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dviddy

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Blog Entries posted by dviddy

  2. dviddy

    Bs01

    By dviddy,

    Building the alternate Teridax seems kind of silly.
     
    Also, why do all of these kind of contests have to be canon?
  3. dviddy

    I am very tired

    By dviddy,

    Just a warning up front: this will probably be long, and it is going to touch on, though not go into very deeply, some more mature themes such as drug use, and skirt around some sensitive sexual-adjacent content. If these topics are triggers for you, I hold no will will towards you for not reading or pushing through. There is no need to relive your trauma on my behalf. Though some of these topics push (or blow past) the rules here on BZP, I have been specifically asked by the administration to post this after some topics of conversation had elsewhere have recently come up.
    The rest will be under a spoiler.
     
     
  7. dviddy

    Thunder

    By dviddy,

    Hey.
     
    You may have noticed that where at one point I was a very very very active member of the online community, and recently have been quite reclusive. You probably have not wondered "hey, what's up with that?" Well, a few things!
     
    I've spent the last six months working very hard to prepare for an interview I had in November- I passed the interview and am getting a promotion in January to what is essentially "Store Manager in Training". Nine months after that (Ocotberish?) I will be interviewed for readiness and probably be given my very own Starbucks store to operate and staff and run all on my own. I've worked very hard at this, and to see an actual career progression after I spent years messing up my collegiate life and trying to move forward through debt and difficulty is very freeing. To know that I'm less than a year away from a salaried, full-benefits, full-month of paid-vacation, full-life position is very rewarding. Knowing that my income will go up 1/3 of my current income and then double again from that in a year... Preparing for that interview was intensive and I put a lot of work into it. While I have still been attending conventions and building MOCs, my participation online took a huge backseat.
     
    On top of that, BZPower and BIONICLE were always a thing that I enjoyed. I spent many many years here because it was a place where I was safe, where I was welcome, known, and where over the last ten years, I made some of the closest friendships imaginable. Heck, I live with one of those people! But life doesn't stay static, and people change and they grow, and sometimes they grow... poorly. Sometimes those we love and care about make bad life decisions, and they take many of those people around you down with them. The even more frustrating aspect is when you have had rumours made up wholesale about yourself, had vague conspiracy theories written about you, and people who were some of your longest-tenured friends buy the stories entirely, all without every asking you a single thing about them. Never saying "hey, I heard this is happening, what's going on? We've known each other for 15 years!" And when you say "hey, I'm concerned about all these warning signs and problems" they say "we like this person better now, we think them spiraling out of control and losing any sense of stability is character growth. They told us we can't trust you anyway." Never once wondering if those were a deflection to avoid taking responsibility for someone else slowly spiraling.
     
    When those people verbally and viciously attack someone you love after they have come from one of the hardest times of their lives, because that person discovered those stories and discussions, and became angry, those friends, once the closest, lashed out and removed us from their lives. When those people said "we're here to talk about how to help" and then followed it up with "lol, let's kill people and talk about where to bury the body lol" as their method for helping, well, it was clear they only wanted to help their own egos. When confronted by the person they were apparently trying to help, they blamed that person for their actions, labeled them selfish for not liking their method of help, and then blocked them entirely. I'd say good riddance, but nothing about it was good.
     
    The connection here is that those people were BZPower friends and family for me. They were current and former staff members. People I've let stay in my home- people whose homes I've stayed in! It creates kind of a disconnect and a lot of pain, and everytime it feels like it's abating, there are suddenly more made up stories and ridiculous falsehoods we're accused of as we have attempted to navigate depression and anxiety, life and death. It just sucks and it makes this place hard to hold onto.
     
    And that sucks too. I've spent a decade and a half on here. This has been my home longer than any house, any place ever really has. I graduated high school on BZP, I went to college on BZP, I left college on BZP, I got my second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, etc jobs on BZP, I traveled on an airplane for the first time on BZP, I fell in love for the first time on BZP, I moved states on BZP, I've been promoted, fired, promoted, etc on BZP, I've explored hobbies, photography, philosophy, religion, faith, ideals on BZP. And yet this one thing has disassociated my desire from this hobby and fandom almost entirely. It sucks. It sucks a lot. It's not fair.
     
    I don't know entirely what to do or what to say otherwise. I'm still angry. I'm still hurt. I'm still frustrated, and it absolutely murders me inside to see these people parade around and say things about us in public spaces to people I care about while I don't have the same platform to speak up. It's frustrating because you tell yourself "just let it go and move on, forgive and forget, hope for the best" but that never happens.
     
    Anyway, I've actually been building pretty prolifically during this time, but not taking any pictures. But I've resolved to change that this month, so here's a dragon.
     
    (flickr)

    (I know it's a "Wyvern" but I don't care, it's a dragon if I say so.)
  9. dviddy

    The story of Brickcon

    By dviddy,

    Well hey there!
     
    Brickcon is this weeked, and myself and a few other BZP folks will be there!
     
    Brickfair was great, and I had a lot of fun taking pictures and snapchatting the event to the people who follow me, and as such, I'm going to be snapping a good chunk of Brickcon and adding it to my story. Follow me and watch my story, starting tomorrow!
     

    (The look of "oh God why would I do this")
     
    This is an unofficial me-only thing, not an official BZP endorsed thing, so be wary that there may be language and other assorted things some of you might not be comfortable with.
  10. dviddy

    I did some stuff

    By dviddy,

    I keep forgetting to post these here, but I did some MOCs this year!
     
    First, the more serious and long-term MOC I've been tinkering with since December:
     
    (BZP TOPIC)

     
    And then the one I built before that and just took photos of a week or so ago:
     
    (Flickr page)

     
    Anyway that's it for now. Enjoy!
  11. dviddy

    What it is

    By dviddy,

    I'm alive! And with all my teeth still in my head! Folks will have to find game tokens elsewhere. Oh well!
     
    There's been probably the biggest amount of personal stress and change in parts of my life ever the past few months, and I've been focusing so fully on that I had stepped away from BZPower for the last several months. The stress and changes all worked themselves out in the best possible ways recently, but I debated continuing to be stepped away as I've recently felt much less welcome by a group I counted as closest friends. For all you kids out there, the drama doesn't stop after school. I'm so very sorry to inform you of this. But you do the best you can, and you keep the people who prove themselves to be worth keeping for as long as they are worth keeping.
     
    I've actually got several MOCs I've built the past few months that I'm getting ready to start photographing and posting soon too! So it's almost like a full return to form! Wow!
  12. dviddy

    Hitting the Trail

    By dviddy,

    So in January we took a chance and moved to the San Diego area.
     
    Almost nine months later, we're moving back to Portland. I constantly hear people down here say "I'm so glad I can live in paradise" and I wonder what they're talking about. It's hot- it's always hot. There is no public transit. The sun is always there, always watching, always beaming, always hot. It's miserable. It's hot. People aren't friendy- they are a weird mix of suburban wealth, military base families, and beach-looks-obsessed jerks. Folks on the road all think they are the most important, and the number of times I've felt like I was about to die because a California driver didn't know what the heck they were doing behind the wheel has ballooned into the dozens. This area sucks, everything is too far away, nothing is attainable, and to top it all off, it's expensive. Hideously, ghastly, overbearingly expensive.
     
    We can't afford it anymore, neither financially nor emotionally. We haven't been happy in nine months, which means it's time for a change. We're going home.
     
    In two weeks.
     
    Expect to see even less of me than recently, as we're going to be cutting the cords here and packing and driving and moving. Things will be sporadic until the latter part of October, I expect. Hopefully once that's done and we're back in place, the MOCs will start flowing again because nothing like "you don't have time to build for the next month" to inspire ideas.
     
    Anyway, time to go to bed!
     
    PS: In-N-Out is lame.
  13. dviddy

    Madness

    By dviddy,

    Here's some stuff!
     
    | |
     
    KORGOT | SOUZAN | GALI
     
    I went crazy and just took a few photos of all three MOCs I had lying around. I finished Gali before Brickfair, Korgot immediately after, and Souzan I finished a week ago. Have all of them today!
  14. dviddy
    I have attended every single Brickfair in Virginia since it began in 2008. We started with a core little group of BZP staffies which I was quick to join, being promoted to staff while at Brickfair itself that first year. What a crazy ride it's been since then!
     
    We're down to just two of those first handful of Brickfair folks these days, just Andrew and myself. This has sort of made me sad, and probably him a little too, but something about this year sort of turned that around for me.
     
    For a long time after Brickfair became the de facto BIONICLE convention for BZPers and, let's be honest, our staff members, there was a silly/serious east coast conventions vs west coast conventions rivalry, and some weird cliquey things kind of happened. Not only in the different coastal cons, but also within the Brickfair group itself, as we hit critical mass of like thirty to forty members at Brickfair in 2011.
     
    I mean, splinter groups are natural, and even now at Brickfair VA we seemingly have two distinct, yet intermingled, groups. The older group, and a group of younger members. We all intermingle at big BZP events, laser tag, dinner, etc, but let's not pretend here- they are two different levels of friendship, and that's okay. What wasn't okay was the exclusivity a lot of us openly yet secretly practiced at these conventions for a long time. It probably started with us just wanting to continue spending quality time with the friends we already had, as for many years Brickfair was our only reunion. And since you spend all year looking forward to seeing those friends, it becomes harder to let other folks into that circle. The fact that our circle was most of the BZP hierarchy was a sad coincidence, and that we were mostly only Brickfair attendees an unfortunate one.
     
    First, I want to apologize for purposefully supporting some of this stuff. I really really like almost everyone I ever meet. I'm aware that sometimes my writing has a tendency to come across abrasive, rude, and hostile, not to mention smug and condescending. It's not (usually) on purpose- I'm a person of strong beliefs, strong opinions, but also one who really really likes getting to know people. I've had so many folks in the last seven years tell me they couldn't believe how different in person I was from what they expected after interacting or just watching my posts online. This is tragic to me, and something I've tried so hard for years to counteract. I think at times I'm just too sassy for my own good, and I'm sorry for that too.
     
    But the thing is, us wanting to just spend time with our friends turned very quickly into a number of us (not Andrew, who I want to make a strong statement here is the best possible public face for BZP and our staff and our community you could ever imagine) purposefully excluding certain people simply because they had been a west coast con person, or because they were on the bad end of one of our group. I can't count the number of times I've had people in my friend circle over the years say "oh no, person x is coming, let's go avoid them, I don't like them".
     
    I'm sorry for that, and I'm sorry for going along with that. I've tried really really hard not to do that the last few years, and I think this convention finally broke it down for me. There are, naturally, going to be people in your lives you don't enjoy being around, and there are still people at Brickfair, Brickcon, BricksCascade, etc, that I want to avoid at all costs, mostly because of events that have transpired in the past that aren't really BZP appropriate. But there are distinctions- those people did things morally incorrigible, things that border on the illegal or obscene. I'm not talking about that.
     
    This year at both cons I've attended I got to break through some barriers and sit and talk with people I've known for years but never talked to. I regret the last part immensely, as some of them are quite possibly some of the best people I could ever want in my life. I mourn years of potential close relationships lost. I strive to make that a different experience in the future.
     
    This was a weird convention for so many reasons, but this is the biggest takeaway for me. I didn't win any trophies, and honestly I don't care at all, as if I weren't a selfish human being who voted for my own MOCs, I would have easily voted for both that won, as both were higher quality than anything I brought with me. Congrats to both Jess and Trisha, your MOCs were the highlight of the BIONICLE section for me and so many others! There weren't a lot of high-profile system MOCs, and I don't think Brickfair has ever seen such low public attendance. But I got to spend time with so many good friends, in so so so so many good conversations, and I got to spend time with so many new good friends. I am especially glad for the deepening and solidifying of one friendship in particular, and I hope it is one that lasts long into the distance.
     
    This is way more rambling than I intended and I'm not sure this is what I set out to write, which was going to be more of a retrospective on being at eight Brickfairs in VA, but this is what came out, so it's probably what needed to come out. I've been thinking about it a lot.
     
    Anyway, basically, let's all be friends except for the small number of you who are actually bad bad people. Which is like three of you, ever, in the history of the site, probably.
     
    TL;DR: Life is messed up, Brickfair is a good time, I'm old, yay friends.
  17. dviddy

    It's clear now

    By dviddy,

    Whoo! What a great little blog contest we had here. As I said, it ended sometime on a Saturday that happened recently, so let's cut to the chase and see our winners, shall we??
     
    From ~Shockwave~:
     
    From Dina Saruyama:
     
    From tylericious definicious:
     
    And last but not least, from Sumiki:
     
    As you can see, the simpler, clever puns are the ones I gravitate towards. Remember this! Who says this is the only pun contest this lil' blog will have????
     
    Oh WAIT WHAT'S THIS A SURPRISE FIFTH WINNER? WHAT, THAT'S CRAZY!
     
    From Takuma Nuva:
     
    I think it's fair to say he put too much work into this piece of clever mask art not to recognize it. So now we're giving out FIVE masks because it's my contest and I can change the number if I want to!
     
    Anyway, if you are listed here, send me a PM with your address, and I will mail you a mask! Unless I'm going to see you at Brickfair VA, which I know is four months away, but I'm going to just bring you one (Sumiki).
     
    Thanks for all the amazing puns you guys, I really enjoyed them all! And be on the lookout for other ways to get a clear NYCC mask from yours truly!
  18. dviddy
    While I do have eventual plans to use some of these on MOCs, and whatnot, let's face it. I have a bunch of this mask just sitting in a bag. I've never planned on hoarding them (contrary to the common refrain on my favourite image board ), and though I plan on handing them out at cons (like I did at Cascade a few weekends ago and will at BrickfairVA in a few months), that still leaves me with a lot of them. I'm not interested in selling them (and I'm not sure I'd be technically allowed to considering the source?)
     
    So now that the reboot has gotten a few months in fully, and most folks who want the sets have them (and if not, Targets seem to have Onua for like ten dollars now, so go buy him) let's do this.
     
    Post puns in this entry. Best four get a clear mask (without the NYCC backing, because those ones I do plan on keeping) in the mail from me. All puns based on the "Hau/how" similarity are automatically disqualified because hau dare you.
     
    EDIT: I forgot an arbitrary ending time. So, this Saturday at whenever I decide. Also, I apologize for those of you elsewhere, but I'm too poor to ship outside the US because of California.
  19. dviddy

    Cascade

    By dviddy,

    So I fly out for Portland (still weird to say that) Thursday pretty early, and I'm stoked. Let's do this.
     
    I'm bringing more MOCs than I've ever brought to a convention before, which is crazy, because I felt like I had a ton of MOCs at BrickfairVA, but this is somehow even more (at least six more?)
     
    I'm ready to be back home for a few days and to eat all the food I miss and see the sights and the people I miss. My old store is the one nearest the convention center too, so I'm excited to spend some time with my old co-workers too.
     
    It won't be perfect, since not everyone who should go, can go, but we will make the best out of it!
  20. dviddy

    Location

    By dviddy,

    Changed my location on my profile on most of my sites to "Escondido, California" today. We have an apartment, wifi, jobs, accounts with the local power company, etc. And now it's all verified on social media and message boards too. I guess we really do live here now.
  21. dviddy

    Hero Pack

    By dviddy,

    This is so dumb but I desperately want to go down to the Fashion Valley LEGO store and buy a few cheap sets and get some Hero Packs even though I already have dozens of those orange masks. I just want the stickers and I want the map and I just like getting the polybag. Curse the weird collector impulse.
  22. dviddy

    California Two

    By dviddy,

    I don't know. I'm having a hard time adjusting to this new life, and it's taking a bit of a toll on my sense of... I don't even know?
     
    In theory, everything here should have been a great move: better weather, better pay, a car for the two of us, a new career for Maddison, LEGOLAND trips, discounted LEGO purchases, a major metropolitan area to play around in, the beach, food, etc.
     
    But it just doesn't feel right so far. My new store sucks, and as dumb of a job as "Starbucks management" is, it's where I'm at while I pay off my bills and then finish school for my real desire, and it's a job I'm incredibly good at, and one I actually enjoy immensely, which is more than I can say for the high-paying jobs several of my university friends have. But this new store is miserable. Anyone following me on Twitter (and if you don't like language you shouldn't) has probably seen the frustration bubble over, but the entire thing is just... It's a mess. It's a chore. I wake up and I hate going to work. But it pays well, and there is supposed to be a promotion spot for me in the coming months too. But I just don't know if I can make it that far? I'd try to jump ship to LEGOLAND with Maddison, but because she works there, I am unable to pursue a job at the model shop by default, and I don't think I'd want to anyway? System bricks are fun and all, but they're not my passion.
     
    I don't know. Random late-night life update. Since we finally have an apartment and internet in it. I'm assuming things get better from here.
  23. dviddy

    California

    By dviddy,

    We have been in California now for... ten days? We're currently hotel livin' it up outside of the tippy-top of North-East San Diego, halfwayish between my work and Nukaya's LEGOLAND lifestyle. It's been really weird. Like, I always knew palm trees were a thing. But you guys. They are a THING.
     
    Also no one told SoCal that it is winter? Today was 80F.
     
    Like??? Why do I even own jackets.
     
    LEGOLAND is cool though. We went the other day and I liked it.
     
    I am missing PDX something fierce, though. Also Micah. Miss you, nerd!
  24. dviddy

    Got it framed

    By dviddy,

    At NYCC, Julie had an extra gift for the three of us who had been under NDA with her for several months:
     

     
    It is signed by the designers, and is apparently one out of ten total posters printed of this image. We finally got a custom frame for it, and now it's all pretty!
     
    Just in time to get packed up to move to California, lol.
  25. dviddy

    Bad Carl

    By dviddy,

    What a year. So many things happened! I'll get to a real recap of the year eventually, but the year decided to throw one more crazy curveball at the last moment.
     
    Last week Nukaya got a call from a job she'd applied for, and they wanted her to come and interview. So she agreed to the interview.
     
    So we booked plane tickets.
     
    To San Diego.
     
    The interview was at LEGOLAND, and we found out this week she got the job. Maddison will be a model builder for LEGOLAND parks, and we'll be moving from the lovely, yet cloudy, Portland to the eternally sunny and also lovely Southern California.
     
    In a month!
     
    We will still be at BricksCascade here in PDX in March, but California beckons.
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