Last November in novel-writing month, I had intended to write a Thriller in the Dan Brown-Tom Clancy-John Grisham mold, and ended up spending the whole month just doing prep work, barely doing any writing.  This looks to be a repeat performance, and that’s really chappin’ my hide.  I’m just too bombed-out mentally, too much wild shit going on in the world, never getting enough sleep.  But I gotta go fast, like the blue hedge mans.

So I got 69 super short scenes (nice) in rough chronological here, some that are wretched little stubs slipped in because I thought a given character could use a checkin at that point in the story, whether they have anything to do or not.  So as I try to elaborate, I’ll try to justify those scenes.  Also, this is another “post in progress” that I’ll edit more content into as I keep thinking about shit.

First thing I’m going to do tho is think about the qualities I most want a given scene to possess – mystery, horror, passion, humor, or a combination.

I feel like there’s still some things I gotta nail down better before I get into more specific ideas for these scenes.  Let’s see…

Tunnel time, tunnel time…  Silent Hill‘s dark world, the building at the climax of Cure, the wall those guys were crawling through in the first Matrix movie, the labyrinth in Hellraiser II…  I’m not explicitly trying to be David Lynch here so it can be more overtly supernatural, but I would much prefer reading as surreal than fantasy, so how to make it feel like that?  It can be like the environments in my dreams with huge amounts of tiny detail, incongruities like corners not meeting the way they’re supposed to, places you can pass through a wall where you really should not be able to…

Surrealism feels strongest when there’s some kind of emotional reality being spoken to by the imagery on display.  What is the emotional reality?  There are places you aren’t allowed to go, where people do things you aren’t allowed to do, or to see.  The Pentagon, the Teacher’s Lounge, the other rooms at the hospital…  What does it mean to get in there?  Life is dangerous.  You might get caught.  It’s wrong and bad.  Get out.  What if you don’t?  Does that mean you become one of them?  The people who know?  The Illuminati?  Does that inherently and inevitably change you, like wealth does in all the Russian folklore?  Where a reasonable main character finds riches and becomes an asshole?

A sense could build over time that it is making him more like them.  How?  I was thinking the emotional nadir for Matthew would be when Hyun-woo calls attention to the unflattering reality of the situation – Matthew is, on a level not even all that deep, using Hyun-woo’s family tragedy to snare him romantically.  That moment leads directly into a scene where the two are invited to the Bacchanal – invited to be where the monster men are.  They see each other across the room and Hyun-woo is looking like a human in a room of beasts, Matthew imagines himself in that stare to be one of the creeps.  I dunno…  Wait, I was talking about the tunnels.

I guess it could move in stages.  Things that are at first hostile to him become welcoming, or deferent.  Like cockroaches moving away from his touch.  Maybe the feeling of mold in his lungs becomes minty fresh.  Better at seeing in the dark?  Certainly just getting used to the layout of some weird in-between places could be symbolically on a grade to becoming a morlock.

Every other floor in the building is a fake floor, part of the tunnels.  If it was architecturally sensible, they’d be full of unused units that have the same layout as the ones above and below – being designed around the same load-bearing elements.  But it ain’t, so what are those rooms like?  They have windows, maybe even balconies.  Maybe on some floors the windows from one side of the building are part of a long thin structure running all the way through the level to  the window on the other side – empty and bright tunnels one can glimpse through cracks but not get inside of, crawling over or under them like a rodent.

I could use the idea of unreal geography to make the interstitial spaces whatever I like, but I kinda lean toward having them be possible.  You need a way to get from one side of the central hall to the other without passing through it, and the in-between floors can help with that.  He first enters the secret tunnels in the basement/first floorish area.  In the “mansion” end where Freddy dwells, the floor was taken out between 1st and basement to allow for taller ceilings.  Those rooms have to be accessed by going down short stairwells.  The design means much of the basement is intruded on by tall-ceiling rooms, and those rooms can in turn intrude on the basement.  Most will have alcoves or closets that reach into basement territory.  But what is left of the basement?  Coming into it from a different angle gives one the expected things – a boiler room, some utility and storage spaces – but those have concealed entrances to the tunnels.

The interstitial space in the basement doesn’t have to be as weirdly shaped as on the first floor…  Eh, this is enough thought on that for now.  What else do I need to put some more thought into..?

I feel like I already began to put in some thought on this but I don’t remember the results, if any.  In thinking about the tools Lynch used to create a sense of mystery or the surreal, I thought about his use of repeated names, and changing identities as a recurring theme in his oeuvre.  I’m not trying to come up with a grand unified thing for my entire output on the fly – possibly that is something that will emerge on its own – but that may be useful within this project.

All that angel guff was meant to be something that goes unexplained to the reader, to create a sense there is something supernatural afoot, but you don’t get to know exactly what it is.  Part of the reason I say these articles are spoilery if you thought you were going to read this shit – I’m giving more away than I intend to in the final product.  But what could be recurring themes that provoke a sense of mystery?  Anything derived from said angel guff?  The animal souls theme?

Again circles me back to my question of what I will actually show on the page.  Vexatious as hell, but maybe I’m a tiny bit closer now.  I’ve decided, I think, that in addition to looking through holes and cracks that are not visible in the “real world,” if you pass into that world by any means besides your original point of entry, you’re in an alternate reality with more symbolic things happening.  Matthew uses this to free an angel from bondage, that helps defeat Dexter and liberate Yolanda.  But what the hell does that look like?

This could connect back to my Rent is Theft universe.  Most of you wouldn’t have read that.  All of you?  It exists in a place, I’m not linking it here right now.  Second draft will have some huge changes, so I’m a lil shy about it.  But that features a modern apartment building that shows allergy symptoms, sneezing somebody’s bed out the window, insect men in trenchcoats that try to evict the characters, and people hiding a secret slowly transforming into yokai.

All that was surreal expression of the central theme of the book.  The world is built for property law and we’re just living in it.  Capitalism is allergic to us and will ultimately zap us with its antibodies.  We don’t belong here.

This world isn’t like that exactly.  The themes aren’t exactly that.  This housing project is a real thing, with an existence greater than the laws that allow low- to no- income people to live in it.  Like, if civilization ended, people would still be allowed to live in it – because they’re the food to the freaky creeps that lurk there.  The box, the trap.

What people do in their waking lives is all just nonsense that justifies the metaphysical reality of being trapped in the box.  So if there’s something related to work or commerce or anything outside the building, it would appear as fake, just toys.  Monopoly money.  Crude drawings a grandma in lieu of photographs – as far as this box is concerned, if she don’t live here, she isn’t real.

It would make sense for the angels to appear in their natural forms in the spirit vision, but that’s giving away the game too much.  What would they look like, and why?  If humans’ appearance betrays their animal soul, then angels could just look like humans – ironically appearing less monstrous than the actual humans, when viewed thru the cracks.  I like that well enough.

Maybe when they die they could assume their angelic form for a moment, before being digested by the building itself.  Dexter becomes a horse-thing, The Disease a giant snake – and then both just sucked up into floors or walls.

Alright, that’s something.  What else haven’t I considered well enough yet?  I need a good maguffin for The Shipment subplot.  Anime porn?  Cuban cigars?  What is this contraband?  Could it connect to Freddy’s secret vice in the Puss in Boots story, whenever I get around to writing that?

Maybe…  I dunno.  I used to work IRL in a place where I’d log deliveries to a shitty billionaire, but never saw the contents of those deliveries – just mid-size unmarked white trucks, destined for a freight elevator.  Were they driving rare animals past me, so he could kill them for sexual pleasure?  Trafficked humans?  Piles of drugs?  Medieval entertainers like jesters, mummers, and tumblers?  I got no idea, but I thought about it sometimes.  Odds are it wasn’t anything too wild because the possibility a security guard would glimpse it on camera, and fink on the robber baron.  But who knows?

It’s gotta be something for sale, to other clients – not something just for the consumption of our mobbish angels.  What would be fun?  Lab-grown jewels with counterfeit certification of blood mine value?  Bootleg disney films?  Hm… I like that, but that’s not how bootlegging works anymore.  Might be funny if the dudes didn’t know that, but find out later on…  I do like that.  It does create the issue that the reader may wonder if I’m a fool, and then feel kinda cheap later on, like really?  That was the big yuk?  I dunno.  I still think it’s kinda funny.  Plus I hate disney.

Alright.  That’s good.  What else…

What is Bonnie’s thing?  How, after losing connect with the mob princess, does she have the ability to score an invite to Bacchanal?  She must have a job for Freddy’s mob.  Dunno what.  A teenage informant isn’t good for much.  I’m not being enough of an edgelord to have child prostitution in this, tho sadly I’m sure it’s not at all unusual in situations most similar to this IRL.  Let’s say Bonnie… sells… stuff… She can be selling stuff to the ravens; that’s what she’ll do in the earlier scene with them.  In terms of the kids in this story, Lupe Bonnie & the Ravens are all about the same age; Yolanda is much younger, if not quite as baby as Eun-ha.

The apple of life!  Something the ravens give to Matthew that helps him get the love of Hyun-woo.  In the original story the snake-eatin’ boy got the apple of life and used it to impress the princess.  The story kinda calls for Hyun-woo to fuck off here, so it explicitly can’t reward him in that way at that point in the plot.  Maybe it just helps save him.

An epi-pen?  Adrenalin?  Does Hyun-woo have allergies?  I think adrenalin.  Might be funny.  I’d need to research if that bullshit from Pulp Fiction was real.  Does it have to go thru the sternum?  If you got stabbed in the heart thru the sternum, wouldn’t removing the needle cause you to bleed out?  Or get a weird infection, or I don’t know.

Gotta figure out the flavor on my Blue Velvety gangster weirdos.  I wrote a lil about them elsewhere.  What are they like in human form?  What can make them feel distinctive?  Freddy is inspired by the emcee from Tales From the Hood, so that’s easy enough.  Armando is in some ways the stereotypical latin villain, so I could reach for Robert Davi.  Probably best to not get too racistical in my depictuals.  The gangsters should be fuckers tho, it just has to be.  This is the loan shark.  Loves folding money.  I just typed monkey before correcting myself, jesus.  Hey, he could fold monkey too.

I could just cast them, for cheap visuals and voices.  Who’s latin?  Jimmy Smits?  Benjamin Bratt?  Cheech Marin?  Freddy Prinze Jr.?  Ricardo Montalban?  That Prince Valiant dude from No Country?  God I’m old.  How about Dario?  Giancarlo Esposito?  And Don?  Maybe Keith David?  Sam Jackson?

Maybe I should rethink these gangsters a lil to get another lady character in there?  …Naw, there’s reasons for that.  Srsly I should put a pin in these guys.  Stick ’em in a butterfly case.  Who’s who?  Need to have some guys who would be funny and/or scary to see interacting.  Would it be too obvious to have guys inspired by the cast of Seinfeld?  Nick Riviera from the Simpsons?  My fuckin imagination is so broken right now i’m dyin’…

They need to be funny and edgy and entertaining, in some kind of order.  Maybe I can think of amusing vices or elements and kinda mash em up.  Like, let’s say… this guy does this kind of drugs and makes those kind of threats and has that kind of demeanor…  It’s all math at the end of the day, and I got dyscalculia’d by exhaustion.  Lemme see…

Freddy:  played by Clarence Williams III, luxuriating in his authority, king of the world, quirks by way of David Lee Roth.
Dario:  played by Giancarlo Esposito, hustling contraband, aggrieved and paranoid, quirks by way of Mentat Dourif.
Armando:  played by Benicio del Toro, scheming all the dollars, loansharking, quirks by way of David Lynch?
Don:  played by Sam Jackson?, bullying people about their appearance, sadism, quirks by way of Kenneth Anger tops?

Freddy has more charisma than Clarence, Dario has less charisma than Giancarlo, Don is more subtle than Sam, but this is some kinda foundation.  Resist the urge to make Armando into the dude from Usual Suspects.  When they’re rocking out at the bacchanal, what is an unimaginable good time to them?  What terrifying nonsense could thrill monster men?

Doing drugs and juggling knives?  Naked crossword puzzles?  Smoking money?  Swallowing small animals whole?  Smoking drugs out of faberge eggs?  Lucha libre?  Weird porn?  Stag reels?  Filming weird porn?  Indoor skateboarding?  Terrorizing normies that were invited specifically to get messed with?  Playing dress-up?  Reading 18th century gothic horror in French?  Fake religious ceremonies?  Bohemian grove shit?  Electrocuting each other?  Taser fights?

Not there yet.  Seriously, so busted tonight, mentally deflated like my tires ran over one of those police spike strips.  Rare alcohol mixed with kiddie beverages like nesquick?  Truth or Dare?  Strip poker?  Nick at Night?  Discourse about children’s cartoons?  Making seventy year old hookers armwrestle?  Fight club?  Not talking about fight club?  Karaoke?  Playing in a punk band?  A goth band?  A pop band?  Like, some NKotB type shit for senior citizens.  They should try to outdo each other singing It’s so Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday by Boyz II Men.

Mumblety-peg.  Bowling.  Ping-pong.  Bible study.  Horse fancy.  Betting on legislation.  Wine tasting.  Blood tasting.  The dozens.  Slam poetry.  Competitive lego.  Candyland.  Trading comics.  Trading baseball cards.  Trading sex partners.  Crypto rug pulls.  Amway.  Dianetics.  Exotic reptile fancy.  Chuchu Rocket.  Monster Rancher.  Ukelele.  Square dancing.  Lambada, the Forbidden Dance™.

Competitive eating.  Daring each other to eat gross stuff.  Art criticism.  Movie heckling.  Inserting their fingers into each other’s eye sockets as a social test.  Sharing needles.  Smoking banana peels.  BDSM.  Fursuits.  Rhythm games.  Crossbow practice.  Potato guns.  That thing where you put dry ice in an empty 2-liter bottle of pop.  Dubious supplements.  Exquisite corpse.  Turing tests.  Voight-Kampff tests.  Pregnancy tests.  Circus geek tricks.  That Mr. Lifto shit.

Quickdraw competition with live ammo.  Scattergories.  Brujeria.  Dominos.  Competitive cooking.  Reenacting scenes from favorite movies.  Getting maudlin and confessing deep dark fears or desires that don’t make sense.  Ghost stories.  Trying to write novels in really short amounts of time.  Buying out corrupt democracies and burning the infrastructure to ash to make themselves nominally richer.  Debating evilutionists on youtube.  Pwning the libs.  Talking in tongues.  I don’t love any of this.  Feel free to add suggestions below.

What’s Matthew’s disability?  Depression with suicidal occurrences seems the easiest, like, getting approved for conditions that don’t involve knives seems less likely to happen.  How realistic then is it to not have him get depressed in a bad way during the story?  Of course the story does include an element of his disability benefits being inconsistent and unreliable, so maybe it isn’t anything that dire.  It is one of the easier ones to imagine / write for, with my dark streak.

There’s social stuff, but the plot hinges on him doing a fuckin’ lot of socially challenging things, and I’d hate to say he has that while representing him having none of those difficulties.  So that’s out.  I don’t think I’d do justice to depicting Tourette’s or OCD.  My husband thinks I might have a touch of the ’tism but no way.  I’m so normal y’all don’t even know.

Depression.  Like the stress is pushing him toward an episode but also keeping him too tense to feel the low come on.  A mixed state?  We all wonder sometimes with invisible disabilities, is this an actual biological impairment, or a situational thing, that a person could overcome with the right advantages or aid?  Like, is he depressed because life is depressing, or because his brain does something specific and sad with the depressingness, chemicologicalocally speakin’.  I do think it’s very well established that neurology is a factor in depression, but that experiential bias is strong.  I’d be depressed too if that was me.  Right?

I was at the doctor recently and now, for some reason, they’re required to do “behavioral screening” on any given visit – do you feel like you can’t stop worrying, like you can’t enjoy things, etc… And I’m like, “within understandable limits given the geopolitical realities of the day?”  It’s a bad joke.  Life during wartime, baby.  Stop making sense.

God, as I’m trying to think right now I just have Unholy by KissSam Smith and Kim Petras in my head so bad.  Bobby don’t know it’s a shoddy bop, get your body rocked, doin’ somethin’ unwholesome…  Life as a creative person.  The drive to create, the vexation of working close to the limits of your cognition.  I guess stemmy kids get that last part too.  The first part only if they’re mad scientists.  Hey that’s ableist.  Let’s say creative scientists.

Remember that cover of Sympathy for the Devil at the end credits of Interview with the Vampire?  That hit me nearly as bad as the Kashmir sampled P Diddy rap at the end of Godzilla (the bad one).  Like, Axl Rose doing spoken word rap, on some Kurtis Blow shit.  Pwease awwow me to intwoduce mysewf.  Unbelievable.  That song might improve before it’s over but I wouldn’t know because I couldn’t get there.  I roflmao’d until daed.

Oh yeah, depression.  Matthew.  Just thinking about it depresses me, haha.  Guess that means I’m doing it right?  To the question, what kind of person is he?, in light of depression the first thing that came to mind was “standup comic.”  But at the moment, burned-out internet funnyman would be more appropriate.  Lessay he ran a twitter called dipshitcycle and had some tweets about the Twilight movies go viral, kept it up for as long as he could, but ran out of funny.  Then another wild child was brung to the ghet-to.

So personality like… Quiet guy, hangs back, but known to drop a sick burn or a quirky observation, changes the subject if you laugh at it.

Back to tunnel time for a moment.  As many such unspecified scenes as I’ve plugged in, I oughtta come up with a list of freaky / creepy things that can happen in there.  It can have things he saw through the peepholes, things he saw through the cracks, things he had to dodge in the tunnels themselves.

Peepholes:  Where you can see the world as it usually appears.
Sex Stuff.  Gotta see people gettin busy or masturbatin’.  Feel weird about it.
…had a specific idea for a masturbator.  A very hirsute person with a big nose in makeup and lingerie.  Not to be mocked by this voice of the universe, but to make Matthew feel some type of way.
Abuse.  Must see people being mistreated, but as a bug on the wall, what can one do about it?
Crime.  Will see people doing illegal things; raises the possibility of ratting them out or blackmail.  But no, he’d never.
Nothing.  Most of the time you look in a random room during the day, there’ll be nothing and nobody in it.  Or if somebody’s there, they will be doing nothing.

Cracks:  If you look back the way you came in, the world looks normal.  If you look out through these cracks in places where you have not come in, they look freaky / spirit vision style.
What does it all mean?  As I said before, the view through these should be a world of visual metaphor for what’s actually happening therein.  So a person who is reading a bunch of trashy romance novels could have every book on their wall feature the same cover, with fancy calligraphic text spelling “(Their Name)’s Genitals.”
Animal Souls.  People will appear as animals or hybrid creatures through the cracks.
Angels.  They appear as people, falsely.
Stranger Activities.  People doing the metaphorical version of what’s going on in their life.  Taking all the coins out of a piggy bank and putting them back in again.
What do things of actual significance and value look like?  Glowing with gold?  Naw, too magic.  Brightly colored?  Clean, in a world where most things are dirty?

The Tunnels:  It’s the spirit world, the bowels of an angel, and where creepy things can happen.
What it seems:  Why secret floors?  Just how much of this building is dedicated to organized crime?  Voyeurism?
Ain’t what it seems:  Why aren’t the peepholes visible from the other side of the wall?  What the hell is going on with the cracks, where the world on the other side doesn’t look right?
Hiding in a corner:  he can’t leave without walking past some weirdos doing a sex act.  Has to wait for their orgasm to escape.
Seeing the mob dudes:  moving merchandise thru the halls, having to duck from them.
Secret rooms:  Rooms that exist on the interstitial floors – what is inside them?  Is that where The Disease’s room is?
Lair of the White Worm:  Yeah, he sees the Disease’s room before he comes to understand its significance.
Animal Encounters:  Eun-ha, the Disease in snake form, the Monkey, roaches.

Those ideas weren’t specific enough, mostly.  Gotta try harder next time.

Off-topic but something I want to remember for future reference:  My husband has been trying to write something in the style of David Lynch, and while this project has been very influenced by that, it’s still very much the sort of bullshit I’ve been doing since I first started writing novels.  We had some discussion on this, and for him the genesis of that project was a few short ideas added together.  One was a portentous sentence from a Lynch film, one was a spooky short sentence he had come up with, and one was a Lynchian thing from IRL he had found out about on the interwebs.  I think, to get a good concept going for that sort of project, that might be a good formula.  One plus one plus one.  See if I ever remember this lol.

Anything else?  No?  Fuck it, let’s do…

THE SCENES

01 Matthew I:  Getting ready for work, sees Eun-ha.  Mystery, Passion.  The passion here should be just a sense of his life feeling overwhelming, maybe an idea about his benefits, something that explains the crime job, but mostly to show it ain’t easy doing nothing for a living.  Of course the mystery of Eun-ha, and maybe some hinting about his day job, something to tickle tha ballz about it.
The hold music plays.  Gets up, goes to window, rests face there, sees girl, does other things, comes back, sees she isn’t there, phone picks up.  I didn’t get the letter.  I don’t have time for this right now.  Got a job?  Gotta go suck my landlord’s dick, if you wanna know.  Considers getting collared shirt on, shaving, gives up.  Goes thru project halls with weird luniz everywhere.
These scenes gotta be capsules that deliver the feeling and the point.  The mysteries – why girl there, what happened to her.  is he really gonna suck the landlord’s dick?  The passion – doesn’t want to do anything but has no choice.  Shit is depressing.  Bring the depression and frustration through description of the environment – not like, this is the environment of a depressed person, a depression nest, just that the environment or other details communicate a feeling that is depressing?  I dunno.  Might be a good place to drop a hint about the cracks later.
What feels like depression, the way the lavish detail in The Bloody Chamber‘s posh environments spoke to lush and sinister decadence, to a end of innocence, to being trapped in cloying darkness on the edge of annihilation?  There was a sense of movement in Carter’s writing, and in mine this could be the movement of pacing around your own mausoleum, aggravated by a world that won’t let you stay dead, won’t let you rest in peace.

02 Matthew II, Freddy I, Armando I, Don I, Dario I, The Disease I, Lupe I:  Scared by mobsters outside their party.  Mystery, Horror, Humor.  Blue Velvet didn’t jump straight to its weirdos but I’m kinda jumping straight to mine.  Establishing the mansion and its inhabitants and guests – almost all angels, all weird as balls.  They should all be saying things that disturb or provoke bad imagination. Maybe Matthew has to go through a series of gates to get to where he can do his job – getting let into the mansion, having to do unexpected jobs along the way, getting free of those guys to get to the office area, where he can debug excel spreadsheets for villainy.  I had the idea all mob stuff is written in a code he can’t decipher, some wacky lingo.
Mystery is plain enough – Matthew doesn’t know why they’re weird or what they’re doing.  Horror should come from menace and maybe social horror – who knows what wild party people are going to do?  Somebody must wave a gun in the air at some point.  Humor – hopefully weird weirdos bring humor on their own.  So… I don’t need to put much thought into how to emphasize these things.
Maybe the humor tho.  That isn’t always easy to write.  A lot of failed attempts in the collective output of hollyweird, that’s fa damn sure.  Gotta have a setup for it.  Situation comedy.  Matthew needs to check in with Freddy every day but Freddy is impossible to get to because he’s being the host with the most.  You’re not allowed in there.  Can’t very well wait until the party is over, you’re on the clock.  But you gotta wait.  But don’t wait.  Move it.  Where do you think you’re going?
He’s hanging loose in some kind of antechamber.  A guard is easily swayed by the underbosses that pass through, which is why he keeps contradicting himself about what Matthew should be doing.  Lupe almost seems like she could bail him out but doesn’t.  The Disease has feathers around his mouth like he ate a bird raw.  At last the boss man lets him go get to the computer.

03 Matthew III:  Tech support turns into Tunnel Time.  Mystery, Horror.   So Matthew has to check out a connection issue and finds his way into one of the cracks?  It’s behind a painting of a white snake.  He sees the cracks and it gives him an awareness, later he can enter from other locations, will end up going in from his room.  I think, honestly, just a simple introduction to the interstices would be wild and weird enough to justify the mystery and horror of the scene.  No need for deeper thought, just establish the layout a little.

04 Hyun-Woo I:  Floating World.  Mystery, Passion.  A scene outside the project, in a nice upper middle class home, tastefully appointed but invaded by cops.  The cops leave and Hyun-woo is talked into looking for Eun-ha.  Hanging out after college where he was a journalism major, now as employable as one would imagine lol.  I really want to play up the extent to which the place doesn’t feel as real as the project, the sense of a vignette of light, of vaseline on the lens.
People should feel as over the top emotional as in the first episode of Twin Peaks.  Might make more sense here.  Might be good to keep the girl’s age a secret here so people don’t immediately pair her with the little girl at the beginning, throw it off in some other way.

05 Matthew IV, Bonnie I, Lupe II:  Tunnel Time ends with witnessing Bonnie crime.  Mystery, Passion.  You broke the unwritten law Bonnie.  You stole from a fellow lesbian.  Then ya friends don’t like you anymore, and your enemies don’t respect ya.  It’s curtains, Bonnie.  Curtains!
So this is where some hint of supernature begins – basically, why are there so many peepholes and why can’t they be seen?  What’s with the cracks?  Doesn’t look thru them much yet, but intro concept.  Passion of course because gaybies are intense and oppressed by society.

06 Freddy II, Dario II:  The Shipment I.  Freddy+Dario discuss the shipment.  Mystery, Humor, Horror.  I need these capsules.  Good for health, bad for education.  I need to encapsulate the feeling of a scene with a strong sense of the movement or other properties, like, the viscosity, how do I say it?
On the banal level, Dario tells Freddy about a hot score, how he just needs help in case things go sideways.  Freddy is like, oh ho?  Don’t tell me.  Let it be a surprise.  They talk in terms of strategies for acquiring and moving product.  Freddy says they simply must involve Armando.  Dario wants to sell it to kids and moms.  wtf?
On the abstract level, it’s the aftermath or a low spot in the party, everyone is strewn about as if dead, or moved along.  Evidence of strange pleasures linger in the air.  The early wolf gets the calf.  Dario and Freddy are half awake half dead, pondering whose entire existence is fodder for their cruel desires.  But in a funny way?

07 Matthew V, Freddy III, Lupe III:  Accused by Freddy.  Help me understand, my little man.  Horror.  It opens with movement, rushing thru halls, inexorable slide into disaster.  Let’s say Matthew saw Bonnie go away, thought it a reasonable interval to avoid trouble, and came into the office.  His phone rings and Lupe hears it, pokes her head in – Jesus, how long you been in here?  He holds up a finger.  Gotta take this.
Goes to see the boss, who talks about the shipment with him – very couched terms.  Lupe rushes in and whispers to him, then the accusation happens.  Why should I believe?  Because it’s true.  I don’t have shit on me.  Wanna see me naked?  Body cav search?  God forbid.  Literally, I’m Dominican.  Mejor muerta que maricón.  Young man, you should have self-respect.  Makes absurd deal – you can leave, but anon the goods must be returned, or you won’t like it.
Abstractly, he never got balance back after returning from unreal world.  In wobbly state he slips, falls into disaster of the sort he must have always feared, in working for mobsters.  Head burning and ringing, Lupe suspecting what Matthew knows, which must also be upsetting.

08 Yolanda I:  Picking through The Forest and finds trace of Eun-ha, ignores it in favor of bugs.  Mystery, Horror.  Maybe the trace can be a pair of patent leather shoes.
Yolanda established.  Weird monster girl, she prowls the vines for interesting entomological finds.  Something strange catches her attention, the movement of a ghost.  She takes in a full and perfect view of the evidence, but unmoved, looks at the next indicated thing – a tiger swallowtail caterpillar perhaps.
The capsule:  The world behind her is the edifice, the tower, the cage in which all the story has been sealed.  Below this little jungle is something like a sublime piece of ill nature, but it’s fake.  It’s all flimsiness served up on an indestructible concrete slab that still belongs to the tower.  The vines have to creep in from elsewhere or grow right out of the moldering junk heap.  Here is a place where little prisoner can scratch the days in her wall, but terrible things threaten to steal what’s left of those days.  Menacing vibes.

09 Matthew VI, Bonnie II:  Confronts Bonnie.  Social Horror, Passion.   How would you appoach somebody to tell them you saw them steal
something?  “What would you do if you saw somebody steal something, kid?  I saw somebody take something that doesn’t belong to them, but I don’t want to see them burned.”  Etc…
The capsule… What does it feel like to have a lot of sympathy for somebody’s suffering / position in life but to also know they’re a thieving little shit?  How do you handle that?  Some things are easier to convert into abstractions.  Like if this was physical objects what would it be?  Some kind of metaphor, what would that be?
When you see an animal suffering but know it would bite you in a second.  People do that, don’t they?  Help a moose out of a ditch that can kick them to death without hesitation.  This feels useful.  Approach the monkey knowing it could do something terrible to you at any moment for monkey kicks.

10 Matthew VII:  Tunnel Time to find Lupe.  Mystery, Horror.  He sees the cracks from the other side in his apartment and goes in, uses the peepholes to find Bonnie.
Not much time left in his day, knows he’s got to speak with Lupe but she’s likely to be in places he has no access to like the mansion.  While freaking out, sees the cracks in his apartment from the other side, and enters the mess.  More hints of supernature, more of the layout of the mess.  The mystery and horror are real straightforward on this one.

11 Matthew VIII, Lupe IV:  Gets with Lupe.  Social Horror, Passion.  First reveal of him being gay?  Yeah sure, why not?  He felt more inclined to share secret with this gay than the one who picked her pocket, but may regret that feeling, because this one is tougher – and Freddy’s daughter.
I do think he comes at this one with a foolish feeling that it will be easier than dealing with Bonnie and is quickly put in some amount of mortal fear by her paranoid and punchy reactions.  Again with the touchy animal metaphor.

12 Matthew IX:  Scared by Monkey Faces.  Mystery, Horror.  This is when he is going to bed at night and sees the Eun-ha dress fly away, worn by a gibbon.  Doesn’t quite get it’s a monkey yet.
By this point he has talked with Lupe and Bonnie and has the scheme in place, right?  So he should feel able to sleep – if only with an alarm on his phone to make sure he gets up early as hell.  Rest your face on the cold window.  The glare keeps you from getting a full view but it looks like there’s a pink dress down there.  He turns lights off and comes back to see the dress flying… and then nothing.  Were you tripping?  Do you go down there?  What would or could you even find?  I think that’ll work.

13 Freddy IV, Dario III, Armando:  The Shipment II.  Freddy has convinced Dario to get Armando’s help acquiring it.  Mystery, Humor, Horror.  A bigger introduction to Armando.  He’s reasonable but blatantly sus, sus as all hell, and Dario ain’t buyin’ it, but Freddy keeps vouching and he’s the bawss.  Let’s say this one begins with them extracting him from the party and dragging him to a chair where he slowly wakes up.  It ends with Freddy distributing weapons.  Katana?  Tec nine?  Monofilament whip?

14 Yolanda II:  Some kind of early scene to hint she will matter later.  Mystery, Passion.  I think the child abuse here, a lil bit, because setting up injustices does suggest they may be dealt with, ultimately.  This scene doesn’t line up with Matthew’s wall creepin so it must be a Yolanda solo scene.  I guess by merit of us focusing on her at all there is an implication she’ll matter later.  Gotta feel the passion.  She is really enthusiastic about a new bug, makes the mistake of telling mom.  Dexter comes in and kills the bug gnarly style.  When I grow up I’m gonna kill you!  You’re never gonna be big enough, haha.

15 Lupe V, Bonnie III:  Lupe schools Bonnie.  Social Horror, Passion.  Bitch I cut you!  You fuck with me I’ll tell.  It’ll be the last thing you ever do…  Maybe not at that level.  It’s too intense.  This should be intense, but the story is all death threats, gotta ease off some ways sometimes.
Find my capsule.  Why’d you steal from me?  It’s over forever.  I don’t need you.  I really don’t need you.  Who are you gonna be with then, rosy palm and her five sisters?  I loved you, you piece of shit.  We’re all shit here.  C’moon, forgiveness?  How about a switchblade in the ribs instead?  I dunno i dunno…
Get rolled up on by the mack truck you saw coming a mile away.  Know it was inevitable but u still wish you could evit it.  A generally extremely thoughtless and reckless person facing personal consequences for first time in years.  What does it feel like?  This also might affect Bonnie’s day job as a dealer for the mob.  High stakes.  Maybe the relationship was always doomed, like a workplace relationship in a volatile workplace.

16 Hyun-Woo II:  Hyun-woo arrives, begins to investigate.  Mystery, Passion.  Doesn’t need to be too much the horror yet.  He comes into the building by way of the bodega, maybe?  Feels a lil out of his depth in the courtyard and decides to go door to door, as a warm up for approaching strangers.  Passes smokin in the stairwell, other creepiness, and has a few awkward knocks.  A lot of social anxiety, but also concern for Eun-ha, and shame he isn’t being bolder, as a journalism major.

17 Matthew X, Lupe VI, Freddy V:  Lupe helps him get out of mob.  Social Horror, Passion, Humor.  As I mentioned elsewhere, this is her “finding” the “mislaid” items on a bookshelf, with help from Matthew that provokes Freddy’s generosity.
Matthew psyched up for the scheduled “confession,” barely squeaks out his scheme to Freddy – I got a way to ping the missing electronics.  Lemme use the computer.  Lupe is like, tsst, what-everrr – much better at acting than Matthew.  It’ll go on in that way until Matthew gets out the door…
This should be real easy on its own, no deeper analysis necessary.  A scene idea with inherent tension.

18 Hyun-woo III:  Hyun-woo door-to-door, attracting bad attention.  Social Horror, Mystery, Passion.
Hyun-woo actually gets to talk about the case with a sorta sympathetic person or two, but also has somebody get real mad and storm off.  What is her intention?  Order of things – medium sympathy, blowup, more empathy plus gets inside and out of the hall, comes out into hall in time to see somebody he has to duck away from.

19 Matthew XI, Hyun-woo IV:  First meeting with Hyun-Woo.  Mystery, Passion.  Love appears.  So…
Hyun-woo knocks on the door.  Matthew opens up, hoping for a sexy mormon or jehovah’s witness to entertain for a dishonest hour.  Have you seen this girl?  Terminator 2 style.  Maybe I have?  I saw a girl.  I heard about the rumors and it got me thinking, could that have been her?  Points out where in
The Forest she was, what was going on generally.  Expresses discomfort with going down there but interest in helping him with investigation.  Goons are going to walk him out but get talked out of it – tho he’s forbidden from bugging neighbors.
Opens with Matthew having escaped the mob, wondering what the hell to do about money still.  Shortly Hyun-woo arrives.  The passions – Hyun-woo’s concern for Eun-ha, Matthew’s loneliness and money concern.  The mystery – Matthew swept into the story of Eun-ha.

20 Ravens I, Bonnie IV:  They want to buy drugs from her.  Hint they will matter.  Mystery, Humor.  Bonnie pissed and uncertain, wondering if she’ll have to go hetero.  Guys appear all around her and she tries to act sexy.  Maybe one of them buys it but the others don’t.  Comes out they want drugs but have no money.  A lil now for a favor later?  Fuck off you bums!

21 Freddy VI, Dario IV, Armando III:  The Shipment III.  Freddy+Armando+Dario get the shipment.  Mystery, Humor, Horror.  I wanted to have most everything take place inside the building but it’s hard to justify this one.  Maybe it’s more the aftermath, right when they get home?
Yeah, they are getting home with crates and battle damage and oblique references to terrible things that have happened.  Hauling the crates, waiting for dollies and freight elevators.  More disgust and mistrust, but it’s Armando with the best space to stash it, at the end of the day.

22 Matthew XII, Yolanda III:  Tunnel Time to investigate for Hyun-woo, Yolanda hint.  Mystery, Horror.Matthew has Hyun-woo’s number and doesn’t want to call unless he has something to call about.  Resolves to look in every single room with eyeholes in search of the girl or a suitably sus suspect.  A lot of creepiness, and sees Yolanda being abused.  The cracks show more hints of the supernatural.  Maybe shift to Yolanda’s perspective to end the scene.  She’s talking with her doll.  Is there something to that toy?

23 Matthew XIII:  Crushing, scrapbooking?  Passion.  Back from tunnel time, Matthew has to decompress.  Shower?  Think about himself.  Could you have a chance with this guy?  Never.  WTF breh?  How can I communicate this passion?  The capsule.  He has nobody to interact with.  Gotta have a lot of internal monologue.
But if this wasn’t literature and that wasn’t possible, how would I sell the feeling?  Look at himself, roll on the bed, look at himself again.  Go to masturbate but lose interest?  Drink or smoak big weed?  Damned if I know.
Maybe it’ll be more clear when I’ve written him for a few scenes.
Neeeh I gotta try harder.  Altho knowing his interests might be good.  How does he pass his time?  A fallen internet funnyman.  I think… a lot of stopping and starting things.  A lot of anhedonia.  Video games, movies, video, not much actually getting finished.  Some amount of liquor and cigarettes.
What’s going on here is that he just got back from some weird kind of netherworld where he was trying to find a lost possibly dead girl for a hot dude and… what does that feel like?  Oughtta feel intense, unreal, too much.  Look out the window repeatedly on the unlikely chance she wanders by the same spot.  Look out again and again.  Try to play a sim game, a fighting game, give up and just make self daed fom booze.

24 Yolanda IV:  Messing with roach traps, yelled on by Dexter, talks to Dolly.  Passion, Horror, Mystery.  Make no question there’s something up with the doll.  How about the abuse?  I guess this can scale back a bit from how personal it was before.  Give this plot a little breather.

25 Lupe VII:  Lupe Somethin?  Passion?  Feelin bad about Bonnie, feelin alone.  Some kinda lesbian feels, like, forever alone.  Remembers a crush that is too hetero and she’ll never be able to be with.  Burns something?
A chapter of internal monologue is too much.  She should be doing something at the same time.  tfw no gf.  Maybe walking her part of the mansion, to get readers familiar with it..?  I think the mansion has only one room with windows, very high on the wall like in Fall of the House of Usher and a lil dim because they face the alley side in the shadow of the ruined building.  It’s got an altar to Belié Belcan / San Miguel.  Foot up to crush a demon, wearing green with a green turban, holding scimitars, stylized flame around, bells and blades on the altar.  “Miguelito don’t step on me today, I’m a little more holy because I feel like hell.”

26 Matthew XIV, Hyun-woo V:  Bored games.  Hyun-woo still temporarily scared into not investigating alone.  Mystery, Passion.  Matthew and Hyun-woo bond as people.  Hyun-woo and him go over what he knows about the building, within the limits of not telling him dangerous secrets about organized crime.  They have to take mental health breaks, during which they talk about who they are, find out they’re both gay?  or later?  Yeah, just hints – cultural things, interests.
Is established that Matthew is hesitant to tell Hyun-woo about tunnels, for reasons unclear to himself.  Shame about the spying incident?  A feeling that he’s going to be using that to look for Eun-ha?  Also doesn’t want to say he saw her flying in the monkey incident.
“I recently got a favor from the boss of the building, don’t know how close he keeps a tab on who owes what to whom, don’t wanna cash in chips I’ll need for rent, but … will try to keep coverin for you as a guest.  Probably best not to push that luck by poking around…”
OK, the last scene with Matthew before this has him getting blackout drunk … maybe not?  If he was anticipating this meeting…  I dunno.  The capsule:  Getting to know this dude, as well as seal the deal of helping with his investigation.  Matthew’s wall has collage art.  Torn Pulp Fiction poster, Uma has cartoon dicks on her cheeks and a curly moustache.  A cardboard cutout of Britney dressed like a flight attendant with crudely drawn snake wrapped around her and onto the wall in sharpie.  Sports Illustrated calendar for wrong year open to a muscly white dude.  Small sharp objects sunk in the wall like lids from aluminum cans, ballpoint pens, tiny screwdrivers, cheap kitchen knives, plastic knives, coins.  They stick because that wall is painted over sheetrock with no plaster.  He has something like flex-seal painted around all the floorboards to minimize roach incursions and all his food is in plastic bags and bins.  Lives off ramen, eggs, and arizona watermelon tallboys.  His entertainment center is immaculate and includes his PC tower.  He sits at it in a partially structured beanbag with wireless game controller, mouse, and keyboard on the carpet.  His bed is the only other furniture to sit on.  He has no kitchen, keeps his microwave in the bathroom, food all in plastic drawers there.  Only eggs booze and beverages in the mini-fridge, which sits near the window where he saw Eun-ha.  Smoke detectors are disabled and empty chef boyardee ravioli can is ashtray.

27 Freddy VII, Dario V, Armando IV:  The Shipment IV.  Freddy+Armando+Dario talk about what’s next for the stuff, but hint of troubled relationship.  Humor, Mystery, Horror.  Dario insists to see if Armando still has it all.  They talk about sales and cuts.  Holding fee for taking the risk?  Bullshit, I’ll take it myself.  Gentlemen gentlemen…  Freddy takes offense at the conversation getting too blasphemous.  We’re all engaged in a criminal enterprise and should show respect to the Lord Jesus Christ.  Join me in begging his forgiveness once again.

28 Lupe VIII, Don II, Armando V, Freddy VIII:  Weirded out by dad and homies.  Humor, Mystery, Horror.  Again, what do they do that’s so alarming?  Still stumped.  Come into the altar where Lupe is, drunk and singing Boyz II Men.  Freddy gets close to hitting Lupe for some reason?  I don’t know… Maybe not.  Maybe just accidentally almost hurts her while acting the fool.  These guys are all angels, as the beasts before the throne of the Lamb, screaming holy holy holy.  What’s it to her?

29 Matthew XV:  Tunnel Time but decides to stop doing it.  Mystery, Horror, Passion.  Scared by monkey faces?  Yeah, Matthew is picking up where he left off but has a bad feeling, gets scared by the monkey, says fuck this i quit.

30 MONKEY RAMPAGE:  Mystery, Horror.  Humor?  What’s a monkey gonna do?  Run and run and run.  Jump, swing.  Parkour all around the building.  But what’s it doing?  Poltergeist shit?  The green mist part in La Cité des enfants perdus.

31 Matthew XVI, Ravens II, Majel I:  Matthew sees ravens kicked out, helps them.  Mystery, Humor?, Passion.  Have I written my idea for how this plays out?  He sees them abused by Majel and assumes they’re trying to get into apartment for food.  He uses tunnel time to get inside and unlock the door for them.  Maybe when he comes out, he pretends to have picked the lock, to throw off suspicion.  While he was in there, surprised by cat, sees some Majel treasures including her vault.  Sees her cat David… he appears as a cat in spirit vision.  They offer him weed, he declines, sees his face reflected in something, scrubbly.

32 Hyun-woo VI, the Disease II:  By himself v. The Disease.  Hyun-woo braving the halls again.  Mystery, Humor?  The hell is the Disease doin.  Hyun-woo finds out about the roof and meets The Disease on it.  Looking for kids to abduct?  Couldn’t be so simple.  Hey old man, see a lil girl?  You don’t belong in this building little doggy.  Run home.

33 Matthew XVII, Don III:  Haircut to impress, realizes Don was at bacchanal.  Mystery, Passion, Horror?  Lost my nice shag for this?  Naw.  Idk.  White boys all think they’re johnny depp.  Let me cut this shit off of you, or don’t you dare tell ’em you got your faggoty little trim in my shop.  Ends with Matthew knowing he’ll go back into the tunnels the next day.

34 Lupe IX, The Disease III:  Is weird with hoes.  Mystery, Horror?  The hell is he into.  The hell are they into.  She sees him in the mansion maybe?  In the evening.  Coming to pick up the hoes from the party dome.  They talk with each other and is it about what they’re going to do?  Sounds impossibly violent or bizarre.  Let’s say she came into party dome to get some booze and to not get caught with it she sits on a couch with it tucked behind her – has to witness the whole scene.

35 Freddy IX, Armando VI:  The Shipment V.  Freddy+Armando scheme to betray Dario and let Armando sell it with a more generous cut.  Humor, Mystery, Horror?  It goes without saying you were always going to have me sell it.  Without a peep.  Dario doesn’t know what to do with himself.  If it isn’t papayas or pork rinds, he doesn’t know how to sell it.  You have the wisdom of Solomon my friend.  Let’s do cocaine and juggle bowie knives.

36 Matthew XVIII, Yolanda V:  Tunnel Time ends up seeing Yolanda in trouble, weird idea to unleash angel.  Mystery, Horror, Passion.  Figures out somehow that the monster is Yolanda, and the human is an asshole.  I feel like there should be some way already established by now that he can choose to see things supernaturally or not.  Maybe peepholes for supernatural, cracks for not? Vice versa.  Also the ability to go through the cracks and ramifications of that…  I wonder what the angel should look like in supernatural sight, that Matthew should feel like it could be a problem for Dexter?  Dexter defeated, Yolanda victory stomp and fall into the roaches.

37 Hyun-woo VII, Armando VII:  By himself v. Armando.  Mystery, Social Horror.  What’s a loan shop?  Interested in a loan?  How about human knucklebones?

38 Ravens III, Armando VIII, Matthew XIX:  Scratch tickets.  Mystery, Humor?  Ravens try to steal scratch tickets, almost get away with it.  Matthew accidentally covers their escape.  Why does he keep helping these boys get away with crimez?  Armando hints Matthew’s grace from Freddy may run out if he keeps it up.

39 Matthew XX:  Gets a face full of cops.  Horror, Passion.  Mystery?  God I’m dislikin’ cops sometimes.  Articles about ICE gettin’ to me.  I think it’s on his way out of previous scene, the cops miss the other people involved and collar him.

40 Freddy X, Hyun-woo VIII:  By self, vs. Freddy.  Mystery, Horror.  Hyun-woo is going to give one of the main mob guys the business when Freddy intercepts him.  “I’m the landlord and the only reason you ain’t considered trespassing is that lil’ Matthew likes you…”  Scene should start with Hyun-woo talking to some rando in a far-flung part of the building.  Freddy comes in from the fire escape?

41 Lupe X, Bonnie V:  Have mercy, I forgot to be a lover.  Passion, Social Horror.  Bonnie coming to get drugs to sell.  Lupe corners her.  Bonnie sez U wanna get together again?  Maybe just a hookup?  No.  Hell no.  But still…  Lights her fire.

42 Matthew XXI, Hyun-woo VIII:  Getting to know you.  Passion, Mystery.  Matthew and Hyun-woo bond as possible lovers.  Matthew doesn’t have directly relevant things to report but does say how he’s gathering favors, might be able to use them to get closer to more evidence – also that he is getting to know more people in the building, to be able to do the questioning, including a girl of a similar age.  Revelation of gay happens here?  “Focusing on this is necessary, but terrifying.  Gotta balance it out with trying to keep an even head.  Beer me?”  They get closer to maybe doing a thing.

43 Ravens IV, Freddy XI, Armando IX:  The Shipment VI.  Ravens jack the goods from Freddy+Armando.  Humor, Mystery, Horror?  Do it by distracting him and then calling the unattended freight elevator.  How did it move without the gate all the way shut?  Has a magnetic plate stuck over the connection.  Distraction shouldn’t be something that obviously connects to them.  Skateboard rolling down the hall with nobody on it. … Armando gets fingers cut off in elevator.  Him and Freddy are blithe about it.

44 Yolanda VI: Alienation.  Social Horror, Passion.  Maybe show her being bullied by other kids?  Neh.  Let’s see her deal with mom being a piece of shit about Dexter, that she has nobody to turn to in life.

45 The Disease IV:  Is weird with baby chickens.  Horror.  I dunno.  The chicks thing is probably directly inspired by the Jisatsu Circle movie…  Might still keep it because it fits his theme and isn’t too direct, but I gotta wonder here.  What would be the best way to depict this guy as consistently creepy without giving away the game too hard?  What is his gimmick, in non-supernatural situations?  What’s his personality?
He is laid back of course, since he rules a significant subdomain of his environment, has angels flock to his whims.  But he is a being apart, doesn’t see those angels as peers.  The ones he does have such a regard for he doesn’t like.  How does this play out in the way he acts?  What kind of voice might he have?
The problem is he just doesn’t desire anything strongly and that doesn’t make for an interesting character.  He can be an impassive force of nature, but that’s less cool than Dr. Evil wanting one. million. dollars.  Obviously he do want his forbidden nummy nummies, but I don’t see him drooling for it.  Like, especially around Matthew or Hyun-woo, because they are not on the menu.
In a sense he isn’t the actual villain of the story.  The villain is Matthew’s loneliness and desperation.  This monster is just a crucible to pass through on the way to getting love.  He’s built up through mystery, thru the question remaining of who dun it.  Maybe better then for him to be all red herring.  But a scary red herring.
Just not so scary he’s obviously the killer.  So here he is with… juggling eggs?  Swallows one, hatches another.  Witnessed by someone who can be creeped out by it…  Or maybe not.  In the aisle at Dario’s store.  Yeah.  In the Bodega when nobody is looking, he takes out eggs and starts messing with them like a weirdo.  Maybe somebody hears the noise and comes around the corner, to find nothing but a bit of down floating in a whirl.

46 Hyun-woo IX:  Hyun-woo vs. Cops.  Horror, Mystery, Passion.  Hyun-woo is hoping they’ll be of some use but they’re just a problem.  Do they know something?  Do they work for Freddy?

47 Matthew XXII:  Tunnel Time but getting exhausted and scared.  Horror, Mystery, Passion.  What’s he been doing?  I’d say going room to room from the top floor on down.  Suggests Yolanda lives on a high floor.  This is kinda like Silent Hill in the dark world but with fewer monsters.  He’s going room to room but try not to be too on the nose with the SH connection, such as it bees.  Maybe this is a good place to imply he’s getting used to it, changing in some way.  What is the air like in the interstices?

48 Matthew XXIII, Hyun-woo X:  Love scene.  Mystery, Passion.  Token sex scene.  Something powerful and magical?  I think Hyun-woo is getting upset, gotta console him.  What could it mean?  Why can’t we just get cops to turn the building upside down?  If they do, they’ll just find her dead, won’t they?  Terrible terribleness lays out before them.  Then sex the pain away lol.
Last thing before this for Hyun-woo was talking to the cops.  If he’s upset maybe he’s outside Matthew’s room on phone.  No reception in dark world.  Matthew’s phone starts ringing when he gets out of there.  Hyun-woo can hear it from outside the apartment and knocks on the door again.
Capsule…  This is exhausting and hopeless but it’s good to have company.  Or is it selfish?  Probably very selfish, but se necesita.  Guilt is the word.

49 EUN-HA ALIVE?  Mystery, Horror.  Showing her walking through the tunnels, alone and scared.  Just to underscore the guilt of the previous scene.  But how as Matthew missed her every time?  What does it mean?

50 Yolanda VII:  Again?  Mystery, Passion.  What’s she still doing in the story, honestly?  Maybe she found out what Matthew was investigating and is trying to investigate on her own?  It’s intuitive, kinda supernatural methods.
Maybe a hint she sensed Eun-ha blow by, and went to find her.  In the halls after dark.  Scared by the freight elevator going down and runs home.

51 Freddy XII, Dario VI, Armando X:  The Shipment VII.  Freddy+Dario+Armando have a Mexican standoff over this anime betrayal.  Mystery, Horror, Humor.
The freight elevator opens with Freddy and Armando, and Dario is waiting for them with two guns?  Yeah sure.
Armando has his arms folded but threatens with nothing but words.  Freddy has to point guns too.  Dario please.  Freddy coerces them into shaking hands and Dario gets blood all over his fingers.  Everybody laughs.

52 Ravens V:  Some kinda hijinks.  Humor.  Loot reveal?  Yeah, they get the disney tapes and are like, jesus what a waste.  Try to sell them to Majel but she overheard.  They get the crates down a hall and into one of their apartments, but know they have to get them out before a mom gets home, so desperate to offload.  Living room piled with tha Shipment, crowbars in the grips of ravens.  They pull the planks off to see generic VHS cases with cheaply color printed inserts that obviously came from bad reproductions, pushed into a clear plastic sleeve around the outside.  The Lian Kink.  The 1ittel Memraid.  Idk.  They ponder throwing them out the window to where they’ll smash down in the courtyard, but too much risk someone will see where they came from.  They call Majel on her cellphone and she shows up too quickly, as if she’s been following them and waiting right outside the door.
Majel, this shit is hot, we gotta flip it!  Somebody lost his fingers and his loot, gonna be pissed.  Did you get the fingers?  Pity, pity.  I can make it disappear for you, but it will cost you.  Awww!

53 Majel II, The Disease V:  Majel vs. The Disease, he knows she steals from Freddy and don’t care.  Mystery, Horror.  These two aren’t even a little bit human, should come off as a very unnatural event, reality boiling away under the surface.  How can I represent that?  I generally don’t want to go inside the heads of angel characters, except half-angel Lupe.  What can they be doing?
See her next dawn pushing a baby cart full of tapes down the hall.  Ain’t no baby in there.  Smells like Freddy’s property.  What’s it to you, the Disease?  Couldn’t care less…
Maybe it’s something in the way they talk to each other.  Do they give each other different names?  I named her Majel Billy because bialy is white in polish or some such.  Like maybe he could be Churney, after czerny / black?  Neh.. ..  Maybe I should come back to this one later…
No, I need to figure it out now.  Maybe they go like they’re going to cast spells against each other before they call it off.  Forky fingers, son.  She should seem a tiny bit afraid of him, I think.

54 Matthew XXIV, Lupe XI, Bonnie VI:  I coulda killed you.  Matthew laments to Bonnie.  Passion, Social Horror.  What’s Matthew doing?  Does he smoke?  Sharing a smoke with Lupe during a random moment in the Courtyard?  Anyway, she feels compelled to tell him this.  He shakes his head.  Little girl, why.  Why, little girl.  She says Understand me, bro.  We are not the same.  He lefts pink-faced and bumps into Bonnie, who lets him talk at her.  He says much more than he intended, but she finds herself feeling things – respect for Lupe, turned on by the idea of her killing somebody, and an unexpected sympathy for Matthew – a feeling she really does owe him something.

55 Matthew XXV:  Tunnel Time more hints at supernature.  Monkey Scare again?  Horror, Mystery.
Surely it could only take so long to work his way through X amount of floors of this shit…  Getting closer to the actual spot.  Let’s say he gets scared out of it this time.  That’s why he’s available for Yolanda’s call later.

56 Freddy XIII, Dario VII:  The Shipment VIII.  Freddy+Dario we’ve lost it all.  Ruined forever.  Who will provide for my mongooses and ocelots?  Then they get a hint about a new shipment of some trivial shit and start scheming again.  Mystery, Horror, Humor.  They should be in the mansion, Freddy making it up to Dario as he can.

57 Yolanda VIII, Don IV:  Don threatens to cut Yolanda’s hair.  Horror.  Maybe he’s having a smoke break in the Courtyard and sees her, gives her the business about that wacky hair.  Carries an aura of menace.  Why am I thinking of der Schneider from Struwwelpeter, choppin’ off thumbs?  Yolanda’s running here becomes Eun-ha’s running.

58 EUN HA v. MONKEY:  Mystery, Horror.  This will go back on the idea she’s alive, some hint she may be a ghost.  Fleeing from and scared of the monkey.  Why am I suddenly remembering something to do with a monkey chasing someone through a place with racks of clothing, tearing the clothes to shreds as they go…  That can’t be anything from a movie can it?  I’m tired.  Memory of a dream probably.  Not like there was a scene in Dunston Checks In where the ape went ape.

59 Matthew XXVI, Yolanda IX, The Disease VI:  Yolanda abducted, saved in Tunnel Time.  Horror, Mystery, Passion.  Matthew gets a call, “I’m in the Forest.”  He rushes to a window and looks out.  Yolanda is hiding from something.  Is it real?  Can he get to her in time?  The scariest thing would be seeing something going to attack a child when you could do nothing to intervene.  Matthew has to get her back somehow, by himself.  He catches her in the tunnels.  But will need more consideration about how to make that as scary as possible without ending the story prematurely.
They escape the snake by going through cracks, but it puts them in spirit world – gotta risk going back out the way you were dragged in.  Where could it have been?  Down near the Forest, of course…

60 Matthew XXVII, Hyun-woo X, Bonnie VII:  The Worst.  Passion, Social Horror, Mystery.  Hyun-woo confronts Matthew on possibility he is stringing him along to get laid.  Messed up, dude!
“Explaining the suspects.  But it’s never enough to go on, always enough to keep me here.  We had sex.  Was that a mistake?  Or was that always what you wanted out of me?  It was!  I can’t believe it.  I need to get out of here.  No way she’s in the building.”  “I know she is!  I can’t tell you why because you’ll think I’m crazy.  I just know she is!”  “Bullshit, Matthew.”
This will get cut off prematurely by Bonnie interrupting them with invite to the bad party, preventing awkwardness from culminating.

61 Ravens VI, Majel III:  Ravens vs. Majel.  Mystery, Humor?  Horror?  Do they get the apple of life here?  I can’t trust you birds in here unattended.  You’re the literal worst.  Cat gets out and she chases after it, leaving them to break into a case they’ve been eyeballing – hinted at when Matthew first gets into room.  It’s the garden of eden.
Since the finger incident, the wise one has been edging toward bailing on these hijinks.  More of that here.

62 Matthew XXVIII, Hyun-woo XI, Freddy XIV, Armando XI, Don V, The Disease VII, Lupe XII:  The Bacchanal.  Passion, Horror, Mystery, Humor.  Again, I need to figure out some good surreal hijinks for the freaks to get up to. Spunk Biscuit?  Chamber Music?  Pinball?  Taking unethical photos of kittens in little costumes?  Pony play?  Make a point of calling attention to Armando’s hands – they have fingers again.
Matthew and Hyun-woo at the worst party, get parted.  Lupe bails out Matthew but Hyun-woo has gone missing.
So, how does this one play out..?  Alarming buildup, some grand invocation, and the Wildness, including a few fake-outs that it’s going to be more tame or much worse than it all superficially is.

63 Matthew XXIX, Hyun-woo XII, The Disease VIII:  Final fight in Tunnel Time.  Horror, Mystery, Passion.  In The Disease’s place, must rescue Hyun-woo and find out about Eun-ha.  Is he locked out?  How does he get in? Definitely unarmed.  Don’t forget to make it surreal horror like Leonora Carrington’s but less funny here.
Gotta walk through the place with trepidation, looking for an improvised weapon as he goes, take in the spooky details.  Chicken coops?  Incubators?  Chicks?  Down twirling in unseen breezes on the floor?  What’s Hyun-woo suffering?  What’s happening to him?  How litcheral is this snake?
A conveyor belt with deformed or dead chicks on it, running in and out of chutes on the walls.  Kinda Existenz I know.  Eggshells like papier mâché.  That gibbon running up and down the aisles, slapping or ripping at you as it goes by.  Eun-ha, how about you?
Vats covered haphazardly with tarp.  Some are askew, showing bodies in varying states, or piles of dusty or goopy bones.  Are they girls turning into giant chicks or vice versa?  How are they being consumed?  Where are the souls?  Something twisting through it all, a great movement in the ground that can’t be discerned.
The pink dress falls off a hanger on a door that is ajar.  Inside, Hyun-woo in bondage.  Liberate the boy.  But a snek must be upon thee.
Maybe Matthew gets Hyun-woo unbound but he’s unconscious.  The Disease catches Matthew and is about to kill him when Hyun-woo saves the day.  Baby Eun-ha shows up and goes to hug Hyun-woo, but vanishes in a puff of down around his legs.  She was a ghost.  The end.  Um…  Let’s say this makes Hyun-woo seem to drop dead.  Don’t touch ghosts yo.

64 Matthew XXX, Ravens VII:  Give Matthew the Apple of Life in Tunnel Time?  Passion?  Horror?  Mystery?  The apple is an adrenaline shot.  Not in tunnel time.  Let’s say Matthew drags Hyun-woo into the hall in regular space, hoping to get cell reception and call 9-11.  The ravens find him there and offer the stuff.  What you gonna do when Hyun-woo turns blue?  Pokey pokey.

65 Matthew XXXI, Hyun-woo XIII:  I just can’t.  Go home.  Passion.  Matthew couldn’t go if he wanted – rent, possessions, entire life in his place, no courage to leave, mental probs – Hyun-woo certainly can’t stay because of traumatic weirdness.  I do think a lot of these scenes have an obvious enough tension in them.  Wish I could get the capsule going a lil more easily, like, how do I make the writing express it perfectly?

66 Matthew XXXII, Ravens VIII: The Years:  Ravens in trouble. Passion, Humor.  I think the Ravens have a bit of a falling out here, prelude to Puss in Boots story.  Should still stand on its own as a natural part of this story tho.

67 Matthew XXXIII, Lupe XIII:  The Years:  Bonnie dies.  Passion, Horror.  I don’t think Lupe is totally broken up because they weren’t together, but has some kinda heavy talk with Matthew because she knows he knows and may have had similar big feelings.  Was it drugs?  Gang violence?  IDK.

68 Matthew XXXIV, Yolanda X:  The Years:  Yolanda much bigger.  Passion.  Good to see the baby surviving, but there’s some kind of edge to it.  Maybe she figures they can’t see each other anymore?  I dunno.  Weird being adult with child in your life who is not a relative or student or patient etc.  Weird things must end.

69 Matthew XXXV, Hyun-woo XIV:  Amelie finale.  Passion, Mystery.  Happily ever after.  Hyun-woo calls Matthew on the phone.  “You want to leave with me?  I’m in the Forest.”  Looks out the window, “I can’t see you.”  “Come down.  Come outside.”  Matthew decides he’ll finally be brave enough to leave the building, but as soon as he opens apartment door, Hyun-woo is there.  They kiss, then “I was serious about leaving.”  They go out together.

–

THIS IS A POST IN PROGRESS.  I’m going to do edits on it at some point in the evening maybe?  To add to or elaborate on the scenes.

I want to make a scene-focused outline, which emphasized interesting moments over moment-to-moment storytelling, which I usually do.  To this end, I’m going to try to turn my plot into 70 scenes.  To do that I have no choice but to start with a more conventional outline.  Reiterating and doing a few improvements to the one I previously established…

Matthew is working under the table for the mob as an IT guy when his disability benefits are shut off until question marks.  Sees little girl out his window one morning.  The mobsters are complaining about too many cops sniffing around lately.  At some point he meets the full roster of Bacchantes, including the murderer.  Random circumstances, Matthew finds himself in the tunnels, where he witnesses the Princess Lupe getting her pocket picked by lesbian hustler Bonnie.  He ends up the prime suspect but Godfather Freddy gives him 24 hours to make it right.

Matthew goes into the secret halls again, from the entrance in his apartment.  There is some action to suggest the highest ranked mobsters are the ones who know about and use the passages.  He locates Bonnie and gets her to give up the goods, then has convo with Princess Lupe – I’m gay too, but watch out.  Ain’t always fun and games.  She says I owe you and let’s figure out how to get you off the hook.  He goes home for the night and thinks he’s seeing the girl again, but she flies away in some impossible way.  Or was it monkey wearing her dress?

M & B came up with scheme to “ping” her stolen electronics, which “turn out” to have been mislaid in a bookshelf, and boss Freddy is grateful again for his cool nerd powers.  What do you want in reward?  Let me quit.  Too much for my nerves.  The boss sez he might contract him for short gigs but will let him chill.  On his way out the door, Matthew hears that the cops are pestering people in the projects about a missing person.  Was that the girl he witnessed?

He frets about calling the cops or not – the girl could’ve been imagination?  Hyun-woo appears and asks if anyone has seen the girl.  Matthew makes contact, and is instantly infatuated with Hyun-woo.  What now?  Here is your challenge, weird nerd: Find the girl or find out what happened to her.

Matthew takes to the tunnels, always ducking from supernatural menace and visions of chaos?  In spying on the world, he finds out about people with problems.  A weird child is into insects and outrages violent mom-BF.  From Matthew’s PoV, people take on animal characteristics.  The child is a giant humanoid ant, the patriarch is a bug-eyed horse.  Maybe.  Still trying to figure out how literal I should get or not with that stuff.

Matthew tries to ignore villainy and keep head low, but ends up helping ant king Yolanda get rid of the horse Dexter, and garners another favor.  At this point that’s three favors and a quest – Bonnie, Lupe, Yolanda, and find the girl Ha-eun.  He keeps getting glimpses of some kind of truth about the girl.  Or the monkey?  Something something snakey snakes.

He starts getting some hints and false leads about the mobsters, including The Disease.

He sees three ravens getting their ears boxed by the witch Majel.  No food for you.  He helps the kids get access to food, but it turns out they were really trying to get access to weed.  Don’t smoke weed kids.  They ask if he wants some and no, but another favor owed.

Hyun-woo has doubts, so Matthew has to kick it up a notch to keep him around.  He laments to Bonnie, who does some kind of a favor that helps out.  Was it legit, or foolery?

I think Yolanda is a target of the snake, and thus discovers big hints for Matthew.  One favor repaid.Act Three-ish, Matthew and / or Hyun-woo are close to the mystery, and end up at a Monster Party.  If they don’t leave before midnight, they might get made into monsters or eaten.  Princess Lupe repays favor by getting Matthew out.  But what happened to Hyun-woo?

In despair, Matthew gets a clue from the ravens, last favor repaid, the apple of life.  He finds out where to save Hyun-woo.  They find out, as much as is possible, what happened to Ha-eun.  Hyun-woo leaves, unable to deal with the tragedy, but some time later they reconnect and Matthew escapes the Projects.  The end.

General Principles:  When crafting scenes, amp up emotion, mystery, and horror.  I’m going to intentionally post scenes suggested by the outline out of order below, to try to force myself to not think of them sequentially.

SCENES

YOLANDA ON A HOOK
Yolanda barely escapes The Disease and helps Matthew get info.  Obviously has potential to be one of the scarier moments in the book.  It raises the question, to what extent do I want to write in close third person perspective?  Mystery is greatly helped by constraining one’s pov to one given character.  Particularly where there is a question about what is real or not, moving between characters tells you that at least the main pov character is not likely to be imagining those other guys – they have an existence independent of him.  Whether the scenario and everyone within it is imaginary, this is a good thing to be able to hold onto.  Still…  it may be worthwhile for me to not do that.  So many more possibilities for scenes if I allow other people to feel real to the reader.
Sooo Yolanda real.  She does not get along with other children.  Like Hyun-woo, she can be a character with a life outside the building.  We first saw Eun-ha outside, implying The Disease gets them there, possibly.  What does that mean to be able to leave the Box?  Even a child like Yolanda is larger than Matthew, more powerful.  It takes strength to go fight the battles of the mundane world only to turn around and come home to a supernatural prison at night.
How does she get hold of Matthew?  Does she have his cell number?  Does she have her own cell phone?  Did she inherit Dexter’s when he got taken out?
Matthew gets a call, “I’m in the Forest.”  He rushes to a window and looks out.  Yolanda is hiding from something.  Is it real?  Can he get to her in time?  Probably the scariest thing would be seeing something going to attack a child when you could do nothing to intervene.
Maybe this is all his perspective.  Maybe she doesn’t actually escape The Disease at this point in the story and her gift to Matthew is her cellphone getting dropped in the Forest, with footage of The Killer.  But is that’s true, what would Matthew do?  Would make sense for him to call the cops, tell them about the tunnels, see if they could find her by scouring them.  Why wouldn’t he?  He knows the Killer could already have her dead, has her in the building.  He’d have to feel like doing some last resort type of shit.
Maybe he has Hyun-woo with him and this helps get that guy back on the page of believing Matthew after their relationship is strained.  Maybe they go into the tunnels together and split up to cover more ground, see if they can catch the snake before it gets into its hiding place with her – and succeed?  But lose the monster of course.
But that then raises the question – why wouldn’t brave Hyun-woo either go kicking open doors in the tunnels, or call the cops for that search himself?  Doesn’t work.  Ugh.  I need a short break…
I think it’s gotta be Matthew by himself and he has to get her back somehow, by himself.  He catches her in the tunnels.  But will need more consideration about how to make that as scary as possible without ending the story.

I COULD KILL YOU
Lupe lets Matthew know she’s thought about killing him to keep her secret safe.  I think, he’s trying to press her for info about her dad’s friends and she says it in annoyance.  Then he’s upset by it and she has to try to console him / sort him out.

SCRATCH TICKETS
The ravens involved?  Matthew sees Loan Shop dude being sus.  Maybe he has to get a payday loan himself…  Naw.  I dunno.  He pays rent to Freddy, and I imagine would be less fearful of eviction after getting in his good graces.

LUPE FIASCO
Lupe and Matthew carry out scheme to find her stolen goods in front of Freddy.  She stashes the gizmo and he pings it via computer trick, eliciting mobbish gratitude..

BONNIE BEDELIA
Bonnie coerced into giving up the goods, sez thx for not telling.

KILL THESE ROACHES
Matthew witnesses Dexter abusing Yolanda.

HE WENT THATTAWAY
Ravens give Matthew the big clue to get back into The Disease’s place and rescue Hyun-woo.

BAD FAVOR
Bonnie tries to repay Matthew with a favor, but something about this one just sucks.  Is it the invite to the monster party, or something that can lead to it?

KILL YOUR HORSE
Matthew defeats Dexter and wins Yolanda’s favor.  I wonder how… Maybe this can be an angel vs angel thing.  I like all the negative things of the building to be angel-influenced, and maybe the angel of Yolanda’s roaches is angry at Dexter.
I gotta commit to how this supernatural element is going to play out.  I think the main thing, as far as Matthew can tell, is that looking at things through the secret passages reveals something about them, shows them looking different.
Maybe he finds here that coming into an apartment through certain kinds of portals makes that appearance into reality, and uses this to unbind one of Yolanda’s dolls, who is the angel of the roaches.  Unbound she goes to war with Dexter and wins in some way.
Maybe it’s that if you leave by any passage other than the one you cam in by, the “vision” world is real in that environment.  To get back to the real world you have to go out how you came in.  Hang on, making a note on another section…

REAR WINDOW
Matthew’s first instance of spying from walls, sees Lesbian Drama.  What do you do when you see something you’re not supposed to be seeing?  What did Jeffrey do in Blue Velvet?  Not that.  Let’s say he sees that there’s something wrong fast enough he feels obligated to watch it play out – sees the pickpocket happen almost immediately.  Bonnie is evoking fish for him but not yet clear why.

NIGHT MONKEY
First glimpse of the monkey with the dress.

KICKED OUT OF NEST
Majel locks ravens out of her apartment.  Matthew fooled into thinking it’s abuse of some adopted children, sympathizes.  He uses tunnels to open her apartment and let in the ravens, who just go to smoke her weed.  They offer some but also say “we owe you one.”  Maybe has moment of cat jump scare from “David.”

BACCHANAL PROPER
Matthew and Hyun-woo at the worst party, get parted.  Lupe bails out Matthew but Hyun-woo has gone missing.
So, how does this one play out..?  Alarming buildup, some grand invocation, and the Wildness, including a few fake-outs that it’s going to be more tame or much worse than it all superficially is.

ALMOST THE WORST
Hyun-woo confronts Matthew on possibility he is stringing him along to get laid.  Messed up, dude!
Explaining the suspects.  But it’s never enough to go on, always enough to keep me here.  We had sex.  Was that a mistake?  Or was that always what you wanted out of me?  It was!  I can’t believe it.  I need to get out of here.  No way she’s in the building.  I know she is!  I can’t tell you why because you’ll think I’m crazy.  I just know she is!  Bullshit, Matthew.
I think this will get cut off prematurely by the plot revelation that gets them to go to the bad party, preventing awkwardness from culminating.

BORED GAMES
Matthew and Hyun-woo bond as people.  Hyun-woo and him go over what he knows about the building, within the limits of not telling him dangerous secrets about organized crime.  They have to take mental health breaks, during which they talk about who they are, find out they’re both gay?  or later?  Yeah, just hints – cultural things, interests.  Is established that Matthew is hesitant to tell Hyun-woo about tunnels, for reasons unclear to himself.  Shame about the spying incident?  A feeling that he’s going to be using that to look for Eun-ha?  Also doesn’t want to say he saw her flying in the monkey incident.

HAIRCUT
Gets haircut and contact lenses to impress Hyun-woo.  Finds out one of the creeps from the Bacchanal was the barber.

GETTING TO KNOW ALL ABOUT YOU
Matthew and Hyun-woo bond as possible lovers.  Matthew doesn’t have directly relevant things to report but does say how he’s gathering favors, might be able to use them to get closer to more evidence – also that he is getting to know more people in the building, to be able to do the questioning, including a girl of a similar age.
OK, revelation of gay happens here.  “Focusing on this is necessary, but terrifying.  Gotta balance it out with trying to keep an even head.  Beer me?”  They get closer to maybe doing a thing.

GLIMPSE MONKEY
Monkey jump scare in the secret passages.

LOVE SCENE
Token sex scene.  Lynch had something to say about sex scenes, about how movies shying away from them is not allowing themselves access to something powerful and magical?  Something like that.  Fools gotta get it on.
I think Hyun-woo is getting upset, gotta console him.  What could it mean?  Why can’t we just get cops to turn the building upside down?  If they do, they’ll just find her dead, won’t they?  Terrible terribleness lays out before them.

HYUN-WOO INTRO
Love appears.  Would he be going door to door in apartments?  Maybe he would, but at some point he’d get rousted as a trespasser if he did.  Maybe that’s how this scene ends.  So…
Hyun-woo knocks on the door.  Matthew opens up, hoping for a sexy mormon or jehovah’s witness to entertain for a dishonest hour.  Have you seen this girl?  Terminator 2 style.  Maybe I have?  I saw a girl.  I heard about the rumors and it got me thinking, could that have been her?  Points out where in The Forest she was, what was going on generally.  Expresses discomfort with going down there but interest in helping him with investigation.  Goons are going to walk him out but get talked out of it – tho he’s forbidden from bugging neighbors.

HE CAME BACK
Happily ever after.  Calls him on the phone.  “You want to leave with me?  I’m in the Forest.”  Looks out the window, “I can’t see you.”  “Come down.  Come outside.”  Matthew decides he’ll finally be brave enough to leave the building, but as soon as he opens apartment door, Hyun-woo is there.  They kiss, then “I was serious about leaving.”  They go out together.

HALL PASS
Finds out the prime suspects / Bacchantes all use the secret passages.

DISEASE PIMPIN
Sees The Disease with his hoes.  Where?  The courtyard?  The bodega?  The halls?  Old ladies are on the old monster’s jock.  Maybe he gets those kinda kicks with lady angels and just uses kids for food.  Less edgy honestly.

IN DA CLOSET
Finds the tunnel, involves a white snake.  ON MY OWN.  Finds out where they lead, including to his own apartment.

BACCHANAL ONE:  FROM THE OUTSIDE
While working for the mob, Matthew meets all the prime suspects when they attend a party at Freddy’s.  This is a very early scene and a very important one.  Establishing the mansion and its inhabitants and guests – almost all angels, all weird as balls.  They should all be saying things that disturb or provoke bad imagination.

MORNING GIRL
First time Eun-ha is witnessed.

COME BACK TO ME
I can’t.  Hyun-woo leaves because the investigation is over and he needs to get away.  Matthew can’t just drop everything and follow him, can he?  Senses it wouldn’t be welcome, that he would remind Hyun-woo of tragedy.  Plus he has all his stuff to consider, giving notice if he moved out, where he could possibly afford to live elsewhere…  The box is a trap.

HALLS OR WALLS?
Matthew can’t decide if he should investigate inside or outside the secret passages.  How is this a scene?  Let’s say he’s starting to experience to supernatural, and a moment of that has him swear off spending time in there.  The monkey scare?  … Nein.  It’s the thing where he finds out the visions have a reality of your own, and for a bit he’s worried that he’ll get stuck forever in there, because he hasn’t worked out with certainty yet that you can get out by going back the way you came in.

THE LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM
Matthew’s first glimpse of The Disease’s place.  I don’t know.  Should it not initially come off as being the one?  Are there other places just as spooky, therefore he doesn’t know for sure which is it?  Why doesn’t he wrap things up here?

THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
In The Disease’s place, must rescue Hyun-woo and find out about Eun-ha.  Is he locked out?  How does he get in?  Would he bring something with him?  A weapon?  What could he even use?  Get a roscoe from the ravens?  From somebody else?  Going in unarmed is braver.  More foolish, but that’s how we get our horror story feeling.
Trying to get a handle on the surreal horror thing.  Leonora Carrington’s *The Debutante* is pretty good for that.  Very snappy, vulgar, punchy.  I think the bat near the end was an interesting touch.
Gotta walk through the place with trepidation, weapon at the ready or looking for an improvised weapon as he goes, take in the spooky details.  Chicken coops?  Incubators?  Chicks?  Down twirling in unseen breezes on the floor?  I don’t know.
What’s Hyun-woo suffering?  What’s happening to him?  How litcheral is this snake?  I can’t even decide.  Losing my marbles.  Last couple of days have been comparatively chill but I still don’t feel like I have the sauce for this.  But I can’t fucking admit defeat.  I can’t!  It’d be letting the fascists win.
A conveyor belt with deformed or dead chicks on it, running in and out of chutes on the walls.  Kinda *Existenz* I know.  Eggshells like papier mâché.  That gibbon running up and down the aisles, slapping or ripping at you as it goes by.  Eun-ha, how about you?
Vats covered haphazardly with tarp.  Some are askew, showing bodies in varying states, or piles of dusty or goopy bones.  Are they girls turning into giant chicks or vice versa?  How are they being consumed?  Where are the souls?  Something twisting through it all, a great movement in the ground that can’t be discerned.
I dunno i dunno.  The pink dress falls off a hanger on a door that is ajar.  Inside, Hyun-woo in bondage.  Liberate the boy.  But a snek must be upon thee.
Maybe Matthew gets Hyun-woo unbound but he’s unconscious.  The Disease catches Matthew and is about to kill him when Hyun-woo saves the day.  Baby Eun-ha shows up and goes to hug Hyun-woo, but vanishes in a puff of down around his legs.  She was a ghost.  The end.
I dunno I dunno I dunno.

ALRIGHT, time for another angle.  If this is gonna have 70 scenes, and if it’s gonna be third person, I can come up with scenes specifically for other characters when they are not being observed or interacted with by Matthew.  The private lives of NPCs oh my…  Gotta decide who should be shown and who should not.  If you humanize a character you remove an element of mystery from them.  Would be better not to show much of the more monstrous characters…  Or maybe not!  I’m thinking about *Wild at Heart* when evil mom was siccing Harry Dean Stanton on our main mans, freaking out on the telephone.  That’s a scene showing a monster alone…  but that is cinema and this is prose.  Hm…  Call these ideas, and if they don’t work they don’t work.

Hyun-woo.  What can he do with no Matthew in the scene?  What might he do alone?  Maybe his arrival at the building, like when the cowpoke rolls into town at high noon and a tumbleweed blows past.  That does feel like a sequential scene, an interstitial scene – not a time in the story when anything exciting or interesting is happening.  On the other hand, it does show the building as mysterious in a way it would not be to Matthew, since he lives there.  Getting the outside perspective could be good.  Also could be the first part of the story to switch perspective, and thereby establish the significance of the other guy at the same time as establishing that’s going to be a method to use.
So I’ll go with it.  How can it feel mysterious?  Hyun-woo dodges cops on the way into the building, showing he’s not with them, has his own agenda.  He has some kind of weird encounter in the bodega maybe, leads him to want a closer look at the building and its inhabitants.  He can sneak in by the hall that goes back into the building.
He should have some other scene.  A phone call to one of the relatives that put him up to this task, perhaps.  What else?  Other times of coming into the building, showing the people Matthew knows from a different perspective and state of mind.  Again, this ain’t feeling exciting or worth elevating.  I’ll look at it again later.
Maybe at the party once he’s separated from Matthew, gets snaked?

I feel like Yolanda could be a more significant character, get some writing from her perspective.  It’ll also help offset the way all the black people in this story are turning out to be outrageous weirdos, by humanizing her.  She sees Dexter’s death traps for roaches and tries to carve little ways out for them.  She interacts with her doll that will later turn out to be a shackled angel.  Both in the same scene?  I feel like there should be a scene where she’s showing her alienation from other kids.  Maybe it would be good to try to make scenes with more than one character, like, two birds some.

Lupe is a significant one.  Her combo of fragility and menace is compelling.  After Matthew gets dismissed from the mob, she could be a human’s eye perspective on them.  Scenes of her being weirded out by the weirdos.  Getting victimized by her baby boo feels like it needs a resolution of some kind.  Bust them puppies?  So: Revenge, Mercy, Weird-outs.

Them ravens.  In this story they should always be together.  Three teenage boys take up a lot of physical and social space, but these guys are made to feel small and fly away.  Before the kicked-out scene, some other scene to intro the idea of them.  After that, some more evidence of them doing hijinks.  Then their last favor.

Bonnie’s scenes should all be with Matthew or Lupe, so no more for her.

Prime Suspects should have one apiece – Freddy, Armando, Don, The Disease.  Don makes like he wants to cut Yolanda’s hair.  Armando menaces the ravens.  Freddy weirds out his daughter.  The Disease does something weird with baby chickens, if that ain’t too obvious.

All told, that could be another ten to fifteen, depending on how I slice it.

Matthew I:  Getting ready for work, sees Eun-ha.
Matthew II, Freddy I, Armando I, Don I, Dario I, The Disease I, Lupe I:  Scared by mobsters outside their party.
Matthew III:  Tech support turns into Tunnel Time.
Hyun-Woo I:  Floating World.
Matthew IV, Bonnie I, Lupe II:  Tunnel Time ends with witnessing Bonnie crime.
Freddy II, Dario II:  The Shipment I.  Freddy+Dario discuss the shipment.
Matthew V, Freddy III:  Accused by Freddy.
Yolanda I:  Anything.
Matthew VI, Bonnie II:  Confronts Bonnie.
Matthew VII:  Tunnel Time to find Lupe.
Matthew VIII, Lupe III:  Gets with Lupe.
Matthew IX:  Scared by Monkey Faces.
Freddy IV, Dario III:  The Shipment II.  Freddy convinces Dario to get Armando’s help acquiring it.
Yolanda II:  Some kind of early scene to hint she will matter later.
Lupe IV, Bonnie III:  Lupe schools Bonnie.
Hyun-Woo II:  Hyun-woo arrives, begins to investigate.
Matthew X, Lupe V, Freddy V:  Lupe helps him get out of mob.
Hyun-woo III:  Hyun-woo door-to-door, attracting bad attention.
Matthew XI, Hyun-woo IV:  First meeting with Hyun-Woo.
Ravens I, Bonnie IV:  Hint they will matter.
Freddy VI, Dario IV, Armando II:  The Shipment III.  Freddy+Armando+Dario get the shipment.
Matthew XII, Yolanda III:  Tunnel Time to investigate for Hyun-woo, Yolanda hint.
Matthew XIII:  Crushing, scrapbooking?
Yolanda IV:  Messing with roach traps, yelled on by Dexter, talks to Dolly.
Lupe VI:  Lupe Somethin?
Matthew XIV, Hyun-woo V:  Bored games.  Hyun-woo still temporarily scared to not investigate.
Freddy VII, Dario V, Armando III:  The Shipment IV.  Freddy+Armando+Dario get the stuff put away, but hint of troubled relationship.
Lupe V, Don II, Armando IV, Freddy VIII:  Weirded out by dad and homies.
Matthew XV:  Tunnel Time but decides to stop doing it.
MONKEY RAMPAGE
Matthew XVI, Ravens II, Majel I:  Matthew sees ravens kicked out, helps them.
Hyun-woo VI, the Disease II:  By himself v. The Disease.  Hyun-woo braving the halls again.
Matthew XVII, Don III:  Haircut to impress, realizes Don was at bacchanal.
Lupe VI, The Disease III:  Is weird with hoes.
Freddy IX, Armando V:  The Shipment V.  Freddy+Armando scheme to betray Dario and let Armando sell it with a more generous cut.
Matthew XVIII, Yolanda V:  Tunnel Time ends up seeing Yolanda in trouble, weird idea to unleash angel.
Matthew XIX, Yolanda VI:  Dexter defeated, Yolanda victory stomp and fall into the roaches.
Hyun-woo VII, Armando VI:  By himself v. Armando.
Ravens III, Armando VII, Matthew XX:  Scratch tickets.
Matthew XXI:  Gets a face full of cops.
Freddy X, Hyun-woo VIII:  By self, vs. Freddy.
Lupe VII, Bonnie V:  Have mercy, I forgot to be a lover.
Matthew XVIII, Hyun-woo VIII:  Getting to know you.
Ravens IV, Freddy XI, Armando VIII:  The Shipment VI.  Ravens jack the goods from Freddy+Armando.
Yolanda VII:  Alienation.
The Disease IV:  Is weird with baby chickens.
Hyun-woo IX:  Hyun-woo vs. Cops.
Matthew XIX:  Tunnel Time but getting exhausted and scared.
Matthew XX, Hyun-woo X:  Love scene.
EUN-HA ALIVE?
Yolanda VIII:  Again?
Freddy XII, Dario VI, Armando IX:  The Shipment VII.  Freddy+Dario+Armando have a Mexican standoff over this anime betrayal.
Ravens V:  Some kinda hijinks.
Majel II, The Disease V:  Majel vs. The Disease, he knows she steals from Freddy and don’t care.
Matthew XXI, Lupe VIII, Bonnie VI:  I coulda killed you.  Matthew laments to Bonnie.
Matthew XXII:  Tunnel Time more hints at supernature.  Monkey Scare again?
Freddy XIII, Dario VII:  The Shipment VIII.  Freddy+Dario we’ve lost it all.  Ruined forever.  Who will provide for my mongooses and ocelots?  Then they get a hint about a new shipment of some trivial shit and start scheming again.
Yolanda IX, Don IV:  Don threatens to cut Yolanda’s hair.
EUN HA v. MONKEY
Matthew XXIII, Yolanda VI, The Disease VI:  Yolanda abducted, saved in TUNNEL TIME.
Matthew XXIV, Hyun-woo X, Bonnie VII:  The Worst.  Bonnie interrupts with party invite.
Ravens VI, Majel III: Ravens vs. Majel.
Matthew XXV, Hyun-woo XI, Freddy XIV, Armando X, Don V, The Disease VII, Lupe IX:  The Bacchanal.
Matthew XXVI, Hyun-woo XII, The Disease VIII:  Final fight in Tunnel Time.
Matthew XXVII, Ravens VII:  Give Matthew the Apple of Life in Tunnel Time?
Matthew XXVIII, Hyun-woo XIII:  I just can’t.  Go home.
Matthew XXIX, Ravens VIII:  The Years:  Ravens in trouble.
Matthew XXX, Lupe X:  The Years:  Bonnie dies.
Matthew XXX, Yolanda VII:  The Years:  Yolanda much bigger.
Matthew XXXI, Hyun-woo XIV:  Amelie finale.

Got some ideas for subplots to add foolery and length.  Eun-ha will get a few scenes.  At some point a glimpse of her doing something will imply to the reader she may still be alive.  At some point the monkey will be implied to be her, while it rages out and does some kind of preternatural vandalism.  At last, there will be a scene where it is made clear Eun-ha is not the monkey because she will be in a struggle against it, during which it may be hinted again that she is not alive.  This leads into Yolanda’s biggest scene of getting menaced.

Majel will also get a lil more screen time, showing her power over the ravens, another hint about her cat, and that she is connected with foolery in the building – including The Disease.

But the main thing is “The Delivery.”  I feel like the mobsters should get more time, and some kind of mobbish plot can help with that, plus demonstrate that their crime is kinda unimportant to who they are.  Theirs is a world of metaphor and spirit, not earthly goods.  At first it will seem like the intrigue over a mysterious delivery of presumed contraband is something real, but by the end it will be clear this is not conventional material goods or criminality – these guys are something else…  (edited into outline above)

–

Big Spoilers Ahead.  If you thought you were going to read the Best Story in the World without spoilin’, read this not.

David Lynch had an idea that if you can come up with 70 scenes, like on 4 by 5 cards, you have enough to make a movie.  Might explain some things about some of his movies.  When you focus on a sensible plot, you spend a lot of time going moment to moment, and feeling bound to include boring scenes that make sense of the story.  Focus on scenes can result in a less sensible story (tho not necessarily) but one with more indelible images, iconic moments, memorable events.  That will be a good goal for a The Best Story in the World™ so…

As I begin this post I have no scenes and I have barely a grasp of the most important puzzle I was trying to resolve for much of last post.  The things we go through to try to write the best novel in the world™.  Anyway, lemme see if I can rip through that.  The housing project is the heel of god’s hoofprint as he stomped thru his shitty creation.  Angels wiggle in the depression like a pile of maggots.  Seraph snake string ties god to the damage he’s done, communicates his mood to the dirt.  A key link in the chain of wormloops is the dominion, an angel that is occasionally activated to do something grandiose, but mostly lies in wait, eating the souls of children for fun and profit.

A pack of greasy angels cavort like bacchantes in the depths of the depths, toasting to their good fortune.  They know nothing of themselves and what they are, just acting on instinct.  The one among their number with the true knowledge, known to them as an underworld fixer / idea man, is the dominion – a serpent in human-like skin.  He taught the project godfather something of the nature of the world, but only enough to empower him to serve the will of god.  One of these secrets of his success?  A web of secret tunnels that run through the building, used by mobsters to run goods or occasionally do hits.  Why not spy to do blackmail?  Not their preferred pound, as Chuck say.

Hero is a disabled dude who meets a stereotype of computer nerd, so in desperation between random cancellations of his disability benes, he takes work as an IT guy for the Godfather.  Due to random circumstances, he finds out about the tunnels, and when hiding in one, witnesses the Princess getting her pocket picked by lesbian hustler.  Then he ends up the prime suspect in her shit getting lifted.  Still, Godfather gives him 24 hours to make it right.

He locates the hustler and gets her to give up the goods, then has convo with Princess – I’m gay too, but watch out.  Ain’t always fun and games.  She says I owe you and let’s figure out how to get you off the hook.  They come up with scheme to “ping” her stolen electronics, which “turn out” to have been mislaid in a bookshelf, and boss is grateful again for his cool nerd powers.  What do you want in reward?  Let me quit.  Too much for my nerves.  The boss sez he might contract him for short gigs but will let him chill.

During course of this he witnesses little girl on two occasions, the second she seems to fly away.  Was it monkey wearing her dress?  Cops are pestering people in the projects about a missing person.  Hero doesn’t think anything of it, until some bit of conversation on his way out of the mob – was that the girl he witnessed?

Don’t talk to the cops.  But what about the girl?  Don’t talk to the cops.  But what about?  Don’t.  A dude appears and asks if anyone has seen the girl.  Hero makes contact.  Dude is sexy.  What now?  Here is your challenge, weird nerd:  Find the girl or find out what happened to her.

He takes to the tunnels, always ducking from supernatural menace and visions of chaos?  In spying on the world, he finds out about people with problems.  A weird child is into insects and outrages violent mom-BF.  From Hero’s PoV, people take on animal characteristics.  The child is a giant humanoid ant, the patriarch is a bug-eyed horse.

He tries to ignore villainy and keep head low, but ends up helping ant king get rid of the horse, and garners another favor.  At this point that’s three favors and a quest – Lez Hustler, Princess, Ant King, and Find the Girl.  Keeps getting glimpses of some kind of truth about the girl.  Or the monkey?Something something snakey snakes.

Sees three ravens getting their ears boxed by parents.  No food for you.  He helps the kids get access to food, but it turns out they were really trying to get access to weed.  Don’t smoke weed kids.  They ask if he wants some and no, but another favor owed.

Sexy Dude has doubts, so Hero has to kick it up a notch to keep him around.  He laments to the Lez Hustler who does some kind of a favor that helps out.  Was it legit, or foolery?

I think the Ant King is a target of the snake, and thus discovers big hints for Hero.  One favor repaid.

Act Three-ish, Hero and / or Sexy Dude are close to the mystery, and end up and Monster Party.  If they don’t leave before midnight, they might get made into monsters or eaten.  Princess repays favor by getting Hero out.  But what happened to Sexy Dude?In despair, Sexy Dude gets a clue from the ravens, last favor repaid, the apple of life.  He finds out where to save Sexy Dude.  They find out, as much as is possible, what happened to the girl.  Then they get out and live happily ever after?

I think Sexy Dude leaves, can’t deal with the tragedy, but some time later they reconnect and Hero escapes the Projects.  The end.

–

So that problem tho.  You come up with what’s literally happening (all that angel guff), but for David Lynch points, you come up with a metaphorical way it can be understood by the people who are touched by it.  Touched by an angel lol.

Literal serpentine angel turns human enfants into chicks and literally swallows their souls.  This looks like…  This looks like … … man i’m tired.  If this was in the Black Lodge, what would it look like?  Characters might wear masks that abstractly resemble their animal souls.  Or just act weird.  Fishes flop around, ravens flap arms.  I feel like there was an implication that the Man from Another Place was magician Mike’s severed arm.  People multiplied and that was echoed at multiple levels of the story.  I don’t want to reiterate somebody else’s work (don’t @ me bro).  What’s my metaphor?  What would be scary?

It wasn’t originally my goal to specifically try to be like Lynch, tho it is a vibe for the moment, so maybe I can jailbreak my brain a bit by looking at easier goals.  Just remembered the other day I’d considered aiming for Carter instead.  There were a few stories from latter half of The Bloody Chamber that jumble in my imagination, but the main things… She seemed really stuck on the erotic role culturally allowed to women – that of the virgin girl in the power of a depraved monster – and tweaking it to her own pervy ends.  Give that monster a tongue bath, freaky girl.  Some variation on this showed in more than one story.

If my main emotional theme is of the child devoured by evil, how could I echo that in other things?  Maybe a formula.  I make profiles for each significant character, which include a section for talking about the emotional idea of them, and ways to make it more abstract.  I could roll this in with the 70 scenes by having a scene idea attached to each profile.  OK…

Here are some scribbles I did while pondering.  Nothing useful about the snake, really.  A few ideas on character descriptions tho.

Haven’t drawn in months and who should appear on top of my sketchbook and pen?  A guy that doesn’t even like to snuggle.

The world is against me!  My grandiose aim is feeling a lot less attainable from here, but if this ends up being at least entertaining to my dude, that’s worth more than nothing.  Scenes ‘n’ profiles with scenes, or whatever this ends up being…

PROFILES

The Snake, known to his friends as The Disease.  As a dominion angel, he is in charge of all the archangels in the building, who in turn are in charge of the angels.  What would happen if he died?  Angelanarchy haha.  Considering these angels are parasites, lacking a regulating agent they might go berserk, or die, or leave.  I think Ant King’s momBF will be one – the first to go out of control or be defeated.
Anyway, The Disease looks like a white man about sixty with too much sun exposure.  His skin is mottled with any kind of polka dotting that white people can get, his eyes big and pale grey, his remaining hair also speckled in rust and white.  He listens to oldies, particularly Elvis, Neil Diamond, and The Righteous Brothers.  It’s all about the rhythmic noises; he has no soul with which to appreciate the feelings.  He wears big glasses with brown and clear plastic frames, off-white tank tops, and powder blue polyester pants hiked up too high with suspenders.  His socks are dark green, shoes brown patent leather.  His hair is frizzy curls just a bit too long to look nice in the donut around his head, and he has a bit of a pot belly from eating too many children.
Emotional Reality:  The universe is terrible and he is the universe.  The Disease has some kind of thought – practical things, rudimentary strategy, but is incapable of contemplating what and why he is.  He only exists for whatever his instincts and desires tell him to do.  His are the emotions of a predatory animal – that he eats children is the only way he matters to the story…  But I do need a personality for him.  I think he comes off like a low key pimp, relaxing in the corner with salacious expressions, weird old (angel) hoes on each arm.  Obviously a man of some importance, if nobody knows what that importance is.
Metaphysical Reality:  Angelology is real inconsistent about what angels look like, so I have some room to fuck around, assuming I want to make them look angelic at all.  I can’t easily find a source for it now, but when I was researching The Septagram I found some references to seraphim as being serpentine or dragon-like, with at least one source just saying they were a snake with six wings.  Most early sources show them with a human head – sometimes also the faces of an eagle, bull, and / or lion, and six wings to cover their bodies and faces.
I’m gonna say The Disease is a sixty foot snake in speckled red black and white, with orange-white flames flowing from his eye sockets and mouth.  He isn’t outrageously large for a snake except in length – head proportions and thickness are normal for a big snake, his length is the absurd part.
Manifestation:  Iconic man… Gotta come up with something iconic.  This is just a classic Bébé styled mélange of quirky bullshit.  What will it be?  What can it be?
Plot, Generally:  The Disease lives on a higher plane, with a sketchier relationship to linear time than most of the building’s tenants.  He is slowly eating lots of children, as he has since before the MC was born.  Nothing in that will change, unless he dies during the course of the novel.
A Scene:  Gotta be some scene where it’s demonstrated what he does with the stolen kiddies.

The Hero, Matthew Poor, a disabled young dude living on benefits.
Emotional Reality:  I need a personality for this guy, something like a voice.  It’s good to make a cartoon character of a guy in your head because that color washes out on the written page and they just seem like a distinct person, but you do want your MC to be more bland than the side guys so he’s more relatable – can’t be too eccentric.
This is gonna be a guy who needs love and is willing to quest for it; that’s the emotional core, what his plot should reflect.  But the plot as I’ve conceived it thus far requires somebody with more juice for social interaction than the average neurodiverse kiddo.  Lemme see…
I guess depression or bipolar would be fair game; they don’t need to involve social anxiety or disabilities at all, tho they are probably positively correlated to such.  Bipolar would make sense for a guy who is running around in spooky adventure building.
For personality tho, whose voice should I steal?  Some kind of PNW personality.  PZ?  Steve Pool?  Kurt?  Jimi?  Fucken Eddie Vedder lol.  No.  Somebody I went to school with.  Try-Anything-Once Todd?  Bad-Moustache-Having Guy?  My Former Tech Support Guy?  I think my visual may have been inspired by Bad-Moustache-Having Guy, tho I didn’t give him a moustache.  It’s hard for me to imagine that guy in this situation tho.
Me?  I’m a PNW personality.  Every character I write probably has too much “me” stank on them already.  My brother?  I can’t do an impression of him as well as he can do of me.  Not sure what that’s about.
GF.5.  My point-fifth girlfriend.  She was physically very different from this character, but I could imagine a personality like that on him.  Probably she would avoid situations like this, if presented with them, so I’d hafta imagine how she would approach a stranger regarding heavy business.  Remind herself she’s an adult.  Try to make the crossed arms look less defensive than they are by squaring the shoulders.  Open with “You don’t know me but we need to talk.”  Naw, that’s still very me.
My boyfriend?  That would be funny, and also appropriate because the book’s for him.  But we grew together over the last twenty years and probably talk real similarly at this point.  What are the differences?  Other people’s moods do a bigger number on him.  How would he approach a stranger?  Shit, I can just ask him.  Haha, fine…  He said he would write a letter.  No good.
Metaphysical Reality:  Human.  If all humans have an animal soul, his -not appearing in this picture- would be a ?  A dog maybe.  Sure.  Like a belgian shepherd maybe.
Manifestation:  What kind of expression of his emotional reality would he have?  On a quest for love.  Don Quixote.  My dude is not prone to doing outlandish things for love.  The people I’ve known who are most prone to infatuation (an annoying old school chum and myself circa 1991) are insufferable drama queens, and that ain’t him.  Can something move a person who is not normally moved to such lengths?  Being lonely for a long time?  I dunno.  Probably a lot of reminding himself it’s foolish and absurd, chastising himself for doing brave and unreasonable things.
Plot, Generally:  Discovers secret tunnels, accidentallies self into several people owing him favors, falls in love with sexy stranger who is searching for a relative-turned-missing-person, trying to find the missing person to win the man’s heart.
A Scene:  What does one do when they’re crushing?  Travis Bickle montage?  Journaling?

The Sexy Dude, Hyun-woo Lim.
Emotional Reality:  A guy loose in the world, no job at the moment, temporarily living at home.  Get rousted by fam into trying to investigate his missing niece.  Some reason they think he’d be good at it.  Journalism major?  That would explain the unemployment lol.
Metaphysical Reality:  Human.  A fellow dog soul?  Man somebody should do a dark fantasy game with furries in it called Dog Souls.  When you beat a boss it’ll be like YOU YIFFED on the screen, whatever that means.  Maybe for my furry allyship I should write a furry book sometime.  I came up with an idea for one back in art school, never did nothin’ on it ‘cept some doodles.
Manifestation:  The manifestation of his purpose.  He is a man with a mission of compassion, tempered with grim awareness of the possibilities.  He must walk into a place from which he knows he may never return, knowing all he’s going to find is sadness.
Plot, Generally:  Investigates missing relative in the projects, becomes entangled with weird gay dude and supernatural horror.
A Scene:  Should probably have a romantic scene with Matthew.

The Project Godfather, Frederick “Freddy” Paz Principa.
Emotional Reality:  Mob bosses are monsters.  Not in a cool way, like, ooh, look at this badass over here.  They are shitty bullies with a license to kill, and the worshipful attitude around them strokes their ego, makes them feel like saints even while they do terrible things.  This is why they can seem nice, compassionate, good to the people they think of themselves as being good to – but they can harm the ones they “love” because at the end of the day love has fuckall to do with who they are: greedy-ass cocklords who feel entitled to hurt and kill for money.
Metaphysical Reality:  A power, from the second choir of angels, controlling mortal affairs inside the box.  In his angel form, he’s a metallic copper minotaur with bullish legs and a human face on the bottom of his oversized bull head – he lifts his chin to speak, eyes and mouth glowing white.  He has halos of red-rimmed white fire that lick at the ceiling, one on his bull head and one on each of his largest wings.  Another four smaller wings wrap around his torso at weird diagonals.
Manifestation:  Back-slapping, hand-grabbing, big gratitude and magnanimity, but it can turn to ice cold razorblade upside your scrotum if you slip.  See him looking larger than he should be.  See bull horns on his shadow.
Plot, Generally:  Who’s house?  Run’s house.  He is annoyed by his daughter losing important things.  He parties with his fellow creeps.  No real changes in the course of the story.
A Scene:  Weirdo parties.  How do I make them read like I’m not ripping off Blue Velvet?

The Princess, Lupe Paz Dominga.  She has cornrows and gold hoops and a diastema like her father.
Emotional Reality:  Coulda been worse, if she had full respect of her father, but his sexism blunts any sense of entitlement she would otherwise feel for being a mob princess.  Is angry lesbian, but lives with some serious fear of her father and what he can do.  Life of constant tension got her ready to snap.
Metaphysical Reality:  Technically a nephil.  Naphil?  They’re supposed to be giants and warriors.  She’s just a teenage girl.
Manifestation:  I think her divine inheritance will be breathing fire in random uncontrolled ways from time to time.  She can light a cigarette by putting it in her mouth backwards.  Her emotional reality could show as an outburst of violence that doesn’t even make sense.
Plot, Generally:  Loses important thing to pickpocket girl, gets it back through Matthew’s maneuvers, doesn’t like what he knows – not one bit.
A Scene:  Some kind of moment where she reveals she considers killing Matthew to keep her secret safe.

The Girl / The Gibbon, Ha-eun Lim.
Emotional Reality:  Within the story she is an animal, a maguffin, not a real human being but an idea of one.
Metaphysical Reality:  Human, but could be confused with a monkey.  Or a baby chicken.
Manifestation:  She is a glimpsed thing, just out of reach and then out of sight, like the white rabbit.  I’m full of animals today.
Plot, Generally:  Drawn out of time and out of life by a monster, her memory haunts men and pulls them into danger.
A Scene:  It is revealed she is nothing but a ghost.

Lez Hustler, a Fish, aka Bonnie Macek.
Emotional Reality:  Low key antisocial PD.  Fuck all y’all, I get to take whatever I want.  But this is a child, and you can catch the tiger by the toe.
Metaphysical Reality:  Human, fish soul.  Splip splap.  She will try to bounce off the hook.  All she has to offer at the end of the day is slime.
Manifestation:  At her truest when shaking and crying not to tell mommy.
Plot, Generally:  She steals from a gang and nearly gets caught.
A Scene:  When does she help our mans?  Return the favor?

Some Fucken Pigs.  The cops are mostly alluded to or glimpsed at a distance, putting heat on the project residents.
Emotional Reality:  It doesn’t matter if they’re guilty or not, you did your job if you harassed some people.
Metaphysical Reality:  Human.  Pig soul.
Manifestation:  The reality is when they upset you, make your skin burn, make you feel like you could just die, your whole life dusted off for nothing.
Plot, Generally:  They irradiate the first half of the book but fade as things get more surreal.
A Scene:  At some point, Matthew needs to get a face full of them.

The Ant King, Yolanda Biggs.  Isn’t “ant” and obscure racist term for black people?  Maybe not.  I heard it in a blaxploitation movie, but it may have just been a more general kinda insult.  I dunno.  Hope not.  I like this image of an angry tiny black girl with her face scrunched up and stray locks looking like antenna.
Emotional Reality:  Peak autisms.  A keen interest in something natural and right, frustrated by the cruelty of those who enforce conformity.
Metaphysical Reality:  Human, bug soul.
Manifestation:  Freedom for her is seeing the bugs win.  Hopefully the building doesn’t get drowned in the sunsabitches.
Plot, Generally:  She tries to foil pesticide schemes of stepfather, tries to win victory for cockroaches.  He abuses her, but he is defeated.
A Scene:  The victory stomp, and fall into the (del)roses(/del)roaches

The Horse, Dexter Slocum.  Yolanda’s mom’s bf, Dexter is a spiritual parasite making life worse for everybody so he can feed off of the hatred.  He looks like a pot-bellied white guy with lank black hair, weak facial hair, and glasses.  A stereotype of a child molester, but that is not his evil of choice.
Emotional Reality:  You can seem so reasonable when you’re doing things that need to be done, like pest control.  But the motives matter.  He hurts bugs to hurt Yolanda.
Metaphysical Reality:  This is an archangel.  He rules over rushes of inconvenience and power interruptions and worries about money, at least, in his own apartment.  His natural form is of a white and grey horse with extremities that drip black and white fire.
Manifestation:  Memo to self: no idea here, but when I am formalizing my scenes, I should try to make all of them as scary as humanly possible.  Amp the horror; otherwise this is too me-ish.
Plot, Generally:  Just doing his thing, going about his life, until Matthew fucks it up.
A Scene:  His defeat.  Arrested?  Killed?  The angel that gets what they deserve.

Raven One, Jared Henke – the smart one?  The ravens are a group of lighter-skinned late tween boys.  Jared is the leader, with long blond hair, a big nose, glasses, and dark clothes.  His voice is resonant but quiet.
Emotional Reality:  Developing minds shouldn’t be doing the weed.  They feel the need.  The greed for weed.
Metaphysical Reality:  Human, raven soul.
Manifestation:  Always be perched.  Smoak and croke.
Plot, Generally:  The ravens in Whitesnake GOIN DOWN THE ONLY ROAD I’VE EVER KNOWN get kicked out the nest, like y’all suck.  Matthew kills his horse to feed them?  idk.  i decay.
A Scene:  Matthew is the one, who spins the lie that gets Matthew to help them score.

Raven Two, Colin Gordon – a dark-haired boy with the greed.  Not as shaggy as his friends, big dark eyes, hint of future facial hair.  He looks like he could be any latin kid kicking the futbol in the yard, but he’s lost interest in everything except scoring.
Emotional Reality:  In the future he’s the first of the gang to die (resist linking song and making a scumbag money).
Metaphysical Reality:  Human, raven soul.
Manifestation:  Head darting around, looking for something to get into.
Plot, Generally:  They get the weed and smonk it.
A Scene:  Colin almost gets in a fight with Matthew and blows it.

Raven Three, Marlon Graf.  The ravens are lighter skinned guys, tho Marlon is black.  He’s more melanistic around his sleepy little eyes, elbows, and knuckles.  His big sensual lips will be pierced in the future, for now they just tighten out whenever the guys make him nervous with their ambition.  Wears a long olive drab army coat.
Emotional Reality:  In the future, promoted to a main character.
Metaphysical Reality:  Human, raven soul.
Manifestation:  The sorrowful croak of the big bird.
Plot, Generally:  420 is the weed number
A Scene:  Marlon’s sad lil self wins Matthew sympathies.

The Crone, Majel Billy, has a cat named David Coter.  She looks like a middle-aged white woman with peroxide blonde hair styled like 1960s cool, black eyebrows like slash marks over large prematurely ancient eyes, discolored and goopy, mascara in chonks stuck to insect leg lashes.  Her mouth is more full and strong than that of a true geezer, able to properly roar.  Majel dresses a bit like granny from the sylvester and tweety cartoons, but with an affection for fur stoles and jewels – rings on every finger.
Emotional Reality:  Use magic to impress ’em, but also to maintain secrecy.  She is the more subtle end of the criminal spirit, but every bit as nasty and ruthless as Freddy.  Enjoys getting boys to do her crimes for her – a crime in itself.
Metaphysical Reality:  This is a virtue angel, supposed to embody god’s will and make miracles upon the earth.  In practice, she just takes what she wants, and makes people believe in magic while she’s at it.  In a sense, she’s another crime boss to the building – a shadow boss, who likes to remain unknown as such.  Let’s say her angelic form is a powerful young woman seven feet tall with wings that end in giant fingers, and her halo is a fiery glowing eyeball floating above her head that can shoot lasers n shit.
Manifestation:  Not in this story.
Plot, Generally:  She only appears to set raven plot in motion, boxing their ears.
A Scene:  Matthew mistakes Majel for being the mom of the three ravens, like maybe they were adopted, but no.  She’s their ringleader in criminiminal enterprisels.

Bodega Owner.  A boothie, Dario Jefferson.  He’s a tall black guy nearing middle age, bald without bothering to shave it down.  He looks like a TV actor from the late seventies, straight out of a sitcom or cop show, in corduroy pants and a turtleneck with the sleeves pushed up.  Sadly lacking in charisma to match…  Ya know I should probably some up with a more entertaining idea.  Later.
Emotional Reality:  Dario runs game.  Come eat his sandwiches.  Hope you don’t get sick.  He upsells his food just so you know that he truly disrespects your entire life and your intelligence.  Mm mm, get this good stuff, fresh for you today.  Only fresh he knows is getting fresh with old ladies.  Not as successful in love as Don Commodore.
Metaphysical Reality:  There’s probably a catholic canon on the appearance of angels somewhere but I couldn’t find it in a minute of googling and who cares?  Angelology has been all over the place on that, when it’s had any concern about the subject at all.  I’ve got a throne angel looking like a building.  Let’s say my principalities have the legs of golden calves but looking up from those sweet gams, the closer you get to the head the more unique they are.  Angels are usually shown as metallic or jeweled or made out of glowing things like fire or lightning, with parts of mans, cows, eagles, and wheels, less commonly serpentine, very often winged or covered in eyeballs.  Let’s say these ones always have a halo of lightning that arcs to the ceiling, wiggling in place.  Between the halo and the legs, Dario has the body of a handsome man, but with eyes at random, getting denser near the head – itself shaped like a golden gyroscope embedded in his neck flesh, covered in eye-like sapphires.
Manifestation:  Dario shows his supernature and / or emotional theme in moments where he has eyes in the back of his head, and he gives everybody the hard sell.
Plot, Generally:  None, just a freak in the crowd.
A Scene:  Didn’t have one in mind yet.

Loan Shop Owner.  A boothie, Armando Ciniegas.  He looks like Dan Hedaya but with a perverse sense of humor.
Emotional Reality:  The usurer.  Only give five when you can take ten.  Laugh at their pain.
Metaphysical Reality:  Armando has golden calf legs and a lightning halo that is always snaking up to the ceiling.  In between he has a tangled mass of taloned eagle limbs reaching in all directions at once, wings folded around his lower torso like a corset, and a head with four eagle faces staring out, sharing a confused mass of glowing eyes that trails away into his lightning halo.
Manifestation:  He shows his supernature and personality by snatching everything in sight with those talons.
Plot, Generally:   None in mind, just a freak.  All of Freddy’s party people are there, in a sense, to make possible suspects other than The Disease, help keep it mysterious.
A Scene:  Didn’t have one in mind.

The Barber.  A boothie, Don Commodore.  Don Commodore is a middle aged black guy with a tight fade and looks like Steven Williams.  Hot stuff.
Emotional Reality:  You never look good enough.  Keep coming back, keep it tight, or you’re a bum!  It’s about class too.  Even here in the project, if you don’t got gold, you ain’t cool.
Metaphysical Reality:  Don Commodore has golden calf legs and a lightning halo that is always snaking up to the ceiling.  In between he has a lion face, mane, and claws.  His halo originates in his eyes, which increase in number when he gets mad, some floating in the air around his head.
Manifestation:  He expresses his supernature and / or emotional reality through preternatural intimidation and pride.
Plot, Generally:  Didn’t have one in mind.
A Scene:  The barbershop scene aforementioned.  Or aftermentioned.  Not composing this in sequence.

Some Maenads.  Elvira Columbia, Crotchy Carolyn, Lachrima Christy, Zinnia Driver, Rashida Mix, and Felicia Fix.
Some Bacchantes.  Salvage Sirloin, Bobby Yomama, Sam Pham, Seeds Ballinger, Markethands, Gulliver Briscomb, Telly Felony, Wretched Fitzgerald, Policy of Truth, The Definition, Fuckbucket Gallego, Norris Lemonde, Cold Bicep, Salad Tongs, VHS, Hernan Bonanza, Billy Blaster, The Hookup, Graham Torwulf, Laundromatic, Dickvein Jackson, Sir Tossalot, Sizzle, Sotto Voce, Slim Delivery, Ivan Grigoriy, Vladi Hubcaps, or Seymour Panties.
Just bringing forth the name list in case I wanna use it.

Locations:  Foothill Manor, a housing project in the fictional city of Seaport, unspecified state Pacific Northwest USA, is about fifteen stories tall but full of ambiguities.  It’s the largest building (aside from warehouses and factories) for miles, bounded by scrubby abandoned lots and broad roads, overpriced dilapidated single family homes on small plots of dead grass, and factory warehouse and shipping yards that do who knows what.  The cranes that move shipping containers are like abstract brachiosaurs looming over a similarly artificial and corroded region.

The building is shaped like a rectangle, with nothing but a narrow strip of sidewalk outside.  The front and back of the building are both on city streets, the south side being where the garbage is taken out.  It’s across the street from an untenanted beige brick block of low rent office space, a few slightly less ignominious apartment complexes, then miles of shitty little houses.  The north side is across the street from a few blocks of factories and warehouses, many of which are seemingly not in use.

The west side of the building has an alley shared with a smaller ruin of an apartment building, occasionally tenanted by squatters.  The building has a name carved above its barricaded front door:  The Carolingian.  The east side was a vacant lot but decades of abandoned rubbish – the bulk of which is furniture – created a habitat for tangled vines of blackberry and ivy, and all the creatures that such an environment can sustain.  Some call it The Forest.

There’s a strange and extremely dank smell like hot organic garbage that hangs heavy when the wind is too slow, supposedly from a wood mill.  Miraculously, it cannot be smelled indoors unless you open your window to it, and cannot be smelled in the courtyard.

The courtyard is in the middle of the building – just a concrete walking space with a few dangerous and hotly contested items of playground equipment, a few planters surrounded by benches.  Perhaps they were originally meant to hold trees, but not enough daylight reaches the depth of this hole over a hundred feet deep, and they now hold planters and lots of cigarette ash and butts.  The courtyard is the quickest route for people on the north side to get to the garbage on the south, and trash fallen from bags dots the place.  The worst is when petulant children tasked to take out the trash just leave the bag in the courtyard itself, rather than going out back to the dumpsters.

The courtyard has an unusual feature for construction in this part of the world, inspired by European blocks.  There are storefronts all around the interior.  But this feature was never fully used, and most of the storefronts are either converted into apartments or boarded or bricked over completely.  The only business in the courtyard is The Loan Shop.  It has a name that is illegible and forgotten, and is run as a combination convenience store and payday loan store.  They also sell scratch tickets.  Gotta win big if you ever wanna get out.  Maybe next time.

The street level outside has several storefronts as well.  Most of them are papered over from inside the glass but still theoretically available for lease – hope springs eternal.  The only ones in use, both on the north side, are the bodega and the barbershop.

The roof isn’t supposed to be accessed, but people do it all the time.  The least worst are people who want to smoke in the stanky open air, naughty children, poetic souls, or some combination of the three.  There are also criminal activities, gang fights, suicide attempts, etc.

The building’s landlord is not a typical slumlord.  He lives like a king, preferring the bottom floor and a significant chunk of the basement, which has been converted on the inside into an improbably lavish mansion.  His wife passed without leaving a male heir, which is a problem for his little mind, and he shares his home with his daughter and close criminal associates.

The project is diverse but, predictably, has a higher percentage of Black, Latin, Pacific Islander, and Southeast Asian residents than the region at large (Natives are present but not over-represented, preferring tribal resources).  To get this kind of housing, you have to get on a real long list and wait, and meet certain criteria of limited income relative to household size, old age, or disabilities.  Everyone here is a mess.

Foothill Manor:  The housing project
Emotional Reality:  A place of economic and spiritual despair.
Metaphysical Reality:  Actually a trap that erected itself at the boundary between Earth and the spirit world.  The building itself has a spiritual body parallel to the material, comprised of a single machine-like throne angel.  The secret passages are something like its digestive tract.
Manifestation:  Anybody paying a modicum of attention knows the building doesn’t make sense.  The elevator and stairs have fewer floors than the building appears to have from the outside, and there’s seemingly no way to access any floors other than those one can get to by those means.  The layouts of the floors are not the same from one to the next, even though that makes more sense from a construction and design perspective, and the halls and apartments don’t seem to fill the entirety of the available space.  Nobody with this awareness has felt bold enough to really test the limits, to solve the mystery, for various reasons.
A Scene:  In a hall Hero confronts the pickpocket.

The Courtyard:  In the middle of the building, a concrete space, technically open to the air but so submerged at the bottom of over a hundred feet that even the city’s funky pollution can’t reach it.  Instead it’s just the smell of trash that gets lazily strewn about.  The Loan Shop is here, plus some benches and ferns and playground equipment.
Emotional Reality:  It’s like the open-air experience in a prison.  You don’t go there to feel hope.  For that, you stay in your apartment and look out the outer windows – if you’re fortunate enough to have one.
Metaphysical Reality:  There’s a hole in the ground, like a fountain that never flows with water.  Sometimes a snake tail drips down from heaven and slips in there, then withdraws and disappears.  Dropping notes?
Manifestation:  It feels innocent enough when you’re new.  You go there just to smoke or go to the loan shop for snacks.  Maybe to hang out with your gang.  But in time, you realize you’re only coming there when it’s time to lose something vital, for the right to continue your diminishing existence.
A Scene:  Maybe when the hero meets the raven boys.

The Loan Shop:  The single most important business in the project, this is run by a principality angel in human guise, Armando Ciniegas.  The store is so tiny, it seems like a converted studio apartment.  Armando or an employee is always present, hiding within the fogged and scratched bulletproof (?) plexiglass.  The goods are more familiar American fare than in the bodega, but decidedly stolen from the backs of trucks – sporadic availability, roulette expiration dates.
Emotional Reality:  Exploitation, despair, tension, the high cost of being poor.  The farce of “legitimate” business.
Metaphysical Reality:  There is something like a mouth here, and something like a gullet.  Armando’s living in a cheek like chewing gum that’s gone flavorless.
Manifestation:  Did you see his eyes glow red when he handed you the scratch ticket?  Did you feel a fraction of your soul get snatched when he handed you the payday loan?
A Scene:  Didn’t have one in mind.

The Bodega, run by Dario Jefferson, a principality angel in human guise:  While you can technically come and go through the front door, out on the sidewalk, out in the sun, many people come through a narrow passage into the first floor hallways.  Why leave the building?  You could just spend eternity in a box, at least until they require you to go down to the welfare office and sing for your supper.
Emotional Reality:  At the supermarket, the produce is hustled in from foreign lands so fast, it seems like the fruit of paradise.  At the bodega, where exactly does this stuff come from?  The produce might not kill you, assuming there even is any on a given day, but it doesn’t look too appetizing.  Even the twinkies here seem like they’re past the expiration date, or passed through some kind of unknown abuse on the way to the shelf.  The strangest things are the foreign foods without languages spoken by anybody in the building, least of all Dario.  Anyway, the emotional reality is the feeling that you don’t deserve nice things.  A supermarket is for real humans.  Everything you get is freezedried or shrinkwrapped, with stickers telling you not to eat it, and stickers partially occluding those ones that say new prices and “we accept EBT.”
Metaphysical Reality:  One of the bottom corners of the box.  If you could see it from the outside, it would look like the brass lion foot of an old-fashioned bathtub.  Inside the window side extrudes into sloping fluted brass.  The black and white tiles are scales.  Some kind of chitinous combs hold the stores good and sometimes leak slime on them.
Manifestation:  Darker inside than you’d imagine, has odd items you wouldn’t expect to find and don’t understand.
A Scene:  Had none in mind.

The Barbershop, run by a principality angel, Don Commodore:  Don is a domineering presence.  Seems like he’s gladhanding and schmoozing to mack or to make friends of customers, but it’s forced.
Emotional Reality:  It’s where you go to look good, to get the hairy world off your neck.  You chat with the regulars, get to know the people in your building, right?  Big look at yourself in all the mirrors.  Who is that weird person, and why do you have to be them?
Metaphysical Reality:  One of the bottom corners of the box.  If you could see it from the outside, it would look like the brass lion foot of an old-fashioned bathtub.  Inside the window side extrudes into sloping fluted brass.  The black and white tiles are scales.  Cockroaches fear no light, eating the hair that falls on the floor.
Manifestation:  Looks darker inside than you’d expect.  More bugs.  The friendliness is of people who expect to get beaten if they overstay their welcome.
A Scene:  Hero goes to get a haircut to look good for Sexy Dude.

The Secret Passages:  Winding through the building is a whole other building unseen.  Secret passages facilitate criminal activity, but also bridge the physical and spiritual realms.
Emotional Reality:  A sense of wrongness.  At the most simple level, why is the number of floors visible from outside greater than the number of floors you can reach by elevator or stairs?  The building is full of building you are not allowed to experience, and who knows what is going on in there?
Metaphysical Reality:  Almost all mobile organisms are, at core, a worm.  Food goes in one end and out the other.  When your food is pure energy and your physical form is a mockery of functions you don’t actually require, what goes through your worm tube?  It’s a place for weirdos to lurk, going about weird business.  If you see it as it truly is, ????  I dunno.  Ribbed for her pleasure.  I kid, I was thinking, maybe it should have some kind of banding, like an inside out earthworm, to facilitate peristalsis that it isn’t doing.  Ocelli dotting the walls let one spy on regular rooms.  Architecture not quite sensible, has a lot of short staircases and dead ends.  What goes on in its rooms?  Mostly locked?
Manifestation:  Almost every other floor of the building is full of this wriggling form, and it intrudes on the regular floors as well, with passages next to peoples’ walls, from which you could spy on them.  But when you are in the literal belly of the beast, things may appear different from how they do in the regular halls.
A Scene:  Hero finds the place for the first time, sees things he shouldn’t see.
Another Scene:  In desperation to find out about the girl, he starts prowling the halls.
Another Scene:  Has to find the Serpent’s room to rescue Sexy Dude.

The Boiler Room:  The basement of the project is partly taken up with the larger rooms of the Godfather’s “mansion,” but also has some secret passage space of its own, and a few more conventional rooms of machinery or storage.  The boiler room is the nexus for all that kind of thing.
Emotional Reality:  The boiler room is a place of high pressure, janky and seedy business.  You’re not allowed in but you got in there just the same.
Metaphysical Reality:  This is most of the organ meat of the throne angel.  Step off the serpent path, end up in golden gears and black sinews.
Manifestation:  If you go through any one door in basement halls, you will often find this kind of area.  What do all these pipes even do?
A Scene:  I didn’t have one in mind.

The Mansion:  The Project Godfather’s part of the building.  As near any visitor can tell, it achieved grand ceilings by taking out the floor between a basement and the first floor, with short staircases descending to the floor in any taller rooms.  Likewise, walls were taken out between apartments, or restructured.  How can there be a stained glass window there, when there are none visible from the outside?  Don’t think about it too much.  This area really does feel very much like a mansion, with the radically restructured interior, but doesn’t have as many windows as the real deal.
Emotional Reality:  How do the rich even live in the same world as us?  How do they fucking dare?  What unmitigated gall.
Metaphysical Reality:  This is part of the throne angel that comprises the box.  Call it the liver.
Manifestation:  The place is as much a conundrum in physical space as in the spirit.  If one was seeing reality true, it would just look like a more gold-plated version of what you already see – maybe with pulsing veins running over the frescoes.
A Scene:  The Hero has to do something with the internet wiring which leads to discovering the tunnels.
Another Scene:  The Hero gets accused by the Godfather.

The Roof:  The whole building’s layout is a loop around the courtyard, and on the rooftop, people can freely walk all the way around.  It shouldn’t be accessible, but there are two stairwells with broken doors at the top, and a hatch door that can be reached from inside with a ladder.  There is barely a lip in sight, no guard rail, and anyone could easily fall off, by accident or on purpose.
Emotional Reality:  Freedom to breathe the air, with all that entails – risk of cancer, crime, and death.
Metaphysical Reality:  This is the crown of the throne angel.  Other angels live in on and around it, led by more self-disciplined creatures.
Manifestation:  When the roof’s spiritual self is visible, it is the halo of the throne angel, just some fire that doesn’t burn and never dies.  The angel’s crown is brazen metal shapes that can reconfigure, rise and fall with its breath.  Or not.  Hey I said there were cherubs buzzing above the building.  Do they leave huge dookies on the roof?
A Scene:  Wasn’t planning to have one here.  Maybe…

The Forest:  The overgrown vacant lot / rubbish heap / pile of vines to the east of the project.
Emotional Reality:  Plants are nice?  Being the Pacific Northwest, you can see green hills in the great distance if you’re pointed the right direction – maybe even some mountains.  But the immediate neighborhood looks lifeless on the surface, making the pile of green leaves appealing to look at – for about nine months of the year.  You can even see hummingbirds visiting the flowers.  When the vines die back in winter, the garbage beneath is much more apparent.
Metaphysical Reality:  Just outside of the footprint, The Forest is exactly what it looks like – an accidental urban micro-biome, full of rats and bugs.
Manifestation:  From inside the project, appearances of things on the outside can be distorted.  What was the movement there?  Can it be real?  The hero can see The Forest from his window.
A Scene:  Hero sees the Girl out there, aimlessly wandering over the heap in a pink dress.
Another Scene:  Hero sees the girl in the pink dress, but she suddenly moves in an impossible way.  Is that actually a gibbon in a dress?  Is that all she was the first time?

The Carolingian:  The abandoned apartment building to the west of the project.  It will not appear in the story, really.
Emotional Reality:  Fucking sucks to see beautiful brick Victorian buildings go to waste and ruin, but as long as whatever dracula holds the deed doesn’t feel spicy enough to raze the place and install something corporate, at least it can be a place for wild people to dwell – in some amount of risk.
Metaphysical Reality:  It is what it appears to be and nothing more.  Just outside the footprint, angels only rarely travel its dismal halls.
Manifestation:  Not relevant.
A Scene:  No scene.

Woof.  All that and I don’t have my 70 scenes yet.  Coming ASAP!

–

Big Spoilers Ahead.  If you thought you were going to read the Best Story in the World without spoilin’, read this not.

OK.  The post before this I was still trying to work out particulars on the Best Story in the World™ and came to a point where I had to chuck a not insignificant amount of work in the trash.  Maybe to be retrieved in future for a different occasion, but it won’t work for the best story in the world.  I needed something immediately and persistently more mysterious and uncanny.

I could dig through Grimm and try to come up with modern retellings of multiple stories, several of them, and pick the one that works the best for this requirement.  But we’re real close to the wire – this event begins March 1st!  So I’m gonna hafta freestyle more.  My husband is working on a story of his own, themed around the idea of a missing person, and sometimes we like to share a theme, so he suggested I do something with that.

I decided to re-use the setting I’d developed for the Henchpuss story – a big housing project with a strong presence of organized crime – so that someday the Henchpuss story could amuse people with connections to this one.  A child went missing in this area and police sometimes harass or shake people down using that as a pretext.  Nobody thinks it’s justified – but is it?

MCs will be a guy who lives in the building and a private citizen investigating the missing child.  I like the idea of the characters from Henchpuss never leaving the building until certain dramatic points in the story, and this one can be the same.  Guy who lives in the building as PoV character, has housing despite no job, because of a disability.

I think the MC sometimes sees the girl, sometimes sees a monkey, doesn’t know if the girl sightings were hallucinating about a monkey.  Maybe the monkey ends the story with some Murders in the Rue Morgue type of shit, wearing a pretty pink dress lol.  Boy I’m tired.  Lemme see…

You know what?  I’m gonna poke at Grimm for a set amount of time and see if I spot something that could have these ideas stretched over the top of it.

The White Snake:  A servant takes a lil bite of his king’s forbidden snake dish and gains Beastmaster™ powers.  He uses them to get a favor from the king and goes on an adventure where he uses those powers to get the love of a hot princess.  But I know what it means.  To walk along the lonely street of dreams.  HERE I GO AGAIN ON MY OWN.  GOIN’ DOWN THE ONLY ROAD I’VE EVER KNOWN!  LIKE A DRIFTER I WAS BORN TO WALK ALONE…

But seriously, this isn’t too bad.  Guy gains some wisdom he can use to his advantage – secret intel about the mysteries and criminal hijinks in the project.  He uses this to accomplish goal of resolving missing person mystery, and is rewarded with a hot prince.  Actually, totally workable!

The Girl Without Hands:  A lotta divine intervention in this one.  Devil wants a maiden fair and tricks her dad into cutting off her hands because reasons.  She goes out in the world and a king falls in love and gives her silver hands.  King has to travel and Devil messes with the postal service, yadda yadda, girl is out in the wilds.  Angels help again, King finds out about wacky misunderstanding and hunts down his baby boo, angels help him, and they meet up again and live happily ever after.  Also god does exactly the kind of faith healing in this story atheoskeptitypes always complain that he can’t do.

You can really tell the Grimm Bros actually did the work they said they were doing, and documented stories from across the land – not just writing their own and ascribing them to people from such-and-such place – because they often evince very different values or attitudes about men, women, religion, etc.  I don’t like the part of Europe this story came from, wherever it was, because the story is bad religious values – piety to the patriarchy taken to the point of egregious violence, being meek as hell to get impossible rewards from heaven.  Fuck that shit a lot.

But the love in it was easily the most moving.  And the girl was the main character!  Make of that what you will.  Also the main character was disabled, to a point, so relevant..?  Angels grew her hands back tho.  God cannot tolerate cybernetics.  But those kooky kids really loved each other.  I weep.  I cry, but angels deserve to DIIIIIIIE.

The Queen Bee:  Three princes gotta wake up three hot princesses from slumber with magical bullshit.  The youngest prince is nice to animals so they help him wake up the princesses.  All three get a princess but nice boy gets the hottest one.  Too many main characters.  Three brides for three brothers.  I don’t see it.

The Goose Girl:  One of the biggest flaws in Frankenstein is classism, and possibly also racism against the Irish, but very prominently the story has repeated instances of the only worthwhile people being upper class in origin.  If the character is a servant and good and fair, it’s because they descended from “finer stock” and only became a servant through misfortune.  This story has the same trope in spades.  Princess rides far away to marry a cool prince, but her wicked servant is jealous and bullies her into giving up her princessly raiment and treasure, and having to assume the role of servant.  A cool talking horse has to get killed and with his head nailed to a wall is still able to speak, giving the king a clue that the real princess is stuck tending geese.  So he takes what he perceives as the true princess and chucks her in an oven until she confesses the situation?  Get tortured, maiden fair.  The story ends with the nasty brutish lower class girl dragged around town in an iron maiden until dead.

Leaving aside the class angle, this is a changeling story.  Characters reversed their rightful roles but were ultimately given their correct rewards.  Is my disabled boy supposed to have a cooler thing going in life, gets it back?  No.  No, this doesn’t work.  Cool magic in the original story, if terrible values and unlikable characters.

The Golden Bird:  In a kingdom ruled by a greedy asshole with three incompetent ratbag sons, the king finds out about a cool bird he wants, and sends his sons to get it.  They fuck up monumentally, with two sons ending up at the gallows and one going on a misadventure with  cool magic fox.  The fox knows everything and has ungodly superpowers, but as a fox he has bad self-esteem, so he always has a human do shit for him.  He helps the least ratbag prince go on a magic adventure to get the cool bird, but prince’s incompetence repeatedly threatens to ruin the endeavor.  In the end, the least ratbag wins everything, and releases the magic fox from a curse, and they all live happily ever after.  Except the dead incompetent ratbags.

I like this one, aside from some amount of annoyance at how the least worst prince conducted himself.  There was some sorta clever stuff happening, it’s zany, it’s action-packed, and has more detail than some of these stories, which are a bit slight.  But I don’t even think it’s worth the effort to map this one onto the story I’ve come up with.

White Snake?  But I’ve made up my mind.  I ain’t wastin’ no more time.  ‘Cuz here I go again.  Here I go AGAAAIN.

Disabled boy can’t make ends meet because his disability benes keep getting cut off.  To get by he takes work for tha Projects Godfather.  He finds out something he was not meant to know, which helps him solve the case of the missing person, and get the sexy prince.

In the fairy tale, servant boy succumbs to curiosity and eats that white snake.  I feel like the symbolism here could be taken in a sophomoric direction.  Maybe he finds out about gay stuff going on in project?  And the Godfather is like, you’re one of us now.  This would be ironic, given what the Godfather gets up to in Henchpuss.  Maybe not.

What is the equivalent of the animal whisper network, in my version?  Secret tunnels in the apartments, maybe?  Secret chatroom?  Mobchat 2.0?  Little black book of mob activities?

He uses that resource to exonerate himself from a seeming wrongdoing, gets favor of boss.  He uses that favor to just permanently excuse himself from the job.  Then he gets involved with investigator boy, and uses his secret insight to help solve the missing person case.

He finds out about people having problems throughout the project and solves them, in exchange for unspecified future favors.  Three fish, the Ant King, and raven chicks.  He feeds the last ones his own horse.  “One good turn deserves another.”

To get the hot prince, he has to do dangerous tasks.  What risk is there in investigating the missing girl?  Original tasks were:  Get ring from bottom of sea (fish helped), Pick up a bunch of grains (ants helped), Get an apple from the tree of life (ravens got it).  Then he gives Prince some apple and they live happily ever after.

What dangerous thing could he be doing that involves helping people who can pay him back, resulting in mystery solved, and wuv, twue wuv?  Lurking on a bulletin board isn’t risky.  Is it?  Crawling around in secret passages that are used by mobsters would be.

I wanted the mob princess to be gay.  Maybe first thing he does is find out she is, because.. something.  She lost her cellphone and didn’t put a lock screen on it?  No…  In the secret passage he witnesses a girl pick her pocket.  He’s suspected of crime but is able to talk the guilty girl into giving up the thing she stole, in a way that doesn’t implicate her.  He lets Princess know he’s gay and she says she owes him – unspecified promise of future assistance number one.

The whole time police are harassing the tenants.  But somebody else becomes involved:  sexy investigator man.  How do I do this?  Somebody makes MC feel like little girl might be in the building, so he risks going into the tunnels.  While he’s in there he finds out about some people in tough situations and ends up helping them, for unspecified future assistance.

Three fish:  Somebody or group of somebodies that can help him with equivalent of the first task to win the sexy prince.  What is the first task?  Maybe… convince him that answer to girl’s disappearance does have to do with the building, so he’ll keep coming back?

Ant King:  Used legions to pick up grains as second task.  In Whitesnake this was when the princess wasn’t satisfied with first feat, seeing the servant as too lowly, and asked him to do a second impossible thing.  Mmm…  ugh drawing a blank here.

Baby ravens:  Get the apple from the tree of life.  The last task, allows happy-ever-after with love interest.  Solves the mystery?

Maybe I need to decide for myself what the resolution to the mystery would be, and to what extent the supernatural should be involved.  I like the idea of referencing Rue Morgue with a monkey in the mix.  What happened to missing girl?  What happened?  What would feel satisfying as an answer to the mystery?

What happened to Laura Palmer?  Too dark.  Should be dark.  I dunno.  I don’t think Frost or Lynch knew at beginning of series.  I ain’t goin’ out like that, as they say.  Gotta do somethin’ proper.  What do I want to say about anything, if anything?

I like people being compassionate and kind; I hate cruelty and greed.  My highest values.  Anything in that?  I’d like the mob boss to live through this one so he can be killed in Henchpuss.  If girl is missing because somebody did something evil, they draw the big ace, so it can’t be the mob boss.

Something terrible should be going on.  What does it have to do with the monkey?  Who did what to whom?  Who was the girl to them?  Competing theories could happen.  Girl was chasing the monkey or lured by the monkey to some horrible person.  Obvious thing would be rape and murder, which is dire as hell.  What other motives could a freak have to disappear a baby?

Spell components?  Sacrifice to the elder gods?  That could be a competing theory, whatever turned out to be true.  A false one could be that the sexy investigator did it so he could get something out of the victim’s family.  What would be a surreal abstraction of the idea of horrible stuff befalling a child?  I think monsters are the go-to.  She was gobbled up by a monster.  Another alternate theory.

What else could work as a metaphor for that?  Transformed into an object, as being murdered to satisfy a bastard’s perversion is the apotheosis of being objectified.  Transformed into an object and destroyed.  What kind of object?  What kind of destruction?  How would it be discovered and what would come of it?  How might it be turned back upon the killer?

The monkey is a murderer in Rue Morgue.  In Argento’s Phenomena a Rue-inspired monkey kills somebody near the end of the picture.  Maybe the monkey is the killer’s familiar, but rebels and kills the killer.  Killer transformed into something a monkey could kill.  Maybe a snake.

Fairy tail-ish but not surreal enough at the moment.  Ugggggh.  Through the darkness of future past the magician longs to see…  I remember that dream where the chicken lady said she used to shed like a bonfire.  Was girl turned into a chicken?  A lil fuzzy chick?  Does killer turn into a snake when he goes to eat chicks?

This isn’t feeling best ever.  I need the best everness.  Something iconic.  Something that grabs you by the short and curlies and slaps you around.  An indelible image.  What can it be?  Hellraiser had its puzzle box, its hell priest.  Maybe an iconic villain?  Yeah, like the ghosts in Kairo, like the mumblecore hypnodracula in Cure.  If he sees you, you just know that you are going to die.  Don’t let him even know you exist.  He walks like a burning pillar, like a lightning strike that refuses to fade.

Like Frank Booth’s weird friends in Blue Velvet.  I loved that scene.  That could be like… the suspects.  The Project Godfather’s friends.  The snake is in that crew.  Get invited to the party but don’t stay til the end.  I think that’ll be Princess’s contribution – at the mob party, she’ll keep MC from having to stay til the end and get taken up into the company.  The Unseelie Host.  The Bacchantes.

Part one of the book, MC eats the Whitesnake ON HIS OWN / discovers the hidden passages.  He opens up a door into his own apartment so he can come and go through them as he pleases.  Finds out about Princess getting girl-hustled and convinces Godfather to cut him loose – can’t take the fear of working for the mob.  Anxiety disorder?  I dunt know if I should be writing a mental condition far outside of my own.  Many people have kernels of disorders and with a smidge of research can write them effectively; gonna need to give that more thought.

Anyway, in background of this part, glimpses of girl and beginning of police harassment.  Maybe it culminates with, right around time of Princess saying she owes him, connecting the police activity with his memory of seeing a girl, wondering if it’s the same.  Also, should establish the mob suspect weirdos.

Part two of book, MC finds out bout sexydude investigations.  Has to protect him from running afoul of the mob, keep him around with hint girl might be in or near building.  Keeps trying to find out more about girl leading to favors owed.  But sexydude grows frustrated.  Somewhere in here should be more red herrings about the weirdos.

Part three of book, MC &/or sexydude go to big weirdo party and have to be saved by Princess.  MC ends up alone, having to save SexyDude and solve mystery.  This all get back to the need for some kind of interesting way to mystery, to menace, to horror.  Should people be dying?  Disappearing?  Might be necessary to establish stakes for the scariness.

I think back on Killer Bob putting that one character’s soul in a doorknob.  That kinda sucked.  I wanna be surreal but I don’t want that.  It’s killin’ me.  I guess the key thing is making any given piece of nonsense feel profound or emotionally significant, or have it speak to one of the mundane emotions one doesn’t normally experience in art, which thereby acquires a profundity it doesn’t normally possess.  sdijorsiejgijreojehow do they do itwfpijprijgpoirjgi

Leonora Carrington’s writing benefits from literally being dream scenarios, as do older surrealist films.  Maybe I can just think of the whole fucken endeavor as being a dream.  Start it with “last night i dreamt of manderley again” and then delete that when i’m done with the draft.  Maybe that’ll help jailbreak my mind.

Somewhere in the building a serpent moves, made of negative space, worming its way through lives and experiences, watching for vulnerability, or gliding by indifferent, until the day that it isn’t.  Ride the snake.  The ancient snake, baby.  The snake is long.  Seven miles. rjeoijgoijrigrefRip it up and start again.

How can I think when I’m burning the candle at both ends?  Every day is work of one kind or another all day long.  I take my breaks when I can but that ends up feeling like too much, like some responsibility is falling through the cracks.  Gotta go fast like hedged hogge.

Snake eats the chicks.  Snake eats the chicks.  How do you see them.  What do you see of them.  Through the walls.  What’s it all look like.  What does it look like.  What is a snake like?  A scary snake.  Regular snake ain’t great, but they’re just an animal.  What’s a human snake like.

Maybe everybody is an animal, that’s why becoming the Beastmaster is useful.  Animal associations for the whole cast.  When MC figures out what animal you are, he gets an advantage.  Maybe he sees a young Henchpuss and figures out the catness.  Maybe the ravens are the fuckup boyz from Henchpuss story, still children in this part of the timeline.  Teens anyway.

I walk forty-seven miles of barbed wire, got a cobra snake for a necktie, got a brand new house by the roadside, made out of rattlesnake hide.  Got a lil chimney there on the top, made from a human skull, Come on take a little walk with me honey and tell me who do you love?

What is the apple from the tree of life?  It’s the bomb that will bring us together.  It’s something that brings boys together at the end.  It’s a cure for poison?  When SexyDude gets snakebit?  Sounds good.

I think Angela Carter should be my guide.  I need to re-read some of the short stories from The Bloody Chamber.  Yeah, that’s good.  The downside is that those stories are explicitly fantasy, working in well-trod cultural archetypes that are a lil less accessible in a contemporary setting, without going “urban fantasy” – which is decidedly not my aim, whatever this all sounds like.

Alright let’s think, if I was going to take Carter and bend it Lynch of K. Kurosawa, how could that look?  Funny that I cannot help but think in pastiche.  A true child of the post-modern era, like all the fascists who benefited from helping the public view bigoted opinions as being valid truths, but coming from my own liberal schoolmarm / hollywood underdog story -programmed point of view.  I will say, in my defense, that I do this less on projects that are more specifically for following my own stars.  In this one, I’m trying to build to somebody else’s tastes, based on what I know he likes.

Way distracted, as usual.  Back to the point, Angela Carter but more contemporary and dream-like.  That doesn’t seem too inaccessible.  Y’know, it really still comes back to the issue, coming up on being a crisis, of not knowing how I want to depict the surreal elements of the story.

Snake mans.  The Godfather’s frank boothies.  A candy-colored clown they call the Sandman.  I think this godfather is black.  Maybe Dominican?  Just to avoid a ton of research he can be pretty amurricanized.  Villains of color can be cool, as long as that isn’t all the PoC in your story and they aren’t living down to stereotypes too badly.  I like the idea of him having grandiosity, bombast like the horror emcee characters in the Tales From the Hood movies, played by Clarence Williams and Keith David respectively.  Welcome to hell, motherfuckers!

His guys all run criminal enterprises in the project.  There are two stores in the building, let’s say the loan store and the bodega.  The loan store is a combination payday loan / loanshark operation and convenience store.  The bodega is the only place to eat something besides expired snack food stolen from the back of a semi in Chinatown.

I love naming criminals, but I’m overly tempted to call one Sheisty, like Sheisty Pete, Vincent Sheisty, John Forsythe Emanuel Sheistington the IVth.  I resist the urge.  Here are some ideas: Frederick Paz, Elvira Columbia, Don Commodore, The Disease, Salvage Sirloin, Crotchy Carolyn, Bobby Yomama, Sam Pham, Seeds Ballinger, Markethands, Gulliver Briscomb, Telly Felony, Lachrima Christy, Wretched Fitzgerald, Simone Kovacs, Zinnia Driver, Policy of Truth, Armando Ciniegas, Dario Jefferson, Rashida Mix, The Definition, Fuckbucket Gallego, Norris Lemonde, Yolanda Biggs, My Mormon Cousin, Snitchy Britches, Brittany the Witness, Cold Bicep, Salad Tongs, VHS, Hernan Bonanza, Tori Lameness, Felicia Fix, Jolene Roxbury, Sandra Impious, Nerdwad, Billy Blaster, The Hookup, Graham Torwulf, Laundromatic, Laura Suffolk, Dickvein Jackson, Sir Tossalot, Sizzle, Maryjane Datsun, Sotto Voce, Slim Delivery, Skinny Kimmy, Georgette Lewis, Mikki Maclemore, Fallon Frankenstein, Maddie Iberia, Dexter Slocum, Ivan Grigoriy, Vladi Hubcaps, Bumpin Booty, Seymour Panties, or Cristina Salmonella.  Drop more in the comments or tell me if this list has any faves.

On the other hand, Frank’s boothies may have worked better for lacking names.  I think only one of them had a name?  Maybe I just use the name for my own purposes and leave them mostly unsaid in the story.

This is all useful thought but isn’t getting over the crux of the problem.  I’m not sure what to litcherally do to evoke the kind of mystery and surreal horror my husband likes the most…  I broke down and went several rounds with an AI (deepseek) to try and boil down some lessons culled from the greats, and this is what it came up with:

“To create a Lynchian surrealism in writing, focus on immersing the reader through vivid, tactile descriptions that make the surreal feel tangible and immediate.  Let the surreal elements operate as symbols of a deeper truth, but resist explaining that truth, allowing them to function with their own internal logic.  Anchor these elements in the characters’ emotions—their fears, desires, and traumas—so the surreal feels like an extension of their inner worlds.  Finally, leave the metaphysics unresolved, presenting the surreal as glimpses of a larger, incomprehensible reality.  This approach makes the surreal feel more real by being vivid, symbolic, emotionally charged, and ultimately unknowable.”

I could ask it to make that more concise (I’d already asked it to make it more concise, but you can keep going with that stuff), but it’s important for me to understand and contemplate it.  I’m not giving you the whole back conversation, but suffice it to say, this wasn’t just me asking “hey whatcha think about david lynch” and pressing go.  I gradually ratcheted down what I was most bothered by, most trying to find a way past.  Basically, what do I literally do on the page to communicate surrealism, without it coming off trite, lightweight, like some fantasy.

First part – take advantage of medium to include sensations you wouldn’t have in a movie, just vividly felt, immersive writing.  Resist explanation – to do this I need to know what the truth is for myself before i present the illusion.  Focus on emotional realities, intense feelings people can have in the mundane world, as motive for their entry points into the surreal….   … . . .. . .    Yeah, I’ve had a similar thought before, but it was escaping me as I beat my brains against the keyboard.

Alright.  The reality is … The housing project is a spiritual puzzle box, a trap that lets supernatural forces feed on different aspects of human souls.  The supernatural parasites don’t understand themselves any more than they are understood by the hosts – operate like animals on instinct, despite powers of speech etc.  I could come up with classes of spirits like the angelic hosts.

first sphere:  seraphim cherubim thrones.  closest to the greater reality above the puzzle box.second choir:  dominions virtues powers.  enforce the will of higher powers or operate the functions of the box.third sphere:  principalities archangels angels.  i wonder why there’s a lower tier of archangels and the highest of angels are also called archangels.  that’s like there being local priests called cardinals, or infantry squad leaders called generals.  gotta dig up pseudodionysius and bust his chops.

Why is the box there?  Machines naturally emerge from the spirit world like crystals from chemistry like organisms evolving to fill vacant niches in biomes.  A giant stepped on the earth, and from its burning footprint emerged complexity.  A throne made the shape, cherubs buzz above the fire like flies, seraphs connect the giant to every footstep it has made.  Virtues became the machinery of the box, powers prevent anyone from escaping into the spirit world, and dominions interpret the will of the seraph to rule over lesser spirits.  Archangels go between dominions and angels, which are the main run of parasites, principalities rule over mortal institutions, clans, gangs, etc.

What does this have to do with animals?  I remember when I was researching demons for The Septagram I also researched angels.  As the goetian demons in the story were supposed to be fallen angels, and I’d noticed that the descriptions of some of those demons were quite close to the depictions of some angels, I assigned former angelic ranks to the demons that appeared in that novel.  All that’s to say, I know angels as classically depicted sometimes have animals aspects – six wings, three faces where one is a bull and one is an eagle, that kind of shit.

Maybe all humans are animals, like, in their souls.  Henchpuss is really a kind of cat man, the foolish boys are ravens, somebody else is fish, somebody else is the ant king.  I dunno.  Is this something that all people have before they even come into the box, or something that develops once you’re there?  Is the little girl actually becoming the monkey?

The angels are parasites.  Some would just exist invisibly causing problems for people, or have weird manifestations like stickers notifying people of debts owed or repossessions, drugs that replenish themselves just when you were most desperate, light fixtures in weird locations that burn your eyes.  The archangels and principalities would be more human-like – the Godfather, the owner of the loan store, the owner of the bodega.  Is Princess half angel?

So the snake is a snake is a snake.  Maybe he’s actually a dominion – seraphs have a serpentine aspect, their go-betweens could share this.  He makes human babies into their animal forms and gobbles them up.  But this should be the truth underlying some visual metaphor?  It obviously already is a visual metaphor.  Still I think I could work better with an idea of an underlying reality that will never be explained on the page.

I think this is perverse.  Usually authors will not do this kind of thinking in public, leaving a trail where nerds could track down the answers to all questions and leave people going – oh, this is unmagical as hell.  thanks, i hate it.

But fuck it, we ball…

What does it mean for a person to have an animal soul?  What does it mean for a person to have a soul?  The animals pretty much have to be metaphors for people’s souls, which might be glimpsed visually one way or another in the story, but are not true reality themselves.

This dominion angel snake just eats the souls of children for food.  Om nom.  Serving a seraph means he has more access to the world above than other members of his choir.  He’s aware of his insignificance and that of others.  Humans are nothing to him.  When he interacts at the weirdo party, he may be aloof to others present.  He should have the power to control all lesser angels with a word – the mob boss, the princess, the cockroaches in the hall.  He should have power over fire.

Bro collects souls like you do in Dark Souls – sits on em.  Do they ever digest?  Reduce to nothing?  He’s a snake full of eggs but they ain’t his babies; they’re victims having their dreams slowly digested.  God damn I’m tired.  Ugheuhfuhushdhdhgfghghghl.

I got a lot more thinking to do and not a lot of time to do it in; might come in the form of sketches, which i scan and upload later… I dunno.  Tomorrow, scene ideas.  David Lynch said if you have 70 scenes you have a movie.  We’ll see.

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