the dreams of those who've fallen the hopes of those who'll follow those two sets of dreams weave together into a double helix drilling a path towards tomorrow

And we're back.

 

Wings of premium lego yet flimsier than most. Arms all of NPU. Combination mechs that maybe don't combine(?) Presenting for your consideration: the dream chapter.

"MOC"

Check out these "MOCs":

They're kinda darling IMO. These come from the facebook page, LEGO Attic Trains. They're a little lo-fi compared to what you see from scenes like Brick Model Railroader, but for that reason, I think they are fun. The page's owner has documented testing of custom lathed 9V pickup wheels. See video below: 

all i'm looking for is total perfection

Have y'all seen the second LEGO movie? Was it the second movie you ever cried during? Naw, me neither.

This is a cool spaceship and you should look at the other pics of it for all the details.

Will part 3, The LEGO Movie: Ninjago Drift, deal with Finn the human's teenaged anime phase, while both being and parodying corporate synergy?

This is cute.

Will part 4, The LEGO Movie Christmas, reunite Finn and Bianca after Finn's first semester at college?

This has some neat techniques for handling & covering angles.

Will part 5, The LEGO Movie: A Good Day to Dark Age, be human-free and take place entirely within The Bins of Stor-Ahge?

 

I guess you can buy this now because capitalism?

Real thoughts though: the first LEGO movie was an incredible feat of taking crass commercialism, literally a feature-length commercial, and turning it into a powerful statement about creativity, a reminder to adults of what's actually important in life, and an encouragement to children to be the hero of their story, all while delivering laughs and a non-stop super-dense vision of what LEGO is like from the eyes of the LEGOs.

his dragon baby has clearly run away with his heart

In the long long ago, dragons held a special cachet in the castle world. The art of mecha was fairly well established but there had yet to be full integration, and castlers' dragons were of... mixed elegance. We combed the archives and believe that the game-changing technic-gear hinges of the Teknomeka by Brian Cooper preceded the landmark castle dragons of Anthony Sava, which used some smaller geared hinges. In the absence of other Lugnet historians we will declare these as the progenitors for all that was to come.

More than a decade later, dragons are loose in the world. The distinction between castle dragons and mecha mechs is no longer black and white. Oh wait:

We would classify the white dragon as more castley - the curve of its spine is elegant but fixed. It is posed perfectly for the cover of some fantasy novel, staring down at the brave hero with sword raised.

Meanwhile the black dragon has five articulate necks (your gumshoe reporter is on the case to figure out what's inside those tyres - we can kind of see a hinge here but are too old-fashioned to know what that part is) and has as much movement in its body as it has spines. 

We wonder what else has emerged from the mixing of mecha and majick while we've gone gray.

maybe i have a ready-made investment portfolio

What pulls an AFOL out of the dark ages? Your damp author met a gentleman in a hot tub last weekend, who discovered his late-80s collection stashed away at his folks over the holidays and has since been buying old sets fervently. It was a shock to hear "Bricklink" and "AFOL" aloud after so many years. (He pronounced it ā-fōl. We never got a chance to explain "AHOL" to him.)

A humble cottage uses new pieces but reminds us of the 1990 Ideas book

Is it all about nostalgia? Are we endlessly recreating our youth, remixing pieces in novel yet reminiscent forms?

This is not a pipe.

For some it must be forward-thinking and expressive, surely. As we wrote at the (re)start, it can be the medium we otherwise lack, the way to be creative in an otherwise adult life.

elegance, abundance, dripping in gold 

Adult life... in 2009 we shook our fists at "Big LEGO," the class of NDA-bound AHOLs with their toes half in the kool-aid, hinting at secret knowledge and bequeathing rare parts. Is the 2019 half of our #tenyearchallenge the fight against wealth? Bloomberg reports that LEGO is an asset class unaffected by financial crises. The day people stop using their (old) dark gray Belville pots to protect their investment is the day we quit for good.

The Uncanny Corner

We've been enjoying everything BricksandTiles has been building since our reawakening, but we've hesitated to poast them: we don't know if they are real.

Rendering technology has improved and become ubiquitous, and now lacking the knowledge of which parts are available in which colors we are helpless to determine the veracity of his MOCs.

 

When it's zoomed in, we think we know: there's no texture, no plastic-printing artifacts, no translucency-in-depth to surfaces. It must be a render, right?

Are these real bois? What is real?

let the true battle begin

We played SSB:U until we unlocked all the characters, and then it immediately lost its luster.

 

Would $60 and those hours have been better spent on LEGO? Meybee making our own fave chars?

brief post is brief

This triggers our nostalgia for 30 and 10 years ago.

 

This is tweepunk.