A "Film Noir" murder mystery in Totally Normal Town!!!

 We just got done making a fun new video in Totally Normal Town!! Here's the trailer:

And here's the complete video:

 

Our Totally Normal School: Hogwarts!!

 Now that I've completed our latest building, we can begin filming our next episode!!

The new building is the kids' school -- Hogwarts -- which is accessible from the Seilbahn Bergstation!! (If you don't recall what that is, please see my earlier post.)

I would like to start right off the bat with an apology to the trans community. Hogwarts has been a key part of Totally Normal Town since the first episode in 2018 -- long before J.K. Rowling decided to devote her life (and giant platform) to being the world's biggest spokesperson for transphobia.

At the time of this writing, Rowling is currently being sued for having spread the false claim that a women's boxing Olympic gold medalist is a man (she is, in fact, a cis woman) -- a claim that could potentially endanger her life if vigilantes in her native Algeria believe it.

Also problematic is the fact that Rowling has specifically pointed to the continued popularity of the Harry Potter franchise as evidence that people agree with her bigoted transphobic rhetoric. So, even though I built this new castle mostly from parts from two old sets from 2011 and 2019, I'm still potentially bolstering her claims by including Hogwarts in this new 2024 build.

I would counter that the lion's share of what makes Hogwarts fun is the atmosphere created by the set design and music, not to mention that nearly all of the best British actors have played roles in the film series. Here's an example:

Snape is a good character, but Alan Rickman's Snape is a great character.

For this build, I found that I had lots of spiders and spider webs (largely from various Spider-man mini-figs), so I decided that this incarnation of Hogwarts should start with potions class in the dungeon.

This is the first time I've included a light brick in an original build of mine. I thought it would look cool to add red light coming from the stand under Snape's cauldron, and I was right.

Of course the most important Hogwarts professor for Totally Normal Town is Professor Trelawney -- she's the one who repeatedly (and accurately!) predicts the destruction of Totally Normal Town!

In this build, Professor Trelawney and her sister "Trofessor Prelawney" share the open terrace floor that connects by stairs with the Seilbahn station. They also have owl (and other bird) perches, plus space for crystal balls and tea sets.

For Hogwarts and the restaurant/station next door I built backs that open so that they can potentially be photographed from all sides. Since these two buildings are up against the back wall, this isn't really necessary, but it adds to the fun of the build.

The room at the top of the tower is a common room, including all of the various pets, plus Slughorn disguised as a chair.

We had so many wands that I thought it would be funny to put bins and barrels and chests of them all over the place. We'll see if Nico adds a joke to the script about why there are so many spare wands.

The main floor has a dining hall.

This was a really fun build to make, and I like having Hogwarts as a part of our Totally Normal Town -- even though I already had serious reservations about the Harry Potter universe even before Rowling became the queen of the transphobes.

...But that should perhaps be a separate post.

Let's close with the two trams -- since this incarnation of Totally Normal Town is a transit paradise!!

You can probably see that these two trams follow the same design as the trams from the Christmas version of Totally Normal Town.

All these photos are certainly going to make this post take forever to load, so if you've made it this far, congrats and thanks for your attention!

Check-in on Totally Normal Town!!

You may recall that the Christmas incarnation of Totally Normal Town was demolished during our most recent Christmas Special, and that we've already started planning the new version of our little city-under-the-stairs!

This version of Totally Normal Town will be more challenging than the last one because we're planning to build mostly original builds, rather than rebuilding sets designed by Lego. Well, we've already gotten started on the first few buildings!

 

As I said in the post linked above, I've narrowed the roads make this a walking-biking-public-transit urban paradise!!! So my first challenge was to build a "Seilbahn".

I think that in English this translates as "cable car" -- but I'd like to use the German word here because it's a special type of cable car that I'd never encountered before moving to Zürich. With this type of cable car, there are two cars (or sets of cars), each on either end of a long cable. They act as counterweights, so when one goes up, the other comes down.

 

For the two Seilbahns I know of in Zürich, the two sets of cars actually share a single track, which only spits in two briefly in the middle for the cars to pass each other. Unfortunately, I was not able to manage that with Legos no matter how hard I tried, so instead I made parallel tracks, each leading to a different terminal station on the ground.

One of the lower stations terminates at a park and the other one at an open-air market.

I had a lot of fun with the market.

It has a produce stand, a fish market, a hotdog stand, a vending machine for drinks, and a newspaper kiosk.

The top end of the seilbahn (the "Bergstation"), there's a fancy restaurant ("Chez François") on the two floors between the top station and the train station below. As usual, the train station includes the portal to other dimensions!

Chez François was a really fun build, with a nice terrace as well as an upper dining room with a view of the town -- plus a fancy chandelier and a view into François's kitchen!

All of these details make Totally Normal Town into the model of a great place to live!

Nico also upped his game this time with a complete redesign of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza -- complete with a 3-d sign!

There are two floors that can be viewed through the picture windows or from above through the removable roofs!

The upper floor has a birthday party area (plus a creepy storage room),

 

and the lower floor has a stage where the animatronics perform! (Plus the room for the unfortunate security guard...).

You might see some other minor items in the background, but that's pretty much it for our original builds -- so far.... ;)

We're already working on our next video -- which will be filmed even before we're done building the town. Stay tuned!!!