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icarusavery · 1 year ago

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things i'd change about bionicle lore if i was writing g3 (WARNING: THIS LIST LONG AS BALLS AND ALSO MOSTLY ABOUT MATA NUI) (also the no gender-locked tribes thing should be obvious)

1 - Some Matoran (and most other Matoranoids, save for Skakdi) are created without an elemental affinity. Notably for the Matoran, these unaspected Matoran (Nul-Matoran/Ze-Matoran/Ro-Matoran, as in null/zero? Pro-Matoran, as in Protodermis? Na-Matoran, a pun on N/A?) are occasionally discriminated against as being "wrong", though other cultures celebrate them as being unbound by destiny.

2 - The six main elements have been rejiggered a bit. Fire is about the same, but Water now has Ice put under its purview (think waterbenders from ATLA), and Earth now has Stone put under its purview (they should've been the same thing). To replace these two elements, Ko-Matoran are now Lightning-aspected while Po-Matoran are now Air-aspected, with Le-Matoran getting Air replaced with something like Plantlife or Nature (not a big fan of "the Green" as a name, and calling it Jungle is honestly a bit dumb imho). I could do a whole post on this topic but the tl;dr is that I think it just fits better with these characters/tribes/koros and their overall vibes and well as my general view on how elements should work.

3 - The other elements would be Av-/Light, Kra-/Darkness (prefer it over Shadow), De-/Sound (prefer it over Sonics), Ba-/Gravity, Fe-/Metal (combining Iron and Magnetism), and Ce-/Psionics. All six of these tribes exist on Mata Nui, but not as distinct entities - instead, they're mostly spread around the main six koros in varying populations. Life and Death are also elements, sorta, but there are no beings who embody them - all Matoranoids are imbued with some Life energy and Death energy would instantly kill any being who attempted to tie themself to it.

4 - On that note, each koro - while it has a dominant element - is no longer homogenous. On top of having Matoran from the secondary elements, Matoran from other "primary" elements do ive in koros not associated with their element. The size of each koro varies - the largest being Ga-Koro, the smallest being Ko-Koro - but generally they have a population of anywhere between 1,000 to 5,000 Matoran. Smaller villages are spread across the island, usually having a population between 50-100. Overall, Mata Nui has a population of somewhere between 20,000 and 40,000 Matoran, compared to Metru Nui having about 1,000,000 Matoran plus members of other species such as Vortixx, Skakdi, and others.

5 - Toa and Turaga aren't a different race/species from Matoran. A Toa is just any Matoran who's unlocked deeper power within them, be it elemental or from their mask (with Matoran usually having very limited if any ability to utilize elemental or mask powers, though generally gaining more as they age). A Turaga is either a spiritual and political leader, or a term of respect given to older Matoran. Would definitely fit better with moments like, for instance, Vakama saying "we, the ones called the Matoran" in Mask of Light.

6 - On that note, Matoranoids - both Matoran proper and other Matoranoid species like Skakdi and whatnot - age. A Matoran is considered "young" when they're 10 or younger, and considered "old" when they're over 60, with the oldest being about 80. The caveat here is that Matoran don't really have a childhood, they're "born" into what would be equivalent to being between 15 to 20, depending on the individual.

7 - On that note, Matoran reproduction. When a Matoranoid dies, their body will disappear after a few days, unless it is destroyed beforehand, such as on a funeral pyre. In either event, the remains are teleported to the Red Star, where the Matoranoid's essence - their soul, in some respect - is reconstituted into a new Matoranoid - usually of the same species, but rarely of the same variant. The Red Star will then transport the new Matoranoid back down to either the MU or, now that there's a population center there Mata Nui, typically to whereever there may be a population deficit. This results in regional populations mostly staying consistent, though the process of a Matoranoid dying and being reincarnated takes a variable length of time, from several days to several years. A newborn Matoranoid is generally given basic knowledge, but otherwise lacks any memory of their old life or their surroundings. Tradition on Mata Nui is for new Matoran to be named by the Matoran who discovered them, though other regions have different traditions. Very rarely, a Matoranoid can recall their past lives, or even temporarily be taken over by an old consciousness, if either exposed to artificial stimulus (such as a mask power) or an especially strong reminder of their past life (such as someone they loved, romantically or platonically.)

8 - On that note, love is canon. Matoranoids don't experience traditional sexual attraction, but do still experience "aesthetic" attraction (not sure if there's another term for it?) and do still experience romantic love, platonic love, and - as much as a lifeform that doesn't directly reproduce can experience it - familial love. For the record, non-MU beings, such as Agori, Glatorian (who I'd retcon as being just a class of Agori as opposed to another species), and kinda-sorta Great Beings (who I'd retcon as being completely different from Agori and Glatorian) do experience sexual attraction and reproduce "normally."

9 - There are a lot fewer species in the Matoran Universe. I never liked how almost every unique being was a member of a species with like one or two members. Bara Magna can have a couple more species (namely, Great Beings being distinct from Agori and Glatorian, though as mentioned above I'd make the latter two one species) but the Matoran Universe needs a lot fewer. I'd make characters like Axonn just exceptionally powerful Toa or something, and have the Barraki each be members of a preexisting species but heavily mutated.

10 - Makuta are no longer all Shadow-aligned, instead being as diverse elementally as Matoran, with their creations often reflecting their element. They also no longer have Rahkshi powers - I'd honestly severely cull the Rahkshi power list given how many redundant ones there are. Instead, each element has one associated Rahkshi power (something thematically appropriate for it or ironic, like Fragmentation for Earth, Disintegration for Sound, Acid for Water, Illusion for Light, etc.) that Makuta of that element can grant to a Rahkshi.

11 - Makuta are immortal, unlike most Matoranoids, owing to the unique physiology (being almost entirely mechanical, and their souls being far more disconnected from their bodies and able to possess empty machines). This isn't a change, this moreso an absence of a change from lore - though I'd clarify it so they still technically have a "true form" with their original bodies, and they're also not made out of "antidermis", but can transfer their soul into another body through antidermis. Makuta can also possess other Matoranoids, though it's far harder because of all the organic bits.

12 - Notably, the Makuta are unaware of the true nature of the Great Spirit. They were created to serve the Great Spirit and maintain the internal ecosystem, and Teridax views his rebellion against it as a rebellion against a distant, tyrannical god. Were he to learn the true nature of the Great Spirit, that it was merely an AI piloting a giant robot through space, he'd likely fall into depression and resign himself to the pointlessness of the whole affair, or decide his true enemy are the creators of this so-called Spirit, or maybe he'd go into denial and act like it was some kind of trick this cruel god is playing on him.

13 - The Great Spirit AI is ironically one of the more primitive AIs the Great Beings ever built. It technically has emotions, but its primary directives weigh far more heavily on it than any personal feelings ever could, and it barely registers Matoranoids as even being alive, let alone as being worth consideration. For the GSR, protocol dictates action. This could be an interesting twist villain, with an AI that views the battle between the Toa and the Makuta not as a battle between good and evil, but moreso as its maintenance equipment breaking itself. Perhaps it's the Great Spirit that summons the Bohrok to clean things up so it can fully reboot, rebuild its "tools" from scratch, and finally get back to its mission of cataloguing the universe.

14 - The Great Beings are much more explicitly kinda assholes. They're a very alien species compared to the much more "human" Matoranoids and Agorinoids, viewing themselves much like the Great Spirit views itself: perfect, logical beings who are far above the tiny primitives that litter the surface of the world. Their actual logic can often be found lacking, however, and they're more just interesting in doing evil shit for the sake of advancing their knowledge of the universe. Great Beings are also mostly organic, unlike the Agori - who use cybernetics to enhance their ability to survive - and the Matoranoids - who are mostly robotic with some organic components.

15 - I never liked how big everything was, so now everything is much smaller, closer to the actual size of the sets. One bio is now equivalent to four centimeters (or 1.575 inches), which may seem arbitary, but in fact means one bio is equal to five "studs" - a common unit of measurement for Lego sets equal to the width of a 1x1 brick (0.8 centimeters, or 0.315 inches). Five studs is equal to a Lego minifigure in height, so you can kinda just go off the height of a minifigure for the length of a bio. The average Matoran or Turaga is three to four bio tall (12-16cm), the average Toa is four to five bio tall (16-20cm), and the absolute tallest beings in the Matoran Universe are up to nine bio tall (36cm). An Agori would be about as tall as a Toa, with most Agori in the Glatorian caste being at least five bio tall, if not six (20-24cm). The island of Mata Nui is about 1000 kio long (40km or 24.85mi, with one kio being 0.04km/4,000cm/1,000 bio, long), while the Great Spirit Robot is 7,000 kio tall (280km or 173.9mi)

16 - A bit of a continuation from the last point: Bara Magna would be larger than Earth, about three times larger, but would only have a bit more mass owing to a predominantly liquid protodermis, and thus not very dense, core. Aqua and Bota Magna would have similar gravity to, if not slightly weaker than Bara Magna despite both being smaller than Earth since their cores would have a lot more heavy metals like iron.

17 - To exacerbate their alien nature, Great Beings aren't at all scaled like Matoranoids or Agorinoids. They're on average 46 bio tall, or 184cm (a little over 6 feet for the Americans in the audience). They're utterly, impossibly giant to even the tallest Matoranoid, and were often mistaken as gods by the Agori.

18 - Destiny's not real. Or, rather, the future isn't predetermined. Some Matoranoids do have a destiny, in a sense, but it's something programmed into them by the Red Star, the Great Spirit, or the Great Beings - be it a specific reaction to a mutagen, or them taking a certain action in a specific scenario (such as a Toa betraying their comrades if their team tries to do a certain action). Some beings can sense the future, but it's always in flux.

as one last addendum, it took a lot of finagling to figure out that I should scale the in-universe size of Mata Nui and the GSR to about 1:2.8 (not the actual size, which would be closer to a 1:13 or 1:14 scale, specifically scaling the in-universe units), and I hope anyone working with that scale appreciates it because my "completely flunked Algebra" brain spent over an hour trying to figure that number out because I kept coming back with numbers that just didn't turn out right.

#bionicle #bionicle g3 #bionicle lore #lego bionicle #god i hate math #also i probably have a lot more ideas but this is just what came off the top of my head

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