#matau is possibly anxiety coded but not in the same way as vakama

[bionicle-ramblings]

So since Matau is growing on me and I understand his character a little more, I saw somewhere that he, like Vakama, also has a bit of anxiety and self-worth/confidence issues. Where Vakama's anxieties come from his not feeling good enough to be a Toa due to not wanting to have ever been one in the first place, and from his guilt at Lhikan's capture, Matau's anxiety is more about keeping up "appearances"

This is more interpretation and personal experience(I may need to reread the books some more later), but Matau always doing reckless things in the name of "bravery" is an example of an "appearance," as he's trying to be a Toa the way he's SEEN Toa be: Brave, strong, always doing something dangerous, but still doing it while smiling. Add to that Matau is the wisecracking, comic relief of the group, always throwing jokes and keeping things upbeat, he's more or less set up an image of the Toa he wants to be seen as even if we or the Toa Metru don't know it:

The Toa Matau wants to be seen as someone brave, someone who sees danger and laughs, someone who can keep spirits high in the team. He also mainly just wants to be seen, noticed, KNOWN by all who see him, and he wants to be seen, noticed, and known as the image of himself he's trying to live up to

We don't know if Matau has ever WANTED to be a Toa, but I can imagine that seeing how loved and how much attention the Toa Mangai most likely received, Matau may have gotten a certain image of what a Toa is, HOW a Toa is. Upon becoming a Toa, he goes straight into making sure he IS that very image, that he fits the mold he made for himself

The way I can best put the type /version of "anxiety" Matau has is this:

Imagine having to ensure you are the one in the group that smiles, the one everyone knows as the "ray of sunshine," or the one that picks everyone else up. No one put this role or expectation on you. You put it on yourself and it's something that soon becomes second nature as you adapt and begin to really "live" in even if it's not really living

I'm not saying that we're not seeing the real Matau(if anything we see him more because this is his ideal version of himself, so to speak), but I can imagine that most of what we see of Matau is the image he's made for himself and a lot of his pride and vanity comes from this image

It's small moments where the "real" Matau starts to show, or more specifically how Matau reacts when he is not recognized as a Toa, or as the image of a Toa he made for himself. One such moment in question comes in the Coliseum scene in Legends of Metru Nui, when the false Dume turns the crowd against the Toa:

When Vakama tries to tell the crowd that the Dark Hunters took Toa Lhikan rather than the Toa, we see most of the Toa react, especially Matau, who has nothing to say and can only back away from the crowd as they call turn against him, believing the lie told about him

No quips

No trying to back Vakama and say they're innocent

Just silence

And other quiet moment is when we see him for a moment in the Vahki transport, as he, Nokama, and Vakama go to Po-Metru. As Nokama tells Vakama to have faith in being a Toa, Matau simply watches, not saying anything. It may be a "nothing" moment, but from looking at the scene again, Matau appears to be sitting in a similar position to Vakama, just with one knee up, and he only looks at Nokama and Vakama when Nokama says, "You will. Have faith," to Vakama having doubts about his being a Toa.

We don't know if Nokama and Matau even had a conversation before Nokama spoke with Vakama, but knowing Matau's little reaction in the scene happens and he's more or less back to himself after, I think that maybe Matau might have been dealing with feelings of, "If I can't be what I imagine a Toa to be, then am I even a Toa at all?" Maybe hearing what Nokama said and hearing Vakama's insecurities boosted him a little and helped pull him out of those feelings because he is more or less back to himself when in the crafter's village in Po-Metru

Am I saying Matau is also an anxiety coded character? A little bit. It isn't like Vakama, where it's easy to see and connect with. Where we know Vakama's anxiety very easily, Matau's is pretty masked, and I think it's meant to be like that because for Matau, acknowledging his own anxiety, or his feeling like he can't live up to the expectation he set yp for himself, is something he can't and probably doesn't want to do. It's a lot like a feeling of, "If I something right now or if I fall apart now, I won't be able to put myself back together again." I don't think it's that extreme in Matau's case, but I imagine it close to be

And that's been my TED talk on Matau. Sorry if some bits don't make sense. I'm beginning to realize I have something in common with Matau and I don't know how I feel about it😅

[bionicle-ramblings]

I mean this in the most inoffensive way possible, and this is purely my interpretation, looking back now that I've caught up more on the lore and read up on on the books and rewatched the movies:

Vakama is a very anxiety coded character

My evidence is more interpretation that anything else, but let me explain:

We all know how Vakama's story starts: he's an esteemed mask-maker in Ta-Metru, good enough to surpass his teacher and have the Turaga choose him to make the most powerful Kanohi mask of all time(pun intended), he's got friends he enjoys his time with, he has a good thing going for him, even if his city is overrun with Vahki that will attack on sight, there's a homicidal plant that's trying to kill everyone, and Ta-Metru isn't the most livable place to be, all things considered, but Vakama is at his most stable as a Matoran.

I don't have a lot of or any background on his Matoran life to really point out anything that comes across as anxiety, but I will say that Lhikan giving him the Toa stone and Lhikan's capture gave Vakama some kind of survivor's guilt, seeing as how Nidhiki literally threatened to burn Vakama alive if Lhikan didn't hand himself over.

Where we loop back to anxiety territory is the visions Vakama has, or rather what the visions could represent. Anxiety is often referred to as "being afraid of the future," and the future is something Vakama sees due to his visions. The closest I can think of that can be a real life interpretation of the visions(what it could be IRL) are panic attacks or anxiety attacks, nothing severe, but big enough that almost everyone who sees it chalks it up to, "being cross-wired."

Some other things that come off as anxiety coding are when Vakama still makes the Mask of Time, despite still being a Toa, when Vakama tries to feign confidence and gets irritable when he's trying to rescue the rest of the Matoran and is trying to do it as fast as possible, even snapping at and lashing out at his friends. Granted the latter, getting haughty and trying to get the job done quickly, seems to be more the result of Vakama internalizing Lhikan's sacrifice and last words, doing so in a, "he said he was proud to call me his brother, so now I have to keep him proud, even if he's not here to say it," which is a line of thinking that could bring us back to anxiety

In terms of how making the Mask of Time can be seen as something to do with anxiety, this requires a bit of a personal lense to view:

Have you ever been at a point where a big event or thing is coming up and to keep yourself from focusing on it, you try to focus on something else? For instance, if you were stressing about a new semester of school starting or a job interview or a test, have you ever tried to take the focus off of it by doing something like cooking a meal or writing ina journal or drawing? Just a small thing you're used to doing that both challenges you, but is relatively stress-free?

I imagine Vakama is doing mostly the same thing. With no sugar-coating at all, he's stressed the hell out about being a Toa and cannot really express that or back out because he was chosen, so he resorts to making the Kanohi Vahi; he's a skilled mask-maker and his job was to make masks, which he was very successful in. I also imagine it's a bit of a bargaining thing for him, like a sort of, "If I can succeed in making this, I can succeed going forward," thing.

There are smaller things that are also possible pointers or shows of Vakama's implied anxiety, namely how he chooses a weapon most familiar to him from his time as a Matoran(the disk launcher), how his mask power is invisibility, which I've personally felt sometimes when I was having anxiety moments("I don't want to be here right now, I don't want anyone to see me"), and just how quiet Vakama is in general, being someone who possibly wouldn't be noticed as much if he weren't the main protagonist in LoMN; I'm pretty sure if it was Matau or Onewa we were dollowing, Vakama would be an intriguing background character similar to Nuju, only slightly louder, so to speak

This was just a random thought I had, and most of it is just what I interpret, and sorry if it doesn't make a lot of sense😅