who needs to have an actual house when you could have a house with magical walls that leads into a floating water island in the void?? featuring a pile of blankets instead of a bed because you can’t have too many blankets

created w/colored pencils + paint tool sai

(second video taken at about midnight so I needed to be super quiet)

Multicolored blankets and the occasional sweatshirt are draped across the corner of a sectional couch. It is one of those L-shaped ones with a built in footrest. The corner seats are plush, but showing regular use as a spot to read in.

Soft lighting illuminates the room - perfect for late night reading binges. A worn table is wedged between the couch and the wall. The table is divided with books and papers crammed in the middle section. On top, the wood shows its age. A dark espresso stain is lightened with rings from mugs and marked with spills, dents and scratches from the previous owners. Yet the table gleams in the light, dusted regularly and cared for by the new owners. Two coasters now protect the table from new drink rings, often accompanied by a half-full teapot and a steaming mug of tea.

When reading is in progress, a bookmark is draped across the top of the couch, and the blankets are arranged just so to make the perfect nest. Often a dog lays on the opposite side of the couch, to warm the feet of the reader. Just be aware that when you get up, the dog will claim the nest. Just to keep your spot warm, promise. It just might take a while, and some bribes, to convince the dog to give your spot back.

In a humble corner of a bedroom, seafoam drapes lightly flow from a gentle wind coming from the window. On the wall next to the bed, a handmade goldfish kite with red, orange, and white streamers hangs alongside a small totoro print and a print of a Northwest scenery with a pod of orcas. Along the bed, pillows and plush toys are shoved into the space between the bed and the wall. Pandas are a common theme along with a happy, chompy dinosaur. The sheets and blankets on the bed are on the messy side, but there’s comfort in the mess of it.

[Drawn with pencil and colored with GIMP]

My room is at the end of the hallway, at the far end of the house. It’s a good size - not terribly big, but not terribly small either. I’ve painted the walls a soft gray with a bit of a warm undertone, and the trim and door is painted white. My room is the only room in the house that still has carpet, since I have a few heavy pieces of furniture that we would need to move to pull it up.

There are two windows in my room. When you enter, it’s on the wall straight ahead and on the left - they’re medium sized, white trim, and paned. The bottom half slides up to open. I have a fairly tall bookcase directly to the left of the door, on the same wall. It’s cluttered, full of all of my books from college (an interesting assortment of classic literature, psychology, anthropology, modern literature, and Japanese folklore), a shelf dedicated to young adult fiction, a section of artbooks, and some career books, sketchbooks, and manga.

Directly to the left of that is my closet. It has a dresser inside that takes up about half of it, and hanging clothes around it. There’s a plastic box on the ground full of Japanese textbooks, more manga, and even older sketchbooks. Above my dresser are a couple of shelves where I keep some bags, some more books, and some old schoolwork. A large portion of it is taken up with my Persona 5 “Take Your Heart Edition” box.

Then, there is my bed on the far wall - it’s large, queen size, and the comforter has some colorful flags on string going across it and a couple of birds sitting on it. My bedside table has a lamp and a diffuser, and the drawers are full of extra bits and bobs - some workout bands, some charging cords, a clipboard with some D&D character sheets, my two sets of dice - and under it is a canvas box of electronics and things that came with my electronics, as well as a bag that has my GBA games in it.

In the corner of the room is my PS4 and a small rack of more sketchbooks. On top of my PS4 is a large Mabari plush with some 3D glasses on his head - both from college. Then, my desk - it has 3 drawers, one for art supplies, one for transcripts and other school related papers, and one for tax documents. I have a TV monitor on my desk hooked up to my PS4, on the left edge angled towards me, and my laptop sits at the center. As I write this, I have my keyboard and mouse out, as well as my drawing tablet, and my D&D Player’s Handbook sits beside me. A cat-shaped nightlight sits between my laptop and the other monitor, and a substitute plush (from Pokemon) sits beside that. I have a messy collection of papers on the right side of my desk - old receipts and other things that I need to keep but haven’t filed yet.

My room is messy, but full of things I love.

This is a picture of my portable altar. It’s an important place to me, anyways! See next spoiler for more detail.

This is my altar to Odin! All the different pieces on it have different meanings, but for the sake of this piece I’m going to clarify just a few different bits of mythology. Odin is known as the god who discovered the runes, and is also the patron god of skalds/poets in Norse mythology. I wanted to take the opportunity to write something in the spirit of that mythology and tradition. I should also note that many people who honor Odin believe you can offer poetry to him as a gift, so that’s another reason I decided to take this direction.

I went ahead and pulled a random rune for inspiration for this poem. The rune that I ended up choosing is Berkano, which is often associated with the new season, birth, and spring. I combined that theme with more Odin mythology to create the piece below!

The fields lay fallow,
Last year’s new growth
Is wilting, falling, decaying.

The god of the hanged
Comes to reap the harvest,
An army in his wake.

The wild hunt rides
Across the frost-bitten fields,
Sowing bones and putrid flesh.

Snow blankets them, buries them,
In the seasonal funeral
So that they may rest.

The earth welcomes them,
Sharing in their sleep,
So that she may wake in spring.

I hope you enjoyed me sharing ‘My Corner of the Cave.’ I know I took a bit of an unorthodox approach, but it is something that is important to me.

If I had to name a space most special, most personal to me- it would be much more likely to be within my games themselves.

They can give me many things, each important in their own ways.

I can travel worlds unknown to our own; they may be coated in snow, or grass, or the thick cement of a rugged city. The inhabitants could be born of flesh and bone or constructed from steel with the spark of life coming from a battery.

Or I can experience stories and leave behind all else, indulge in them as I dig into my duvet with a coffee and a controller. Maybe it’s not winter, maybe my room is hot and the fan is trying its very best to bestow me with some kind of halfhearted relief. The time of year is irrelevant, the world outside forgotten for a couple of hours.

As I play, maybe I’ll sit at my desk, maybe I’ll choose the bed. It’s a choice made entirely by whether I’m connected to other people at the time - tethered to my computer and the headset or free to lounge in a mess of pillows, plushies and blankets that have been collected over the years. My friends have a habit of buying me more, even when I say I have far too many, even when I say I want more regardless of the room available to me.

I have a couple of figures on the desk, usually from the very games I play. My joy manifested into a physical form. They give me something to keep my hands busy when the queues are long, the same specks of dust removed each time in the same meticulous habit. There are certain things I like to keep tidy, and some not so much.

In my virtual space, I’ve reconnected with old friends whose friendship I may not have rekindled otherwise. For a person with as much social inadequacy as myself, multiplayer games provide me with a space to talk, to even have something to talk about. Words often die in my throat - or at the tips of my fingers on the keyboard - otherwise.

My friends who live far away, or my friend who lives an hours drive from me - suddenly are only a few minutes away. It’s here where I can find some solace, surrounded by voices on the end of another line.

There’s a monster under the bed. It watches with eyes so dark brown they’re almost black. It scrambled under the bed one day, in heart-pounding fear, and discovered that the gentle darkness was pleasant.
And so it nested there.
The nest is formed with two soft, spare blankets. One is dark blue with a white, puffy underside, the dark blue top minky soft. The other blanket is grey. Against the wall, bunched in the corner of the nest, is a dark blue robe, often indistinguishable from the dark blue blanket except by touch. The nest itself is shoved up in a corner, against the chest of drawers, end of the bed, and the wall. Light from the room shines in from under the protective curtains of the bed’s sky blue blankets, which also stuck between the mattress and the springs, the edges of the fitted green sheet visible as well.
Sharing the space under the bed with the monster are two cardboard boxes, one large enough for the monster to fit in. It used to hold belongings. There’s also a plastic bag, or two, and a large stuffed animal. A blue laundry bag, half full of shirts and pants and socks and underwear. The laundry bag is made of sailcloth, shiny and crinkles when it moves. Printed in navy blue numbers is the longitude and latitude coordinates of a highschool, and a graduation year. 4*.******* N, 7*.******* W, 2018. Also stamped on the laundry bag, in blue and yellow (or, perhaps, Royal Blue and Gold, depending on who you might ask) is a ship’s wheel with a capital “F”. For “Failure”? Or “Falmouth”?
There’s a black suitcase, still unpacked, full of a swim bag, which fills most of the small suitcase’s inner space. Inside the swim bag are an assortment of both felting wool, and swimming gear.
A piece of broken styrofoam.
Two Blockbuster section labels, one reading “Drama” and the other “Action”.

And lying in the nest is the monster itself, an iphone in a beat-up case, and a drawing tablet with a fraying cord.
The monster stares out of it’s dim sanctuary, at the brown-black-green-orange carpet, that is all those colors up close, but a sort of puke-y color when standing up.
Beyond the monster’s sanctuary lies a white cloud pillow, it’s lettering indistinct from the monster’s low viewpoint. There’s a bike helmet (blue), a shower bag (light blue and white, striped), a backpack (black), shoes (teal with a white sole), flip flops (black with a white strap), a purse (with what could be pokemon on it, but the monster’s eyesight is bad without aid, and the monster is not wearing glasses. Monsters do not wear glasses.) There’s a bin of food, a box of ritz crackers, and a large teal laundry bag. All are on the Roommate’s side, and do not belong to the monster.
Much beyond is too blurry for the monster to make out. There are bins beneath the Roommate’s bed, and no monster occupies the remaining space. There’s only room for one monster in a Moore dorm room, after all.

They jokingly call it ‘the dungeon’ or ‘the far kingdom’, both of which I hold as fond descriptors of my space at work.  Where others moved into an office, I became the odd one out that had to be given a desk in the common area due to lack of space.  I wouldn’t let this deter me, however, in making it my own - something that others would remember and know me by.

Indeed it is memorable, because few notice that I’m even there as they pass down the hall.  I’m around a tall corner and often keep quiet enough that I startle people that realize I’m there.  The desk itself has shelves that stand above my head, and I made the curve where my computer sits into a raised platform with shelves supporting my two monitors.  This makes me disappear, effectively, and gets a good laugh out of visitors!  Once they realize I’m there, a turn of the corner reveals the fun trinkets I’ve used to decorate and make work a little slice of home.  I spend almost 10 hours a day there, after all!

Red wood cabinets and black shelves are boring by themselves, but I’ve taken it upon myself to spatter my favorite things all over the nooks and crannies that are available.  Behind me is my sloth calendar, with a new sloth for every month to enjoy, set under what we fondly call ‘Mr. Fox’, a strange fox painting with mysterious origins that I somewhat inherited.  He predates many of us in the division, and not many know where he came from.  He just watches over everyone.

On my desk immediately around me are framed photos of my cats, nestled next to a few Funko pop figures that I’ve snuck into places - mostly Overwatch characters.  The shelf that my monitors prop on helps if I want to stand at my desk at work, and gives me a great deal of extra storage space… for papers, mostly, but also snacks and even more figures.  Cat figures, sloth figures, plastic dinosaurs, and small stress recycle truck and two pint-sized recycle carts that are a must if you work in recycling.  Post-it notes are stuck everywhere in-between, which make it borderline cluttered, but an organized clutter.  There’s always something to look at, and I often need something to focus on when I’m having a tough time thinking through coding problems.

The fun part about the desk situation is the rows of cabinets at the top, and under it a long fabric board to hang things on.  More pictures of my cats, my parents, my wife, and other fond memories are stuck all along the board, along with other trinkets including a kickball tournament medal that I am going to be proud of for years, even if it’s been several since my coworkers and I won. Adulting at it’s finest! Under the pinned decor are boxes of tea and my mug (sloths of course), a must when I need to relax.  There’s also a giant stress cupcake and T-rex from my last birthday and a cat tissue box cover my mom made, all of which complete the main are a that I am situated in on a daily basis.  My goal was always to make it feel comfortable, a place that truly described me to anyone that stopped by.  People still discover new things when they come over, amused by my position as the resident dinosaur-sloth-cat person.

And if that weren’t enough, I was able to expand recently.  I used to be smashed into a literal corner with not much space for people to sit if they wanted to talk or meet with me.  After some shuffling around, I now also have the ‘therapy corner’.  With my space doubled, I wanted to mimic my house and make work even more into a personal hideaway.  There’s a multicolored rug, an end-table, an ottoman, and a chair with a pillow in the corner now, making it a space that I can kick back and relax in during breaks or lunch.  My coworkers affectionately refer to it as the therapy corner because they use it when they need a break too, which was my biggest intention of putting so much effort into it. Warm and inviting, my work area is a place where I can solve tough problems but also have those little daily reminders of the things I love, and enjoy the company of the people around me much as I would at home.

You need to climb the steps to reach the roost. A small flight, a long flight, then one more small flight in order to reach the top. Sometimes the journey’s fast and easy, a quick dash up or a quick dash down. Other times the hike can be a challenge; after a long day, with arms full of groceries, or when you dare to venture out in heels. Yet the roost is high with tall windows that look out at the park and the setting sun, and in winter (which tries to take up half the year) heat rises so the rooms are always warm. The climb is worth the comfort at top.

You walk first into the short galley styled kitchen. The tile floors are red and in some places are chipped, while the counter tops are a light forest green. Despite the clashing colors the room is charming and homey, with one wall filled with plenty of windows to allow in tons of light. The floor has a small slant that sends the cat’s small tinkling balls rolling on their own across the room. This makes the kitchen the cat’s favorite place to play, despite all the attempts to keep her out, so late nights are often spent sitting on the floor in front of the postcard covered fridge - coaxing a small green ball down the length of the kitchen while the cat dives back and forth.

Off the kitchen is a three-season porch with windows that overlook the park across the street. The porch is small, with a stash of items stored in one corner and a small bistro table and chairs in the opposite side. In spring, summer, and fall, when the room isn’t too cold to use, it’s where Kiwi likes to enjoy a cup of coffee in the morning. The cat will often join you there, perched on one of the windowsills and examining the early morning birds and squirrels. The white tile underfoot is usually cold, so slippers are essential unless your toes are feeling brave.

The living room is the most used, the most lived in and enjoyed. The wood floors are warm toned and the walls are white, adorned with paintings of flowering branches and birds. There’s a white rug with a quatrefoil pattern in warm brown hues on the floor, atop it sits a couch and coffee table, both of which have seen better days. A pile of pillows, dark teal and yellow in color, crowd the couch alongside a collection of blankets. A desk to match the coffee table sits in the corner with a computer sitting atop it and a plush gray swivel chair before it. Another blanket adorns the chair, folded over its back. Alongside the desk sits a wire basket in which even more blankets lay folded, and more often than not a sleeping cat can be found curled up inside it as well. The windows in the room reach from nearly the floor to the ceiling, and like the other rooms in the roost they flood the space with light and a view to the trees that grow aplenty across the street.