Not me. I’m too cheap for that kinda thing. I’ll buy the finished product.
In that way, G2 did us a favor. It made us more skeptical about this kinda thing.
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I want to clarify that reply from Faber was made on the original post from all the way back in June. On a much later post he clarifies that 14b2020 is unfunded.
And even if it were, that reply makes no mention of community funding. Funding could come from anywhere. Yes, crowd funding is all the rage now, but never has Faber ever asked anything of us other than support and enthusiasm, which he has achieved.
Rebel Nature seems to be his focus right now. 14b2020 won’t really pick up until next year, so we can’t be expecting him to be posting about it every day, especially when it isn’t nearly as far along as Rebel Nature seems to be.
Speaking of Rebel Nature, I highly suggest everyone interested in this topic take a look at all of Faber’s work. A lot of what he’s doing seems to all be connected, including this Bionicle project. Faber is up to a lot more than just a few Instagram posts. You need to dive deeper before you can see what might really be going on.
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That’s a specific statement with only one interpretation. He isn’t clarifying, he’s correcting himself.[quote=“PakariNation99, post:710, topic:48962”]
A lot of what he’s doing seems to all be connected, including this Bionicle project.
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I know that, and I don’t like it. I’ve already hinted at the possibility that this is just a hitch to propel Rebel Nature forward, which isn’t a cool move. Bionicle should be its own thing, not a marketing tool for something else.
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I think everyone’s getting cold feet too quickly. I’m sure the project will pick up a bit more towards April.
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I’ve always had these opinions formed, but Faber’s activity which has been mostly flying under my limited radar is simply confirmation.
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Rebel Nature is its own thing, and it has a lot of different things going on within it.
But Faber’s setting out to do something more here. It’s not about plastic building toys anymore. He has plans, goals, and aspirations.
His mission statement is Fiction inspired by Science fueled on Empathy. His goal is to use multimedia to tell stories that can connect with people enough to inspire them to create and, more importantly, to take action themselves. Rebel Nature is the forefront of that. It seems Cryoshell might be involved in some musical capacity. And it’s looking to me like Faber wants to adapt Bionicle to follow this mission too, starting in 2020.
And I, personally, am really excited for it. Look, I understand if there’s people here who are going to be upset or disappointed if 14b2020 doesn’t turn out to be G3 or some kind of revival, or even if it isn’t called “Bionicle” (which you really should expect that it won’t be, since it can’t legally be called Bionicle). I know just as well that there are going to be people who will instantly demonize the project because of the message it’s being set up to tell. And to me that’s saddening, because to see something heavily Bionicle-inspired become a force for change in the world at large is a dream we’ve all shared. This would be the chance for the thing we like, or at the least a version of it, to actually inspire more people than LEGO fans.
Is Faber being a bit bold? Maybe. Are there going to be people who drop out of the community entirely because they got their hopes dashed? Certainly. But Bionicle was fueled by his strong personal feelings, and he’s making it something personal to him again. And seeing all he’s done and what he’s currently doing, it makes me very excited to see Bionicle become a part of that.
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I’m not so sure I’ll demonize it, ( even if I disagree with the nessage), but I may be somewhat skeptical. I don’t mind it being there. Heck, I don’t even mind if it’s the central theme, but he sacrifices story to get his point across, then I might get upset.
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Considering how elegantly the original Bionicle disguised its more personal meaning, I have faith Faber can do it again.
And if not, then maybe it just won’t be your thing. And there isn’t anything wrong with that.
Let’s also consider too that 14b2020 might not be purely environmental with its message. Sure, it might be a part of it since that seems to be what Rig 21 is all about, but another important aspect Faber has stressed is the role A.I. will play in humanity’s future. Perhaps something very much inspired by Bionicle could be a cool vehicle for that kind of story, a story about A.I. and the struggle of what makes a person.
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That could be very cool. On the other hand, this could be like Nick’s Planet Ripple, and things like Global Warming were solved, and instead we caused something else that brought everything down.
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Why does everyone think this project would have an environmental message behind? Did Faber say so, or it’s just assumption?
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Seems to me like it’s just an assumption based on the melting ice around the toa canisters, and the pic of Antarctica in the O.
Personally, I would much prefer bionicle without an environmental message. More something you can go to for a break from the hoopla, not going with the news media craze of the times. (That being said, I would be less opposed to it if that same message weren’t everywhere I looked.)
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Agreed. That’s my opinion on the whole situation.
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I find myself stupid, so we’re good
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As several people in this thread have demonstrated, the message is still being put out so much because there are still people who refuse to listen to it.
Anyway, if this project were under the Rebel Nature heading, but treated as a distinct concept/setting/series within that, I would be okay with it. Would it feel a little cynical to rile up the fanbase of an established franchise to bring attention to his personal project? Yeah, a bit. But I do think a lot of people are being overly negative and accusing Faber of being some sort of eeeeeevil mastermind or whatever, when he’s shown many times that he’s still very passionate about Bionicle. Like I said before, I still hope it’s its own thing, not sharing a setting with his Waveborn thingy, and not set on Earth, but if those conditions are satisfied, I wouldn’t mind it being part of a bigger thematically-connected anthology.
Of course, this is also all down to whether anything further materializes at all. ^_^;
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Agreed. I’m just trying to consider all angles.
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Yes, but I feel that we are at the point where those people won’t be convinced no matter what. A similar example could be the flat-earth movement.
I’m going to add an edit here, because I just thought of something 5-10 minutes after I posted this:
We don’t even all have to agree on everything. It’s okay to allow other people to have opinions that disagree with our own. If everyone always thought the same way this world would be a very drab place.
That is my biggest hope too. I would prefer if Bionicle were completely it’s own thing.
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This post from 2016 suggests that the Arctic Island is on Earth and the inhabitants must escape to another Earth-like planet. This could be accomplished by sending astronauts to explore the new world. The journey is long, so they would have to be fitted with cybernetic enhancements and put into cryo-sleep to survive.
Alternatively, when the ice finally melts, six heroes are placed in protective canisters coated in a protodermis shell. This is a rare substance, so only six could be produced. The newly melted water carries the canisters, (which are programmed to open once they detect arrival on dry land,) to a tropical island on the other side of the globe. These chosen few are the society’s last hope for survival. Either way, the 310NICLE Universe, (in whichever form it takes,) is most likely set in humanity’s future. G1 may have some connective tissue to the future as well- despite being set in “The time before time,” considering one of the franchise’s original titles was Afterman.
I would also like to point out that Cryoshell is attached to Faber’s new project. In G1, the name Cryoshell was a reference to the Toa Canisters which acted as cryo-sleep shells. But a cryogenic shell could also refer to an outer layer of ice keeping its interior dormant in an ice age of stagnant progress. In G1, the Matoran had not just stagnated, they had regressed from the technological advancements of Metru Nui to the near-primitive state of Mata Nui’s tribal lifestyle. That is, until the Toa returned to defeat Makuta and guide the Matoran back to their old home. Thus, the Toa awakening from stasis in their canisters is a visual representation of societal progress, so the canisters being this Arctic society’s only hope for survival would make a lot of sense.
I know many Bionicle fans don’t gel with the environmentalist message Faber is so fond of, but G1 had an environmentalist message too. The G1 story was about having the same respect for the planet as one would have for one’s own body. That is why the world was set in the GSR, because Faber wanted to connect the ideas of medicine and environmentalism. The Earth is one big ecosystem that needs to be cared for in the same way we care for ourselves. G1’s message was very general, but the natural evolution of that theme is to focus on global warming and transhumanism/A.I.
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…no it doesn’t? That post shows a Toa canister on a beach, with a comment about how the discovery of earth-like planets nearby gives inspiration. It has no inherent connection to the current 310N idea, and given the amount of time that’s passed since then I find it unlikely that this is somehow integrally connected to what Faber’s planning.
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Faber re-posted that concept art recently along with the other art, and that post shows that he’s been thinking about these ideas for a while. He’s clearly invested in this concept, and he didn’t have to connect it to Bionicle in that picture, he could have tied it in with Rebel Nature- but he didn’t. He’s posted similarly cryptic environmentalist sentiments alongside his 310NICLE art, so I’m sure he’s incorporated the idea into the project in some way.
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Very interesting analysis. I had never considered that before. I always found some of the more specific yearly themes to be more obvious…
- Heroism/destiny in 2003 (Jaller and Takua)
- 1984-style totalitarian regimes in 2004 (Turaga Dume and the Vahki)
- Fighting against internal darkness in 2005 (Vakama)
- Sacrifice in 2007 (RIP Matoro)
- Survival in a post-apocalyptic world in 2009 (the entire premise of Bara Magna)
Do you have any specific examples (beyond the overarching narrative) of how these environmentalism/medicine themes interact?
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