Happy Halloween, folks! Today, as a special treat, I will be giving you something EXTRA SCARY: 10 (ten) 𝖊𝖝𝖙𝖗𝖊𝖒𝖊𝖑𝖞 𝖈𝖚𝖗𝖘𝖊𝖉 𝖒𝖈𝖒𝖆𝖓𝖘𝖎𝖔𝖓𝖘 from the breezy suburbs of Seattle.
If you really want to be scared: all of these houses cost more than $1.5 million dollars despite looking like they were made with, like, thirty dollars. I guess the scariest thing of all for so many of us is 𝖗𝖎𝖉𝖎𝖈𝖚𝖑𝖔𝖚𝖘𝖑𝖞 𝖍𝖎𝖌𝖍 𝖚𝖗𝖇𝖆𝖓 𝖍𝖔𝖚𝖘𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖕𝖗𝖎𝖈𝖊𝖘
Well, without further ado:
#10: Asphalt Purgatory
this house really drives home the banality of ugliness but it gets bonus points for the garage, which gives the great pyramid of Giza a run for its money. 9
#9: Vile “Villa”
If you really think about it, so many horror stories come true every day if you’re a tree. you know, like helplessly watching someone slaughter your neighbors and friends
#8: Casa del No
(computer voice): enhancing
this is just an abomination, completely eviscerating the millennia-long tradition of architectural detailing in the same way facebook has eviscerated the meaning of the word “truth” for millions of old people addicted to insane right-wing conspiracy pages
#7: Thinly-Veiled Window Showroom
sometimes i wonder if people deliberately build these houses just to make me (personally) angry, and this is one of those times.
#6: Stop Making Sense: The House
(shouting desperately as I’m getting dragged away by police) FERNGULLY WAS A DOCUMENTARY
#5: Duckface
did these people build a house just using random parts stolen from other construction sites or something
#4: Obligatory Faux Chateau
pin this to your halloween moodboard because this place is definitely cursed in every way imaginable
#3: Great “woof, that’s bad,” Lodge
i would make a Twin Peaks joke but none of those gables quite match
#2: (spooky voice) “code violations”
this is like the luxury cabin in the woods version of groverhaus
#1: Please, I beg you, No Mo PoMo
Where to even start with this house. First of all, it is trying to be like 30 different things at once: Italian Villa, French Eclectic, Tugboat, a thinly veiled metaphor for the perils of human indecision. What personally pushed me over the edge was this:
HOW (how??) does this happen? (Mulder writing in his log at the end of an episode of The X-files voice): Only in a world that has forsaken love and truth, in favor of fear and lies, do such abominations unfold.
Happy Halloween, folks. Don’t drink and drive. As for candy: the world is ending, eat trash twizzlers be free!!! See you soon with Vermont. Also, there’s a few bonus McMansions from this post viewable on Patreon for all subscription tiers!
There is a whole new slate of Patreon rewards, including Good House of the Week, Crowdcast streaming, and bonus essays!
Not into recurring donations or bonus content? Consider the tip jar! Or,Check out the McMansion Hell Store ! 100% of the proceeds from the McMansion Hell store go to charity!
I just realized that Clark Kent probably works at the Daily Planet because it means he and his super-senses are planted right in the middle of a bunch of investigative journalists all day long. He probably knows more about Metropolis’ corruption and abuses of power than anyone else in the world, just by virtue of existing in the Daily Planet’s vicinity.
I imagine also that he works there for the reverse reason. Think about all the things he knows about the people in positions of power in the city that Really Should be made known to the public, but he can’t figure out a way to legitimately excuse having that knowledge? Well, all he has to do is drop a hint of a thread in the lap of someone like Lois Lane and his coworkers and friends will be on it like bloodhounds, with a firm air of legitimacy that he himself would never, ever have. Because honestly? Clark Kent probably knows that “I heard about it with my magic alien hearing” isn’t and SHOULDN’T be admissible in a court of law or public opinion. But aiming some good old fashioned investigative journalists in the most competitive news organisation in the city at it? Perfectly legitimate.
Villain: “Hah! What are you going to do, punch me for tax evasion? Lock me up for conspiracy? With what court-admissible evidence? Admit it Superman, there’s nothing you can do here.”
Superman: “Guess not.”
Later, Clark Kent at the Daily Planet watching his colleagues work: “My god, they’re like bureaucratic piranhas. They went through his entire IRS filings for the last eight quarters in thirty minutes flat.”
Someone told my ex-dad (not a sex thing; he just disowned me) that I’m trans and now he’s threatening to come to work and make a scene, and I know I should be upset, but like. What’s he gonna say exactly? And to whom? Because imagining a haggard and likely shitfaced Pennsylvania construction worker barging through the grocery store like, “HEY!!! THAT BROAD-HIPPED 5’3” EFFEMINATE KID WITH THE CONSPICUOUSLY BIZARRE NAME WHO SPEAKS IN A CARTOONISHLY AFFECTED CARICATURE OF MASCULINITY AIN’T GOT NO DICK!!! YOU GONNA BUY SCRATCH OFF TICKETS FROM SOME KINDA DICKLESS ABOMINATION??“ is wild. What’s it going to accomplish? Or is he gonna call my manager? “HELLO, I’D LIKE TO REPORT A FRAUD IN YOUR DELI DEPARTMENT. THERE IS NOT SAUSAGE AS ADVERTISED.” What the fuck.
Odds are he’s more embarrassed of having a trans ex-kid than I am of being outed at work, so what if I go to his job and tell everyone I’m trans first? What then, coward?
That’s such a power move.
This is exactly the struggle I’m having with my own mother right now and honestly? i sort of did that, but at the church i grew up in. my mom was like “oh so what if i tell the whole church youre trans” as if she had forgotten that nearly everyone who goes to my church is actually gay, like elderly retired gay couples, so i was like “haha okay,” and told everyone.
And lemme just say, watching a 5’2", 87 year old gay man stop my mother mid-sentance to say “Actually, I think he prefers to go by Aiden now.” was the BIGGEST dick energy ive ever seen.
The achievement hunters have played a lot of minecraft, and will hopefully play a lot more, but nothing will ever top that moment in episode 192 when Geoff was haunted by a guardian and started screaming at the top of his lungs, and after a minute and he had calmed down you just hear Micheal in the background, with the Most disdain I have ever heard someone utter, saying, “you’re a grown ass man”
like, u know there is a degree of moderation there, right? someone has to order the books to stock in the library. a library that lets any old creep stash their hastily scribbled shota pwp in between the shelves is a library that’s going to be shut down p quick. by the police. for providing ppl with child porn. (and yes if a picture of a tree or a description of a tree can make someone experience a tree, then the same can be said about a picture or description of a child in a sexual situation ffs)
I mean there’s like a million other logistical differences, and idk who checks erotica out of a library, but hey ppl can be wild abt these things
Hooboy. Well, as a librarian who has worked in many varieties of libraries, let me… try to… respond to this from a library and librarian perspective.
1) It is true that libraries have a process to go through for accepting materials, and that there is a degree of selectivity involved–this is because libraries have limited budgets, limited physical space, and limited staff to process and manage materials.
So, yes, any random junk written and left in the library would be thrown out. Not because the library would be concerned about its liability if anyone should see it; because we like to keep the library clean and organized, and leaving stuff on the shelf is not how we add things to the collection (how would they get CATALOGUED and LABELED???) And, of course, any adult attempting to show pornography (or, say, themselves) to actual children would be Removed From The Library because this would involve actual children being harmed by an actual adult in direct contact with them. Police do not shut down the libraries where this happens. They arrest the people harming the children.
Meanwhile, libraries spend VAST SUMS OF MONEY and ENDLESS STAFF HOURS to keep copies of Fifty Shades of Gray on the shelves where children actually can find them quite readily (and have them checked out on their library cards if mom’s has too many fines). Same with Last Tango in Paris and Flowers in the Attic and Year’s Best Erotica collections. (And Bibles, which get stolen at a ridiculous pace. I don’t know why, we were just forever having to order more of them.)
In an online space, which has effectively unlimited space, where adding new material costs nothing, and where the process of organizing that material and making it available is fully automated and what labor is involved is taken on by the contributing author, literally none of those constraints apply, so more content is more content! It’s catalogued and labeled as soon as it’s posted! It cannot be misshelved. Perfect!
2) This is not to say that no physical library has handwritten erotica in its collection somewhere. Many, many libraries collect rare local works such as self-published zines, and unique items like the personal papers of notable people (San Jose State University, for instance, holds the papers of the Kensington Ladies’ Erotica Society; The University of Iowa Zine Collection includes fanfic zines with erotic content; UCLA has the personal papers of Anais Nin), and doubtless some of these zines and personal papers include erotica. Because this handwritten material would be unique and its value would be presumed to lie mainly in the fact of its authorship, it would be properly collected, not in a library, but in an archive or special collection, where some archivist would dutifully folder it and make a note of what it was so future visitors to the collection could readily access it.
The main goal there would be to protect the material, not the person who might potentially view the material.
I worked in a public library which had an extensive collection of Playboy on microfilm, for instance. We kept it behind a desk where it had to be requested and checked out with a library card before it could be viewed. This was partly to prevent children viewing material inappropriate for their age–just as, say, the AO3 clearly marks adult material as such–but mainly to prevent vandalism of the material by people who disapproved of it. Several of the images on the film had been damaged by people trying to scratch them out; for the safety of the microfilm, we restricted access to it. This is also why the AO3 doesn’t allow people who dislike a fic to force it to be taken down.
This is also why most libraries celebrate Banned Books Week by eagerly higlighting works which people have ATTEMPTED to force to be removed from libraries–including work like Lolita, which is read by many as a titillating pedophile love affair. Librarians are not celebrating Lolita. They are celebrating the principle that they will not be stopped from collecting materials of interest and making them available to readers.
3) From your description of a library where children can freely access anything on the shelves, you seem to have only one conception of a library–a public library with open stacks, or perhaps a school library. There are, in fact, many kinds of libraries, with academic libraries being the most obvious foil to your description.
In an academic or university library, all authorized users of the library are adults who take adult responsibility for what they find in the library, much like when adult internet users indicate on a website that they are choosing to view adult content.
When I worked in a university library, I asked one of the librarians what do when a guy was sitting at a computer very obviously watching porn while a young woman, sitting next to him doing something text-based, seemed like she might be uncomfortable. I was told in no uncertain terms that the library’s policy was to relocate the person who was uncomfortable. The library was a repository of information and a place to access information: any kind of information, including the erotic. Under no circumstances would we curtail a library user’s access to that information.
(Unless he got his own actual dick out where people could see it, then we could call the campus police. Because, again: actual humans directly involved.)
Duke University Library Erotica Collection, 1940s-1960s (”An archive of original illustrations, sketchbooks, and erotic stories, depicting transgressive sex acts including (but not limited to) lesbian and heterosexual sex, incest, pedophilia, sadomassochistic behavior, and copulation with objects as varied as sex toys, produce, and household appliances. The stories and illustrations appear to be the work of a single individual, with nearly all narrative told from a female’s point of view. Also includes some amateur pornographic photography and magazine clippings.”)
This. This is good fiction writing advice. I really appreciate how it was formatted as “this is a common problem, here is a solution to try in your own work” and not “oh god, don’t do that!” without any extra help. And I extra appreciated the “don’t rely on adverbs” bit, because they do have their place but they aren’t the only way actions can be emphasized.
The-Lounge 