Talk:Great Sundial
On this page, it seems to imply that the kanoka effect was permanent consistent with what Greg claimed but counter to what is said in Time Trap. If it is still small, should it status be "Diminished", and if it is regular size, than it should be mentioned on the page. Firespitter Lhii (talk) 13:05, 10 December 2021 (UTC)
Hours
I removed the claim that the sundial represents an 18 hour day, and User:Surel-nuva reverted, with "As far as I know this was a Bionicle Story Squad addition, like the metallic bone structure. It's just lost media". Dumping some Greg quotes here:
- (On whether it represents a Matoran day): "No it doesn't mean that" https://greg.thegreatarchives.com/2008-2010/page112#post4451
- "I saw that there was some debate about this elsewhere, but I frankly don't remember ever discussing this in the past. I rarely answered questions that sprang from the sundial since that was not a story element I knew much about." https://greg.thegreatarchives.com/2013-2017/page682#post12447713
- "The sundial is canon, but it does not really change the trivia answer. A sundial can be used to track time, but we still don't know how long a year, a day, or an hour would be to a Matoran." https://greg.thegreatarchives.com/2003-2008/page224#post8942
- "I actually never paid much attention to the sundial. I made the year the same length as ours for reader understanding, so if I said something was 1000 years ago, there wouldn't be a lot of "what's a year" questions." https://greg.thegreatarchives.com/2013-2017/page128#post7060220
More on generally avoiding the sundial:
- "I wasn't involved in writing MNOG and have no idea what the writers of the game intended the sundial to be or what role it was" https://greg.thegreatarchives.com/2003-2008/page173#post6902
- "Don't know, the sundial thing was mainly an MNOG element, and I didn't work on MNOG so I have no idea what the designers had in mind for it. I only know what I used it for." https://greg.thegreatarchives.com/2008-2010/page223#post8883
- "That actually came from the story bible, and there was no explanation given for whose voice it was supposed to be." https://greg.thegreatarchives.com/2013-2017/page454#post11058329
- "Can't speak to this -- it's an MNOG thing, and I didn't work on that." - when asked about its involvement in material he wrote https://greg.thegreatarchives.com/2013-2017/page898#post14551889
- "No idea. I had no involvement with MNOG. Again, made before my time" https://greg.thegreatarchives.com/2003-2008/page296#post11803
I don't doubt what you're saying about the story squad. I wasn't super active on BZP back in the day so I'm not really sure how it functioned (and no clue what "metallic bone structure" is referring to - another canonization?). If it was canonized though, Greg quickly forgot about it and is otherwise pretty consistent about not wanting to touch anything about the sundial, and resistant to relating it to actual timekeeping. Either way, restoring the info with a citation needed tag really doesn't seem acceptable here. After all, what's to stop someone like me who sees an unverifable fact and doesn't know arcane Bionicle forum lore from coming along next year and removing it again?
And so I did some Googling and could find this bonesii post soon after the announcement, this thread discussing it as lost after a user added it to the page here, and it's inclusion in Dag's list of lost BSS topics.
Personally I think it's good to include it with a note that it came from BSS, is now lost, and contradicts the direct word of GregF. I'd say the BZP threads are more than enough indication that this did occur. I wish someone had added a note on it back then though lol!
I'm glad I went down the rabbit hole of tracking it down and documenting it here. Hopefully saves the next person the trouble. We won't recover the lost media but we can document its existence. ChroniclerTakanuva (talk) 06:18, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
- I see where you're coming from, I'm just at work, so I planned to add them after my shift ends. :) --SurelNuva (Talk) 07:15, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
- Reading back, I could see I may have come off as hostile. If I did, it wasn't my intent and I apologize. More I wanted to document the rabbithole I went down to find this, and hopefully document it for posterity. I'm glad you could give me enough to point me in the right direction! best, ChroniclerTakanuva (talk) 15:08, 6 March 2024 (UTC)