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The only reaction appropriate for this topic? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nC8zz95rm8s

Personally I had the opposite problem with the pacing: I thought it moved way too fast, and as a consequence lost out on portraying moments that could have developed the characters more, or at least given them a more solid arc. To each their own, I suppose.

You never realize how much you love grain products until you have to start denying yourself every single craving that pops into your head

IMPROVE THE SHORT STORY!

The movie needed more snow puns.

There is if you've got popcorn. - And Sprite.

There is if you've got popcorn. -

NO YOU'RE WRONG I CAN'T LIKE WHATEVER I WANT YOU LOUT Takuma Nuva

I wouldn't really call it taste, I would just call it bigoted. -Tyler

Yeah I saw them. What I said earlier about it was directed to each and every one. +1,000 mega bonus points to Mak.

Roablin, I have to take your first paragraph piece by piece, because it is a doozy. This is very much true. This is something that would be great if changed, because society is slowly moving away from that mentality. Society has men taking care of children while women work. We have women working while women take care of children. We have men working while men take care of children. We have single parents pulling dual-roles. Society is also slowly getting used to the idea that not everything is pivotal around the nuclear family. You don't have to have kids. It's not the most important thing in the world. Where your day-to-day life isn't centered around what you are doing to raise a child. Correct, up to the point where you use the word reality. See above for more. We have centuries of film telling these stories. 99% of the time. We can start focusing on other stories finally. Precisely. I too think it is ridiculous to make the guy the hero all the time. To have the male actors paid obscenely more than female actors. I agree that we need to work to change that ideal. Also, more generally speaking; Literally no one is making the argument that all stories all the time need to be 1:1. No one. The argument for representation is this: Write good women. Write strong women. Write vulnerable women. Write flawed women. Write evil women. Write incorruptible women. Just write more women.

Hahli Husky and DV are super great and know what they're talking about much more than I do, but I might as well try and add something here. Except you don't seem to realise that the reason there aren't more women in roles such as those is because of sexism? And that there would be much more women in work like that if women were afforded the same opportunities as men? And that the unequal ratio of men to women in media is a part of this problem? I get where you're coming from, but I think you're again missing the issue. Sure, in a perfect world, the ratio of men to women in any particular story wouldn't be such a huge deal. But where we are, the ratio of men to women in media and stories and whatnot is constantly skewed towards the men, so it's kind of a big deal? The problem is that an unequal ratio towards the men is the norm. And it really, really shouldn't be.

Just because you didn't seem to understand what I was saying there: the girls I was talking about are real live actual members I know who spoke about this elsewhere, and were too frustrated and afraid of backlash to respond to anything related to this discussion, not guests or people I figured exist. But yeah, BZP discussion is dominated by men. But there are definitely several women listening in, and I'm not just guessing at that. Sure there are assertive women in this world, just as there are many passive, aggressive, and passive-aggressive ones. But assertiveness is a set of tools, not a personality type, and even women who know how to be assertive may choose to keep silent in certain situations rather than risk someone on the internet being horrid to them or getting in to an argument with someone who just wants to shut them down. This is incredibly common around the internet and in our society as a whole, and sadly has tended to create a lot of passive women who'd rather not speak up. I used the "nonsensical" bit (notice the quotations I used up there) due to some people in the discussion saying that it wouldn't "make sense" to have a larger amount of women in certain media, which is funny because so much of the Lego movie didn't technically "make sense" in the first place, in a real world sort of way. That argument just baffles me to no end.

But we do believe so many lies fed to us. It doesn't make us helpless. Countless women, men, and other people believe the drivel that the media and other sources lay before us and ingrain in us. A lot of sources don't even realize the harm they're doing. Men come to expect things from women. Other women expect things from women. People shame women for not being some sort of norm. You know this; I can tell from this blog entry because you fight to be who you are. The struggle you have is real. Women damage their bodies and their lives trying to lose weight. Girls of color in our culture believe they are not beautiful because they are not white. They try to straighten their naturally curly hair. Women try to wear clothes that make them unhappy. They are shamed into speaking quieter and not laughing as loudly. They are told to "be like this so guys will like you". And it's good that you fight that. It's good that you decided to be yourself. But this doesn't mean all other women are going to do this. Too many of them don't even realize what is happening, and that's why we're having this problem. I've known so many girls and women who try to be what we are told to be, verbally and by implication. Shave your legs because you have to. Cover that face with makeup. Be cute. Be dainty. Be submissive. Be feminine. No man will want you if you don't. No one will respect you if you don't. I starved myself. I picked at my face until it bled trying to get rid of acne. I'm in therapy because I have anxiety and depression resulting from expectations that I should be a certain way "because I'm a woman". I'm not alone. I'm nowhere near being alone. Countless women have hurt themselves, hurt each other, been killed, settled for less, been denied privileges given to others, and ended their own lives over this stuff. But at the same time, there's an overwhelming voice that tells us something else. You shouldn't shave. You shouldn't wear makeup. Don't be cutesy. Be outgoing. Be a STRONG WOMAN who likes fighting and guns and "manly" stuff. Don't be what we told you to be, and you'll be praised as "not like other girls". This compliments some women by shaming the lifestyles and preferences of others. This is also very, very wrong. I copied this from something I can't share as a whole: The point isn't that we shouldn't do certain things because they're a stereotype. The point is that you need to be who you are and don't shame other people for being who they are. People in our culture seem very concerned with telling women what they can and can't be. That's the problem here. And like Pat said, we're gonna come across this stuff in our lives no matter what. We can be all they tell us, and they say we're trying to hard and we're mindless conformist bimbos. We can completely ignore it, and we get ignored or told to "freshen up", "smile", "reinvent our wardrobe", "don't speak up for ourselves". We can do our own thing, and we still get fussed at for "being or not being a certain way". Now, I'll get to why I'm saying all this on this entry. I don't like speaking up on things like this because I get nervous and have trouble expressing myself, especially on BZPower. Guys on BZPower have tried to shame and argue with me too many times, and also done the same to many other girls. But unless they're trans and lived through these struggles, they don't have that firsthand experience. They may accept what we tell them happens. Some of them see all this garbage at work in the world. They want to help. That's why DV and Makaru speak up. I always appreciate what they have to say. They've learned from women around them, such as myself, Nukaya, and Tufi Piyufi. You say you're speaking to an audience of guys, but to be honest, several women are reading this blog entry. They read the topic about more female characters in the next Lego movie. They love the idea of more women being represented. I know this because they're my friends. But why don't they speak up? I wonder if it's because of the backlash we've received, both here and in other faucets of our lives? In the end, yeah, the only one you can control is you. You have to go into this stuff being willing to let go and know that you're not going to change the entire world by yourself and in one go. But I'm not going to give up or fall into "all or nothing" thinking. I haven't changed the minds of plenty of people. But I have friends now who have watched me and what I say and support, and they understood and now stand beside me. Some of them are content creators who are writing excellent balances of men, women, and non-binaries in their works. Would that have happened if I hadn't been fighting and speaking out on my blog and other internet spaces where they could see? I'm not sure. Other, greater content creators have seen this huge outcry for equal representation. That's part of why we have the Lego Movie creators so ready to include more women in the first place. We shouldn't get angry over every single lie told to us, no. But I think getting fired up over feminism is a really excellent cause. Why? Hey, I've got another quote. We don't have to explode or lose our minds. I mean, in this entire post I'm not upset or angry. But as a woman, I want to speak up. My voice is important here because it's about the representation of women, the lack of which has discouraged and hurt me inside. I am passionate about my cause and ready to educate anyone willing to listen to me. And if people don't, okay. But I'll still speak out. I'll still speak up for equal rights and representation and a proper treatment of all women. We need to see more varied women in our media because it reinforces that we all exist outside the stereotypes and we're more than what people say we should be. There are just as many women in this world as men (I hear that it's more women than men actually but I'm not sure atm.) So why are there way more men in so many movies and comics and games? And why is this so when women and girls are close to half of the consumers of said media? If we can have something as "nonsensical" as a giant floating cloud city or mecha cyborg pirate with a live shark on his arm in a movie, then we can have something as "nonsensical" as more female characters, too.

Nobody here is every going to argue that women are helpless little creatures that believe everything they are told about themselves. But one doesn't have to look past, well, themselves, to see how media representation of women (and men) has set up stereotypes and perceptions of both of these genders that are part of the cultural zeitgeist. Again, a ton of actual scholarly sources were posted in that topic, but you must have ignored them to be making the point you are making now. No matter how smart an individual is, society and culture are made of conglomerates and social movements made up of a social, shared consciousness. The conversation at hand has never been "are these stereotypes legitimate," because of course they're not. We all know that, because we are on here having this conversation. I know that the idea that all women are passive or submissive is garbage, because I only have to look two feet to my left and ask Maddison something and she will definitely refute that. Stereotypes are obviously not applicable to indviduals very frequently, and even when someone falls into a stereotypical interest group in one way, they fall out of it in another, as evidenced by Becca's post above. As Bryan said even further up, the problem here is that you are consistently seen to argue against the idea of greater inclusion in media, and it seems you reach deeper and deeper into the depths to come up with reasons why. You make decent points, but then you take those points to false conclusions. You're right, we can't force writers to stop producing these works that perpetuate false perceptions, roles, and representations of women, but we can and we should change the world around them so these works are the outliers and the ones viewed as weird and uncomfortable. And we do that by spreading education and by demanding the status quo change, and we do so by applauding, visibly, publicly, purposefully, the moments when big companies, big media moments, big characters, challenge that status quo themselves. Because if they can see that, yes, there is a market for this, that having a movie full of strong, smart, independent women who don't define themselves based on their relationship with a man, that this won't tank their profits, that this gives them a positive public perception, they will continue to move that direction. Yet here you are saying that striving for that is "a stack of illogic" which is both disgustingly dismissive and is, itself, a "stack of illogic". The world is set at an almost exact 1:1 ratio of men to women (with women globally having a slightly stronger lead currently), yet, again, men make up the majority of all power roles in the world. This is your world. Your entire post internalizes so much of that stuff it is ridiculous. All your "I'm not like the girl stereotypes" things are an attempt to prove yourself not a part of the "stereotyped girls" set-up by showing how much better you fit into traditionally male-dominated aspects of society. There's nothing wrong with those ideas or interests at all, whether male or female or intersexed or trans or whichever, but it reads like "I don't have these problems because I don't subscribe to femininity at all, and women who do are the problem" and there's some straight-up misogyny in there. This is your world. You are a woman who, at some point in time, is going to run into these problems in your life. People are going to assume you are weaker, dumber, more passive, etc, at some point in time. It will happen. And what we are trying to say is that not only should it not, but that part of making sure that this changes, that we can say to future generations that this is a thing of the past, is to increase visible recognition of women in power roles on media, because media is propaganda, because it does define the shared cultural consciousness, and by influencing that, we can change this. I debated going through and adding some more caps and exclamation marks, but I felt the point was made without them, just as it was the first time.

I'm not like the female stereotypes, either. I'm actually a dog. Actually, I was amused by your stereotype breakdown and wanted to fill it out for myself. Stereotype: "Girls don't like Lego."Me: *was really into Bionicle but kind of appreciates LEGO from the side nowadays* *mostly buys Friends and Mixels sets because I'm poor and they're cute* *also wanted more girls in the Lego Movie* Stereotype: "Girls like fashion."Me: *loves clothes* *is becoming a lolita so as to wear frilly poofy dresses with bows* Stereotype: "Girls like animals, especially horses."Me: *desires kittens you have no idea* Stereotype: "Girls are less likely to enjoy courses in science and math, and rarely do they program."Me: *hated math in school, enjoyed science, did some programming in college but eh* *wasn't for me* *loves programming games tho* *but is an amateur* Stereotype: "Girls are soft."Me: *doesn't have to wear lotion* *ever* *also I just shaved* *feel my legs* *so smooth* *blue belt in taekwondo tho* Stereotype: "Girls like jewelry and painting their nails, etc."Me: *me too omg* Stereotype: "Girls can't use logic."Me: *spills your fruit* *excellent comeback* *10/10*

Ha! It's generally not that bad, but some teachers think it's their job to overload you with work. As long as you manage your time well and don't let stuff sneak up on you, you should do better than me.

College sounds fun. I'm getting motivated. -Rez