On the Topic of Canon...

Xboxtravis · February 25, 2023

First off, I will preface this by recommending two videos from Christian Faber's YouTube channel which goes into behind the scenes concept art from Bionicle G2's early conception phase... and which are both required pieces of context for the rest of my thoughts.

Okay so now that we got the idea in our heads that G2 was the result of a time traveling villain completing the upper half of the Mask of Time and using it to revert back to a different timeline where Makuta still had a chance of winning while also utilizing the portal through the Well of Time (the same Well of Time which took Mr. Makuro from his life as a Matoran/Toa/Turaga in the Bionicle universe to the Milky Way Galaxy where he would found Hero Factory by the way) oh and it all ties somehow into Slizer and Roboriders; and the whole Bionicle saga is a mythic arc where history mirrors and repeats itself due to the consequences wrought by time travel...

Can We Talk About Pepe Silvia?

Everything we know about Bionicle canon and lore is broken. Or maybe not, I don't know.

I think a large aspect of the Bionicle fandom which has long dominated is our dogmatic adherence to canon. I do not think this is entirely in error or a mistake... LEGO hired author Greg Farshtey to present books and comics to the fandom, and not only that Greg was willing enough to sit down and listen to us all as 12 year olds in these very forums asking the most banal and detail attentive questions about the Bionicle world. Word of Greg is supreme, its the words we etch into stone and enshrine in the halls of BioSector01 articles. Kudos to Greg, he was always fair game to it and even returned when many of us were adults to declare canon some lucky MOCs that won contests. I wish him the best of luck in his new career since he was laid off by LEGO last year.

The concept of canon itself predates of course modern internet nerdom, having roots in ancient debates over scripture. Religious elders would decide what books belong in compilations of scripture, and which were apocrypha. Its ironic then that such a concept has seeped into our pop-culture literature ideas, and anybody who wants to realize geeks can make as much fuss as any council on scripture only needs to look back to when Disney declared the old Star Wars Expanded Universe to be "Legends."

But now in the Bionicle fandom we are presented with our own point of doctrinal schism. Word of Greg for as long as it has stood, is not compatible with the Word of Faber. Who ranks higher, the franchise co-creator who dreamed up so much of what made Bionicle unique? Or the author who worked hours to put word to paper, and spent decades patiently talking directly to fans? In a system of dogmatic canon Word of Greg and Word of Faber can never exist. One says "Love Isn't Canon", the other speaks of how has spent time asking how robots would love and create. One says the worlds of Hero Factory and Bionicle are apart, the other states that they were one in the same the whole time. One has a world populated with characters we the audience got to help create like Helyrx and the Toa Hagah, the other would likely declare them apocrypha, "Legends" so to speak.

That is without mentioning of course the Word of Swinnerton. The Word of Templar Studios. The Word of Creative Capers. The Word of Saffire Studios. The Word of Ryder Windham. The Word of that Cool Guy on the Forums Who Seemed Really Smart. Etc. Voices of what we have called canon, clashing against each other; a confused sea of contradictory statements and ideas. But the truth is, it was always like this. Bionicle from its onset was a collaborative story, and the voices were never meant to be seen as at odds with each other. Bionicle as a work as to complicated to messy to have a clean canon, since the story group that lead it was more concerned with expressing big ideas than in detailing minutia. Men and women put time into creating for our silly toyline of plastic robots, a mythology a living breathing world (or at least it was in our imaginations) which despite its contradictions (or perhaps because of them) lived in our imaginations. The deeper we go into Bionicle's lore and origins the less makes sense, but it only makes the journey more rewarding. It makes one appreciate the human work of artists and authors in imagining this world more, for all its human quirks.

Also a preemptive congratulations to whoever makes that cool MOC/art piece/short story of Turaga Makuro falling through the Well of Time to end up starting Hero Factory on the other end of it, I am sure that is going to be dope. 😜

Nato G · February 26, 2023

12 hours ago, Xboxtravis said:

Everything we know about Bionicle canon and lore is broken. Or maybe not, I don't know.

I'm not going to address all of your points, because I really don't think it's as much of a decisive or divisive issue as you make it out to be.

People have long played pick-and-choose when it comes to which aspects of canon they want to accept, and what headcanons of their own they want to include. Greg has an awful habit of contradicting himself and forgetting details and making split-second decisions that he couldn't justify. He even retconned books that were written before he came onboard to what he believed better fit his intended themes and story arcs. Greg's word was never the be-all and end-all of Bionicle's lore, and I think most people who look at a BS01 article and see a half-dozen footnotes going back-and-forth over Greg's contradictory statements realise that.

As you said, Bionicle was a collaborative creation. There was an entire story team to oversee this stuff when the theme was still in Lego's hands, and Greg alone can't be expected to keep it all straight. Over the years people have put too much pressure on him, and too much stock in what he says. I see that as a problem with us as fans, not a problem with Greg, or with Bionicle itself.

But setting this all aside, we're at a point now where fans have made their own decisions about what Bionicle is for them, and I don't think any amount of revelations from Faber or anyone else will change that... unless they want it to. And that's the beauty of Bionicle. At its core, it's a story about creation and change. We can take it and make it whatever we want it to be.

12 hours ago, Xboxtravis said:

But now in the Bionicle fandom we are presented with our own point of doctrinal schism. Word of Greg for as long as it has stood, is not compatible with the Word of Faber. Who ranks higher, the franchise co-creator who dreamed up so much of what made Bionicle unique? Or the author who worked hours to put word to paper, and spent decades patiently talking directly to fans?

To this specifically, I would point out that the stuff Faber came up with, as fantastic as some of it is, is only concepts.

They're ideas. Amazing wild ideas that push the boundaries of Bionicle's what-if's and could-be's. They're what comes before the story team consolidates the details, before the "official" narrative is decided, before someone like Greg sits down and writes the books that become the finished product that we see.

Faber himself acknowledges this in the titles of the videos: the Bionicle that could have been. He's not in any way insisting that the version of events he's discussing supercedes or takes seniority over what already exists. He's merely telling us what might have been, what we missed out on, and what we might use to inspire ourselves moving forward.

We shouldn't view this as some irreconcilable divide that will create a schism in the fandom. It's just an intriguing insight into the behind-the-scenes process of developing a theme as wild and wacky as Bionicle, and perhaps some prompts for new stories we can tell within that world.