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)

–

70 Scenes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

–

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PROFILES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Looking Back at Wasted Potential

digging an old post out of drafts at the last second…

 

Rather than look forward to (this predated my doomerism policy)the apocalyptic corporate fascist world war three the orange ballsack is trying to start, let us look back upon the wasted potential in the recent Space Shooters films.  There were warning signs that J’brahms was too superficial and glossy to stick the landing.  I even clocked some of that stuff along the way, but chose to not dwell on it, hoping for a bright future.

Well, it’s time to dwell.  Or at least tarry for a moment.  What a wild ten years it’s been.

2009 Space Shooters, dir: J’Brahms.  This was less of a soft reboot and more of a chubby reboot of the series.  Turgid?  If this reboot lasts more than two hours, seek medical attention.  But it had an emotional through-line that was visceral, and big visuals that spoke to the giant scale of apocalyptic content in my dreams.  It felt legit.  Hokey, overblown, but legit.  I especially liked when they retconned Quinoa Djinn to play up his conflicted half-human heritage angle.  That part at the Fulcan Science Academy when he turned them down to join Space Fleet – badass.  The lens flare was a bad sign.  Maybe it was the poison at the heart of the whole proceedings.

2013 Space Shooters: Into Batchness, dir: J’Brahms.  This movie took a part originated by a rich corinthian adonis and gave it to a member of an underprivileged race – one of the cantina aliens from episode 4.  It was a radical move to appease us SJWs, and I don’t want to come off problematic here, but he just didn’t have the charisma to carry it off.  I swear it’s not because of his compound eyes!

2015 Space Shooters: The Fuck Actually, dir: J’Brahms.  This was an interesting one.  The first two movies in the stiff reboot were both squarely focused on the crew of the Starship Galactica – Captain Kenobi, Quinoa Djinn, Lieutenant Neytiri, and the rest.  This one introduced a whole new cast of characters, as if maybe he was trying to walk back from the heat generated by the casting choices in Into Batchness.

It also played up scientology and the cool powers it gives you, which was an interesting choice.  Dark scientologist Kyle Ron wants to give everybody body thetans or something.  Ray Palpable and Finn the Human form the heart of the movie – new friends on a big adventure.

It was a return to form – a strong emotional momentum and big apocalyptic visuals, tailor made for me.  The actors made all the difference, because the script was actually very flimsy.  They told the story with their faces and the guy at the lens helped make that happen.

The warning signs here: When Finn ended the film in a coma, it felt like an insurance policy that would allow them to write him out of the sequel if the racist backlash to the trailers proved dangerous at the box office.  I was extremely fucking leery of that.

Plus the lack of time spent with character development – even compared to the first one – was maybe a hint the director might be a soulless scumbag who was good at playing heartstrings with visuals due to experience directing hallmark commercials.

2016 Space Shooters: Tokyo Drift, dir: Justin Lin.  This one returned to the characters Space Shooters had started with so memorably, but something about the commercials put me off and I never got around to watching it.  Nobody I know suggested I’d missed anything.  It had Idris “Heimdall” Elba and motorcycles, which were a setup for the spinoff series “Hobbs and Shaw.”

2017 Space Shooters: TemporoMandibular Joint, dir: Jack Ryan.  Abbey recently pointed out that this movie caught a lot more flak from squalling fascist baby boys than the previous scientology-oriented entry in the series, and that it was a bit mysterious.  My own feeling is that they were already primed for revolt by their previous casting-based tantrums and something about the moment in US politics made it feel like go-time.  I seem to recall some billionaire rapist emboldening a lot of domestic terrorists at the moment.

Anyhoo, Jack Ryan turned in a weird but interesting movie.  I loved a lot of things about it.  But again it had a new character who had sparked controversy with nazi bitch boys landing in a security coma at the end of the film.  And I felt like the main characters – Ray Palpable and Finn the Human – were weirdly lacking in agency through almost the whole run time.  At least there were strong hints they could come to dominate the plot in the coming sequel / grand finale.  This was two questionable things that loomed as possible issues in the last movie, but could have been easily moved past.

2019 Space Shooters: Rule of Rose, dir: J’Brahms.  It didn’t happen.  They used the security coma to separate out our girl Rosie from the main cast and bury her in the background.  Finn’s character never developed beyond the first movie when he went to rescue Rey from the big laser death planet.  Ray just got shuffled through the expected paces and landed alone with no found family, just an orphan like at the beginning of her movies.

Her scientology powers were given a dramatically uninteresting excuse lifted from early fan theories.  A beloved villain from an earlier iteration of the franchise showed up with zero fanfare and couldn’t help but fail to elevate the proceedings.  I didn’t see it myself, but I have all of this on good authority.  I’m not even going to pirate it.  It’s just sad.

Live long and prosperity be with you, Space Shooter fans.  I’m sorry J’Brahms turned out to be another false messiah like Josh Weedlin before him.  It just doesn’t pay to like celebrities that much, but even for non-fanatical types, this was a sad one to watch playing out.  I feel you, kids.  I feel you.

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Superhero Violence

Sure is fun when superheroes punch.  Nobody gets brain damaged or killed by it.  Biff bam boom.  This is less true when you get into edgier edges of the genre, like martial arts films where the punching goes on for hours and eventually some people get killed.  But if Captain America is punching a guy?  Spiderman?  Batman?  They just fly away and bounce, knocked out.  Beddy-bye time.

This was my problem with R Batts, as much excitement as that revisit to batmannery generated.  The initial trailer showed him beating on a guy to the point where IRL he’d be looking like Emmett Till, emphasizing that by having the other dudes in the gang watch the violence in mute horror.

This comes up in my dreams.  Last night I dreamed I was Spiderman, and I had to beat these super-powered bad guys.  But when does a beating stop?  In comics and movies it stops with the KO.  In my dreams, much like in real life, a person isn’t necessarily going to lose consciousness before the point where they become crippled or die.  So I punch this guy until he’s at a disadvantage and he’s still tusslin’.  Then I push his head against the ground hoping he’ll black out.  Instead his superpower finds final expression when he phases through the ground all the way to hell.  I said, damn, tell me he didn’t die!  I don’t want to kill people!  But his girlfriend was like, no, he’s dead.

The dream followed him into hell then, where he woke up feeling refreshed, the damage of violence falling away.  But he was in hell, so more tussling ahead.

My husband never liked superheroes because he identified more with the kind of weirdos they fight against.  The late Wesley Willis was not consistent about this, but it did come up a lot in his poetry.  Fighting with superheroes, not thinking of yourself as the person they would save.  This was not my point of view growing up.  I could be a superhero in my imagination.  I’m starting to feel it tho.  The idea one can punch this fucked up world into making sense is absurd on its face.  The face you’re punching.

Now we have Watchmen, The Boys, Damage Control, etc., looking at the other side of superheroics, with varying degrees of success and varying degrees of horror content.  I’m not really into those either.  I’m just pointing out a thing, not making any case for a way to address it, or saying it needs to be changed.  In the vast realm of comics I haven’t read, there is almost certainly one that would make me say Yeah, that’s it, but I’m not enough of a comic fan to be all that curious about it.  Feel free to drop recs anyway, or just talk about related subjects.

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It’s a Gas

What did ’60s people mean by “it’s a gas”?  Something like “it blows my mind, it’s trippy, it’s exciting,” I think.  Wasn’t there.  Were they thinking of inhalants, huffing gas fumes?  Or laughing gas, at the dentist’s office?  Probably the latter.  Wait, no, maybe it was just about the fuel to make a hot rod go – mostly about the excitement.

Whatever the answer, life is a gas, and it blows my mind, and it’s trippy, and exciting.  Too much of the last one, unfortunately, but one can abide.  I think of the laughing gas.  I laugh under stress sometimes, like when I was a six year old shepherd in a school play and lost it completely, or when I annoyed my husband by weirding out at the hospital.

I remember when my homeboy was trying to go on a road trip, with me and my brother, and his car gave up the ghost at freeway speed.  We were slumping to a stop while a chu-chunk sound played to the tune of “when johnny comes marching home again.”  I started laughing.  I remember when we did manage to actually undertake that road trip, and a map put us on something one would barely consider a road, with giant chunks missing and boulders in the way, in the rain in the middle of the night.  The gas tank had a “remaining miles” display which was ticking down from two to one to zero super slowly as we struggled up a gradual incline that never seemed to end.  Inappropriate jokes, stifled laughs.

We finally crested that hill as dawn broke and the remaining miles jumped up to ten, gravity helping us out.  I hope we all crest this hill together, and in the meantime, I hope my coping mechanisms don’t get too annoying.

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