These are some good points. For the most part, it’s impossible to say one way or the other without Greg weighing in to say for certain. My interest here is not to confirm one thing or another, but just to see if Greg actually does have a serious inclination one way or the other, or if he doesn’t mind letting fans decide through vote.
I can’t speak for the community, and ultimately we’ll only know once the contest is over, but ultimately I see no reason to verify one way or the other if something is the canon form of a mask or not.
You’ve worked extensively on BS01’s Kanohi and Other Kanohi pages, so you probably know better than most just how many hypothetical masks there are in existence. Of the 78 known Great Masks, there are 23 without canonical forms–and that’s not counting the 65 unseen Noble masks we’ve never seen before. Of course, this isn’t counting any mask we aren’t aware of, or the masks wer’ve only seen mutated, organic, or otherwise transformed. All told, there is a reasonably solid chance that the Hagah masks are ones we’ve never seen before, including their original forms.
I just don’t think there’s any need to confirm one way or the other if the masks the Hagah wear. My inclination is to permit fan Masks of Emulation into the contest. If a moc with one wins, then that’s the canon shape, but if some other mask wins, then Pouks’ mask was reforged. Then leave the other three masks ambiguous.
Thanks for including these–I actually had forgotten about the very first one, but I don’t think it adds anything here. But the second and third quotes are the subject of my original post, and at this point, I’d just be reiterating what I said there.
That’s a great point that I also hadn’t considered. Again, I can’t speak for Greg, and I’m eager to hear his input on the matter. However, just because he was working with the Hagah in a storyline doesn’t mean he was considering the hoops that had been jumped years ago to explain why Norik was wearing Dume’s mask. You don’t need to take the appearance of a mask into consideration when you’re describing them and their powers in story.
Also, Jerminator made an interesting point in another topic that’s worth raising in here as well.
Given what we have, it’s a reasonable solution to solve the contradiction posed by the quotes. The problem is that, as he says, it’s an interpretation. But there’s nothing in the quote to infer that Greg was remembering the details on Iruini when he said this.
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Invariably, all we can do at this point is speculate and guess. Normally I wouldn’t even raise the issue. But people have taken this quote to say that any moc with a fan mask must be disqualified simply because of this singular quote in question.
If this is really what Greg wants, then by all means, let’s have that as a rule. Canon is canon, even if many fans would wish otherwise on this point. I hold strongly to Greg’s quotes, and will frequently cite them when necessary (such as, for example, the Hagah torso).
However, I don’t think it’s fair at this present time to outright disallow submissions simply because one happens to wear a Mask of Emulation. At present, the “evidence” we have is flimsy at best and requires assumptions and interpretations as to what it can mean (as Jerminator alludes to). Perhaps you’re right, Dag, perhaps Greg meant all along that “Iruini is the only possible exception to the rule, and that every other Hagah had masks like Norik.” But until he expressly clarifies that “yes, Iruini is the only possible exception to the rule,” I don’t think it’s fair for people to keep insisting that this is what Greg said, when it isn’t. That’s a fan interpretation of the quotes we have.