I’m asking for clarification on why the results for this recent Chiara contest are… what they are. I don’t want to sound so rude, but I am highly confused about how some great, canon complacent MOCs have been sifted away while color clashing, excessive builds have prevailed. Again, I don’t want to sound like a complainer, but I am curious and confused. I would love to hear any explanations, or if you have a different reason for voting altogether. Do you vote for…
Canon Aesthetic Matching
Uniqueness/Technique
Coloring
Complexity of Build
Greebly Detail
Someone You Know/Known in Community
Other
Please help explain this to me. Thank you for your response(s).
What do you mean by this? Despite it not being required for the contest, 9 out of the 10 finalist entries are fully canon compliant (if you allow for the Volitak variant).
It’s whatever the community decides is cool in the moment. In three years the consensus will shift anyway; better to have it be a fanon contest where the results are entirely based on personal preference.
I’m mainly talking about the excessive detail bits- unnecessary tubes, energy stocks, and scarves and the like. We have a canon precedent for what the lightning element looks like. We have an example Toa of lightning in Nikila. We also have the Toa Inika who were imbued with such intense lightning energy that their faces glowed blindingly bright and had lightning infused with their elemental releases.
Despite their ties to the element, none of these excessive elements appear. As such, there’s an unnerving disconnect with the inclusion of these details. This is what I mean. Thanks for the question.
@Ghid Good thing without a doubt. Especially with some of the results from the canon contest held here.
None of these are really contradictory to canon; there are plenty of other Toa that have random tubes (Matoro Mahri’s Cordak tubes, Helryx, Gaaki, etc.), and scarves are an external accessory that anybody of any Element and/or affiliation could wear. I can kind of see where you’re coming from about the “energy stocks” being a bit too Element-specific, but it’s also not that big of a stretch to think that a Toa of Lightning might develop built-in devices during their transformation. You could even imagine the stocks as a separate add-on to Chiara’s body if you really want.
“Precedent” doesn’t mean that every single Toa of Lightning has to match Nikila’s traits 1-to-1. Unless you expect every single Toa of Lightning to be an exact clone of each other, Chiara’s going to do something that Nikila doesn’t.
Ultimately, a sample size of 1 isn’t a very good precedent. Nikila shouldn’t be viewed as the gold standard of what a Toa of Lightning looks like, and neither should Chiara. Just because Chiara has tubes and energy stocks doesn’t mean that every Toa of Lightning does and Nikila is suddenly an outlier; those could easily be unique to Chiara, even among other Toa of Lightning.
At the end of the day, it’s totally fine to not like these details; as I said above, I myself am not too big of a fan of the generator-looking things that many entries have, but all of these things are a far reach from “breaking” canon.
Again, voted in by fan vote. I’ve seen some arguments about their inclusion of the tubing that have somewhat helped me get passed my initial disdain. My argument against is this: she’s a Toa of lightning, she can channel lightning freely/naturally. There is no need for these tubes, as she can already control the lightning within herself.
But where’s the why? Ko-koro Matoran wore them to help with the absolutely cold Mount Ihu. There’s been arguments I’ve seen that have also helped me with Kualus and a little bit with Nidhiki.
I don’t expect them to look so similar, but these extra bits just seemed tacked on from the perspective of a real-world object vision. I also gave the example of the Inika to extend my argument to the lightning element itself.
Absolutely true. But when you match Nikila with all the other Toa, there is a trend.
Ultimately, I’m looking for someone to convince me. As I’ve stated above, I’ve been convinced upon similar type issues before. I’m willing to adapt my view, I just need a good argument to do so.
I know I’m becoming increasingly cynical, but I think contests are less about the MOC itself and more about metagaming the competition.
That means guessing what people want for a build, amalgamating the pre-existing ideas, getting the attention of the tastemakers, bullying better MOCists into not participating (such as bullying iBukkey into not entering).
I’ll say that the Bionicle community has always had a thing for very greebly sets with a somewhat coherent silhouette. This is true all the way back in 2003 when Lego was canonising MOCs. The irony is that these look nothing like the official sets and closer to combiner sets… but even then, the colouration is different from the combiner sets.
Point is, if it looks like some AI generated detail spew, you’re doing something right (even if it’s wrong).
EDIT: Forgot to include the ultimate meta - cloth scarf. This turns mediocre MOCs into finalist entries, and I mean this in the more sincere and toxic way possible.
If I have time, I’ll try to figure out how to digitally add a cloth because I’m gonna meta game and slap a stupid scarf on every MOC (ok, sisters of skrall & naho need proper cloth element, everything else is just idiotic meta gaming the competition).
I consider the fanon contests on par with the canon ones, since they’re gone and will never return (if you think otherwise, I’m sorry but I think you’re delusional).
So when voting, I look obviously for cool MOCs, but they have to tick all the boxes that a canon entry should have: accurate colors, weapons, masks, size and how it looks next to official sets (this is why I’ll never vote for a heavy CCBS or system build).
It’s also important that a MOC (especially a digital one) doesn’t rely on custom pieces or parts in colors that don’t exist (custom masks are absolutely fine), since at the end the whole point for me is to be able to build a character irl.
And yes, I too am annoyed by this scarf trend that’s going on since the Hagah contest.
Well, I use custom kanohi & eye stalks, maybe a small handful of custom coloured parts, eg recolouring a small handful of custom armor pieces. Basically if it’s a toa hagah recolour, it should be fine.
I think the scarf was fine on Kualus, but then it slowly became the meta. But I’m frustrated enough with the state of fanon contest, I’m just gonna go full toxic meta gamer.
That said, I ain’t giving into the Galva kanohi monopoly (which the contests keep denying exists).
I typically don’t vote because the entries rarely match my personal visions of these characters :P
I think the inclusion of tubes and scarves are mainly an attempt to give characters a greater sense of personality and originality. Moccists have a lot more freedom than did the designers of official sets
Specifically in Chiara’s case, the wires/generators also help to make her stand out as a lightning-themed character, since we’ve seen blue and white used on water characters and ice characters before.
And I’ve shared my sentimental view on this before: original =/= good, freedom =/= reason. I want to accept these, as they are clearly popular, but there needs to be a reason.
This is just throwing real-world ideology at her. There’s no need for these details. She is a source of lightning, and can already channel it naturally. Wires and generators do nothing advantageous enough to give reason.
I mostly voted based off a combination of what I think looks cool + what I think fits the particular character. Inevitably, what I think looks cool is going to be influenced by builds that feel unique or like something I haven’t seen before. To that end, I don’t necessarily think it’s that important if a moc feels like an official set or not, because if we were to limit ourselves to that then we’d probably end up with a lot of simpler Inika builds for these Toa contests. (That said, one of my top favorites from this contest actually did use an Inika torso… so I’m not saying Inika torsos are bad.)
As for stuff like tubing and what not to your point, it is true that Chiara herself can generate lightning so in a practical sense you could say those aspects are unnecessary. But from an aesthetic standpoint, it makes the viewer read the character as a lightning character. These contests are submitting not only mocs but character designs at the end of the day, and they say a good character design is one that tells you about the character. So if the piece elements are added that make you say “oh, this character must wield lightning” I think that’s a good thing.
Maybe a bit of a side tangent, but this is why I’ve always felt that the The Glatorian are some of the best-looking Toa sets even though they ironically are not Toa at all. They really embody their element visually in a way that a lot of official Toa sets didn’t.
But it’s all a subjective thing at the end of the day.
Except, when compared to all the other canon examples for Toa, it can look out of place, if not provided reason. Does Nikila have these elements to “tell you” she’s lightning element. No. What of Lesovikk and air? I’d argue to that point, the only Toa to match their elemental aesthetic in this way would be the fire Toa, if only for their blatantly obvious color scheme and often (but not always) fire emblem tools.
It’s these considerations of how it looks when compared to all the other canon examples that gives me issue accepting. Again, there needs to be legitimate reason behind a design, even if that reason comes after. I want this reason. Just being cool is not.
I think even looking at it from a canon lens, we could say our sample size of the Bionicle world is pretty small. Hypothetically, there have been countless Toa over the course of the MU’s 100,000 year history, but we only see a small handful of them in the grand scheme of things.
We could say “Nikila looks this way, so I guess all Toa of Lightning look like that” in the same way we could say “Pohatu looks this way, so I guess all Toa of Stone are brown, tan, and thicc.” But then we look at Hewkii Mahrii, and he doesn’t really fit any of those descriptions. Along the same line, compare Lesovikk with Kongu and they look pretty different from each other despite sharing an element.
And some official Toa to their credit do have elemental motifs, take Vakama’s fire disc shooter thing. And Nokama’s transparent blue mask with the bubble pattern almost looks like its made of water.
I guess what I’m saying is, even canonically speaking we can assume some wiggle room when it comes to what a Toa can be.
I’m not saying there shouldn’t be some variation. It’s only natural, and exemplified. And, yes there have been elemental motifs in accessories, but these accessories are known fittings to Toa. These bits I’m pointing out are extra even beyond that.
To clarify further, I also previously pointed out the Toa Inika. They were so incredibly infused with lightning energy that their faces glowed blindingly bright and had lightning embedded in their elemental releases. Do they look like Nikila? No. But again, no excessive/unnecessary details.
The energy canonically is originated and controlled within.
I am only going to comment on this single point because otherwise it would be a very long post. Also, just a preface I don’t actually follow the DuckBricks fanon contest and I just now viewed the finalists so I knew what people are talking about.
I think that these details are fine if done right. Your main problem with stuff like “generators” and “wires” seem to be that they either don’t make sense, or they’re thematically redundant given the character’s element. I am now going to give my reasoning on why I do not find it problematic in principle. Whether it will shift your view on this, is up to you.
There are many examples of characters in set form having accessories which have either their elemental aesthetic, or function, or both, yet in theory, the character does not need them to wield the element.
Iruini’s cyclone spear can create windstorms, but that is nothing he couldn’t do otherwise - it is however still a usefull thing for him if he does not want to deplete his own reserves.
Midak Skyblaster for Takanuva is also similar, he could make light spheres quite easily and has done so before, but that does not mean the weapon is useless to him.
Gali’s scuba fins and propellers make her swim faster, even though she could manipulate waters to shoot her forward.
Lewa and Matau both have tools or armor which allow them to fly, even though they could use heir air power alone for flight (which they have in comic 14 and Adventures 3 respectively).
Surely Vakama could produce jets of flame from his hands for lift off but he uses a jetpack instead.
Nuparus aqua shield/blade creates seismic waves, yet he can do it too.
We see functional elemental redundancy all the time and this might not be anything new. And perhaps most importantly, this device that Chiara has might be anything - a capacitor to store some of the electrical energy she naturally generates to channel it later through the cables; a booster increasing her power etc. That is the way I would be looking at it anyway… never would I think that those are the source of her power or a useless outfit…I would think of it as another cool piece of equipment with cool new powers or perks.
The functional elemental redundancies you mention are boosters more than anything.
Anyone with the Cyclone Spear could activate it, but it’s more natural in the hands of a Toa of air.
Takanuva could make the spheres, but the launcher provides a method of storing and launching these spheres.
Gali is a strong swimmer, but her tools enhance this.
Lewa and Matau couldn’t fly for nearly as long without their tools.
Vakama’s jetpack channels the flame to produce proper thrust (there’s a reason rocket science is a thing; it’s more complicated than just expelling combusted material).
Nuparu’s Aqua Blaster Blade absorbs impact, and then expels that energy in a blast- Nuparu can only do so through the earth.
These have functionality that boosts the wielder’s abilities.
This is something someone else has brought up on the Reddit side of this discussion. This is the type of answer I am looking for: something with supporting, and story-based reasoning. Though tubes are still redundant as, again, she can channel it naturally. I don’t find it a strong enough argument, but at least it’s something in the right direction that seems close to a good answer I’m looking for.
Thank you again for your response. Plague really does fit the issue.
Indeed, you’re right on all of these, and that is how I meant it too. And I think whatever Chiara has, functions similarly or has an entirely additive function. In short it is either something with partial redundancy and provides greater efficiency/more specialized focus, or it does something completely new with her power or on its own.
Could you elaborate on this point? Do you mean that because she can channel lightning through her body as she wishes, she wouldn’t need cables to channel it to a specific part or tool?
