CroMagnonMan

The concept of reversing good and evil roles is something that interests me a great deal, especially in the Bionicle story, so I was eager to see what you had to write about the subject. I especially thought that the sentiment, "too much peace," had truth to it, but I'm not sure you adequately explored its full meaning by the end of the story. I would have liked to hear more of that philosophy.Mostly my main issue with the story is that it is very dialogue-centric -- which I suppose is the style you were going for. But to me, while it does a good job of demonstrating your idea to the reader, it is lackluster when it comes to bringing it to life. The spaces between the dialogue are very bareboned and straightforward, consisting largely of "pauses" and "glances". The pseudo-dramatic way each new character's words are introduced, as well as the throwaway mentions of the angry spectators, did little to impress upon me. The role each character plays is carefully marked and they never extend beyond that role -- their inner thoughts, the emotion behind their words, none of it is portrayed beyond a cursory overview. This makes the dialogue feel less sincere and more artificially put together for your purposes. As a specific complaint, I was disappointed that I didn't read more into Takanuva and Light Teridax's thoughts, and why they specifically were targetted by Teridax's final words. It seems like that had a lot of potential. I consider this an example of you trying to "get out of the way" the setting of your story so that you can get to the part you're concerned with, instead of examining the details and exploring the personalities. (I usually don't care about describing surroundings, but some indication of the nature of the court would have added to things as well.) I bolded certain words just to emphasize how many you've used to describe basically the same thing. I take it -- and hopefully this will not sound presumptuous, because it's something I've done in my own writing -- that you've done this because you have a specific tone for the scene in mind and want to fine tune the details for the reader, using similar words to specify your meaning; but that is not how you create a literary picture. It's sort of a cinematic instinct to describe things as having fixed and immediately obvious attributes, but a movie has the luxury of moving pictures and visual actors. Also, instead of describing Teridax's poise, this would have been the ideal opportunity to explore the attitude behind the poise. "As if his purpose had been completed" is a very distant-sounding observation, something I would like straight from the character it addresses (though not necessarily in the form of italicized thoughts).But maybe you weren't going for any of that, and I'm just wasting my time telling you things you already accounted for. As far as the idea itself goes, I was interested in what you had Teridax say, particularly that bit about keeping the Avohkii from being destroyed. (Though the part where the courtroom exploded into chaos felt very corny.) The argument put forward is very self-consistent, so that I can very easily see Teridax as the *cough* "good guy" here. But I agree with fishers64 about the pacing problem, and think I've adequately explained my reasons why. I don't usually feel comfortable reviewing things, so I hope this is useful to you in some way... ~QMark

You mean, kind of like what the Matoran themselves are? That carries with it some unfortunate implications...

There were so many of them that I see considerable difficulty in attempting to compose a concise answer to that question...I used to be big on Egyptian mythology when I was younger, though I never actually knew very much about it. Mythologies in general still interest me, but I don't know where I could find good resources on them. It seems ancient religion was invariably a very confusing mess, which makes it difficult to get into it. I like things organized.

I still can't get myself to be outraged over this. It's too ridiculous, and I don't know what y'all wanna do about it so badly.Way to go, "Books LLC", ya freaks. If you make so much as a cent on this, you have my honest admiration. Nothing is "technically free". If you slap a price tag on it and someone is hooked into buying it, it obviously isn't free. And if something is free, one wonders what right anyone has to claim someone else cannot put a price on it, since they're not making any money on it themselves.I'm having trouble taking your moral indignation seriously. Maybe if we were talking about something other than Bionicle fanfiction/wikia pages...~QMark

But my point is that these people are not in the majority, which you yourself said is the criteria for being overrated. Which is why I asked, "Who are these people regarding them as gods?" I maintain that sounds like a gross exaggeration; to an observer, idolization will always seem more excessive than it is. Talk to half the fans of anything and they will blather on about its merits. I'm more interested in hearing these hypothetical criticisms that you say other people will not tolerate.But in fact, there seem to be more people sharing the same view as yours -- that the Beatles are "overrated" -- than there are claiming the Beatles are perfect, at least in my experience. (It's annoying, to be honest, because a lot of people seem to think being overrated completely invalidates anything great about a band, or that bands simply aren't allowed to be considered "classic" or "legendary".) That's... very poor reasoning. It's completely subjective whether or not something is "great" or "really, really great", so there's no reason to think the opinion of "the fans" is any less valid than yours, unless you have some specific complaint about the quality of the music. (And yeah, I know music in general is subjective, but if we're not dealing with specific issues then we're dealing in abstracts, and there's no point to that.) And if you don't bring it into the discussion, then you're just validating the opinion of the people who think the music has no flaws.To me, for something to be overrated, the major complaint can't be "it's not perfect", even if people are saying "it's perfect", because there comes a point when saying something is "almost perfect" becomes a case of splitting hairs. (That's why you never see an album with a 4.9 star rating.) Seems kind of weird to describe a set of something as being both random and similar. I'm not really a diehard Beatle fan, though, so don't worry, haha. I'm just not sure what you mean by "random" in the context of what you're saying, about everything having the same "feel"...? Er, saying there was "no reason" for it isn't really fair, nor is there an "objective" criteria to decide that. I mean, having an outro that's four minutes of more or less the same thing is an artistic choice, and I don't know why "radio time" should come into that decision making process. The whole song was kind of building to those four minutes, or that's the way I see it, and I don't think it would have been nearly as effective if it had been allotted a shorter amount of time. It's kind of anthemic, you know? I just listen to it and enjoy the repeated melody, maybe hum along to it. It wouldn't work for just anything, mind you, but it works for that, I think.I don't know what your musical tastes are, but I like listening to a band just jam every now and then. It reminds me of two Dire Straits songs, Money for Nothing and Why Worry, where the outros are just minor improvisations on a basic pattern extended for a while (both songs are around 8 minutes, I think). Sometimes I'm not in the mood for that, though, and then it kind of wears on me, so I'd understand why you wouldn't like those four minutes. Eh, it had to happen at some point, with someone. And it's not like it's a truth universally acknowledged. I do dig the Beatles, though, so I don't mind if they're the ones who get that "title".~QMark

In reply to this and other posts of the same nature, who are these people who regard them as "gods"? It sounds to me like you're all exaggerating a bit. Sure, there are some who go really crazy over certain musicians, but then there are others who just regard them with the same respect they would to any geniuses of their field, and sometimes that involves "adoration", which others may perceive as excessive. Considering the fact that you admit the Beatles and others of their era were very good, what do you expect from people but that they put them up on pedestals?It seems to me that the idea at work here is "people think they're brilliant, therefore they must be overrated". But unless you're pointing out some flaw or deficiency to their work that other people are ignoring, how can it be overrated?~QMark

Thanks to this I now know about a second meaning of BZP. Now "BZPower" is forever tainted to me... tainted with HILARITY.Haha, I don't even know what to say about this. Are people actually paying for these books? If they are, I fear for their intelligence.~QMark

Agreed, it seems jarring. Might be because I keep reading it in the voice of the Knights Who Say "Ni!"...It also appears to be the only prefix with "i" in it. Everything else has "a", "e", "o", or in one case "u". It doesn't seem to fit the tone of the system in place....Although, the more I say it, the more it seems to fit. So forget all that, "Ni-" is probably as good as anything.~QMark

For your nostalgic pleasure.It certainly is soothing.~QMark

I voted for it as well. It was good times.I was stuck in Po-Koro for years and just replayed the first three villages over and over, until I discovered online walkthroughs. After that I realized the game was really short. Nevertheless, it was really fun to play, especially since I was just getting into Bionicle.~QMark

A Matter of Time sounds like it has the most promise, mostly because having a 100,000+ lifespan must have incredible implications. Except I would recommend not calling it that; time puns are very tacky. Good luck.

I would be interested in knowing how much money is being made from those books now that the Bionicle franchise is technically over. It's not like it's going to get much new blood; the target audience isn't likely to find Bionicle without sets out there to grab their attention.I myself would like the books to be available online, mostly as a reference. To be honest, I'm reluctant to spend money on them. I enjoyed them when I was younger (I read up to Inferno, I think), but now that I'm older and the story's mostly done I don't see much to be gotten out of them.~QMark

Since certain Matoran, in Metru Nui at least, were designated mask makers, making the same mask over and over would get tedious after a few thousand years. Making different kinds of masks would be a good way to keep one's skills honed. Plus I imagine that they would be somewhat artistic types, since they apparently took pride in their skill at mask-making. They might want to make a certain kind of mask just because they felt like it, or for the challenge, or because they felt that the people they were making the masks for deserved a bit of a personal touch.In terms of resources, I'm pretty sure Metru Nui had a lot of materials available for disc- and mask-making, what with all it went through to obtain, purify, use and recycle Protodermis. (That's practically all it did, actually.) It was a booming metropolis, so waste probably wasn't much of a concern. Also, maybe the number of discs required is balanced out by the difficulty entailed to make a certain powered mask? Like, certain powers could be harder to manifest, even dormantly, because it's a "pure" power and requires more finesse, while composite powers would have more room for flexibility?~QMarkEdit: Oh, almost forgot what the topic was about, haha. I like the term "Humble Mask" as well, wouldn't mind spreading that terminology at all. Nice thinking, Ghosthands.

"Egocentric" is a good word for it, haha.And that's an interesting way of looking at it. At that time, though, Makuta was the one keeping the Matoran from going back to Metru Nui, what with all his Infected Rahi running around. I imagine if any of the Matoran had tried to go to Metru Nui, Makuta could've just summoned the whole lot and prevented them by sheer numbers. (Sure, the Matoran put up a good fight at Kini-Nui, but I assume that if Makuta had actually wanted to go at them at full force, they wouldn't have stood a chance, much like how he could have defeated the Toa originally if it had fit into his plans.) But from what we've seen the Matoran seem pretty content to follow the Turaga's lead, so if the Turaga told them they couldn't go somewhere they probably wouldn't (except maybe Takua... now wouldn't THAT have been an interesting story, Takua embarking on a search for the lost city of Metru Nui!). Plus they probably wouldn't be too eager to fall into Makuta's hands.~QMark

Well, I could say 2001 just for the MNOLG and all of the lore-building that went on at that time, but for the sake of being a bit different I would say 2006. That arc really revitalized the story for me. Just the concept of a new island being taken over by shadowy evildoers, requiring Matoran from the original days to turn into Toa and take care of the problem, and the little things that went along with the story like their brief time in Karzahni, all of it seemed to come together really nicely. It wasn't perfect, but it was effective and enjoyable.~QMark

I don't know if you're still working on this, but from what I see here I'm impressed. I especially like how you managed to find a practical "system" application for what seem to be societal habits, like the Toa Code and the Matoran sense of morality. Very clever. The parts that involve the other species are a bit less articulate, probably because their role in-canon seems unclear as well. This and your Quadratic theory are a pleasure to think about. If you ever have any other ideas, please share them as well!

Very interesting! It's always cool when someone can add organization to a seemingly incongruous subject. Got my attention when I saw it in your sig, and reading your explanations was intriguing too. Good job!

I'd definitely say Hahli. I didn't really get much into her portrayal as a Toa, nor do I remember much about her role in the story, but as a Matoran in MNOLG II she really had a lot of things going for her. An adventurer like Takua? Check. Sure, she didn't really fight any Rahi or solve any major problems, but it's the explorative spirit that counts. She learned fascinating new things about Matoran culture and philosophy from all of the villages (what can I say, the guys who made MNOLG I & II really know their stuff), and mastered different skills in a very short timeframe. (Speaking of which, it would've been nice if some of that had been alluded to in her time as a Toa.) And she won the Championship! It has the making of a great sports movie! Haha. And all this, even though she was apparently just a shy girl reluctantly pulled from her daily work. Maybe most of what I like about her comes from how I picture her in my own story ideas, but even that reflects on how she was portrayed and designed originally, right?So yeah. Hahli, heh.~QMark

Hahaha, I've had some similar thoughts on that, Gorag. That's pretty cool to me, I have to say.It seems like a lot of people here are throwing expressions like "they lied for the Matoran's own good". But I have to ask, how so? I've heard the argument that it would have been more "difficult" if the Matoran had known about their lives on Metru Nui, but I can't imagine why. If anything, it would be positively devastating to learn that the set of legends you've been hearing, the knowledge of which has guided your actions, your work, on an island you have taken to be your home from the very beginning, for 1,000 years -- that all of that was a lie and now you're "ready" to hear the actual truth.And in terms of serving the mentorship role, I really think they failed to make themselves seem credible. The only thing that made them seem like they knew what they were talking about was the fact that they were hiding all of this information from everyone in the first place. And what gave them the right, the power, to hide the Kanohi Masks to "test" the Toa? What credentials? "Wise and sagent, shady old guy/girl"? Putting people in harm's way, no matter how powerful or capable they may be, is no way to test or teach them. (I'm looking at you, Nokama. Way to abandon Gali in that underwater temple with the giant freakin' octopus and not a hint of what to do.) That just makes them seem morally ambiguous.Food for thought, I guess. Cool topic, Gorag! Now that you say it, having the Turaga turn out to be the bad guys would have made the Metru Nui twist much more interesting and sinister, to me at least. But that's what ended up happening anyway... and, hey, they seemed to take it pretty well, as unlikely as it may seem to me personally.~QMark

One thing that has always bugged me was the way the Toa Nuva were handled upon their transformation. Recalling for a moment that this was 2002, all we had heard about the Toa up to that point told us that they were "spirits of the elements", incredible beings with inherent abilities tied to nature and the forces of the planet. There was a definite, though ambiguous, quality of reverence about it. Then, out of nowhere, they get a tacky "upgrade" and suddenly their powers are tied to some "cube" that randomly spawned at the same time. What? I still don't know how that even made sense, and it just killed the mystique about the Toa, because when the cube was stolen they lost their powers and everything that gave them character and history. (Plus, isn't it embarrassing being the only Toa who can't use their powers without an outside source?)The fact that some Av-Matoran are apparently "destined" to be transformed into Bohrok was completely pointless and a little bit disturbing as well. What, wasn't there a better way to supply Mata Nui with them without... THAT weirdness? Did he even need new ones -- aren't there supposed to be tens or hundreds of thousands of the things in hibernation? When the swarms were awakened in 2002, it didn't even take their whole arsenal, did it? That twist came totally out of left field and was just sort of... there.And as a side note: the whole concept of "Destiny" in general. I still have no idea how it works. Okay, everyone has a "purpose" in life. Who assigns them that purpose? I used to think it was Mata Nui, but then it turned out he was a robot, so how could he? Was it just another "glitch"? For that matter, how does anybody even KNOW about how Destiny is supposed to play out? The stars? No, wait, turns out the Red Star is just a part of Mata Nui's take-off gear... so how does it predict the future again...?Finally, Orde's gender and his whole backstory. It doesn't sit well with me. There was no apparent reason to make him a male except to... actually, there just ISN'T any. And the guy apparently messed with the minds of a whole species of beings, driving them to an ever more alarming degree of anger and hatred... because he got MAD? Am I the only one who finds that utterly horrifying, as in grade A psychological horror story material? I'm sorry, but in my world that would make him either a villain, or an extremely messed up guy, whether or not it was an accident. Word of advice: You can't just put something of that magnitude into a character's backstory and treat him like just another character! Realistically, this guy would have issues. Agreed on both points.Ultimately Bionicle is a pretty messy business -- tons of world-building went on but mostly it just made everything more convoluted. Nothing seemed focused to me. Ironically MNOLG, with its straightforward, simplistic setting, is my favorite part of the whole deal, probably because the people involved in making it had to go to great lengths to make the world seem very big within the parameters given to them. It was all about the setting and the characters, not the progression of the plot or expository blocks of information (of course, MNOLG did present many pieces of exposition over its course, but it was always through the characters and with respect to the atmosphere of the moment). Compared to everything we now know about the Bionicle universe, how much have we actually experienced instead of having it told to us?~QMark

Just checking in to say that by now I've reviewed The Lighthouse by Nuclear Winter and March Forth And Conquer by ~LG~. I have to say, I think I could get used to reviewing. It's rather enjoyable, and quite informative (for me, I mean). Plus I thought I should mention the "Story Fit" thing that Multivac has going on. Maybe you've already heard about it, but it's a challenge of sorts for writers to write different "themed" stories every week. I think it's a really cool idea, and I might get in on it tomorrow. In other news, I've decided to give my old story ideas a rest and try to write something completely new, see if that works out better. That's sort of why I'm in a good mood at this moment. And I have been writing one story recently, too, but it's more of a pet project. I don't know if I'll finish it, although it is fun to write. ~?

Username: QuestionMark Current status: I have written one Short Story, For Whom The Bell Tolls -- which was deleted some time ago, but that I will be re-posting shortly. That's pretty much all I've written, to be honest... My plan is to work on one particular Epic. The working title is "Nixie". What do you like to write?: I'm not really sure. Many of my ideas draw inspiration from "life questions" and are therefore rather dark, which is difficult for me because I try to write in a reader-friendly, to-the-point manner. Mostly I want my stories to have some sort of meaning or message. What to look for: Clear and concise descriptions that readily create mental pictures; characters and emotions that are relatable. I want to be pulled into the story. Three dimensions are more important than anything else. Misc: I don't actually do much here on BZP. I'm not that interested in BIONICLE anymore, but I still follow it because I think its many aspects have great potential for fan-fiction. Every now and then I'll check out the Completely Off Topic and General Discussion Forums. My hope in joining the Writers' Club is to get more inspiration to write from reading what others are doing. ~?