The Great Being Civil War: Review Topic

[The Mad Great Being]

Reply here if you desire to express your opinions of my chronicle. I will bring to life the keyboard if I do not leave now.

Edited September 15, 2015 by The Mad Great Being

[TheSkeletonMan939]

This is awesome. I'm way too excited to see what comes next, especially since you teased so much more of the story earlier!  

The formatting is a little weird, though.

[TheSkeletonMan939]

Amazing, just amazing work so far. This is truly the continuation Bionicle so richly deserves. So many stories are posted in the epics section, but so few truly are worthy of the term epic. Yours is without a doubt.

 

You need to put a link to this epic in your sig, more people need to see this. It's brilliant.

[TheSkeletonMan939]

More great work as usual; everything you write clicks so well with the rest of G1 it's as if it came from the mind of Greg F. himself.

 

"Tren  Krom  cannot  come to  the  Star."  said  Botar.  "He is  flesh,  and  flesh  alone  is  free....the  Bionicle...

 

 

That line gave me goosebumps.

[The Mad Great Being]

If there is any way to paste on this website, please tell me. I can't even create links.

I admit I had a similar experience to Greg F when writing this: I heard the characters talking in my head. The difference is I can see them, too.

[TheSkeletonMan939]

If there is any way to paste on this website, please tell me. I can't even create links.

 

What do you mean? You can just Ctrl+V any text to paste it.

[TheSkeletonMan939]

"Listen  to  me."  said  Kopaka.  "I  am  beginning  to  think  that  Destiny  is  an  actual  power,  a  guiding  force,  quite  outside  our  universe.  I  think  the  Great  Beings  bent  it  into  a  virtue,  because  it  already  existed  elsewhere.  We've  been  scouring  the  Red  Star,  collecting  names  of  who  killed  who,  and  by  random  chance  I  find  myself  talking  with  the  very  person  we  need,  just  now."

"I  knew  he  was  getting  somewhere  with  this."  said  Pohatu.  "Why  the  harping  on  Destiny?"

"Because  if  the  Great  Beings  can  bend  Destiny,  so  can  others."  said  Botar.

 

 

[Akavakaku]

It's obvious that you're a great writer, and that you've worked very hard on this story. The overall course of the plot seems very well-done, and so is the writing style. But a few choices stood out to me as a bit strange.

 

Tahu's frighteningly willing to use his powers to hurt people who don't pose threats to him. Is he supposed to be acting out of character?

 

Orde's telekinesis seems really overpowered. Isn't it just supposed to be a secondary power of Psionics?

 

Some of the content seems much too mature for this forum, especially some of the Rock Tribe stuff. I would cut portions out if I were you.

 

Kella's attraction to Lewa seems a little forced, as does Lewa's contentedness to just stay with the Bota Agori for the time being. Also, does Lewa/Onua mean anything to you...?

 

It seems a bit too easy if the Mask of Life is just floating around wherever it likes, how could anything bad happen then?

 

And there were also a couple minor errors:

 

It's Bomonga, not Bomunga.

 

Berix is a Water Agori, not Jungle.

 

Canonically, the Red Star cannot transport Makuta.

 

BIONICLE means the Biological Chronicle, so it should refer to both the Spherus Magnans and the biomechanicals.

[TheSkeletonMan939]

Canonically, the Red Star cannot transport Makuta.

 

Unless of course these Makuta died before they evolved to be made of antidermis.

[The Mad Great Being]

Replying to He of the Unpronouncable Name:

 

Tahu has been developing a ruthless streak, as shown in the Nektann battle. Now he's faced with a chaotic society and a sinister order of spies he put up with before and now no longer has to. So I suppose this is more an evolving of his character.

 

Orde has annoyingly feeble powers in Yesterday Quest. I can see a Mask of Telekinesis being that weak, but a Toa? Besides, he's using more finely-honed effects than large-scale use of power. He is after all very skilled.

 

The Mask is only supposed to watch and update Mata Nui. He gave it orders not to interfere save in certain situations. It does not like ruling, especially considering its' past history as a quiescent artifact, that's rather an ingrained habit. Living in a body is quite enough.

 

The Red Star can transport beings in bodies. It cannot transport gas. I disagreed with the exclusion of antidermis ipso facto from Red Star teleporting; it would make more sense that these 5, killed after the Miserix takeover but before the gas evolution, got to the Red Star and evolved there. My reason is based primarily on an old spoiler Greg leaked when planning Powers That Be: (3 things to keep in mind): "Why it was safe for Teridax to kill Makuta." Of course, "safe" is a vague word.

 

And I wanted an in-story use of Bionicle. It would make sense for the MU folk to settle on some definition of themselves as a people, as opposed to the organic Natives or Magnans.

[TheSkeletonMan939]

What an amazing first part!

As an addict to the original Bionicle storyline, what attracts me to your story is the respect you have for the existing canon and the way that nearly all the plot points of your own story derive from Fashtey's work. You manage to take the seemingly innumerable number of loose threads Farshtey left hanging and tie them into something comprehensible, natural, and beautifully crafted.

 

Characters are believable, dialogue is spot-on, and it's all culminating into something that I think is a worthy successor to the original Bionicle storyline.

 

Nitpicks include very minor typos and grammatical errors, nothing reprehensible. Except for you referring to the biomechanicals as "Bionicles"... they aren't called "Bionicles"... 

 

I look forward to the next installments of this grand tale, Mad Great Being!

 

[Toa Funkenstein]

I hardly know where to start. This is a divine prime example of what a fanfic should be. The immersion is verbally unexpressable ( as is this whole chronicle), the story and events are epic and the deconstruction of the universe is mind-blowing and makes you understand the universe so well. This epic literally completes bionicle, filling all gaps, explaining everything and bringing the whole cycle of the Great Beings into a grand, satisfying conclusion. The level of dedication put into the immersion and understanding the universe and the characters is mind-blowing, and how you add to it by coming into these epic conclusions by combining existing elements (e.g the whole thing with dedtiny). There are no words to express what this means to G1 fans, this is the second missing half of BN that fills all gaps and holes. Plus it was awesome how you managed to fit Vezon into the story, a real fan service. This is probably one of the best epics (in the very sense of the word) written in entire human history. Every G1 fan should read this.

 

There are though some complaints:

 

Major complaints:

 

1. Toa Tuyet's death was a bit cheap.

2. Mata Nui's enabling of MU being reproduction was too mary sue.

3.The death of the piraka was a huge fan disservice, completely anticlimactic and not adding anything.

 

Minor complaints:

 

1. A reunion with Vakama and Lhikan would've been nice.

2. A little bit more Vezon would've been nice.

[UnderscoreChronix]

Well that was quite the read. Lots of really cool and interesting concepts in here. I think the destiny of the Skakdi, Toa of Sand Mazeka and the Great Beings' weird and exotic weapons like the Mind Spider are among my favourites. I appreciate you not shying away from the crazy power scaling in Bionicle, what with the frequent use of kraata powers, psychic mind battles, pocket suvas and more. And wow, there was no shortage of deaths either. I found the Whatever factories very disturbing. I think I'll be making much of this my headcanon for the story post-2010 save for a few small things.

As for critiques I would've liked the ending to be a bit longer, to hear more about the state of Spherus Magna and the fates of various characters - as we didn't really get much in that regard beyond a few lines on Lewa and Sahmad. Reunions between Norik and Varian and as another has said, Vakama and Lhikan would've been nice too. Just more closure like that would've made the ending more satisfying. At a few earlier points throughout the story (especially during the war) I also felt the current status of some characters had become unclear, such as Vakama who IIRC seemed to disappear later on. To be fair though, there are so many characters and so many things going on it must've been hard to juggle them all as is. I feel the ending would've been a good time to address this somewhat.

Given what Greg said about Takanuva's planned destiny I thought he'd have some hand in bringing peace between the two sides, or be involved in the illumination or something - his ending was much sadder than I expected. I'm unsure how I feel about the illumination and all those people being killed by it, including all the Vortixx and Skrall. I'm also a little confused about the Chair of Vision, though maybe I just missed something. That whole thing was a little weird. 

All in all though, I really enjoyed this. Writing something of this scope is most impressive. 

Edited May 14, 2022 by UnderscoreChronix