#all the images in this catalog are black and white

[everydreamrecorded]

Silk’n Circuit #1 by Mosa Kinoshita.

Weaving, embroidery, silk, gold metallic thread, printed circuit board. Found in the early 1980s Fiber Structure National II exhibition catalog.

[fear-is-truth]

How would Patrick react to you getting pregnant?

getting knocked up by patrick bateman .ᐟ.ᐟ

tw ; unplanned pregnancy (duh), intrusive thoughts, suggestive, not proofread at all

a/n: i finished writing this then forgot about its existence lol. anyways, safe sex is important !!

if you’re already married:

patrick’s reaction to the pregnancy would be shaped by his obsession with image. being 27 and married, he’d likely face pressure from his colleagues. he’s the quintessential wall street yuppie: the suit, the power, the status. kids? they’re just another box to check for the perfect american dream.

he’d flip from denial to forced enthusiasm, playing the role of the expectant father. he’d talk about starting a college fund, buying a bigger apartment, even hiring the best nanny money can buy. it wouldn’t be about the baby itself, though—it’s about appearances. patrick would treat the pregnancy like he treats his designer wardrobe: another accessory to show off.

in private, he’d still be unraveling. he’d resent the disruption to his routine, the messiness a baby would bring. but he’d also feel trapped. divorce or walking away isn’t an option—how would that look? his friends are your friends, after all. patrick would pour his insecurities into overcompensation, obsessively showering you with gifts and planning every detail of your life.

but behind closed doors, he would remain emotionally unavailable most of the time. he’d throw himself into his work, his gym routine, anything to avoid facing the reality of impending fatherhood.

he’d have a mental meltdown over your body changing—obsessing over how “the weight is distributed” while simultaneously marveling (inappropriately) at how your chest looks fuller. (“…better than any breast implants”), the way your skin glows, but also how your clothes fit differently. he doesn’t even try to hide his vanity. “you’re still beautiful, obviously,” he adds quickly, “but maybe we should talk to a trainer after the baby is born. just to make sure you bounce back quickly.”

he’d absolutely flip between moments of pathetic awkwardness and his usual cold arrogance. for example, he’d randomly caress your growing belly, but then suddenly blurt out “your… tits looks great, but do stretch marks happen to everyone?”

he’s constantly offering unsolicited opinions about your diet and fitness routine. he’s the husband who insists you on buying expensive organic groceries and then criticises you for craving something as mundane as ice cream. but when you do cry about it (because hormones), he panics and makes the whole situation awkward.

if you dare deny him sex because of pregnancy hormones, patrick would sulk like a child. but then quickly bounce back to showering you with gifts to stay on your good side.

patrick’s jealousy of your attention is borderline absurd. he starts competing with the baby before it’s even born, constantly reminding you of his accomplishments.

maternal clothes for you are only the best—chanel, hermès, and gucci maternity collections. he refuses to let you look frumpy. if you wear anything “off-brand,” he’ll throw passive-aggressive comments like “are you trying to look like a suburban soccer mom?”. also, he’d browse catalogs and stores for gucci, armani and burberry baby clothes.

the nursery is black & white and minimalist—think pristine white walls, sleek italian furniture, and splashes of gray for “warmth.” no toys that clash with the aesthetic. he insists on vitra rocking chairs, fendi baby blankets, and a custom crib.

patrick spends hours making sure the initials won’t spell something embarrassing and that the full name looks good on a business card.

he’d pick out names that scream “old money”. for boys: theodore, alexander, nathaniel. for girls: charlotte, victoria, isabelle, madeleine, genevieve, anastasia.

his obsession with control would bleed into the smallest details. he’d blast his favorite music at your presence—huey lewis & the news, whitney houston, or talking heads—arguing it’s “good for the baby’s development,” while monologuing about how these artists represent true genius.

he’d talk to your stomach, but awkwardly, fumbling over words in his usual detached, overly-rehearsed way: “your dad’s a very successful man, you know… i hope you inherit my bone structure.”

if it’s an unplanned pregnancy:

if you’re not married, holy shit… the stakes are different, but patrick’s reaction is just as selfish. first of all, the pregnancy is absolutely. his. fucking. fault. patrick hates wearing condoms (would sometimes straight up lie about wearing one) and he always tells you that nothing “bad” will happen—until it does.

his immediate response would be to downplay the situation. “are you sure?” he’d ask flatly, trying to buy time. his inner monologue would be a chaotic swirl of paranoia and blame—his mind races with possibilities: is this some gold-digging ploy? a mistake? could it even be his? and he even has the audacity to ask “are you sure it’s mine?”

the next stage would be denial. patrick doesn’t deal well with reality when it doesn’t serve him. he’d try to act as though nothing has changed, refusing to acknowledge the pregnancy in conversation. he might even subtly suggest that “it’s early days, we don’t have to make any decisions yet,” thinly veiling his hope that you’ll take care of it and spare him the inconvenience. but when it becomes clear that you’re keeping the baby, his panic would fucking escalate.

he might lash out, picking fights over nothing or disappearing for hours at a time to “work late” (read: spiral into his usual vices—drugs, violence, torturing sex workers).

he’d start compensating in weird ways. he’d lavish you with gifts—jewelry, designer clothes, a bigger apartment—anything to make you think he’s excited, supportive even. they’re attempts to placate you, to make the problem go away without addressing it.

in private, patrick would unravel. his inner monologue would become a torrent of rage, fear, and morbid fantasies. he’d think about running away, faking his own death, or worse—doing something drastic to ensure the pregnancy never reaches full term.

the idea of fatherhood would gnaw at him. as a child of divorce, patrick is deeply insecure, and the thought of raising a child dredges up unresolved feelings about his own father. the self-loathing buried under his narcissism rearing its head. he’d compare himself to his colleagues and realise that many of them already have kids—or at least talk about starting families. peer pressure.

this sense of competition would push him to overcompensate. he’d brag about how “ready” he is, throwing money at every conceivable solution: top-tier obstetricians, prenatal yoga classes, nursery designers. he’d try to mold himself into the perfect father-to-be, but only because he wants to win.

but patrick being patrick, his selfishness bleeds through. he bitches about your mood swings—“it’s like living with a completely different person”—but also refuses to acknowledge his role in them.

he spends hours staring at himself in the mirror, wondering if fatherhood will make him less attractive. he starts paying extra attention to his skincare routine, convinced that stress is causing him to wrinkle.

[laurentidal]

Monitored Activity

The email had come from IT right at the beginning of the workday with the subject line "Attn HR. Problematic Monitored Activity."

Dear Miss Villanova, In accordance with company policy, we are writing to inform you that employee Joseph Ulish was found to be acting in violation of the company's internet usage policies during our last audit of online activity. We are attaching evidence for your review and action. Thank you, Martin Shore, IT Dept. Head

Lily gave a long sigh. It was the first time an employee had been caught looking at porn on company time, though it was certainly bound to happen eventually. She took a breath and gave herself a little hope. Who knows. Maybe it wasn't porn at all. Maybe Joe was on poker stars or he was shit talking the company on social media.

But as she opened the attached list of websites, she knew that those hopes were false ones.

Sixty-two websites were enumerated and organized by the date of first access. Accompanying the list was a breakdown of how many times each site had been visited and how long he had spent there. Lily whistled softly to her empty office. With these kind of numbers, it was a miracle Joe had gotten any work done. At the very least, he should be getting fired for theft of time.

She opened the first site and was shocked to see only text. Only a glance would tell you that it was almost certainly smut, but still. If he was going to try to get away with porn at work, text was certainly the most effective method for staying under the radar. And what exactly was "erotic mind control?" Out of curiosity, Lily found herself reading the whole way through the story. She wasn't too prudish to admit to herself that he might have been onto something here. Certainly not appropriate for work! But this was certainly… having an effect, shall we say. Perhaps there was some unidentified fetishes still hiding in that brain of hers.

Site number two was actual porn. Just straight up pornography videos. She closed it quickly, lingering just long enough to catch sight of a few choice body parts. She was human after all.

Sites three through eighteen were all social media pages once again dedicated to this mind control stuff. It seemed there were an impossible number of sub-genre's to this already incredibly niche thing. Lily was fascinated. The pages were stories and videos and audio notes. Most fascinating were the pages seemingly dedicated entirely to flashing gifs and spinning graphics. She found herself scrolling through them slower and slower.

She never noticed when her left hand had left her keyboard.

More porn. More smut. More porn. More spirals. More spirals. More spirals.

By the time Lily reached the fiftieth website, her pants were around her ankles. She didn't know how many times she'd brought herself to completion. Her eyes were glassy and unblinking. The words in the stories and the images and comics burned into her psyche. And oh. The spirals.

The spirals.

She wished she could stop and stare at each one forever. But she had a job to do. She had a list to complete. Link sixty-two opened to a website that Joseph had accessed just this morning before she'd arrived. The site was a full screen spiral. Black and white with streaks of red and blue that made it seem more real than reality. And in the middle there was a button that simply read "Submit?"

She clicked it immediately. The button disappeared, leaving her staring at the spiral alone. She had no more work to do. The list was complete. She could just stay like this forever.

The door to her office opened and Joseph entered, followed by Martin.

"I'm so happy you were the one who got to review my file, Miss Villanova," Joseph said. He snapped his fingers and Martin locked the office door and began to undress. "Martin here was the first to comb through my activities. He did just a good job cataloging everything, don't you think? He had to look so long and so close to compile that report. He was shooting his first load before he'd finished reading that first story, weren't you?"

"Yes, Master," Martin said dully as the pair approached.

"He tastes quite nice, Lily," Joseph said right in her ear as she helplessly masturbated to the spiral. "You'll see."

Thanks for reading! If you are a fan of my work, consider buying me a coffee. Any contribution is insanely appreciated. 💖

[cityof2morrow]

OFB Props: Signs 001 Mix

Published: 7-14-2024 | Updated: N/A SUMMARY 100 posters, tags, and area signs to organize sale items on your commercial lots. Customize poster images, infographics, and barcodes/currency labels. Labels are color-coded in Simlish and English to make sorting objects easier: COOK (white label/for cookables, ingredients), DRINK (red label/ for edible beverages), EAT (pink label/for edible foods), GROW (green label/ for harvestables), HEAL (orange label/for functional medicines, motive boosters), CRAFT (brown label/for craftables, ingredients), STOCK (yellow label/for stockable foods, supplies), USE (blue label/for all other functional items), VIEW (gray label/for deco only items), and “other” (black and purple/barcode). These are general deco items, so you don’t have to sort by function/color unless you want to.

DETAILS Pets EP or higher. Cost: $3 | Environment: +1 | Buy > Deco > Wall Hangings/Sculptures (some signs don’t have to be placed on walls) You need my Poster Pack (Simmons, 2024) for all poster recolors. Sale Poster 7 (barcodes/currencies), and Ceiling Sign Info 4 (infographics) – are also REQUIRED. Recommended textures sizes for new recolors are 512x512 (poster graphics) and 512x128 (bar codes/currencies, infographics). Simlish text is ideal since images may be reversed on the back side of some objects, or slightly stretched. *Thumbnails for the BACK side of the posters may not generate accurately in the catalog (default game quirk). Make sure you can see the back side onscreen when recoloring. Finally, you’ll likely need “moveobjects on/off” and “snaptogrid on/off” cheats when placing some items.

ITEMS 11 ceiling signs (160-440 poly, poster images on signs 1-6 appear on back side). 11 standing signs (188-440 poly) 3 curved standing signs (548 poly) 10 wall signs (220-224 poly) 5 curved wall signs (874-876 poly) 3 curved/winged signs (1072 poly) 7 hanging signs (269 poly) 6 Instore Mini Billboards (4t2 conversion by NekoSayuri, 2018; EA; 116 poly) 5 Lil’ Business Chalkboards (4t2 conversion by itsnotdissimilar, 2016; EA; 128 poly) 7 framed posters (64 poly) 5 unframed posters (12 poly) 4 taped, unframed posters (108 poly) 3 unframed, wrinkled posters (18 poly) 3 wrinkled tags (34 poly) 3 smooth tags (155 poly, poster images appear reversed on back side) 3 info/barcode tags (4-60 poly) 6 easel signs (512 poly) 6 sales card on stands (card mesh by Cathee, 2008; 40 poly).

DOWNLOAD (choose one) from SFS | from MEGA *collection file included

COMPATIBILITY I recommend using Shift Everything (Lamare, 2022) or Object Freedom 1.02 (Fway, 2023) to enable floor-to-ceiling shiftability for all objects. This will also minimize shadow issues when shifting the signs. Some signs show a small gap between the frame and poster when viewed at close range. CREDITS Thanks: Sim Crafters, ChocolateCitySim. Sources: Beyno (Korn via BBFonts), EA/Maxis, Offuturistic Infographic (Freepik), Fonts (Gazifu, 2013; Ajaysims), Sims 3 (EA, 2009; 2012), Sims 4 (EA, 2014; 2020), Sims Mobile (EA, 2018), Supermarket Aisle Signs (Rockethorse, 2014), Synapticsims, Vector_Corp.

[platonicreaderinsertfanfic]

Etho: Vampire Hunter AU (Reader-Insert)

Female reader.

Word count: 932

“You’re up late.” A low voice broke the silence of the night.

You looked up from your work maintaining the chapel’s pews. “Etho!” He looked tired, green and black clothes splattered with dark stains, cloak hanging off his body in ripped shreds, and reddish brown smeared all over his bare hand and forearm. 

Adjusting the mask covering the lower half of his face, he smiled with his eyes. “Sister.” Like all your friends, he called you by your title rather than your name—just as you preferred. As far as you were concerned, Sister was your name, not the pretentious mouthful assigned to you by the Church when you came here years ago. Hiding your identity was tiresome, although preferable to being claimed by the powerful vampire queen who had marked you as a child.

“I take from the bloodstains all over your clothes, your hunt was successful?” Tossing your screwdriver onto the wooden pew beside where you were crouched, you leaned back to get a better look at your friend; it seemed none of the blood was his this time. Good.

He laughed, almost sounding embarrassed. “It doesn’t feel successful.”

“Rough kill?” You threw your long hair back over your shoulder, keeping it out of the way as you returned to work.

Running a blood smeared hand through his white hair, Etho’s mood darkened. “Even when I know my target has lived for over sixty years, and killed seventeen innocents, it’s not easy to drive a stake through the heart of a creature who looks like a ten year old girl…”

“The abbess always says you’re too kind for this work.” Picking up the screwdriver, you gave it a little flip in the air, catching it neatly. Gently running your left hand over the pile of screws, you grouped them as you counted in your head. 

Etho walked towards you. “Uh huhh. It’s hard to tell when she sends me out every week to kill monsters.” Sighing, he squeezed past your kneeling body to tiredly sink down onto the pew. “I shouldn’t have specialized in vampires.”

“Etho, don’t sit—!”

Splintering wood and the crash of ancient planks smacking beautiful tilework flooring interrupted your warning, as the pew gave way beneath him. “Ohhhhh.” He sounded pathetic as he lay on his back on the floor, gazing up at the decorative ceiling and gripping the pocket watch hanging from his belt. While you knew Etho must be a fierce and capable warrior, you found such an image hard to combine with the slightly hapless, and very nice guy, you had befriended over the years.

You groaned. “I had removed most of the screws attaching the seat to the end of the pew, so I could replace them with slightly wider screws, ‘cause the whole thing’s been getting loose, and had already been jury rigged before I ever came here…”

“Sorey.” His accent always came through when he apologized. “I’ll explain to the abbess it was my fault.”  

“Thanks.” Leaning back against the chapel wall, you mulled over how long it would take you to fix the pew, assuming you had the skill to properly fix something so old, delicate, and ornate—which you doubted.

“And speaking of the abbess, I got permission to take you with me on my next assignment.”

“Really?” At his words, all exasperation fled your body. Usually you were forbidden from leaving the abbey, on account of the mark on the back of your left hand. “Why?”

“You’re good at clerical work, right, Sister?”

You nodded eagerly as he continued.

“My target tonight had quite a library, and chests of saved correspondence. I needed someone to help me catalog all of it tomorrow, and since they made the mistake of letting me choose my own assistant…I chose you.” Propping himself up on his elbows, his eyes crinkled in a smile. “You do want to see more of the world, right? I don’t know why the abbess always keeps you cooped up in the church compound, but I figure I ought to show my friend a bit of the outside world if I can.”

Without thinking, you gripped the back of your left hand, imagining the green symbol hidden by your half finger glove. “I’d love that.” 

Rising from the rather destroyed pew, which now littered the floor, Etho stretched. “I need to wash up. Wouldn’t want to talk to the abbess looking like this.” He pointed at you. “Now go get some sleep, we have a long day tomorrow.”

“You’re going to talk to the abbess now?”

“Some of us aren’t night owls by choice, Sister.” Etho chuckled. “If I have to work this late, she can wake up to talk to me in the middle of the night from time to time.”

Grateful for his friendship, and this opportunity to leave the abbey, you wanted to hug the lanky man before you, but decorum held you back. The last thing you had ever wanted was rumors of being romantically involved with anyone, and years of practicing such thinking left little room for nebulous gestures like hugs—no matter how platonically you intended them. “Hm, you’ve always had fun being a bit of a pain.”

“Just doing my job.” His smile shone through in his voice as you packed up your toolbox.

“See you tomorrow, Etho.”

With a jaunty little wave, he strode off, leaving you to wonder what the next day held.

[mariacallous]

Mel Brooks, who mocked Adolf Hitler in his 1967 black comedy “The Producers,” has always made the case for satire as a weapon against tyranny.

“You have to bring him down with ridicule,” he told “60 Minutes” in 2001. “It’s been one of my lifelong jobs — to make the world laugh at Adolf Hitler.”

Of course, Hitler was long dead and there were 6 million fewer Jews on the planet when “The Producers” came out. Before and during World War II, satire proved a futile weapon against the Fuhrer: Charlie Chaplin made “The Great Dictator” in 1940, similarly reducing Hitler to a buffoon. But by the time the movie premiered that October, nearly 3 million German troops had smashed into France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.

 The futility of satire was on my mind when, on the Thursday after Election Day, I toured a new exhibit at the Jewish Museum on the Upper East Side in Manhattan. “Draw Them In, Paint Them Out: Trenton Doyle Hancock Confronts Philip Guston” features two artists, one Jewish, one African-American, whose work wrestles with racism, white supremacy and antisemitism. 

Philip Guston, born Phillip Goldstein in Montreal in 1913, was inspired by the ferment of the 1960s to create a series of cartoonish paintings featuring hooded members of the Ku Klux Klan. In these almost cheerful paintings, the frightening avatars of white supremacy look like costumed children out of a Charlie Brown comic (or, more accurately, from “Krazy Kat,” a popular comic strip in Guston’s youth).

“These buffoonish Klansmen still today are a real rebuke, I think, to bigotry in all its forms,” curator Rebecca Shaykin, who organized the exhibit, said at the press opening. “They’re still just so incredibly powerful.”

About a third of the gallery is given over to Guston’s Klan paintings, as well as some of his earlier work. The rest features riotous paintings, cartoons and a film by Hancock, a Texas-born artist who was a child when Guston died in 1980 in upstate Woodstock, New York. Many of Hancock’s paintings directly quote Guston’s Klansmen: They are in painting after painting featuring “Torpedoboy,” a sort of Black superhero who Hancock considers his alter ego. The Klansmen try to lynch Torpedoboy; he fights back with what looks like a watermelon. In one painting, Torpedoboy appears to drive a spike through a Klansman’s head. 

In the exhibition catalog, Hancock describes what attracted him to Guston’s Klan paintings. “I fell in love with the forms, and how he used comedy to take the wind out of the sails of the KKK,” says Hancock. “He helped me understand where I could take” my own characters.”

Whether audiences appreciate the comedy depends on their sensibility; remember, it was decades before “The Producers” lost its “notorious” label and became a beloved institution, at least in its adaptation as a Broadway musical. For some, the Klan paintings by both artists could be triggering. In 2020, at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, four major museums certainly thought so, and postponed a comprehensive survey of Guston’s work. They explained that “the powerful message of social and racial justice that is at the center of Philip Guston’s work can be more clearly interpreted.” 

When the exhibition did open at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 2022, the museum offered a pamphlet from a trauma specialist and a detour allowing visitors to skip the Klan-themed works. 

The Jewish Museum seems unfazed by that controversy. When I asked Shaykin about it she said the Guston-Hancock show had already been percolating when she learned of the postponement controversy. “It just made it more imperative, I think, that we bring Guston into the present moment and pair him with a contemporary artist,” she said. The only suggestion that images might be controversial is a sign outside the gallery, warning that the exhibit contains “explicit language” and “depictions of violence and lynchings.”

James Snyder, director of the Jewish Museum, also said the exhibit is right for the political moment. 

“We don’t do politics,” he said at the press preview, “but if you think about what happened the other day in the election, and where we actually really need to go, this show could not be more timely.”

What happened, of course, was the election of Donald Trump to a second, non-consecutive term. And if ever there was a rebuke to the power of satire, it is Trump. Trump was a nightly target of nearly all the late-night talk shows, where he was mocked as a racist, a would-be authoritarian, a grifter and a vulgarian. With just a week to go before the election, Jimmy Kimmel made a direct appeal to Republicans to reject Trump, calling him “the exact meeting point between QAnon and QVC.” For years Stephen Colbert wouldn’t even say his name.

Deserved or not, the jokes about Trump didn’t make a dent in his popularity — and perhaps they only added to it. In a recent episode of his podcast, “Revisionist History,” Malcolm Gladwell talks about the “satire paradox”: the idea that satire, by making the targets entertaining, actually makes them more sympathetic. He quotes Jonathan Coe, a British writer who argued in a 2023 essay that “laughter is not just ineffectual as a form of protest, but that it actually replaces protest.”

“Laughter, in a way, is a kind of last resort,” Coe tells Gladwell. “If you’re up against a problem which is completely intractable, if you’re up against a situation for which there is no human solution and never will be, then OK, let’s laugh about it.”

Not that Guston and Hancock are not deadly serious in their aims. The art is provocative and appropriately disturbing. The exhibit suggests that Guston, who changed his name from the identifiably Jewish “Goldstein” in 1935, later felt guilty about abdicating his identity — and as a result felt complicit with the Klansmen who sought to erase both Jews and Black people. “They are self-portraits,” Guston once said of the Klan paintings. “I perceive myself as being behind the hood.”

Hancock’s seemingly humorous works are also working through extremely grim themes. The Klan was active in his hometown of Paris, Texas, and in 2021 a KKK chapter planned a “White Unity Conference” there before it was blocked by the city council. Born in the mid-1970s, Hancock acknowledges in the catalog that he had benefited from the “heavy lifting” done by his elders in the Civil Rights Movement. But as a Black man and Black artist, he couldn’t ignore the legacy of racism. “It wasn’t until I was much older that I started to peel away those layers, or have them peeled away for me,” he says.

That’s why the most effective works in the exhibit aren’t satirical. At all. They include early work by Guston, who already as a teenager was depicting the Klan and lynchings in the social realist style of the day. Nothing about these dark, frightening images is cartoonish or ambiguous.

And perhaps the most arresting work in the show is a video installation by Hancock, showing scenes from the fairgrounds of Paris, Texas, juxtaposed with photographs of the lynching of a Black teenager, Henry Smith, which took place on the same site in 1893. Hundreds gather around the makeshift gallows to watch the execution. They seem to be having a very good time.   

“Draw Them In, Paint Them Out: Trenton Doyle Hancock Confronts Philip Guston” is on view at The Jewish Museum, 1109 Fifth Ave., through March 30, 2025.

[fatehbaz]

At the inauguration of the First Brazilian Congress of Eugenics in July of 1929, the physician and anthropologist Edgar Roquette-Pinto [...] exalted “eugenia” as the new science that, together with medicine and hygiene, would guarantee the efficiency and perfection of the race. [...] [This] agenda [...] brought architecture to the very core of the eugenics [...] movement [...]. [M]edical scientific discourses, first articulated in France, crossed the ocean [...]. [G]lobal movements, hygienics and eugenics, [...] became the dual vehicles for bringing architecture into active dialogue [...].

In Brazil, the nation was seen as a sick organism [...]. In the center of Rio de Janeiro, this mission brought together a diverse cast of characters: from the physicians and architects of the Parisian Musée Social, the early French think-tank [...], to the physicians and architects of Rio de Janeiro who formulated [...] Brazilian modernism, to Le Corbusier, who began consolidating a eugenicist ideology precisely during the months he spent in Brazil in the mid-1930s.

---

In the early 1920s, [...] a dramatic event occurred in Rio. [...] [A] sanitary and urban reform [movement] [...] reached its climax with the demolition of an entire populated mountain, the Morro do Castelo, in the center of the Brazilian capital. This mountain was no ordinary mountain; it was the original site where the colonial city [...] had been established in 1567. [...] As far back as 1798, a medical report had argued for the mountain’s demolition [...]. [T]he mountain came to be seen as the very negation of modernity itself; a reservoir of vice and disease with a motley “marginal” population, including poor Blacks and formerly enslaved people who, according to the elites, invaded the center of the city [...].

The extensive territory that resulted from this demolition was immediately occupied by the 1922 International Exhibition. [...] Promoting itself as a tabula rasa, the exhibition represented a literal “triumph” over the territory - a territory now cleansed of its history and unwanted inhabitants. It’s more than 500-page catalog is striking in its complete elimination of all traces of the African and indigenous components of Brazilian culture. [...] Its images demonstrate a new alliance between beauty, health, tropicality, and modernization that Brazilian elites adopted [...].

Shortly after the exhibition, in 1922, and lasting until 1938, neo-colonial architecture was declared by the government to be the national style, mandatory for every building that would represent Brazil abroad. [...] It was not a coincidence that all this - the demolition of the mountain, the elimination of Rio de Janeiro’s original urban nucleus, the displacement of its poor residents, and the construction of the exhibition pavilions - was executed almost simultaneously with new policies and mandates such as the “white only” decree of 1921, which prohibited the immigration of Blacks to Brazil. [...] No one illustrates this connection between race and architecture better than Lucio Costa [the architect of Brasilia, the new modernist national capital city] - who, in 1928, made this racist link in a newspaper article: [...]

All architecture is a question of race. [...] Everything is a function of race. If the breed is good, and the government is good, the architecture will be good. Talk, discuss, gesticulate: our basic problem is selective immigration; the rest is secondary [...].

---

When Le Corbusier traveled for the second time to Brazil in 1936, his discourses were centered on nature, death, and the racial and sexual “other.” [...] In 1936, while preparing his series of talks in Rio de Janeiro, Le Corbusier made a sketch on a piece of cardboard that distilled and concretized [...] rationales of modernity: change the environment, change the man. Written at the top is the word “Castello,” followed by the name “Lucio Costa,” the phrases “pedro aller police” and “Castello coûts clichés,” the name of architect “Carlos Porto,” and the phrase “Acheter livre Carrel.” The latter was a reminder for him to buy the new bestseller by the French Nobel prize-winning physician Alexis Carrel, Man The Unknown, an unmistakable call for the implementation of eugenics and manifesto for white supremacy. What made Le Corbusier think of Carrel while thinking of Rio de Janeiro?

It is not a mere coincidence that Castelo, one of the most significant eugenic laboratories in Latin America, is the first word that appears on the cardboard.

But Castelo was not only the name of the pulverized mountain from which thousands of “undesirable” inhabitants had been displaced, or the stage for the 1922 international exhibition with its neocolonial pavilions and its image of white Brazil, or the epicenter of the master urban plan that Agache had designed for Rio. Castello was also where Lucio Costa was designing the new building for the Ministry of Health and Education, the institution charged with developing and enforcing Brazil’s eugenic policies under Getulio Vargas’ new authoritarian regime, for which Le Corbusier had been invited to be a design consultant. This sketch links the dramatic transformation of the urban territory of Rio de Janeiro to Lucio Costa’s project and to Carrel’s vision for remaking society. [...]

In his Oeuvre complète 1934-1938, Le Corbusier included a sketch of the Brazilian Ministry of Health and Education building. This new ministry [...] later became the symbol of Brazilian modernism [...]. Gustavo Capanema, the first Minister of Health and Education, had commissioned both the building, which he called the Ministry of Man and was destined to “prepare, compose, and perfect the Brazilian man,” [...]. Capanema pondered, “How will the body of the Brazilian man be, of the future Brazilian man, not the vulgar man or the inferior man but the best exemplar of the race? How will his head be? His color? The shape of his face? His physiognomy?” [...] When Le Corbusier came back [from Brazil] to France and began collaborating with Alexis Carrell under the [Nazi] Vichy regime, his vision of a clinically inspired habitat where all human needs can be met reached a new level of specificity. [...] He was convinced that the human body, the anatomo-politics of its productivity, and the built environment should be managed by the State. In a 1941 broadcast he affirmed that "[...] The degeneration of the house, the degeneration of the family, are one."

---

All text above by: Fabiola López-Durán. "Fantasies of Whiteness". e-flux Architecture. Sick Architecture series. April 2022. At: e-flux dot com slash architecture/sick-architecture/461057/fantasies-of-whiteness/ [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Presented here for criticism, teaching, commentary purposes.]

[totowlff]

the encounter

➝ a painting, an agent and a crime. sounds good, no?

➝ word count: 3,9k

➝ warnings: descriptions of crimes, reader being clumsy

➝ author’s note: i finally felt safe enough to post this story. it's a more or less alternative universe, since it has some real things (i'd love to know your bets). hope you like it.

It was an ugly, gloomy day in Vienna, and you found yourself sitting in the cafe you tended to frequent these days. As far as anybody knew, and as far as you told anybody, it was a nice place to come and work during the day, so almost every day for the past few weeks, you sat in your usual seat by the window and sipped coffee as you ostensibly worked on something important on your laptop. As far as anybody asked, the cafe was comfortable enough and it was fairly close to your apartment, and you simply weren’t quite as productive when you were working at home. That’s what you told people, along with the fact that you worked in finance.

You weren’t working on anything at the moment, because your mind was elsewhere, and your eyes were fixed on something across the street from the cafe. You were staring at an old antique shop, with a dark green facade and gold lettering across its front window. You were watching the people inside, talking animatedly, trying to imagine what they were speaking about.

— Maria — you heard someone say. The name was familiar, after all, that was the name that was listed in the identity documents that your boss handed to you in a manila envelope a few weeks earlier, along with an investigation report. Hearing the name brought you back to when he was briefing you on the operation, which had been named “Królowa”, a reference to the object of the investigation. You had been assigned to search for information on a triptych painted by the Polish master painter, Jan Matejko, that depicted a procession accompanying the Virgin Mary and the Baby Jesus to a cathedral in Kraków.  

The triptych was considered a lost Polish national treasure, stolen from its most recent owner during the Nazi occupation. Previous investigations into its whereabouts dragged on for years, buried in the files of the Europol, based in The Hague, in the Netherlands. When you started working there, almost a decade earlier, the case was stuck on a cold lead about the piece's last owner, Count Hieronim Tarnowski, a Polish aristocrat.

The last documented whereabouts of the triptych was within Montelupi Palace in Kraków, which was owned by the Tarnowski family. However, the palace and all of its contents were expropriated by Nazi command in 1942, before the interior of the Palace was consumed by fire. From then on, there was nothing further documented about the of the painting. It and some other cultural treasures seized by the Nazis were long considered lost by the Polish government and Europol. That is, until one day, you found something that made you dig deeper into the case.

You were doing some research for another art theft case when you found an open thread about Matejko on an art forum. While you were reading praise for the painter's work, you came across a photo posted by a user called Piter1974 that caught your attention.

It was a photo of the triptych, clearly taken with a modern camera given the quality and colors of the image. They contrasted sharply with the images attached to the investigation that you had as reference, which had been taken from pre-war catalogs. The only existing photos of the work were all in black-and-white, taken with early 20th century cameras. You did some cursory checking on the authenticity of the image, and didn't hesitate to print it out. You placed it on your boss’ desk with an air of confidence. 

— What is that? — your boss, a burly, perpetually grumpy Frenchman named Romeo, asked.

— It’s Matejko’s triptych.

He looked unconvinced as he cocked an eyebrow. 

— Came to show me your Photoshop skills? The colors look nice, but…

— I didn't color this photo.

Romeo blinked.

— Do you mean…

— It's a recent image — you said, proudly — The EXIF data shows that it was taken on October 6, 2022.

— Where did you find this?

— On an internet forum. A user posted this in a discussion thread about Jan Matejko's works.

— You…

— It’s not AI or Photoshop. I checked, Romeo — you replied, smiling — The triptych still exists!

Your discovery led to the case being reopened, with the image being examined pixel-by-pixel for any inconsistencies, and your findings being verified. The EXIF data buried in the picture not only showed the date, but it showed what kind of camera the image had been taken by, which was a high-end professional model popular with archivists and museum curators for taking high-quality images suitable for cataloging. 

You felt frustration wash over you. The trail seemed to have gone cold again, after all, how many art galleries were there in the world? It was like you were looking for a needle in a haystack.

But again, fortune smiled on you. While analyzing an old catalog of Jan Matejko's works written by a Polish author, you came across new information about the triptych's whereabouts. According to the catalog’s author, after being confiscated by the Nazis, the triptych briefly reappeared in the 1960s, in the inventory of a well-known antiques shop in central Vienna. Your relief was short-lived when you saw the name of the shop’s owner. 

“Of course Bednarczyk is involved in this”, you thought to yourself, letting out a long sigh.

Czesław Bednarczyk was an old acquaintance of the Polish justice system. He had been a notorious smuggler, taking vast amounts of Poland’s cultural treasures and gold abroad, most of it to be sold in his antique shop in central Vienna, on the Dorotheergasse. 

Despite the mountain of evidence against him, the antiquarian never faced justice for his crimes, nor did his reputation within the art world suffer. When he died in the late 90s, the funeral was attended by great figures from the industry, all paying their respects to the patriarch's family, who worked to preserve his legacy to this very day. 

Bednarczyk's antique shop was taken over by his eldest daughter, Elisabeth. She was known for being one of the leading experts on Viennese porcelain, which kept her from being a major suspect. However, you thought, that didn't mean the place couldn't be involved in some way, as other Matejko pieces had been sold by the Bednarczyks over the years. And so, you went to Vienna with a false identity and a single objective: find the triptych.

After arriving in the city and settling into the apartment that would be your base, you tried to investigate the surroundings of Dorotheergasse, the narrow lane where the antique shop was located. In short order, you found the perfect place to monitor movements in and out of the shop without raising any suspicion — a cafe next to the Jewish Museum across the street. — Maria — the voice repeated, making you wake up from your thoughts. You glanced over your shoulder, finding the friendly smile of Kristina, the cafe's barista — Is everything okay?

— Yes, everything’s fine — you replied quickly, fumbling to hide the fact that you had forgotten that was the name you’d given to the waitress — Why?

— Oh, you… Called me over to place your order, but when I asked you what you wanted, you didn't say anything...

You felt your own cheeks heat up.

— Sorry, Kristina, I was distracted…

— By the antique shop?

You were apparently being too obvious. You wished the ground would swallow you whole.

— Well, no… Not exactly…

— Oh, I’m not surprised.  — Kristina laughed — When you said you had just moved to an apartment nearby, I sort of figured you had an eye for art and antiques.

— But, how?

The barista chuckled.

— I mean, you’ve seen the kind of people that come in here. It’s only old people or people that are crazy about art, and you’re obviously not old.

You smiled, trying to hide your discomfort at feeling so transparent.

— I do like art — you lied — My parents had a lot of pieces at home, like sculptures, porcelain...

— Oh, that shop has a ton of those things.

You raised your eyebrow. 

— Have you ever been inside?

— Yes. I got curious about it and went after work one day.

— Did you talk to anyone there?

Kristina was clearly taken aback by your interest.

— Oh, yes, I talked to a man, he…

— Alexander? — you asked, taking a few seconds to realize that, in your eagerness to find out more about the Bednarczyks, you were close to showing your hand.

— No, his name was something else — she replied, with suspicion on her face — Who’s Alexander? 

In truth, you knew that Elisabeth had a son named Alexander. According to the case’s dossier, he was a specialist in contemporary art and responsible for numerous sales of works to foreign galleries and museums. If the triptych had left the antique shop heading abroad, it likely would have passed through Alexander's hands.

— Well, like I said, my parents like art and I remembered they bought a few pieces from a shop in Vienna run by a man named Alexander — you said, trying to cover your tracks  — I thought it could be him, but I think it's unlikely, come to think of it. After all, how many art and antique shops are in a city this size, right?

After staring at you for a few seconds, Kristina smiled.

— Unlikely, maybe, but not impossible. I imagine the art world isn’t a very big one, after all. 

You went back to focusing on the antique shop. You had noticed some movement near the door and you were trying to pay attention to whoever was leaving, when Kristina cleared her throat.

— Yeah? — you muttered.

— Do you still want something?

Looking at the table, you noticed that your espresso cup was empty, as was the plate full of crumbs from the chocolate cake you had devoured after lunch.

— I think another espresso — you replied. With a nod Kristina walked away from your table, while you looked again at the door of the antique shop as two blonde women came out of the shop’s door. Both of them were talking animatedly and had boxes in their hands.

Just then, you’d decided you’d spent enough time over the past few weeks watching and waiting — you had to see what was inside. 

The next day, the plan was already drawn up in your head. You would go into another antique shop in a different part of Vienna and buy something made of porcelain, something that seemed to be antique. And then, you would go into the Bednarczyk’s shop to try and have it appraised. It belonged to your mother, you would tell them, and you wanted to find out what they could tell you about it and see if it could be restored. Anything to buy more time.

You’d let the staff at the shop talk to you, you knew what questions to ask to not seem like you knew nothing about the pieces, but what to avoid asking to not show that you knew too much. While you were talking to them, whoever they were, you would try to work in a way to ask about any Matejko pieces they knew of.

Your plan was hastily arranged, but it seemed like it should be perfect.

You found another antique shop in Ottakring, across the city, and bought the first porcelain piece you spotted that you knew was old enough to seem like a treasured family heirloom. You thought it would be a good idea to stop by the cafe first and have an espresso to settle your nerves before heading into Bednarczyk’s.

You walked down the street to the direction of the antique store with the box containing the little sculpture in your hands, confident this would be a big step forward in the investigation of the tryptich’s whereabouts. 

As you were glancing toward the shop’s entryway, you let your attention slip for a moment, crashing into the back of the man who was walking ahead of you. The box in your hand slipped and fell toward the ground, the muffled tinkling of shattering porcelain coming from inside the box. You immediately sank to the ground and lifted the flaps on the top of the box.

— No, no, no, fuck — you said, seeing the ballerina you bought reduced to a pile of shards.

— Shit — the man said from above you. When you looked up, you realized that you had stumbled into a man with dark hair and brown eyes, who were fixed on what was once a small porcelain statue — I'm sorry, I didn't see you coming in behind me…

— No, it's okay — you murmured, trying to hide your displeasure at having broken the piece. You had chosen the porcelain ballerina precisely because you knew that it was old enough to be of interest to Elisabeth. However, you couldn’t exactly get her to appraise a pile of dust — Isn’t a big deal...

— From your reaction, it seemed like something important — the man said, as you closed the box quickly and stood up — I’m so sorry. I hope it wasn’t a family heirloom.

You looked up at him, pressing your lips together as you realized how tall he was. “Focus… Maria”, you thought to yourself, feeling your face heat up. You couldn't let your cover identity slip.

— Yeah, it was. I had brought it to see if there was somewhere that could appraise it, maybe restore it, but… I don’t think there’s much to be done about it now.

Looking at the box, the man seemed to think for a few seconds, before looking up at you again.

— Well, if you want, I can find something else to give you instead. I’ll pay for it.

— I don’t… 

— That won't replace the sentimental value, no, but it's the least I can do, considering your little ballerina is broken because of me.

You hesitated for a few seconds. You didn’t want to involve another person in your investigation, especially an innocent bystander that made you feel a strange heat in your chest and a strange flush in your cheeks. However, before you realized it, you were following him down the street, the box with the porcelain shards in your hands, into the front door of the Bednarczyks' antique shop.

He opened the door and motioned politely for you to walk in first, which you did, unable to hide the shy smile on your face. The man closed the door behind him as you approached one of the shelves. It was stocked with a huge assortment of miscellaneous knicknacks - silver candelabras, ceramic vases, sets of different glasses and jars, all polished and carefully arranged. Your eyes landed on a velvet box on one of the middle shelves, and you couldn’t resist the compulsion to step forward and carefully tilt open the lid, trying to see what was inside.

— It's a set of silver flatware — a female voice said behind you. You turned around with a start to see a short, blonde woman with kind brown eyes staring at you. She smiled — Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you. Mr. Wolff asked me to come assist you.

— Mr. Wolff? — you asked, confused.

— The gentleman who came in with you.

You were still confused, wondering how she knew the other customer’s name. 

— By any chance — you started, stopping when you felt someone touch you shoulder.

— Ah, you found Petra, excellent — the man, apparently Mr. Wolff, said — Petra, could you show us the porcelain?

The woman nodded and directed you to another set of shelves, chatting about , the woman guided you between the shelves, chatting about the store's new arrivals. However, your mind was occupied with trying to remember if you’d ever seen the name Wolff anywhere in the case files. The man seemed to be too familiar with the staff to be just another customer. You remembered reading about Elisabeth, her son, Alexander, and Alexander’s wife, Amy. However, you didn't remember any man with the surname Wolff.

— Here is our selection of porcelain. I'll leave you to choose what you would like — Petra said, with a smile.

— Thank you very much, Petra. As soon as we choose, we will call you.

With a nod, Petra walked away, leaving the two of you alone in front of the shelves filled with figurines, cups, teapots and porcelain vases. After a few seconds of silence, you finally looked at the man next to you.

— Mr. Wolff, is it? — you asked, the tone of your voice causing a smile to appear on his lips.

— Well, yes. Torger Wolff. But you can call me Toto.

Something about what he said made you smile.

— Toto, like the dog in The Wizard of Oz?

— I would say like Toto Rina, the Italian mafioso, but most people think of the dog first — Toto said, without taking his eyes off you — And you, what's your name?

You hesitated for a few seconds.

— Maria.

— Just Maria?

— Maria Bauer.

Toto chuckled.

— Ah, a fairly common name, no? — he asked. “It had to be something from the idiots in the operations department”, you thought to yourself, giving a wry smile.

— My parents weren’t the most creative…

— In my case, they were too creative — he said, looking at the shelf again — I suppose you’re not not from Vienna?

His question made you swallow hard.

— No, I'm not. I moved here not long ago. How did you know?

— Your accent — Toto replied — I'd say you're from the south, maybe. Graz?

— Klagenfurt — you said. That’s what was in your identity document. You hoped he wasn't familiar with the accent there, since you were sure that the Dutch and English you were used to speaking on a daily basis with your co-workers was present in the way you slurred some syllables.

— But you've lived abroad, haven't you?

— Why do you ask?

— Your accent doesn’t sound like a Southern accent. I have an acquaintance from near there, but his accent is a bit different. 

— My mother is Dutch — you lied, almost in an attempt to stop that interrogation — So, I grew up listening to her accent and ended up picking it up.

— Ah, yes, I understand — he said, giving a gentle smile.

Turning your attention to the shelf, you tried to focus on the china in front of you, trying to decide which piece would be the most similar to the one he had broken. Not that it mattered much, but one did catch your eye. It was a figure of two people - a man and a woman, sitting next to a column, with the woman holding a rose and the man holding a basket of flowers on his lap. It was romantic, and oddly endearing.— Did you like this one? — Toto asked.

— Yeah — you replied, your fingers brushing the top of the porcelain column, where there was a small hole to hold a few flowers  — It's very beautiful.

— I agree. 

— With such a renowned expert curating the collection, it's not surprising — you said, taking the porcelain figure in your hands.

— Oh, do you know of Elisabeth? — he asked. You glanced over to Toto to find that he had a curious expression, like something you said made an impression.

Maybe you’d already said too much.

You’d betrayed the fact that you were not from Vienna and had recently moved to the city, leaving you no acceptable excuse to explain how you knew who owned the shop you were in. It wasn’t as if she was well-known outside of very specific Viennese society and academic circles — No, I don't know her — you said, giggling nervously.

— So how do you know she curates the porcelains here?

— Well, like I said, I recently moved and I'm still cleaning up my apartment, so I'm working from the cafe across the street — you lied, trying to sound as calm as possible  — And, one day, I noticed the antique shop across the street and looked up some information about it online. My parents collect art - mostly these porcelain figures, so I thought I’d bring in one of their older pieces to have it appraised and restored, since she seemed like the best person to do it.

— Of course, the internet — he said, laughing — What's not on the internet nowadays, right?

— Right? You can find anything — you smiled, feeling your heart pounding. He seemed to buy it, but you couldn’t guarantee that you’d be so lucky next time. 

After asking if you liked the piece you were holding and calling Petra to confirm your choice, Toto asked you to stay there, before heading towards the counter at the back of the shop together with Petra.

Watching him talk to Petra, you started feeling guilty. You had only just met Toto and you already felt terrible about lying to him, which made you feel even worse, as feeling such strong emotions about telling lies was an occupational liability for you. But still, he had nothing to do with the investigation beyond knowing who Elisabeth was, and ostensibly frequenting her family’s antique shop. He certainly wasn’t a person of interest, so you could only conclude that he was one of her wealthy patrons. “He must be rich”, you thought, watching him scribble something on a piece of paper and hand it to Petra.

Perhaps, in other circumstances, you could get to know each other better. It was crazy, you thought, to be imagining a future with a man you knew nothing about and had just met mere moments ago, but you couldn’t help it as you looked at the way he smiled at you. It was a sweet, warm smile, and you’d never met anyone else you felt a connection with so immediately. It was the same smile he gave you once more as he handed you an elegant box that Petra had given him. “What a handsome son of a bitch”, you thought, giving him a small smile.

— Here — Toto said, handing you the box — I know it's not a one-for-one replacement, but it's my way of apologizing for the accident earlier.

— It’s no problem, really. You could very well have ignored what happened and kept walking, so…

— No, I don’t think that would have been — he murmured, eyes fixed on yours. That intensity of his gaze on you made your own cheeks feel hot.

— What do you mean by that? — you asked, giggling nervously.

— It would be impossible to ignore you — Toto said, seeming to realize the effect of his own words on you — I could never just walk past you.

The room filled with silence that stretched out long enough for you to think of a million scenarios in which you would end up with your lips pressed against his.

— Well, I'm going to take this home — you finally said, taking a brief look at the box — Thank you for your kindness, Toto.

— It was the least I could do, Maria — he replied with a smile, putting a peculiar emphasis on your name.

Giving one last wave, you turned around and left the antique shop feeling like you were floating. However, nothing compared to the feeling that came over you when you opened the box and found a note on the bubble wrap that surrounded the delicate piece of porcelain.

— I'd love to see how it looks on your shelf — you read quietly, realizing that Toto had written his phone number below his message while Petra was wrapping the figurine.

You dug into your purse and pulled out your phone, but started feeling guilty again. You were in Vienna for work, not to flirt with strangers. You were dealing with dangerous people and getting involved with more people meant additional risk, not only for them, but for you and your career.

“Well… one photo of my bookshelf probably won’t hurt anyone”, you thought, before saving the number on your cell phone.

[luthsthings]

A Sims 4 Horse Ranch* review, by a Simmer who's not all that into horses

* Software not final. Sponsored by EA.

First, many thanks to EA/Maxis for the early access! This was a treat for me, to get access to an early build to try out for a while, as I'm not exactly a high-profile streamer. Or a streamer at all. Or even a creator (though I'll upload a household I came to love to the Gallery when I get a chance!). But I do love this game! And I love that I can help more of you play it the way you want to. Anyway, the review…

What I liked!

The great range of build/buy! I'll get LOTS of use out of this. It complements some other packs well too.

There are lots of helpful rooms in build mode for fast stables and nectar-related spaces! As a non-builder who sometimes tries to build, I was really happy to have a premade horse stall for my lot.

[image: a pre-built stable room in Build mode]

There's lots of Teen–Elder clothing and hair, and I love the dirty clothes swatches. I'll get LOTS of use out of this pack's CAS! And it will go well with styles from some other packs, too.

The new Afro-textured hairs are a welcome recognition that the cowboy culture of the Old West was not a White culture — there were lots of Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous cowboys and entrepreneurial women in the Old West!

I deeply appreciate the Indigenous content in build/buy, recipes, and CAS — I could see lots there in CAS, for example, that the Navajo people I saw and met in Utah and northern New Mexico (which is a part of the world I really want to go back to) wore IRL.

Lots range from fairly small (15 x 20) to quite large. I appreciate the range as someone who isn't a fan of building on large lots when I do build. There are horse practice areas in the land around some small lots, so you can still keep a horse there.

For Strangerville owners who love that landscape (which I do!), there's now somewhere for that valley, with its smaller population, to be "near". I can imagine that you'd drive up into a range from the new world and drop down into hidden Strangerville. Driving the other direction might take you to Oasis Springs.

The horse-riding and other horse animations are really detailed and fluid. They interact a lot with each other, too. I felt like parent and child horses recognized their relationship even.

[image: a mare lovingly nuzzling her foal]

The sheep and goats are endlessly adorable. Plus profitable! :D And they can sleep in your house!

The rabbithole adventure location out in the countryside has a very different gameplay than previous ones! And it has great sound effects -- play it with the volume up! It's hard to find, though. But it was nice to not need other tricks to get access. (I still have not done the secret places in Oasis Springs or the Outdoor Retreat pack!)

What I didn't like:

No new fridge, stove, bathtub, or toilet (I do like getting more of those!)

Very little boys' children's clothes. And no chaps for Children, even though they can ride and even though Toddlers got some

I would have liked a higher-tech/automated version of a nectar maker. However, this isn't a feature I care about much anyway.

You can't breed the mini goats and sheep, and there aren't even smaller baby ones. I'd have liked to have a full-on sheep farm. I like sheep. (I can practically see my husband glaring about how much I like sheep, even though he's waaaaay far away at the office right now.)

[image: a smiling, leaping mini-sheep, with a spotted goat behind it]

I definitely would never have found the countryside rabbithole without help, but maybe you will? If I could figure out how to do spoilers here, I would...

The horse-toy balls are a little… glowy? for my taste. They also weren't where I looked for them in the catalog, so you'll want to use search for them.

Cross-pack things?

I'd have liked to check out these before now, but with the pre-patch builds, that's not an option, and I'm always kind of busy when patches come out! For example ...

How do cats and dogs interact with horses, sheep, and goats?

Can horses be familiars for spellcasters?

Are there new Milestones?

Are there new Lifestyles?

Are there new Club rules, and are there enough of those?

This Simmer needs to know! (And eventually will.)

Neat things to know!

There's a rabbithole building in town where you can change or plan outfits like a dresser! And just off the main road in town there's a rabbithole building where you can buy goats, sheep, and groceries and other useful things, like horse age-up treats. I liked having an alternative way to buy these things and a whole new way to plan outfits. I'd be happy for more of that. If I can't go into a building, I might as well at least be able to pretend I can. As long as they don't end up being worlds stuffed with rabbitholes in place of gameplay (actually watching horse competition would have been nice!).

You can use a Community Board in town (or from B/B if you want one on your lot) to take local one-off jobs for money. Most need you to own a Horse or some sheep or goats. There are lots of ways to make money as a rancher without needing someone in the household to have a job. My relatives who are farmers will be seriously jealous.

Get to know that Crinkletop guy! He's very useful.

Bugs? Bugs!

Things to watch out for that were issues for me in the early-access build, which is NOT the release build, so hopefully it's a bit better:

Ranch dancing is EXTREMELY popular. You might want to not keep a radio at home until the new dancing has a mod to … moderate it. Or is tuned down by the devs. But I do like it when I'm in control!

[image: five Sims ranch dancing (line dancing) as a group, including two Don Lothario and Eliza Pancakes]

The beautiful stone fireplace was also very, very popular, and of course potentially deadly. Watch out for that.

Ranch hands are NOT reliable. They might stay really, really late. They might stop showing up after a couple days. They might forget the things you instructed them NOT to do the day before. They might be super into kicking the garbage bin over. Keep an eye on your ranch hand. At least until the day, someday, when they get fixed. I'm hoping this is also moddable for those of us on PC.

At one point I had a weird bug where my Sim decided she would NOT eat. The rest of the household could eat. Guests could eat. They could eat HER food. It was fixed by going to the world map and back into the household, so I didn't find out if she was going to just starve to death.

I couldn't find some of the new CAS at first because some men's outfits were under "jumpsuit" for no apparent reason. So, if you're looking for some cool outerwear, try "jumpsuits." Hopefully it was recategorized for the release build!

And that's it! I'm happy to answer questions!

[th3-0bjectivist]

Dear listener, I understand that having a white dude on Tumblr recommending excellent black music makes about as much initial sense as me suggesting that you upgrade your home to cutting-edge VCR and landline phone technologies. Given the current racial tensions in the US right now, all I ask is that you give this white boy’s recommendation the old community college try. This week the focus will be on Santigold, a cross-genre artist that deserves way more attention than is afforded to her. I’ve been listening to Santigold’s music for nearly a decade, and I’ve said it before, but you guys can keep your Cardi B’s and your Nikki Minaj’s because when I’m hungry for excellent music, I come to the table for something rare, experimental, smart and versatile. Santigold delivers all of that, and more. Smash play on Look At These Hoes from her 2012 album Master of My Make-Believe, and if it pleases you, join me for rolling fields of gold below.

A genuine music industry trailblazer, Santi White started off her career as a mere A&R (her job was to find promising new artists and bring them in to sign contracts) for Epic Records. This Philadelphia-born multitalented maven started collaborating with musicians, and then in 2001 became the lead singer in a ska band called Stiffed. The best part of this group’s music was the vocals and lyrics, and after disbanding in 2005 or so, Ms White embarked upon her solo career. A solo career that has lasted nearly two decades to this year. There’s an island vibe to her music, and I’m not just talking about the style. Her music feels different than anything mainstream in terms of raw brain-power, exceptional flow and overall depth of meaning. She makes music that thinks as much as it works to go against the mainstream grain. She deserves respect and legitimate accolades for sticking to her guns and staying genuine through her career, rather than selling out and producing the equivalent of another WAP just for the sake of raking in millions from people with questionable taste in music. Along with having a sultry mezzo-soprano voice (my personal favorite lady voice type) her style is a mishmash of hip-hop, new wave, punk and electro. If you listen to her jams and don’t find your head and body bobbing to her beats, I believe I can officially pronounce that you have no actual soul in your body! If you spend any time at all studying the deeper meaning behind her jams, you will find complex themes of resilience, perception of reality and an overall complexity of character which few, if any ‘similar’ artists can even approach without immediately appearing to be outside of their mental depth. Just below you’ll find the music video for L.E.S. Artistes from her 2008 album Santogold. Enjoy!

As the first song on this post strongly suggests, Santi White ain’t no booty hoe. She’s highly educated, she’s a mother, and in terms of eloquence of execution… she’s an absolute industry badass. You owe it to yourself to take a deep dive into Santigold’s catalog and I implore you to revere artists like her as the mega-talents they truly are. Image source: https://tomtommag.com/2012/05/brooklyns-golden-child-santigold/

[imaginethebeautifulworld]

prussia x reader: childish games

Hello Lovelies~ Was ridiculously bored at work, and this silliness was birthed. Please enjoy!

Over the years, you had compiled a list of all the things you most loved about your husband, and somehow, only slightly surprising, his zest for life and the itch to have fun easily slotted its way into your top ten.

 For someone nearing 1000 (a fact you loved teasing him with), you would have thought that he would have grown more reserved by now, bored and listless with the world. But the truth was that he was restless, and rarely allowed for a single dull moment.

 And while you had grown yourself- maturity and social obligations demanding a certain image, he had a knack for making you forget all of it, embracing that whimsy and playful energy that you refused to completely abandon in your childhood.

 Which was what often led to moments like these.

 Gil was sitting across from you at a table in some cafe in Constanța, eyebrows furrowed in an almost comical way as he glared down at the series of incomplete triangles on your napkin.

 A little riddle or trick- you couldn't really decide which- you had briefly remembered from your childhood, one you knew would annoy your husband to no end.

 As much as you loved him, he did have a habit of over-complicating things.

 So far, his guesses had all followed a pattern you had expected: an ECG, a triangular sound wave, and then he rambled off something nearly incoherent involving quantum theory which had you giving him a Look. Seeing your expression at that last one had him offering you an embarrassed half-smile, before he went back to staring at the napkin with annoyance. "I'm going to hate myself when you tell me, right?"

 It wasn't really a question, but you hummed in acknowledgement, fighting and failing to hide your grin. "Probably."

 To his credit, he had more guesses, a couple theories, even asked if it had something to do with your own work, eyes slanting towards you in curious consideration. When you shot that down as well, he huffed melodramatically in defeat, flopping back into his chair and gesturing magnanimously towards the offending piece of recycled paper and its 18 unassuming little lines.

 "Alright; you win. Hit me with it."

 You were enjoying this way too much, but you couldn't help it; he brought out the best and worst in you. "Sure you don't want another guess?"

 "Can't you just put me out of my misery instead?"

 You leveled him with another look, fond and irritated all at once, catching too easily on the smile hidden in his words. "No martyrdom before supper."

 "Wow. Rude."

 Ignoring his comment, you spoke with perhaps a little too much presumption. "Gilbert Wilhelm? Prepare for me to blow your little mind."

 "You already do that every day." You bit your lip at his fond murmur, digging in your pocket for a different colored pen. Carrying an assortment had become a bit of a habit as of late; Gil was constantly losing his, and sometimes you just needed a change from the monotony of black-and-white. 

 Finally, you pulled out a purple, a good offset to the black. Pulling the napkin back into drawing range, you motioned for him to watch.

 You took it slow, intentionally choosing the option that would take the longest for him to guess. He loved puzzles and thought experiments, and you wanted to savor this for as long as possible.

 Starting with the furthest edge, you connected every third triangle with an inverse arc, the temporary image almost reminding you of the base of cartoon campfires. Gil was hovering over your shoulder now, having swapped chairs sometime in the past few moments.

 You paused, intentionally drew your pen away long enough for him to analyze the new data, catalog the latest information. Some part of you had a feeling he would be trying the same trick on Vlad at the conference tomorrow, and you couldn't fight your smile. "Want me to keep going, or do you want another minute?"

 He hummed after a moment- a quiet acquiescence.

 For a moment, you stared at your work in progress, contemplating your next move. With a small quirk to your lips, you scribbled what looked like three clouds, one for the top of each of the tallest triangles.

 "Was zum Teufel," Gil demanded eloquently.

 That was enough to finally make you giggle, turning to him with a smirk and a feigned attempt at innocence. He leveled you with a look of his own, before indicating with a pointed glance that you needed to continue.

 You waggled your eyebrows in playful amusement, now turning to add two dots to each of the three connected shapes, followed by another cloud-like doodle at the based of each of the three tallest triangles.

 As it stood, you could argue for some funky mountains or some kind of sailboat, but you were only half finished.

 "One more guess?" you asked in an effort to be nice, to at least sound like you weren't secretly enjoying his suffering. Instead of a proper answer, your ruse easily seen through, you received a poke at your waist, the lightest threat to continue.

 Biting your lip, trying not to flinch away, you added six arrows- two per shape, each facing the center of its respective shape from the left and the right.

 "Wait..." Gil's voice was scarcely a whisper at this point, teasing your neck. "Are those..?"

 With a small triangle and two quick flourishes each, you announced the final results with pride, no longer holding back your giddy grin. "Behold: Three Cats in Party Hats!"

 It was worth it just to see him bringing his palm to his forehead, hiding his face in his hand. You could see him fighting a smile though, and knew the last few minutes had done more than enough to help him out of his prior languor.

 "I hate you sometimes; you know that?"

 It was too affectionate to be true.

 "Love you, too."

Inspired by my remembering learning this about 20-ish years ago from some random guy while I was helping out at a market stall. He also taught me how to draw a cat by stacking C-A-T atop each other. Anyway, have some kitties~

[manic-maniac-man]

Eyescream Feb 2015

Takahiro Miyashita

[TAKAHIROMIYASHITATheSoloIst.] is scheduled to be presented in the form of an exhibition at the Paris Collection 2015-16AW in January 2015. Designer Miyashita Takahiro's long-awaited return to Paris has been a hot topic of conversation, and amidst all of this, the brand's first photo book was released on December 25, 2014. The book is entirely in black and white, and features three female models, making it a rather mysterious-looking book, but designer Miyashita's aesthetic sense permeates every corner. Could this really be the beginning of a new development for the brand?

Direction TAKAHIROMIYASHITATheSoloist.

Photography Yoshiki Suzuki

Styling Takahiro Miyashita

Hair & Make-up by Asami Nemoto

Models Kiyo Matsumoto, Hyunri, Osuzu

・When and how did the project for this photobook start?

"I think I heard about it around the beginning of 2014, maybe before spring. It's the first book to be published by a new publishing company (Unknown Books). We had made a book (catalog) once before, and it was the same people who had finished that. Since I was approached about it, I thought I'd give it a go. I thought this kind of thing would take longer than expected, but I wanted to shoot quickly. I set out to shoot in the morning, afternoon, and evening, but the first time it didn't go well due to the weather. In the end, I went to shoot three times."

◆Even though the magazine is mainly men's, all the models are girls.

"That's right. I decided on that from the beginning. I was only told it should be 80 pages long, and was told to do whatever I wanted, so I didn't want to make something that looked like a catalog or advertisement. I only used my own personal items, and hardly used any of the Soloist's clothes."

●But it fits perfectly, including the fit. Did you work on styling it with Miyashita-san?

"Yes. I just did the styling. I also wanted to design the book myself, so I added text and things like that. There was no special title. After I finished, I thought, 'This doesn't have a title,' and I thought this was good."

◆There are a lot of handwritten letters in the design, including the cover.

"MOGNO6 is a letter artist and typographer. I was introduced to him by Ya-kun (Takagi Yasuyuki/photographer). He is so cool, so I gave him a photo and asked him to create some letters that would go with the photo."

◆ Did you put a lot of thought into the design as well?

"No, it's pretty quick. Even if I plan things out from the beginning, sometimes it's not a very good idea when I get to the scene, so I often think about it as I go along. I think hard beforehand, but it usually doesn't come to fruition (laughs). Coordination, I didn't put anything together. I just brought a lot of things and said, "Put this on," and we piled on ideas."

- They're all in black and white. Are you shooting them on film?

"The basics are digital and Polaroid. For the digital ones, I had planned to edit all the images from the beginning. I told the photographer, Yoshiki Suzuki, that I wanted a beautiful rough texture, so I asked him to edit them to the limit. I didn't want to do something that was already set in stone. I wanted to leave them in an unfinished state, with the feeling that there was more to come. He's a very skillful person, so I think that's why he leaned towards me when taking the photos. I also took the photos from "The Impossible" with a Polaroid. All of the rough ones are like that, and I think there are seven of them, including the cover."

◆It's a really mysterious book because miraculously it all works together without any sense of incongruity.

"It's strange, isn't it? I don't know what I'm trying to say (laughs). I don't really want to say anything. So I just go blank. You're like, what is it? I can only answer, "It's nothing." I don't think too much about it. I didn't think anything of it when I was doing it, but when I actually did it, it felt like a trailer for something."

◆If that's the case, it looks like it might continue.

"I don't know. I'd like to do it if I have the opportunity. I'd like to publish about one book a year, but...

I'm grateful for this first book."

TAKAHIROMIYASHITATheSoloist. Photobook

Hardcover: 84 pages (including cover)

B4 size ¥10,000

[sexyirish7]

Awareness Ribbon Wall Lights

This set includes 44 swatches of awareness ribbons. Each color comes with black and white outline options. 

While there are a lot more colors, I found that while the color palette was different, in game, the pastel colors all came out white. Therefore, I had to remove some of those pastels. Additionally, some of the shades various colors were not accurately represented in game. I did my best to try to get a variety of colors for you.

As always, please contact me if there are any issues. Enjoy!

Creations by SexyIrish7

This cc object is a new 3d mesh created using Blender and Sims 4 Studio.

Polygon Count: 59

All cc have:

Ability to search catalog using search terms: sexyirish7 and si7

Customized thumbnail 

DOWNLOAD for FREE: SFS

OR at Patreon*

*You must be over 18 to access my Patreon page.

*******

CREDITS:

Software credits:

Sims 4 Studio v. 3.2.1.3 (Star): https://sims4studio.com

Blender 3.3.3: https://www.blender.org/download/

GIMP v. 2.10.34: https://www.gimp.org/

Inkscape v. 1.2: https://inkscape.org/

Thank you to the creators and moderators producing tutorials and answering questions!

*******

Model and Image credits:

Mesh and images created by me.

*******

TOU:

Do not re-upload and claim as your own

Do not re-upload and hide behind a paywall

[dei-lab-assistant]

Ethoslab Vampire Hunter AU

Reader-Insert version can be read here. Anyway, I hope you can enjoy this little 924 word fic! _____ “You’re up late.”

She looked up from her work maintaining the chapel’s pews. “Etho!” He looked tired, green and black clothes splattered with dark stains, cloak hanging off his body in ripped shreds, and reddish brown smeared all over his bare hand and forearm. 

Adjusting the mask covering the lower half of his face, he smiled with his eyes. “Sister.” Like all her friends, he called her by her title rather than her name—just as she preferred. As far as she was concerned, Sister was her name, not the pretentious mouthful assigned to her by the Church when she came here years ago. Hiding her identity was a drag, although preferable to being claimed by the powerful vampire queen who had marked her as a child.

“I take from the bloodstains all over your clothes, your hunt was successful?” Tossing her screwdriver onto the wooden pew beside where she was crouched, she leaned back to get a better look at her friend; it seemed none of the blood was his this time. Good.

He laughed, almost sounding embarrassed. “It doesn’t feel successful.”

“Rough kill?” She threw her long hair back over her shoulder, keeping it out of the way as she returned to work.

Running a blood smeared hand through his white hair, Etho’s mood darkened. “Even when I know my target has lived for over sixty years, and killed seventeen innocents, it’s not easy to drive a stake through the heart of a creature who looks like a ten year old girl…”

“The abbess always says you’re too kind for this work.” Picking up the screwdriver, she gave it a little flip in the air, catching it neatly. Gently running her left hand over the pile of screws, she grouped them as she counted in her head. 

Etho walked towards her. “Uh huhh. It’s hard to tell when she sends me out every week to kill monsters.” Sighing, he squeezed past her kneeling body to tiredly sink down onto the pew. “I shouldn’t have specialized in vampires.”

“Etho, don’t sit—!”

Splintering wood and the crash of ancient planks smacking beautiful tilework flooring interrupted her warning, as the pew gave way beneath him. “Ohhhhh.” He sounded pathetic as he lay on his back on the floor, gazing up at the decorative ceiling and gripping the pocket watch hanging from his belt. While she knew Etho must be a fierce and capable warrior, Sister found such an image hard to combine with the slightly hapless and very nice guy she had befriended over the years.

She groaned. “I had removed most of the screws attaching the seat to the end of the pew, so I could replace them with slightly wider screws, ‘cause the whole thing’s been getting loose, and had already been jury rigged before I ever came here…”

“Sorey.” His accent always came through when he apologized. “I’ll explain to the abbess it was my fault.”  

“Thanks.” Leaning back against the chapel wall, Sister mulled over how long it would take her to fix the pew, assuming she had the skill to properly fix something so old, delicate, and ornate—which she doubted.

“And speaking of the abbess, I got permission to take you with me on my next assignment.”

“Really?” At his words, all exasperation fled her body. Usually she was forbidden from leaving the abbey, on account of the mark on the back of her left hand. “Why?”

“You’re good at clerical work, right, Sister?”

She nodded eagerly as he continued.

“My target tonight had quite a library, and chests of saved correspondence. I needed someone to help me catalog all of it tomorrow, and since they made the mistake of letting me choose my own assistant…I chose you.” Propping himself up on his elbows, his eyes crinkled in a smile. “You do want to see more of the world, right? I don’t know why the abbess always keeps you cooped up in the church compound, but I figure I ought to show my friend a bit of the outside world if I can.”

Without thinking, Sister gripped the back of her left hand, imagining the green symbol on the other side of her half finger glove. “I’d love that.” 

Rising from the rather destroyed pew, which now littered the floor, Etho stretched. “I need to wash up. Wouldn’t want to talk to the abbess looking like this.” He pointed at her. “Now go get some sleep, we have a long day tomorrow.”

“You’re going to talk to the abbess now?”

“Some of us aren’t night owls by choice, Sister.” Etho laughed. “If I have to work this late, she can wake up to talk to me in the middle of the night from time to time.”

Grateful for his friendship, and this opportunity to leave the abbey, Sister wanted to hug the lanky man before her, but decorum held her back. The last thing she had ever wanted was rumors of being romantically involved with anyone, and years of practicing such thinking left little room for nebulous gestures like hugs—no matter how platonically she intended them. “Hm, you’ve always had fun being a bit of a pain.”

“Just doing my job.” His smile shone through in his voice as she packed up her toolbox.

“See you tomorrow, Etho.”

With a jaunty little wave, he strode off, leaving her to wonder what the next day held.

[asterlark]

i was scrolling through this neat little game of internet artifacts and loved this one from 1989, featuring compilations of early internet emoticons and acronyms. notably this was the first appearance of "lol" on the internet, but i love some of the other ones that haven't really caught on- i especially think we should bring back ]:> for "devil/guilty" and 0:) for "angel/innocent"; [% for a mug is pretty cute too tbh

here's the explainer text that accompanied this section:

Earliest LOL The acronym "LOL" made its first documented appearance on the internet in a FidoNet newsletter. FidoNet was a network of BBSs - or bulletin board systems. Messages were transferred over phone calls during off-peak hours to minimize toll costs. This edition of the FidoNet newsletter attempts to catalog the increasing number of emoticons and acronyms that were spreading on the network at the time. It also contained conventions that never really caught on - like ODM for "On De Move".

image descriptions under the cut!

[image 1 description: white text in a simple font on a black background. the text is split into two columns. column one reads:

:) - smile/happy

:D - big smile or laugh

:> - mischievous smile

;) - wink

:* - kiss

:0 - shout/yawn

]:> - devil/guilty

:# - grimace/frustrated

:P - sticking out tongue

:d - tastes good :9

B) - glasses

c% - coffee cup

u - shot glass

---<--<-@ long-stemmed rose

----==== drink sliding down bar

column two reads:

:( - frown/sad

:c - pout

: '( - cry

:> - sly wink

[ ] - hug

0:) - angel/innocent

:I - content

:/ - disfavor/baffled

:X - not talking

8) - wide-eyed surprise

[% - mug

U - glass

Y - wine/cocktail glass

/end image 1 description.]

[image two description: white text in a simple font on a black background. the text at the top reads "Also worth considering are the following:" and the rest of the text below it is split into two columns. column one reads:

OLM - On Line Message

OIC - Oh I See

BTW - By The Way

ROTF - Rolling On The Floor

LMTO - Laughing My Tush Off

AFK - Away From Keys

BAK - Back At Keys

BCNU - Be Seeing You

ODM - On De Move

LTNT - Long Time No Type

RE - Again (Greetings, as in "re-hi")

LTNS - Long Time No See

M/F - Male or Female (also known as 'MORFING', as in "Oh no! I've been morfed!!")

column two reads:

OTW - On The Way

H - HUH???

LOL - Laughing Out Loud

RAO - Rolling All Over

BRB - Be Right Back

BBL - Be Back Later

WLCM - Welcome

L8R - Later

OTB - Off To Bed

TTFN - Ta Ta For Now

/end image two description.]

[kariachi]

Some daemon au fic, featuring Elena and Celio and preparing a space for a tiny daemon.

~~

If there was a benefit to settling as a bug, a standard bug not one of those giant stick insects or tarantulas, it was that you got an excuse to shop for furniture and such. Sure it was all miniature furniture, selected out of a catalog from their siring-pair’s favorite company, but still. They weren’t a wealthy household and had an allowance of ten dollars a week, this was the closest they were going to get to being able to interior decorate to their taste without having to undergo a whole plot to get the Morningstars to fund it and their parents to let them.

As such, Elena and Celio treated going through the catalog with similar weight to Black Friday shopper gearing up. They set up shop at the kitchen table, Celio settled on Elena’s nose for an aerial view. Two rulers off to one side, a piece of paper and a pencil on the other. One cup and one small cap of cocoa, because they deserved it. A post-it note with his measurements, in millimeters, centimeters, and inches all. Not that there were many inches, or even a full inch. And right in the center, the latest Arthrotect catalog, a thick thing that wasn’t quite up to the position of doorstop but surely hoped to take on the role when it grew up. The cover showed a snail daemon stretched out on a little leather couch. The words ‘Full Detail Guaranteed on All Pieces!’ stood out in bold red letters in the bottom corner.

The first quick flip-through, as suggested by their siring-pair, showed the first section to be an array of two-page images of different daemon apartments, each labelled at the top with the range of pages to visit for that style. From spotless whites contrasting with straight black lines under ‘Minimalist’ to bold colors and tilework under ‘Traditional Mexican’. Dark woods and warm metallics under ‘Traditional’ to bright, contrasting colors and loud wallpaper under ‘Maximalist’. Some with endless blues, some with endless wicker, some that came out of a castle and some that came out of a pagoda. One that’d had a multi-colored crystal and glass lamp so ugly they’d had to immediately go to that section and write it down. Why the ugliest lamp on the planet had to be over thirty dollars they did not know, but if it came down to it, they’d get Mike and Ruth to buy it for them. Thankfully it’d been available in an acceptable size.

Somehow, despite being primarily bugs for the past six months, it had never occurred to them that daemon apartments would be scaled before. The catalog had five separate size categories under every apartment box and item of furniture- from five to twelve millimeters all the way to forty-three to fifty millimeters- alongside the pieces’ own measurements and level of functionality. Depending on the size of the daemon, buyers could make sure they wouldn’t be overhanging or swimming in their bed or chair or some such. Celio was just barely in the thirteen to twenty category, so while some items had to be purchased at a larger scale if they really wanted them, they were mostly accommodated. And even for those daemons that weren’t, the catalog had a range of sets of stairs, ladders, and ramps that smaller daemons or disabled daemons could use. It even had a lighting guide in the back, explaining the different lighting levels beside each of the functioning lamps and such and what area and how much they would brighten when turned on.

There was even, before such things as the lighting guide, a section for general household goods. Small cups, bowls, and plates, décor outside of any specific style. A holiday section ranging from tiny Christmas trees to little towels with pomegranates on them to miniature beaded skulls. Half-inch tall statues of people and animals, and paintings of similar scale. Tiny puzzles and boardgames. They really did have everything.

By the time Elena cracked her knuckles, matched her own sip of cocoa by holding Celio’s little mug up to him, and they properly set in to work, there were already four things on the list.