Dragon in a Mafia Club: This idea was born out of my love of classic Mafia music. The stuff you hear in Goodfellas and the like. All the great lounge singer tracks of old. And giving RJ a chance to sing a lot of those songs to a relatively hostile audience seemed like a fun idea. Especially with Tail along for the ride. It also offered me an opportunity to have Angel and RJ get involved in another adventure together. One that addressed how while they may have a truce, they still have issues with each other and have a hard time calling each other friends.
The very first image in my mind about this chapter was literally the gag where RJ answers the door only to see Angel standing there and slam it in his face after telling him no. It was just such a perfect visual in my imagination and I couldn't help but adapt it into reality. It brought to mind a lot of similar scenarios where a character convinces another to get involved in a scheme they have no desire to be a part of. And RJ's genre savvy enough to not trust anyone being so coy about why they want their help on something. Especially when it's Angel who is very shady and hard to trust. Therefore the only way I could get him to go along with Angel in the end was to have him, essentially, blackmail him into it. Mainly by telling on Charlie in a way that makes the dragon look good so RJ can't back out of it without looking like an asshole. It's really RJ's worst weakness. It's also a funny weakness and why I pulled it here. As Angel says, it's hard to hate him after he got RJ more time with Charlie. But it's paradoxically easier to hate him because it's a seriously underhanded trick to pull. Which sorta sums up RJ and Angel's relationship, they both hate and like each other to strange degrees.
The Mafia Bar in question was fun to create. I'm surprised people weren't picking up on it earlier than RJ honestly. I did sort of telegraph it hard by the time I revealed a lot of dudes were wearing fedoras and were also likely from Greed. But it was somehow funnier to find out that they only put two and two together around the same time as RJ finding the Gabagool. Which led to one of RJ's most valid and hilarious meltdowns I've done yet. I particularly like how he goes off about his plan to burn the place down and escape in the confusion, before quickly backing off that idea when he gives it more thought, only for Tail to keep suggesting it afterwards. Because Tail just really can't let an impulsive idea go.
Selecting the songs for the chapter was a bit harder than you might think. They all had to be Lounge or Gangster related in some fashion. I tried to avoid the more obvious ones, specifically anything that evokes Vegas too much. This isn't that kind of atmosphere. I stuck in general to songs about big city life or criminal activity. I think the hardest stuff was picking the songs for Angel's strip dances. They had to be something you could obviously dance to, that would make sense as something for a stripper. I usually just try to search through YouTube and Google to see if anything matches the criteria. Frankly, I get duds that way than hits, but eventually I find something buried among all the typical stuff that actually does fit the scene I want. Ring-A-Ding-Ding and Until The Read Thing Comes Along both actually worked for what I wanted with Angel's dance scenes. Mack the Knife was... well that was a no brainer given who shows up here. Roy Orbison's Uptown took a bit of time to pin down and I set it to visuals of another RJ hallucination. This time with Charlie performing a dance for him.
Writing dance choreography is complicated by the way, it's not the same as a fight. You're mostly just trying to properly depict and describe the movement of someone's anatomy in order to convey the energy of the scene. It's not that it's particularly tricky, it's just you need to remember how a person is moving if you're going to accurately move to each step along the way. I've gotten used to it as I've done these musical numbers but I remember having trouble trying to accurately figure out what dance Angel would be doing on that pole.
The most fun of the song sequences I did though, outside of the final one, was the Tom Jones Dueling Melody. This was partially inspired by John Mulaney's "Salt & Pepper Diner" bit, where he describes how he and a friend of his tortured a diner full of people by making the jukebox constantly play "What's New Pussycat" and put in one "It's Not Unusual." The joke here was, let's do that, but have both songs interrupt each other because Tail thinks the former is funnier and wants to use it to hit on women. In my opinion, "Pussycat" is a song that can get really annoying, real fast, if you play it on a loop. It really does feel like it goes on longer than it should after a while and the loops just merge together. It's also an incredibly stupid song. "Not Unusual" is actually fun to listen to and doesn't feel like an extended joke. Mainly because it doesn't rely on repetition nearly as much. Combining together was a challenge, as I needed to figure out when was the worst time for Pussycat to come back in without ruining the flow of No Unusual completely. I like to think I pulled it off.
Tail turning himself into a ventriloquist dummy was partially inspired by Krusty Clown trying to do something similar during the Gabbo episode that saw him get cancelled. I didn't have Tail traumatize the audience, as the act goes a bit better, but he does end up spitting on everyone in what's admittedly something very gross. It's a neat way in my mind to subtlety explain how RJ and Tail work now. Namely that they share an eternal organ system. RJ can drink water and Tail can spit it up. The reverse is also true.
Now here's the part that makes things weird. I had decided that Chaz would return for this chapter. That was the plan from the start in order to set up that he is still eager to have sex with a dragon. And that's he's latched onto RJ because he's the only dragon around. I needed to make it clear that Chaz doesn't actually find RJ hot, as that's sort of a weird scenario where everyone wants to fuck RJ and that would be stepping some isekai fantasy territory I'm not particularly cool with. No, Chaz just wants the clout of saying he had sex with a dragon.
The weird thing was that I published the damn chapter... when they released Shark Boy Summer on YouTube. And I swear that was completely coincidental! It was the most random ass thing to happen. Something that I never intended to happen. Ever. It's even weirder to know that this happened twice now, what with Chaz's "funeral" short coming out just days before I released Chapter 27, which also featured him. I have plans for Chaz to come back and quite honestly, if he shows up somehow again despite being dead when I post that damn chapter in the future I will be very scared.
Also I'll probably shoot my shot and ask Spindelhorse if they'd hire me as a writer because at that point if we're sharing the same fucking brain that much I might as well be on the fucking team.
Chaz was mostly just here to be his terrible self and to lead Angel away for his half of the story off page. The real treat was Crimson. I know, it's a little strange that RJ would meet Crimson before he meets his son, but I like to do things a little differently than most. I suppose it's not a surprise that Crimson was, at the very least, financing the initial deal Chaz had with Deacon Witchfinder. But something that did surprise readers was Crimson revealing he was one of the Greed Mobsters who had invested in the Willow Woods Gang and their bootleg operation. It made sense for me to tie that in here, because of course Crimson would be looking for other means to increase his cash flow. He did admit to Moxxie the family was in dire need of money. Expanding to operations in Pride would help with that if they had a partner.
I didn't just do this to tie it back to a previous chapter. I needed a better reason for Crimson to threaten RJ like he did. Originally, Crimson was just going to set up his challenge with the acoustic guitar because of what he says initially. That RJ playing on his electric game controller guitar is cheating and he's a very old fashioned gangster. That felt too petty, even for him. I changed it to make it so he's pissed at RJ ruining his business deals because that felt more in line with Crimson as a character. That and it shows that there are consequences to RJ's actions. Even when he comes out on top. Too often a hero in his situation just does something good and it means everything is okay. It sort of places this central moral compass upon a character, that they're always right no matter what in the end and are rewarded for it. Yeah, no, being in the right doesn't mean you're going to have good things happen to you. It's just as likely that it will make you enemies as much as friends.
Speaking of, let's discuss Angel and RJ as friends for a bit because there's been a few reactions to why Angel does what he does in this chapter. And I'd like to address them. I wanted to use this interaction to introduce the fact that Angel has an extended family. And more importantly, that he used to come from a life of crime. I wanted RJ to discover that Angel had come from not the best of places growing up. And that would put some things into perspective for him. And also lay the groundwork for the fact that RJ has not really talked much about his life to his friends for one reason or another. Now granted, that doesn't really excuse Angel for lying, but it's not really there to excuse him. It's for RJ to process and think about for later and for right now.
A few people, not everyone but a few, while they didn't seem to think Angel was out of character for this, were annoyed that he decided to lie and were a lot harsher on him for it than I expected they'd be. To be honest, this sometimes makes me a bit concerned that maybe people are reading this story in a frame of RJ Centrist Morality, that problem I mentioned before. That RJ, being the POV character, is always right and doesn't have to learn anything. And perhaps a few people were just taking out their frustrations on Angel a bit more as a result. I was concerned I'd get the opposite effect writing these sequences, specifically between RJ and Angel. That more people would side with Angel, excuse his behavior and call out RJ's mistakes. To find that they agree generally with RJ is nice, but I do now fear folks are thinking RJ has nothing to learn and doesn't need to learn anything from these situations. Because he does, he learns that maybe part of why this friendship isn't working the wants is because he's putting all the expectation on Angel. And yeah, Angel has to of work, but friendship is a two-way street in my mind. It's give and take. And Angel not trusting that RJ would help him by just being honest is a failing on his part, but also to RJ's to some extent.
This isn't to say, again, that Angel was right to lie. I just feel, in all honesty, that there's a reason for people taking the actions they do. In the case of Angel Dust, I feel his character has always been very guarded. That he hates himself and doesn't think he deserves to have good things happen to him. That he's an awful person who has only done wrong. So why bother trying to do good at this point now that he's dead? And this, probably, was his way of trying to force RJ to move on and just forget about him before things go too deep. Tail obviously proves to him that RJ still isn't his biggest fan, so why not just complete the course and sprint to the finish line that Angel suspects is inevitable. Angel seems to think being honest about who he is and what he's done will just push people away and make them realize how pointless it is to try. It's why he doesn't tell Charlie what his greatest sin is.
(Which, by the way, Charlie does NOT force him to do. Vox spills the beans on it and Angel gets mad over being exposed even though it doesn't change anything about how Charlie sees him.)
I feel like I can understand why Angel is keeping these secrets, why he is playing them so close to the chest. So I think my story goes easier on him than I think some readers will. But ultimately, RJ is trying to be more forgiving, trying to be a better person, and that requires him to make the effort to correct himself and explaining his side of things in the clearest way possible. Angel thought it would be easier to just ruin his friendship with RJ rather than be honest with why they came here. RJ decides to prove that's not the case and will help Angel out even if he's mad at him. That's how I feel a good protagonist should act. That just because you're mad at someone that isn't good enough reason to not help them. Especially if they're not the only ones in trouble. True, Angel's family is horrible, but preventing a potential gang war that might get a lot of people who don't deserve it hurt is still an admirable goal in my mind.
I can honestly see why people aren't happy with Angel, even if they accept its in character for him. But I like to think that RJ still accepting some of the responsibility as to why Angel lied is a good lesson to learn. You can understand someone's actions without approving of them. That's really the first step to any sort of empathy and I feel it's a lesson a lot of us have forgotten.
In any case, I like to think Angel redeemed himself a little by encouraging RJ to take the chance and play his heart out on stage. Which led to what I feel was one of my best musical numbers so far. I wanted to use Bad Bad Leroy Brown for a good long while. And it felt like the perfect song for RJ to use to get out of this situation. The lesson of the song, about how overconfidence in your own infamy can probably lead to your downfall, fit well with how Crimson seems to fancy himself.
The image of Tail smashing a mug into a guy's face and stealing those car keys in tune to the song's lyrics was in my mind for the longest time. And I was more than happy to get it out there at last. It also marks the first time RJ plays a musical instrument completely unaided by his headset, showing how much he's grown by practicing so much. It's a tremendous confidence boosting win for the guy and I felt it was much deserved after everything I put him through in this chapter. And pulling of an escape with Angel, that was the cherry on top, allowing them to bond.
A small part of me always likes to imagine someone doing an animatic of these song sequences I create. For no other reason than they like the ideas and want to capture them in motion. If I had the time, budget and connections, I'd probably get some to do this one above all others first. Although "It Just Works" certainly ranks high on the list as well.
I honestly really enjoyed writing this chapter, it was nice to have Angel and RJ do something together again. It's hard at times because he and RJ don't share a lot of interests in common. So I'm always trying to think of things that they may want to do together, if anything. It takes time to get there, but I like their dynamic as vitriolic frenemies, and if I have the chance I'm going to utilize that.
Pump You Up: This was both a chapter to goof off a bit, as well as set up some things for further down the line concerning how Vaggie and RJ now make this polycule work with Tail around. The answer is it won't be easy, but they're still an effective team together and that's worth maintaining even if Tail is basically RJ with a broken filter.
I can't claim full credit for the idea. Crow suggested that one of the chapters could feature the Hotel Crew at the gym. Only a few weeks ago, I had seen a picture of Charlie lifting dumbbells in workout clothes, declaring she was going to be buff enough to "Give the Best Hugs." You'll notice that gag was in the story as well.
I combined that idea with the concept of RJ doing a Looney Tunes plot where he screws with a jerkass gym hog. That role went to the Ohio Sinner who killed his wife for cheating on him with the delivery guy and got sentenced to death after the yappy jogger saw him hiding the body. And yes, if it isn't obvious enough yet, he is from the original Helluva Boss pilot. I decided to feature him as the antagonist because I felt I could get a lot of work out of that one off joke of him being really mad he got executed for killing his wife. Honestly, I probably over did it a lot on that. I think the absurdity of him not being able to let go of the fact he was rightfully punished for murder was just something that lent itself perfectly to comedy. Especially when he was going to be the target of Looney Tune hijinks. No one was ever going to have any sympathy for him.
Before that though, I had Vaggie, RJ and Tail have an extended discussion with a conversation medicine ball to air out their grievances. This was mostly me laying the ground work for later in chapter 37 where they have a longer discussion about things. But in general, Vaggie needed to vent about the fact Tail exists and is a wrinkle in their original plans. RJ does his best to be mature about it, sticking to his guns about his decision, but Tail is still Tail and it's hard to keep him from being overly honest.
This will come up again, but for now I want to express that establishing this polycule was never meant to be easy. There were always going to be problems. I never wanted things to just happen overnight, I wanted them to build. I wanted RJ to work on himself as much as anything else in order to really move forward. And part of that is working with Vaggie who has a lot of reservations about sharing the women she loves with someone and is trying to figure out how, if any of this, can work. If I just made it happen, too quickly, it would be playing into the tropes I want to avoid. I'm moving in the direction I've set out, but I feel it needs to be warned. Not a "Will They, Won't They" situation, so much as a "What Does it Take for This to Work?" For Vaggie, it relies a lot on trust. And granted, yes, it is a bit hypocritical of her to ask that of RJ when she isn't very honest about everything herself. That's a bit of a running theme in these chapters. I can understand if that's a bit frustrating, but it serves a purpose.
For the moment, the issue is Tail and if RJ's Id having agency complicates things too much. As it's obvious Tail voices a lot of RJ's deeper desires and demands to be heard. This was how I managed to fit in a bit of lore that's been ignored by fans of the Hellaverse all over. Sinners are sterile. They can't have children. No matter what you try, or what you write, or what you do, Sinners cannot have kids period. Not with each other. Not with Hellborn. Not with anyone. And it felt like a natural point for that revelation to come out at last. So yeah, RJ can't have kids with Charlie. Not as a Sinner.
We should talk about the skits though because that's where the meat of the chapter is. The first one is pretty straight forward. RJ tricks the Gym Hog into trying to out muscle Vaggie in weight lifting, only for him to be bamboozled. Not only were the weights fake, setting up that Niffty is preparing for the bakeoff next chapter, but ultimately Ohio Sinner overdoes it and crashes through the floor. That was an easy gag to come up with. As was the fake out of the Sinner returning and being right behind RJ. Because, oh subversion! That's not what's behind RJ... until the Ohio Sinner bursts up from the floor beneath him. He gets bonked on his head for his trouble and I have Tail shout "Cheese It" as a shout out to what Bender does in Futurama for that one College episode. I just really like that line as a synonym for "Run away" essentially. Something about it is so absurd.
The second skit however was actually added at the eleventh hour. Not only was our page count running short, I just felt like we did not have a rounded number of jokes before the chase sequence. For the life of me, I just couldn't figure out something else for RJ and Vaggie to do. I had ideas, but none of them seemed to work for full skits. At the last second, like a day or two before we published, I talked it out with Crow and I figured out this idea. RJ giving the Red Sinner from Ohio muscle relaxants and then forcing him to do jazzercise with Vaggie leading the class. The image of this big beefy sinner being puppeteered around by RJ for a bit finally struck a chord with me and was honestly funny as all Hell. I was immensely proud of figuring it out at such a late hour and it still working.
The third skit was more or less inspired by a minor Simpsons character, Lugash, the gymnastics instructor from the former Soviet Bloc states who cartwheeled over the Berlin Wall to escape from it. Though he retained his very angry style of teaching. RJ taking on the persona, mostly by drawing mustache over his and Vaggie's faces, seemed like a perfectly silly thing for him to do and call back to how Bugs Bunny's obvious disguises were never seemingly found out until it was too late. That and both him and Vaggie during Slavic accents was the Cherry on top that made the joke land all the better.
The chase sequence to close the chapter out, set to "Push It To the Limit" was basically me running through all the ideas I had for the Gym that I didn't think had enough legs to carry the chapter in their entirety. The punching bag was one of the key elements. I got a few ideas for the sauna however from playing a sequence in Streets of Rage 4 where you fight in one and the floors are super slippery. The final bit with the bike sending the gym jerk speeding out of the gym was a perfect homage in my mind to how a lot of these Looney Tunes antics seem to end. With the bad guy getting very distant comeuppance.
Probably could've added some explosions though.
I like to think this was a substantial use of RJ's toon force abilities, particularly the rule of funny managing to work in his favor against his antagonist. I promised myself I'd better utilize that ability of his as time went on and hopefully I've managed that. Just as much as I've managed making RJ and Vaggie's friendship more viable even if there's rocks and bumps in the road to their polycule with Charlie becoming official. In any case, I hope that goofy little chapter made you laugh plenty and often.
Where's the Lamb SAUCE?!: The Baking Show chapter with Niffty. I have to tell ya, I really fucking loved writing this one. As someone who has watched way too many cooking and restaurant related reality shows, mostly Gordon Ramsey, and all of them fairly over the top, this was a treat to put together. I got to do all kinds of crazy stuff with it, and better yet, give it my own flavor.
I started the chapter by establishing Tail's inability to shift into a weapon with moving parts, clearly setting up his limitations as a weapon. Not only can he not turn into a chainsaw, this means he can't change into ranged weapons. Only swords, clubs and axes and anything else similar to that. The good news that's still a lot of stuff he can shift into. The bad news is he doesn't get to be a chainsaw.
I had planned on Niffty's favor originally being her asking RJ to take her out to the grocery store all those chapters back when they went on their first adventure together. Instead, I moved it forward very significantly, until now when Niffty is given her chance to be a big reality TV Star on a cooking show! Which is a problem for her because... she's not good with cameras.
It had occurred to me early on that RJ had never seen Niffty freeze up in front of a camera. He wasn't here for that. If I wanted those jokes about cameras and Niffty freeze framing in front of them to land, I needed to establish to RJ what they were like. The idea for the cooking show sprang from that concept and I went with it as far as I possibly could.
Casey Cakesey was my method of starting that off from the jump. He is a blatant parody of Gordon Ramsey, only somehow meaner. I was strangely well-equipped to basically create him, as I went down way too many Hell's Kitchen rabbit holes some years back. It's hard to just make all of that go away. It sort of sticks in your brain and stays there forever. Purely because it is impossible to forget the various ways Ramsey breaks people down. And a lot of compilation videos basically repeat the same few major moments over and over again, just in different orders. I am at least proud I didn't do "Idiot Sandwich" at any point. Though I was tempted to allude to it.
But Cakesey was just one host, finding the others was a little harder. I settled on Katie Killjoy as the main heel judge. She made the most sense since this was a VoxNetwork program. The decision to use Zeezi took a hot minute though. I was worried I didn't have enough information on her as a character to effectively relay her personality. I eventually just settled on making her a more toned down Beelzebub, based on the fact the Overlords were supposed to be Lucifer's main posse before the Sins were conceived. Zeezi herself has Bee's clear party gimmick as her main thing. It's just she's not as focused on Gluttony alongside it.
Ultimately I think my decision to use her comes down to the fact I really love dinosaurs and I really, REALLY wanted an excuse to use her already. I think her being the good guy judge mostly makes sense. I don't think she was ever a big fan of Vox, nothing she did in season 2 suggested she was ever close to him. And she was very quick to abandon him alongside everyone else when it became clear he was off his rocker. She also said, in song, she thought Vox was full of it until he "beat" Alastor. So it makes sense to me she's normally a lot more chill.
Strangely, she's not the big name in the cast, that lies with Fizzarolli, making his debut at last in the story. This wasn't set in stone, mind you. I had thought of some other, original character being the host, or just some random background sinner. Ultimately, I decided it would be more fun if Fizzarolli was there. I thank Crow for that, mostly for letting me talk myself into it. Part of me likes to think Mammon is very desperate to assert himself in Pride where all the Sinners are. Purely to make money off of them. So of course he'd loan out Fizz to VoxTek, who else would he stick him with?
Fizz offered a nice goofy persona for RJ to bounce off of while dealing with the insanity of the show. Corw remarked that the final challenge area reminded him of Legends of the Hidden Temple, but it was mostly just a homage to booby trapped pyramids and tombs. If I borrowed any major inspiration for it, then it was probably from the short-lived "Secrets of the Cryptkeeper's Haunted House" Game show with a similar premise. Namely the final challenge where the contestants had to collect the most skulls to win while wandering through a literal haunted house set. I just did it with an Indiana Jones aesthetic instead. Generally just to goof on how out of all the challenges RJ faced for the show, this one had the least to do with cooking.
The hunting challenge was at least a little connected to cooking and generally done for RJ to face off against a killer animal he has to end up killing. It was another opportunity to utilize Toon Force a little and have our hero be forced into an equally insane situation that doesn't sound nearly as hard at first. To be fair, more than a few challenges on Hell's Kitchen featured living animals in some aspect. Although I don't think the contestants ever had to pick out a pig to slaughter. Not with their own hands at least. They did pick out lobsters I think though, possibly some fish. Not many people care about fish and crustaceans being killed on camera, or at least alluded to. Hell doesn't have the same qualms.
The first challenge though was the one I probably spent the most time developing. That's because it's a parody of a whole other TV Show, Supermarket Sweep, a classic game show where competitors have to prove their grocery buying prowess. It's a bit like Price is Right, but it tends to require you running around a fake grocery store and finding all the name brand products sponsoring the show in order to win. It's been parodied and copied over the years by several shows and I wanted the chance to do the same. With the Hell-based twist that all the contestants are allowed to fight each other and there are weapons hidden among the produce. It was a good chance for Tail to get his chainsaw back. To very gory results.
I'll say it was nice to have Tail and RJ going back and forth, both here and in prior chapters. It's nice that RJ is able to talk with himself now and it doesn't seem weird. It's a different way of having him consider his options aloud without having to resort to tons of narrative exposition.
But a lot of this chapter, despite RJ's antics, was centered on Niffty. I suspect the show will eventually fill in the gaps, but as I understand it, Niffty used to live in Japan, explaining why she speaks it so fluently, before she came over to America in the 1950s. I suspect she probably married an American Serviceman and returned with him to the states where she tried to assimilate. You can have the same effect with her being interned during the war, but I feel this fits her clear aspiring homemaker psychosis better. As her vision of America would've been tarnished over time as a recent arrival, rather than having it crushed before her whatever broke her mind much later.
To that end I created Priscilla, her rival homemaker in life. I didn't want to make her another animal or something, so I stuck her as a propane grill with fire for her face and tongs for hands. And from there, I made her a very stereotypical snooty elitist housewife, who clearly doesn't appreciate "out of towners" so to speak, moving into her neighborhood. I'm a rare case of someone who really likes the 1950s aesthetic but also enjoys exposing the rot beneath America's so-called Golden Age. And Priscilla's overt racism was part of that.
Not only did it make her eventual defeat all the more satisfying, it carried the theme of the chapter further. That being that RJ feels upset over not knowing enough about someone he considers a close friend, and discovering said friend has suppressed who she is, perhaps partially because of the racism she experienced in life. So he encourages her sudden embracing of her culture to prove a point through her fusion meals and later one tries to assure her that she's got nothing to prove because what matters is how Niffty sees herself.
Figuring out Niffty's fusion dishes was a bit complicated. I needed to find traditional American potluck dishes that could be combined with Japanese food that would still sound delicious and could work when combined. I think the miso pork and mashed potatoes casserole was one of the tastier concoctions. But the pie she made with Daifuku sounded way more delicious the more I wrote about its full creation in song. Incidentally, the musical the song came from "Waitress" actually featured Niffty's voice actress in a starring role. So that was a fun tidbit, thank Cross for discovering that for me.
I'm not sure if any of the foods I crafted for this chapter are viable in terms of creation, but I'd like to think they are. If anyone is brave enough to try and make these things reality, let me know how they turn out.
Awkward Sniffing: This was a significant chapter as it would mark the first time Loona worked alongside one of the main characters from Hazbin Hotel. At least in an extended and direct fashion. It was also where I needed and had to address a bunch of stuff that I felt was in dire need of some extended conversations about. And it seems there's still more to talk about because there is quite a bit of discussion over what went down here. I'm actually sort of pleased with the response though, because it's so diverse and no one opinion is exactly the same it seems. I think this one might have the most to go over in the end, so let's get to it.
The Secret Wars bit was sort of tied into the overarching theme of the chapter. That Vaggie and Loona are from very different worlds and backgrounds with different sets of priorities. They both need to reconcile those differences and realize that, despite all of that, they have the same goal in the end. Much like the X-Men and Avengers who spend too much time arguing when they both want the same thing in the original Secret Wars comic. That and we get to see just how overly obsessive RJ can be with his interests and how everyone reacts to it. I think stories about superheroes, people who do good purely because it's right and not for any compensation, probably appeal to Charlie a lot. Pentious would be fascinated by the speculative technology of the setting. Angel and Husk are already super over it and bored. Niffty is just happy to be included but not really engaging. I like Vaggie's little comment the best as it sort of foreshadows the fact she's keeping her angel identity, as well as exorcist past, a secret. Mainly how she no longer sees the "Ends Justify the Means" as an absolute now.
Picking the location for the Heavenly Eye Cult's location was a bit tricky. I didn't want it to just be another warehouse or apartment complex. That can get old fast. I went with a bit more of a theme involved, namely the Porn Theater. The concept is that the Heavenly Eye, being a Hyper Christian cult, believes that re-appropriating dens of sin is a way to purify them by giving them a new purpose. A sort of "Build Your Church Over this Pagan Shrine" sort of thing. Making it a theater enabled me to add a few extra details here and there, beyond just the screen area. The peepshow, the private dance/stripper pole area and, the bane of Ikebert's existence, the Donkey Room.
Look, if you know what a Burro Show is... and I pray you don't, then you know what was in that room. Or at least the remains of what was in that room. Supposedly, the very concept of these "shows" is an urban legend. But you know Pentagram City, every vice is seemingly indulged in, no matter how depraved. Ikebert, being just a country boy turned soldier, is strangely innocent enough to not realize what he's walking into, but worldly enough and knowledgeable enough to realize what is going on from the context clues left behind. Giving Ike something to hate besides Communism, particularly that room and everything in it, was my way of switching up his joke a little. I thought it came out pretty well.
The other thing I did with Ike was have him find out Tail could talk. This was another thing I wanted to accomplish with these chapters, having RJ's extended friendship circle react to Tail's existence. They mostly take it well and generally accept it, because Hell is weird like that. But they still obviously have a lot of questions. I think Ike is mostly wondering if it has any slightly socialist sympathies more than anything.
The Harpoon Gun caused a little confusion. The one that Sir Pentious made for RJ back in the Cherri Gang War chapter was a more traditional looking harpoon weapon. This one is a lot bigger and somewhat modeled after a similar weapon in Helldivers 2. I have RJ give it to Loona because I felt like she needed a unique weapon for the upcoming fight scenes and it gave us more of a chance to have the two of them interact. I'll talk about those chats a bit more in a second though. I should really discuss said fights, particularly with one Eye Guy Cultist who stood out the most.
The Griffon came out of my desire to include more fantastical enemies for RJ to fight. Surely there are sinners who turned into other mythical animals even if dragons are rare. And griffons are, themselves, often depicted as being the holier alternative to the demonic dragon. So there it was, that was my solution, RJ fights a Griffon, just like in Quest for Camelot, which I did call out specifically. To be honest, it's hard to call Tail a second head, even though he technically is. Mainly I think it's because since he's manifested his face on the tail it would just make things very confusing. He's already named himself after RJ's body part, I'm trying to limit how bizarre this could get by admitting he is a head.
So for now we'll just call him a growth.
I'm letting you know, if anyone wants to make an animatic of RJ and Tail singing the song "If I Didn't Have You" from Quest for Camelot, I should warn you... I might die laughing. That movie sucks but I have good memories of it, so it's that weird sort of nostalgia where I acknowledge something was terrible but I still don't hate it. Not really a "so bad it's good", but one of those "I had fun remembering it" deals. So feel free to do that because that song sort of fits RJ and Tail's dynamic so perfectly... and yes, Tail is Don Rickles.
The griffon's death being as violent as it is, what with the spear through the mouth and everything was really mostly to just pay lip service to how much more violent Helluva Boss can get than Hazbin. IMP really does not shirk away from murdering someone to death. Also, when you show an enemy goon being so hard to kill, if you write him being taken out with relative ease it sort of feels unearned. You only do that if you really want to be funny, like with Adam's death as he gets killed in mid-monologue by the most unlikely of perpetrators.
Now when you compare that to the other bad guy of this chapter, Commander Loudmouth, that goes a whole different way. If you must know, Loudmouth has no proper name as of yet. It's sort of the whole joke. That he's only known by the fact he's a pompous blowhard. Part of me thinks he used to be one of those assholes who picketed gay weddings or the like in his living life or screamed at any woman entering a Planned Parenthood who was just going for a regular check up.
Loudmouth in general is pretty terrible, but he's at least fun to watch fail. Unlike the Deacon Witchfinder, he does not command the same respect and authority. He's just, well, very loud. Making him the final boss battle for the chapter required giving him a vehicle just to make it seem like he had a chance. He hasn't exactly wowed us all that much in previous outings. You can rest assured though, the next time RJ faces off against someone with actual authority in the Eye Cult, it will be a much different story.
Well, I've held out long enough, time to address the biggest element of this chapter, Loona and Vaggie. Let's talk about Vags first and move into Loona, as that seems a more fluid way to discuss both of them. A lot of people, both recently and when first published, took umbrage with Vaggie a little. Mainly for how she viewed the situation with Loona. Granted if you felt she was being unfair, that was kind of the point. Vaggie has a lot of trust issues, it stems from the fact she ended up stuck in Hell after being betrayed for the crime of showing compassion. I've talked about this with Crow, and I think one reason she seems to be stalling a lot with the polycule is the very simple fact that she isn't as willing to be as honest with Charlie as RJ seems to be. So that's what's making things difficult for her. Throw in Loona into this mess and Vaggie is worried about RJ maybe losing his directive and slipping. That he's trying to go back on the conditions of their deal. And given that RJ does have feelings for Loona, she's not wrong. I think a lot of people mostly just took issue with her taking it out on Loona, even though the Hellhound was sort of pushing things to go in her favor regardless.
More on that in a second, let's stay focused on Vaggie. I wouldn't call how she acts here selfish, she's maybe a bit hypocritical, but it's not without reason. And the simple fact is this is the other side of the coin here. A few folks noted that Vaggie was real quick to agree to the polycule, especially so soon after RJ's robot Charlie plan. Yes, he didn't want to hurt anyone and he didn't think he was doing anything wrong by seeking out a relationship with an AI to get over his feelings for the real person... but he was. He made a really big mistake in his judgment by trying to find a shortcut rather than being honest about his feelings. He was so fearful of people hating him and being cast aside that he responded with a really stupid plan to avoid that. Now, RJ has reasons for why he did that, stuff that I honestly will get into before long, but suffice it to say he did admit he was wrong and acknowledge why he was wrong.
Some people thought it was still too easy of a thing for Vaggie to forgive and I wanted to address that by showing that she didn't really just forget about it. The CharAI Incident really affected her ability to trust RJ in some respects because of how messed up it all was. And yes, RJ has proven himself time and again to be very reliable, a good person, all of that, but Tail has introduced a new wrinkle into things and so has Loona. RJ is obviously infatuated with her as much as he is with Charlie. And while he isn't acting on it, Vaggie is concerned he's falling into the same pattern of decision making that led to CharAI. That being trying to emotionally manipulate a situation where he can have two girlfriends, or at least a side chick on top of Charlie. And Vaggie is very protective over Charlie's emotional state, which as demonstrated at the start of the chapter is a bit frustrated by Loona. She wasn't particularly okay with the idea Loona and RJ would be hanging out even though she claimed she was. So that's affecting Vaggie's actions here. Almost as much as Loona seemingly confirming Vaggie's fears as well.
Now I get that some folks are calling this out and pointing to Vaggie being unfair, but that's sort of the point. This is a messy situation that Vaggie is in. She's friends with someone who wants to date her girlfriend and is seemingly courting another woman on the side. What she already agreed to was hard enough, this is going a bit further than she's comfortable with for now. Ultimately, I reveal the reason Vaggie agreed to the Polycule and is trying despite her misgivings is both because RJ realized how wrong he was with CharAI and, well, when the initially made the deal RJ had just narrowly avoided getting sexually assaulted by his robot girlfriend. So a little sympathy was in order.
All the same, RJ did stick up for himself here, or more accurately stuck up for Loona. Because even acknowledging that a lot of Vaggie's issues are valid concerns and things they both need to work on, Loona doesn't deserve to get dragged into that. If this is more about RJ than her, Vaggie should keep centered on him. Something RJ acknowledges he deserves. Although some people don't feel so strongly about that. And honestly, as I admitted, Vaggie does have her own problems to work on. But try to remember... we're not there. Vaggie hasn't been forced to admit the fact she's an angel to anyone. And she's not ready to own up to it. So for now, she is working through this as much as anyone. I think the issue some are having is that we are seeing this entirely from RJ's perspective so we are stuck in his bias more or less. We don't see Vaggie's side, we only hear her express it. But I want to make it clear that she is doing her best to talk it out, make this work and figure out how to manage it. She just needs to realize what about herself she needs to fix. Part of that is being honest with the people in her life and herself. But that's going to take time.
The other half of this equation is Loona, who is very obviously trying to push a little to see how RJ responds. Trying to see if he'll return any of her little quips and flirty remarks. Mainly because she's been thinking more and more about this weird dragon that spent most of a day with her and wasn't repulsed by her at any point. Who actually seems to like her and she can tell he does. So, why not poke at this and see where it takes her?
It also doesn't help that she very clearly had a dream about RJ at some point recently. Which if you've read ahead you know all about. So she's kinda got that fantasy on the brain while she's out on this mission. I think Loona sees these missions against the Eye as twofold then. They are about stopping the cult and protecting vulnerable Hellborn, but they're also the excuse to hang out with the only real friend she's ever made. Vaggie wasn't wrong to point that out, but it was unfair to assume that trying to get with RJ was her only motivation. Especially when it goes deeper than that.
There's something to say about how cautious Loona is being with her emotions here. The fact is, she's still coming down from taking a chance on Vortex and completely blowing it once she realized he was taken. RJ isn't taken yet, but he's going after a different woman who is beyond out of his league. And Loona kinda knows she can't really compete, so she isn't sure about just going all in. She's trying to test RJ's boundaries, get him to admit something, show her something, give her a sign she should keep pressing this. I think RJ realizes this, but he's not really sure about his own feelings. He's not sure if Charlie will even agree to a polycule or if Loona will feel this way forever. So at the moment, he wants to play it cool.
Although, let's also be fair, him knowing what Loona is doing makes him not entirely innocent when he plays along, just a little. He's not intentionally misleading or manipulating her. He doesn't really take the bait Loona lays out, but he's not exactly discouraging her either. As seen in the restroom scene, he will put up boundaries but he's not exactly telling her to stop.
The restroom scene by the way was directly inspired by a very similar one from the superhero office comedy game Dispatch. Specifically the one involving the main character Robert and Invisigal. Except where Invisigal was very forward and open with the fact she had a sex dream the other night with Robert in it, Loona isn't really to just blurt that out. She danced around it, she tries to be coy, because... truthfully, Loona is as big an introverted dork as RJ, she's just desperate to prove she's not. So her flirting methods aren't as blatantly direct, but also a bit of a mess as she tries to act like she's really the seductive femme fatale... while standing in a gross restroom in an abandoned porn theater. Not the best strategy.
I think the scene overall better explains my intentions with Loona in the end. That none of this is just going to happen. Whatever is going on between them, whatever it leads to, RJ and Loona may both really like each other, but they have way too many issues to work out between them to just have it occur because of that combined interest. As I've pointed out before, I prefer romances with slow burns, and this is me playing a very long game. Particularly long in fact.
It all comes together though. RJ makes Vaggie and Loona stop sniping at each other long enough for Loona to reveal to Vags that she does actually care about the mission beyond just RJ. And Vaggie shows her in kind that she does value the lives of the Hellborn and she isn't just here for her own personal stakes. That scene with Loona unleashing herself and saving the Hellpup due to him saying some very specific trigger words was something I was really proud doing. Specifically in how it enabled her, RJ and Vaggie to call out how beyond twisted the Heavenly Eye is. And that even if their weird blood drinking idea worked, it wouldn't justify any of their goals because the cruelty involved is truly despicable.
I also liked the fight scene with the two mega goons, as it showed RJ's greater demonic form isn't invincible. He might be stronger, but that doesn't mean he can't be harmed. He's still inexperienced in using it and, more over, other sinners have had a longer time to get used to their powers. He can put up an impressive fight, but the struggles he had here shows that going big isn't the instant win button, which is why RJ uses it sparingly.
Although Loona certainly appreciated him using it. I'm glad that I established she's seen this form twice before so she could actually want RJ to change into it. This way her dream, which I reveal more in a later chapter, has precedent beforehand.
By the end, Vaggie and Loona are a lot more comfortable and cordial with one another. And while Vaggie says she's still unsure about altering the polycule deal, the fact she reaffirms that she does trust RJ, and more importantly won't take her insecurities out on Loona, shows things are improving now between them. The ending scene also gave RJ and Loona a greater chance to actually talk things out and get to know one another. Honestly, they need to do that more often, especially if they want this little weird friendmance to continue or go anywhere. Assuming it does.
I'll also mention that picking "Cum On Feel the Noize" and "Children of the Grave" were both major gets. Both because of the setting of the first fight being a place where you'd probably hear that music, as per Angel's comment about where hair metal tends to play at strip joints exclusively now, and because Black Sabbath really fits the aesthetic of the Heavenly Eye as villains. I mean, that is essentially what they are, a twisted version of Christianity crafted in Hell.
Oh yes, and RJ's Sewer Level Count continues to rise. Again, if you know where this is from... you're one of my people and I love you for it. Free Civvie!
Anyway, thank you all for tuning into another edition of my Behind the Scenes Blog Posts. Please feel free to leave your responses below and come back in due time for more. Hopefully when the rest of the already published chapters are uploaded to FF.Net, assuming they'll even let me of course. Until then, thanks again for believing in this story and I hope these notes gave you some insight into my creative process. Thank you.
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