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partly-cloudyskies · 3 years

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1, 12, 16, 18 + one I didnt pick but you secretly want to talk about

This has run long so I’m putting it under a break. Some thought about my current writing projects, an old abandoned project and, uh, word counts below!

1) Welp I got three WIPs:

This is How We Grow: My first real attempt to fully commit to the heightened romance and emotion of an idealized pastoral setting but sometimes there are shadow monsters plus this also acts as an excuse to see more of Soup’s weblena art.

The Longest Shadows: A future fic where Lena becomes a badass shadow witch and Webby learns that the McDuck legacy is a complicated thing rather than the unalloyed good that she unthinkingly embraced as a youth (Yeah how you doin season 3).

The Glass Factory: A Maebea NITW AU where Mae and Bea find and cling to each other out of a shared sense of alienation as they bear witness to an economically depressed city in its final moments before the shockwave of gentrification turns it into something unrecognizable and hostile (YES I’m still working on it!!)

12) A dumb line from an old WIP... there are so many abandoned projects that are like, two chapters and then a separate file full of quotes that I thought were cool and then I never looked back on them again. I’m sure those hold up. Let me check my old writings folder...

OH NO. I have it and I hate it but I’m going to post it anyway:

Detta rises over the Blackfuse mercenary as he struggled with the debris crushing him. Short even for a goblin, she looms over him like a Titan contemplating the fleeting life of mortals. She raises one hand, closed in a fist that sparks and howls with the wind.

“I’m gonna put a hurricane in your skull. See what it does to your brain.”

FOR CONTEXT, this is an old WIP from, like, 2016. It was a World of Warcraft fic that I REALLY wanted to write. It took place during the Panderia campaign and was set entirely in Bilgewater Harbor, an island city of goblins that is almost entirely empty in-game but I always liked its chaotic design. It was about Detta, a goblin Shaman who had given up adventuring and became a freelance problem solver in Bilgewater. She had a Storm Elemental she named Dizzy who she used as a secretary. One day Korkron troopers loyal to Hellscream bursts into her office and tells her they want to hire her to track down a criminal. Tozz, one of the troopers, is assigned to stay with her to make sure she stays on task. Eventually they would find the criminal only to learn he’s a Twilight’s Hammer cultist who had been in Orgrimmar instructing Hellscream’s forces on the secrets of Dark Shamanism and Hellscream was hiding this by killing everyone involved. You can take it from me that it was VERY lore compliant while filling in the spaces that the game devs had left CRIMINALLY underdeveloped and was going to be a dramatic story in the vein of film noir, with intrigue and divided loyalties and shifting motivations all on the eve of war and rebellion and WoW DESERVED to have better story than it did and you know what I’ve decided that is actually a brilliant line and I am PROUD of it and --

You get the picture. Next question!

16) Hm... this is a question that I don’t really have an answer for because all worldbuilding is good worldbuilding if you ask me. I think the thing about worldbuilding is that a good 90% of it doesn’t make it to the page and we kind of struggle with that because if you have all this research material then you might feel compelled to splash it all out on the page so you’d have something to show for all the time you spent. But that’s not what it’s for, it’s so that you have something to refer to when you need it. It’s the big part of the iceberg no one else gets to see. So maps? Spreadsheets? Research? None of it is ridiculous. All of it is good.

I guess the most of it I’ve ever done was for the novel that I wrote. I had a lot of material for that. I drew a map and I even tried to keep it to scale by sketching it out using travel route lines in Google Maps. I guess that is a little ridiculous, but I’ve no regrets.

18) I hate title and I don’t really spend much time on them. I certainly don’t keep track of how many titles I come up with before settling on one. I tend to be direct, I think.

Glass Factory is called Glass Factory because there’s a glass factory in NITW and my story takes place in an art studio. There’s an art studio in Alexandria called the Torpedo Factory, and that and its surroundings is what inspired that story, so Glass Factory. ez.

Longest Shadows is about legacy, the shadows cast by Scrooge and Magica and how Webby and Lena fall under those shadows. Plus it’s Lena so there’s almost a 100% chance any story with her has some kind of shadow reference in the title. So that’s that.

This is How We Grow was probably the most agonizing of my recent WIPs in terms of title. I think it’s a little clunky. But it’s about the two main characters growing and it’s... there’s farming. Plants grow. So... uh, that’s it. I might not be a huge fan of the title but I’ve never considered changing it. Never look back, when it comes to titles. That’s my motto.

Now for a question of my choosing...

14) I can knock out 500 words pretty easily on a good day, like on a real good day I can do a 1000 in half an hour. I’ve had times where I got an idea in the morning, wrote 2000 words about it, edited it by lunch and posted it by evening. But good days are few and far between and mostly I just put in a paragraph or two where I can.

I used to be very obsessive about word count. Like, I still look at it today but now it’s just like “oh, that’s how many words are in this file, okay”, but years ago I practically lived by it. I think part of it was me chasing that NaNoWriMo dragon, which was something I used to be pretty focused on. Now that I’m older I wonder if NaNoWriMo actually helps or does more to hurt aspiring writers. I mean, it’s not like there’s any external consequences to falling short but when you’re young and you’re looking to commit yourself to something, it sucks real hard when you inevitably fall short and it can be discouraging.

These days I’m more in a “what’s important is that you’ve written something” frame of mind. It doesn’t matter if it’s four pages or it’s literally a single word. I’ve had single word days. And it’s okay! It’s okay to write a single word. Progress is progress, when it comes to writing. Now, if I look at the word count, it’s because a chapter I’m in is running longer than I would have liked and maybe I should consider splitting it in two or something because I am the kind of person who likes the idea of a uniform amount of words per paragraph thank you very much. Beyond that, I don’t pay word count much mind and I think I’m a happier writer for it.

So yeah!

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burnings-stories-blog · 6 years

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Nights Before the Woods

Chapter 1: Change

Characters: Mae Borowski, Casey Hartley, and Candy Borowski. Setting: Possum Springs, Possum Springs School, Mae’s house. Summary: Mae’s just recently turned six, which means she has to go to first grade in the local school. Which is so small that every grade in the town, minus college, goes to it. Sadly, she doesn’t have many friends, doesn’t want things to change, and hates waking up so early for school. Words: 2,088 Notes: First and for most I’ve never written for anyone bellow the age of fourteen so I know that the dialogue in this might be a little cringy but I tried so that’s all that matters. Anyways.. This is basically take two when it comes to me making NitW stories. As in I had tried before, but kinda sucked at it. I guess. But I’m not gonna let that keep me down, so as you can see, I’m doing this all over again from the almost very beginning! Without further ado, here we go!

Tagging: Anyone who’d wish to be tagged in my story posts

Change. It was something Mae Borowski knew an awful lot about at such a young age. It may make her mom, dad, and granddad laugh when she says it. But Mae, even at the age of six, knew a whole lot about change. After all, it was almost every week her mom or dad would change the cereal.

Sometimes Mae would like what was in the cabinet, other times she wouldn’t. Then there were the times her granddad would change the story he’d tell her before bed, but most times Mae liked the stories he told her. She honestly couldn’t think of a time she didn’t like his stories.

But there was one thing she didn’t like, and it was the fact she had to go to school. She thought that only rich kids like Bea, or that one kid in Girl Scouts with the piercings and fancy toys, go to school. Not someone like Mae. So, the young Cat looked away from the car window which was being dotted by the rainy mist that had rolled in from the Great Lakes and at her mom to ask her a question “Mom. Why do I have to go to school? Only rich kids go there. And I’m supposed to be the tough kid! Who can wrestle any wild animal to the ground! Not a school kid.”

Candy never took her eyes off the road for anything. Not even when Mae asked her always very important questions. Which was odd to her, after all, her mom did say that she had eyes on the back of her head and that was how she was able to see Mae do something she’s not supposed to behind her back.

So why can’t she look away from the road? Maybe it would just be uncomfortable or something like that. Even still, Candy did answer her daughter’s question “Because Mae dear, everyone needs a proper education. It’s how you make a nice living for yourself when you get older. Besides, you might just get to make some new friends there! You might just get to see some of your old ones too! Didn’t Bea tell you she was going to be starting school a little earlier than you?”

Mae nodded a little “Yeah.. She did.”

She then huffed as she crossed her arms over her chest “But I don’t want new friends. I like the friends I have. Bea’s nice and funny.”

Candy nodded “Yes I know, you’ve told me that many times before sweetie. But Mae, doesn’t it seem like Beatrice is your only friend right now? Don’t you think you could use maybe one or two more friends?”

Mae rolled her eyes “Mom, she likes to be called Bea, not Beatrice... And.. I guess it would be nice to have more people to play with... B- But I’ve already got another friend that isn’t Bea!”

Her mom raised an eyebrow “Really? Who?”

Mae grinned “Granddad!”

Candy just chuckled a little and shook her head “I should’ve already guessed that.”

She then regained her more mom like serious attitude before continuing “But what I meant was more friends around your age dear.”

Mae just sighed a little “...Alright... I guess I can try.”

Candy smiled “That’s all I’m asking for sweetie.”

With that, Mae returned to the silence of the car ride towards Possum Spring’s very own school which housed grade one up till high school. It was quite a ways away from where the Borowski family lived, it almost felt like they had drove right out of Michigan a few times! But sadly, the end of their little car ride appeared not long after Mae decided she’d try and make new friends at school.

Pulling up to the school’s front steps, Mae unbuckled her seat belt and reached down for her back pack full of very essential items. Note books, pencils, her favorite toy, a book her granddad had given her a few weeks ago, and some random junk she had forgotten to clean out of it. With it now on her back like a backpack should be, Mae opened up the car door and hopped out of it and onto the pavement.

Before she could walk up to the school’s doors though, Candy rolled down the driver side door’s window and poked her head out of it “Have a good first day of school Mae, I love you.”

Mae nodded “Love you too mom.”

With that done, Candy returned her head to where it should be, rolled up the window, and drove off. Not only that, but Mae also got to walk up the short set of steps up towards the school’s front double doors and headed on inside. If Mae was alone and not in public, she’d say that she was a little scared about her first day of school. After all, she didn’t know where her classroom was at all! Luckily though, a nice man wearing what looked to be a janitor’s outfit with a bit of a short scruffy beard led her to the classroom safely.

Another thing Mae was silently scared off was the other kids. Mae has never been to good when it comes to talking to new people. After all, it was Bea who approached Mae first and not the other way around. So seeing all of these kids in one room was kind of... Scary for her. Luckily, all she had to do was focus on the teacher and everything would be a-okay. The teacher herself was a grey furred Rabbit who wore your average teacher clothes and had your average teacher smile.

Not to say Mae knew what an average teacher looked like, she just knows what one might look like from the shows and movies she watches. Once the teacher and other kids were all settled in for their first day of school, the lady picked up a piece of chalk and wrote her name out on the chalk board behind her. Which read out “Ms. Nat” and after she wrote that out she turned to face the rest of the people in the room and said “Greetings students! Today, as some of you know already, is the first day of school here for many people. I myself am new here too, so my hope is that you will treat both me and the new students as though we’ve been her since the beginning.”

She then clasped her hands together before continuing “Now then! I will be choosing one of our new students out at random to introduce themselves before we get started with today’s lesson! Doesn’t that sound fun?”

Some nodded, most ignored her though. Even still, Ms. Nat scanned around the room before making the worst possible decision she could have made in her entire time here at this school. At least, in Mae’s opinion, “Ms. Borowski! Please, come on up here and introduce yourself.”

The small Cat widened her eyes in shock before nodding and standing up. Silently, she walked towards the front of the room before reaching Ms. Nat’s side and turning to face the other kids. All of their eyes were on here, and she didn’t feel very comfortable about it. Ms. Nat then looked down at Mae and gave her a smile “Go ahead and tell everyone your name and work from there.”

Mae nodded and took in a deep breath “H- Hello... My name is Margaret Borowski and-”

But before she could continue, someone cut her off. Mae couldn’t see who, but she knew that they said “Wait a second. Margaret? Isn’t that a old lady’s name?”

Some of the other kids started to join in on this “Yeah!”

“My grandma’s named Margaret!”

“If she’s got a old lady’s name then what does are her parent’s names?”

Ultimately, Ms. Nat silenced the children and Mae returned to her with tears in her eyes. For the rest of the day nothing much happened. At least, until recess. When the time had come for that period in the school day to start Mae went straight for the swing set and plopped herself right there on one of the seats all alone. She was still hurt by what the other kids had said, so hurt in fact, she didn’t even notice the other kid sit on the seat next to her until he said “Hey.”

Mae looked over to the kid on her left, he was an orange furred Cat with green eyes that looked to be maybe a year or so older than Mae. She just looked away after inspecting him a little and returned to moping “What do you want? Why would you want to be around a six year old with a grandma’s name?..”

The boy just shrugged “Because no one wants to be around me.”

Mae looked back at him and raised any eyebrow in slight confusion “What do you mean?”

He sighed “They say my name’s to girly for a boy... I guess they’re right... What boy is named Casey Hartley.”

Mae smiled a little “I kinda like that name. Better than Margaret Borowski.”

Casey shook his head “no. I like Margaret too. My grandma is named Margaret like you, she’s smart so I bet you are too.”

At first, Mae was hurt that Casey said he had a grandma named Margaret, but then he said that Mae would probably be smart herself. That made her feel good. Her smile turned more happy than before “Thanks Casey!”

Then an idea of what she could say to him came into mind. But the real question was, should she? Should she just randomly ask this question she so suddenly thought up? Turns out, she did want to “H- Hey... So my mom wants me to have more friends around my age, a- and I said I would try and do that.. And well... Do you... Want to be friends?”

Casey nodded “Sure, that sounds like fun.”

Mae smiled from ear to ear “Really?! Thank you so much Casey!”

She then let out an excited gasp “I have a great idea! Let’s go play on that big play set!”

As she spoke Mae pointed towards the large playground near the back of the schoolyard. Casey nodded, smiling himself “Yeah, let’s do it!”

With that, they both got off of the swing set and ran towards the playground. Once there, they’d have a lot of fun playing all sorts of games. It seemed as though making a new friend was just the boost of happiness that Mae needed to get through the rest of the day friendly and cooperative. So when the time for her to head home rolled around, Mae was just a little reluctant to go home.

Candy, who was standing outside of her running car, motioned for Mae to come over. But her daughter hesitated and turned to look at Casey, who was still up on the top of the school’s small set of steps “Where are your mom and dad?”

He shrugged “Working. But you should go home. I’ll be fine.”

Mae nodded a little before heading off towards her mom, who of course, asked if Casey was her new friend. Which Mae happily said “Yes!” in response to. That also made Candy happy, and as they were pulling away from the school, she said to Mae “As a special treat for being the big girl I know you could be and getting through your first day of school safe and sound as well as making a new friend, I got you a little something. Check in between your seat’s cushion.”

Mae was already digging through the crack between her seat’s cushion and the seat next to her before her mom could finish, and what she pulled out was a whole candy bar of her favorite brand. She gasped in surprise “Is this all for me?!”

Candy nodded and Mae smiled wide “Thank you so much!”

Her mom smiled, and they continued on their drive home. Maybe school, and change, wasn’t that bad after all. It could’ve been worse. She could’ve been changed into a witch by Ms. Nat. She was to nice to not have something to hide. Mae knew it. Just like how she knew her house was haunted. After all, her granddad said so. Even still, Mae could see now that she could keep up her tough attitude and be a school girl at the same time. She liked that, she liked Casey, and she kinda liked school too.

THE END

#text post #nitw mae #nitw casey #nitw candy #nitw #night in the woods #night in the wood mae #night in the woods casey #night in the woods candy #nitw fanfiction #night in the woods fanfiction #fanfiction #tumblr fanfiction #game fanfiction #indi game fanfiction #Nights Before the Woods #NBtW

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innuendostudios · 7 years

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I Want It To Hurt: Thoughts on Night in the Woods

[massive spoilers ahead, but I’ll warn you before we get to them.]

I’ve been thinking a lot about the ending of Night in the Woods. Finished the game a couple weeks ago; it’s pretty much the only game I’ve managed time for other than 20-minute bursts of Nuclear Throne when I’m waiting for footage to render or just decompressing between obligations. I have a weird jumble of feelings about the game, many of them deeply appreciative and some... confused.

These capsule reviews aren’t meant to be any kind of consumer advocacy, but if you’re waiting for me to tell you whether or not you should play the game: yes. Whatever else I say, yes, you should go play Night in the Woods. You may not know what you think of it by the end, but if you’re the kind of person who reads my stuff, you aren’t going to regret playing it.

The game’s protagonist, Mae, seems exquisitely designed to remind a certain type of person of themself. I might be one of those people, or, at least, I was when I was Mae’s age. Mae is a 20-year-old college dropout living with her parents in her jerkwater hometown, unsure of what to do with herself and generally unwilling to talk about it. Her town's economy is drying up and it’s a lingering question whether it will still exist in a decade or two. Everyone’s out of work or working for less than they deserve. Most of her friends from high school are still there, working the same jobs, playing in the same bands, eating the same crappy pizza.

It’s horribly familiar. When I was 20, I was piddling around community college with no motivation to transfer to a university. My dad had been laid off during the pre-Recession recession and hadn’t seen comparable pay since. I spent most of my time hanging out in coffee shops in my own jerkwater town, chatting up all the kids who’d never moved away, killing time. I worked my first job at the video store that was also a liquor store, around the corner from the hardware store that was also a deli. Our local businesses were also dying, save the few that secured a spot on Main Street, though by the time I was 20 my town was becoming a bedroom community for San Francisco and, instead of turning into vacant buildings, the local shops were getting muscled out by Peet’s Coffee and Jamba Juice. We even had our own parallel to NITW’s annual Harfest, but we called it Pumpkin Festival.

Admittedly, I was never a delinquent like Mae, and never managed to play in a band, even badly, so the sequences when I got to smash fluorescent lightbulbs and play bass were a kind of wish fulfillment (Mae’s bandmates sound for all the world like they’re covering Joy Division). And it’s moments like these that create the simple pleasures of Night in the Woods. It’s a game where stealing pretzels to feed to some rats you found in an abandoned parade float constitutes a major time sink and a minor, beautiful victory. Like, maybe I’m a fuckup but I can keep some rats alive and that’s not nothing. It’s a game where the conversation trees talk about the selling out of the working class, about punching fascists, about anarchy. It’s a game where the critical decisions you make are about who you want to hang out with on a given evening. (For the record: I agree that Gregg rulz ok but as soon as I realized that Bea didn’t like me very much I decided, oh no, I’m gonna make this girl my friend. So I saw pretty much none of Gregg’s or Angus’ optional content in my efforts to be best buds with Bea, and I regret nothing.)

So this game is something special. Play it. Let’s talk about the ending.

*SPOILER TOWN*

If I had sum up my overall impressions of Night in the Woods, I guess it’d be a more extreme version of my feelings on Oxenfree - somewhere over the course of the game I went from actively liking it very much to just kind of respecting it. Only more complicated than that.

OK, so Night in the Woods hints at a larger, darker plot from pretty early in the game, and such a thing was directly teased in the Kickstarter pitch, so by the time such things make their way into the game we’re all amply prepared for it. We’ve known all along that "there’s something in the woods.” I’m still not sure how to put into words my feelings on what that something is.

OK, OK, here goes: in the early stretches of the game, Mae has dreams that hint at what her mental state is up to, but as the game goes on, the dreams become more and more consistently about confronting giant animal gods. She also sees what appears to be a ghost man kidnap a kid at Harfest, but no one else sees this. Mae becomes convinced that there’s some kind of ghostly power that’s getting inside her head, while her friends worry that she’s cracking up. Still, they help her investigate various ghost stories around town, for her sake, and Mae’s health visibly declines and her dreams get more intense, until one night she finds herself communing with what may or may not be an utterly indifferent God who does not care about her or anything that lives on Earth.

Eventually, Mae and her friends track the ghost men into the woods and it turns out they’re not ghosts, they’re local men in hoods who are some kind of death cult. They believe they can keep the town from dying by kidnapping and sacrificing undesirables to the demon goat who lives deep beneath the old mines. They tell Mae that this is what’s been visiting her in her sleep.

So: Mae thinks she may be dealing with ghosts or God, the cultists think it’s a demon. Meanwhile, Mae’s friends think she may have some poorly-treated cognitive issues - turns out Mae had some kind of psychotic episode years back where she hospitalized a boy because she just couldn’t see other people as people anymore, and she’s been grappling with this disconnection for some time and going to college without good treatment may have made it all much worse. And maybe all this talk of careless gods and demon goats is just Mae dealing with the ugly parts of her own psyche.

Anyway, so Mae’s friends straight up shoot one of the cultists with a crossbow and then cause a mine cave-in that dooms the rest, which is, no matter how you slice it, a pretty sharp tonal shift from what most of the game has been. And, before escaping, Mae has a vision of sorts, where she feels herself sucked underground and once again confronting some kind of supernatural being.

And she just talks to it. She says she’s done disassociating from people. She knows that maybe nothing lasts, that maybe her friends will all drift apart and her town will die, but if that’s what’s going to happen, she wants to accept it. If everything disappears in the end, she wants it to hurt when it does.

The question, then: in this moment, are you, the player, talking to God? A demon goat? Or the dark parts of a mind in need of treatment? Or, a similar question: is the town dying because of the stagnation of wages, the shipping of jobs overseas, the failure of government to support small towns? Or is because the town needs to sacrifice to the beast that lives in the mines?

The game doesn’t have an answer for you. Instead, the game’s stance seems to be: whatever the answer, it’s out of your control. Be it economics, fate, religion, superstition, or mental illness, it is not a mystery you can solve, a villain you can shoot. It’s something you will have to live with, day by day. It is inexorable that, on a long enough timeline, everything ends. Maybe it doesn’t matter why. When you stare into a void, maybe it doesn’t matter whether you’re talking to God, a demon, or your own broken mind. Maybe what matters more is what you say.

You may never know the truth. So hold on to what’s good and live with uncertainty.

I feel like this is a very profound thing for a game starring an anthropomorphic cat to say. I also can’t shake that it felt more profound when I typed it out just now than when I experienced it myself.

As a person from a jerkwater town, who’s spent his entire adult life working his ass off and yet perpetually broke, who’s spent the last five years grappling with depression and anxiety and the radical acceptance it takes to know that his thoughts can sometimes be extremely alien to him, and who has walked the long path from Christianity to wishy-washy agnosticism to weary atheism, I feel this moment should have slugged me in the gut. I can’t think of a single game that would say such things, and I can’t think of a game that seems more explicitly tailored to my sensibilities and experiences.

But while I respect the hell out of Night in the Woods’ ultimate message, I still feel conflicted about how it plays out. I don’t think the game is wrong to veer into odd genres at the end - so many of its themes are internal and philosophical that literalizing them in order to build to a climax feels like a smart decision. I don’t know if it’s that the game spends such a long time raising questions and then kind of rushes the answers. I don’t know if it’s that Mae and her posse seem a lot more credible cracking wise and worrying about money than shooting people with crossbows. It’s certainly hard for a game about normal people with normal problems to throw in highly abnormal problems for the final hour.

I don’t know if I maybe just need to play it again.

I feel like the more I think about the ending, the better I understand it, but I still can’t say with confidence that I like it. And my appreciation of the game seems deeply rooted in the front half and not the final third.

And I don’t know when I’ll have time to go back in and play it again. For now, I’m glad I played it once. Whatever it was, it was certainly something.

#capsule review #night in the woods #adventure games

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lost-in-the-stars-nitw · 7 years

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Lost in the Stars (NITW Fanfic)

This is part 2 of Lost in the Stars.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GnitGNQnrrqPBn09jUeyKUZURMenKTh9suu9e0dQ5VQ/edit?usp=sharing

A fan fiction that takes place after the events of Night in the Woods. It has original charters and hopefully what people consider to be ok writing. I plan on continuing to update this as time goes on. I’ve been working on this for a while and I hope you all enjoy it.

SERREEEREEEEEEE. FALLING AND FALLING AND BURNING AND SKY AND FALLING-

Jon bolted awake, gasping for the air his nightmares had somehow torn from him, his gaze searching wildly around the unfamiliar room as his extended claws clutched the thin blue blanket to his chest. The sudden rush of fear making his fur stand on end making the cat look less like a cat and more like a giant ball of fluff. 'Where the hel- oh, oh yeah maple drive, new house.’' Realization dawned quickly, this was the new place, he was safe so was everyone else. He wasn’t falling down a black pit he was laying on an air mattress. His fur settled and claws retracted. He let to blanket drop and groaned as he rose to his feet to survey the room in detail, he had only seen it once before and didn't seem to recall much of little he saw last night. It seemed different from when the realtor had shown him it 3 months ago, ‘What was it?’ The room was barren except for the few belongings Jon had thrown in corner. Four white walls broken by a set of sliding closet doors, the door out to the hall behind him, and a window that acted as the only light source. A dim predawn light trickled in through the panes illuminating the few belonging Jon had brought in the night before. The air mattress in the middle of the room with a small black electric air pump nearby, a brown and tan canvas satchel laying in a heap with a white “The Sky Paints Me Anew” shirt and his black fabric jacket made of an almost denim material that was well worn and patched on the elbows. 'Ol reliable, a classic.' Jon rubbed the sleep from his eyes as he put on the clothing and picked up his bag from the dusty hardwood floor, pausing to crouch down and to re-lace the black combat style boots he had worn to sleep. Jon stuck his head out the doorway and into the nearly pitch-black hallway, ears flicking.

‘No one must be awake, it's too quiet for those animals to not be asleep.’ Jon gave a look up and down the hall, before heading down the stairs to his right and into the living room. ‘Well “Living Room” is a bit of a stretch to be honest.’ The dim room was carpeted in a deep brown. ‘Heh, I bet if I laid down of this carpet naked and closed my eyes it would be perfect camo. No one would be able to tell where the floor ends and I begin. Hidden cat.’ The walls were the same white as the rest of the house, with an opening to the dining room to Jon’s left and a large window as well as the front door to his right. The only other things in the room where a large limestone fireplace on the wall opposite of him and Danny curled up, asleep, on top of Veronica’s kick drum dead center of the room. Dan laid curled in his thin sweater and black pressed pants, silver chain dangling from his side to his back pocket. The same outfit he always wore. Not like anyone in the band had more than one outfit anyway. Jon took notice of his bare feet. ‘Took off his shoes though, loves those shoes more than I care to think. He probably smooches ‘em when we aren’t around.’ A pair of black dress shoes were laid neatly to the side of the drum near the sleeping dog.

Jon wandered into the quote on quote “cozy” kitchen. It was cramped and old to be frank. The cupboards and walls were painted a ‘lovely’ burnt orange with large lime green polka dots. ‘It's like living in the cover of Mom’s old records. Bleh, one hundo percent repainting this room.’ A small somewhat new stove, and a light-blue refrigerator that looked like it fell out of an art deco piece, sat tucked amongst the cupboards and counter space.

“Damn, that’s an old ass fridge!” Jon exclaimed with surprise before opening the ancient tomb to, unsurprisingly, find it empty.

Shrugging, he hopped onto the counter removing a thin metal laptop from his satchel. With the click of a button the screen popped to life, illuminating half the kitchen in a bright clinical light. ‘UGHHH! Why is the brightness so high?’ After adjusting Jon glanced at the corner of the screen under the bobbing mascot of Tophat Computing. 5:22 A.M. ‘Five hours of sleep huh? No wonder why I feel like a hot pile of garbage.’ 5/14/2018. 472 notifications form group chatterboxes. 3 notifications from personal chatters. 14 unread emails. ‘Oh boy can’t wait to see what new threats I’ve got from good ol Benson. Debt collectors are such assholes.’ Jon clicked and scrolled through the chatterbox group chat labeled “Lost In The Stars. r/general” ‘Ehh, mostly questioning why we didn’t stream last night. A few people bitching about the upload schedule, of course. Some new donation messages. Cool. I’ll let TJ deal with the group chat.’ Jon closed the window and clicked on the email notifications, sure enough more threatening emails. He clicked on one randomly and replied. “You’re getting your money asshole, I’m already caught up on payments quit threatening me. I know you don’t have legal right to any of my shit. All in all, hope you are doing well Benson, please go choke on a hot pile of ass. -Jonathan C. Malloney.”

“That’s done.” Jon muttered, closing and stuffing the laptop back into his bag before hopping off the counter top. He let out a sigh as a special thought creeped into to his mind for the countless-th time in his life. ‘Well now what? I should be doing something but what?’ His paw reached for the crumpled pack of Camel 45-s and his lighter out of instinct. He lit the cigarette and took a deep drag before sighing out a grey cloud of nicotine and stress. ‘We need furniture… and food… and let me guess.’ Jon reached out and flipped the light switch above the sink. ‘Yup, need lightbulbs too, probably for the whole damn place.’ He ran a paw through his rat’s nest that people called “hair”, taking another long draw from the 45. ‘I still need to go over to that realtor’s office and make sure that the rental request went through. Fuck… That’s a whole other can of worms to deal with, but we need a place to record and stream that isn’t where we live. I still need to call the city council about renting out that old party barn. Oh yeah, we also need to get a phone. Yeah that’s somewhat important.’ Jon took a moment to shake himself out of his own head, he was pacing at this point arms crossed and holding his lit cigarette in his right hand. He sneered and the smoldering vice perched between his fuzzy fingers. ’I really ought to stop smoking these, they’ll kill me someday… but that day isn’t today.... You are clearly stressing yourself waaay out Jon, just focus. Today will be food and light bulbs. Get food and light bulbs and today will be a success. Food, lightbulbs, success.’

Jon stepped out of the kitchen and back into the desolate living room. ‘I read that there was a Food Donkey and some kind of hardware store in town. I’ll try and track those down, I guess. Not like they’ll be open at 5 in the morning, but hey why not?’ Jon scowled at nothing in particular as he made his way through the nearly lifeless living room and out the front door.

#night in the woods #nitw #possum springs #writing #fanfic #fan fiction #Lost in the Stars

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