#another skello original

[toaskello]

the bionicle fandom after learning that advance wanted to make the male inika gym dudebros who all lusted after hahli whose character only existed to motivate the guys to be the one to save the universe so she'd be impressed with him

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Today seems like a good day to ramble about my favorite bit of imagery in all of Bionicle, and that would be the twin eclipse in Legends of Metru Nui.

To start, let's recap a bit. Our protagonists, the Matoran and friends, live on a tropical island. The deity they worship is the Great Spirit Mata Nui, a vague, godlike figure cast into unending slumber by his jealous brother. We never see this entity, although he is often represented with symbols like the Kanohi Hau or a rock with etched details representing an abstraction of that mask. Similarly, we never see him do anything, as he is sleeping. All we know is that the village elders say he was benevolent and good.

The first major plot twist in Bionicle comes when the Matoran travel underground and find their original home: a large cavernous dome with an island city surrounded by a vast silver sea. Despite being underground, twin suns are visible in the sky, frozen in a partial eclipse.

The next year of Bionicle is a flashback, taking place on this island city while Mata Nui is awake and the suns are shining bright. Mata Nui himself and his actions are still seemingly nowhere to be seen.

Tragedy strikes at the end of the year when Mata Nui's jealous brother infects him with a virus and sends him into his slumber while the twin suns eclipse. With the limited information about the true nature of Mata Nui we had in 2004, this always seemed to be a rather on-the-nose metaphor. The Great Spirit who watches over the Matoran falls asleep and the suns overhead eclipse in a manner that makes them look like closing eyes. He can no longer protect the Matoran from the eternal shadow like he once did.

Fast forward four years and the big reveal that all of Bionicle had been building up to is finally made known. The Great Spirit Mata Nui was a metallic colossus in which the Matoran resided. The island city was his brain, the silver sea his cerebrospinal fluid, the dome his skull. The suns, as it so happens, actually are his eyes. But importantly, the eyes are not looking down on the Matoran - they are looking up, away from them.

Mata Nui, as it so happens, was rather unconcerned with the inner workings of his body. He wasn't malicious, but he cared about his people as much as you and i care about our sesamoid bones. Do you know how many you have and where? Probably not. His major character arc going forward is recognizing this and, after being humbled into a puny (7-foot-tall) humanoid, learning to care and respect other beings, even those he would usually consider beneath him.

The reason I love this shot so much is that it works perfectly for both views of Mata Nui: the Matoran interpretation of an idyllic protector who banishes shadows from his place in the heavens, and the giant robot with people in his brain who is preoccupied with observing space. The perception of this scene changes as our understanding of both the biology and personality of Mata Nui are revealed throughout the story.

Like, they made a movie for a toy with this shot that you would have to go back and watch four years later to fully appreciate. And IDK, I think it's pretty cool.

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look at the mama airship carrying her eggs, isn't nature beautiful

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i finally know peace

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Ok, so people on Bionicle Discords are talking about Creeping in My Soul and Bring Me to Life. I think it's a common sentiment that the former is almost certainly based on the latter (though is a definite improvement IMO). But what if I told you that Bring Me to Life is actually way more relevant to Bionicle than its "copycat"? Specifically, it's a conversation between Mata Nui and Matoro at the end of 2007.

Going to need to go line by line for this

How can you see into my eyes like open doors?

Starting off a bit weak, but Mata Nui's eyes are quite literally doors. BA6 shows that Naho Bay is where the Toa Metru first arrived on the island above, and that's directly above one of the GSR's eyeholes.

Leading you down into my core

Matoro is being led to Karda Nui, which is often referred to as the core of the universe, by the return of Voya Nui.

where I've become so numb

The core is numb, the energy storms have stopped.

Without a soul, my spirit's sleeping somewhere cold

It's essential to the conclusion of 2008 that Mata Nui's spirit temporarily left his body.

Until you find it there and lead it back home

Pretty self explanatory, Mata Nui wants Matoro to use the mask to return his spirit to his body before he dies.

Wake me up inside

Again self explanatory, Mata Nui telling the beings inside him to wake him up.

Call my name and save me from the dark

Three guesses as to what the dark represents.

Bid my blood to run before I come undone

Either referring to the repopulation of Metru Nui (Matoran are often likened to red blood cells) or reactivation of the energy storms (Karda Nui is the heart).

Save me from the nothing I've become

A bit of foreshadowing for the twist ending of 2008. Mata Nui has realized that Makuta, who is often referred to as "nothing", has become the Great Spirit.

Now that I know what I'm without, you can't just leave me

Mata Nui's character arc is about recognizing how he completely ignored his inhabitants. He took them for granted, and he recognizes that here.

Breathe into me and make me real

Ok yeah I got nothing

Bring me to life

Self explanatory.

Frozen inside without your touch, without your love

Another reference to ice, Matoro's element. This is starting to get into the importance of Matoro specifically, elaborated on in the next line.

Darling, only you are the life among the dead

Matoro is the Ignika's chosen bearer. Only he can hold it without being cursed. He's also about to be very much not alive, but Mata Nui reassures him that his spirit will live on. It's also a nod to the Kanohi Tryna that was given to him as a test of character. He would resurrect the dead, being the only life among them.

All this time I can't believe I couldn't see

Alright, Matoro lines. What has he realized?

Kept in the dark, but you were there in front of me

Ah, he's realized the true identity of Mata Nui! The Great Spirit has been in front of him all along, just not in a form he recognized. Canon materials often used the phrase of toiling "in the dark" when describing the Matoran creating the GSR as a euphemism for being unaware that their home was the body of the Great Spirit.

I've been sleeping a thousand years it seems, got to open my eyes to everything

lol

Without a thought, without a voice, without a soul

Matoro is transforming into energy. He's beginning to lose his corporeal form.

Don't let me die here, there must be something more

Matoro regrets his decision to don the mask. This is something that explicitly doesn't happen in canon, but this isn't actually a Bionicle song and I'm doing my best here ok

Bring me to life

I've been living a lie

Matoro grappling with the revelation that Mata Nui is the MU.

There's nothing inside

Again an oblique reference to Makuta taking control of Mata Nui's body.

so there you have it, incontrovertible proof that this popular mainstream song that was released in 2003 was written about the plotline of a 2007 toy. i will not be taking questions at this time.

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also going to a galaxy quest watch party tonight so here are some berrylemon spheres

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now embrace the nightfall

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ok fine i guess i need to watch the cooking and eating monsters show that has harryhausen skeletons in it

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Ordered some custom masks from Nate's Mask Shoppe!

Got a Black Komau for Nuri because I found out that's the mask he was supposed to wear in MNOG II. Akaku was a bonus! It's dark purple. May have to design a Ba-Matoran to wear it...

I got a mask for Kotu to flesh out this collection of animal caregivers, since that's the field I work in!

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so idk if anyone reads my tags but i have occasionally endearingly tagged animal pictures with "la creatura". i have just learned the origins of the term and its status as a racist dogwhistle, so i will be dropping it from my vocabulary immediately. i sincerely apologize for using the term, i genuinely had no idea and i thought it was just a fun meme way to refer to animals.

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what are they talking about

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made Vaguely Cantaloupe-Flavored Miniature Skull Waffles for my birthday!

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sent in later than i usually do, but it's already counted so that's good

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There's something inherently funny about the broader definition of the word "cousin" to me. Just that a cousin is someone in your family who isn't your parent, sibling, parent's sibling, child, nephew, or any "great" or "grand" you affix to any of those.

From Wikipedia:

More generally, in the kinship system used in the English-speaking world, a cousin is a type of relationship in which relatives are two or more generations away from their most recent common ancestor. For this definition degrees and removals are used to further specify the relationship.

Degree measures how distant the relationship is from the most recent common ancestor(s). If the cousins do not come from the same generation, removal is specified, as removal measures the difference in generations between the two cousins. When the removal is not specified, no removal is assumed

This can be carried to absurd extremes. For instance, you, dear reader, and I are cousins (barring of course that we're more closely related). We may not be first cousins, we may be hundreds, thousands of degrees apart, dozens of times removed. We likely can't trace our lineages back to a common ancestor.

But science can.

Introducing Mitochondrial Eve, the individual whose cells contained the mitochondria that is the common ancestor of all mitochondria currently in living humans. Mitochondrial DNA only passes matrilineally, so it doesn't recombine with the DNA of the other parent and as such is easier to trace back to a single ancestor using standard rates of mutation. There's a similar concept with Y-Chromosomal Adam (who was not partnered with Mitochondrial Eve, nor were they likely to have been alive at the same time or in the same place).

It's worth mentioning that neither of these individuals are necessarily the most recent common ancestor of all of humanity, but it's easier to see how we can determine their existence. At the very least, we know that you and I share these ancestors, and almost certainly have a closer one. So we're technically cousins.

Now I'd like to propose a question. Could a chimpanzee be considered our cousin?

Well, we can trace common ancestry. Chimpanzees are certainly more than one degree separated from us. If those are the only criteria, then they have to be, right? I don't think I've ever seen a definition of cousin that mentioned species...

So let's go a bit further. Your pet dog or cat is your cousin, as you're all descended from primitive boroeutherians. That bird outside is one of your cousins too, a fellow descendant of early amniotes. The fly that's buzzing around you, and the spider that's going to catch it. The plant that grew the vegetables you had for dinner last night. the bacteria in your gut. All life on earth shares ancestry. We're all one big family tree, with a lot of cousins.

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hey did u know that u can join paleontology labs without being a grad student or anything i just spent a few hours washing sediment and picking through it under a microscope to find fossils. found some turtle shell pieces and bits of gar im going back tomorrow to spend most of my day there

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Got some spice blends for my birthday, so I had to make cheese with them! I really like how they turned out. The front left one is a pepper blend that crisped up really nicely when I cooked it.