#(it's not really a ~RADIOSNAKE~ fic but like the fact that he and Alastor are a thing is casually referenced in the fic) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ckret2 · 3 years

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Today's Day 4 of Alastor Week hosted by @missblissy : Blood and War! Y'all didn't think I was gonna get all the way through 7 whole Alastor fics without slipping in at least one radiosnake fic, did you?

This is actually one I've been working on for a while; and, in addition, it's a lot longer than the last three days' fics; and today I'm wiped from writing three fics in a row the last three days; so instead of finishing the fic I wrote some chunks scattered throughout the fic and then decided to clean up some typos in the beginning of the fic in order to post it as a preview. The final fic will be 4 scenes; this preview is about 1.2 scenes.

Sir Pentious rampages in Pentagram City, Alastor shows up to help, and they hash out how exactly he can do that without stealing Sir Pent's thunder. (Also they're dating.)

###

"What the hell are you doing here?!"

Alastor glanced over at the airship delicately lowering itself between two buildings. Sir Pentious hung precariously out of an open hatch that he was lining up with Alastor's rooftop so he could yell at him properly.

Alastor beamed brightly up at Sir Pentious. Sir Pentious scowled back.

With a singsong lilt to his voice, Alastor called out, "Good afternoon~!"

"Oh, don't you give me that!"

"Why not?" Alastor trotted to the edge of the roof, twirling his microphone cane like a baton, to talk to Sir Pentious more directly. "Is it not a good afternoon?"

Sir Pentious looked down. As far as the eye could see in every direction, burning buildings were crumbling and screaming sinners were running around like ants. The sky couldn't be seen behind a haze of thick, black smoke. Grudgingly, he said, "Pretty good."

He jabbed a finger at Alastor. "And I'm not about to let you ruin it!"

Alastor placed a hand over his heart and said, "You wound me!" in a friendly, carefree voice of the exact tone to suggested he was, in fact, a little bit wounded. "Why would I ruin it? I'm on your side of the fight!"

Sir Pentious emphatically jabbed his finger several more times. "That's exactly how you'd ruin it!"

Alastor blinked heavily, leaning back. "Beg pardon?"

"If you join the fight, then you'll get credit for all this!" Sir Pentious gestured at the scene of carnage. "Everyone already knows you can blow up half a town, but what about me?! Hell has forgotten the threat I pose! I won't have it!"

"Oh but I don't want credit. I just want to play, too!"

"Play? Ha! You're not cut out for open warfare. This is no game," Sir Pentious said, with an air of superiority that was wildly at odds with the fact that five minutes ago he'd been making a game out of decapitating sinners with a laser.

Alastor—who, of the two of them, was the one who'd spent half of 1918 in a trench, and was arguably the one who really understood open warfare—simply shrugged without arguing. "To help, then! Can't I at least come aboard? We could talk about it!"

"No! Oh no! No no no! You won't be doing any talking to me today, bussster! I'm not falling for that!"

Alastor tried to pout. His refusal to stop smiling prevented it from being very convincing; it mainly consisted of creasing his brows and offering his biggest, most adoring doe eyes. "Oh, but Pentious! My friend!"

"No!" Sir Pentious completely negated the power of Alastor's sappy eyes by utilizing a sly tactical maneuver called "turning around and shutting his eyes."

"My partner in crime!"

"Nooo."

"My king!"

Sir Pentious swallowed hard. "No."

"My dastardly darling," Alastor went on, relentless. "Light of my afterlife, hellfire of my heart—"

"Fuck you! Fine, get in here."

Alastor leaped gracefully off the edge of the building, angling for the open hatch on Sir Pentious's airship. Sir Pentious, who had less faith in Alastor's grace than Alastor did, leaned out the hatch with eyes wide and arms outstretched to catch him. The end result was the two of them landing in a tangled heap on the floor. Both of them privately blamed the other.

Instead of disentangling himself, Alastor slid an arm around Sir Pentious's neck and got comfortable. "Anyway, I don't know what you expected me to do besides come help. Did you think I'd just watch from some rooftop café on the far point of the pentagram? Sip coffee and wonder how you're doing? Please!"

Sir Pentious perked up. "Oh—is it visible from that far away?"

"Probably farther! Only the fire and occasional explosion, though. I couldn't see the airships until I was downtown."

And he wilted again. "Ah. Pity. All the smoke, I suppose."

Alastor studied Sir Pentious's disappointed expression; then smacked his shoulder. "Say, there's something I can do for you, isn't it!"

Sir Pentious gave Alastor a wary look. "What."

"Publicity! Somebody right in the heat of the fire, reporting live on the chaos and carnage! Every falling building, every exploding car, every screaming sinner suddenly silenced—all broadcast live to every radio in the Pentagram!" There was a slight echo as Alastor briefly seized control of the PA system, trumpeting his words throughout the airship: all broadcast live to every radio...! A couple of Egg Bois hustling by paused to look up in confusion. "You want to remind Hell of what a threat you pose? I can't think of any better way than that!"

Sir Pentious considered the offer, frowning thoughtfully. The longer Sir Pentious went without saying no, the wider Alastor's smile crept across his face. Finally, grudgingly, Sir Pentious said, "Well. It's an idea. Video footage would be more effective, I think."

Alastor knew he was being baited. He took the bait anyway. "Video footage!" He scoffed. "Who needs video footage? Video footage is for dance routines and Charlie Chaplin."

"Who?"

"Never mind. But this isn't a vaudeville routine, this is horror! And in horror, what you need is sound! Visual images are a mere distraction that will fade the minute you look away from them, good for nothing but cheap shock value! What sticks with you is the sounds—the wails reduced to gurgles, the sizzling of human flesh! Did we need to see a picture of the Hindenburg to feel its narrator's shock and grief?"

"What's—don't you 'never mind' me, what the devil's the Hindenburg?"

"I don't know, I've never seen a picture of the thing. Some attempt to get a hot air balloon to work like one of your airships, I think."

"Oh, is it." Sir Pentious sniffed haughtily. "I wouldn't waste good film on such a travesty, either."

Alastor clapped a hand on Sir Pentious's shoulder. "So we're in agreement! I'll get going!"

"We wh—? Hold on! I didn't agree to anything!"

Alastor was already getting to his feet, using Sir Pentious's shoulder as leverage; Sir Pentious swept Alastor's legs out from under him with his tail, and, once Alastor had tumbled back onto Sir Pentious's coils again, he clapped a hand over Alastor's mouth. "Stop talking for thirty ssseconds so I can think!"

Alastor looked Sir Pentious directly in the eyes and licked the palm of his hand. His tongue encountered Sir Pentious's glove. His eyes narrowed.

Sir Pentious smirked, then pretended he didn't notice the tongue inching toward the base of his palm in search of the glove's hem. "Now, then! I suppose you're right, I could do with a little publicity—but I know how showy you are, sir, and I won't have you grandstanding during my big day. The audience should be talking about me, not you! No singing, no dancing, no terrible puns, no alien octopus monsters, and no reminding people how dangerous you are! Can you do—" Sir Pentious's hood flared wide. "—are you trying to nibble through my glove?"

The corners of Alastor's grin were visible above Sir Pentious's hand.

Sir Pentious huffed, yanked his glove off, stuffed it in Alastor's mouth, and pulled a fresh one out of his pocket. Alastor, not about to let Sir Pentious think that kind of treatment galled him, started chewing on it.

Sir Pentious huffed more loudly and tried not to look flustered. "Really, now!"

Alastor pulled the glove out of his mouth. "You know, I appreciate the finger food, but I think it's a bit overcooked. It's like chewing leather."

"Well, I'm not as good a cook as you," Sir Pentious said archly. "So can you manage that or not?"

"Sir, I am a professional broadcast announcer! I know when to make the show about me, I know when to make it about the music, and I know when to make it about the news. And you, my friend, are big news. The biggest in Hell."

Sir Pentious's chest puffed up. "Well," he said. "Well, yes, in that case. By all means!"

"Wonderful!" Alastor flung his arms around Sir Pentious's shoulders, grinning viciously. "I'm going to make you a star, just you wait! By the end of the day, every mouth in Hell will be hissing your name: Sssir Pentiousss—"

"Don't mock my hiss," Sir Pentious said, but with no real rancor, tilting a little close to Alastor.

"Never, darling." Alastor pecked his cheek. "Now, come on. Haven't you got some pillaging and plundering to get back to?"

###

When Alastor had first been charging into the battle zone, trying to track down Sir Pentious, hopping along from building to building had allowed him a close-up view of Sir Pentious's airships—especially when they were flying low, carefully hovering down the streets, so close to the neighboring buildings that Alastor could perch on a window washer's scaffold and wave through a porthole at an Egg Boi. But rooftop level was above half the fires Sir Pentious had started; visibility was cut almost to nothing by the smoke. All he got was soot and hazy glows and the occasional neon pink flash of chemical explosions—and rarely, a single airship emerging out of the dark, identifiable by sound long before by sight, the rumble of its engines like the thunder of an approaching storm.

But the real show, he now discovered, was at ground level. That was where fires towered above him on every side, flames arcing up into the sky until the roof of smoke closed in over them, terrified screaming sinners jumping from the windows of burning buildings...

"... only to gorily splatter to the sidewalk," Alastor continued reporting to his microphone, "joining the bodies already burnt to cinders in the streets! Sir Pentious is showing no mercy today, ladies and gentlemen—nobody's safe, inside or out, high or low! If you're within range of his laser, then you are in danger!"

He paused his commentary at the sound of a low, loud thoom and a shrill whistling, then in a hushed voice hastily asked, "Can you hear that whistling? Nothing is visible yet, but that's the unmistakeable sound of one of Sir Pentious's infamous rockets. We should be hearing the impact any sec—" The street lit up white, and the explosion momentarily drowned out Alastor's delighted laughter.

###

(And the rest will be my first priority to finish after Alastor Week, so it should be up soon! Stay tuned!)

#alastor #sir pentious #radiosnake #alastorweek #alastor week #hazbin hotel #fanfic #my writing

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ckret2 · 4 years

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So I've been deeply pulled into the Radiosnake pairing bc of your fantastic writing! Problem is, now I have fic ideas but no knowledge of the Hazbin background. Can you tellI me where I can get more Hazbin info? I've only watched the pilot and read your stuff. I heard there were comics??

That is an excellent question anon, because right now it is really hard to get Hazbin background easily.

Okay, so, the canon info on Hazbin Hotel can be sort of sorted into four tiers, from most to least canon.

Tier 1: The Definitely Canon

There is, of course, the pilot. And then there is an Angel Dust prequel comic, only seven pages of which have been released so far. We’ve been told it’s gonna be finished and we’ve had glimpses of in-progress prequel comics for a couple other characters—most prominently Alastor’s and Charlie’s—but so far that unfinished Angel Dust comic is the only one that’s been officially released.

Finding the in-progress comic pages is... a challenge. Nobody, as far as I can tell, has been specifically collecting all of the pages we’ve seen so far. I was able to scrounge up:

Couple more Angel pages

some Alastor pages

another Alastor page

a random Alastor panel

another random Alastor panel—I’ve seen the full page of this before, Alastor goes “Hello ladies!” and they go “HELLO ALASTOR~<3″ but I can’t find the full page now

There’s a smattering more canon panels on the artist faustisse’s twitter, but I haven’t dug them all out, and some of the posts I’m gonna link in a lil bit have a glimpse of another panel.

If you haven’t already heard of Helluva Boss, I recommend looking into it as well. It’s a second series being created by the same folks, different cast of characters but set in the same version of Hell, so any canon details we learn in Helluva also apply to Hazbin.

Helluva’s pilot is here. Plus a cute music video here.

Earlier this month, during a BLM charity stream hosted by show artist Ashley Nichols—she runs regular streams under the title “HuniCast”—they released a few sneak peaks of future Helluva scenes, all compiled here.

And that’s it for canon. Two pilots, a music video, a smattering of future scenes, part of one comic, a few WIP pages/panels from other comics.

Tier 2: Pseudo-Canon

Everything else we currently know about Hazbin (and Helluva) are things that the creators have told us. Consequently, they’re all pseudo-canon—and likely subject to change in the future as the shows and comics are further developed and released. Some details that were released/described in the past have been contradicted at other times, or else radically changed by the time the pilot came out.

(For example, when Alastor was first created years and years ago as an OC with no plans for Hazbin, he was a demon deer who could shapeshift into a human shape—now he’s a demonized human with a few deer traits. And Charlie and Cherri Bomb used to look very different.)

So until and unless they make it into canon, all these pseudo-canon details are subject to change and should be taken with a grain of salt—but, they also comprise most of what we know about the characters’ backstory and the as-yet-unaired characters.

Pseudo-canon info on Hazbin is scattered mainly between two sources: the creators’ twitter accounts, and livestreams where they take questions and talk about the making of the show. If you and livestreams do not get along (my ADHD and livestreams do not get along), or if you don’t want to wade years and years back into twitter accounts to dig up every scrap of info on the characters the creators have ever mentioned, collating all the pseudo-canon info is gonna be hard. (It’s gonna be hard even if you do want to sit through the streams and dig through all their tweets.) Lots of fans, me included, depend on the absolutely heroic work of various fans who are willing and able to watch hours-long streams and collate a list of canon factoids released during the streams. I’ve reblogged as many of these posts as I’ve been able to find:

Alastor’s sound design (on twitter)

Alastor's Sound Design (post I made with screenshots of weird—but very interesting—subtitles slipped into the aforementioned video)

Sir Pentious and Cherri Bomb’s sound design

Niffty and Husk’s sound design

Charlie, Katie, and Tom’s sound design

Intro song’s sound design

Happy Hotel’s sound design

details from Faustisse (including a pic of a couple costume designs. Most of these posts come from zatyrlucy, who’s been doing a fantastic job of going stream-by-stream to get lists of details from the regular streams by Ashley Nichols and by comic artist Faustisse.)

more details from Faustisse (including a pic of the Von Eldritch family dining room)

Faustisse 3 (better look at that table)

Dollymoon’s Hazbin Hotel Facts - PART ONE (Shoutout again to dollymoon for compiling these, we’ve never spoken but I am eternally grateful for this service. Dollymoon’s posts are THE single most reliable compilation of Hazbin Hotel’s nebulous pseudo-canon facts that I have found to date, including both links to the sources and timestamps where applicable. Dollymoon’s URL has changed since making this post so the “read more” link doesn’t work but the “source” or “reblogged from” links direct correctly to the new blog. Incidentally, the risk of other blog creators deleting their blogs/posts or changing their URLs is why in info posts like these, I always link to my own reblogs rather than their original posts—their original posts might vanish without warning, but I know I ain’t gonna delete my posts, so these links will still work in the future.)

Hazbin Hotel Facts - PART TWO

Hazbin Hotel Facts - PART THREE

Faustisse 4

HuniCast - Australian Wildlife Relief charity stream

I think this was a faustisse stream (the original source deleted these posts, so the comic pages that were originally behind that read more cut are now gone.)

Faustisse stream 6?

And those are all the masterposts of factoids I’ve managed to collect. If anyone has more masterposts, chuck ‘em at me.

Even this isn’t all the knowledge that’s been released about the show. The posts that dig the farthest back are Dollymoon’s, and even they don’t comprehensively cover all of Hazbin’s production. A couple of these characters, Vivziepop created as a teenager, so there’s some truly ancient concept art floating around out there that will have details that probably aren’t canon anymore... but might still be until something happens to actively contradict them.

Tier 3: The Wiki

The wiki is kind of an absolute mess. It’s a chaotic blend of things actually seen in the pilots/comic, things mentioned at some point in some stream somewhere, and wild fan speculation based on what they headcanon as plausible based on the above, all mixed together with very little indication for which is canon, pseudo-canon, fanon, or speculation. Most of the statements on the wiki don’t have citations.

(And, on top of that, half the main characters’ info gets split up into separate tabs instead of just having a normal-ass wiki page, AND their image galleries are on COMPLETELY SEPARATE pages that are linked to in one of the tabs, and the most important characters all have TWO SEPARATE GALLERIES. Which doesn’t have anything to do with the quality of the facts hidden underneath those tabs, but nevertheless drives me up the wall.)

Some things on the wiki were added according to info released so long ago it’s probably changed by now. Some are possibilities that got reported as facts. Other things on the wiki have unambiguously changed, or else are just flat-out incorrect. (For instance, at this moment Alastor’s page still lists him as an overlord, even though it's been confirmed that Alastor is not an overlord despite his power level because he isn’t interested in and didn’t pursue that position, per this stream. For a little bit, somebody’s fanart of their headcanon human Alastor got added to the wiki as concept art.)

tl;dr: the wiki should never be trusted as a primary source. The wiki’s better than it used to be. Even so, at this time, it’s only trustworthy to fill in the gaps of what you already know is true from other, better sources.

The thing it’s good at is it more or less compiles all the known info all in one place. Trying to figure out who the hell this Vox guy is is really hard if you’re reading for mentions of him in compilations of a dozen different streams, much less if you’re trying to comb through those dozen streams yourself, plus a dozen more, plus three different artists’ twitters. In comparison, it’s really easy to, say, just go look at Vox’s wiki page, where all the trivia is compiled. (And Vox’s page is actually one of the better cited on the wiki. Look at all those numbers!)

So, if you need to find out who this character is you’ve never heard of before, if you want to see a full list of the thus far named characters, if you don’t remember whether Alastor likes coffee or tea, if you want to know what Angel’s twin sister looks like, if you need a reminder of Sir Pentious’s death year... check the wiki. It’s an okay starting point.

But, if you see a “fact” on the wiki that you yourself don’t remember from straight out of the pilot, and it doesn’t have a citation that links to a tweet or a stream... regard it suspiciously. And do not trust it unquestioningly as fact until and unless you have seen the source.

Tier 4: Noncanon Creator Shitposting

I’ve mentioned Ashley’s HuniCast streams a couple times. The biggest draw of them is that she usually gets several of the voice actors in the streams, where they’ll happily say nonsense in their character voices. For the most part, they’re not sharing any actual canon info they’ve been given on their characters, just goofing around pretending to be their characters. Nevertheless, a lot of the things that happen in streams get accepted as broad fandom headcanons, like Alastor being into dad jokes. (My favorite, for obvious reasons, is this one.)

It’s easy to find the source audio for all this wonderful nonsense by searching youtube for “HuniCast highlights,” and then rummaging around for animatics people make out of the audio. The only one noncanon video of this sort I can think of that didn’t originally come from HuniCast is a lone one from Alastor’s singing voice (who’s a different voice actor than his speaking voice).

So, obviously, none of these are canon. But they do come from some of the people actually involved in the creation of the show, and they are in the characters’ canon voices, so a whole lot of people treat them as semi-canon anyway. (Even the wiki lists “dad jokes” among Alastor’s likes, which to my knowledge hasn’t come up anywhere except for HuniCast streams.) Since they’re so broadly-known, they’re worth knowing about as important sources of fanon, even if you don’t want to adopt them into your own headcanons. They’re basically the same level of canon as blooper reels.

#anonymous #ask #hazbin hotel #reference #helluva boss

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ckret2 · 4 years

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Your fic PDA is the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever read. The entire time I was trying to read it I was dying of shame. I had so much second hand embarrassment I thought I’d never get through it. It’s one of my favorite fanfics of all time. The way you write Alastor self-destructing is incredible, especially the scene with Pentius. The most chilling part for me was when Charlie offered to issue a statement saying it wasn’t him, and he said no. I realized then that he was just on a (1/?)

(2/?) on a path of self-destruction, and there was nothing Charlie or anyone else could do to stop him. I wish Pentius had kept pressing Alastor (his sex scandal excuse was embarrassingly weak) and had found out the truth somehow, but that would have been a disaster as well. I really loved how Alastor’s web cam experience wasn’t even sexy at all, but almost endearingly terrible. But when he went back to a different web cam hotel he really did break my heart. And of course Sir P has to...

(3/3) has to insert himself into the conversation and make sure his disaster ex is okay. I really respected the fact that he didn’t watch the video and believed that even Alastor didn’t deserve this (could not agree more). I loved all your fics, but this one was so excruciatingly good I had to give a (disorganized) review. I’m glad in your actual canon arc things will go better than this, but it was so fun to explore Al’s self-destruction and I can’t wait to read more from you. Thank you. ❤️

😍 Thank you so much anon, this was a great thing to read right before going to bed.

(fun fact I can't stand getting secondhand embarrassment in movies, BUT HERE I AM WRITING THIS)

And if it helps: although it's gonna be a while before I get to writing the canon arc, I've got another fic coming up soon that I'm sorta mentally headcanoning as an AU to PDA, like... how that plot could have gone differently if Sir Pent had found out Alastor's real feelings but before Alastor decided to go to a webcam hotel. It should be, uhhh... the third next radiosnake fic I post? Stay tuned.

(4/4, Forgot to mention) While I read the fic I was listening to “every breath you take” in minor key and I felt it really suited the fic and the atmosphere of it, if you want to give it a listen.

lmao, the one by Chase Holfelder or the one by Melodicka Bros? My CDIH/radiosnake playlist has the Melodicka Bros version, and it's got Chase Holfelder's version of "I Will Always Love You."

#(the playlist is Sir Pent POV through 'maple leaf rag')#(Ally POV from 'if I told you once' through 'I will always love you')#(both from 'roustabout' through 'the masochism tango')#(and everything past that I haven't sorted yet lmao)#anonymous #ask #about my writing #hazbin hotel

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ckret2 · 4 years

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I'm probably a little bit late for the hype, but for your radiosnake fic, was sir pentious being behind on current technology because he was just really heartbroken or bc he was somehow cursed? Sorry, sometimes i'm bad at understanding, so i wasn't sure if the karma bit meant that there really was some kind of supernatural intervention or not

It is never, ever too late to talk to me about one of my fics! People talk to me about stuff I was writing over a decade ago and I love it, you're good.

It's neither one, actually. He isn't too heartbroken to keep up, and he isn't cursed. He just lost so many resources that he can't keep up with new technological developments any more.

Long explanation below the cut!!

... god I think tumblr just, fucking deleted the cut. If there isn't a cut below this line I APOLOGIZE I tried to edit it back in, tumblr sucks.

Like, say in '64 someone comes into hell with knowledge of how to make a new weapon that's gonna change the game. Sir P's got a web of like a hundred informants who know they're gonna be rewarded when he has power, so he finds out about the weapon in three days and can snatch up the soul that knows how to make it in under a week. He's got a dozen mines from which he can extract the raw materials needed to make the weapon, so that takes a week; dozens of engineers working under him to figure out how to replicate the weapon based on the newly dead dude's half-remembered math, so that takes a week; and Sir Pent himself, the mastermind of this operation, has no more pressing needs to attend to--his airships are defending his turf without any need to call him in for help, he doesn't have to worry about collecting supplies because they have control of all the materials they need, nothing's disrupting their supply train in the sky, etc--so he can turn his whole attention to improving on this weapon, and he's done so in a week. So only a month has passed between this weapon entering hell and Sir Pent becoming not only the only person that has it, but the only person with the next generation version of it.

Compare: a new weapon enters hell in '76. After getting his ass stomped by the Radio Demon a decade ago, Sir P's lost most of his allies because they no longer have faith he can conquer hell (and even if they do, they don't want to risk getting on the Radio Demon's bad side—they don't know why he attacked Sir P, how do they know he won't attack his allies?) so he's got like, five informants. It takes him a month to find out about this weapon. If another overlord finds out about the weapon first and snatched up the weapon-maker, then Sir P has lost all opportunity to replicate it until the other overlord has made and started using it and he can get his hands on a copy to reverse-engineer, by which point this weapon's probably already on the way to being obsolete.

But say he DOES somehow get to this soul before anyone else: he's got like, maybe one or two mines under his control, so it takes a lot longer to extract the necessary raw materials, and that's assuming those mines have the materials this weapon needs. He might need to attack other factories or warehouses to steal the supplies he needs—and these factories & warehouses are probably being guarded by people armed with weapons he hasn't had a chance to replicate because a different overlord snatched up the weapon-maker before he ever heard about them, so they might overpower him, might even take out one of his airships. But say his raids succeed; they could take a couple of months, between planning and carefully executing the needed attacks.

It could take a couple more months for his heavily reduced number of engineers to figure out how to replicate the weapon, especially if it's outside their fields of expertise and he needs to find and recruit someone new to help—and what if he can't recruit anyone, because Sir P is no longer a top overlord that people will want to work for?

Meanwhile, Sir P is busy viciously defending his now very small turf with only a couple of airships at his disposal, AND he's got to plan and lead the raids for supplies, AND he's got to find and recruit new followers, AND he's got to organize repairs and do damage control if another overlord takes an airship out... so it might take him ANOTHER month to get around to looking at the designs himself and seeing if he can improve them. And maybe he's so stressed and overworked and tired he can't think of a way to improve the weapon.

So six months have passed and they have a rushed weapon that they might have had to make with shoddy stolen materials... and in that time, maybe someone with a weapon designed to overpower this one has died, and Vox has already snatched them up and made that weapon in a month, and so Sir P's new weapon is worthless before he uses it. Now he's six months behind.

Except he's not JUST six months behind. All his airships—which are his main bases, his main weapons, his main defenses, and his main transportation all in one—got blown up in '66, so he probably spent all of '66 and probably the next few years airshipless while he tried to rebuild them. Except while he tried to rebuild them, other overlords were stealing his turf because he had no airships to defend it—if he hears a facility of his is being attacked fifty miles away, he's powerless to go defend it. He's got no airships he can send to fight off the attackers. He's got no choice but to lose it. And that happened over and over, and he lost the very facilities he needed to rebuild his airships. So now it's gonna take twice as long to build half as many airships. And during all those YEARS he's trying to rebuild his airships, he's NOT going to be able to expend resources on keeping up with the latest weapons tech.

So in '76, he's not actually struggling to snatch up the newest weapon maker; in '76, he's finally built five airships, and they're all running on '66 technology. How is he going to even BEGIN replicating '76 technology if he completely missed out on learning about the '70 technology it's based on? By the time he's learned about '70 technology and is ready to face '76 technology, it's now '78.

Oh except another overlord who knows he's currently weak and fears what a threat he'll pose when he's strong again goes and crushes all his airships and now he falls behind five years again as he rebuilds AGAIN. And at this point Sir Pent is getting desperate, so he starts making stupid rushed mistakes in a scramble to gain some ground. (Stupid rushed mistakes like charging into Cherri Bomb's turf right after an extermination, or stupid rushed mistakes like aiming a giant cannon at Alastor just because he happens to be there.) And those stupid mistakes lose him more airships and set him back AGAIN.

It's an endless cycle. He lacks the resources to catch up with the latest developments; without the latest developments, he can't get the resources he needs.

History lesson! The fact that Sir Pent was a top overlord for so long was part luck and part momentum. When he died in 1888, he was THE first supervillain. In life he had no peers, and in death he had no peers. He was THE ONLY ONE who knew how to make the weapons of mass destruction he made. He was the ONLY human soul that could make a machine that could slaughter hundreds. The only ones stronger than him were fallen angels and proper demons (not souls who had died, but entities like Lucifer or Stolas) who had proper borderline-godly powers.

In 1933, the Radio Demon took out the power of a vast majority of those proper demons, and that's what buoyed Sir Pent up to being in a position where he could start conquering hell properly. Again, in '33, he was THE ONLY human soul who could do that. (Except, perhaps, Alastor himself, but he has no interest in claiming turf.) Other human souls began gaining power the way he had—both in the living world and in hell, there were people specifically following his example as a supervillain—but he was doing it first, and he was doing it with a lifetime (and afterlifetime) of experience. By the 60s, there were other human overlords around who'd gained some experience and were now just as good at him... but they didn't have his resources. He had a head start on them of decades. So all of them were the ones taking six months to make a weapon because he held all the supplies and personnel they needed to make the weapons. That's the primary reason he was ahead of them. Yeah, he's brilliant... but his overlord opponents are all brilliant too in different ways. The difference was, he's brilliant AND he had ten factories already.

(And it's worth remembering that he also had the Radio Demon, who's basically a walking tornado, on his side for fifteen years; so every once in a while one of Sir Pent's enemies would just have an entire facility mutilated by this dude. Not only is that a powerful weapon to be wielding, but who's gonna wanna go work for one of the guys that might be targeted by the Radio Demon?)

So! That's why Sir Pent fell behind and stayed behind. No heartbreak, and no curse. Just mathematics. Just resources. He stayed ahead because he came into hell with more resources than anyone else and stayed behind after Alastor reduced him to less resources than everyone else.

As for the "karma" section in the fic—not one single word of that scene reflects what's happening in hell in the slightest. Every single word of that scene reflects what's happening in Alastor's head. Fifty years after screwing over Sir P, he feels so miserable that he feels like he's being specifically punished. After seeing how massive and unintended the consequences of his actions are, he feels like he must be some kind of walking curse designed to torture Sir Pent.

On the one hand, seeing everything that's happened to himself and Sir P in the last fifty years and describing it as "karmic punishment/our assigned tortures in hell" is a reflection of how cataclysmically sublimely unhappy they both are. He's like, I'm so damn miserable it's GOTTA be divine punishment because nothing else could be this awful. On the other hand, it lets Alastor push some of the blame off of himself (because this REALLY IS all his fault!) and onto fate instead, like, oh, I couldn't have avoided this, it's our divine punishment. And if it's divine punishment, then there's nothing he can do to change it, is there? There's no point in trying. There's no need for him to say "I'm sorry" and try to make up for his mistakes. Because they aren't really his mistakes. He's just acting out some sort of karmic role. Right?

(And remember that a chapter earlier he was waxing poetic about how hell's not actually a bad place, really, he and Sir Pent deserve to be in hell together because it's the place they'll be happiest. :) :) :) Like, that's a direct contradiction to his "karma" theory. In both cases, neither scene is saying true things about the nature of hell—it's just Alastor's speculation based on how he currently feels.)

The logic fueling his "Sir Pent and I are each other's assigned punishments and there's nothing I can do about that but grin and bear it" is the same logic fueling his "dead sinners can't be redeemed, they had their chance in life and wasted it, now they're in hell forever" to Charlie in the pilot. The message behind both is the same: we can't and shouldn't be forgiven for our past mistakes; why bother trying to make up for them?

#(welcome to my blog I answer questions about my fics with essays)#(it's an act of love I promise)#anonymous #ask #about my writing #meta #sir pentious #alastor

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ckret2 · 4 years

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would you mind explaining "Careless whisper" "I will always love you" and "Friend please"? no pressure though!

Oh god you chose two of the meme-iest songs! Both in one post! I can’t believe it!

Okay.

This took me forever to write because I wrote half of it and then got distracted for weeks and didn’t get back to it until I got a fresh ask today with some more songs and I was like, crap, I should finish this one.

So the first three paragraphs in this post still apply here, I’m not gonna copy paste them, go read those paragraphs if you haven’t yet. tl;dr i’m answering questions about why i included songs on my radiosnake spotify playlist because i like rambling for thousands of words at a time, also the playlist is based on a fic i wrote.

Feel free to keep sending me questions about more songs on the playlist. Explanations under the read more, assuming the read more works, which I make no guarantee of because this is tumblr.

Careless Whisper (Lyrics)

… except, the jazzy version.

So lemme tell you a story about how “Careless Whisper” came up and then I’ll explain why it actually belongs on the playlist.

The only way I can outline a story is by sitting down with another person and rambling the plotline at them, copy pasting it into another document, and bam that’s an outline.

Right now, in the disjointed process of outlining a sequel to Cold Day In Hell, I’m sort of chunking random ideas at a couple friends to see what sticks. One idea is that, when Alastor is drunk, he’s 90% worse at pretending he totally doesn’t care about Sir Pentious at all. If they’re ever drunk at the same social event, he will subtly (not subtly at all) follow him around all night like a puppy and hang on to his every word, automatically playing this sort of nonsense in the background.

One of my friends announced sadness that it didn’t start off with “Careless Whisper,” so I checked Postmodern Jukebox (the fastest/easiest/most common way to translate a modern song into Alastor Aesthetic) to see if they had made a jazz cover (they had), and I reassured my friend that the PMH cover definitely played every second song while drunk!Alastor was mooning over (and/or looming over) Sir Pentious.

And then I went oh goddammit the lyrics actually fit, dammit, now I’ve gotta put it on the playlist.

So I put it on the playlist.

Here’s the great thing about song lyrics. Even if everyone knows that the lyrics mean one thing, language is inherently ambiguous and you can totally just decide to read the lyrics a slightly different way if you really really want to and the exact wording doesn’t make it impossible. Everyone KNOWS that “Careless Whisper” is about cheating, but it never SAYS it’s about cheating (like, it says “cheat a friend,” but like the singer could’ve cheated their friend at cards? it doesn’t say), so you can just decide that it’s about any other kind of betrayal in a relationship! Like, say, blowing up your ally’s steampunk airship fleet. The song never says it ISN’T about a steampunk airship fleet.

So let’s just establish right now that this song is no longer about cheating. That’s out the window.

In the original song, “dancing” is probably intended as a metaphor for having sex. In THIS context, it is literally dancing. The emotional core of CDIH, the moment around which the rest of the story rotates, is the night that Alastor and Sir Pentious dance together. And although Alastor no doubt dances plenty of times after leaving Sir Pent, he’s certainly never going to dance like that again—like he’s with a lover, like he wants to be touching his dance partner, rather than either alone or while distastefully putting up with physical contact with someone who doesn’t matter to him.

The interpretation of the line “careless whispers of a good friend” that I think is probably Most Common is that a friend of the singer’s lover warned the lover that the singer is cheating on them, and the singer thinks that the fact that the lover now knows is worse than not knowing at all, because now that the lover knows they can never go back to normal, hence why the friend was being careless. Aside from any questions of, like, whether or not that’s a sound opinion at all—I’ve always interpreted that line differently. Since the singer refers to their lover as a “friend” (“should have known better than to cheat a friend”), I’ve always assumed that the singer would refer to themself as their lover’s friend, and so the “careless whispers of a good friend” were the whispers that the singer themself made that started whatever affair it is they had.

And so that assumption—that the “good friend” that said something they shouldn’t have is the singer—is the interpretation I’m carrying into the song’s inclusion in the playlist. In this case, it’s Alastor’s decision to lie to Sir Pent about how he feels about him (claiming that he never cared & that he was just screwing around with his emotions) before running off that are the “careless whispers” because, although not exactly whispery, they do have the same effect as in the song: ever since he said them, there’s been an unmendable rift between Alastor and Sir Pent (which was, like, his objective, but he’s still not happy about it)—and, more than that, it was very careless. Alastor had intended for his actions to just push Sir Pent away, not to effectively ruin Sir Pent’s ambitions to rule hell completely. But, that’s what happened. Because he didn’t think anything through. He just said and did the very first things he could think of to push Sir Pent away. Extremely careless.

And, of course, the specific version that got included was chosen because it sounds jazzy. Yay for PMJ, making all sorts of songs Alastor-ready.

I Will Always Love You (Lyrics)

… except, the super dark version.

So I figured out at some point that the easiest way I was gonna find Alastor music was through jazz-style covers of songs a la Postmodern Jukebox, 1) because PMJ has been actually mentioned as among the limited varieties of modern music that Alastor would listen to by virtue of the fact that they do covers that sound like what he used to listen to, and 2) because Puff here isn’t actually a fan of jazz and it’s a lot easier for me to slowly wade into the water via jazzy covers of songs I already know than it is for me to fling myself into the deep end like “appreciate Jelly Roll Morton! Appreciate Jelly Roll Morton NOW!!!”

(I am slowly and laboriously training myself to be a fan of jazz, because Alastor is a RADIO HOST from NEW ORLEANS in the ROARING TWENTIES AND A LITTLE BIT OF THE THIRTIES, i will NOT be writing him while in complete ignorance of a subject that probably occupied a huge portion of his life.)

So due to the fact that I was looking for PMJ-esque genre-switching covers of songs, I drifted over to other genre-switching song cover acts like Chase Holfelder to go through the songs and go “hm wonder of any of these work." This song is an exception to the genres I’m looking for for Alastor, but it still makes the list because like, the vibe is just right.

Have y'all ever actually listened to/read the lyrics to "I Will Always Love You” before? Not just the AAAND IIIIIIIII-IIII-IIIIIII WILL ALWAAAYS LOVE YOOOOO-OO-OOOU bit but the actual lyrics. They’re sad. The lyrics are “I deeply love you but if I stayed with you I would only hold you back so i’m going to leave you because it’s for the best but i’m super sad about it and i always will be.”

Now, that doesn’t 100% line up with Alastor’s situation. Because, like, obviously, he was doing the exact opposite of holding Sir Pent back when they were together, and fearing holding Sir Pent back was not the reason he left.

But it is among the reasons he avoids the hell out of him now. The primary reasons, of course, are still “being in love is scary and i do not want to do that so maybe if i avoid him i can continue pretending that i am not in love?” and “lmao he justifiably hates me now so why try"—but #3 on his list is the recognition that, since they broke up, Alastor’s actions have caused a constant cascade of events that have held Sir Pent back ever since. (And Alastor also suspects that there might actually be some kind of legitimate curse or fate or something going on here—that part of Alastor’s role in hell is playing the part of Sir Pent’s personal hellish divine punishment.) So he didn’t leave because he’s sabotaging Sir Pent’s ambitions; but he sabotaged Sir Pent’s ambitions because he left.

And therefore, as a consequence, he should stay away from Sir Pent now. He shouldn’t beg forgiveness and a second chance—because he doesn’t deserve them, and because he might make it worse.

This particular cover of the song really kicks the anguish up into high gear. The most common Whitney Houston version is like, okay she’s brokenhearted, but also somehow somewhat empowered by the brokenheartedness—like even though she’s leaving sad and bitter, in her heart she knows that the decision she’s making is for the best for her beloved, and she can draw strength from that. There is no drawing strength from the decision in the Chase Holfelder version—just using it up. It’s like he’s burning through all of his reserves of strength to push his loved one away. When Whitney hits the big note, she’s pulling power into herself to belt that out. When Chase hits the big note, he’s pouring out every last bit of power left inside his body. You can imagine Whitney walking away from this song with her head held high and her back straight but Chase is just gonna collapse to his knees with his shoulders hunched and head bowed—completely empty, a husk. That’s the vibe I want with Alastor—that every single day of his self-imposed exile he’s losing a little piece of himself, hollowing himself out. He can’t draw strength from it.

Typically, when I’m picking songs for this playlist, I don’t pay much attention to the gender of the singer (my only main priority on this playlist is that by the time it’s done I want the genders of the singers to be roughly balanced on both Sir Pent’s part and Alastor’s part), but in this case I think the fact that the singer is male contributes to it working for Alastor the way another version with a female singer wouldn’t. Not entirely sure why—maybe because, even though the voice doesn’t sound anything like his, it’s easier to actively imagine Alastor singing the song when it’s got a male voice? Maybe because, thanks to Sexism In Society, a woman saying "I’m leaving you because I’d get in the way of your dreams” more easily comes across as “Oh… I am simply not good enough for you… I’d hold you back…” while a man saying “I’m leaving you because I’d get in the way of your dreams” more easily comes across as “I wouldn’t hold you back, I’d push you down. I’m dangerous for you.” And the latter fits Alastor better.

(But hey, if any of you know of any versions of “I Will Always Love You” with a female singer that makes her sound dangerous as hell, feel free to recommend them to me. Not because I’m looking to replace the version I’ve already got but just because I’d really like to hear it.)

Currently, it’s listed as the last song on the Alastor portion of the playlist. I recently reorganized it so that the Sir Pent portions and Alastor portions each flow from the shallowest/most surface emotions down to the deeper/truer/more hidden emotions, and even before I did that reorganization, “I Will Always Love You” has been the closing song on Alastor’s side since it was added to the playlist. That feels like the right note to leave it on: after everything else has been said, once every other layer and lie has been stripped away, the deepest and truest and last thing Alastor would have to say to Sir Pent is “I hope life treats you kind and I hope you have all you’ve dreamed of” and an anguished screaming declaration of love.

Friend Please https://genius.com/Twenty-one-pilots-friend-please-lyrics

So remember when I said that language is inherently ambiguous and if you want you can totally just choose to read words differently if the wording doesn’t actually prevent that interpretation? This song is clearly about suicide. I have decided for the purposes of this playlist it is not about suicide anymore! It’s still about depression but not about suicide! When the singer was like “Please don’t take your life away from me” what he meant is “Please don’t take your life, and also, I am emphasizing that if you do so you are removing yourself from my life to try to show you how much you mean to me,” but how I have decided to interpret it for this playlist is “literally do not remove your life from my life, as in, like, don’t run away and stop talking to me.”

So. As I mentioned in my last song meta post, there’s sort of two—not genres, but like, musical aesthetics that I’m drawing from for Sir Pent: Victorian-ish/steampunk-ish sounds, and emo stuff because Vivz said that’s what he actually listens to. Twenty One Pilots fits the criteria for emo for me—idk and idc if other people consider them emo, they toured with Fall Out Boy and Panic! At The Disco, they count as far as I’m concerned—so they’re actually among the bands I’ve been intending to specifically look at for potential Sir Pent Songs.

For the most part, they’re, like, too good at the sad millennial vibe. But that song works.

“Friend, Please” comes low on Sir Pent’s portion because it’s deep in the more genuine emotions—I’ve actually considered putting it last and may still do so, it would make a nice counterpoint to “I Will Always Love You"—actually I’m gonna go do that, gonna go shuffle the playlist, there, good—and it’s also something that he couldn’t/wouldn’t say until after he knows about Alastor’s deep thoughts. Reinterpreted so that it’s not about suicide, it becomes about a friend who’s still depressed, but the focus of the song becomes about the friend’s self-isolation—a self-isolation that’s fueled by denial and self-delusion, the friend convincing themself that they’re alone, always will be, and can’t/won’t have anyone else in their life again that they can depend upon.

Which, although he doesn’t necessarily seem to be depressed, is certainly the vibe Alastor gives off in the show—that despite his overly-friendly overly-familiar attitude, he probably keeps everyone else at a great emotional distance. In canon he might be okay with that. In fic, he’s doing that at the expense of pushing away a person he loves very much—and then pushing away anyone that could help him cope with that loss. Leaving him very alone and perpetually disguising himself as fine with that. Maybe, when he can go years without having to see Sir Pent, he can be fine with that.

But I have Big Plans for that sequel and you know item #1 on the list is "stick Alastor and Sir Pent in a position where they’ll have to cross paths all the time so that it’s like threading a giant needle with barbed wire, stabbing the needle into Alastor’s heart, and slowly dragging the barbed wire straight through.”

And after that? Living like a ghost, claiming he’s fine when he’s been completely emotionally drained, is gonna be a pretty accurate description of his mental state.

Right now, Sir Pent is in no way close enough to Alastor to know that—and in no way sympathetic enough toward him to care even if he did know. He still hates Alastor for completely ruining his life. But there’s still that part of him that used to care about Alastor and still could come to care about him again. And if that part gets revived, and if he gets close enough to Alastor to see how miserable he’s made himself by trying to push everyone away and denying that he’s pushed his own mental state into as bad a state as it’s currently in, his reaction would be “you absolute dumbass” followed by trying to shout some sense into Alastor by pointing out that every one of his problems is caused not by external factors, but by his own damn screwed-up perception of the world. Like, every one of his problems he made himself, and he can unmake them. He’s just got to uncover his eyes first.

It’s easy for fandom to just, like, characterize Sir Pent as an all-around dumbass—strategically, socially, emotionally, etc. Until and unless we see otherwise—and see it so firmly that even I can’t find ways to headcanon around it, and believe you me, I can headcanon my way around a lot of things—I choose to believe that the only areas he’s definitely a dumbass in are “understanding modern slang” and “remembering NOT to charge into battle without considering the odds the second he sees somebody he hates.” This means that I like to believe he also has a reasonable level of emotional intelligence, and a healthy level of compassion that he can deploy, when he so chooses, on someone he considers worthy of that compassion. He’s evil, yes, but self-professed evil, which means self-aware evil; which means that even though there’s gotta be something fucked up with his worldview for him to choose to be evil, it is a choice he’s making, not something he’s doing specifically because he believes it’s right/necessary. And he can turn it off when he decides he’s with someone that deserves it.

Now, is Alastor on that list? Not currently, hell no. But there’s potential for him to make it on the list—that potential for Sir Pent to care about him again, to want to see him throw off the things that he’s using to hold himself back, to want to see him become better and happier, to want him back in Sir Pent’s life—buried somewhere deep beneath Sir Pent’s burned emotions and decades of resentment.

#(i've got asks for five and a half other songs on the playlist)#(i'll get to them uhhh... soonish)#mementomori #ask #music #about my writing #(sorta?? my writing comes up)#meta #hazbin hotel #headcanons #radiosnake

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