Reznas

Sexism is a form of oppression. Men aren't oppressed when a story features a mostly female case, it's not making anyone feel inferior,

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.

That's why it matters that gals are under represented in Bionicle, 'cause a lot of girls liked it but didn't get as many role models and characters to relate to by their gender as boys did, and it is alienating and discouraging and just plain annoying.

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.

Have a heart, think of the other group sometimes

Read above.

I trust her opinions because I'd assume women understand the mechanics of discrimination against women better than people who aren't women.

 

(I trust Pomegranate too)

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

Unless a majority of eight year olds these days have an understanding of sexism, the comparison of eight year olds neither knowing or caring about possibly problematic elements of media they absorb and cats neither knowing or caring about the nutritional value of the food they eat is perfectly valid. I'm not saying 8 year olds are like cats in every respect, simply that I'd trust an 8 year old's voice on matters of sexism like i'd trust a cat's "voice" on matters of nutrition.

 

Also, if my cat cared about the nutrition of his food, he'd find some way to communicate he had an issue, just like he communicates being hungry or being lonely. Cats may not be able to speak, but they can still communicate.

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.

The thing is, that opposite extreme just plain isn't going to happen. The scales are already severely tipped in one direction. You're saying that to balance them, we have to add an equal amount of weight on both sides. 

 

Equality won't come if you do that. What we need is to tilt the balance in favor of female protagonists until both sides are equally weighted, until everybody accepts them as commonplace as male protagonists. Then we write the stories you talk about.

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:

edit: Also I'd be inclined to trust Octodad's opinion on this matter, considering she's probably the most experienced/well-versed out of all of us currently taking part in this discussion, regarding matters of sexism

How so? What makes her opinions better than anyone else's?

EDIT2: Also edited out all caps.

If you ask an 8-year-old "is your favorite toyline sexist?", they will either vehemently say no and tell you it's the best toyline ever, or ask you what that word means, then vehemently say no and tell you it's the best toyline ever. 8 year olds are useful in gauging how well the line would sell, but not in gauging how problematic certain aspects are. I'll feed my cat cat food, but I won't ask him if it's nutritious. He neither knows nor cares.

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

Are you, as of this moment, an 8 year old? 

I'm curious actually. Is anyone on these forums 8 years old and can testify that they believe that Bionicle is sexist, or if they care about the gender of their plastic toy?

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

Nobody called you sexist, or maybe they did I didn't read everyone else's stuff completely, but I certainly didn't. I was pointing out that your opinion laid in being ignorant of the sexist nature of what you said and how it contributes to continuing sexism. You don't believe there's anything wrong with the messed up gender ratio, which means you don't believe there's anything wrong with having too little women with too little variety in stories, which probably doesn't bother you because, after all, you are a dude so you just don't understand what it's like. Arguments like "but My Little Pony doesn't have many guys!!! That's sexist" are completely irrelevant, because you have all this other media around you that for the most part has waaayyyy more dudes than women that you can pick and choose from. The problem isn't "the genders aren't equal in general," the problem is "the genders aren't equal because of a lack of women." Why is that second one sexist while the first one isn't? Because men already have it way better, and then they exercise their power to either deliberately make things worse for the ladies or just do it 'cause they don't know that things are out of balance at all, 'cause thing have always been this way, because sexism. It's not like it's always malicious, it's not like someone is calling you a terrible person, they're just using a word that describes you having a worldview where women are lesser than men in one way or another and not seeing something wrong with that, or knowing it's wrong but taking advantage of it anyways. It's not your fault, but once you know about it, it becomes your responsibility to either admit that something is wrong or insist that there's no problem and the world is meant to be this way. Not caring is sexist, because it means you're okay with there being a problem, it's just not your problem so you're just gonna let it happen. It is wrong, it hurts people, and it's sexist. Also, using "feminism" as something that's vicious doesn't really help you out much

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

Can I just say that there have been so wonderfully written arguments and rebuttals in this topic that it leaves me slightly disheartened knowing that nobody's opinion has ever been changed by an internet debate.

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.

That said, I'd like to raise a point that Greg used to always throw back at me whenever I brought this stuff up: The idea that young boys would not like a series (or more importantly, would not buy the toys from a series) that had a large number of female characters, and that trying to market something like Bionicle to both genders would fail. How much truth is in that, do you think?

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

So, if I don't agree with you, I must be wrong? If you think that Bionicle is a sexist story about men oppressing women then that's fine by me. I am not sexist simply for believing that Bionicle is not sexist as for disagreeing with you. I think that Bionicle is fine and people should focus on the story rather then the genders of those in the story. How can people turn Bionicle into a feminist argument?

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

But in all seriousness, I find that the whole gender thing isn't as important as every makes it out to be. At the end of the day, for me, it boils down to set quality.

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

A fellow EDM artist! Hey, that track is really nice! I would honestly categorize it as Nu Trance rather than a broad EDM, but that's just me. Sounds really ambient and chill. Great work! Can't wait to hear that Progressive House track.

-Rez

Lewa, hands down. He's always been my favorite character.

-Rez

I really, really love the chord progression, especially starting at around 00:57. You've also created a great impression of space.

If there's something I would suggest, it would be to bring out the quivering kinds of sounds in the background starting at around 1:22. I can appreciate the subtlety, but in this case it just sounds too good. : P

Related to the chord progression, I actually just randomly started playing it on the piano one day, and thus came this piece.  I tried to make it sound pretty eerie. Guess it worked. =3

Yeah, the Trance bass is kind of quiet. I didn't want it overly emphasized, but it does seem kind of subtle.

Thanks!

-Rez

Also, for future reference, you could have found your answer here and here.

-Rez

So happy to see BZPower going after all these years. While I'm skeptical about Bionicle's return, I do really hope it comes back, for the sake of BZPower. I'd love to see activity like we had before the downtime.

-Rez

There should be a new Bionicle game for the ocular rift

*Oculus Rift

Meh, LEGO doesn't generally make those sorts of games. And since Bionicle isn't even officially returning as of yet, why would they develop a complex game based on a theme that's been over for four years?

-Rez

 

That is cool. Who is Lewa?

...He's your avatar.

 

Bionicle Zone Power (BZPower). It's not hard to find a Bionicle avatar or picture off the net. He probably Googled Bionicle and found a nice picture of Lewa. No need to be so presumptuous.

As for the drawing, it looks really nice. I'm not so fond of the mass in between armor plates, but everything else looks great. I wish the whole thing were in color. =3

-Rez

gigantic amount of concrete evidence

I wouldn't call the evidences you mentioned gigantic or concrete. Until LEGO actually confirms the return of Bionicle, all of your "evidence" is simply speculation. LEGO removed Bionicle from a "themes never to return" list. Okay, sounds fishy, but there isn't any hard evidence backing that up. You're only speculating. They could of removed it for a handful of other reasons.

I'd say that bonesiii has the best idea so far: wait. None of this so-called evidence is backed up by anything but speculation, which isn't proof of anything.

-Rez

I told you guys.

-Rez

Wow... just listened to this today. It's really good; professional quality, I'd say. Like others have mentioned, it doesn't really bring to mind Onu-Koro, but IMO, I doesn't really quite fit with Onu-Metru either. It's kind of a sad, meditative song, in a way; maybe Voya Nui?

 

I dunno. Anyway, well done. Really splendid job.

Thanks! I'm not sure about whether it would fit Voya Nui. Maybe? I tried to get kind of a dark feeling as if one were walking deep into the earth, and then the middle section kind of represents the beauty underneath.

Thanks again!

This is a really crisp piece you've composed, Reznas. It's mastered pretty well. I'm also not sure how many would have thought to use trance for an Onu-Koro theme, so that makes your work stand out. Good job!

Thanks! I try to master stuff as professionally as possible, so it's a real compliment to hear that. Well, it's always my hope to make my music stand out, so I guess it worked.

-Rez

When I look up, I see a beautifully dark and mysterious night sky full of stars and moonlight and romance and WHERE AM I GOING WITH THIS!

-Rez

I don't really see how we can discuss rumours of Bionicle's return without at least referring to potentially leaked information. I mean, the rumour in itself is based on leaked information, so... yeah, I'm a little confused about how far we can go with all of this...

We're free to share any other information about Bionicle's return besides anything leaked. As an example, we can discuss things we'd like to see in the future of Bionicle (assuming it returns).

-Rez

I have no problem with some brown tones on Lewa, but I honestly think that there are better color combinations than green and brown (Bionicle wise). I would certainly hate to see Lewa's mask brown, that's for sure.

-Rez

 

 

#BROWNLEWA

 

 

#BROWNLEWA

 

But I feel brown is kind of cool because the green is leafs and the brown is wood.

 

Brown and green would be cool, although I'd still want the brown to be used very sparingly on Lewa if he's released in the revival; ideally, less than 1/4 of his armor or bone piece would be brown or another color that wasn't a shade of green. After all, the green color of leaves is much more visible that the brown color of tree trunks in most forests with large numbers of leafy trees, right?

 

EDIT: Funny as it is, Kopekemaster and I happened to post the exact same opinion at the same time.

 

 

WHAT IF HIS MASK WAS BROWN!

 

That would ruin Lewa's character. His mask has always been green, why change it? Ugg, you're getting me to speak as if Bionicle is definitively coming back. -.-

-Rez

#BROWNLEWA

No. Just no. And hashtags?

-Rez