To play devil’s advocate, I wouldn’t bring up the stars sets As they’re weird canon anomalies. They’re using the agori build but Tahu (and his mask) is clearly representing his 01 form. Like how how the 09 ignika is technically a ketorange helmet but is still canonically a gold mask.
The point about Lhikan’s hau still stands, though.
Greg answer is about standard shaped masks only, there is definately room for regional variations. Whether or not the characters have them is the real questions
The thing with the organic Inika masks is extremely unfortunate. I mean on the one hand I’m kinda happy that it’s basically the death knell for Sanok Orde but that’s just because I have an irrational dislike of everything about the Sanok and when I’m thinking with human brain instead of lizard brain, yeah, that sucks.
Like, regional variants are a thing, like Lhikan’s Hau, and I think the Phantoka Makuta’s masks are also variants? Or is that just fanon, I dunno. Point is, there’s room for variation and hard-banning inorganic Inika masks for the foreseeable future is a bit of a silly move to make, because, let’s be real, those masks are ugly as sin, and their rubberiness probably makes them harder to paint, so chance of them getting used for future entries are low.
Basically it just takes six masks out of the pool and makes Varian even less interesting as a prospect. Especially because the Calix is all we have for her.
Like… I dunno if anyone else has this problem, but I’m willing to bet that a large portion of older fans now can’t look at that mask without hearing Hbah427/Jaller Locobolt’s voice coming out of it.
Also the notion of the scales on the Suletu representing an organic brain is rather silly considering that, while we don’t know for certain, the fact that the MU species all have/had programming strongly implies that their brains are not organic. A wet, wrinkly meat-brain would mean nothing to them.
But this is the unfortunate end result of the Bionicle fandom’s obsession with getting Greg Answers for everything and needing every detail canonised. It makes the most sense for the organic masks to not necessarily represent the standard form, and it makes the most sense for the standard versions of the Mahri masks to not include breathing tubes. We could’ve rolled with that thought process forevermore, and eventually gotten an inorganic Calix design canonised with Varian at the very least.
But instead, people had to ask Greg to canonise it all that time ago, and he said “No they look like the original parts”, even though that doesn’t make sense, and now we have a forum post that makes Nidhiki, Varian, and potentially the Yesterday Crew’s contests less interesting.
That said, I think it’s worth noting that both of the previous contests have overwritten Greg canon, with his approval.
Helryx was dark blue… until she wasn’t. The Mask of Creation wasn’t gold… until it was. Like you yourselves said, Greg doesn’t really remember this stuff and he probably doesn’t care all that much about the minutia anymore, if he ever did in the first place. If a Varian with an inorganic Calix won, he’d probably give it the nod anyway. Because at the end of the day, he probably figures “This is what the community wants this character to look like, and they care way more than I do, so I’ll roll with it.”
I’m not saying we should just disregard everything Greg has said about canon (I myself operate on Schrodinger’s Canon but I don’t expect anyone else to), but I am saying that things like the minutia should probably be taken as guidelines rather than gospel.
So the broad strokes of character’s design should be adhered to, but things like exact shade of colour (Helryx), colour distribution (Artakha, Nidhiki), and exact design details of masks (Inika and Mahri masks) should be left up to the discretion of the builder and the artist that adapts their work.
It should be pointed out that Kongu’s Suletu is known to be unique, even if organic masks do look exactly like their metallic forms:
Unless there’s some quotes that I haven’t seen, this seems a touch restrictive. With the exception of the question specifically about the Faxon, Greg left ambiguity in every single answer (“as far as I know”, “I think so” “etc.” .etc). I’ve gone into more detail on this before:
And I don’t see how we can take the Faxon quote as canon since Lesovikk’s Faxon has a visor, which we all agree is one of the specific things that made Hahli’s Faxon non-standard.
Also, there’s one thing that was brought up before that wasn’t addressed here; what are the thoughts on running each Hagah Contest individually until the final round, and then letting the artists pick a team of Hagah from the finalists of each individual contest?
This would give a great balance between team cohesion and individual quality in a way that could not be provided by any other format.
Could you get the establishing quote for this question:
Greg has said the contrary though. Lesovikks Faxon is standard shaped.
Here:
Also question 6a is of interest too and here:
Also, Takanuva is able to visually recognize Krakua’s mask in Swamp of Secrets.
Yeah, that was the quote I was originally replying to.
The problem is that that quote contradicts virtually every answer given on this topic, which state that the visor is part of the “aquatic mutations”.
Although, that second one does seem to state that the tubes are the only difference as well, which would mean the visors are standard.
Though I will point out that he says “as far as I know” in that second one…
But the only one we for sure know, is visorless in standard shape is the Volitak. Because of Mazeka
Thank
Oh my god you’ve hit the nail on the head there for why I can’t take that mask seriously. That and the weird gurning expression it seems to have.
It’d really suck to have that be the only viable canon face for Varian. Wen get so few female toa as it is; I want the ones we have to look cool.
Varian burned her nose off at age three.
Please, can someone explain to me why the contests are to be run all at the same time, and not consecutively? I just, absolutely honestly, do not see reasoning behind it, aside from “We can run all the contests in 3 years and 5 months instead of 3 years and 7 months!”, where those ~2 months are tiny ~5% compared to overall time for those contests. I just really want to understand, please. 
Because the Toa Hagah are being considered a single cohesive unit with known visual similarities, not four individual Toa.
All of the Toa Hagah will likely end up having some level of cohesion, so by doing them consecutively, you give them different levels of priority, when they should all be considered the same.
It’s not just the time cost (which is far less negligible for those running the contests) but the logistical cost of decoupling the Hagah.
I cannot express how disappointed I am with this outcome, for a multitude of reasons, so many that I’m going to have to split this message into segments.
Part 1 - Why simultaneous voting is a terrible idea
Except choosing what degree of team cohesion you want can’t be left in the hands of voters because they don’t know which designs are going to win. All they can do is pick four cool designs and hope they work together based on their criteria.
Even the very simplest of criteria a voter could have, like not wanting two Hagah with the same spearhead, cannot be accommodated with the traditional means of running the contests. What if three Hagah had very purist designs, and another one had a completely new and distinct colour, or armour design with CCBS parts? Welp, I guess we’re stuck with it.
If someone votes for one entry they liked, but that entry ends up not working with the other Hagah based on their criteria, can they really say they made the right choice in voting for that one? The answer is no. It runs completely contrary to the idea of a team-based contest.
Part 2 - Alternatives to the options offered
Something I’m particularly frustrated with is that you seem unwilling to entertain any alternative processes or half-way-houses between essentially blind voting (i.e. simultaneous voting) and more transparent voting (staggered voting). Plenty of ideas were suggested here, and all of them deserve some attention and consideration. Maybe you discussed them all privately and made your own conclusions on why they don’t work, but at that point you’ve cut the community out of the decision-making process.
The only two big issues I saw people raising regarding the staggered system were the lightning rounds, and the fact that the Hagah whose contests run first have more sway over what the team should look like. As I’ve said before, there are other ways to run this contest that reach a compromise and don’t require lightning rounds.
And why was having to have lightning rounds a non-negotiable with staggered voting anyway? Couldn’t we have let the community decide whether they minded having each Hagah run as if they were four separate contests?
Part 3 - Misrepresentations
There are perhaps two flaws in your argument here. The first is that despite saying the discussion is more important than the poll, you seem to be forgetting that those of us who argued against the normal voting procedure were far more vocal than those who were for it. Again, the alternatives for how to run the contests that have been offered here have the potential to mitigate the two big issues with staggered voting.
The second flaw is that your poll isn’t just a measure of which option is preferable, but also of whether the traditional method is preferable to an alternative. If you think of it like that, it’s not so simple to conclude that the traditional method is markedly more popular. In this instance, I’m not arguing for staggered voting, but that simultaneous voting does not represent the best and most popular option, and that we need to find a better alternative.
Part 4 - issues with the poll
Which leads me onto my next point. The issue with the poll you posted is that it doesn’t distil the crux of the issue, which is how much do people care for clear consistency among the Hagah, and to what extent. If you ran a poll that went like this…
Edit: I put the entries in the wrong order 
…For anyone who votes anything other than the first option, simultaneous voting is inherently risky.
I reckon plenty of people value consistency a lot, but some could have voted against staggered because they didn’t like the idea of lightning rounds. And some, I suspect, voted simultaneous because it looks like the obvious answer if they don’t think very carefully about the risks it brings. To the untrained eye, the options are “run the contests the same as before”, “run the contests as before but force people to make 4 designs”, or “run the contests pretty much the same as before, but faster”.
Part 5 - if we really have to go down this road…
If we really have to run the votes simultaneously, I would implore you to do the following:
This has its own controversies - e.g. “I voted for this because it had x, but now x has been changed to y” - which is why I’d rather we don’t just jump blindly into simultaneous voting without considering every repercussion. That said, with my suggestion, at least people can preferentially not vote for artwork that changes something they liked about the original Hagah design.
Part 6 - TLDR
That’s a very long way of saying the fact that the community is dissatisfied. This is a very short way of saying it.
In future, let’s resolve every problem through the medium of memes. That’s guaranteed to be more productive.
I see people voting in that poll I made. I guess I should have expected that people would actually use it as one - though I can’t say I’m complaining.
It’s worked for me several times before.
How is voting for all 4 Hagah individually at the same time a problem? seems to be the best option to be completely, honest. Staggered would make the first Hagah that gets a poll to become the standard which all other entries who’d want a chance to compete would have to adhere too. Designing 4 hagah at the same time is also something we’ve gone over and people don’t want that for several obvious reasons.
Please do correct me if I’m missing something? or misinterpeting this?
Because having a contest for four mostly-identical Metru builds was a questionable decision at best on its own. Dividing it up into four separate contests, while it would reduce the amount of overlap, would mean spending like a year on four characters who are just minor variations on the exact same thing.
EDIT: Not saying that making it a Metru build contest was a bad idea. They should be Metru builds. The winners should look as good next to each other as the 2001-2006 Toa Teams do. But by the very nature of that, doing even one MOC contest for them is a really weird decision, putting the entire process and several more important characters on hold, so ballooning that to four would be absurd.
Read the full message (or just part 1 if you’re short on time). I explain why simultaneous is bad.
I’m not denying that all three options of how to run the contests have their issues. My argument is that we need to entertain other options, because simultaneous could have repercussions for anyone who wants the team to have more than the bare minimum of consistency.
Really? Another poll? Absurd. What you should have done is, you should have held a poll to decide if you should hold that poll.
