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 71 super short scenes 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.

07 Matthew V, Freddy III, Lupe III:  Accused by Freddy.  Help me understand, my little man.  Horror.

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.

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…

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.

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.

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.

13 Freddy IV, Dario III:  The Shipment II.  Freddy convinces Dario to get Armando’s help acquiring it.  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?

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.

15 Lupe V, Bonnie III:  Lupe schools Bonnie.  Social Horror, Passion.  Bitch I cut you!

16 Hyun-Woo II:  Hyun-woo arrives, begins to investigate.  Mystery, Passion.

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.

18 Hyun-woo III:  Hyun-woo door-to-door, attracting bad attention.  Social Horror, Mystery, Passion.

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.

20 Ravens I, Bonnie IV:  They want to buy drugs from her.  Hint they will matter.  Mystery, Humor.

21 Freddy VI, Dario IV, Armando II:  The Shipment III.  Freddy+Armando+Dario get the shipment.  Mystery, Humor, Horror.

22 Matthew XII, Yolanda III:  Tunnel Time to investigate for Hyun-woo, Yolanda hint.  Mystery, Horror.

23 Matthew XIII:  Crushing, scrapbooking?  Passion.

24 Yolanda IV:  Messing with roach traps, yelled on by Dexter, talks to Dolly.  Passion, Horror, Mystery.

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?

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…”

27 Freddy VII, Dario V, Armando III:  The Shipment IV.  Freddy+Armando+Dario get the stuff put away, but hint of troubled relationship.  Humor, Mystery, Horror.

28 Lupe VIII, Don II, Armando IV, Freddy VIII:  Weirded out by dad and homies.  Humor, Mystery, Horror.  Again, what do they do that’s so alarming?  Still stumped.

29 Matthew XV:  Tunnel Time but decides to stop doing it.  Mystery, Horror, Passion.  Scared by monkey faces?

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.

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.

33 Matthew XVII, Don III:  Haircut to impress, realizes Don was at bacchanal.  Mystery, Passion, Horror?

34 Lupe IX, The Disease III:  Is weird with hoes.  Mystery, Horror?  The hell is he into.  The hell are they into.

35 Freddy IX, Armando V:  The Shipment V.  Freddy+Armando scheme to betray Dario and let Armando sell it with a more generous cut.  Humor, Mystery, Horror?

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?

37 Matthew XIX, Yolanda VI:  Dexter defeated, Yolanda victory stomp and fall into the roaches.  Mystery, Horror, Passion.

38 Hyun-woo VII, Armando VI:  By himself v. Armando.  Mystery, Social Horror.  What’s a loan shop?

39 Ravens III, Armando VII, Matthew XX:  Scratch tickets.  Mystery, Humor?  Ravens try to steal scratch tickets, almost get away with it.  Matthew accidentally covers their escape.

40 Matthew XXI:  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.

41 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…”

42 Lupe X, Bonnie V:  Have mercy, I forgot to be a lover.  Passion, Social Horror.

43 Matthew XVIII, 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.

45 Ravens IV, Freddy XI, Armando VIII:  The Shipment VI.  Ravens jack the goods from Freddy+Armando.  Humor, Mystery, Horror?

46 Yolanda VII:  Alienation.  Social Horror, Passion.  Maybe show her being bullied by other kids?

47 The Disease IV:  Is weird with baby chickens.  Horror.

48 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?

49 Matthew XIX:  Tunnel Time but getting exhausted and scared.  Horror, Mystery, Passion.

50 Matthew XX, 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.

51 EUN-HA ALIVE?  Mystery, Horror.  Showing her walking through the tunnels, alone and scared.

52 Yolanda VIII:  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.

53 Freddy XII, Dario VI, Armando IX:  The Shipment VII.  Freddy+Dario+Armando have a Mexican standoff over this anime betrayal.  Mystery, Horror, Humor.

54 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.

55 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?

56 Matthew XXI, 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.

57 Matthew XXII:  Tunnel Time more hints at supernature.  Monkey Scare again?  Horror, Mystery.

58 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

59 Yolanda IX, 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?

60 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.

61 Matthew XXIII, Yolanda VI, 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.

62 Matthew XXIV, 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.

63 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.

64 Matthew XXV, Hyun-woo XI, Freddy XIV, Armando X, 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?
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.

65 Matthew XXVI, 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.

66 Matthew XXVII, 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.

67 Matthew XXVIII, 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.

68 Matthew XXIX, 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.

69 Matthew XXX, 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.

70 Matthew XXX, Yolanda VII:  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.

71 Matthew XXXI, 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.

–