Republican Senators Wassup

Hey republican senators, I know most of you don’t like having to worship the floppy anal orifice of gibbering shitgibbon.  Maybe you’re a fascist, maybe you’re so greedy you’d see the world in flames and everything beautiful dead and too poisoned to rot, if you could save a nickel on taxes.  Maybe you want all women in chains, all queers and nonconformists and foreigners flayed and immolated on main street.  But do you want your personal hitler to be quite this embarrassing?  Quite this disastrously incompetent?  Quite this obviously weak, insecure, tiny handed, and internationally humiliating?

Anyway, March 15th is a very special day.  Since we’re all into violent historical reenactment now, you have the opportunity to do something very funny today.  Consider it!  Blame it on antifa.  Everyone will believe you.  I’ll back you up.  C’mon, you know you want to.  Treat yo’ selves.

🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️

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Homemade-ish Vegetarian Pizza

Pi day post?

Pizza Hut had been serving us adequately for a minute, but when it was time to cash in the free large pizza, there was something seriously wrong with it.  Like the pineapples had been shipped in antifreeze, I don’t fucking know.  It’s not like me to throw out leftover pizza but that wasn’t cool.  I used to work at that Pizza Hut.  Top Ten Anime Betrayals, in the parlance of our times.

So we decided to do a homemade pizza to make up for it.  Since I was a young adult and first able to customize my toppings, I’ve favored pepperoni, black olive, and pineapple.  We did this.  It turned out quite nice.  I would have preferred real pepperoni, but the fake kind weren’t too offensive.  I wonder that there might be a way to get them crispier, like pan fried for a moment?  But let’s just describe this recipe as it happened.  First draft was good enough.

Ingredients
Wad of uncooked pizza dough from WinCo deli area, idk, like a pound?
Pinch of flour.
Half a bottle of Botticelli brand Vodka Spaghetti Sauce.
Shredded mozzarella cheese, maybe 12 to 15 ounces.
Maybe a third of a bag of Trader Joes Vegan Pepperoni.
One small can of black olives, two-ish ounces.
A lil less than half a small can of pineapple chunks, three-ish ounces.
Maybe a tablespoon or two of mayonnaise.
Trader Joes Aglio Olio seasoning.
Garlic Salt.

Tools
Oven.
Very broad cookie sheet or pizza sheet.
Ladle, any material.
Smallish spoon.
Oven mitt or two depending on if you’re strong enough to one hand it.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  I got that instruction off the pizza dough package and it worked well.

I put a lil flour on the cooking sheet, probably cold have done a bit more.  This helps it come off the sheet without sticking, and I did lose a wee bit of crust on there.  When stretching the dough, ideally the side facing down will have just enough flour to easily come free, but not enough to be noticeable on the end product.

Stretch that dough.  Spin it, roll it, smush it with your hands, but be mindful to aim for an even thickness, avoid areas too thin.  Make it thinner than you might imagine; it will puff up.  I didn’t know if I was making it too thin, but it ended up being just right, flattened to about one foot diameter.

Pizza sauce.  Any tomato sauce is probably fine.  I think this is usually marinara, and that might have come off more classically pizza-ish than my vodka sauce, but I’d sweeten marinara a bit.  I find it too bitter sometimes.  The biggest risk of a pizza is that our natural tendency is to plop all ingredients in the middle, then smooth them out – resulting in a thicker pile at the center, which is the most likely spot to not cook thoroughly.  Doughy pizza fucking sucks.  The sauce is the first ingredient where you want to think about this, but the same principle applies to all layers:  Try to distribute all toppings evenly, but let them be thinnest in the middle.  Use the bottom of a ladle to push it around.

Mozzarella.  Buy shredded if you don’t want to be cooking for hours and hours.  I made this whole recipe in maybe a lil over a half hour; shredding would have added several minutes.  On that even distribution principle, I’d pour it in kind of a donut shape, breaking it up as I drop it onto the pizza with one hand.  Same as before, have some in the middle but not as thick.  Regarding mozzarella, you know practically no franchise pizza place uses pure mozz anymore?  They all used to have mozzarella, so now when you taste a slice with a reasonably thick amount of the stuff, it’s nostalgia city.  It’s not the most remarkable taste, but it feels gourmet when the most recent pie you had before this one was botched fast food.  So good I had to write about it.  Use mozzarella or don’t even bother.

Vegan pepperoni.  Leave some space between them to put on your other ingredients.  The pepperoni should be reasonably clear on top of each slice, for reasons I’ll get to later, so don’t bury them.

Sliced black olives.  Like the shredding, it ain’t worth it to do your own slicing.  Pat them dry with paper towel, or a thin non- terry cloth dish towel if you wanna be environmentally conscious but not leave lint all over your pizza.  Distribute between the pepperonis.

Pineapple chunks.  I was hoping to get the thinner slices like they have on most fast food pizza, but most of the cans have thick chunks.  Do avoid crushed.  The big rings could get sloppy too.  I took the thick chunks and sliced them into thirds, so they’d have a similar thickness to the olives and not come off more dominant in the final taste.  Even more important than the olives to dry these.  A lot of fluid on the pizza risks doughiness, and this flavor is better in little bursts rather than suffusing the whole with a vague fruitiness.

Mayonnaise!  Vegan pepperoni are de-vegan’d but much improved by wiping a thin bit of mayo on top of each slice!  More convincingly pepperoni-oid, tastes more tolerable.  I also put a thin bit of mayo all around the outside of the crust, to help seasonings adhere to it, and make it richer.  This isn’t mayo as thick white condiment; it’s mayo as a more easily controlled and thin layer of cooking oil.  Again, bottom of a ladle is a good tool, but for tighter control I used the bottom of a spoon.

Sprinkle the aglio olio on the pizza’s topping area.

Sprinkle the garlic salt on the outer crust only.

I forgot to, but putting a very thin amount of mozz on top could help hold it all together.

Cook for twenty minutes.  Outer crust should be golden brown, the center might look squishy but that’s the melted cheese.  If you did everything right, it should not be doughy.  Serve immediately.  Might burn an incautious mouth, but the outer crust in particular gets less nice fast when it cools.

It’s a shame this takes so much work, but it will taste great.  It makes Pizza Hut look like grotty scumbags slingin’ reheated garbage out of the back of a rusty white van in rural Arkansas.  They have a pizza oven; I don’t.  They should be able to make something so much better, but crapitalism gotta max that profit at the expense of quality, every time.

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Life List: Canada Jay

I had no idea what I was seeing.  I had no idea when the day began that I’d be up a mountain, getting snowed on in October.  But it was a good time.  Canada jays are Perisoreus jays, which I think are more closely related to Eurasian magpies than to American jays?  I dunno.  I’m no scholar about this stuff.  It’s all google if I feel up to it.  But on my honeymoon, we randomly went up to a lookout at Hurricane Ridge, in the Olympic National Rainforest, and saw these birds.  Never before or since.

They’re bold.  I heard that they are so used to getting food from humans that you can hand feed them, and I regret not trying that while I was up there.  They seemed bold enough.  I saw one buzz within three feet of another hiker.  It took me a while to work out the ID.  I certainly hadn’t expected them to be corvids.  They seem a bit smaller than other jays, which themselves are smaller than crows.  Maybe about robin sized?  Mostly grey-white, a little bit of black around the back of the head and more on the wings.  Dark grey beak, dark button eyes.  Nice.

Based on where we were, this was most likely the “obscurus” subspecies, which sounds cool, whether or not it’s actually at all interesting.  It isn’t.  Pay it no nevermind.  To me, this bird will remain associated with my honeymoon, like ravens, like red-tailed hawk cries, like peacocks in the road.  Much more personally interesting, even if that doesn’t transmit to y’all.

I have to imagine that somebody in my readership has much more experience with them.  Holler at ya dogg.  I’d be interested to know more about them.

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Gotdam Stygian Depths

Ohhh but sleep is so good, why must I ever deny myself its pleasures?  Sometimes when woken abruptly, I will have some memory of a whole other category of dreams that I can’t usually remember or don’t normally experience.  Not good dreams, but interesting and engaging while I’m in them.  The intense sauce of turbosleep…

If I notice the sky, it has seven suns or the one sun is moving across it too fast.  Architecture is cyclopean and laying at diagonals.  The ground could be covered in tide pools.  Cartoon characters walk among us unquestioned.  One time Jack Ritter from Three’s Company dropped a bag and Minnie Mouse and a cartoon door with two feet spilled out.  I might be Homer Simpson running from the Independence Day aliens in my tighty whities.

Monday night a human cat like Puss in Boots was being chased by competing bands of fantasy adventurers, running up and down buildings.  One building had condensation like a cold cola and I wiped off the entire surface with a wave of my hand.  I think this is the only state in which I have dreams in the genre of high fantasy.

When the alarm ripped me out of it, the glamer fell away.  I had Everybody Dance by Chic stuck in my head badly before I fell asleep and it came right back, asserting the continuity of waking life as distinct from the world of imagination.  I’m being driven to work as I compose this.  Ugh.

Ooh-ooh clap your hands.

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Life List: Stellar Jay

Stellers Georg was some kinda colonial naturalist who mushroom-stamped his name on tons of beautiful and rare creatures, some of which were famously driven to extinction by colonizers.  The push to rename birds like the “steller’s jay” … I really hope it works out.  Fairly certain some needledick mosquitofucker from le Fed will firebomb any university that endorses it tho.  One thought on these guys was just to call them the stellar jay, which seems appropriate enough.  They are exemplary creatures, with a head black like the cosmos and white streaks for eyebrows like shooting stars.

These jays are the only ones I’ve ever seen in Federal Way.  No scrub jays up there, no blue jays in this part of the state.  No big deal!  Stellar jays are enough.  They are very deft and sprightly, bounding and elegantly flapping up and down the canopy, jacking your peanuts, screeching whenever it’s screeching time.  Jays are corvids, but next to crows, they are supermodels and olympic gymnasts.  And yet, who is dominating in the colonized landscape?  I favor this analogy – jay is to crow as gibbon is to human.  A gibbon is brightly colored and very talented, cute and cool and amazing.  But humans win.  Brute force and pointed sticks.

I’ve wondered before in the comment section of a much smarter person than myself, could stellar jays be the result of a hybridization event between crows and blue jays?  They look like a blue jay that slipped and fell in a puddle of crow black, immersing their upper body in it.  Hence another suggested name, the black-crested jay.  I know some very distantly related bird species can hybridize.  This happens more commonly with waterfowl than with perching birds.  Still, I’m less inclined to believe it now.  Blacker color schemes can easily arise by convergence, and there’s no reason to doubt that happened.  But if genetics prove that crank theory right someday, I will be crowing about it.  haha.  crow.

Can I get through even one of these posts without mentioning american crows?

Anyway, I’m now in a two-jay neighborhood, with both stellar jays and california scrub jays.  It’s very cool.  At least, it will be until the icecaps melt and my condo is below sea level.  Until that day, let the jays screech for me as often as they please.

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Life List: Bushtit

The peepingest marshmallow peeps.  A bug of a bird.  There’s a trend in evolution that the adaptable base of a family tree is drab brown things that lack extreme specializations.  Merely being a minuscule flying dinosaur is a pretty extreme specialization, but within that, there are some birds that are more flexible than others.  For all I know, a bushtit is so specialized they’ll go extinct when left-handed buttercups fall to invasive ultrageraniums.  But colorwise, this feels very basal.  Everybody knows tits (haha, heyo heyo) have strong black and white marks on their heads and showy songs, fierce attitude.  So how is this timid tittering beige bug-bird a tit?

I looked it up.  They are not tits at all!  They’re in a mostly Eastern Hemisphere group that includes other bushtits and long-tailed tits, which are not even in the same branch of Passerida as the bold and familiar tits.  Sheisty.  American bushtits are the only members of the clade in North America, in all their beige glory.

I can’t emphasize enough how drab these birds are.  What color is their head?  Slightly reddish beige.  No, slighter than that.  It’s the Lacroix of reddishness.  It’s essenced.  How about the belly?  Yellowish beige.  No.  Less yellowish than the reddish essence on the head.  It’s all beige, man.  With beady lil black eyes.  If you don’t demand color in your birds, this is a cute look.  They have a nice shape – a borb with a long tail, just about kinglet sized.  Puny as hell.  They fly like those practice footballs with the little rocket part sticking out the back, almost always in a small flock.

I don’t remember the first time I took note of them, but while working as a security guard way back in the elevatorgate era, I started noticing them flying from one short tree to another, usually in the winter and usually when it was less busy with traffic or people on foot.  I have seen them in other seasons.  Maybe they’re more obvious in winter because that’s when they flock the hardest?

They don’t even sing boldly.  They squeak, like a chickadee that isn’t brave enough to get past chicka.  Not a lot to say here.  Cute little birds are cute, but unremarkable.  This series calls for remark and now I remarked.  Mark another one down.  American Bushtit.

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Fat Middle-Aged Genderqueer ASMR Unbagging Reaction: Trader Joe’s Crispy Dried Watermelon Chips

Need one o’ them there meridian responses?  Like unboxing and reaction videos?  Product reviews?  You like slow paced grainy video where the loudest sounds are packages rustling and fans whirring?  If ya want my body and ya think I’m sexy, come on baby let me know.  Sorry for rod stewarting at you there.  Point.

I referred to an inanimate object as crazy, in violation of my ableism policy, but I don’t know how to bleep it.  Enjoy this little walk on the wild side.  And go to sleep!

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OMG It’s Full of VVitches

Rambling incoherent dream the other night.  Our house was across a busy urban street from a house where a coven of vvitches live.  I’m spelling it like that because their communion involved chanting the word magic and floating in the air like the iconic moment from that film, tho in this dream they mostly kept their clothes on?  But they were masturbating, I remember that.  One of them was trans, all of them were very Hot Topic.

One night I saw a streetlamp fall down and shatter by their house, but couldn’t see well enough in the dark to see who did it or how.  In this dream my husband’s social stand-in was some kind of punk rock lady, and I was manmoding, still pants sectional tho.  Anyway, for some reason we felt the need to keep going over to the vvitch house, investigating them, trying to discover some big secret that would … defeat them?  Learn them to respect municipal infrastructure?

I found a cool bracelet in a charred pile of dubious stuff and resolved to steal it, tho it would need some repair.  We discovered their coven leader was a dracula of some kind.  My husband got swept up in the vvitch communion.  I defeated(?) their coven leader while that was going on, and they lost their powers, falling gently out of the sky.

My husband hadn’t been as brainwashed by magic magic magic as the rest, and shook off the spell, said some judgy words to them, and we went home.

As derivative as this was, probably no artistic use for it, but it was vaguely fun.  Maybe the flavor could be used in an RPG sesh, not like I’m doing that much lately.  The cool bracelet is the exact sort of detail I’d love to lift from a dream, make use of.  Like custom craft the bracelet in real life.  However, on waking, the design wasn’t that cool.

Why was I so antagonistic to vvitches?  I should be down with ’em.  Don’t be such a puritan, dream me.

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Plague Etiquette

Had a disease dream the other night, wish I’d taken better notes when I woke up.  I think we were in some kind of post-apocalyptic enclave or military installation, armed and waiting for an unknown threat.  Meanwhile, a plague was doing the rounds, inexorably getting everybody sick.  We were just waiting our turns and trying to avoid standing too close to each other.  But sometimes there ain’t shit you can do about that.  Like in my household in real life.  By the time somebody knows they shouldn’t be breathing all over everybody else, we’re all infected.

A guy came into the room to grab a pillow.  I reflexively stood up, like, what are you doing in here – let’s keep our social distance.  But he looked alarmed and upset by my impulse display, and I realized there wasn’t any point being rude.  I gave him a nicer pillow than the one he had been grabbing.

Another guy on my squad started to show signs of the illness – crusty eyes, slimy face.  I gave my best kindly expression and let my heart fall.  It was time for all of us to get it.  Maybe we’d live.  We’d certainly find out.

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Sceney Scene Scene

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SCENES

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

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

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

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

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

KILL THESE ROACHES
Matthew witnesses Dexter abusing Yolanda.

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

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

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

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

NIGHT MONKEY
First glimpse of the monkey with the dress.

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

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

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

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

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

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

GLIMPSE MONKEY
Monkey jump scare in the secret passages.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MORNING GIRL
First time Eun-ha is witnessed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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