The Gender Issue

[NuvaTube]

Now, to all the BZP veterans, fear not, I am fairly canonically versed so won’t be asking the worst of the annoying, constantly repeated gender questions that pop up in this section of the forums. At least not an uninformed state XD. I will go on for a bit, but hopefully that’ll also provide more depth and something new to think about c:

 

Here, I will aim to analyse the subject of gender in the Matoran Universe in a fairly complete dissection, considering available canon information, and the most obvious concepts that it consequently implies. By doing so, I will guide you through the considerations I myself made, and then the subsequent questions it spawned. I hope this will also lead to constructive discussion regarding gender theories.

 

There are four main questions, but a few little ones dotted around so check them out too (:

 

*(Allergy Warning: Contains excessive brackets)

Also, apologies for the apparently serendipitous structure of the text.

 

[bonesiii: Sorry to add to the brackets, but several subjects relating to reproduction and origins controversies had to be edited out. Remember the rules. ]

 

I will start with some dictionary definitions:

 

“Male”

a) Of, relating to, or designating the sex that has [certain organs].

b) Characteristic of or appropriate to this sex; masculine.

 

And now:

 

“Female”

A) Of or denoting the sex that [...] bears young.

b) Characteristic of or appropriate to this sex; feminine.

 

Okay. Now let’s think about some Bionicle canon:

 

The Great Beings made the Matoran Universe, in which a multitude of biomechanical organisms inhabit a vast, complex constructed ecosystem that serve as part of the internal functions of the colossal Mata Nui Robot. Arguably one of the most important of these organisms is the species called Matoran.

 

These macro-tech workers live in a giant machine. However, this machine was obviously inspired in the ecosystems of true life on habitable planets (namely Spherus Magna).

 

The natural “systems” develop into remarkably balanced and sustainable networks. Look at the Earth for example. The planet’s active geology and the Sun fuel the vast web of life [removed]. Species compete [...], yet only stable systems hold out. Hence balance is generally maintained, and to a truly spectacular precision and order. So pervasive and remarkably self regulating are the workings of life that some have even modelled the Earth as a whole as an organism in itself, sometimes referred to as “Gaia”. However, in order for the Earth to maintain this overall stability, life itself must constantly be in flux; [...].

 

[bonesiii: I had to cut a whole paragraph here. Essentially, large-scale beings have distinct gender, and this relates to origins issues as well. Sorry but almost none of that is allowed here.]

 

So, one may expect that the MU [changes], so as to more accurately replicate the self-regulating merits of a living ecosystem that would be so obviously attractive to the architects of the Robot; the Great Beings.

 

However, as we well know, the GBs felt [gender-related] reproduction wasn't necessary. Instead, the biomechanical robots of the MU work their ecosystem as a collective unit (or at least they should have done, were it not for the unpredicted sentience “glitch”), with the collective goal of maintenance, not the closed goal of surviving long enough to reproduce and to outcompete other species that may stop you doing so. This system may thus be better compared to the Portuguese Man of War jellyfish, which is essentially a “colony” of specialised organisms working together for the collective goal of being a successful Man of War, even if each unit is not directly aware of its role in the colony, it just knows what it needs to do its job.

 

So reproduction isn't really needed in the context of the Matoran Universe, as we are so often told; and now we see that with a bit of thought, this can make sense. Hence, in a more mechanical, factory style system, the Matoran who die under whatever circumstances are simply “rebuilt/resuscitated” in the Red Star and replaced not with offspring. If a Matoran cannot be resurrected due to being completely destroyed, they may instead be replaced, when a completely new Matoran is brought into being with the enigmatic machines in Metru Nui, or if more Matoran are apparently needed, if it is in the best interest as the system as a whole (presumably the reason for Mata Nui’s involvement when new Matoran are made, since he is the only one with a truly holistic view of the MU who could appreciate if more Matoran would really be required).

 

Okay, with context reflection out of the way, time for the first (proper) question (finally lol):

 

1.Why do Matoran have gender?

 

Before I continue, I feel it is important to acknowledge the real world reason for it: relatability (which is also the primary reason that they are incredibly humanoid).

 

Since the BIONICLE brand was aimed at boys, it makes sense for LEGO to make the main characters male, since the target audience will better engage with such characters as they are more relatable. However, in order to not appear completely sexist, they must include female characters too. Of course, it would really make sense for the Matoran to have no gender at all, but hey. Hasbro did the same thing with Transformers. These are also classic exhibits of The Smurfette Principle and to some extent the Token Minority tropes (look them up if you don’t know what they are).

 

As a result, we have characters with seemingly pointless gender. So, any ideas guys?

 

Before you think of an answer, let’s think further about what we know regarding this matter:

 

First, I’d like to refer you back to the definitions of male and female.

 

Now; clearly, if Matoran do not reproduce, they cannot literally, biologically, have a gender. That is, unless they can reproduce, but just don’t for some reason. The Withheld Reproduction theory was actually one that I held for a long time until the Red Star’s purpose was revealed, and for the following rationale:

 

The MU may just not need [change], since these complex systems would only have to remain stable with one another for the 100,000 year operation period of the MU, which is an almost irrelevant time period in most cases (sentient intervention would of course greatly accelerate things). All the Rahi, Matoran and Skakdi etc. need only work harmoniously enough as a collective ecosystem for a (relatively) short amount of time. And if change was needed, the beauty of this semi-sentient network is that it can just be artificially managed (such as Makuta armour being upgraded due to their apparently unexpected evolution.)

 

Also, (I’ve been desperate to discuss this at some point) in Voyage of Fear the Matoran Whenua made an interesting remark about a Rahi he saw in the Archives. After observing it (I think swimming around shallows or something like that) he theorised that the Rahi may evolve from having fins to legs (or vice versa, I can’t remember). This fascinating bit of information suggests MU organisms can gradually evolve to their environments, on their own, in a very significant way. This would remove the need of reproduction, and the idea is further made impossible by the Red Star's function, and the MU's expected life. Thus, let’s conclude that they definitely can’t and just don't reproduce.

 

Then, by default, the attributed genders can only be due to their characteristics, i.e. that they are masculine/feminine. But is even that true? Let us examine the appearances of Matoran characters. Males are for previously mentioned reasons essentially the default, with female characters the deviation from the standard theme; hence I will refer to the differences female characters exhibit.

 

Looking at the sets, comics and books (movies don’t count), female characters really aren't structurally different from the male characters (I’ll talk about Roodaka and other species later ). The traditionally feminine characteristics, like wider hips, larger buttocks, slimmer builds, breasts and shorter heights are really not observed at all in the Matoran species (maybe some in Gali Mata...just. Certainly not her monstrous Mistika form. Even so, she would be an exception, Nokama and Hahli don't follow suite).

 

A canon reason would logically be that it’s because they don’t reproduce, so why would the GBs make a separation at all? The only thing that seems to suggest they are different is simply that we are told they are. (I think female characters did have feminine voices but I’m not even sure about that lol).

 

We’ve seen MU characters identify each other’s genders, so there must be some recognisable difference, surely?

 

One difference we do know was mentioned by Toa Orde. I’ll let this awesome quote speak for itself:

 

“I know, I know,” he replied. “All Psionics Matoran, Toa and Turaga are female, and I’m male. Simple answer is, I’m the reason they’re all female.”

 

Seeing the puzzlement in Chiara’s eyes, Orde smiled.

 

“I was the first Psionics Toa, and one of the first Toa ever created,” he continued. “But I was, let’s say, a little too … aggressive in using my powers. I had a temper then. A short fuse plus psionics leads to bad things … sometimes very bad things.”

 

“Like what?” asked Chiara, intrigued.

 

“You know the Zyglak? Those savage, brutal monstrosities that hate everything to do with Mata Nui and think everyone looks better with a dagger in them? Well, they didn’t used to be that bad. Oh, they were nasty and violent, but … see, my first job was to calm them down a bit. And, well, it didn’t quite work out that way.”

 

“Oh, no …” said Chiara.

 

“What can I say? I got annoyed and pushed when I should have pulled.”

 

“That still doesn’t explain why --”

 

“After that, someone decided that maybe a gentler touch was needed for Psionics … so all the subsequent Psionics types were made female.”

 

“Right,” said Chiara. She shot a bolt of electricity from her finger, frying a lizard that had been sunning itself on a rock. “We females are so gentle, after all.”

 

And even this isn’t anything solid. Whoever made subsequent Psionic types female (maybe Artahka?) considered it a logical, justified course of action to make such a decision (of course, it may just have been a sexist joke, but I doubt LEGO would allow that...I hope so anyway).

 

So, are females in the MU actually gentler? Let us think about this. Also bear in mind that we have to overcome the subconscious notion that they may be like humans, seeing as we are questioning if they actually have gender.

 

Gali and Nokama were certainly the peacekeepers of their respective Toa Teams, but Gali is said to have been able to display quite a temper at times. In support of the idea that gentleness is a general trait of Ga-Matoran at least (no such info on Vo-Matoran, in fact Chiara seems to suggest the opposite, then again she's just one example. From the little we saw of Nikila, she wasn't particularly aggressive non gentle, not that I think there was enough of her shown to really gauge her personality). Now let’s see what Dalu has to say:

 

“...I'm sure where you came from, Ga-Matoran are all gentle peacemakers who never raise their voices. That's what they ... we ... were like where I came from too."

 

Judging by Orde’s comments, perhaps this trait extended to Vo/Ce-Matoran too. Dalu shows us two things that I care to mention here:

 

- Ga-Matoran and probably Vo/Ce-Matoran display “gentle peacemaker” characteristics (Judging by Orde’s comments, perhaps this trait extended to Vo/Ce-Matoran too).

 

- Matoran have malleable personalities that respond to their experiences (i.e. Dalu’s semi-traumatic new life on Voya Nui forced her to change). And of course due to the rampant individualism shown by MU inhabitants, we have some that may just be natural exceptions (GORAST, GORAST, GORAST).

 

I would speculate these personality gender differences maybe be due to the Protodermic equivalent of hormones, in the way that higher levels of Testosterone show increased competitiveness/aggression in humans.

 

This now suggests female Matoran in the MU serve the more supportive, social function of maintaining societal amity. Ignoring the sexism of this notion, I would conclude there were, to some degree, designed gender roles of a social kind. Perhaps it even reflected the state of Spherus Magnan society, since the GBs felt the MU captured the “Great Spirit” of SM in a poetic sense too, hence the name.

 

Perhaps, further to this, the GBs just decided to make gender for the same reason we like to assign gender to robots. We like making things in our own image, and like relating to and personifying our creations, even if it doesn’t really make sense.

 

This however, still doesn’t explain what external physical differences allows MU inhabitant to gauge gender. So, what do you think?

 

Okay, I said I would talk about Roodaka. Specifically, I was to discuss the possibility of reproduction in other MU species. I don’t have anything on this myself so I’ll go ahead and ask:

 

2.Do any species other than Matoran reproduce biologically?

 

The only reason I ask is because of Roodaka’s species, Vortixx. The only Bionicle species (other than Gali Mata and Kiina, although they are more subtle in femininity) that LEGO released that was clearly intended to be female. I mean, c’mon, who could miss those breastplates; with a colour scheme that brought even further attention to them. Not only this, she had emphasised hips/rump, a lean figure, high heels, earring things and a pony tail.

 

More to the point, what are her breast(plates) for? I assume it’s just the Vortixx armour design, but one wonders. She remains a rather odd set in this sense.

 

Then of course there is the sub issue of gender ratios in the MU (and possibly SM). Reproduction is apparently non-existent, but we can hypothesise that they have designed gender characteristics (maybe hormonal differences for better social cohesion). As we know, the ratios are overwhelmingly male biased, but why? If the GBs decided to attribute gender (seemingly pointlessly, from what we know) why not make it 50/50? Was it reflecting the SM gender ratio? We don’t really know. But hey! Theories?

 

Now for lols, let’s consider what the gender ratios are specifically. If we look at it, it is rather unbalanced. Let’s start with the Matoran first:

 

The problem is, we don’t really know the population distributions among the element types (I like to call them races/ethnicities). Since we don’t know the proportion of Av-Matoran to the rest, and we don’t know how much less common Secondary Elements are compared to Primary Elements. Then we have the added fact that Ba-Matoran are rarer than most Secondary races, to an unknown degree.

 

But for the sake of this topic I’ll be arbitrary. I’ll assign relative population values to each ethnicity:

 

Primary Elements Population Value: 6 (For Each Element)

Av-Matoran Population Value: 6 (I’ll say 3 for male and female, assuming the gender ratio is equal)

Secondary Elements Population Value: 5 (Each)

Ba-Matoran Population Value: 4

 

Doing the maths gives an overall Matoran species gender ratio to be about 1.68 males to every 1 female. I consider the population values to be fairly reasonable.

 

We have no information on gender ratios of other sentient species such Skakdi, Steltians, Vortixx etc.

Note that female Skakdi are said to be more aggressive than males so the “Gentler Females “ doesn’t apply to them, but bear in mind that the whole species was experimented on by Makuta Spiriah, so we don’t really know how they were originally meant to be (they could well have followed the Matoran trend but Spiriah overcompensated in making them more violent, we really don’t know). Vortixx also arguably have less gentle females given their society (we cannot take Roodaka’s personality as a typical example, seeing as she is exceptional by Xian standards).

 

We do have explicit information regarding the Makuta, thankfully:

 

Originally 85 Male, 15 Female, hence a ratio of about 5.67 Males per 1 Female. The Makuta may have also followed the “Gentler Female” trend, judging by most female Makuta opposing Teridax’s Plan at the Convocation, which was dangerous and certainly not a calm, peaceful idea.

 

So, there is certainly a gender imbalance, which naturally leads to the question:

 

3. Why is there a significant gender imbalance in the Matoran Universe?

 

(Of course, the real reason is relatability, as I previously mentioned. However despite real world reasons I feel it is the joy and almost duty of a Bionicle fan to think about and theorise over the often ambiguous lore in order to expand it and keep the community rich and alive.)

 

Again, sorry for the long read, but on the positive side, I hope my posts provide deeper thought than most of the other posts in the Bionicle Storyline & Theories section that you read :L

 

Thank you for reading (:

 

Peace.

 

P.S. Bonesiii, enjoy the mild techno-babble

Mata Nui! some of this was badly written and unclear looking back on it. Sorry 'bout dat

Edited August 1, 2013 by bonesiii

[Van Hohenheim]

so, tl;dr, the genders exist for differing roles in society? that's what I think you were getting at, anyways.

[Kanakalackin]

Is this even allowed?

[Jinkmeister]

That was quite fascinating! I do like your reasoning, and I'm glad you made clear it truly is just a marketing thing. But I would like to suggest that it's completely believable that females of a certain species (Skakdi) would be more aggressive, since we see that in nature here, namely in insects,aand in several mammals, especially lions. Since Skakdi are almost animalistic the way I understand them, it wouldn't be very far fetched at all to call the females more aggressive. I put forward a reason for all the water Matoran and Toa being female is that water, as a whole, is calm and gentle. Since all other element's members reflect their element, and Toa especially magnify it. Kopaka is very collected and chill (pun not intended), and Tahu is hot-tempered and headstrong. Therefore, it would appear that the general female personality and temperance reflects water more than any other element.

Edited August 1, 2013 by Jinkmeister

[bonesiii]

Oy @ another long topic. :PI think I'll dispense with quotes and just do this bullet-point style. Short on time.First, sorry but some of this got a bit too far into unallowed topics and has been edited accordingly to be safe. Replying to what remains:1) I believe it was essentially confirmed that since the GBs and other SM beings do, the GBs decided to incorporate gender into their AI creations as well (as they thought of them). So the "relatable" point in a sense may actually be true in-story, just as we tend to call intelligent fictional robots "he" or sometimes "she" rather than "it."Also it was stated that the average personalities of certain genders were thought to be better for certain elemental associations (and part of the decision-making process the GBs used may have been seen with the Orde incident).-No, they cannot reproduce biologically. Nothing's withheld. And not sure I see why the RS would relate to that logic, honestly.-Again please be cautious with making analogies to beliefs about Earth's past, especially biological origins, as that's a controversial subject and not everybody shares your beliefs on it. It's better to stick to Bionicle's story and avoid such analogies. I've left some of it that's in-story intact, but a lot had to be edited. And more importantly, please remember that the method of biological reproduction is a big no-no here. -I'm personally still a bit fuzzy on just whether Rahi can reproduce. There sure seemed to be a TON of sea Rahi in the surface ocean after Mata Nui landed there, sometimes seemingly implying they can, plus the Matoran killed many like Ruki for food apparently (the canon was contradictory at times on the issue of killing animals -- seen too with Jaller's attempt to kill that ash bear in MOL and Lewa intervening -- maybe they just absorbed a bit of life energy and let it go, I dunno). Of course, Makuta could have been making more all that time I suppose.I bring it up because Rahi DO eat the way we eat, Greg said, so they don't function the same as Matoran in every way. Still, if they did reproduce it wouldn't be with gender methods (you know), methinks, but more like cells dividing... and that sounds highly unlikely for biomechanical beings. -Whether Matoran species females are structurally different really depends on the source in question. Gali's set form was slightly different, as you say, and sets are most canon (or what they represent). And MOL showed more curvy armor designs with some Ga-Matoran (and movie form is generally most canon in terms of what is being represented by the sets, so this seems to be the most authoritative source). I figure curvy armor decorations are the canon answer, much more subtle than real-world females, more symbolic of the mental gender than anything (from the GBs' POV).-True, it's certainly possible for there to be no outward indication of gender other than color scheme, but no reason there couldn't be either. I see no reason why the GBs wouldn't at least give some shape-based indication in the design, since making any shape for the armor should be about as easy as any other.-Note that with Orde, color scheme alone wouldn't work. People would always be calling him "she" by accident if that was all it was.Of course, there's also voice.-No, it was the GBs who picked out the genders (and the elements themselves of course), not Artakha.-What matters is not whether females ended up being gentler but whether the Great Beings who picked the associations believed that females were gentler. We really should be taking this as evidence that this is so of the GB species, and maybe Agori in general. Clearly it is not true of the Skrall (well, I guess the Sisters aren't exactly warlike, and I guess in comparison to the male Skrall you could make a case... but yeah).Whatever developed later as a result of having true sapience could very well be way outside "expected parameters". Certainly evil was not intended, and Roodaka is evil.But I don't think "gentle" is necessarily the right term from the GBs' point of view. That's Orde's opinion, and given that he says "whoever" he probably never even met the GBs himself so he's just guessing. Maybe less prone to angry outbursts or whatever. And "less" does not mean "not". -Re: Dalu quote -- wait... what's the context of that? You appear to be taking it literally but it reads like sarcasm to me. Fair to say that it might be the average, but "all" is a classic grammatical sarcasm format in English, and Greg uses it that way all the time. I think the truth is more elusive than that. Sorry if I've misunderstood you. -Without comment on WHAT that equivalent is, I think that's reasonable. I would shy away from a literal hormone as that would make it hard to justify calling protodermis a molecule. It could be software-related, but the basic function could be the same, sure.-Yeah, I think it's fair to conclude, exceptions notwithstanding (and keeping in mind most of those may come out of freewill rather than intended parameters) that general social amity is one of the purposes. I suspect though that the main thing is how they relate to the element in question psychologically, not social at all, but could be wrong.And as to whether that idea is sexist... well, suffice to say pick five different people off the street and (if you can ask it without leading the question since poll word choice strongly influences answers given) you'll probably get at least three distinct opinions on it. Some might say it's sexist to imply it ISN'T the case. I think this is a non-issue because it was the GBs who chose this, so if it's sexist, it's the Great Beings who were sexist and this would be one of their character flaws. After all, we can't expect them to be Mary Sues / Gary Stus.Even so, I think that since freewill entered the picture (or whatever the proper term is), this may have gone down in importance.And it might never have been that important for most elements. Psionics is a special case as it is inherently social, so using the Orde incident as evidence for gender overall may be unreasonable. Most elements were geographically separate, as seen in Metru Nui, De-Koro, etc. so there would be little chance for a personality of peacefulness to have much effect in the rare-ish interactions between different elements. You wouldn't for example have to have a Ga-Matoran on hand in order for a Ta-Matoran to talk to a Po-Matoran; that would be silly.On the other hand, it appears the GBs had Toa Teams in mind and we've seen Gali perform that function in the Toa Mata. -I agree with the analogy to humans assigning "gender" to robots, as shaky as analogies usually are. Really nothing more than that is needed (though I think there WAS more).Maybe the GBs just started habitually calling robots "he" (like the Baterra) and later thought, why not actually grant gender... and then maybe some of the female GBs were like, "hey, what about females you sillyheads?!" and as an afterthought they made a few female ones. Or maybe somehow they did some kind of scientific measurement of what is best in each case and it just happened that male ended up more common.2) No MU beings reproduce biologically. Only SM beings.-No, Roodaka is not evidence of this, as much as some fanboys wish she was. The whole "soon you will be my Queen" thing greatly added to the confusion but canonically it is a political alliance and nothing more. A tradition that somehow must have got started amongst Vortixx, Steltians, and presumably a few titans (unless it's just a Steltian thing).-Same answer to Roodaka's design, in general.It's also possible Mata Nui observed that this is what females look like among humanoid aliens / Glatorian and thought it made more sense when making the Vortixx species (and maybe others), versus the GBs' apparently more reserved design for the Matoran/Toa species. Assuming the Vortixx were one of the species Mata Nui later made, and assuming he'd observed this tendency before then. Probably none of those assumptions are safe, though.I've wondered also if maybe the Vortixx themselves modified their design to emphasize their gender since being female on Xia meant being the ruling class, so it would be a status symbol. You wouldn't want to be mistaken for a male grunt worker there if you were female. We do know MU beings can redesign their metal components and rebuild themselves, but modifying the spawner machines may be off-limits (who knows).-See above quasi-theories about ratios. Come to think of it, worth adding that the entire population was pretty much intended as maintanance workers originally. It may simply be the GBs thought that having male personalities match a slightly stronger male-type body build should be more common, and just thought it would be too weird to have similarly bulky females, so settled for a different ratio instead.-I presume the ratio is (roughly) 50/50 on SM. I suppose it's not essential if the majority of males never "marry" or however that works. But I just blame real-world considerations for seeing such a shockingly lower percentage in the sets. It doesn't seem to me to make any story sense.-Oh... come to think of THIS... Av-Matoran probably blast to bits the "females are an afterthought" theory. So yeah, probably along the lines of the other ideas.-Element population ratios -- well, the six main elements are far more common than the secondaries, and each of the six is about equal. That's about all we know for sure. Your theoretical values seem to me to have the main six way too low. Even the Av-Matoran should be lower than any one of the main six, I'd think. Could be wrong.-I didn't know most female Makuta opposed the Plan, but I'll take your word on it. I suppose it's possible Gorast is "overcompensating" for sexism among the others, while the other females might not have.3) You asked this already above... so see my attempted partial answers there. It could be we're all way off the mark too. But I suspect the true answer is best summed up as "multiple reasons."Hope this helps.

 

 

Re: Jink re: water -- I think it's more that water is "sensitive". It can be gentle but also can be stormy, etc. It changes naturally, whereas a rock tends to be about the same from one moment to the next unless somebody throws it or whatever. I wouldn't think of the ocean as inherently gentle.

[Chro]

Is this even allowed?

As long as people don't respond immaturely to what was a very well thought-out discussion and not a rant about the specific things that made you ask if this is allowed or not... I'd say yes. Or not. Shoulda seen that comin'.

so, tl;dr, the genders exist for differing roles in society? that's what I think you were getting at, anyways.

Sort of.I'm sure you touched on this, NuvaTube, but I don't exactly remember it, so: wouldn't the GBs design the Matoran, etc. without gender? I always kinda thought that when personalities appeared in the MU beings, gender (not talking about physical here) developed as well, instead of gender being a base part of MU beings with personality coming in later. The way that gender was divided could've had somethig to do with the elements of each being, of course, like how you mentioned; perhaps the way that Ga-beings and their powers/affinities/etc. were made by the GBs caused them to develop female personalities, whereas the way Ta-beings were constructed, they became male. Edited August 1, 2013 by Chro

[Jinkmeister]

Re: Jink re: water -- I think it's more that water is "sensitive". It can be gentle but also can be stormy, etc. It changes naturally, whereas a rock tends to be about the same from one moment to the next unless somebody throws it or whatever. I wouldn't think of the ocean as inherently gentle.

That's what I had in mind, but it totally didn't end up that way on the screen

[Sir Kohran]

So, are females in the MU actually gentler? Let us think about this. Also bear in mind that we have to overcome the subconscious notion that they may be like humans, seeing as we are questioning if they actually have gender.

 

Gali and Nokama were certainly the peacekeepers of their respective Toa Teams, but Gali is said to have been able to display quite a temper at times. In support of the idea that gentleness is a general trait of Ga-Matoran at least (no such info on Vo-Matoran, in fact Chiara seems to suggest the opposite, then again she's just one example. From the little we saw of Nikila, she wasn't particularly aggressive non gentle, not that I think there was enough of her shown to really gauge her personality). Now let’s see what Dalu has to say:

 

“...I'm sure where you came from, Ga-Matoran are all gentle peacemakers who never raise their voices. That's what they ... we ... were like where I came from too."

 

To expand a bit on this, I find it interesting in the MNOLG how most of the villages with male populations have established defence systems - Ta-Koro has the Guard, Le-Koro the Air Force, and Onu-Koro the Ussalry. All three are seen or said to fight both near and far from their homes.

 

The only village with a female population, Ga-Koro, comes under attack early in the game. In stark contrast to the organised defences put on by the other (male) villages, the reaction of the Ga-Matoran is to hide in a hut whilst their homes are wrecked. After the hut is sunk, they are trapped underwater and need Takua and Gali to come along and rescue them.

 

Should we assume from this that female Matoran are inherently more passive and in need of defence by others?

Edited August 1, 2013 by Sir Kohran

[Jinkmeister]

That's the problem. Why would the Great Beings make an entire village full of passive Ga-Matoran, all in need of defense? That seems utterly doomed for failure. One Toa couldn't keep up protecting a village forever, especially when the village is completely open to attack. That's the other thing. Ta-Koro is in a volcano, Le-Koro is in the trees...the closest thing might be Po-Koro, but they have total line of sight in every direction, and they have walls (right?) Ga-Koro has no walls, and a threat just needs to be able to hold its breath for a bit to sneak directly under the village. I contend that the problem isn't with the inhabitants, it's with the location. The location, coupled with the passive nature of the Ga-Matoran (which, as a tangent, you have to wonder where the variety is. In real life, we have some females that are more masculine than others. Is it inconceivable that some of the more masculine [masculine in the sense of more aggression or need to defend, specifically] Ga-Matoran would form a milita? Then the question comes in, where were they during MNOLG?) Anyway, the location coupled with the Ga-Matoran's tendency towards a passive nature seems like a recipe for disaster, which it turns out being.

 

I would definitely not say that female Matoran are in need of defense by others, that seems to toe the line on sexism. I would say, rather, that their passive nature just doesn't equip them for a confrontation like it does for, same, Ta-Matoran. It's made clear that female Matoran and Toa are definitely completely fine on their own. So all in all, the events of MNOLG are almost an anomoly, I'd say. It doesn't fit, unless the goal is to make Ga-Matoran as a group seem like they need defense.

 

Not sure if I got what I meant across as clearly as I meant to, but I think the gist of it is there.

[bonesiii]

I always kinda thought that when personalities appeared in the MU beings, gender (not talking about physical here) developed as well, instead of gender being a base part of MU beings with personality coming in later.

That was disproven by the revelation about the Orde incident, since the GBs chose which gender all other Ce-Matoran/Toa would be at that point. Therefore they had already decided gender itself would exist.

 

And as I've said before, there's no actual evidence for the idea that "personalities" (or freewill or full sapience -- actually they had personalities from the start clearly, but I presume you mean the thing that the GBs didn't know) ever actually developed later. The main problem with that idea is it's harder to explain how it happened in everybody rather than just one or a few. It seems clear it was there from the start but just didn't become obvious until after the MU was launched and all GBs but Velika were out (the same way a baby's full potential for adult intelligence doesn't manifest right away; takes time to learn... although to be fair babies' brains aren't totally developed so that might be a bad analogy).

 

And keep in mind the Av-Matoran dual-gender thing. At one point that was a reasonable theory but I'd consider it impossible now. Actually Greg once gave evidence for gender developing, but it was retconned out.

 

 

Jink, thanks for clarifying.

 

 

The only village with a female population, Ga-Koro, comes under attack early in the game. In stark contrast to the organised defences put on by the other (male) villages, the reaction of the Ga-Matoran is to hide in a hut whilst their homes are wrecked. After the hut is sunk, they are trapped underwater and need Takua and Gali to come along and rescue them.

Should we assume from this that female Matoran are inherently more passive and in need of defence by others?

I'm about to the point in my retelling where this happens, and I've been trying to figure it out so glad you bring it up. Really the main problem to me is that it's portrayed as just one Tarakava. Yet much earlier they actually drove away a Tarakava Nui. I'm thinking they were already in that hut -- maybe it was "really" much larger than portrayed and it was a meeting hall, and a surprise attack trapped them in there.

 

If that idea "holds water" (lol sorry) then this instance should be irrelevant.

 

And clearly they did have a defense, though we never saw it as far as I recall until the Bohrok War. So, I'd be cautious with taking that idea too far.

 

Why would the Great Beings make an entire village full of passive Ga-Matoran, all in need of defense?

 

I don't think they're passive, but to this exact wording, keep in mind the GBs never intended there to be anything to defend against. (And they never planned on the "villages" either but that's a minor point.)

 

Ga-Koro has no walls

Prior to the modern era, USA was thought of as un-attackable (other than doomed by-ship wars and locals) due to being cut off from the "old world" by two oceans. Same principle here; Ga-Koro's design made it difficult for any land Rahi to attack. That opened it up to sea Rahi, true, but I get the impression they were skilled at spotting and stopping those attacks, so Makuta stopped trying for a while until he came up with a clever trick and saved it for when the Toa came to try to prove Gali an imposter along with similar approaches for the other Toa.

 

It's hard to tell if this works because MNOG had a tiny population of Matoran but canonically it was around 160, seemingly too many to fit in just one (normal) hut. That's why I'm thinking this special hut had to float and was really MUCH larger than MNOG portrays; too large to be made on just one lily pad with the root intact.

 

In real life, we have some females that are more masculine than others. Is it inconceivable that some of the more masculine [masculine in the sense of more aggression or need to defend, specifically] Ga-Matoran would form a milita?

I think you're making too much out of what was and wasn't shown in one little incident in one very early semi-canon source. Those Ga-Matoran would surely be the ones seen guarding the village during the Bohrok War, and likely most had the same job earlier but just didn't happen to be posted at the front gate. After all, most attacks prior to this wouldn't have come from land but from the sea, so they should have been posted near the outer sea edges of the village, which keep in mind weren't even depicted at all in the MNOG. They would be watching for Tarakava coming up for a breath, etc.

 

Macku certainly didn't need to learn how to throw a disk in MNOG; she was just as good at it as the guys, keep in mind too. So I really think this idea is going way overboard. And there was virtually no travel between villages -- the Ga-Matoran could not rely on others for defense. They had to do it themselves, and for a thousand years! Think about it.

 

Then the question comes in, where were they during MNOLG?

Easy: Offscreen. As was the vast majority of the village (which wasn't even imagined until later; the original idea was each village would have 12 Matoran or so).

 

It's possible a few more were hired during the Bohrok War, but I doubt it. The Rahi were mostly demasked then and Makuta was believed to be defeated, so they would simply move from sea watch to land watch. And show up "on-screen" where the story happened to take place.

 

I would say, rather, that their passive nature just doesn't equip them for a confrontation like it does for, same, Ta-Matoran.

Maybe not quite as well, or not in the same way. But then you could argue they're better at using brains rather than temper to solve problems. From their POV they would probably say that IS being better equipped. I think they just use a slightly different strategy but one that works.

 

I also think some villages just needed more numerous and organized (named) defenses like the Ta-Koro Guard, Ussalry, and Gukko Force. Ta-Koro faced a lot of lava-specific Rahi plus overflow from the southern jungle and (formerly) the nearby forest, the Onu-Matoran burrowing Rahi who roamed around anywhere they wished, and the Gukko Force especially due to being in the big jungle which implies heaviest Rahi population. Ko-Koro and Po-Koro had some region-specific Rahi but I get the impression they had less attacks overall. And Ga-Koro similarly was well designed to limit attacks to just region (water) specific Rahi.

 

So, the three villages with named defenses were more often under seige. And note that only the Gukko Force didn't show up in the Chronicler's Company battle end. I think this means that the worst attacks were in the south and they were still largely needed there as Rahi crossed the jungle to the north. Prior to this battle that would mean all three of the southern villages were in much more constant danger than the northern three. (Counting Onu as southern more because of the massive cliffs separating Ko from Le and the cold making crossovers unlikely except for Nui-Rama; there would be prolific Nui-Jaga populations mobile between Onu-Wahi and Le-Wahi.)

 

I agree with your concluding statement; they're fine at defending themselves on their own, at least as much as anyone is.

 

And to pick out one time where a Makuta "gotcha" attack worked on Ga-Matoran as if that's the only such attack that ever worked would be bad analysis. Keep in mind Le-Koro fell entirely to Krana (well almost; I guess Kongu and Tamaru were exempt), Ta-Koro was destroyed by a measly handful of beings (ouch), and Onu-Koro destroyed by Gahlok (or the flood they wrought), while its population just fled (until Nuparu's invention). With Toa we can see countless "gotchas" and it tends to be males (because males are more common). Lewa comes to mind. Yes pun intended.

[Katuko]

1) I believe it was essentially confirmed that since the GBs and other SM beings do, the GBs decided to incorporate gender into their AI creations as well (as they thought of them). So the "relatable" point in a sense may actually be true in-story, just as we tend to call intelligent fictional robots "he" or sometimes "she" rather than "it."

This is pretty much the only real reason here. The Great Beings and other Spherus Magna inhabitants had gender, and reproduced biologically. And just like humans, they decided that their robotic creations should be based on an existing species which they knew of, and then given traits they were familiar with.From a purely designer perspective it might not make immediate sense to just straight up make a robot look like humanoid, no matter how well that form suits us. If you make a bot that can perform its given task well, it doesn't need to be of any particular shape. The GBs wanted adaptability, though, so they made humanoids. Humanoids with power.Since their artificial species is partly organic, I find it reasonable that they made the biomechanical limbs and muscles and brains based on their own structure, which would likely be a lot simpler than to spin an entirely new "brain" out of whole cloth. At least, if it was to be somewhat organic and capable of learning like a human/Great Being/Agori/what-have-you does. And with copying organics also comes copying thinking, emotion, and certain gender traits.Like Chiara herself comments, females are not necessarily "gentle", like the GBs (and many humans) think. Roodaka, Helryx, Lariska are some females off the top of my head that seemed anything but gentle.I believe the GBs made their lifeforms have gender mostly because it's what they were familiar with. Even if biological reproduction was out, they thought of it as useful as a guideline when "marking" certain elements. I would personally not have designed my 'bots that way; I would either have them lack a gender n the first place or I would combine the same element with different genders depending on what the task at hand might need -- if males and females actually had distinct enough personalities.Maybe they did it just to make people easier accept the concept of partial sentience in their artificial creations. The all-important familiarity aspect that's been mentioned a lot. If you were to ask any human, I think many of them would prefer a servant robot which looked human and was somewhat relatable, rather than a pincer crane on wheels which barely communicated. So maybe Great Beings felt safer about leaving their fate in the hands of a partly sentient species which had a personal, emotional reason to live and fulfill their mission.

[Toa Zaz]

Well, the real reasoning behind it is that Lego decided that they ought not to completely isolate women in all their lines, but didn't try very hard at equal gender distribution or anything like that. So they added one token woman to appease the feminists. Obviously there's no logical explanation for why robot without [bones: please remember to keep this child-friendly... let's say without gender-specific organs ] would ever require some kind of gender assignment, (any explanation based on personalities or whatever would be sexist and offensive), and this is probably one of the few plot holes that Greg should have left unexplained. Unfortunately, he did not, and that's how we ended up with this huge controversy over Orde's backstory from The Yesterday Quest.

Edited August 1, 2013 by bonesiii

[fishers64]

I think that the reason for the gender thing in the first place was to conceal The Big Mystery of the giant robot. If there were no genders, it would stick up as odd, and genderlessness would indicate that they were robots, cogs in a machine, which would indicate that we have a giant machine...or a robot. The writers wanted us to think of them as characters, not as AI pieces in a system. I also think that the GBs recogized that males and females have slightly different neural structure, optimized for different tasks, and as such made each variety of Matoran either male or female depending on whether the male or female mental structure was more suited for the task. Oddly, this is supported by the Av-Matoran. The GBs could have observed the Av-Matoran and noticed that the males and females did better at various tasks, and adjusted the other varieties accordingly. Inevitably they might make a mistake or two, as seen with Orde, but it makes sense that they would do this. And I think they went with male/female mental structures to begin with was because that is what they knew, and they sort of needed a baseline for the nanotechs' brain in order to expand on it. It was easier to make the ladies and then program the water attributes in rather than to debate all the personality qualites of water beings. It's easier to make a bunch of guys and say "These are the statue builders" and "These are the airship technicians." and then optomize each group for that. And inevitably, they needed fewer teachers and more airship techs. This is not something to be held against the GBs - there's nothing wrong with them acknowledging that males do some things better than females, and vice versa, and they needed more guys. (This is in response to your third question, Nuva Tube, so yeah.)There's some Greg hunting stuff here - I wasn't aware that many of the female Makuta were killed off for opposing the Plan. Although it does make sense - we don't see many of them later, and it does kind of fit the female mindset...ish. (With Gorast being the exception.)

[Just A Dot]

Once upon a time, the Great Being created the Matoran with genders. However, after they saw the fanfics of HukixMaku and JallerxHahli, or perhaps after they realized that approximately 4/5 male Matoran were going to be forever alone, they stepped in and made love non-canon. However, they completely forgot to remove the character's genders, leaving us with this topic today.

 

Oddly, this is supported by the Av-Matoran. The GBs could have observed the Av-Matoran and noticed that the males and females did better at various tasks, and adjusted the other varieties accordingly. Inevitably they might make a mistake or two, as seen with Orde, but it makes sense that they would do this.

 

This here makes the most sense to me (as I was lazy and only skimmed the original post and most of the replies. Don't worry, NuvaTube, I'll give it a read when I'm a bit more lucid). There are differences between genders, and the Great Beings could have unintentionally created those differences in Av-Matoran while they were making them (giving them genders in the first place for the sake of familiarity). Thus, they took those differences into consideration when making the later species and other breeds of Matoran (someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the Av-Matoran were the first species created, right?)

[bonesiii]

That's correct, GG. Yes, that reasoning makes sense to me too.

 

I have to disagree with you, Zaz, that literally any reason focusing on personality would be sexist. There's little other than personality to go on with MU beings, after all. Some personality argument would be sexist (i.e. "all of this gender behave this way"), but there would be nothing wrong with observing real trends (which do exist in real life though they are often poorly described). I think society as a whole is growing out of oversensitivity on this issue and is becoming more able to calmly and rationally analyze it without playing the offense card.

 

And let's note that just leaving the tropical island clearly offended many people, not something you'd expect if you had little experience with online fanbases.

 

By contrast the negative reactions to the Orde incident were few and far between. I also recall noticing it tended to come from a few people (though there were exceptions) who I never saw commenting on the story at all until that one time; I got the impression those who actually did follow it understood. Seemed to me that some just heard from others that a story commented on gender and had a gut reaction, but they weren't likely buying sets or books or whatever anyways.

 

That can create an illusion of being a 'huge controversy' but in context I don't think it was; it's been greatly exaggerated. I saw far more visceral anger about Metru Nui than that, coming from literally hundreds of people.

Edited August 2, 2013 by bonesiii

[Just A Dot]

By contrast the negative reactions to the Orde incident were few and far between. I also recall noticing it tended to come from a few people (though there were exceptions) who I never saw commenting on the story at all until that one time; I got the impression those who actually did follow it understood. Seemed to me that some just heard from others that a story commented on gender and had a gut reaction, but they weren't likely buying sets or books or whatever anyways.

 

That can create an illusion of being a 'huge controversy' but in context I don't think it was; it's been greatly exaggerated. I saw far more visceral anger about Metru Nui than that, coming from literally hundreds of people.

I kinda thought the Orde thing was stupid, but I really didn't care too much.

 

And how controversial was Metru Nui, out of curiosity? I was just finding out BIONICLE had a story by early 2004, and I personally didn't like Metru Nui anywhere near as much as Mata Nui, though now it's probably my favorite story arch.

[fishers64]

Thanks for the reasoning, GG. That sounds better than my wall of text.I don't know about 2004, but I don't think there was a gender/sexism controversy over Orde, more that it was a writer's way of escaping a mistake. The complaining about that came later, much after the fact IMO, and the complainers said that there was a controversy over gender when it happened. I remember thinking "Controversy? There was a controversy?"

Edited August 2, 2013 by bonesiii
Since the post is, as you correctly pointed out, off-topic (among other issues but let's just drop it), I've removed it, so removing the quote of it too. Member has been PMed with a copy of it and explanation of the rule. :) -bones

[Exitium]

The prevailing theory seems to be that the Great Beings made Matoran with genders since that's what they were familiar with, which I think is logically sound. Ignoring the physical differences between males and females, there are various neurological differences between them which we probably don't even fully understand, yet if the GBs were advanced enough to construct artificial brains, then their knowledge of the brain could have led them to believe that gender was about more than simply making more of a species. One could debate about whether the social differences between men and women are biological or merely human constructs, but the GBs' conscious decision to have genders would suggest to me that they believed the social roles were important in their own society, whatever those roles may have been.

 

As for the whole attack on Ga-Koro issue from MNOG, I don't believe a feminist critique is valid here because the Matoran and Nokama were ultimately saved by Gali (a female). Also Ga-Koro's defense forces were shown in more detail in the Bohrok War (when admittadely the Bohrok made short work of them; they were hardly defenseless, however). It's worth pointing out that while it's perfectly ok to write about a stereotypical masculine character, stereotypical female characters are often accused of being shallow or uninteresting, which is often why fictional works can face criticism for not having strong female characters. This is one of the reasons why Gali sometimes shows a temper for example, or why Gorast is one of the most aggressive Makuta. I also agree with bonesiii that Dalu's comment is meant to be ironic, and though Dalu herself is hardly helpless, even the MU seems to be home to some element of sexism and the perception that females should be peaceful and defenseless.

 

The episode between Chiara and Orde further emphasizes this point. The episode is particularly interesting because it plays the whole "males are strong and insensitive and females are kind and gentile" stereotypes straight before proceeding to mock them with Chiara's needless execution of a helpless reptile. Although Greg may not believe in these generalizations, the GBs must have on some level, or they wouldn't have bothered with the Ce-Matoran gender swap. I actually remember this to be quite controversial at the time, and I'm actually quite surprised Greg even wrote this, considering there were no plot holes he was trying to fill or anything, and wading into the gender debate seemed likely to generate the kind of controversy LEGO usually tries to avoid.

 

Also minor point, I don't remember ever hearing about the female Makuta opposing Teridax's plan; in fact Gorast was one of the first to support it. Could you maybe clarify where you got this information?

Edited August 2, 2013 by Exitium

[Just A Dot]

The episode between Chiara and Orde further emphasizes this point. The episode is particularly interesting because it plays the whole "males are strong and insensitive and females are kind and gentile" stereotype straight before proceeding to mock them with Chiara's needless execution of a helpless reptile. Although Greg may not believe in these generalizations, the GBs must have on some level, or they wouldn't have bothered with the Ce-Matoran gender swap. I actually remember this to be quite controversial at the time, and I'm actually quite surprised Greg even wrote this, considering there were no plot holes he was trying to fill or anything, and wading into the gender debate seemed likely to generate the kind of controversy LEGO usually tries to avoid.

He could have been trying to justify Matoran Universe genders in general with that.

[bonesiii]

Exitium, well, there was the fact that Greg had apparently said Ce-Matoran were female, forgot it (allegedly -- but being forgetful myself I can easily believe this lol), and then had to explain why Orde was male. So there technically was a plot hole to be filled.

 

And yes, the actual context shows that Greg was really "deconstructing" the idea that females were inherently more gentle. That was part of why I thought many who were posting about it obviously hadn't read it themselves, as they took it the opposite way.

 

Maybe part of the reason people didn't like it, which LEGO might not have anticipated, though, was that people had thought of the Great Beings as utopian. But personally I'm fine with this being taken down a few notches as that's generally unrealistic and I suspect if LEGO actually went with that interpretation even more people would be complaining of Mary Sue-ism. Could be wrong.

 

Re: the move from Mata Nui to Metru Nui -- many of the posts were intensely flamey about it, and what struck me about it was that so many of them came before we ever got to really meet Metru Nui. Some of them raised valid constructive criticism but most people were distracted by the intensity of the negativity and this largely went unnoticed (which was part of why I started my old complaint topic archive to try to bring out the constructive points, though that seemed to go nowhere ). I think it was just the power of fans' connection to Mata Nui being far more than LEGO ever anticipated, and that was never really what Bionicle was meant to aim at.

 

Another thing was that we kept seeing these complaints about that one thing for years and years after -- continuing to be emotional, although paradoxically Metru Nui was really growing on many of us, and at the moment it seems the vast majority appreciate it. By contrast (and the reason I bring it up), the Orde alleged controversy was never all that emotional (at least not with number of such posts) and didn't last. It only stays 'alive' by occasional calm posts that mention that it happened. It doesn't seem to have anywhere near the same kind of emotional power. So this is another part of why I doubt it was really a substantive controversy.

 

For the most part I think it's just that for whatever reasons, part of the incident got quoted out of context at one point without realizing (hindsight 20/20) how people might react to that, and people reacted to how it looked out of context before reading the actual chapter. It was not apparently a matter of people encountering it in-story and coming on here to express issues with it, unlike various other things (though again I'm sure there must have been exceptions).

 

Re: Gali save -- yes, I was going to mention that at one point but must have forgotten... Darn that memory lol.

[Just A Dot]

Maybe part of the reason people didn't like it, which LEGO might not have anticipated, though, was that people had thought of the Great Beings as utopian. But personally I'm fine with this being taken down a few notches as that's generally unrealistic and I suspect if LEGO actually went with that interpretation even more people would be complaining of Mary Sue-ism. Could be wrong.

 

Re: the move from Mata Nui to Metru Nui -- many of the posts were intensely flamey about it, and what struck me about it was that so many of them came before we ever got to really meet Metru Nui. Some of them raised valid constructive criticism but most people were distracted by the intensity of the negativity and this largely went unnoticed (which was part of why I started my old complaint topic archive to try to bring out the constructive points, though that seemed to go nowhere ). I think it was just the power of fans' connection to Mata Nui being far more than LEGO ever anticipated, and that was never really what Bionicle was meant to aim at.

Ever since we found out that the Great Beings were more of scientists than Gods, and that they apparently ruined Bara Magna, I viewed them as not really caring too much about others and more of only caring about new discoveries. So, the kind of people who would drop their kids in a vat of an unknown substance if they were the only test subjects available.

 

The biggest reason I hated Metru Nui was because it was too civilized I loved how "wild" and "untammed" Mata Nui felt, and didn't think Metru Nui could ever capture the same sense of mystery. That, and the fact that none of my friends believed me when I said the Toa Metru existed a 1000 years before the Nuva, or that Metru Nui was not just Mata Nui in the far off future with technology. But, I did also believe, at the time, that BIONICLE: The Game was semi-canon, so I guess I can't blame them for not listening to me (even if they didn't know any better).

[bonesiii]

that they apparently ruined Bara Magna

Just to note (assuming you mean causing the Shattering of SM): they could only be blamed indirectly, and only in the sense that the ELs that they made happened to be the ones to war over it and then tap into its power on-site. The GBs actually studied what would happen if they would do that and tried to stop it, but the ELs would no longer listen. Really the blame lies with them, not the GBs.

 

But I think it may have been somewhat inevitable. The EP pushed its way up, and has this capability, and if they didn't figure out how to tap into it, a Skrall or an unusual Agori or whonot might have done it instead.

 

If you did mean something Bara-Magna-specific (Baterra come to mind) then I sit corrected.

 

The biggest reason I hated Metru Nui was because it was too civilized I loved how "wild" and "untammed" Mata Nui felt, and didn't think Metru Nui could ever capture the same sense of mystery.

Well, sure. The thing I think that was missed by most at the time though, and Greg did try to highlight it in one of the interviews with BZP news, was that Metru Nui made Mata Nui possible -- the reason robotic-like beings were stuck on a wild and untamed place is that they were essentially like outcasts from an advanced world where they fit in. It should have been obvious to us that the flashback would thus be the story of how that civilization was smashed to bits, but that got lost in the visceral reaction to the superficial change, sadly. Now I think most people see it, in hindsight.

 

I did always think they should have had more wilderness in Metru Nui though. There's no real reason the "tamed" part would have had to fill the entire land. So there could have been better ways to handle it, and that's mainly what I meant about the constructive criticism that got lost amidst the 'sides-ism'.

 

Anywho... this is getting a bit off-topic now.

 

To connect it with what got us on that tangent -- there has been one thing that both controversies and several others have had in common, is that Bionicle tended to raise mysteries with the intent of eventually discovering answers, but some people sort of fell in love with the mystery so much they resented any answer being given. That also might be a factor with the Orde thing; not so much offense about the specific answer that was given but that any answer at all was. Could be wrong. Just saying this to make this post remotely on-topic lol. If so, it seems to be something that people have eventually gotten over in general, just took longer for some (like leaving Mata Nui) than others (like Orde).

 

Also off-topic: Does anyone else have trouble typing "Orde" without habitually putting an r on the end? Man, that's tricky... I hear "Orde" in my head but my fingers just want to complete "Order". If I forgot the backspace button anywhere up there due to being tired, that's why.

[Just A Dot]

 

that they apparently ruined Bara Magna

Just to note (assuming you mean causing the Shattering of SM): they could only be blamed indirectly, and only in the sense that the ELs that they made happened to be the ones to war over it and then tap into its power on-site. The GBs actually studied what would happen if they would do that and tried to stop it, but the ELs would no longer listen. Really the blame lies with them, not the GBs.

 

But I think it may have been somewhat inevitable. The EP pushed its way up, and has this capability, and if they didn't figure out how to tap into it, a Skrall or an unusual Agori or whonot might have done it instead.

 

If you did mean something Bara-Magna-specific (Baterra come to mind) then I sit corrected.

 

[...]

 

Also off-topic: Does anyone else have trouble typing "Orde" without habitually putting an r on the end? Man, that's tricky... I hear "Orde" in my head but my fingers just want to complete "Order". If I forgot the backspace button anywhere up there due to being tired, that's why.

 

I thought the Great Beings had something more to do with it. At the very least, they could have made their robot react a bit sooner instead of waiting for 100,000 years.

 

Orde is such an awesome name, and I have no such trouble. If anything, I may mistype it as "ore".

[bonesiii]

But as has been discussed in other topics, the moons took around that long to stabilize to enable it at all, and you wouldn't want to risk a Reformation with people on the world if you didn't have sufficient data to be sure you wouldn't end up just accidentally killing everybody. Also, 100,000 years may seem long to our perspective with ~100-year lifespans but not necessarily to Bionicle beings.

[SarracenianKaijin]

My answer to this is that people who wrote this story really didn't think things through at all, and unfortunately never will.

 

Or you could just say life on MU just evolved into the gender binary structure. Makes about as much sense as anything else Great Beings ever did.

Edited August 2, 2013 by SarracenianKaijin

[Sir Kohran]

I'm thinking they were already in that hut -- maybe it was "really" much larger than portrayed and it was a meeting hall, and a surprise attack trapped them in there.

 

The clip of the attack that plays in the Maku conversation has a bit that seems to suggest they had some warning:

 

 

It's hard to tell if this works because MNOG had a tiny population of Matoran but canonically it was around 160, seemingly too many to fit in just one (normal) hut.

 

It doesn't have to have been every last person in the village; others could've hidden elsewhere. Maku probably emphasised the group in the hut because they had Nokama with them and were the ones in need of help.

 

As was the vast majority of the village (which wasn't even imagined until later; the original idea was each village would have 12 Matoran or so).

 

MNOLG depicts a lot more than twelve Matoran in most of the villages. IIRC the twelve idea came about a year later, and was represented in MNOLG2 with the small and named cast. This had to be scrapped when the Kohlii match in the movie depicted far larger numbers, and at some point thereafter the thousand number was decided.

 

Ta-Koro faced a lot of lava-specific Rahi plus overflow from the southern jungle and (formerly) the nearby forest,

 

The village was well-fortified and in the middle of a huge lake of lava; I highly doubt they needed much defence. Given that Onewa mentions the Guard helping to look for Pohatu, and there's the outpost in Ko-Wahi, it seems rather that the Ta-Matoran took it upon themselves to assist the other villages.

 

Ko-Koro and Po-Koro had some region-specific Rahi but I get the impression they had less attacks overall.

 

Ko-Koro could only be reached by a narrow bridge. Po-Koro benefited from its huge walls, plus in the desert enemies can be spotted from a great distance.

 

And note that only the Gukko Force didn't show up in the Chronicler's Company battle end. I think this means that the worst attacks were in the south and they were still largely needed there as Rahi crossed the jungle to the north.

 

Kongu does show up to take out a Nui-Rama. Other fliers don't appear, but there's no reason to doubt they were there or arrived soon after him (Takua doesn't see the entire battle).

 

And to pick out one time where a Makuta "gotcha" attack worked on Ga-Matoran as if that's the only such attack that ever worked would be bad analysis. Keep in mind Le-Koro fell entirely to Krana (well almost; I guess Kongu and Tamaru were exempt), Ta-Koro was destroyed by a measly handful of beings (ouch), and Onu-Koro destroyed by Gahlok (or the flood they wrought), while its population just fled (until Nuparu's invention).

 

But at least in the first two cases, the Bohrok had the element of suprise, plus a lot more in the way of numbers and firepower.

 

As for the whole attack on Ga-Koro issue from MNOG, I don't believe a feminist critique is valid here because the Matoran and Nokama were ultimately saved by Gali (a female).

 

True, but Gali's role as a Toa is one that requires her to take action. She doesn't do anything that a male Toa doesn't.

 

When it comes to Matoran, whose roles don't inherently require the ability to fight, the trend appears to be that the males do whilst the females don't.

 

Also Ga-Koro's defense forces were shown in more detail in the Bohrok War (when admittadely the Bohrok made short work of them; they were hardly defenseless, however).

 

I gave thought to this bit too. When the Pahrak attack the edge of the village, the Ga-Matoran reaction is not to defeat them or drive them off, but just to remove their path to the village, which leaves the Ga-Matoran cornered. Then when the Pahrak enter the village over the waterfall rubble, the Ga-Matoran again rely on the path to the last lily pad being cut off, cornering them even more.

 

They respond to the threat in much the same way as they did in the Rahi attack - they try to remove themselves from it rather than stop it, and end up in the same situation (cornered). And again, they have to be saved by external forces.

 

Re: the move from Mata Nui to Metru Nui -- many of the posts were intensely flamey about it, and what struck me about it was that so many of them came before we ever got to really meet Metru Nui. Some of them raised valid constructive criticism but most people were distracted by the intensity of the negativity and this largely went unnoticed

 

I don't remember that, though some members did dislike the switch from archaic rural to high-tech urban.

Edited August 2, 2013 by Sir Kohran

[emily]

I just wanted to throw in a few points of clarification regarding what is said in Mata Nui Online Game.

 

 

I'm thinking they were already in that hut -- maybe it was "really" much larger than portrayed and it was a meeting hall, and a surprise attack trapped them in there.

 

The clip of the attack that plays in the Maku conversation has a bit that seems to suggest they had some warning:

In the cutscene, it is implied that the Ga-Koronans are trapped in the hut by the Tarakava (it cuts to Nokama and several Tohunga already inside after the Tarakava emerges, and a final Tohunga is flung in on her back), but Maku contradicts this herself by saying that "Nokama and the others barricaded themselves into a hut to hide..." It is difficult to say what Templar intended to be the correct story.

 

 

And note that only the Gukko Force didn't show up in the Chronicler's Company battle end. I think this means that the worst attacks were in the south and they were still largely needed there as Rahi crossed the jungle to the north.

 

Kongu does show up to take out a Nui-Rama. Other fliers don't appear, but there's no reason to doubt they were there or arrived soon after him (Takua doesn't see the entire battle).

To add to this, Kongu does say "Rahi disappear, and Matau confused. Thought: Rahi fallback here, to destroy Kini-Nui. So fastfly we come, to aid!”

 

The impression I had always gotten was that the Makuta had drawn back his impending attacks on the villages in order to coalesce all of his Rahi at the Kini-Nui, to overwhelm the Company and ensure that the Toa would never escape his lair. His plans were thwarted when the villages united to face him, a conclusion alluded to early in the game, when Jala exclaims, "But we cannot confront the enemy alone, and I do not have faith in the other cities of Mata Nui. If they do not join with us in the defense, we will all perish, Toa or not!"

[Toa Zaz]

That's correct, GG. Yes, that reasoning makes sense to me too.

 

I have to disagree with you, Zaz, that literally any reason focusing on personality would be sexist. There's little other than personality to go on with MU beings, after all. Some personality argument would be sexist (i.e. "all of this gender behave this way"), but there would be nothing wrong with observing real trends (which do exist in real life though they are often poorly described). I think society as a whole is growing out of oversensitivity on this issue and is becoming more able to calmly and rationally analyze it without playing the offense card.

 

And let's note that just leaving the tropical island clearly offended many people, not something you'd expect if you had little experience with online fanbases.

 

By contrast the negative reactions to the Orde incident were few and far between. I also recall noticing it tended to come from a few people (though there were exceptions) who I never saw commenting on the story at all until that one time; I got the impression those who actually did follow it understood. Seemed to me that some just heard from others that a story commented on gender and had a gut reaction, but they weren't likely buying sets or books or whatever anyways.

 

That can create an illusion of being a 'huge controversy' but in context I don't think it was; it's been greatly exaggerated. I saw far more visceral anger about Metru Nui than that, coming from literally hundreds of people.

As far as I recall the negative reaction to the Orde thing was (considering the sets were gone and there were far less members than in 2004 or whenever) huge. The BZPowercast even had a discussion on it in which they agreed it was offensive.

 

Now, I don't think Greg was deliberately making a sexist statement; some of the stronger female characters are some of his favorites. I think he just made a mistake on Orde's gender and he wanted to cover it up instead of admitting it, and he did a very poor job of it.

[Katuko]

Now, I don't think Greg was deliberately making a sexist statement; some of the stronger female characters are some of his favorites. I think he just made a mistake on Orde's gender and he wanted to cover it up instead of admitting it, and he did a very poor job of it.

He might also have wanted to comment on why the GBs made certain genders male/female (they stereotyped), and used the characters of Orde and Chiara to make a secondary comment on how they were wrong after all; because males and females are not as predictable in traits as the GBs thought. Still, it was handled rather poorly anyways. I blame the general format of the later serials as well as the line itself going downhill as the reason why these revelations seemed to come too quickly and too densely at times. Edited August 2, 2013 by Katuko

[bonesiii]

Maybe we're supposed to presume there was more than one Tarakava at first or something. I dunno, that's a tricky one. Given that Maku at least helps just fine in the same source to fight many more Rahi than that, it seems odd nobody out of the whole village would pick up a disk.

 

Maybe the giant meeting hut plus a few not having yet arrived could explain it.

 

Of course, I could also have some real fun with it by saying it's a really experienced Tarakava that could block disk attacks really well and the like. That would at least work for my story lol. Any last minute thunks? (Not that I'm about to write the scene today or anything. )

 

Now, I don't think Greg was deliberately making a sexist statement; some of the stronger female characters are some of his favorites. I think he just made a mistake on Orde's gender and he wanted to cover it up instead of admitting it, and he did a very poor job of it.

I think is pretty much right on. I think the point he was making was very anti-sexist, to be clear (as explained in above posts), but apparently too subtle and many people missed it and took it the opposite way.

[DuplexBeGreat]

To connect it with what got us on that tangent -- there has been one thing that both controversies and several others have had in common, is that Bionicle tended to raise mysteries with the intent of eventually discovering answers, but some people sort of fell in love with the mystery so much they resented any answer being given.

*cough*Teridax*cough*Some additional info about Greg not being sexist- remember that we were explicitly told at the start of the "Guess the GB" contest that it was NOT a female for the reason that Greg didn't want to ruin a strong female character by revealing that she was secretly a guy all along.

[Toa Zaz]

Yeah, I think the other problem with the suddenly chauvinistic Great Beings was, aside from being too subtle, making the Great Beings despicable instead of benevolent like they had been portrayed for so long was jarring because it wasn't given proper dramatic weight. It wasn't clear enough whether or not we should have been on board with them or not.

[dviddy]

I think is pretty much right on. I think the point he was making was very anti-sexist, to be clear (as explained in above posts), but apparently too subtle and many people missed it and took it the opposite way.

 

You are re-writing history in a major, major way. The controversy over the Orde thing was huge, and your comment on how it was "just people who never read the serials and just heard about it" is offensive and dismissive. I've read every chapter in each serial, and had done so each time a new chapter was released. The problem was never with the "Greg is saying all women are passive and nurturing!" and you know better than that. And there is nothing "subtle" about saying "pfft, all women are nurturing and passive? Watch me fry this lizard to prove otherwise!"

 

Like, really? :/

 

The problem was that Greg had the female Toa act overly violent and a little over-the-top, and it was one of those "the exception proves the rule" situations. (As a self-proclaimed logician, I am certain you are familiar with the loose rhetorical meaning behind that phrase). By making one character who says "yes, women are always passive and calm" and then act violently, she is proving that her actions are not the norm, and that women are generally passive. Of course, it doesn't help that Greg only knows two types of women: Passive, nurturing females, and violent, slightly-to-lotsa crazy women. The extreme reaction to the comment about peaceful women does not negate the sexism behind the comment, it is a comment that (subtly) proves it.

[bonesiii]

The problem was that Greg had the female Toa act overly violent and a little over-the-top, and it was one of those "the exception proves the rule" situations.

Interesting interpretation. But then, what in-story would you point to as evidence of that? If the story shows things that don't fit an alleged rule, I mean how else do you prove the rule isn't really a rule? And what good would proving that rule do?

 

To be clear, I don't think I had you in mind about some of the posts I was thinking of. (Although I forget exactly who said what.) I definitely recall several posts that didn't seem to catch the Chiara thing. Of course, then there were the "why kill a lizard" posts. Which definitely caused confusion too, due to the "Toa don't kill" thing, though that had a reasonable and consistent explanation (re: Graalok... but still confusing).

 

The whole incident is regrettable, I think we can all agree. Probably a better solution would have been to just say that element had both genders or something. (Honestly I still feel all elements would have been better that way.)

 

As far as how big it is, well, it's not a contest. It just seems to me that whenever one of these topics comes up, the vast majority of people didn't seem to know about that even just a little while after it; you'd see one or two posts insisting it was huge (like yours ) but the majority didn't seem to agree.

 

I think we can also agree that as meaningful as the move to Metru Nui was to a lot of people, it was a superficial change, while this touched on a subject that's actually about how people have been mistreated, and has a history far beyond Bionicle, and a lot of that baggage may have still been around and got attached by assumption on to this. Which can go both ways -- on the one hand, that's not really fair to LEGO especially since nobody honestly thinks Greg actually agrees with sexism so to take it that way literally wouldn't make sense, but on the other hand, it's kind of a "third rail" thing and you can make the case LEGO just shouldn't have gone there just to avoid the risk of misinterpreting.

 

On the other hand, perhaps being oversensitive about gender is a factor in what causes the larger problems and humanity would be better off getting over that?

 

Of course, it doesn't help that Greg only knows two types of women: Passive, nurturing females, and violent, slightly-to-lotsa crazy women.

Another good point. Of course, that's largely due to plot reasons. Violent, slightly or really crazy describes just about any villain, and if you have some villains be female, that goes with the territory.

 

Also, passive and nurturing seems a bit of an exaggeration to me. Gali clearly tried to act to keep her team together -- which you can call nurturing, but not passive, while Onua disagreed with the team splitting up but did nothing, which is passive but not nurturing. Later, of course, Onua "nurtured" Lewa to take off the Krana. So this is not an inherently female thing. And I don't really recall much if anything like that with Hahli, any more than anyone else.

 

But yeah, there's some kind of tendency there which could cause misinterpretation.

Edited August 6, 2013 by bonesiii

[Just A Dot]

I actually viewed Chiara's frying of that lizard as being done out of annoyance at Orde's somewhat sexist statements. Had the serial continued, she may have turned out to not always be crazy and violent and over-the-top and stuff.

[bonesiii]

I actually viewed Chiara's frying of that lizard as being done out of annoyance at Orde's somewhat sexist statements. Had the serial continued, she may have turned out to not always be crazy and violent and over-the-top and stuff.

Well, that wasn't Greg's intention, although it's a fair read of how it's written. He clarified that he meant the lizard as a pest species, like how if you spot a mosquito you have no issue with swatting it. In some areas this is actually common with lizards which is not something people in other areas like me can automatically relate to, so probably was another failure to communicate by assuming the meaning would be clear to a wider audience than it was.

 

So, it wasn't meant to be crazy, violent, or over-the-top. On the other hand, the timing is obviously not meant as a coincidence. Like the earlier posts said, it was meant to illustrate that normal everyday females don't fit that assumption, so the assumption itself is wrong. But much of that message got "lost in translation" as it were.

[fishers64]

Of course, it doesn't help that Greg only knows two types of women: Passive, nurturing females, and violent, slightly-to-lotsa crazy women.

 

I disagree with this statement. There's Helryx.

 

 

I actually agree with bonesiii here. Not everything need be interpreted as a gender statement. I thought nothing of the Orde and Chiara thing until I went on here and saw all the posts about it. And Chiara was already portrayed as unhinged, so nothing strange going on. (I could type up a big long lecture on this subject, but it's off topic and there's no need. Let's not bring the Blog Wars in here.)

Edited August 6, 2013 by fishers64

[Kanakalackin]

 

Of course, it doesn't help that Greg only knows two types of women: Passive, nurturing females, and violent, slightly-to-lotsa crazy women.

 

I disagree with this statement. There's Helryx.

 

Helryx is insanely evil and ambitious.

 

Edit: I meant Tuyet.

Edited August 6, 2013 by Wasp

[fishers64]

 

 

Of course, it doesn't help that Greg only knows two types of women: Passive, nurturing females, and violent, slightly-to-lotsa crazy women.

 

I disagree with this statement. There's Helryx.

 

Helryx is insanely evil and ambitious.

 

 

What? She's the leader of an organization for good. She does what she thinks she has to do to further Mata Nui's mission. Granted, she's not perfect, but she's not crazy.

 

Ambitious? She's more beat down than anything else.

[Kanakalackin]

Oops I was thinking of Tuyet.