HARRISON F. DIETZMAN / GAME OF SINGLE FAMILY HOMES
Episode 1
The single-family homes in neat subdivisions are built by various contractors under the auspices of Willcuts Company Realtors, a company owned and operated by the Willcuts family. Once completed, there will be 600 nearly identical Willcuts Company single-family-homes in Newberg, Oregon; a city with a population of 26,000.
Willcuts Company Realtors give their subdivisions whimsical names that impart them with an imaginative geography.
One of Willcuts Company Real Estate’s subdivisions is named Riverrun and another is named King’s Landing.
D.J. Waldie’s 1996 memoir Holy Land recounts the history of the construction of Lakewood, CA, one of the first planned subdivisions on the west coast of the United States. In the space of three years, developers built the 17,500 identical single-family homes that compose the core of Lakewood.
During the 1950s in Lakewood, CA, a newly built three-bedroom home sold for $8,500. The median household income of those who purchased the new homes in Lakewood was $5,100. $8,500 is 167% of $5,100.
Willcuts Company Realtors lists a brand new three-bedroom home in one of their subdivisions for $450,000. The median household income in the state of Oregon is $75,000. $450,000 is 600% of $75,000.
The suburbs, writes Waldie, provide a “necessary illusion of predictability.”
Episode 2
In the HBO epic fantasy series Game of Thrones, both Riverrun and King’s Landing are dynastic seats of royal families. Riverrun is the seat of House Tully and King’s Landing is the seat of the High Kings of Westeros, lately House Targaryen.
What illusion of predictability does this provide?
The homes in the Kings Landing and Riverrun subdivisions differ only in color and orientation. All told, there are approximately 206 identical houses in the two subdivisions.
Does Willcuts Company name their subdivision Riverrun before or after the murder in its dungeons of Willem (age fourteen) and Martyn Lannister (age fifteen) in season three episode ten?
Does Willcuts Company name their subdivision Riverrun before or after the broadcast in season three episode ten of the event known among Games of Thrones fans as the Red Wedding?
In the Red Wedding, House Frey, the ostensible allies of House Stark, lure the Starks into a trap at Riverrun, supposedly a safe haven, and massacre them. House Frey’s soldiers stab Rob Stark’s pregnant wife repeatedly in the belly. All of this is shown on-screen in detail.
Episode 3
House Targaryen does not have a good track record as rulers or as people.
To keep their bloodline pure, the Targaryen kings married or were otherwise involved sexually with their sisters.
Does Willcuts Company name their subdivision King’s Landing before or after Jaime Lannister rapes his sister Cersei Lannister on the throne room floor? All of this is shown on-screen in detail.
According to certain consumer surveys, 42% of Caucasian respondents would prefer to live in a home that was not designed to fit multiple generations of the same family.
Episode 4
In 2023, according to publicly available internet user data, Game of Thrones was the third most searched for porn-spoof, after Star Wars and Harley Quinn and ahead of Avatar and Harry Potter.
In 2023 searches for “step-mom” on pornographic websites decreased by -3 points as compared to the previous year.
In ten US states, incest in some form is a highly popular search on pornographic websites.
But people typically do not use the term “incest,” instead they search for step-mom, or step-sister, or some other closely related term.
For example, “Mistaking my girlfriend’s IDENTICAL SISTER for her,” or “Step sis makes step bro CUM TWICE before parents get home.”
Episode 5
Things connoted by naming a housing subdivision after a location in Game of Thrones: kings and nobles, violence and bravery, murder and honor, incest and torture, dragons, the mother of dragons, heroic bastards and cowardly heirs, George R.R. Martin’s hats.
The distance between the nearly identical homes at King’s Landing and Riverrun is as wide as the height of a small adult or an average teenager.
In season five episode nine, Stannis Baratheon orders that his daughter Shireen (age fifteen) be burned at the stake as a sacrifice to his household god. His wife agrees, enthusiastically. All of this is shown on-screen in detail.
The space between the homes at King’s Landing and Riverrun is sometimes fenced off with about as much wood as might be required to immolate a teenage girl.
Because of their closeness, the homes have only two very small windows on the sides and two very small windows on the back.
Episode 6
“Step-” distinguishes biological distance from imaginative intimacy.
“-sister” distinguishes imaginative intimacy from biological distance.
The teenager- or small adult-sized gap distinguishes the otherwise the identical homes.
The gap recognizes what is almost the same.
The step- recognizes what is almost the same.
What illusion of predictability does this provide?
It is so difficult to look desire in its face.
Harrison F. Dietzman worked for six years as a wildland firefighter with the Washington State Department of Natural Resources. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his partner, the poet Alisha Dietzman, and their two rescue cats, Frank Stanford and Ishmael. His writing appears in or is forthcoming from SARKA, The Point, Guernica, Soft Union, and elsewhere.