When Ikebert calls about a Heavenly Eye Cult hideout, RJ finds himself on a mission with his PolyBuddy and the Hellhound he might also be interested in. Neither Vaggie nor Loona are really okay with this. So between fighting blood-sucking cultists, now RJ has to manage Vaggie's extreme skepticism and various slow building issues with their Polycule Deal, as well as the very weird, super awkward sexual tension he has with Loona. Can this little team pull it together and stop the Cultists in their tracks? Also, Ikebert discovers something he hates more than Communism. I know, we were surprised too.
This chapter includes the most random reference to animated fantasy movie that I doubt anyone would expect.
Niffty finally calls in her favor with RJ. And it's terrifying, horrible, absolutely disgustingly awful! Because she wants his help... winning a Reality TV Cooking show! Oh, wait, that doesn't sound nearly so bad. Maybe RJ will actually have a relatively normal adventure with Niffty for once. Assuming he can handle a snobby rival, a clownish host, some eccentric celebrity judges and Niffty's paralyzing camera shyness. And that's assuming a VoxTek program is ever going to play fair with him. If so, RJ may have to serve up his own plate of tricks to help Niffty pull out a victory.
When the Hotel Crew heads to a gym for a little group therapy exercising, RJ and Vaggie find they have a few things to "Work Out" themselves given Tail's recent admission into their polycule agreement. But that tension takes a backseat when a muscle headed gym hog starts throwing his way around. Now our PolyBuds (And Tail) have to find a way to get rid of this jerk, hopefully with only minor property damage.
Remember to limber up before performing Loony Tunes Antics!
RJ and Tail's newfound agreement is put to the test when Angel Dust ropes them into an offer they can't refuse at a special performance for some legitimate businessmen. RJ's guitar skills soon come in high demand to keep the crowd happy, but at least one patron has other plans. Will our Wyvern Wannabe Rock Star strum his way out of this? Or will a few sour notes see the audience hang him with his own guitar strings?
Sleeping with the fishes has more than one meaning this chapter!
For those who have been waiting for it, here's how RJ now looks in story. You can see he's gotten considerably stronger looking, not jacked but certainly physically fit. Tail has popped out. And he's got a new nose horn. So hey, he's had a pretty significant glow-up. I still need to draw his full demonic form, but that's going to take some time since it has even more detail and there's quite a few alterations here and there. This is just his base form, and I hope knowing how he looks helps you better visualize the character in the story proper.
Please leave your comments below, I would appreciate it.
"S'up Tumblr! It's me! Tail! RJ the Dragon's Tail! If you've bothered to read that little collection of scribbles that nerd has posted, you know I have a mouth now and I can finally do all the things I always wanted... well, within reason. RJ's still in control. But he can't shut me up anymore, so there! HA! Anyway, feel free to ask me whatever stupid stuff you've been meaning to ask, I can field it. I got all the dirt on RJ's psyche for one, plus I know a bunch of stuff that didn't make it into the story itself. So ask away! It's Tail's Time now!"
-Ask Tail Anything Post!- Leave a Comment or ask a question and Tail will answer it.
Heya, kiddos, ready for a real hero to take charge of this story? RJ is out of commission and his Tail is in the driver's seat! First stop, Imp City for some much needed steam venting, and then we're going to find a certain wolfy named Loona and really make her howl. RJ can just do what he does best and sit around sulking while I finally show Hell whose boss down here! Don't touch that dial, or whatever you use on that screen of yours, because at long last... finally, IT'S TAIL TIME!
I still can't get the links to work properly. Oh well.
Dragon Me to Hell - Behind The Scenes - Chapters 27 to 31
Bout time we got back to doing these and we got quite a lot to talk about for the next five chapters. Quite a bit happens for our dragon hero over the course of recovering from his failure at the beach resort. Including meeting a new friend of his, so let's get started.
Running with the Wolf: It was always the plan that this series would start to bridge both halves of the Hellaverse together. And while we started early on with Striker, I knew people wouldn't be satisfied until we saw at least one person from IMP show up. Chapter 27 gave us two, Loona and her dad, Blitz. And for that big intro to them, as well as a certain seriously gross shark, I knew I needed something special. That's why I put things on hold until a special project of mine was finished. That being a brand new title card.
I went back to Ciphy_Master for this one, asking him to fulfill my little request. I was more than prepared to wait for it, as good things take time. I just didn't anticipate how much time it was going to take and honestly that was my fault, I probably should've made the request much sooner, but I wanted to finalize the chapter to get a good idea of what it would look like. Ciphy was himself preoccupied with other matters though, so it was just something I had to accept. It at least let me catch up a ton on my backlog. The reason you're getting so many chapters, including the longest one I've written to date, is thanks in part to Ciphy taking his time to get this thing right. And I was beyond pleased with the results.
As a special treat though, here's my personal concept for how the title card looked originally.
I honestly think Loona turned out better than I thought she would. The Goat Boiz... eh... yeah... no. Ciphy improved on every aspect honestly. Keeping me appraised on it all. I especially like how he ended up making Loona look way cooler. And how he positioned Razzle and Dazzle was also way more clever than my choice. I am immensely appreciative over Ciphy professionalism on this project, I cannot thank him enough for seeing it through, knowing he was going through a lot at the time.
Anyway, talking about the meat of the chapter. I wanted RJ to deal with the aftermath of falling on his face hard at the Beach Resort. That primarily meant him being forced to come to terms with his newfound doubts and concerns. One of which was if he was ever going to be good enough for Charlie and if anything he did for her was going to amount to anything more than just being a good friend. Not that he's looking for a reward or anything by being nice, that's not the point. He just wants to prove he can be more than a friend. Unfortunately, that means he has to come to terms with the fact that maybe things will not work out how he wants all the time, whether or not Charlie is his girlfriend.
I needed a way to separate RJ from Charlie though, to better emphasize the fact he felt distant from her now as he was starting to question if he was kidding himself. If going after Charlie was the right move for the right reasons. Because if all he does is screw up, what good is he to her? That's not the only problem though, but that's for the last chapter we'll be discussing in this post. Primarily, I needed to force RJ away from Charlie to emphasize his feelings that he is not succeeding in his goal and it feels further away than ever. So... I got Charlie sick and unable to complete an important errand.
Sick Charlie was fun to write, partially because she gets to be a little more goofy and silly, mostly because she's allowed to be gross and vulnerable. Nothing in canon said Charlie can't get sick, so I went with it. Drawing on all my experience of watching people and myself get sick, it's not fun, believe me. And there's probably a whole B-Plot's worth of stuff to write about how Charlie's flu wreaked havoc with the Hotel. But that's for another day.
KeeKee was placed as the chapter's primary macguffin if you will. The source of the story's overarching narrative. Although, to be fair, I doubt anything else could've filled her role. She is the only pet that Charlie has that is nearly so important, given that she is essentially the Hotel itself. I threw Raz and Daz into things for one primary reason, they had not been used in a major way yet and I needed to give them both some time with RJ. It also would present an opportunity for both of them to reveal their true natures later on and prove that they weren't just sickeningly adorable. It was a nice bait and switch for RJ to discover and provided some decent comedy in between the major vignettes.
This brings us to the real co-star of the adventure, Loona. And her and Blitz showing up now reveals ultimately when this story is taking place in parallel to Helluva Boss. I thought it would've been more than obvious by this point, especially when chapter 26 took place on Spring Break. But it seemed I didn't really do enough to make it clear. So this is the official admission, Chapter 27 takes places about a day after Episode 3 of Helluva Boss, Spring Breakers, where Charlie met and was ultimately shot down in her pursuit of Vortex.
I think the reason I chose that particular point in time is at least easy enough to ascertain. RJ and Loona both had awful Spring Break experiences. RJ tried to confess his love for a girl and he ended up ruining the vacation she planned, not on purpose, but still ruined it just by being there. Loona tried to hook up with a guy she liked and let her defenses down to do it, essentially humiliating herself in an attempt to get him to like her. And he did... but he was already taken so that was over before it started. So now both of these two characters, feeling a little lost and loveless, are forced together in a circumstance that neither could have predicted.
And it's all Blitz's fault because this is Season One Blitz, and Season One Blitz is an asshole! I'm not saying anything more about certain... actions he might have taken beforehand, but primarily he leaves the worst impression on RJ because he is, ultimately too self-centered to care about anyone else's problems besides his own. Loona needs her shots, she is uncooperative because she hates needles, and RJ is in the way of him getting one as fast as possible. So in the process he makes it harder for himself and harder for RJ. It was probably the most perfect introduction I could've given Blitz to this story, and thankfully his voice actually seemed to match Brandon Rogers' delivery and style. Although I probably should've used the F-Word more, who knows?
Naturally the most crucial step in the chapter was actually giving a believable reason why Loona would ever want to team up with some rando sinner she just met to find a cat she couldn't care less about. Making it partially her fault was a starter, having her coach it in a way to prevent RJ from developing a grudge against her and her dad, but primarily I just have her admit it's so she can get out of taking her shot. That seemed appropriate enough for Loona as a reason.
Loona is... difficult to write for some people. I find too many folks try to soften her edges. That's not Loona. Loona is sharp, you can't soften those edges for her. She needs to be willing to drop them and allow herself to be vulnerable. She won't do that for just about anyone. So she's abrasive, mean, she doesn't take RJ seriously and questions him constantly, expecting him to reveal that he's actually just a horrible person and that he doesn't actually care about the cat. That like every sinner he's out for himself in some fashion. So when RJ proves he truly does give a shit about KeeKee and is disappointed, even blaming himself, for what happened, it's pretty clear he's not like most sinners. Especially when he bothers to be nice to her without really expecting anything in return. In fact, he's kinda worried about dragging her along on something that's more trouble than is worth involving her in. Loona actually has to convince him to let her tag along.
It was after that initial hurdle, reassuring Loona that RJ isn't just another shitty human soul, that the two are able to open up to each other. RJ because he needs to vent about his current rash of problems, and Loona is receptive to it because it reminds her of what she's going through after Vortex unknowingly shot her down. From there, I could build out the chemistry between them and actually show that RJ might have another path with someone else. Especially since it seems his tail has a clear interest in Loona, a strangely affectionate one in fact.
Those were seeds planted for later, which have just sprouted in chapter 32, but we're not there yet.
The things I wanted to avoid was making it seem like Loona was instantly crushing on RJ and vice versa. I wanted more of a bonding feel, a level of understanding and some interest between them that goes unsaid. And wanted all of that to feel natural. Earned. Having a shared experience being unlucky in love is one thing, I needed it to go deeper. Namely that both RJ and Loona feel isolated, alone, like they can't do anything right and never will be able to even if they change. That's honestly the deeper meaning behind the "Jessie's Girl" sequence, beyond just Loona seeing just how much they have in common.
That was a fun song sequence to write by the way. Especially with the duplicating Charlies. Mainly I did that to knock RJ down a peg by reminding him and the readers constantly that they were all very obvious figments of our dragon's imagination. Having them vanish, as well as showing Loona in the middle of them all, was a nice bit of greater foreshadowing suggesting RJ has other options he could pursue.
However, he's not ready for that discussion.
Another neat bit of the song? I didn't have to really change any lyrics except switch around the pronouns and the names a little. It was a near little trick honestly. I wish more songs afforded me that sort of chance to play around and not be too taxing when it comes to switching up the lines.
The Hellhound who believes cheesing is an actual thing was mostly just an excuse to have him take KeeKee into the alley so they could both get captured. Honestly though, I suspect some people would actually think you could get high on cat pee.
If you want to know where I think Loona actually started getting a bit of a crush on RJ, it was around the point where he tried to tell her to not put herself in danger for her, and she pulled her whole faux angry response to that in a bit of tough love right back at him. Which only became more pronounced when during their flight he tried to reassure her that she was both a good person, declared they were friends, and casually informed her she was attractive. Which not even Vortex said. Sure, he said she was cool, but so did RJ. Anyone can say you're cool. Someone telling you you're attractive, without it even being a flirt but just them saying it directly as a matter of fact, that's a big deal. Especially to someone like Loona, who has very obvious abandonment issues and crippling doubt about her self-worth. So if anything cemented that she was attracted to this guy, it would be that.
I mean, come on, someone flying you through the city, calling you beautiful... that's gotta be on a few trashy romance novel covers.
Alright so... Chaz... uggggghhhh. I hate Chaz. I mean, I like writing him because he is all kinds of terrible. But I really do not like Chaz. I'm amazed he has any fans, but they exist. They are defying to odds and... declaring that the most easily hateable character on the show is actually just a silly little guy. But I really didn't want another one of RJ's potential enemies to just outright hate him. I have a lot of those and more on the way, I needed to switch it up some. So here's an enemy who is takes one look at RJ and decides "Would" and who else would think that but fucking Chaz, am I right? So, hey, if you like Chaz for some reason or hate him which is more likely, good news, you now have a reason to see RJ pound his face in to ward off unwanted advances.
And it's not because RJ is straight or because he has a problem with being hit on by a man. Chaz just physically repulses him. As he should.
The real villain of the moment though was the Deacon Witchfinder, the leader of the Heavenly Eye Cult. Dressed in head to two in religious garb and standing out from his fellow Christian Cultists by wearing a hat on his head. Specifically, it is a pilgrim style Witchfinder General hat. You can probably guess when exactly he died. His first name is also important, Deacons in the Church are meant to be a voice between the higher echelons of the faith organization to those of the common folk. In this regard, the Deacon Witchfinder speaks for what he believes is the highest authority in the universe, that being the Heavenly Host or God Himself, telling him what to do. Is he lying or delusional? Who can say. But it's certainly effective given how many followers he has.
People have pointed out he feels like a great foil for RJ, a sinner who doesn't believe they belong in Hell and has let that twist him into something horrible. They're mostly right, but there is a bit more to the Deacon Witchfinder that you'll find out in time.
You found out one major thing though. The Deacon and his followers drink the blood of Hellborn, thinking it grants them supernatural power that will help them overthrow Hell. This probably does not work but they believe it does and that's what matters. Faith is a real strong motivator. Of course, the whole point of this is to show that the Heavenly Eye is a a very deranged version of Christianity. One that has taken the multiple practices of the various sects of the Faith and twisted them into something it was never meant for. They've essentially become Satanists, or really... the Christian Panic of Hell. But they refuse to acknowledge that a ton of the shit they're doing is frankly... messed up. Mainly because they do not see the Hellborn as people. And imps and Hellhounds aren't exactly seen as much better than that by the rest of Hell either, so they're easy pickings. Giving them ample opportunity to harm the lowest rung on the totem pole without anyone really giving a shit.
It's not like life matters much in Hell to begin with. People die all the time and no one bats an eye.
I suppose the song "We Drink Your Blood" was a little on the nose, but it felt appropriate. Given the song is about communion, but twisted in a way that makes it sound much more sinister, and also the song is by Powerwolf and Loona stars in this chapter... to not use it would be criminal. I brought out the less likely song "Malcolm" to sort of balance the scales and show RJ was willing to take a lesson from Loona about leaning into the skid. Something I feel she did more than once as a method of survival. If everyone thinks she's a bitch, they'll leave her alone. And if everyone thinks RJ is a fuck up, then they won't expect him to hit back. Given what happened at the Beach, it's the best advice RJ could get.
Corky's return was mostly just a way to catch up on the first pack of Hellhounds that RJ befriended. And to close off another random little link that RJ had mistakenly made with Avery as she's moved on. Which allows Loona to step in as his actual link to the lower totem of the Hell Hierarchy and his persistent friend. I feel like the moment they wrap things up, make that deal to help take down the Eyes, and share some last minute advice helps cement their growing chemistry. And I'm glad people resonated with it as well as they did. The fact they all bought that Loona could actually be a little interested in RJ was important to sell.
But more important was RJ returning back to the Hotel victorious with KeeKee safe and Vaggie appreciative. He apologized for his behavior, recognizing what he learned with Loona and was rewarded by getting to watch trashy TV with Charlie. Just to show that he still has a chance with the Princess and he was worrying himself into doubt for nothing. That chance being that Charlie needs friends to help her, and that's more important than anything. RJ can sort of accept that better now, but he needs more help later.
I really enjoyed writing the Soap Opera bit for the end of this chapter and the ones in the following one too. Those were just funny as hell. And the final line where RJ happily admits he did indeed make a friend was a nice cap on everything, giving RJ a win after a major defeat from the last chapter.
In any case, let's move on to the next chapter, where I continued that little gag with the soap operas I started.
This Was An Excuse to Do the Bane Voice: I'm just going to admit that straight up. I came up with this chapter to do a lowkey Warriors riff and make up an excuse for RJ to do the Bane Voice. That's basically it. But there's certainly more to it than just that. This was also an opportunity to show RJ taking part in what is essentially someone else's episode. Yes, he learns something, but he's not really what the chapter is about. It's about Sir Pentious, Angel Dust and Cherri Bomb.
I continued the Soap Opera joke and expanded it somewhat to give us a peak into just what kind of nerd RJ is. That being, he can make anything about going over lore. Sometimes too much. It was a little harder than I thought as I didn't want to retread old ground. But thankfully, it seems sudden revelations from people who should be dead is a well-worn trope in Soap Operas. So I suppose the fact it just keeps happening is perfectly fine.
The crux of this idea was basically me thinking "What would happen if Cherri was trapped being a reality star for Vox?" I think it came from a line from the "Pop!" song honestly. As it suggested that Cherri's reasons for blowing stuff up was to please a "Greedy TV Screen." It was obviously a theory postulated by the song as it was produced before the series actually got picked up by Prime. I decided to do something with it and came up with a reason for why she would ever subject herself to being on a Reality TV Show. Luckily, the actual show provided me with the answer. Angel's been gone for a while, Cherri hasn't had her best friend backing her up in her turf wars. Surely something must've slipped for her in that time? Or, more likely, someone used it to his advantage.
If there could be any fate worse for an anarchist like Cherri other than being forced to hock crappy merch for a crappy Reality TV Show, I don't know what it is. It just felt like the absolute worse nightmare scenario for her to be trapped in and the perfect one for Sir Pentious and Angel Dust to save her from with RJ's help. But who would they be fighting to save her exactly? Simple, I came up with some rival gangs.
The inspiration for them was two fold, really. It comes partially from The Warriors, as you no doubt could tell. But a lot of it, particularly the Hockey-based gang, was largely crafted from the game "Huntdown", about a 1980s Retro-Future steeped in the sleazy B-Action flicks of the era. Where you play as three bounty hunters as they take on several gangs to free the streets from crime. Obviously RJ and friends weren't going to become bounty hunters, but they needed someone to face off against and I wanted them to at least have some personality.
The Lost Toys and Penalty Boxers were the most directly inspired from "Huntdown", the latter due to the fact that the Misconducts from that game had a similar aesthetic. I shifted them around to be more their own thing, but they have a lot of their DNA still in there. Puckmaster especially, as he's just a sinnified version of Unholy Goalie from that game. The Sawn Offs are mostly original, as I didn't want to copy the game entirely. It would've gotten boring. I stuck with making their gimmick similar to the Furies in the Warriors, in that they all use a particular weapon and base their gimmick around it. Said weapon being power tools, and saws in particular. The Leatherface motif came naturally after that.
To combat the super gimmicky gangbangers, RJ and crew needed to go way harder in response. So... I pulled from another bit of inspiration. Drawing from the fact this story was dealing with Sir Pentious forced to accept he's not the only nemesis in Cherri's life, I took some ideas from a similar episode of Duck Dodgers. In one episode, Martin the Martian abandons a fight with Dodgers in order to face off against another villain who he thinks is far more worthy of his time than Daffy's alter ego. In response, Dodgers does everything in his power to become a superior arch enemy, up unto turning into a Doctor Doom parody. I didn't go that far, but I had RJ dress up himself and Angel in ridiculous Henchmen costumes to try and bolster Sir Pentious' arch enemy status.
Angel did not really enjoy getting shoved into a bunch of costumes, but at least he wasn't being forced to perform sex acts in them. I think that's the only reason he tolerated RJ doing any of this. The juxtaposition between RJ's extreme enthusiasm for dress up and Angel being completely over it from the get go made for some fun gags in my respect. Especially with the first costumes.
You might have guessed that RJ was technically dressed up as a Big Daddy for the first go around, and Bane for the third, but I don't think nearly as many spotted that he became Waspinator for the second round with Penalty Boxers. I felt it was too good a chance to pass up. Waspinator and RJ are both sorta butt monkeys who never have anything go right for them. It was a perfect combination, especially given how I planned for the fight to end for that section.
But yeah, the meat of everything was indeed RJ pretending he was Bane, much to everyone's annoyance. I don't care what anyone says, and that includes Crow on this, sorry bud, but I fucking love Bane from the Dark Knight Rises. Don't get me wrong, he's very much... NOT a good representation of who Bane actually is in the comics. Like at all. Sure, Bane is as smart as he is ruthless, but he's not nearly so... quippy. But I think it's more than obvious that I really fucking love quippy characters and will defend them to my dying breath. RJ couldn't pass up the chance to do the Bane voice for this because it's too good persona not to try replicating once. Getting to say all those incredibly scene chewing lines is just pure RJ in my mind. The very exact thing he'd do given the chance. And honestly, I just really wanted to have some fun I have to treat myself now and then. And being presented with the chance for RJ to give the "You Think Darkness Is Your Ally" monologue just made me smile.
Alright, enough of that. This chapter also introduced something more substantial by having RJ's Tail start acting up. Namely it becoming way more violent and far less agreeable. It was the first seeds planted in what would culminate eventually in chapter 32. It certainly got people wondering and I was glad they did. It's nice to see folks picking up on foreshadowing.
Now to be clear, Cherri knew it was Angel in that costume all along. After all, Sir Pentious lives with him now in the same Hotel. She, however, does not really recognize RJ at all because she has not been introduced to him. To her, he's just some random dragon, and one she kinda enjoys... kicking in the dick. Why? Eh, he's an easy target. Her foot is just magnetized to his crotch somehow. If you're wondering what this means... it's just a funny running gag. And maybe a little payback for RJ being so overbearing with his costume idea and everything. He did make things more difficult than he needed to in his very... special way.
Ultimately though I really just wanted Cherri to ultimately save herself, with Sir Pentious' and Angel's intervention of course, but mostly because they would be helping her realize she didn't need VoxTek to be awesome, nor did she really need all the bombs in the world. She just needed a little help from the people who cared about her, even if she didn't really want to admit she needed it. Which was how the final fight unfolded.
Crow was the one who suggested the similarities to Megamind with the whole plot. I was the one who told him Pentious would show up in his war blimp to save the day and he compared the scene to the one in Megamind with the whole... presentation thing. Given that his suggestion gave me the idea to just up and use the song "Welcome to the Jungle" for the chapter's title and musical number, I decided to pay homage to it more directly. Plus Pentious got to really roll his S's. The song would be played by RJ dressed as the Doof Warrior for his final, and best costume really, because it allowed him to be himself. Same with Angel dressing himself as the Shadow. Not really a Henchman, but still effective and it feels like something he'd dress up as.
The last bit with Cherri booting the little camera drone all the way back to the production crew was a nice way in my mind to wrap things up. If you really want to tie in more background characters into the canon of this story, you can assume that the director trying to make Cherri sell all those products and show off her naughty bits was Travis. You know, the weird bird guy thing from the pilot who called Angel Dust a "Slut" after he dropped him off on the side of the road. And later appeared as the director alongside Valentino in Masquerade. I know we never technically saw him, but given he works for Valentino its believable that Vox would ask Val to let him borrow his director for this.
Speaking of Vox, if you're wondering why, given certain things we know about season 2 at this point, why Vox didn't just step in and stop all of this from going down, we can assume he was busy with other things. And just didn't bother to call in, if you will. What could he working on? Well, that's probably spoilers related so can't talk about it. But I hope that makes sense for anyone wondering.
If there's anything I hope these chapters with Cherri Bomb add it's the chance to actually develop and tease hers and Sir Pentious' relationship a bit more before it actually gets rolling on the show proper. I just know that Vivziepop had a lot more planned concerning the development of these two, but she only had eight episodes to do it in, and other characters needed their time as well. I would hate to be in her position, forced to figure out which story to tell and how to tell it. Clearly a good deal of those ideas ended up in Helluva Boss. How much and what exactly I can't say, I can't read her brain, but I like to think that in some small way I'm managing to do something that is at little in line with her vision. But I'm not as pompous as to believe its one to one. Only in spirit in that she probably wanted more time to show Pents and Cherri actually growing fond of one another.
The ending where RJ gets fed up with trying to figure out the overly complex lore of soap operas and just switch his obsession to Wrestling was a twofold joke. One, to show that the most masculine of pastimes in the form of professional wrestling is really just another version of the soap opera format but with more punching. As South Park pointed out years ago. But also, it was sort of a tribute to a dear friend of mine who is the biggest wrestling fanatic out there and I really wanted to put in something I think he'd get a laugh out of if he ever bothered to read the story. I have way too many wrestling jokes to
The other fun bit was just seeing the hotel boys all just relax and bond with one another watching crappy TV. It was really their chapter at the end of the day, their shared adventure together, and letting them sign off on it all was a joy to watch ultimately.
It also gave me a chance to have Charlie set up next time... which we will now get into.
The Gross Out Chapter: This was where I channeled my inner Ren and Stimpy writer, minus the gross creep who made that cartoon. Fuck John K. Now that the requisite reminder that some cartoonists are absolute assholes who deserve nothing but scorn, let's actually talk about this chapter. where RJ molts and hijinks ensure.
I have to give credit, once again, to Crow for this idea. As it was he who suggested that when RJ levels up as a result of his headset, he should molt and along with a power boost he should end up looking a bit more handsome and attractive to Charlie. And while I liked the idea and thought it would be a good story, I knew there would have to be a decent consequence and drawback to that in order to get a conflict out of the whole thing. And that's where the idea that the molt would be the most gross, ugly thing RJ would have to go through came from.
And then forcing him to take part in a fancy party just made it even better.
Look, sometimes sitcom shenanigans bullshit just works, okay? There's a reason that shit stayed popular throughout the 90s.
RJ's very gross look was mostly inspired by real-life lizard skin shedding. Granted, his was considerably way grosser than they ever get, but the general look was similar. Craggy skin sunken looking eyes, the greatest divergence was the gunky build-up that started leaking out. My reasoning is that the gunk is RJ's pores trying to get the skin to come off as it suffocates under all that dead skin. Combine that with the fact he's wearing heavy make up and has strapped himself into a suit, you have the perfect storm for things to start falling apart, as RJ's body tries to shake off the gross dead skin that's all over him.
I knew Bethy had to be the one that would help RJ hide his molt. It made the most sense given her fashionista nature and her love of movies means she'd be perfect to help RJ cover up his skin. However, that came with another complication, I wanted to have Bethy sing a song and it was agony trying to pick one. I can't really remember which ones I tried, all of them just did not work. None of them felt like something Bethy would sing, other just didn't feel like they fit the scene. Ultimately, I found a song about dressing people up, "Dressing Them Up." Although, it wasn't about movies and the people they were dressing up weren't people but mannequins.
The song comes from the musical "Kiss of the Spider-Woman," and admittedly I was a bit concerned picking it. The song is sung by a gay man who is very flamboyant. Now I know Bethy isn't gay and I'm very sure she's not a man, so I was honestly concerned I was appropriating the song or something away from the community it was spawned from. But I decided it was mostly okay because, for the most part, it's fine to sing any song regardless of who sung it originally. I mean, I'm sure a lot of people who are singing "Pink Pony Club" aren't Lesbian Women. More than positive it's not just girls singing K-Pop Demon Hunter songs either. And the song just fit Bethy so well, I just had to use it.
I still needed to change some lyrics of course, thank Crow again for helping with that again. I just needed the song to actually reflect Bethy's former job of dressing up starlets for Hollywood. She wasn't dressing up mannequins after all. Her lyrics had to reflect that. I did pay a little homage to the song's opening by having her lines rhyme a little before the music cut in.
Bethy's body structure also adds a great deal of versatility for these sorts of musical numbers, even with her stuck in text form with no visuals. I like to think I've done a great job of translating exactly what she's doing in any given scene, but I can only see my own mind's eye here.I just find it fun that Bethy has all these squiggly limbs that she can stretch and wrap around, and with no bones she can pretty much do whatever she wants with her tentacles. It lends itself to some great fun when she's allowed to cut loose.
And to match her manic energy, I used Niffty as a means of her closing out her participation in the story. It just clicked for me that Bethy and Niffty had a lot in common, save for their particular hyper-fixations and their view of the world. The two instantly hitting off with one another just made me smile, Bethy obsessing over decor aesthetic, Niffty obliviously suggesting horrifying torture opportunities and Bethy just absorbing them as part of her design brainstorm.
I'll have more to talk about concerning Bethy next chapter, so let's go over the real fun part of this whole chapter, the Goetias, and one family specifically in that regard.
Paimon has never been stated to be dead by Vivziepop. And I doubt he is. The Goetia are essentially immortal and there's no way he died in the last couple of years out of the blue. The only reason he hasn't shown up again is the same reason Blitz's dad hasn't popped up again. The voice actor is super expensive. I don't have that problem, so I can actually have Paimon around and comment on what's happening concerning his son and his unhappy marriage.
Stolas being here was inevitable. If I was throwing a Goetia party, of course Stolas would be there. There's no way he wouldn't be. He's a prince within the royal hierarchy after all. And his dad is throwing it. So this was a good point to introduce him into things. Thankfully not while he's being excessively horny. I'm not sure that would've gone over well with RJ, who already has conflicting feelings about the fact he cheated on his wife.
The conflicting feelings being that said wife is an absolute bitch. And look, I know a lot of folks try to defend Stella. I've given her leeway myself given she clearly didn't want this marriage either. But come on, it's obvious enough that she was a horrible emotionally abusive person. Again, she's not mad that Stolas cheated on her, she never loved him, why would she care? Maybe she's pissed off that he's acting like she's the bad guy even though she stayed loyal. But all the same, there's no love lost here. She's really only pissed off Stolas slept with an imp. You can argue about her not wanting this life, never asking to have a child with Stolas, and how she's been forced into this and all, but she's still a horrible person who played her role in this tragedy. None of that is an excuse for treating Stolas with the contempt she does. It's one thing to not love a person you're stuck in a marriage with. But Stella goes out of her way to antagonize him, secure in the knowledge it seems that he will never talk back to her.
So yeah, she was the focus of a lot of the unfortunate consequences of RJ's gross molting session. All in the slow build up to her discovering she drank dead skin gunk. I suspect a few of the readers were looking at Alastor oddly, with how he was so quick to accommodate and buddy up to Stella. But try to remember, Al does not actually care. He uses people. And if he could use Stella to make RJ's life miserable for his amusement, why not do so? And Stella of course buys it despite hating Sinners because it's a chance to piss off Stolas more. Seriously, writing her comeuppance was well overdue.
Octavia was the one Goetia who wasn't stuck up her own ass. If I have any true sympathy for what's going on in the Goetia family, it's for Octavia. Who is dealing with the fact her parents never loved each other and asking herself what that means for her. I don't blame her for being confused about it. And I don't really blame Stolas either, although he seriously should've tried to keep her in the loop and try to explain it.
I was happy to write Octavia as RJ's ally in this mess of his own making. And I'm glad that folks saw it as a brother and sister deal personally. The last thing I needed was people thinking Octavia was joining the polycule. Believe me, she is not, nor ever will be. Mostly because she's underage, generally because she's Ace and that's just never going to be in the cards for her. I like to think Octavia does have a friend now that she can talk, what little good it does. RJ can't exactly solve this problem for her, but it's nice to know someone out there is going through some shit just like you are.
Paimon and Stolas' running argument that's occurring throughout the chapter was fun to write for how utterly terrible the former is as a father. If you can blame anything for Stolas' imperfect parenting, it lies with Paimon who was only hands on at any point when it mattered to their reputation. I really like the joke about how it actually took him way less time to pick Stella as his arranged wife than it takes most of us to finish a grocery trip. That was my favorite joke to write, right along with him saying being rich means they can afford to lie. It also gave me the chance to have RJ offer Stolas some advice. Even if he isn't ready to act on it, Stolas is at least trying to listen.
The waltz sequence was mostly just me getting the chance to have various Ars Goetia talk about their very weird personal lives, as well as have a creative way for RJ to navigate the dance floor. I'm actually sorta proud that I didn't make any stupid crack about RJ having a problem with dancing with another man. These sorts of functions are so formal I honestly don't think it would even be an issue. Plus, I honestly wonder at this point if ANY of the Goetia males are straight. I really do. All three of the most prominent ones we know of are beyond queer. So I doubt they'd care about dancing with the same sex all that much. They have clearly way weirder fetishes than their sexual orientation alone in any case. If anything, that's probably the most normal thing about them.
Either way, it meant RJ was allowed to have this fun little sequence and not make a big deal about who he was dancing with. He made a big deal about what the guys and gals he runs into begin talking to him about, all of it very bizarre rich people kinks, but it's there. I will admit, none of them were particularly rude to him. Although I think the woman asking him to get in a fight with her boyfriend and die was a little much on her part.
Of course, all of this inevitably leads to RJ on the roof with Charlie, talking about his insecurities with his looks. Culminating in our wyvern letting himself accept change and allowing the level up to complete. Where, once the dust settles, we reveal he's now considerably more handsome, muscled, and now possessed a nose horn. Part of me honestly wishes I had a proper picture of what RJ now looks like as a result of this change. It's nothing too drastic, his Demon Form is honestly the biggest alteration. But he's changed enough that, while he still looks a bit goofy, he's now just a little more cooler looking as a dragon.
This sparks something in Charlie, allowing her to getting just a little interested in our Wyvern, specifically because he now looks... kinda hot to her. We'll actually have a greater discussion about RJ's level up and how it affected Charlie's view of him at another time. But for now, let's just say I think Charlie has some very particular types. That being reasonably short people, like Vaggie, and reasonably tall people. She was a bit flustered by that super tall furry porn star after all.
I'll use this time to address something else. A lot of people seemed to think that Stolas was going to invite Blitz to the show as a result of him getting Charlie her venue. However, my understanding was that Stolas had learned by now not to mix his daughter-daddy time with his... well, dates if you will. I didn't want Stolas to be repeating the mistake he made in Loo Loo Land. Honestly, it probably wasn't the fact Blitz wasn't ultimately in the next chapter, so much as Moxxie and Millie weren't. Because... I guess Blitz would've had them tag along? Eh. Truth be told that felt like a weak justification to have them there just because. Moxxie and Millie will appear in the story in due time. Don't worry, they aren't forgotten.
One last bit before we head to the next chapter ourselves, it took a bit of time to pick out what song to use for the closing dance party. I had a few possible song choices, but a lot of them I wanted to save for another time and another musical moment that felt more earned for those songs. My eventually choice came down to it sounding enough like my other choice that I found it acceptable. Little Richard is always a great go to for classic rock dance music.
I also like the image of Stolas dancing with Octavia, a nice daddy-daughter moment honestly. I wish we had more of those on the show.
Beware the Phantom Stock Plot: It seems anything involving performance art of any kind will inevitably involve a saboteur plot with someone trying to ruin the show. And that usually takes the form of a Phantom character. One of the most often used plot lines in fiction, it seems everyone wants to do their take on the Phantom, and I'm no different.
But at least for me, I was able to use it to tell a fun story that focused on RJ managing a mission with two of his wacky Sinner pals outside of the Hotel. Bethy and Ikebert were just the perfect co-stars for this adventure. And when I decided they'd be in the chapter together, I hit upon a perfect idea. That being Bethy would be absolutely smitten by Ike, the most unlikely person anyone with any sense would have a crush on. And that Ike would be completely oblivious to this, because... well he's not the smartest guy and the turtle is way too focused on hunting down communists to truly notice that sort of thing.
It posed way too many opportunities for awesome gags, both in this chapter and beyond, to pass up. So I went all in on it, and for the most part a lot of people seemed to enjoy it. I think this is partly because a lot of folks really like Ikebert and his ridiculous hyper-militaristic Cold Warrior persona that is incredibly out of date with modern times. It's almost quaint how insanely Anti-Communist he is. And a lot of folks really like Bethy, although their autocorrects continue to write her name as Becky for whatever reason. Mainly because, even though she is an admitted former studio fixer who blackmailed, cheated, lied, brutalized, and covered up secrets to get to the top in Hollywood, she's actually quite nice.
A lot of people have compared her to Susan from the Ted TV Series. Mostly because she is Bostonian and I have described her as having a fairly thick Boston accent. And Susan is probably one of the most prominent Boston Women in fiction right now, so everyone is picking up on that and the similarities to Bethy that I admit Susan has. These are completely coincidental by the way, as I have never watched Ted's TV Show and only now know of Susan because I've watched clips of the show as a result of the comparisons.
In general, I actually sort of came to really like the two as a couple as I wrote the chapter. Not just because they were funny together or even because they had good chemistry. It just felt like their particular quirks complemented on another. Bethy is an obvious drama geek and theater kid, she lives for the show and the performance more than anything. And with Ike, what you see is honestly what you get, regardless of anything else we may find out about him. He's incredibly earnest and blunt about who he is. Bethy puts her ego forth quite a bit though, as she has a rather high opinion of herself. So when Ike doesn't seem to get what she's putting down, it's hard for her to adjust because in her mind this should really easy. She's highly talented and amazing, surely Ike should be able to see that and her actions should convey her interest well enough.
But she doesn't seem to realize that Ike is incredibly stupid, so it's not really through any fault of her own that he's not understanding any of this. He really is that thick.
The other half of this chapter though was the play itself. While it's mostly there as something for RJ to save, I did actually have to put thought into how it would be performed. And what it would look like. Charlie ultimately is a bit of a big optimistic and joyful person. She's also, very clearly, her own sort of drama geek. I couldn't really see her making a big action spectacle, that's just not really her. So "The Stray Soul" is very esoteric, heavy on metaphor and, admittedly, purposely corny. Charlie would not write a play that was just a little overly expressive and clearly preachy. And it doesn't escape me either that she cast herself in the role of the character who helps the lost people in the wood find redemption.
Essentially this is just a very obvious, not entirely subtle, very insistent play that is trying to convince you, a Sinner, to give redemption a chance. So, as Ike put it, the script is intentionally hokey. I wouldn't say stylistic suck, but more appropriately in-character concerning the person who stayed up two nights writing it.
Sir Pentious being in the lead role is intentional forward shadowing. I think Charlie picked him because by now she sees him as potentially the most innocent of the group. Not fully, I mean, he wants to be an evil genius, but he's probably got the most optimism out of everyone at the Hotel. He'd be best suited for the role of the Stray Soul in her mind. Plus, it gives Pents the chance to take center stage during a story that isn't really about him and doesn't strictly tie his story to RJ's. Sure, RJ plays the villain in the final scene, so to speak, but that's him taking part in the play, distracted from his plot stopping the phantom.
Speaking of, the Phantom honestly took a bit more inspiration from a source that was derivative of the original material. That being a version of the Phantom that plays an antagonist role within a level of Psychonauts, Gloria's Theater. He hides up in the catwalks, his general mode of attack is making things fall from above, yes he borrows primarily from every other Phantom in existence, but his base form, for me is the Catwalks section in Gloria's Theater from Psychonauts.
I think the reason people keep coming back to the Phantom concept, myself included it seems, is that its theatricality within a story about performance art. The idea of a suffering artist who lurks around a house of art, trying to live through someone's else work, in a way shape them to be exactly like them. There's obviously so much more to the Phantom than that, but speaking from a purely artistic lens, I feel a lot of writers get a lot out of that. There's also the whole idea of some creep in the background, constantly trying to sabotage a performance because he wants to force everyone to conform to his artistic demands... yeah, I imagine a few people can relate to being stuck in that situation.
For me I guess I've just absorbed a lot about the Phantom from two sources. The first being the Universal Monsters and the Phantom's role within that franchise. The second is from all the times Lindsay Ellis has bothered to discuss the IP to death in every aspect. I personally really liked how she talked about the Persian and how he keeps getting removed from pretty much every adaptation. A little of Ellis' fan-girling attitude towards the property translated over to Bethy, obviously. Although I doubt Ellis hates Love Never Dies enough to kill someone over it.
Coming up with this Phantoms numerous methods of sabotaging the play was a neat exercise in thinking of how he could try to destroy the performance. And how RJ and the others could fix it. RJ using his tail to prevent Charlie from falling was a good one as it introduced a pretty neat complication with the dragon being stuck flying in mid-air in a particular place, leaving him somewhat vulnerable, relying on Bethy and Ike to help him out. The stage being set on fire was tricky, Crow pointed out that kerosene would have been very easy to smell, so I had to come up with something flammable that couldn't be sniffed out. Ike getting launched out of the cannon was purely inspired from the Muppets, particularly the Muppets in 3D which is sadly no longer operating in Disney World... because we have to have a Monsters Inc Land I guess.
I'm only a little bitter.
It was a neat way for Ike to end up flying into Stolas and Octavia's booth and just casually greet them. I don't even think he knows who they are, he's just being his usual hospitable self. The only thing from Phantom lore I did not do was the chandelier falling. Mainly because it was so obvious that the Phantom would go after it, that if Bethy did not suggest they find a way to keep it defended she wouldn't be half the fan girl she claims to be. And with this Phantom playing it way too close to the original script for his own good, it was a neat way to fast forward ourselves to the climax.
I don't think it was that much of a surprise to have the Phantom revealed to be a Heavenly Eye cultist. Nor was it too much of a surprise for the Scooby Doo reveal to show that he was the missing special effects director. But the core of that sequence wasn't about either of those things, it was about Bethy's song. I was honestly worried people would be upset about Bethy having two songs in a row. It's probably why I added in Charlie singing the Play Rehearsal song from "Be More Chill" at the start. That song is just too perfectly Charlie not to include, and it showed that she was starting to realize she had some feelings for RJ besides friendship.
But Bethy was a lot more difficult. I wanted to give a song that emphasized her love of showbiz, and it's so hard to find one that fit the scenario. I finally landed on "That's Entertainment", both for its roots to old Hollywood, which Bethy hails from, and because it was very specifically about stage shows. It's nice that for once someone else besides RJ got to be front and center in resolving the problem. Yes, he helped using his tail in the end, but it's still good to show someone else saving the say besides him. While he is the hero, he's only one character in a group of many.
I think the gag where Bethy kills the Cultist because he claimed Love Never Dies was the best story in the entirety of the Phantiom mythos was me reminding folks that she is still a sinner. She's in Hell for a reason and that she has a limit. Crow kept joking that he thinks this moment was when Ike actually started returning a crush on Bethy, but personally I just think the turtle admires her for being so effective in executing a "Communist" like she did. However, I did want to reward Bethy despite her fruitless pursuit, because I think she deserves something outside of her work to take joy in. And RJ, being himself a hopeless romantic, playing wingman for her was just a sweet little moment to cap this chapter off. You can expect more from Bethy and Ike of course, together and apart. Especially Ike, but that's for another time.
For now, let's head to the last chapter we'll be talking about today.
Calling Out Mayday!: This was where we finally revealed RJ's new room decor. And it having a bit of a Skyrim Lodge look was intentional. RJ is clearly big on massive RPGs with epic quests and awesome loot. Bethy would've picked up on that and quickly done her best to transform his room in a space fit for a dragon. Given how people like the look, I think it's a success.
But that's really not why we're here. The whole point of this chapter was to bring certain things to a head that have been bubbling for a while. RJ's argument with Vaggie was long in development, and while I wanted people to understand both sides, I wanted it to be clear that RJ, mostly through his own dissatisfaction with how things are going and his growing frustration with his many failures, is being a paranoid jerk. He can't get this one thing he really wants to work and its relatable that he's struggling with it, but he needed to understand that he wasn't the only one feeling that. Vaggie is in this too, and I think he kinda forgot that while he was in the middle of feeling sorry for himself.
When I started writing the argument, it really made itself clear in the first few sentences what I was doing. This was seriously some of the most raw, emotional anger I've had RJ express out loud. So much so that I was kinda caught off guard by it and translated that back into Vaggie herself. A lot of this came out of my conversations with Crow about what this scene would represent. That being that RJ needs to understand that relationship is a lot of work, and even more so in a polyamorous one where everyone is required to have a degree of trust with one another. It requires a lot of that and RJ and Vaggie both have trouble with that, so of course it's going slower than he would like.
There's also so clear issues on Vaggie's side, but it's RJ who is making the biggest row about it right this moment. I think the most human moment out of the whole sequence is Vaggie asking RJ to stop thinking about the worst possible scenario every time and just let her talk. It was a real eye opener, one that forced RJ to shut up for a second, recognizing that she had rightly called him out on it.
I knew it would ultimately be hard to write RJ and Vaggie fighting. They are good friends and their chemistry has worked wonderfully in past chapters. But true friendship is always tested best when they're forced to acknowledge their issues with one another. It was right for the story, especially in this chapter given what's about to happen that will change a lot between everyone in the cast and then some.
I think having RJ talk things out with Emberlynn, allowing him to cool down and get the perspective of someone outside of the situation, helped ease things a little. Ember really works in these sorts of scenes, when she's playing the weird little advisor on RJ's shoulder, who surprisingly knows a good deal about how he's managing this. Probably because she sees a lot of herself in RJ's clear thirst for monster girls. And she's expending all her knowledge on him in the hopes of getting him to act out the story the way she wants him to. So, in a way, it's like a fanfic writers talking to their creation. That's probably not the best way for Emberlynn to view things, but it is helpful in this regard.
I suppose we should talk about the obvious little canon thing I set up here with this chapter. The idea that Charlie is a fan of Verosika Mayday. Now grated, Charlie has never mentioned she likes Verosika, nor have we seen any indication she does. But Charlie's musical sensibilities clearly lean towards pop more than most, save for musical theater. And Verosika being the most popular singer in all of Hell, well, honestly, it would be the most obvious fandom for her to be a part of. It's not like Verosika has done anything that would upset Charlie. And I doubt Viv intends to make her enemies. If that somehow changes, eh, I can always just pretend this is a canon alteration, a retcon before I needed to retcon it. But I seriously doubt that Charlie would hate Verosika. She's not against sex after all, nor is she really against promiscuous behavior. She just thinks Heaven is against it and is trying to appeal to them.
Besides, it's kinda fun to see Charlie geeking out over something she loves.
In all honesty, I was concerned that this chapter and the last would be too similar, as they involve a stage and performance. Yeah, they're different in a lot aspects, but it was still something I was worried. I was mostly hoping that Verosika's songs and RJ and Charlie being spectators mostly would fix that problem. Course, I needed songs for Verosika to sing. And it was good to find a bunch that were canon and that would work with the chapter. But I needed more. So I went fishing for Verosika sounding songs. I found more than a few, two in particular that worked really well. "If I had a Tail" and "Drown Inside It" were very Verosika in tone, sexy, bombastic but very sensual. I had to change some of the lyrics for the first one though, because... well, Verosika... has a tail. She very much has a tail.
Verosika seems to be a polarizing figure among a few select Hellaverse fans on the internet. They view her as a vindictive Ex of Blitz who should really just get over him already. Honestly, Blitz clearly burned the bridge with her so badly that I don't really judge her for having beef with him. I'm sorry, but I don't think she was the bad one in the relationship. All indications suggest everything was just fine until Verosika said she loved him and he quickly did everything in his power to scorch the fucking Earth. Blitz is an asshole and I'm not going to baby him because his life sucks or because he's unintentionally defying convention by running his own business. Something imps don't tend to do as they are the servant class.
Well that's nice and all, but that doesn't give you a pass to steal someone's credit card and spend it all on horse riding lessons. It really does not.
I like Verosika, she very fun, she's shown some considerable depth post her debut episode, and I do like the whole femme fatale angle she's got going. I will say she does need to move on from Blitz of course, but that doesn't mean forgiving him. Not in the slightest. Just that she probably should get that tattoo of hers removed entirely or something.
Anyway, let's talk about Lezter and Zester. Yes, I wanted their names to rhyme, sue me. This was another first for me. I've never written a gay couple before. But I felt it was necessary to include some proper representation, especially given the nature of this show. The two imps are technically the cause of RJ's main problem for this chapter, but they are also kinda the prelude to him learning a lesson. As he's able to actually reflect a little on his current relationship woes through their constant bickering. I know, I know, I'm sure some people are probably annoyed that my first gay relationship of my own making is a dysfunctional one. But I think that's the fun of it. I don't like the idea of leaving out people of the chance to be involved in some funny hijinks just because they need to be a good role model. No, I feel it's better if characters are allowed to be real. Or at least not completely blissfully happy.
Lez and Zes do love each other, but they have fairly different personalities. Zes is short-tempered and likes to plan, Lez prefers to act and is extremely sensitive. Throw them together, you're going to get two people who butt heads often. But because they care about one another they'll do anything to really make it up to one another somehow. I honestly grew really attached to these two very fast once I started writing them. And I'm glad folks seemed to enjoy them because they'll certainly be back.
But they're also why Charlie ends up... drunk. Very drunk. Meaning the idea of RJ making any move now is really out of the question and he's stuck in a super awkward position. That being the girl he loves is all over him and acting loopy, and he can't return it because that would be taking advantage of someone not in their right mind. I'm glad some folks applauded RJ for doing his best to set boundaries in this situation all in the name of keeping her safe. But it was still a trying scenario. I thought the whole thing was really funny though. Charlie being drunk was such a funny idea to me and it kinda brought back memories. I was typecast, all the time, back in drama to play the drunk. And I did a really good drunk despite never drinking in my life. So this was my chance to relive that a little.
It wasn't meant, as one suggested, as a way for Charlie to blurt out things and do things she wouldn't normally do. It was primarily to give RJ another complication to deal with and force him to accept that Vaggie had a point. That this was something that was going to prove she could actually trust him, as well as trust himself. It was also supposed to set up the reveal that Charlie isn't being forced to do anything she doesn't secretly want to do. Confirming to RJ that Charlie does actually sometimes think of him that way. A means of showing him that the succubus magic wasn't forcing her to be another person entirely. Another hint in the direction that Charlie does feel something for him.
But the true test came with RJ confronting a dark reflection of his personal desires in the form of the stalker. His design was actually based on a parasite if you must know. It seemed fitting. He was also the reason I needed to add a disclaimer to the top of the chapter. Sure, he's not a nice person, but the subject of suicide is still touchy. I'm just glad I didn't linger on it longer than needed. What was important was showing RJ an extreme version of a dangerous mindset he was slipping into. That love is supposed to be easy and not work. That you are just owed affection because you do some baseline things right. And realizing that, RJ cools off on his angry rhetoric and tries to be more empathetic. It doesn't work, but he tries.
Which cues our big musical number where Charlie and RJ fight the stalker while Signals plays. I chose this song as the title track because it honestly felt the best one out of all the songs to use. It's not an official Verosika song, but it's a good one and it matched the tone and the lesson this chapter was about. Cutting between both Verosika's performance and the fight highlights the need to properly choreograph both character movements and fight scenes. Otherwise, it would have been boring to just recount one but not the other.
The fun bit came at the end though when after the Stalker was taken down, RJ and Charlie got to dance with Verosika on stage. That felt like a good ending cap to some very serious, heavy sequences.
I also gave Verosika the chance to confront her stalker and call him out directly. As well as reveal that he hadn't even picked the right house for his final attempt at making her notice him in the mortal world. I got this idea from an episode of "Law & Order: SVU", where a very similarly minded stalker discovers that all his text messages and letters and all that he was sending to the girl he liked back in high school, trying to get her to notice him... yeah, he got the wrong address. Not that he would've been obligated to any affection if he got it right, but he was upset she just ignored him. When in reality, she didn't even know he existed.
The scene in the limo was largely something Crow and I talked about concerning the crux of this chapter, that love is work. He got it from an episode of Steven Universe, I felt the sentiment was appropriate given everything. I mostly had to add a bunch of stuff concerning Vaggie having as much work to do in the background. There's a whole messy B-Plot in there where Vaggie was chasing the various guests around the hotel trying to get her phone back. It's hilarious, but currently outside our scope. For the most part, this story remains in RJ's perspective. But I really liked the idea of Charlie cozying up to RJ and him reaffirming his friendship with Vaggie as he finally acknowledges that he can accept that relationships take time and that it's better to wait and work on things than speed them along.
However, that also leads into the next scene, the surprise cliffhanger. Where RJ's Tail throws a tantrum, refusing to let Charlie go until its forced to. This scene was Crows' idea, yet again, he's very involved in a lot of this more so than most of my stories he edits. But when he has a good idea, I can't help but use it and I have to give him credit for it. I really felt that this would be the perfect way to ring in the introduction of our next complication. I came up with the "It has no mouth, but yet it screams" line though. I thought that was seriously good and I couldn't not use it.
Now, while I would usually break into the next section and talk about this new complication, we're kinda out of time. Five chapters seems plenty for the moment. So, come back next time for a special blog where we look at two chapters, both of which will change the status quo considerably. There is a lot to talk about with them so it's going to be a pretty hefty Behind the Scenes. And it's going to be all about our newest addition to the cast, as we finally talk about RJ's Tail.
Ever since he arrived in Hell, RJ's Tail has been a literal pain in his ass. It just seems to act like it has a mind of its own and for whatever reason rarely listens when our scaly nerd wants it too. But now, the tail's latest tantrum forces him and the Hotel crew to get some answers at last. The question is will they like what they find when they get a peek inside? And will the Hotel be able to handle the truth?
When Vaggie asks RJ to take Charlie out to a Verosika Mayday Concert, it raises some questions about the nature of their PolyCule and if this can actually work. As well as whether or not Charlie truly cares about RJ the way he wants her to. A problem that only gets worse when things go about as wrong as they can go at a concert with someone else's girlfriend. And when it looks like the Succubus Pop Star Queen might be in danger, it's up to RJ to step up or else this is going to become the worst date ever.
Remember to grab your T-Shirts at the Merch Stand!
It's Showtime for Charlie's big play and they got a packed house! Unfortunately, that just means more potential victims for a sneaky saboteur skulking about the catwalks. RJ must team up with Bethy and Ikebert to root them out before he brings down the house. But can he manage the two sinners' different levels of manic energy? Especially when one of them has... other thoughts in mind?
I probably could've picked another gif given the very obvious references in this chapter... but I like Beetlejuice more.
Charlie's latest Hotel Out Reach Plan requires a venue, luckily the Ars Goetia have plenty and they have invited her to a party they're having. To help sell them on the Hotel, she's bringing RJ along to show them that sinners aren't all so bad. Our dragon hero wants to help, as well as maybe get a chance to dance with the Princess of Hell. Unfortunately, the timing couldn't be worse as RJ's body is undergoing some changes and it's up to a certain little flighty squid to help cover it up.
Time to get Grossly Fancy!
Apologies on the minor lateness getting this up, something went screwy with my picture editor.
Cherri Bomb is in the Middle of a Turf War, which isn't even the worst of her problems. So RJ teams up with Angel Dust and Sir Pentious to help her out of the jam she's found herself in. And maybe play a little supervillain henchmen dress-up along the way. Will Pentious be able to prove he's Cherri's true nemesis? Will Angel be able to stand RJ's comic booky obsession? What nerdy references will RJ force down everyone's throats this time? Will his crotch survive another run in with Cherri's boot? And what the heck is up with his tail? These questions will be answered at some point. Perhaps.
Complications force our dragon hero into a less than ideal chore: Cat sitting. Keekee needs a check-up and it seems on RJ will only have the Goat Boys, Razzle and Dazzle to help him out. But when things spiral, can a new companion help him sort the mess out? And maybe help him get over his recent funk of failure post-Aborted Beach Episode?
Hey There Hi There Ho There! WE ARE BACK! Catch RJ the Dragon in a brand new misadventure in cat sitting! With one temperamental hound along for the ride! What trouble can he possibly get into this time? You'll need to read to find out!
ALSO: Art is By Ciphy_Master, not me. This was a Commission I asked of him. Please credit it to him, not me. I cannot stress that enough!
Dragon Me to Hell : Behind the Scenes - Chapters 21-26
Hey everyone! It's been a while! Sorry for the delay! But now that things concerning my next chapter's publication are picking up some speed, I figured it was time to do one of these again with the upload of all current chapters to FF.net. Since we got a lot to get through, a total of six chapters, I might as well get started. RJ went through a lot in these adventures, some of it good, a bit of it bad, might as well go over it all in as much detail as I can manage to recall. Let's begin.
Book Fair Battle: This was a fun one to do, mostly just to showcase another way Charlie is trying to make Hell better by making Sinners get involved in doing so. It's arguable if its working the way she wants because Sinners aren't exactly charitable to begin with. They won't give up things they like and the stuff they are willing to part with is usually terrible. But hey, that just gave me the excuse to showcase a ton of absolutely horrible books as well as horrible opinions on not so horrible books. This opener was filled with a lot of jokes as a result and it's hard to pick one I really liked.
The mummy who turned out to actually be from 1920s America at the height of the Ancient Egyptian Craze was a fun twist. I liked creating a the Gaslight sinner as I try not to fall back on just making every sinner an animal. That list of bad books RJ pulled out of the donation box was partially inspired by a fake commercial from the game "Whacked!", specifically the one about the clown suit. But the best joke of the lot was probably the evil book made of shadows that turned out to be pretty racist, despite his insistence he was not. Inspired by a bit from the South Park game, Fractured But Whole, I just kinda wanted to put my own spin on making fun of how a lot of Lovecraft stories are pretty frickin' racist. Crow really like that one by the way, he said it reminded him of a bit that would've been on Owl House.
The real point of this chapter though was to get RJ and Vaggie on another adventure together and to show their dynamic's growth since the last time. Namely that they're getting more comfortable trusting each other, but there is still some things they can work on. Vaggie is fairly protective of Charlie and her position at her side, and RJ has trouble reading when and how he's supposed to react to things concerning the relationship.
He also has difficulty coming to terms with what Vaggie exactly wants. Part of that is her not telling him enough, but it's also because he just kinda does things he assumes will be okay based on prior information. But things can change and what works for one situation might not the other. RJ wasn't trying to show Vaggie up at the book drive, but he needed to be aware that it could look like that. This was about getting them in sync, on the same page, a issue contrasted with that of the Vees when they showed up later.
We also had Arin show up again, free from his record store and living his life like a normal T-Rex. While Arin isn't a major character or even one that will reoccur often, I like him well enough and he will show again along with Paula. I just think it's nice that we can show that RJ and Charlie have a visible impact on people that's actually good. I think that was probably the real issue many people had with season 2, as a result of it having so few episodes. Charlie was never given a win to counterbalance all her screw ups. Now, that made her eventual victory at the end all the more satisfying. I just think if we had more opportunities to see Charlie's view of being helpful and nice to people win out it probably would've better reinforced and framed things for that moment. But since I'm not bound by episode limits, that's easier for me to do.
There was a joke in this chapter that I basically just put in for me. Just for me to get a laugh and get something off my chest. The Question & Torture session RJ and Vaggie passed by featured an angry reader upset with the author for having his main character defeat a bunch of bad guys that he felt should've put up more of a fight. Full disclosure, this was me venting.
When I wrote "When There Was A Tomorrow," the first book in my Halo/Mass Effect crossover series "The Wormhole Chronicles (Newest Book "Monument to All Your Sins" out now with more chapters coming sometime soon) my first two chapters were dedicated to Commander Shepard's team encountering the Covenant and barely surviving only to be chased through a wormhole by a far superior ship into the Halo universe. More than a few people have taken umbrage with my decision to show Shepard and his crew overcoming a Covenant Battlecruiser. Even though Shepard has faced worse odds, and every single one of his friends is basically a badass in their own right, people felt I was nerfing the Covenant just to give them a win. That was not the case, I was following the formula for Halo Reach's story. The Normandy successfully repels the Covenant, they win, big victory... and seconds later it's completely rendered pointless because a much bigger ship arrives and almost destroys them. Their only course of action being to flee.
Despite me saying this over and over, every now and then a new reader will come along and take me to task over not obeying the sacred laws of internet power scaling. I have said multiple times, I do not write Death Battle. I do not write a stories to settle the argument over which fandom has the stronger characters. I find that type of storytelling boring and reductive as it boils everything down to Fantasy Football. This is not a sport. This is a story. I write what makes sense to tell that story. I can admit I haven't always done my best job at maintaining the fragile balance of suspension of disbelief. But when that suspension is based on someone demanding that I write the story so their preferred fandom wins? No. I'm not doing that. I'm writing it how I feel is best for the themes, the characters and where I want the narrative to go. If you want Death Battle, watch Death Battle. I'm sure they'll come up with and excuse to have your preferred character win fifty percent of the time depending on which group of nerds they want to appease that week. I don't do power scaling and I never will.
So yeah, that whole scene was just a brief way of me needling the annoying people who continue to be on my case and accuse me of making the Covenant weak because I don't have them kill a named character every other chapter. Hopefully, those who are familiar with my writing, took a look at this and had themselves a laugh about it. All the same, when I do eventually go back to "When There Was a Tomorrow" to fix up a lot of it so it will be more up to my current standards I'm probably going to update a few plot points. Including that opening scene, if only so I won't have to deal with a fresh new slew of people getting on my case over it. But for now, this little scene was just my way of working through that.
So let's talk about the Heavenly Eye cult's return. The concept of a white demon, as a sinner aligned with Heaven, is something I came up with as something I could label the Heavenly Eye as. It was inspired by similar antagonists from a book series I ran across called "Ghostsitter", but those were entirely different. I honestly felt it made sense that a lot of the worst sorts of religious fundamentalists, even after they ended up in Hell, would refuse to believe they were there because they're horrible. They would come up with some excuse or mental cope that would justify why they're down here. In this case they either feel they're here as a result of God's plan or can earn redemption if they overthrow Lucifer and the other sins, seizing Hell in the name of Heaven.
Funny enough, if they ever found out all they had to do was walk up to Lucifer's house and kick in the door they probably would've done it. But no one knows Lucifer can't harm sinners. And I imagine that he'd probably call up the sins for help if something like that went down. Either way, they are highly mistaken about the nature of Hell and have presumed that if they show loyalty to Heaven, they will be welcomed into paradise. They think they're in an entirely different series. If I'm being honest, I guess a bit of how they act is in reference to the very weird, very ridiculous Adam fan clubs that sprouted up post season one. All very insistent that Adam was the real hero and Charlie was in fact the true villain of the story. Which is bullshit. I'll be the first to say Lilith didn't tell her daughter the whole truth. Adam probably wasn't always this terrible, but became worse over time. We don't know the full story... but come on! He literally said he does the Exterminations for fun.
The Heavenly Eye thinks so long as they serve Heaven they're untouchable, but the reality is they're just a bunch of horrible or desperate people who don't want to admit they ever did anything wrong. That they're still in the right and this is all just a test. And they're willing to hurt others, even kill them, if it advances their goal. And they outright refuse to do anything that would actually help them redeem themselves. Because, as Charlie says, it starts with sorry... and they aren't.
This was when the other villains for the chapter came in as well. I had spent a long time setting up the Vees and making them all hate RJ in some way. This was the payoff with them trying to capture him together using a cool robot Vox designed. A bit like a co-op video game so they could all enjoy it without getting their hands dirty. It requires a ton of cooperation to manage though and while they can cooperate and act in sync, as we saw in season two it doesn't take much to jostle their cohesion. At the outset though they are clearly outclassing the cult, who rely on swarming the target while the Vees act as a team to fend them off despite being outnumbered. This imparts the lesson of the chapter to both RJ and Vaggie, that they need to form together and trust the other has their back. And, to that end, never try to let their need to be the hero of the hour get in the way of getting the job done. Granted, that's not always going to be so easy, but as this chapter shows they CAN do it given the chance.
The choice of songs for this chapter was a little difficult. I knew Electric Eye fit the robot I designed for the Vees. But Saints in Hell made sense for the Eye Cult. I couldn't pick one or the other in the end, so I made it a medley of the two and just had the chapter be an extended tribute to Judas Priest. It's a neat way to experiment, to do something different for once and I had a fun time mixing and match the songs into a running mixtape between the tracks.
Angel was supposed to have a bigger role originally. I figured it would be interesting for RJ to work through his problems with his best friend and former worst rival. Plus it would be good back and forth between Vaggie and Angel while she was having issues with RJ. Unfortunately, the more I thought about it, the harder it got to justify. Angel isn't in a position to stand up to Val yet. And won't be for a while. I couldn't have him in an extended fight sequence against the Vees. Maybe if he was avoiding fighting them, sure, but I didn't want Angel to come across as cowardly. In the end, I scrapped the idea early on and switched it so Angel would come in at the end to help out. And give him an early win with him toppling the robot at the end.
This chapter also marked the turning point when Vaggie learned of RJ's curse. I couldn't exactly just keep that a secret anymore. Not with RJ wanting to gain Vaggie's trust more. So after fighting together and saving Charlie together, RJ confessed his curse to Vaggie. Who was rather sympathetic over the thing, as opposed to how he thought she'd be. Better yet, as if to cast away any further doubt, Vaggie let him know that, actually, he has been able to use the curse to his advantage. He DID weaponize it to protect Charlie in this instance by uncovering the Cultist's schemes and getting the Vees to fight them as well. So hey, for once, RJ ends a day feeling pretty good about himself. And that was nice to give the guy honestly, he's been put through a lot.
Gangland: Chapter 22 was, quite honestly, a gift to myself. I absolutely love detective and Noire stories set in during Prohibition or 1930s. Something about that aesthetic is simply so perfect to me. And given Hazbin Hotel itself is inspired a lot by period piece musicals like Chicago, I wanted to pay tribute to those old pulp detective and crime thriller stories with my very own gangster chapter. Starring, who else, Husk.
You might be asking, why not Angel? Well, Angel at this point in time has not told anyone about his past. No one at the hotel seems to know he was a gangster, only that he's a porn star. And that's what he prefers. I don't think he'd be comfortable getting back into the life of monsters and crime over this.
Husk though? That's a different story. Plus, Husk was the last main cast character that did not have a proper extended adventure with RJ. He was overdue for one.
At the time of writing things, I knew little of Husk. I was fairly sure he had a casino, but did not know what state it was in. I erred on the side of caution and assumed it was shut down. It would've probably been written that way had the episode not come out that showed, no, it's still operational even if Husk doesn't run it anymore as an overlord. I also did not know about all of Husk's powers. Just his playing cards. So I stuck to those exclusively. When I did find out about Husk's powers being magician based, it was a little late to go back and rewrite everything. So I just stuck to the cards. But you might see his magician powers sooner than expected all the same. No spoilers though.
Another fun wrinkle added to the mix was Niffty, who gave RJ someone who would be more open to the fun of being in a gangster story while he's playing detective. Husk is too moody to fully appreciate RJ's tendency to treat a lot of scenarios he's stuck in like they're part of a video game as a coping mechanism. Niffty doesn't really care, so long as she's having fun. To that end, it also went to show that RJ had learned how to work with Niffty's uniqueness rather than against it, giving them a lot more of the sibling energy I wanted to utilize there.
The real hook though RJ and Husk becoming proper friends. RJ really wanted Husk to like him for a long while, mainly because he felt he was a good listener and found his grumpy advice refreshing/helpful. He liked Husk and really wanted to get to know him better, especially given that he clearly doesn't like Alastor and that was something they had in common. To that end, Husk bothered to finally open up to this freshly fallen sinner and express a lot of his own regrets to him, hoping to steer him away from his own mistakes. While RJ tries to remind him that, overlord or not, Husk is still a pretty cool guy and he's not over the hill and forgotten so long as he's got a place at Hazbin. Building up their more casual friendship here was a blast to do, especially when it allowed RJ to be a bit goofier and Husk to play the straight man. I like allowing my mains to take on different roles while remaining in character.
Speaking of characters, we had quite a few of them in this chapter. Let's talk about them in order, Luccio was pretty minor but important. A former flunky that became the big boss, a contrast to Husk who is trapped as Alastor's henchman. I really liked writing Luccio as this very classic Pesci sounding little gangster. However, his inspiration is not Pesci. No, I went more esoteric and off the beaten path there. Luccio you see, from his stature to his voice to his speech patterns and even his attitude, it's all from one character... Vinnie Gognitti from Max Payne.
Vinnie was this pathetic little shit of a capo from the crime family Max Payne was deep undercover with. His voice was this highly stereotypical Brooklyn Italian-American accent that was like Pesci but not. It was far squeakier and a lot more whinny. From the second you meet him in the game, he is constantly complaining, asking his goons "What are you doing, come on!" and throwing out a long list of insults and bitching about everything. Max shoots him in the gut and then he takes off running while still bitching about how Payne shot him. I fucking love Vinnie, he was the perfect little wormy shit and I could only imagine him when I was designing Luccio. I probably should've had him scream, "You're Dead HUSK!" at some point, but maybe that would've been way too on the nose. But seriously, Luccio was so fucking fun to write. Even with him calling out RJ for speaking in Gumshoe tough guy talk, it was just a fun to have this extreme gangster facsimile do so.
And yet, he wasn't the funniest or weirdest reference I created. For that you have to turn to the real villains of the chapter, the Willow Woods Gang. Now, you might have guessed Mr. Warty was a Mr. Toad parody and that his gang is based on the characters from the Wind and the Willows. Heck, I even had him do a messed up murderous version of Mr. Toad's quote when he's driving the armored car. But his people were only half of the gang. The other half, the half that owned the farm he was using the brew the bootleg beer... were a parody of the Woodland Critters, every single one, including their leader, the squirrel.
The Woodland Critters are from South Park, specifically the episode Woodland Critters Christmas. An episode where Cartman tells his class an extremely fucked up story about a group of Satanic Woodland Animals who look all cute and cuddly, but want to birth the Anti-Christ and destroy the world. They have a blood orgy, they shout "Hail Satan" all the time, and in later episodes they talk about how fun it would be to rape and murder people, all while speaking in cute little weird voices the belie their true nature. Cartman literally wrote them so he could try and make Kyle the evil Jew in his story who helps bring about the Anti-Christ because Eric thinks Jews hate Christmas due to him being an antisemitic piece of shit. Don't worry, he was forced to change the story so Kyle doesn't birth the Anti-Christ... but he does later from AIDs. (God Damn It Cartman!)
Combining the Woodland Critters with Wind and the Willows was just such a bizarre combination. So bizarre I couldn't help but do it. For no other reason then it made me laugh to see this prim and proper civilized criminal, who feels the need to explain his brilliance in detail, forced to work with very crude, but incredibly friendly, devoted satanist country bumpkins who are really obsessed with murder. It's like a bunch of mobsters partnered with the freaky cannibals from "The Hills Have Eyes", it was beyond funny to do. And by the end they both resembled each other when Warty lost his shit.
A lot of the locales, from the speakeasy club to the beer warehouse to the farm itself were all inspired by various mafia and gangster related media. The final chase sequence itself was taken from the original Mafia game, only there the armored car was piloted by crooked border patrol cops. The speakeasy was probably inspired by too many similar clubs in mobster movies to name, from Goodfellas to Public Enemy, but I probably got a good deal of the layout from some of the clubs visited in LA Noire now that I think about it. Which yes, that Truth, Doubt, Lie section was purposely inspired from that game. I even threw in "You're Lying, Luccio" with a similar inflection to how Phelps does it to Morgan in the first case on Traffic Desk. Did you know there was supposed to be a burglary desk in that game but they cut it? Man, I wanted more cases to solve.
The greater stuff going on in the background of this adventure though, that was fun to write as well. One honestly has to wonder how the other Rings and the Hellborn that inhabited said Rings themselves, took the news of the Pride Ring undergoing a second extermination in a few months. Because of the inability of HB and Hazbin to comment on each other directly until Amazon worked out a deal with Spindelhorse and A24, we have no idea how the Hellborn even view the exterminations. I've tried a little to show that there are differing opinions among those who actually live in Hell and are not damned to it, but I'm going off a lot of speculation. In this case, Greed is full of mobsters, but for some reason Pride is very desirable real estate in Hell. So if the Extermination is about to get a lot of Sinners killed and Hellborn are exempt from the Exorcists, why wouldn't a few members of the criminal underworld not attempt to force their way in afterwards? That was the bit of lore set up I planned here, a means to foreshadow the dangers of the other rings potentially encroaching on Pride once Adam has had his fun.
That will probably come up again before you know it.
The hardest thing to do for this chapter though was picking songs. I went through so many possible choices for the first one alone. Calypso King won out because every other Zoot suit or Jazzy tune I tried just did not match the energy at all. I really thought I'd find a big band swinging song for this. Or at least some sort of Electro Swing. Something! Honestly, I was just happy I found Let's Misbehave so soon as it captured the exact thing I wanted this chapter to embody. A fun adventure with Alastor's minions, plus perspective minion in RJ, wreaking havoc in their very own gangland adventure. It took so long to settle on Calypso King in contrast because nothing felt right and I questioned if it matched the sequence it was going to be paired with for so long. If anything delayed the chapter getting written it was that.
In any case, I really liked writing this chapter. I absolutely adore this aesthetic and the problems encountered were worth it just to get RJ in a detective's fedora and trench coat so he could try out Bogart everyone. And it was great to have Husk being his full on grumpy self and give him some closure about not being an overlord anymore. Additionally, it's kinda funny... you know, to have Husk teamed up with RJ, given that our feline bartender is voiced by Keith David... who was good friends with another RJ at one point down in a certain base in Antarctica.
I feel like I've alluded to that funny little fact more than a few times by now, but if I haven't really gone all out with it. Maybe once RJ gets a cowboy hat.
High Flying Romance: From one obsession to another, Shadow of the Red Baron was my longest chapter to that point. I almost split it up, but decided against it even know it would give me more breathing room. But no, I wanted to get a certain chapter out for Christmas and I was sticking to it. This was my Shoot 'Em Up/WW1 tribute chapter, as well as a very important one to me as it represented RJ and Charlie's first real date. Maybe not something either of them admitted or called one, but they had an honest to goodness adventure together that wasn't hidden behind it being one of Charlie's sessions.
Plus it marked the return of Lilly-Bella in a role that gave her a lot more to do honestly, even if a lot of it was off screen. It was probably best I got a ton of Lilly's initial setup out of the way so I could just focus on her character here. Showing her very direct personality and abrasive yet loyal attitude. The thing about Lilly-Bella is she is exceedingly straight forward I find. She knows exactly what her goals are and has a very particular plan in how she goes about them. She has a sense of humor, she's not joyless, and I wouldn't call her angry either. She just has some very stringent rules she sets for herself. I think it was her high standards and how earnestly she believed in the art of coding that made her clash with Vox so hard. He only cared about profit, she cared about making something that showed her talent that gave players something they didn't know they wanted.
That carried over here, Lilly's integrity. She jumped right into things, wanting to help figure out more about RJ's headset and find out if there was a way to fix it up more. RJ calling upon her expertise gives her a chance to show she has some and it's through her we get out next big revelations about the headset. That it was always designed to get into its user's mind, albeit for seemingly nefarious reasons, and that's probably why it's fused to RJ's head as much as the accident that short circuited it. As well as how it can upgrade its functions if RJ plays more games with it.
Given what RJ knows about the headset now though, it's probably not a good idea to play any games Vox has developed though. You don't want the TV-Man getting into your head, especially given what the headset was apparently designed to do originally. This ties into something that I felt was important to remind people, a power system is better defined by what it can't do than what it can do. RJ's Headset can do a lot of things, but only if they're based off some function or feature in a video game and only if RJ somehow exposes the headset to it. He also can't really pick what the headset will decide is important. And even if he can get into the code to try and fix it up, he cannot get rid of the side effect of the hallucinations the headset being fused with his skull creates. Plus the code itself it so banged up due to the short circuit, repairing it will take a lot of time.
It's important really to set these sorts of limits on powers, even as they're evolved over time. You can't have your character not grow in strength in these sorts of stories because that makes them stagnant. You also can't just have them overpower everyone. There's going to be a threshold, yes, but you should always make that come with new complications or problems. RJ will get stronger, but that won't make his troubles go away. It will just create new ones.
This is my way of avoiding power creep. The last thing anyone should want is for fanboys to be arguing over how super special awesomesauce their favorite is and how he could defeat the whole MCU single handed or whatever. Trust me, Dragonball became that insufferable a fandom as a result of this very writing issue and I will forever be against the idea of making a protagonist so impossibly powerful that he becomes boring.
The chapter also gave me an excuse to revisit 80s Town and see how it was looking now. Specifically the Arcade that RJ and Angel practically destroyed. Good news, it's all fixed up and now leeching off the fame of a porn star and internet celebrity beating each other senseless inside it. This is Hell, I have to believe that sinners love nothing more than obsessing over awesome fights they see. At the very least the imps from Wrath probably do. It's just nice that we could return to a location and see the consequences of RJ's actions for once. I feel like that's something we lose out on when we have one and done adventures/episodes.
That's not nearly as important though as meeting our newest Original Sinner, Donna. A female pterodactyl that is incredibly high strung and anxiety ridden. Which being in Hell means things are not really fun for her. At all. She's probably the biggest prime candidate you could find for Charlie's whole redemption plan. If you're wondering why she's here well, that's due to her backstory. As you heard, she died while inside a pterodactyl mascot suit that was advertising the new zip-line ride at the water park she worked at. She took a bunch of drugs and, on a dare from her group of douchebag friends, essentially rode the zip-line down inside her mascot suit. She died when the line snapped, cracked her skull on one of the poles, and then drowned while her drunken and high friends laughed their asses off.
In case you don't get the joke, Donna worked at a parody of the infamous 1980s death trap of a water park known as Action Park. It was one of my more subtle references, I don't think anyone picked up on it. Mostly because I think they probably imagined Donna was more akin to Petrie, from Land Before Time, as they're both pterodactyls who are afraid of everything. Although Donna's fears skew a bit more adult. And I wish I could've done more with her, but the circumstances of a first person narrative are unfortunately limiting. Donna and Lilly-Bella were having a whole other adventure of their own outside of the cabinet this whole chapter trying to keep Charlie and RJ from getting trapped inside it forever.
Still what I got done was so fun to do I'll probably have Donna show up again. And it has nothing to do with the fact I love dinosaurs so much because Donna is a flying reptile and that's different.
If there was an interesting aspect to writing this chapter, it was crafting an entire video game, including its systems and its general gameplay. I based the shoot 'em up aspect on games like 1942 and the beat 'em sections on Armored Warriors, where you fought with big frickin' mechs. Same concept here, except combined and the game is set in a Dieselpunk Alternate WW1. Figuring out how that works, how the systems compliment each other, how the level types are distributed, what the airplane mechs can do in either level with both modes, it was good deal of rewarding writing. So many people create video games in their stories that don't feel like they could be real video games. I hope I'm doing a slightly better job than most, probably because I've played too many video games overall.
The most challenging part really was figuring out what old Great War airplanes to use and how to redesign them for a dieselpunk look. The thing of it is, Dieselpunk sorta skills World War One when it crafts its words. It just goes straight to WW2 aesthetic. So I kinda had to do this from scratch with few reference points. It became even harder when I had to alter those airplanes into mechs. And center them around a particular mythological animal in the case of the player mechs. Charlie's airplane benefited from me basing it a bit off the main plane in Crimson Skies, the Devastator, with its' reverse prop design that is endlessly cool looking. RJ's I just decided to make it a swooped winged version of the Sopwith Camel. Giving it the dragon touch may have been a bit much but... come on, a flying game that lets you turn into a robot dragon doesn't seem too out there.
I also had to give Charlie and RJ new outfits for their stay within the confines of the game. RJ's was simple enough, I just designed a standard looking WW1 Flying Ace outfit. Charlie's was a bit more difficult as it had to be functional yet elegant. She's playing a French pilot after all. Making it Tri-Color like the flag was the easiest part. I borrowed some inspiration from Freedom Force Vs. The Third Reich, basing the flight suit a little on the French Resistance Hero's fencing outfit. Who was also named Tri-Color mind you. I just changed it so she was wearing an ace fighter pilot's jacket that was a bit sleeker.
One of these days I might draw it out. And who knows, you might see Charlie in it again someday.
The nature of how RJ and Charlie interact with the game presented some fun opportunities though. They're entering a 3D space for a game that's only 2 Dimensional. So... hey, why not cheat a little with an exploit? That idea created the scene you see in the first song "Come Josephine in my Flying Machine." Which I consider the most romantic and violent song number I've done. The fact that Charlie doesn't have to worry about hurting anyone while letting out her frustrations is what really makes the scene work. She's just able to cut loose and know it's all safe to do. And because there is now reduced danger, RJ is able to not worry so much and just enjoy his time with Charlie. All while crooning a duet together and blowing up pixelated Germans.
Course, I had to kill the fun somehow, and what better place to do it than shoving them both in a trench where the real war is fought. Figuring out exactly where to put the reveal that something was wrong was a little hard. I wanted to lead up to it more, make a greater suggestion that something was messed up with this arcade game. Just slowly edge towards it. I feel like I probably could've done better on that front, but by the time we got to the boss, I knew we couldn't hide it anymore. Getting that visceral horror, of just all those NPCs screaming in horror and pain, that was the gut punch I wanted. That the fun was now gone. That at least I managed.
The length at this point was becoming an issue. I knew I couldn't just keep doing more and more levels, it would get boring, so I kinda started speeding things along. I explained this later as the Red Baron Program cheating to force the confrontation earlier. As much I love writing combat sequences, especially air combat sequences, I knew I had to get us to that final confrontation while also ramping up RJ's fears that he's brought Charlie into a death trap and all so he could get some stupid extra powers/prove a historical fact about the war he's very attached to.
I think it's important to remember that as "Badass" as RJ can get, he is still a neurotic mess of a person who fears and overthinks a lot of stuff. How he reacts is different given the situation. But when it involves other people besides himself? Then he gets truly worried because the idea of someone dying for him or because of him is the worst feeling he could experience.
Let's move on to the Red Baron himself. I was a bit concerned about doing him the way I did because it was yet another AI Program that wanted RJ's brain in a sense. I felt I needed to address this in story or else I'd get called out on it. However, this entire thing was necessary for future plot elements that we will run into before long.
The Baron was still an interesting character to write. He was still a villain and he did cheat a ton, but he retained his honourable status. He still believed in being noble and gracious in his battles. He just did everything he could to make sure he never lost, by hacking the game. He refused to let himself be beaten and he rigged it in his favor, gaining more power to do so with every player he defeated, capturing a bit of their souls, causing them to suffer within his world. I guess it was a little bit of me playing into the idea of gaming addiction brought upon by predatory arcade cabinet practices. You know the ones, the quarter suckers, the games that are impossible to beat unless you keep shoving tokens into the slot. The Baron becomes the manifestation of this. He's cheating, but he's still claiming to be fair to benefit himself.
Which brings us to the final fight! And the song that really sold me on doing this chapter. I knew the second I heard "Shadow of the Red Baron" that I needed to center the entire chapter around this song. That this was it. This was the music that would play for the boss fight. This was going to be the song that forged the foundation of Charlie and RJ's shared video game experience. It is such a glorious song, so perfectly performed. Every section is just an immaculate tasty lick. I don't think I hate any part of the song really, it's just so exciting and action packed from start to end. I tried to play to the music itself, making every scene I wrote match the fight as it occurred. The strikes, the blows, they're timed to the music in a sense.
It's difficult at times to write a musical with no music. You lose a lot in the translation. It's why I try to recommend people have the song on hand when reading the chapter. I encountered a bit of a problem with my method of writing this thing during the Sinister chapter as people didn't seem to understand that I was parodying "Popular" from Wicked. I presumed, wrongly, that because the movie had come out that it would be recognizable. But apparently not, so I need to be more careful there in the future.
The final part where RJ's Sopwith Dragon goes into super mode and basically chases the Baron around with Charlie supporting the effort. Until finally, together, they take him down for real, the Baron accepting his fate, acknowledging, I believe in the end, what he actually wanted: A good fight.
Although honestly, the real winner was Lilly-Bella who is the only reason RJ even won because she managed to un-hack the Baron's bullshit. I wanted to make it very clear that Lilly was the MVP here and that all her coding and programming skills weren't just talk. She came through and RJ didn't let her think for a second he was ungrateful. He even got her a place to stay by suggesting as much to Donna that Lilly could be helpful if given the chance. Which helps Lilly in her continued quest to be a real indie developer.
I think this was one of the better Charlie and RJ adventures so far, mainly because it ended on better terms for both. I liked writing that moment where Charlie tells RJ to just shut up and take her hand in the game as a bit of her asserting herself. And it was a healthy bonding experience where Charlie got to be interested in video games because she was helping a friend and RJ got over a bit of his insecurity of not being the best gamer out there. That's it's okay he's not the perfect teacher for Charlie, because it really just matters that they both have fun together.
It was worth being extra long just to get all that in.
Looney Escapades: This entire chapter was basically a homage to Looney Tunes. Specifically the Hunter cartoons, with Stiker playing the titular hunter. It also saw the return of Ikebert, who has become a bit of fan favorite. More than I could've ever hoped for.
Allowing RJ a chance to be proactive through Beelzebub's suggestion of cleaning up the dog park enabled me to have a decent payoff to things from that little subplot. Although it won't be the last time that happens. It also pushes back a bit against the perception of Beelzebub as not really caring about the hounds. I don't believe that, I feel that Queen Bee just doesn't have the control outside of her ring that people seem to think she does. Her adoption centers aren't located in Gluttony, and are run by other Hellhounds in fact. I think it's a case of not everyone cares as much as she does and she can't be everywhere because she only controls one realm out of seven in Hell. And because Lucifer doesn't really care much about running Hell... eh, yeah, problem there when he has to be in charge of something in his Ring.
I think a significant portion of this chapter was just getting to see more of Ike and flesh him out a bit. We've seen his base form, not we actually got a bit deeper into his philosophy. Essentially he feels that the Hellborn will never really appreciate what he's doing for them by protecting them from Communism. But that's okay, it's better for them to be ignorant than to be praising him. He doesn't do this for the adulation. At least that's what he thinks. And his fight against Communism has consumed him to a point he doesn't really see any other action as being more important. Not even cleaning up a park.
Of course, this gets challenged when he has to play the Daffy to RJ's Bunny... or is RJ playing the Daffy role? Hmm, hard to say actually. Either way, Ike is the perfect foil in this situation because he is somehow more gun crazy than Striker and that makes for a fun contrast as the cowboy imp is forced to deal with someone even more heavily armed and far more insane than RJ could ever be.
Then there's the actual Looney Tunes gags and references. The most egregious being Angel Dust's section when he does the whole "Rabbit Season-Duck Season" gag and then dresses in drag. It was strange giving my own twist to that routine. Where Angel is trying to get shot instead of trying to avoid it. Granted, that's not really what he's doing, he's fucking with Striker and messing with RJ. Angel's goal ultimately is intending to prevent the imp from getting a shot off by being creepily the idea of being hunted by him. It throws Striker off enough because it seems overtly sexual stuff freaks him out. Specifically when he's on the job.
And hey, I got to put Angel in drag! That's been his thing since before the pilot came out.
I also enjoyed making RJ sound like a very stereotypical Canadian to fool Striker for a second. It just felt right as something he'd break out from time to time to screw with someone like Striker. It was a direct adaptation of a joke between Wile E Coyote and Bugs Bunny, but I think I gave it a decent spin on things there.
The Mexican Standoff with Sir Pentious was a neat one to do, if only for a short exchange and a break from the constant shooting and running. It gave me a chance to characterize Striker a little. And for Ike to reveal just how absolutely committed to his batshit crazy beliefs he is. The story had to change a bit though as I had to switch around RJ's Tail and Sir Pentious' Tail messing with the crane. For one, I needed to make it clear Sir Pentious' tail wasn't portrayed as sentient, unlike RJ's Tail. And I needed to move the sequences describing their actions around so it wasn't obvious right away what they were doing and for pacing reasons. It made the payoff at the end when Striker is crushed by garbage funnier.
Running Gun was chosen after a long consideration as the chase music. Why? Well, it's fairly simple. It best described Striker's personality to me. It felt appropriate given he was a cowboy running down RJ. The lyrics matched a lot of the visuals I wanted to use... and it's another part of the Looney Tunes send up.
You see... the secret title of this chapter is actually... Running Dra-Gun. Which is basically using the Looney Tunes' method of making their titles to their cartoons incredibly groan inducing puns. I even have this image of RJ running in silhouette as Striker chases them as the title card opener with "Running Dra-Gun" in big goofy letters over the scene. So yeah, it's a stealth pun.
Some people felt that RJ should've used more of his Toon Force abilities here. Technically he did, I just didn't call attention to them. His ability to run around a tree and then disappear up it. How he was able to use a tree for cover to hide despite the trees not being that big, and if you noticed in his "What's Up Doc?" parody number he's popping in and out of the playground equipment at odd angles that he probably shouldn't be able to get to nearly as fast. But because it's funny, he can basically turn into a whack-a-mole as long as there is a hole to stick his head out of. I'm doing my best to better show off RJ's toon powers though. Specifically his squash and stretch abilities that enable him to do a few things a dragon of his size probably shouldn't.
Of course, then there was the scene where Ike saved those two hellpups, which was decidedly not very looney or tooney of him. I did show that Striker was mortified at the prospect he almost killed two kids, just to show he's not a completely horrible person. But later showing Ike freaking out over the kids calling him a hero was a very significant moment in his development. Showing that Ike has way deeper issues than he's willing to confront right now. I enjoyed revealing that this guy who seems to not be bothered by anything and is highly delusional is probably just hiding something from everyone and probably himself.
But it was fitting that we ended things in this chapter with Alastor stepping in to throw his weight around. I felt it was the only way I could manage to justify Striker losing here without making him seem like a joke. I know people are sensitive to that. Alastor showing up, that would give anyone pause, Striker especially. He might want to take down overlords but... Alastor is the strongest sinner in Hell. That's way above his weight class and without Angelic Bullets he's got nothing he can use against him. So at that point, better to cut your losses.
This is why I had Niffty be the last character RJ seeks out to help him with Striker. Not just so Niffty can see Striker again and go all Yandere on him once more, but because if there's anything that's going to make Alastor act it's Niffty being in danger. I know people don't think he actually cares about Niffty, but I don't believe. I think he cares a lot more than he realizes.
It also helped lead things into what happened next when Alastor gets Vaggie and RJ to volunteer for a much bigger mission. One that follows directly from the end of this chapter.
Creature Feature: I think there's a theme with these chapters honestly, just me having RJ get stuck is some of my favorite scenarios. And having a Christmas released Chapter involve, well, a horror story... eh, it was a fun little thing to do. Hey, it was relevant, the Bone Stag was a monster reindeer! It counts.
So as RJ points out this was an extended Creature Feature story, starring him and Vaggie. I immensely proud of him going on about his fear of "Nedry-ing This Up" as he comes to realize what their role was in this. I just wanted a chance to actually do something scary with this story. I was itching to do a proper real horror chapter here and I finally got it.
Vaggie and RJ were always the choice for this chapter, but I was honestly surprised how well they worked together for it. The chemistry between them, how they bounced off one another, how the jokes landed, it all work so well. I was kinda happy to see it because I needed this. I needed to really make people see how good a pair of friends they had become. And how, outside of their shared love of Charlie, they had other things going for them. That they had stuff they could connect over and bond over. That they really were coming together. This is especially important for when I put renewed strain on their friendship in the future. No spoilers, but if you believe Vaggie and RJ are good friends, then you want them to work through whatever issues they encounter in the future. You want that friendship to remain strong in the face of adversity.
I was actually setting up this chapter for a while. With Alastor constantly showing up, looking frazzled, coming up with excuses not to do thing, seemingly being distracted and not really explaining why. It was leading up to this, creating a bit of a mini arc of sorts. I like to think the pay off for the foreshadowing was well worth it.
Here's the tricky thing of the chapter though. I had to be careful with what I revealed. I was not going to have Alastor's form radio station give away all his secrets. I couldn't have him admit to making deals with Rosie or what his ultimate plan is. None of that. Because if I'm wrong it contradicts everything. And I most certainly couldn't have him say too much about how things went down with Vox. I almost did that, but I quickly changed course and fixed it before publishing. This was very important because how it was originally contradicted what we learned in season 2. I couldn't abide that. I needed to fix it and fast. It was a sort of 11th hour deal honestly.
Most of it was easy though, so long as I kept it ambiguous or not entirely certain what Alastor did or encounter or had to deal with while he was in Hell. And there was no specific timeline given as to when certain events happened, so it was easy to just leave it in the air. That whole thing with the overlord who almost disrupted Alastor's powers? A simple problem that Alastor never had to deal with again because he made sure the Overlord would never share it with anyone. His trophies of his kills based on what we saw of the overlord he took out, a few of the posters, his descriptions of how he got the screams he wanted for his broadcasts, his taxidermy, all of it was generally just reasonable assumptions as to what Alastor can do or has done. But nothing totally certain, nothing that can be contradicted later.
The Bone Stag itself was probably the greatest risk in that regard. I needed to make it clear that it's not Alastor's shadow but also not really him by the end. It's a part of him, a sectioned element of his soul that he implanted in his old radio station as a guard before Rosie forced him into hiding for seven years. Given Alastor is supposed to be the strongest sinner in Hell, it would make sense he would have the power to do this, but I did have to put limits on it. Mainly that it's a wild animal, it can't really be controlled by anyone but Alastor and Alastor cannot reabsorb until he is in contact with it.
Also the anti-Alastor signal affects it way worse, preventing it from doing anything until RJ and Vaggie deactivate it. And then... well then the fun begins. As we get to see the Bone Stage murder people to oldey timey music. Particularly some of the creepiest kid's song ever created during the 1930s. I particularly enjoyed Teddy Bear Picnic and Run Rabbit. Those were just perfect little songs that Alastor I know would have loved. Teddy Bear Picnic was the perfect introduction to the Bone Stag, Crow honestly loved the whole sequence. Getting your editor to pretty much tell you not to change anything concerning a scene is a dream for any writer I think.
Run Rabbit was also a good sequence, started out with a flagrant reference to Aliens. Just making the whole thing a chase, that song was built for a chase scene honestly. I almost didn't have it in there, but the chapter was still a bit short, so I figured I could keep it in. That way there was still a decent length and something to make the middle sequence a bit more interesting.
Brief aside, I really love Aliens. I really loved just squishing Aliens, Jurassic Park, the Thing and basically so many films together. The Haunted Mansion reference in the secret room was probably the closest I risked to overstretching myself joke wise. But the whole joke about RJ not really having a good way to get out other than bashing a wall down was too neat not to have. Coupled with Vaggie just accidentally finding the secret exit.
Boogeyman though, that was the highlight, the big one, just a complete murder fest involving the Bone Stag killing a Captain Rhodes parody, complete with final line. I think that song was just the perfect encapsulation of this entire chapter. Like Shadow of the Red Baron before it, I essentially wrote this chapter around that final sequence. One thing I'm really proud of is matching the words of the song so closely to the kills. It enabled me to be a little creative with the action and choreographing how everything went. Right up to the point RJ stabbed the spear from the Stag's leg.
I did include some other stuff besides Alastor lore drops. Revealing that Vox has been spying on RJ, keeping tabs on him through their encounters, and that he was the one who hired Striker. That whole conversation between them was fun to write. Again, it's really interesting to see interactions between the characters of both Hellaverse shows and I seriously hope we will see more of that, outside of just the ones we're all hoping for like Lucifer and the Sins. Because really, how would Striker interact with Overlords, especially given he wants to kill a few himself to carve out a place for himself.
In the end though, Alastor still came out on top, but RJ and Vaggie won friendship. I think that diner scene was a really nice thing to write. Just to give RJ and Vaggie a chance to talk things out and show that they have more to both of them than just their love of Charlie. Although that is a significant part of who they are. I think a lot of people accuse Vaggie of that problem and this was me trying to show that her real issue is, she never really had actual friends. She couldn't trust many people. And someone like RJ is new to her. Someone she's not completely put off by. That doesn't make her suspicious. Not in the same way others do. And that's probably why this is such an adjustment for her. Not only is RJ someone she can count on but he wants to be her friend. He thinks she's cool. And he's trying to relate to her, understand her, know her. And not for any other reason then he feels like he can relate. It's an interesting dynamic and I like exploring it.
But, well, at this point it was becoming clear... RJ was winning too much so...
Beach Episode: Up until now, RJ's success rate has been based on him running through tropes as if they can apply to real life. And while sometimes this often helps guide him a little, there is always a chance that will backfire. And that happened here, hard. RJ thought he was in a frivolous, low-threat Beach Episode... and it couldn't be further from the truth.
I know they said there wasn't an ocean in Pride Ring, so I didn't make an ocean. I used the biblical mythology lexicon to create a lake... a Lake of Fire, so it's still not water. I'm not sure if Viv will use the Lake of Fire at some point in the future. Or if it will even have a resort on its shores, but this feels like something that would happen in the Hellaverse. Let's make a beach resort on a lake that's made of literal fire no one can really swim in! That's just a perfect Hellaverse joke, wonderfully absurd and incredibly stupid on part of everyone who came up with the idea.
Shaking RJ's confidence in his plan was a simple affair. Things went a bit off the rails from what he was hoping pretty quickly. He did not expect Niffty to be that good at volleyball. But the real nerve shaker was Alastor, who made it very clear that he didn't appreciate RJ acting like he was hot shit just because he's been on a winning streak. As well as reminding him that he's kinda pissed off how RJ keeps rejecting his help and that he should probably stop thinking he can somehow skirt by on his stupid luck. That he's still the same sinner who dropped into Hell like a clueless idiot and nothing has changed.
Which led to RJ wanting advice from Angel, which went a bit better than he thought it would. Because Angel isn't really trying to ruin RJ's day anymore and he's trying to help him out. They're not friends, but Angel wants to try and be a better person. I liked the conversation, it's a good way to show the two of them have evolved since their first meeting.
However, that leads us to the real conflict. Interesting thing, a lot of this chapter was inspired by a suggestion from Crow that Vox should try to trick RJ into thinking he's not dead and that this whole thing is just a virtual reality simulation. I liked the idea, but I needed to make it feel a bit more in line with what I wanted for the story. I essentially decided to do a Total Recall riff, specifically the movie. It probably helped that Vox is an admitted cinephile in canon and season two said he pirates Earth's broadcasts. So yeah, he probably does have Killer Klowns locked up somewhere in a film vault.
In this case, there's a "Doctor" who tells RJ he isn't dead and that he's just in a coma. Insisting that he needs to wake up or be lost forever. He gives a convincing little explanation about everything that's happened and even shares information that only RJ would know like his last name. It's all pretty spooky and it almost works on RJ, had he not spotted that spy watch.
I was kinda hoping it would trick a few people too. That this might just be what was actually going on. That RJ was trapped in virtual reality. That something was really amiss. If only for a second. And I may have slipped in some foreshadowing for future chapters just to keep you guessing well into the story as it goes along.
For now though, RJ realizes that Vox hasn't an original idea in his body and is soon running for his life from killer Fizzy-Bots. I kinda love that there are so many kinds of Fizzy-Bots, because that gives me an easy excuse for minions to send after RJ. All of which I don't have to worry about the moral quandaries of killing them because they're robots. I can do anything to them. Of course, this was like the third chase sequence in a row for the past three chapters. So I was a little concerned people would be getting tired of RJ running away from all his enemies. But, ya know, if he's rolling around a giant disco ball and throwing himself out a window on a surf board? I imagine people would mostly be cool with it. So long as the chases aren't boring, I think most people are fine with RJ giving his enemies the run around.
Surf City was always the chase song, it took me a while to settle on a decent beach rock song. However, I had a change of heart and added an extra sequence while I writing the chapter. That would be the beach concert with "Mustang Dong" and the return of Katie Killjoy being a total bitch. This time with her characterization being a better mix between her pilot voice and her series voice. I absolute hate Katie Killjoy, so any chance to humiliate her is an opportunity I will take. But I also love writing her, so it's a catch twenty two. The purpose of her being here though was mostly just to sell the point home. That RJ, for all his advancements and evolution, was still the same dragon who dropped into Hell and has no idea what he's doing.
That nothing has really changed in the end.
As for "Mustang Dong", I just wanted to use the song. It's fucking funny as shit and I wanted an excuse to use it... as well as a means to tell people in a subtle way that there is a specific time frame that this story is happening in parallel to Helluva Boss. But you'll probably learn more about that in the upcoming chapter.
The final sequence of the chase, with RJ turning into a massive fire dragon and burning the sand beneath him to destroy the Fizz-Bots, was a great cap to everything. A very cool awesome attack... that basically became the final straw for the Resort's management. They kicked Charlie's party out and nothing she or anyone else could say would stop her.
Additionally, I hope that this chapter also made people realize WHY Emberlynn and RJ are friends in this story. There is no way RJ could've had the conversations he did with anyone but Emberlynn. She is far too crazed a shipper to not want to be involved. But the thing of that is, she's also bot nearly as connected to the Hotel, so she's can't affect things too greatly despite her newfound knowledge. It gives RJ someone to confide in and talk things out that he can't do with anyone else because they're too close to the situation. As an outside observer, Emeberlynn has a different perspective that RJ can utilize to think things through. Granted, it's a pretty insane, possibly borderline schizo perspective on the situation, but she's at least someone that will encourage RJ and set him straight on other things. And her investment in his love with Charlie means that he knows she's still cheering him on, even when he's not so sure.
But his second talk with Angel was really the good one to go out on. I point to it being the real coda of the chapter, as Angel allows himself to be sincere for once and offer some advice, That RJ will screw up, that he can't always prevent it, but that sulking about it when you fail isn't going to help make it better. That sometimes you just gotta roll with it, accept the loss and try to build from there. Which RJ accepts as he joins every for their weenie roast. Crow thought it was a good enough place to start the hiatus as it kinda feels like it's a cap on Act One if you will and that an intermission is warranted. I kinda agree, if I was going to pause for anything, this chapter was probably better than most.
And in light of that, we have reached the end of another BTS Entry. I appreciate you all sticking with me for this ramble. I hope you learned a little something about my process, maybe even something that can help you in your own writing and if nothing else maybe you got a laugh out of it. Stayed tuned for more of these down the line and, better yet, expect a new chapter of Dragon Me to Hell to be out in due course! Trust me, this one is real special and kicks off an entirely new arc. You don't want to miss it! See ya then!
It's a Hazbin Hotel Beach Episode! Fun in the sun! Bikinis and Volleyball! Margaritas For All! And RJ is planning to turn his fortunes around at last! Our Wistful Wyvern has decided to confess his love to Princess Charlie Morningstar and finally get his polycule with Vaggie off the ground. The only problem is how to pull it off. Because we all know RJ the Dragon never runs into more than one problem ever. And this is a Beach Episode, where nothing can go wrong! So I'm sure his plan will go off without any unforeseen issues. Surf's Up!
Alastor has "Volunteered" Vaggie and RJ to solve a little problem at his old radio station. Thinking they can get some dirt on Alastor for themselves, our two PolyBuds agree for what seems to be a straight up stealth mission. But Al's old stomping grounds hide some pretty dangerous secrets. Our duo might have bit off more than they can chew, hopefully something else doesn't do the same to them.
Oh Deer, a scary chapter for Christmas! Just what everyone wanted!