But why? I thought it being symbolic showed more platonic feelings toward each other. Making it literal gets rid of such a stellar part of their team in the first place.
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I didn’t say make them literally siblings, I said make their relationship more literal,
to quote
I actually agree with this,
I’m saying they should come to consider each other family. A mutually adoptive family.
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Oooooh ok. I can get behind that then.
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Oh, gotcha.
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I don’t really care that much, and I read some of the discussion about this, but personally I think that Romance between Toa of the same team would end up being weird imo. The entire team already has a family like bond, so introducing romance within that would make it seem weird.
It probably could be done well, but I don’t know…
First: a family-like bond =/= actual family. This is an important distinction.
There’s this thing in psychology called the Westermarck Effect, in which being raised in an actual family environment produces a severe desensitization to any sexual attraction. This is why you do not find your sister or brother attractive, and additionally why kids who are adopted at an early age into a family generally do not find their siblings attractive either.
This serves an important part in this argument - the “family” dynamic that a lot of you are talking about that would be “weird” if the Toa got together seems to be rooted in this idea that they would be an actual family - which would be weird.
But in reality, this is not an instance of members of a family that have grown up together developing a romance between them. This is a group of similarly aged young people who have only just begun to work together and become friends because of their situation. They are also thrust into incredibly similar trials and are given responsibilities that only they can really identify with.
This does not necessarily mean that a romance has to happen among them. They can still remain platonic. However, I don’t subscribe to this theory that it would be “weird” for it to happen between two members of the team. It’s actually extraordinarily realistic for two people who can relate to each other and have to spend a lot of time together to develop a romantic relationship - time actually makes people appear more attractive to each other.
If you have ever had a group of friends in high school that all hung out platonically, and then two of them within that group got together, you’ll know what I mean. Time makes people closer, it makes relationships stronger, and many times it will turn friends into romantic partners (hence why so many people say when they’re engaged “I married my best friend”.) Good friends becoming romantic partners is an extremely common occurrence and happens all of the time in real life.
I’m not sure how being busy with saving Matoran conflicts with becoming closer with a teammate and having romantic feelings for them. You still build relationships even though you have a “duty” on hand. It would be akin to saying that the Toa can’t be friends with each other, because they’re too busy to have friendships. They are capable of both at the same time.
People in the military often (extremely often!) have loved ones at home - not just family, but specifically romantic partners (girlfriends, boyfriends, wives, husbands). I think it’s very possible to be part of an elite military force and still be capable of romantic feelings.
Friendship makes the Toa more human, but romance wouldn’t? They’re both extremely relatable human emotions. A good romance is really just an enhanced, more deeper and personal friendship.
This is essentially why I talk about this at all. It’s this idea that I’m directly wanting to combat here: that romantic love is evil, or useless, and that it doesn’t add anything to a story and we must keep it away at all costs.
I thoroughly believe that romantic love is intrinsically a core developmental part of human interaction. You grow to know another person intimately, develop further bounds of empathy, compassion. communication and maturity. It changes you and matures you, even if it ends badly. Anyone who’s been in a relationship can point to what they’ve learned because of it, be it flaws in themselves or flaws they should have seen in others, or both.
And when I’m developing a character, as the character writes itself and we see the interactions in the story, I don’t think we should approach with this eight-year-old cooties mentality that romance is gross and just ruins everything because it’s icky and boring.
Romance is a mature avenue for character development and growth. That doesn’t mean it always needs to happen. It just means that there’s no actual reason to eliminate it as an option entirely.
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Ok, I haven’t read through this entire topic yet, but this seems to be an important enough issue to bare some repetition. 
I personally have no problem with romantic love existing in the universe, however I don’t want any Romantic interaction between the Toa, simply because I don’t think I’ve ever seen Lego successfully pull off a “love story.” 
That being said, I have absolutely no problem with the families (made possible by romantic love) being featured prominently in the universe. In fact, that was one of the biggest (and only) improvements of G2 in my opinion, knowing that the Protector’s had spouses and families to get back to made them a lot more relatable than the G1 Matoran.
(I’m not sure if this is a popular opinion 
)
Also, it allows us to have characters with actually limited life-spans (as opposed to the 80,000-100,000 year lifespans of G1), which gives us a more relatable time-frame.
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Oh come on, EmmetXWyldstyle was awesome.
And, this is TTV who’s writing the story. They could probably successfully pull off a ‘love story’.
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I won’t speak for others but I’m not arguing that, it’s not the toa having or gaining partners I have a problem with, I just think it would be better for them to develop a familial bond between the group rather than two of them becoming romantically involved, it works better for the general ethos of bionicle as well as it frankly just feels more bionicle.
And you can read the above conversation we had on the subject for more detail.
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I agree strongly with this. I am 100% opposed to any and all romance in BIONICLE anyways, but any romance between the main six Toa is completely out of the question for me.
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Well, EmmetxWyldstyle was the best (canon) Lego pairing I’ve ever seen (even if the circumstances were a bit over-the-top 
).
But, my point that’s a bit of an exception to the rule, the Lego movie had special writers and cinematic funding, and its the same thing if TTV writes it, outside the usual case.
Or, maybe I’m still just jaded from JayxNyaxCole. 
Also, I kind of think that romantic interaction within the team would mess-up the team-dynamic. 
Quick question, did either of you feel that the inclusion of families, and (by proxy) romantic love damaged or improved G2?
True, I won’t deny what you’re saying makes sense. I guess it’s more that it’d be weird from our view point as fans, as this is a more action adventure based theme “for kids.” But it can work well.
However I’d like to toss in the idea that it can complicate the rest of the team’s relationship. That happens too.
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That is true, but since we’re not making the characters human (just humanoid) nor are we having any humans at all, I feel that it is important to include a few other Human “traits” or circumstances, such as romance.
Not including love, I feel, would make the characters feel more alien, which might be fine with G1 fans, but it could alienate at least some of the general public.
… platonic love is still love dude. And regardless I’m actually in favor of romantic love existing in g3, just not between the toa. In fact I suggested one of the toa already be married at the start, probably onua since he’s always appeared to be the most mature of the toa.
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True. I like the JayXNya pairing, but adding Cole was a needless and stupid edition that did nothing to change or strengthen the story. Same with Cole’s ghost form.
Wow, I just realized that Cole really gets the short stick when it comes to storytelling.
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This is not a bad idea. For one of the Toa to have a family, or at least a girlfriend/boyfriend, would go a long way to setting the stakes.
laugh Yah, its a bit of a shame, and that’s not even going into what they did to his character. (He was supposed to be the disciplined and collected leader in the beginning, which didn’t survive past the pilot)
I get where you’re coming from, but if a toa were already married as a matoran, and then continued that marriage with them as a toa, wouldn’t it be essentially the same as thought two toa had fallen in love? (I mean, the only real difference is height, and with minifigures, there’s even less of a difference)
What doesn’t make sense to me is you’re fine with matoran x matoran, and toa x matoran, but not toa x toa?
If they’re all the same “species” in this G3, wouldn’t it be more weird if the toa didn’t fall in love?
We’re not saying that we should exclude it from the lore; we just don’t want it happening with “on screen” characters as it could mess-up character dynamics in the story.
To Clarify,
We’re NOT objecting to including romantic love, marriage families, etc. in the world; we just don’t want romantic relationships between the main six Toa (GalixTahu/GalixKopaka/FemLewaxPahatu etc.) as we feel that would messup their dynamics.
It could also add character dynamics in the story.
Nobody knows how something will turn out, unless they do it.
(This is a very extreme and dark example that I’d rather not see but it would help character development: A mother toa loses her son to enemy rahkshi; that would give her all the more incentive to train, master her element, etc.)
It might alter their personalities a little bit, but you could say the same when the Toa Mata became Toa Nuva. Your personality matures and changes through the hardship you’ve faced with life. Love is just one more hardship to tackle. All it would do is help the toa mature.
Worst case scenario, it would leave a toa heartbroken with no more sense of duty, unity, or purpose in life.
But this is Lego we’re talking about; I 100% believe they wouldn’t allow that to happen, or at least not for long anyway.
“Because it could be bad” can apply to everything.
I think a familial bond can be used (and of course, would be used for the majority of the Toa i.e. the ones not in a relationship with other Toa in the group) quite well, but I don’t see how that would be “better”. It’s simply a different type of relationship that people have with each other.
Also, “feels more Bionicle” is something that’s pretty subjective to a lot of our fans, and there’s things that some people think that “feel Bionicle” that we’ve already written off, like it being constraction, or genders being locked to elements, or a five to one gender ratio. We wrote those off because we figured out the core of Bionicle (worldbuilding/aesthetic) and are throwing out the arbitrary rules and restrictions that previous generations had. “No romance between the Toa” falls into that category.
Here’s a list of things that can “mess up” character dynamics in a story:
- People hating each other (initial Tahu and Kopaka)
- People liking each other (Kopaka and Pohatu)
- People maturing (Tahu)
- People growing in power (Takua/Takanuva)
- People dying (Matoro)
- People turning evil (Lewa, Tahu, Vakama)
My point is, character dynamics are supposed to change and grow. That’s the whole point of character development. As they change, the dynamic changes. I hate it when people use the term “mess up” as that denotes a negative change, and implies that every romance will end in a negative change in a group dynamic. Every relationship is an avenue for character growth, and romance isn’t any different from that.
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