Bionicle: adapting a Matoran story for humans

Previously, on Tumblr

The Bionicle Lore is deep enough that it’d probably make the basis for a good human religion. It’s got some nice moral lessons, some good fights, some nice self-sacrifices. You can tell the flat-Earthers that, well, kinda, yes it’s not a globe but really it’s just placed on the skin of a giant robot made by the truly elder gods. You can get a religious exemption to piously wear carved metal masks in public. What it mostly lacks is rites and day-to-day observations. In this essay, I will

Bionicle as a nereligion, 2019-11-25

An important part of Bionicle lore is that most species of sentient being (not just sapient) wear Kanohi masks. These masks come in several levels of power, from powerless to noble to great to legendary. The heroes of the stories, the Toa, wear the Great Kanohi, which have significant power. The wise elders, the Turaga, wear the Noble Kanohi, which are lesser forms of the Kanohi those Turaga once wore when they were Toa. Most of the standard folk in life, Matoran, wear powerless Kanohi, but if a Matoran becomes a Toa, the new Toa’s Great Kanohi’s power will correspond to the powerless mask they wore.

Masks come in types as well as power levels, and it is these types that determine the powers granted by Great and Noble Kanohi.

And for a while, I thought that in a neoreligion, Kanohi would just be symbolic things, worn by members of the neoreligion like Harry Potter fans wear Hogwarts memorabilia and make deep-delve fanon posts about what their wand construction would be.

But after reviewing the known types of Kanohi masks, and the present state of technology, I’m sure that [several] masks could be made in powered forms[, with modern techonology]

…

What’s really needed is a standardized head-helmet on which to mount the masks, which would provide power, user-facing displays, eye lights, and fallback vision cameras in case the mask doesn’t provide additional sensory inputs.

On the role of masks in a Bionicle neoreligion, 2020-11-12

What would a neoreligion based upon Bionicle call itself?

Let us quote Turaga Vakama: “This is the Way of the Bionicle.”

I’m using this clip from Bionicle: The Mask of Light to answer a question, 2020-11-14

The Orthodox Suva of Mata Nui believes that the Great Spirit Mata Nui blessed the Matoran with the virtues of Unity, Duty, and Destiny, and that it is through these virtues that Mata Nui’s brother, Makuta, will be defeated and Mata Nui reawakened.

The LessWrongian Suva acknowledge the existence of Makuta, and work with the Orthodox Suva to defeat him. But unlike the Orthodox Suva, the LessWrongian Suva believes that the Great Spirit Mata Nui does not exist yet. The LessWrongian Suva believes that it is through the virtues of Unity, Duty, and Destiny, and only through those virtues, that the Great Spirit can finally be constructed.

LessWrongian Bionicleism, 2021-04-22

Resources for resources

Like this site’s project to analyze Zeonism, to do this work well would require a lot of time reading Bionicle lore. That time is not currently available to this page’s curator.

So, some resources if you want to go about doing this:

• Biosector 01
• The Internet Archive has software, books, and some video content
• WikiHow: How to start a cult
• The Matoran Language (2021) which is a lovely piece of xenolinguistics by Tumblr User @outofgloom
  • Introduction to the Matoric Language (PDF, 633 kb)
  • A Phrasebook of Matoric (PDF, 223 kb)
• The Muslimness of Dune: A Close Reading of “Appendix II: The Religion of Dune”

How to adapt the Way of the Bionicle as a human religion

These questions are decisions that will need to be made as you determine what shape the Way of the Bionicle takes in your community.

Key questions to answer:

1. Is Bionicle just Greg Farshety’s fever dream, or is the story that he and the rest of the Lego Group assembled something that is real?
   • If Bionicle is Real™, is it in the past, present or future?
     • If humans spread out into the stars, will they find Spherus Magna, the Red Star, the Glatorians and Matoran and Makutas, and maybe the Great Beings? Their fossilized remains? Or are these a future state of being for the human race, which they must build? Are humans the Great Beings whom will construct the Agori, the Matoran, the Great Spirit Mata Nui, and all the rest?
   • If Bionicle is Not Real™, are the Matoran representative of humans? Or are they a set of puppets used to enact a morality play? Perhaps the human analog is the Agori instead?
   • What do you call Greg Farshety? The title “The Chronicler” is used for Takua, who took notes, and was presumably passed off to someone else when Takua became Takanuva. But if Farshety is transcribing visions of a future, is the “The Prophet”? The past or present, “The Chronicler”? “The Dreamer”? “The Writer”? Surely not “The Author”?
2. Are you limiting this to the more-limited mythology told by the Turaga to the amnesiac Matoran of the Island of Mata Nui, or are all works of the Bionicle story to be considered part of the Bionicle religion’s lore and canon? Even the Alternate Universe stories that the Toa Mata Nui visited?
   • The smaller legendarium will be easier to adapt, yet it’s mostly limited to a comforting story told by scheming elders to keep a bunch of amnesiac ten-thousand-year-old cyborgs happy and under control as they eke out a stone-age existence.
   • The larger legendarium provides vastly more parables and interesting creatures, as well as more masks, and a more-complex definition of “Makuta” and “Shadow”. From the full Bionicle canon, you get a richer religion. Compare the Torah to the extended Abrahamic Cinematic Universe. If done correctly, you’ll blend tales from the stone age with tales from a universe-hopping war and tales from a wholly-urban environment. Yet because of its size, it will be much harder to adopt.
   • Will you also include the Bionicle Reboot? (Personally, this archivist advises against it; it’s a tiny legendarium without much symbolism or room for exploration of morals)
3. How should humans behave?
   • The Matoran and Agoir live in groups by elemental affinity, within regions of islands defined by their elemental affinity. The Matoran are hybrid biomechanical creatures. What lessons can be derived from their lives and ways of living for humans? The Agori are biological creatures who augment themselves over time, averaging 15% mechanical implants. Is this an example of a way to be, or an imperative?
   • What role do masks have, if the masks that humans wear have very little of the power that infuses the Kanohi?
   • Toa and Turaga are physically different from Matoran. Presumably, humans cannot undergo the Pokémon-style metamorphosis from Matoran to Toa to Turaga. For humans, is this metamorphosis a metaphor for the aging process? The progression from child to adult to elder? The experience of being given a quest, fulfilling it, and retiring? Any old quest, or something life-defining?
4. What are Rahi?
   • Discourage calling other humans Rahi.

Suggestions for physical trappings of the religion

The Bionicle legendarium has strong themes of light and shadow. Physical gathering places (suva) should have strong contrasts in lighting, and light/shadow should be a strong theme in any liturgy or practice. (See Zoroastrianism or the Secular Solstice canon)

Elemental powers such as water, ice, fire, air, earth, stone, light, iron, sonics, electricity, plasma, magnetism, psionics, The Green: these are somehow essential to the universe, but how can they be present in your religion’s practice?

“Masks” could be trinkets, charms, pins, bracelets, or something else that does not cover the face. Yet this archivist thinks that a human religion of Bionicle would benefit from the markedness that comes from wearing a solid mask covering the entire face, at least in public. In many countries, there are provisions in law to allow for religious headgear. Exploit this. Encourage your adherents to wear masks based on the Kanohi masks at all times, and encourage the development of a common headgear and mounting system so that people can switch masks as appropriate. Masks should not merely be ornaments, but serve as a reminder of something essential to the adherent, akin to the Powerless Kanohi.

If possible, develop masks which are also functional in some way, such as:

• including night-vision goggles in a Kanohi Ruru
• manufacturing SCUBA equipment in the shape of a Kanohi Kaukau
• making protective gear in the shape of a Kanohi Hau
• making a forklift operator’s mask in the shape of a Kanohi Pakari
• fitting passive terahertz scanners into a Kanohi Akaku
• piping video and audio through Google Translate for a Kanohi Rau
• incorporating pilots’ headsets in a Kanohi Kadin
• incorporating SONAR tech in a Kanohi Arthron
• spotlights in a Kanohi Avoihkii

Also, figure out how to discourage people from wearing masks of which only one exists, like the Mask of Light, Mask of Life, Mask of Time, Mask of Creation and Mask of Shadows.

On the subject of cultural appropriation

Let’s not discuss this.

Okay, fine.

If humans are to accept as truth the existence of the Great Beings, of Mata Nui and the Matoran, then they must accept that the only knowledge humans have of the Bionicle is the English translations by the creative team at The Lego Group. Whether the names of things in the English are direct transliterations from Matoran is a matter of debate; The Lego Group acknowledged that they had borrowed Maori terms and names for the Bionicle stories. The Lego Group subsequently renamed many things in a retcon, and continued releasing Bionicle.

The earlier names, then, were a mistranslation, and that has been corrected in subsequent works.