The Forbidden Ceremony

This is my entry for the round 2 on Bio-Cup 2023. It might be obvious from the photo but the theme is 9 circles of hell - heresy. Now, the theme is Bionicle; I had fun building a Mata Nui Online Game -inspired scene on the previous round, and wanted to continue this theme; this is Bio-Cup after all, and as I have to force myself to use bonkle pieces even when they're not the simplest alternatives, I can as well make real Bionicles. Of course, most of the stuff here is still something that is not present in usual Bionicle sets: landscape and vegetation. It would have been a very dull MOC with only the characters! 

Why is this heresy, then? Let's think of heresy for a while. I do not think that heresy exist, and heresy as a concept has mostly been used by despots and fundamentalists to oppress the people. Of course, there is talk and rhetorics that should not be tolerated - hateful shit and such. But it's not heresy; heresy is different view of world - and rites and ceremonies to manifest it.

Bionicle does not officially have romantic love. This is the source of disdain, jokes and endless asks to Bionicle book and comic author Greg Farshtey, who answered to children's inquiries with amazing patience and often awkward reasoning for years and years. There are thousands of these questions. Mata Nui Online Game and the following online animations made by Templar Studios clearly had romantic love between the Matoran villagers, but Greg later deemed them non-canon as the thing was not discussed in the story bible - and Greg thought that 11-year old boys were not interested in romance. I do not actually believe they are not, if romance is presented in well written and interesting way. Greg also said that 

" Romantic love is useless to beings who do not need to physically procreate."

Which is probably even more silly that 11-years-old thing. Now Bionicles are mostly robots and that makes them too, and having them "physically procreating" whatever that means would probably annul lot of the robotics thing; I dunno. But what I'm after here is that, procreating or not, romantic love is as good story element as friendship and honour and dismissing it completely from the story is a deed of utmost cynicism. As deeming stuff to heresy usually is.

But is romantic love heresy in Bionicle? Not in Greg's canon, as it doesn't exist. But there are texts that have addressed this issue and the cynical nature of the legendarium. My take is based on the idea that the need for romantic love exists, but it is declared unnatural, or harmful to worker's lives in a society working like a machine. Greg has such ideas, as the world was artificial. However, on my take, the longing dwells on the worker's hearts, and some heretic Turaga elders are willing to perform the ancient forbidden ceremonies at forgotten, overgrown shrines. There are no audience, no gathering or feast, as things have to be kept in secret. But love triumphs - even romantic love.

The model turned out very colourful. See, I can make a cheerful MOC on heresy! I knew from the beginning that I wanted to make a large version of Tohunga headpiece; I had used the normal one as a portable shrine on the previous entry, and large sculptures on them are a common sight in MNOG. That open some questions: Why do the workers carve large statues of their real faces, always hidden? That aside, the piece has certain epic creepiness in it; The dull grey eyes under the heavy brow... Usage on the weird NHL hockey players hinders the somewhat. The large flower on the forehead links the shrine to more cheerful themes of this entry, and is mirrored on the flower tucked on the mask of the Ko-Matoran. I enjoyed tucking the ziplines to the statue  - the same pieces also made up the tree trunks. They are very hard to handle but the effect is unique.

Otherwise, there was the everlasting challenge of using plastic warrior parts in landscape; the rahkshi backs were the most powerful ones, but I also like the mossy patterns made with Karzahni's marbled armour. HF cocoons made dome nice fantasy ferns. The base was curious one - simple plate or brick layer would have been too, well, bricky; I made a hexagon patterns as I had plenty of 45 degree angled lime connectors from old LUG support bags. It has some connotations to 2001 part aesthetics and the biomechanical nature of Bionicle. 

The characters were the last thing I built. Ga-matoran felt too obvious - I had no intent to define the genders of these characters, and gender-specific elements are silly to start with. Green Le-matoran would have been hard to perceive from the background, and that was also true for browns and greys. I ended up with Ta-Matoran wearing a red Pakari, because I had some nice orange piece around; the other one turned out to be a Ko-Matoran so I was able to use white robot hands in the fingers. I like the contrast between white and dark blue. The Turaga is one of the stone element, wearing a bright light orange ceremonial attire; It's partially inspired by the original turaga sets with a plenty of added mobility.

-Eero.