Blackbook City is a series of... comics or stories, she hasn't quite decided what medium she'll actually lay it out under, by Arruruerie. That's right - it's unpublished, and in several areas, pretty much undefined/gray as far as how the plot goes, though when she finally defines it, there might just be a link on this page for the sake of sharing.
Originally intended to turn out to be a spinoff from another vague project called Swansongs before its creator became more interested in it than its would-be predecessor, which will probably turn out to be the prequel if she gets back to it properly.
The story of a Dystopia created when a coatl (here treated as an extradimensional dragon) plane-hopped to find a place where she could stay and forget all about her failed pursuit of the target of what had developed for her into a Stalker with a Crush situation and not have to deal with the ire of stalkeree's companions, settling in a reasonably idyllic world where, taking advantage of the situation, she established herself as a powerful figure. After that, all hell broke loose, somewhat literally, her presence bending reality and letting more monsters and demons pour in, the less ambitious of them setting up seedy positions in society and the more ambitious establishing themselves as lesser nobility.
And naturally, the world's original inhabitants were scared out of their minds. In an effort to retaliate, their own original aristocrativ families took charge as the closest thing their world gone mad had to government among humans and set up an unorthodox police system called the Card Squad to keep the more unscrupulous demons in check, consisting of a pack of tame animals (under an assumption that only humans with odd affinities/connections to animals can match equally oddly-empowered or animalistic monsters) paired to a bunch of underage kids (under an assumption that the best human-animal pairs bond early).
Blackbook City provides examples of:
- Animal Motifs: Yes, there are the dogs, as well as monsters and people alike with motifs of birds, cats, bats, wolves, and cows, for starters.
- Aristocrats Are Evil: Most aristocrats.
- The Big Bad Wolf: There are two monster characters based on the Big Bad Wolf, one named Lurker and the other quite simply called Bigbad.
- Can't Hold His Liquor: One of the four scenes that would be the introduction to Blackbook City, each centered on Zelda and Ace, Chester and Queen, Annabelle and Jack, and Julia, Marta, King, and Joker, ended up featuring Zelda squeezing information out of the assassin Johnnycat, attempting to disguise himself, via a drunken slip of the tongue.
- Cats Are Mean: Among the main cast on the demon side is a Cat Boy assassin and burglar based on the Cat from Hell.
- Eye Scream: Melanie, one of the humans, resents the Blackwells, one of the human noble families, for causing an incident in which she was attacked by large birds and lost an eye, and Momo, Lady Orochi's head maid, is missing both eyes and sports a Glasgow smile from an encounter with a kuchisake-onna when she was young.
- I'm a Humanitarian: The Joker branch of the Card Squad's suit-of-cards-named segments is made up of zombie people. Several of their dogs, also zombies, and monsters are also fine eating humans, and Bigbad actually prefers it.
- The Mole: Among Lady Orochi's mansion staff is Freya, a human girl posing as a witch, sent there as a spy and potential saboteur by the Card Squad. She has a couple of hellhounds as sidekicks who take care of jobs requiring unusual ability for her.
- Musical Assassin: Lucifer and Celeste Georgia, Chester of the Card Squad's parents, are the one who thought up the Card Squad and have attack-animal partners of their own, respectively a parrot and a bat, who they command with, also respectively, a violin and a piano.
- One-Winged Angel: Most of the demons are normally in plain ol' animal or humanoid forms a good deal of the time, changing when appropriate.
- Raising the Steaks: The zombie dogs working on the Card Squad.
- Shout-Out: Making a few was bound to happen. They include ones to...
- Stephen King: Johnnycat. See Cats Are Mean.
- Beowulf: Working for an underground neutral radio station are a recon man partnership with the codenames Beowulf and Grendel.
- Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street: Lady Orochi and Mushimaru ended up this way to an extent, and in fact, Mushimaru is a transformed beetle. A few of their clothes were designed somewhat based off of Judge Turpin and the Beadle as well.
- The Devil Went Down To Georgia: Chester's father Lucifer turned out to be a violinist, which... kind of slated him for a future fight with Johnnycat.
- Resident Evil: The Blackwells are were-crows, two of their clan are in the Card Squad, and one of them is a zombie in the Joker branch. Arruruerie ended up naming her dog Forest.
- Twin Switch: Bigbad and Lurker do this now and then.
- Villainous Crossdresser: Bigbad is a master of disguise and even not when masquerading as a woman often dresses either as Lurker, his sister, or in vaguely old-lady clothes, thanks to Little Red Riding Hood.
