Brickonicle G3 Elements Poll [Worldbuilding] [Pitch]

The TTV Channel Brickonicle
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Then we give Pohatu a new element; something that is conceivable for him to use. Problem solved.

How exactly does Stone fit Pohatu more than, say, Iron? What inherent quality is there in rocks which we can relate to Pohatu’s friendliness or upbeat personality? They’re rocks, they do little more than move with the planet’s geography and erode. They’re tough, hardened, often coarse, and sometimes have dead things inside them; so shouldn’t Pohatu be as salty as he is in G2 if elements reflect character?

And powers are a very shallow trait. What matters most is his character. This is where G2 failed with its Toa–they didn’t act like the characters we were told they were. If the Toa lose their powers entirely (which shouldn’t happen, this is just an example), but still act and look like their G1 counterparts, they are still those characters on an actually important level.

Nobody said Onua doesn’t keep his fighting style. He just has the option to fling rocks now. This is not a tremendous change; he can still fight exactly as he did before, just with another option. The same can be done with Pohatu if he loses Stone. Kicking around his element is still an option where something like Iron is concerned; he can tear metal ore from the ground and chuck it, and the flexibility of metal would work well with his high-mobility traits that he displays using his Kakama.

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That’s not how it works. If you give a character a new fighting option it fundamentally changes their fighting style. Otherwise the new option never gets used and may as well not exist. Similarly, giving Pohotu an element like iron would completely change the way he would fight. In a world were people are made of metal, using the power to control metal only to throw chunks of metal at people is the least imaginative way of using that power. And before you say that they’re made of protodermis not iron, they’re weapons armor must be made of iron, otherwise, what is iron used for In this world? And why specifically iron?

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Not really. Onua could still have just thrown chunks of the ground at people; now, it’s just straight-up rocks. This doesn’t change his fighting style.

[quote=“Matanui606, post:42, topic:33898”]
Similarly, giving Pohotu an element like iron would completely change the way he would fight. In a world were people are made of metal, using the power to control metal only to throw chunks of metal at people is the least imaginative way of using that power.[/quote]

I didn’t say it was the ONLY way to use that power; just a way that enables him to continue fighting like he did in G1, except now he can also stab people with metal and make constructions out of metal where they’d have been rock before.

Metal can form weapons and tools, it can comprise walls, it can just straight-up stab people–heck, the Avatar franchise has some really creative uses of metalbending. Saying that, if Matoran aren’t made of metal, then Iron is a useless element is like saying any other element is useless if Matoran aren’t made of it.

I don’t remember if it just came into my head when I tried to conceive an alternative, or if I tried to specifically pull out an element that made sense for someone who lives in a desert (where the sands could be partially comprised of Iron and rusted over like the surface of Mars, thus keeping Pohatu’s sand powers from G2) and has Pohatu’s fighting style (which I’ve long imagined as being more hand-to-hand-ish since his G1 climbing claws always looked like brass knuckle-type weapons to me, but I don’t remember the G1 fight scenes too well, so I can’t properly back that up).

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I never said that, I was heading off the argument that matoran aren’t made of metal in an attempt to save time. I actually mentioned the use of metal as armor and weapons and was saying that if it’s not used for those uses what is the point of it. And saying that they will use these new abilities is the definition of changing their fighting style.

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Also I’d like to say that if you change pohatu’s element you might as well change his name since it translates to stone in Maori.

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I didn’t see that part at the time I wrote that post.

Only if those are his go-to maneuvers. Stone could theoretically be used in a lot of the same ways, save for anything relying on metal’s relative flexibility; nothing’s stopping him from primarily chucking the metal around, and secondarily using it for other things.

“Gali” and “onua” are literally meaningless in Maori. Should we change Gali and Onua’s names, then? No, because it has no importance. Pohatu is no different.

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I would direct you to your own topic made to debate this exact thing, as we are massively off topic here.

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I get what you mean, they would appear to have similar effects, however they wouldn’t actually be all that similar in concept - it wouldn’t be the same as stone and earth, which control the same thing.

So at which temperature would this change?

Why is the colour scheme a main argument for merging? Surely just ■■■■■ the colour scheme for one!

I like this idea, perhaps make it metallics as a whole, with it only affecting magnetic metals? I mean, would the tohunga be able to tell the difference between the different metals that are and aren’t affected?

How is Kinetics an element? Movement? Really? If anything, it should be merged with Fire/Plasma/Heat.

Haven’t we already ascertained that fire is plasma?[quote=“Matanui606, post:39, topic:33898”]
I personally believe that that change was a mistake and, judging from the polls above, people agree. By changing Lewa from air to jungle they went from a very clear element to one that was poorly defined and was never actually shown to be used to any real affect in the story.
[/quote]

Exactly! The plantlife change was pointless - I think he moved some tree leaves at some point? And how do you define his control of plantlife? Can he grow more indefinitely, or only use what’s there? Can he shape it completely, or must it flow with it’s own design? Can he physically uproot and move trees and such?

I read that as creating a magnetic field which placed a downward force on his armour, made of metal, as opposed to his protodermis body.

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Um… 50 degrees Fahrenheit? I don’t know, what do you think makes sense? 50 to me is where things go from warm to cold. I think I prefer the seperate energies thing. It could explain how a toa of fire can suck the heat out of a room (Vakama did this), and the opposite for a toa of ice. Like, maybe in Bionicle temperature is actually the sum amount of hot and cold energy in an area. Heat is positive, cold is negative.

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50

When your Pohatu love is too stronk and you vote for stone even though earth is a way more logical element.

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This is why you don’t mess with the six main elements. Because everyone has a favorite, and while they may not be an even split, alienating roughly one sixth of your fan base is never a good idea.

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I think that’s more of the fault of how the story didn’t have time to focus on all of the characters.

Air to Jungle was a positive update that I was on board with - it made sense for the color scheme, and if the world building had been more coherent, would have made for a better Le-Koro (or Le-Koto, either one).

I think the mistake was still keeping Earth and Stone. Very much against having those two in the canon.

I wouldn’t necessarily say so. I think a lot of characters have a lot of leeway when it comes to changes. There’s obviously a limit, but a lot of pushback seems to because things were done a certain way before and people don’t like change.

A good example is the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The Vision in the Marvel movies and the original Vision in the comics have different origins, but the one in the movies I would argue has more personality and is more relevant to the story that they were telling. Ant-Man’s Hank Pym is very different from the Hank Pym of the comics, Ultron is different, the Guardians of the Galaxy are different. Even Civil War was very different (and much better) than it’s comic counterpart.

Essentially, there’s things you can change and things you can’t. Everyone is going to argue about what those things are, and we’re not always going to agree ourselves, but I can safely say that we will probably not be sticking with things just because that’s how they were in the original canon. Stone is either definitely out or will be reworked.

That’s not even close to an accurate statement, and is really misleading as to the impact of this decision. There are traditionally six elements, that doesn’t mean that the fanbase is equally divided with which element is their favorite. It could be disproportionate (which is probably is). Also, that’s assuming that everyone that likes a certain element would be displeased and/or alienated by its omission. Or that the elements are such an important concept to people that they would stop paying attention to a franchise entirely. None of which are accurate assumptions.

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Hei, Jon… Can i ask you what you think of my choise of elements?

Fire
Water
Earth (combining it with Stone)
Air (replacing Stone)
Jungle (or a different name for plantlife)
And Sonics (replacing Ice)

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One of the reasons Marvel can get away with this because the movies are made for a much larger audience than the people who know the original comics, this many people don’t even realize changes were made. You can easily see the other side of the coin with G2 where the returning G1 fans were a larger group than the new fans they were trying to attract.

I did say it wasn’t an even split.

Yes, but it’s also true that not only those whose favorite element was changed would get angry. I’m not a giant air fan, but I wasn’t super on board with the change to jungle. Nor is stone my favorite, yet here I am arguing very vocally against it’s change. Honestly your likely to ailiante far more than one sixth of the fans by completely cutting stone.

That’s fair, and while I personally feel air was better, I’m ok with the change for jungle. That being said, changing stone for another element doesn’t work well at all given that the entire culture of Po-Koro is based around carving stone and any change would have to come with a massive change to the village. Now you could just completely remove stone as suggested, but that would undoubtedly ailianate those who have stone as their favorite element, not to mention the changes that would make to Pohatu. And if you aim to solve that with all new Toa I would direct you to my earlier post about the necessity of name the name recognition of the Toa Mata.

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Which is exactly what we’re aiming for. The pitch is to present a new Bionicle that would prove to be exceedingly popular with new fans while also escaping the limitations of the franchise before it. That’s the reason for the transition into System.

That’s, again, assuming that people are going to be alienated just because an element is changed. I don’t believe that is what would happen, I think that most will just accept the change and move on. The small fraction of the ones who wouldn’t would probably be bothered by any other small change to the canon, and since change is an important part of this pitch, it’s not worth trying to pander to them.

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And the move to system has been largely well received. However there is a distinct difference between a movie and a Lego line. Movies are widely marketed to everyone, while Lego lines are marketed to children, and just happen to gain the interest of adults who liked them as children. As such a movie can get away with doing whatever they want since the audiance they’re marketing to is much larger than the people they could potentially ailienate. And is largely true for Lego lines as well, but Bionicle is different. With Bionicle the number of people who you could potentially ailianate by changing something is vastly larger than the potential new fans you could get given that you are competing with ten years of people who were picked up by marketing versus the children you could pick up in one year of your new line. G2 made the mistake of trying to market soupy to children and it played the price, don’t make the same mistake.

You are far underestimating how much the average person hates it when people change the things they love. You want to see what happens when you take a risk making a big change and people don’t get on board? I would direct you to a few movies:
The Last Airbender
Percy Jackson: The Lightning Theif
Eragon
DragonBall: Evolution

These are movies that thought they could pull a larger audience than the existing fanbase and they got torn to shreds. If you want to see how the average person reacts to change, Meso and his endless train of pessimism through all of G2 is a good example.

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To be honest, at least there wouldn’t be as many complaints about what the difference between Earth and Stone is, unless there’s a way to compare Earth and Air with each other.

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I don’t think “change” has anything to do with how I reacted towards anything in G2. I wasn’t a fan of many aspects of G2 because they were either objectively worse than what we received in G1 quality-wise, OR because the media we were receiving just didn’t meet the standard of quality that I personally expected from a BIONICLE reboot. The fact that it was “different” or that it was “changed” had literally nothing to do with it whatsoever.

Obviously different people view change differently and place varying levels of importance on how much change is actually warranted, but from my perspective… if you’re going to reboot BIONICLE but change nothing… why even bother? Change is important to me; it keeps things fresh, unique, exciting, and prevents stagnation. Obviously getting rid of an element is a vastly different conversation than switching from Constraction to System on the level of change, but it’s a discussion worth having nonetheless. Adhering too closely to the old ways and not embracing the possibilities that could arise from making certain changes is a foolhardy endeavor, IMO.

-Mesonak

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Kinetics would refer to the energy of motion. Loading something up with potential energy, then punching it so that it goes flying. Making your enemy spontaneously stop in their tracks. It’s no more valid than saying Fire is heat energy (though, like you said, it works better as a concept when Plasma is merged with it).

Like me and Dore said, Fire works best as a composite of its original interpretation and Plasma, since then we can say Fire is the flame and not simply a chemical reaction. Ice, therefore, is the frozen state of Water and not just sucking temperature out of things.

He’s saying that the whole aim of G3 is to design it so you don’t have to be a long-time fan or a kid to get into it. The thing people could enjoy and get into beyond the toys might be the surrounding media–an objectively good TV show or movie, or even a video game.

Those movies didn’t fail because they were different. They failed because they were bad. The only one of these that I actually remember that well is TLA, so I’ll only speak of that; but basically, it failed because it had bad acting, bad writing, a lame story, unexciting action, and probably some other thing I’m forgetting. If none of those flaws were in place, and Shyamalan wrote that film knowing something of the way the TV show told its story, then it could have been a valid interpretation of Avatar’s story. Yes, faithfulness to the source material is a very important thing, and it should be strived for, but it’s really not what makes or breaks a film, book, or anything else.

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I have know idea where people are currently in this “debate,” but these are my thoughts:

Team Number:
I would like to see six. It’s been that way in bionicle (and most lego themes honestly) for as long as anyone can remember. Plus, if your’re going to have six main bad guys (the rahkshi in this case) you’d want to have six adversaries for them.

Main Elements:
I’d like to see all the main elements again -fire (colors being red and orange), water (colors being shades of blue), ice (colors being white and trans light blue), air (Colors being shades of green), stone (colors being shades of brown/tan), and earth (colors being black and purple 'cause black with gray is boring, Orange was never really an earth element, and (even though purple isn’t either) it’s nice to introduce/keep new/rare colors now and then!) ).
The main controversy seems to be with air/jungle and stone/earth/sand so I’ll just explain that;
First of all, jungle’s not really an element; if you really want Lewa to control plants, then just make him a toa of plant-life! It makes a lot more sense then, for example, saying Tahu is the toa of Volcanoes!
Secondly, I understand the controversy between the three rock elments, but I feel that if the element of Earth was represented correctly it would make a lot more sense. Picture this: Toa of Earth can control the soil (so basically anything in the topsoil layer of the Earth itself). Toa of Stone could control rock, boulders, etc.

Other Elements:
In dealing with other elements, since we’re discussing this over your G3 pitch, I’d like to see them on the other islands from the main ones; It would give these matoran/toa more of a foreign feel.
I’d like to see lightning, iron, and plasma.
Lightning (colors being yellow and blue) makes sense as no other beings in your pitch, so far, has this power yet. Iron (colors being copper and silver (anything shiny)) also makes sense for the same reason, however I’d rather see the element dubbed Metal. Lastly, there’s plasma (colors being trans-orange and white). Some have pointed out that this is really similar to fire, which is a fair point. However, I feel that this element should be called Heat instead for a controversy regarding the element of fire:
In one of the Bionicle Adventures books, Vakama draws in all the heat from the room to the point where frost covers the area around him. Does this really make sense? It feels like he is more of a toa of ice! So, let’s instead take away the ability to draw or add heat from other toa/matoran and give it to the beings of the Heat tribe!

Light/Shadow:
I’m just going full opinion here. Both of these elements are awesome! Plus they add to the general archetype of good vs. evil in stories, which I feel is a must for any storyline.

Toa Kaita Equivalents
Edit: Just thought of a pretty cool idea. So remember the Toa Kaita? Well, I believe someone of these Message Boards suggested it already, what if we could do this again, but have them in pairs? Or, better yet, make them not limited to only merging with select elements/individuals?

For example, Gali merges with Onua to create a Toa who controls Mud (like how Gali controls mud in '08, but it actually makes sense)
Gali could also merge with Tahu to create a Toa who controls Steam/Water Vapor.

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