voidaspects

[voidaspects]

Yknow, I feel like the perception of Sidorak was impacted severely by his depiction in the movie, and it would be different had they not leaned into his pathetic-ness that hard

Now, to clarify, he wouldn't be less pathetic or any more respectable or anything. His characterization is pretty set in stone.

What I mean is... edgy as fuck pathetic bastard man? The retractable sword and the Claws and such giving a hint of badassery in a sea of incompetence?

Don't act like people wouldn't eat this shit up had they been allowed to imagine he was a twink

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This has definitely been brought up by other people, but I continue to remain genuinely baffled that there was never a single official scene of Takanuva meeting back up with Jaller and Hahli after the mahri nui arc? Like what?! That might genuinely be the biggest missed opportunity in the entire series?!!

Especially since Takanuva references talking to the mahri, so it clearly happened, but just… entirely off screen?

And this is coming from someone who’s main attachment to the series is the later years. I can only imagine how frustrating this is for people who grew up with the Mask of Light.

Like they get separated and go off to become heroes and then when they get back… nothing? Really?!

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I'm not usually one to try and "improve" established models, and tend to just appreciate them as is

...but I just modified my Helryx to give her a neck while keeping the rest of her build as unchanged as possible, and like... I adore this

I adore this so much. Her whole vibe has changed somehow in a way i really like, personally. Like I don't mind her usual look, but like... gosh I love this change so much.

I think I'm just gonna make an exception and keep her like this, because I'm just so so damn happy with this tiny alteration to her.

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Y’know I have this weird thing where I’m not a big fan of the Bionicle movie designs by default

(Just not a big fan of how the masks feel like they’re actively trying to not be masks)

…And yet Toa Nokama specifically and literally no one else has her movie mask when I think of the character in my head. She is the one singular exception. And I’ve just accepted that fully into my perception of these characters at this point.

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Actively kicking myself for not downloading all of the free 3D models off shapeways that I could get while I could. They were all just right there dangit! The 3D printing you can source elsewhere, but the models...

If only I had known in advance dangit!

...yes this is specifically about bionicle masks

I hope someone else has these downloaded somewhere. I was hoping a lot of the people who made the models would have moved their resources elsewhere but I haven't seen many of them give updates anywhere. Only some of them appear to be active on socials.

[voidaspects]

Shout out to Stuart Sayger for never drawing the mouth on Hahli Inika's mask literally one single time. Could've just been shorthand, but it's so consistent I could definitely see it being intentional.

This like instantly fixes her mask for me without actually redesigning it.

...this is basically her canon look in my head.

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I’ve searched for this on multiple occasions, and I continue to be surprised that it doesn’t exist anywhere:

A comprehensive list of all of the buildable/canon models in bionicle. Not just talking contests, but like… a list of every figure that could feasibly be owned. It doesn’t stop at the sets (unless you’re a purist about that) and I’m amazed no collector has put it upon themselves to make an inventory of what buildable models are available to feasibly collect.

Think about it! Every matoran model from both mnog games would count. Even the ones that have pieces that weren’t made in those colours, by the parameters of things like the Hagah that’s not a dealbreaker.

And stuff like dark hunters! Some people have made lists of them and resources for them, but it’s weird how scattershot those topics seem to be.

And think about all of the rahi that have been put into media. How many of those are buildable? At least a couple, sure, I wanna know how many!

I know this isn’t untouched ground, I know people have these things in their collections, I know a lot of these are well known and easy to find. What perplexes me is that there’s no index for this. There’s no list anywhere. How many buildable canon models do we definitively have? I want a list! I want to know the scope of this!

When thinking about what can be collected, I want a list of the official sets, a list of combo models, and a list of everything else. And the everything else list just doesn’t exist! How many are there?

Like is this a weirdly specific thing to want? Am I just rambling? Or does it feel weird to anyone else that no one has made a list of these? Or at least nowhere I can find

[voidaspects]

anyone else find it weird that a major plot point of 2004 bionicle is mask powers being discovered, and yet vakama’s profession was literally being a mask maker? Like shouldn’t he know?

Do kanohi forges just slap a cool mask together and then go “wonder what this one does?”

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I’ve shown this a little bit before, but I just realized I never actually posted the full collection on here since then, so have the full display!

My full collection of every single Order of Mata Nui member! (minus the ones that physically can’t be owned in a canon capacity (I’m sorry Johmak ;-;))

I don't know what else to say other than this was really really fun to collect and aaaah I love them all sm I'm so happy!!!

Sorry the photo isn’t great, it’s like impossible to get good photo lighting where they’re displayed.

So have these instead!

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Fucks me up a little every time I see a Metru build next to an inika build and am confronted with the fact that they're functionally the same size on average even though my brain insists that they aren't

Why does this feel so incorrect to me...

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Slowly but surely building out my full Order of Mata Nui collection.

My remaining checklist is as follows:

1. Get the remaining pieces for Tobduk

2. Get the remaining pieces for Krakua

3. Think about how only Johmak specifically is entirely absent

4. Cry

5. Take solace in the fact that I already own Jerbraz

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I think, in general, we as a community can be a bit too harsh on Greg Farshtey, and I think he’s someone who’s been placed in the unfortunate situation of being a writer forced to explain every detail and flaw of his work in depths to an audience, and we should cut him some slack a lot more

…That being said….

Greg why

There was a built in solution here why did you go out of your way to reject it

Greg please

[voidaspects]

Not to delve too much more into this topic, but I just want to take a moment and share this great article I found while exploring this topic a little bit ago. I admit, I lack the cultural knowledge to vouch for it’s authenticity, but the sincerity of it leaves me confident enough that I can comfortably add this to the conversation.

Tl;dr: this is a perspective of the opposite side of the coin; an exploration and introduction of Bionicle from a Polynesian perspective, which I think is something that’s really worth appreciating.

There’s a lot of interesting discussion that can be had about the nuances of morality when this topic is discussed, but discussing the topic in itself is also incredibly interesting, and really makes stuff like this worth appreciating for the perspective they give.

Get this into your thick skull: Bionicle addition

All of the names in bionicle that weren’t changed after the lawsuit, the Māori people ALLOWED Lego to keep. That means it is ok to use them. And even if there were names for new characters after said lawsuit happened that seem “culturally appropriative”, don’t you think that the Māoris would sue again? They didn’t. That means it wasn’t that bad. Also, I have proof that they SPECIFICALLY ALLOWED Lego to keep using the Māori names that were chosen for the toa mata (the main cast). Don’t you think since the Māoris had a problem with some of the names, if they had a problem with the toa mata’s names, they would have pointed that out first since the toa mata are the LITERAL MAIN CHARACTERS? A huge misconception is that the Māoris “didn’t catch” some things in bionicle, this proves that theory wrong! Even if they had missed some things at first, bionicle continued for less than a DECADE after the law suit! Don’t you think that they would have sued again if they found something they missed the first time?

The island from Moana is “Monte Nui”, the island from bionicle is “mata nui”. The island from Moana is not a bionicle reference.

The name “Jaller” does not fit in with the rest of the names in bionicle. It sounds soooooooooooo yankeedoodle! Even some of the characters who got their names changed sound more like bionicles than him. Maybe they were trying to make him an American stereotype? Like, his voice sounds like a dumb surfer dude. Even Tahu, an actual surfer dude, sounds like less of a surfer dude than Baller with a J over here!

If bionicle was that bad, it would be morally wrong to keep liking it. What a person likes dictates their character, but that’s only if you know the extent of what you’re doing and keep doing it. If someone got addicted to something bad as a kid without realizing how bad it is, it may be hard to move on from it as an adult.

in jaller’s name, they changed the “a” to an “er”, I think it might be a joke similar to the “clankers” thing in the Star Wars community.

the reason why Lego won’t bring bionicle back is because they fear backlash from twitter people, but considering that most people nowadays like bionicle, I don’t think they will get much backlash. They have even changed some of the names that the Māoris let them keep, because of how scared they are! Let them know they shouldn’t!

The matoran are not racist depictions of anything. Bionicle was inspired by christen Faber’s day dreams of the pills inside of his body fighting his cancer being actually alive. The depiction of antibodies as humans in media usually have them depicted as creatures rather than people. The concept of the matoran developed over time so they were more portrayed as humans than antibodies. Also, the previous names for bionicle seem a little iffy, but they probably didn’t know that voodoo was an actual practice, and the bone heads thing… probably either had to do with the fact that blood cells come out of your bones or since the bionicles were just literal animals back then, they didn’t have any problem giving them a funny name. Another candidate for a name was literally “doo heads” for crying out loud! 😂

[voidaspects]

Hi there's suddenly a ton of people seeing my unorganized blog here's a bunch of art from last year!!

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Still love how clean this piece looks. Was meant to be just a little extreme perspective exercise, but then... I got carried away :P

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Traditional art has been really fun to get back into!! Been liking the vibe of a lot of my new stuff!

[voidaspects]

Here have some art!