Chronicle of bonersi

To the first post:

It's definitely disproven canonically by Greg's confirmation of 7 feet for Toa, and it's actually a myth that the size is "absurd" (except in the intentionally mind-boggling way ), but I like the idea. It would seriously mess up some crossover fans (crossing over into the real world), but be awesome with the sets, and they're aliens, so why not?

It would also have some physics problems... but that might be really fun to explore so I wouldn't mind.

It solves the continents issue that every past attempt to tame the giant has faced -- smaller landmasses, but for smaller people, still continents. And it also solves the biggest problem such attempts have faced -- they run contrary to the idea of the bot by trying to tame it in the first place, but this one doesn't try to do that with respect to the characters, whose eyes we experience the story through, only the planet. Nice.

It would also make the giant bugs easier to accept.

And of course, fit the "nanotech" concept even better.

The biggest issue IMO:

It's actually an out-of-story one -- that it would have to be made clear up front in 2001, IMO. Definitely not a good idea as a retcon five years after the end of a ten-year run! Just because the emotional feel of it, knowing the comparison between the characters and us, would be so radically different. It would become central to the definition of Bionicle, and you can't just retcon something central in IMO. (Unless, I guess, you treated it as a mystery, but there's not supposed to be any actual connections to our world, so how could it ever be solved aside from an out-story reveal?)

So... too bad they didn't think of it then.

And another big issue, which only matters because of the above, but is in-story -- the behavior of elements. Mainly rock; a lot of emotional emphasis was placed on things like heavy rocks being moved around. But pebbles behave very differently and aren't really impressive; the behavior doesn't scale down well at all for beings of that size.

Actually in that category, it would explain the appearance of Koli balls, though.

(But this wouldn't really matter if it was stated up front and they made sure the portrayals were pebble-like, depending more on casing things in stone, etc. than projectile attacks, or speeding up the projectiles to compensate... or the reboot's sand solution.)

I'm getting error messages trying to post the reply after this point (lotsa quotes... not sure if it's the character length or too many quote tags). I'll try to edit some of it in in a bit, but I'll save the rest for another post if somebody else posts. To replies: This really doesn't matter much, as there's no geographical proof of scale between the region we saw on the map and the rest of the planet. As far as I know, we don't know that. I theorized in my retelling's early chapters that prior to the Shattering they did inhabit a wider area originally, but how much wider we don't know and there's no reason to assume it was global. Again, doesn't matter -- extremely long lifespans. Actually, smaller creatures have an easier time with things like climbing, because their weight is much less of an issue. Squirrels anyone? But there may not be any, or they might be rare enough as to not be a problem. However, Bionicle has always had huge animals, either way. Yet again, irrelevant. They did that by "tapping into EP's power" where it happened to surface, which triggered it to explode. It would do that regardless of their size. To Be Continued.... Quotes continued... Same way we can see the moon and the sun even though they're really far away. With the new canon revelation by Greg that there's no Bionicle-physics effect on gravity and that while the planet is larger, it's not much larger, this is not an issue. The atmosphere would not be much thicker.

For the old understanding that it's more like Jupiter-sized or higher, it depends on how that is made to work. In my EP-changes-the-core-to-power-this theory, layering fields affecting the atmosphere were part of the effect in addition to absorbing any gravity over Earth level.

If you only lessen the gravity, it seems like the atmosphere still wouldn't be much thicker anyways, as there would be less gravity to hold it.

It would only really be an issue if it was both super-large and had normal gravity physics, but seeing a battle would be the least of their problems if that was the case! Spherus/Bara. Aqua (and Bota) were the smaller pieces, not likely Jupiter-sized (though some art did make Aqua seem bigger than Earth). Only if they crossed over to Earth... it's an alien planet -- no reason their grass equivalent has to be our size! I wish people would stop using (hopefully) hyperbole like this. It's been shown repeatedly (every time a new topic on it comes up) that it is not impossible (just right on the edge of impossible which is really where it should be). After that point, the discussion dived off course into the usual catchup with people who clearly didn't follow past topics on the subject. (But that's okay, happens every time. Somehow. ) And turned really weird at the end (no offense), but probably all of those quotes probably won't fit in this post. Theories about this were never confirmed as far as I know, but presumably the same reason as the theory that Mata Nui would absorb excess water as he entered an alien planet's ocean and send out dampening fields to prevent waves -- he was designed to spy on aliens worlds covertly (even while landing) -- and had a crazy amount of powers.

So, likely kinetic dampening field on the ground too.

Note, though, that Makuta clearly wasn't using it when he stood up on Aqua Magna, and it's possible the generator of it had broken down after a thousand years lying dormant. If so, Mata Nui may have extended his field to cover it. If not, he had no reason to use it on AM anyways as it was uninhabited. (Not that he cares.) Not that myth again...

Think about it -- simply borrowing the "template" of the real world for all stories would be the lazy approach. Inventing different physics is by definition the opposite of laziness!

Now, they didn't try to make it hard science fiction and explain every little detail (as I am somewhat doing in my retelling as I love that genre ), but they weren't supposed to, given the audience and chosen genre. Wait, what?

What figure? The size of the giant robot or planet? None of those things was revealed or likely even decided when they chose to have it have different physics -- which was in 2001 and about Toa elemental powers, mask powers, etc. primarily.

Applying it to other things in Bionicle is absolutely reasonable.

(However, as said above, Greg turned down applying it to the gravity problem. This was solved, however, by making the planet larger but evidently not too much larger and interpreting the depicted behavior of motion and the like in animations as artistic license.) First, welcome to BZPower!

To your question, pretty sure nobody's assuming that, since it's common knowledge on here that actually the entire giant robot and all its contents* is of some type or another of protodermis.


 * Other than a scroll somewhere and maybe a handful of other items.

(I'm not sure why we're talking about the metal hull anyways... What the heck does that have to do with anything, folks? ) Depending on what you mean by explanation, we don't really, because that's simply not the genre, and to demand to understand all aspects of fictional physics wouldn't make sense. Hopefully you just mean some sense of the direction of the explanation though. Solid IS plausible. I think people saying that are focusing on the life part -- the explanation of artistic license for the way things move and bounce etc. starts to become worse and worse the higher the felt gravity goes. At Jupiter sized, it's way beyond that.

Doesn't mean life can't live on such a world, but it would have to be a radically different form of life. At the very least, it makes all story outside the giant robot impossible (artistic license can't save it then), without some physics alteration or power-based effect. (Inside it doesn't matter as the giant had artificial gravity.) Useless, since they needed to survive before them in order to exist to invent them. That's a good point that I don't think has been brought up before, but I doubt the EP made up most of the mass of the planet. If it did, the explosion would look more like the destruction of the Death Star than a Shattering. Hey now, I actually do things like that automatically with every story. It's actually a myth that it's even remotely difficult; people who say that really don't try.

However, story producers are under no obligation to explain such things (unless they're writing hard science fiction, and even then most of it only goes a few steps into it). How in the world does that follow? The fact that we don't know how fictional physics is possible is a big part of why the explanation works. The only way it wouldn't is it there was some weird rule that physics can't work if the people who live in a world governed by it don't understand it. But we didn't understand physics on our world until recently (and still don't know it all), yet it keeps on truckin' just fine.

Likewise, in a fictional world with fictional physics, knowing how it works is irrelevant to the ability for it to work. Exactly. But don't take too seriously the people whining about it. Vocal critics phenomenon -- and I think it's well established that most people accept that fiction, esp. fantasy, is free to imagine a different world and under no obligation to explain it all. You can't base an absolute interpretation on that -- the artists were NOT attempting to portray hard science fiction or even canonically accurate depictions of the size.

I still loved the idea of megaplanets enough to run with it, and came up with my gravity theory from it, but that's for fun, which is the point of the franchise. Turning it into something to get upset about because it isn't just like Earth misses the point of entertainment (and fiction anyways). This doesn't follow, because EP granting the core a power to nullify gravity over Earth level works no matter how big the megaplanet.

(Moot point now that Greg turned it down, but he also never said the planet was actually that large. If you go by art, you have to think the planet's a lumpy potato and that the Codrex's keystone was both a stone tablet and a metal figurine at once...) Actually yes were were, as I explained in a recent topic. We know EP either transforms or destroys* -- and since it did not destroy the planet, it "must"* transform the rock it's in contact with. The question then is what kind of transformation it would cause.

We know EP's transformations are governed by destiny, which is adaptive. On most subjects, it is free to be essentially random, but since destiny would require something like this to enable multicellular (non-liquid) life, this is what the result of the transformation should be.

Thus the most likely transformation is to the gravity nulling power. And as a side effect to make the rock immune to further effects by contact with EP.

Combine this with the alternate universes for alternate possibilities which is canon, and if there's any randomness still left there, there should still be a branch of universes in which this is the power, and our story would follow one of them. Also it is the ultimate origin of all Bionicle powers seen so far (aside from perhaps things like the Element Lords), including control over Gravity.


 * There is one substance partially immune, exsidian (and a mix of that and a type of the artificial protodermis was fully immune), but the most plausible explanation of that is as a result of a transformation to be that way.

This also fit well into my theory of a super-ancient civilization of spacefaring aliens that seeded planets with EP to explain how multiple such worlds could exist, and transforming them into megaplanets with leveled gravity for aliens of various forms to iinhabit was the purpose of it.

None of that is canon but it would have worked easily, and the first part follows naturally from canon facts. Say what?!

Er... I'm going to give this a pass, though, as it's unclear if you mean general or specific physics (as I use the terms to refer to underlying physics itself or behavior of advanced technology/magic/etc. that actually uses the same underlying physics, just in different ways). But since the story doesn't comment on which is which, for fiction it's pretty much all just "physics."

Given that, we're told quite a lot, so much that even for me I never really got around to getting that official topic exhaustive. If anything the problem was we were told TOO MUCH about the physics, as that evidences. Oh, I see how you got to the earlier thing then -- no, that wasn't the theory. It was that the EP altered the rock to do this.

Having the EP itself do it would be pointless, since it was gone for 100,000 years. Okay, I thought I was imagining the vibe of this in earlier posts so I didn't say anything. Also, I must have missed why we're talking about gravity from the hands in the first place -- what is hoped to be accomplished by it? (Replacement for the kinetic dampening theory?)

But this quote is... uh... well let's just skip the descriptors and debunk what it's apparently arguing.

The gravity's range reaches even to moons in orbit. It can definitely reach the feet. Where the generators are is irrelevant. That's a strawman, Ic. Nobody said that.

They said "it's fiction, and fiction isn't intended to be limited to how things are in the real world, therefore X, and we don't know details that aren't the point of the fiction." No, it's nothing like that. Bigfoot isn't a work of fiction that's meant to be fiction (well, some hoaxters might mean it that way, but the foil-hat types think it's true). This discussion has taken some weird turns... >_>

Can we please get back on-topic? Problem is, choosing that label can be motivated by just happening to have a personal taste against something that is perfectly valid. You have to learn to actually appreciate the good reasons for having different genres that focus on different things, because different people do have different tastes (and that's good -- you agree? ).

So, carelessly applying that as if it was an objective problem when actually it's your preferences, can actually be a cause of problems.

In this case, clearly Bionicle should not have tried to be hard science fiction. It actually went a bit deeper into the more "out there" stuff in the early years (Pohatu's Nuva mask extra power for example), that was walked back because it was recognized that the target audience was not yet to that level.

Keep in mind I'm speaking as one of the geekiest fans of physics on here -- I get the temptation to turn that into a negative -- I missed the (slightly) deeper sci-fi featurings (although the later years had more of a feel of that direction, of course, just not as much heady explanations), and it took me a while to get that this just meant I wasn't completely in line with the average tastes. (And chances are always slim that any individual will be, so that's cool.)

Probably the difference with me is I want to be a writer of these things myself.

Fans can get away with being under illusions about writing like overestimating their own preferences as objective quality (or overblowing certain early-level guidelines about writing into absolute rules or the like), but a writer who wants any degree of success has to be more realistic.

I even experimented with this on purpose for my retelling; since there's no chance of me ever making money on it or anything like that, I was free to make it "my vision of Bionicle", but as predicted, there was a slew of early complaints that it did get more heady about the sci-fi side of it than the canon. And those people were just as convinced as the pro-higher-sci-fi people that their way was right. (Again as predicted; not my first rodeo. )

Aaaaaanyways... Tiny Toa. And now we're lurching even farther away from tiny Toa, lol.

I believe Tolkien said the ring sort of acted like an anchor that the "departed" spirit of Sauron from the previous age was using to pull himself back in, and once it was destroyed, he slipped back into the void. Or something like that.

So... kinda like a power source but more like a boat on an anchor, fighting strong winds/currents and trying to toss another anchor onto the island (find the ring) to pull it back. Destroy the whole island by leveling it to the ocean floor, and both that potential target anchor point and the current one are lost. Boat is pushed away.

It certainly weilded great power when used by him, though, and it seems like he alone had the equivalent of a passcode to access the full control. (And for those who didn't it allowed partial access to hoodwink them into doing its bidding based on "autopilot" programming/spells, or perhaps a quasi-AI.)

Obviously none of that actually works by things like wires or anything; fictional energy/magic versions, but yeah.

Um... tiny Toa.... >_>

Tiny Toa are... tiny.

Their masks are... tiny.

Hey that could be interesting. Remember the tiny masks on the Kofo-Jaga in one of the books? This alternate version of Bionicle would have the Toa's masks be kinda like that. (And the Kofo-Jaga's masks would be itsy bitsy.) I can explain that in ten minutes or less, but we're far enough off-topic and it might get into things some would find controversial (although not actually against any rules, but still) so let's not go there.

(PM me if you're curious, though.)

(My explanation would also virtually nullify certain aspects of the idea you probably are using for plot purposes, though... But only some and depends on how you do it. ) Oh yeah. Getting some training right now on a particular subject for a job, and my supervisor actually just said something like "for now, just accept that that's how it works." In an EXISTING world, nobody rational applies this "we have to understand it for it to work" rationale for complaints -- it's just in fiction and with some who evidently have not learned much about the genres they're criticizing.

(Now, if somebody wrote in to a hard science fiction publisher with certain "handwaving", that actually would be a blunder. But it all depends on what you're going for. Plus, if you try, and do it wrong. Although mainstream fiction like Star Trek actually does that all the time lol.)

Outta time for now... Gator, laters. Edit: Okay... back... Anywho. For the record, this was one of the oldest theories about it. That was the point of that immune mix of exsidian and proto I mentioned. Somebody presumably mined the proto/exsidian (protosidian???) from the rock of the EP pools the GBs made around the MU to make the vials and that vat and anything else needed for that. It would have been one of the easiest finds of science ever, since whoever took that EP had to see the pools originally and that they weren't going down, while everything the takers tried was affected.

That may be a rare bad edit or from a forgetcon (but I've never heard of it -- and it was also said the Entity couldn't control the results, so doesn't sound canon). Regardless, evidently destiny governs not transforming too -- just as with Kraata it's always their destiny to become armor suits, proto/exsidian always doesn't transform. This doesn't change that if destiny needed the planet transformed, it had to be.

(And as I mentioned, contact with EP is probably the best explanation of exsidian in the first place; things that have already BEEN transformed can at least for a short time continue to be in the pool without continually being transformed, like the Nuva as they emerged, so it's probably a permanant version of that.)

Also, we don't know that the contact doesn't produce some kind of constant transformation.

For example, if a substance needs a charge of energy to fuel a power that produces a protective energy field, usage or just sitting on a shelf away from EP could drain it. But contact could "transform the charge to full" (or sommat).

Yeah, sorry Cwog -- it's just that "energized protodermis" is so long, and one of the harder words to type even for the fluent (what with the z and all). I had to consciously force myself not to use the acronym for the retelling, heh. (Explains why in-story they often shorten it to just protodermis. Acronyms aren't Bionicle's style, heh.) Since then I've tried to use them less even in S&T but I've kinda slipped back into the old habits on that one, heh. But that's not the same argument. That's pointing out that you can't assume it doesn't work just because you don't know how it works. Not the same as saying it definitely COULD work. Like I said, I'm not sure why it's being brought up, but if he needed gravity control under him, he'd point under him. And he's not normally walking; he flies through space, lands, lies down to disguise himself, does science, then flies off again. (And how do you know he'd have to point the hands at something? A short range effect just around him might not need that, whereas Makuta's gravity burst attack would presumably need to be like that.) So wait, this is about during the battle?

(Still not sure to what end, though?) Okay, but specifically how is gravity being brought into it? Then it seems to me a lot of time was spent for nothing on that ad infinitum, because a more relevant issue is how gravity would help prevent earthquakes. Anywho, suffice to say, kinetic dampening is a better solution (and also seems to be present in the interior, since everybody didn't die in the GC, although as in Star Trek's inertial dampeners, it didn't completely block it so there was still a quake). Now if the argument is making the giant lightweight by an inverse gravity field ("anti-gravity" if you will), then that might help... but still not the best solution. If he'd landed on solid land all the time only, it would, but even there, one slip and he would be powerless to stop a quake. If he uses kinetic dampening, he can stop quakes on land plus tsunamis from his main landing zone -- ocean. Pulling up instead of down (inverse means opposite).

(I don't think there's a difference; I was describing my understanding of what they seemed to be saying. ) For Toa, yes, but Kofo-Jaga are small compared to Toa. Alright, but that seems like a different subject than what we're talking about. Those things are still explanations, it just means there's a lot of work involved to figure out specifics within what we already understand how to do -- how to manipulate cellular chemistry by moving it around, how to write programming in general, and making machines that do those things. I think we were talking about no explanations at all for some things. Yeah, it's like the Enterprise on Star Trek. At first glance, that looks like an absolutely awful design for a spaceship. If the nacelles were thrusters, it would spin in a circle. There's no balance. Plus, the unnecessarily thin struts produce mechanical stresses that are also unneeded since a more compact design would have much less of that.

But it LOOKS really cool, so most people accept it... and some vague futuristic (unknown how they work) explanations are given -- it's not thrusters, it's warp drive and that works differently somehow, and they have inertial dampeners and hull integrity fields. Made up stuff defending a ship design invented to look cool. And people generally accept it.

(Now I'm not saying nobody ever complains about that shape, because I don't frequent their boards, and it's a much older story now. But point is, this IS widely accepted and it involves not knowing how it's possible. And that's kind of the point -- it isn't meant to be something we can understand, it's meant to be super-futuristic describing inventions we haven't thought of how to do yet.) Sailor, Faber primarily did concept work, and I highly doubt he was trying to counter the later official size of the bot by releasing any of the early versions. Please don't try to turn the awesomeness he gives us into some kind of "versus" thing. Yes, the original concepts were smaller than what Greg chose -- that's old news -- but that doesn't change that Greg decides what the canon size is. (And you can't just sweep all the other factors away as not being greater evidence anyways.) Alvis, it's showcasing the concept version of the size, not the final official size. And we already had art showcasing a smaller size, also shown on Faber's site (but showing him curling into a ball in space mode -- this is early). Again, Christian Faber releases primarily concept work, and was not trying to consider all the factors the canon needed like continents inside, etc. Acting like it's certain isn't going to change any of that (and if I may add, is not wise behavior -- we don't need people adding to the trend some have followied of turning this into a subject to fight about). And again, Greg is in charge of the canon, and he did give us the final size. BTW, the relation of Toa height to this is almost certainly based on the number in the concept art linked above and the size of Earth. The "based on" here doesn't mean there's some kind of "higher canon" number comparing official giant size to official Toa in-story; it just means "based on" for the purposes of getting the smaller concept size compared to Earth. Pretty simple. (Although I haven't run the math of that myself. Anyone wanna try and see if that's it? ) Point by point since my latest post:

-Yes, Greg has said he doesn't think spatially, but he also knows how to avoid the issue by not defining anything that requires it. And for many reasons explained in this and past (including recent) topics, it actually doesn't matter in this case either, since some "magic" is involved to enable something that big to function (fictional properties of protodermis). Mathwise, it's been shown that it actually does work out, and just barely.

-You'd have to ask him whether he did any math beyond picking a big number. I've said before I think he probably just picked one (but the point usually missed is that it was VALID to do so...), however, we have also seen people ask him about other numbers and he's talked about math he's done behind those, and usually it's pretty close to perfect when we check it.

The picking a number thing is actually also MORE of a problem with the concept size, which fails to take into account that it had already been established there were "continents" inside the giant. Faber was thinking artistically and generally conceptually -- Greg, though, knew some other factors, and that undoubtedly played a role in his choice, even if he didn't sit down and make calculations for it.

Who knows -- he MIGHT have seen this animation, which shows quite easily why a giant that small won't be well described as having continents in him! He's running over continents much larger than any part of his body! Sigh. Here we go... Please be aware hasty assumptions like that have been debunked in many topics over the years, but we'll see. It's better to say "I'm not sure if or how the following things are consistent..." (or words to that effect) rather than assuming from the getgo that they aren't. Yeah, that's not a contradiction. T1S answered it, I see; I'll read on to see if more needs said.

-The Matoran worked as maintenance workers, Sailor. (And support for them.) They didn't need to be running everything directly. It's obvious you think you've got new information here, but this has all been thought and talked out on here for years. (A normal reaction if you haven't followed S&T for a while, but FYI. )

-Matoran being compared to cells is only an analogy.

-Not every number necessarily works out, but many of them do work out despite false rumors to the contrary. *reads on*

-Low population density is one of those myths; see above. You could say that about pretty much any fictional or real spaceship, honestly. Many have only one operator!

-Battle damage to planet has been covered earlier in the topic.

-The island of Mata Nui does not contradict the official size of the giant. I've explained this over and over and made an image for it, but out of time to repeat or dig up now. It does come out differently than typically assumed (or in one case animated), but neither of those things are actually problems (fans assume things all the time that weren't intended, and artistic portrayals often get such things wrong).

-No, the island doesn't need sized up.

-Problem with calling the continents "just big islands" is that these words are chosen in English for a human audience, and there was no hint of such a suggestion in any of Greg's answers telling us there were continents. Although I agree the continents are small (compared to things like Africa).

-Saying everything fits and then saying some needs pushed down to the leg islands is a counterproductive argument. Those islands were unpopulated.

-The leg islands were explored. Whoa there. The MU wasn't built for the needs of the Matoran! It was built to reform Spherus Magna and its size is based on that. The Matoran are there to maintain it. Undoubtedly machinery for space travel and reforming and various other things does need to take up a large amount of space besides just the maintenance workers' habitats.

The latter is actually "Greg does decide the canon", in response to your wording, and Alvis's, that made it sound like you aren't aware of this. Doesn't mean his answers are always wisest -- but they are the canon ones. In other words, if you think you have a better idea, you should take it to him if you want it to be the canon one. Just saying yours is more canon doesn't make it true. (Though it's okay/good to have your own headcanon of course.) Point by point again:

-Landing actually makes more sense if you think about it because his primary purpose was geological -- to study other alien worlds of the same type as Spherus Magna to try to get the reforming right. It makes sense this is better done with sensors ("eyes in the back of his head" ) that are at rest on the land rather than whizzing around in space, probably seismic sensors like we use. -FTR, that probably means if he DID encounter a small alien world (which means NOT like SM), he wouldn't need to land anyways. He might document its population from space though for his secondary mission.

-Right, only a part presumably needed to poke out of the water for his telescope-based observations (probably an indirect measurement on the planet by observing the stars to keep track of where it was in its orbit and spin etc.). As this appears to be about the sets (or both), sending to Discussion. BTW, folks, next time remember to use the report button. And BTW, here's my estimation (although it doesn't consider all factors): Apparently Mata wins for me both with count of top choices and higher levels of the not-top choices. It had several glaring downsides that later years fixed, but I guess they were spread out randomly enough to not make any other team win out. Reboot comes in second. Looks like Nuva is third based on my overall choices, although it lacks any top winner. Pohatu Karda winning out doesn't surprise me, although the chart doesn't factor that I miss the loss of brown (but then orange is my favorite color, so forgiven in that case!). I made this in Powerpoint. If anybody wants to make their own, I uploaded the file here. If your tastes are similar to mine you can modify slide 1, or start from scratch with the template on slide 2. (Select a bar, then drag the top middle resizing dot up or down.) I see no issue with this. As for masks changing, that makes sense with masks... but needn't happen for everybody either. That's going too far, IMO. Since there were 1000 Matoran, the chances that all the unnamed ones we happened to see were the same ones we found out names for are slim. Admitted, the chances that the unnamed ones all had the same masks as the named ones are slim too, but we all know that's for set reasons; they didn't have molds of the many other possible shapes that could be used. That doesn't apply to making every unnamed sighting match a named character. But Vhisola? Sure, she had such a major role, it makes sense she'd have a prominent job of some sort for personality reasons, though you never know. This is an old idea, and it's true that it would have been possible, in theory, since evidently access to pocket dimensions like the Field of Shadows was available to the Great Beings. There's one simple problem with it -- the whole point of the Matoran and other beings living inside the giant was to be maintenance workers of that giant robot's inner workings. While in their normal life they only really noticed their life-supporting domed environments, their work had direct physical effects on the machinery of the giant, and this is by far the simplest explanation to tell fans for why there's a universe inside there, so probably the best idea. Yes, you can come up with "patches" to work around this and the other many problems, but it's generally a bad idea to use explanations that require "patching". This is basically my answer to most of the arguments in this topic. I'll go through them briefly. But first, notice that the only real "noticeable" problem mentioned in the first post that the pocket dimension is supposed to solve is the size of Spherus Magna. But it's been demonstrated in many topics including some recent ones that the size of SM is not a problem at all. First, it was never defined, so artistic license can easily be appealed to, and second, until very recently, the door was left open for the art to be accurate but something wonky about physics being the case... which is perfectly normal in Bionicle (elemental powers, etc.), so "(real world) terrestrial planets don't get that big" logic doesn't actually work, because Bionicle planets could. Especially since SM has an EP core, and who knows how that could affect things. (More specific ideas have been discussed in past topics and I'd rather not go too off-topic here by rehashing them.) So, since there's no real problem there, I don't think it's worth creating gobs of other problems to then try to patch up. The simple solution is that the size of SM is actually not relevant (and either option works anyways), and the interior of the giant really is that big. This is best for fictional purposes too, as trying to "tame" it would make the "unimaginably vast" feeling lessened. Having trouble grasping how huge it is, is actually good for that. There's also the "it's been done" factor, which makes all these "look at these other examples in fiction" ironically work against themselves. Plus, maybe the biggest, it breaks down the whole concept behind Bionicle of Makuta being cancer in Mata Nui's body and Toa being medicine going inside. Now the analogy must be stretched so that Mata Nui has an actual body that's okay, and a "parallel" body that's larger and contains people. The idea of those people being analogous to tiny cells in our bodies doesn't really work with this, especially if the point is to shrink Mata Nui! Now to specific arguments: From the OP:

-To be clear, nothing wrong with changing it for a fanfic. This post is meant to be answering why the main story is best how it is, on this issue. But the reasons it is best canonically need not apply to a fanfic; different audience.

-When alternate dimensions have been appealed to elsewhere in the story, it hasn't been called "simple", for good reason. I'd think something that might actually be able to be built in real life (albeit not fitting as well on the real Earth) would be the simple one.

-And the other dimensions thing has been widely disliked, so probably not a good idea for audience-based reasons again.

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-VN is definitely a major problem to the idea, as it was not intentional. Mata Nui actually isn't, since Bohrok were designed to exit to the face, so methods of getting from the pocket world to the face would have existed.

-Teridax taking over isn't really a big problem either, since presumably everything about Mata Nui having control over the interior would remain so. A bridge between the two worlds there would make sense. However, both of these "not problems" do require a bit of patching and explaining, so still problems... just minor.

-Adding TARDIS-walls to this idea actually is another big patch, and is not the same as the "simple"(-ish) pocket dimensions we've seen in Bionicle. You couldn't physically ram into walls in the Zivon's realm and end up in the MU. So now you're adding TWO things to explain. Pocket dimensions are entirely next to the main dimension. The Tardis is more like "compressed space." (Though it could of course travel through time and space and even to another dimension (accidentally).) More of a squished sponge than a pocket.

Those work great for Doctor Who, because they're central to the concept. Not so for Bionicle.

-This line of explanation also forgets that if we're appealing to "giant-focused messing with physics", versus SM-focused, why not go much simpler and just say Mata Nui controls gravity and such so his size isn't a problem?

Since Greg seems to have gone the "SM size is artistic license" route now, that may actually be the case, and we know Mata Nui has such powers. Right -- which is why going with Faber's concept idea probably doesn't work, and might be part of why Greg went with a much larger number.

Remember that concept art is just that -- throwing ideas out, which often will be modified before a final version is chosen.

Edit: Mjol, can we please not go down your anti-protodermis rabbit hole here, since it's off-topic? Short answer, though, is just saying it's a bad idea doesn't prove that true. (But I don't see how just saying "protodermis makes it possible" explains how it would work.) Also, to the "throwing around numbers" idea -- actually, if there's a good reason why the number isn't a problem, "throwing it around" actually IS good writing, if the reason for throwing it does something for your story you want (like helping the vast feeling, and having room for continents). And to clarify, Greg DID confirm SM is larger than Earth, and that the reaction to gravity portrayed may be artistic lisense, but also turned down anything odd with the planet's gravity itself. So the answer seems to be a bit of both, with the giant being the size described. Which does work just fine, just takes a bit of thought. For example, if it really doesn't matter if there are two people in the background in a story's scene, or twenty, picking a number at random is okay for a story. (And actually, throwing tons of effort into trying to statistically calculate a number based on tons of factors instead would be a waste of the writer's time.) Likewise, since an enormously giant giant was possible for Bionicle (which isn't in our world and not subject to all its rules), picking a number that factored for real-world design of every feature wouldn't really have been wise for the goals LEGO had in mind for this story, which wasn't to create a totally realistic "hard science fiction" story, as fun as it can be for some of us to see if we can speculate ways to make it work for that. It would have missed the point of why Bionicle had a story and why the size was being chosen. This is circular reasoning. Whether it was sloppy is exactly what's being debated. And I'm the first to call him on it when it legitimately is, like my detailed explanation of why his retcon of the Shattering moons into planets didn't make sense.

This one does work. It's right on the edge of what works, but it works. The idea that it doesn't is a fan invention based on not thinking it through carefully. But there's been many topics where we've done that over the years, and my post above summarizes the findings. Again: 1) This isn't the terrestrial world (as in Earth's world), and appealing blindly to Earth's (our world's) physics alone as if that proved how things must work in a fictional universe is not a good argument. It can be part of a good argument if you consider all factors, but that alone is not enough. And: 2) Greg didn't say how much larger it is, only that it's larger. (Plus, this is alien biology. However, I have not liked to appeal to that explanation in the past. Worth mentioning that fans have brought it up though.) My old main theory, incidentally, was that the EP transformed the core (as EP either transforms or destroys), to absorb any gravity over Earth levels. This would have solved all issues just fine and would fit Bionicle physics normally. Greg has turned it down, but also left room for the other solution -- that the art showing it near Jupiter's size is simply artistic license. I do agree Greg wasn't thinking likely of gravity physics and that route of math when he came up with the number, but see the last comment edited into my first post on why that makes sense for a "comic-book physics" toyline. However, he was likely thinking of some things, like making it really hard to grasp how large it is, which makes sense for the purposes of it. And before we've seen him talk some of the math he's looked up, and I've usually found that they work out, albeit sometimes a little off. I've debunked this too; see this image. Both of these arguments are just fan myths that have been going around (and being debunked over and over). As for the specific math of Australia, I haven't calced that, admittedly, but there's really no reason for a problem either way. If it approaches the smallest real-world continent in size, so be it. It's a really big island, then, and it was called one in-story. If we don't enlarge it, then the eye-holes still do fit underneath it, just not the sides of the face, which don't matter. Not worth retconning over. But have other issues as pointed out, like not fitting the idea of there being continents inside the giant. And this argument forgets the many other examples of contradictions between different artistic portrayals in Bionicle, many far, far more blatant than this. Face it -- the animators weren't worrying about exact sizes. All of this assumes the artists were worried about portraying the "actual canon size." They weren't. Doesn't really matter -- it was uninhabited. But I think, along the lines of my gravity control mention earlier, the giant probably had systems, probably somewhat or fully automated, to minimize his effect on planets. He was designed to spy on them stealthily, after all. So things like absorbing excess water so no flooding, and probably a cloaking device for landings and takeoffs, and maybe inertial dampening fields, would likely be included, and might still be functioning to a degree even during the Great Cataclysm. (Just as the internal versions probably were, which would probably be why the impact caused only survivable quakes rather than instant death of everybody from a single superquake impact.) fishers, you lost me a bit with that math, both in the original topic and here, to be honest. I'm not sure why square miles and surface area is being considered? How long is Australia, directly, in feet? And is RS's quoted feet conversion for Earth's diameter accurate? This isn't an odd topic -- it's been one of the regulars since we learned of the size. And you seem (both in this and an earlier post) to be under a misconception that the reboot has anything to do with not being able to enjoy discussing the original, which, if I may say, is itself rather odd. (The giant robot not being in the reboot is something fans of the giant robot voted for too, you know, in a poll I ran on it. It has nothing to do with anything against that idea, as if it's not an interesting concept... quite the opposite, but that also means it's been done, and a reboot can't really copy off of it and also be original. Every year of Bionicle tried to be original somehow -- which means old themes will not be repeated AND remain interesting -- "timeless". ) Very glad for that. I thought Greg hinted or stated that Mata Nui had actually granted them innate powers, but that they were basically in denial of it. Not sure on that one though, but either way, they do have powers if they hold the weapons. But keep in mind the Toa lived (and sometimes fought) alongside beings like Matoran who had no powers (or tool powers). If indeed they don't have innate powers, their strategy in battle would be different than Toa, but not that much. That's generally the only time any good guy fights, including Toa. Depends on how you define Glatorian. I don't know if we have an actual official number, but BS01's Employed Glatorian section seems to imply it's a small number -- 100 is probably a good guess at the ceiling. But that would probably just be the employed from the four main tribes. Some Skrall were also designated Glatorian, and if you go by species name, there's an unknown number of unemployed (as Glatorian) warrior class, of all five of those tribes. (Especially Skrall.) Plus you might want to count the Vorox, unsure. They used to be of the type called warrior class, anyways. What a good ceiling guess would be for either total (five including unemployed, or all warrior class), I really have no idea. But probably not more than a few thousands, maybe much less. I'd add that even the youngest like Gresh had 100,000 years of experience in the arenas, constantly practicing too, while Toa didn't necessarily rigorously practice, so Glatorian's combat skills would probably outpace most Toa. Since Toa do get drained of EE eventually, and mask powers may take a while to recharge, Glatorian could be great backup. (Talking about powerless ones. But really I think Glatorian will probably continue to keep use of some kind of power, possibly tools getting recharged by Toa??) This is a common question, and the simple answer is "the word 'Rahi' is used in different ways by different people in the Matoran Universe -- in other words, it's just a word." So, it's just like how words are often used differently in real life. And no one simple definition applies to every in-story character's usage of it, simply because they're using different definitions. The old attempt "beings made by Makuta" fails because some were made by the Great Beings ("First Rahi") or the Order (Energy Hound). "Not sapient" fails because of Keetongu, Krahka, and a few other apparent examples Greg has mentioned, like Kikanalo (probably actually a spectrum from rare but intelligent ones to common but less intelligent). "No Makuta-made Rahi was originally sapient" fails because of Visorak. (It may apply to Krahka, but probably not to Keetongu.) They're a good example of the Matoran's special definition of it; even though they're as sapient (or close to it) as Matoran (apparently), the Matoran still see them as "not us" because they're not humanoid and don't speak a language that Matoran know. But some have decided for practical purposes to make one definition that incorporates this, and that works, more or less, it's just not simple. Something like "Usually an animal created by Makuta, though some Rahi are sapient like Keetongu and some animals called Rahi weren't made by Makuta." Short answer for how the subject came up for you (topic starter) is, you don't really need to worry about the word "Rahi" when trying to classify sapient species. Though I think it's simple enough to have a group called "Sapient Rahi" like Keets. You may be on to something here, although the name you gave this is questionable, since Rahi are not made out of antidermis. But it got me thinking -- maybe something all Rahi have in common is not being made with "spawning machines" (like Matoran), and the other non-Rahi beings always are? It hardly matters once they're made, but presumably every being made with a spawner is sapient. With Rahi it just depends on the species. Probably all Rahi were originally supposed to be non-sapient and all beings made in spawners would be sapient, but the Makuta decided to make sapient ones too. Of course, since we don't know how spawners work, we can't necessarily rule out that they work the same as Makuta viruses, I suppose, although I think the fact that there's a difference strongly implies not so. And Tren Krom wouldn't fit in this... but yeah. No, "not us" means "not who we (Matoran) see as like us." It includes many non-Matoran. Again, folks, it's really simple (and not simple ) -- the Matoran have one definition, the Makuta another, and possibly the GBs another. Most likely they are products of change over time. The GBs' idea would be original, obviously, and the Makuta may have altered it a bit, and the Matoran later as well. I doubt the GBs ever told the Matoran to have a weird definition of it. Bit of an issue with that wording -- this is a word, and words and their meanings are made up by beings. Within the story, the Matoran's definition is just as valid as any other, but not as true (likely) to the GBs' intent. So instead of "actually" it would be better to say "Matoran would call something a Rahi that the Great Beings wouldn't." And Matoran being a programming language wasn't a theory to be disproven; it was revealed by Greg. Basically, you're confusing primitive programming languages with advanced, adaptable ones. Given that it is spoken by beings that were intended to be "partially sapient", we should expect it to be highly advanced and adaptable (even before the full sapience update).