Karalora

I didn't have time for an in-depth search this morning and the Wikipedia entry that popped up was about the novel. I thought it might be a case where an obscure bit of folklore was codified by a piece of literature and then fell right back into obscurity.

What is there to even say at this point? @Robert8 is the most consistently excellent minifig designer I have ever heard of, and I include the actual professionals at TLG in that statement. The Alraune is a creature I was not previously familiar with, and my Google results suggest that she's not quite from folklore, but was the star of a novel based on the more traditional legend of the mandrake root mannequin, and was later adapted as a monster in the Final Fantasy video game series in pretty much the form seen here. Either way, she's a marvelous creation. Nice to have Ra (or Horus, or Re-Horakhty, or...those Egyptians just could not decide how many gods they had, or which ones were which, could they?) added to the mythology lineup. Now let's talk about the Monster Fighter. First of all, very nice Kate-Beckinsale-in-Van-Helsing leather corset--it's corny, but it tells you exactly what kind of story we're telling here. Second of all, the Moonstone. Those of us who collected the Monster Fighters sets will of course remember those and their lovely rainbow of transparent colors and symbols representing the different monsters. Trans-yellow was not one of the colors, so using that makes it seem like this is a natural part of that theme...but Rob (mind if I call you Rob?), you've gone and given the game away with that jack-o-lantern icon! You're openly admitting that Monster Fighters, and "classic" monsters in general, are ultimately all about sneaking Halloween into the rest of the year! Not that I object, of course! Moving on... The Easter Bunny is an obvious one--LEGO gave us the Bunny Suit guy, but this one isn't wearing a costume, he's the real deal! Look at those eggs! THREE in one bag! I have to say, the thing that would trip us all up if they did want to use your designs is that you're way more generous with the accessories than the actual blind bags tend to be. But we do need more LEGO Easter eggs (and I'm not talking about the stuff in the Haunted House attic)--that one with the sad, simple little blue scrawl isn't going to cut it. I think I've rambled enough. The quality of the series speaks for itself!

Holy cow this is magnificent! You can almost identify real individual species, portrayed with a single part or very simple build! A++++++ work!

I don't know if this is what you had in mind, @Alexandrina, but a recolor of the otter Patronus could fit the bill for a pine marten, weasel, ferret, or any of the long skinny mustelids.

Oh wow, I skipped right over the springtime holidays and now we're looking up the barrel of summer. I'd like to see more swimwear. We have a fair amount already, but it's only fair--hard to do a believable crowded beach scene when there are only two colors of women's one-piece, two varieties of men's trunks, and one bikini top. I also want more colors of mermaid tails--pink, purple, and turquoise seem to comprise the hip mer-palette these days. A conch shell. More colors of pails and a little sand shovel for kids playing in the sand. How about summer food? PEACHES!

@Fuppylodders, there is nothing wrong with asking questions. But there is something potentially wrong with making a big production out of asking questions, as you have been doing consistently in this thread. Here's the example that first caught my eye: This is an awful lot of words just to express the sentiment: "I'm not sure when exactly the labels 'trans' and 'cis' apply." And anyone who wants to take you in good faith and help you out has to sift through all those words to locate the actual question so they can answer it. It amounts to demanding that people do extra work to answer what turns out to be a fairly simple question, and that's why it potentially comes across as insincere or even hostile. And I will leave it there until I know whether you are ready to carry the conversation forward or not.

Okay, @Fuppylodders, so you can't instantly transform a way of thinking that you've held your whole life. That's fair, and I don't think anyone expects you to. The thing is, this is a message board. This is a place where you have all the time in the world to think about who you're talking to, and what you want to say to them, and to choose your words carefully...or to choose no words at all, and simply not weigh in on a topic about which you have little experience. If you truly mean well, you will back off and listen when those whose experiences are closer to the issue are trying to inform you. If you aren't willing to do that...people are going to assume you don't mean well. You've made several long-winded posts in this thread where you expound at length about how gosh-golly CONFUSING this issue is to you and how MEAN trans people are for not accommodating your ignorance and lifelong prejudice, as if you expect that no one has ever shared such a blazing insight before. It's not your old ingrained habits that make you bigoted. It's the way you defend those old ingrained habits simply because they are old ingrained habits, instead of demonstrating an ounce of humility in the matter. You're not being picked on because people expect you to learn something new. We're all learning something new, all the time. But it's a lot easier to learn when you're not constantly blustering about how you haven't learned yet.

Definitive in a given moment, then. Certainly no one has the authority to overrule a person on their own gender identity.

Psychosis is defined as difficulty discerning reality, yes? (I mean...is that the definition? It's the working one I have for day to day life; I am not a clinical psychologist.) If you accept that people's declared gender identity is definitive, then it cannot be psychosis and making a direct comparison is rather playing into the haters' hands.

@nerdsforprez For a fellow ally, you sure seem determined to interpret my words in the worst possible light. What gives, bruh?

Far be it from me to tell a professional they don't know what they're talking about, but it's pretty disingenuous to take a statement clearly made in the context of gender identity and conflate it with psychosis. Trans people are the gender they declare. Period. It's not a matter of "conflicting truths."

I know this is a longshot of a longshot, but...Temple of the Forbidden Eye please!

@allanp You talk about "intolerance on both sides," but it's a false equivalence. Trying to define someone's identity as something other than what they designate is an act of aggression. You are trying to overrule a person's self-image. What gives you the right to do that? If they then say "No, you are not authorized to define me," how is that equivalent? If anything, it's self-defense. Society needs to realize that assigned gender at birth is a doctor's opinion about a new person's gender based on, usually, the shape of their genitals. But as you grow up and develop your self-image, you get to issue a second opinion, and by definition it is the right one. You are the ultimate authority on your identity! If you agree with that first doctor, super. If not, your opinion overrides theirs. Anyone who says otherwise is effectively committing insubordination by proxy on behalf of some OB/GYN years ago. What a silly thing for them to do.

YAAAASSSSSS!

As a workaround, you can try using a "male" head with no facial hair printing and rely on the hairstyle to code the minifig as feminine.

I think I can field this one. The LGBTQ+ community came under criticism from certain queer people of color, who felt that it put exclusive focus on the white queer experience and did not represent them. A version of the rainbow flag with additional black and brown stripes was developed to essentially say "We hear you, we take your criticism on board, you are certainly welcome, and your stories are part of the whole." The Progress Pride flag includes these colors for the same reason. Of course, another reason to use the Progress Pride flag as the basis for the set, rather than a "normal" rainbow, is that we get more colors this way. You want only six/seven stripes and the same number of minifigs, instead of ELEVEN?

I think people who are not very involved with politics consider the threshold for "political" to start at "something I saw people yelling about on the news and otherwise know little about."

Hey, who left this microphone on the floor? It's like they just dropped it here...

The LGBTQ community didn't start this fight. The only reason LGBTQ Pride exists, as a concept, is that so much time and effort throughout Western history has been expended on trying to make members of the community feel ashamed of themselves. And that's at the low end of the oppression scale, not even getting into the beatings, inequality under the law, and in some cases outright criminalization of these folks.

I wanted to address this point because the takeaway here is that if any government bans something for any arbitrary reason, that thing becomes "political." If LEGO adopted that policy, they would be putting the decision-making power for what sets can be released in the hands of entirely outside entities, and I don't think they would or should do that.

Lots of great suggestions here; I don't have much to add. Although... SF: Look up the uniform of the streetcar conductors and/or BART train drivers and try to recreate that. Give any minifig a baguette to reference that famous San Francisco sourdough bread. NY: A cabdriver That's all I've got, unfortunately.

I'm kinda digging those polka-dot legs.

It might be worth defining brick-built for the purposes of this discussion. A lot of larger animals are constructed from smaller parts, so technically built, but the more visible parts are molded specifically to be used as that animal. When I think of a "brick-built" animal, I assume most or all of the parts are standard bricks, plates, slopes, and wedges, plus some Technic for articulation. All that said, I generally prefer molded animals (or animals constructed from specialty-molded parts). It's not that brick-built ones don't look "realistic,"--it's LEGO, everything is a simplified plastic cartoon--but they don't usually look alive. Being made from ordinary parts puts them on the same level as the houses and cars, so at best they tend to like kind of robotic. The smooth, detailed shops possible on a molded animal help it look like a living thing.

"Winter Village Tavern" and "Winter Village Sweet Shop"?

I'm a huge mythology buff as well. One of my fondest LEGO wishes is for a theme that ties into Greek mythology or world mythology. Maybe that Percy Jackson Netflix series will do well enough for TLG to chase a license...and maybe they won't get one and will have to resort to creating their own original theme with similar imagery! Anyway, to answer your question, Robert8 didn't do Dionysus as such, but the Series G Statue is holding a bunch of grapes and a goblet and could easily be interpreted as a statue of Dionysus.