Embers - Review Topic

[Master Inika]

It's still crazy to be seeing Ga-Metru as the bad guy headquarters

I am picking up on quite a few thematic parallels with Harry Potter and the Star Wars sequels about complacent victors allowing their enemy to regroup and cause more destruction. Embers handled it a bit better than either of those franchises do, especially Disney Star Wars.

I love Lariska's office. It felt like something out of Time Trap and brought me back to that edgy but still very cool era of Bionicle.

[Nato G]

7 minutes ago, Master Inika said:

It's still crazy to be seeing Ga-Metru as the bad guy headquarters

It's been fun to take a deeper dive into how each Metru might change with other species repurposing it for their own uses. Ga-Metru made the most sense as the place for the Odinans to consolidate themselves; controlling the food and water supply gave them the leverage to hold onto some degree of power. 

7 minutes ago, Master Inika said:

parallels with Harry Potter and the Star Wars sequels about complacent victors allowing their enemy to regroup and cause more destruction.

I definitely see the parallels with those franchises. Honestly, I was more inspired by Bionicle itself, with almost every named villain after a certain point - the Piraka, the Barraki, Roodaka, Brutaka, etc. - escaping at the end of their year and continuing to cause problems. All I did here was apply that same policy to an entire occupying force instead of a handful of individuals. 

20 minutes ago, Master Inika said:

I love Lariska's office. It felt like something out of Time Trap and brought me back to that edgy but still very cool era of Bionicle.

I felt it was important to still kind of match the energy of the original portrayal. It's a bit of a balancing act, finding a compromise between honouring her roots, and twisting her to suit the role she needed to fill in the story. Striking that balance is a big part of why I was reluctant to include too many canon characters in Embers. 

[Master Inika]

In the case of Bionicle, it at least always felt like the antagonists surviving was due to reasons beyond the main heroes' control. In one way or another all the examples you gave (Barraki, Piraka, Brutaka, Roodaka) survive because the Order of Mata Nui comes in and takes them away and I don't think we're ever meant to see the Order as unequivocal good guys. Star Wars and Harry Potter have the problem of the New Republic/Ministry of Magic sometimes being treated as unequivocal good guys while also being responsible by negligence for the evil factions returning to power. It would be like if the Order of Mata Nui was never a secret, most Toa were considered normal members, but Teridax still managed to take over in 2008.

[Nato G]

10 minutes ago, Master Inika said:

I don't think we're ever meant to see the Order as unequivocal good guys. 

Frankly, I put the Order in the same "villains who got away" category as the rest of the characters I mentioned earlier. Their whole existence and role in the story just... never sat well with me. They commit some of the most brutal murders and atrocities seen in the story, but somehow get a free pass because they put the Great Spirit's name on their business cards. 

While I certainly have no problems with neutral factions or exploring moral grey areas, the Order still feel very out-of-place in Bionicle. They're more like a fully evil faction that manages to avoid conflict with the actual protagonists by virtue of there being a bigger threat that they're both opposed to. They feel like the wrong kind of morally grey for a story that's about noble heroes with a strict code of ethics.

42 minutes ago, Master Inika said:

reasons beyond the main heroes' control. 

This is the other facet of the Order that bothers me. The Toa are the heroes of our story, yet there's this whole faction of ridiculously overpowered super beings who are ostensibly on the same side and show up once in a while to bail the Toa out of trouble and take agency out of their hands. Why aren't they the main characters? Who don't they just save the universe since they're so much more powerful than the Toa? At times it felt like a bit of a crutch from a storytelling perspective; instead of having the Toa reckon with the Code or have to make hard choices, the Order conveniently just pop up and handle the morally murky stuff for them.

It's a big part of why I didn't include the Order in the first two books, and heavily reduced their power and influence when I finally did introduce them. So that my heroes would have to make the hard choices and daring saves for themselves. 

[Master Inika]

One of the things I learned reading Greg's pre-Bionicle books is that he LOVES writing corrupt, amoral bureaucracies. Doing my best to piece together how the sets get their story significance, I feel like without Greg, there'd be no Order of Mata Nui and just plenty of unrelated more-powerful giants running around Bionicle.

I'll defend the Toa vs. Order dichotomy, it seemed thematically intentional from the start for me. Like the "top men" from Raiders of the Lost Ark, our heroes having their agency taken away from them at the last second was always frustrating but true to life. I also feel like in some way, the Toa represent naive, idealistic children and the Order represent jaded adults who act without explaining themselves, or trying to. The Toa feel like the main characters, and they are our POV characters, but they're not the main characters of the universe. The Toa (whether they know it or not) can only act because greater forces allow them to, but those greater forces don't need the Toa's permission to act on them. That ties in with Greg's stated interest in Lovecraft as well.

One of the most poignant moments in Bionicle to me is Tahu's decision in 2008 not to attempt to save the Makuta from the Energy Storms. 99% of the time, the Order does swoop in and make the real moral hard calls for the Toa, which resonates (imo) with how it felt like be a kid when G1 was happening. So, the one percent of the time Tahu does get to make a real judgment call, it's very powerful, and I think that buildup was worth it.

[Nato G]

14 minutes ago, Master Inika said:

I feel like without Greg, there'd be no Order of Mata Nui

I feel similarly. Aside from Axonn and Brutaka, basically none of the Order members actually exist as sets, and the faction doesn't really play a role in any of the novels. Their shenanigans were mainly confined to the serials, which - from what I understand - were always more of Greg's personal playground, where he could cut loose without as much oversight. 

13 minutes ago, Master Inika said:

The Toa feel like the main characters, and they are our POV characters, but they're not the main characters of the universe. The Toa (whether they know it or not) can only act because greater forces allow them to, but those greater forces don't need the Toa's permission to act on them. That ties in with Greg's stated interest in Lovecraft as well.

In principle, this is a cool idea. And it works pretty well when the greater force in play is the ephemeral, unknowledge whims of Destiny. Not so much when the greater force is an edgy band of secretive, sadistic murderhobos who can effortlessly one-shot the villains the main heroes struggle against. 

The Lovecraftian stuff works when the greater forces remain largely unfathomable. But Bionicle was always more about deconstructing and demythologising its figureheads and faiths. With basically every single legendary figure in the story - Artakha and Karzahni, Makuta Mata Nui, the Great Beings - the curtain is eventually pulled back to reveal a mortal, flawed being. And compared to them, the Order were never really all that mysterious to start with. 

I think my issues with the Order also tie in with the fact the story never dwelled on the character's reactions to big, world-changing revelations. Things were never really given the weight or exploration they deserved. That an amoral spy organisation of super-beings were committing atrocities in the Great Spirit's name, conducting mass kidnappings and assassinations, incarcerating people for millennia in inhumane conditions without trail, and at one point manipulating a Toa team into committing genocide - all under the leadership of the very first Toa - really should have gotten more pushback/discussion from the other heroes. Instead everyone just kind of takes it in stride and moves on. 

[Master Inika]

Someone on Discord (I wish I saved the comment) once said that Bionicle is a psychological cosmic horror about how free will is a lie but none of us fans appreciated it at the time because everyone communicates via corny superhero banter

[Nato G]

12 minutes ago, Master Inika said:

Bionicle is a psychological cosmic horror about how free will is a lie

I don't necessarily agree with that interpretation, but I can definitely see how someone could reach that conclusion. It's a testament to Bionicle's rich weirdness and depth that we're still having these sorts of philosophical conversations about it so long after it's gone.