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sophygurl · 5 years

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okay so I saw your fox way post (which i realise is from like 5 months ago so i'm sorry if it's not in your main interests anymore) and I wanted to know what you think would be some good descriptors for the organised comfy chaos that is their house. bc i love the idea of a house of miss-matched over stuffed sofas and everything everywhere that doesn't understand the concept of minimalism but I can't find anything online that looks like what I imagine. Thoughts?

omg so The Raven Cycle in general, and Fox Way in particular, is never out of my main interests so thank you for this!! I actually have a Bunch of other metas that I’ve kinda collected notes for and one of them is actual physical descriptions of 300 Fox Way?

I feel bad because I’ve already promised @sparkly-things metas about Maura and Gray next up ages ago, but hopefully they won’t mind? And I happen to have a lil energy and time today, so here goes with every physical description of the house that I’ve collected during re-reads (may have missed stuff).

This got long, and is perhaps not even what you were looking for, but I hope it helps you and/or others looking for descriptions of the house!

Blue describes the architecture of the house, simply, as weird in TRB. In TDT she expands on that, saying it “was two houses knitted together, and neither structure had been a palace to begin with. Narrow hallways leaned eagerly toward one another.” I’m not sure if she means this literally, as in two small houses on nearby lots got made into one building somehow, or just that the way the house is built just makes it feel that way?

She goes on to talk about a “stray toilet gurgling somewhere” - since we know there is only the one bathroom is she talking about that or does this language mean there is maybe another toilet connected somewhere, like in a basement? Then “the wood floors were as buckled as the sidewalk out front.” Some of the walls were painted in vivid purples and blues, and some had decades old wallpaper (in the same rooms or in different rooms?). “Faded black and white photographs hung beside Klimt prints and old metal scissors. The entire decor was a victim of too much thrift-shopping and too many strong personalities.”

Gansey describes the house as being “cramped with extraneous people and whimsical objects. It hummed with conversation, music, telephones, old appliances.” Malory calls the house “lovely” and seems to appreciate just how many walls there are.

At one point, it’s said that 300 Fox Way is one mile away from Monmouth Manufacturing.

The exterior is a “little bright blue house”. There is a hand painted sign that reads “PSYCHIC” and then “By appointment only”. When turned around, the sign reads “CLOSED COME BACK SOON!” I’m not sure if there is a porch, but there is a porch light referred to when opening the front door, so that’s a good guess. There is a front step, so it’s not a ground level entrance to the front of the house the way it seems to be in the back.

Outside in the backyard - there’s Blue’s large Beech tree, which shades the entire backyard with it’s “beautiful, perfectly symmetrical canopy” that kept out all but the heaviest of rains. There is a high wooden fence covered with honeysuckle that blocked out neighboring lights and the canopy of the tree blocked out the moonlight.

Right off the sliding glass door in the kitchen, there’s a cracked brick patio leading into the yard itself. There are chairs arranged on the patio.

In the kitchen, above the table, is the chandelier described as a “badly designed stained-glass creation” (also described as “the fake Tiffany lamp”) - the one they have difficulty changing the bulbs in. The process of changing the bulbs took at least three hands and was generally left until all the bulbs had burned out - so consider that the kitchen would have different levels of light depending on how far along in this process they might be. The kitchen counters seem always to be cluttered with mugs, teas being made and packaged, essential oils, flowers, pots boiling, etc. There is also a cabinet filled with glasses, either in the kitchen, or close enough to the kitchen for them to rattle when one gets down off of the kitchen table.

Also in the kitchen - the door to the pantry that Artemus takes up residence in.

You can see to the front hall and the base of the stairs from the kitchen, and there’s a main hallway that connects from the kitchen, which is at the back of the house, to the front of the house where the front door is, and so I imagine that the stairs are right there in that front hall area. I also believe there is only the one set of stairs connecting the two floors. The staircase has a railing with a knob on it. In the hallway, there is a table with a clock on it.

The reading room can easily be gotten to from both the kitchen and the front hall, so I imagine it’s off to the other side of the stairs perhaps and maybe there’s a door from the hall and another to the back from the kitchen? There do seem to be multiple doors into the room, and since Adam describes it as a room meant to be a dining room, that makes sense to me. The doors are sometimes closed, so it’s not one of those rooms that is just separated off by archways or whatever.

Anyway, it is described as containing “the candles, the potted plants, the incense burners, the elaborate dining room chandelier, the rustic table that dominated the room, the lace curtains, and finally ... a framed photograph of Steve Martin.” Maura seems proud of that photograph, and makes sure to tell Whelk that it’s signed. It’s also described as having mismatched furniture, with an armchair at the head of the table.There’s a framed photograph of a standing stone on the wall. Also, apparently, there’s a phone in the reading room. There are blinds over the windows.

There’s also a living room, which I’m thinking is further into the house, because you can’t see the front hall/door from there. There is a fuzzy mint green love seat, and a blue striped chair, and a wicker bench in front of the window. There’s also a couch. I’m also guessing this is where the TV is, unless there is a separate TV room as well, somewhere on the downstairs level?

There is only one bathroom, and it’s upstairs. There’s a full bathtub.

The upstairs phone, the one dedicated to the psychic phone line Orla had put in, is in the Phone/Sewing/Cat room, which has green gingham wallpaper and is “full of a multitude of odds and ends”. I’m not sure if the long purple silk Calla does her aerial yoga in is always there, or of Calla sets it up before she does it each time? There are bins of sewing materials, a chair with a pillow on it, and I’m guessing this is the room with the sewing table in it?

Blue had repurposed canvas trees glued to her bedroom walls, decorated with collaged and found-paper leaves. There was a card table shoved against her twin mattress with reading materials on it, and a nightstand with a dim green lamp. Her closet door was covered with glued dried flowers. She had a ceiling fan that was hung with colored feathers and lace, also leaves. And she had copied a poem on her ceiling. There was a bird painted on one wall with a talk bubble that read “WORMS FOR ALL”. A shelf cluttered with buttons and scissors. A rotating fan in the corner. Blue’s room is adjacent to the Phone/Sewing/Cat room.

Maura has her own room, which is next door to the Phone/Sewing/Cat room. Calla describes it as being chaotic and messy and filled with too much shit.

Calla and Jimi share a bedroom. It is my considered opinion that they also share a bed, but this is never mentioned or alluded to. We do know that on Calla’s dresser is kept the three statues of Oya, Oshun, and Yemaya, the Yoruban goddesses.

Persephone’s bedroom was at the end of the hall upstairs, past the Phone/Sewing/Cat room and bathroom, and the door to her room was painted red. She had a desk with a Victorian desk chair, and a “high, elderly twin bed”. There was a shaggy rug.

Presumably Orla has a bedroom somewhere up there and if there are other residents of the house (see the post referred to in this ask for why I wonder about that possibility), then perhaps there are also other bedrooms??

The attic is accessible from the second floor with a door that leads to the stairs that lead up to it. This door is at the very end of the hall, probably past Persephone’s room. A single light bulb lit the attic and it didn’t reach the stairs, so that was a dark stairway. Once up there, there are numerous slanting roof lines which means this is one of those houses with lots of angles and not just one flat or arched roof. There’s also unfinished wood floorboards and areas patched with plywood. There’s a porthole window (along with other windows apparently?), the leads out to the mismatched roof angles outside. Before Neeve moved in, there was nothing up there because Maura was against collecting things.

When Calla and Blue go up to investigate once Neeve’s been living there, they find a mattress covered with throw rugs on the floor; lots of candles, bowls, and glasses cluttered together, bright painter’s tape making patterns between those objects, a half-burned plant stalk on a plate dusted with ashes, and in one of the narrow dormers - two full-length footed mirrors facing one another. Also a statue of a woman with eyes in her belly, a black leather mask with a large pointed beak, a red mask that matched it, a switch made of three sticks tied together with a red ribbon, and a little cloth bag with asafetida tied into it.

After they clear out Neeve’s things and it becomes Gwenllian’s room, the mirrors are still there, and the mattress, but it becomes cluttered with her own mess of things, also including candles and half-burnt plants.

So that’s what I got! LMK if you have more questions. I love this house and the people who live in so very much. Thanks for asking about it!

#300 fox way #the raven cycle #trc #fox way #blue sargent #maura sargent #calla johnson #peresephone poldma #ask me stuff #i swear i'm getting to those other topics soon #charactersoverkisses

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