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flowerfan2 · 4 years ago

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One Night in Milwaukee - Ch. 5

I’m considering changing the title to “One Night in Milwaukee (and a week in Florida)...” Enjoy and please reblog!

David x Patrick, 15k so far, A03

Chapter 5

David takes his time showering and doing his hair. He had thought that his run would center him, but all it took was one quick conversation with Patrick to knock him off balance.

He wishes he could put his own clothes back on, but since everything he brought with him is either in the wash or soaked in sweat, it’s not an option. Tying a towel around his waist, he goes into the bedroom and looks through Patrick’s suitcase. He allows himself a satisfying eye roll at the contents – the expected button-downs in shades of blue and green, jeans that probably won’t even fit David, and a few plain t-shirts and pairs of khaki shorts. David sighs and selects briefs, shorts, and an olive green t-shirt, a nondescript fashion choice that would make his mother weep. At least he’ll only have to wear them for an hour or so until his own clothes come out of the dryer.

He finds Patrick in the kitchen, hovering next to the island.

“I made eggs,” Patrick says, sliding a plate towards him.

“Thanks.” The eggs are just like David likes them, with a sprinkle of salt and pepper, and a piece of toast on the side. David recognizes the wheat bread he bought yesterday on his trip to the grocery store, somewhat bland but decent enough given the heaping of butter Patrick has spread on it.

They eat in silence for a few minutes, until the stress of it is too much for David to take.

“These are good.”

“It’s just scrambled, we didn’t have any cheese-”

“I can go to the store again, I didn’t know what you’d want-”

“You don’t have to do that,” Patrick says. “You didn’t have to go in the first place.”

“So I shouldn’t have?”

“No, no, it was great that you did…” Patrick catches David’s gaze, and they both sigh. “Why is this so awkward?” Patrick asks, taking their now empty plates and putting them in the sink.

“I don’t know, maybe because it’s been a long time, and things are different, and we both want everything to work out? But there’s no guarantee.” David stands up and waves his hands at the neat little kitchen and the safe tan sofa with its blue and white pillows and the “Home Sweet Home” sign on the wall with an outline of the state of Florida. He’s not sure he’s ever felt so out of place. “And this is not somewhere I ever expected to be, and I really don’t know what to do with it.”

Patrick nods, that sadness coming over his face again, and it makes David want to strangle someone. Not Patrick, never Patrick. But whoever was responsible for taking his good, decent button and making him sad.

<i>It was you, you asshole,</i> his unhelpful brain tells him, and isn’t that just the worst.

“Want to see the pool?” Patrick asks, and although David can see it perfectly well from here, he figures it can’t hurt. At least the screens will keep the alligators away.

They go outside, and the warmth of the sunshine surprises David. It’s gotten hotter even in the past hour since he was outside. It may be late November, but this part of the world hasn’t gotten the message. He wanders over to the pool and dips his toes in, then sits down by the steps in the shallow end and puts his feet in the water.

Patrick comes over and lowers himself to the concrete, David reaching out automatically to give him something to brace himself against. When Patrick starts to put his feet in David stops him with a hand to his ankle, carefully rolling up one leg of his jeans and then the other. David’s knuckles brush against the wiry hairs on Patrick’s leg as he neatly cuffs each pant leg. He wants to roll Patrick’s shirt sleeves up, too, reveal more of his lovely forearms, but it seems a step too far.

“Thanks.”

“Wet jeans are an abomination,” David comments.

“Kind of like you wearing my khaki shorts?” Patrick’s mouth quirks up in an attempt at a smile, and David’s heart lifts.

“Nice. Just a few minutes again you said I looked good.”

The hint of a smile disappears, as David’s words fail to land the way he meant. “I’m sorry, David, am I supposed to apologize for that? I don’t understand why it upset you. You do look good. Clearly you’ve been working out – aren’t you allowed to be pleased with the outcome?”

David squeezes his eyes closed and leans his head back. “Yes? But…” He’s not sure how to explain it. “It’s not about vanity, or, appearance. I know that probably sounds fake, coming from me,” he opens his eyes and looks at Patrick, who is gazing back as patient and open as ever, “but it’s true.”

“Okay,” Patrick says, clearly waiting for David to fill in the blanks. David had hoped a discussion about this particular part of his recent history could have been put off, possibly indefinitely, but it’s feeling like one of those moments when he’ll regret it if he brushes it off again. And maybe opening up will get Patrick to do the same.

“I was pretty depressed, after we broke up,” David says, running the tips of his fingers through the water, watching the ripples spread across the surface of the pool. “Couldn’t get out of bed, lost interest in everything… you know how it goes.” He’s not sure Patrick does, but he can’t help but try to make light of it, as awful as it was. It’s hard to really focus on those months, the drag of gray haze that wouldn’t clear. “Eventually I started seeing a therapist.”

“You mentioned that,” Patrick says, and David relaxes a fraction, because he had forgotten. Maybe this won’t be that hard, then. It hasn’t chased Patrick away yet.

“Right. Well, he recommended a bunch of stuff to try, including exercising regularly, and I resisted at first-”

“Obviously,” Patrick says.

David glares up at Patrick, who’s got his best trolling face on, deliciously familiar, and suddenly spilling his guts doesn’t seem so embarrassing anymore. “Anyway, once I started, it wasn’t so bad. Despite what I once told you about running… it worked for me.” That and laying off the alcohol.

“That’s great, David.”

“Well, Alexis says I just replaced one obsession with another.”

“Is that so bad, when it’s a healthy one?”

“You didn’t have to put up with me when I couldn’t go out for a run because of crappy weather, or inconveniently scheduled vendor meetings.”

There’s a hitch in the rhythm of their banter, and Patrick takes David’s hand in his. “I wish I did. I wish I was there.”

David feels his chest tighten, and he gives Patrick’s hand a squeeze. “Me too.”

They sit there with their feet in the water, like little kids in a backyard wading pool. There’s no breeze to speak of, but it’s not completely quiet. The sound of the highway a few streets away provides a bit of background noise, and a weird bird keeps making a strangled chirpy sound from a hedge on the side of the house.

David’s past encounters with Florida involved multi-million-dollar yachts, tanned supermodels, and free-flowing booze and drugs, not this strange version of suburbia. He imagines this house sitting empty for most of the year, waiting for its owners to come and visit. How many of the cookie cutter three-bedrooms in this neighborhood are empty right now? How many swimming pools are noticed only by the staff who come by weekly to clean them and make sure nothing has crawled into the filters and died?

“This water’s probably terrible for your skin,” David says, and Patrick looks at him in mild confusion. “Because of all the chemicals.”

Patrick shrugs. “I guess.”

“There are chemicals in here, right?”

“I don’t know, which would upset you more – the amount of chlorine dumped in here or the water being left in its natural state?”

David pulls his feet out of the water and stretches his legs to the side, the concrete warm on his heels. “I’m honestly not sure. But maybe we shouldn’t take any chances.”

Patrick stands up, leaning hard on David’s shoulder as he goes. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

David stays put, although now that he’s thinking about what might be in the pool water he wouldn’t mind rinsing off and applying some lotion. Or some hand sanitizer.

Patrick comes back out of the house with an armload of cushions and drops them onto the lounge chairs by the other end of the pool. “Come help me set these up.”

It only takes a moment to unfold the brightly patterned cushions and tie them into place (ah, there’s the Hawaiian floral, David thinks to himself). While David is arranging the loungers to his liking, facing the sun, Patrick comes back with two bottles of water. David twists off the top and rinses his feet while Patrick squawks at him.

“What? Was that not what this was for?” He tries not to smile.

“David. That water was to drink. There’s an outdoor shower over there.” Patrick points to the side of the house, then seems to regret his decision. “But don’t walk out there without shoes, okay?”

“What, will the baby alligators nip at my toes?”

Patrick grins at him. “No, but the fire ants will.”

“What the hell kind of place is this?”

“It’s just nature, David. As long as you wear shoes in the grass, you’ll be fine.”

“I feel like the state of Florida must have had some really good marketing professionals along the way. Alexis should get a job with them. They’ve managed to convince people that this pest-ridden swampland is worth something.”

“Arguably that is kind of what happened. You know Disney World was built on reclaimed swampland, right?”

“I did not know that.”

“Anyway, this neighborhood isn’t all there is. Give me another day to rest up, then I’ll show you around.”

Another day to rest isn’t really going to cut it, David thinks, watching Patrick wince as he eases himself down in the chair. He wonders again what Patrick had in mind when he made his escape to the sunshine state, which brings them right back to the conversation Patrick keeps avoiding.

“Patrick, how long, exactly, are you planning on staying here?” David asks, hoping that the direct approach might actually get him an answer.

Patrick stares up at the sky. “I don’t know.”

Patrick’s hair looks like polished copper in the sunlight, but David tries not to let it distract him. “How much time can you take off from work?” David presses. “Or are you working remotely doing… whatever you are doing now?”

Patrick takes a long gulp from his water bottle, then stares at his feet. “I’m unemployed. I lost my job about a month ago,” he says bitterly.

“Oh.” David is surprised, to say the least, especially by Patrick’s tone. He’s always seemed like he would be the ideal employee, eager to please and determinedly hardworking. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Yeah. Well, after you piss off a major customer, it’s hard to convince your employer to retain you.”

“It can’t have been that bad. I don’t think I can imagine you pissing off a customer.”

“It was, and I did.”

“What on earth did you do?”

“Do you really want to know?”

David sits up and squints at Patrick, no longer enjoying the sun on his face. He doesn’t even have sunglasses with him, a major miscalculation. “Yes, of course.”

Patrick leans back and closes his eyes. “I was working as an account manager at a software company. It was boring as hell. Sales, mostly, skating by with just enough technical knowledge about the product to capture the customer’s interest, and then serving as the liaison between the customer and the tech guys who actually knew what they were doing. But I kept screwing things up, and when the customers would want to know why the contract didn’t have the terms they wanted, or why I was taking so long to get back to them, I just didn’t have the patience to deal with it.”

“That doesn’t sound like you.”

Patrick opens his eyes and looks at David, and he looks almost as bewildered as David is. “No, it doesn’t, does it?”

David has the feeling there’s more to this story, but Patrick doesn’t elaborate, and all David really wants to do is give him a hug.

“You know, I have a feeling you don’t have an ounce of sunscreen on. You’re going to be bright red if we stay out here any longer.” David stands up and holds out a hand to Patrick, then slides his arm around his back to pull him up. When they’re both upright, he loops his arms around Patrick’s neck and pulls him close.

Patrick presses his face against David’s neck. “I’m a mess, David,” he says, his breath hot on David’s skin. “I don’t know what happened to me.”

“I think we’ve both been a little lost,” David says, holding Patrick tight. “But I know what will fix it.”

“Yeah?” There’s an almost pathetically hopeful note in Patrick’s voice.

“Absolutely.”

“What?”

“Running. Miles of it. Every day. It’s a miracle drug.” David is struggling to keep up his serious tone, and not quite succeeding.

Patrick chokes out a laugh, pressing a hand against his ribs. “I don’t think I’m quite up for running yet.”

“Well fine, then, you’ll just have to watch me do it. It’s almost as good.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Patrick says, and kisses David soundly. David hesitates for a second and then enthusiastically participates, and they are both breathing heavily by the time they pull apart.

“Not that I’m complaining, but what brought that on?” David asks as they go inside, the shade welcome after the bright sunshine. He keeps a hand on Patrick as they go, not so much to make sure he doesn’t fall over but because he doesn’t want to lose this connection, now that he’s found it again.

Patrick takes hold of David’s waist, his eyes on David’s brighter than they’ve looked in days. “You. I thought I was dreaming, sometimes, remembering how much I liked you – loved you, too, but just fucking liked you. But I wasn’t.”

“I’m the best,” David says, half-joking, but there’s a familiar happiness bursting inside his chest.

“You are, David. You really are.”

#Schitt's Creek #Schitt's Creek fic #David Rose #Patrick Brewer #David x Patrick #tw: brief discussion of depression

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danvtrash · 5 years ago

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THE SIMS 4: ASPIRATION CHALLENGE

by: @danvtrash

Hello and welcome to my first EVER challenge! I came up with this challenge when I was searching for other challenges (😂) and I didn’t found anything that I wanted, so, I created this! I wanted something not too hard and not too easy, and specially, have fun with it! I hope this challenge seems fun or not stressful to you! Please, tag me if you are starting it, and use the tag #ts4aspirationchallenge if you post pictures! So, without further ado, let’s get the rules out! 😄

The Aspiration Challenge is a Challenge carried out across 9 Generations! If you end Generation 9, you can create Generation 10, it’s up to you! So, please, sit back, relax, and enjoy playing the game! 😊

RULES:

No Money Cheats (only if the challenge says otherwise);

CC and Poses are Fine;

Feel Free to Pause Aging Only For Story Purposes;

You May Edit What Your Sims Look Like In CAS If They Are Ugly;

You Can Create Your Sims Parent’s and Cheat Their Carrers and Skills (optional);

Create a Sim (Young Adult);

Move Them Into a Starter House;

You Can Money Cheat To Decorate Your House;

Set To 1500 Simoleons;

INFORMATION:

This Challenge is named after the Aspirations from the Game! I tried to use most of the Aspirations from all of the EPs, GPs and SPs so, If you don’t have all of them, It will be more difficult to play this Challenge, so, be sure that you have all of them! 😊

Generation 1 - Friend Of The Animals

Ever since a child, you’ve been super excited when meeting an animal, and that’s what made your day! A little pet on any animals head in the street! Unfortunately, since you lived in the city, your parents didn’t want a pet at home. So, once you became a Young Adult, you moved out from the city to the countryside where everyone had an animal at home!

TRAITS: Dog Lover, Active, Loves The Outdoors

ASPIRATION: Friend of the Animals

CARRER: Veterinarian

RULES:

Have a Dog;

Master Veterinarian Skill;

Master Dog Training Skill;

Master Veterinarian Carrer (5 Stars);

Master Aspiration;

Marry With One Of Your Clients;

Get Married In The Wedding Arc In Brindleton Bay;

Have The First WooHoo/Try For a Baby In the LightHouse;

Have 2 Kids;

Generation 2 - Painter Extraordinaire

As a child, you painted a lot... even your room started to look like an art studio. You live in the countryside, surrounded by nature and that made you very inspired to paint for the rest of your life! Everything is sooo beautiful, and you want to save that into a canvas!

TRAITS: Creative, Art Lover, Clumsy

ASPIRATION: Painter Extraordinaire

CARRER: None

RULES:

Get Your Money From Painting At Home;

Master Painting Skill;

Get To (At Least) Level 8 Cooking Skill;

Master Aspiration;

Sell 5 Masterpieces;

Have 3 Failed Relationships But Get Married With Your First Relationship;

Paint a Portrait Of Your Lover Throughout Your Life (Paint Young Adult, Adult, Elder);

Have 4 Kids;

Generation 3 - Master Chef

You watched your parent cook a lot so, you felt like helping in every meal! With that, you started to like being in the kitchen with your parent and you, sometimes, searched alone for new recipes! Once your parent started to get older, you took charge of the kitchen!

TRAITS: Cheerful, Foodie, Squeamish

ASPIRATION: Master Chef

CARRER: Culinary (Chef Branch)

RULES:

Master Cooking Skill;

Master Gourmet Cooking Skill;

Get To (At Least) Level 5 Mixology Skill;

Master Culinary Carrer;

Master Aspiration;

Marry A Co-Worker;

Earn Silver or Gold At a Family Party Where You Announce Your Pregnancy;

Have 2 Kids;

Generation 4 - Computer Whiz

With such a busy home, you didn’t get a lot of attention in your childhood. So, you spent most of your time in your room. One day, your sibling introduced to you a video game and you fell in love with it. It was love at first sight! With that, you spent your freetime in the computer.

TRAITS: Genius, Geek, Childish

ASPIRATION: Computer Whiz

CARRER: Tech Guru (eSport Gamer Branch)

RULES:

Master Programming Skill;

Master Video Gaming Skill;

Master Tech Guru Carrer;

Master Aspiration;

Meet Your Lover At GeekCon;

Have Your First WooHoo/Try For a Baby In a Backyard Observatory;

Have 1 Kid or Adopt 1 Kid;

Generation 5 - Jungle Explorer

You didn’t get why your parent spent sooo much time in front off a computer! Outside of the house is sooo refreshing! You don’t want your life to be in front of a screen! You’ve heard at school about a place called Selvadorada... but no one told you what it is. You want to know what that place has to offer you! Once you became a Young Adult, you packed your stuff and... Hello, Selvadorada!

TRAITS: Vegetarian, Dance Machine, Kleptomaniac

ASPIRATION: Jungle Explorer

CARRER: None (Get 13000 Simoleons From Your Parents and Move Out Of Your Parents House and Travel To Selvadorada Alone)

RULES:

Master Selvadoradian Culture Skill;

Master Aspiration;

Marry a Selvadoradian Sim;

Have Your First WooHoo/Try For a Kid In a Bush;

Marry Your Lover In Selvadorada;

Move Out Into a House With Your New Spouse;

Have 2 Kids;

Have a Raccoon as a Pet;

Generation 6 - Bodybuilder

Being a child of a Sim and a Selvadoradian Sim, you had a lot of playtime in your childhood, that helped you increase your motor ability. You ate healthy, you did exercises everyday, even at school outside P.E (Physical Education). You wanted to maintain your fitness at the highest level. One day, in Highschool, you had a Military Lesson where you learned a lot about it and you got interested in it. You talked to someone from the Military to sign you up for next year.

TRAITS: Self-Assured, Ambitious, Neat

ASPIRATION: Bodybuilder

CARRER: Military (Covert Operator Branch)

RULES:

Master Fitness Skill;

Master Logic Skill;

Master Military Carrer;

Master Aspiration;

Go To a Gym and Become BFF With a Sim;

Become Girlfriend/Boyfriend With a Co-Worker;

End Your Relationship and Marry Your BFF;

Have 3 Kids;

Generation 7 - Musical Genius

Your parent used to do “Plumboomba Dance” in front of the TV as an exercise and with that, you had to listen to that... weird music at the background. It wasn’t your type, actually. What if you start your own music? Your own melodies? That wouldn’t be a bad idea!

TRAITS: Goofball, Music Lover, Jealous

ASPIRATION: Musical Genius

CARRER: Entertainer (Musician Branch)

RULES:

Master Piano Skill;

Master Violin Skill;

Master Entertainer Carrer;

Master Aspiration;

Go To The Flea Market and Play One Instrument (Task Completed Only If You Accumulate 1000 Simoleons with Tips);

Meet Your Lover At a Lounge;

Have Your First WooHoo/Try For a Baby In a Closet;

Have 1 Kid;

Marry Your Lover After You've Had Your Kid;

Have a Cat as a Pet;

Generation 8 - Good Vampire

You can’t deal with music anymore! You went to your room and you got a message from a friend who said that she heard about a place called Forgotten Hollow and ONLY VAMPIRES live there! Vampires? They exist? You thought it was only in movies... but that place is real! Now, how do you become one of them?

TRAITS: Gloomy, Snob, Good

ASPIRATION: Good Vampire

CARRER: None

RULES:

Master Vampire Lore Skill;

Master Aspiration;

After Becoming a Vampire, Move In To Forgotten Hollow;

Get To The Vampire Rank: Master;

Become BFF With Vladislaus Straud;

Have Your First WooHoo/Try For a Baby In a Coffin With a Vampire;

Marry That Vampire But Left Him/Her At The Altar;

Become a Human Again;

Meet a Human Sim and Marry Them;

Have 3 Kids;

Generation 9 - Soulmate

Love, Love, Love... isn’t it beautiful? In Highschool, you tried to be with a lot of people on Love Day but that’s not your forte. You need to find your soulmate and experience everything what the word Love has to offer to you! It will be sooo romantic!

TRAITS: Hot-Headed, Romantic, Family-Oriented

ASPIRATION: Soulmate

PART-TIME: BabySitter

RULES:

Get To (At Least) Level 8 Charisma Skill;

Master Part-Time Job;

Master Aspiration;

Go To The Romance Festival and Become BFF With a Sim;

Marry That Sim At a Myshuno Meadows;

Try For a Baby In A Hot Tub, Tent, Sauna, Pile Of Leaves and Shower;

Have 5 Kids and 1 Dog or 1 Cat;

This Challenge finishes once you have completed the rules to Generation 9! It’s up to you if you want to create Generation 10! I hope you have enjoyed playing my Challenge and share this with your buddies! 😄

#sims4 #thesims4 #danvtrash #aspiration challenge #legacy challenge #aspiration legacy #ts4 #ts4 challenge #ts4aspirationchallenge

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starr-fall-knight-rise · 6 years ago

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Humans are Weird “Plus One”

Thanks for reading everyone, Hope you enjoy please feel free to ask questions or give ideas :)

Krill was very interested, if there was one thing he didn’t understand about humans, it was their mating rituals; he wasn’t sure he really wanted to know about their mating habits, but the process of attracting another human could be interesting. Understanding what went into a human monogamous marriage was shaping up to be rather difficult. From what Krill understood so far, the most complex human process involved a serious set of complicated rituals involving a lot of symbolic traditionalism. These included a specific style of dress only for the couple about to be married and all of their guests as well. This ceremony was to take place at a specific time and place and last for a very specific amount of time. Specific words were supposed to be said, and then afterwards there was supposed to be a massive party which included a very specific type of pastry and very specific types of food and human music. Humans were generally obligated to give each other gifts during this time.

Krill, as it turns out was friends enough with Vir’s brother that he was to be one of the “groomsmen.” Or one of the specified group of people important to the groom. Vir had been chosen as the best man which seemed to Krill to mean that he was just the favorite groomsman, of which included Krill and the other brothers. However, due to the nature of the wedding women and men had been included on either side, so that count also included Vir’s sister, and another woman Krill did not recognize.

Captain Vir burst into the room just then wearing one of the special human outfits, a dark blue suit and mat tie with a peach colored flower at the breast pocket. “Damn dude, you look like shit.”

Across the room David made a rude human gesture by raising both his middle fingers, “F*** you, Adam.”

“That’s incest.”

From where she stood, next to David, Vir’s sister gave him the evil eye, “Be nice, Adam. He’s just nervous.”

“Not nervous enough to throw up all over himself, so I don’t feel sorry in the slightest.” He said walking over to help his brother with his tie.

“Didn’t that happen to you once?” David wondered clearly trying to keep his mind off what was going on.

Vir sighed and glanced longingly up at the air, “Airman Mariah Alvarez, I was so nervous I spilled my drink on her and ended up throwing up…… first and last date I ever had.”

David laughed easing some of the tension in the room, “Ok, yeah, I’m not that nervous, and I’m sure Jordan is doing just fine.”

Vir snorted, “Doing more than fine, though I can’t see why he consented to marrying your dumb ass.”

“Least I actually managed to get a date.” His brother snapped back.

“You better be nice to me, I’m the one giving the toast at dinner tonight, and you don’t want me to tell them about the time you-.”

“Ok…. Ok, you made your point.”

Krill wondered quietly if the humans were always this vicious to each other. Vir insisted that it was a human way of showing affection to each other, but he had a hard time believing it. It just wasn’t logical. Why would you intentionally be an ass to someone you like?

Vir finished with his brother and took a step back, “Stop frowning and you might actually look presentable…..” He paused, “Are you sure you’re ok with Sunny being my plus one?”

David rolled his eyes, “For the last time Adam, I don’t mind Sunny. In fact, I like her and she has good taste in music, so YES I’m fine with her coming. Just…. Keep her in back where mom can’t see her for the time being.”

He chuckled, “Alright, now come on, they’re ready for you.”

Krill followed the humans out into the sunny afternoon and onto the spreading grassy park before them. Distantly a glittering blue lake sparkled in the light of the sun. It was an almost perfect day, a very slight breeze, just enough to keep cool in the mid-summer heat pushing the grass to the side in slow undulating waves. The guests were all already seated as David took his position at the front with Vir standing to the side. Sunny stood at the back of the group and, to Krill’s amusement, she was covered in the same peach-orange flowers that decorated the rest of the venue.

The sun shone down from the sky as Krill watched an unknown human larvae make its way up the isle throwing the flowers left and right seeming to be having a very grand time of it. Other humans appeared, and finally the last human wearing white, or some other light color Krill could not identify , moved up taking David by the hands.

There was quiet music playing in the background, and Krill had to try his best not to fall over. Kimber showed up a few minutes later, hair in long golden curls around her tiny shoulders wearing a sharp black suit and shiny black shoes.

She was carrying a ring.

Krill had trouble making out the words that were spoken. Then, the humans kissed and the entire venue erupted into applause. Two weird human things krill would never understand. Humans seemed to enjoy touching each other’s mouths with their mouths, and screaming and hitting themselves to show how pleased they were. It didn’t make much sense.

The sun had just begun to by the time they made their way onto a covered outdoor patio where the party was to take place. Earth’s sky was plastered with vibrant hues of delicate orange, yellow, pink and deep purple. Camera lenses flashed, and small lights burst into existence all around the dance floor. More human music began to play. The new human pair stepped out onto the floor and began to dance. Off to the side Krill could see Sunny watching in focused memorization as the humans spun back and forth, around and around. After dancing alone for a song, other humans slowly began to join them. As seemed traditional, the Vir would have to dance with the second human accompanying the opposite partner.

Krill caught the conversation.

“So do you want lead or follow, not sure how this works…. Rock paper scissors?” Krill was just beginning to notice that very specific types of humans tended to dance with other very specific types of humans. A smaller, curvier human, with a larger square human. Vir and the other were about the same height, build and clothing style.

He wasn’t able to watch for very long as Kimber found him, and with a big grin, she dragged him, floating, onto the dance floor and proceeded to spin them both round and round until Krill was convinced he was going to go right ahead and die.

He finally managed to get away shaking off the spinning confusion as he watched as the party slowly began to ramp up. At some point Vir approached Sunny and held out a hand, “What do you think Sunny, want to dance?”

She seemed pleased and excited, and they did dance, a seven foot tall Drev, and an above six foot human coaching the Drev through simple dance steps. Slowly spinning across the dance floor.

The sun had finally set leaving the covered patio as the only source of light in the dark night. Food was being brought out and the people had taken their seats. The containers they were using the carry the drinks were in odd shapes, Sunny didn’t seem sure how to hold it, but she did enjoy the salad.

There was a sharp chiming sound from across the room, and Krill looked over to see that Vir had taken to his feet and then to a chair, much to the dismay of his brother, and everyone at the party that knew about his prosthetic, “Alright, alright, quiet down everyone… you see, my brother made the mistake of allowing me to make a toast at his wedding…. In front of all you people, so I’m trying to figure out the most embarrassing story I have about him.”

David was still smiling but the look on his face. Krill wasn’t really sure what he was supposed to expect….. With Vir things could go either way.

“But, since it’s his wedding, I’m going to be nice and short so we can all get back to eating and getting sloshed.” He glanced across the table, “Sorry mom.”

“I know everyone says something super special ad mushy about the couple, about how they are meant to be together, and how everything is perfect and no one is surprised, and, while all of that is true, the important thing to me is how my brother saved my life…. It wasn’t’ so long ago that I was in a really dark place, and my brother had to come dig me out. And Jordan was a saint the entire time. Even when my brother had to skip out on meeting parents, and date night, and dinners, and a WEEK long vacation they had spent months planning, Jordan never once complained, never got mad. He was only understanding. The pair of them together are the best people I know. I owe everything to my brother, and by proxy I owe a lot to Jordan too, and the only complaint I have….” A pause, “Is that these two waited this long to get hitched.”

The room broke out into a burst of more humans screaming and hitting themselves. Sunny took up the custom clapping both her upper and lower hands together.

A few more toasts, a few more things to say, and then David stood, “Alright, while we appreciate all the gooey stuff you guys have to say, this is supposed to be a party, and I expect to see you guys do some wildly stupid stuff. So get going.”

***

He would not be disappointed.

Krill ended up under the table at some point as the humans stomped and cavorted around the room knocking over chairs running into each other and dancing wildly with the thudding thrumming beat which had taken over from the delicate dance music. And when he said dancing, it wasn’t the kind of dancing that Krill had become used to, it turned into the humans wildly waving their arms around stomping their feet and rolling in unknowable patterns and confusing circles like ribbons of silk ripped in the wind.

They lifted each other into the air, and threw flowers until there was barely any ground left.

Drunken and confused, the humans stumbled into each other and passed out under tables. Sunny vanished some time during the evening as the party grew even rowdier. He cowered under the table.

Watching from where he was, he saw Vir dancing with the other humans surprisingly sober compared to his friends. One of the other humans in a rather flowy blue garment ended up close to him. The human had a drink in their hand and they looked rather glazed in the eyes.

He didn’t hear their conversation, but he watched Vir turn and then immediately stumble backwards crashing into the floor before scrambling on hands and knees through the dancing figures and then out of sight.

A chair crashed to the ground next to his table, and he yelped in surprise scooting even further towards the center as a couple of humans hit the floor next to him.

He hid there until morning light danced delicately across the floor casting rays over humans passed out from their late night drinking. Many of the humans had left, but many still remained collapsed others sitting at tables in various states of sleep.

Krill quietly crawled from under the table and went floating around the party not recognizing any of the humans until he moved onto the grass outside of the patio and found Sunny and Vir asleep next to the tent covering. Sunny lay flat on her back in the grass head lolling to the side with Vir tucked against her side under one of her arms head resting against her armored plates. His suit jacket lay over him like a blanket and his tie lay in the grass to the side.

Krill sighed and rolled his eyes looking back at the horrifying aftermath of their party. The collapsed humans, the strewn bodies, it looked like a warzone.

He almost wondered if the Drev way of fighting each other to submission would be less barbaric.

#humans are space orcs #humans are weird #humans are space oddities #humans are space australians #Earth is space Ausralia

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mst3kproject · 6 years ago

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The Hideous Sun Demon

Have you ever wondered what would be the exact opposite of a werewolf? Apparently writer/star Robert Clarke did, and as his answer, he made The Hideous Sun Demon. Nan Peterson from Girls Town is in it, and Patrick Whyte from Kitten with a Whip, and William White (no relation as far as I know) from The Human Duplicators. There’s a Rifftrack available, too, so this one is officially more than qualified.

We hit the ground running, as a man is wheeled into an ambulance after a nuclear accident. This guy turns out to be Dr. Gilbert McKenna, a scientist of some description, who lost consciousness after spilling a jar of radioactive isotopes. A couple of days later, and he seems to be just fine – he’s feeling well enough to sexually harass the nurses – until he goes out in the sunshine. Rather than just giving him a tan and a bracing dose of Vitamin D, the sun’s rays de-evolve him, transforming him into a lizard monster! The condition reverses in darkness, so McKenna takes to sleeping during the day and only going out at night, but a secret like that can’t be kept forever – especially after his scaly alter-ego commits a murder.

Wow. This movie is terrible. The acting is awful, with everybody sounding like they’re reading their lines off cards. Clarke is one of the better actors in the movie as long as he’s playing low-key. When he’s supposed to be freaking out and crying, he takes it way too far, right over the edge into comical. The actors playing the other scientists always come across like they have no idea what the words they’re saying actually mean, and certainly don’t know how much of it is dead wrong. A scene in which McKenna is beaten up by some thugs outside a bar is so badly choreographed, it’s laughable.

We don’t really know McKenna at all. When we first meet him, he’s just been irradiated and is unconscious on a gurney. We are told that he’s an alcoholic and we see him try to flirt with the nurse, but really we only ever see him as the depressed guy terrified of turning into a lizard. If we knew more about him, we could sympathize with him better and feel his downward spiral more keenly. The one quick piece of background we get actually undercuts his character arc – if he’s already an alcoholic, then we have no baseline for his drinking over the rest of the movie. I think we’re supposed to believe it’s getting worse, but we don’t know.

The worst casualty of this lack of background is the nature of McKenna’s relationship with his colleague Anne Russell. We get the idea that Russell cares for McKenna very much – she worries about him constantly, and another character reminds her that she views him ‘through rose-coloured glasses’. Are they romantically involved? The first time I watched the movie I got that impression, and yet then he goes off to pursue Trudy the lounge singer. Is Anne’s love supposed to be unrequited? Are they awkward work exes? Does he deliberately dump her so she won’t be burdened by his sauranthropy? The script never deals with any of this.

Since most of the movie is set at night, the lighting is terrible – darkness and dark filters make it difficult to tell what’s going on in the outdoor scenes, and the crappy film stock doesn’t help, either. In order to make sure we know this is all happening at night, the foley guys have dubbed in lots and lots of cricket noises… which brings us to the sound, which is so bad that it’s sometimes hard to tell what people are saying. The music is often hauntingly familiar, consisting of public domain tracks we’ve heard in several of these old monster movies before – in particular I’m sure I’ve heard the song Strange Pursuit in another movie, but googling it turns up very few results.

The lizard-man is… not great. The mask is about as good as anything from the fifties, and fairly elaborate, with lots of individual scales and teeth and extra makeup for Clarke’s chest and hands, so he can run around with his shirt open. In other movies the cheese factor of the monster suit is minimized by a lot of lurking in the shadows, and the makers of The Hideous Sun Demon have handicapped themselves quite badly by having a creature that must appear in full sunlight. We get a nice clear look at stuff like the seam where the costume head meets the chest, or the wrinkles where it bends at the elbows.

And yet… for all that… I kind of like this movie. The idea of a reverse werewolf, a creature that transforms and kills by daylight, tickles my sense of humour – but it’s an interesting concept on other levels, too. It invites us, for example, to think about why night is the traditional time for monsters. This is such a truism that it’s rarely even put into words. Everybody knows that Evil People Only Come Out At Night, and when we do think about it, the reason why seems obvious: night-time is when things like wolves and sabre-tooth tigers used to come out and gnaw on the unwary among our ancestors. We’re still here because the survivors passed on genes that made them afraid of the dark.

This means that a man who transforms into a monster by day is a very different creature from the traditional were-animal. Werewolves, who change only under the moon, can lead a normal life while partially, or even wholly, unaware of their affliction. Darkness is anonymity. McKenna doesn’t get to be anonymous. He literally has the full light of day on his problem.

Because darkness is anonymity, it is a time for monsters in another, only slightly less literal way: night-time is when an awful lot of crime happens, because there are less likely to be any witnesses. Again, this is very relevant to creatures like werewolves and vampires, creatures of the night – their activities can go unseen because of this lack of witnesses. It’s also important for Gil, but in a different way. He cannot be a creature of the day, because it brings out the monster in him. He is therefore forced to be a creature of the night, and must keep company with other creatures of the night, such as Trudy and her gangster boyfriend.

Trudy is an interesting character, in that she represents both knowledge and innocence. She hangs out with criminals and, rather astonishingly for a movie of this vintage, is presented quite frankly as sexually promiscuous. McKenna takes her out to the beach and it is heavily implied that they had sex there before he ran off at sunrise so she wouldn’t see him transform, and later dialogue tells us that this is not her first such encounter with a near-stranger! It’s not fully explicit, but it’s still perfectly clear, and this is possibly the one thing the movie does well. At the same time, what McKenna finds attractive about her is that she doesn’t know his secret. She’s innocent of the terrible truth and interacts with him on that level.

I still don’t know what the relationship between McKenna and Russell was supposed to be, but McKenna’s pursuit of Trudy makes sense on this level, even if we assume he and Russell were all but married. He can’t bear to be around Russell because she knows and that will colour how she treats him no matter how much she loves him. Furthermore, every time he notices a difference between her behaviour before and her behaviour now, it will remind him of his condition, which he desperately wants to forget. Trudy’s ignorance is therefore one of the most attractive things about her.

After Lizard-McKenna kills her boyfriend, Trudy vanishes from the movie. She was probably the one who called the police, but we never see her again or find out what she thought of the whole thing. This is disappointing because Trudy’s feelings toward McKenna have changed several times over the course of the film – from infatuation to rage to pity and back to infatuation again. I would have liked to see some sort of conclusion to this. If Trudy’s innocence is the main thing McKenna sees in her, it would have been nice to see them interact again after that innocence is shattered, and what effect this change in her has on him.

Also unresolved is the effort to find a cure for McKenna’s condition. A radiation expert, Dr. Hoffman, comes to see McKenna and examines him, and says he thinks he can at least treat this condition if not cure it entirely – but this goes nowhere. The death of Glenn Manning in The Amazing Colossal Man is made extra-sad by the fact that they did have a cure, and that Glenn didn’t understand that they were trying to administer it. It’s an extension of Glenn’s own story, in which the world has not yet given up on him, but he has given up on himself. McKenna is just being chased by the cops, and sure enough, eventually they shoot him. His death is supposed to be a tragedy, but there’s nothing to give it meaning.

So while I do kind of like the ideas in this movie, the execution of them leaves a lot to be desired. I’d actually be interested to see a remake of The Hideous Sun Demon, made by somebody with a bit more talent at writing (and directing… and acting… and basically everything else). There’s gotta be something you could do with a reverse werewolf that would be way cooler than this.

#mst3k #reviews #the hideous sun demon #episodes that never were #50s #you is a warwelf

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juni-ravenhall · 6 years ago

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writings about juni as an oc

30 questions about Juni (with unnecessarily long answers), from this SSO OC asks posts except i just filled it all out in one go. i want to try developing her into a more detailed character just for fun so this seemed like the best way to start! i hadn’t decided anything about her besides “non-binary and pan” until starting to fill this out hahah, i just tapped into my jorvegian feels and went along with what felt right.

this is already stated on my “about” page but, to be clear, Juni is some kinda persona/OC thingy and not “me”, while having some traits and details inspired by my real self. (you can definitely get to know about me by reading this, but, it’s not me me.)

BASIC CHARACTER INFO (remember her details are not mine!) Name: Juni Ravenhall Age: around 18-20 i guess, don’t wanna make her too old to fit with the other characters in the story. Gender: non-binary / genderfluid?, but more or less OK with her female body, and she’s fine with any pronouns. Sexuality: panromantic pansexual.

1. What is their home stable in-game? Why?

South Hoof Peninsula (headcanon:ing that there is a home stable there, obviously) because it’s her home. While travelling she makes use of stables and accomodations anywhere, so some people know her in the places she stays over a lot (Valedale, Moorland, others).

2. Where do they actually live in Jorvik?

Her home is on South Hoof, although she doesn’t stay there for long periods of time anymore with all the travelling and adventures going on. She was born in Valedale, but was taken to South Hoof as a small child. (My headcanon is that there’s a few more people living on the peninsula than what’s shown in-game.) It’s worth noting she’s an orphan (or is she...?! *dun dun dun*) so she grew up without a biological family. (btw, that’s not just to be dramatic... I’m from an abusive home and parents mean nothing to me, so I wouldn’t be able to relate to her as much if I gave her some kind of normal, caring parents, I don’t know that stuff. I’d much rather she has no parents / doesn’t know her parents, than that she has to grow up with awful ones.)

3. Who is their favorite NPC?

Hmm, I would make up some OCs for her proper personal story, but out of the NPCs that exist..... (these are not all my favourites, just some of them that I think works well for her story.) - She knows everyone at South Hoof to some degree since she grew up there, I think she’s especially close with Jonas as a parent-figure of sorts, and of course, Madison. She helps the hermit and is on good terms with him. When Hugh moved there, she started making friends with him, I imagine they’ll get close as Juni really cares about animal rescue. - She's fairly close to Conrad, mix of mentor, friend and parent-figure. (He’s taught her more than what’s shown in canon, and she visits him anytime she’s staying in Moorland.) - She likes helping Agnetha and Björn with their garden projects so they have a friendly relation, though casual. It’s the kind of thing where she’ll stay over and help them for a few days, and at the end of the day they have cozy outdoor dinners outside the house, watching the sunset view from the cliff and smelling the roses. They probably get some great fresh food from around Silverglade. - I think she's somewhat friends with Ed at Wolf Hell Inn (or stays over and sees what crazy stuff he’s up to often enough). - She definitely likes Rania and like going out for rides with her, whether there’s a special cause or not. I forget the name of that crazy ranger girl... but she likes her and Alonso too. - She likes hanging out with Mario, and they’ll have picnics on the mountain or on top of the observatory after she’s been helping him out, watching the stars together (platonically). - She’s a wary friend of the Bobcats and Justin, like, they could be friends (since she’s at Moorland often enough) but they aren’t quite. I think she gets along with Josh (pole bending guy). - I was going to write about the soul riders and druids... but I think in my made-up headcanon, Juni's situation and role in the soul rider team would be different. I’ll have to think more about it.

4. Who is their Soul Steed? What breed are they? Do they have any markings or look different in some way from the in-game appearance you could give them?

Winterborn, a Jorvik Warmblood stallion (here’s his tag on my blog). He’s a brave and loving companion, thoughtful sometimes, a bit silly and spoiled sometimes. His bond with Juni is very strong. He probably does look a bit different in my headcanon but I’d have to draw/edit it to make a decision, so let’s leave that in the air for now...

5. What is their favorite location? (Ex, Hollow Woods, Greendale, Silverglade Manor Library) Why?

- South Hoof, as her adopted home, and because of the ancient and “wild and free” energy it has. She feels relaxed and at home there, and somehow connected to the magic of the land (even before she learns about magic). - Valedale and the surrounding areas like Hollow Woods, where she feels a nagging sense of nostalgia and belonging, a tingling mysterious feeling (similar but not the same as what she feels on South Hoof). She loves the flowers, buildings and nature there. - Moorland Forge, for Conrad. - Agnetha and Björn’s gardens. - Wolf Hell Inn, she likes it there and (as mentioned) she likes seeing what weird stuff Ed is up to. - Dino Valley, she loves the winter, the solitude, and the challenge of survival (she’s an adventurer after all). - Crescent Moon Village, just for how cozy it is, and the Mirror Marshes, for its beauty. There’s a lot of spots around New Hillcrest and Epona she likes in general too. - Goldenhills Valley, she loves the autumn colours and the ruins, and takes an interest in the witchcraft that she sees, starting to wonder what’s good and bad magic. - Cape West, a cute little village to visit now and then. - Jarlaheim, as a place to hang out and shop / rest, after a day of helping out with farm chores around the area. - Greendale, where it seems like faeries might pop out if you’re quiet enough. - Ydris’ circus, because she can’t help but get curious about it. (I love circus / fairground aesthetics personally... I’m one of those people who’s always loved clowns and everyone else is like “what?! clowns are creepy man!”) - Mistfall and Firgrove are places she likes both for the nature and buildings, but she doesn’t tend to stay there long. - The Observatory, and other spots high up with great views, like the shortcut between Firgrove and Valedale, and the secret path up the mountain in Firgrove, too. - Aideen’s Plaza in Jorvik City, a cozy and fun place when you need a break from the countryside, especially if there’s an event / festival / market going on. - Pandoria? -- there’s certainly something about it...

6. Who’s their favorite horse? Why?

I’m going to say Juni doesn’t own any other horse than Winterborn, at least at this time. (Obviously I have lots in-game but for this OC story it doesn’t really make sense, so let’s say the rest aren’t canon, haha. Maybe they’re horses she’ll own later in life.)

7. What are their powers? Are they stronger with one Circle over any of the others?

Hmm... I dunno, I have to think more about this one. I probably want to draw some pictures to figure out more about her relation to magic and Pandoria and all that.

8. What’s their usual style? Any favorite tack sets or color themes for them?

She likes all colours and likes putting together new outfits and tack sets of various styles, but some particular favourite colours are red and purple, and overall her style tends to be bold and graphic rather than soft or gentle. She can do soft and gentle too though, when she feels like it!

9. Thoughts about Jorvik City? How do they feel about Rania’s petition for a horse-friendly Jorvik City?

She likes it there (especially Aideen’s Plaza as mentioned), but definitely thinks that there’s such a thing as “too much city” and has to retreat to nature after some time there. A horse-friendly city would be nice, as Winterborn would probably really enjoy getting spoiled with treats at the Plaza on a warm evening, getting petted by nice strangers.

10. Thoughts about Justin? (I’m sorry, I’m curious, he shows up so much)

She pities him in a kind way, thinks he’s sensitive and immature. She wouldn’t mind being friends with him once he starts growing as a person. She also likes lasagna, so they could organise a lasagna party together with the Bobcats sometime.

11. How do they feel about the magical horse race at the circus? Did they enjoy being a horse?

While she doesn’t like how Ydris treats people, she thought it was really interesting and insane, and had a lot of thoughts about what magic is / what magic can do after starting to come into contact with all its different types (Pi, Ydris, the soul riders and druids, etc etc). Maybe being able to turn into a horse at will and gallop around with Winterborn would be really cool!

12. Do they trust the Druids? Or how do they feel about them?

Once she starts getting to know about them, she trusts them as soon as she knows Conrad is involved with them, because she trusts him. Of course she doesn’t trust them 100%, due to all the weird stuff that goes on, but she trusts that they have good intentions even if it doesn’t always come out right, or maybe the right people aren’t in charge.

13. Least favorite NPC?

That’s a tough one... let’s just say she doesn’t like when people use or abuse others. However, she believes that anyone can change and become a better person, it’s just exceptionally hard for some people (and nobody is entitled to forgiveness). (Honestly it’s just difficult because I’m an open-minded person and I appreciate villainous *fictional* characters for their roles in a story, just as well as I appreciate the heroes and background characters. I don’t see a point in being pissy about fictional villains, they’re just part of a story, and in fiction everyone has a chance at bettering themselves. Plus, the victims of their actions are all fictional... nobody really got hurt. I wouldn’t think IRL people like Tr*mp is going to change for the better, plus even if he did he’s caused a lot of people a lot of harm, so IRL is another thing. but I can accept any character’s change and redemption in fiction because... it’s fiction, a fantasy.)

14. How do they make their money?

Before travelling she made them by doing odd jobs around South Hoof, now she does odd jobs around Jorvik. Often she’ll take a trade and do work for food and someplace to stay for the night instead of getting paid. She sells things she’s found and things she’s made now and then (having some skills in crafts).

15. How many horses do they own?

Same answer as before, as an OC she only owns Winterborn (right now).

16. How many pets do they have? What kind? What are their names?

I don’t think I want her to have any at this time, I might change my mind later. She loves the farm animals and the wild horses on South Hoof, of course, and helps take care of other people’s pets when needed. (I love my baby seal in the game though.)

17. How do they feel about the Soul Riders? Do they trust them? Feel like an outsider? Are they closer to some over the others?

I’ll have to decide on her role in the story and relating to the soul riders before I can answer that, so I’ll leave that for now. I don’t think she’s very close with any of them, if anything it’d be a somewhat good relation with Linda and Alex, I think.

18. Do they believe something mystical, magical, or otherwise strange really exists in Dino Valley? How did they feel about the leaving of the Kallter and the roar/scream/screech in the Valley?

There’s absolutely something strange about it, and her heart beats at the idea of more adventures there. The Kallters must have had a reason to leave.

19. Thoughts about Jorvik Wild Horses?

I think for headcanon OC story purposes, Jorvik Wild Horses and Starbreeds are probably the same thing? Just like, I’d go with that there’s a one type of magic horses with Jorvegian magic (or Pandorian) flowing through them, but then they can look different from each other. In the headcanon there wouldn’t be random Jorvik Wilds running around or anything, it’d be super special rare stuff like the Starbreeds are.

20. Do you think they are a Wild Whisperer? Or are they just bonded with their Soul Steed?

I’m not sure, leaning towards that she’s mostly just bonded with Winterborn. Maybe she has some level of whispering abilities but it’s definitely not one of her strongest skills.

21. What’s their favorite Jorvegian holiday or celebration?

All holidays, any excuse to celebrate, although she prefers peaceful and homely celebrations over parties or high-tempo events. Life is precious, so she celebrates every day to some degree (like I mentioned... sunset picnics, enjoying nature).

22. What do they think or feel about Pandoria? Have they or do they visit outside of the quests (using the rifts)? If they have or still do, why?

I think at the time I would place Juni’s story, she’s only starting to learn about Pandoria and is still confused and thoughtful about the different types and uses of magic. So what she’s going to think of Pandoria and what she’ll do about it would be something to figure out.

23. How has their visit(s) to Pandoria affected them? Do they have scars? Has it affected any of their life views?

See above. But also, since I want to explore Juni’s relation to magic, I’ll say I think the magic (or something else about Pandoria) might start to eat at her, and maybe she starts losing herself a bit the deeper she gets into those thoughts and the magic itself. (Hint... I think it’ll have to do with being an orphan and feeling alone and depressed.)

24. Would they ever consider working for Dark Core or believing their side?

No, I can’t imagine she would unless there was some very specific reason.

25. What or who is Garnok to them? A dark presence? A squid-like monster? A child with a ridiculously complicated jumping course (fuckin @’s Lizzy)?

I love Lizzy’s course lol, but maybe Garnok did have a hand in it... Anyway, I don’t think Juni knows anywhere near enough to have an understanding of Garnok at this point, so it’s just some vague thing the druids aren’t describing enough.

26. Do they ever go to the Disco? If they don’t, would they ever consider going? What would it take to make them go?

She goes sometimes, but she quickly gets tired of both dancing and socialising in crowds and has to wind down afterwards, maybe just sitting down at the disco balcony to look at the ocean, or heading down to the beach to lie down and rest. The evening ride back to her home on South Hoof (or to a place to stay in Moorland if the ferry stopped running) is a moment of winding-down, too.

27. Disco or Moorland Beach party?

The beach party is probably a little more chill, which suits her.

28. Are they interested in helping with archaeology or fishing?

She likes trying to do archaeology, and finds ancient (or just old) things really interesting, but she’s not necessarily the best at it. It’s something she does from time to time, or when someone asks for help. Fishing is something she’d only do when hanging out with someone else.

29. How do they feel about Igor, the waiter/manager of the Dino Valley cafe, and whom seemed interested in your horse for… “culinary reasons?”

She hopes he was joking, and appreciates his efforts in starting up the café since the Dino Valley crew is so small, and everyone needs each others’ help to survive and explore there.

30. Do they like the perpetual winter of Dino Valley or the perpetual autumn/fall of Goldenhills Valley, or is it strange to them? Do they prefer one over the other, or neither?

She likes them both, but she’s curious about what they’d look like if the seasons did change.

#text post #juni #sso #my post

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escaperiesworld · 6 years ago

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Sustainable travel and ecotourism are gradually getting more and more popular. According to Forbes, the so-called last-chance tourism is the top travel trend for 2018. The number of travelers globally skyrockets and the appetite for unique destinations is heating up. Forbes notes that the last-chance travel is leading to rising interest in ecotourism and sustainable hotel experiences.

So far ecotourism has not been the most popular way to travel and it is still far from reaching its real potential. It has been more like an exclusive service with an added value for the people who are very much into nature. Yet everything changes rapidly. People are looking for more authentic escape travel experiences and are willing to get the most out of their travel adventures.

Here are the ten reasons why you must choose authentic escape travel and look beyond Google page 1. These will help you to turn away from environmentally harmful mass tourism madness and choose authentic and green travel instead. Let me show you the ecotourism’s potential from a whole new perspective. Get amazing new escape travel experiences, leave a positive impact, help local communities and the environment all at once.

Natives on Orinoko River in Venezuela

#1: Why you must go for authentic escape travel experiences

I am pretty sure you want to get as much as possible out of your travel experiences. If you choose a real escape travel that is authentic and green you will inevitably discover more of the original beauty and will get more positive emotions visiting ANY destination.

So what is authentic escape travel?

When you go to the rain-forest, you probably expect to find real jungle and not a palm plantation there. By going diving and exploring the coral reefs let’s say somewhere in the Red See you expect them to be actually there, colorful and healthy; not over-exploited by the tons of irresponsible divers and unsustainable diving services. If you want to see or take part in local traditions with local communities, you expect to experience them as they are naturally supposed to be. A fine-tuned crap made for sucking out the money from tourists is a no-go today. Also, the last thing I want to do is to buy let’s say a “local” plastic souvenir of Eifel Tower in Paris that is made in China. If I buy anything at all it should be the stuff made by locals. These are a kind of rough examples of authenticity vs non-authenticity.

Unique Latvian Sauna Ritual

When the travel dream turns into a nightmare

Going the “beaten-path” is tempting

It is very easy to bring the tourists to the beaten path travel hotspots. It is also easy to market these places. Just take the stock pictures of let’s say stunning islands of Thailand where the movie “Beach” was filmed, and the visitors cannot resist them. The pictures are usually taken when there are the least visitors. They are also very much improved in the Photoshop or similar post-processing tool too, of course (you can remove people from the picture in Photoshop if you want). Sitting somewhere in the office of a Northern county like Finland on a dark winter’s day you are hooked by these pictures though. You are fed up of the 6-months long Finnish night and you want to get where the sun shines, the food is great, and there are no worries.

Not everything is gold what shines

It is only when you get there you realize that the place is not exactly what you saw on the dreamy picture. It is crowded, loud and there is no space on the beach. There are lots of stinky speedboats and the sea is so polluted with plastic bags and bottles that you actually see more of this stuff than the fish out there. Finally, literary everybody wants to get as much money from you as possible before you leave. You try to find a place to take a picture with the least people in the background. Yet year by year it gets more and more difficult. You can try to fool your friends on social media with a fake smile, but you cannot fool yourself. You don’t feel that you got what you were coming after. Sounds familiar? Well, that’s a rough picture of non-authentic mass tourism travel experience.

You will get about the same stuff in all the travel hotspots widely advertised by travel agencies especially if you go there peak season.

#2: Pristine nature heals

So, why not choose less popular places of authentic and green escape travel instead. There are also less crowded islands in Thailand and even in Greece. Actually, there are pristine nature spots left not far from mass tourism hotspots in most of the travel destinations. You just have to explore a bit and you will be greatly rewarded for this small effort.

Choose nature! Pristine nature heals. It gives you a sense of freedom that nothing else can compare to. Add some ecotourism activities (like hiking, kayaking etc.), and you will return home charged.

Canaima National Park in Venezuela

You will get a great gain from spending your time outdoors. You just have to choose the best time depending on where you plan to go.

When to go?

For example, a diving holidays in Malaysia or in Bali are the best during the dry season (from April to September). The stunning northern beaches in Latvia are the best in the late spring, summer and early autumn months (which is also from May to September).

Diving in Bali

Sandy beach in Latvia

Egypt is super hot in the summer months but very pleasant during the winter (from October till March), when it is also a perfect place for diving.

If you want to explore the rainforest the best time is again the dry season that depends on the place you choose to go.

Hiking in lowland rain-forest in Costa Rica

While enjoying the boreal forests in Northern Europe would be better in early spring (April – May), late summer (August) and early autumn (September – October). In the summer months, northern forests turn in the heaven for the mosquitos. Yet you can always choose a summer kayaking trip along the wild forested riverbanks in Latvia instead. Mosquitos will not bother you in open sunny areas.

Boreal forest in Northern Europe

Kayaking along the forested riverbanks in Latvia

The bogs and mires in Latvia are the best to be visited in the autumn when they get the most beautiful colors and are rich with wild berries.

Pristine boglands in Latvia

Any hiking/trekking in the mountains are the best in the summer months. And so on.

You will always enjoy nature. Just choose the right time to go. The bad experiences are mostly due to bad planning.

Stunning mountains in Georgia (Kazbegi)

#3: Be careful with the “must visit” places

Let’s be realistic. Despite Google’s huge efforts to give the best information on its search engine’s first pages, they are not always that successful. You might need to look further to find the best and most authentic information.

International sites with high domain authorities mostly prevail on the first Google search pages. The Hubspot says that 75% of Internet users never scroll past the first page of search results. The influential digital marketing expert Neil Patel confirms this. This is why all the websites strive to get on the first Google page at least in some niche. It is not hard to imagine that the ones who started earlier and/or have more resources have a huge advantage in the world flooded with digital information.

In most industries being on Google page 1 really means you are the best. Yet it is not that straightforward when it comes to travel. Sometimes it might be too bad for you if you are among those 75% who stick to the Google page 1.

While there are good reasons why authoritative websites rank so high, it is not guaranteed that you will find the information about the best and most authentic travel (and any other) experiences on the Google’s first page. You must look for the local sites first!

Why you should go beyond Google page 1

Let’s look at an example I know the best. In the case of Latvia and the other Baltic States, I can tell you for sure that non-local travel sites that rank the highest in Google for our region reveal only a very small fraction of the things to do and places to see here. And almost none mentions ecotourism. The simple fact is that they just don’t know enough.

In the picture below you can see the first five results on Google page 1 for the query “places to visit in Latvia” (it is very similar for the “things to do in Latvia”). The very first one is the article in the official travel portal of Latvia – a very general one. None of the next five and further on up to the Google page 3 are local. You can also see the average position of my page that is actually very much dedicated to providing detailed advice for the travelers to Latvia.

To get to my site you actually have to go to the Google page 3. The screenshot below shows the two local (Latvian) sites on this page including mine. And that’s it.

There is no way that most of the average travelers would look for these sites. Yet they actually include among the most useful information. You may say it is the problem with my site that I cannot rank higher. Yes, it is. However, is also the problem of the travelers that do not get the best first-hand information actually.

Note that for less popular destinations most of the high-ranking sites focus on more traditional highlights. You have to be a local expert or a very dedicated traveler to know that Latvia is actually a Nordic paradise for ecotourism. Being an average traveler, you just don’t have a clue about this. It is about the same all around the world; especially if we speak about destinations less uncovered.

Be critical about what you read on the Internet. Why the local’s advice matters?

The travel sites of higher authority on the first Google pages often focus on multiple travel destinations. It also means they are much more general than any local information source of a good quality. Authoritative English sites often rank high because of good content writing skills, longer experience, lots of back-links, and long-term running domains and not necessarily because they have more knowledge.

While they give good general insight, these sites often lack the level of detail that you actually need while planning your trip. This is where you should seek advice from a local.

The best way to get the most amazing authentic travel experiences is to consult a knowledgeable local guide. Or you can ask somebody who can do it for you and plan your escape travel trip as you want it to be.

Check for alternatives

For more authentic and specific results you may also have to look for the local websites that very often rank lower. Or you should do your research when you are at your travel destination. This way you might get to know a lot about hidden gems to visit and unique local experiences to have. Besides, you will also help local sites to rank higher in Google. Ultimately this will be a clear gain for you and for other travelers, who will find the local experts easier.

Remember that there is no way that any non-local blog site (even TripAdvisor or Lonely Planet) would know something about the destination better than an experienced local. No matter how good it is written and presented. It is not the first-hand information. Give more chances and trust local information channels and local businesses, at least those who speak your language.

While it is not guaranteed that the local sites and experts will always help you to travel greener (although very often it will be the case), they will be more authentic for sure. They might also lead you away from mass tourism to real destinations showing you amazing places and things you might never imagine exist.

Razna National Park in Eastern Latvia

A beach western Latvia

This all does not mean you should compromise the quality, of course. You have all the rights to demand the best and most reliable information both from international and local travel experts.

#4: Make sure that the ecotourism service is really “eco”

“Eco” gains for travelers

Many travel ecotourism destinations and service providers tend to use prefix “eco” for marketing purposes. Yet ecotourism does not always mean green travel, at least for now. I’ve been in many places around the globe that position themselves as ecotourism destinations. While there are lots of great examples, a good bunch are also far from being environmentally friendly.

Beware of the ecotourism service providers that promise you to spend amazing time in pristine nature but don’t care much on the impact you leave on these sites.

Seeing rare species and stunning wildlife may be exciting. Yet you might not notice at what cost it actually sometimes comes for the local ecosystems, species, and communities. The unique experiences may also make you neglect the problems with trash disposal and other environmental problems that are not uncommon today especially in developing countries.

Keep you “paradise” alive

By coming back to the same place that seemed to be a paradise when you first visited it, you may face the harsh reality some years later. You may not find a paradise there anymore just because you neglected the importance of sustainable travel principles for the first time you went there. Always be aware of what an ecotourism service provider actually sells and do not hesitate to write reviews about your concerns. Reviews are often the most effective tool to affect any travel service provider as the travel businesses rely on them very much.

Responsible ecotourism service providers will take care that your travel experience is truly green. They will search for the best solutions to leave a positive impact on the environment and local communities. As a traveler do not hesitate to credit them for these efforts. It is often neither easy nor cheap to keep this kind of service level.

“Eco” gains for ecotourism businesses

If you are a long-term thinking ecotourism service provider, I will dare to assume that you want the best of your guests to return. You also want that people recommend you to other travelers. Well, then you must ensure that your services are top notch sustainable in a long run.

As from the travelers’ perspective, there is nothing worse than coming back to his/her “paradise” and finding that it has turned into a miserable, worn touristic spot. You will lose not only one client and his friends. You will lose many more and you definitely risk losing your whole business.

Remember that you cannot have a great sustainable ecotourism destination and get more visitors by compromising environmental issues all at the same time. A sustainable ecotourism place is usually not compatible with big public events and masses. You will have a much bigger gain by improving your services, limit their accessibility and making them greener and more authentic from year to year.

#5: Travel is not a competition

I know it may be tempting to go with the flow and list as many countries and “must visit” places that you have been to as possible on your Facebook or Instagram account. However, it will not make you happier (or this fake happiness won’t be lasting). Neither it will impress a lot of people because these days you will hardly surprise anyone by being a traveler.

Why not enjoy your travel instead in a much slower way?

Running from one destination to another and ticking them on your “places to visit” map will just add more stress in your life.

Travel is not a competition. It is a way to get amazing experiences, meeting new people, getting connected and overcoming prejudices. It is not about “Ha, I’ve been to more countries than you”. Running through a city’s dome square and some shopping centers nearby no way means that you have truly been, seen and felt your travel destination.

#6: Going off-the-beaten-path (or track) is still trendy and will always be

I know that off-the-beaten-path is quite a worn term that many want to replace it with something fancier. “Road less traveled”, “under the radar places”, “remote travel”, “being nomad” are frequently used today. Well, I am probably too old but I still think that “off-the-beaten-path” still compiles the very essence of authentic escape travel.

Going off-the-beaten-path: You can get to Iquitos town in Peruvian Amazon jungle only by plane or boat. There are no roads going there

You choose to get outside your box, to dare. You also choose to get out of your comfort zone and “risk” to be transformed in a good way.

“Off-the-beaten-path” is not the same as “far away”

If you want to see more authentic, less disturbed places and enjoy your freedom during your trip, you must seek off-the-beaten-path places in any destination you go. It is that simple. And the good thing is that you do not always have to travel to a remote jungle lodge to get off-the-beaten-path (although this is a nice option too). Just look around any mass tourism hotspot. You might discover amazing things just slightly going off-the-beaten-path. This is a great escape travel strategy.

Amazing ancient monastery complex and natural area just in one day trip from Tbilisi in Georgia

Stunning secluded beach in Jurmala city just 30 minutes from Riga – capital city of Latvia

If you do not have time and you do not want to do your own research, ask somebody to do that for you. It will be much more rewarding than going the “easy way” and sticking to the “beaten path” all the time. This way you will get the most out of your escape travel.

Off-the-beaten-path is also greener

Going off-the-beaten-path often means that you will travel greener too, as you will reduce visitor pressure on the mass tourism hotspots and in a way may help them to recover. Reducing the problem of over-tourism in many travel destinations is a very urgent and challenging task. You can help a lot.

Going off-the-beaten-path also means that you will leave more of your travel budget in local communities rather than in already rich touristic hot-spots. This is how your escape travel experience will also bring a number of benefits to other people and will help the environment.

#7: Try traveling “off-the-beaten-time”

Ok, this is something I like to use often, but it probably needs some more explanation. It is clear that by visiting any country you may also want to see the usual “must visit” places. After all, these are the places any travel destination has become popular for. Hence, you inevitably come back to the “beaten path”.

Teide National Park in Tenerife Island (Spain) is not that crowded if you go hiking there off-season in November

Yet you can choose to visit a “must see” place not during the peak season or holidays. Go there off-season or even during less crowded hours! Believe me, you will be the biggest gainer from this strategy.

Get up early and visit Machu Picchu in the morning before it is flooded by the crowds of tourists

#8: Beat your fears with awareness

Unless you are a world traveler with a huge experience, some fear about going to a new destination is inevitable. It is just natural to fear the unknown. The problem starts when you make all your decisions based on fears.

Believe me most, and I mean the most, of our fears, are nothing to do with the reality. They are based on our prejudices well rooted in us by media. Most of the so-called “dangerous” destinations are much safer than your own suburbs wherever you come from.

Granada in a nice, colorful and welcoming place in Nicaragua to go

What’s safer? Off-the-beaten-path vs beaten-path

Besides, the more authentic and off-the-beaten-path destination you choose the safer it is. There are exceptions though. Yet, most of the crimes against travelers actually take place in the mass tourism hotspots. It makes sense as the criminals gather where most of the money comes to, of course. It has always been the beaten-path.

There are exceptions everywhere. This marketplace in Iquitos – Peru is not the safest place. Yet it is ok to visit it with a local guide

You should always check the real situation before you go anywhere but you must also avoid any old prejudices. They are very often hindering you from having truly authentic and amazing new experiences.

The good example of this is Eastern Europe. The region used to be associated with the dark Soviet regime for many years. Yet today most of the Eastern European countries are fast developing places, many being the members of European Union. It is actually safer to travel there than in most of the Western Europe cities.

A beautiful and tranquil Sabile Town in Latvia

Welcoming streets of Tbilisi – the capital of Georgia

By overcoming your fears, you will see more, enjoy more, understand more and experience more. And this is what escape travel and any travel is all about. Isn’t it?

#9: Ecotourism can be fun. It really can!

Ecotourism has not been the most “sexy” topic so far. Yet any travel must be fun if you want to enjoy it. This is where my colleagues’ conservationists often fail. Ecologists are trained to be serious scientists and experts. They take their stuff seriously; sometimes too seriously.

I am a biologist and I know that on the everyday basis my colleagues have a great sense of humor. This is until the discussion comes to the nature conservation. That moment any ecologist turns into a furious justice fighter. Some are even ready to sacrifice progress and people in the name of nature. While this is an admirable level of passion on its own, it is no way working with most of “normal” people.

When we come to the green travel and ecotourism we have to focus on the gains for each of us. Again, travel is primarily fun and entertainment. Saving the planet may not deeply appeal to everybody (until it is personal); at least at that level, a typical conservationist thinks it should. We need to see our personal benefits and/or solution to our problems.

Any travel experience should be engaging and fun.��If we enjoy authentic experiences and nature in a fun way, we will be more motivated to save these values for the future.

Improv-travel approach

As an eco-tour leader/guide I have incorporated a whole new approach in my tours and experiences. Instead of giving the people long boring factual information I combine interesting facts with improv theater elements(!)

Apart from being a passionate traveler, I am also an improv theater actor. Both travel and improv have the same positive impact actually. They connect people and encourage them to step out of their comfort zone. And it works. People are more engaged with nature in a fun way. They care more, they have more positive emotions and they are motivated to return. This is a clear personal gain.

Whatever is your approach to ecotourism it must be fun and engaging. There are endless ways to reach it. Just don’t be boring and too serious. People want to relax and enjoy their experiences. If you can not ensure this, be honest and find-hire someone who can.

#10: Raise awareness

Ecotourism is a perfect way to raise awareness. You visit new places, do things and get engaged with nature all at the same time. No awareness-raising campaign can replace a personal experience.

Most of the nature conservation and environmental projects have public awareness-raising actions. Yet they are always considered to be secondary. While they must be primary. None of the projects can be sustainable without success in raising awareness.

Besides informing the people and getting them engaged are two different things. Well planned and fun ecotourism activities may serve the latest tremendously.

There is a big difference between just visiting a protected wetland area and helping to clean it from excessive bushes. The traveler’s gain is a great sense of accomplishment, while the natural habitats get restored.

Hence any volunteering project is a great way to travel and leave a positive impact at the same time.

Summary

There are many good reasons why authentic escape travel and ecotourism experiences can make a huge positive impact on you and on local communities. They can also help to solve many environmental problems.

Authentic travel will allow you to enjoy the original beauty of any travel destination and will cut the huge problem of over tourism in mass tourism destinations;

Pristine nature heals and charges while crowds take the energy away from you;

Going beyond Google page 1 will allow you to find hidden gems and unique local experiences that you might even not imagined exist;

The real ecotourism service is sustainable and helps the environment. Be sure that it is real“eco” and always leave feedback;

Escape travel and going off-the-beaten-path is trendy and it will always be. Try going off-the-beaten-path wherever you go;

If you cannot or do not want to go off-the-beaten-path, got “off-then-beaten-time” (off-season);

Step out of your comfort zone and beat your fears! They are not real anyway. You will discover many new destinations and experiences;

Ecotourism can and must be fun. Look for escape travel experiences that bring you joy;

If there is a perfect tool that raises awareness about the importance of environmental problems, then it is ecotourism?

Have you been to an ecotourism trip? Do you enjoy green travel? What are your reasons to choose authentic travel and ecotourism? Leave your opinion in the comments or write me a message to [email protected].

10 Reasons You Should Go For Authentic Escape Travel And Look Beyond Google Page 1: Tips For Travelers And Ecotourism Businesses Sustainable travel and ecotourism are gradually getting more and more popular. According to Forbes, the so-called…

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rivbike · 7 years ago

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Film friday, this will be replaced on Monday.

Twenty-five thousand years ago the cavepeople who did things the hard way—like, crossed rivers in the rapids rather than walk for an hour looking for the shallows, or hunted wooly mammoths solo with a knife rather than with ten other tribesmen all armed with spears—drowned or died, and didn’t pass on the genes that encouraged the hard-way ways.

The hard way stuff made sense when there weren’t options, but it’s normal to always find the easiest way to do whatever. Now the easy ways are almost but not quite the only options, and you have to try hard and avoid all of the world’s messages to get to the hard way. Still, sometimes the good thing to do is the hard thing is to do, even tho the easy way has its hooks in you.

There’s too much easy now, and when something got easy depends on what thing you’re talking about. In the post-WWII decades, the easy way to fix green beans was to open a can and turn a knob to turn on the range. All the baby boomers in the country grew up on canned foods unless they grew up on a farm. I never ate a fresh vegetable between my 1954 birth and about 1969, when I started doing all of my own cooking, and got curious about exotic raw vegetables.

Also after WWII, the easy way to kill bugs was pesticides. Their effects on other life was untested, and they were unregulated, and the only good thing that came from them came from them was this 1970 song:

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The song wasn’t worth the destruction that had something to do with some of the lyrics, but at least it snuck in some digs with memorable lines heard by lots of kids who without the song, might have been environmentally clueless. Pesticides wiped our forests, song birds, salmon, raptors, and people. Not all easy ways are destructive, but the destructive side effect isn’t rare. Cars are the easy way to get around, and…I don’t need to recite the car-cons. The pros of cars benefit people only, and the cons affect people plus everything else.

Today is “Film Friday,” and the Hard/Easy discussion works for “image-making,” too. The first photograph was taken in 1839. It changed art. Up to the mid-to-late 1880s, most of the famous artists…and maybe even all artists who painted, painted realistically. But by the 1860s, photography had progressed to the point where photographs could out-perform any painter’s most realistic effort---although, only in black-and-white. So Monet and his group of impressionists painted different topics—outdoors, flowers, farms, ponds, farm ponds with flowers, plain people in plain scenes, and used bright colors (not black and white!) and short, imprecise strokes (the opposite of photographic realistic-ness). The art critics hated them, but they stuck it out, and long after the impressionists died, their paintings are probably the most loved of all paintings. It’s safe to say that if you don’t like impressionism, you are insane.

The art world grew and different styles came of it, and when there were no more obvious styles to develop, we got abstract artists like—who’s that guy with the paint buckets? I mean no disrespect, I just can’t remember his name. Bismarck? No, Marksteinberg? I can’t think, it’s late. You know the guy. He was influenced by the Beats in the ’50s. Maybe he was one of them, but he was late to the movement if he was. I’m NOT thinking of David Hockney. Not Roy Lichstenstein. I’m not sure of these spellings. The splattered paint dude, him. He would have been hung in France in 1859, but his paintings go for millions of dollars, even though there’s not a clear and obvious finely honed skill to the paint strokes, if that’s what they are. I have no quarrel, my point is just that everything is a reaction to everything near it, and that’s where this becomes Film Friday. Jackson Pollock!

The best and worst thing that’s happened to photography is the smart phone...which strictly isn’t photography, but it’s still an effective way to make images, if that’s not a stretch of “make.” If your phone catches fire, do the images go up in flames?

The point I’m taking a long time to get to is NOT that phonography is bad. I think it is fantastic! The point is, the look of phone pictures eventually wears you down, and at that point, even a bad black-and-white photograph (or scan of it) tends to be refreshing. After overdosing on perfect colors and everything so sharp in kind of unneccessary images often not well composed, a crappy black and white photo that remind you of the crummy ones of your childhood or your parents’ childhood...are refreshing. Black and white can be easier to look at, just like impressionistic paintings.

The instantness and ease of the cell phone image is hard to shake, but eventually it may wear thin, like eating too much candy, and when that happens, the fussiness and struggle with a film camera starts to seem fun. It’s natural to seek the easy ways, but not enough challenge leads to an imbalanced existence, and you have to re-balance. It’s a blast, seriously, to not know how to do something, or to get a lousy result. Lousy results are fantastic, and they’re all real and fun. If you’re good at everything immediately, you’re going to be sad. It feels great to struggle and be lousy at something, then squirm and claw your way out of that frustrating, failure-fraught hole.

The famous ancient photographers would have given up film in a second, and for exactly the same reasons, modern experienced photographers are doing the same thing. Nikon, Canon, Olympus, Minolta, Kodak, Mamiya, Rollei, Hasselblad, Bronica, Ricoh, and every other camera maker except MAYBE Leica, has quit making film cameras, which, I can say right here but not in public-public, means--to me--that they’ve quit making cameras. (Leica stillmakes one film camera, I think).

What they make are computers that look like cameras and that use the same lenses and have many of the same controls as cameras, that give you the “photographer” look while you’re operating a computer. Buddha bless the computers that look like cameras! But still, the stuff that goes on inside them is not like the stuff that goes on inside the cameras that your parents or grandparents used for photography.

What makes a camera a camera, and how is it different from a computer, and do we automatically stretch the definition of photography to include processes that use sensors and megapixels instead of shutters and chemistry? What makes a bicycle a bicycle? When does something stop actually being the thing it’s pretending to be and being marketed as? It’s all so fun to think about!

You don’t have to be richto take to film photography, but it helps to not be fighting off bullets. It IS harder, the results aren’t immediate, so the feedback is more deferred so it’s slower to learn, and with a fully manual camera you can’t just point and shoot. (You can’t buy a point and shoot camera anymore, and eventually digital images will be blinkable, so you won’t need a digit).

Kodak has quit making lots of its film. Fuji, too. Ilford still makes it all, and it’s cheap and good. There are places that develop it if you don’t do that yourself. You can get digital scans of your film images, so onlining them is easy, like this:

Roman shellacking. Bad focus (brush should be in focus!) but overall it’s still fine. Blurring the background makes it less distracting.

Will, Roman, Jenny, Dave, Vince, and I are taking more film pictures these days, and you’ll see them on the site in black and white, with all their flaws that make them stand out from phone pictures and make them look better for all of that.

There’s a 28-year old BMX-y guy named Travis Mortz. He is my hero. He shoots BMX with a chunky film camera, travels with his developing stuff, and has a million ultrafantastic videos romanticizing film and telling you good stuff. Google “Travis Mortz forest hill film lab videos” or something like that, and you’ll see ‘em.

He or Ilford or thedarkroom.com or Blue Moon in Portland, or Citizen Photo also in Portland, Photolab and The Looking Glass in Berkeley, or the Foresthill film lab (see the video at the bottom of this--that’s him)...or lots of places still do this stuff. Look them up in the Yellow Pages or the internet, whichever is easiest! There’s a place in Iowa that develop black-and-white SLIDE film--one of like seven places in the world that do that. There’s so much stuff out there, and it’s not inconsistent to use the internet to find out where they are.

You can get a used 35mm film camera and lens for $100 on eBay or from KEH camera...or Blue Moon...lots of places. You can get ‘em for less than $50, even. Film costs $6.00 for a roll of 35. It costs $16 or so to develop it and get back scans. You can monkey with them in photoshop. You can get digital prints or real prints (optical).

There has never been a better-cheaper time to get a film camera and get into genuine photography. Used film cameras are so underpriced now. What would have cost $5,000 in 1990 new now costs $600 used in great condition---or less! And if you bail out on film you’ll be able to sell it on eBay for 80 percent of what you bought it for.

This is my favorite RIV-picture, and I got it with an Olympus OM-1, Ilford HP5 film, I forget the lens. At least 11 shades of gray in the packing paper.

My dog Scoutie and wife Mary on a hike near the house.

This is with super grainy film, and is one of my favorites.

And below are pix from others here—Dave, Jenny, Roman, and Will—for a refreshing change...

Dave: end-of-roll double exposure of my favorite wife, cat and guitar.

Dave: first pic I shot when I dusted off the Pentax for this film renaissance. My bike in front of a food cart. Very busy.

Dave: I like happy accidents. Like when only the wheel is in focus here.

Dave: Berkeley skate park.

Dave: Trying to fill the frame with business.

jenny-- commute home, Sacramento

employee parking outside of #20m my (shipping) room. maybe 105 degrees this day.

SF giants home game

jenny homer riding from vancouver, WA to portland, OR during Rivelo weekend in June.

jenny neighborhood, sacramento

Roman loves to take “extra-credit” trails off to the side of the fire-road. Here’s a fun one in Shell Ridge. Cowboy hats make any picture better. Bandanas too. -will

On the way to camp. -will

Willy from the same ride as the one above. -Roman

The Yuba River shot on a Yashica T4 -Roman

Our man Manny -Roman

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I completely dig this guy, Travis Mortz He’s 28, going on 78. He loves film, shoots BMX with a Hasselblad cameras (it’s not the easy way), and if far more experienced and by far a better spokesguy for film than I am. His videos are a joy.— Grant

last thing: If you live in NYC and want to see the best photographs in the universe for free, go to 64 Grand Street (the same one referenced below). I’ve been there four times, and it’s life-changing!

Now the bricks lay on Grand Street, where the neon madmen climb,

They all fall there so perfectly, it all seems so well-timed

But here I sit so patiently, waiting to find out what price

You have to pay to get out of going thru all these things twice.

—Bob Dylan

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theisbifamilyisbi · 7 years ago

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TIFI Chapter 1.5 Too Much Happens

In this chapter, I scream in agony.

Abraham: “What if I were pregnant, too?”

I would kill a sim if you guys make me test if my portrait panel mod works. THERE BETTER BE A SINGLE BABY IN THERE, ISSY.

So I threw a birthday party for the twins because Issy wished for it. I wonder if Mochi is crying.

Fun fact, the party wish was for Mochi but Hank Goddard was blocking Issy from getting her the entire party so I didn’t actually get the wish ;-;

More importantly, HOW DO YOU MAKE THESE? I WANT THEM.

That’s Skittles aging up. Yay!

She got the Eco-Friendly trait. I mean, it’s kind of interesting. I guess.

Skittles: “This house is green, but not the good type of green.”

Mochi got the artistic trait, and that is her first painting in the background.

Mochi: “My new artistic sense makes me realize our house is an eyesore.”

At least Connor is having fun. That kid there is Terrell Sekemoto, son of Emma Sekemoto and Leighton Sekemoto. And we see Ginny too.

I missed it but apparently Iqbal Alvi married Tori Kimura so his last name changed. That must be awkward for his kids.

This is the Keaton’s son I think. He has a... face. He looks kind of like a skull, in my eyes to be honest.

Kind of? Also whatever that gif is from, I want to watch it.

After I put them in their outfits I realized that they both have similar braids and I gave Skittles the braids Mochi had as a toddler. Oops? Thus, Mochi’s goggles. Also her eyebrows were scary.

I feel blessed that they’re fighting over cleaning up the plates.

KitKat: “You don’t have the skills for this, brother.”

Reeses: :(

REESES. MY POINTS. YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE WHO IS DOING THIS.

Reeses: “It’s Skittle’s fault!”

Mochi: “Actually, I’m Mochi, brother.”

I should probably make that bathroom bigger but I’m out of money.

Remember when I said I’m out of money? I don’t think genies are cheating.

Issy: “I must rub this lamp!”

Genie: “What do you want.”

Issy: “Beau-”

Issy. You’re already irresistable. And married. With five kids. And you’re pregnant.

Issy: “Money.”

She rolled the wish for beauty but her slots were filled so it went away. Good. I’m not wasting this lamp. I’ve decided to make it more fair it’s going to be a once-per-generation thing.

Issy: “OMG SPARKLES!”

I wouldn’t complain if you dropped a money bag on her head and killed her, Sims 2 Wishing Well Style.

Awh they’re bonding. Also Mochi painting that picture is way after this picture. She hasn’t completed it yet.

I’m keeping an ear on you. You will only play Dark Wave and Electronica, not kids music.

Look the chess table and high chair is back!

I’m not using that 100k for a full house until gen 2 where I update it in the heir’s colors. So until then just Issy’s greedy wishes and common sense is whats causing the buying.

The bunk beds were annoying me when Abraham was reading kids to sleep, so I bought everyone individual beds. Isn’t it cute how they’re all together? Sorry for the walls being down, I didn’t want to heavily distort the view.

Aw they’re sitting together! And I think Abraham is happy that either the twins aged up or there are two chairs for the table now because he didn’t use it before I sold it.

That paint has only been there a week. It’s probably time to finish it. I really want a portrait of the heir and heir’s spouse to put in the basement of achievements.

This table is blinding. But it was the cheapest long table.

Pocky: “I hate you, always breaking, always dirty, toilet.”

I put toys outside for the kids to play with. And this is a full view of Skittles. I think she’s cute!

Everyone is bonding! :D

What are the stages of eating a man, Issy?

Issy: “Gnomes are yummy!”

And so he was eaten by a giant. I’ve had this game, full expansions, for years, and never saw this. I guess it’s because I avoid parties lmao.

My only issue with the playground stuff is the sims are outside at night and pictures are dark.

KitKat: “This is depressing. The swings are better.”

You have four siblings, ask one of them to play with you!

Abraham really likes the chess table now! I guess it was the kids or the missing chair.

Issy: “I AM DISTURBED!”

PLEASE BE A SINGLE GIRL TO FULFILL THE WISHES.

Abraham: “Wait-another!?”

Good job Abraham. I mean, I guess you guys do have five kids. She’s going to be fine considering she had a home birth of triplets all on her own.

Did I mention there’s a chance of quadruplets because of Story Progression?

Issy: *stares pensively out the window*

Welcome to hell, Twix Isbi! This single baby girl was born with Loner and Hates the Outdoors.

I took a peek at her as an adult. She’s uh, kind of alright. Average, really. She took after her dad more than her sisters.

Of course Pocky doesn’t go home after school. When does she? The bus is mocking me.

Don’t worry. Mochi also wanted to stand in the rain after school instead of going home.

Reeses went to a friends house. That is Michale McIrish. He’s the son of Fiona McIrish and Connor Frio. I wonder where his blonde hair came from?

He is blonde. He’s like Reeses blonde but the custom hair he’s modelling that I just got makes his hair look darker. Also the lighting in this house is atrocious. He’s a werewolf, likely because he was a Full Moon Baby.

Skittles also went to a friends house. That is Terrell, again. They were bonding. Then he left her.

Bonding again. Yay!

All I’m saying is he really likes this chess set now.

She decided to make her own food since nothing in the fridge was good.

Issy was stir crazy so she brought Twix to the entertainment park where a show was going on to teach her how to talk. I wanted to watch a performance.

Also Twix wasn’t happy to be here. She hates the outdoors.

I was disappointed. Who are they all watching? There is no one! I hope this is a one time thing. I like this part of showtime, damn it!

Then Iqbal Kimura died. I was honestly watching all the elders arrive and was like “Welp someones dying.”

Issy: “FIGHT-O!”

Twix: “Fight-o!”

She did finish learning to talk as he died.

I got them out of there in case they got a sad moodlet for watching someone die. Issy actually wanted to resurrect him but her wishes were full. THANK GOD.

Why do you try making my life hard, Issy?

Issy: “It’s just... SO SAD!”

Right, I think she’s over-emotional.

So Issy rolled a wish. To woohoo with Abraham. Risky is currently at 10% for a pregnancy.

*SCREAMING* DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS?

I DIDN’T WANT TO TEST THE PORTRAIT MOD SO SOON!

YOU DESERVE THAT. YOU BETTER HAVE A SINGLE BABY THAT IS THE GENDER YOU WISH FOR.

Abraham got promoted so he promptly left work, got said promotion, and read his favorite book outside. Baby Incoming, Preparing with Vigilance.

One of the kids brought this handsome chap home. His name is Rhett Kao. He’s a werewolf.

It was here I realized Pocky was missing. She thought she could make it home before I noticed but I counted kids in the house and realized I was missing someone.

She rolled a wish to have a baby while pregnant.

GEE, I WONDER WHAT BEING PREGNANT DOES FOR YOU?

Issy: :D

Can I use you for your genes?

Rhett: “I feel like I’ve made a fatal error coming here today.”

Look it’s birthday time! Also, did I mention Pocky and Reeses got honor roll? KitKat skipped a day so she didn’t get an A.

The teens aged up. This is KitKat WHOSE EYES ARE CLOSED. GRR. I hate this chapter. No one is on my side. You know she has purple eyes. And let me tell you, she is gorgeous! She got Natural Cook.

This is Pocky. Pocky is also very pretty. She got the Dog Person trait. Boooring.

And Reeses. Reeses continues to have like no personality, and he got Computer Whiz. Anyway, I warned you he looked like his dad. I gave him glasses because they kind of make him look better.

Pocky: “WHO WOKE ME UP FOR THIS SHIT?”

She’s such a grumpy butt sometimes.

I honestly don’t know what to say about you. Don’t look so smug.

Reeses: “Everyone went back to sleep?!”

Pocky: “I’ll fuck you up if you wake me again.”

KitKat: *Unresponsive*

Don’t look at me like that Issy. I’m still mad at you.

Points:

Births: (5) +25 100K Simoleons: (1) +40 Honor Roll: (2) +10 . Bladder Fail: (2) -10 Total: +65

Previous: 1.4 Y U No Come Home Kids

Next: 1.6 House Full of Kids

#TIFI #chapter 1.5 #1.5 #sims 3 #ts3 #legacy #legacy challenge #isbi challenge #isbi

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squaredancing-weston · 8 years ago

Text

para || Braine: A New Path, 1/04/2017

Tagging: @mr-blainderson and @squaredancing-weston

Time: Wednesday Morning, 4 January 2017

Setting: Boarding Facility (and trails), Harrod, OH

Summary: Brody and Blaine both need to get away from Lima’s crazy, so Brody takes Blaine to learn the basics of horseback riding.

Part 2

"Oh, I'm sure. I mean, he's adorable and tiny, and those type //never// wreak chaos," Brody continued to tease. He was sure that the dog would be fine for a couple hours: probably sleeping on the bed or something, in the lap of luxury that his owner had set up for him. "Well, it sounds like a good size, definitely-- less worries about crushing the poor guy with a wrong step. He certainly looks Blaine-sized anyways. I'm sure the two of you will go out in no time in matching bowties." He chuckled at the idea, then nodded. "Oh, no-- I mean, my family's had a dog. But he was just you know, one of those normal outside mutts that wandered around the ranch and chased cats and stuff. God, Bandit must have died when I was, what? Twelve?" He shook his head and shrugged. "Anyways, we didn't replace him. Four teenagers and half a dozen horses or so, didn't really have time for playing fetch, you know? Same with the cats-- they were all outdoors, and barely had names. Mostly just for pest-control. And I don't think I would've wanted a rodent-- we had enough rats running around the place." He scrunched up his face. Blaine's expression wasn't something Brody was expecting, and he felt suspicious-- did Blaine know? Well, apparently Dani knew something was going on between him and Marley, so he hadn't been as discreet as he thought with her, but they'd just been discussing Bas. He //knew// he hadn't been flaunting any sort of weird thing with him. So why was Blaine looking at him like that? Brody pushed the thought from his mind determinedly-- he did //not// want to think about people knowing his personal business, and he had to be just reading into things because he was upset about the whole situation. It was that easy. Brody scoffed at Blaine's reply, arching an eyebrow at the back of his head, "Somehow I doubt that will be too difficult," he called to the other man. Brody smiled. "Well, next time you should. Or at least send out a text-- it's not like my holiday was that exciting. I would have come out to see. Maybe made a drinking game out of your set if I got bored," he added jokingly. His face fell a little at Blaine's admission: Brody knew about family problems, and his own was a sore spot, so he could definitely sympathize. "Third? Ouch. Okay, you realize that I now have to officially adopt you and take you out for the holidays, because that's a crap draw. Except, you know, the singing bit-- that's okay. Oh! Next year, we'll go caroling," he suggested, although that honestly sounded heinous to him-- not because he hated singing (even though he wasn't especially good), but because Brody despised the cold Ohio weather. But he'd bear it for Blaine-- or at least he would right now when he didn't actually have to do it. "I'm surprised you found someone sober enough to remember the lyrics with you," he remarked with a smirk. Brody didn't really know that song sober, and he had no idea what the crowd would have been like that night. The older man nodded along with Blaine's thoughts: it was really great to hear him sound so passionate about something like that. "Well, I guess it's one of those 'Don't quit your day job, but don't give up' kind of things, right? I mean, there's a lot of opportunities to chase a passion, if you're willing to look." He straightened up in his saddle and threw a smile over at Blaine. "Look, I know I'm not //that// old, but...dancing does have a sort of age cap on it. I know I hit my peak about ten years ago, but at least I still get to mess around now. I don't mind coaching." He shrugged; it hurt, obviously, losing his chance, but he'd had a long time to come to terms with it, and he was generally pretty happy with the way his life had gone, career-wise. He grumbled in faux disappointment, "Fine, fine-- no giant foam finger. Just the big megaphone and banner then."

Brody liked the whole nature aspect of the ride: he imagined that's what drew people to the idea of horses in the first place. It was away from the hustle and bustle and drama of real life, and you got to see things that you normally missed in the suburbs. Like a deer. Blaine's eyes were sweeping the area, possibly trying to search for anything else, and sure enough there was a second half-hidden in the brush. Brody figured that there weren't anymore besides, but hey-- two deer was something. His borrowed horse snorted, apparently bored with the cold and standing around part of the ride, and suddenly the animals sprung into action, bounding off and away from the scary humans staring at them. "And there they go," he commented with a dry laugh, before pushing his heels gently and clicking his tongue to spur the horse onward. "If I could figure out a way to get my kids to pay that kind of attention," he commented, glancing back at Blaine, "I feel like I would have a much higher GPA in my Algebra class, you know?"

"Oh of course not, they're completely perfect angels. Or at least they are in my mind, lest I leave early due to my worry," he replied, smiling. He was starting to get slightly worried, but he shook it off and continued. "For sure, though I have been extra careful with my steps lately, since he's pretty decently small right now. And you're not wrong, I've scouted some dog sized bow ties at Target. I'm beyond excited." He was trying his best to joke about it, but it was honestly an exciting prospect to Blaine to go out to a special occasion, matching bow ties and all. Blaine nodded in understanding. "Gotcha. Bandit, that sounds like a good fit from what I know about your ranch life." Which he would admit, wasn't much, but it was a nice picture; a family ranch with a dog running around. "Well, I'm sad to hear that regardless, Lula might just be the reason I got through some of the things I did, as smoothly as I did." He shrugged and smiled. "But I'm also going to assume that you had enough to keep you busy, I could see where a dog as an actual pet would be hard." He noticed Brody scrunch up his face and internally panicked for a second, but he quickly decided not to dwell on the moment and he moved one. He grinned and shook his head. "Yeah, somehow I have the same feeling." He bowed his head, hiding his blush. "Uh, yeah, I will." His blush quickly subsided as he shot Brody a look and stuck his tongue out at him. "Well, at least you've encouraged me to make sure that my set is so amazing that you can't possibly get bored." He watched Brody ramble, with a small, amused smile on his face. "Well, I don't oppose you adopting me, but I will ask that you don't add caroling for my benefit. To be honest, I hardly like caroling myself." He shivered at the thought. Walking in the cold, having only a few families actually listen and not slam the door upon arrival. Blaine glanced at Brody and grinned. "Yeah, I never said they were sober, but they managed to fight their way through it. It was a good show." He twisted in his saddle to find a position that was even slightly more comfortable than the one he was in, but it was proving a little difficult. "Exactly. I'm not aiming for the 'big shot' by any means, but I'd like to reach a bigger audience if I can. Hell, I may try YouTube or something." He finally settled, realizing that it was a lost cause and defiantly telling himself that it wasn't /that bad/. He smiled back and shrugged.

"If you say so, but I still have faith that you could if you tried. But it's great that you like coaching, at least you're not miserable, regretting your life choices." He noted the shrug, noticing that behind the tough exterior, it may bother him more than he wanted to admit. Blaine rolled his eyes. "If I get the choice, stick with the finger.

Blaine watched the deer leave, smile still in tact as he watched. He was snapped out of his trance by a laugh, and he looked back at Brody. He laughed and shrugged. "People tend to pay attention to what they havent experienced before. These kids have been sitting in these classes ranging anywhere from 9-13 years, they're over it. I, on the other hand, have only seen a deer when it was standing on the side of the road as I pass it in my car. This was new."

"Can't have that," Brody agreed, "so yeah-- definitely an angel. Yeah, but I mean, at least right now your eyes are pretty much on him all the time anyways, right? So it shouldn't be too bad until he's bigger." The older man's eyes widened in surprise. "Seriously? They really have dog bow ties?" He could see that that sounded like something Blaine would actually like, so he wanted to be supportive-- and it didn't sound awful, considering he'd be matching his owner-- but he was still floored that some person had made them in the first place and gotten a large-scale retail to sell them. Brody nodded, "Yeah, he fit in pretty well. He probably liked Jeff best if he was going to like one of us, but that's because Jeffy's butt stayed off the horses," he laughed. "Lula was your family's cocker, right?" he asked with a slight frown in thought. He honestly couldn't imagine Blaine having any problems growing up-- the guy was a human puppy, and who would kick a puppy?-- but between a rough family connection and Brody's recollection of Blaine telling him about transferring to Dalton when he was in high school, apparently it wasn't as easy as he imagined. "It's good that you had her. I guess I just didn't have it that rough growing up," he admitted. "Or if I did, I was too tunnel-visioned to notice. I pretty much had dance running in the background all the time unless I was actually doing it, so I might have missed when something important was happening." Brody had had a great childhood, as far as he remembered: not without some drama, but not like the bullying or overall angst that Spencer and some others had referred to. It was starting to make him wonder how much he was actually paying attention in school. "Yeah, I mean, the horses were pets too, so it wasn't like I didn't have anyone to bond with. Star, Bay, Oprah, Mike, St. Pauli, Max, and Chaz, and those were just the ones in high school." He laughed nostalgically, considering how he and his brothers had taken to naming the horses. He'd never really felt deprived without a dog, to be honest. "Damn straight," he laughed, nodding his head stubbornly. He could be an ass, but he knew he was better than Bas.

Brody bobbed his head in understanding, pressing his lips together. "I mean-- do you want to talk about it?" he asked. Families were tricky, and while Brody himself was never keen on discussing his problems, he could see how someone like Blaine might get something out of venting. If he wanted. Brody flashed him a grin. "Good." He leaned over his horse and pushed lightly at Blaine's shoulder, "You better." Blaine's reaction caused the older man's grin to turn impish, "See? I'm helping already," he teased. "Good-- you'll like having D as a mom. She's overprotective as hell, but she's got a cabinet full of Jack and likes Disney movies. Heck, if you tell her you're into jazz, you'll probably become her favorite kid ever. Oh, thank god," he responded with an exaggerated breath of relief. "I freaking hate the cold honestly. I mean, I can handle being out here like this--" he gestured the early morning around them, "but if I'm going to be outside, I'd rather be constantly on the move, you know? Hey, maybe instead of caroling we'll go Karaoking," he offered. "It's warmer, there's more variety in the music, and there's food." Brody laughed. "Well, that actually makes it sound way better-- I want to see your Duet with a Drunk. You could make that a regular thing and put it on YouTube with your normal sets." He leaned back slightly in his saddle, careful to keep his posture correct, because the last thing you wanted was to get caught in a bad position. "Hey, I'm not doing so bad. I like my kids. And yeah, that would kind of suck." Brody regretted a lot of his choices in his life, but coaching dance was actually not one of them. Brody grinned again at Blaine's response. "Yes! Big Red Finger! We're number 1!" Brody chuckled. "I was actually talking about the deer, but yeah-- you were equally enthralled, so good point. Really? You've never seen a deer just out and about?" He arched an eyebrow curiously-- he'd seen deer everywhere growing up. They were like cats in his mind-- just kept popping up in random fields like they belonged there or something. He assumed everyone had had the same experience. "We'll have to get you out here during spring and fall," he added with a smirk. "Make sure you get a full variety-- turkeys and bunnies and squirrels to go with your deer experience. You'll be a regular cub scout."

Blaine nodded and laughed. "Yeah, this is the first time that I've been away from him. So I guess we'll see. I'm putting my faith in him right now." He was bemused by Brody's surprise and he chuckled. "They do, yeah. Not too many options, but they've given me a starting place at least. It probably wouldn't be a constant thing. I'm not one of those monsters that make their dogs stay in clothing year round. But on little outings or such, it'd be cute." He grinned and laughed with Brody. "So is Jeff your...brother, I assume?" Blaine nodded and smiled at the thought of his old family pet, though sadly at the times he was referring to. He had gone through some pretty rough patches in his life, with the bullying and the constant family coldness. It had caused something of a depression in Blaine's early years, and Lula was the only thing that made him feel better. He offered Brody a weak smile. "That's good though, right? I'm glad you didn't have it rough and that you had dance to get you through things like that." He smiled a little more genuinely with a small shrug. "When I transferred to Dalton and joined the Warblers, it helped quite a bit. So it's not like my life was just all bad. Just...different." Blaine's eyes widened at the names of the horses and he tried to hold back his laughter. "Okay, /who/ came up with those names and what's the story behind them because those are fantastic."

Blaine's smile faltered slightly at the question. He knew that he could trust Brody and confide in him, but it was a lot, and something that even Blaine had been avoiding working through because he thought that he didn't need to. So he just let out a shaky laugh and shook his head, trying to play it off. "I don't want to bore you with that, Brodes. Besides, there's not really too much to tell." At Brody's remarks, Blaine just rolled his eyes with a smile, bringing his hand up to scratch the back of his neck, something that had become a nervous tick for him of sorts. It had been a little over a year since he had heard anyone actually /want/ to hear his music, and he had started getting set in his quiet, hermit ways. So hearing Brody talk like that made him slightly uncomfortable, but in a good way. A way that he could get used to. "Well, it's a good thing that I love Jazz, then. I love being the favorite child." Not that he ever had been, but he liked the prospect. Blaine nodded in understanding. "Yeah, no I completely understand. While I'm not outdoors just all the time, when I am, I'm usually running or being active in some way. I hate just standing out in the cold though. So yes, karaoke sounds like the much better option here." Blaine looked thoughtful for a moment and nodded. "You may be on to something there, my friend. Bring your camera whenever you come to a show; I'm depending on you to catch these moments. So that means no Red Finger." Blaine smiled softly at him and nodded. "I like my kids too, even if I want to stab myself in the eye sometimes. It's good to know that if music doesn't pan out, I'll have them."

Blaine shook his head, shrugging. "It's kind of surprising too, because we lived in a rather large out kind of just on the edge of the woods. Granted, I spent most of my time studying music, watching musicals, writing music, dancing; so I didn't really notice when Bambi showed up in the backyard. Thankfully there were no hunters involved." Blaine shot a pointed look in Brody's direction, but chuckled. "As long as I get one of those cool sashes and your provide me with patches, we can do that."

"Well, better his first time being a couple hours out here then waiting till eight hours of the first day of classes, right?" Brody agreed. "I'm sure he'll be fine. Man, well, I mean, really?” The concept floored him for a second, but when Blaine reminded him about literal dog outfits that he’d seen himself, his mind relented on his skepticism, filling in with his own experiences. “Yeah, I guess I can think of worse things to do with your dog. I once saw a poor German Shepherd in a tutu, so I hardly think a little bowtie every now and again is anything cruel. And if you added a little sweater vest for Christmas, I’m sure no one would blame you,” he added, cocking a half grin. Brody nodded. “Oh, yeah-- younger brother. Kind of a puppy, like you, though he’s about 28 now. I’ve got two older ones too, Mark and Bob. But they’re all back home in Cali, you know? Don’t come out here that often.” Scratch that; his family had never come out to see him, but Brody didn’t want people to notice things like that if he could help it, so he smiled when he talked about his family and played the words easy. His past was too complicated for the water cooler, and he preferred to keep those cards close to the chest. Blaine looked a little sad at reminiscing his old dog, and Brody wondered how rough it must have been to lose her-- Blaine already seemed ridiculously attached to this one. If kid-Blaine was using her as a living diary, so-to-speak, he was probably felt like he’d lost his best friend. “Yeah, I mean, I’m not the guy that goes searching out drama, so I’m glad I missed it. But, you know...” he faltered, feeling guilty that he couldn’t really empathize with his friend and coworker. He wished the guy had just had an easier time and therefore could empathize with him. When Blaine perked up at the mention of Dalton, Brody smiled. “They really were something for you, weren’t they?” he asked, recalling their earlier conversation about Blaine’s desire to teach there. If Brody were guessing, he’d say that place seemed more like home than Blaine’s home had. “I bet they’ll be lucky to have you-- when you get to transfer, I mean,” he added. “Do you still keep in touch with any of those guys?” Brody outright laughed at Blaine’s reaction to his childhood horses. He didn’t blame the guy-- they were arguably pretty amusing names, although they definitely fit. “Oh man, we all did, pretty much. I mean, Oprah was Jeffy’s-- he said it was because she was nice and listened to him, but honestly I think it was because she was black and kind of chubby, but that sounds ridiculously racist and I’d rather you didn’t repeat that. Um, Bay and Star were Mark’s, which are actually pretty stupid names if you know anything about horses. Delilah, for example--” he leaned over and pointed to his mare “--is a bay quarterhorse. Bay just is a shade of brown. And that white stripe on her head? Hers is called an ‘irregular blaze’ technically. A star is what they call it when it’s just kind of a white dot on their forehead. Because Mark’s dull as dishwater,” he laughed. “Uh, Mike and St. Pauli are alcohol brand names, so you can tell where Bob’s mind was at, even in middle school. Max and Chaz are mine-- they just honestly seemed like decent names. Plus when I got mad at them I could call them Maximillian and Charlotte Ann, which somehow sounds more serious? I don’t know,” he shook his head-- Brody wasn’t really that original at naming his own things. His truck was Trixie, for pete’s sake.

Brody understood the value of secrets-- there were a lot of reasons not to talk about things, after all. And while he and Blaine were friends (or at least friendly), Brody certainly wasn’t the guy’s confidant. So how badly the guy was trying to play off his past wasn’t Brody’s business-- he just nodded in understanding, respecting his coworker’s privacy. “Yeah, just, you know, if you want to vent about boring stuff,” he followed up, leaving the door open without forcing Blaine anywhere near it. He hunched a bit in the saddle, rolling his eyes, but Blaine’s smile didn’t look overly uncomfortable about the idea of Brody seeing him perform-- although if the guy forgot to text him, the older man wouldn’t hold it against him. Some hobbies were better kept separated from work. Brody himself laughed, “See? You fit in already. Well, just don’t be too good-- you might end up replacing me as her favorite guy period, and then where would I be? That’s my True Love right there. You just stay the favorite son, and we’ll be good. I’ll teach you to ride a bike and everything. And hey, look! I’m already putting you on your first horse-- I’ve totally got the hang of this.” He laughed and smiled. “Okay, good-- we’re on the same page. We’ll find a winter-themed karaoke night and go there for the holidays.” Brody wrinkled his nose, “What? You’re putting me behind the lens? You know those people can’t talk, Blaine? Ruins the quality. You would silence me just for YouTube hits? Who’s going to make the weird whooping noises for you?” He put on a faux pout, although he would definitely help Blaine if he could. “Hey, though-- I could put you in touch with the AV kid that set up my channel, if you want. I mean, mine is really simple, but the quality’s got a draw.” Brody laughed. “Yeah, they can be a handful, but would you really get so frustrated you’d want to damage your most potent weapons? I think that’s a horrible thing to threaten Blaine,” he teased lightly.

“Well, at least you were doing something constructive,” Brody consoled him. “And anyways-- deer kind of all look the same, so you can just take that image right there--” he gestured to the empty field “-superimpose it in your backyard, and bam-- exact same idea.” He gave a dry laugh, “Yeah, well, you won’t see them on these trails either-- too many people potentially wandering around, plus it would spook the horses. There’s better areas, I’m sure. I mean, I don’t waste my time, since I can barely hit the broad side of a barn with a shot, but I hear the kids talk.” His face broke into a smirk at Blaine’s expression, but he nodded, “Absolutely-- we’ll have a ceremony every time you get a new one. With cookies and punch.”

Blaine looked thoughtful, figuring that Brody had a point. “Yeah, I guess that’s true; this way he can work up to it. Though I feel that would work better if I was actually going to be gone from home the next couple of days as well.” He couldn’t help but laugh at the thought of a German Shepherd in a tutu. But then he thought about how sad the poor thing must have looked and he quieted down. “Yeah, tutus are a bit much. There’s accessorizing and then there’s overkill. A Christmas vest would be cute, I’ll have to keep an eye out for those this year.” Blaine grinned as he heard that Brody had a puppy in the family. “Well, I guess that means that my ‘puppy’ charm won’t work on you, if you’re used to it.” Blaine nodded in understanding, adding a sigh. “I know how that goes. Well, obviously, not to the same extent, they actually live in Ohio, but even then, they don’t visit too often.” He glanced over at Brody, giving him a small smile. “I’m sorry they don’t get to visit much. It must suck to be so far away from them.”

He tried to hide his smile as Brody tried to relate to him. He appreciated the attempt, and he would always be grateful for it. Blaine’s life was far from the worst life to possibly live, but he knew he had struggles that were kind of difficult for people to either relate to or understand, and he never held it against them, the few people that he did open up to. He let his smile shine through though when the other asked about Dalton. “They were my family when I desperately needed one, student and teacher alike. It’s where I was able to actively express myself without having to worry about what was waiting around the corner.” Blaine’s smile faded slightly at Brody’s remarks at transferring. He had really started to love McKinley as well, and the friends he was able to establish there. While Dalton had been his home back then, he was starting to see McKinley as his home now. “If I transfer, anyways. Though I wouldn’t say that. I think I’m a good teacher, but I don’t know if I’d be able to keep up with Dalton’s curriculum,” he said, playing it off as much as he could. “You mean, aside from Bas? Every now and then, yeah. There are a couple who stayed around the area that I need to get in touch with again. It’s been ages.” Blaine watched Brody ramble through the list of names and how they came to be and laughed. “Your family sounds amazing. I also support your names; who doesn’t want to use Maximillian in an angry voice?”

Blaine pulled his lips up into a tight smile, genuine but distant. “Thank you, I’ll keep that in mind.” He had had a sudden urge to talk about everything but he kept it to himself. This day was a day to forget and relax, not pull up all the dark clouds that rested in his memory. He knew he wasn’t opposed to telling Brody and letting him in, but it just wasn’t the time. He snorted, listening as Brody rambled on, taking the true role of his adoptive father. “I solemnly swear not to steal your one true love. I’m okay with staying the favorite son. And yes, you’re the best dad ever. I’ll get you a mug and everything.” Blaine shook his head with a smile. “Deal, Christmas Karaoke it is then.” He shot the older male a strange look. “Hopefully no one, I’m hoping for genuine cheers. And you would have the most important job! Making sure that any great moment is captured for the world to see? Your role is almost more crucial than mine.” Blaine looked at him puzzled for a moment. “You have a channel? What do you use it for?” he asked out of genuine curiosity. He chuckled and shook his head. “No, I guess I wouldn’t.”

Blaine smiled and nodded, looking back out into the field. “Yeah, I guess that’ll have to do. I’m glad I won’t have to really worry about hunters here though. I don’t think my little heart could handle it.” Blaine grinned back, giving a short nod in approval. “Good, I expect the good kind as well. A 25 year old man getting his boy scout badges is a special occasion that deserves to be celebrated.”

Brody shrugged-- consistency would make for better routine, yeah. “I mean, you can keep coming up here, I don’t mind the company. But I think you’ll be sore enough tomorrow, so maybe not,” he offered dubiously-- Blaine didn’t seem to want to be far from Bing regardless, and riding wasn’t something you just started as a daily thing randomly. Blaine’s laugh at the poor dog’s misfortune caused Brody to crack a grin as well, although it really had been an unsettling thing to witness. “Well, it’ll make for a worthwhile Christmas card next year, that’s for sure,” he agreed. The older man bobbed his head, heart hurting as he thought about his baby brother back home. “I hope so-- I mean, it Jeffy called me up and asked for something, I’d still probably come running today, so not sure what that says about my resistance.” Literally-- Brody would jump off a cliff if Jeff would ask for it. But really, if any of his family was desperate enough to talk to him by now (besides his mom), he’d probably do anything. Brody’s brow furrowed unhappily at Blaine’s reveal-- what kind of asshole family lived in the same state and still wouldn’t see their kid? Especially if their kid was Blaine? “Well, I wouldn’t worry about it. Me and Dani make enough trouble over the holidays to set off a National response.” He bit his lip. “Yeah, well, I mean, between kids and jobs, life just happens. And, I mean, my mom calls all the time--” every one or two Fridays at dinner, like clockwork “-- so it’s not that big of a deal.”

Brody smiled at Blaine’s brightening when the subject of his old school came up. “That’s pretty amazing: I mean, not a lot of people have that, you know? Especially not through school.” The older man’s lips twitched a little at the amendment. “If? You don’t think you’ll get in?” Or maybe he’d actually like to stay? Brody knew public school had a lot of pitfalls, and McKinley probably more than most, but he really did like the new teacher, and would be glad to see him stick around for a while. “I mean, you handled it just fine as a student. I doubt you’d be any less capable as a teacher. Probably overqualified, since you know the place so well.” He flashed a grin in encouragement. Brody wished Bas’ name would stop coming up-- it kept bringing him up short, causing a sort of stutter to the conversation, that, while miniscule externally, felt jarring in his head. “Bas? Sebastian went to Dalton?” he echoed. He’d known the guy went to a private school growing up, but considering his law degree was from New York and his family from France, an Ohio-based school seemed a little baffling. Brody let out a chuckle. “Well, we all definitely had our quirks. I feel for our mom, really. Right though? I always liked a good normal name that can be put to good use.”

Blaine’s response felt honest, but also effectively closing the conversation, so Brody respectfully dropped it. Like he’d said-- he just wanted to put it out. Just in case. The older teacher grinned in amusement. “Good to hear-- you know how hard those things are to come by? I mean, favorite sons are a little tricky as well, but True Love-- I mean, that only happens with most protagonists of every tv show. Very rare. Oh goodie! I do love a good mug.” He laughed at the idea of Christmas Karaoke, “It’s a deal. No one? Well that’s just disappointing. I mean genuine cheers come come from anyone, but who will be so supportive that they’ll bring out foam fingers and overly dramatic applause?” he told Blaine, a faux serious expression on his face. “Oh yeah-- TitanicTexting-11? The AV Club set it up for me as my little texting box for my kids who can’t follow the No Phones in Class rule,” Brody revealed with a grin. “We mess around with the audio and do that weird silhouette thing for the faces, and then just mishmash a recording of all the texts I catch them sending that I force them to read in my little Confessional Box in the back of the class. It’s got a pretty decent subscription, just because kids like to laugh at each other.” Brody smirked triumphantly. “Exactly. You’ll just have to find something else to stab in frustration.”

Brody raised an eyebrow,” Because you’d be afraid of getting shot or because you don’t want to think about them getting shot?” he asked. “Seriously; we’re going to have to really expand on what sort of knowledge is expected of you. Like the Drinking Game badge, and the 100 Papers Graded in One Night badge,” he added with a laugh.

Blaine smirked at his friend and nodded a little, the stiffness in his legs already at the forefront of his mind. "Yeah, I think I'd probably refrain from riding again right off the bat. But we could still come give you company. As long as you don't go galloping off into he distance, we could always walk beside you. Or if you needed to work in the barn, I could come hang out, give you someone to talk to lest you become a crazy horse man." His grin didn't falter; he truly wouldn't mind coming and spending time with his friend. Especially when it seemed as though he was pushing the other two away. Blaine nodded, running through possible Christmas card ideas in his head. "You know, I think you're right. I'll send the first draft to you for approval." Blaine glanced over as Brody talked about his brother, sensing that something may be burrowed under the surface, but he refrained from asking further. "Well, it sounds as though he has you wrapped around his finger. He's lucky to have that." Blaine shook his head, a grin toying at his lips. "I can't wait to experience it then." He looked off into the distance as he nodded in understanding, though a tiny bubble of sad jealousy was bubbling within him. Blaine didn't even have he reassurance that it was his family's life that was keeping them from contact from him.

Blaine bobbed his head, still beaming. He knew how fortunate he was to be placed in a private school that not only had a zero-tolerance bullying policy, but was also filling with genuine and loving people that wanted to see him go far. "I'm not much for God, but that school was the closest I've gotten to believing he might actually exist." He knew that might sound strange, and he wasn't meaning to put his previous school on such a pedastal, but he had a lot of gratitude towards it, and he wasn't sure he'd ever be able to show it. Which may be another reason he didn't want to transfer; he didn't want to disappoint the school he came from. He looked at Brody thoughtfully as he shrugged his shoulders. "I don't really know," he smiled briefly, "though you may have a point; I think the fact that I went to school there would work in my favor. I just don't know. I graduated 7 years ago, there's no telling how it's evolved since then." Blaine was taken aback when Brody seemed to go into something of a trance. When his friend asked his question, a wave of realization washed over him. He spoke slowly. "He did, yeah. He was actually the first friend I made there, if you can believe that. Turns out he's not as big of a douchebag that he likes to let people believe he is." He observed Brody and continued carefully. "Is...is everything alright between you two?" Behind his perfect poker face, he knew the true answer, but he needed to attempt to get Brody's side of it. Blaine chuckled and shook his head. "Your mother must be one tough lady to deal with four boys with 'quirks'."

Blaine laughed outright. "Believe me, I know exactly how hard they are to get." He had to bite his tongue to refrain from being even more of a downer, to admit that it didn't take but five seconds for his father to choose a favorite son. He once again rolled his eyes, this time with affection at his friend. "I guess when you put it that way. Just start it off a little more subtly." His eyes grew in wonder as Brody explained his channel. He felt confident enough to raise his hands from the reigns and clap slowly before grasping them again. "That is absolutely genius and I'm going to need to watch those as soon as possible. If you take submissions, I'll give you some that my students sent; you can just grab volunteers for those, I guess." He stuck his tongue out at the other in mock defeat. "I can probably think of a few people, if I really set my mind to it." Blaine sighed with a small shrug. "Both I guess. Neither are particularly pleasant thoughts to me." Blaine just looked bemused at Brody. "Tell you what. Send me a list and I'll get started. Though I must tell you that I already have those two done."

#ttl #Blaine Anderson #para #A New Path #p. Blaine #Harrod #Braine

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propertyhold · 7 years ago

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Designing Olivebridge Cottage 2.0: Part 2!

So, you may recall that last time we discussed Olivebridge Cottage, we had a plan to kinda-sorta rebuild the house and it looked more or less like this:

This period was the closest this job probably ever came to feeling manageable: we had the town and the engineers on our side, the homeowners were happy with the direction, and the tasks ahead were difficult but not that difficult. It’s a little one-story house—a few more months and we’d be out.

Then the homeowners threw a second floor master suite into the mix. Which they wanted me to design. In approximately 5 minutes. Two weeks before we were set to start construction on a plan that had remained unchanged for a few months.

At the time, the logic went like this: after spending so much time and so much money on this house, reselling the house at a price that bore any resemblance to the amount invested would be somewhat impossible if the finished product didn’t really differ materially from the original house. Adding a whole bedroom and bathroom would turn the house from a 2 bed/1 bath to a 3 bed/2 bath, essentially shifting it into a different bracket of real estate. Obviously the upfront building cost would be higher, but the homeowners felt that it was the right move.

And so, the second floor. Maybe it sounds easy to you. It did not sound easy to me. It didn’t even necessarily sound fun to me, because I think I’m more of a renovator at heart. I like working within the constraints of an existing structure. Pulling a design out of thin air…that’s a whole different thing.

And you can’t just plop a second floor onto a house and call it a day! You have to rethink everything. For starters, stairs! Stairs take up a lot of space. You also have to think about using that new space efficiently. You have to think about plumbing paths and electrical requirements and septic systems and all the codes. And you have to think about what that new house is going to actually look like! And, in my case, without really any experience to lean on, I had to do it in a really short amount of time and have it approved by two homeowners, a team of engineers, and the fine folks at the local building and zoning department. And then I had to be able to build it.

All that being said, it’s not like I could just propose/build whatever. Every design job has constraints, and often those constraints guide the design much more restrictively than your imagination does. As somebody with some educational background in architecture, and certainly a personal interest, my mind immediately went to all kinds of things I’ve seen or read about. The Eames Case Study House, constructed from factory components in a matter of days. The stark geometry of the Bauhaus. The undulating concrete forms of Saarinen and Niemeyer. Those incredible walls of glass and rich wood finishes and the indoor-outdoor dialogue they create that Neutra did so well. It’s easy to get caught up.

And then you come back down to reality, because these were my constraints:

Experience: at this stage, we didn’t even have a builder. Obviously I can’t literally, single-handedly construct a house, so I knew I’d be working in conjunction with a contractor, but we didn’t know which contractor. New construction is somewhat uncommon around these parts, so there really just wasn’t room to gamble on some complicated or experimental design. This house needed to be simple and straightforward to construct.

Cost: I had to be able to build it inexpensively. New construction is never cheap, but there’s a big difference between a simple, traditional stick-frame structure and a complicated one that requires steel supports or tons of custom components or hard-to-source materials. Time is money when working with contractors, going back to the ease-of-building point. Cost is also part of what eliminated prefab as an option: everything I found was priced much higher than we hoped to be on a cost-per-square-foot basis, not to mention really tiny!

Footprint: partially because we were working with most of an existing structure, and largely due to zoning regulations and setback requirements, we essentially had to maintain the footprint of the existing house. More on that in a second!

Site: this site was somewhat challenging. You have the beautiful wooded areas in the back and off to the side with big mature trees and boulders and the wonders of nature, but then across the street and next door you have houses. Two of the three are currently in states of disrepair (and even fixed up, it’s not like you want to highlight neighboring houses when you have nature as an alternative!), so I had to try to maximize the appealing views and minimize exposure to the less desirable ones.

Practicality: even with the additional floor, the house still isn’t particularly large. You can dream all day about the architecture of a space, but ultimately you still have to have a functioning kitchen, three bedrooms, storage, wall space for art and small storage and display, two bathrooms that meet code, utility space, and laundry. The house has to work.

Codes: There are codes for almost everything. Heights, spans, clearances, distances between supports, the rise and run of each stair tread, the R-value of insulation, the placement of electrical receptacles, forms of egress, the type of glass required on a given window, fire safety, vapor barriers, grades of lumber for interior walls vs. exterior ones, the space around the toilet bowl. To say the learning curve for me was steep is an understatement.

Engineering: Regardless of what would have actually been possible, the engineers had some restrictions that my hands were somewhat tied to follow—the most consequential being the pitch of the roof. You hear a lot about snow loads being greater than they used to be, and our engineers said emphatically that our roofs had to be 6/12 at a minimum. This refers to the rise and run—for every 12″ of run, the roof must rise 6″, which is fairly steep. That’s kind of fine for a regular gabled roof, but wouldn’t allow us to build, say, a shed-style roof without the angles just looking insane.

Time: there just wasn’t enough of it! I had to design it quickly, primarily because all of this came about in mid-September, and we had to get a foundation in the ground before winter hit! And we had to build it quickly. Had is a strong word—the homeowners wanted it done quickly. They wanted it done yesterday. There was quite a bit of time spent on this project trying to explain why various things were so time-consuming, and why we probabbblllyyyy couldn’t build and finish (and furnish!) an entire house in 3-4 months.

Homeowners: as much as the homeowners and I really did get along and were on the same page about so many things, remember that I’m designing this house for them, not me! It’s easy to forget now, but during this period there was SO much anxiety and frustration that, for the homeowners, it started to feel essential that the house had mass appeal. OH DEAR. To me this house was always aspiring to be more modern, not less, but Adriana started showing me examples of these very traditional, kind of generic but well-executed new construction projects that just felt so at odds with the actual house, or what they even wanted to live in! I think it was really just panic about the future prospect of resale, which I understand. Not only did this feel really…uninspiring, it also seemed like an efficient way to increase construction costs: with modernism you can get away with simplicity and utilitarianism, but it’s hard to do that with more traditional styles without everything just looking cheap and flat. As a small example, we were aiming to reuse certain things like windows that were still in fine shape, but large single-lite vinyl casement windows were not going to look right on a house that’s supposed to have 6-over-6 divided lite double-hungs. Nonetheless, this period of not wanting to go “too daring” with the design was happening in the background of this and felt like a big complicating factor, even though they eventually got over it. Ha!

SO! The first thing was figuring out the space I had to work with. Our original footprint was this, with the top facing the street:

Since we asked real nice and applied for a zoning variance, the town allowed us to bump out the living room wall 6 feet, giving us an addition 120 square feet of space to play with. Like so–shaded section is new:

One of the challenges I see in designing a structure vs. renovating one is that with renovations, you tend to be thinking mostly about the interior or mostly about the exterior. Exterior work is often cosmetic—re-siding, re-painting, re-roofing, landscaping…ya know. But you have a structure: you have window locations, doorways, ceiling heights, the direction the roof pitches. But designing a building, you have to consider the how the interior looks and functions and how the exterior looks, and the two don’t always play well together! You might think a certain window would be nice inside the house, but then outside it just looks totally dumb. Or vice-versa! Or you want really high ceilings inside, but that makes the structure really tall and proportionately unappealing. There are so many things like this. In this case, it felt imperative to maximize light and views on the elevations of the house that face nature, but ALSO create a street-facing facade that looked welcoming and attractive, but didn’t highlight the undesirable views available to that side of the house from inside. Tricky!

In super simple terms: green is where we have good views, red is where we have bad views.

So, at THIS point, the back portion of the house (now the “guest wing,” since the master bedroom is moving upstairs!) was supposed to remain fairrrrly unchanged, although I wrote in the last post about some of the stuff we were required to do with it.

The kitchen and dining room plans were also more or less set, at least in their locations. That footprint wasn’t changing, and since we were hoping to keep some framing and the foundation under the kitchen/dining space, which would not allow us to put a second floor over that part of the house without redoing the foundation as well. Weight and stuff. So our second floor master suite is confined to the area where the whole foundation would be new—directly over the living room.

So basically we have this enlarged living room, which is also the only artery to get to the kitchen/dining spaces, the guest wing, up the stairs that don’t exist, and into the house at all unless you’re just going in the front door and into that long skinny guest room. It’s a ton of space, but once you add in all of those factors it gets a little tricky to create a room that doesn’t just feel like a massive pass-through.

It dawned on me that nobody was especially tied to the front door location, and that maybe it ought to be facing the street. Incidentally that’s where the front door was before the previous owners bought and wreckovated the house.

It also occurred to me that it’s not like you spend a lot of time in a stairwell, and you can get sort of creative with window placement in a stairwell, and that the stairwell should probably go against the street-facing wall, too. That way, we concentrate the views from the living room out into the woods, not onto the street and neighboring houses.

That’s how I got to some earlier version of this. You’ll notice that a couple of walls have shifted around in the guest wing with the elimination of the old entry, but those changes weren’t planned for until after we started building! A number of major things changed on the fly once construction got underway.

ANYWAY—if memory serves, all of this took place in a couple of days, and then it was time for another meeting with the engineers and Adriana the homeowner. In the background of all of this was the fact that I was no longer under contract at this point—we had to scrap and re-write my contract for the job completely, which was underway but not complete. This sounds inconsequential, but typically I wouldn’t be designing or sharing drawings and renderings (not to mention running around town to building departments and engineering firms) until after I have an executed contract and a deposit check in hand—a little freelancer safeguard against doing a bunch of work and never getting compensated for it if a client decides to be a jerk. Unfortunately it’s happened so I’m leery of it, even when I work for people that I know and trust!

The point is, we walked into this hour-long meeting with the engineer, and I didn’t really know what we were doing there. Adriana had called the meeting but without a design in place, it seemed premature and potentially like a waste of everyone’s time.

As it happened, Adriana had been corresponding with the engineer and had submitted a sketch of what she thought the second floor layout should be. I think she’ll be OK with me pointing out now that it was…a mess. Haha! Problem number one was that it wasn’t at all to scale and showed the staircase coming up in a location that made no sense for the first floor. The allocation of space was choppy and complicated and gave the toilet the best corner in the whole house! There was an enormous amount of space given over to closets, not enough room to actually use the washer and dryer in the plan…and I was just sitting there like…oh shit.

Again. I am not hired. I am not being paid. I am watching the engineer set these plans in stone in CAD, and feeling like if the meeting continued on this way, we’d have a terrible plan that I could then be possibly tasked with executing, and a client who might not understand the need to start over with a different plan since why did we have that meeting in the first place where we designed the house in an hour?!

So, I stepped in. And drew up a little sketch of what had been tumbling around in my brain. Then we dropped it into CAD. And then we moved a couple things. Then we rotated the roof 90 degrees to have a street-facing gable. Then…the basic strokes of the design were all there. We had a shape. We had walls. We had rooms.

Then some more decisions. How tall are the first floor ceilings? I say 10 feet. Adriana wants 12. How tall are the second floor ceilings? I say 8. Adriana insists on 10. All of a sudden the house gets four feet taller. That doesn’t sound like a big deal, but things like that had a bigger impact on everything—costs and time, for instance—than any of us appreciated at the time. That’s longer lumber, more insulation, more of all the finishing materials…whoopsie!

With those plans and decisions in hand, and shortly thereafter my contract executed, it was time to take our basic shape and basic layout and flesh it out into something resembling a house!

Because budget was such a concern, it was always the plan to reuse as much of the original house as we could in the rebuild! That’s right up my alley, of course, but it’s tricky—you don’t want to be so tied to the idea of reuse that the end result suffers because you were just trying to make too much stuff work together. This started with the windows, so I made a simple visual of all the windows that could potentially be relocated and the rough openings required to install them:

Pretty exciting stuff.

Then I set about placing them, and quickly realized that we’d need more windows, and the sizes we had were mostly really strange and difficult to work elegantly into a design. I tried, though! In order to keep costs down, I recommended that new window purchases be readily-available stock sizes.

Here was the first proposed design—oof! I hated that entryway when I proposed it, and I hate it now. Haha! Since the front elevation is where we wanted to minimize views, I kind of liked the idea of doing it up really fortress-like with just a couple little windows on the front. Those windows come from the list of windows with potential for reuse, but the sizes felt arbitrary and not so great.

The clients thought it looked uninviting and scary. I get that. Moving on…

Idea #2! In both of the first two designs, I sort of liked the concept of doing a shed roof over the kitchen/dining spaces, but the required 6/12 pitch was kindaaaaaa too much. I also turned the entryway inside-out, thinking a little recessed covered exterior mudroom kind of thing might be totally cool? Especially clad in a cedar tongue-and-groove or something? Given that we already bumped the front of the house out closer to the road than the existing zoning allows, it seemed like an interesting way to avoid pushing our luck with the building department by also asking for some kind of porch/portico/something that would bring anything structural even closer to the road.

The clients did not like the outdoor mudroom concept. Still not feeling the facade. Next!

I liked this plan! I think I still kinda like this plan! The mismatched window sizes on the second floor window are an error on the rendering, so ignore that. Anyway.

This plan definitely felt the best so far to the clients, but something still wasn’t sitting quite right (with all of us, really) so we brought in another set of eyes! Trained, talented, and experienced eyes! Adriana is great friends with an NYC-based architect named Matt Bremer, so she brought my renderings to him for some input!

Matt drew the above doodle, Adriana sent the doodle to me, I made the alterations in SketchUp, and that got us to…

Boom, house!

And that’s…pretty much what we ended up building. With some minor changes, naturally.

All in all—is this the house I would have built if I could have built anything my heart desired? No. But it IS a house that I think takes into consideration the things that I talked about at the beginning of this post. Simple and relatively inexpensive to build fairly quickly, satisfied our technical requirements, had the happy approval of the homeowners, made effective use of the site, and allowed for an efficient but spacious-feeling interior layout. Check check check!

Now let’s build this thing! This is where it gets fun.

Psssst! Olivebridge Cottage is an ongoing series about a renovation that flew off the rails (and then found its way back on)! For lots of backstory and schadenfreude, check out these past posts!

New Season, New Project!

Plans for Olivebridge Cottage!

Oh Dear, Here We Go…

Little House of Horrors

From Bad to Worse (And Worse and Worse and Worse)

Blogger is Hired to Renovate, Mistakenly Destroys Ulster County Art Piece “House”

Olivebridge Cottage: 2.0!

Designing Olivebridge Cottage 2.0: Part 1!

Designing Olivebridge Cottage 2.0: Part 2! syndicated from findqueenslandelectricians.wordpress.com

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keywords-r-us-blog · 8 years ago

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Social Identity

Social identity is the way in which individuals present/express themselves to the public, predominantly via social media. A person’s social identity is usually warped in some way to appear more acceptable to society. This is due to the standardised factors such as gender, socioeconomic status, nationality and fear of judgement from others. Below I have collated several entries from individuals via social media and asked them to describe themselves briefly based on what they believe to be their social identity. I gave minimal guidelines and asked for a small about of information to pressure individuals to be concise. The results are evidently varied, and represent the varying identities people can present on social media.

Lachlan Baker: Male, 20 white Australian, party animal, friends and family means everything, adventuring, life is a beach ride the wave of life, stay positive go forward never go back.

Jean Cameron: Almost 50 years old (April 3) Carer One beautiful son ☺ Married 2 cheeky dogs Favorite movie is Labyrinth with David Bowie Favorite musician is Bruce Springsteen Favorite colour is orange

Dylan sky:18 years old, male, Australian, the wheres wally books

Angela Callaghan: 50 years old, Love my kids unconditionally, I commit to what i feel is important, And My priorities are family first then work, I love the honest relationship I have with my kids and cherish them every day.

Jennifer Dias: 44 | female | Australian / Brasilian heritage | Employed as a youth events development worker. I am passionate about all art forms, cultural diversity and in developing networks and providing opportunities for young people & 50+ers | in MyTime I'm a volunteer/an artist/a photographer/ a tone deaf singer/ songwriter and an off key guitarist/ an interpretive dancer/ an observer/ a mother/a grandmother aka Vovo / and a friend | I absolutely love love love my family unit in all its complexities and moments of joy and appreciate the lessons I learn along the way that assist me in my own personal growth.

Stacey Harrell: The Indispensable Man (by Saxon White Kessinger) Sometime when you're feeling important; Sometime when your ego 's in bloom; Sometime when you take it for granted, You're the best qualified in the room: Sometime when you feel that your going, Would leave an unfillable hole, Just follow these simple instructions, And see how they humble your soul. Take a bucket and fill it with water, Put your hand in it up to the wrist, Pull it out and the hole that's remaining, Is a measure of how much you'll be missed. You can splash all you wish when you enter, You may stir up the water galore, But stop, and you'll find that in no time, It looks quite the same as before. The moral of this quaint example, Is to do just the best that you can, Be proud of yourself but remember, There's no indispensable man.

Britney: 20yrs, female, Australian. Favourite bible verse: Philippians 4:13 13 I can do all this through him who gives me strength. I like to take photos of stuff, im a 3rd Year Nursing Student and I like spongebob memes.Also, I am super normal and quiet when people first meet me and then when I get comfortable i get real weird.

Caley Cameron:19 Years Old, Male, Australian

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Nicola Turner: I'm 18 going on 81 my favourite food is toast, I love my pet rabbit and second hand clothes. I can't add up in my head, I'm more of an english person. I like to think I'm independent but I'm a sucker for other people's company.

May Louise Bouchet: 28 Australian Profession- teacher Heritage- French/Mauritian, Italian and Polish Favourite music- anything popular I enjoy cooking, renovating, shopping, travelling, eating and playing sport. I like to be busy but also enjoy downtime and most days I feel mentally drained. If I could start my life over I would become a historian and work in a museum. I value family, friends, history and a good education. I'm also a feminist.

Denham Callanan: artist, friend, dreamer, romantic, procrastinator. 19 Male Love, family, philosophy, history, comedy, sarcasm, animals, nature. "He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt" -Joseph Heller, Catch 22 "Everyone you meet you start to fall in love with, what separates your enemies from your friends, and your lovers from your soul mate is at which point you stop" -Me

Sarah Bloggs: 35 your cousin from England :-) xx

Holly Schwebel: Female, 17, and I attached a picture of a poem that has resonated with me for as long as I've known of it. Let me know if you need anything more.

Sophia Blackwell: 19, and gender: female :--) I like the words captivate, kind, lovely, brilliant and fun. And those are things I'd like to surround myself with. I'd describe myself as a pretty easy going person and I care a lot. I'm pretty sensitive but not in all areas, definitely not when it comes to romance hahaha. Uhm, when it comes to an occupation I'd love to pursue something creative like cinematography. I'm learning Danish at the moment. I'd like to become stronger when it comes to speaking with confidence especially when I don't agree with something. I love doggos, well all animals and wholesome healthy foods and most certainly taking photos of both. I really like the outdoors because it makes me feel good inside and alongside that taking photos on old cameras.

Elizabeth, Renae, Anderson, Wisely: age- 18 gender: dinosaur (jk) I'm female nationality: Australian I like cats a lot and food. I'm obsessed with Alice in wonderland. um I really love history and wish to pursue a career in it. I'm an introvert. I like to read and rarely watch movies or tv.

Hayley Watt: Age:18 Gender: Female "A rose grows best in a pile of shit" Music: welcome to your life by Grouplove I think of myself as a positive person and I believe everything happens for a reason, or at least I tell myself that to prevent deeper questioning about the meaning of life.

Anonymous: Age: 24, Male Came from a rough family background that leaves me drifting through experiences. I socialise while holding up endless walls. Everyone likes me, but no one gets close. Song that best describes me would be Hellfire from The Hunchback of Notre Dame. There's a constant nagging in my mind that I'm being judged severely for whatever reason. It's maddening. My interaction with the real world is to deal with people without them ever figuring out that I'm a 'fraud', whatever that means. I feel dishonest, even when I explicitly don't mean to be. I am sustained by my Catholic faith, and its instrumental to my being and keeps my cynicism in check. I wish it could be socially acceptable to talk openly about it, it feels limiting otherwise. My favourite quote is "Sometimes you have to walk past the good to get to the best." - Susan Calloway

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Coby Borg: Well im me. Im half maltese. Born in straya. Lover of music. Pretty much any genre. Struggling to keep on top of work as we all are...

Katie Hall: Gender: female Age: 19 Nationality: let's say I'm a "bitzer", no clue on where my parents come from, so I'm just a bit of everything A hole bunch of random stuff: Live by Disney's world famous Nanny's quote, "Anything can happen if you let it". I love dancing but not as much as I love my sister and I'm deadly afraid of elephant seals. Here is a picture of an adorable puppy!

Tahlia Gill: 18, Australian My fav quote is Shakespeare (I'm original I know ) “Cut him out into little stars And he shall make the face of heaven so fine That all would be in love with the night And none would worship the garish sun.” My fav songs are zombie by the cranberries, american pie by don McLean and anything by Hudson Taylor Another quote by William Blake: a truth that's told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent Love Harry Potter, lotr, avatar and soppy rom coms haha

Amber Walker: 18, British Adventures, outdoors, camping, hiking, explorer, Hippie, coffee, animals, love a bit of ed sheeran and Adele I'd live out of a backpack if it meant i got to truly see the world.

Genevieve Blenkin: 19, female, ginger, "you always miss the shots you don't take". The picture is of the country because its such a big part of my identity.

Stefano Rankin:20, Male, Australian, quote: victory stands on the back of sacrifice.

Mat Percival: 20, Aussie. Love a good beer and laugh with my mates and love any fiddly past times I can afford. Creative design and cars play a big role in my life, and I guess my goal is to produce works/products and a service (whatever it be) that people are amazed by and are impressed enough to tell their friends. Love a good burger as well and Hotwheels are my fav.

Allie Cook: 21, American, favourite quote: "And in this moment I swear we are infinite." -- Charlie, Perks of Being a Wallflower. This is my life outlook to always live life like I am infinite.

Stephanie Hirsh: I like ball park music and I make cakes

Cameron Raymond Rawstron: Age 20, Quote: “That’s a bit how ya going”, I love Amity Affliction (anchors, Don’t lean on me), What do I do: Learn about computers, occasionally exercise, try to be socially accepted, hide my pan behind a smile, am brutally honest/too real. What I wanna do: re rich, be happy, be meaningful, listen to Amity Affliction, achieve happiness. Such memes, very wow.

Taylah Zanardi: 18, female, chronic sick kid, "there is no magic to achievement. It's really about hard work, choices and persistence", I like to present myself as someone very put together and who knows where they're going in life, citity

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