Valendale

Gotta go fast, I guess.

The early 2000s cut-off was a bit of a surprise for me; I went in expecting to at least vote for Exo-Force. I ended up voting for Bionicle and 2 Castle subthemes. (Although my choice of Castle subtheme would be the 2007 fantasy one.)

The dragon does look good, but I think I prefer the skeleton dragon from last year. The statue in the village set reminds me a lot of the one in the old islanders theme. I used to have a catalog with it from my brother I would look at all the time as a kid. I don't think I'll be picking any of these up. Either still getting last years sets or saving up for a big ticket item.

Wow, this set is beautiful, and it's even taller than the original city. The full street layout kind of makes me wish I had picked up the docks. I can't really afford anything right now, but once I do get some money, I guess the question is: Do I get this or one of the modulars?

Yeah, I've been growing a little tired of distance learning myself. Not so much from a lack of motivation, but I really miss being immersed in the environment on an actual campus. Now, even on the one day a week I'm there, it's pretty dead.

Congratulations on accomplishing your goal! I know doing stuff like that feels good. Lately I have been playing Hyrule Warriors as well as playing my favorite tabletop game online at Dominion.games.

These actually look pretty nice, like something you can wear to show your enjoyment of the franchise while still looking good. I might get a pair of the shorts or pants if I can afford it.

Hey, it could have been a lot worse. I tried to remain positive right up until the end. And like I said, last year could be considered worse depending on how you look at it, but let's hope for the best for all of us in the next one.

Well, I tried to stay optimistic throughout the the year, and believe everything wasn't as bad as everyone was making it out to be, but as 2020 comes to a close...I have to agree that it sucked. Besides the pandemic and everything else going on, nothing particularly good happened. I didn't find love, I didn't get a job, I didn't graduate, I didn't get to go to Brickfair. Meanwhile, there were a few personal negative moments. I don't want to get to personal, but I lost my car towards the end of last year and I'm driving one I like significantly less now. And more recently, one of my cats has not been feeling well, and we may end up losing him if the medicine doesn't help. So how did we get here? The year seemed to be starting off well compared to last year. I was building great friendships, going out al the time, and spending lots of time in my school's student center. I was the best 2 months for my social life in a long time...and then the coronavirus hit. My school, like many others, closed down for the rest of the semester. The student center closed, there was no more late night vibing, and I packed up to ship home. At this point, I was still very optimistic, I was getting to spend a little time at my family home I hadn't been planning on, and I was confident things would get back to normal soon enough. Obviously, that didn't happen. But I initially enjoyed the chance to spend some time at home. I had been planning to graduate this fall, which meant, I wasn't sure when I would be able to spend more time there. My friends and I transitioned from meeting up in person almost every day to mostly talking online. But I lost contact with a lot of the people I was less close with, which was one of my favorite parts of hanging out in public at the student center. I also spent a lot of the summer filling out applications and sending resumes, hoping to find a job or internship before the fall semester. Ultimately, I didn't. The fall semester was a strange change of pace, being back at school without being able to hang out constantly or spend time in public. But I handled my work very well, and I actually like my new apartment a lot. But all that has given me a lot of time to play some video games. I found a little RPG I really like called Heartbeat that has entered into my top 10 games of all time. I beat Crypt of the Necrodancer as Aria. I have done some online gaming with friends since we can't be together in person as much. Most recently, I have been playing a lot of the online implementation of Dominion, my favorite card game. So yeah, overall not a great year. I can't say for sure it was worse than everything that happened to me last year, but it was certainly not great. I think like all of us, I'm hoping for the best next year, but preparing for more of the same. I'm definitely graduating this time, I just hope I can get a job lined up and maybe have a few in-person vibes before then.

I think the idea is to appeal to adults, who may not necessarily be fans of LEGO already. Just look at the descriptions in the article, listing benefits that I'm sure most LEGO fans are already aware of. I think these sets do that job pretty well, along with just being good sets in general, giving a nice-looking display model as well as an above average number of parts for their price. And many of those parts are quite interesting.

Not too thrilled about a Police Station honestly, but at least from a visual perspective it is very good, better than the last two I think. I love the little news stand.

Wow it's crazy that we're remembering that as ages ago when it was kind of the last games to really run in G&T...

I believe they have their own Roku channel that collects many of their TV shows and short videos together.

Welp, I've dropped in and donated a little like I said I would. I'll keep the stream on throughout the day when I can, but I probably won't be active in chat.

I haven't really been watching BZP streams since they moved to Twitch, but I may tune in and donate since they money is going to charity.

Well, I would have preferred a statement of support for her, but I guess a response like this is to be expected from a company that's scared about how that could affect their income. I would be interested to hear how Warner Bros distributes those royalty fees. I have been buying Harry Potter sets with the expectation that JK was receiving a cut. If that's not the case, I may have to reconsider my purchases. But overall I'm very disappointed with the way this article was written as framing her as "tweeting some very hurtful things against minority groups" when her statements have been very much in support of women's and gay rights.

Actually, my memory was a little shot on that last one. It wasn't unblocked on our computers, at least not for long. But we figured out how to install VPNs on the computers to get around the block. And with the great power, Slither was what most people chose to play, along with a few of us playing Town of Salem. Eventually we got into trouble for naming ourselves after our teachers... I'm still pretty much playing the stuff from my last post. Right now I'm trying to play through the Wonders of the Ancient World scenario in Civ V as Darius.

If nothing else, it makes a pretty cool LEGO themed coaster.

This is a pretty cool idea. I think I'll grab a pair of the jeans for sure. Maybe I'll also get the fanny pack for the memes.

Haha, I remember playing that one back in the day, mainly because it wasn't blocked on our school computers. As for me well, my friends have gotten me back into playing League of Legends...I'll say it's much more fun when you have friends to play with. For a more single player experience though, I've also returned to playing a little Dragonfable. I even bought the 2016 Artix Entertainment calendar...thinking about actually hanging it up.

Amazing creation. I'm glad I'm not the only person who can see Kalmah having a peg leg.

Was just going off what people said above. That's not where I would personally want to see more time.

Going off the disappointment with the Mata Nui to Metru Nui transition and the lack of time spent on Mata Nui, I'm going to say something I've always been disappointed by was that because Bionicle's plot occurs on like a 1 year time frame despite having thousands of years of world story, we never really get anything in a rebuilt Metru Nui. I think stories set in this location would be cool, but we basically immediately move everyone out onto Spherus Magna. I think it's even worse because we had several years in real life where this would be taking place, and it just didn't happen in the story. But I have to agree that the most disappointing thing is probably all the pieces that have broken over the years. That's something that can't really be replaced, while story-related holes can always be filled with fanfiction.