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Shmoo!
I figured out something. My guy is a Shmoo. When I remembered Puss in Boots wrong, I thought he was Puss in Boots. But Puss in Boots is a con man and a conniver, and commits all sorts of outrageous acts on his own initiative opn behalf of the hero. When I remembered Faust's homunculus wrong, I thought he was a homunculus (actually, I can blame that all on The Box of Delights. But the homunculus has his own agenda, and works on his own initiative to destroy Faust at the behest of -- no, not Lucifer, but somebody else in that league, I should look it up again.
Still, my guy isn't exactly a Shmoo. He isn't going to keel over in ecstasy because somebody wants to eat him. But he is literally born to please, and he can give you almost anything you want, and he wants to, except for the fact that people are following his activities and want to kill him to protect the conduit from overuse. If he could be free of that worry, he'd want to grant wishes all the time. Oops. IN revision, have to make this clear, the pleasure of granting wishes.
He's got toes, though.
Anyway, I added a couple hundred more words to Chapter fourteen, because I decided it was a juicier cliffhanger to stop just as they begin than to stop earlier, while he's waiting for Forager Girl to come out of the shower. I have begun Chapter fifteen with him waking up feeling all happy and grateful and wanting to stay with her, and her speeding off to school and not saying anything to him. Next: Winston emerges from his room, and talks about Forager Girl, and offers to take him to not-really- Labor Ready the next day. I think I'll send him off in search of windows to wash and skip the rest of the day, maybe have him return with stuff from a bakery that hires him. And then: some weird scene in the evening, and the next day, a successful not-really-Labor Ready day. Cliffhanger at the end of the chapter: will Forager Girl be sick of him yet? Or something like that. Chapter sixteen, return of the other roommates, and some not niceness around that, and a wish at not-really-Labor Ready, the necessity of fleeing again. Chapter seventeen: return to San Francisco, and a corner bar, and finding the superstitious wino in a park who recognizes him from the last time he had been in the city and has figured out -- because he is crazy -- what my guy really is, and imprisons him with wishes until the watchers come.
More bloodshed, fleeing again, and Chapter eighteen: the soup kitchen, learning about the KMart parking lot, going to work.
Leaving it till Chapter nineteen for Candelario to show up.
I figured out something. My guy is a Shmoo. When I remembered Puss in Boots wrong, I thought he was Puss in Boots. But Puss in Boots is a con man and a conniver, and commits all sorts of outrageous acts on his own initiative opn behalf of the hero. When I remembered Faust's homunculus wrong, I thought he was a homunculus (actually, I can blame that all on The Box of Delights. But the homunculus has his own agenda, and works on his own initiative to destroy Faust at the behest of -- no, not Lucifer, but somebody else in that league, I should look it up again.
Still, my guy isn't exactly a Shmoo. He isn't going to keel over in ecstasy because somebody wants to eat him. But he is literally born to please, and he can give you almost anything you want, and he wants to, except for the fact that people are following his activities and want to kill him to protect the conduit from overuse. If he could be free of that worry, he'd want to grant wishes all the time. Oops. IN revision, have to make this clear, the pleasure of granting wishes.
He's got toes, though.
Anyway, I added a couple hundred more words to Chapter fourteen, because I decided it was a juicier cliffhanger to stop just as they begin than to stop earlier, while he's waiting for Forager Girl to come out of the shower. I have begun Chapter fifteen with him waking up feeling all happy and grateful and wanting to stay with her, and her speeding off to school and not saying anything to him. Next: Winston emerges from his room, and talks about Forager Girl, and offers to take him to not-really- Labor Ready the next day. I think I'll send him off in search of windows to wash and skip the rest of the day, maybe have him return with stuff from a bakery that hires him. And then: some weird scene in the evening, and the next day, a successful not-really-Labor Ready day. Cliffhanger at the end of the chapter: will Forager Girl be sick of him yet? Or something like that. Chapter sixteen, return of the other roommates, and some not niceness around that, and a wish at not-really-Labor Ready, the necessity of fleeing again. Chapter seventeen: return to San Francisco, and a corner bar, and finding the superstitious wino in a park who recognizes him from the last time he had been in the city and has figured out -- because he is crazy -- what my guy really is, and imprisons him with wishes until the watchers come.
More bloodshed, fleeing again, and Chapter eighteen: the soup kitchen, learning about the KMart parking lot, going to work.
Leaving it till Chapter nineteen for Candelario to show up.