Akhmou's NAME is Evil....

[Arzaki]

So, I've recently realized that tons of villains in Bionicle have "ahk," or "akh" in their names. Rahkshi, specific names of the Rahkshi, Lehvahk and other Bohrok, I think some of the Visorak. Even some of the Vahki.

 

And then there's Akhmou, who was evil both on Mata Nui and Metru Nui.

 

Coincidence? I THINK NOT.

Edited August 4, 2014 by Arzaki

[ToaKapura1234]

actually, greg just liks ahk Artahka pretty much torpedoes the villain part

[bonesiii]

Artahka pretty much torpedoes the villain part

It's Artakha, so technically no.

 

It's been theorized that "ahk" means something like "being", and does not always mean evil, but yes, that is almost certainly intentional.

[Click]

Yep, just look at Tolkien's Matoran guide and you'll find lots of stuff like that (it's non-canon but it's more interesting than what little the story team gave us on Matoran etymology). I theorize that on Naming Day, a mysterious jolly Ta-Turaga comes through the chutes bearing gifts and a Mask of Clairvoyance (I swear there was something similar in the books) and takes a look at the futures of each Matoran to give them their names. Then they are left to puzzle over it the rest of their life (Krika: "Why does my name mean "Great Insect?") until they eventually figure it out. Maybe that was actually a driving force behind Ahkmou's turn to the dark side.

 

But out of story, it was probably totally intentional as one of those few places the legal guys thought about etymology. Or it could just be a random coincidence that no one realized until just now.

[bonesiii]

Or it could just be a random coincidence that no one realized until just now.

Definite no on that. I noticed it all along.

[toa kopaka4372]

Interesting tidbit. Personally, all I ever thought when I saw those names for a long time was how odd and bizarre they looked

Which I really like, so not complaining...

[The Lorax]

Possibly that combination of letters just doesn't occur in a lot of words and languages so it was really easy to get through legal.

[Makuta_of_Oz]

 

Artahka pretty much torpedoes the villain part

It's Artakha, so technically no.

 

It's been theorized that "ahk" means something like "being", and does not always mean evil, but yes, that is almost certainly intentional.

 

So by that logic, "Great Being" could be "Ahknui"?

[NorikSigma]

 

Or it could just be a random coincidence that no one realized until just now.

Definite no on that. I noticed it all along.

Well, we certainly noticed it, but it just could be a coincidence? Like why do so many words contain 'e' in the English Language?

 

Or like how there is a huge number of Bionicle names are the V's in them. I just think Lego thought that the "ak" sounded cool, and was a subconscious way to let customers know that that was the bad guy.

 

Or even if they were meant to be names for villains, I think Ahkmou sharing that quality was just coincidence.

[bonesiii]

I highly doubt it was subconscious.

 

And nice idea about Ahknui!

[Relapse]

I think it's similar to how many Toa's names were phonetically "smooth" (ie. Lewa, Tahu, Gali) while villains had "hard" syllables (ie. Morbuzahk or however it's spelled) which kind of subconsciously lets you know who is good and who isn't. Of course, this changed when it came to the later years, with good guys named "Gaaki" and baf guys named "Spiriah" but on some level there was a common theme.

[Arzaki]

Ahk Nui... Someone make that please XD

[NorikSigma]

I highly doubt it was subconscious.

 

And nice idea about Ahknui!

Oops, what I meant was that the sound "ahk" sounded villainous and they probably wanted the customers to sort of be able to rember the villains with a villainous name.

[Holy Disciple of KEKKONEN]

Just the fact that you include Vahki and Bohrok in your example shows that it isn't strictly so. Both of them had good intentions before they were used by Makuta.

 

actually, greg just liks ahk Artahka pretty much torpedoes the villain part

Uh, no, Artakha is pretty much the worst of them all. Did we forget that the guy ordered a massacre to hide his own island? And that he mainly just created deadly destructive things but refused to stop them himself because he had a big ol' creation fetish?
He sits on a throne of corpses in his ivory tower while the rest of the universe destroys itself all around him. Karzahi's motives at least are human and understandable. Artakha is just cold and alien.

Edited August 6, 2014 by Holy Disciple of KEKKONEN

[Heir of the Chronicler]

I believe badabababa obesity hit this nail on its head. Although the hard K is prominant throughout BIONICLE (Ta-Koro, Tren Krom, Kanohi, Karzahni, etc) the "Ahk" sound was often used to denote the villain. Although, by the backstory, the Vahki and Bohrok weren't inherently evil, they were definitely the antagonists of their years.

 

- Heir

[ToaKapura1234]

Just the fact that you include Vahki and Bohrok in your example shows that it isn't strictly so. Both of them had good intentions before they were used by Makuta.

 

 

actually, greg just liks ahk Artahka pretty much torpedoes the villain part

 

Uh, no, Artakha is pretty much the worst of them all. Did we forget that the guy ordered a massacre to hide his own island? And that he mainly just created deadly destructive things but refused to stop them himself because he had a big ol' creation fetish?

He sits on a throne of corpses in his ivory tower while the rest of the universe destroys itself all around him. Karzahi's motives at least are human and understandable. Artakha is just cold and alien.

He did not order the massacre and probably did nor even know about it Helryx on the other hand is worse than Teridax in my opinion.

[Pomegranate]

Would Teridahks have been better than Teridax, then?

[bonesiii]

He did not order the massacre and probably did nor even know about it Helryx on the other hand is worse than Teridax in my opinion.

(Note: I forget off the top of my head which of these is accurate.) The difference is, they did those things out of good motives, but "ends justifies the means" thinking. In no way are they worse than the truly evil arch-enemy of the story! Rather, those are gray-area characters, but overall are good guys.

 

As for creating things and letting them go, he really didn't do a lot of that, I'm not sure what HDoK is talking about. There were the Crystal Serpents, but he learned his lesson and stopped trying to make creatures, and they did serve to guard the island. Note also that the killings to protect the secret of the island were not just done for the heck of it -- it was in response to a Makuta actually attacking the island. They essentially had no choice, though really they should have used the Pit instead of killing. In any event, he's certainly nowhere near as bad as Karzahni!

 

 

Would Teridahks have been better than Teridax, then?

Or Teridahk. (I alluded to this in one chapter of my retelling when somebody -- it's spoilers who -- says his name wrong, as, I think it was, Terodahk.) But that would just be to avoid the real-world emotional dislike some have of the use of "x" in the name. Since a lot of Makuta names used it, or things like it in the case of Antroz, it does make linguistic sense as a Makuta-specific (mostly) style variation on ahk/ak/ok (ax and ox).

Edited August 7, 2014 by bonesiii

[ToaKapura1234]

Let's say a company was secretly building a utopia, spies found it and leaked information to stop it from being completed due to jealous people angry they couldn't join. The information gets to company employees, innocent civilians, (maybe even including us, I might add) and the company kills everyone who knows. How are they possibly any better than, say, the Soviet Union, where people frequently died from knowing too much?

 

Company represents Order of Mata Nui, Utopia represents Artakha, Soviet Union represents Makuta.

 

But at least the Makuta admit what they are. Helryx is willing to order massacres that would horrify Mata Nui if he knew and claim they are his will. No wonder Brutaka betrayed Mata Nui! The entire order who claimed to serve Mata Nui, knew of this massacre and didn't care (if Mazeka, a new junior member, knew, then everyone must have). Brutaka was disillusioned that anyone was good by all the murder. Now that he's become the Makuta-like thing, I would say he is higher on the moral plane than Axonn, given that Axonn must have known of the murder and done nothing. Just because the Order shared common foes with the good guys and thought they were good, doesn't mean they were.

Edited August 9, 2014 by Toa K

[silo]

Basically I think its just that most of the villain names were meant to sound harsh and "spiky" which is why a lot of them feature Vs, Ks, Xs and Zs.

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                             -Silo

Edited August 9, 2014 by Silo

[Lyichir]

Funnily enough, Akhmou's name is one of the few names introduced in MNOG 2 which I haven't found the name origin for. Most others have a meaning related to their element in one language or another, but I haven't found any language with a word like "Akhmou" that relates to the character in any meaningful way.

[bonesiii]

But at least the Makuta admit what they are

? Not in the story I followed. For a long time very few knew they were evil. But that's not really the point -- the point is that they actually ARE evil. Not people doing bad things for a good cause, because of a bad philosophy. There is a difference.

 

Let's say a company was secretly building a utopia, spies found it and leaked information to stop it from being completed due to jealous people angry they couldn't join.

Okay... but this isn't a good analogy for Artakha. The utopia isn't secret, just its location, and it rewarded good behavior with joining, as intended by the founders of the entire world (as the Matoran thought of the domes realm). Its reason for being secret is pretty obvious -- to protect its inhabitants against "glitching" (or evil) beings. And being angry about not joining had nothing to do with Makuta Kojol's attack. The Brotherhood just didn't like any place remaining free from their tyranny, and wanted to gain greater power over the rest of the universe from what they would find there.

 

The information gets to company employees, innocent civilians, (maybe even including us, I might add) and the company kills everyone who knows. How are they possibly any better than, say, the Soviet Union, where people frequently died from knowing too much?

Well, it's not the best idea to bring real-world examples into it (one of the S&T rules mentions the difficulties of this, though it isn't outright banned). So I'm not going to go there, but you're saying it's bad, and that we can judge.

 

First, killing them was wrong, as I said -- they should have used the Pit. But there's other issues with your analogy:

 

1) Most of the people being killed were the enemy (people involved with Kojol).

 

2) Why would "employees" be killed? That is the people on Artakha, and the Order (well, allies). None of them were killed.

 

3) Nobody besides those groups was supposed to know the location. So if anybody else got it, they got it out of bad motives, most likely. If anybody was supposed to know it and was on their side, they may have simply been invited in, but we don't know details like that.

 

However, some innocents might have been killed too, and that is obviously taking it too far. But that makes them gray-area "mostly good guys", not "worse than the outright bad guys", since they were not doing this out of power hunger but to protect something good. This was cleared up in previous conversation.

 

It seems like the alternative you have in mind is to leave people like that alive and/or free, but consider that villains could capture them and torture them to get information. Even the Pit would have a serious downside, but I suggest it due to its secrecy. Basically, this choice that the Order did isn't meant to be good. But the fact that it's bad doesn't make the good things they also did irrelevant. That's what gray-area characters are. Compare it to many of the characters on LOST, several of whom did some extremely bad things.

[ToaKapura1234]

It explicitly stated Order members were killed.

[fishers64]

The Order is EVIL. 

 

They claim to do bad things for good reasons. This is a contradiction in terms, because doing an inherently bad thing is inherently bad, no matter the motive. They lied, killed, and kept secrets, and justified that they were doing it for the right reasons, but the fact that they lied and killed is bad no matter what. 

 

Therefore they are evil villains. Helryx wanted to destroy the universe just to get personal revenge on Teridax. Tobduk is an assassin who feeds off people's rage. Trinuma is a charismatic and cunning manipulator. Mazeka is a Matoran who wants revenge on his personal adversary. None of them are upstanding, none honorable. 

[bonesiii]

It explicitly stated Order members were killed.

Alright, I did forget about that. But they were not "employees" of Artakha. Understood, though, that that's what you meant. But you think the Brotherhood didn't kill its own? Teridax famously killed many of the other Makuta. Ordered Miserix killed, had those who had sided with him hunted down.

 

And the Brotherhood took things farther -- they used their power to conquer. The Order was doing what it was doing out of a desire to create a larger good. Their philosophy was wrong, and that led them to do bad things. But their goal was different from the Brotherhood -- it was meant to do good, while the Brotherhood (by the time of Teridax's leadership anyways) was centered around evil.

 

The Order is EVIL. 

 

They claim to do bad things for good reasons.

It may be valid to call them evil, though they were "good guys" -- Brutaka's reform back to loyalty to Mata Nui was a good change; what he became before that reform was evil. So the product of the reform cannot logically be evil (by an objective definition of the term anyways). That means they had some good. Whether they crossed the line of balance into evil, is a fair matter for debate. I'd rather not comment as it's an issue my retelling explores, so I'll let that story say it. But the point is that it's just not reasonable to say "worse than Makuta!" because the Order still had some good motives and actions that the Makuta cannot on the balance claim.

 

Hence, gray area.

 

This is a contradiction in terms, because doing an inherently bad thing is inherently bad

Yes, but doing "all bad all the time" is objectively worse than doing "some bad, some good", and especially if your "ends" are good (protecting something good, for example, versus selfish goals like conquering).

 

Therefore they are evil villains. Helryx wanted to destroy the universe just to get personal revenge on Teridax. Tobduk is an assassin who feeds off people's rage. Trinuma is a charismatic and cunning manipulator. Mazeka is a Matoran who wants revenge on his personal adversary. None of them are upstanding, none honorable.

Actually, technically this is "Hasty Generalization" fallacy. Also, my point was, they're gray area people. Axonn was in general upstanding, for example. He was once a warlord, and reformed from that, wanting to protect the Voyatoran. Hydraxon seems to have been pretty honorable. Etc. And Helryx probably went a little crazy at the end there. It does make sense to call her evil... at that point (although it should be mentioned that destroying Teridax could still save countless other worlds... but not sure if she knew that), but that could be the end of a road that was not completely evil for most of history. That isn't necessarily fair to describe the entire Order for the majority of history, yanno?

 

You have to also keep in mind it's the Order of Mata Nui, our chief good guy. The Order was essentially about doing the will of Mata Nui. That needs to be factored. In practice, especially a thousand years after he was asleep (but also due to his not paying much attention for quite a while before), it was the will of Toa Helryx. But Helryx was not abusing her power to become a petty tyrant or the like early in history, or kill people for no "good" motive.

 

Speaking of that, one issue with this bit:

 

They... killed... and justified that they were doing it for the right reasons, but the fact that the... killed is bad no matter what.

Not if a killing is just. The idea of the Order was they would kill villains (or "glitching" AIs) where it was needed, but that the Toa couldn't do it because of the Code. Killing good guys just because they know something is obviously unjust. Killing bad guys who were killing good guys... well, assuming a "due process" is followed (and sure, that's questionable with the Order, but I'm talking in principle), or it was a direct "if you don't kill him now he kills an innocent... or you" type scenario, it's just.

 

Killing bad guys who know something? Well now there's a gray area. To the Toa, only blatant "I have to kill him to stop him from killing right now, there's definitely no other way" situation would ever warrant killing, and the Code isn't even explicitly in support of it, so many might err on the side of not killing. To the Order, killing bad guys who know something is justified. Who's right? Order certainly doesn't help themselves here by killing good guys; shoots credibility out. But hypothetically, if they hadn't done that too, and only Kojol's people were killed (and increase the plausibility to only ones who definitely were loyal to the bad guys, not slaves, etc.), would that also be evil objectively? If the something is important enough that they knew?

 

Well... that kind of question is why stories have gray area characters -- precisely because it isn't easy to answer (at least for everybody to agree).

[Quisoves Potoo]

Now that he's become the Makuta-like thing, I would say he is higher on the moral plane than Axonn, given that Axonn must have known of the murder and done nothing.

You are assuming that Axonn knew of all the Order's activities, which given its covert nature, seems rather unlikely. Furthermore, Voya Nui was quite isolated, in or outside of Mata Nui. Axonn didn't even know Krakua's identity in Destiny War. Axonn and Brutaka were guardians, not proactive agents. There was no need for them to know of the fallout of Kojol's invasion of Artahka.

But let's assume that Axnn did know of the murders. What was he to do? Attempt to take on the entire Order Mata Nui? Hypocritically murder Helryx? Quit in disgust and leave the Ignika, the most powerful and dangerous artifact in the Matoran Universe,  potentially vulnerable? Knowing of an atrocity and not attempting to ameliorate the consequent situation does not necessarily equate to consenting to its occurrence.

Additionally, I seem to recall that Brutaka, during the 2006 storyline, saw Axonn as a quixotic crusader for useless values, not as a hypocritical would-be murderer.

[Vartemp]

Interesting point. Never noticed this trend before. I just noticed all named Skakdi (besides Nektann) have the ak sound in them, which is pronounced very similar to ahk. I wonder if this sound means "evil" in some language.

 

I also noticed Teridax and Icarax both end in -ax, so this could mean "leader" in some language.