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!
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