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!

–