mccoyed

Love this, especially the realistic fungal growth on the trees and the way they tower over the scene. I can't believe I've never seen that technique for fungus crescents before but it makes so much sense it just dazzles.

You're so good at all the tiniest details, SK. My favorite thing in the builds is of course that, especially furniture and the like, as well as those wonderful and colorful brick-built tents. Slowbelly Keep is excellent and I can foresee the SNOT techniques you used being emulated by other builders in days to come. It works very well for a decrepit, ruined feel and therefore has a lot of differentiation from your usual cleaner looking castle builds.

Friends Lego is problematic, but I wouldn't say it's out and out sexist. Lego is trying to capture a market that would exist even without their involvement, since people generally raise their children to perpetuate gender norms. Where social justice comes in is at the point of questioning how much responsibility Lego has to not participate in the perpetuation of this behavior at the level of broad culture. Lego has no legal responsibility and certainly no economic responsibility to embrace an agenda of gender neutrality/equality in its design and marketing. They may, however, have a social responsibility. Whether they do or not is in the eye of the beholder. Some in this thread obviously don't think corporations have a social responsibility to reject harmful norms. Others think that Friends is not part of that and not harmful, for a variety of reasons. The thing that many fail to realize, in their rush to absolve Lego of any responsibility that might cast a shadow on our enjoyment of their product, is that Lego does feel they have a social responsibility and they do act accordingly. Maybe they don't go far enough for some, and that's fair enough, but it is inarguable that they do practice certain policies that have no economic or legal justification, and are based purely on what Lego feels is their social responsibility to promote values that they feel are in the collective good. This include gender equality. Though Lego Friends is problematic, most of their products in the past have been much more so. As some have said, Lego didn't create gender norms, but they have been very responsive to the progress toward better equality and better representation of women and girls in their products. They didn't do the Research Institute for no reason. They didn't improve the ratio of male to female minifigs even in the series marketed primarily at boys for no reason. Lego does acknowledge a level of social responsibility as a toymaker. They have shown a commitment to developing that further while also trying to capture markets where they've been traditionally less successful (girls!). The nuance is found here, actually. Lego Friends may embrace gender stereotypes in its use of color, the shaping of its figures, and in the activities the narratives of their toys are set around, but they also transgress many regressive stereotypes at the same time. The girls of Friends are, as people have noted, scientists and karate experts and so on. There's a give and take here. That's important. Another way Lego has shown their attitude toward social responsibility is in their disposition toward realistic (by their standards) war Lego. This attitude has also slipped with the market, but they have a policy in place which they believe addresses a balance between economics (they'd make tons of money selling war Lego and we all know it, just as they would catering to more pernicious stereotypes in the girls' toys market... see Bratz and the like) and their moral stance on selling war imagery to kids. My personal stance on this is that Lego is a poor target for social justice issues as they are a relatively responsible company. I usually get agitated in these discussions when people reveal themselves to have hostile attitudes toward the very notion of sexism, misogyny, feminism, and social justice. There has been some of that in this thread, but I won't engage that.

This is great. Excellent use of color, love the giant nails and your workstation designs here. Rockwork with the gold accents is a nice touch.

Yeah, the whole contest was purist.

The only thing about this I don't like is that now there are giant drow afoot.

Very nice scene. The foliage and trees look natural, which is hard to pull off. I also love that overgrown stone wall. Great idea and executed in a way that you'd almost miss it, just like in real life!

Nice. I like the Treasury Guard best because of his unique shield!

Haha thanks! And who knows, perhaps lady minotaur isn't taken yet... Right on! Thanks ME. I wanted to do more with the garden area. Another time! Thanks SK. It's really fun to build Kaliphlin every now and then. I should try a few things in the other Guilds too. Can be good to get away from the rocks and snow every now and then, plus it's winter in Canada so I find myself wanting to build in the sun. I have some ideas about continuing haha. Thanks Mike S!

Awesome. So much fun in this build and you managed to fit in a lot of stuff without the build feeling too busy. I think the standout feature here is that snowy slope, but I really like those observation balconies.

There are some cool ideas in here. A few I've never seen. The music in the video is hilarious and I could easily see many of these videos focusing on specific genres and brickbuilt items. Thanks for doing this and sharing it with us.

Book 2, final build!

This is fantastic. Maybe the next small scale community challenge should be brick-built creatures and monsters of Historica! Then, Vit would win of course. :P

Another one knocked out the park, Ces!

Outstanding scene here. So much going on that it totally fits the notion of a microcosm of Historia and Avalonia.

When we were in Ireland to get married, my wife and I bought a bottle of mead from Bunratty Castle and drank it in our hostel in Cork. Good times. Good stuff!

I might have too many challenges going on across too many platforms/communities. There's just a lot going in the AFOL community right now. Struggle for Klegon is doing their first global challenge. Lands of Roawia is having one. There's this one, which is primary to me (and the only one I've done a build for) as well as other assorted stuff I wish I had time for, like more CCC or the Chibi Vehicle challenge. Besides all that, building Vegrsala took a lot out of me! There's also the busy time of year we're in and I got some news about my company closing their Canadian operations so soon I will have to be looking for a new job, too. Lots of crap going on. Most of my free time goes to Dragon Age: Inquisition on top of it! Sorry if I'm oversharing here. Haha.

Thanks DG! The Jarl is one of my faves too. None other than Asbjorn of Arnarvhall, who has featured in many of my Mitgardia builds!

Thanks mrcp6d! That's a great compliment. Thanks LordDan. Initially I wanted the water thing to be a bigger part of the build but I gravitated away from that as I went on. Kind of glad about that because it may have been too distracting otherwise. Thanks DG. That's a mighty compliment coming from an accomplished builder like yourself!

Thanks. I wanted to try something with an otherwise conventional build. I haven't got to do many towers, houses, roofs, etc so it was fun to see what I could make work. It looks good? Thanks, SarahJoy. My wife loved the use of Storm's torso with the rest of the fig's ensemble and I had to admit that it was an inspired choice so maybe I'm not that modest after all. :P Thanks Jakorin! Thanks, Sleg! I love 3rd party pieces, personally. But I think they are occasionally overdesigned and don't fit well with actual Lego. It depends. I try to put thought into it when I use them as I think brick-built solutions can often be more fun. I wouldn't say I regret any of my 3rd party purchases, but I have definitely found fewer uses for some than others so there's that. I do have an idea that absolutely won't work without a third party armor piece from BrickWarriors, though. That's for the Category C challenge so hopefully I'll have time to get working on that soon.

Was hoping someone would get that. :P Yeah, I definitely thought so too. SarahJoy and I agreed that the local minotaurs would use the BW head for females and the CMF head for males. Thanks Tomsche! Thanks Lenjoy! Haha thanks, Vit.

Option #3!

One day, a new minotaur lady of some poise and sophistication arrived in Ruadh to see what all the fuss was about. She enjoyed the art, the great music, and the friendly folk but could never quite shake the feeling that she was being watched. If anyone asked, The Brute Squad would probably claim they were just doing their job, checking out the new arrival to make sure she wasn't up to no good (trying to start some trouble in their neighbourhood). They weren't trying to be creepy. It's just that, well, they didn't see a lady like this every day.

Thanks Mike! Thanks Robert! That is very nice of you to say Kabel! Thanks a lot.

That's excellent, Vit.