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Canonization Poll: Toa of Plasma's Gender


Plasma Gender Canonization Poll  

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It's better than the other canonizations we regularly do on this website.

Such as what? I'm kind of curious what weird things have been canonized by fans bringing it up.

 

Fikou.

 

 

all 256* or so Toa Mangai, and their associated items.

 

*okay, so it's not that many, but who cares about the toa mangai???

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Isn't it technically impossible for Greg to retcon anything anyway?

 

I seem to remember that he said that when a new answer contradicts an old one, we should take the old one as being more canonical. Unless he wants to attempt to retcon that statement too, his previous answers regarding genders are set in stone.

 

(And it is ambiguous as to whether Greg could even retcon the "use old answers" rule - either you allow him to because he is the writer, or you disallow him to because that would contradict the "use old answers" rule itself. Both arguments are valid. BZP would of course have to split into warring factions depending on whether you believe that Present Greg can overrule Past Greg, or not. :P)

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Isn't it technically impossible for Greg to retcon anything anyway?

 

I seem to remember that he said that when a new answer contradicts an old one, we should take the old one as being more canonical. Unless he wants to attempt to retcon that statement too, his previous answers regarding genders are set in stone.

 

(And it is ambiguous as to whether Greg could even retcon the "use old answers" rule - either you allow him to because he is the writer, or you disallow him to because that would contradict the "use old answers" rule itself. Both arguments are valid. BZP would of course have to split into warring factions depending on whether you believe that Present Greg can overrule Past Greg, or not. :P)

 

is there any actual ruling to the "old answers are correct" thing? like, did Lego impose that, or just greg? because if it's the latter, i find that kinda..... restrictive. :t

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Isn't it technically impossible for Greg to retcon anything anyway?

 

I seem to remember that he said that when a new answer contradicts an old one, we should take the old one as being more canonical. Unless he wants to attempt to retcon that statement too, his previous answers regarding genders are set in stone.

 

(And it is ambiguous as to whether Greg could even retcon the "use old answers" rule - either you allow him to because he is the writer, or you disallow him to because that would contradict the "use old answers" rule itself. Both arguments are valid. BZP would of course have to split into warring factions depending on whether you believe that Present Greg can overrule Past Greg, or not. :P)

 

is there any actual ruling to the "old answers are correct" thing? like, did Lego impose that, or just greg? because if it's the latter, i find that kinda..... restrictive. :t

 

I think the original label of "Tohunga" for the matoran mysteriously not appearing in the Metru Nui saga or ever again (for non-real-world reasons anyway) sets precident for ignoring that statement, so long as we don't try and use that fact to trick Greg.

 

EDIT: This was a terrible example, please move along.

Edited by JMSOG

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It's better than the other canonizations we regularly do on this website.

Such as what? I'm kind of curious what weird things have been canonized by fans bringing it up.

 

Fikou.

 

So were they not called Fikou before or something?

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I think the original label of "Tohunga" for the matoran mysteriously not appearing in the Metru Nui saga or ever again (for non-real-world reasons anyway) sets precident for ignoring that statement, so long as we don't try and use that fact to trick Greg.

 

That's different.

 

LEGO was in potential legal trouble for using that and other words stemming from the Maori language. So they changed those words to be less offensive. If the Maori had been all right with LEGO yanking words from their language, they would have stayed as "Tohunga". And Greg would not have stroked his beard one morning and changed the name to Matoran for kicks. The story team did it only because they had to. Legally. It was a retcon by necessity, not necessarily for story purposes.

 

If Greg had changed the name to Matoran because he felt like it one day, that would be proper justification for "[setting] precedent". You're changing the situation by taking it out of context.

Edited by TheSkeletonMan939
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I think the original label of "Tohunga" for the matoran mysteriously not appearing in the Metru Nui saga or ever again (for non-real-world reasons anyway) sets precident for ignoring that statement, so long as we don't try and use that fact to trick Greg.

 

That's different.

 

LEGO was in potential legal trouble for using that and other words stemming from the Maori language. So they changed those words to be less offensive. If the Maori had been all right with LEGO yanking words from their language, they would have stayed as "Tohunga". And Greg would not have stroked his beard one morning and changed the name to Matoran for kicks. The story team did it only because they had to. Legally. It was a retcon by necessity, not necessarily for story purposes.

 

If Greg had changed the name to Matoran because he felt like it one day, that would be proper justification for "[setting] precedent". You're changing the situation by taking it out of context.

 

...did not mean to take it out of context. I, of course, understand the real reasons, I was just pointing out that a precident existed, and that was the first one that came to mind.

 

Drop that example, fair point, it's different...Okay, instead, hewkii x Macku. Or if you prefer an example from when Greg was a writer for bionicle, Matau's flirting over the course of 2004-2005 (happened in more than just the movies).

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Drop that example, fair point, it's different...Okay, instead, hewkii x Macku. 

 

That was a Templar creation.

 

Or if you prefer an example from when Greg was a writer for bionicle, Matau's flirting over the course of 2004-2005 (happened in more than just the movies).

 

That's a better example. Forgot about that one.

Edited by TheSkeletonMan939

 

 

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Or if you prefer an example from when Greg was a writer for bionicle, Matau's flirting over the course of 2004-2005 (happened in more than just the movies).

 

That's a better example. Forgot about that one.

 

I'm frequently surprised about how often people forget about how prevalent the romantic tension between Balta and Dalu was in the first few legends novels. 

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I found another example of Greg using male pronouns for Plasma.

 

 

6) Could a Toa of Plasma form objects like weapons out of his plasma?6) If he was really skilled, yes

The jarring lack of the subjunctive makes me inclined to discount that quote's contents entirely. Greg clearly wasn't paying attention when he wrote it; so why should we assume the pronoun is correct?

 

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Edited by Ballom
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It's better than the other canonizations we regularly do on this website.

Such as what? I'm kind of curious what weird things have been canonized by fans bringing it up.

 

Fikou.

 

 

all 256* or so Toa Mangai, and their associated items.

 

*okay, so it's not that many, but who cares about the toa mangai???

 

Ok, you know this is being a little hypocritical. I mean I could say 'who cares about what element plasma is'. Yeah the need to know each and every Mangai's item is a little much, but at least it adds something to the story, the keyword here being Adds. This doesn't add anything to the story, as I and others have pointed out numerous times. 

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It's better than the other canonizations we regularly do on this website.

Such as what? I'm kind of curious what weird things have been canonized by fans bringing it up.

 

Fikou.

 

 

all 256* or so Toa Mangai, and their associated items.

 

*okay, so it's not that many, but who cares about the toa mangai???

 

Ok, you know this is being a little hypocritical. I mean I could say 'who cares about what element plasma is'. Yeah the need to know each and every Mangai's item is a little much, but at least it adds something to the story, the keyword here being Adds. This doesn't add anything to the story, as I and others have pointed out numerous times. 

 

 

The Mangai canonizations don't add to the story, it just fills in specific details about a group of characters who were originally left to reader interpretation. Taking that away, IMO, detracts from the overall story and the creativity the fans can put into it by theorizing about those characters or imagining them in their own way.

 

This is a fact of an entire population of a specific type of element, which means that pending on how it's canon, it affects how people will write characters of this particular elemental tribe and how they will be imagined. If they're left male then that's just the same as the vast majority of the world already, a world in which more female characters is needed in the first place. So making this tribe female would, at least, help the world building aspect in that the ratio of males to females won't be as humongous as before when speaking on a worldbuilding level of the MU.

 

It's not the end of the world either way, but it's a little grotesque to see how many people personally take offense to them being a female tribe.

Edited by Goddess of the Dark Sun
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It's better than the other canonizations we regularly do on this website.

Such as what? I'm kind of curious what weird things have been canonized by fans bringing it up.

 

Fikou.

 

 

Fikou have a set representation. They may not be significant in the grand scheme of things but I think it's pretty reasonable to give the little guy a name. Do all the other creatures in the Master Builder set also have names? I don't think they did when the set was created (because it's just a building toy...) but I'm pretty sure they were officially named retroactively because fans like to know things like that. This is in contrast to the Toa Mangai dilemma however which I for one was never a fan of.

 

The Mangai are mentioned very briefly and used more to provide history than any actual substance to the story I believe (I haven't read a lot of the more obscure material so could be missing a lot!) There were never sets of the Mangai, no gender, power or weapon details. These details had zero impact on anything other than than BS01 page but some of the fans decided it was worth continually hounding Greg regarding each and every aspect anyway. What mask they wore, what element they were, what weapon they had. And even after the polls here were finished Greg still turned around on at least one occassion and disallowed the 'winning' choice despite having previously ok'd it... 

 

The point is, there is a big difference between wanting to canonise things that actually exist like the Fikou spider and things that were simply vague ideas like the Toa Mangai. Even though the Fikou is pretty insignificant it has a physical set form and is known to exist in that exact form. All it lacked was a name and we got one. The Mangai on the other hand were ONLY a name when they were introduced and if not for the constant badgering of fans that's probably how they would have remained.

 

The fact that someone suggested these canonisations 'add to the story' is absolutely ludicrous. Things like this do nothing but remove what few grey areas remain in Gen1. Before the Toa Mangai canonisations, we could've written literally any fan fiction we wanted about the Toa Mangai and had it canonically 'fit' even though it would remain fanfic of course. Now that's impossible due to the huge limitations that these unnecessary canonisations have introduced. So fine, writers can just use their headcanon and ignore what Greg has given us as fact but if they're going to do that anyway then what was the point of pushing for it's canonisation in the first place?

 

Why not just leave it vague and let the fans interpret it anyway they want? You know why? Because for some reason, there are a lot of people on these forums who want to be 'right'. They want Greg to confirm that their idea is canon and therefore everyone else is wrong but them. That's what this comes down to, people trying to carve off a little piece of Gen1 and unashamedly inscribe their name on it. 

 

Let's not forget what happened with the Mangai too. First we get their elements then we push for masks and Greg relents. We keep pushing for weapons and again Greg finds it easier to just grin and agree than draw a line. I know this sort of comment causes a huge backlash on the forums but I genuinely believe Greg cares not one iota about these details of things like the Toa Mangai. That is not to say he doesn't care about Bionicle but his goal (and job) was always to focus on the overarcing story and almost every time we demand him to step outside of this brief he manages to mess it up by introducing retcons, ridiculous numbers, simple contradictions or just not what we want to hear... 

 

If we go ahead and pass a yes vote on this to Greg it'll simply lead to more and more unnecessary and outrageous retcon requests. Fine, there's only one time Greg refers to a Toa of Plasma as 'he' but why is one time not enough? I know people hate this gender divide (not sure why) but why does it matter so much that it's worth retconning? Why not just leave it and move on? Why not just enjoy the story without attaching gender labels to fictional robotic characters living in a giant robot crashed on a shattered planet full of reactive alien metal in another universe?

 

I just googled the gender divide on earth out of curiosity and found some interesting stuff. It seems Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have more than twice as many males than females, almost 70% male... If it's possible here in real life why then can people not accept that it can be possible in a fictional universe inhabited by Lego robots? 

 

EDIT : Just checked that page a little more. In the breakdown by age demographic, UAE is shown to have 2.74 men to women between the ages of 15-64 That's almost 70%. Just sayin ;)

 

It's not the end of the world either way, but it's a little grotesque to see how many people personally take offense to them being a female tribe.

 

I don't think anyone 'takes offense' at them being a female tribe. What people are objecting to is the consideration of any retcon whatsoever. I for one would object just as strongly to a poll asking to change a female tribe to male (possibly more strongly in fact) so I think you're reading way too much into this right now. I also know from previous experiences in this sort of topic that things start going wrong at the same sort of time as people start making false assumptions about other people and their opinions...

Edited by Munty
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I think to that rather late, but there is a piece of official media using male pronouns for the Plasma. It's BL1 translation in french. Yes, I know, that's not in english so next to nobody will care, but that's an official media and there is no way to know if this was a random choice from the translator or something she saw with the story team/her contact from LEGO.

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I just googled the gender divide on earth out of curiosity and found some interesting stuff. It seems Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have more than twice as many males than females, almost 70% male... If it's possible here in real life why then can people not accept that it can be possible in a fictional universe inhabited by Lego robots? 

 

Because there isn't a hard in-universe rule saying that Qatar or UAE can't have less than 70% male or that all women in there should apply only to a predetermined number of professions?

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I think to that rather late, but there is a piece of official media using male pronouns for the Plasma. It's BL1 translation in french. Yes, I know, that's not in english so next to nobody will care, but that's an official media and there is no way to know if this was a random choice from the translator or something she saw with the story team/her contact from LEGO.

You are aware that, with translations, English doesn't always have parallels in other languages, right?

 

The original transcript used no pronouns. During translation, they would have used the next closest term or phrase to describe the event, which in this case required them to use a masculine pronoun because that's probably all they had in that department.

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I think to that rather late, but there is a piece of official media using male pronouns for the Plasma. It's BL1 translation in french. Yes, I know, that's not in english so next to nobody will care, but that's an official media and there is no way to know if this was a random choice from the translator or something she saw with the story team/her contact from LEGO.

You are aware that, with translations, English doesn't always have parallels in other languages, right?

 

The original transcript used no pronouns. During translation, they would have used the next closest term or phrase to describe the event, which in this case required them to use a masculine pronoun because that's probably all they had in that department.

French and English are pretty transitionable in terms of translating, they are neighbors and French/Latin has had an influence on many English phrasings just sayin. :P

 

I think it would be cool for plasma to be female, it makes sense in my head, but then again to we really want more retcon?

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I think to that rather late, but there is a piece of official media using male pronouns for the Plasma. It's BL1 translation in french. Yes, I know, that's not in english so next to nobody will care, but that's an official media and there is no way to know if this was a random choice from the translator or something she saw with the story team/her contact from LEGO.

You are aware that, with translations, English doesn't always have parallels in other languages, right?

 

The original transcript used no pronouns. During translation, they would have used the next closest term or phrase to describe the event, which in this case required them to use a masculine pronoun because that's probably all they had in that department.

French and English are pretty transitionable in terms of translating, they are neighbors and French/Latin has had an influence on many English phrasings just sayin. :P

 

I think it would be cool for plasma to be female, it makes sense in my head, but then again to we really want more retcon?

 

But English also borrowed from other languages, so not everything matches up there.

 

That brings another thought to mind: was the French text talking about the Toa specifically, or about Zaktan (who supposedly killed said Toa), or Avak (the one who observed the resulting scene). Depends on the translation. Without having that provided, I have no way to check that.

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You are aware that, with translations, English doesn't always have parallels in other languages, right?

Adressing that part was pretty much the role of the "there is no way to know if this was a random choice from the translator or something she saw with the story team/her contact from LEGO." part of my message. Either way, it's still an official media that would become false if this was retconned.

 

I think it would be somewhat wrong if something done by the english community was done to the detriment of other communities.

 

For the exact translation:

Un Toa du plasma n'avait pas supplié assez fort ou n'avait pas révélé tous les renseignements qu'il connaissait. Zaktan l'avait alors entraîné à l'écart. Quelques minutes plus tard, le chef des Piraka était revenu seul. Quand Avak était allé voir de plus près, il n'avait pu retrouver du Toa que des bouts d'armure, un masque qui semblait avoir été à moitié dévoré et des flaques d'une chose qu'il avait préféré ne pas essayer d'identifier.

For the record, here is what it would look like with a female Toa of Plasma:

Une Toa du plasma n'avait pas supplié assez fort ou n'avait pas révélé tous les renseignements qu'elle connaissait. Zaktan l'avait alors entraînée à l'écart. Quelques minutes plus tard, le chef des Piraka était revenu seul. Quand Avak était allé voir de plus près, il n'avait pu retrouver de la Toa que des bouts d'armure, un masque qui semblait avoir été à moitié dévoré et des flaques d'une chose qu'il avait préféré ne pas essayer d'identifier.

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So, I've skimmed over the first page (yeah, I'm lazy) and one of the arguments I've seen has been "Why should we do this to appease a small amount of the fanbase."

 

I just crunched some numbers. Those in favor have 51.61% of the vote.

 

It's the people who don't want this that are a "small amount of the fanbase."

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I just crunched some numbers. Those in favor have 51.61% of the vote.

 

It's the people who don't want this that are a "small amount of the fanbase."

48 people is a small amount of the fanbase. Percentage doesn't matter much here, absolute number is much more interesting.

Keep in mind that if Star Trek fans had, as a group, said, "No point in talking about this anymore, it's never going to come back," it never WOULD have come back.

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So, I've skimmed over the first page (yeah, I'm lazy) and one of the arguments I've seen has been "Why should we do this to appease a small amount of the fanbase."

 

I just crunched some numbers. Those in favor have 51.61% of the vote.

 

It's the people who don't want this that are a "small amount of the fanbase."

Correct me if I'm wrong at all (wow, I say that a lot), but for starters, every BZPower member ever, active, inactive, or banned, only makes up a fraction of BIONICLE's entire worldwide fan base. Besides, that 51.61% is an even smaller fraction of BZPower, making that number very insignificant. Like maxim21 said, it's almost 50 individual people. Now, you are right about one thing: the people who don't want it are also a small amount of the fan base, but trust me, I don't think we can make much of an impact in our current state.

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Plasma would have to be male. Now for a female, it would be bo/bio or something, according to me.

OK, I'm letting myself in for trouble here, but explain? What is bio? Plant life?

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Just checked that page a little more. In the breakdown by age demographic, UAE is shown to have 2.74 men to women between the ages of 15-64 That's almost 70%. Just sayin ;)

 

You... do realize there are areas of the world where having a girl is seen as disgusting and female children are killed, right? That might not be naturally disproportionate.

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Just checked that page a little more. In the breakdown by age demographic, UAE is shown to have 2.74 men to women between the ages of 15-64 That's almost 70%. Just sayin ;)

 

You... do realize there are areas of the world where having a girl is seen as disgusting and female children are killed, right? That might not be naturally disproportionate.

 

Actually, the United Arab Emirates has a very high rate of immigration by foreign workers, most of whom are male. Naturally, the population is not disproportionate. They do kill/deport female children in some parts of the world (such as China), but I'm pretty sure the UAE isn't one of them. If there were nearly a 3:1 ratio, we'd have a serious problem. Even in China, there's about 120 males per 100 females, or a 1.2:1 ratio.

 

EDIT: I meant natural born citizen ratio. If there were three boys born for every girl in the UAE, that would be a serious problem.

Edited by Toa Vanson

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Just checked that page a little more. In the breakdown by age demographic, UAE is shown to have 2.74 men to women between the ages of 15-64 That's almost 70%. Just sayin ;)

 

You... do realize there are areas of the world where having a girl is seen as disgusting and female children are killed, right? That might not be naturally disproportionate.

 

...While i'm not advocating this, merely playing devils advocate...perhaps some historical event happened in the MU that we don't know about that led to the extinction of a couple female elements...?

 

There are multiple ways to go about this...removing the gender lock of elements, adding more female elements, etc...but the only way for that specific piece evidence to work is if something absolutely catastrophic happened early in the MU's history.

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Just checked that page a little more. In the breakdown by age demographic, UAE is shown to have 2.74 men to women between the ages of 15-64 That's almost 70%. Just sayin ;)

 

You... do realize there are areas of the world where having a girl is seen as disgusting and female children are killed, right? That might not be naturally disproportionate.

 

...While i'm not advocating this, merely playing devils advocate...perhaps some historical event happened in the MU that we don't know about that led to the extinction of a couple female elements...?

 

There are multiple ways to go about this...removing the gender lock of elements, adding more female elements, etc...but the only way for that specific piece evidence to work is if something absolutely catastrophic happened early in the MU's history.

 

That sort of did happen. When many of the Makuta were killed, I'm pretty sure most or all of them were female.

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okay, but trying to think of events in the MUs past that would have killed the bulk of its female population is actuall the one thing worse than assuming it, by default, is male-dominated, this topic is going downhill. :t

But there was an event that killed much of the female population of a species. When Miserix's supporters were killed off, 14 female Makuta were killed, leaving only Gorast. Granted, many Makuta were killed, and the original amount was 85 male and 15 female. On the other hand, we have a mostly female species - the Vortixx. Now, that's not canon, but is it that hard to believe that Vortixx might kill unwanted male comrades? 

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okay, but trying to think of events in the MUs past that would have killed the bulk of its female population is actuall the one thing worse than assuming it, by default, is male-dominated, this topic is going downhill. :t

But there was an event that killed much of the female population of a species. When Miserix's supporters were killed off, 14 female Makuta were killed, leaving only Gorast. Granted, many Makuta were killed, and the original amount was 85 male and 15 female. On the other hand, we have a mostly female species - the Vortixx. Now, that's not canon, but is it that hard to believe that Vortixx might kill unwanted male comrades? 

 

 

i;m confused, mostly about what this has to do with matoran/toa/turaga. :0

bnnrimg1.pngbnnrimg2.pngbnnrimg3.pngbnnrimg4.pngbnnrimg5.pngbnnrimg8.png

 

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I think to that rather late, but there is a piece of official media using male pronouns for the Plasma. It's BL1 translation in french. Yes, I know, that's not in english so next to nobody will care, but that's an official media and there is no way to know if this was a random choice from the translator or something she saw with the story team/her contact from LEGO.

You are aware that, with translations, English doesn't always have parallels in other languages, right?

 

The original transcript used no pronouns. During translation, they would have used the next closest term or phrase to describe the event, which in this case required them to use a masculine pronoun because that's probably all they had in that department.

French and English are pretty transitionable in terms of translating, they are neighbors and French/Latin has had an influence on many English phrasings just sayin. :P

 

I think it would be cool for plasma to be female, it makes sense in my head, but then again to we really want more retcon?

 

But English also borrowed from other languages, so not everything matches up there.

 

That brings another thought to mind: was the French text talking about the Toa specifically, or about Zaktan (who supposedly killed said Toa), or Avak (the one who observed the resulting scene). Depends on the translation. Without having that provided, I have no way to check that.

 

 

So the French as provided by maxim21 is clearly talking about the Toa; masculine articles, adjectives, pronouns are used to refer to him.  This isn't really sufficient evidence for anything, though, since in French every article and every third-person pronoun (and most adjectives) must encode either masculine or feminine gender.  Hence, the very first word of that passage ("A"/Un) had to set the Toa's gender as either masculine or feminine.  There is no convenient means of obscuring this masculine/feminine distinction, short of writing something like un(e)il/elle, and entraîné(e), which sounds terribly uncertain and doesn't mesh with the rest of the books omniscient point of view.  (By analogy, one wouldn't expect to read "s/he" in this sort of context in English; English would be more likely to use other strategies which do not exist in French, due to English's lack of grammatical gender outside of the third person singular pronouns.)

 

Given that French generally uses the masculine gender for nonspecific or unknown referents (e.g., in phrases such as Il pleure, "It rains," lit. "He rains"), the use of the masculine gender here really tells us nothing, since the grammatical structure of French is such that it uses the masculine as its default.  More likely than not, the phrasing of the translation is simply following grammatical convention.  (This does, however, suggest that use of the feminine there would have been an unlikely and bold decision, and so could have actually been positive evidence in favor of the retcon.)

 

By way of a quick, monolingual analogy:  If the English original had read something like "Zaktan killed the Toa of Plasma, and Avak found their boots," there wouldn't really be any reason to assume that there were multiple Toa of Plasma.

 

~ BioGio

Edited by BioGio
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I just googled the gender divide on earth out of curiosity and found some interesting stuff. It seems Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have more than twice as many males than females, almost 70% male... If it's possible here in real life why then can people not accept that it can be possible in a fictional universe inhabited by Lego robots? 

 

Because there isn't a hard in-universe rule saying that Qatar or UAE can't have less than 70% male or that all women in there should apply only to a predetermined number of professions?

 

 

I've read and re-read this and I still have no idea what point you were trying to make. Is there one??


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okay, but trying to think of events in the MUs past that would have killed the bulk of its female population is actuall the one thing worse than assuming it, by default, is male-dominated, this topic is going downhill. :t

But there was an event that killed much of the female population of a species. When Miserix's supporters were killed off, 14 female Makuta were killed, leaving only Gorast. Granted, many Makuta were killed, and the original amount was 85 male and 15 female. On the other hand, we have a mostly female species - the Vortixx. Now, that's not canon, but is it that hard to believe that Vortixx might kill unwanted male comrades? 

 

 

i;m confused, mostly about what this has to do with matoran/toa/turaga. :0

 

I was just talking about killing of the female population in general. Not necessarily Matoran.

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okay, but trying to think of events in the MUs past that would have killed the bulk of its female population is actuall the one thing worse than assuming it, by default, is male-dominated, this topic is going downhill. :t

But there was an event that killed much of the female population of a species. When Miserix's supporters were killed off, 14 female Makuta were killed, leaving only Gorast. Granted, many Makuta were killed, and the original amount was 85 male and 15 female. On the other hand, we have a mostly female species - the Vortixx. Now, that's not canon, but is it that hard to believe that Vortixx might kill unwanted male comrades? 

 

 

i;m confused, mostly about what this has to do with matoran/toa/turaga. :0

 

I was just talking about killing of the female population in general. Not necessarily Matoran.

 

"It would be better to say that almost all females died rather than retcon another tribe's gender"

 

S T O P

T

O

P

 

Stop posting in this thread, turn away from your computer and think about what you just said.

 

Seriously.

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I, uh... hm.

 

I'm just going to make a suggestion, and by suggestion I mean thinly-veiled mod reminder: instead of playing devil's advocate by trying to come up with situations in which most of a hypothetical female population might have died, stick to the topic of whether or not you like the idea of Plasma as a female element.  Like, of all the places to take this topic, that's possibly the least productive, and that's the most diplomatic way I can put it.

Edited by GSR
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I honestly think the colors of the Toa of Plasma are ugly (orange + white only works for drinks, yo), but...I'mma say yes. I don't wanna play Devil's Advocate, but at least make the majority of the Toa of Plasma female.

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Given that French generally uses the masculine gender for nonspecific or unknown referents (e.g., in phrases such as Il pleure, "It rains," lit. "He rains"), the use of the masculine gender here really tells us nothing, since the grammatical structure of French is such that it uses the masculine as its default. More likely than not, the phrasing of the translation is simply following grammatical convention. (This does, however, suggest that use of the feminine there would have been an unlikely and bold decision, and so could have actually been positive evidence in favor of the retcon.)

The rule you stated doesn't apply here. The subject ("The Toa") is an individual, not something unknown like in "It rains" (which, FTR, translate to "Il pleut", not "Il pleure"). It doesn't refer to a generic Toa either: it's specific, so the gender have to be defined as the character's gender. For a french reader, this passage clearly state this Toa is male, and not that his gender is unknown.

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