This whole situation just sucks all around. While I want to gripe about the contests, they have no comparison to what Mr. Farshtey is going through right now. He deserved better. It seems like the man who is responsible for much of LEGO’s success is just being fired unceremoniously, and that really sucks to hear. This is essentially Bionicle’s third and likely final cancellation.
It would be incredibly insensitive to ask him right now, but he has to be asked eventually. Unless Greg comes to us first (which probably won’t happen) we at least need a concrete answer about the contests from him.
The Helryx contest in its entirety lasted approximately 71 days, give or take a day or so. The Artakha contest lasted about 77 days
Should the Tuyet contest begin today, it would last until around May 15th, leaving ample time between the end of the contest and Greg’s departure, and room for any possible delays.
I’m not saying that the contest should be run (I don’t think they should). Just putting this out there
Everywhere is tightening the belt at the moment, and Lego has gradually scaled back on print media, which is what Greg made. Ninjago and Monkie Kid tell their stories with animated shows, and basically nothing else has a story, or at least, a story unique to Lego. There’s no comics and no books to write, so Greg was presumably surplus to requirements. TBH I’m kinda surprised he was still there to begin with.
I would like to note on the subject of the canon contests continuing as/fitting one in before July that Meso has said they are dead in the R/Bionicle Discord server since people keep saying we can.
(Image courtesy of Minirigby)
So if Meso has said they are dead I think they are dead.
Hopefully he was just jumping the gun a bit with that response. I say we should at least have a vote of some sort to have at least one more contest. And I highly doubt Greg would be annoyed by the idea. Sense he had lots of reasons to be annoyed with the community before
Obviously, it will take quite a while to prepare for the Lariska MOC, but no one knows whether the final contest will be hagah, tuyet, or Lariska.
As soon as Meso heard Greg’s news, he spoke pessimistically. The contest is dead.
I have a lot of complaints about it.
it’s a little… That was such a bad thing to hear. I felt like they gave up right away.
Yes I know it can be really rude for us to bother Greg while he’s taking care of his work.
I understand the burden of TTV.
I know I’m selfish.
But there was no discussion.
Even though it was passing by said, I felt exhausted.
Well, it’s possible if TTV is able to handle it and not let someone in communities waste our little time raising objections to it.
Will that be possible?
I can assure you that Meso was far from crushed. More along the lines of “I’m free” than anything else TBH.
Not at all surprising, really. I’ll go back to what I said when the first “We need help” post hit: “These contests have destroyed the mental health of everyone that tried to run them and sunk at least one friendship within TTV itself, and I don’t think the results are worth that.”
Eljay and Meso have always been fairly candid and open about how much stress they go through whenever the contests are active. I think it stopped being an enjoyable event for them a long time ago, more an obligation.
I’ve seen it said that the contests being killed by an outside factor is the absolute worst thing for all parties… but honestly, I think it might be the best outcome for the organisers themselves. They get to break from the intense pressure and scrutiny permanently, and it’s nothing they did. They share none of the blame in the death of the contests, so people can’t even be angry at them for not continuing.
It’s not official yet, but yeah. There’ll presumably be an announcement very soon, probably just taking time to record and edit it.
No.
Also just… stop.
What is important right now is that Greg has lost his job of over 22 years. What isn’t important is clutching at straws for one last ■■■■-storm over the design of a toyless character from a defunct toyline.
Meso has stated, quite plainly, that they do not intend to trouble Greg with another contest while he has things like “Securing new employment” and “Feeding his family” to worry about.
