblade was my favorite villain and Evo my favorite hero that year. I don't really celebrate BIONICLE/HF anniversaries. Together, they lasted 14 years. Every year is the anniversary of something constraction-related. Sometimes, I'll stop and think to myself, "Hey, 2004 was this many years ago. Neat." Maybe I'll watch some old commercials or a movie, but I don't really celebrate these things. The way you word it makes it sound like there's an established practice of BIONICLE fans throwing parties or something, which would be fun, but it's just not realistic. This topic took a really weird turn. Lenny, you have a problem when it comes to taking criticism, so much that you get defensive even when you're not being challenged. Wah's comment was totally normal. He's way nicer than I would have been if I were commenting first. You act like there's some concerted effort for all of us to come along and ruin your topics specifically, but I can assure you there's not. Nato hit the nail on the head: there's not a ton of activity these days, and you tend to post a lot of topics for things that other people wouldn't consider topic-worthy, so naturally people reply to them even if their content isn't necessarily that substantial, and we tell you that. Usually, your anniversary topics don't interest me too much because there's so many of them and they all basically say the same thing: it's [x] years since this storyline (followed by an encyclopedic recounting of that storyline), what were your favorite parts, and how do you celebrate it? For reference, 2007 was my favorite year of BIONICLE, and I don't celebrate it in any noticeable way. I just have all the sets and media, and I use them sometimes, and that's pretty much it. In response to all this, I have a question for you, Lenny: how would you celebrate the Hero Factory 2012 anniversary?

Surprising that the style guide has fewer people so far than the prototype pieces, but I guess not everyone shares my media-focused obsession. It's awesome to participate. It might sound silly, but I've avoiding donating to any charities relevant to the Ukraine crisis because it's just so hard to tell who you can trust, but I trust BZP.

When you read, your eyes look at symbols that stand for sounds, and those sounds represent concepts. Reading requires both of these events (symbols-to-sounds, and sounds-to-concepts) to take place. It happens so quickly, we can ignore the middleman if we want. Writing systems like Chinese are called logographies as opposed to true alphabets, because Chinese characters don't stand for sounds at all, just concepts. You have to learn as many characters in Chinese as there are ideas. English sometimes works like that. Consider the difference between to, too, and two. In this case, different sets of symbols all produce the same sound. The only option the English-speaker has is to memorize separate what spelling corresponds to each idea. This is a lot of work, and your brain is doing it all the time. It's doing it right now, in fact. On top of that, you don't remember the symbols you've read for the rest of your life. I'm reading a book right now, and I'm in the middle portion, and I don't recall exactly the symbols it opened with, and I'll remember them even less precisely by the time I reach the end. And yet, the thoughts it made me think remain in my head. I still know what the book is about. It's not as though I've never read it. Now we introduce a third (potentially fourth) stopping pointing in the act of reading: symbols correspond to ideas (through the byway of sounds), but those ideas in turn correspond to an impression. The impression, most often, remains in the reader's mind long after most, or even all, of the symbols and sounds do not. You cannot recreate the physical, indisputable elements of the book, but you can still say what it was about. How can this be? This is to say nothing of the nuances that exist even within the individual letters and sounds, and how many things even simple combinations can mean. This has been just a little look at the act of reading, provided to you by the act of reading no less.

Is it cheating to say Artificial Soldier by Front Line Assembly? They use Bionicle in their album artwork, but unofficially.

I'm not familiar with the source material, but it's an excellent model. I like the lizardlike proportions and how cybernetic it looks. G1 was really good for that.

The lightsaber eyes took me off guard, and I love it, too. This is a great model, and I especially like how it balances old and new parts. It takes advantage of all the progress made since then, but it still looks like the character. I can't decide whether or not I miss the original model's awkwardly-shaped torso with the weird tail/leg, though. Seeing him look more humanoid is definitely commendable, but does it fall into the uncanny valley for anyone else? Maybe because his head still looks so dinosaur-like. The extra G2 piece on the staff if another little detail I appreciate. It's new, but it doesn't feel like it interrupts the original pieces.

Lego is punishing us. And we deserve it.

I can't be the only one who thought Bara Magna was the Death Star for a second. But seriously, this is wicked cool. I love it when people look at Bionicle from a realistic lens, and especially as far as natural sciences go, I know Bionicle's track record isn't perfect. But this is cool, even if I have no idea what it means.

Thanks, now you've conjured in me mental images of Lehvak-Kal playing sudoku in space, the Shadowed One balancing his checkbook, and Kalmah and Vican playing checkers.

How would you have preferred the story to be resolved?

I forgot this was All Insane Kids' new name until I clicked on the topic. Glad to see they're still kicking.

Well said. As easy as it is to look at Lego in an antagonistic light for doing this, the fact is that Greg's main contributions to Lego are centered around types of media that were more popular and profitable when we were kids than now. Looking at what Lego is doing now vs. the kind of things that activate the nostalgia response in me, and I really can't say they're the same company. I don't mean it in a bad way, it's just growth and development. 20+ years with a company is still pretty cool and something to be proud of. I'm sad of course, but at the same time I'm happy that we were able to build so many cool memories. I remember one of the first OGD questions I read, someone asked if an Order of Mata Nui member's anti-telepathy shielding would protect against Hakann's mental blasts. I don't even remember the answer, I just remember my astonishment and thinking about how cool and deep the Bionicle universe was, and how awesome it was that we could just as Greg these things.

It being my primary online handle for 15 years, I have absolutely no idea. I remember literally nothing about why I picked such a non-sequitur of a name. Is "Inika" my proper name and "Master" the title? Do I mean to imply that I am a seventh "master" among the Toa Inika? Was it supposed to be Mr. Inika? I have no recollection, and it's possible I never knew to begin with.

My original comment was (mostly) a joke. I'm sure dealing with us was a toll on him, but I am thankful for his investment. Even though it's not good news, Greg does have a life outside of Lego. I am eager to check out more of that non-Bionicle story.