I’m glad to see there are more people on this discussion in support of Faber. I’ve been fighting for a long time for a more open-minded approach to this entire thing, and it’s glad to see that I’m definitely not the only one.
Having watched Meso’s video earlier today, I have to say the thing that’s actually disappointing isn’t Faber’s lack of info, it’s the fact that we, the community, are so obsessed and ravenous over strict, clear, concrete info that he feels the need to be cryptic in the first place. Meso always makes a big deal that if Faber wants to be successful with this that he needs to play into that (and don’t get me wrong, he’s sort of right in that regard), but it’s absolutely awful and a bit infuriating that that has to be the case.
Instead of getting on this message board and thinking up what kind of things this could be or things we think would be cool to see, people are stuck complaining about it not being G1 or LEGO or anything they expected it to be. In other words, we’re focused on what it’s not instead of on what it could be, and that’s totally against what Faber wants us to be doing.
He’s asking us here to be open-minded. He’s asking us to look at this thing, this LEGO toy line we used to buy and consume, and actually let go of those preconceived notions of what Bionicle is or was and instead think about what it can be now.
I, for one, am actually excited to think about Bionicle as this non-product thing. I was always appealed by the atmosphere, the aesthetic, and the storytelling, the toys were just supplementary. To me it’s like saying creativity doesn’t exist if LEGO bricks don’t exist. And I realize that for a number of people, the toys were what mattered, and that’s okay! This just isn’t the thing you want, and I’m sad to say that the thing you do want probably won’t ever exist again.
Does this new announcement mean that Faber’s going to lose some of the community that was backing him? Yes, of course. But those people were drawn in by a promise their own minds and expectations created, and most certainly not through any malicious intent on Faber’s part.
So where does that leave us? I’d argue in a better place. The numbers may be less than before, sure, but I’d argue the passion and enthusiasm and the drive behind it is only strengthened, because this means the people who want this specific vision to be real are here supporting it. We don’t have people looking at this project for something other than it is, and that makes its focus and vision stronger.
So if you were here because you wanted a LEGO toy, I’m very sorry. This isn’t the thing for you, and I’m sorry it might have looked that way. But for the rest of us, we’re all here still excited about what it could be, and it’s the passion that’s going to drive Faber to make it a reality, not the numbers.
Side note, it’s funny to me that a community built on an IP whose entire initial premise was mystery and being slightly cryptic is so obsessed with information and minutia. We need canonization contests to make us happy instead of actually enjoying the scope of unresolved things we can play with. I’ve honestly never seen a fandom that’s actually the antithesis of the thing it’s a fan of in practice.
), or this (
), should we have that deal.”
