March 2022
i was only a few panels away from wrapping up the art for this at the beginning of last February when i recieved a call recruiting me for not a small sum of funds if i could make myself available for a little over a week within the next few days. i had been prepparing to move cities (only 30-45 minutes away from my current home), had packed most of my things, and had already given noticed at my workplace of my last day -which i was then apologetically ammending for this last minute venture which i would be departing on the day after signing my lease and leaving me with a little more than a week after i returned to finish clearing out my old apartment. Crazily, everything worked out.
Since then i’ve been moving into my new home, exploring my new city, trying to get a feel for which coffee shops i want to fit into my regular rotation, setting up my desk once more into a functional work space, retraining myself to focus at my desk and work, painting, catching live shows, and tearing through a stack of books. i’ve been way too hard on myself for choosing to ease into my new life in comfort and having to balance the task of transporting and unpacking with having an ongoing passion project. i wanted to have this chapter published in February, or early to mid March even. But it’s the last day of the month and to-morrow is April 1st. (Pay no mind to that last part.)
Notes: This chapter… it’s quaint. A lot of the dialogue reads like a children’s book and several of the word bubbles came out wonky, something i had to move on from so i could continue forward; and the former something i intuitively knew was just how the story had to be at the detriment of it reading as some what condescending. It also makes me feel so deeply sad. i hadn’t realized until so many months after writing this how much my psyche was funneling my bitter feelings about youth. There’s a nauseating amount of nostalgia bait media out there; what i want to write is decisively anti-nostalgia.
i think at this point i’ve already nodded to Paradise Lost a handful of times, but here the story swan dives into that territory to the point that it’s essentially fanfiction. If you’re familiar with the work, certain keypoints are obvious, and if you’re not then i don’t want to bore you with the details. The only real point of note is that i’ve replaced the already abstract character “Sin” with Lilith. It’s a decision that simply made a lot of sense to me and i’m far from the first person to make that observation. i was nervous about writing her since Bad Angels is not a romance story about Lilith, and i didn’t want to fall into one-dimensional love rival bad romance genre tropes, but i find i enjoy writing her. She’s charming and has real chemistry with Lucifer and feels to me to be feminist without being a handpuppet.
The last page of this chapter is also my 100th page!! i didn’t plan it that way, it’s just how things serendipitously worked out! 💜 i also tap into a bit of Prof. Marston & John Willie for this one. 🪢
aaaa sorry for typing so much. This was one of my longer chapters and i was gone for longer than i expected and have been up to a lot of things. As usual thx for reading, allow me to play you out.
-AV
xx
Hell has two metropolitan cities: Pandemonium & Dis. Pandemonium was the first city to be founded in Hell and is located near the intersection of the rivers Styx and Lethe. It is governed by a Council of 66 Princes, also known as Devils. Dis is run by a democratically elected Senate.