Man, it’s been awesome having these contests; I’m really looking forward to voting in this contest and future ones as well.
Also, I’ve been perfectly fine with the wait for the polls to open (it’s really helped me to unwind after the entry period).
Thanks so much to all you awesome peeps at TTV (and to Greg as well) for making this all possible!
This might be an obnoxious take, but I just want to throw it out there that canonization doesn’t have to ruin your own personal vision of the characters and story if you don’t let it. These contests are basically just an opportunity to showcase people’s headcanons and reward the fanbase for still caring. At this point these contests are made for a niche enough audience that the outcome doesn’t really change anything on a tangible level. You can still imagine the characters however you want, because there’s never going to be new material written about them. If Hoseryx is your headcanon Helryx, no one can stop you from envisioning her that way when you read back old material or write your own.
tl;dr “Canon” is completely arbitrary and there’s no reason these contests can’t just be harmless fun.
A somewhat controversial take, but not obnoxious.
An obnoxious take would be, “the crushing of your headcanons is what you deserve, you terrible fanbase”.
for legal reasons this is a joke, but I don’t get how these contests affecting canon are such a big deal to some people.
I could see how it could be disappointing to people, especially if they had a drastically different vision of a particular character. I’m personally quite happy with Helryx and Artakha, and am looking forward to future contests. (Well, I’m not totally happy with them but they’re good enough to me that I can ignore some of the small issues.)
Here’s an idea: What if instead of selecting one image to be canon, the top 3 or 5 entries get accepted to become semi-canon. To say, so and so generally looks something like this. Perhaps that would satisfy more people, while still accomplishing the goal of getting canon pictures of various characters.
I agree with this.
This argument gets brought up a lot, but nobody seems to like the idea of decanonizing future contests. If the canon truly doesn’t matter and people should just pretend whatever they want, nobody should be holding contests for it. I guarantee you get rid of a lot of arguments and negativity if the contest results are no longer canon.
I suppose that’s true. But I think that in these contests, the good outweighs the bad. Someone created a survey a few months back, and it showed that a majority of people like the results, and many people have commented on how much they love the new canon designs.
Rather than ending the contests, perhaps some of the nay-sayers should change their attitudes.
Not that I’m arguing the debates are good activity, no - especially not for my finger tendons and any hope of not getting canceled by a mob of twitter users 30 years from now. But the massive explosion of Metru build content, contest entries, and general activity is second to none, and the best efforts of the Bionicle community elsewhere can’t begin to compare.
Although, maybe it’s less about the canon contests being a source of vitriol and just the Bionicle community being toxic given the opportunity… But, I too am part of the debates, and the topic of the most recent one…
If you have to apologize to Ghid you’ve gone too far
I mean, eight likes really isn’t that much…
If the post was theoretically solely to generate a reaction with a certain expectation in mind, it would have absolutely worked. And it was immediately contested by you, viewing it as malicious and vengeful, which speaks more than your current argument does, as you reacted stronger than anyone else to the suggestion.
Now I’m not saying your reaction was unjustified, although excessive. It’s just that prior posts have indicated the canon contests are causing too much stress and drama for everyone involved, and maybe it’s not one party responsible for that level of back-and-forth digital fisticuffs, but all parties - those voting in favor of the contests and those campaigning against them.
The solution is not to cancel the contest, as I now speak to nobody in particular@n01inparticular if you make that joke I will gut you and use your ribcage as a grill rack, but as my response posts stated earlier, to have fun. Once the rules are decided, everybody should really try to loosen up, as the #1 thing to argue about is over and done - nothing can reverse it.
(And even in that, arguments have been made with an unwanted severity as if the one aspect being altered would make the final product non-canon, further encouraging the mindset my post was promoting. It’s never one group’s fault, no matter who says it is.)
Quick comment on this as this is a huge opinion piece: Eljay likely barred custom builds because everyone was ripping each other to pieces over the argument and nobody - not anyone - was finding common ground. Appease the torso group and avoid nuclear fallout, and the custom group can wait till next contest.
No, he didn’t have much of a canon reason, and I don’t agree with his choice, but I absolutely understand it.
Or, y’know… Join the discussion of the rules and make sound logical arguments to illustrate why your side is superior. I firmly believe if one side had enough well-spoken and calm people on it they would have easily won for demonstrating higher self control, but there were very few (and I was not one of them).
Which is basically what TTV’s been saying this whole time. The activity has been overwhelmingly positive, and the vocal minority against them has been very vocal, but also very small. I’m not saying those opposed should lay down their arms and never speak again (although reiterating the same statement 50 times doesn’t help), but I am saying some arguments that don’t disappoint literally everyone in favor of the contests would help their side.
And… That’s all I’ve got to comment, unless someone wants to go on a hopefully related side tangent here as the discussion has arced back into arguing about an argument about an argument. I miss Kini and his promising to ban people
Leaving it with the sentiment we should attempt before dumping the entire thing:
I mean, yeah, if everyone could just get along things would be great. Does anyone truly expect that to happen?
As a note and something I’ve been thinking about. I think a lot of the drama and controversy from this contest comes from the fact that the Hagah are the only group who have a predefined look. There’s already two of them and we know they look like those two but Arhtahka and Helryx lacked any physical predefined looked they had descriptions yes but not a physical -they look like this- design before the contest. And since the Hagah have a predefined look people have to adhere to that look and people don’t want to do that esp when the previous two contests didn’t have that issue. and I suspect come Lariska the drama and controversy will be a lot less. Idk it’s a thought.
I’ve been considering this a lot as well. I think if the order of the contests had been different, if we’d had more time to get into our stride before doing a more complicated contest in the Hagah, things’d be better.
However, it’s ultimately no use dwelling on it and wishing things had been done differently, cause it’s too late. Gives me a little more hope for the future, though.
Personally then, I would lose absolutely all interest in these contests. The whole appeal of them was to get proper depictions of these characters. If you lose that aspect of these contests, then they just become another MOCing contest.
Very much this. It’s been on my mind for ages, and it seems as good enough a time to say it: these contests very much exist on a sliding scale. On one end there are the MOCs that allow for extreme amounts of creativity and uniqueness and originality. Those would be your Artakhas, your Marendars, your Gold Skinned Beings. On the oppose end are the extremely canon-compliant and rule-abiding builds. Those would be your Hagahs. Meanwhile, most other MOCs in these contests fall somewhere in the middle, like we saw with Helryx. Some will be more canon-compliant, others will play it fast and loose. That’s just how it will go.
And, to butt my nose in where no one was asking:
*The Metru torso debate was beaten beyond death for six months and several topics. Where do you people even find the energy for it at this point?
*There is not a “sudden” upswell in negativity in general and specifically towards these contests, nor has there been a “silent minority/majority” in terms of ending them: People were against them before it was even decided if they would happen. People were still against them during the Hoseryx debacle. That’s why there was a vote almost immediately after that contest about whether the contests would continue. After that vote, which overwhelmingly showed support for continuing the contests, there were still people complaining about the contests. Even if you don’t remember it, or you didn’t see it, I remember it. I saw it. More importantly, the mods saw it. That’s why, after the Tuyet contest, there will be a vote to decide if these contests will continue. That’ll be the time to make any grand arguments for or against the contests going forward.
I earnestly don’t mean these last two points to be overtly aggressive or particularly directed at anybody. But, like, man, it’s just ad nauseam at this point. We’ve been here before, and we almost certainly will again.
Which is what some people want. It’s just a disagreement. I think TTV has hinted they may do another poll to determine whether the contests continue or not in the future, until then I’m not sure there’s anything we can do.
A great deal of the community believes the Mangai have a predefined look, while others (myself included) do not. Probably won’t be as heated as the Hagah, but future contests will have issues too.
aw …
craaaaaap …
Can’t we just do one at a time or would that be too slow?
I forgot the Mangai were a part of this (I haven’t payed much attention to the future contests) But even for the Mangai they like Artahka and Helryx only have descriptions and no depiction though since Likahn is also a Metru build and Tuyet and Nidhiki are commonly moc-ed with Metru builds I suspect they’ll be Metru builds but hopefully by then all the Metru-build debates will have ended and a conclusion will have been reached.
Oh absolutely. I don’t think it’s unfair to say that there have been two predominant perspectives coming into these contests: people either want really cool, wild MOCs like you’d see in BioCup for instance, or MOCs that more adhere the precedence established by the canon and past sets. There is obviously overlap between the two perspectives, but there’s also been plenty of room where they don’t see eye-to-eye.
Well, that’s the whole thing, isn’t it? Do the Metru build debates matter for the Mangai? I don’t think they do, but your message seems to imply you disagree. Apologies if I misinterpreted.
EDIT: Not trying to start the Mangai debate early, just trying to show why I think it’ll happen.
The Mangai are NOT stated to be Metru builds.
Eljay has been pretty adamant that no build will be mandated.
And I for one will not vote for any Metru build Nidhiki or Tuyet.
