Toa Hagah Canon Contest Ruleset Feedback

I still hold that without clarification from Greg, we can’t assume that there aren’t also exceptions to the rule, as with Iruini.

I don’t think Wolk is saying that there aren’t other exceptions like Iruini across all the other Hagah teams recruited by the Makuta, but just that having two of those exceptions in the same team is really unlikely.

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Only if you let it be

EDIT: What are the odds that, of the two Toa Hagah we ultimately got, one of them would happen to be the exception?

Extremely unlikely as well, but not impossible. However, since Teridax’s team is 100% the only team we will ever have depictions of in canon, it would undermine the “masks reshaped in the forms of past heroes” explanation to give anymore than Iruini the standard shape of their mask power. Sure, it could happen twice (still really unlikely), but I’ve seen several people also intend to enter Gaaki, Kualus, and Bomonga with what is branded to be Clairvoyance, Rahi Control, and Growth respectively (which could matter depending on how the idea of “artist intent” is/isn’t incorporated in the contest). If we allow Emulation for Pouks, what’s stopping people from doing the same for the other three? If we don’t draw the line at Iruini, where should it be drawn?

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Honestly, is it genuinely hard to believe that two Toa Hagah could wear the same masks of past heroes? 84 Toa at minimum (14 known Makuta x 6 Toa Hagah per team) and not a single pair of them within a team could’ve worn the same Kanohi of two past heroes? It’s not like there was a shortage of Toa/heroic figures in the far past to honor.

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We’ve discussed this before, so I’ll just refer anyone interested in more in-depth arguments on the point to our more thorough discussion in the Regarding Hagah Masks post in the Ask Greg. But for the sake of those skimming this argument, I’ll post this.

  1. We only have one quote that ever expressly implies that Iruini is the only exception to the “different mask/powers” rule, and it’s a shaky quote that needs Greg’s further explanation. Anything in-canon just says the masks are in the shapes of prior heroes.
  2. Having four of the six Hagah have unknown/unspecified mask shapes still maintains the statistical probability that most of these Toa would, in fact, have masks that don’t match their power.
  3. Even if people enter contests with custom shapes, the purpose of this contest isn’t to canonize one shape or another as something. There are plenty of mask shapes we’ve never seen before (last I checked there were 23 Greats without canonical forms and the 65 unseen Noble masks, though I can’t remember if that’s counting elemental masks yet). We’re not canonizing anything in terms of shapes, and it’s statistically likely that they’re wearing masks we’ve never seen before.
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If we’re going to ask Greg to walk back canon (and that’s a pretty big if), we might as well go all the way; just say that all six Toa Hagah have the standard shape of their mask, and completely rid the canon of all of these wrong-shape shenanigans. This would include Norik.

Note that we can still keep the whole “honouring past heroes” thing, because, as of the current canon, the official story is that the Hagah changed their mask shape to honour past heroes, but they also changed the powers of their masks to powers that don’t match the new shapes. Wouldn’t it be simpler to just say they picked new Kanohi to honour past heroes, rather than picking only a new shape that doesn’t match their new power?

Plus it would make the whole “immoral power vs shape” discussion a whole lot clearer.

Honestly, I don’t even think we’re walking back anything right now, just asking Greg to clarify what his intentions were. But in an ideal world, I wouldn’t mind throwing that bit of lore contrivance out.

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Norik’s Pehkui is already shaped like a Kiril. He’s still trapped in this wrong-shape crap, so you can’t really encompass him in this; and he’s still gonna be a weird exception because of this.

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“Hagah masks don’t have their normal shapes” was canon before the Magical Shapechanging Mask on that dead Ta-Matoran was canonised as the Mask of Emulation, and before Pouks was even given a canonical mask. And Iruini wasn’t even an exception until 2007, when Nidhiki’s mask power was assigned to one of the new pieces.

It’s not Greg’s fault those people didn’t do the research when building/drawing Pouks.

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To be fair, it wasn’t really public knowledge that the Toa Hagah (besides Iruini) were all said to wear different-shaped Kanohi. It was only in recent months that someone dug through the Greg Archives and discovered that bit of lore. Just look at Helryx’s color discrepancy and how people overlooked it until after the contest was over.

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Very small.
The odds of it happening twice is significantly smaller.

Not if Greg says it’s not.

I get that this would be controversial, and I totally get if people wouldn’t want to do it.

But, at the same time, literally the only thing being retconned would be the set; at no point is Norik’s wrong-shaped mask relevant to the plot, or even referenced. (Unless I’m forgetting something?)

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I like how people complain about it being a sudden “retcon” and go on to suggest retconning it…

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What? The honoring-past-heroes masks has been well established canon ever since the novelization of Web of Shadows, and we already knew before that that the powers didn’t have to match the shapes because of Norik. It’s a simple deduction from that that most of the Hagah, given the wide range of masks in the Bionicle world, would have discrepant shapes and powers.

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(I should’ve been clearer) I meant Teridax’s Toa Hagah team. By Greg’s Archives, those Toa Hagah were all specifically mandated to have different-shaped Kanohi (besides Iruini). Other unseen Toa Hagah teams are a free-for-all for mask molding similarities/differences like Iruini, but it’s Teridax’s team I’m specifically talking about.

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I think it’s a problem because some people didn’t like 3D printed parts and scoured through Greg’s old answers to validate their viewpoint. If their favorite contestant won, then I doubt they would care. Something similar would’ve happened if someone was hell-bent on Helryx wearing dark blue armor.

Oh well, what’s done is done.

But, again, why would it ever have been assumed otherwise?

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Not it at all. It simply doesn’t make sense with what we’ve had established in the book, as I’ve explained…

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If we’re going to ask Greg to just go back on anything he’s ever said just because some people don’t like it, let’s go all the way. Make it so the Toa Hagah aren’t Metru builds, so people can build the Hagah however.

It’s only fair, right? If you get to retcon canon because you want to use a certain mask, I should get to retcon it to use whatever torso I like.

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