Wrinkledlion X

Ingenious! Love stuff like this.

Where did you find this image, by the way? I don't recognize it.

On the most basic level, the exo toa launcher was the best. That thing REALLY worked.

Among canister sets, the zamors were probably the best balance of aesthetic and function-- the only downside was how easily they fell out, but I'd always just add a piece on top so the ammo was secured. Rhotuka were also a lot of fun to play with, though somewhat gimmicky. Discs were just alright as projectiles, but the aesthetic was cool.

Although I liked zamor launchers a lot, I think their success led later sets to rely too hard on launchers to the detriment of overall aesthetics. Especially with the cordak launchers and nynrah ghostblasters, you had these huge chunks of red and silver plastic that made cohesive color schemes impossible. Models like Jaller Mahri and Lesovikk stood out partly because they got to carry just a single weapon, and the simplicity made them look like noble figures. At that time I really missed the simplicity of design from the early years-- though 2009 did remedy this to some degree.

I know, it's such a shame!

For me, MNOLG and the Templar flash animations were peak Bionicle. Nothing in the franchise ever captured the feeling of walking through an alien world quite like they did. That mood of unknown, ancient things lurking just below the surface and out of sight... so good. By contrast, the movies felt much more on-the-nose and lacking in subtlety-- so much of the appeal of MNOLG was in lingering on a particular screen for a while, soaking in the desolation of the desert or the grandeur of the Great Mines. The point-and-click nature of the game was brilliant for establishing mood, because there was no pressure to play the game quickly. The movies, in contrast, had to rush through plot points, and there wasn't much room for that meditative element.

If Templar had kept making games, I can see the franchise retaining its mystical vibe for a lot longer. The supernatural and mysterious elements never truly left the storyline, after all-- the writing just got faster paced and more comic book-y, so those mysterious elements didn't have as much room to breathe. I bet Templar would have kept dropping hints about the Big Mystery, for one, like they did in Onu-Koro with the protodermis layer.

Imagine-- standing atop a knowledge tower in Ko-Metru, hearing the sound of distant wind... watching the frost blow by in sparkling clouds. The feeling of stillness and mystery. You don't know it, but these crystal structures contain a fraction of the mind of Mata Nui. As you gaze into the crystal, you catch fragments of the great spirit's thoughts-- images of past and future flicker across the mirrorlike surface, rippling enigmas, offering nothing but more questions about the nature of this universe.......

Also a variation of this would probably be playing:

I wonder if the ussal color scheme in the MNOLG was chosen with these prototypes in mind! Kids wanting to build Puku would have had just a bit more incentive to buy the Nui Rama.

I bought premier membership because I was a very strange child. I don't think they even had blogs yet, but there was a LEGO brick with "BZPower" printed on it which sealed the deal for me.

After Mata Nui leaves, so begins the transvaluation of all values. Without a god above, the task of the modern Matoran must be to find the god inside the individual-- to become a ruthless, Nietzschean Uber-matoran, unconstrained by morality, killing and conquering with the coldblooded beauty of a lion on the savannah .... 

Either that or hold out hope for an even BIGGER robot, maybe with the whole universe inside it this time. Different strokes. 

 

 

The fact that you need to contrive some scenario for it probably means it might not be wise to even attempt.

 

What is contrived about it?

 

That's the whole reason OP's having his problem, there's no incentive within the G1 universe and lore as of current that necessitates Turaga Nuva. Anything that would prompt the Toa Nuva to become Turaga, then, must be something that's made-up out of the blue--thus, contrived. Making new Toa is the only logical reason I see in this thread, but does Spherus Magna really need more Toa, especially with the revelation that Glatorian can use elemental powers?

 

Can't they just retire? 

The title made me think this was gonna be about Lehvak-Kal getting exposed to radiation after being shot into space...

Honestly if you told me that one of the Kal's powers was "UV Damage," I'd probably believe you. Not much weirder than "vacuum."

Ideally, I'd like a story that's vaguely in the same universe as G1 but doesn't attempt to touch all those messy loose ends at all. Set it eons in the future, Agori and Matoran have merged into a single race, the old Mata Nui robot is grown over and merely a part of the landscape, etc. A fresh start, but with a touch of uncanny mystery if the characters ever go underground and find the ruined, eons-dead cities in the domes... 

If you wanna bring back the original six Toa, make them either reincarnations of some kind, or hint at the idea that they've been in the wild elements doing their own thing for thousands of years. I don't imagine Christian Faber has any interest in getting tied up in whatever happened to Lewa after he got captured by those Jungle Agori in 2011.

So, this appears to depict a Toa canister drifting to shore....

Put this on when painting so you don't have to wait for it to dry. 

Hohohoooo...

Christian Faber elaborated once how the human immune system was his biggest inspiration, imagining that our antibodies are little heroes (Toa) inside our bodies (Mata Nui) fighting diseases (Makuta). I've heard this tidbit retold in the community in various ways, including that this inspiration came when he himself was fighting a serious illness, but I don't think he personally recounted as much so I'm not sure how true that bit is.

My favorite analogue that he gave is that the Toa literally show up in pill-shaped capsules. 

EDIT: The movies were heavily influenced by other film properties, moreso than the original 2001/02 media. The shape of MoL's story borrows a lot from Lord of the Rings, which was concluding that year, and the latter movies owe a lot of debt to Star Wars. Turaga Lhikan training the Toa with eye-masks is one example, Vakama turning to the dark side the same year as Return of the Sith is another. 

This sort of old Bionicle.com stuff has fascinated me for ages. I have few memories of the 2001-2003 era of the site. I don't want to hijack the thread but since Peri seemingly found what you're looking for, something that has bugged me for a while is this throwaway memory of the site transition between 2005 and 2006. I recall that the 2005 website near the end of the year had on the bottom left corner a count-down with the Voya Nui logo above it. When it hit zero the 2006 website with the Piraka related content went live with a primarily white/light grey colour scheme, but then soon after switched to the black/dark grey colour scheme that it had for the majority of 2006. The wayback machine doesn't seem to corroborate this and only shows the dark colour scheme. Did my mind make up this false memory or what?

 

I can confirm that. Not sure why they walked back on the white color scheme, it was pretty cool. 

I'm inclined to say yes, though looking at the main forum right now—1:45AM, my time—I can see three members active, two of whom (Phyoohrii and Planetperson) I recognize from the old days of BZP. I also see 361 guests online, though whether those are bots or actual humans I can't say. So maybe the forum's still got some juice in it! I've watched a lot of forums die and this one's doing pretty well compared to them, probably just because it used to be such a titan. Even if the titan is dead, there's still lots of meat for the flies to buzz around, y'know?

I agree with Akaku that consolidating the forums might be the way to go. Right now the main board gives the impression that things are really dead even though new posts are being made all the time, just because of how many greyed-out threads there are. If you consolidated things you might be able to downsize the remnants of a giant forum into a tiny, cozy place that caters primarily to the loyal community members who are still around.

 

 

 

 

• Where do Vakama's visions come from? Why do they always come true?

That question was already answered, in the worst possible way. To quote Greg, they were "a glitch."

Thaaaats....... Not the worst possible way it could have been answered. It's marked down in a way to seem maybe a bit cryptic, and it may have ultimately been lazy, it's not uncommon for Greg to have been lazy with his story writing in the past, but the whole concept of 'A Glitch' happening in the BIONICLE Universe is actually intriguing to me.

 

 

I think, on its own, it does sound like a fairly interesting concept. The problem I had with it was that, throughout the second movie and pretty much the whole of the 2004 story, Vakama's whole development revolved around his visions NOT being a glitch. When others accused him of basically being nuts and that there was something wrong with him, he lost confidence. When he learned to trust his visions as something more than faulty wiring, that they were real, he got his confidence back and evolved as a character.

 

For Greg to later go back on that and say, "Yeah, it really was a glitch," kind of negates his whole arc for that year. At least for me.

 

Agreed. One workaround might be that it was only a glitch mechanically speaking, and that his prophetic glitches were still predestined at the end of the day. Of course, that implies the existence of Destiny in the greater supernatural sense rather than the "Matoran Universe running like clockwork" sense that it gradually became.

Personally, I wish the Great Beings hadn't been demoted from gods to scientists, because then we'd be able to explain destiny stuff away with "the Great Beings did it." Now we either have to chalk it up to randomness (which it clearly isn't in-story) or just say "the Even Greater Beings did it." Maybe the Even Greater Beings are just Greg and the LEGO marketing division? 

In 2004-2005, the biggest loose end was probably Krakua's appearance in Time Trap; Greg told us that Krakua had established the communication with Vakama while protecting a fortress in the future, but that episode was never shown and we were left wondering exactly how the connection established itself, why Krakua talked about those particular things with Vakama and so on.

Didn't Krakua end up defending Metru-Nui during Makuta's reign? That always seemed like it was intended to be his time to shine, but then maybe Greg couldn't make it work and gave up on him. 

• Exactly where and when is Toa Krakua when he communicates with Vakama in the past in BA10? What is the island that he is supposedly defending?

That is a very good question.

I don't know if it counts, but I want to know where all the Bohrok came from. I know they start out as Av-Matoran, but where did millions of dead Av-Matoran come from? 

Fair enough. Sorry for the tangents, for some reason I get really into debates about Bionicle metaphysics. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But my point is simply that thoughts aren't separate from nature just because they occur inside of a mind. If your premise is that magic can be used to control forces of nature, I don't see any inconsistency. "Thinking" is as much a property of some physical objects as gravitational pull, which can be controlled magically in your story—so by my judgment psionics fits in pretty comfortably. Illusions, mindreading, telekinesis, etc. 

Do what feels right though. What is this for exactly, are you working on an epic? 

Odd coincidence, but I got nostalgic the other day and browsed through the Greg archives for a while reading old discussions, and I discovered the first time I ever saw the term "Matoran Universe." Not sure if it was the first usage of the term but it was clearly the first time I'd seen it. Check out this relic:

November 21, 2006
 

Hiyah. I was just wondering about these organic creatures.

1. How long can one live?

2. How do they "come into being?"

3. Can you give me any good facts about next year's squid ammo?

Thanks in advance.

 

There seems to be a lot of interest on here with the idea of organics, so let me lay out the facts for you ...

1) The squid next year are organic. They are not native to the Matoran universe.
2) Nothing else organic plays any role in the story next year or in 2008.
3) Organic beings come into the world the same way they do here, biologically.
4) There isn't going to be a biomechanical-organics war -- that has never been what BIONICLE was about.
5) The idea of organics is not new with 2007 -- I believe a non-biomech sea bird was shown back in 2001, and of course, they were seen again in BA #5.

Greg

 

The matoran universe? Are they from a different universe?

Sorry, universe was probably a poor choice of words -- I basically mean their "world" inside the domes. As you know, the Matoran are not meant to live outside the domes. The squid do not come from within the domes, they come from the water outside.

I love him clarifying that there's no biomechanical-organics war. 

Psionics doesn't work as an element because it's not really a part of nature, unlike every other element. Thoughts don't exist, they're self-contained within the heads of animal life. For my G3 concept, it's getting the boot for that reason.

Haha, I gotta stop you there dude, because that's frankly an insane statement. Have you really thought through this assumption that thoughts don't exist? The fact that they exist in animal life makes them innately a part of nature. Human society is also a part of nature, and you can't tell me that a centrally-planned city isn't a physical manifestation of the plans the engineer had in their head. Thoughts clearly have causative power in the real world.

(There was a branch of psychology—Radical Behaviorism—that held thoughts to be nonexistent, but it went out of style among psychologists decades ago because it lacked explanatory power.)

I'm not sure why you're trying to eliminate psionics from your story, TBH, because I'm sure you're cool with a Toa of Fire controlling his element through a magic sword—why not control thoughts with magic too? It's more plausible actually. You don't even need magic to manipulate a person's thoughts in our world, just swing a sword at them and watch them get scared! Much easier to control than fire. 

Anyways, I think it's telling that your attempt to remove "thought" from nature required you to replace it with an even more blatantly magical concept. Don't worry so much about making your magic robot story realistic! I'm very down with introducing mana into Bionicle—I think it's a cool idea—but it's just not internally consistent right now. 

 

Ha, you're not being difficult. If you want to make it an element, go for it! If it were me I'd make it more of a meta-element, but it sounds like you have some story ideas in mind so don't think you have to appeal to me. 

Define "meta-element." Like, do you mean something more traditional, like the OG elements, or something that plays more on the nature of the work itself?

Not the nature of the work—I don't mean "meta" in the postmodern sense, just the basic meaning of "one level beyond." 

If Toa manipulate the mana of water, air, earth, etc, they're basically tapping into the life energy within each of those elements. This makes sense because the traditional Polynesian worldview is animistic. Thus I'd assume a Toa of Mana would be able to manipulate the energy in everything, both inside of actual beings and the elements. Sort of a turbo-charged Toa Ignika, or perhaps like the Forest Spirit in Princess Mononoke, if you've seen that movie.

It's like having a Toa of Magic, which is pretty much just a Toa of All Elements since magic is the root of all the other Toa's elemental powers already. It's a pretty cool idea but maybe not for just any garden-variety Toa. 

EDIT:

Toa of Mana cannot control life and death, they merely receive psionic powers and can make inanimate objects act as if they were alive.

This part's my main issue, because making inanimate objects come to life is already what every other Toa does. Either a Toa of Mana would be able to control all the other elements, or you'd have to search hard for things that aren't made of the other elements, which depending on how you define them is either impossible or just very awkward and limited. If Toa of Mana can control everything except for Earth, Fire, Stone, Water, Air and Ice, is it really mana they're controlling at that point? Or are they just the Hufflepuff of Toa? 

Ha, you're not being difficult. If you want to make it an element, go for it! If it were me I'd make it more of a meta-element, but it sounds like you have some story ideas in mind so don't think you have to appeal to me. 

Encyclopedia Britannica says the Polynesians believe mana to be present in all things, animate or inanimate, but to varying degrees (https://www.britannica.com/place/Polynesia).

I think it makes more sense to say that a Toa of stone manipulates the mana of a stone when he controls it, instead of defining mana as a separate element. The closest element we have to mana already is probably Life, rather than psionics, given that the entire Matoran world was alive. (It just occurred to me that it would have been cool if Toa Ignika could manipulate all the elements as parts of "life!" Would have been a big hint that the whole world was one big life form.)

But yeah, I'm pretty sure the hard line between animate and inanimate is part of the modern West's materialist worldview, influenced by Descartes, Christianity, etc. 

My understanding of mana is that it isn't distinguished between "dead" matter and "things with mana," but by matters of degree. 

If mana is present as an aspect of the natural world, I'd assume it would be present in all the other elements rather than as a separate element. Maybe the difference between a Toa and Matoran would be the amount of mana they have?