#I have to build up some capital to remodel first!

[custombuildershouston]

Case Study - Home Value vs Lot Value in Metro Houston

It is fairly common knowledge that if you keep up with home product replacements and home improvements such as a new roof and painting your home when needed, you will optimize your home's value when you sell. It is also commonly understood that certain types of remodeling projects can also increase your home's return on investment better then others. The best financially performing renovation projects are kitchen remodels, bathroom remodels, a new roof and new windows.

These types of generally accepted remodeling practices are very good rules of thumb but do not always apply as the best performing home remodeling solutions for older period luxury homes in metro Houston. Period vintage Houston homes are often in a class of their own. They have special economic factors that newer homes in outlying areas are not exposed too. We will examine these factors and discuss some special remodeling projects that can optimize and increase your older home's ROI.

We will restrict this discussion to metro Houston and close in neighborhoods, where it is common to find homes build before 1970 on lot sizes larger than 6,000 sf. These home's architectural styles are fairly consistent with the decade they were built. You can expect to find the majority of the architectural styles represented by traditional two story homes from the 1920 - 1940 periods and single story ranch and bungalows from the 1950 - 1960 periods.

Lot Size / Home Size Ratio's

As anyone that travels around the central Houston area has noticed, there are many homes being build where older existing homes once stood. In many cases when the deed restrictions will allow, there are multiple homes being constructed on a single lot that once only had one home. You are also likely to notice that that the majority of these new homes are 3 to 5 stories tall. This is due to the price increases of land over time.

Urban land values have steadily increased in price over the years outpacing the value of the unmaintained and ruinous homes that were once located there. Developers and home builders buy the land and subdivide the lot to put multiple homes on the property. This is economically significant because it illustrates a changing dynamic in home ownership on medium to large size lots.

Let's take a modest vintage home in a nice upscale metro Houston area. It is a 2 story home about 2,000 sf living area on a 8,000 sf lot. The value of this home is $1,000,000 and it has been well maintained over the years. One look at the appraisal districts value assessment will immediately send off a few red flags. The appraisal district has the home valued at $800,000 for the land and $200,000 for the home. This home could never be replaced for $100/sf. Although there is a case to be made on the behalf of the appraisal districts valuation, this property has fallen victim to the land value dynamics of land prices outpacing home values.

There are 2 value increasing strategies that can be applied to this property. The first is obvious, sell the property for land value. The owner will not receive top dollar but can comfortably receive their equity and not spend any additional capital on this home. The buyer is likely to tear down the property and build a much larger home that resolves the imbalance issue of lot to home value relationship.

The second value increasing strategy is to increase the overall size of the home. This can be accomplished by adding a room addition or in this case a home addition. We will explain this more further on in this article. When you add an home addition the unit home price decreases, while the overall property price/value increases. This effect causes the home's unit price (Market Value / Living Square Foot) to adjust in line with the average value prices of the neighborhood.

This value effect is due to a natural economic factor of home size to lot size. As the building lot value increases in price so must the size of the home in order to uniformly increase in market value. If the home does not increase in size as the price of land increases, the house will ultimately become economically obsolete or irrelevant.

So what do you do if you are faced with this dilemma? This is a challenging situation to face and the solution is a complex matrix of possible scenarios. It starts with understanding your financial position. How much equity is built up in the property and what is your ability to afford a larger house payment. We will assume for this article that you have equity and you are evaluating what options you have. It also has to do with the emotional investment you have in the home and neighborhood. It is not always easy replacing a home or a neighborhood you enjoy.

Expanding the Homes Living Area

There are a number of strategies to employee in expanding the living area of a home. There are also various cost associated with the different strategies in expanding the home. The most cost effective method of expanding the living area of a home is to repurpose non air conditioned space to living area. Under roof areas of porches, garages and attic space are good candidates for this type of remodeling project. With the cost of the structure already capitalized, the cost of building out these types of spaces is dependent upon the finishes you choose to use.

The second most cost effective home expanding strategy is referred to as a room bump out. This is when you design a room expansion that actually bumps out a portion of the home's envelope without actually building an room addition. An example of this would be a room that might require an additional 3ft to 5ft for storage or better accessibility to other rooms. The cost of this strategy varies and is dependent upon many factors. The expense of a bump out on a wood subfloor is more cost effective then one that requires expanding the concrete foundation.

The third living room expansion strategy is adding a room or home addition. This is the strategy that most people use when attempting to add a large meaningful space to the existing home. There are many factors to consider when evaluating expanding your home through a home addition strategy. The designer must first consider the structural impact of attaching an additional structure to the existing envelope. There are some major concerns to attend to like attaching rooflines and mechanically attaching the foundation.

One of the complications that arises in designing the home addition is when you are required to reroute utilities that are in the path of construction. This includes yard lines and overhead lines that attach to the home. A great deal of planning and coordination is required to reroute utilities that could become a major disruption to the owners if not executed properly.

The cost of a room addition or home addition will vary greatly with the required needs of the design plan. The cost to expand a kitchen or bathroom is triple the cost of adding a bedroom or family room. There are many other major factors that affect the total cost of an home addition. Some of these evaluations involve determining the need for additional air conditioning capacity, new electrical demands that could require upgrading the electrical panel service and the adding of new plumbing needs.

Tear Down the Existing House and Build a New Home

The greatest market value of a metro Houston home is the location and land that it is built on. If you have been in your home for a number of years and have found yourself in the imbalanced lot to home value ratio dilemma, you actually have 2 additional strategies available instead of home additions. The first is an outright sale of the property on the open market. In the example we used earlier it is possible to obtain the going market price for your property. Depending on the current demand conditions of the housing market will dictate if you realize a price above or below the market.

The second strategy associated with leveraging the land value of your property is to design a new home for the existing lot. There are a number of advantages to this strategy that outweigh the disadvantage. The disadvantage is that you will likely spend a great deal more money building a new custom home on your lot then you would remodeling the existing home. Although the actual market value will be 20% - 30% greater when you build a new home over an equally impressive home renovation.

The advantages of building a new home on your existing lot are numerous. First you can live in the existing home during the early planning and design phase of the new home building process. Although you will be required to find temporary housing from demolition through the end of construction phases. This allows you to enjoy the process more when you do not feel the urgency to complete all of the required task associated with design and product selection on someone else's schedule.

Secondly and most importantly, there is a substantial financial gain that occurs when you build on a lot you already own. A homeowner in metro Houston will usually experience substantial equity build up in the value of their property from price appreciation overtime. These capital gains are in affect lost during a transaction that involves the selling of your property and the purchase of a new property. This means that the capital appreciation gains you experienced in your existing home are nullified by the same capital appreciation that the home you are purchasing experienced through the same period.

In addition, you will experience further transactional expenses associated with the sale of your property in the form of sale commissions, closing cost and finance cost. When you elect to build a new home on your lot you will save the expenses of (8% -9%) the sales price and experience a cost savings from eliminating the lost transfer value of the capital appreciation you have earned. Depending on how long you have lived there and the developments in the local economy during that period will determine the value of your value appreciation. According to the HAR (Houston Association of Realtors), West University which we used in our example has seen price appreciation in the range of 30% the past 5 years. That represents nearly a grand total of 40% of the estimated market value of the property. In our example that equates to about $400,000 in gains that do not get forfeited due to buying a new property.

Lastly, you are able to maintain your relationship with your neighborhood and not to be forced to develop new routines for shopping and dining needs. By electing to build a new home or to remodel your existing home, you will obtain all your earned equity made on your property and can enjoy watching it grow at even a greater rate of return.

Source Url. https://www.marwoodconstruction.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Case-Study-Home-Value-vs-Lot-Value-in-Metro-Houston.pdf.pdf

[thedaveandkimmershow]

When we look back on February, the month that just was, we probably won't remember what we did in February at all. It was a lot of wall to wall work. Top to bottom. Front to back. An 18-wheeler's worth of lived experience just rollin' rollin' and rollin'.

Interestingly, it was like January but without the diversity of experience. 

The thread, of course, running through both months was figuring out memory care for Kimmer's aunt in southern California who was widowed on the last day of last year. Kimmer flew down at the beginning of the month to figure this out in person with her cousin... and within those days she was there, a solution was found and her aunt was moved a few days later into a memory care community under excellent care.

Excellent care? How would we know that?

Because Kimmer continued to coordinate with them by phone and text and email throughout the month.

February was also the month where we had to up our game on the remodel on our house which is less about adding to it or making it something it originally wasn't... but correcting mistakes in the original build or in subsequent attempts by other homeowners to add onto or modify that build. 

Yup. I'm talking about electrical and heating. Neither of which are a walk in the park. Also, we ourselves created a modification to the original design that we now sought to undo. Years ago, we added a walk-in closet to our bedroom by robbing the space from the guest bedroom on the other side of the wall. Which pretty much made that bedroom the tiniest and awkwardest space you've ever seen. So February bore witness to the restoration of both rooms to their original conditions (ish) except now they're connected, turning that end of the house into a pretty sweet suite.

We've got expert help with all this, of course but we've still got a lot of furniture and equipment in the house from the apartment in Bellingham and the work space in Lynnwood. All of which needs to find a new home. So there's been a lot of cleaning and rearranging and donating and donating and donating and dump runs and runs to public storage back n forth and back n forth and back n forth n so on.

The silver lining about all this work that invariably consumed the entirety of our weekends... is that we ended those days with ice cream cones from McDonald's.

It's the small things in life, right? 😁

Unfortunately, because of all the momentum created by work on the house and care coordination for Kimmer's aunt, we had to postpone Valentine's Day. Now, we always celebrate Valentine's Day a day or two late because chocolates are on sale by then and restaurant reservations are easier to score. Plus, Valentine's as a day of celebration always works better for us on the weekend.

Now, we are ready to celebrate. We've both got gifts and cards for each other and we have it in mind where we wanna be in the day. We're just waiting on an opportunity where celebrating the two of us isn't shoehorned into or piggybacked onto something else.

Okay.

Linzy's side of the fence was a bit more chill in its lead up to a busy Spring. I went to a couple of her gigs at the Rustic Cork this month which is always a fun and relaxing time, especially with some of our family friends joining us at the Lake Stevens location. Otherwise for Linzy it's figuring out her transition to a teaching gig for which she was recommended. She's also in the process of finishing production on five of her songs, including incorporating some newly recorded background vocals contributed by some of her musician friends. And she's in rehearsals for the new band Midnight High.

So February for Linzy turned out to be a getting ready kind of month.

As far as what Kimmer n me'll remember specifically from February, here are some contenders:

First, the whole house thing was really intense, hard work.

Second, the lightning strike on Capital Hill by the broadcast towers that wiped out my cell service while I was across the street at Trader Joe's waiting for a grocery list to be texted my way.

Third, the cold, the cold rain, and the cold slushy snow that left me with with soaked clothes, soaked shoes, and wet, freezing hands and head several times down at the end of the month.

Fourth, the whole thing about AI and search, AI and writing and education, and then how AI tools have found and are finding more ways into the edit suite.

Fifth, the fact that it snowed a bunch and nothing stuck and there were no consequences to it. (Remember, we still have the freezing rain event of December 2022 indelibly stamped into our memories. So any snow event that isn't traumatic and doesn't mess anything up is quite the dodged bullet.)

Sixth, the text from Kimmer that read "The meat pies are found in the frozen section. I love you."

And last, the neighbor who said this to me on Valentine's Day...

"You know, I can tell you and your wife are really in love."

😊

[victorluvsalice]

GUESS. WHO. COULDN’T. USE. THE. FIRE. TO. ROAST. WEENIES.

I have NO CLUE why, either. Both Emmett and Nikal acted like they couldn’t reach the fire whenever I told them to get roasting! I moved it around a few times, but nothing doing! They could interact with the fire in other ways -- warming themselves, telling stories -- but using it for its intended purpose during this shindig? Nothing doing. *grumble*

So, I decided our party-goers would do something else to see out summer -- a nice water balloon fight! Everyone likes those, right? Certainly Emmett and Nikal do. And that went well for a while -- lots of splashing, and taunting, and. . .weird bright lights?

YES LOOK WHO’S BACK. Just like that, Emmett was getting yanked into the sky by another one of those damn UFOs! Looking back at it with the benefit of a few week’s hindsight, I realize that this is probably because both he and Nikal are scientists and have contacted aliens with their satellite dishes, but still! My only thought at the time was “NO NO NO I HAVE NO ROOM FOR AN ALIEN BABY IN THIS HOUSE!” *facepalm* Oh game, why do you do this to me. . .

So, uh, how did everyone take one of the hosts being plucked from the party by extraterrestrials right in the middle of their party?

[lunarr-rrose]

Upgrades and Remodeling - Fernando Angelucci, The Storage Stud

https://u109893.h.reiblackbook.com/generic11/the-storage-stud/upgrades-and-remodeling-fernando-angelucci-the-storage-stud/

In addition to non-capital expenditures, increases in revenues and decreases in expenses, also look at building additional land and facilities on that land.

Be very careful with this because you don’t want to over rehab or overbuild your facility in an area that does not support it or won’t bring you value.

Once we have done all the non-capital expenditure capital style improvements then we proceed to physical improvement.

To understand more about upgrades and remodeling continue watching this video.

Fernando O. Angelucci is Founder and President of Titan Wealth Group. He also leads the firm’s finance and acquisitions departments. Fernando Angelucci and Steven Wear founded Titan Wealth Group in 2015, and under his leadership, the firm’s revenue has grown over 100% year over year. Today,

Find out more at

https://www.TheStorageStud.com

https://titanwealthgroup.com/

Listen to our Podcast:

https://thestoragestud.podbean.com/e/upgrades-and-remodeling-fernando-angelucci-the-storage-stud/

----------------------------

So, in addition to non-capital expenditure increases in revenue and decreases in expenses. Also look at actually building, additional land, additional facilities on that land, remodel on what you currently have and actually putting some capital expenditure into your facility. You have to be very careful with this because you don't want to over rehab or over build your facility in an area that doesn't support it. So, it won't bring you value. So for example, say that all of your competitors are gravel roads or grass that none of them have fences. None of them have security cameras, and none of them have technology to use. It wouldn't make sense for you to go and build a 30,000 square foot edition. That's all climate control with all this technology, that's gated and has security cameras and has all this crazy, no touch technology, because you're not going to be able to get much of a premium if any, for those units versus just building a drive up unit on gravel with no fencing.

So, one of the things that we always look at once we've done all the non-capital expenditure style improvements is we start looking at physical improvements and we try to stair-step our way. So number one, the biggest thing for us is the safety of our tenants of our renters. So, what can we do to make the property safer? Give them a feeling of, you know, security when they come to the facility, but not only when they come to the facility and when they also leave them and they can have the peace of mind knowing that their goods are going to be stored securely and safely. So, one of the things we always look at is, do we build a perimeter fence around the entire property? If there's not one already there, do we install a gated entry that uses a key pad to not only enter, but then also exit so that we can track everyone that's in and out of the facility?

Do we install security cameras? Do we install security lights? Is, does the property dark at night? You know, do we want to install these large high lumen lights that will light up the entire facility? That obviously comes at an expense when it comes to utilities. But, if someone is willing to pay $5 a month more to come to my facility versus the one down the street, that's completely dark at night that would be worth it. Another thing we look at is, putting portable units on the facility. Maybe, we don't know if the market will absorb additional units or maybe right on the cusp of the market being at equilibrium. One of the things that we can do is, put these portable or modular units on the site in odd places, see if they get filled up and if they start getting filled up quickly, we put another one and another one and another one.

And if all those get filled up, then Hey, maybe it makes sense to put down a permanent structure, let's lay the concrete, let's build up a permanent structure. And you know, let's go ahead and shift tenants to the new structure and then start all over again with the portables and kind of just stair-step our way up. So, that increase in income will offset the increased debt and hopefully exceed the increased debt that we have to take on to build these additional units. Another thing that we always look at is, buying adjacent land. That's always going to be, it's always going to be a value add for us, especially in a market that is severely underserved. And then, one of the things that we really like to do is if we can control or monopolize the market. So say, you know, we're on the West side of town, the majority of our competitors on the East side of town, but maybe we have two competitors on the West side of town that are within, you know, half a mile of our facility.

You know, one of the things we can do easily is just go and offer to buy their facilities and even pay a premium for those facilities because we have a vested interest. Now, by doing so we're able to monopolize pricing, we're able to get economies of scale. And then, when we go to resell, when you have a larger portfolio, you can actually get a premium for having more square footage in an area that's easy for one manager to go in between. So, these are things that we always look at when it comes to capital expenditures, you know, upgrades and remodeling. Another thing too is, you know, again, keeping the possessions safe. Does the roof need to go? Does it need to be repaired? Does it need to be resealed? Does it need to be redone? How about the doors? Are the doors all dented and sticking on the tracks?

Or maybe the Springs are starting to go, do we need to replace these things? These are all things that are necessary and we have to do them. They may not drive additional revenue, but they'll make the property look nice. It'll make the property easy to use. And then in the end, when you go to sell or refinance, you'll push the value up, by dropping the cap rater or allowing the property to be valued on a multiple that's higher than it was when you first bought it. So, these are the things that I usually look at, when looking at upgrading or remodeling a facility

[ddaengyoonmin]

Out of this world

One shot series *comingsoon*

Theme: What if there was life on other planets? What if those planets just happened to be the ones in our own solar system? What kind of life would live there, and what kind of stories would unfold in the lives of the lifeforms in these strange worlds?

Fluff/Angst/Smut

A/N: Some cliche themes but with a sci-fi twist, as usual I took all of them way too far lmfao

Mercury <- (5.3k.)

Yoongi :

Genre: Enemies to lovers!au

Life on this fickle planet is a constant fight to survive. Temperatures that fluctuate from freezing to burning up in a single day.  Lifeforms on Mercury are built to adjust to the boiling heat of the day but when night comes...and the icy wind blows through the buildings, if you aren’t indoors you’re a goner.   So when your family kicks you out right before nightfall, they had basically left you for dead.  Frantically you run around the streets to get into one of the small heating pods that the city leaves out for emergencies. But, with the rate of homelessness going up in your town, just as you feared, they were all taken.  At the last second as the nightly alarm sounded telling everyone temperatures were about to hit deadly you see an empty pod. At full speed you jump inside and shut the door, unfortunately some rude man jumped in at the same time as you. You both are equally as annoyed with the other for having to share such an already cramped space.  Now you have to spend an entire night alone with this stranger while you wait for the heat to come again.  He's actually pretty cute...maybe this won't be so bad?

Venus

Jin:

Genre: Royalty!au

The capital of Venus is one of the most exquisite sights in all of the galaxy.  Tall crystal castles and buildings line the streets of the city.  They say the streets are made of diamonds and the cars are made of silver.  You’d always wanted to see it for yourself.  But, common citizens had never been allowed to enter the protected dome of the capital.  The small town that you and your family lived in was meant for the poorest citizens in all of Venus. You were tasked to shovel and dig through the ash and volcanic rocks to find gems to sell at a small price to the merchants that visited from the capital.  One day a masked traveling merchant lets you in on a secret. The Prince of Venus was going to be throwing a grand ball in hopes of finding a wife, and it was open to anyone of any nobility.  You had always felt like it was fate for you to see the capital one day, and now you had just the plan for how to make it all happen.

Mars

Jimin

Genre: Romeo/Juliet!au (with a twist)

The planet of war.  The great war between the two tribes of Mars had been going on for generations.  To the point where no one could even remember how it started, all anyone knew was that the Red horned tribe and the Blue horned tribe hated each other with a deadly passion.  You were the daughter of the Chief of the Blues, your family was from a long line of war heroes and leaders, but you could care less about the war.  Your father always seemed to have his horns in a knot about the smallest things that the Red tribe did.  You didn’t even think they were that bad, so what if their horns were a different color, how much different than your own tribe could they be?  You decided to sneak out and go to a party that was being thrown in the Red tribe’s capital.  You convincingly painted your horns red and crept your way in.  There you met the most amazing man you’d ever been acquainted with.  The two of you danced all night and took quite a wild ride between the sheets, so what if he is the son of the Red horn tribes chief?

Saturn/Titan

Jungkook

(If you haven’t seen the movie timer this was slightly based on it, worth the watch)

Genre: Soulmate!au

The way love worked on Titan was strange.  Everyone was born with a glowing tattoo on the inside of their wrist that always read --:--:-- .  On each person’s 13th birthday the clock would start.  It was a countdown to the day you’d meet your soulmate.  Some were told they wouldn’t meet them until they were old and gray, and some met them that week!  When yours activated it had read 08:22:20 which meant 8 years, 22 days and 20 minutes, you’d always been so excited and counting down the days until you met the love of your life.  Today it read 00:00:59.  You were an hour from meeting your soulmate, and were sitting cold, damp, and  handcuffed and on the floor.  You’d been kidnapped off your planet in a spaceship a few hours ago while you were walking around town, hoping that was how’d you’d bump into your soulmate.  You find yourself begging that he’s the hero that rescues you, and not the mastermind behind this terror...

Jupiter/Callisto

Namjoon

Genre: Hate sex

The famous races of Callisto...may the best pilot win! Unfortunately it wasn’t you.  You’d flown all the way from another galaxy with your best ship in hopes of winning the grand annual race hosted on this moon.  You lost to a brand new pilot, a native of Callisto and a member of the giant race named Namjoon who was a bit too cocky but lived up to it.  As the rules went, the winner gets to take all the spaceships of the losing racers for his own.  But you didn’t plan on letting your favorite ship go that easily.  You tracked down the towering 12 foot giant and told him you’d be getting your ship back one way or another.  With a mischievous look down at you, he decided to let you get your ship back...but only for something else in return. He had the perfect thing in mind, he was looking right at it.

Uranus/Oberon

Hoseok

Genre: Android!au

On your way back to your home planet, your ship malfunctions and crashes on to the moon Oberon.  It was a desolate and empty planet.  Or so you’d thought.   While searching around for food and water you happened upon a small shack with a powered off and rusted android inside.  You looked around and saw that no one had been here in many years.  The poor android seemed abandoned and alone, and you were starting to know the feeling, as none of your distress calls were being answered.  Since he wasn’t made up of any parts that you could salvage to repair your ship and you had plenty of time on your hands, you figured you’d fix him up. After some tweaking and remodeling he was now the most lifelike android you’d ever seen.  You powered him on, not sure what to expect.  His eyes were now lighting up and the quiet whirring of the mechanisms that powered him moving. The first words you heard were “Hello owner, I’m Hoseok5.0 the love companion bot, here to serve you in any way you need” That was not quite what you had been expecting.

Neptune <- 16k

Taehyung

Genre: Mermaid!au

No one with legs lived on the surface of Neptune, walkers such as yourself lived on the moons.  The spacecrafts that you traveled in constantly moved to and from all of the different moons, but  no one ever went down to the surface.  That's where the swimmers lived.  You’d heard the stories of the fishtailed people that swam in the great sea below the moons, some called them mermaids.  But no one had ever actually seen one before, well, until now.  You and the scientific research team that you had gathered together had built the first spaceship in your people’s history that could go into the waters below.  You’d figured you’d snap a few pictures and return within the month, but things didn’t go as planned.  Your ship was captured by the swimmers and they seemed just as in awe at you and your team as you were with them.   They decided to let you go but only on the condition that you to bring their leading scientist back up to the moons with you, so you could learn from each other.  You learn quite a bit from Taehyung and he from you, in particular, your anatomy seemed to be his favorite subject...

[lukeskywaker4ever]

The King João I Cloister or Royal Cloister in Batalha Monastery, Portugal

In addition to the Church and the Founder's Chapel, there are also two Cloisters: two quadrangular covered galleries around a courtyard that allowed easy and quick movement between the various sites, as well as monastic activities or simply, shelter from the rains and winds or a walk of the monks.

The first is the so-called Royal Cloister or D. João I Cloister:

It is a cloister with about 55 meters side, 4 galleries and 7 sections in each, plus 4 common to the angles. It is initially Gothic in construction and It has only one floor, as was the custom at that time, which makes the roof also serve as terraces that run through all the galleries. It is covered by cruising vaults and in the center-facing part, features large buttresses topped with gargoyles.

This cloister was started at par with the church in the last years of the fourteenth century and continued from 1402 by Huguet.

The pointed arches are from the time of D. João I, but in D. Manuel the “final retouching” is introduced and the flags are filled. In this way, Mateus Fernandes adorned all his interior with a fine Manueline tracery, with vegetal motifs (logs, branches, leaves and fruits), crosses of Christ and armillary spheres all based on colonists.

The capitals are all worked with vegetable elements, except one that has two pairs of friars, clearly Dominicans who hold large open books.

When we reach the center of the Cloister, to the east, we see a pointed, cone-shaped or arrow-shaped building, which we call the Stork's Coruchine and to the left a small bell tower.

Returning inland, we can see the ogival portal that gives access to the Chapter Room, flanked by large twin windows. All of it is carved with foliage motifs or small human heads and figurations.

The Chapter Room was the room where the friars, presided over by the abbot or prior, met to read the chapter or the life of the saints. It suited all assemblies, especially when it came to deciding any matter of general interest to the convent.

In the case of the Batalha Monastery, it is a square enclosure, with about 19 meters in side, naked and dark but grand and with a very bold architecture. The only vault the room has is an eight-pointed star shape with 16 radiant ribs and no pillar or column to support it. The central key bears the arms of King João I. It also has 8 secondary keys all around the main, all of them representing plant motifs. The construction is so bold that it inspired the 19th century Portuguese historian and novelist Alexandre Herculano to build a legend - the so-called “vault legend” and where it says “the vault did not fall. The vault will not fall.”

In the corbels, in the corner of the room, is a figure with a hat with a hanging cloth and a ruler and a square in his hand, representing an architect, supposedly responsible for its construction, and some say that it is Afonso Domingues, despite that he had already passed away when the room was finished.

On the back wall is a large window filled with a stained glass window depicting the Passion Scenes of Christ and dated 1514.

In this space is still the Monument to the Unknown Soldiers, whose bones were transferred in 1921 to the Battle and tombed in 1924. Illuminating it is a wrought iron lamp, giving a faint light, always lit, with a soaked crowd. in olive oil, which we call the "Flame of the Fatherland." This work by Master Lourenço de Almeida, offered by the 5th Military Division of Coimbra, is a revivalist piece of art that represents the soldiers of all time. Above the shallow grave we also have the image of the Christ of the Trenches who accompanied the Portuguese troops on the battlefields in the First World War. On the shallow grave of the unknown soldier are written the words: "Eternal Portugal in the seas on continents and in races to its unknown soldier killed by the Patria".

As we leave this room, on the right, we find a beautiful Manueline portal that gives access to the old dormitory of the friars. This space is very large, wide and rectangular, about 50 meters long and about 10 wide. However it is a harmonious space where there is a large broken cradle vault that employs massive Gothic torch arches.

This space has come to our days under another name “Adega dos Frades”, perhaps for the reason that it was used for various things, each time there was a need for adding and / or remodeling the spaces (in this case as cellar and fruit store). Today is a space where the public is exposed to a permanent exhibition with various pieces of sculpture, originating from the Monastery, resulting from successive restorations.

At the northwest angle is the lavatory pavilion, with two vaulted sections and tall windows richly decorated by Boutaca. The Manueline washbasin is made up of several overlapping bowls decorated with frowns and through which, even today, water flows from the spring of Jardoeira. It served for the hygiene of the brothers before and after meals.

Nearby we find the old refectory, a space about 30 meters long and 7 wide, with a broken cradle vault and where the friars ate their meals in common. Today the space is used as the Museum of Unknown Soldier Offerings and is where all the tributes of various nations, personalities and ex-combatants to the Unknown Soldier are deposited.

There is nothing left of this primitive refectory except a pulpit or tribune which is on one wall and which served a friar to read sacred texts at mealtimes. The plates and other utensils were passed through openings that communicated with the kitchen, which remains today, on the wall.

[thewatchmenare-blog]

What Happened to Detroit’s Building Hugger?

As you know, we at TheWatchmenAre tend to be a watchdog outlet for the voiceless, telling stories and experiences that would usually go unheard. We were approached by a former employee from one Detroit business whose story needed to be shared, Building Hugger, a historic building-focused remodeling company that worked heavily with windows.

Jobs of note for the former company include the dome of the Michigan Capital Building, as well as the Congregation Church in Detroit. They were a prominent alum of the Build Institute, utilized grants from Motor City Match and the Tory Burch Foundation, among others and was also featured prominently in pieces by the local media.

Seeing nothing short of ordinary, Building Hugger was liquidated sometime around January, whereas after issues between customers, employees, and founder Amy Swift became known. While these allegations are word of mouth, they included instances of OSHA violations, money concerns and an overall toxic work environment.

While there can be no direct accusation, the story of Building Hugger is one that should be told so that the ills of the past can be avoided in a future Detroit. In the meantime, here are the stories from former customers and employees about the elusive Amy Swift and Building Hugger.

The Customers:

While touting a decent track record for its first few years, the financial strains toward the end of Building Hugger’s life led to some less than desirable outcomes for its final customers.

One customer, an individual named John Sharp, had reached out to Building Hugger to do work on his historic home. After meeting and doing your typical contracting business, he put a large sum of money down for the work, allocating around $3000 for the job.

But, this was as far as work on his project would get, as, after a few months, no work was ever started on his home. After waiting with no response on when work would begin, Sharp contacted the supplier, who said that they had never received payment from Building Hugger for the parts needed for Sharp’s project.

Sharp shared that he filed a police report, but the situation was deemed “not criminal.” and nothing came from his actions. As the Coronavirus Crisis began to ramp up, he also shared that nothing came from his efforts due to the increasing difficulty to begin a case in small claims court at the time.

“it's just so frustrating that the legal system allows for this I mean, it just seems criminal to me that somebody can just take money from this person, that person and never order, and then say well we're bankrupt now we pissed away the money and it's gone and. Too bad you know,” shared Sharp while discussing his experience.

At the time of reaching out, there was still no resolution to Sharp’s concern.

Another customer we spoke to had a similar situation to Sharp, he was working with Building Hugger on a project for his home, and while putting money down for a job, it never saw completion after a few months of waiting.

Named Chris, he had contacted Building Hugger to work on his home in New Center, which had about 48 windows that needed work, and Hugger had come highly recommended when he was searching for contractors. The total cost was going to be somewhere around $25,000 for the storm windows he wanted to be installed as well as the renovation work.

After talking with Swift, he was told he would need to put down half the money as a “material deposit,” so he went ahead and put down a little more than $7,000 for the job. Signing the contract in July, Chris was told they were about three months out from the start of renovation and things should be ready for installation in September.

After this point, Chris shared that rather than having a team come conduct work, it was usually one or two employees working to remove the existing storm windows. Also at this time, he shared that Amy was very quick to bill him for the work, despite no windows being installed yet.

“So during all this time, everything kind of goes back and forth and she was pretty quick to send me bills and quick to payment, which should have been a red flag,” shared Chris when speaking with him. “What they wanted to do with storm windows was take out all the old one’s so they had better access and could install the new one’s at the end of the project, which at the time was okay because originally they were supposed to be to be installed in September.”

“But when what ended up happening was that the date kept being pushed back, back, back, back and next thing you know, it’s November and they haven’t even ordered the windows yet.”

With the project being pushed back, Chris says that around this time things went silent with Building Hugger.

Taking matters into his own hands, he contacted Allied Windows directly, where he later found out that of the $7000 he had put down originally for the job, only around $2500 had been given to them. Important to note, that while Chris had paid Building Hugger in July, they had not paid the window supplier until November, after which Chris had already paid Hugger $7000 for further material costs.

Contacting a lawyer, Chris was finally able to speak with Swift, who redirected him to a bankruptcy lawyer with no resolution. After going the entire winter with no storm windows, Chris was able to acquire windows through Allied Windows but has yet to install them.

In terms of the quarrel with Building Hugger, as of speaking with Crhis, matters remained unresolved.

When speaking with both Sharp and Chris, both had mentioned another customer who faced similar issues with Building Hugger. However, as requests for contact were unfulfilled, we are unable to comment further on the matter.

Former Employees:

The relationship between employees and Amy Swift seemed rocky at best based off the people we have spoken to. While many feared retaliation and asked to remain anonymous, their story will still be shared.

In May an individual named Tony reached out about the situation he had experienced with Building Hugger. This included not being paid for work and overall, a very toxic work environment.

He described how when starting at the job, there was essentially no training, sharing, “There was never any training, it was just throwing people out in the field doing trial by fire.”

Tony also made the acquisition that the women who worked with Building Hugger were paid less than the men, despite Amy Swift labeling the business as one that empowers women, sharing, “You know, none of the women there made anything compared to the guys. Then I found out one of the employees was basically on probationary pay for almost two years.”

The issues with payment come across the board, with Swift apparently chastising employees for working slow while saying that they needed to rush in order to meet financial deadlines.

One employee, who asked to remain unnamed, shared, “She would talk about finances, but only in the sense that she would say, based on projects that we were doing, we needed to work more quickly to meet the financial deadlines.”

Tony last saw Amy Swift in January, as things were ending. He stated that at the end of things, there wasn’t even enough money in the account to purchase a $60 piece of glass. With no money, there was no payment, and he said that people began filing for unemployment, and filing complains with the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs [LARA].

In February, Amy Swift made a sales group on Facebook to liquidate the business, Tony tried joining this group, which earned him a dismissal from it, and a block on Facebook from Amy.

He then texted her, asking for compensation in the form of lead, zinc, and other materials that remained for stained glass window supplies. She replied to him and said that she would have considered it, but, since they filed claims with LARA, he would need to consult her lawyer.

That moment was the last point of contact between the two, after that moment, he never heard from her again.

“We did not receive any correspondence from Amy until Monday, January 20, which was basically reiterating that this is how small businesses go and that if we did not work, we would not receive that money because, in order to receive the money, the client had to have their work done. She basically tried to make it seem like the only way for us to get paid was to finish working those jobs, which we weren't guaranteed,” shared the unnamed employee.

While there were issues with finances, treatment from Swift and overall workplace safety were two other aspects brought up by employees.

One employee, who asked to remain anonymous so as to avoid any retaliation, shared, “My other concern was we were often in sites that didn't have decent floors to stand on or running water or bathrooms. And when I mentioned this to Amile, she told me all they had to provide was a bucket with water and rags which OSHA specifically says is not okay if there are solvents and paints on site. And, she said anywhere in the city we could make it back to the shops to use the restroom. Well, it's a big city, so I don't think she realized, but OSHA says it has to be within 10 minutes.”

While this situation was never fully reported to OSHA, Building Hugger did have prior violations from 2016 that can be viewed here and were ultimately resolved with an informal settlement.

The employee also added that lead testing was a major concern that Swift and the company did not take seriously, sharing, “We were supposed to get tested for our lead levels and stuff like that every six months, and the last time between my tests I went over a year. And at one point, everybody on the crew except for maybe two people were beyond their lead levels, and they're supposed to get tested three times.”

This employee also faced similar financial concerns with Swift, not receiving proper payment, while also apparently holding a crew leader position with no additional pay for the leadership role.

In conclusion

While originally speaking with the workers, they had yet to receive financial compensation. However, after months, they did receive payment from Swift at the end of June, after not receiving anything but brief correspondence since January.

What comes next? Hopefully justice and the truth.

In the meantime, the story of Building Hugger remains and should be used as a reminder for those looking to start-up work in the city. Treat your workers and customers with respect and care for their safety and well being.

Lastly remain honest and open about finances, as well as the state of the company. After all, in the end, honestly and transparency among the different roles of your enterprise could be the one thing that saves your skin.

[samkat10423]

Houses! Because with seasons, sims can’t sleep outside

First house to go, was that Ivy house behind the library. In their bio, it says they “inherited” it from an elderly aunt who had conveniently croaked. The house was HUGE! And looked too pristine for an “old lady” house. So, I decided to get rid of it and move them into a run-down dump, that I found over on MTS. (There are 2 versions of this house, created by FergusMind. This is her Haunting in Maine). I just added the fence and some more plants. And a doghouse.

You’re probably wondering why a dump, if the aunt was rich. Well, as a nurse, I once took care of an old man who was loaded with money. I mean, rich with a capital “R” rich. But, you’d never know it by looking at him. And when he was initially admitted, no one knew he had anything, but the rags he was wearing. (Came in with a head injury, after a fall). It was only when his son finally managed to track him down, that the hospital learned just how rich he was – and then started fawning all over him. Well, I liked him from the very first – mostly because I like crotchety, old geezers. He distrusted banks – having grown up during the Great Depression – and buried his money in Mason jars in his back yard. Also stuffed his mattress with it and stuck it under the floorboards in his house. He didn’t believe in electricity or phones - which is why his son, who’d been out of town on business - didn’t realize there was a problem, until he got back home. So, when I read the Ivy bio, I decided to base their late aunt on him, and gave them this house. And the reason they haven’t spent any simoleons fixing it up, is because the adults can’t agree on what to do first – other than hit the local pot store - and the kids just want shiny, new “toys.” Plus, they’re still digging up Mason jars.

After I got done with them – which included going into the dreaded CAS – I decided to tackle the Goodfellow family. At first I tried to just remodel EA’s build. But I really hate that house. So, I ended up bulldozing it and moved them into this one by ruthless-kk. I think it’s called Sunnymeade Cottage. Anyway, I think it works better for a family of fairies. I did declutter it a bit on the inside, and ditto on the outside. 

Then, I plunked down this house by gelinda – her Montclair – for that Doe family from Murky Hollows. I added the fence and Grande Lama’s curbing along the driveway, then eliminated the basement – just because I really didn’t need it – and redocrated the house with that Store set, Mid-Century Modern.  Mostly because this family reminds me of that old “Leaver it to Beaver” family. (Before most of your guys’ time). Anyway, I redressed the mom with those clothes from that Decades set, and used that hair that came with the Mid-century set.  June Cleaver! Or maybe, a Stepford wife.

Then, I took a session and visited Starlight Shores – or whatever the heck it’s named – and grabbed some sims. One of the families was the Woods – a bunch of do-gooders. I decided to make them into cat-people, since I’ve been enjoying  ashuriphoenix’s posts. Anyway, I made them into cat-sim-witches. (Try saying that 3 times real fast, after a couple glasses of wine!) Then moved them into this house I found over on MTS. I think it was by FergusMind. It was originally on a 10x10 lot and super small inside. So I made it a tad bigger. Then I gave them that little shed out back, to store their brooms and protest signs in. And that white picket fence and the trees, and bushes. And viola! Done!

Then I did this house. I think it came from MTS too, but really don’t remember. Anyway, I changed the garage into a barn – because I wanted at least one family in this town to have a horse. Then changed the original fence into this split-rail, and added horsey stuff. And those 2 oak trees, and the spruce out front. Inside, I changed most of the wall finishes and that was it. I’ll redecorate it, once I figure who I’m going to move in, since I like my houses to reflect their owners. 

Then, because I wanted to do a quickie reno, I plunked down this little Victorian, across the street from my town church. It too, started out on a much smaller lot – 10x10 - with zip landscaping. And was TINY inside. Since I plan on moving those Avilla sisters from Starlight Shores into it, I decided to expand it a bit. Which entailed bumping out the walls a tad, and then redoing the roof. (And I hate doing roofs almost as much as CAS). Then I redid the siding. The original creator had used that gaudy French paneling – with all that gilt – from the basegame. I think it looks better, and is still in keeping with Victorian homes, but not in-your-face gilt-crazy. Anyway, then I added different windows, the fence, bushes, and trees. Anyway, the sisters should be happy here. I made the quiet twin into a werewolf (her BIG secret) and the other one is now an aspiring acrobat. Hasn’t got a lick of talent, but oh well.

[windysnano]

The Academy of Polaria

Polaria is a small country in the colder parts of Macori. The inhabitants are pale, covered from head to toe in thick fabrics to keep the cold at bay. It has known peace for a century, the last war forgotten and only talked about in whispers in the back of a shadowy tavern at the border.

The capital, Katorma, is placed in the middle of the country, a man-made river dug out around it and a tall wall left from the Old Ages when wars raged every other year. The middle of the city holds a huge market place, a castle adorns one of the market place’s sides and houses the other three. The streets are big enough for two horse-drawn carriages to meet with room to spare for any pedestrians on their way to work. Hidden in a corner of the market place is an inn where travelers gather and exchange stories. Children aren’t allowed inside, but sometimes they sneak in through a window to listen to the old travelers who don’t care much for rules. There are three large parks in the city and one garden filled with exotic trees, flowers and animals. The garden is off-limits for the commoners except for the third Sunday every month when the resident priest makes a sacrifice to their gods. He is always joined by the two mages who are the main caretakers of the garden. After the sacrifice there is a party going on for two days.

The most notable building in Katorma is the Academy of Polaria. The academy consists of four long buildings forming a square with towers in the corners that are placed towards the cardinal directions. There’s a yard in the middle of the building and in the middle of the yard is another tower. The middle tower is crooked with smaller towers sticking out from the main construction. The walls of the outer building are made from a material that shines with a blue glow in the dark of the nights. The middle tower looks like a patchwork, each new inhabitant of it bringing their own colors and materials to make their room feel like home. The tower in the middle is inhabited by the teachers. Some rooms are left empty after they retire, others are remodeled and rebuilt by a new teacher. One room sticking out towards the south has been left empty for 300 years. The door is locked and there are no window, but sometimes sounds can be heard from it.

The Academy of Polaria trains new mages. It is most famous for the strength of their frost mages, but any specialization is taught with enthusiasm. It accepts students from any country, but most of them comes from Polaria. The first level students live in the western tower and the building between the western and northern tower. Some of them never specialize in any one teaching, opting instead to learn the basics of all of them, others focus on one of the elements or one way to conjure the magic that is present in the air around them. Most students leave the academy after only a couple of year, before they have learned more than the very basics. A lot of them go on to work in breweries, either helping more experienced mages make potions or making beverages for the public.

The students who lasts through the first two years of studies move to the northern tower. The northern tower is imbued with magic which is sometimes helpful and sometimes disastrous. It’s a test of the students’ abilities and strength, and a way to prepare them should another war ever arise again. Students living in the northern tower often moves in groups were each person has a different specialization. The studies are tougher for students in the northern tower, and during the three years students spend there a few drop out to pursue other careers. After the three years some will go on to join the military in their respective countries as battle mages. The few that decides to delve further into the world of magic moves into the eastern tower.

The eastern tower is unremarkable. The rooms are bigger, often filled with bookcases as the students need a lot of books to further their studies. Dangerous animals are rumored to live on the upper floor but few go there to confirm. The students spend most of their time on their own, trying to perfect whatever magic they are learning, only going for classes a couple of times each week. Some are studying magic to bend and break it and rebuild it in different way, some are trying to find new ways to incorporate magic in the lives of people and some just want to learn the strongest magics available. There is no time limit to the studies in the eastern tower, students stay until they are satisfied and then either become teachers themselves or go out into the world to find hidden knowledge that is rumored to exist in the deepest caves or darkest oceans.

The southern tower has a library and the southwest and southeast buildings have classrooms. Hidden under the yard is the cellar where the darker magics are taught, as well as a room filled with nocturnal animals. Animals able to handle the cold of Polaria’s winter lives in the yard, which is also used to teach the students about the use of herbs in their magic, either for potions or components when they call upon the elements.

The Academy of Polaria is known far and wide. Occasionally they hold courses for non-magical people since it gets them money to keep the school running. Students apply from all over the globe and the tests to be allowed in has to be harsh to sort out the ones who are unable to handle it. On rare occasions word gets to the school about a young kid who shows exceptional affinity for magic and they send someone out to pick them up.

Bob is not one of those.

---------------

And we’re off! woop! So Bob eh. Yeah, Bob is the main-character. I don’t know anything about them yet. They’ll go to the school though, but apart from that...

I have... ideas... about the magic system, but it’s all kinda fuzzy

Anyway so for next part we’ll get introduced to Bob!

[friend-and-boy]

@chibi-blastoise @unabashedlynerdypatrol

This is going to be a long read, but if you’re actually interested in solutions, here are some passages from Henry Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson. I’m not being sarcastic or condescending when I say I recommend it highly to literally everyone.

“...it is contended, the government, by forbidding increases in rents, protects tenants from extortion and exploitation without doing any real harm to landlords and without discouraging new construction.

This argument is defective even on the assumption that the rent control will not long remain in effect. It overlooks an immediate consequence. If landlords are allowed to raise rents to reflect a monetary inflation and the true conditions of supply and demand, individual tenants will economize by taking less space. This will allow others to share the accommodations that are in short supply. The same amount of housing will shelter more people, until the shortage is relieved.

Rent control, however, encourages wasteful use of space. It discriminates in favor of those who already occupy houses or apartments in a particular city or region at the expense of those who find themselves on the outside.

...

The effects of rent control become worse the longer the rent control continues. New housing is not built because there is no incentive to build it. With the increase in building costs (commonly as a result of inflation), the old level of rents will not yield a profit ... If, as often happens, the government finally recognizes this and exempts new housing from rent control, there is still not an incentive to as much new building as if older buildings were also free of rent control.

A common next step of legislatures, acting under merely political pressures or confused economic ideas, is to take rent controls off “luxury” apartments while keeping them on low or middle-grade apartments. The argument is that the rich tenants can afford to pay higher rents, but the poor cannot.

The long-run effect of this discriminatory device, however, is the exact opposite of what its advocates intend. The builders and owners of luxury apartments are encouraged and rewarded; the builders and owners of the more needed low-rent housing are discouraged and penalized. The former are free to make as big a profit as the conditions of supply and demand warrant; the latter are left with no incentive (or even capital) to build more low rent housing.

The result is a comparative encouragement to the repair and remodeling of luxury apartments, and a tendency for what new private building there is to be diverted to luxury apartments. But there is no incentive to build new low-income housing, or even to keep existing low-income housing in good repair. The accommodations for the low-income groups, therefore, will deteriorate in quality, and there will be no increase in quantity.

...

It may reach a point where many landlords not only cease to make any profit but are faced with mounting and compulsory losses. They may find that they cannot even give their property away. They may actually abandon their property and disappear, so they cannot be held liable for taxes. When owners cease supplying heat and other basic services, the tenants are compelled to abandon their apartments. Wider and wider neighborhoods are reduced to slums ... it has become a common sight to see whole blocks of abandoned apartments, with windows broken, or boarded up to prevent further havoc by vandals. Arson becomes more frequent, and the owners are suspected.

When these consequences are so clear that they become glaring, there is of course no acknowledgement on the part of the imposers of rent control that they have blundered. Instead, they denounce the capitalist system. They contend that private enterprise has “failed” again; that “private enterprise cannot do the job.” Therefore, they argue, the State must step in and itself build low-rent housing.” (End quote.)

So, to answer your questions, my solution is for the State to fuck off. That’s it. Rent control can and has quite literally destroyed cities and communities. I don’t want to leave it as it is. The State should slash regulation regarding the construction of new housing, and get rid of any and all rent controls. If rents are allowed to fluctuate based on supply and demand, you will get the greatest supply of “affordable” housing possible. Why? Because the most amount of people want it. And landlords and builders want to make profit. You don’t make profit by building shit people don’t want unless the government forces them to buy it. But the reason the politicians won’t do this is because they have entire voting blocs that don’t understand how rents got so expensive, so they think government stepping in will be a quick fix, even though it is the politicians’ fault in the first place.

[giftfromthesleepprincess]

Chapter 2—Is the Blue Haired Marquis Santa Claus?; Scene 4

Gift From the Princess Who Brought Sleep, pages 60-69

Hanne arrived in the Freezis Foundation headquarters in Marlon’s capital city of Bariti about forty-eight hours later.

The building, standing along the middle of the Methis river, was second in size only to Marlon Castle, the home of the king. She’d first seen it about ten years before—it had just been newly constructed, and while at the time it had been a little smaller, as the years passed by it was remodeled again and again, and little by little its scale grew larger and larger. With the influence of the foundation now, perhaps a time when it eclipsed Marlon Castle in size wasn’t far off.

The one to greet Hanne as she was imagining the fate of the foundation was the chief minister’s close aide, Bruno.

“…Thank you for coming. The minister is waiting, let’s go.”

He didn’t sound much like he was welcoming Hanne. There wasn’t any real need to concern herself over it. He was always like that. He didn’t think very well of Hanne coming into direct contact with the minister.

“Here is my strict advice for you.” When they started to walk along the hallway, heading for the chief minister’s room, Bruno spoke to Hanne. “There are others with the chief minister. You must address him as one of his subordinates. And above all you must not speak of the fact that you—are his great granddaughter.”

“I understand. I’m sure you have no wish for a needless quarrel over successorship, Sir Bruno.”

“I pray you feel the same. Heidamarie as well…Though I am not terribly worried about her; she is quite taciturn, and seems to have little desire for material wealth.”

“Oh, how awful of you. You make it sound like I’m a greedy blabbermouth.”

“That is not my intention, I only—We’re here. Let us end this conversation now.”

Bruno knocked on the chief minister’s room.

“Beg pardon, commander. Hanne Lorre has arrived.”

After a moment, they heard a hoarse voice say “Come in” from the other side of the door. Bruno responded by opening the door and entering the room with Hanne.

The chief minister was in bed. He was sitting up, looking their way. There were two steward women by his side.

“So good of you to arrive, Miss Hanne. Come, please sit here.”

The politeness of the chief minister’s manner of speech, being the highest-ranking member of the foundation as he was, was not to stand on formality with her. He always spoke that way to everyone. Whether speaking to a king or a beggar, his way of address was still the same--perhaps the reason he had been able to make the Freezis Foundation as big as it was lay somewhere in that personality of his.

“I’m sorry I haven’t written in a while. Commander Shaw Freezis.”

It had been about one year since Hanne had seen him last.

“Are you in good health?” she asked him, sitting down in the seat prepared for her.

“Not in the least. When you get to be one hundred and sixteen…oh…One hundred and seventeen? No, maybe it was one hundred and fifteen? Ha ha ha, I can’t even remember how old I am,” he laughed feebly. Thinking on his age, it was miraculous that he was alive at all. “My being able to live like this is thanks to the divine protection of God. I must do something to repay that. My calling you here today is—for that purpose, to sum up.”

After saying that, the chief minister glanced slowly to his left and right.

“…Should I clear out the room?”

It seemed he was worried about other people overhearing their conversation.

Hanne shook her head.

“I don’t really mind. And I gather that Sir Bruno would rather not let us talk just the two of us.” She could hear the sound of a tongue clicking behind her. Hanne continued speaking, not paying it any mind. “—Have you found ‘it’?”

“Yes, ‘that’. …Thinking on it, all the chaos that I experienced when I was young—it was all caused by ‘that’. Though I didn’t figure that out until I was long into adulthood. In that respect I have a connection to ‘it’. I must take revenge…on the thing that drove mad the lives of my mother and father.”

“I can guess. I’m here to fulfill that wish. If you have anything you want me to do, you need only ask.”

“I’m grateful to hear you say that. …The thing I’m searching for is in ‘Toragay’. You must head there.”

“Toragay!? Toragay in Elphegort?”

Hanne looked a little taken aback, not expecting that name to come forward.

“Oh, does this mean you’ve got something on it already?”

“Yeah, on a different case…No, I see. When I think about it now, it’s only natural. I wish I’d realized sooner that ‘that’ was involved…I should have…”

“Could you tell me what it is?”

“—The other day I discovered that the marquis governing the town of Toragay, Kaspar Blankenheim, had passed on. According to his father in law, a doctor, it was a result of illness—but I don’t believe that.”

“So in other words, you think he was murdered by someone—there’s a chance it’s a case to investigate?”

“Yes. I haven’t gotten any clues yet, so I can only theorize at this stage…”

“But that means that you do have something to theorize.”

Hanne nodded. “I believe it might be the same matter as the ‘accidents’ and ‘rules’ that the late Yukina Freezis wrote of in her journal.”

“Ho ho, I see…But if you were already at Toragay, I suppose that means it was a waste of time to call you all the way out here like this.”

“No, not at all…There is some information I wanted from you, now.”

“’The most important thing for a merchant is information’—that was my father’s favorite phrase. Very well. Then I will tell you all the information I have at my disposal. First…the criminal organization ‘Pere Noel’, which has been causing havoc in the world lately. They have secretly been involved with the town of Toragay—did you know about that?”

“Yes…But according to my investigation, the chances are very high that their leader was none other than the deceased Kaspar Blankenheim. If so, then ‘Pere Noel’ has already lost their leader—”

“Oh?” The chief minister nodded several times as though impressed. “You’ve found this all out rather fast. However, there is one point that I’m not of the same opinion about.”

“Which is?”

“The idea that the leader of Pere Noel is this man named Kaspar—That conflicts with my own information. I have a different person suspected as the lea—cough, cough.”

The minister started to rapidly cough. Bruno flusteredly ran to his side.

“You’re putting a strain on your body. That’s enough for today.”

But he waved off Bruno’s hand. “Don’t mind me. This is what an old man like me lives for. On the contrary, putting a stop to me would put me in worse health--Let’s continue, Miss Hanne. My own research has picked up on a certain woman as their leader.”

“A woman?”

“Yes, and this woman has been witnessed periodically entering Toragay. It seems she is self-styled as a ‘sorceress’.”

“‘Sorceress’...”

Hanne’s back ran with cold sweat.

“In this day and age, anyone calling themselves that would just be treated as a charlatan or insane person. But yet she is using the title of sorceress.”

“Her name—What name is she going by?”

“—Elluka Clockworker—”

When that name reached her ears, Hanne’s eyes opened wide.

The chief minister continued speaking, putting emphasis in his words. “You know what that means, don’t you?”

“Y-yeah…”

“Whether she is genuine or not, I must…no, we must ascertain the truth. Of course I will have my World Police move on this matter—I wouldn’t mind putting them under your command, if you wish.”

“But that…would stir up needless animosity, wouldn’t it?”

As she spoke, Hanne gave a quick glance towards Bruno’s face.

…He was making a very openly sour expression.

But the chief minister shook his head, smirking.

“I won’t be living much longer anyhow. To the last I am getting my way as befitting the top of the organization. There’s no need for you to concern yourself about that.”

It happened many years ago, but the chief minister had promised Hanne limitless economic aid, once. It was an expression of his affection for her, but it also resulted in inviting great criticism from other members of the foundation, starting with Bruno. There were few people who knew of the trouble from back then around now, but they weren’t all gone yet.

So even now, Hanne hid her status and spent her time as a mere newspaper reporter.

Even so, it seemed the minister no longer cared about those circumstances.

“If you have the chance I’d like to have you involve in the investigation Miss Heidamarie…your little sister; although, it seems she’s working on another case at the moment. Once that’s all wrapped up, I’ll have her head for Toragay.”

“I’m much obliged for the thought--Well, I’ll make sure to do that when I need her. But, for now at least…I’d like to work on this on my own. Launching into this large-scale while I have no evidence might not turn out so well.”

“I see, if that’s how you feel…Very well; you must find this ‘Elluka Clockworker’ by any means necessary. Though I doubt you’ll be able to catch her so easily…But if anyone’s able to accomplish this, I’m sure it’s you.”

“…As you wish.”

“—Cough…I guess we’ve been talking too long. I think I shall rest a little now.”

“Yeah, get yourself some sleep.”

One of the stewards handed some sort of tablet to the chief minister, and after swallowing it he lay down in bed.

“Well then—”

Hanne bowed once and left the room.

Bruno followed after her. The whole time Hanne and the minister had been talking he had seemed displeased, and that hadn’t changed now.

“…He trusts in you a great deal.” Hanne couldn’t tell if that was intended as praise or sarcasm. “You understand? I know what the minister said, but I must urge you not to—"

“I know. I won’t be recklessly abusing the authority of the foundation. And, naturally—I won’t tell anyone I’m his great-granddaughter.”

“…Good.”

She knew. The more people got wrapped up in this—

The more casualties there would be.

<<prev------directory------next>>

[alistonjdrake]

Of Rust and Gold: Graza & Graza Palace

Hi. Another one of these. Last one (a summary of some important characters) can be found here and main wip intro is here. 

Of Rust and Gold is the first book in what I call The Saints Song Series. It’s a multi-pov low fantasy, court intrigue drama with romance and adventure elements.  It follows the stories of Argus and Leo. Prince and pirate respectfully, brought together by the plot of a stolen ship holding dangerous cargo and a secret that shakes what they know about their world.

Built by King Didacus of house Espinar in 1150 for the new capital. Has since been rebuilt and remodeled hundreds of times for modern eras. Sits on a hill overlooking the city. It’s a large, bustling palace to fit a large and bustling city. It’s been home to hundreds of kings, has seen many days of construction, and by the 1780s stands as an amalgamation of the many changing eras. It’s been the busiest under the reign of King Frederick, as his marks the beginning of the humbling of the nobility and many of them have left their own estates to take up apartments at court out of necessity and to reach prominence safely under the king instead of partying favor and for their own greed in past eras.  At least, and perhaps during the slowest seasons, it houses a thousand people (not including the servants). The monarchs of Escan have no shortage of other homes and palaces, each new reign seems to begin with a showering of gifts usually including land, but those who tried to rule away from Graza often found themselves unsuccessful. Graza Palace is built for opulence and visitors have said it “thrives with all the jewels of the empire”, but it also strategically powerful. Since the beginning, Graza has been claimed as neutral ground among nobles in a country with a long history of internal strife. Since Escan no longer has a standing army, it’s proximity to Alda and the Order of the Knights is something to fear. They would stand in when soldiers can’t be found. And as the power of the noble class is at it’s weakest, true wealth and acclaim can be only found at the heart of the empire.

Graza became the official capital of Escan in 1148 after a series of wars between several noble houses trying to capture the throne. At the time, Escan was very much divided and the nobility had most of the power, abiding mostly by the laws of their territories rather than falling under one king. Graza was a growing fishing village right on the coast of Escan. It was vulnerable to pirates and other criminals until Lady Sence, who was neither noble or in relation to anyone of importance cleaned the town. Thus, after the wars ended it seemed the perfect place for King Didacus to find neutral ground and build a palace.

Lady Sence is as much a mystery to her contemporaries as she is to modern historians. Once King Didacus stepped foot in Graza, it was said she came to greet him at the city gates (then made crudely of wood instead of fine iron and patterned stone). She knelt as a nobody and stood as an adviser to a king. They spent many years turning the city into something of worth, the first pair to even bring clean water (and to care about the public’s health) to the common people through pipes and public fountains. They strengthened the ports against enemies, increased trade, and were the first to start transforming Graza from a muddy fishing village to a beautiful city. 

Now, in modern times it is the center of Escana culture. It's bustling with districts representative of the empire's claimed lands. The Rhine District, Kellish Corner, market streets, home to the city-homes of many noble families, the beautiful cathedral, and many trading warehouses. The city is largely populated, due mostly to expanding and swallowing up nearby villages and towns.

The docks of Graza are also famous and no longer fear pirates. Graza is located right next to Alda stronghold, the headquarters for the Escana fraction of the Order of the Knights.

Grazans also pride themselves on the way they speak Escan. It’s been praised as a beautiful language and the Grazan accent, especially the one spoken at court, is often the one people have in mind when thinking of the Escana. Grazans tend to speak faster than most who speak Escan, they’ll take few pauses between their words. What some also find a bit irritating is the fact that many Escana words are spelled differently in Graza than they are in other places. In 1347, when writing edicts a scholar decided some words weren’t aesthetically pleasing enough and so spelling and thus pronunciations were changed. Despite this, the words (most only exchanging two or three letters) mean the same thing as their previous form and modern Grazans switch back and forth between them. They commonly stress consonants powerfully which keeps their speech quite clear and understandable. They are inclined to produce sharp sounds and tend instinctively put a vowel at the end. Grazans speak with a spefific rhythm and are inclined to speak with it even in other languages. 

[vanilla-blessing]

qb anime of the year list 2018

Anime of the Year 2018 - the year of girls going to aquariums together

I’ve seen at least one person who claimed that 2018 was the best year for anime in recent memory and I’m inclined to agree. A large majority of my top ten list is shows that I would consider perfect and even shows that blew away what I thought was possible in the medium. It was a revolutionary year and makes a strong argument that anime wasn’t a mistake after all. - qb

#1

Hugtto! Precure blew away my expectations every week for close to a year. I don’t exactly know what to say about it here, since this isn’t the last time I’ll talk about it for sure. It doesn’t even end in 2018, but it was such a huge part of my 2018 in anime that it would be inaccurate to not include it. The only way I can think to explain Hugtto! Precure is to talk about the Netflix She-ra reboot. She-ra’s a pretty basic modern Dreamworks cartoon, with some interesting ideas thrown in and likable characters, but mostly held back by what they could realistically allot for production. Because of this limitation, She-ra goes hard on a single perfect episode (if you’ve seen it, you know which one) that stands out in a big way and shows the full potential of what they set out to make. Usually, Precure is lucky to get a handful of these stand-out episodes in a season, and most of the time just gets by, due to being an annual series that can never, ever take a break. Normally, the first few episodes of a Precure season can be counted on to be strong, but the realities of anime production being hella tough inevitably catch up.

Hugtto! Precure started with an incredible opening arc, then never let off the gas pedal. Nearly every episode of Hugtto is a stand-out, never-before-seen, innovative tour-de-force. The combination of production miracles that resulted in Hugtto has been talked about by me on this blog before, (http://vanilla-blessing.tumblr.com/post/176000267859/hana-is-getting-unstable-a-pink-precure) but the length of time that Hugtto stayed in the paint, going extremely hard every single week with few exceptions, was just absurd. Every season of Precure has one or two peaks, sometimes a good season gets lucky and has even more, the best seasons bat a solid average, but are still expected to be held back by reality. Coming out of the fifteenth season of Precure with a majority of the best episodes in the entire franchise isn’t something that I can wrap my head around, but it definitely happened, mostly in 2018. It’s simultaneously a love letter to the franchise’s past, present, and future made by the biggest Precure fans on the planet, and it’s unquestionably the best season. Hugtto threw what we all knew was true and had accepted about Precure clear out the window, retroactively made older seasons better, watered my crops, brought world peace, ect.

Oh yeah and boys can be cures now. 

#2

I’m definitely not done with Revue Starlight and this won’t be the last time I talk about it. Revue Starlight essentially carried the Summer 2018 anime season on its back. Starlight absolutely dominated my anime watching schedule; my week was seriously just waiting for and watching different translations and releases with every other show being almost incidental, far less important than waiting for the song lyrics to get translated for an episode I had seen three times already. I won’t get into everything here, since I’ve already talked about it on this blog after all (http://vanilla-blessing.tumblr.com/post/179023723689/subtext-is-for-cowards-revue-starlight), but I need to reiterate that it was such a commanding, unique, stylized experience and didn’t drop a single episode in its entire absurdly high-level production. The only reasonable explanation for this is devil magic, and hell, it was worth it. Revue Starlight is probably in my top 5 anime of all time and I wouldn’t get this list out if I said everything I wanted to say about it. It’s great. Watch it twenty times. 

#3

Pop Teen Epic, or Hoshiiro Girldrop, was the most wildcard that has ever been in seasonal anime, and could have been absolutely anything. What none of us predicted was just how much of anything this show would be, encompassing an unprecedented range of artists, voice acting talent, and whatever AC-bu are, each giving their very individual takes on a self-described shitpost comic strip, sometimes covering the exact same material two or three times, with no regard for any sort of cohesion or structure.

Nothing about this idea should have been funded, nothing in Pop Team Epic has any reason to work, and as a straight adaptation probably wouldn’t have worked. PTE spun gold from trash through the raw effort of artists doing their own thing, which captures the original spirit that made the formerly-cancelled comic popular in a way that’s much too intelligent for haters to understand. Also it got a dub, which is the most ridiculously bad idea i’ve heard in my life, and it owns that it happened.

#4

Spider-man into the Spider-verse is legit the best comic book movie ever made. It’s a fun, expressive twist on the most tired superhero origin story of all time, and showcases some of the most sssssssssstyle and raw, real emotion I’ve ever seen in animation. Its particular selection of influences is brilliant and poignant, rising far above the simple fanservice you’ve come to expect from Spider-man. The unrelenting individualistic spirit of this movie will stick with you the longest in the soundtrack, bravely incorporating a side of pop music that you don’t usually get to see in big-budget productions, pulling soundcloud rappers out of their grody (i’m told) dens into the spotlight with equal importance alongside the heroic score. Spider-verse is all about establishing your own unique flavor, and it manages to overwrite every other entry in this cursed franchise with its bold taste.

#5

It doesn’t make sense to me how amazing Aggretsuko’s dub is. The impeccable timing of each line, the perfect integration with the comedy, and the optimal length of the episodes are all far beyond what I expected from a Netflix show. It not only converted the original series of shorts that I already had on my top 10 the first year into a godlike longer series I didn’t know I wanted, but went to the effort to bring real metal singers in for the karaoke. Honestly just repeat everything I said in my 2016 list and multiply it by five. I hope they make more. They’re making more.

#6

I was pretty slow to pick up anime in the Winter 2018 season, but I never missed Hakumei and Mikochi, maybe because it was like, the only simulcast on my favorite online anime streaming subscription service HiDiVE. The subs weren’t great, and it certainly wasn’t all that popular, but it was just the relaxing show I needed. Hakumei and Mikochi brought me back to my favorite non-racist parts of the Redwall series of books: friendly animals, delicious foods, alcohol, and rustic songs. I was ready to put it on my list for simply being a cute healing foodie anime, but to my surprise, it had much more in store within its tiny world: stark confrontations with mortality, a shy riverside necromancer, the inexplicable remake of The Raid: Redemption in miniature, fashion trends, frogs, carpenter weasels, carpenter skeletons, ghost celebrations, a country beetle with lofty dreams. The list of memorable people, places, and things contained in the gnomish roommates’ tiny world goes on and on.

Masaomi Ando’s directing went completely along with the storybook aesthetic, maybe even to an overall detriment, which is exactly the kind of reckless commitment to style I love to see. The distinctive paneling, constantly gorgeous backgrounds, and deliberate pacing perfectly captured the imaginative stories I loved to read as a kid, but with more alcohol, and more sophisticated themes under the surface. Even something anime rarely get right, endings, were perfectly capstoned every week with a short digest that explored more of the history, legends, and very personal lore of their small, unique world. At its core, Hakumei and Mikochi is the calming story of tiny roommates you think it is, but it’s also so much more. They have day jobs and get drunk and remodel their house after it explodes that one time. They gamble dangerously to escape a blizzard, help a photographer give herself a little credit, and rescue their neighbor from a fancy grave of her own making. By the end of the show Hakumei practically built half a town. The collective stories from their everyday adventures build into something tremendous, and it all wraps up on the most perfect ending sequence I could have hoped for, which calls back to every story thus far as a new verse of the show’s central duet is sung. In any reasonable AnimeOTY Hakumei and Mikochi would be my top anime of 2018, but this year, the competition was unreasonable. This show will just have to settle for being the best regular anime of the year.

#7

Bloom Into You is an incredible adaptation of an apparently yuri romance manga that raises the bar for anime adaptations in general. I don’t know when, but somewhere along the line I stopped expecting that serious capital R Romance anime would have a distinctive style, and gave up to the notion that there was no demand anymore and a stylized, seinen/josei romance would just never get made. Well that was 2016 and then Scum’s Wish happened which this blog has covered extensively.(http://vanilla-blessing.tumblr.com/post/168842023559/how-lerche-adapted-an-average-trashy-romcom-into, http://vanilla-blessing.tumblr.com/post/168789506264/scums-wish-and-our-messy-uncomfortable) To me Bloom Into You feels similar in concept, as a difficult romantic situation with no easy answers or completely happy people. The main perspective character, Yuu, is among my favorite romantic leads in any series; she doesn’t get romantic feelings, although she wants to, and despite being easily motivated, is kind of dispassionate. Her relationship that she was pushed into with Touko might as well be out of mutual convenience, since Touko doesn’t want to fall in love with someone who would love her back, and Yuu doesn’t think she can.

Yuu filters the developments of the series as they grow closer through a very different perspective compared to more emotional leads of usual romance stories, methodically breaking down and considering where she’s at, observing where others are at, before taking an action that makes sense to her. Her growth through the series takes a very different direction than the common dramatic formula; instead of running headfirst into misunderstandings to overcome romantic challenges, she’s compelled to take a step back and position herself in a way that allows her to understand and confront her girlfriend’s issues. The changes that she experiences herself during this process are extremely gradual, but are no less significant to her. Although the dramatic weight of the series is obviously all about Touko, the central thesis of Bloom Into You is to explore Yuu’s complex feelings, and ask to what degree our actions are dictated by our emotions. It’s a heavy topic to be sure, but what makes this anime adaptation special in particular is how the directing and production pull it off, to maybe an even stronger degree than the original material.

Bloom Into You’s most striking and noticeable feature is the incredible conservation of small movements that connect expressions naturally. Minute changes in characters’ faces are vital to observe the almost imperceptible changes in Yuu over the course of the series, and every aspect of the direction is in service of highlighting these subtle moments. In addition, repeated cinematic themes are reinforced over the show’s run, such as the use of light to impart a blinding realization, flower language to inform deeper personalities, even using a literal (not literal) cinema. Symbols such as trains, masks, and mirrors are used constantly and consistently to reinforce the show’s themes, which should be immediately obvious from the opening animation. I’m still kind of stunned that Bloom Into You’s ending theme is such a banger and managed to use an oscillating sine curve in a metaphorical way. These details might be lost without the brilliant layouts, intentionally resembling a stage, which always push the minute differences front and center. As an anime adaptation, Bloom Into You adds so much value in such a subdued, conservative way that it puts uninspired adaptations to shame.

#8 

Thunderbolt Fantasy 2 rounded out the year with a good old new-fashioned Japanese-speaking Chinese-Wuxia Taiwanese puppet show. The novelty of this wild series, like, existing at all, is still incredible to me, but I was really wowed by the new characters and the direction the series went in after the already high standards of the first season. Following the outrageous action and fights of the previous season, I did not expect that season 2’s introductory goon would 1. Live past the first episode 2. So quickly become my favorite swordfighter and 3. Have inarguably the most complete character arc of the entire show thus far. The Princess of Cruelty’s struggle against her inner and outer demons in a unreasonably stacked, desperate situation developed her into easily the most compelling character of the season, and the rest of the cast including a corrupt police officer with extremely disconcerting and bad puppet teeth, a ventriloquist rock-lutist, and a nihilist monk each bring their own unique flavors to the table. The table that they throw the puppets in the air from to make the show. All of the new elements of Thunderbolt Fantasy 2 improved an already strong formula even more, and revealed an emotional depth to the series that I’m excited to see developed further. Some people might not call this anime, but those people haven’t seen Thunderbolt Fantasy for longer than 2 seconds. It’s so anime.

#9

I blasted all available seasons of Star vs the Forces of Evil early in 2018, and it was basically my first foray into straight-up American cartoon magical girl, despite watching all the Japanese ones, which was probably an oversight on my part. That’s because Star Versus is really good, and provided a flavor of magical girl I had been missing out on. I could talk about the excellent sparkle witch aesthetic of the show, fluid animation, and hilarious comedy, but I’d rather spend this blogspace posting Star Butterfly faces. 

#10

A Place Further Than the Universe, or YoriMoi, or my preferred moniker That Antartica Anime, wasn’t on my radar until well after it had finished airing, but it stuck with me for most of the year. Although it’s definitely melodramatic at times, it utilizes this tendency in exactly the right way to enhance the individual characters’ emotional arcs. Even though I was personally sort of taken out of it for many of the girls’ personal trials, :penguin emoji: is obviously thoughtfully written and carefully constructed, and especially knows how to orchestrate an immense emotional reaction with pitch-perfect timing. If there’s one particular aspect this anime has absolute mastery over, it’s hitting that perfect note and cue to create a memorable narrative climax. And for all my bellyaching about not fully relating to some of the characters, Miyake is definitively the #1 qb-relatable character of the year.

Here’s the rest of my list. Don’t @ me about it because if its not on my top ten then it doesnt really count anymore i dont make the rules thats just how it is

11. Yuru Camp

12. Hisone and Masotan

13. Asagao to Kase-san

14. Devilman Crybaby

15. After the Rain

16. Planet With

- friend of the show @queuebae on twitter 

That’s why the 2018 anime of the year award goes to Kaiju Girls 2.

[ladylynse]

Here’s an old, partial Danny Phantom fic I’d started at one point. Post-Phantom Planet

“Man,” Danny groaned, “sometimes I just wish no one else knew my secret!” It wasn’t a secret anymore, of course. The entire world knew. But things would be easier if they didn’t. Wouldn’t they? Maybe not, given how literally Desiree grants wishes.

Whoever thought being rich and famous would be great had clearly never experienced a taste of either. Danny Fenton had, at different times, experienced both. At first, being rich had seemed like a dream come true, but it hadn’t taken him—or anyone else in his family, for that matter—long to realize that he’d been happier before it had happened. They’d had the good fortune to be able to leave the life of the rich behind—and, with it, their mansion next to Vlad Masters’ home, thankfully—and resume their normal lives again, all the wiser for their experience.

Being famous was something that had happened exclusively to Danny. For all that he wasn’t the genius in the family, he was the one who had ghost powers. He was Danny Phantom. He was Amity Park’s hero. Well, he was now that he was no longer Public Enemy Number One. And, since the fiasco with the Disasteroid, he was the acknowledged hero worldwide.

He hadn’t wanted that recognition, exactly. He’d have been happy just to get his parents off his back. He hadn’t needed statues of him to be built in every capital city of the world. That was just embarrassing, he’d thought. Yes, he’d saved everyone, but he’d had help, and anyone—well, except for maybe Vlad, who would have done so only for his own purposes—would have saved everyone if they’d been able to simply because they’d had the opportunity. He hadn’t done anything special.

But he was being hailed as a hero nonetheless, and with that, he got a lot of unwanted attention.

Things had been simpler, really, back when his ghost powers had been a secret from all but a select few. Danny Phantom was still famous in Amity Park, and he was either hunted by ghost hunters, his parents included, or hounded by fans, but he could leave all that behind. He could step out of the limelight. A quick change in an empty room, darkened alley, abandoned building, what have you, and he could return to being plain old Danny Fenton. Just a kid, a loser, the lowest of the low on Casper High’s social food chain and the favourite punching bag of one Dash Baxter.

Okay, so maybe being plain old Danny Fenton had had its downsides, too, but he’d never been mobbed by people or followed by the media or anything when he wasn’t Phantom. And, heck, the time Amorpho had shown up, they’d both learned the value of anonymity. He’d loved being able to leave the spotlight behind.

That wasn’t possible now.

The whole world knew his secret. Not just his best friends, Sam and Tucker, and his sister, Jazz, along with a variety of his enemies, Vlad included. It had its benefits, of course. His parents didn’t hunt him anymore, and they’d accepted him. Valerie had even apologized to him for hunting him down, too. Dash didn’t try to shove him into lockers anymore. His teachers would let him write make-up tests if a ghost attacked and he had to leave during the middle of an exam, and they were more lenient on homework due dates for him, too, so he was doing better in school.

The best part, though, was that he and Sam were together now. And it meant Tucker had stopped making cracks about them being lovebirds, for the most part. But he wasn’t clueless anymore, and he knew how much Sam meant to him, how much she’d always meant to him, and it was even easier than he’d thought to overlook Paulina and any of the other girls who had tried to get a date with him after his secret had been revealed.

The fact that Vlad was gone, stuck on the Disasteroid and floating somewhere in space, didn’t hurt anything, either. The rest of the ghosts still plagued Amity Park since his parents had fixed the Fenton Ghost Portal, but at least they didn’t try to capture anyone (except for him, especially in Skulker’s case). Danny couldn’t help but wonder if it was out of boredom—along with a desire to escape the Ghost Zone, of course. But for all that a bunch of the local ghosts kept trying to push the limits, they hadn’t tried ganging up on him and he hadn’t had to deal with anyone really, really strong. The fact that everyone knew his secret, that it was no longer something that the ghosts could hold over his head and taunt him with, meant the dynamic had shifted a bit.

But it was the other shift, the fact that Danny Fenton was just as famous as Danny Phantom, that Danny was having trouble getting used to. And it had been, what, three months? He hadn’t had any peace. Any.

The media trailed him wherever he was. People stared at him, even kids he’d known all his life. His parents had gotten an unlisted number, but it had gotten out somehow, and the phone kept ringing off the hook. His dad was threatening to get rid of the phone altogether if it didn’t stop. He had to keep switching cell phone numbers, too. And the letters. He’d gotten letters requesting help from people in different countries, for goodness sakes! He wasn’t even sure how they’d gotten his address.

He’d had to close his email account for the same reason, as well as the one he’d opened to replace it, and it hadn’t taken him long to realize that people were using every form of communication they could to get in touch with him.

They weren’t going to move. He should be thankful for that. But he’d heard his parents mention it, if only wistfully. While the attention wasn’t focused on them, they weren’t spared from it, either, and neither was Jazz.

It was getting to the point where Danny would actually be quite happy to go and visit Aunt Alicia for a few weeks. It might be Tucker’s worst nightmare, but right now, he’d welcome escaping technology. He would miss running water and indoor plumbing a lot more than electricity, but at least it would be difficult for them to follow him, wouldn’t it?

Probably not. Back when he’d only been famous as Phantom, Danny had realized that some of the media people were really determined. And crazy. Admirable, he supposed, but annoying for him, since too many of them seemed to see him as their newest ‘story’. Now? Now, it was just ten times worse. A hundred, even.

His mom was still talking about home schooling them, too. Invisibility and intangibility—and flight, when it came down to it—really helped to get away from the press, but the constant attention wasn’t easy, and it was even wearing on Jazz. She didn’t show it much, but Danny could see it.

The pile of broken pencils in the garbage can beside the desk in her room made that pretty clear, too.

At least his parents had managed to hold off the Guys in White. They were probably the main reason Danny hadn’t been shipped off and locked away in some government facility to be studied for the unique specimen he was. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that the Guys in White hadn’t given up, that they weren’t just waiting until everything died down a bit, until they could find some loophole that would tie his parents’ hands and let them spirit him away….

He wasn’t safe anymore. He’d never really been safe safe, not since the accident, but he’d been marginally safer when his secret had been, well, a secret. The Guys in White were determined, after all, and had become increasingly competent. Him being half-human wasn’t enough to stop them from seeing him as a ghost to be dissected and studied, nothing more than an unfeeling and exceedingly unique specimen. If he’d had any doubts, they’d all been banished by the way he’d been chased down when his secret had first been revealed to the world during the incident with the Reality Gauntlet.

Then, he’d been able to turn the clock back, in a way. He’d remodelled reality, let it resemble what it was supposed to, the way things had been before Freakshow had escaped and used the Reality Gauntlet in the first place. He’d taken away the memories of the entire nightmarish incident from everyone except those who had known beforehand. Everything had gone back to normal, or, at least, what had become normal. It had been a relief.

He didn’t have any such solace now, though he couldn’t say he regretted not having to keep a secret from his parents.

There was a meteor shower tonight, so at least he didn’t have to wonder which ghost was likely to show up. Desiree never missed anything like this. She had an annoying habit of managing to turn up at little kids’ birthday parties, too, he’d found. She was easy enough to deal with, but she always managed to wreak a little bit of havoc before he caught her. And tonight, well, she could be anywhere.

That was why he was out early; only the first stars were starting to show up. He was invisible, of course. That was the only way he could go anywhere without being followed these days. This time last year, he probably would have taken a bit of time to enjoy studying the night sky. Once he caught Desiree, the only ones who could’ve stopped him would’ve been his parents, or maybe Valerie, unless one of his ghostly enemies had decided to show up.

A quick patrol meant Desiree was still managing to keep ahead of him. The first few shooting stars streaked across the sky, and Danny started his rounds again, looking for a party of some sort. Desiree was more likely to go to a larger crowd of people than to pick off strag—

“Ghost boy!”

Danny blinked. He wasn’t flying over Casper High anymore, and he didn’t need his ghost sense going off to tell him why. As it was, he was holding Paulina. Drifting lazily above her backyard. Danny put her down on the grass. “Paulina,” he said slowly, “you know I’m dating Sam….” Paulina wasn’t the only one who had persisted in calling him ‘ghost boy’, but she was one of the few girls Sam hadn’t been able to scare off. Danny had the uncomfortable feeling that Paulina saw this as a challenge, and she was stubborn enough not to back down. This just proved it. Again.

Paulina Sanchez pulled a face. “Danny,” she purred, “just for one night, don’t you think—?”

“For the last time, no, Paulina,” Danny said. He turned around to see a smirking Desiree. He was surprised she was still here, actually, but he supposed she was waiting for Paulina to make another wish. He could guess what it was.

He let his hands glow green as he rose in the air to face Desiree. “It wasn’t very smart to let her wish me here, you know,” he said. “You’re just making my job easier.”

Desiree laughed. “I grant them as I hear them, Phantom.”

Danny frowned. “No, you don’t. You twist them. That’s what you do. Make monster trucks actual monster trucks and all that.” He glanced back down at Paulina. “What’d you wish for?” he asked, suddenly wary.

“Oh, the usual boring drivel,” Desiree answered. “To spend the night in your arms and that sort of thing. You’re confined here until dawn, if you’re wondering, while I’m out granting wishes.” Her smile grew suddenly. “Have fun.”

“Hey!” Danny yelled, sending an ectoblast after her. She might not have had a lot of time to grant wishes, but she still looked a bit too strong to be easily caught in the thermos, even if he wished her in there. “You can’t do that!”

Another laugh. “I already have.”

Danny sent another ectoblast in her direction and flew towards her. Desiree hadn’t trapped him in a cage, after all. She couldn’t seriously expect—

Danny groaned and twisted around in the air to right himself after the impact. He’d hit…something, and had only barely managed to dodge his own ectoblast, which had been reflected back at him by that same something. “What’d you do,” he asked, rubbing his nose, “put up an invisible ghost shield that only works on me?”

Desiree, who was three feet away and somehow out of his reach, smirked again. “Height restriction’s twenty feet,” she said.

“My parents can get me out of here, you know,” he warned her.

Desiree shrugged. “It won’t matter what form you’re in. You’re not leaving that yard until the sun comes up, even through the Ghost Zone. You might as well enjoy yourself.”

“Enjoy myself?” Danny repeated. “Sam’s going to kill me even if I don’t land all night!” This was one benefit with Desiree; he could sometimes distract her with conversation, so long as he watched what he said. It wasn’t much different than letting Technus get caught up in one of his rants, really. It bought him time.

Of course, he still had no idea what to wish for to get out of this.

Then again, maybe he didn’t have to. Danny smiled. He’d fought Desiree often enough that he’d realized he could sometimes exploit a loophole in one of her wishes, sort of like she could take a general wish and turn it into a nightmare. He didn’t know the exact terms of this one, but he was pretty sure it would work.

Desiree noticed his smile and crossed her arms. “You aren’t getting out of this one until your time’s up,” she said.

“I can make Paulina regret her words,” he said. “She’ll kick me out. I’ll catch up with you in five minutes.”

“I’ll save you the trouble,” Desiree said. “You can’t go invisible or intangible, as per your friend’s instructions. She didn’t want to lose her hold on you.”

Great. That probably meant that even if he did manage to get out of the yard, he’d be bogged down by everyone else he was trying to avoid. “Hey, wait!” he yelled as Desiree started off again. “I’m not done talking to you yet.”

A laugh. “I’m done with you,” came the reply. “Can’t you hear all the wishes people are making, Phantom? It’s glorious.”

It was also resulting in, from what he could see, things like three-headed dragons and wild horses and—who the heck would wish for a fifty-foot snake? Okay, so he couldn’t understand the dragon, either. He suspected the horses were a result of a little girl wishing for a pony or two, though. Stupid traditions of wishing on shooting stars….

“I wish,” Danny yelled, causing Desiree to stop and look back at him again, “I wish…. Man, sometimes I just wish no one else knew my secret!” He wouldn’t be in this position if Paulina didn’t know he was Fenton and Phantom. Well, he might be in this position as Phantom, but if he’d snuck away and Fenton turned up, he’d be out on the street in no time. Before she’d found out he was the ghost boy, the only time Paulina had had time for him was when she’d wanted something.

Desiree had an incredulous look on her face, and she flew closer to him again. “Really?” she asked.

Danny suddenly had a very, very bad feeling. “Um…no?”

He’d asked Clockwork if he could have a do-over of the events that followed the Disasteroid and had been refused. He hadn’t thought to ask Desiree before. Well, yes, he had, but he’d ruled that out. Desiree couldn’t pull something like that off. As far as he knew, it was out of her power range.

Danny looked at Desiree’s enlarged form and swallowed.

Her usual power range, anyway.

Now that he thought about it, it probably wasn’t. If he hadn’t revealed himself in front of the TV cameras, the people who knew his secret would be considerably fewer. And Desiree could handle wiping the memories of a handful of people. She’d done it when she’d erased Sam from his life, after all.

Oh, crud. Why had he ever opened his mouth? He knew better than to make careless wishes in front of Desiree. And he knew he could’ve said something a heck of a lot more harmless.

Unfortunately, there was ‘knowing’ and there was ‘doing’.

“I, uh, take it back? I wish I hadn’t made that wish?”

Desiree laughed. “Doesn’t work like that,” she said. “So you have wished it, so shall it be!”

As the wave of power rolled towards Danny, he closed his eyes and flinched away, knowing things were going to be a whole lot worse when he opened them again.

2XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

“Yoo-hoo! Ghost boy!”

Danny cracked open one eye. Desiree was gone, but that wasn’t a surprise. With both eyes open again, he tentatively put a hand forward and found that he was still bound to Paulina’s yard. Great. That hadn’t changed, either.

He looked down to see Paulina waving at him and couldn’t help but wonder if anything had changed. Maybe Desiree had been bluffing after all. About being able to un-wish a wish, at least. She probably hadn’t been kidding about putting a cap on how high he could fly or anything like that, though. He wasn’t that lucky.

He sighed and drifted back to the ground. “Paulina, I can’t—”

“Oh, you remember me!” He suddenly found himself enfolded in a hug. “I knew you would!”

“Uh, Paulina?” Danny said, trying—and failing—to phase through her arms to get out of her death grip. “Why didn’t you think I’d know who you were?” Maybe Desiree hadn’t been bluffing after all.

Paulina smiled at him. “We never have been properly introduced,” she said.

Danny swallowed. Okay, Desiree hadn’t been bluffing. But he didn’t really want to find out what Paulina meant by ‘properly introduced’. This time last year, yes, he probably would’ve been overjoyed. Now?

Now, he had to get out of here before Sam really had a reason to kill him.

[shellheadtmarc]

since apparently no writing’s happening, i got a few headcanons i wanna tuck safely here instead of the verse servers for easy access, so here we go.  i still don’t have those fancy banners because i’m lazy.  maybe one day.

v; fallout group + tony practices his russian with vadim and yefim bobrov, owners and operators of the dug out inn in diamond city.  other than jarvis, there really isn’t anyone else, and he’d get rusty otherwise.  what good does it do in a world still recovering from nuclear war?  well, none, but it retains for him a sense of normalcy, it gives validation to the bobrov brothers, and it makes the diamond city locals nervous.  that last bit is his favorite. + he has various safehouses/boltholes/supply caches tucked across the commonwealth, the longer the stays there.  these typically have things like ammunition, extra stockpiles of weapons and clothing, a place to crash for a night, some food and water supplies - things like that.  he’s learned the hard way it’s better to keep things like that on the go, because you never know when you’ll have to make a run for it.  and there are a lot of them, scattered all over the place in inconspicuous buildings and holes in the ground and out of the way places.  the only people other than he himself that probably knows where all of them are:  stephen and elle, eventually yes man and maccready and thor.  everyone else probably knows where a handful are, such as zetta and nick and possibly elizabeth.  also fun fact:  in most there’s at least a rudimentary set up so stephen can have his tea if he stop in and uses one. + he supports the core mission of the railroad but he has literally no interest in joining up.  which is a good thing because they really don’t want tony, either.  not even as a tourist.  he’s too flashy, too vocal, and most importantly, too much of a wildcard.  instead, he throws his support behind the minutemen.  he has bigger goals than ‘save the synths’, because that’s very important, but being blinkered to just synths isn’t big enough for him.  he needs to think bigger, act bigger, and do bigger. + the reason tony doesn’t really care for diamond city has to do with mistakes repeating themselves.  diamond city is a thriving settlement, and he absolutely won’t deny it, but it’s built on the back of classism and capitalism, and that’s what eventually tore the old world down, and while he has resources and influence to a degree back in new york, in boston he’s just another scavver and he gets the opportunity to see things as a normal scavver.  there’s a huge divide between haves and have nots in diamond city, and he is, currently, very much a have not, with the exception of his fairly unique skillset.  there’s too much red tape in the way of things that would actually improve the lives of the whole commonwealth, and there’s a very outside the wall vs. in the wall mindset that just...pisses him off.  he likes the dug out.  he likes power noodles.  he’ll occasionally pop into fallon’s basement and flirt with arturo.  but otherwise?  he can leave it. + he’s rebuilding trashed synths and giving them a remodel to take the away from the institute and use as provisioners and security.  his first is moe (it’s an acronym), whomst he found in fort hagen and was a trial run for the os and personality matrices he develops so that each member of this ground force he reclaims has a unique personality and ai.  moe is really buggy.  really buggy.  or, as tony puts it, “the fucking moon moon of synths”.  but moe also learns like the other reclaimed synths, just at a different pace, and tony refuses to reprogram him, because he has developed a personality of his own.  so moe might not be the smartest of the ground force out there, and tony keeps him close to his home base for that reason (the last time he wandered off he was attacked by ferals and lost his metal jaw), but he keeps the lab in the control center of fort hagen tidy.  he is, in effect, something of the commonwealth’s dum-e. + he once stole a protectron with a unique paint job and 3-d glasses glued to its head from a movie theater.  said protectron alternates now between fort hagen and sanctuary.  there’s a whole plot point centered around it, but the protectron and 3-d glasses are the most important bits. + the percentage of profanity that sprinkles his vocabulary as increased exponentially.  a lot of this has to do with...man, that’s just how the wasteland is.  it rubs off and slips in without him even being aware of it, because the wasteland is not a kind and gentle and disney friendly place.  in addition to this, he and maccready have a swear jar going and getting tony to pay in is like pulling teeth, but rest assured maccready can let one little “damn” slip and tony’s rattling the jar (well, can) under his nose.

[thebrewstorian]

Collection Report: Portland Brewing Company Records, 1984-2021

I like to say that this collection arrived under cover of darkness, but really it was just a really rainy February day when Ryan Pappe dropped these records off. 

This post will give you information about the collection, as well as some pictures of the processing. 

The Portland Brewing Company Records include brewing records, photographs, promotional and training materials, and ephemera.

The brewing records were kept in binders -- many, many binders. 

The Portland Brewing Company was incorporated by Fred Bowman and Art Larrance in 1983; it opened in 1986. Hart Brewing was founded by Beth Hartwell and Tom Baune in Kalama, Washington in 1984; the name was changed to Pyramid Breweries in 1996. The Portland brewery facility closed in 2021. At various points, these companies merged and purchased by other companies.

History of the Portland Brewing Company

The Portland Brewing Company was incorporated by Fred Bowman and Art Larrance in 1983. 

We have the Fred Bowman Papers too. 

Bert Grant, owner of Yakima Brewing Company, was hired in 1985 as a technical consultant to assist in designing the brewhouse. The company was initially funded by a small public offering in 1985 that raised $125,000.

In 1986, the brewpub opened at 1339 NW Flanders Street in an old creamery building in Northwest Portland; they only produced draft beer. In 1988, they began bottling their flagship Portland Ale in 32-ounce package and in 1989 began bottling it as a 12-ounce 6-pack. In 1991, Tony Adams and Mac and Scott MacTarnahan invested capital in the brewery, and that same year the company embarked on an ambitious financial plan to build a new brewery. In 1992, they expanded their distribution network to the seven western states and won a gold medal at the Great American Beer Festival with MacTarnahan’s Ale.

With a growing market and need for increased production, in 1992, they purchased brewing equipment from Sixenbräu in Nördlingen, Germany, including copper brewing vessels, and began production of a new brewery at 2730 NW 31st Avenue with an expected 65,000-barrel annual capacity, which was more than double the production at the Flanders facility. The new brewery met its full production level in 1993. In spring of 1995, Portland Brewing purchased and installed a new state of the art bottling line from Krones Inc., which could rinse, fill, cap, and label up to 250 bottles a minute, roughly twice the amount of the old line. With the addition of equipment and increased tank space, by 1995 the brewing capacity was 100,000 barrels annually and by 1996 was 135,000 barrels.

The company embarked on several campaigns to raise money for expansion and renovation projects. In 1992, the company offered 100,000 shares of common stock to Oregon residents (which sold in 32 days); the next year, they offered an additional 100,000 shares to Oregon and Washington residents (which sold in 60 days). These two offerings raised $1 million. In 1994, they offered an additional 490,000 shares to finance increased production capabilities, marketing efforts, and German style beer hall and restaurant; they raised $2.8 million. In 1995, they raised $2.9 million, which brought the total number of shareholders to approximately 5,500, number of outstanding shares to 2.1 million, and the total dollars raised by investors to almost $7 million. The NW Flanders Street facility was remodeled in summer 1996 and a new kitchen was added.

By 1998 the company was in financial trouble and MacTarnahan bought $3.5 million in debt in exchange for stock; as a result, Portland Brewing began using MacTarnahan labeling. Portland Brewing Company merged with Saxer Brewing Company of Lake Oswego in 2000.

History of Hart Brewing and Pyramid Breweries

Hart Brewing was founded by Beth Hartwell and Tom Baune in Kalama, Washington in 1984; the name of the brewery was a contraction of Hartwell. Five investors from Seattle acquired Hart Brewing in 1989 and then purchased Thomas Kemper Brewing Company from Poulsbo, Washington in 1992. They also moved to a new, larger facility in 1992 and by 1994, Hart Brewing was the fourth largest craft brewery in the United States. In 1995, Hart Brewing opened a new brewery in Seattle, known as the Seattle Alehouse (closed in 2020). Also in 1995, the company became a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ exchange, issuing 2.6 million shares. The name was changed to Pyramid Breweries in 1996. In 1997, Pyramid Brewery opened a brewing facility and restaurant in Berkeley, California (closed in 2015).

Hart Brewing’s first beer was Pyramid Pale ale, and it was followed in 1985 by Pyramid Wheaten Ale, the first year-round wheat beer made in America since Prohibition. Pyramid Snow Cap Ale was released in 1986. They began making a Hefeweizen in 1993 and an Apricot Ale in 1994.

History of Portland Brewing and Pyramid Breweries

In 2004, MacTarnahan, then 88 years old, sold the Portland Brewing Company to Pyramid Breweries of Seattle. The Portland Brewing facility was renamed “MacTarnahan's Brewing Company.” MacTarnahan died later that year.

In 2008, Pyramid Breweries was acquired by Magic Hat Brewing Company, which was subsequently bought by North American Breweries of Rochester, New York in 2010. In 2012, the company was purchased by the Costa Rican company Florida Ice & Farm Co. In 2013, the brewery announced it would return to the Portland Brewing Company name.

After declining revenue, the company closed the Portland taproom and restaurant in 2018 and ceased production entirely in 2021.

What’s in the collection?

The bulk of the collection is in Series 1, Brewing Records. These are arranged chronologically and by type of record. There are a few exceptions for early Hart Brewing beers, but most of these records document production at the Portland facility. However, the name of the company and the title of the forms changed several times, and that is reflected on the folder titles.

Series 1: Brewing Records, 1993-2021 

The brew house and cellar logs record data about ingredients, temperatures, waste, and other measurements of the brewing process and when the beer is in storage. A Bright Tank is a tank used to hold beer in preparation for packaging; the term “bright” refers to “bright beer,” which is beer that has been rendered clear by filtration, centrifugation, fining, and/or maturation. Pilot brewing systems are the secondary systems used by breweries; typically, they produce a fraction of the beer compared to the main system and are used for experimenting with new styles or ingredients. Of note is the Pyramid Breweries recipe archive, Pyramid beer lab reports, and the Craft Brand trademark portfolio (Dundee, Magic Hat, Portland Brewing, Pyramid) and includes beer information sheets and marketing materials.

So many brewing records!

And fun names. 

And weird additions. 

And some spilled beer. 

Series 2 through 4 are organized by company. The Portland Brewing Company materials include photographs of facilities, events, and equipment; marketing, promotional, packaging items; news clippings; building plans; and training materials. The Pyramid Breweries, Inc. materials include marketing and promotional items, news clippings, and a training manual. The Hart Brewing Company materials include marketing and promotional items, as well as a scrapbook with photographs, correspondence, ephemera, and news clippings. 

Of special note: Series 3: Hart Brewing, 1984-1993 

Scrapbook with items that reflect the growth and changes in the company in the first years. Included are drafts of company description and purpose statements; photographs of events, company offices, employees, and equipment; coasters and product table tents; invitations (e.g. Northwest Regional Wine Tastings); fliers for tastings (e.g. Western Washington Beverage tasting at Rays Boathouse) or events (e.g. The Great Northwest Beer Festival); correspondence related to events or donations (e.g. Bellevue's Peter Puget Festival and The Xerces Society); advertisements; and menus. Also included are news clippings by authors such as Vince Cottone and Fred Eckhardt with highlighted sections for information about Hart, including the opening of Hart Brewing, beer releases, regional sales, articles about Beth Hartwell and Tom Baune; and information about their sale of the brewery in 1989. 

For the records, Gov. Booth’s wife had a first name, but I’m not sure if this is Jean or Cynthia.

This scrapbook was disassembled for preservation and access.

What about related materials? 

There are a lot. 

The Portland Brewing Collection is complemented by several other collections. The Fred Bowman Papers feature digital surrogates of papers and photographs documenting the creation and expansion of one Portland Brewing Company. The Art Larrance Collection, including digital surrogates of articles of incorporation for Portland Brewing, company newsletters, and pre-Prohibition hops and brewing advertising and company materials (items in this collection have been digitized and are available online.)

The Oregon Hops and Brewing Archives Oral History Collection (OH 35) includes interviews from industry professionals, journalists, and community members. Notable are interviews with Portland Brewing founders Fred Bowman and Art Larrance, Hart Brewing founder Beth Hartwell, and brewers Ryan Pappe and Doug Hodges.

The Fred Eckhardt Papers include photographs and research files for Portland Brewing, Hart Brewing, and Pyramid Breweries. The Brewing and Fermentation Research Collection (MSS BFRC) contains information pertaining to the Pacific Northwest brewing industry; included are newsletters for homebrew clubs, ephemera, news clippings, and noteworthy industry publications.

It takes a long time to process collections!