Master Inika

I came here to say Solek. I'll give the Agori and Stars credit for at least starting to do something with the terrible Karda Nui Matoran build. It's a tough question. There are very few Bionicle sets that I could say are outright bad, even if some are weak. For every terrible set, I can think of at least one good thing about it, even if it's that I just enjoyed building it (like Krekka).

I’m 26, I still own and enjoy all of mine (200+). I don’t plan on ever selling them. Do what makes you happy. If you have other things in your life that make you more happy, focus on those. If looking at your bonkles and holding them in your hands makes you happy, do that.

Officially, he is Makuta in disguise talking to himself, and the pool is a mirror reflecting his true self back at him. The novelization is more clear that it is a mirror. Unofficially, it is almost certainly a leftover from an earlier version of the story involving Dume actually betraying the Matoran. Dume is almost always portrayed negatively in the story up to that point, so him having been in stasis the whole time feels to me like a late addition.

This movie is kind of just a poor man's Kung Fu Panda. With regards to the movie this one is directly based on (Blazing Saddles) you should 100% see it.

Stuff like this is why I watch the credits. It was an okay movie on the whole, but seeing his name again in a movie made it all worth it to me. I did some research afterward to make sure it was the same Bob Thompson who was Bionicle's former head, and it was. He works for a company called Paterson James now: http://www.patersonjames.com/team/production-executives/

I just had to look up Core Hunter to remember what he looks like, and yeah, that's pretty lazy. At least the Barraki jaws had some distance between them before closing.

Just curious, do you mean BZPower member over 20 years old or members of BZPower for over 20 years? I think BZP itself is 20 years old, if it's the latter. If you mean the first, then hello to you, too. I turned 20 six years ago. I've only been on BZPower for 15 years, though. Still, it's pretty crazy to think I've spent more of my life as a member than not as a member.

“A nice nod,” to what exactly? What’s the purpose of them being connected in some way if none of the characters involved interact or know of each other (which I reiterate is not necessary). At this point, them being in the same multiverse doesn’t really mean anything more than either being in the same multiverse as our reality would mean. I can appreciate the attempt to connect them without involving their stories, but the multiverse is itself a fictional concept (or at least a scientific concept so far removed the public only learns about it through fiction). Each multiverse story (including G1) has its own rules, so having two storylines being within the same multiverse is, inherently, tying them together in a needless way. (For the record, I think almost all multiverse stories that aren’t specifically written to feature alternate realities from the start shouldn’t.) The stuff like the Mask of Time and the shared names is, in and of itself, the nod to the fans. This thing from when we were kids has a new and modified meaning for new kids. That’s the reference, and it shouldn’t mean anything in-universe.

Looks like someone just saw the new Doctor Strange. I still can't fathom what could possibly be gained by linking the two generations up. They both have their own strengths and weaknesses (some leaning more on one side or the other) that don't really create a ton of possibilities justifying it. When there are hundreds of different realities, it just opens up a can of worms that doesn't need to be opened and makes it more difficult to invest in what's going on, as well as destroying any sense of scale. Some properties (Back to the Future, MCU) can mostly pull it off, but they're created with it in mind. Yes, they share some names and tropes, like the Mask of Time. That's for us, the fans, as fun easter eggs. It saps all the energy out of it to try to create some convoluted way they're secretly one timeline.

I'm throwing my hat in the ring too.

Beautiful. I could look at it forever, especially that glorious third column.

I've got to agree. There was a time when I'd always intended, maybe once I was more established in life, of picking up all the expensive sets, and then I just realized, where would I put them? That being said, I am still committed to one day have the Death Star II. LSW from that era is going to be what's going to bankrupt me if I ever actually come into contact with money. I remember 2008 being the first time I thought the Bionicle offerings weren't as good as previous years (I'd been collecting for five years at that point). And yet, I still loved them and bought as much as I could. I remember taking all three of the Makuta Phantoka on vacation with me, and even though they took up a lot of space, it was just nice to have them and play with them. I still have them in storage. Their joints, if they're still functional, are probably all dusty and creaky now. Even if I know there was a lot to dislike about them, there was a lot to like, too. There's really nothing from Bionicle (G1) that I'd actualy call bad; I enjoy thinking of every individual set I ever obtained. It really is all about Bricklink now. I recently bought a pair of huge Lego containers, but they're quite modern (past ten years-ish) and I realize that I want my Lego collection to have an older feeling, so I'm going to try tracking down some Lego tubs that were collected from earlier eras. Maybe give my containers a more classical vibe. Before, I could dig through and recognize all the nostalgic old themes--Knights' Kingdom II, Exo-Force, Aqua Raiders--but now the most noticeable theme is probably Friends. Not that I hate Friends, I'm just not nostalgic for it. Friends makes me think of the end of G1.

Nice models. Wairuha Nuva was always the weakest G1 instructions combiner, if you ask me. I like how you filled in the chest as well, that always made the Kaita look weirdly skeletal, even more than most Bionicle sets. The Rahkshi one is my favorite. It looks so alien, yet still so much like a Rahkshi. It makes me think of the strange but weirdly comforting aesthetic of the early Kaita, with their weird but consistent colors, and how you have to get really creative with your part reuses. The Vahki one mostly looks like the Kranua to me, but it's still not bad. The custom arm design is cool.

This, so much. It was a really slow process. I intended for years to get into Ninjago, I just never bought any actual sets. I always planned on going back and getting them, but now, with all the constraction sets, AND Star Wars, it would be ridiculous. It's such a tempting rabbit hole to fall into. This is what my collection realistically looks like: 1) Anything BIONICLE G1 I can get my hands on: sets, media, toothbrushes, you name it. I still pick up what I can track down. 2) LEGO Star Wars. I don't think anyone has a complete LSW collection, but I'm proud of what I've been able to obtain, mostly minifigures and 2008-2014 era sets, though I do have some minifigures and parts of sets left from the very beginning. 3) G2. I have most of the mainline sets, but to be honest, I just don't feel nostalgic for 2015/6 the way I do for 2001-10. 4) Hero Factory. I have ten or so. 5) Various other City parts. My favorite things to actually look back on are probably my minifigures and BIONICLE collectibles, like the Kanohi Masks.

Oh, you're right. Confirmed: Gali would have killed if given the chance.

Over all the years, with so much being added and taken down, are there any particular memories you have of LEGO.com that you wonder if anyone else remembers? There are a lot I have that I think were pretty popular: that real-time tic-tac-toe game you could play against other online members, the Knights' Kingdom games and webcomics, and Supersonic RC. If anyone else hasn't played the Knights' Kingdom games, then you should know the Bionicle games spoiled us. The KK games were fun, but they had no music, just sound effects, so playing them was kind of surreal. I'll be surprised if anyone else remembers this: the armor-finding game on the Knights' Kingdom website. It was sort of like the 2009 My LEGO Network BIONICLE Campaign. There were little pieces of armor hidden on random game and product pages, and if you clicked on them, it'd show them on your knight. There were a dozen or so individual pieces of armor, and when you found them all in one color you'd graduate to the next. I think the final color was gold, and I spent a whole day when I was 9 tracking them all down. It was glorious.

The disk's designs are pretty stylistic, so I don't think it's necessary to be too systematic in what they could mean. Ko-Metru and Le-Metru are obviously Knowledge Towers and a chute, and Onu-Metru as an elevator makes sense, too. (Even though it makes no sense, I always saw Onu-Metru's design as a bird's eye view of a bridge, with a road going horizontally underneath the vertical center part.) Ta-Metru is a general depiction of a flame, I think. The base (that wrench-looking part) is the most distinctive element, with the rest of the design fanning out from there, like a fire sending out flames and smoke to the sides and upward. Ga-Metru's could be seen as a watery, softer version of Ta-Metru. Notice the absence of sharp angles like Ta-Metru has. Also, whereas Ta-Metru's is roughly triangular pointing upward, Ga-Metru is roughly triangular pointing downward. If you projected them onto each other, they'd look kind of like a Star of David, masculine and feminine. Which brings me to Po-Metru, which does sort of have that double-triangle shape. I always noticed as a kid that Po-Metru's design was so much more symmetrical and spherical. Ta-, Ga-, and Ko- all have only one "right" orientation, while Le- and Onu- look the same if rotated 180 degrees. Po- looks the same rotated every 120 degrees, though, so it's more symmetrical. Po-Metru looks like a boulder to me, like it's been rolling on the ground until the most distinctive element is in the center. Those are just my takes. They are super interesting, and there's a lot of directions they could be taken in. I remember studying them as a child, and just being taken by how cool and alien they looked. I kind of wish Bionicle did more with this aesthetic.

Agreed, it'd be boring to systematize why some people are people instead of robots. Ignoring that the Bionicle characters are (sort of) robots, but that's incidental to how they function as characters. Another fun example: Marka. She's the only Ga-Matoran from that era who isn't just a fun free flower child water-lady. She's loud and impatient. It'd be so boring to just make her a disguised Av-Matoran.

Agreed, after every major victory (Makuta, the Bohrok, and the Bohrok-Kal) the Toa all seem to come to an understanding, only to be back at their old antics next time. It definitely helped the drama of the movie. Not even knowing the plot details, the young viewers understands the point.

She also did it to Hakann, too, if I'm not mistaken. I don't have the book on hand, but I think she broke off the attack purely to adhere to the Code and not kill him. Just thinking out loud here: a non-Water Toa could hypothetically suffocate (or at least severely impair) an enemy by randomly switching the mask's power (for both of them) on and off, since they'd know when to take a deep breath first.

How could I forget "Bring Me to Life"? Great choice. Also, pretty much anything by Linkin Park, but especially Meteora. I felt vindicated when "By Myself" got used in Bionicle, even if it was just for that test animation video for Antroz.

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.