Alyska

Okay, so aside from money, Lego and soft toys, what are the best "gender neutral" gifts for kids? (I mean, if you don't want to give them something stereotypical, but you also don't want a little girl complaining that you gave her a "boys' toy" or vice versa.)I'd say craft and science kits are probably a good bet, but it really depends on the individual child and what their interests are.

The awkward one for me is earrings. Whenever someone gives me earrings, I start fiddling and pulling my hair foward, hoping they don't notice my ears aren't pierced.

I think it's okay to redo other people's old discussion topics. After all, the original topic is closed, and it's a shame to waste a good discussion point just because its been done before six months ago (or more). If you feel weird about it, you can always mention where you got the idea from.

Finally got around to watching last week's episode. I'd say it's definitely one of the more emotional episodes so far. I wanna hug the lil Spikey-Wikey.Also, I haven't checked back the last few pages, but did anyone notice The Sorceror's Apprentice music?

Yeah, I was referring more to disposable women in media in general, rather than being exclusive to Bionicle. Christopher Nolan movies are a particularly infamous example.As for Christmas presents, I usually try and base it on what I know about the child, rather than just gender. If I don't know, can always ring their parents. If they're very young kids, I just make soft toys for both genders, like I do for my niece and nephew. I made a dinosaur for my niece last year. But most toys these days are gender segregated, so it's hard to buy things that are percieved as gender-neutral.

Well, if it was a relative, I think Sahmad would have speciified, given that it was told in the first person. But I think it was a little bit awkwardly written that he never mentioned her name. I understand that names are in limited supply these days, but still... not giving her a name just makes her yet another disposable woman, existing only so she can die to make a male character more angsty. (Nikila is another example, although she was given much more characterisation and a name).I think Greg was being deliberately vague about their relationship 1) for fanfic bait and 2) So he doesn't have to answer questions about all the juicy details. He hates those sorts of questions.

Actually, Greg's said that he doesn't like writing romance at all. I think he was just pandering to the older fanbase a bit.

Hmm... maybe they just need to organise the story content better? They made some effort to do this by dividing the books into three or four different series, but even then, it was still tricky. They seemed to take the philosophy of "take everything from last year off the site so kids don't get confused", rather than archiving it in an accessible way. Ironically, I think taking previous years' content offline actually made it more confusing, as the current storyline each year was presented with very little context, at least as far as the main site is concerned. Kids would need to rely on external sources, such as BS01, to get the full picture without buying a lot of books.

I actually made my sig in response to all the "KIINA AND BERIX!"/"KIINA AND GRESH" that was going on in the last version of the topic. ("Media analysis wiki", eh? That makes it sound so sophisticated...)According to Greg, Kiina definitely DOES have a crush on Mata Nui, but she didn't really show it properly until he said goodbye to her. Her movie personality is generally considered not-quite-canon around these parts.As for female Agori characters... What female Agori characters? We've had a dozen or so Agori released as sets, and none of them are female. Even in Sahmad's tale, where it was confirmed that they exist, it was a bit like "Ooh! There's one... oh, wait, she died... Hey, look, another one! Oh... it was just a dream." I'd love to see a female Agori that actually had the privelege of being a named character.Also, nice comic, Zippy. Love the goofy facial expressions.

To be honest, I haven't seen any of the HF TV series after the first season, and don't really intend to watch any more of it, but it is nice to know that they are trying to flesh out the characters. Although, just from what's been said of Breez, that sounds like a pretty clumsy way of making a "strong" female character (You don't need to point it out, sweetie. The boys don't run around boasting about what strong male characters they are). Strong female characters should just be there, rather than being treated as some sort of Great Big Anomaly that needs to be shoved in the audience's faces. Then again, maybe that was meant to be her character defect. But, I'm ranting...I don't think having a show that appeals to a wide demographic is a difficult thing to do, at least, not if you have good writers. Most shows on Nickelodeon have sizable teenage/adult fanbases that are much bigger than Bionicle's, and yet they all appeal to kids just fine, too. And many of the things that appeal to the older fans- such as well-choreographed action sequences and original, clever jokes- will also appeal to the kids.Based on this topic, it doesn't seem that many people here have developed the same sort of emotional attatchment to the HF storyline that many of us had to Bionicle. I guess that says something, doesn't it?

Thanks for that quote. It's very informative.One problem with any plans to put BIONICLE stuff online deals with some of the stuff you quoted. LEGO doesn't own the rights to put the movies online because those movie rights were licensed out to other companies. Unless TLG bought the movie rights from Universal or Disney (which absorbed Miramax Films), then they wouldn't be able to provide that content online for free. The same applies to the books, which are owned by Scholastic, even though I imagine buying the book rights would be easier than buying the movie rights.

I don't necessarily think they should have put the books or movies up online, but I do think that they should have been creating more online-exclusive content in the first place. They did a fantastic job with the online content in the first few years- why on earth did they stop? It's like they just got bored and couldn't be bothered any more after it stopped being "new".Worse still, they seem to be doing the exact same thing with Hero Factory. They don't have the comics up, and they've stopped producing those fantastic podcasts... It's like they're repeating all their old mistakes. These things require upkeep, Lego!

Apparently, there were several movie pitches over the years. The first one was rejected because the story wasn't fully written (and thus, we would have gotten a "Boneheads of Voodoo Island" movie), another was turned down because it involved human characters ending up in the Bionicle universe, and the third was because of the contract.

Greg has said that Gresh's parents are probably still out there. Kiina's and Gelu's are possible, given their ages, but we don't know what percentage of the population died during the Shattering.I like to think that gresh's parents got stuck on Bota Magna, so one day Gresh is going to run into a Glatorian plant monster thing and..."Mum? Is that...you?""GRESHIE! WHY AREN'T YOU WEARING A JACKET? BLAAARGH!"

I think it really needed a TV show. I've said this a lot already, but I think the problem was not with the story, but the way the story was told. Books and DVDs require your audience to spend effort and money to get to the story. TV shows do not. By all means keep the books and DVDs, but they should be treated as supplementary material, not the core media.

^ Got it from Greg himself.If you look through the old forum archives, you should find it in the "Bionicle in Theatres" topic.

I'm hoping that whatever replaces it will be designed to cater to a wider audience; kids and adults, males and females alike. HF's demographic seems a bit too narrow, as based on my conversations with kids, the TV show seems to alienate anyone over the age of ten.

In summary, the reasons for Bionicle's end:

• [*]Lego did not bother with maintaining Bionicle.com in the later years. Less story content was available for free.[*]Too much reliance on books, which require money to access. Book covers were too toylike and uninviting (some nice original artwork may have helped).[*]Never had a TV show to help communicate the story. (Once again, story less accessible).[*]Promotional materials, such as the "Save the band" campaign and the Bionicle Heroes game, deviated too much from the canon, causing confusion about the story. To a lesser extent, this also applies to some elements of the movies.[*]Picked the wrong studio to make TLR.[*]No mention of Bioniclestory.com on the main site, or on the toy packaging. (seriously, how are kids supposed to find it?)[*]No theatrical film. The deal with Tinseltown Toons meant that no other studioes could produce Bionicle DVDs for the term of the contract. Lego recieved a pitch for a big-screen Bionicle film, but had to turn it down for this reason.

Now, the longer version:I see the issue as not so much the complex nature of the story, but rather the accessibility of the story. When Bionicle was in its prime, from 2001 to 2003, most of the main story content was available online. Then came Mask Of Light, which sold well because of the interest in Bionicle built up by the website.After 2003, however, the story became much more reliant on the books, and there was less available online. Now, not that there's anything wrong with books; it's just that they require the kids to spend money in order to access them (Unless the public libraries have them, which in my experience, generally don't.) Now, kids generally won't spend that money unless they are already somewhat committed to the story, and parents, when choosing reading material for their child, would probably spend their money on something more sophisticated-looking than a paperback book with a picture of a plastic toy on the front. (I'm not criticising the quality of the books here at all, I'm just sayin', people judge books by their covers.)If you look at most of the story-driven toy franchises for children over the last ten years, all of the most successful ones (Beyblade, Transformers, My Little Pony, etc) have had a TV show or theatrical movie to promote them. Hero Factory certainly has the right idea there, but I actually think Bionicle's story would have been better suited to a show than HF.Ah, there are so many things I would like to see done differently. I really don't like the fact that the complex story on its own is always blamed for Bionicle's end. It's not about the story, it's about the execution. Kids aren't too dumb for the story, but they are lazy. If you want them to like your story, you have to make it easy for them to access.

Okay, to put it another way...Every Spherus Magna character alive right now must have had a mother. As far as we know, none of the main characters are closely related to one another, and no one is ever mentioned to have siblings, so that's one mother per character. Now, if the population has a natural ratio of, say, nine males per one female, then that means that the previous generation must have been nine times as big in order to produce that many children. Which means that the population has dramatically decreased in size ( either through decreasing birth rate, or perhaps a lot of Glatorians and Agori died during the Shattering).Basically, in order to sustain a population with that gender ratio, the average Agori/ Glatorian woman needs to have ten children during her lifetime. Maybe she has a long lifetime to do it in, but they also seem to have very slow growth rates, so that's several thousand years' worth of changing dirty nappies.

Wow, those are all stunning!What medium is the butterfly done in?

I've been dabbling in Flash a bit myself lately. I spent about three hours the other day just getting a character's hair to wobble when she moved her head.I expect it gets faster once you've made all the symbols that you're going to use.

Anyone here into animation? This is the place to discuss your work, share tips and tricks, and ask for help.At the moment, I'm looking for some fairly basic free stop-motion software that will run on Windows Vista. Would any of you be able to recommend a program?

Not being able to link to certain other sites really bothers me, and I think the quality of discussion is hindered because of it.Also, brony haters, for reasons that I have already stated far too many times already.

Alan Rickman as Kopaka!

I think it was stated that nearly all Toa were once Matoran, with a few exceptions like the Toa Mata/Nuva, Orde and Helryx. So, yeah, Matoran, Toa and Turaga are generally treated as different life cycle stages of the same species.So, was it confirmed that there is an actual gender imbalance among Agori and Glatorian species? (As opposed to just having an imbalance among the main characters) Because that just doesn't make sense at all, given that they reproduce biologically. If they didn't have such ridiculously long lifespans, they almost certainly would have gone extinct by now.

I managed to get Pokemon Black for $37 AUS at Myer on the weekend (nearly half price). Giving it to my brother for Christmas so that I'll finally have someone to go on wireless with (and eventually be able to use my fiftysomething Pass orbs).I've also decided that in the Dream World, it's easier to get the good areas/items if you don't have the sky and ocean areas unlocked, so my brother can set up his own PGL account rather than sharing mine. I can get him any of the Pokemon he wants, and he can get me the good items. Also, two separate accounts on two separate computers means at least two hours of dream world time per day.