I feel forced to write this...

I will do this in A&C style - popular arguments and my counter-arguments.

A) Canon contests ruin mystery.

C) You are right as long as you restrain "mystery" to "character appearance" - but there are more mysteries in BIONICLE than just the looks of some characters. And you may want to check out this BS01 page to see how many characters are still lacking an image - there is no way anyone is ever going to do a contest for all of them. Even if they were willing to do so (which is not the case), no one has the capacity to do that many contests.

A) Why is everyone doing canon contests for character design now?

C) As Greg uses to point out, only staff members of certain organizations can request canon contests and only if Greg deems them reasonable. These groups are BZPower (mainly the S&T staff), the KanohiJournal/IDBM "magazine coalition" and BS01 (which, BTW, are the most reluctant with character design contests - before Alternate Teridax, they only hosted Certavus). No one else can do these contests.

A) Some of these contests are very restrictive! For example, BS01 forces you to use Golden Kraahkan! That is why I don't like them!

C) For the record, you can use any Golden Kanohi except those which wouldn't make sense (Olmak, Vahi etc). Not everyone has got a gold mask, that is true, but 1) you can buy Tahu Star now and get one, 2) you can always order a Golden Kraahkan directly from LEGO Customer Service for a small amount of money (I did so on Friday and it cost me 2.74 €, shipment included - if you don't win the contest, you can still call it a nice addition to your Kanohi collection; note that prices differ from country to country). I see the point of the argument, but in order to get a canon representation for a character, you need to stick to the things Greg already said about the character, and these things include that he wears a Golden Kraahkan and carries a warhammer.

A) Still, it is unfair! And I don't want every character to have a picture!

C) You don't like this contest, that is okay - then don't enter. Plus, does it hurt you to actually have a canon representation for Kirbold, Alternate Teridax, Certavus or any other contest-designed character? I see it like this - when you are reading a story, you usually have your own images in mind. If you imagine Alternate Teridax in a different way, no one can keep you from continuing doing so. Also note that Greg rarely refers to the looks of a character in story unless he needs to, so your freedom will not be inhibited by the contest.

A) Are these contests really necessary?

C) That is entirely a question of taste. But, faced with the cancellation of the set line and the continuation of the story despite that cancellation, the only way to get canon character images will be by doing contests - this view is also shared by Greg, who is or at least will soon be the one in charge of BIONICLE. While not every character may need an image, no images at all would be pretty dull, considering Greg will very likely get about 30 new names to use for characters and other stuff in 2010 and 2011 - without sets, none of these would get a canon representation, and although not every one of them may need one, some of these characters will probably play major roles and deserve to be designed. Again, if you don't like that, just ignore the images - if you can't accept them, then just mantain your own image of the character within your head, because that is where these characters mainly live - in people's heads.

Note that it is not my intention to fight for the Alternate Teridax contest, although I personally like the idea of the contest, but to make a point about canon contests in general. For that purpose, I used the AT contest as a current example (and since I focused on character design, Desert Birdwatching wouldn't have worked for my argumentation).

Feel free to comment, feel free to argue, but no flaming will be tolerated.

NtM