学生時代からの親友とのご縁で 札幌市東区にある建築会社『株式会社建築舎』さんの 会社案内パンフレットの表紙と中面のイラストを描かせていただきました。

建築舎さんは「オーダーリノベーション」を強みにしている会社です。 「オーダーリノベーション」は、間取り、内装、外壁などを選べるので、 中古住宅を注文住宅のように自分好みのお家を作ることができます。

札幌近郊でご興味のある方は、ぜひ建築舎さんにご相談ください！

https://kenchikusha.net/

In this ever-changing business landscape, it is as essential to protect your brand’s identity as to establish it. Whether you are starting your new business or rebranding an existing one, doing a trademark search online is a must.

What do the Fifth House actually do?

Sure, yes, ghosts and tradition and the Heart of the Emperor, and Watchers Over the River - but none of those things give you the kind of assets that mean you can dress your cavalier in a coat that "probably cost more than the Ninth House had in its coffers" for a dinner party.

It's made clear very early on that the Fifth are a power to be reckoned with. When they first receive the letter about the Lyctoral pilgrimage, Gideon assumes it would be on the Third or Fifth. Harrow, meanwhile, has frequently-repeated anxieties about the Ninth being subsumed by the Third or Fifth, to the point that she worries that the anniversary party invitation may be an attempt to wipe out the other Houses. Teacher describes the Fifth's relationship with the Fourth as "hegemonic". The Fifth loom so large in the cultural imagination, they even inform the name of the made up porn magazine that Gideon offers to Crux.

The links between the Third and the Fifth that both Gideon and Harrow make seem to reflect both the fact that these two Houses have particular power and influence, but also that they frequently cooperate. Judith writes about the close cooperation of the Second, Third, and Fifth, a relationship which becomes a source of tension as the scions seek to establish authority after the Fifth are murdered. Judith says:

“The Fifth are dead. I take authority for the Fifth. I say we need military intervention, and we need it right now. As the highest-ranked Cohort officer present, that decision falls to me.” “A Cohort captain,” said Naberius, “don’t rank higher than a Third official.” “I’m very much afraid that it does, Tern.” “Prince Tern, if you please,” said Ianthe.

Which makes it sound as though Abigail might technically have been considered the highest ranking person at Canaan House (likely because she was head of her House and not an heir in waiting like Judith or Coronabeth), and that following her death there is some question as to whether the Second or the Third should take control, but notably no suggestion that anyone else might.

We know what the Second do: they are the leaders of the Cohort and the Bureau, the military and intelligence that forms the core of imperial expansion. Most of the information that we get about the other Houses talks only about their cultural or ritual roles in the empire - we get very little in the way of gritty details of what happens outside of the Dominicus system.

We know a little bit about what the Third does - according to Tor they are cultural trendsetters and players in soft power, but the one detail we get in GTN itself is revealing: when Gideon imagines her glorious future in the Cohort, one of the assignments she considers boring is the prospect of being "in some foreign city babysitting some Third governor." Which makes it sound rather like the Second are conquering the planets and the Third are then running them. But the books are even lighter in details about what the Fifth do, beyond ghosts and manners.

However, there is one suggestive detail: an important topic in HTN is stele travel - the necromantic FTL used by the Nine Houses. And Mercymorn, in describing a stele, specifically states that Fifth House adepts are required for their construction. Which rather makes it sound like the Fifth have a monopoly on the manufacturer of the technology required for FTL travel. Now that in and of itself could be the basis of their enormous wealth - selling aerospace tech to an ever expansionist military is probably quite lucrative.

But there's another element of House imperialism that only gets mentioned in passing that doesn't seem to be entirely accounted for, which Judith describes in As Yet Unsent:

"Their other line of attack is the business contracts. They claim that the services asked of them by the Emperor were set down in lifetime contracts by previous generations, who assumed the contracts would be terminated upon the Emperor’s death."

There are obviously some unanswered questions about the imperialist project of the Nine Houses - both Augustine and Coronabeth question quite why it works the way it does - but from the above it sounds like in many respects it functions exactly as you would expect an empire to: as a vehicle for the exploitation of others' resources.

Perhaps the Cohort themselves administer these business contracts. Perhaps they fall under the purview of the Third House planetary governors. But if you're exporting resources from the living planets of your empire to the mostly desolate planets of the Dominicus system, you're going to need some FTL ships and a whole lot of bureaucracy.

And if there's one other detail that we get about the Fifth, it's that there is something significant about the political power of their bureaucracy. As Judith puts it: "Quinn himself is a Fifth House bureaucrat with all that entails."

Are the Second, Third, and Fifth so close and so powerful because they form the bedrock of the empire: the conquest, control, and exploitation of planets beyond the Dominicus system?

writing prompt #5

The room fell silent, Steph wasn't expecting the pain filled look they were giving her. The question repeated itself in her head a couple of times as her mind searched for a way to save the situation.

"I see you don't have an answer." The silence was still palpable in the room as well as the cold she felt when she saw those beautiful blue eyes lose their shine. "I should have known it was too good to be true, tell bru… Mr. Wayne that if he wanted to know about the projects so much, he could come ask for them himself instead of using a sugar trap." Steph tried to say something before an alert went off on Danny's phone, at which point she saw the panic that took over his eyes, before he ran to an adjacent hallway that led to a room, in which she was not. I had had the opportunity to enter. As she followed him she could see how Danny took a series of vials and several injections. She hesitated a moment before walking through the half-open door. At that moment she saw how he proceeded to apply several of the injections to a girl of about 5 or 6 years old. Steph knew just by seeing her that she was Danny's daughter. and some of the things they discovered while investigating the Nightingale medical company made a lot of sense.

HAPPY 16TH BIRTHDAY!!! To this elderly bapy boye!!! he...!!!

(inspired by this post) you know how it is. kiss kiss

quick small fyi

Hi. Hello. Putting ~that~ copypasta in my ask box makes me sad. If that’s your intention, okay! But to me it feels like a joke about my sexuality, or else about other people’s sexuality, and it just bums me out. I try to play it off as a joke a lot because I do not know what else to do about it, and because I know the social Internet is essentially in the business of devouring all which is earnest, but yeah. 

I don’t totally understand why it makes me sad, and the parts of it I do understand I am not really interested in sharing. But I think a lot of people maybe don’t know that it makes me sad, and are not trying to make me feel bad, so this is a post to let those people know. 

Top 10 certified limbus moments to me is the time Outis called Eunbong a tacky name for a restaurant and when the owner mentions that he named it after his mother the fucking. music just abruptly cuts off, followed by Sinclair softly saying “Oh.”

Then Ryoshu out of all people tells her T.W.H. (that was harsh)

my take on the lethal company UI

my copiums now

random limbus post edit [part 1] [part 2]

Attention, all Limbus Company gamers! Heathcliff is in trouble, and needs your help to clear all Cathy! But in order to do this, he's gonna need his trusty bat, and some good nosh!

To help him, all he needs is your credit card number, the expiration month and year, and the three numbers on the back. You have to be fast though! Before Cathy finishes her plan and takes over Wuthering Heights!

MY BRAINS NOT WORKING AND THE CUTE BOY I WORK WITH KEEPS CORRECTING MY GRAMMAR THIS IS SO AHAIWIAKSDHDGRRRRHRNE

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🖥️ Equipped with an innovative flip-up monochrome, CGA-compatible LCD screen, the PC Convertible offered a crisp display for viewing documents and running applications—a revolutionary feature for its time.

💾 Powered by an Intel 80C88 CPU, the PC Convertible came with built-in storage options, including 256 KB of RAM (expandable to 640 KB) and dual 720 KB 3.5-inch floppy drives, enabling users to store and access data with ease. It also featured serial and parallel ports for connecting peripherals.

🔋 Despite its modest battery life by today's standards, the PC Convertible offered respectable uptime, allowing users to work on the go without being tethered to a power source. Weighing just over 12 pounds and featuring a built-in carrying handle, the PC Convertible's battery was rated for 10 hours.

🌟 The IBM PC Convertible was succeeded in 1991 by the PS/2 L40 SX, and in Japan by the IBM Personal System/55note, the predecessor to the ThinkPad. The IBM PC Convertible left an indelible mark on the history of computing, paving the way for the modern laptops we use today. Its innovative design and practical features demonstrated the potential of portable computing, inspiring subsequent advancements in mobile technology.