Kayru

Would you call the majority of BZPower 'professionals'? I certainly wouldn't. The thing is, rating numbers have good potential. With a good explanation for the ratings, they can pose a plausible visualization of a person's genuine opinion on how you did in comparison to the best and worst you can possibly do. You may say that then, if a post has good thorough constructive criticism and a well-explained opinion, number ratings are redundant. Well, that can be true... sometimes. But sometimes the CC makes it hard to understand what exactly the commenter's opinion is. Sometimes you spend so much time telling the artist what to work on, it makes it look like you don't like their creation at all, which may be very different from their actual opinion of the thing. Number ratings could give a more tangible overall assessment in those cases. However, I agree. 99% of the number ratings used are totally pointless, thoughtless and/or unreasonable. Unless it's from someone I know and trust or it has a lot of explanation behind it, it's best ignored. Wouldn't it be nice if they just didn't use them anymore...

I fail to see how cooking babies in the microwave is helpful, Bolt. I see no problem in not making the Bionicle characters look feminine. As biomechanical creatures, it's not like there'd be much use for anatomical differentiation. But having women as a minority instead of the half-and-half that real society is, it gives the idea that females are not as interesting or as skilled as males for action. And as a female, I for one remember feeling that only having one heroine showed them as being less valuable or useful as male heroes. I'm sure the issue is not in female involvement. Everyone in the storyline is 'involved' some way, and that is even more so for main heroes. I think the issue is in the numbers. Make it realistic - have half male, half female, just like in the real world. Having women as a minority gives the idea that they are mainly unfitting in an action storyline. I haven't heard a single male object to having more women in the storyline, and I know that most, if not all, female fans would prefer it that way. Then again, the one-sidedness has been there from the beginning. Lego dug itself into a hole. If they were to suddenly change the ratio of men to women dramatically, it's more likely now than ever that, from a sales standpoint, their ratings and profit would drop substantially. The recurring minority-majority has established the idea already to the fan base that having fewer women is better, and it is likely that now if more females were added, kids would stop because Bionicle was 'getting too girly'. Bravo, Lego. Shoulda thought that one out in the beginning, shouldn't you?

Actually, speaking as a fellow female, Toa Matt's creation actually does bear some resemblance to a female chest, if you blur it out and envision it as more of someone wearing clothes (which submit one's chest to being more rounded and more like his MOC, honestly). Well, it's not like Lego's ever going to make breast-shaped pieces. So as bcii said, it probably would be better just to use other methods of making MOCs feminine. Good MOCers can capture subtle things like curviness and different proportions to make their creation look female without going all Amazon (oh, I about exploded when I saw that one topic a long time ago about how to fit huge chests on the Toa Mata and Metru...). Then again, I've gotten plenty of comments from Non-Bioniclers (??) that the Nuva armor looks like chickstuff. I'd be pretty entertained to see Tahu as a woman. EDIT: Oh jeez. Not one shoulder plate, but TWO?? As if that helped!