8.31.25
MAKING A HOUSE

did you know houses are very big? have you ever made a little house? sounds not as hard as a big house and guess what, it's not. this is the story of how i made a house, but it's a small house. it's too small for me to go inside. except i can go inside and you can too, using imagination, and also the digital photographs from my iphone.

max had suggested that i make the house for rumpus, for the TAKE THE BABE scenario because there is a moment where you are outside the mortal dwelling (which has been approximated with logs and toadstools), and you can rub your hands together and say "ho ho ho ho!" and it only lasts one turn but it is Very Resonant in the collective mind that we all connect to in our Dreams. and since max suggested it, i thought, yes. because that is where all ideas come from: from max.

i wanted it to be an irish cottage, or irishish at least. i love the contrast between the whitewashed walls and the thatched roof and a nice red door! well now that's a house! and i set about cutting a cardboard rectangle, out of cardboard. i had a lot of fun adding crossbeams in the panels (i learned this is important for wattle and daub structures, it holds the daub which makes it a wall and not just a fence), and i put windows on one side of the house, and so far everything was looking great. i hot glued them together and stood them up and took my ease. "isn't this fine!" but then i bruised my nose a little bit on a Rumpus Constraint: the house must have a 2-space door on each side of it, and that's not so bad, except i really wanted to put a red door in the MIDDLE because then it would be Accurate but if i did THAT: LUDONARRATIVE DISSONANCE! a door you can't open!

also i measured wrong the first time and didn't find out until i put it on the rumpus board.

IRISH COTTAGE		CARDBOARD COTTAGE WITH REMOVABLE ROOF
WALLS		ON THE BOARD (SECOND ATTEMPT)

i often get stuck for a long time on little details like this, but you know what, literalism in games is only cool if it's cool, so in the end i just got rid of the red door and you know what? it's fine. i started on the roof.

i made the basic shape i wanted with a big piece of cardboard and then cut cardboard into darts to get the curvy bits. my glue was: hot glue. i decided not to do a gable and chimney on the side because of the doors, so instead i was doing a central chimney. i was kind of thinking about the houses in MOTHER, how they are very empty, really a sketch of a house, like the kids in the game are dreaming them into being but they don't really know how houses work? to the fairies, the only thing in the house they want is the babe, so all the other details - the hearth, the furniture, the mortal parents - fall away.

THE ISLAND COTTAGE
YOU CAN KIND OF SEE THE DARTS ON THE SIDE		I FORGOT TO WRITE ABOUT THE SPACKLE

i knew i wanted thatch, and there are all these clever ways to do thatch, like cutting up a broom, or cutting up a broom into little pieces, or cutting up a broom. but i didn't have a broom (my house is kept clean by a helpful fairy and i live in fear of them) so instead i cut a piece of cardboard into lots of tiny strips and then pulled them apart, and then my hands got tired so i left some together, and i mod podged them to the cardboard. when i started to paint it looked Very Much Like Cardboard Strips but then i flocked it and added some washes and it was great.

THATCHIN'	LOVE 2 SPACKLE	PROBABLY DIDN'T NEED THIS PHOTO	I REALLY NEED TO CLEAN OFF MY HOBBY DESK (NOT PICTURED)
BASECOAT	DRYBRUSH	MOSS	MOSS MOSS

i LOVE roger j porter's rumpus crib. i love the lion head! it looks so sturdy and reliable but strange, like the mortal parents have been living on the border of fairyland for too long and a little bit of fairyland has crept into their dwelling. i made my crib out of styrene rods, plasticard from a classroom math manipulative set, and milliput. i sculpted the lushest fur possible for my crib, and i added some kitten feet (i made a bunch with push-molds when i was making my kitten chaos spawn). 3d role-play con was a couple days away at this point so i was just working like a maniac. i sculpted the babe out of greenstuff and didn't have time to paint it. but! doesn't it remind you of the green children of woolpit? i would say to everyone at the convention.

ROGER'S CRIB
MY CRIB	KITTEN CHAOS SPAWN	THE BABE
SHHH	SHHHHHHHHHHH	EVERYONE LOVES IT WHEN I WORK AT THE KITCHEN TABLE

i really love this house. i need to go back and add rafters to the roof, because the roof will slide down the walls and smoosh the walls together if you're not careful. i will do it sometime. there's infinite cardboard in the world and you can make anything you want out of it.

next post will be about HORT HOGS: THEY ARE IN TERRIBLE PAIN BUT THIS IS WAR!!

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