BIONICLE Retrospective

2002: The Bohrok Swarms

Part 1.5: The End of the Toa?

And so the Bohrok Saga concludes. Kind of. Technically there's another '02 comic after this, but this is where the first graphic novel ends, so it's fine, it's fine.

So last issue had big Part 1 energy, and this is Part 2. All the setup has been taken care of, and now it's time for that sweet sweet payoff. The End of the Toa? is non-stop action, jumping straight into the battle against the Bahrag and not slowing down until the Toa Nuva escape the collapsing Bohrok Nest, victorious and transformed.

The issue is split into two distinct sections, the first being the fight against the Bahrag, and then the second half being dedicated to introducing the Toa Nuva and their new abilities. And for the most part, it all works pretty well. The battle isn't exactly complex, but at least we get a general idea of what each of the Toa are doing, even if the only ones who really seem to contribute are Tahu and Pohatu. The Bahrag's powers are also clearly conveyed, the six elemental powers of the Bohrok, plus illusions and their invincible force field, and we get a little lore hint from them as well when they call the Bohrok the Toa's "brothers."

I highly doubt that the twist of the Bohrok being transformed from Matoran had already been planned by this point, so in this case I believe this line only refers to the Toa and the Bohrok both being in service to Mata Nui, which is still hugely important because at this point, the what of the Bohrok's mission has been revealed, to restore the island to what it was in the "Before-Time," but not the why. This is the first hint that the Bohrok are not truly a malevolent force, but rather one meant to be in line with the Toa's goals.

The second half is just as brisk and to the point, conveying everything the reader needs to know as directly as possible. The Toa are transformed, they're much more powerful, and they retain their original mask powers but can now share them with their allies. Very much to the point.

This issue is very clean like that. It does not mess around, it moves from one beat to the next, relays the essential information, and moves on. Even that divide between the two parts is very clean. The comic is exactly 14 pages long, with 7 of those being Toa Mata vs. Bahrag, and 7 being Toa Nuva time, counting the Toys R Us bonus pages.

Unfortunately, there's also a clean divide between the parts of this issue's plot that are solid, and the parts that are really, really contrived. I hate saying that because this should be an important moment, this is the Nuva transformation, it's a big deal! It should be good all around, and a lot of it is! The plot being straight to the point is a good thing, the Toa winning by combining their powers, showing the force of their unity, is a good thing, the reveal of the Toa's new forms and the deepening of the mystery of Protodermis is a good thing!

But then there are so many other parts of this issue that are just...bad.

Like, okay, we have the Exo-Toa, right? Big tough suits of armour, massively hyped up by the previous issue, described as power greater than anything the Toa have ever known. And they're useless! They are entirely useless! They hinder the use of the Toa's elemental and mask powers, so the Toa end up discarding them entirely in order to win. At least the Kaita got to kick around some Manas before being split and forcing the Toa to confront Makuta in their normal forms, no such luck for the Exo-Toa. All that buildup for absolutely nothing.

And then, when the Toa do succeed, they do so by combining their powers, exactly as they did the previous year against Makuta...except now they're going on about how dangerous it could be?? Like guys, you've done this before and it worked. And it works here too! It's like the reader is expected to know or believe that the Toa combining their powers could lead to catastrophe, as if they've been warned of something like this before. Except there has been no warning. There has been absolutely nothing to suggest that this move is dangerous except Lewa just now referring to "The Danger." That's it, just "The Danger." Boy, what danger?? This idea of the Toa's powers combining being potentially dangerous is brought up in one other place, in a McDonalds promo comic released this same year, but to fans who have followed the series closely since 2001, they know it's BS, because the Toa have done this before. So not only is their victory achieved in the same way for the second year in a row, which I have to say is kinda lazy, even if the end result is different, but the second time is treated differently for no apparent reason at all. Sure, with the benefit of hindsight, we know now that this instance of the Toa combining their powers resulted in the creation of a Toa Seal, whereas the first time didn't. But a first time reader won't know that, because the actual Protodermis cage doesn't show up until 2003,so all they get is a continuity error. And worse, an irrelevant continuity error, because again, there is no danger.

And then we jump from pointlessness to contrivance. Because now the Bohrok Nest is falling apart. For some reason. I don't know, is this the danger? Did combining their powers release so much energy that it's causing the tunnels to collapse? Is this supposed to be a result of the fight? For as clear as this issue usually is when conveying important information, this part is just unnecessarily obtuse. The tunnels are collapsing because they just are. The Toa fall into tubes of Energized Protodermis, at this point still just called Protodermis, just because. It's not the Bahrag's doing, no mechanism that we know of gets activated, they're just dropped in because the plot demands it.

It's just really frustrating that an issue that is able to be so clean and concise and direct in some areas manages to be so completely contrived in others. It's just...like just look at this panel.

This panel sums up my entire problem with this comic. On the one hand, it depicts the Toa Nuva soaring out of the collapsing Bohrok Nest, an excellent visual. But the dialogue is infuriating. "But at what price?" Gali (I think) asks, and Tahu responds with "Nothing has been lost." Which is true, there were zero downsides here, everything went completely in the Toa's favour, which in turn makes Gali, and Lewa earlier, look like complete idiots for hand-wringing over The Danger and what price they've paid for victory. Because there is no reason for them to think anything is wrong. It feels like they're responding to the marketing's claims that defeating the Bahrag would come at a cost rather than anything actually present in the story. Speaking of which, Tahu's line feels like a slap against the marketing as well. So many ominous teasers of what would happen when the Toa succeeded, what cost it would have. And Tahu says flat-out that it was nothing. All that hype was pointless, the Toa winning is unequivocally positive. It's a big fat gotcha and it feels lazy at best and mocking to the reader at worst.

I did not expect this to turn so negative, but yeah. Sorry about that. I mean in the grand scheme of things it's not that bad. You take the bad with the good and overall The End of the Toa? is fine. But yeah, once you notice the problems, it's hard to ignore them.

Anyway, to close off on a more positive note, I want to shout out Carlos D'Anda, the penciler for the first five years of the Bionicle comics, because he really showed off in this issue. Lots of dynamic and expressive posing going on here and it is a treat to look at.

Next Up: Divided We Fall

Yes THIS but since Rauru has the exact same energy as my literal dad he would consistently replace Link’s name with another random four-letter word that starts with L and be completely serious about it every time, LIKE SO:

AND

[original post x] @somehowmags​

It's alright

30 second timelapse:

to all people who said PART 1 made them laugh - i lov u 💗 this is for u

'I flirted with the idea that instead of being trans that I was just a cross-dresser (a quirk, I thought, that could be quietly folded into an otherwise average life) and that my dysphoria was sexual in nature, and sexual only. And if my feelings were only sexual, then, I wondered, perhaps I wasn’t actually trans.

I had read about a book called The Man Who Would Be Queen, by a Northwestern University professor who believed that transwomen who were attracted to women were really confused fetishists, they wanted to be women to satisfy an autogynephilia. And though I first read about this book in the context of its debunkment and disparagement, I thought about the electricity of slipping on those tights, zipping up those boots, and a stream of guilt followed. Maybe this professor was right, and maybe I was only a fetishist. Not trans, just a misguided boy.

About a year later, on the Internet, I come across a transwoman who added a unique message to the crowd refuting this professor. Oh, I wish I remember who this woman was, and I wish even more that I could do better than paraphrase her, but I remember her saying something like this: “Well, of course I feel sexy putting on women’s clothing and having a woman’s body. If you feel comfortable in your body for the first time, won’t that probably mean it’ll be the first time you feel comfortable, too, with delighting in your body as a sexual thing?”'

-Casey Plett, Consciousness

😀 i love setting out to draw 1 character multiple times but ending up drawing multiple characters 1 time instead 😀 i love it so much 😀

It's a little bit further into your relationship with art student!Bakugo and you've been working together now for the good portion of two semesters...

Except for whatever reason, your professor assigns him a different model for the upcoming final, and when you go to look for him after class (since at the announcement, he stormed out of the room in frustration, slamming back his desk and knocking over the overflowing recycling bin by the door), you find him weeping in frustration in the janitor's closet next door adhfnlkjadshfk

my thoughts on coffee talk 2.

the imaginary carlos and charles beef that some fans are convinced is going on is giving Netflix DTS trying to convince us that charles and sebastian were mortal enemies that prayed on each other’s downfall nightly

Im going insane

after knowing the whole story of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, I still can't believe Nintendo really went for the Princess and the Knight trope

It is truly fascinating how the common tumblr narrative around John and Paul somehow makes the guy who literally got violent multiple times over people insinuating he was queer appear more "on board with the whole gay thing" than the guy who said some awkward/dated stuff in interviews a couple of times.

Things I need to happen in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia s17:

Robert McElhenney III stops being worried about Mac being ~Bad Gay Rep~ and rather than having him consistently be More Sympathetic and Less Bad than the other members of the gang he's also shown as being manipulative and cruel and having some sort of character again outside of being Dennis' stupid, pathetic lost pet a Gay Man.

Do you guys remember when Mac was "bossy" and "the brains".

Gonzelda is now my new ship (Zelink who?) 🐔

But seriously, Gonzo is such a Big Mood™ coz while he was preoccupied chasing chickens, I was busy hunting koroks 😂

So I know we here at Startrekfandom love that "came back wrong but from the pov of the wrong" thing and apply it to many different characters and canon situations and I am far from trying to complain about it (I'm "came out wrong" trope myself so I was always gonna obsess over it) but having recently watched a very important episode (you'll know which one) for the first time I think there's a character who hits both tropes mentioned but llike, intertwined, opposite and subverted, and whom I wanna talk about.

Julian Bashir.

From his parents' pov he's "came out wrong but we got him help and he came back better" while from his own pov it's "came out 'insufficient', was destroyed for it, came back wrong and only later slowly came to terms with his new self tho never the process (justifiably so)" and it's heartbreaking because in a way, he's right! Jules Bashir died! His parents had an intellectually disabled child and decided to eugenics him! Julian is not the person he used to be and while I do love the person he is now, that doesn't bring back who he was! Part of me wishes we could've gotten to see Jules at least once and part of me hopes we never do because my heart would shatter.

This isn't a good comparison but nonetheless one I can't help drawing: it's giving similar vibes to anti-vaxxers. "I'd rather risk having a child who is dead than one who's autistic". Obviously this doesn't map over since Julian is still autistic and the procedure his parents subjected him to specifically targeted his intellectual disability and if any folks with id wanna comment on this I definitely recommend you listen to them over me, but it's a similarity I, as an autistic who has encountered anti-vaxxers again and again, can't help but point out. "Give me a normal child or give them death."

This may have been written about already but there needs to be stories about teenage Julian (after finding out and rediscovering who he was) practicing some good ol' recognition of the self through media. I need to hear about how he would encounter a story about someone who came back wrong (I'm gonna assume there's plenty of "wrong" pov stories floating around by the 24th century) and absolutely weep. I need to see Julian mourning Jules, taking years and years to process his feelings, experiencing guilt about how he, the imposter, didn't deserve to live Jules' life.

Came back wrong from the returned's pov but it wasn't an accident. It was done to you deliberately by the people who claim to love you. And now you are here, piloting the corpse of your predecessor.

Jules Bashir is dead. Long live Julian Bashir.

ayyyyy it's the art year in review post with my best work from each month