Reznas

Happy Birthday, B6! It's crazy how much work you do for the site. Thank you for all your contributions and for keeping this site running! =D Enjoy your day, and eat lots of cake! -Rez

Notice how in the "Find Content Section" it says, "There have been 11 items by MIY (Search limited from 04-August 13)". I'm not entirely sure why. It might be related to some newer policies and the hacks, as I mentioned. Some accounts lost more information than others, so you may be one of those. Ultimately, I would have to defer until the staff can explain this better than I can. -Rez

Do you still happen to have the link? You may have misplaced it (the topic, that is). If you do have the link, go ahead and link it here so we can see what the problem is. Assuming this is an issue, you may want to create a tracker issue about it. -Rez

There have been multiple server issues, multiple related to malicious attacks on the site. Most of the topics and comments posted within the months of the hackings were lost. :\ -Rez

Honestly, I think a return of Bionicle will bring back a lot of activity to this site. I mean, look at what happened when just a rumor popped up. The activity in the last couple of weeks has been crazy. Topics, comments, etc. are continually getting posted, all in much greater numbers then, say, a month ago. Not saying we're going to see numbers like we did before the downtime, but I think the return of Bionicle will definitely boost activity on BZP. -Rez

Déjà vu...so much Déjà vu from this set of sentences. -Rez

I love math and physics! I'm probably going to get a degree in some field of physics in college, along with a music composition degree (two completely different degrees ). Can't say that much on the papers, seeing as I'm not incredibly advanced in physics and math yet. Still got three years of high school left to get that fixed. -Rez

The UDD symbol would be beast. Although, personally I probably wouldn't get one. Mainly because I don't really want a tatoo in the first place. -Rez

I'm sorry if I made that assumption, but you're initial comment made it sound that way. No need for sarcasm. I was only citing my source (the Leaked Content Policy), regardless of whether or not you had already seen it. Of course the leaks are going to get discussed over the internet. LEGO knows that. The point of the ban is to keep an established relationship and cooperation between BZPower and the LEGO corporation. Despite the fact that the leaks are already out there, it's simply an act of good faith from BZPower to LEGO to keep discussion of the leaks isolated to where they're already being discussed. It's a bit more than a few. Honestly, I would say that at least fifty of the posts in this topic were borderline spam, if not more. Who knows how many were deleted by the staff, anyway. -Rez

LEGO doesn't technically ban BZPower from discussing leaks. BZPower bans discussion of leaks because of the points they mention in this topic, BZPower's Leaked Content Policy. Not to mention discussion of leaks causes lots and lots of spam like we've seen in this very topic. -Rez

No one said that LEGO was purposely trying to offend fans. We're just pointing out that because LEGO is in it for the money, they target a gender-exclusive audience and exclude the other gender. In the end, they probably wouldn't lose any money if they added in more female characters. -Rez

Fair points. Although I will say that since you don't know whether or not I've actually been oppressed by any women, you're being a bit presumptuous by saying I haven't been. I tried using this same point here, but I got the response of, "One women doesn't speak for them all." In fact, I got a PM or two regarding that. I'm just slightly confused as to how one woman's point doesn't speak for all women and therefore probably isn't that valuable, but then another woman's point, which doesn't speak for all women, is valuable. Honestly, I would say in both accounts that a woman's opinion on a subject regarding women is valuable, but as I said, I'm confused, because I was reprimanded for saying the same exact thing in another topic, but the flip side applies here. -Rez

If men can't be oppressed by a mostly female cast, then how can there be a flip side? Just because males are supposedly "superior," which is a stereotype in itself (I treat women just as I would treat any men, and there are plenty of men like me who do the same), doesn't mean a female cast can't portray females as superior. Men can be oppressed to, by females. It's time we stop assuming males can't be oppressed. I have had a fair share of oppression from females that I know personally, and they certainly acted superior. It goes both ways, and while a lot of it comes from males (I'll admit that males are more often sexist than females are), males aren't the only culprits. Actually, I've advocated for more girls in Bionicles. I think there's certainly a problem with the gender ratio in Bionicle, and I would have loved to see more variety. Read above. Octodad doesn't speak for all women. That doesn't mean her opinions are wrong, but being a women doesn't automatically make her opinions of sexism against women right. -Rez

But you're missing the point. Cats aren't capable in the same way that children are. You're trying to compare two things that are on completely different levels. Communication is a little different. They don't know what "nutrition" is, so they can't communicate "there's too much sugar in this food" like an eight year old can communicate that something is sexist. See, while the majority of eight year olds don't understand sexism, the huge difference between the two things you compared is that an eight year old can understand sexism, while a cat can never tell you the nutritional value of something, much less communicate it. How do you know if equality won't come that way? Sometimes the best way to change things is by showing how the end result should be. What I'm saying is that tilting the balance of female protagonists disproportionately will only bring us to the other extreme. Getting to that extreme isn't as impossible as you think... -Rez EDIT: How so? What makes her opinions better than anyone else's? EDIT2: Also edited out all caps.

I understand what you're saying, but the comparison between children and cats is just not even valid at all. Cats don't have the ability to understand human ideas.They will never be able to tell you anything. They can't talk. Whereas an eight year old may not understand sexism, but they have the ability to. And they are capable of understanding such ideas. A cat can't ever tell you if something is nutritious, but an eight year old can most certainly tell you if something is sexist or not, if he has the aptitude. -Rez

I think there's a problem with the reasoning along the lines of "an all-female team in a story isn't sexist." It would be great to have more all-female teams, but if we cherish the all-female teams and look down on the all-male teams, eventually we'll come to a point where all-female teams are the norm and all-male teams are rare. We don't want to come to that point, because then it's the opposite extreme. We need to find a way to balance things out. That means we don't have all-female teams, and we don't have all-male teams. There is always room for the opposite sex in any story, no matter the story. That should apply on both sides. Stories targeted at females should have male characters just like stories targeted at males should have female characters. -Rez

That's not even the point. First of all, while it's targeted towards 8-year-old children, it's not limited to them. There were plenty of older children/adults following the toy line. Not to mention plenty of girls that would probably have liked to see a few more female characters, you know? And while young children probably don't care, that doesn't mean we shouldn't discuss these issues. Because they are issues. -Rez

You have to agree that making women superior to men in a story with an obviously unbalanced ratio (meaning way more women than men) is still sexist though, right? I mean, sure, in the media men are often spotlighted over women, but that's not to say that sexism doesn't go both ways. I know you're not saying that sexism only applies to women, but that's what it sounds like you're saying. Disclaimer: MLP has no relevance to this post. The above example is purely a hyperbole in order to prove a point. -Rez

In the end, no one will probably change their opinion, but it's never a bad thing to discuss serious subjects. Not only does it get different view points out there (this gives any viewers a broad spectrum of ideas surrounding the subject), but it also helps members learn to discuss their own views in a debate setting. Honestly, I doubt that the 8-9 year old male target audience would even care or notice any difference if there were more female characters in the story line. Previously in this topic, someone mentioned that a majority of Bionicle fans probably never even attributed a gender to any of the characters anyway. I find it hard to believe that a "few" more female characters would hurt LEGO's sales, especially since there are plenty of female fans out there. -Rez

You're not wrong because you don't agree with Pomegranate. I can't even evaluate whether you're wrong or not in general. It comes down to who has the most sound evidence and proves their point the best. I couldn't be bothered to read Pomegranates' post (TL;DR), so I don't really know who was wrong or right. And even then, I don't determine what's wrong and what's right in an argument. In truth, no one person can really determine such a thing. Also, no one ever called you sexist. And this isn't really a feminist argument. It's about gender ratio, and had the creators excluded male characters from Bionicle (meaning 6:1+ females:males), we very well could have been discussing the flip side (few strongly represented male characters). Look above somewhere for an argument about MLP related to what I'm saying. -Rez

That's a pretty inaccurate statement. While I think that such a fuss over a LEGO toy line is kind of pointless (in the grand scheme of things, it's just a toy, and it's probably not doing any more harm than any other toy lines), the discussion of gender equality is pretty important. It's okay to focus on the set quality and ignore the lackluster gender ratio, but other people don't appreciate the fact that only a couple solid female characters were written into the Bionicle story line. I am okay with a semi-unbalanced gender ratio, because each author is free to integrate whichever characters he wants to. Not to mention a male author is more inclined to integrate male characters into his story. In some stories you'll see 3:1, males:females, which is fine. In other, 3:1, females:males, also fine. However, Bionicle is 6:1+, if you could even give it that. Save the Ga-Matoran and water elemental Toa, nearly every other character is male. There's an issue there, no matter how you look at it. But, as others have said, LEGO has a target audience, and that's how they write their stories. It all comes down to money, which is a sad reason to exclude female characters, but it's why they do it how they do. -Rez

I speak English and Russian, seeing as I'm an American and live in Russia. I don't really have any plans to learn any other languages as of now. Russian already exhausts enough of my language studies. -Rez

I'll push the blue button!!! -Rez

I've seen a lego brick named Samantha, but she was 3x2, not 2x2. Maybe she put on a brick after eating too much at McBrick? Music and stuffz. Yes. -Rez