#jc rambles

I think that being Finn's favorite (and self insert) would make Emmet a lot weirder than other minifigures. I've always loved the idea of Emmet being like a cryptid to the people around him.

His entire schtick in the first movie is that he's so generic, that he's easy to ignore.

And yet... something is still wrong

When people look at him, there's a feeling that he's just a bit too normal.

Every action he does follows the instructions a bit too perfectly.

There's this uncanny feeling that they've seen him before; His features are common enough that he reminds them of a close friend or coworker.

Nothing about the way he looks or dresses pops out in any way.

He disappears into the crowd so easily that they forget what he even looked like in the first place; Meeting him just slips from their mind.

Finn was a kid who would sneak into the basement to play with his dad's legos. What if all that sneaking around, trying to make sure everything he did would stay unnoticed, translated into Emmet—his self-insert?

After all, Finn did make characters other than Emmet that were far more flashy and memorable, easy to distinguish and recognise.

Yet the generic construction worker was his favorite.

So maybe that was the point. Why would his dad suspect the perfectly normal construction worker in the city? There were plenty of other ones weren't there? Nothing about this one would stick out.

Was Emmet too generic to identify, just because a kid wanted to hide his playtime from his dad? Essentially making his self-insert so easy to overlook in the lego reality, no one could find him?

Do the people who interact with Emmet on a daily basis only faintly remember him because of this?

Do they know to expect someone, before trying to remember who exactly that someone is?

Do they look at Emmet, thinking for just a second, 'oh yeah, I remember him.' before forgetting all over again once he leaves?

I guess after that whole scene with Finn and his dad -Emmet and Business-, the thing that makes people overlook Emmet fades a bit. Enough that they actually remember that this is the guy who saved them from being frozen forever.

He still has that underlying familiarity to his features that makes people think, "Haven't I seen you before?", but honestly, they all have worse things to worry about.

Maybe in Apocalypseburg, instead of being so generic that he's able to hide in plain sight. He is instead able to be put in the middle of dangerous situations and walk out without a scratch. Or maybe he just feels like this last bit of brightness in a dark reality.

Apocalypseburg and its residents are so tough and broody because they are a representation of Finn entering his teenage years, and their attitude towards cute things and Duplos reflects Finn's own attitude to his sister and that teenage way of thinking 'I need to grow up'.

Emmet is still very much Finn's favorite, and this time, Emmet is representing the last bit of childishness that Finn has. I guess he subconsiously wants to keep that alive.

Emmet is-y'know, a bit oblivious to how much the Apocalypseburgers don't like him. That whole sequence at the start of the second movie is proof enough.

But whenever something that could hurt him pops up, he just moves right past it. I mean it could be explained by him just being used to Apocalypseburg at this point.

But cryptid Emmet is more fun me thinks.

They see this person, who looks so happy, as if all the Duplo attacks they've gone through barely even affect him.

It irritates them sometimes, his casual obliviousness to everything that has happened.

Sometimes they want to just tackle him, shake him, and make him understand everything wasn't awesome.

But he was always just out of reach.

Stepping to the side just as a brawl breaks out. Skipping right past a bottle aimed at his head. Hopping around dangerous infrastructure that doesn't collapse until he's off.

Emmet is this little slice of brightness in Apocalypseburg. This seemingly untouched piece of optimism in a land full of people who have already adapted to the constant attacks by toughening up.

He's weird, and now everyone notices. Instead of forgetting, they stare.

And they wonder in the back of their minds why- or how he's able to get through all of this with a smile on his face.

hehehe-I like cryptids.

Just wait until you see the kind of things I have for Rex

should i, or should i not make a tumblr where i just... post whatever weird stuff i think of

i just need a place to get all my chaos out and this specific blog is NOT the place for that XD

I’mma try watching this hhhhh-

YES. god i love these asks Please excuse the rambling

Other than all the trauma Rex has gained after Undar, he definitely has some physical side effects from being stuck in a different reality for 5 years. (Along with the crash that got him there in the first place)

I headcanon that in the real world, physical limitations minifigures usually have in their lego reality don't affect them anymore. That means that things that happen to them in the real world that could hurt them don't really do anything.

Falling off a table just makes them panic for a second, but there are no resulting consequences from what might have been a fatal fall.

Having a massive fan right next to them - that probably would've been deafening in their reality- is really just a mild annoyance that they can just shrug off. It's not like they have ears right?

That switch in the laws of nature messes with them a lot.

So, depending on the amount of time they spend in the realm of the man upstairs, the way they are affected by certain parts of the 'real world' when they return to their original reality can differ.

In the 'real world', they're all just plastic toys, so along with not having to deal with fatal consequences, any bodily function they previously had kinda gets put on pause. And 5 years of lying there in that weird stasis definitely messed with Emmet in irreversible ways.

In the first movie, Emmet just spends a few minutes in the real world, so when he gets back to lego reality, he's up and ready to fight immediately; the same goes with Lucy in the second movie.

But for Rex, well... he spent 5 years paralyzed, lying on his side, unable to do anything but watch. He spent 5 years as a plastic toy trapped in his own mind; he couldn't starve, he couldn't sleep, he couldn't even age.

But he was able to hear the winds of undar howling around him, he could feel the dust filling his lungs, he could scream and cry and beg for help, he could feel the searing pain of the explosion that made him crash, he could feel the hot-cold temperatures of undar. He could suffer

And after being stuck in that frozen state for so long, he's bound to have gotten used to it. The guy didn't really have any other choice in that situation.

Of course, once he finally manages to get out of Undar, he could move around. This would (In my headcanons) be a result of him getting so used to the reality of the man upstairs, that he can now move around more easily than just flopping. The rage of betrayal also helped.

Adrenaline is one hell of a drug, and that's something I think did help fuel Rex into finally getting out of Undar. But now the problem is what happens after the adrenaline rush dies down.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that after he got out of Undar, everything he told Emmet he did was embellished to hide the actual way he struggled.

When he slips back into the lego reality after being stuck phasing between that and the 'real world', well...

He keeps collapsing from muscle weakness. He has partial hearing loss from the constant banging of the dryer above him. He can't breathe properly for more than a week because of the dust that filled his lungs.

Every single feeling is overwhelming after years of isolation.

Doing anything in his reality feels almost foreign after years of doing nothing.

And it's a whole other level of torture to deal with all that alone.

He has to relearn basic motor functions in the lego reality, because fully integrating back there releases him from the stasis that froze his body in time. And now the dull pain that was in the back of his mind flares up like he's exploding all over again.

His limbs feel weak and shaky, yet they haven't changed at all from the day he crashed (Save for that large burn across his left arm).

His clothes are tattered, and his hair is slightly messy, but he hasn't aged. Yet he still has to deal with the aftermath and pain of being paralyzed for 5 years.

I'll say this again. It has been. 5. YEARS

Time is weird after years of being stuck wide awake. Hours could pass by, and it feels like it's only been a minute. Seconds can pass, and it feels like it's been hours.

He hasn't slept, eaten or done anything in those years. He barely remembers what any of that feels like anymore. And so that results in him forgetting to eat or sleep once he gets back on his feet.

And I don't mean that in a 'oh he just ignores the hunger eating away at him', no, I mean that he just doesn't feel hungry anymore. He completely forgets that food is something that he needs to put in his body. A whole week can go by, and it isn't until he checks the date that he realizes it.

He stays awake for 8 days without even a bit of sleep, and it's only until he wakes up on the floor that he realizes he passed out from exhaustion. Compared to the hunger, he still feels physical exhaustion to an extent, but it's just a lot fainter. Its the emotional exhaustion that hits harder.

So yeah, he spends a good few months phasing in and out of his reality and the 'real world', re-learning how to do normal people things again.

This is one of his lowest points because he's so consumed by pain, anger, and vengeance.

When he's finally physically 'stable' enough to actually build the rexcelsior and get the raptors, that's when his emotional state stabilizes a bit more.

Because now he has these prehistoric lizards noticing the lack of sleeping and eating. Their existence does help him to reluctantly develop somewhat more normal eating and sleeping habits.

But he will still get so consumed with his thoughts that thinking about any of these basic necessities gets put on the back burner.

And then there are the times where he gets flashbacks, and those days are always the worst. He feels weak, he feels pain, he feels a gnawing emptiness in his chest. So then he just lies there, blanking out. Disconnected from both realities.

In the realm of the man upstairs, it's literally just the bottom of a washing machine/dryer, whatever it is. It's an everyday appliance that probably exists in the Lego reality.

For the Lego people, it's this whole other part of a solar system. A place where you're more or less condemned to wind roaring in your ears, the sound deafening - a frozen icyness chilling you from the inside out - a hot, sweltering hell when the atmosphere rumbles - a barren wasteland you cannot escape from by yourself.

It's a mundane household appliance.

Undar is such a complicated topic by itself, it's this weird little thing in between realities. You're either stuck with the real world version, or the lego world one.

And unfortunately for Emmets sanity, he gets to experience it in both.

I love my boy a lot, it's why I torture him. But he can be just a bit delusional sometimes... Or a lot.

I think Bricksburg has messed with his perception of what is considered 'normal'. Being by himself for so long with nothing more than instructions and basic interactions has to have messed with what he thinks relationships are like. Both platonic and romantic.

It was really only once he became 'special' that people really noticed/thought about him.

Years of conformity, thinking you're friends with people who never really noticed you, absolutely affected the way he thinks friendship works.

Him becoming friends with the gang was probably an amazing experience. It's the first time he's called someone a friend who reciprocated said sentiment. He finally got to see what people caring about him actually felt like. After a few bumps in the road, of course

I have said this many times, and I will say it again, but Emmet would do anything for his friends, he wholeheartedly believes they would do the same for him. And they would.

Just after a few hours of meeting these people, Emmet chucks himself to what he thinks is his own death to save them; Lucy might've acted like she didn't care about Emmet, but her running after him after throwing himself off a building shows how attached she got to the funky construction worker.

I know that I give the gang crap for the way they treated Emmet in Apocalypseburg, but I do love them a lot, and I really do believe that they care about him a lot. An alien invasion sure is one hell of a way to test the strength of said new friendships, but y'know. Plot.

Isolation with people around you, and isolation from everything you've ever known have very different effects.

I agree with the fact that Emmet being an outcast in Bricksburg was a lot easier for him to ignore, because he constantly had people around him. He still had the comforts of his favorite shows, music, and Planty to drown out that loneliness and realization that he doesn't really have any friends.

In Apocalypseburg, he's still an outcast, a little more aware of it now. But he has people to call his friends, who actually want to spend time with him. Sure, they can be busy with defending the city, or having their brooding sessions, but he's not so lonely anymore.

Undar on the other hand. Well... Undar strips away anything Emmet could use to distract himself from the reality of his situation. As you mentioned, there's really nothing there to maintain that 'illusion' of his friends caring about him.

All Emmet can see and hear is the world moving on from his disappearance. He can't see anything other than the people he called his friends getting all buddy-buddy with their enemy, forgetting him without a second thought.

The isolation in Undar inevitably shreds any hope he had of being rescued. And that breaks him. He spends the next 3 years stewing in bad memories, in rage, in betrayal. And all of those negative emotions drag up every bad memory he has, every single time he was deemed not special, not tough, not good enough.

That's all he can think of. Because what else is he supposed to think? It's been two years. Any rose-tinted glasses he's been looking through are just gone. Shattering along with his trust and belief in his friends.

What he doesn't see is the panic when his friends realized he was gone. He doesn't see the desperate attempts to look for him, however short-lived they were. He doesn't see how his friends grieved for his 'death'. He doesn't see how they're all consumed with guilt over the demands for him to change. He doesn't see how Lucy never moved on.

Rex is completely isolated and paralysed, which is bad enough. But he's also basically in a realm beyond mortal comprehension. For years. I'd at least expect his brain to be fried after allat.

Did he have to relearn how to be mobile again? To literally just be mudanely functional before actually training? And the hallucinations. you cannot convince me that that man doesnt still get horrific psychosis sometimes.

I've come to think of Undar as this weird part of the lego movie lore.

It presents itself as this hell that Rex had to go through for 5 years, isolated and alone. But then when Lucy comes to rescue Emmet, it gets all bright and colorful, changing from looking like the 'real world', into being built out of bright and colorful lego bricks.

That by itself is just weird, because on one hand you could say that it was practically impossible to rescue Rex when he was there, because he was in a different reality. But Lucy still managed to save Emmet. She came, and the whole aesthetic of Undar changed, switching over to lego reality.

So at this point, I think of Undar as this weird part of the universe for minifigures, where the barrier between the realm of the man upstairs and their own gets really wonky.

Maybe for normal minifigures, all they see is their reality. But Rex? Emmet? Maybe their connection with Finn and the realm of the man upstairs makes it so that they're stuck between that barrier, existing in both realities at the same time.

They get to enjoy cosmic horrors. Realizing the nature of their own reality. Just going through things beyond mortal comprehension, because unfortunately, they're the favorites. (And I mean Finn's favorites)

I've said before that usually minifigures are able to brush off most things in the real world that would hurt them, because they're just plastic at that point.

Buuuuuut, I also said the amount of time they spent there would affect just how much the realm of the man upstairs affects them. And the universe hath decided to fuck Emmet over even more.

So, while Rex was in undar, marinating in his rage and getting used to being in the 'real world' (y'know, coming to terms with the horrors). Reality was also getting used to the fact that he was there, fully aware of everything going on. And reality decided 'Welp, you get to feel everything from both worlds now' And that's how I'm justifying him choking on dust when I originally said that 'real world' things don't affect minifigures. For the angst.

The very first time Rex fully slipped back into his reality after being stuck in the 'real world' for 5 years... it ended with him flat on his face. Because 5 years of not using any of your limbs ends with you on the ground, shaking with muscle weakness.

And after him realizing that he has to deal with learning how to use his arms and legs again, he's also instantly slapped in the face with the fact that his burn injury from the explosion didn't actually start healing in Undar. He just got used to the searing pain, and now said pain is even more intense because he's back in his reality, and he spent 5 years laying on that injury.

BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE!

Because not only does he have to relearn how walking works, and the pain from the injuries that got him in undar in the first place. I've also decided that he has to deal with the ringing in his ears getting louder, the dust that's making him cough his lungs out, and the exhaustion from a violent adrenaline crash.

To summarize: Just the universe cranking the already horrendous pain up to 11.

Mind you, all of this is happening within a minute of him coming back to his reality. Rex hasn't built the ship, or changed his looks. He hasn't really done anything other than getting out of Undar.

So you can imagine the whiplash he was experiencing, going from being fuelled by rage and betrayal, and the elation of escaping- to feeling like he was going to kneel over and die right then and there.

Right out of undar, he is delirious with pain, every inch of him is exhausted, just sitting up requires a tremendous amount of effort. So any rage he has is still there, but now it's just simmering, because everything hurts, and he can't think of anything other than how his head feels like it's full of cotton.

I've said this many, many times, but that man is traumatized. The things he saw in undar will never just go away, he's stuck with knowledge of the universe that no one else will ever fully understand. And that's not even including the trauma of the explosion that made him crash there in the first place.

Do I think he gets hallucinations because of all that? Somewhat.

He's going to have bad days, where all he can feel is that loneliness eating him alive from the inside. Phantom pains flaring along his left side from the explosion. Weakness in his very bones making him struggle to take even one step.

He'll get flashbacks of everything he saw and felt in Undar, flashbacks of how people ignored him before that.

And in those flashbacks, he hears voices. Voices of the people who betrayed him, who told him to change, who said he wasn't good enough.