My manic episodes (I have bipolar 1), being turned into a novel and a nine-episode series. The drive toward Nebraska, the fight test, the color game that ran the universe, the show that was never being filmed, the freestyles no one recorded, and the black holes left behind.
by Cody Simons · narrated by Chonsky the Investigotter · 25-track soundtrack
content note: mania, psychosis, police, drinking and drugs · if you’re struggling, call or text 988 (US)
I am Chonsky the Investigotter of the Association of Associotters — also known as a Seachonk — and the only thing I’m certain of is being uncertain. I’m not even sure if it’s spelled Chonksy, or Chonksea, or Chonk C, but no matter. I’m also your Narrotter, though these aren’t my only names. You can call me Cody for short, or by pretty much any name you like: The Teal Seal, Ronnie or Reggie Beaver, Toné Toné Toné Toné Soprano, Loop·e, Hop·e, Cray·z, eetc etc.
My mother wasn’t a fish — her middle name was Ellen, so maybe she was an eel — or an elk, I guess. It wasn’t as clear as Albert Camus, that White Bear Camel (Alb–Ber–Camel, get it?). Anyway, this is a weird introduction to the game, but the gameframe — a.k.a. the color game — is the biggest thing in our universe; AI and robots do everything else. I’m not the main character of the game, I’m merely “The Field,” but I’m pretty sure that’s the most important role.
I’m a dumb otter — and for every offensive thing I say in this story, I will donate to the right organizations. […] The game will make sense; you just have to bake in it until the “aha” moment. I have a habit of lying to myself a lot; most things in the world are apparent if you dig. I choose to be Dumbnocchio (yes, you can call me that, too). My biggest habit, though, is associating things — I can’t help it. I never bury the lead, and I’d certainly never hurt myself, but I told you already I’m not the lead, “merely ‘The Field.’”
By now, you probably have a few questions: Who is the lead? What exactly is the color game? What the fuck is this even about? Has the writer ever read a book? (Not many, but I’ll answer that one for you.)
Well, it’ll all be described in Part II — which is a whole 993 pages away (tmeses are my nemeses) — so go fuck yourself. I don’t want you to read my books, you bastards. #dontjoinus. Also, you’ll notice a pattern about the numbers in this book: they’re pretty much all prime.
So what is our story about? It’s about Love, or Infatuation at least. It’s about substance use and abuse, and about a normal guy from Tennessee who wanted to be anything but normal, at all costs. It’s about music and design and rap and word play and art and life and physics and memes — and an ode to stealing everything from everyone and standing on the shoulders of giants.
Like I said — delusion is the most powerful tool you have.
chapter I opens on a bright blue shovel, sealed under Memphis ice — the first obsession
53 chapters planned, about 103,000 words, told two ways: THE ACCOUNT, in scenes, and THE FILE: short, flat, dated. Chonksy signs the margins — C.
The book comes first. If it gets made, this is the shape: one limited series, nine episodes, about eight hours, and then it ends. Every episode runs the same engine: my highlight reel turns into a game with rules only I can read and a prize I can see but never reach. And when someone finally comes to the door, the jokes stop at the knock.
Planned in nine parts named like the episodes: 53 chapters, about 103,000 words. It’s a novel, inspired by what I went through.
One limited series: nine episodes, about eight hours, no second season. Mostly live action, with the Chonks cutting in through my own drawings.
The outline, the novel plan, the main titles, the memory montage for Episode 1’s cold open, a lookbook of concept frames and title cards, and the game screens.
A chimp conductor wakes at dawn and drives into the sun. From there it’s all my art: ten pieces from 2022–23, each one turning into the next, then all 9,419 pieces at once swirling into a black hole, and the dive lands on the cover. Animated with AI from my art; original score.
the ten pieces, in order: my art, 2022–23
Cold open: a Memphis ice storm, and a blue shovel a two-year-old can see under the ice but can’t reach: “I want it now can’t get it.” Then the highlight reel, funniest and dumbest first: Memphis, Nashville, Harvard (statistics by day, drinking by afternoon), New York.
A summer of weddings, a crush that starts at a friend’s engagement party, and a phone filling up with art. By fall, the people closest to me can see something I can’t. The title is the punchline of a wedding speech.
Told on screens: Dog Physics, a spiral that seemed to talk back, and a sudden drive toward Nebraska. It ends on a note I wrote that April: “some form of delusion.”
The city as an escape room, played dead straight: no E’s, every S a ZZZ. Dad comes to stay. Late in the hour, one rewind plays the city back as just a city. Then the black.
The gray fog after. Then Miami as a caper (a spider bite, too many hotel key cards, a string of meme coins) and my brother’s wedding. The title is from a note in the fog: “Hope for a comedy, settle for a friend.”
The biggest laughs of the series (rap battles, the color game, New Year’s Eve), then two mugs on a table and one unbroken take to a knock at 3 a.m. You see the door, never the police.
The plainest hour: no score and no jokes at the hard parts. Then, slowly, the humor comes back, and a narrator is born on the page: “You can call me Cody for short.”
A half-hour mini-episode.
It ends where it started: the blue shovel, still turning under the ice.
Inside my head it’s dense hand-drawn neon; outside it’s plain live action. The Chonks (Chonksy, the SEACHONKS, Baboom the chimp conductor) cut in for 5 to 30 seconds at a time, always through a drawing I actually made, and never at the knock.
How one memory is stored: a blue shovel frozen under Memphis ice, followed from the first photon to recall 33 years later.
explore it ↗Two full manic episodes about two years apart, plus the long elevated runway between them — assembled here from my own notes, which I kept through all of it.
Part of the first one has its own number now: February 2023 is Mania 0, Hyphen-Minus. “It’s number zero,” named “after the spiral because like I was talking to a spiral or at least I thought it was.”
It starts at a friend’s engagement party — ninety minutes of conversation with someone, and a likeness my brain refused to put down for the next two years.
Seven weddings, including one at a castle in Ireland. High-dose Adderall, 50+ all-nighters, and a vape pen that never left my hand.
The most productive day of my life, spent entirely in bed: inventing Dog Physics. The universe is a fractional dimension somewhere between e and π. Rounding is fundamental. Blue is conscious.
“I had a sudden urge to just GTFO and drive towards Nebraska” — the 50th state. I just kept driving. Ended up in Detroit instead, abandoned the rental, flew home, and told a friend everything.
“I went back home and I started rapping.” A van of strangers seemed to be following me through Williamsburg. The cops got called. Everyone, I noticed, was wearing exactly one black earbud.
It ended — in my head — at Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania. The line of demarcation. (I was definitely still manic.) Then six months of antipsychotics: no crying, only fake smiles.
“It all started with a spider bite it seems” — start playing The Soft Bulletin by The Flaming Lips if you want. A half-tennis-ball balloon on my back, bleeding through hotel sheets in Miami Beach. I never got it checked out.
The chonks reemerge on crypto twitter. I launch a small economy on Pump.fun: $eULeR, $CCHONKS, $OFFO, President Shrek, Bear Marketoff, Zippy the Platypus. None of them pump.
My brother’s wedding in Cabo. I quit the pens the day before. At some point there is a scene where I shower with my clothes on, still singing.
Four hours of sleep a night for three weeks. The spider bite becomes a Neuralink. The house becomes a set. The mosquitoes in a Florida backyard become robotic.
At 3am the cops are at the door. Five days on an involuntary hold, then a transfer to a third hospital, where I draft a writ of habeas corpus asking to be discharged. It is not granted. I get out on January 17.
I wake up as the inauguration plays on TV and it all just… ends. Maybe the sleep had been corrected. The only two contests I knew I’d lost: rapping against Kendrick, and saying “Joe Biden” — a contest that, in my head, Trump had created.
In between the two sits the part the book is named for: six months of antipsychotics. “It smoothed my brain and dumbed me down… I didn’t cry once, I only smiled fake smiles.”
The delusion had architecture — rules, teams, a cast, a language. This section keeps the exact colors of the notes app pages it was all written in.
Everyone gets a color team and an animal — assigned from your name, exactly like the notes say. Initials, substrings, affiliations. You can petition to change your animal, but the acceptance rate is astronomically low.
gameframe is also a real product idea now — the mania gets co-author credit
In April 2023 I went back home and I started rapping — hours of freestyle, alone, certain it was all being recorded for the show. It wasn’t. “I thought everyone was recording; next time I will definitely press record.”
Saw war in Warsawcracked a cow in Krakowhad a good dance in Gdańsk
Do it the hard way, no E’stryna catch these Z’sA to Z, A to ZZ, A plz
Tumbleweed / no weed we tumblingot stubble on my facerumble in the jungle then
I can clang — clearly insaneat least it’s got a rhythmthat doesn’t require my brain
300+ songs came out of the episodes · 70+ keepers · 25 made the album below
One of the core games was Karaoke Revolution, effectively — performed in a rigged house with the 24/7 panda cams on, alongside my dog and my parents. I wasn’t covering the songs; I was the people singing them.
Best scene, per the notes: showering with my clothes on in Mexico — still singing.
I was in psychosis.
I was in one-sided secret love.
I was in obsession.
I was in a mania.
I was not in a movie.
The movie was a tragedy.
The black holes are the gaps — the weeks that don’t play back, the months on medication where nothing was sad and nothing was happy, the parts of the story I only know because I wrote them down while they were happening. “I am missing a part of my brain, and I just want to sleep it back to health.”
Blue was the first obsession — a bright blue shovel sealed under Memphis ice when I was a kid. Blackness and blindness, my catastrophizing ass knows, will be the final one. The book is about everything in between. follow the blue thread →
Made for the series in September 2026: AI concept frames and title cards, built from my notes. The only face in them is an AI version of mine, and none of them is my art; my art is in the main titles.
written and scored alongside the first draft: one chapter, one track · one thing plays at a time on this page
No cameras were used in the making of this show.
There was no show.
Everyone listed was just living their lives.
Real people wander through these episodes — friends, coworkers, family, and a girl I never said much more than “Sup” to. On this page they stay anonymous. In the book they get fake names and real love.
The concept frames, title cards and game screens were made for the series with AI, from my notes. None of them is my art, and none is a photo of anyone; my art is in the main titles and the strip under them.
