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Toa Mata


Xinlo

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me and my good buddy Takal were debating earlier about the difference between Earth and Stone elements, and we came to a disturbing discovery:

 

earth and stone are basically the same (bye Onua)

 

Gali can heat water (she did so in one of the early comic issues, forget which) which means she can also freeze it (bye Kopaka)

 

following the same logic, Pohatu should be able to heat rock to create magma, and by extension, flames (this would be difficult I'd imagine, and nowhere near as practical as Tahu's fire abilities, but it still makes him redundant)

 

and Gali could also control air in a roundabout way by evaporating water or simply focusing on the moisture in the air to much the same effect as Lewa's abilities. Coupled with a Kakama for making tornadoes and you're good to go

 

So that's Kopaka and Onua rendered useless and Tahu and Lewa maybe handy to have around for a shortcut to certain abilities, but the gist of it is Gali and Pohatu could easily and practically be the whole team for 90% of the circumstances they were put in. They're also the only two who get along, so we ditch the angst as well.

 

Bam. Perfect harmony in a Toa team at last, and a perfect gender ratio. We have fixed Bionicle, my friends.

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This would be true for the Avatar universe, but since we've never seen Gali make ice, or Pohatu melt rock, I'm guessing the BIONICLE universe plays by different rules.

 

They're also the only two who get along, so we ditch the angst as well.

 

But this sounds like a great idea, so you know what, I'm just gonna go with it.

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no we've never seen it, by I was extrapolating from the fact she heated water. If she can do that, would it not follow she can cool it down as well? and if she can manipulate temperatures, could not pohatu? I admit it's a bit of a stretch but it makes way more sense than the canon version where these abilities are locked out because "reasons".

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I don't remember when Gali heated water, but if I had to guess I'd say there's a limit on that ability. But if she could cool water, wouldn't she have done so in that comic when the Tahnok where trying to boil her alive?

 

Also I think the "reasons" are that there's a Toa of ice and a Toa of water, one controls one element, one controls the other. And seeing as how water and ice are two different states of matter you could argue that they kind of aren't the same thing (even though they kind of are). It's good enough for me. :shrugs:

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As somebody who has re-read the first several years' worth of comics a ludicrous number of times I can say with certainty that Gali never heated (or cooled) water. You may be misremembering one of the Bohrok issues where she was collecting Krana from Tahnok who began to heat the water, nearly boiling her alive.
 
Also, earth and stone are quite different.

 
Bam. :P

Takuma Nuva

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Perhaps I was misremembering. But even so, with such a minor adjustment to the "rules" which aren't even clearly defined anyway, all this is possible.

 

Also how exactly are earth and stone different?

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Personally, I don't see a problem with earth and stone or water and ice being treated as separate elements. Even in Avatar: The Last Airbender, where they ARE the same element, bending dust or loose sand requires an entirely different set of techniques than bending stone or hard clay, which in turn requires a different set of techniques than bending metal. The reason, in that case, is that the bending arts in Avatar: The Last Airbender are very closely tied to the physicality of the elements, so naturally there's a big difference between bending an element in a form that behaves like a solid and in a form that behaves like a fluid.

 

Even though BIONICLE never came up with a specific reason for the Earth and Stone elements being separate (besides "we had six characters and needed the desert dude and the underground dude to have different powers"), the fact that those elements have such different physical characteristics seems to me like sufficient justification for not treating them as one and the same, even if they're identical on a chemical level.

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First, as GregF said and was even quoted by Soran in the entry that Tekulo linked, "I throw some dirt at you. I throw a rock at you. See the difference?" Really, when we say the element of earth it's really just a more eloquent way of saying the element of dirt.
 
I'm guessing that your logic for the similarities between stone and earth come from the concept that, hey, rocks are quite a prevalent part of the earth. If we're going to subscribe to this line of thinking we start by tossing out Pohatu, not Onua. Second, if we're going to say this is reason enough to consider stone part of the earth class, we'd have to include metal and plants.
 
As for excluding Lewa from the group, I see this as an unbelievable stretch. Changing the humidity of a local area may be one thing, but I very much doubt that Toa of water have the concentration or even ability to manipulate water particles in such a manner. Furthermore, gale-force winds as they naturally occur require weather patterns that are in no small way the result of hot and cold fronts. This means we need at least Kopaka and/or Tahu. Even then, the amount of focus, set-up, concentration, and time required just to produce a decent breeze, assuming the Toa were actually capable of such, is ludicrously impractical and convoluted.
 
But that's just my two widgets.


Takuma Nuva

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My fanon version of that quote:  I try to grow dandelions in dirt.  They grow.  I try to grow dandelions in rocks.  See the difference? 

 

I like to think that the "stone" element consists of inorganic matter whereas earth is organic matter.  

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