And I understand that. Changing too many things, though, just for diversity, might turn off old fans of Bionicle, looking into the story of Brickonicle. Which may not happen, but there’s still that possibility.
If anything, that seems like a great reason to depart from the conventions. TLG isn’t making G3, at least not yet. We can do whatever we want.
See, I can understand where you’re coming from with this, and I would personally go for Lewa as female as well; that said, I don’t think that it’s gonna fly.
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The whole point of this project is to approach this as if we were Lego.
Voriki was not a G1 character. He was a silly G1 in-joke that we are transforming into a character.
This means nothing.
Is it? I understand that being realistic is important, but do we have to make the red Toa the main character all of the time?
With all due respect, a rebooted Bionicle will have to be able hold up on it’s own merits and establish itself with a new set of people who are not attached to the history of the line as we are.
As has been proven by G2’s failings, Bionicle cannot sustain itself upon the backs of older fans. Thus, developing a re-imagined Bionicle that caters to old fans will only doom it to another untimely demise.
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That is a great point. But there’s no denying it will be recognized by those who loved the first, heck even the second, generation, and they will wonder why one of their favorite characters is now a girl, for better or for worse.
But, I will admit you had some great points. You won this small debate, my friend.
Ironic that a fan project that literally exists only for the fans also believes that the opinions of the fans are meaningless. I get that a hypothetical G3 Would need to appeal to appeal to a new audience, but changing one characters gender won’t do that, it Wil mostly just serve to anger old fans, and while you could argue that G1 fans don’t matter because by now they’re pretty much all adults, if you are still looking at a theoretical launch in 2020, then there will still be a large number of G2 fans in your target demographic, and they’re probably not going to be excited about you genderbending their favorite character either. Also, please give me an example of a time that genderbending a main character has worked well for any franchise, because the only one I can think of is Battlestar Galactica and there was twenty years between the reboot and the original. Put simply, if you’re looking at 2020 as the hypothetical launch of G3, G1 and G2 are in far to recent memory for you to get away with such a big change.
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I already ended my debate with Var, please don’t continue it.
I was asleep for your debate, now it’s my turn.
That kind of sums up every debate that has been had about G3.
True, but the fact is I have points that weren’t brought up or that I feel weren’t accurately represented, and so the show goes on.
Fine, that’s fair. Debate away, I guess.
I feel this whole discussion on gender ratio opens up quite a paradox. Just as Morgan Freeman said that we need to end racism by disregarding race as a factor entirely, to bring about gender equality we must disregard gender entirely as well.
In which case, this means that gender doesn’t matter, so theoretically, if a character’s gender changes, this does not matter, right? But on the other hand, if gender doesn’t matter, then does it really matter if there are more males than females?
While I am open to change, I personally feel that the best route is to simply do the ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ philosophy that we applied to the elements. If we ARE going to introduce a female toa, then I feel the best option is clearly the seventh ‘Toa of Lightning’ that is in the works. Considering G1 classified Lightning Toa as female (even though we’re getting rid of such arbitrary gender rules in G3), it fits with the old status quo, and it’s not like there are any clearly established, truly iconic Lightning Toa that are male (besides Voriki, of course, but you get the idea).
TLDR; Gender doesn’t matter. Just keep it the same like with the elements, and make the seventh Toa of Lightning female if we’re going to introduce said character.
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I like that people actually want to get behind this idea (I was one of the original proposers - it just seemed too good to pass up). But G1 Voriki was just a prank character, so we should try and move beyond the source a little. Keep the visual inspiration if we want - similar colors, mask shape, etc. - but the character should be unique in her own right.
For starters, we should probably rename her. Maybe Chiara? That was the name of a canon G1 Toa of Lightning and sounds more feminine than “Voriki”. I guess the only problem with going down this road is that TTV has already stated they don’t plan on including OCs in their pitch.
And concerning gender restrictions in BIONICLE, that’s definitely got to go (as everybody has agreed). But even if there are both genders present in all villages, I could see Ga-Koro (and maybe another village like Le-Koro) being matriarchal and the others being patriarchal. This wouldn’t affect the everyday lives of the Matoran or the genders of the Toa, though. Just a thought I had.
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In terms of adding new, female charcters, I’m all for that and I think it’s definetly a good way to add diversity.
Making old characters female I’m not completely against, but I am very hesitant. I feel like it could work and would be alll right, honestly I could see any of the toa (maybe with the exception of Onua) as female, but I don’t think you should justr randomly change their genders for the sake of it (Look at the ghostbusters reboot)
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You are quantifying everything as though G1 and G2 is being completely ignored and forgotten.
This is simply not true.
I think its very evident from my arguments in this topic as well as our discussions from our podcasts that we are very keen on respecting the source material and adapting the aspects of Bionicle we feel work, while modifying what we feel doesn’t.
Everything is in an effort to reach a middle ground, an ultimate equilibrium of old and new that form a unified whole.
Do you truly feel like the gender of each Toa is something that is truly representative of what Bionicle stood for? Do you really think that this aspect is so integral to the fanbase that altering it would change what made Bionicle great?
We are not ignoring the opinions of older fans, however we also are not marketing this new line to older fans. We, as a collective fanbase, are set out to design a product that we feel kids would enjoy based off our personal experience with the line from our past. That is our goal. We are designing something new, not spoon-feeding that same exact product to people in hopes that they’ll enjoy it as much as we did.
You shouldn’t discredit the opinions of the designer, but at the same time it is important to understand who you are designing your product for.
This is certainly a part of it, but I believe this is a bit of a misunderstanding of why the addition of female characters is a necessity. Equality is great, and by extension there is the added benefit of opening our line up to a larger demographic, but we aren’t out to make some statement against oppressive societal norms here. We just want to add some new stories and character traits that haven’t been fully touched upon before.
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Your arguments in this topic are exactly what have me that impression.
This is true, this is the impression I’ve gotten from the podcasts, but your arguments in this topic seem to have a very “don’t like it? Don’t care, G3 is for a new audience not old fans” vibe. That may not have been the intended message, but it’s the one that was received, and this thus the one I responded to.
This question is complicated. On the one hand, No, I don’t feel that Bionicle is incapable of being good if a character is genderbent. I’m On the other, I do feel that genderbending any of the Toa is a betrayal of the source material. Their gender is a noninsignificant part of their characters and a change to it would undoubtedly affect their characters in unforseen ways.
Never have I said that we should redo G1, or that I just want a redo of G1. I understand change is necessary, and I support most of the changes that have been proposed in the podcast. You and Jon have a habit of marginalizing any criticism on changes you propose by saying “We don’t want to do G1 again” but I’m not saying I want G1 again, I’m saying I don’t want this in G3.
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exuse me @IllustriousVar but could you just for a sec give me your opinion on my idea of “what if the toa had sibling”? i mean if the toa are going to have been originally matorans, then its not an impossibility for them to have had one or two siblings.
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…What? Where is this coming from? I never said anything bad about development. I’m talking about unnecessary change.
First, how does it make their personalities more distinct or fleshed-out? It’s changing their gender; it doesn’t make them a new character. Unless you’re talking about reworking their personality, that is; in which case, you’re writing a new character entirely, which is one of the things G2 did wrong.
Second, these aren’t new characters. These are re-interpretations of characters we’ve seen before. They still need development, but they don’t need to be re-written because they were already great.
This isn’t about the rules of how the world works. The only respect in which it could be considered as such is in terms of the gender ratios in the tribes; in which case, yes, that’s gotta change because it never made sense. There should be male and female Matoran in each tribe in such proportions so as to sustain a breeding population. Changing the genders of major characters, though, is a different subject. Making any of the main cast girls when they weren’t before doesn’t make the story more interesting, it doesn’t open up new plot venues, and it doesn’t improve upon the characters themselves. It’s just a change that could more easily be addressed by adding new characters.
And I agree with that. I’ve campaigned very heavily for changes in the story myself. But the changes I’ve wanted have either been for the sake of making a new and interesting dynamic or improving upon the world and lore, not things like “Lewa’s a girl now because gender ratios.” That doesn’t improve Bionicle. It doesn’t make it more fresh or interesting. It’s on par with making Lewa the Toa of Jungle instead of Air.
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I believe that you don’t have to like our ideas towards change, that’s perfectly fine. And I am more than open to discussing the merets of your dislike and using that to adjust our thoughts on how to proceed with Brickonicle. However, you need to provide a stronger argument then “I just don’t like it” if you actually want to actual convince me that we shouldn’t make these changes.
This reboot of Bionicle IS for a new audience. If you think that retaining these said elements of the old theme can still stand strong when presented to a new audience, then that’s fine. But you need to actually give me an argument that justifies this opinion because the presumptuous assumption that the gender ratio of G1 was one of it’s strengths is ultimately meaningless without any kind of statement to back it up since G1 failed.
Great! Then you are seeing something I’m not seeing. Now can you clarify that point because I believe this is the crux of your argument and could help you win this debate.
The problem is, you aren’t providing a reason as to why this shouldn’t be in G3 other than it was done in G1 and you liked it. Therefore there is nothing to go on other than your attachment to G1 is the crux of why you believe this change is bad.
I don’t see why not! But I’m also unsure how this directly ties to the discussion of gender.
This change is directly tied to how we wish to develop the character.
See:
I still don’t quite see how the gender of these characters is implicit of a total rewrite of their personalities. Can you explain?
Many in this topic believe that changing the genders would, in fact, switch up the dynamic significantly. You yourself have attributed the change to a rewrite of the character. With this in mind, I fail to see how this doesn’t open up new ventures or make potential improvements to these characters.
I don’t necessarily think the thought behind changing Lewa’s element was incorrect though. They were trying to tie Lewa’s element to his environment in a way that makes more sense, it’s a path of logic that I feel works, however the solution is not one that I would have proposed. This is why we changed the element of earth to encompass plantlife as well as soil, and move Lewa’s element to the skies.
Its a different solution to the same problem.
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