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When were gender-locked elements made canon?


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Something just occurred to me the other day, made me wonder.

When was the idea of elements being gender-locked officially canonized? I don't remember any story media spelling it out specifically - not in the comics, MNOG, or novels, at any rate - but it's something that I know has almost always been taken to be a True Canon Fact.

I'm wondering now though, whether this was simply a fandom assumption made on the existing evidence at the time (i.e. as of 2002 all five named Ga-characters are girls, all twenty-two named non-Ga-characters are guys, therefore that must be representative of the entire population) that was adopted as true canon only later? Or whether, instead, it was official right from the start and was mentioned in something that's since been forgotten to time?

 

I guess what I'm really asking is, what was the original official source for the statements confining each element to a single gender? BS01 doesn't give any source for that fact; and I'm curious, more than anything else.

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I second this question. I'm also curious about the nature of the gender identity and expression of Matoran, as they lack sex due to not having any sexual reproduction. It is odd to me that love is not canon due to a lack of biological sex while gender is so strictly explicit and segregated. Would a non-Ga matoran identifying as female be considered trans?

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I just checked the "Bionicle Encyclopedia Updated" and the Ga-Matoran entry say, "All Ga-Matoran were female."  Interestingly, all the entries for the other five elements make no mention of gender, although the Av-Matoran entry says, "The Av-Matoran tribe includes both males and females."  Since the updated encyclopedia was basically just a copy paste of the original we can assume that the earliest source for gender locking was from 2005. 

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I know it was established in 2001, I have memories of arguing with my five year old sister when she said all Bionicle characters were 'boys' way back then. Maybe it wasn't completely canonized in a hard rule, but everything we had seen was Ga-Matoran were all women and everyone else was a male and I just sort of; knew that was the rules? Hard to explain without a direct source. 

As for Matoran anatomy... if we go at it from a canon perspective; I think really what makes a Matoran male or female might depend just completely on the programming of the Great Beings. Its possible there is some chemical or hormonal production that differentiates a male or female; or some sort of programming was hard coded to make them act male or female in the eye's of the Great Beings. While the films like Mask of Light and Legends of Metru Nui suggested there are physical differences between the sexes (I.E. Hahli's armor, or Nokama being much slimmer than the male Toa Metru members), but the canonicity of that is debatable since the sets didn't reflect that. We know it was important enough to the Great Beings that they were assigning genders to elements and sometimes reversed their choice if they felt it wasn't a perfect match. With Psionics we know the first Toa with that power was Orde, but while he was a male; all subsequent Toa and Matoran of that element were female. It all feels very, clinical, very engineering like with the Great Beings making adjustments to it all from whatever their logic dictates were. 
 

Would Matoran ever debate the meaning of their gender? I really don't know. I feel their society views gender just, differently than humans would; especially since it plays no role in reproduction. Elemental affiliation is probably a bigger identity in their mind than gender would be; and Takua's reveal as an Av-Matoran was probably a huge shock to anyone on Mata Nui. It seems repeatedly elemental affiliation was a huge cultural influence, and it even reflected in Toa teams were we saw Onewa butting heads with Vakama; which one could argue is a sub conscious result of the animosity between the Ta-Matoran and Po-Matoran rooted in the Matoran Civil War (interesting that the amnesia reset on Mata-Nui erased that old rivalry and the Ta and Po Matoran were much more friendly than they were on Metru Nui...)  

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1 hour ago, Xboxtravis said:

Elemental affiliation is probably a bigger identity in their mind than gender would be

I agree with this theory here. I feel like the real difference between male and female in the mostly-robotic Matoran Universe beings is akin to the difference between setting your Siri voice as male or female - a characteristic of aesthetic more than function. Since Glatorian and Agori can reproduce biologically, I imagine the Great Beings wanted to implement gender into the Matoran Universe somehow, even if it was through a different system, because it is likely a similarly important aspect of life to them as it is to people and animals on Earth. However they probably wanted to implement gender in a way that complements the uniformity they were going for within each elemental group, so they made some elements strictly male and others strictly female.

However, Matorans' gender may actually determine psychological/personality differences between them. If we look at Orde's BS01 article, it says the Great Beings changed all Psionics Matoran to female after his bad temper proved dangerous "as the Great Beings believed females were more gentle than males."

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2 hours ago, Xboxtravis said:

Elemental affiliation is probably a bigger identity in their mind than gender would be;

This is an interesting concept I had not considered. I find this all fascinating because designs and character names (stuff made for the toys) were made to be gendered and sexually dimorphic in order  to be more visually relatable and familiar to human child customers, while the lore explores what the matoran are and the implications of their existence (i.e., they cannot love).

49 minutes ago, TakadoxMusic said:

However, Matorans' gender may actually determine psychological/personality differences between them. If we look at Orde's BS01 article, it says the Great Beings changed all Psionics Matoran to female after his bad temper proved dangerous "as the Great Beings believed females were more gentle than males."



So pretty explicitly, the gender expression of matoran, in theory, reflect the values of the Great Beings and Agori culture.
 

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10 minutes ago, Presto said:


So pretty explicitly, the gender expression of matoran, in theory, reflect the values of the Great Beings and Agori culture.
 

Well that is how I retcon the references of romance with the "love isn't canon" rule. Velika "hacked" the Matoran to give them sentience, but its likely the Matoran took on the Great Being's and maybe even Velika's views of life as a result of that hack. If we take Legends of Metru-Nui and Web of Shadows; we know marriage is canon (i.e. Sidorak and Roodaka) and the Matoran have a concept of romance (i.e. Matau jokes about it with Nokama)... but we also have to reconcile that with the "love isn't canon" statement. 

I take it then that the relationships we see in particular with Hewkii & Macku, and to a lesser extent Jaller & Hahlii and maybe even Vhisola's attitude towards Nokama; are not love as biologically reproducing creatures such as humans, Agorii or Glatorian would understand it; but instead more like a child just mimicking what they see their parents and adults do. Like have you ever seen a seven year old confess their love to another kid and then go around holding hands? Its innocently cute, but its hardly what an adult would consider to be romantic love. I think that is pretty much the Matoran extent of understand of romance, gender and sex; they know it exists even if only via just weird bits of programming and knowledge quirks left over from the Great Beings... but they really lack the full picture to completely grasp what they are doing. So Hewkii and Macku hang out, and their actions would seem romantic to a human viewer; but between Hewkii and Macku the intent is really just the same as the little kids holding hands I mentioned earlier... just parroting and copying what their creators the Great Beings would have done... without fully understanding the intent. Again, Velika (and maybe Tren Krom or Mata Nui) would be the only beings in the entire MU to really understand a natural world as we the human audience would, and since it was Velika who screwed with Matoran programming to make them sentient in the first place it seems likely a lot of Matoran behavior just is copying his own personal opinions, biases and world views. 

Like to put it in Greek terms, Matoran understand Agape and Philia definitions of love, love for their common matoran, love of their deity Mata-Nui, and the purposes of charity and brotherhood (Unity, Duty, Destiny and the like). But they lack the idea of Eros, romantic love and anything the Matoran do that resembles romance as an adult human/Agorii or Glatorian would understand it is really just a subconscious childlike attempt to imitate what the Great Beings understood while lacking the context completely.

In a meta sense, its almost representative of a company ran and operated by adults (Lego) trying to make an epic fantasy world for children (there is a small part of me that wishes Greg never really canonized the Great Beings as a Glatorian group... I would much rather pretend they are far futuristic human-like characters with funny names for the Matoran such as Thompson, Faber, Farshtey and Swinnerton... :P)

Back to gender, its really just a side affect of their element for most Matoran, and to our knowledge the Av-Matoran were the only group of Matoran that had both genders represented in their ranks. So if anyone where to question the purpose of gender, it would be the Matoran of Light; because for everyone else the real important societal identify is elemental affiliation. Of course the more interesting aspect is the Av-Matoran hidden in society... again Takua spent almost his whole existence thinking he was a Ta-Matoran and there are countless unidentified Av-Matoran scattered across the former Matoran Universe who probably are unaware of their true elemental affiliation due to the Time Slip. 

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I recall the Mata Nui Explorer from the Mask of Light DVD bonus features, in the Ga-Koro segment, saying all Ga-Matoran are female.

Am I the only one who likes the elements being gender-specific?

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9 hours ago, Master Inika said:

Am I the only one who likes the elements being gender-specific?

I don't have strong feelings on it one way or another, though I do think it is a shame that because this is all based on a toyline aimed at a male demographic, the main toa teams always have the 5:6 m/f ratio. I suspect fewer would take issue if 1 or 2 more of the main elements were female-specific,

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As I recall, it was implied from the very beginning, although it took a few years for the concept to be set in stone. Even in '01, all the Toa were male except for Gali. All the Turaga were male except for Nokama. All the Matoran were male, except for the Ga-Matoran. Similarly, a lot of other stuff was still vague and undefined. Ga-Matoran were established as good swimmers, but that hadn't been fleshed out as part of their elemental affiliation. I mean, at that point, even the abilities of the Toa hadn't been set in stone as create/control/absorb their element.

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On 3/30/2020 at 7:57 PM, Xboxtravis said:

I know it was established in 2001, I have memories of arguing with my five year old sister when she said all Bionicle characters were 'boys' way back then. Maybe it wasn't completely canonized in a hard rule, but everything we had seen was Ga-Matoran were all women and everyone else was a male and I just sort of; knew that was the rules? Hard to explain without a direct source. 

Yeah, that's what I thought, too. I've just always, like... known (at least more or less) that it was one of the rules of Bionicle, but I have no recollection of where I actually learned that fact from. I would... assume it was possibly mentioned in some throwaway bit of promotional material or other, that has since been lost to time - or maybe on Bionicle.com at some point? - but I just found it weird that I couldn't place where that fact had actually come from.

Like others have said, I think Mask of Light and its supplementary material may have been the first time it was made explicitly obvious; but I know that the fandom had known or assumed that fact for longer - I recall it was often mentioned in GaliGee's stories from the earlier years, for one example - so I was just wondering when that fact explicitly went from "the Ga-Matoran we know of are girls" to "all Ga-Matoran are girls, no exceptions". Or if there'd ever been a difference in those two statements at all!

 

4 minutes ago, Black Six said:

Moving to Storyline & Theories.

Oh, whoops! I guess my first instinct was right: I did think of S&T first, but second-guessed myself before posting. Sorry about that ^^;

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