So?
That can be an interesting part of the story if written well.
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That sounds horrible.
Romance within the group can only lead to discord, one that isnāt possible to repair.
And again I state, the toa should have a familial bond, they should become adoptive siblings, and romance is incompatible with that.
I think the adoptive family approach is the best, as it not only gives a stronger reasoning for calling each other brother/sister, it would mean they all mutually grow attached to each other, it would still allow for rivalries and arguments but they could be reconciled,
I can imagine kopaka storming off after a fight with tahu and being followed by pohatu, the remaining toa get ambushed, pohatu convinces kopaka to return and they save the others, kopaka outstretches his hand to tahu āto your feet. brother.ā
I feel a familial bond between the toa would result in a much better story and better character development,
Imagine voriki appearing as the seventh toa and after plot things finally being accepted as their sister,
The familial bonds between toa would be so much more powerful and would lead to so many powerful moments, not just between any two of the toa, but all of them.
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You do realize that you can have both types of bonds at once. We are talking about a group of six people after all.
That isnāt necessarily a bad thing.
A story should not be designed to cater to any particular personās preferences. It should be written with a group of ideas that the writer wishes to convey. If the end of this story leads to a broken team thatās fine. If it leads to a team stronger than before thatās fine as well. What matters is its execution.
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Yes, which could be an interesting story conflict. You can not have stories without conflict, after all.
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@Payinku: Well, technically Takanuvaās battle with Teridax in G1 was essentially one giant Kolhii match, and the warrior/athlete division of some ancient cultures was much less defined, but I do agree that the Toaās primary goal should still be putting their mission above all else when it comes to dealing with threats to their respective villages and the island as a whole.
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I, so you have half the characters treating each other like family, and the other half romantically involved, and they all refer to each other as siblings?
TTV is treating this like Lego would, so no, the worst timeline is not an option.
The worst timeline is an interesting story, but itās not something Lego would do, itās a massive downer of an ending that nobody would enjoy.
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Iām not proposing that they split up at the end, Iām just saying it could add an interesting dynamic. And no, Iām also not proposing they continue to call each other siblings. That would just be weird.
The toa refer to each other as brother/sister, this is the hill Iāll die on.
Any bonding to be had romantically is outmatched tenfold by sibling bonding.
Maybe for you.
However, Brickonicle seeks to be different. Thus, if the project leaders wish to abolish the āsiblingā bond of the Toa (which always felt symbolic in the first place) then they might.
I dunno what TTV actually wants with the romance very well. Iām not part of the project, after all. Iām just here to give my reasoning.
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This is how I always viewed it. The Toa refered to each other as ābrotherā and āsisterā because they were united under a single cause (and perhaps because theyāre of the same race), not so much because they considered each other to be literal family.
Long story short, romance exists in G3, but there wonāt be anything written between the Toa (at least in the first year). Anything that happens in the future will happen naturally and flow with the charactersā development.
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I think itās more productive to seek to be good personally,
which isnāt me saying that different is bad, but rather that being different shouldnāt be the end goal.
It was symbolic, Iām actually suggesting we change it to be more literal.
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 didnāt say make them literally siblings, I said make their relationship more literal,
to quote
I actually agree with this,
Iām 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 donāt 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 donāt knowā¦
First: a family-like bond =/= actual family. This is an important distinction.
Thereās 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 āfamilyā dynamic that a lot of you are talking about that would be āweirdā 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 donāt subscribe to this theory that it would be āweirdā for it to happen between two members of the team. Itās 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, youāll 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 theyāre engaged āI married my best friendā.) Good friends becoming romantic partners is an extremely common occurrence and happens all of the time in real life.
Iām 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 ādutyā on hand. It would be akin to saying that the Toa canāt be friends with each other, because theyāre 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 itās 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 wouldnāt? Theyāre 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. Itās this idea that Iām directly wanting to combat here: that romantic love is evil, or useless, and that it doesnāt 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 whoās been in a relationship can point to what theyāve learned because of it, be it flaws in themselves or flaws they should have seen in others, or both.
And when Iām developing a character, as the character writes itself and we see the interactions in the story, I donāt think we should approach with this eight-year-old cooties mentality that romance is gross and just ruins everything because itās icky and boring.
Romance is a mature avenue for character development and growth. That doesnāt mean it always needs to happen. It just means that thereās no actual reason to eliminate it as an option entirely.
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Ok, I havenāt 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 donāt want any Romantic interaction between the Toa, simply because I donāt think Iāve ever seen Lego successfully pull off a ālove story.ā 
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 Protectorās had spouses and families to get back to made them a lot more relatable than the G1 Matoran.
(Iām 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 whoās writing the story. They could probably successfully pull off a ālove storyā.
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I wonāt speak for others but Iām not arguing that, itās 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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