True. Although it could let them spider-man crawl up walls, though. Might be a bit overpowered, but hey.
Ah, I remember that now lol. I was stumped too on why anyone would think they'd prefer a place without metal, but I guess that makes sense. Still, it's pretty unlikely; why would the GBs design any Matoran to have such a weakness? Unlike De-Matoran, that weakness could be physically dangerous to their health. So yeah, I'd prefer a different trait. Anyways, the traits aren't going to get established, apparently, unless Greg does come back sometime.
Actually, according to a Greg quote, Fe-Matoran prefer areas where they can mine metal. BS01 lists it as "industrial regions," I guess because that would include the mines as well as the Fe-Matoran living in Xia, but yeah. I see how endurance would help in a mine.
Sounds like it means they have more stamina (versus Po who have more strength). See, that could work all kinds of ways in terms of preferred location, not metal per se. And BS01 says nothing about a preferred location.
So, hypothetically if Magnetics' ability was resistance to magnetic fields or minor manipulation of them, for example, they indeed might want to live around magnetic materials. Also, magnetic rock isn't necessarily under Iron, but might be more of a combination of Iron and Stone, so living in a magnetic place doesn't necessarily directly overlap Iron, even if Iron prefers to live around metal.
Well, I don't agree with the inconsistency argument either. I was only saying that the fact that they don't have a confirmed environment supports the argument of "can't find it lying around," which again, I don't agree with. Because as I mentioned before, there are the gravity generators and the information libraries, both of which would make sense.
Well, what are we discussing now? The seventh Toa element introduced, Light, established the principle that energy could be an element, and two of the originals established that fictional energy could be involved -- cold energy with Ice and shadow energy with Shadow. So if you're saying that people think it's inconsistent with Bionicle's original style, I strongly disagree. Gravity is one of the important energies, like Light (and heat from Fire), and Psionics is another fictional energy, one encompassing a wide range of subpowers that were also shown early in the story, like Mind Control.But if you're just saying that this "weirdness" of those elements makes some people like them less, that some people prefer tangible elements, then there's really nothing to debate because that's a matter of personal taste.Myself, I just like a decent variety. The EM elements try to be complete but cautious, so it's a bigger list that does a better job of encompassing realistic differences in materials, yet the non-combo list can't go on forever because there's a limit to what's realistic. For Bionicle, I think I mostly like the list as is; a few more tangible ones like Lava and Crystal would be nice.
That's an interesting theory. Since we don't actually know how Psionics works, I guess that could be possible.
Also, this is getting tangential but something that occured to me because of posts here earlier today is, although I support Kinetics, I've come to realize that actually, I think Kinetics supporters can find Kinetics in Psionics. Telekinesis is a subpower of it, and it could be argued that the reason it can also control minds is that it's affecting kinetic energy of the inner workings of the mind, whereas the kinetics of molecules themselves are too small. So the telepathic powers are just more complicated versions of telekinesis. This would explain why Psionics isn't just called Telepathy, and why Telekinesis is a part of it.So in a sense, we could think of Psionics and Kinetics as synonyms. Anywho...
Actually, what I meant was "balanced" symbolically, not balanced in terms of power. Sorry, I guess I didn't clarify that.
I understand all that, but that doesn't argue for them being overpowered, which was what I thought we were discussing.
Yes, you do have a point there. Though the "light environment" for Av-Matoran is a place with lots of light, and the "air environment" for Le-Matoran is a place that is high in altitude, which, in other words, means places where there is "more" of that element lying around than usual. So there are still distinguishable places that are associated with elements that are pretty much everywhere. And since Light and Air are both pretty common elements in fiction, it doesn't take long for us to associate Light with bright places and Air with the sky and stuff like that. But Gravity and Psionics aren't as common elements.I guess what I should have said is that most people wouldn't immediately think that there is a place in the MU where there would be more gravity or psionics "lying around" than usual, and it would have helped if it was confirmed that they do live in such places.
Light is everywhere too, and I didn't see that being used to argue against it in 2003, or ever really. And Air has been pretty much everywhere in the original plot and most of the rest, except 2007 and some brief space stuff later. So is heat.
Fair enough, I guess.
And disliking Ce-Matoran not having a specialized environment isn't an argument against the element existing; it's an argument against that detail.
Living near other Matoran makes sense. Though you could also say that they not only like to live around other Matoran, but other beings in general, including intelligent Rahi.And isn't the mental ability the shielded mind thing?
Personally in that case, I think it's likely that Ce-Matoran's ability is mental and thus they like to live near other Matoran. Since all Matoran generally like to live near other Matoran, that makes this not really a specialized environment, and yet, if you were to put one in a remote hermit type life, it might drive them a little more insane than normal Matoran. That's my take on it anyways. (No idea what the mental ability would be.)
Ah, well, that changes everything.
Sure there could. Keep in mind we don't know what the Matoran traits would have been, but they would be related to their elements, and thus a specialized environment could be constructed for them. Greg simply said that they don't happen to live in such specialized environments, not that they couldn't.
Fair enough. But would it have really mattered if that glitch hadn't occurred that made everything in the MU sentient? What benefits would there be for a social-glue Matoran type in a culture-less and pre-sapience world? Perhaps they made the sociable Ce-Matoran as a failsafe in case the glitch did happen, so there would be a Matoran type that could help unite the other types.
I see those two elements as sort of the "glue" that socially holds together the MU. The assumption that each type of Matoran must want to live separately from others is very unattractive, at least to me. It implies that all Matoran would be prone to the antagonism towards people who were different that unfortunately developed on Mata Nui during the thousand years of Rahi raids. Having one, two, or more that naturally want to live with other types of Matoran makes sense, to help remind people that "different is good". It paints a much more positive picture of Matoran society.Basically I think it's a mistake to consider these things only with the narrow lens of "what is very similar to past elements", or even just "elements", but you have to consider more important things like psychology, culture, etc. And in this case, since true sapience, with culture, wasn't planned by the GBs, you have to consider the practical benefits a pre-sapient culture would have with this design.
Well, this is a topic about elements, after all. And I agree with you on there being more to the story than the elements. I just don't happen to agree with the way some of them are implemented in the story, is all.
Clearly, Greg saw good reasons for these statements, and we should not ignore that. This is a much larger story than just establishing a list of elements.
That's the thing, though. As far as the story goes, we haven't really gone that deep into the functions of all the elements in the Matoran Universe, which is something that I think should have been explored a little more. And who knows? Perhaps we were going to see some of that in Yesterday Quest.
In-story, the GBs must have had good reasons to set up the elements the way they did and include the ones they did.
And I agree. That would make it make sense that the Ba-Matoran would want to live some place close to the gravity systems.And again, sorry about all that, I didn't mean "overpowered" at all. :)I say go for it with the polls.
For example, think about Gravity in terms of the giant robot. Really, the GBs did not intend for it to be possible for there to be bad guys inside the giant robot to begin with. Those thinking about being overpowered are thinking, "what makes a satisfying story about a struggle against evil?", but this isn't even remotely what the GBs would have been thinking. More likely they were thinking, "What if the artificial gravity systems go out? We should have Toa for that."