midnight cat of rustling leaves bts

For those who missed it, my Halloween story from yesterday:

http://dielikeadisneyvillain.blogspot.com/2021/10/the-midnight-cat-of-rustling-leaves.html

Now let's talk about it!

alright so the twist ending?? came from when I was thinking to myself and said wouldn't it be funny if debbie reynolds??? got cancelled!!! for eating people's skins???? and it's just like, she's picking off their scabs, kind of deal. Hilsrious. Probably could have told that inspiration in the "spooky story 2021" spooky story preview post but it's a spoiler so I, did not do that.

I'm still not sure whether it's a good idea just ending as I did, like if I should go back and add an epilogue paragraph that ties everything together- something like "well I'm not going to tell you the secret obviously, because it's a secret, but I'm no longer afraid of aging or whatever" or whatever. Bring back the, you think it's going to be a central thing but to me it feels kinda, abjured, um, kinda disjointed?

Right, I'm not going to say it's a hard and fast rule, but in, most, satisfying, horror, the monster stands for something. Like, the classic example, The Babadook is a metaphor for grief and whatnot. And Raimi's Drag Me to Hell can be read on a lot of different levels, and that's super dope, and all that. And I didn't consciously, in the writing process, have that be the case for The Midnight Cat of Rustling Leaves, the cat?, but... well, we'll get to it.

want me to talk about prose stuff okay i'll do that i'll talk about prose stuff

First person! It's in first person. Present tense. I'd wanted to do it in second person but I'd done that last year. And technically the year before that, with the, he's standing behind you right now, "twist" "ending." The first paragraph or so I wrote for the story, which I deleted, was about you, as the writer, who doesn't want to write in third person because naming characters feels like too much power and doesn't want to write in first person because you have to do voice. And yeah I guess I did do voice, not just the THIS IS THE TITULAR CAT stuff I did out of apathy commingled with desperation.

One of the things I tried to do with the prose, I noticed I was using a lot of hyphenated phrases in the beginning so I tried to lean into that, incorporate more of wherever I could. Hopefully all that comes to a culmination in the heartbeat paragraph, string-of-a-bunch-of-hyphenated-phrases lubdub, and hopefully that sets up the shift into acceptance of fate; the former idea (of culmination) was intentional while the latter idea (this being the shifting point) is something I'm just using after the fact to say, yeah, that would make me look super smart if it were intentional. 

Seeing that paragraph specifically as a climax, rushed such just because it was late and I was tired, does kind of make me, not dislike those bits as bad? Just kinda smoothed over that, as a transition, and realizing it would be a good place to at least bring that aspect of the prose to a head. And if that's the climax, and acceptance of mortality is the turning point of the story, maybe it comes across as that, like the Midnight Cat is a metaphor for, aging, or acceptance of aging, or whatever it would be. Perhaps if I got a bead on that I'd be able to come up with a satisfactory epilogue paragraph, but for now I'm comfortable not yet being in a position where I'd know what it would be.

Does that make the scab also a metaphor, I don't know.

While we're still on the subject of hyphenation, though, there are no such hyphenated phrases after this climax, and that was intentional. There's not many paragraphs from climax to resolution, as tends to happen story-structure-wise, so it's not obvious, but that is something I did intentionally, not including any hyphenated phrases like story-structure-wise after the hyphenation climax. So even if I can't say "the climax of hyphenation is a turning point into the narrator accepting his fate, on purpose, I'm very smart", I can say "there aren't any hyphenated phrases after the climax of hyphenation, on purpose, I'm very smart." Though it would be great if I could say, I intended that as the shifting point, and it transitions smoothly as I intended.

it was late and i was tired

Because, I totally had to rush, a lot, especially near the end, in order to publish the thing by midnight, so I'm not sure if it came together or not. It was late and I was tired. The paragraph where I basically say YEAH SO I GUESS I'M NOT EVEN GOING TO PRETEND THIS IS SOME OTHER CAT for example, is way kludgy of course (though actually not written that late in the process? Far from the last thing I wrote, I mean.) (And let's say that was intentional too, to introduce the concept of, humor, into the, thing, in order to transition into the actual skin-taking, easier, and it's late again and I'm tired again and I'm sorry.)

I spent the bulk of my writing time on the beginning, knowing how it ended and what the horror element would be and everything, and then I spent so much time setting up the circumstances under which there'd be a scab in the first place, and not have it be some clearly-just-there-to-set-up-something-later plot device. Like yes there's a, skateboarding accident, and, shoot I wanted the main character to be an adult, not a child, thus spun off from there into the -life crisis thing and back to the beginning. The horror element itself being leaves/a cat, would thus be entirely arbitrary to that. Hopefully I ameliorated that adding the Nick Northrup character to establish that, this childhood rumor of this monster, establishing the rules early on as part of that- takes your skin, but very carefully avoiding saying, takes all of your skin! 

And his other two urban legends, non-cat, to rule of three that stuff. (Or, "the triple," rather; "rule of three" has a specific expository meaning, having to do with setup, reminder and payoff.) The axe-faced Waterbabies are a real local legend, about Pyramid Lake I think. Mother Whispers, candyman and bloody mary and stuff-esque, obviously, is just a cool name for an urban legend that I came up with by asking myself when I got to that part: hey, you know what would be a cool name for an urban legend? I reported earlier that the story would be The Midnight Cat of the Whispering Leaves, had to change it to Rustling lest the word whisper get repeated too often. (I do that a lot, sometimes unnecessarily, I mean I can just feel when I've already used a specific word earlier, change one of them. The part where the narrator pets the cat on the head while she brings her head up to his head, that almost killed me, but it was the clearest way to tell that part of the narrative.)

Nick Northrup established, I could also add him to the The Triple and round out the figures who are growing old. Audie Murphy, Tony Hawk, and Nick Northrup. Audie Murphy, whose hands I think about a lot and so whom I decided to slap in my thoughts on in here. Tony Hawk, he of the early 2000's comedy movie cameos, is what I know him for lately for some reason. And, sucks teeth sucks teeth you don't want to name a character because it feels like too much power, Nick Northrup. Named after Danny Norton from second grade, and, inspired ish by seeing Charlie Gomez the day before, on the 30th. He and the rest of the Will Shamberger band had come into the movies to catch our showing of Nightmare on Elm Street, Charlie in a full Michael Myers thing with the jumpsuit and everything. Not really looking old underneath it though. And it's far from the first time I've seen him in a while. Will Shamberger band are friends of the Theatre.

Um yeah I think that's all I wanted to talk about. It's still late and I'm still tired, so... 

☮