Hello again! Sorry that it's been a while.This will probably prove to be an interesting behind the scenes blog post. Mainly because it is going to involve RJ in a team up with his best friend, his biggest crush, and one of his worst enemies. It features a new enemy, a new location, a big exploration of V-Tower and what I feel is probably my most dramatic ending to any of these chapters so far.
So, we might as well get to it. We've already procrastinated too long on getting these up anyway!
Buddy Heist: The one thing almost every friend group has almost always considered at one point in time is the fantasy of pulling off a heist. And I felt what better bonding experience between Sir Pentious and RJ than the both of them performing a heist together. Initially to help liberate some of Pentious' old inventions, but one Lilly-Bella got involved, she obviously had her own objective in mind to help bring her into the fold.
I had always planned to have Lilly along on this one, if only in voice and not direct presence. But that still required giving her a separate goal. Not because she wouldn't help RJ out if he asked, but Lilly went through Hell working for VoxTek and the last thing she wants is to be pulled back into it, even if it means she kicking Vox in the dick over it. She just doesn't want to take the risk of being dragged along and potentially losing her newly started up business as collateral. Lilly is, in my opinion, extremely cautious about her moves. She has built this point of view over a long period of time. The one moment where she was reckless ended up getting her killed. So she's very calculating. RJ offering to help liberate her source codes is the only effective way in the moment to convince her to play the "Gal in the Chair."
It also gave me the opportunity to check in on Donna, the anxiety ridden highly traumatized arcade owning pterodactyl. She got up to some serious fun antics here. I touched on her issues previously, but it was only here I was able to actually go full throttle with just how high string and particularly messed up Donna is as a result of how she died and what she's now stuck forever as. I based a lot of how Donna acts on Petrie from Land Before Time, another flying reptile that is worried about everything. My general idea was to make her as plainly pathetically cringe, for lack of a better word, in order to illustrate just how much of a nervous wreck she is. Everything is a potential trigger word for her. She thinks too much to the point she ties herself in knots. She causes her own panic attacks just by trying to have a normal conversation. Given that she's supposed to be Lilly's land owner, who collects repairs from her rather than money, it create a fun reverse dynamic. She's supposed to be in authority here, but it's Lilly who has to calm her down all the time. So who needs the other more? I'd argue that maybe Donna needs Lilly more at times.
You might be wondering, as a result of this and a later conversation in the chapter, what exactly is the nature of Lilly-Bella and Donna's relationship? Well, unfortunately I can't really spoil that. Overall though, I think Donna is just not ready for a relationship as she's still finding herself. And Lilly isn't ready for one either for entirely personal reasons. I do feel at this point they are friends and Lilly does care about Donna's well-being. Make of that what you will. The nature of their friendship and it's future will have to wait for another day.
The main joke through most of this chapter was primarily RJ trying to convince Lilly-Bella to engage in terrible Hacker Tropes. You know the ones, the technobabble gibberish and constant typing done by Hollywood to make typing in code seem exciting. I settled on one major point for Lilly-Bella based on those Tropes, namely that she feels personally insulted by them. That she takes hacking, like coding, very seriously and would prefer it if people stop trying to make it "cinematic" just so it can seem more entertaining. RJ is the opposite of that, he knows all of that stuff is fucking stupid, but he loves it because of how stupid it is. He thinks it makes them fun, even if it's unrealistic. So the whole time, RJ keeps quoting famous Hackerisms from Hollywood movies and desperately trying to get Lilly to join in. Only to get shot down every single time. It made for an interesting way to include some heart to this chapter. A way for RJ and Lilly to bond a bit more and sort of accept that they're very different people but do share a lot in common at the same time. That even if RJ is very ridiculous and Lilly is not, they can come to terms with that given that they do share a lot with one another. Enough that they do care about each other. Even if RJ shoves himself in vents.
That joke was my favorite by the way. I was waiting for a chance to do one of those.
There were a lot of moving parts to the heist overall. Any good heist story requires the plan to go wrong and setting up where it goes wrong and how those actions lead into others is crucial. I follow a very clear cut A causes B and therefore C rule of narrative. That things will go wrong and the character must adapt when the plan fails. Otherwise it's just going through the motions. I had a lot go wrong, even if none of it was enough to completely doom the plan. The complications I kept introducing were just enough to force the characters to stay on their toes, even though Pentious has no toes. And it made sure they needed to visit all sorts of other places in V-Tower to accomplish their goal.
Dressing RJ and Pentious up as Exterminators was mainly just a way to make sure they couldn't really be spotted. By now, a lot of people know what RJ looks like. It forces him to disguise himself more in order to actually sneak around. It's a complication caused by how infamous he's become in Hell. What should sometimes help him, actually is a detriment more often than not. Blitz found that out the hard way at the auction and now RJ is forced to keep finding ways to keep out of the spotlight. This won't be the last time either.
Vox's musical number, Working for the Man, was directly inspired by hearing it in the Fallout show. It just fit Vox so perfectly that I needed to have him sing it. So I developed the entire sequence in the gaming dungeon built around the concept, of Vox going down the line, torturing his enslaved code monkeys. As well as setting up foreshadowing for season 2 of Hazbin Hotel itself. I feel like this is probably one of the better coordinated musical sequences. I'm just glad it gave Pentious something to do as I was worried he was getting the shaft a bit.
I knew though if I was going to be stuck in V-Tower the whole time, I needed to have Valentino and Velvette making their own appearances. For Val, I made him his usual overly hostile, very violent self. Only impeded by RJ switching on a lamp, a joke I adopted from a similar little fan comic where it was Angel who did that. Here though, Val thinks he's yelling at some random exterminator because his eyes are terrible. Which added an extra level of funny to the situation. Velvette was a little easier, and yes I included Melissa. Regardless of how she actually does treat her, I kinda prefer that Velvette does have a soft spot for at least one of her models. Enough that she does not insult or belittle her nearly as much as she does everyone else. It gives her a bit more dimension if there's one person outside of the Vees that she cares about.
By the way, you probably might have guessed this, but Lilly-Bella's cancelled game about an alternate-history where Three Mile Island went way worse? It's a very blatant S.T.A.L.K.E.R. homage. Just with a lot more ambition and potential money behind it. I'd like to think she can eventually get it into stores somehow, but that's in the future.
This chapter also reveals what Vox is planning for RJ if he ever gets his hands on him. And it is particularly horrifying to me. Think of it as being stuck playing video games for all eternity and being forced to lose. I think Crow said it reminded him a bit of that scenario the boss alien from Space Jam threatened Micheal Jordan with should the Toons lose. I just think it's the perfect ironic punishment for RJ. Being trapped in a video game he can't win. The sort of torture that would drive him crazy.
Vox perhaps came off a bit like a very stressed Disney's Hades in this chapter, and not just because he clearly quoted him. He's got a plan he's working towards and nothing seems to be going his way. He just keeps failing and it's against someone he feels is particularly inferior to him. But Vox is obsessive, in his mind, every time RJ outsmarts him, it's really Alastor who is getting one over him. He's fully convinced by now that RJ is working with Alastor in some capacity. That he's made a deal or at least an agreement to keep hurting his business. It's obviously not true, RJ is perfectly fine sticking it to Vox by this point because Vox has made it clear he's going to keep going after him. But for Vox it's just a matter of pride. Alastor is his enemy, he can sort of accept it if Alastor beats him. He can't really accept it if some dumbass dragon keeps doing it. He copes with it by saying he's actually working for the Radio Demon, but it still pisses him off that he can't seem to figure out how to capture this stupid dragon. And this moment in the office was the perfect chance to let Vox vent those frustrations. As well remind people that RJ is just a pawn in this game, he's not actually important to Vox. He's important in the sense that Vox thinks it will piss Al off he defeats RJ and uses him against Al in some fashion. It emphasizes to me that Vox is just way too obsessed with Alastor to the point everything he does is filtered through the lends of him defeating the Radio Demon in some way.
As we saw in Season 2 of Hazbin.
I of course had to include Shock.Wav in things. I knew he'd be involved in this chapter and I was happy to find out that the sharks monster could actually fly. It meant that when push came to shove, Shock.Wav could do shit outside of his tank. It would've been a very boring final chase sequence if he was stuck in the water. Having him show up in the office, glaring at RJ, sets up what's about to happen later and it was probably one of my favorite bits of planting and payoff in a single chapter so far. I like how RJ just turns and sees this big killer cyborg sharks just staring him down, basically considering if its worth it getting out of his tank to eat him.
Oh, and that paper cut gag was also pretty hilarious. A lot of fun gags like that this chapter. I liked having RJ forced to stretch himself around to get Val's key card for one. It's important to remember that RJ has Toon powers and this was one way to incorporate it here. Toon powers can sometimes be very underutilized because they tend to make a protagonist looks silly and not many people want to do that to their hero. I have no problem with it because RJ has to look silly because that's part of the point.
We also had a quick allusion to Baxter in the R&D vault, revealing he's developed the tech that could potentially torture RJ should he ever be caught. And that's when we come to the very long embarrassing phone call that just continues to spiral as Lezter and Zester have another of their lovers' quarrels while they're trying to help out with the heist. This was directly inspired by another heist movie I watched with a married couple who are familiar with the protagonist thieves who they call up to help them out of a jam. And they do, but they are constantly arguing right up until the end when they finally get the tech stuff sorted. I just found it incredibly funny. Don't ask what the movie was, I honestly can't remember. Having them argue while dragging Lilly's personal life into things, constantly get distracted by Donna's weirdness and Tail's abrasiveness just made it the perfect little snowball going downhill. Crow remarked how he thinks it's an example of me being very good at Cringe Humor. I'd rather call it Escalating Absurdity, you can see it in a lot of comedy shows today. Always Sunny, Spongebob, The Simpsons, etc. The whole fun of the thing is watching how long something can go on and just continue to get dumber and dumber until it explodes. Monty Python was really good with this, although that was mostly because they never had punchlines that often so they had to keep ratcheting up the set up to be as ridiculous as possible. See the Dirty Spoon Sketch for one such example.
I really should give the lead Goon Shark a name at some point, but sometimes it's just more fun if these sorts of henchmen remain nameless. Feel free to suggest your own though.
The Robot being hacked served a few purposes. To show RJ could take hacking seriously. As a way to kick off the final action sequence. And, lastly, to fulfill the most important part of any heist film, the double cross. And yes, I was directly calling out Rick & Morty with that "Your Skills are Required" thing. I sometimes view RJ as the Anti-Rick in this regard. Rick has no patience for a lot of narrative conventions and his knowledge of them allows him to cheat. RJ loves this shit though and will look for any excuse to indulge in them. He loves heist movies, whereas Rick hates them, and he wanted this to be the ultimate one.
There's a reason I used Barracuda by the way. It's a joke on the line from Jaws, "You Yell Barracuda, everyone goes, huh, what?" No one would really think that much about a barracuda being a threat because they don't often attack people and they're just not that scary compared to sharks. So it's the perfect way to sneak in under a far more dangerous predator's nose. It's also a kind of stealth pun. There's a famous hacker movie called "Swordfish" which bases its entire premise around that being a code word. So I just picked a song that was about another similar fish. It helps that Barracuda is a really kickass song that works for a chase sequence against a killer mutant shark.
RJ's temporary electrical powers was me setting up some ideas for the future, concerning how and what lines by which RJ's powers could evolve. Plus it made for an awesome way to close out the whole mission by using it against Shock.Wav in the elevator shaft, using up all the electricity power, so RJ can later fly away with Pentious in tow.
I really loved how this chapter gave these two something to do together outside of trying to help Pentious get with Cherri. The friendship between RJ and and Sir Pentious has become something seriously special to me because it's nice to see these two goofy nerds bond and help one another. It's also nice that RJ has a best friend that he completely understands and relates too, especially given where they both started before they became actual friends. A lot of readers have appreciated their shared nerdy friendship and I couldn't be happier with how much it resonates with folks. I hope to get at least a few more scenes out of these two before we're through with season one.
Take a Look It's in a Book!: The Library Adventure! Since this takes up two chapters, I'm honestly just going to cover both in this section. The chapters themselves started out as a single chapter honestly, I had to split them though when it became clear things were getting a lot bigger than I planned. I was honestly worried at one point I didn't have enough ideas for a magical messed up library in Hell to sustain the chapter. And in the end, I had so many ideas, all of which I wanted to use, that I had to make it two chapters to contain all of it. I'm glad I did though, because this chapter gave us a really fun Charlie and RJ adventure, expanded Hell a little bit more and, most relevant to me, created one of my favorite antagonists to date so far. So let's talk about it, shall we?
High Midnight will actually show up again, so keep your eyes peeled for it. It's all part of the ongoing arc of Lilly-Bella's indie game studio. It's important to me that RJ's friends have lives outside of him and that they're succeeding in their own dreams without his direct intervention. He's of course willing to help out when they need him, but none of these people need the dragon to hold their hand. So RJ is taking a more subordinate role here by help Lilly with bug testing. I actually tried to do this sort of job a long while ago, it's pretty much like this. You play through the game, sometimes trying to deliberately break it, find a bug and when you do, you have to list out what caused it and, if possible, how you fixed it. Anything from doing a certain action or literally shutting the console off and restarting the whole thing. Sadly, I didn't get the job out of the various people auditioning. I guess I just wasn't fast enough in spotting the bugs they wanted me to find in a game they said was fundamentally broken.
Charlie's insertion into the plot here was also fun as I was able to better capture her overly enthusiastic energy here. Better than in previous chapters I think. Especially with her slight inability to recognize boundaries. As well as better showcase her tendency to shove herself into a situation to solve a problem that she's decided is something she is uniquely fit to solve. In this case, RJ still wants to be a more powerful dragon and Charlie wants to help him fulfill that goal. Even more so now that it's obvious he really likes hanging out with someone that isn't her. Who seems to be someone who is actually helping him out a bit with a lot of his issues.
Yes, this is following up on Charlie being jealous of Loona, and hating that she's jealous so much she'll look for any method she can think of to absolve herself of her jealousy. In this case, she'll take RJ on an adventure of her own making! One that's super fun and awesome and lets them bond over something they both like! Books! That will show him that she can be just as fun as Loona! Little did she know exactly what sort of adventure she was dragging him into.
Information regarding Hell's education system is... spotty. Obviously it exists. Millie went to school as a child. Stolas clearly had a teacher alongside Vassago and even went to class. So there's obviously some formal schooling. Now, Octavia seems to be home schooled, if the last episode of the latest HB Season suggests, but that doesn't mean there weren't OTHER kinds of schools set up for Royals. Perhaps Octavia is just a special case being a Goetia. Charlie did go to prom though with her boyfriend at the time. I have to believe she had some sort of schooling. Probably because Lucifer wanted to try and give her some kind of decent childhood and not cooped up in the palace all the time. And even non-royals likely need an education. So while there are no cannon answers concerning Hell's Royal Academy, if it exists and how it functions, I'm just going to stick with what I've created here. It's a school in Pride, they take Royals and upper echelon Hellborn, and it's where the most prestigious library in Hell is located.
If you want to assume this is the same place we saw Vassago and Stolas in among all those books, go ahead, but I think that was just some random bookstore. Probably upper scale, but not the library itself.
There were some questions, from Crow, about why a library for older hellborn would have a puppet show period. My thinking is, some Hellborn have children and go back to school, or the teachers have kids and bring them to work, or the library is open to the public, you just can't take out any books without a student ID of some kind, past or present. I just wanted an excuse to shove in a joke about how kid story times in Hell are probably really fucked up.
Shuggothgorwrathus, or Shuggy, was born out of a few suggestions from the people I asked advice from concerning this chapter. Yes, she is heavily inspired by the librarian from Monsters University. However, she's not exactly that. That librarian was a squid creature. This one is a literal bookworm. Her base form is generally inspired by the Shoggoths of HP Lovecraft, giant worm slugs with more eyes than are reasonable and a bunch of slithering tendrils. They are meant to be repulsive. I had the idea that Shuggy was naturally drawn to the library before it even exists, as she is attracted to repositories of knowledge and this was the biggest one she sensed through the ether. She set herself up in the library, basically refused to leave and they eventually just gave her a job because no one could make her. Strangely enough, she took the job way too seriously. Probably because it was the first task she had ever been assigned to in eons and wasn't about to let it slip away from her. Plus, as you can tell, she prefers the quiet of the library so she can read all the books she likes without interruption.
Her speech is very deliberately structured. She is loudly whispering, not because that's an ironic contradiction, but because she's so big that she can't help it. So she's actually being as quiet as possible when she's speaking. She also speaks every syllable out, enunciating each sound as she talks. It gives her a nice unique form of speech that gives her a bit of a different sort of character than one might expect.
The slinky bit where Charlie and RJ fall down the stairs was just a bit of fun on my part. I wanted an excuse to use that song somewhere and this was it. Plus we hadn't had an RJ induced hallucination in a while.
The inhabitants of the Under Library, or Forbidden Archive, are mostly derived from public domain works. I did this to invoke the setting itself, as a library full of the world's greatest stories. I mostly drew from the Pagemaster's choices and what is generally accepted as essential reading. Alice in Wonderland was obvious enough for example because it meant RJ could fight the jabberwock. Which is like a dragon but not quite and RJ needed to fight something that looked a bit like a dragon at some point. But I wanted to include something original too. Something from Hell itself that Charlie could latch onto as a character from her childhood. That's why I created Huggsy the Hellhog. This stuttering, nervous little pig creature that just wants to make friends. Perfect for Charlie.
If you must know, Huggsy was partially inspired by a similar creature from a book in Owl House. Which also featured in an episode where books could come to life in a library. In that episode, the character in question turns evil when some people draw in his book. I didn't want to do that here, but I kept a similar charm by having all the book characters essentially fighting each other for dominance. Orchestrated by our real villain for the chapters.
Storytime was one of my most elaborate and powerful villains to date. She could literally bring the written word to life. Creating anything from any of her favorite stories just by speaking them aloud. She obviously let the power go to her head and became incredibly self-deluded. My backstory for her is that she had died as a miserable mousy young woman who only found solace in books. She likely isolated herself and hoarded her books and her knowledge over others she deemed unfit. When she wound up in Hell, she sought out any solace she could in her beloved books, but only found a sense of security at the Royal Academy Library. Where she was initially denied going into the Forbidden Archive, only to break into it eventually. Where the immense power and dark magic leaking all over the place supercharged her powers, allowing her to maintain her full demonic form indefinitely, so long as she had enough raw creative energy surrounding her.
Her dress being pages and words, a large book around her waist, while her face is essentially the flaming light of a candle that she uses to read the words in front of her and cast her spells was a difficult design to get down. What I wanted to capture was this book snob who believes herself, essentially, a queen. She's let the power go to her head and it's driven her already worse qualities to insane degrees. Obviously she isn't literally the concept of stories given flesh. But she's been down here long enough to just presume that's true as no one has challenged her until now. Making her hate comic books as a lesser art-form was also a no-brainer. As it gave RJ a reason to dislike her even more and planted the seed of her eventual defeat. Her lack of knowledge of what comics were made it easy for them to overpower her and give the other book characters an opening.
Her name is in fact the same as the title of the song she sings. It just felt so perfect for her. Especially given the song itself carries a sort of dark fairy tale melody paired with the lyrics. It also gave me a ton of visuals for which she could use to attack our heroes. It was probably one of the most fun sequences with her to write.
I seriously loved Storytime. You don't always know what kind of characters you create will resonate with you most, but Storytime just clicked for me the more I wrote her. Yes, she's a horrible book snob who treats her hyper-fixation as licence to be an awful person. But you can sort of relate to her. She's evil, yes, but she's not inherently malicious or trying to conquer the outside of the library because she believes she's the strongest. She believes, as the avatar of stories, she has the right to rule. To expand her kingdom. For she is essentially the foundational point of civilization and therefore all should bow to her. It's the kind of megalomania that is at least fascinating in its perception of what true power is. In this case it's not strength of arms, or economic power, or even some kind of religious fervor. Storytime believes that her connection to the font of human creativity gives her more power than any of those things combined.
You shouldn't be surprised if Storytime shows up again. Maybe not as powerful as she once was, but certainly powerful enough to be a threat. I'll try not to overuse her, but I'm really itching for her to go off on her book snob tangents again.
I think I picked Huck Finn as the escape raft driver purely because the idea of him actually being articulate and capable of giving exposition was funny to me. As was the idea of RJ telling him about his and his friend Tom's cultural impact.
I really enjoyed writing Charlie's extended exploration of her character, in that as the Princess of Hell she has a lot of responsibilities that, frankly, she's placed onto her own shoulders as it seems like she could just do nothing and everything would function as it always has just fine. No one has asked her to help people. Let alone her dad. But she's taken it upon herself to be like how she views her mother to be, an inspiration to all the people of Hell, someone who can make it a better place. All she wants is to help people, but the more she tries the more she realizes just how broken her realm really is. And the Under Library is really making that stand out to her. This is an entire society under the very school she studied at. And for a good while now it has been suffering under the rule of a tyrant that is hurting a lot of innocent fictional people that did nothing to deserve this.
And when you couple that with the fact Charlie just wanted to bring RJ on a fun adventure to prove how awesome a friend she is, well, now she's feeling extra terrible. Because it sounds incredibly selfish of her to think about doing that this whole time while these people were suffering. So now she feels doubly awful and she's spiraling a bit. And it's only RJ who's able to bring her back a little.
The Card Catalog Monster was probably the weirdest thing I've made thus far. It was also inspired by that same episode of the Owl House I mentioned. Only that catalog didn't around trying to eat people for taking its cards. I probably could've just had this thing chasing after RJ and Charlie, but I wanted to ratchet up the suspense and danger considerably. So I added more stuff in as the pair ran into the maze of shelves.
The book bats are simple enough to place, everyone does those. The paper golems though? They were inspired by some enemies in the Ghostbusters Video Game, and some creatures in an HHN haunted house that were made of written words on pages. Very creepy looking. The Book-ataur was just combining the two previous creatures into a singular one. You need a minotaur for your labyrinth after all.
The song I had originally planned to place here was going to be a direct reference to the movie "The Labyrinth" but "Dance Magic Dance" just honestly didn't match the tone of the scene. So I scrapped it. Later when I had the chapters split, I needed to find a song to put in here after all. It took a long time trying to find something that worked, the Beatles' Paperback Writer was ultimately the one that won out because it felt like something you could set a chase to. And that's how it ended up as the title to the chapter. Dumb luck.
The next part and the opening for the second half was probably the most fun I had in this little arc. I have a deep love of very trashy pulp fiction. I find it a fun subgenre that can eventually create more quality works from its ranks. However, they diamonds in the rough are harder to locate among them because they are inherently disposable pieces of media. This was sort of my tribute to them. Let's go over them quickly.
The mystery story where Charlie spoils the whole plot was a fun little romp to go through. Mainly so Charlie could accidentally spill all the secrets of the story for the Clue-esque scenario they were stuck in. A few of the characters are in fact based off Clue, especially the woman who is ultimately revealed as the killer. She was modeled after Mrs. Peacock. It's interesting spoiling a whole mystery that you're not actually there for, because it has to make sense without the reader knowing any of the clues. Mostly though it's just funny to watch the detective get his big moment ruined.
I based the Gothic Romance story off of Crimson Peak for the most part, with just a little bit of monster erotica thrown in. Lots of people want to fuck a ghost I guess. My joke here was that the Ghost was just using the woman's infatuation with him as a means to an end. He just wanted her to find his body to give him a proper burial. And RJ and Charlie kinda mess that up for him as the woman ends up falling down the stairs and breaking her neck when he tries to embrace his incorporeal form. But hey, now she gets to be with him forever! So win for her anyway! I always want to inject some more dark humor into these chapters to match Hellaverse's tone. But I have a tendency to not be overly mean or have characters do things that might make people hate them, even if its not really their fault. The Hellaverse is full of fans who can't help but take this show way too seriously. But since all this stuff is happening to fictional characters within the universe itself, that gives me more leeway.
The Hunger Games parody, or Young Adult Dystopian Fiction parody, was basically just me letting out my long gestating frustrations with the genre's concept. Relying too much on love triangles for drama, nonsensical battle royale-style plot line, very flimsy world building, it's all there. I'm at least proud I didn't do a Twilight parody, that would've been low hanging fruit. And I'm sorta lucky Hunger Games is back in the public consciousness again with the new movie. However, the truth is this one was a late edition. When the chapter got split, I felt like the sequence with the book hopping wasn't long enough, so I added in this world to flesh it out a little. Interesting enough, it did present the chance for Charlie to confess she's not exactly opposed to love triangles, and that, well, in certain circumstances she has wondered why they don't all just get together and let everyone be happy. So happy accident there.
And then Tail causes two corners of the love triangle to go up in smoke. That was fun.
The Tom Clancy parody was my chance to have RJ directly ruin a book himself. Mainly because it's a book that got adapted into a video game and he knows all the secrets too. Which essentially completely ruins the whole tension of the plot when he's able to resolve all the problems instantly. And as a result he creates a new one when he lets slip the Admiral is having an affair with a staffer. I found the whole thing so ridiculous that a serious minded political/military thriller could be completely upended and become a romantic drama in seconds. Enough to get RJ and Charlie to flee from it as fast as possible.
The Sci-Fi Pulp parody isn't really owed to any one book or series. Just the essence of the genre overall. Down to it's overly badass, hyper masculine, and constantly attracting horny women to him protagonist. He's basically every single stereotype the genre gets saddled with, fairly or unfairly. I thought it would be funny for Charlie and RJ to try and appeal to his better nature, only for it to fail completely because this is one of THOSE pulp sci-fi stories where the hero is a bit of a jerk and won't do anything unless it involves getting something out of it. While I try to show the hero is somewhat professional, it's apparent he kind of expecting to get laid for very little effort, even if he doesn't force the women to have sex with him or anything. And he can probably tell Charlie is not going to put out for him no matter what happens so he's not really interested. Plus, even if she did do that, he'd probably have to fight RJ... and he's kinda bored and lazy with having to always do that.
So Tail just steals the keys to his ship and his gun and they run off. Straight into... well a lot of other books in rapid succession. This sequence was somewhat inspired by an old ride that used to run over at Universal Studios, where you took a rocket ship and flew through several Hanna-Barbera animated worlds. Awesome stuff, fun stuff, although I also took inspiration from a ride that is still in operation, but changed. You probably noticed that near the end, RJ, and his hallucination, spouts a ton of lines from the original version of Star Tours, including screaming about how he doesn't know where the brakes are. I just thought it would be funny to have RJ look at Charlie all lovingly while she's panicking, spouting off purple prose sweet little musing in his head... only to blather out another reference to something she has no context for like an idiot.
Not long after comes the song sequence where Storytime tries to stop Charlie and RJ from reaching their destination by flinging all her powers at them while they climb, chased by the Card Catalog the whole way. This was a great way to show off her powers, but I also enjoyed the wall of badly written text that had to be fixed in order for them to pass. I think Crow got a kick out of that since I used a lot of the same issues he frequently encounters from me when he edits these chapters.
Storytime's inner sanctum being a weird Escher Drawining was actually the oldest concept from this little Charlie and RJ date. That they'd enter a weird place where up is down and down is up and every which way in between. It made for an interesting way for the two of them to finally talk about Charlie's insecurities and growing frustration with how the adventure was going. And we also got a quick example of how RJ's power up ability to works as he scans an apple and sees it can cure his damage.
The final fight using Blind Guardian's song Turn the Page was where we really brought out all the stops here. Creating a massive crossover of characters to fight Storytime and finally defeat her. Starting with various public domain comic book characters. A lot of people managed to guess them, mostly. A lot of people thought the red T-Rex was Devil Dinosaur, and while that's not a bad guess, he's technically the Red Dinosaur on the cover of "The War that Time Forgot." Others are the Angel, Two-Gun Kid, Captain Midnight and the original comic book Sandman of the Golden Age, complete with gas mask. We even included GI Robot and Conan in there. It was fun to let the comic book characters get their much needed justice against Storytime who had relegated them to being third class citizens in her kingdom.
I picked Turn the Page as a song purely because its lyrics invoked a revolutionary quality to them. Which was what I wanted Charlie and RJ to inspire in these fictional characters. Enabling them to rise above their unfortunate stations in life and liberate themselves from Storytime.
This brings us to the Draconomicon. It had a longer and more difficult to pronounce name until Crow suggested I change it. This is a big deal in terms of plot items. As it basically sets up a major arc that runs through a few more chapters leading up to a seriously important plot point that I cannot spoil right now. All I can say about the book for now is that indeed holds a lot of secrets about dragons and it is incredibly powerful, but it is also more or less a map at the end of the day. Where it leads? You'll see.
I think this was my favorite of the RJ and Charlie dates so far. They really got to bond over things and it allowed RJ to actually help Charlie out of her own funk and self-esteem issues. I hate the idea of making their relationship some manic pixie dream girl scenario where Charlie fixes all of RJ's problems for him and doesn't gain anything in kind for the relationship. That's too one-sided. I wanted RJ and Charlie to be there for each other as equals, and this was my opportunity to show them doing just that.
By the by, I can't take credit for the Secret Wars comic being secretly stolen by Angel for a bit. Crow suggested that as a way to show Angel wasn't completely immune to the call of Nerdom. I thought it was funny enough to include and gave me something to do with Angel, so I included it.
Anyway, let's move on to our last section which will hopefully be a bit shorter since it's only one chapter and it's pretty straight forward.
Chained Together: Stiker returns and he makes a mess of things real quick! Isn't that just always true of him though? He certainly managed to pull that off big time in the last episode of HB's third season part one. I think that one was more devastating emotionally than the end of this one, but it's pretty in line with my depiction of Striker honestly. So forgive me if I draw a few parallels by the time we're through here.
If there's one thing that's difficult in writing this story, it's keeping track of everything. Not just RJ's powers and the weapons he has, but when and where to remind folks he has connections. It had been a while since Bee checked in and I figured now would be as good a point as any for her to chime in on things. It helped that this was something connected to her hounds. I still believe Beelzebub does care about her Hellhounds, I just suspect she doesn't have much control over any rings outside of her own. So whatever pound Blitz picked Loona up from was probably not located in Gluttony. It was probably in Pride or Greed, maybe Wrath. It really depends on whatever they eventually tell us about the situation before Moxxie joined up with them. Or at least until Beelzebub fills us in more about how much control she has over the orphanages outside of her ring. But I like to think she does care about her hounds all the same and that she's overjoyed Charlie is helping them through her little project with the Hotel. Especially with RJ helping to assist in that manner.
I managed to get Bethy's reaction to Tail existing under the wire on this one. Having RJ get a new outfit helped fix a few things. Namely, it explained why he wasn't at the concert with the others. It also explained why he couldn't just fly around, as his wings are stuck in the sleeves. And the acid rain outside prevents him from flying at all, lest he damage his wings. So it made him vulnerable for Striker's attack. Finding ways to take away RJ's advantages is a constant push and pull situation. RJ has powers but it's important to establish limitations and to see how he reacts when he can't use them. It creates some fun dynamics and builds up the catharsis for when he's able to cut loose.
Plus RJ gets to look snazzy in his new jacket. He deserves to look nice at the very least.
So, about the first song sequence, this is a weird inspiration. "Trickle, Trickle" is a song I heard while down in Florida in Disney. We were in the Magic Kingdom on a particularly rainy day, and while we weren't really waiting to watch the parade a bunch of people were. Unfortunately the weather essentially made the parade impossible, but as a special compensation prize, Disney ran a Rainy Day Parade instead so the visitors didn't feel like they completely wasted their time. "Trickle, Trickle" was the song that continued to play the whole time the parade went on. I found it fun and I thought it would be neat to have RJ trapped in an acid rainstorm in Hell while this song played. The bone birds were very quick to pop into my mind as these strange hallucinations that overtake RJ's brain, as it seems his imagination wants in on the musical numbers. They are probably somewhat inspired by the Tiki Room Birds, except... you know they're dead. Well, that might be unfair, they aren't even dead, they're not real. They're more hallucinations from RJ's brain doing a slick little dance together. And the reason they're bird skeletons is because the acid has supposedly melted their flesh off.
Yes, it's kinda fucked up in that regards but the Hellaverse can be pretty fucked up.
Striker's return was fun to do given he's been gone for so long and a ton of stuff has happened in his absence. Namely, RJ isn't the same dragon he fought last time. All the same, Striker has methods to deal with him and has better prepared for this rematch. I had established that RJ's fire could be taken out before. Here it's a lot more permanent than getting hit with some fire retardant fluid. Now, he's literally had his fire doused force RJ to have to once again run to escape, partially because he doesn't really have a choice without his fire and mostly because he'll be late if he lets Striker drag this out too long. It's still fun to have Tail insult him.
This brief chase sequence enabled me to use Striker's Ballad song. I know in advance that I won't be able to use it in the place it actually comes into play. My story doesn't really have a good spot for it there, sadly. So I'm using it here, the best to use it right now. Striker's annoying fan club randomly shows up to serenade RJ's potential capture and it pisses both participants off. RJ especially because having your kidnapper get glazed during his attempted kidnapper kinda sucks.
This eventually leads us to the real meat of the chapter, RJ and Striker trapped as prisoners of the Heavenly Eye. Finally we have the chance to see how an imp like Striker takes to the knowledge that a bunch of sinners are literally draining hellborn like him dry to gain power. He can't deal his way out of this, he can't convince them to let him go. He's forced to work with RJ to save himself, much to his displeasure. But it does give both RJ and Striker the chance to actually talk things out and get to know one another better. And that's the fun part of the whole chapter, because they really don't get along, but they eventually manage to build a decent partnership together.
Getting out of the cage was simple enough, but it required explaining every detail of how they unlock their various restraints and why it's not so easy to remove the cuffs. I need RJ to be in the cuffs because, as a result of it being stuck on him, he still can't fly and Striker can't just ditch him like he probably would if given the chance. They still have to work together if they want to get out of this.
It was also neat to have the Eye Cultists get some personality. They're all nameless goons and horrible people, but I've always enjoyed giving the henchmen dimension. They chose those job, they joined up, what kind of person decides this is what they want to do with their lives? Trying to understand them, empathize but not sympathize, is a trick I enjoy employing. They're still the bad guys, but there's at least more to them than their lack of morality. They have history together, they know each other, some of them are friends. They're shitty people, but they're in Hell, that's true of a lot of sinners. I just wanted us to get a little bit of a peak into what sort of shitty people they were. My favorite moment is honestly this first one where the two guards discuss their specific Christian Sects and how the cult functions. Basically that as long as you believe in the Christian God, you're accepted... unless you're a Unitarian. I borrowed that joke from the Simpsons. Mainly because I doubted anyone would accidentally take it as something meant to be offensive to them.
The shoot house was a neat sequence. Forgive me for indulging a little in my experience with CoD here. I've run so many of those houses and courses through so many games that I just needed to finally get it all out. It also gave me a chance to showcase RJ and Striker's different styles. Striker is a loner who only really cares about himself. RJ likes to focus on teamwork, even with people he doesn't like. Their personal beliefs clash and it makes it harder for them to properly coordinate.
I also wanted RJ to use his scanner more in this chapter since some readers felt he should use it more often. Especially given food can give him power boosts. This seemed as good a time as any for him to use that more. I had to look up what food was particularly flammable mind you. I was glad it landed on donuts, specifically ones covered in sugar. I actually saw some guy use donuts to fuel his furnace so there's some basis in this. The microwave being the final spark to reactivate RJ's fire was just a bit of a cartoony bit to tie into RJ's Toon Force abilities. Plus electrocution via microwave is funny... in cartoons, not in real life.
The real moment in this scene though was Striker discovering the fridge full of hellborn parts. It finally gave him something to rightfully be angry over and a means for RJ to actually try and reach him. To explain he's not for this and he's actually an ally of imps and hellhounds. Striker doesn't really buy it, but he does have to eventually admit that RJ isn't exactly who thinks he is. They're still miles apart from each other on a bunch of subjects, but they are aligned on how awful the Heavenly Eye are.
And yes, I threw in a reference to Spider-verse. Just with a donut, not a bagel. Honestly, I don't get the appeal of bagels. They're just donuts without frosting, normal ordinary bread with a hole in it. But, some people like them and more power to them.
Another reference was deliberately calling back to Roger Rabbit. But it was more than just making a fun joke where RJ reveals he could've gotten out of those handcuffs at any time... so long as it was funny. It was a way to show how much RJ's Toon Force blessing has grown since he started out. Properly laying out for everyone just what RJ can now do. I really liked the part that RJ not studying law means he's immune to some of the laws of physics. That's funny to me. More important, it finally seemingly got through to Striker that RJ does actually take him seriously and he has never been trying to humiliate him. That a lot of this has just been a massive misunderstanding that Striker took the wrong way. Setting things up for them to finally become a proper team.
It took a minute to finally pick out the song for the two to enter into their finale fight scene together would be. Def Leppard's Run Riot felt appropriate to me, as it had the bombastic action I wanted and the lyrics were about two people sticking together through a hectic moment together in order to come out the other side in one piece. It was really fun showing how well RJ and Striker could work together, utilizing their unique abilities together, while also saving some regular hellborn who had been trapped alongside them. It really made the sequence something special as these two enemies did something incredible together and showed everyone they didn't have to be enemies.
And the whole point of all of this... was so RJ could be all the more crushed when Striker refuses to change and still wants to take him into Vox. I started the chapter out showing how RJ has made friends with a lot of people just by being himself. That all it takes is for him to explain himself, show everyone he's earnest, and help someone out when they need it. But to Striker, it does not matter. To him, this is just who he is and he's not going to change. Everyone else is at fault for how horrible his life is and therefore if he has to sell out RJ to get ahead, he will. Everything RJ did, trying to make Striker change his mind, be honest with him, get him to open up? It didn't matter, this was always what was going to happen.
The scene has a lot of allusions to a similar scene from Avatar: The Last Airbender. The difference is, Striker makes it very clear why he's doing this and it's not because he's hurt. It's not because he's lonely. It's not because he wants something important to him. He's doing this because this is how he sees the world and RJ's optimism is just something to exploit as a means to an end. But even then, RJ doesn't want to give up, he can't believe that everything Striker and him did together meant nothing. Another inspiration being a similar confrontation in Amazing Digital Circus between Jax and Pomni. Only whereas Jax's screaming at Pomni about how there's nothing more to him than just being an absolutely horrible person, Striker is not masking anything. He is really all RJ sees and it's too late for him to change.
RJ tries one last time by sharing a bit of his past, that he's had friends he doesn't always get along with, but they're still important to him. Still valuable to him because they help him understand stuff about himself. And he'd like to pay that kindness forward... and Striker rejects him again. Utterly crushing him.
The final part of the chapter is RJ lamenting his failure to change things around with Striker. Echoing his sentiment from a prior chapter with Charlie again. There, he did find a friend in Loona, as unlikely as that was. Striker though, he failed and while it isn't his fault and he shouldn't blame himself or be too upset about it, it still hurts to know you put so much effort into something and get nothing from it. Not even just a temporary truce. Striker immediately betrayed RJ and spat in his face over all of it. The whole thing is crushing. And I know the next three chapters are a whole different thing tone wise, but I feel like it fits with what RJ did there in a broader sense.
But those chapters are going to need to wait. For now, thank you for joining me for this behind the scenes. And I look forward to doing this again soon when I upload the mid-season finale to FF.Net sometime soon. See ya then!
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