Cool House

As a member of the Fiction 500, you own an awesomely cool car, boat, plane,[1] and a garage to keep them in, but where do you get your mail delivered? Where do you hang out when not on amazing adventures? A Big Fancy House? No, too normal. It must be a Cool House.

To be a Cool House, the standard suburban mansion or Big Fancy House just doesn't cut it. The Cool House is Wish Fulfillment in real estate form. It might look like an ordinary home or something that wouldn't normally be used as a house, but in either case the briefest of tours of its features will reveal that it is no ordinary home.

To qualify for Cool House status a dwelling should be sufficiently unique that any "normal" person aware of its full capabilities would be either in awe, concerned about the owner or designer's sanity, or concerned lest the house fall into the wrong hands. Thankfully Cool Houses are often protected by a Weirdness Censor.

In addition, it should have at least several of the following:

1. Features that no sane, mundane person would expect to have in their home.
  • A security system better than most banks.
  • The basement is actually an Elaborate Underground Base.
  • Secret passages, fireman poles, concealed helipad.
  • An architectural style that may make the home unique in the world.
  • Home theater that actually looks like a small public movie theater, complete with ticket counter.
  • Phone booth, bowling alley, indoor swimming pool/hot tub, "unusual" art, an astronomical observatory with rotating dome, etc.
  • The house is the only Big Fancy House in a Stepford Suburbia city.
2. A feature that no mundane person would be ABLE to have in their home.
  • Alien tech.
  • Magic portals.
  • An object that is unique in the world, illegal for others to own, etc.
  • A physical Weirdness Censor.
  • Surrounded by a yard with grass, trees, pool, etc., in a location where construction or normal survival would be impossible, for example, at the north pole, inside a volcano, on top of Mount Everest, etc.
  • Sentience.

Not to be confused with a popular television doctor.

Examples, from least cool to coolest:

A house that looks completely ordinary, but is actually heavily automated, often resulting in trouble

Anime and Manga

Live-Action TV

A house that looks completely ordinary, but hides such features as the roof pivots on a hinge to release an airship larger than the house, or some other equally unlikely thing

Western Animation

A house that looks spooky or odd, presumably the home of an eccentric at best. When you enter, you realize that the exterior of the house is the most normal thing about it

Live-Action TV

Web Original

  • In the Global Guardians PBEM Universe, Doctor Ka's mansion in New Orleans bears a striking resemblance to the Winchester Mansion. And for the same reason.

Western Animation

A Big Fancy House that is really a front for an Elaborate Underground Base, PLUS it has additional gadgets

Comic Books

  • Wayne Manor.
  • Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. Which is actually an extremely upgraded mansion. Whenever the student body gets too large, two extra mansions are added on the grounds.
  • Doctor Strange's Sanctum Sanctorum. Ordinary New York brownstone on the inside; base of operations for a very busy wizard on the inside.. plus it may be alive.

Film

  • Dr. Morbius' house in Forbidden Planet.
  • In Help, The Beatles have a variation on this; they appear to live next door to each other in four rather humble houses on a terraced estate, but it's revealed that the interior walls have been knocked down to make it one large mansion inside with separate 'designated' areas full of cool stuff inside.

Literature

  • First-time visitors to the Dominator's island may think it's just a mirrored-steel Big Fancy House with lasers on top. There's a weapon embedded in every wall, jets hidden under the grass outside, and an elevator that goes down to a massive basement with its own pool, video arcade, library, enormous warehouse of weapons...

Video Games

A house that doesn't even look like a house, but it sure is cool

Anime

  • In Sonic the Hedgehog The Movie, Sonic and Tails live in a re-purposed airplane. With train cars and what looks like a satellite dish for a roof.

Live-Action TV

  • The TARDIS on Doctor Who, the ultimate mobile home.

Western Animation

Film

  • The house Marvin (John Malkovich's character) in the film version of Red has certainly qualified. The house you see is a front. The real house is entered through the broken down trunk of a car. It has no electronics or phone; Marvin is a Cloudcuckoolander who is almost always 'right' about his conspiracy theories. Inside is a full house, including an old-style safe vault with all the secrets he's collected.

A house with most (if not all) of the above

Anime and Manga

Literature

  • Artemis Fowl's home. He has any technology you can imagine, awesome visitors, and it's basically a friggin' castle. A wine cellar, a holding room, and a room dedicated to watching news. Here's one of the elevator things. Fowl Manor = Win.

Video Games

  • Tomahna is revealed to be this in Revelation, while only hinted at in Exile. They even have an elevator. Bonus points for it being written into Earth by its patriarch, Atrus, your friend and Mr. Exposition from the first games.

Western Animation

Real Life

  • The White House in Washington DC now has, or has previously incorporated, most of the features listed under category 1. Especially the security system. And the application process to move into the place is tricky, to say the least.
  1. ↑ If taking place in the future, substitute Cool Starship. If taking place in a Steampunk setting, substitute Cool Airship
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