Why does everything take as long as it does?

Logistically speaking, why do so many things take as long as they do? Conflicts that last hundreds of years, plans that are spoken about and pre-staged for thousands? The Toa Mata/Nuva do so much from a tactical story perspective in a year compared to several events that take many magnitudes of time longer to complete. Do Matoran lack some kind of fundamental agency when it comes to interacting with each other over great distances? Are Toa literally the only things they have to affect the greater world around them? What goes on in the massive gulfs of free time between important events?

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Well, the initial big time gaps – the 100,000 year journey, the 1000 years waiting for the Toa to show up – all came from the original story team, which I was not involved with. My assumption is they went with such long time spans because that is what epic stories do. You know, if it’s, “The One Ring to Rule Them All got forged day before yesterday,” it just doesn’t sound as impressive.

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I mean, that’s fine, but the Matoran and Toa and Makuta and the Leauge aren’t all just sitting around for the big ol’ gaps. People die, new buildings are built, others fall into disrepair. Takadox, I’m sure, is out trying to get a leg up on the competition somehow. Teridax is plotting plots most evil. Toa Teams rise and fall, get murdered or fulfill their destinies. What was the day to day for a Toa Hagah, for example? “Guard duty for the fifty-first year straight, wonder what Spirinah’s mutating into something grotesque today?”

How many conflicts have we not seen? How many species have risen and gone extinct as the political laboratory of the Great Spirit Robot shifted and changed? Besides the Dark Hunters and the Brotherhood, were there ever other factions, Matoran even, who sought to depose the Toa as the ultimate face of the forces of Good? Was there ever an arms race between the Vortixx and the Nynrah Ghosts? Southern Islands!

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But if everything gets covered, then where is there any room for fan tiction? And frankly, if we covered everything that ever happened in the universe that was of any note at all, we would have needed to publish way more books and comics, and as it stands, a lot of people seem to feel there was too much G1 story.

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I admit to being a bit of a dog for G1 fluff. I couldn’t get enough of it, even after returning to it after developing a critical eye. I was six when the first wave of G1 hit the states. I’d give anything to see the physical story bibles.

But, I do I understand your perspective. Especially after the reveal for Teridax’s name.

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