LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar Day 2

The second day of the Advent Calendar takes us away from the original trilogy, and away from the second trilogy, and into the third with a minifigure of Rose Tico. I was surprised to get a minifigure so soon, and to move from Episode IV to Episode VIII in one day.

But I'm not complaining! The minifigures are often the most exciting ones to open in the Advent Calendar. The ships and tech thingies are fun, but because they have such a limited piece count, they just will never be as nice as the full-size models. For example, the landspeeder from yesterday is a really good version of the landspeeder using just 18 or so pieces, and I quite like how they made it look, and anything from Episode IV is always going to be a big hit with me; but it'll never match the coolness of the versions made with hundreds of pieces.

Minifigures, however, are just like they are in the larger sets. They are not reduced versions of what one gets in the larger sets, they're the same thing

I wouldn't mind if the Advent calendars focused much more on the people. Because let's be honest, the Advent Calendars usually have a good 8-10 days' worth of prizes that aren't particularly well done or models of some of the less interesting Star Wars ships, devices, or other tech.

So here is Rose Tico, as seen in the Last Jedi. A good, strong character who confronts Finn for wanting to bail on the heroes (even though that wasn't what he was doing), then they o searching for Maz the coder and have a great adventure in the casino city (and ride those crazy animals and meet those children, one of whom at least has Force powers) and then go to Crait to battle the First Order where she keeps Finn from making a suicide run, which leads to her getting seriously injured. She's a great character. She's a super mission-focused hero, and should be an inspiration to all Star Wars fans. Unfortunately, after Episode VIII came out, the world was witness to the fact that Star Wars has terrible racists and terrible misogynists in its demographic, and the character - and even more unfortunately, the actor, Kelly Marie Tran, was the recipient of much racist and sexist abuse, along with a lot of the other female characters and actors. Knock it off, Star Wars fans. The only racists in the Star Wars universe were the Imperials, who felt that humans were the only valid sentient life forms. Don't be like them. Jerks. Episode VIII was awesome partly because it was filled with humans of many races, and many strong and capable women. Grow up.

I mean, how small and cowardly does one have to be that one is threatened by a **fictional character** in a space fantasy such that one must go all Internet-warrior and post racist/sexist things and send threatening notes and make sure that ol' ALL CAPS key is always on? Pathetic. It's not the year 1 any more, you throwbacks to a thankfully-lost time.

Here she is:

And in case you've not done one of these Advent Calendars, here are some photos of what the "playmat" area looks like. It's really quite silly of LEGO to do this, because there is no way to have this box open and display the daily builds on the playmat while still also being able to open the doors. The doors are far too difficult to open without tearing them that one has to hold the box in order to do it, which means any figures on display have to be taken off every day. Kind of defeats the whole purpose. So I display my daily builds on a table, and then once Christmas arrives and there are no more doors to open, the box goes to the recycle bin because I don't like having things lying around taking up space if I don't need them. Then the whole batch of Advent builds go into a plastic display box, nice and tidy. :D