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Review: Hauntings


Nick Silverpen

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The Dark Time on Mata Nui was a thousand year period in which Makuta infected his darkness throughout the island paradise to the Matoran of Metru Nui. However, in a new and strange land, on an unknown ocean, there were bound to be odd and eerie occurrences which the Matoran experienced besides the Makuta.

In an anthology of canon-compliant short stories, I hope to present a series of occurrences I've brainstormed that happened in the Dark Time. I've already posted a majority of this on Tumblr and Wordpress and AO3, but I thought it fitting to put it on here. 

(Also, I know it has been a while since my last posting, and I know I owe some people some stuff from Holiday contests, which I will get to posting. But for now, know that it will be here soon)

The Hauntings

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Hey, Nick! Great to see you and your writing again! I appreciate your specification of canon-compliance you mentioned. 

I like the eerie tone you've managed to set up in your prologue. Well done, with the Makuta as the big bad, but that leaves a lot of blindspots for the creepy stuff to sneak in. 

More of an author-y/writing process question: Since you'll be posting from already-written writing, do you find yourself editing and proofreading a lot, before publishing here? Adding new things in? 

Anyways, looking forward to reading more from you! (if I were good, I'd read where you already posted, but I took a glance at AO3, and while it was nice to see some familiar authors and a decent amount of activity, a lot of it looked like a crazy wild jungle of crossovers, and I'd be afraid to get lost. BZP is a nice comfort zone, I like the format haha). 

Peace! 

Edited by Aderia

(disclaimer: none of this banner art is original, I just smooshed it together in gimp. Torchic, Matau)
ThosePeskyFirespitters.png.3dbdb65e6a28cbbc5957d81c09a685b6.png
Those pesky firespitters... 
Library | The Sculptors and the Smelters | The Ternion Review Topic 

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Hi Aderia! Appreciate your reply.

There were definitely a lot of things in the "Dark Time" that Makuta was involved in, but I don't think he could have spent every hour of every day terrorizing every aspect of the Matoran life on Mata Nui. There are some stories he is involved in, but there are some other things he has no connection to.

The official dictionary definition of "Hauntings" is 

Quote
Hauntings (adj): poignant and evocative; difficult to ignore or forget.

I want to see what is creepy, what could happen. I've explored some ghost stories and scoured Biosector for some stuff that is within the realm of possibility of happening on Mata Nui. 

Process wise, I feel as if the first few chapters I'm putting up are edited enough where I don't need to do a line by line edit/analysis. All of that work was done a while ago. 

Glad you're enjoying it!

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For Ch. 1

1) Great use of treespeak. There always seem to be subtle enough differences in how different writers use it, it's always fun to see, if not perhaps a bit less fun to write. 

2)

Quote

 “Visit-company! Of the funky monkey kind!”

 This line got a genuine chuckle out of me, kudos. 

3)

Quote

The leaf glowed, and could only be discerned from other plantlife of the forest by night. 

This is really the only line that gave me pause. The glowing detail works well. Does that mean all the plants are in the jungle are literally shaped the same? Or that the Matoran just haven't been able to distinguish physical differences? Or is it just that the jungle is so dense that they can't find it effectively otherwise? (I'm leaning toward the last one, now that I'm thinking about it more). 

 

4) You had a lovely, natural, gradual build up of tension while they're all finding each other after the crash, and the line I quoted below really capped it off nicely. Simple and effective. Good job. 

Quote

“But Taiki,” Kongu said. “We are all here. Who could be buried?”

 

Keep 'em rolling!

(disclaimer: none of this banner art is original, I just smooshed it together in gimp. Torchic, Matau)
ThosePeskyFirespitters.png.3dbdb65e6a28cbbc5957d81c09a685b6.png
Those pesky firespitters... 
Library | The Sculptors and the Smelters | The Ternion Review Topic 

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Just read chapter 1, and definitely enjoyed it. So many Bionicle fics are same-y but this one, like some other recent ones on the site, thankfully, are working hard to stand out. The horror angle is great.

I was genuinely disturbed by the description of the corpse. Typically when we think of zombies or skeletons we project certain personalities or attributes onto them that make them totally separate from living things, and when we are just dealing with a regular corpse its humanity is typically played up to convey tragedy.

The way you described this body, however, and the way the Matoran reacted to it, was truly chilling. Even though clearly dead it still seemed like it would spring to life at any moment, and the whole scene was just so unearthly. That's the beat way I can put it.

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  • 7 months later...
On 1/27/2020 at 11:24 PM, Valendale said:

I like the idea of spooky stories set in the Bionicle universe and I'm enjoying what you've posted so far. I like how the "unknown" danger is interspaced with more "known" dangers like rahi and how the actual source of the hauntings is left with multiple potential explanations.

 

On 9/13/2020 at 9:29 AM, Toa_Kralich said:

All of these were really great and helped sell the dangerous mystery of the world that felt pervasive in 2001 and 2002. It always felt like if you weren't staying strictly in towns, it kind of sucked to be a Matoran!

I appreciate your comments! A big point was to develop Mata Nui a little more. It’s such a big island, and there was such a long time in story that we know nothing about. Why were the Matoran so afraid of the Makuta and the Rahi in the comics and early story material? I really wanted to explore that idea, of “how a character’s (villain in this case) actions can affect a setting”.

 

On 1/26/2020 at 1:02 AM, Bonkle said:

Just read chapter 1, and definitely enjoyed it. So many Bionicle fics are same-y but this one, like some other recent ones on the site, thankfully, are working hard to stand out. The horror angle is great.

I was genuinely disturbed by the description of the corpse. Typically when we think of zombies or skeletons we project certain personalities or attributes onto them that make them totally separate from living things, and when we are just dealing with a regular corpse its humanity is typically played up to convey tragedy.

The way you described this body, however, and the way the Matoran reacted to it, was truly chilling. Even though clearly dead it still seemed like it would spring to life at any moment, and the whole scene was just so unearthly. That's the beat way I can put it.

The dangers I’ve come up with are scouring Biosector and brainstorming with Ghost Mantis on Tumblr. GM came up with some of this. But we know a lot of common dangers thanks to BS01, Ask Greg, etc, but never the nitty gritty of it. Plus, I wanted to think that Makuta could not be behind everything on the island; there are definitely some Spherus Mangan influences out there that I am dying to write more about. 

 

Bonkle, I appreciate your enjoyment of my corpses! :D. I just wanted to describe them enough to get a picture of it. 

 

I have two more Hauntings left after this, the last one being where the plot actually begins to work toward something in old lore. It has been an interesting study so far in the genre that will allow me to to something with an original fiction piece. Hopefully I can bust the other additions to this quickly and wrap this anthology up, one being half written and the other one pretty clear cut. 

 

Once again, I appreciate everyone's input!

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