ZippyWharrgarbl

OOC: Woo! Okay, here we go. And as I said, this is my first attempt at any kind of BZP RPG, so please let me know if I muddle something up. Honestly, I read through the whole topic and I'm still not entirely sure what's happening.

 

IC: Thumper, above Tranquis VII

 

Eloise Thumper sat nervously in her Hero Pod, attempting to guide the thing down without wrecking it. There didn't seem to be enough room in the immediate area to land, so she was a little lost as to where to go, since she wasn't entirely sure where anyone else could be. She'd been asked to head over- everyone who was available had- but she'd been getting her Hero Core charged when the call came out and thus missed the ship over. To her dread, she'd been offered a Hero Pod. She was terrible with these things, but she had to do her duty as a Hero. The others needed help, after all. And she'd heard Bulk needed rescuing. But that was a small part of her reason, though. A very small part. Definitely.

 

She decided to try radioing in, to see if anyone needed her help directly. "Thumper here. Anyone need any assistance? I'm, uh, having trouble finding a park."

Okay here goes my first RPG attempt

 

Hero Profile

Name: Eloise Thumper

Powers and Abilities: Thumper is a walking tank. She's made for strength and endurance and due to a personal interest, has a lot of skill in hand-to-hand combat, mostly regarding wrestling, boxing, and other such techniques.

She's also heavily armoured, and has a very high tolerance for pain, as she was designed to be able to get up close and personal with villainy, even under heavy fire.

Weapon(s): Thumper is not proficient with blasters, and uses them very rarely, if at all. Instead, she uses either her bare fists/feet or power gloves, which can issue a shockwave when struck against a surface at force.

Appearance: Thumper is physically large and burly, designed for missions where brute force is required. She stands head and shoulders above the average Hero, and is easily wider than one too. She often wears a belt- specifically, a replica of the Champion Belt from the Makuro Wrestling Federation Championships. She considers it training to get used to the real one. Her colours are red, orange and green. Her core, like her eyes, is yellow. She's often wearing a friendly smile and seems genuinely happy to be here.

Here's a terrible MSPaint image of her. Drawn super quick to reflect her colour scheme (an attempt was made at a luchador palette), I'll put up a better picture once it's done/if needed.

Bio: Eloise Thumper is a relatively new Hero. She is not the brightest bulb by a long shot, and is little help for missions of stealth or diplomacy.

Thumper is a genuinely caring, nice person, despite her love of violent sport. Outside of the ring, she does not have a mean bone in her body. She, however, will fight crime to the best of her ability with what she has learned in her matches. She is devoutly loyal to the Hero Factory and forces of good in general.

Her most obvious hobby is various styles of boxing, wrestling, et cetera. She's won a few Newbie League trophies and medals outside of the Hero Factory, though has been warned repeatedly about not taking it above that level, and 'putting on kid gloves' for those she faces. She does tend to be confused about why her fellow Heroes refuse to train with her, though. She does not realise that, after seeing her perform a perfect elbow-drop into a training drone so forcefully that she makes its limbs pop off, they hesitate to put themselves in any situation that involves going up against her. Also, she's terrifyingly aggressive in the ring, like she's another person altogether.

A very by-the-book Hero, she has memorised the Hero handbook from cover to cover and it's one of the few things outside of wrestling that she has almost encyclopaedic knowledge on. She does what she feels is right, and when that's too much of a grey area, she turns to the manual. She is not fond of breaking rules.

 

She's Dunkan Bulk's biggest fan, and becomes very flustered and shy when in his presence. Other Heroes, she treats with friendliness and respect.

I'm trying to find an image of them, but I recently saw a couple of fake sets in a store that seemed to combine Hero Factory and Ninjago. At least, the packaging was a Ninjago set with a Hero Factory character in the background, sagely looking on. I wasn't able to get a photo because the store owner had already yelled at me for trying to take photos of their ridiculous Shrek t-shirts and I didn't have the strength to be yelled at by a man in a mohawk beanie again.

Congratulations to all the winners! Even if I didn't win, I still feel so happy to have been part of the last canon story contest for G1. It was one crazy 2-year ride!

I voted female, purely because if there's anything that Bionicle does not need, it's less female characters. I consider the "father to son" thing to be simply using a phrase instead of reflecting what will actually be in the story, because otherwise it's basically saying that in New Bionicle, they will be limiting the number of female characters as much as they possibly can. Which isn't cool at all.

 

I hope more of the Protectors will be female. If the Protector of Water turned out to be male but, say, the Protectors of Earth and Wind were female, then I wouldn't be that bothered. Also, I liked the idea someone mentioned above about them maybe being nonbinary or something. That'd be cool too.

 

n regards to my story, that's not meant to be Nidhiki. C; I can see where you could get confused, though. It's actually meant to be Eliminator, who also has giant claws and, according to the 'Dark Hunters' book, is nearly invisible in low light conditions. He was also hired by Teridax.

 

 

Ah, gotcha, never mind then.

The question on the multiple choice still stands though--has anyone else voted for more than two entries? I don't want to mess up the results by voting for more.... :S

I think you can vote for as many as you want. Some people are just voting for two in the multiple choice section. If there was a limit it'd probably be mentioned.

I'm thinking of choosing three entries in the first poll--is that allowed or is it limited to just two?

 

Also, I noticed a couple of (very minor) canon issues. Neither one would pose any significant problems if the entries win:

 

All That Glitters (Spiriah): viruses are described as "microbes engineered to alter their very essence" but I'm not sure if they've been described as alive in the past. BS01 just refers to them as "energy-based substances."

 

The Unknown Turaga (Kodan): Nidhiki is described as "huge, nearly invisible creature, with massive claws that glinted in the thin beam of morning sunlight that had miraculously flickered by us." While he had a Mask of Stealth as a Toa, I'm pretty sure Nidhiki lost those powers after being mutated.

In regards to my story, that's not meant to be Nidhiki. C; I can see where you could get confused, though. It's actually meant to be Eliminator, who also has giant claws and, according to the 'Dark Hunters' book, is nearly invisible in low light conditions. He was also hired by Teridax.

 

Anyway, I've held off voting for a while since I've been super busy, but I finally got enough time to read all of these. It was really hard to choose between them! They're all so good.

I'm a sucker for stories about Makuta. This one had some really good ideas- the cult leader thing was awesome and really tied in with the Makuta craving attention and reverence- but something about it seemed... off. I think it may have been some of the words used in the dialogue; they seemed too casual sometimes, and Gorast and most (if not all) of the Makuta have a pretty formal way of speaking. Some of the scenes felt a little hurried through, too, and the descriptions of the illusions were quite short and blunt.

 

This one was really hard for me. I love the ideas and themes presented, it was just the details, like word choice in dialogue, that were holding me back from voting for it immediately. I can't say enough how much I liked the premise of this story, though. It's a great concept.

 

Oh, and I agree with the writer in their note at the beginning of the story: Gorast totally needs more characterization.

It looks like it was made from a pillowcase from 2004 (presumably several) .

 

Aw. Those bedsheets are hard enough to find already. Imagine trying to find several! Thanks, though!

 

Hey, any news on when it's coming to Australia? Or is it already here? I don't wanna miss out on the sweet Bionicle merch! :U

It's already in Australia!

 

 

Aw, nice! Now all that remains is to decide which one to get. Thanks, mate!

I wouldn't wear that if you paid me $200 million USD. I like Bionicle, but that just is a little too revealing for my taste, among other things.

 

Which makes me wonder - who would wear that?

 

 

I think a better question is "Who WOULDN'T wear that?". If it wasn't around $200 in Australia money, I would be wearing it right now.

 

Also, we're missing a very important point: where do you even get Bionicle fabric? I wasn't even aware it was a thing until I saw this.

You'd think a longer deadline would get MORE votes coming in. Then again, I was planning to wait til closer to the deadline, so maybe that's a common choice.

Hey, any news on when it's coming to Australia? Or is it already here? I don't wanna miss out on the sweet Bionicle merch! :U

 

I don't know if this is recent or if I'm just having issues, but all of those videos come up as "Private" for me, so they're unable to be watched. Is there another place to see these? They sound really cool. :c

It's not just you. That's odd, looks like these were released ahead of time as well.

 

I don't know if someone else has re-uploaded them somewhere on YouTube, you could check.

 

 

I'm checking now, and I'm going to hazard a guess and say that it hasn't been reuploaded yet based on the results only being fan animations. And TTV reporting on the animations, featuring some of them in the video.

I don't know if this is recent or if I'm just having issues, but all of those videos come up as "Private" for me, so they're unable to be watched. Is there another place to see these? They sound really cool. :c

I went with "more than half" because, first off, I thought there was going to be one winner per category. I know this isn't the case now, though.

 

I also thought that, well, it's the last contest for old gen. It does no real harm to have more winners (outside of some possible inconsistencies), and since these will be the last things to be added to canon, well... I'm all for being flooded with new canon before moving onto the new gen.

 

I understand this will be an unlikely outcome, though, so I'm not too fussed about the number. More than zero, hopefully. c:

Oh man do I have some headcanons for you.

 

~ Makuta can't regenerate antidermis on their own, but if they lose a lot of it it can be replaced via purified gaseous antidermis from that pool Mata Nui made them out of. Similar to prions, if one of their particles bumps into the new ones it changes the particle into their personal structure and increases the volume of their antidermis. I couldn't find any sources regarding if antidermis was able to be regenerated or not, but I remember reading somewhere that it wasn't and thought that was sort of silly.

 

~ Matoran are made in factories (as in canon), most of which are situated on Metru Nui. Matoran are created in the factory, slapped with a name, and sent on to the schools of Ga-Metru. After being taken through a rudimentary "Hey you're a Matoran, here's some basic mathematics and Mata Nui propaganda" class, they're shipped off to wherever they're needed. Sometimes they're given further education if they're destined to be a healer or whatever. The factories aren't constantly in use and require special permission from the Turaga to operate to prevent the universe being overcrowded.

 

~ Residents of the MU can feel love, they just generally have no idea what it is. Usually it gets mistaken for an illness or allergy to a certain person. Some work it out, though, and connect the weird feeling of butterflies in their stomach to wanting to be with someone forever. Most just avoid the person causing it like the plague.

 

~ I like to think that there was a secret underground Makuta group made up of Makuta opposed to Teridax's plan. They're still arrogant and snobbish as all get out, they just have enough goodwill to not want to commit Grand Theft Great Spirit. They were slated to be killed after Teridax took leadership from Miserix, as in canon, but they managed to fake their deaths or similar and slip away to the Southern islands. I also like the idea of some Makuta having at least a passing sense of decency, like Krika.

 

~ Not all members of a single race, such as the Makuta or Skrall, are evil. In the case of Skrall, after the events of TLR, many of them found themselves freed from the tyrannic rule of Tuma and buggered off to form their own settlement, perhaps even inviting the Sisters of the Skrall along too.

 

~ When Makuta Spiriah augmented the Skakdi, he accidentally made them a lot more prone to rage and violence along with the magic vision powers. Despite this, some Skakdi undertake rigorous meditation to keep themselves calm and collected and basically the giant permanent smile on their face is real 99% of the time and often does not look like they are about to bit your head off. They integrate with Matoran and Agori society on Spherus Magna, though like many of the species associated with evil that also integrated, there is a lot of prejudice directed towards them.

 

The last three points can be summarised by "Not every member of this race is evil".

 

The headcanon in the first post reminded me of one I saw in 2009 (I think) that I REALLY liked. This was around the time people were trying to guess who the traitor from TLR was. Someone suggested that Strakk was the traitor, and I loved that.

To me, the episodes feel more like promos. Don't get me wrong, I loved them, but... well, for a start, they're only a minute and a half long. For another, they skip a lot of things. There's not really any worldbuilding, and it feels like they're missing a lot of crucial details, especially if you think of a kid watching the show without reading about it first. How did they find the masks? What's the deal with the gatling guns? Why is New Vakama showing it off like it's really important? Why are the spiders attacking? Do the Toa know each other yet? What happens after they get the masks? Why do they want the masks if they already have some?

 

Stuff like this just left me a bit deflated. Love the show, love the art style, it just really feels rushed and more like a promo for an episode rather than the actual episode. I actually thought they WERE promos.

 

I was expecting a show that had a plot, but had some fun thrown in, too, sort of like Ninjago did but more goofy. What I got was the time-slot for Mixels and a group of writers being told they had 90 seconds to cover what was around 20 minutes of plot. I'm hoping they get better as time goes on, or at least cover more. I really like the show, but it's feeling really cut apart.

 

There were a lot of positives in the show, though; the voice acting being all by the same guy was actually decent. I mean, I didn't even know until I watched the Gali promo. Also, the subtle references to the original story (Tahu's arrival sounds a lot like something from the 2001 arc) were really well-done. Though short, they weren't unpleasant to watch by any definition of the word, even with the skips in the story. Also New Vakama does magic tricks so there's that, and the characters all seem really cool and awesome so far.

Sure! I'll get right on that now. I realise you said it's possible to interpret it as not her main weapon, but I don't want to confuse anyone who interprets it as her weapon. I'd rather have a footnote there to clarify than have it misinterpreted.

 

I don't have much experience with footnotes, so if there's an issue with the formatting (at the moment there's a tiny '1' next to the mention of the weapon, and at the bottom of the entry it says that it's not her confirmed weapon), I'll gladly change it. If it's preferred that the number is removed, that's totally fine.

Thank you! c:

 

Oh, and in regards to the issue in my entry, specifically, naming Toa Naho's weapon: for the sake of having the story flow nicely, I'm leaving it in ('Toa Tool' sounds too clunky and general to me for the scene), but if it gets accepted into canon, I'm very happy to have a footnote or something added to state that it is not her confirmed Toa Tool and is instead artistic licence on the part of the writer. I really like how it is now and I'm really hesitant to change it, but I also don't want to break any rules, so I figured that this was probably the best way to go about it.

 

Of course, this is all if it gets selected. If it doesn't, I suppose it doesn't really matter either way. c:>

Here are the edits made to the story. It's quite a long list, so I'll put them under a spoilers tag (I suppose they count as spoilers, since they have some parts from the end of the story, anyway). If that's an issue, I'll fix it up. They're all changes to grammar or wording, and there has been no change to the storyline.

 

 

EDIT: A footnote was just added to clarify the nature of Toa Naho's Toa Tool: "¹: This is not Toa Naho's confirmed weapon, it is simply artistic licence on the part of the writer. Her Toa Tool is as of yet unconfirmed."

I did some last-minute edits. Nothing changed about the story itself, I just fixed up some grammar and word usage. Me from two years ago really, really liked unnecessary commas.

 

Oh! And I know I've been asking some REALLY obvious questions, but I just want to make sure I do everything by the book: Can my edits be put in a separate post? In this case it'd be double-posting (my post is the last one there), but it looks sort of weird to have them edited into that. Which they are at the moment.

 

Yeah, this'll really be the last major addition to the original storyline's canon. Whoever wins this will be Bionicle's last great storyteller.

 

Speaking of which - how many winners will there be?

I'm planning to have a polling stage to determine that. Haven't decided yet on what the pollable minimum and maximum will be, but probably roughly comparable to the ATYU contests.

 

 

Alternate plan: everyone wins. We are all canon. Somehow. 100% canonity is achieved. The Bionicle universe collapses in on itself, leaving the new storyline in its place.

(I'm kidding, of course. 100% canonity is theoretically possible, but not probable in Bionicle's space-time.)

 

Oh! I'm going about some edits soon, and I've forgotten: do we just post our changes on the story topic, or on both here and the story topic?

Neat! Uni tends to absorb the time and life force out of me, but now that it's pretty much over for the year, I should be sufficiently restored before early December. I'll get the edits done by then!

I have no idea why no one has replied here yet. This piece is both well-written and captivating; I'm very much interested in what happens next. The characters are, well, in-character, and there's already a lot of events happening to pique my interest.

 

As more chapters are posted, I'll probably do a more in-depth review, but I'd just like to say that this has a lot of potential, and I'm looking forward to the next chapter.