I find it almost insulting that the results of the poll (“exactly as normal” winning by a landslide) were practically ignored, and the way this explanation reads is very opinionated with “we believe,” “our utmost belief,” and “just seems like,” so I just don’t find it convincing enough to side against the majority of the community on this one.
While I am disappointed, I did expect it, and I think I should address some points made in the first topic that I didn’t initially.
Artistic license is a great way to excuse “We don’t have the molds anymore and this Rahkshi is in the style of the rest of the Stars.” We are not hindered by that limitation and shouldn’t be forced to abide by it because you don’t want to use specific pieces.
Additionally, the Rahkshi can be excused otherwise - they were modified to sport thicker, light-resistant armor.
[/quote]
At first, I took the citation on BS01 for granted without actually looking at Journey’s End to see for myself. When I did look, however, I only found this single line from chapter 9:
Meanwhile, Takanuva is fighting the Rahkshi of Heat Vision, who are now more resistant to his light powers.
It’s left ambiguous, so it could refer to a difference in armor, but it doesn’t automatically mean that. Maybe it was a product of Makuta Viruses, we simply don’t know for sure. Plus Greg’s consistency that this is purely a difference in set design with no significance in story.[1][2] For other Stars, yes, there actually is an in-universe change in armor, like Gresh[3][4][5] and Tahu,[5] but the Skrall is just regular, only green instead of red,[6][7] and there is no definitive explanation for Takanuva or Nektann that I could find. Even outside of the Stars there are examples, namely Gold Good Guy, who was canonized as Turaga Lhikan,[8][9] despite having the same Great Hau instead of a Noble. Or how Ultimate Dume is (probably? there’s conflicting answers[10][11]) the same exact form as 2003 Makuta, only with wings.
Yes, the reason for these differences out-of-universe is that they were simply working with the pieces they had, but I was specifically talking about how they impact canon in-universe, showing that they don’t have any reason in story for their differences but are still equally canon, so a custom built Hagah wouldn’t canonically go against the Metru build (especially when the differences with my build are much less egregious than the differences that already exist in canon). This isn’t even taking into consideration the differences between the sets and other media, like the movies, which Greg also considers to be equally canon, just a different interpretation.
You simply cannot argue from canon that custom builds should be banned. One could even make the argument from the wording of the question asked to Greg, specifically the phrase “Metru-styled,” that it doesn’t automatically imply an exact Metru build, which would be supported by the fact that the Hagah come from different teams across the MU. I’m not saying I support this view, but that it’s one way to read it. Whichever way you do, there still isn’t justification to ban custom builds on the basis of canon, and it would be arrogant to ignore everything above and suggest otherwise. However, if you ban custom builds simply to ensure cohesion with Norik and Iruini, while that is entirely reasonable, it would be purely opinionated to suggest the actual Metru torso piece must be used in order to achieve that cohesion, and you would then be imposing that opinion onto official canon, which is far more arrogant.
So why not let custom builds enter and let the community decide to vote for them or not if they so desire?