@IllustriousVar Thank you for the explanation. I too was a little angry and confused as to why Lewa was made a girl, but I rather like the change now. So please lets all be civil here.[quote=“BrokenAxels, post:70, topic:41785”]
what’s in a characters pants.
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Why is this so funny?
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…What fanfics do you think they’re writing? I mean, this G3 is always going to be a fanfic.
But seriously, what fanfics are you even thinking of? “so you can get away with your ships and weird fantasies.”
It’s clear you haven’t listened to the show. They do not currently have any plans to ship any of the Toa.
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but he thinks that most people write fanfics about MxF characters, but ctually most of them write MxM fanfics, so making lewa a female actually reduces the +18 fan fics, unless it’s GK733, we’ve already seen what he has done
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Guys, understand that, this is fanfic.
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There’s a difference between travelling and exploring. I can travel to Europe, see the sights, the people, the landmarks, etc. without ever actually exploring anything. I can go exploring without even leaving town – simply go to the local forest area and wander around. It doesn’t have to be a nature area – I could explore my campus right now, if I felt like it – but it often is, for there, boys can be “Jungle warriors” or “animal hunters” or whatever.
No, but tinkering with stuff and building things is generally a boy’s trait. You, of all people, should know that; Lego is generally a “boy’s toy”, hence why most of your podcast and most of your fans are male.
What no one seems to realize is that stereotypes are a thing for a reason. Think of it this way: imagine, for a moment, you are shooting two very innacurate paintball guns (one red, one blue) at a target a foot or so away from each other. You would get a very purple target; however, if you look at the left, it would be more reddish; if you look to the right, it would be more blueish. Humans are the same, and though no trait is exclusively male or female, there are traits that usually go to one gender or the other.
Personally, I just look at if they’re blue or not 
.
~W12~
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My feelings on this are a little bit… conflicted, I suppose. On the one hand, I feel like several stuff in today’s world have led some people to forget that gender actually does matter quite a bit. And I’m not just talking biological, gender will change how people perceive you, (even in a gender-equal society) and more than that, boys and girls are just different. That does not at all mean that girls can’t be inventive or adventurous, but it means that a girl who is hot headed, rushes in without thinking, and loves adventure is still going to be different from a boy with those same traits. I guess I’m really just re-stating what Chronicler said:[quote=“Chronicler, post:50, topic:41785”]
Gender, like all factors of life, should also be something a character builds off of, with mindset and attitude. Your character should get to a point where someone shouldn’t be able to imagine them as any other gender. Gender can make a character distinct and memorable, which shows how powerful it is. Any trait can, really.
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On the other hand, this isn’t G1 Lewa, it’s someone else entirely. So yeah.
tl;dr: I would be very-much against just re-making G1 Lewa into a girl. But as a new character, I’m ok with G3 Lewa being a girl.
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With all do respect.
I don’t think this is an issue that we need to give this much attention.
This has been decided upon.
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Only one girl has weighed in on this topic. Time to rectify that.
Personally, I’ve never taken gender into account when relating to a character. I always used to relate to Pohatu: much like the Toa, my friends tended to be very strong personalities, and I was the one everyone liked.
Also, I think we’re forgetting to ask something important: why does Lego make their teams all male? They know their target audience, and even the girls that follow bionicle, are likely more “tomboys”. So they make characters those types of kids can relate to.
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I used to have a problem, but I’ve grown used to it. I think the real problem here is nostalgic fans felling that their precious G1 is hurt, which is ridiculous as this is a fun project on one fan site.
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I do realize that, but stereotypes do not paint a comprehensive picture of reality. I once heard a very illuminating quote from a TED talk which went something like, “Stereotypes are true; they just aren’t the whole truth.” If we aren’t willing to break molds once-in-a-while, we can’t discover something new, and that eliminates all possibility of progress, in storytelling and in society.
Some things about BIONICLE shouldn’t be changed, like the biomechanical nature of its characters, their affiliation with various elements, and other such things. But something as irrelevant as the gender of an established character, which played almost no role in either iteration of the BIONICLE story, is not a change that creates huge waves, and it also allows for a new perspective on the story as a whole. If we confine ourselves solely to the way things always have been, it limits us from achieving something that could be equally interesting and exciting.
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This has been interesting, to say the least. I don’t really care that much that they changed the gender of Lewa, since I’m not that invested in Brickonicle.
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Well actually:
You aren’t wrong. It IS confusing to an established fan from G1 because its changing the established world said fan would be used to. But this reboot isn’t for G1 fans, it’s for an entirely new audience. G2’s biggest misstep was thinking the G1 fans were enough to carry the line, and that was proven incorrect. Our usage of the names have nothing to do with nostalgia, as we are not trying to market this towards old fans (hence why we are comfortable with making liberal changes, such as the gender of a character).
We’re only using the names of the Toa to ground the universe in a state of familiarity so we don’t stray too far from what the intellectual property stands for and represents (which is exactly what we think LEGO would do) while also keeping in mind that it makes logical business sense to continue using the properties you’ve already paid for.
I think one look at all the controversial decisions we’ve made would tell you that we aren’t making any of our decisions because of nostalgia. TFA’s biggest problem was simply retelling the same story with a fresh coat of paint. Everything that we have done in our reboot is to avoid issues like that.
Ironically, I think the reason people are so upset about this is because of their attachment to nostalgia.
Exactly. We don’t want Bionicle G3 to only be for boys.
If it changed nothing, then we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I think you could read any of the posts from people for or against it and realize that it changes a lot.
Then surely developing a character that has traits not typically associated with that type of person would be a good thing as it would be breaking new ground and showing the audience a different side of this character that isn’t commonly seen…
Right?
There was literally no part of G1 Lewa’s character that was tied to his gender. Literally none at all. This argument just makes zero sense. Changing his gender isn’t going to radically change the personality of the character, and it’s silly to believe otherwise. What it does do is change your perception of the character, and that is what makes all the difference.
Except for the fact that we aren’t making a sequel and have no desire to. This is a brand new story for a brand new audience. We have no interest in making a story about the original Toa, because their story has already been told.
The implication is that we believe this change is a good thing for Lewa. If we didn’t think so, we wouldn’t have done it. We shouldn’t have to say this.
Moreover, its not just about Lewa but about the Toa as a whole and the dynamic that they share with one another. As I mentioned previously, being the only female on the team reduced Gali’s character to that of “the girl” which hampered her dynamic/growth and forced her quirks to be ones associated with stereotypical feminine roles. By taking this level of attention off of Gali, we as writers are now forced to think of these characters differently by giving them unique personalities that can be defined by more then just “female” traits.
There is no obligation to do anything. We make changes because we feel they will serve the story and line in a positive way, not because there’s some arbitrary desire to appease one group or another.
No problem man, glad I could clear things up. I just want to clarify to others who still may feel sour about this that its perfectly okay and understandable to not like this change. As I mentioned before, it’s unrealistic to make something that every single person will like, and we understood that going into this.
With that said, at the very least I would hope that you could listen to our reasoning and understand where we are coming from, that’s all I ask.
While this statement is true, do keep in mind that we are approaching this as if we were working for LEGO and this was actually happening. The criticism we’re getting is totally justified and actually encouraged given our goal.
For the record, there are plenty of females in the world that have zero desire to play with dolls and would rather play with action figures. It’s no coincidence that all the female cast member and guests on our channel have mentioned their parents were against them playing with Bionicle.
Generally speaking, the only reason there’s even a “boys section” and a “girls section” in toy stores is because parents demand to keep it that way.
By adding more female characters to our story we’re doing so with the hope that the few girls who do get to play with these sets can find a character they can relate to.
This analogy makes no sense. Just because the right side is more red than the left doesn’t mean red paint balls have some innant attraction the right side. It’s a 50/50 chance that either side could have whatever amount of paintballs and the color of said paintball has nothing to do with it.
correlation does not equal causation.
A lot of people keep saying this as though this isn’t precisely why we made this change to begin with…
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i would just like to point out that… the personality and characteristics of Lewa and the other toa for that matter, will most definatly change and/or evolve as the story continues. The traits that Lewa has (which some are arguing is more of a “boy behavior”) is only where she would start, character development changes how the character is, and if you all go back and look at other characters from ither LEGO or some other franchise, in most chases those characters are not the same as from the start of the franchise.
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Well, yeah.
How was Bionicle ever just for boys?
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It’s already not, it’s for children who like action themes, which is mostly but not entirely male, there are girls that are interested in action themes and those who are not, girls aren’t going to suddenly gain an interest in action themes because of more female characters any more than boys would if you added more male characters, it’s not the gender of the characters that interests them.
I’ve never seen her that way, I doubt many here have, both her and onua were the peacekeepers of the team, she was, like the others, personification of her element, calm and soothing, fast and strong, like water.
Aside from that, what is the problem with an individual female character having feminine traits? It’s not like she was the only female on mata nui, hahli was a tomboy and she’s arguably more important to the story.
Because females generally aren’t interested in those subjects so some people think its weird, while it is abnormal, there’s nothing wrong with being an exception to a rule, my stance is to let people do whatever interests them, which I think should be adopted by parents, you don’t have to act a certain way or have certain interests because of your gender, but interests and personality traits are more prevalent in one gender or the other.
It’s more for convenience, put the toys boys are mostly interested in in one section, and the toys girls are mostly interested in in another, my local Walmart changed it to boy on one side of the aisle, girl on the other, and it’s a mild inconvenience to no longer have it all in one place, but not really a problem.
Girls are perfectly capable of relating to males, I don’t know why you think anything to the contrary.
Indeed, the point he’s trying to make is accurate, but that analogy is terrible, brain chemistry is far more complicated than blindly shooting paintballs at a target.
this is a visualization of the concept, not entirely accurate I’m sure but it’s just to illustrate the point, which correlates not only with traits but also interests.
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Well, this isn’t quite what I expected when I decided to visit ye old boards. Guess I’ll wake from the grave to give my two cents on this.
Face value, personally I’m confused at the whole G3 thing. But even with my more recent disagreements with the direction of TTV, I’m still proud of the old crew for what they’ve accomplished, and I feel like their G3 is the culmination of all the years they’ve been working, and for that, I can appreciate it.
Beyond that, I find that Lewa being a girl…kinda odd, certainly…wouldn’t have been my first choice, but it’s ultimately a decision that rests in the eye of the beholder: the one writing the story. I’m an advocate for people taking stories into their own hands and reinventing them in new and unique ways - I’ve done it many times myself - and that’s what this is: A change being made as personal preference and nothing more. If you disagree with it, you disagree with it…there’s nothing more to it, somebody has a different view than you, and that’s okay.
As for the whole gender identity thing…I guess the best way to state my opinion is that if you take somebody, and all their traits, all the aspects of them that make them who they are, and then say “well, what if they kept their identity, but we made them [insert different thing here] to make them and the story overall more interesting?”, they’re still the same character, you’ve just made them more interesting. I’ve done that to several characters of my own: I found my story was getting monotonous with too many male characters and not enough diversity as a whole, so I took a character who I felt wasn’t interesting, found what made them who they were, and adjusted them accordingly. It’s just a part of storytelling…the character is the same, and they’re still who they were…you’ve just changed an aspect of their character to make the story itself higher quality.
Finally, to address the topic of Gali being the only female forcing her to be “the girl” and thus stunting her character growth…I really just can’t say I agree. I personally always found myself identifying the most with Gali, as she had some of the best character development in my opinion. Lewa’s always been my favorite, but Gali had her own special place for me because she was interesting.
Anyway this ended up way longer than I expected it would, so I’m gonna return to my endless void now.
~Eko/rak
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This is not the argument I’m making.
I am not saying that girls cannot enjoy an all male cast.
I am not saying that girls cannot enjoy a theme aimed at boys.
I am not saying that more girl characters will suddenly double the number of buyers
I am not saying that there needs to be female characters for girls to relate to for a girl to enjoy something.
I am saying that “this is a line for boys” is not a compelling argument to keep Lewa a male, because it doesn’t have to be a line just for boys, we don’t want it to be a line just for boys, and that there’s no point in intentionally ignoring an entire population of potential consumers by consciously making choices to exclude them just because we don’t think they like “boy toys”.
I am saying that, while girls are more than capable of relating to male characters, it doesn’t hurt to expand the diversity of our characters and increase the likelihood that young girls will find a character that more closely represents them, especially if we expect girls to be buying these products.
Really? I mean, you’re right, she was a personification of her element, that’s true. But it’s not like it was a coincidence that water was the element chosen to represent the female population in Bionicle. They picked Gali to be female because her element was the most feminine of them all.
And that’s fine. I don’t think there’s a problem with a female character being feminine, it’s not like we want to get rid of Gali. However, I think having a variety of female characters that are diverse and different will lead to a more compelling and interesting story, and that having only one character, especially one that falls within a traditional/stereotypical mold, to represent the female populace is limiting both as a writer and a consumer.
And sure, you can look at the entirety of G1 and point to influential characters that weren’t just cookie cutter girls. No one is saying that G1 didn’t have good female characters. But G1’s lore has been fleshed out over the course of 10 years. Hahli in particular didn’t grow into relevance until year three. I see nothing wrong with wanted to have a character like Hahli as part of our main cast from the very beginning.
Strawman. See above.
I’m not sure what point this graph is trying to make? That boys and girls have different interests? I’m just kind of lost as to what this has to do with making Lewa female. We seem to be on the same page that Bionicle can be enjoyed by both genders.
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That’s actually not true at all. Representation can and does improve the engagement. We saw this with Wonder Woman this year, which not only received rave reviews, but had great word of mouth and saw an unprecedented surge of women moviegoers, especially when compared to other superhero films. It’s one of the reasons the film had such great legs at the Box Office.
There are three facts here. The first that LEGO does have a primarily male demographic (though recent years have started to try to balance that out). The second is the fact that women in STEM fields are still very much in the minority. The third is that our audience is primarily male, which our analytics show is true.
But your conclusion is that, because of these factors, things like “tinkering”, “building” and being inventive is a male trait, which I think is wrong. Merriam-Webster defines trait as a “distinguishing quality or inherited characteristic”. This characteristic isn’t male exclusive, but males are just encouraged to pursue these interests more. This is changing, but with young girls right now, so we aren’t going to see the results yet for another decade or so.
The reason why I make that clarification is because of this original statement:
I don’t think that personality relies on his “masculinity” at all. What that is literally saying is, “Please don’t make Nuparu a girl, because he has to be male in order to be smart and inventive.”
So, you can see the disconnect here between the statement of the fact “there are less women currently in STEM fields” and then “Nuparu cannot be the smart, inventive character we know him as if he’s female”. I don’t think one proves the other as correct.
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My argument is that the Bionicle communities’ gender ratio is already reflected in the toa team, and is even further reflected in the podcast. I agree that more female characters would be a good thing, but changing the gender of a beloved character is a bit much. Now, you’ve already explained that these are not the same characters, and I’m sure you guys have a very engaging story in the works, but it’s still Lewa, and it’s still just kind of weird.
And, to clarify, I don’t mean anything by that other than it’s weird seeing a character I’ve known as male (even in a rebooted form) for 16 years suddenly be a woman. For a story written for the entire point of exploring that idea would be one thing, but it’s odd on such a large project.
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Let’s start with the easiest
A bit of a misunderstanding here: the paintball guns have nothing to do with the analogy, it was only the set-up so that people would understand what I was describing. The end result – the board spattered unevenly with paint – is the analogy.
A story about them has already been told. That doesn’t mean you can’t tell a new story with those same characters.
I’m not saying that to argue against changing the character. I’m just saying that “We want to tell a new story, so we need new characters” isn’t true.
Ever since you decided to make Lewa a girl, it has been for one reason: “We need more female Toa.” Not because you think Lewa should be female; you simply chose him because he worked. There’s nothing wrong with that; I was simply correcting UltimateMustacheX.
I think this is your best argument on this topic. My whole point has been about making Lewa female, but you’re not – you’re making Vizuna G3 female, with a personality similar to G1 Lewa.
(Honestly, had you started by pointing this out, I probably wouldn’t have said anything)
There is one further thing I want to address though.
BIONICLE is a line for boys. That’s all it ever was, and unless you turn it into elves, that’s all it ever will be. So why would you want to remove a male character for your predominantly male cast to enjoy? Instead of having five male characters, now you have four. You are achieving female representation with Voriki; Now, you take an extra step to bring in maybe a few young girls and in the process fail to connect with many young boys.
You want to do as LEGO would. There is a reason lego has a predominant male cast in their themes. They seek to connect to as much of their target audience as possible.
I never said it was. I said generally.
~W12~
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