You seem to forget that BIONICLE is a fictional story. Also, just because love would be canon doesn’t mean that it needs to be explored in the main story.
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And thus, love doesn’t need to be complicated.
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Remember that time @Pot8o and I spammed signs saying “HEWKII X MACKU” All over the Metru Nui realm? I think it needs to happen again. XD
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it can be finally true
/s
except hewkii is still a toa
hmm…
Also good times.
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Not that it matters much besides making the romance hilarious.
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“I am going to kiss you now!”
-hewkii
macku goes to get a step ladder
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At least Hewkii is slightly shorter than th other Mahri.
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I’d say it’s still an oversimplification to say that the Matoran straight-up couldn’t love until witnessing romance between Agori, and an illogical one at that: After all, aromantic people don’t magically develop romantic emotions just because he or she sees a couple together. In order for Greg’s idea of “learning to love” to work, the Matoran would have to have the potential for such emotions in the first place.
The only interpretation of Greg’s words makes sense, imo, is that the Matoran (or at least, some) developed the potential for romantic feelings as an unintended result of the Awakening, but just didn’t understand or recognize them as anything beyond really close friendship - which would be consistent with the fact that, even in the case of Hewkii and Macku, they never actually refer to “love” or “romance” by name (except Matau’s brief “romantic ride-drive” moment, but we can chalk that up to creative liberties on the film’s part).
Furthermore, going by this interpretation it would still technically be true that Matoran “could not love”, since romance as a concept did not exist in Matoran society. However, after discovering the concept through the Agori, they could be able to better understand the associated emotions. Plus, this would not necessarily invalidate relationships that have been established - those bonds could still exist, just without the characters recognizing them as romance.
Personally, I prefer the potential for love (and established romantic relationships) to have always been there, but I think they’re better left off to the side of the story, and it was good that they were never actually explored as anything more than a side thing.
Just because love has the potential to exist, that doesn’t mean it automatically becomes a focal point of the story. After all, when we got relationships between characters, it was always very much a side thing, and never affected the story.
Edited for triple-post. --John Smith
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I also think it would be highly unlikely that the Matoran will learn to develop romantic relationships by observing the Agori. We are talking AI here. AI can learn, but we do not know that AI can learn “feelings” – romance was obviously not a part of the Awakening, which begs the question whether there is anything in Matoran AI that would be able to simulate that.
There is certainly room for argument here – a lot of argument – but I have proceeded on the theory that romance is frosting layered on the cake of a biological imperative. Matoran have no such imperative, therefore no reason to have ever developed romance, and still no need for it now. Any need for companionship is met through friendships.
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Good lord, i seriously didn’t expect a reply after this much time. But seeing that someone else brought it up recently i guess i’m not surprised.
I will admit, when i started this fun two years ago by asking the initial question, i went into it very much wanting you to say “yeah sure lets make romance canon”, so when you gave an answer that wasn’t a hard “no”, i sort of jumped on it. Now, in retrospect, i understand that your answer was far more vague than the yes i treated it as. I want you to understand that i did that out of excitement over the idea of making some kind of impact on the Bionicle lore, something that literally shaped and defined my childhood, no matter how small it was. Now i’m about to go on a bit of a ramble, and im not very good at cutting things down, so i apologise for that.
I’ve thought about whether or not a Matoran could conceivably learn the whole new emotion of romantic love, and i still think it is entirely possible. You have to consider, what form does a Matorans brain take? Is it a program? A mechanical brain analogue, a little squishy biological brain with electric implants, or even just a purely organic brain? Now i’d see the argument that a program or a relatively ridged mechanical brain wouldn’t be able to change enough of develop a whole new emotion based off of nothing but an observation of it, but its conceivable that an organic or partially organic one could over the vast stretches of time that Matoran live for (you could even imagine that some Matoran, maybe Ko-Matoran, would go out of their way to try and feel it, for scholarly reasons).
However, you would also need to consider the fundamental problem; can you even “learn” emotions in the first place? Like, could a human being learn a new emotion? Well, i would argue that often times we do, under multiple different circumstances. Children don’t seem to be born with emotions like lust or indeed romantic love, but we develop it, as you said, once it becomes a biological imperative. We only develop feelings like that once we get to the point in life when we need them, so Matoran really have no reason to develop them at all by that logic. However, human beings also develop emotions like jealousy, envy, and irrational anger as they grow, and there really isn’t any biological reason for that to happen, it just does. There is no biological reason to be made angry by floor tiles not forming a coherent pattern. Those are feeling that we learn from environmental factor, and through observation. If human beings can do that naturally within a span of maybe 12 years, i think that Matoran, once place in an environment like Spherus Magna in which the majority of the worlds population experiences a set of emotions that stretch far beyond romantic love, could probably learn how to actually feel what they can of that set.
I’ve been out of this community for a good while now, but even i know that this point of argument, at this point, is pretty dead. However, this is just my opinion and takeaway from what you said back in 2015, and what you are saying now. From the lines you have drawn, i still think its very possible for Matoran to love within the canon, even if the possibility of slim and vague.
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And I think you make a very cogent and reasoned argument. My counterpoint, though, is that Matoran are not human. They do not have human brains, they have machine AI, and I do not think that AI in this universe is going to be able to pick up on that emotion. They might be able to imitate what they see, that is true, but the feeling behind it will not be the same. (And one my arguments all along has been, of what use is a romantic relationship in the MU? All they will be able to do is hold hands. They don’t need the security of marriage, they can’t reproduce, and the support and caring of a partner they can get from friends. The only thing they are really missing out on is the heartache, and I think they can live without that.)
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Fair enough. I didn’t know whether or not it had been established what kind of brains Matoran had yet. Last time i heard about the subject it was still sort of up in the air, but knowing now that its decided on i am much more willing to rest with the idea that romance can’t be canon because of it. I also see the argument that including romance in the canon wouldn’t really add anything to the story, but i’ve always looked at it in a more present-tense light. The official G1 story is over, so really changing something now wouldn’t change what has already been. G2 would still be without romance. The only things it would really effect would be the stories people have come up with themselves, in that it gives us a little more wiggle room for what we can do without breaking canon (i know Lego’s all about doing what you want, but i’ve always felt that if you make up a story that falls too far outside of Bionicles standard canon, its not really a Bionicle story anymore). It may not seem like much but event something as small as handholding is a heck of a gesture in the right circumstance, and a dang-good plot-point.
Regardless, thank you for the correspondence. And thank you i guess for remembering this post after the topic was brought up again recently, i wouldn’t have seen it otherwise.
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I completely agree with you, on all counts. However, I think it’s worth pointing out that Greg is only saying he personally doubts it will happen - hence why he’s only saying “I don’t think…”. He’s not shutting you down, per se, just explaining his personal opinion on the matter. And to be honest, I respect him for taking this approach: He recognizes that this is an extremely sensitive topic that many fans care about, and that there are solid arguments for both sides. By doing this, he makes his opinion clear, while still not upsetting anyone. So don’t worry, there’s still a bit of wiggle room for you to work with. 
I can imagine this on spherus magna now
Macku: One of the agori told me about this thing called love
Hewkii: I heard too, it’s so weird and strange, glad we don’t have it
Macku(sarcasticaly muttering): Yeah I’m glad too
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Granted I am not a fan of shipping but MatauXNokama is absolutely hilarious in my eyes every since LOMU suggested it. If that could have wounded up as canon through this loophole then I could actually make fanart of Matau and Nokama at last going on their “romantic ride-drive”.
I imagined the farthest they would go is kissing but it’s more like the sort of relationship you have when your a child
I just think that places like Deviant Art are annoying about it but most other places are fine
Knowing how Velika is, he’d give everyone love if it just meant annoying the other great beings
The Matoran are practically children, and the Toa fill the roles of adults, so Hewki×Macku got kinda uncomfortable after he became a Toa, just saying.
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The Matoran aren’t children. They have the mind of adults. In Mask of Light, Takua and Jaller acted childish, but this is more likely so they could better relate to children. Takua’s transformation into Takanuva was a visual and narrative metaphor for Takua “growing up,” but it shouldn’t be seen as the case for all matoran.
In fantasy terms, a Toa / Matoran relationship is like a hobbit dating a human or elf. The main difference is height, not age. The same thing goes for Agori and Glatorian. (Now that I think about it, didn’t TLR imply Berix and Kiina liked each other or am I just misremembering things?)
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Well people (and Lego themselves) have shipped Kiina with almost everyone
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