Dresden Comicon@Home Tidbit for Battle Ground

[Mira]

I think knowing the average lot size in Chicago is useless. They were probably pretty small before zoning laws mandated them be a certain size. (250 by 1000 feet is huge for a residential lot).

Thanks for the number of stories. I must have forgotten or missed that.

How big the castle is doesn't really answer the question of whether the lot was too small to hold it. My point is mostly that we don't have enough information to tell us that the lot wasn't big enough to hold it either, so we can conclude that it was.

What is shocking I think is how tiny the houses are in Chicago, and how expensive they are for the average family..  Not that there aren't big houses, there are, but for the very rich only or for those who have lived there for generations.

[Conspiracy Theorist]

The Lot is exactly as big as it needs to be for the purposes of the story, and only Eb and Listens know he married Demonreach (as Thomas puts it) through a sanctum invocation, Listens probably the only one who knows he has soulfire as he witnessed it being used against Shag.

Each Stone in the Castle is warded, like those on Demonreach, so it is likely only those destroyed by the eye are gone, the rest survive, and fortunately Harry has compatible stone to hand.

Harry is going to have to expose a lot of secrets to bring down the Titan, about what and who he is which is going to affect how people look at him.

[Grifter]

I think knowing the average lot size in Chicago is useless. They were probably pretty small before zoning laws mandated them be a certain size. (250 by 1000 feet is huge for a residential lot).

Thanks for the number of stories. I must have forgotten or missed that.

How big the castle is doesn't really answer the question of whether the lot was too small to hold it. My point is mostly that we don't have enough information to tell us that the lot wasn't big enough to hold it either, so we can conclude that it was.

Sorry, my bad, it's actually 25x125 feet.  Don't know where my head was at. That's 3,125 square feet edge to edge, or 6,250 square feet if there were two lots.

A ballroom for a championship event in dancing has to be a minimum of 2,772. So the building would have to be at least two lots for anything else to be on the same floor as the room they were in.

[Dina]

The Lot is exactly as big as it needs to be for the purposes of the story, and only Eb and Listens know he married Demonreach (as Thomas puts it) through a sanctum invocation,

And the Gatekeeper.

[Conspiracy Theorist]

Ah yes, quite correct, he isn’t present though, but none of them know he has his super weapon arsenal, they would probably be concerned that the least powerful weapon in his armoury is Excalibur. Eb may have thought he retrieved that, instead he has something an order of magnitude greater at least, now they are going to find that out when he uses them.

[BrainFireBob]

That is what the monsters say to him he should do, stop caring and become one too. That is because Harry has a good heart, Morcone has not.

That's the entire point. Harry has a code. So does Marcone. It's even a code Harry respects- nothing, at all, ever, to kids.

Marcone is what Harry would be if he listened to id Harry. And Harry is externalizing his internal struggle on to Marcone. That's good writing, because it's believably human.

[Bad Alias]

What is shocking I think is how tiny the houses are in Chicago, and how expensive they are for the average family..  Not that there aren't big houses, there are, but for the very rich only or for those who have lived there for generations.

A lot of places are like that. I've seen enough of those home buying and selling shows to know that if I had one of those houses, I'd sell it, move to where I live, buy a bigger house, and retire.

[1]only Eb and Listens know he married Demonreach (as Thomas puts it) through a sanctum invocation.

[2]Each Stone in the Castle is warded, like those on Demonreach, so it is likely only those destroyed by the eye are gone, the rest survive, and fortunately Harry has compatible stone to hand.

[3] Harry is going to have to expose a lot of secrets to bring down the Titan, about what and who he is which is going to affect how people look at him.

1. The Merlin (and the Gatekeeper, as mentioned) know too. See the Eb's journal entry from Turn Coat. It's in Chapter 47. From that I assume all the Senior Council knows.

2. Was that in PT, or is that a theory? I don't remember.

3. Either that or Harry allows the Senior Council to sweep a lot of it under the rug in return for making sure he stays in the Council.

Sorry, my bad, it's actually 25x125 feet.

That makes a lot more sense. Average probably means something like most common in that context. And you're right that it could be a double lot. It could also be an irregular lot or just a big lot. I spend a lot (pun definitely not intended) of time looking at property in my county (and sometimes in other counties). There's plenty of variety.

[SpacedCowboy]

The lot of the house I grew up in would definitely be big enough for a small castle or a pretty large tower castle. Castles were a lot smaller than people think.

There are some small castles in Scotland and Ireland that are little more than towers, but most castles I’ve been to (dozens, we sort of have a bunch of them over here in Europe) are way larger than the average lot, like acres large. My parents live in “Castlegate Grove”, One street over is “The Armoury”, From end to end this is about 400 yards, for the armoury and the gate, and West Derby Castle wasn’t a large one.

[morriswalters]

What is shocking I think is how tiny the houses are in Chicago, and how expensive they are for the average family..  Not that there aren't big houses, there are, but for the very rich only or for those who have lived there for generations.

Originally they may have been middle class. You seemed to have never lived in a shotgun house, which are quite common, at least in Louisville although they are found in Chicago.  The house may be no wider then 12 feet, with setbacks that would make the lots about 17 feet wide. I lived in houses which were separated by no more than than the walk that ran between the houses.  Variations on a theme, camel back, three or four  rooms down and one up.

A regulation basketball court is 94 feet long and 50 feet wide. Look at 3552 Winchester Ave in Chicago on street view, this is how I picture Harry's house.

[Bad Alias]

There are some small castles in Scotland and Ireland that are little more than towers, but most castles I’ve been to (dozens, we sort of have a bunch of them over here in Europe) are way larger than the average lot, like acres large. My parents live in “Castlegate Grove”, One street over is “The Armoury”, From end to end this is about 400 yards, for the armoury and the gate, and West Derby Castle wasn’t a large one.

West Derby Castle is more like 120 yards from end to end. I live in America where we don't have any real castles. My understanding is that most castles were pretty small, especially compared to what we get in fantasy. Most of the tourist castles are the huge stone castles instead of small and/or wooden castles which were much more common. Here's a 20 minute Youtube video about castle rooms that at least talks about what average castles were like.What rooms are inside REAL medieval castles?. If anyone's got a better source for average castle size, I'd be happy to see it because I can't find anything good.

Marcone's castle is almost certainly a tower castle because we hear nothing about a courtyard and exterior wall.

You seemed to have never lived in a shotgun house...

A regulation basketball court is 94 feet long and 50 feet wide. Look at 3552 Winchester Ave in Chicago on street view, this is how I picture Harry's house.

My grandfather lived in something pretty reminiscent of a shotgun house. I've kinda always pictured the boarding house like that but isolated because Harry was never worried about the buildings next to it burning down.

[Grifter]

Originally they may have been middle class. You seemed to have never lived in a shotgun house, which are quite common, at least in Louisville although they are found in Chicago.  The house may be no wider then 12 feet, with setbacks that would make the lots about 17 feet wide. I lived in houses which were separated by no more than than the walk that ran between the houses.  Variations on a theme, camel back, three or four  rooms down and one up.

A regulation basketball court is 94 feet long and 50 feet wide. Look at 3552 Winchester Ave in Chicago on street view, this is how I picture Harry's house.

Doesn't look like a traditional wood boarding house.

[morriswalters]

Close enough for government work.  And if you don't like this one almost every house on the block has a street higher than the bottom floor and the same for the next street over. I've never seen anything like it.  I just love street view.

[SpacedCowboy]

West Derby Castle is more like 120 yards from end to end.

No-one actually knows how big West Derby Castle was, all records of its plans have been lost over the last almost a thousand years. We do know that when it was in use ~150 soldiers were quartered there, we know where the main motte was centered (there’s a monument), and it’s about 900 feet from there to “Castlegate Grove” and “The Armoury” as the crow flies. 400 yards (1200 ft) seemed about reasonable on that basis (there’s the other side of the motte, after all).

Whether there’s any historical accuracy in the road naming is up for debate of course. It was a motte and bailey castle, so it’s going to be of a reasonable size, just because the bailey part is separate from the motte. It was described as “dominating the landscape for miles around”, which also lends itself to the thing being reasonably big.

There were around 600 of these motte and bailey castles dotted around the UK, mainly as point-to-point contact and troops barracks. Liverpool also had another castle (a stone one) down by the river for coastal defence.

My point, castle-size notwithstanding, is that it’s not going to be a “real” castle, it’ll be one of those towers-that-someone-called-a-castle-because-it-sounds-better. There was a strange inversion in naming when real actual castles were named towers (eg: the Tower of London), leading to actual towers being then named castles as the meaning of the word was confused. Etymology is odd.

[Conspiracy Theorist]

Etymology is indeed odd, there are some really weird insects out there.

[Mira]

Originally they may have been middle class. You seemed to have never lived in a shotgun house, which are quite common, at least in Louisville although they are found in Chicago.  The house may be no wider then 12 feet, with setbacks that would make the lots about 17 feet wide. I lived in houses which were separated by no more than than the walk that ran between the houses.  Variations on a theme, camel back, three or four  rooms down and one up.

A regulation basketball court is 94 feet long and 50 feet wide. Look at 3552 Winchester Ave in Chicago on street view, this is how I picture Harry's house.

I know all about shotgun houses, I also grew up in the Bay Area, in San Francisco many house share a wall or are so close together they may as well, basement, then up two or even three floors.