a life in plastic

Another part of my ongoing Lego Movie archiving project! This is a copy of Space Between Us by cleversnail, with a few related oneshots by cleversnail and gaylegohell.

A unique copy of a Lego Movie fic that I bound for a friend way back in 2020.

I made the bookcloth for the cover myself, out of some scrap fabric I found at a secondhand store years ago, and the endpapers are screenprinted lokta paper. I'm hoping to still have enough of both to finally make my own copy, as I've had no luck finding more of either.

Furthermore, one of the hard requirements for a Lego brick is that it must be compatible with any other Lego brick. If I buy a set today and pull a set from the 1980s? Those bricks would fit together perfectly. This requires a huge amount of precision engineering and controls on manufacturing quality. (I can’t remember the source, but I’ve at least heard that once the brick molds wear to a certain point, they’re pulled from the line and either melted down or turned into construction material for Lego HQ. Point being, no one is getting their hands on a worn Lego mold)

Recycled and non-petroleum plastics are different from other plastic. The chemistry is different. The timing and process to use them is different. This has been a reason why more companies haven’t moved to them, because there’s a drop in quality for material (so they claim).

What Lego just did is completely obliterate that argument. The corporation with some of the strictest quality control requirements for plastic just kicked the basic foundation of the “bad quality” argument out from under it, because if they feel confident enough to guarantee the same experience as using a brick from over 40 years ago, if they are confident enough that they can meet their own metrics at a huge industrial scale….

“Ben. Ben look at this wee ceramic kitten,” B holds his treasure delicately in his hands, a small orange kitten with a ribbon around its neck.

“Ohh he’s cute,” Benny agrees. “What’s his name?” He likes to be supportive of B’s interests regardless how varied they are.

B thinks a minute. Furrows his brow. 

“Robert,” he decides. 

Benny nods. “That’s a great name. Do you love him?”

“I do, Ben.”

“Cool, let’s take him home.”

——-

“B CHECK THIS SHIT OUT!!”

Benny’s managed to squeeze himself into a neon yellow and pink ski jacket from the 90s he found in the ladies’ section. It’s tapered at the waist and actually makes him look pretty good.

“You look like a cool dude Ben,” B says.

“I’m gonna wear it all winter,” Benny says. He wears it out of the store.

small look into my jim spaceborn museum…. 3 copies of the first book in different languages (still hunting for all languages, i found an online version of the dutch edition last night), second book in german (still desperately trying to find it in english), scanned materials (animation cels) of the unfinished pilot cartoon episode, lego space building the future (uses characters from the comics), bricks culture magazine issue 7 that has an interview with frank madsen, bricks journal volume 2 issue 2, another interview, and some minifigs i build of jim and keko :-) (not shown is my kazak minifig bcus im just embarrassed its kind of old) (also not pictured are emails and forum posts that i have printed out and keep in a folder for reference…)