Febuary 15 2005 Disclaimer: I don't own anything related to LOK or any other pop-culture references.
Smoke: Hey all. I've got a major block that just won't move on this one, (it's been there since at least the fourth of December,) so I'm deciding to give up. If you're interested in the block's name, it's called "Janos Audron's general stubbornness."
Janos: I resent that.
Smoke: Shaddap. If you had simply cooperated, I wouldn't be in this mess.
Raziel: Stop blaming Janos for your failings.
Smoke: Quiet or I'll force you to listen to Trans-Siberian Orchestra.
Raziel: Not that!
Smoke: Anyway, I never designed this story to have an end, and now I can't think of one. (Actually, I found a fragment titled, "Sucker for a Happy Ending." Basically, they're talking about the ending of a game where one of the dead characters really had survived.) I might put random bits of it up in my DevArt account and link to them from my profile page.
Kain: You say that, but I don't think you mean that.
Smoke: The text that follows the review responses is the skeletal form of the rest of my ideas. There are bits of flesh as well. Oddly enough, I think that this is the first time that I've done a skeleton for this story. (Nevermind, I found one dated mid-July. I think that's about the time I was starting the sequal.)
darkangelswings: Okay, now I feel bad; I was busy with my "giving up" project just as you were gushing about it. Not to worry, I've got other things in the works. I might even decide to write one of those ridiculus stories where the characters get drunk for no reason.
Soul of Ashes: Sometimes it is good to lend pieces of your own experience to characters. I think I did it a little too often with Jennifer, she became my idealised alter-ego. As far as a good direction, it lead my straight into a brick wall. :D As far as the borrowed OC, I might find somewhere to stick him.
Kyrial: Glad you liked it. Read the skeletal form if you like, you'll see that it becomes a tangled mess. :)
Lunatic Pandora1: Magnus was going to get scaryer. First time I was playing BO2, I was like, "Oh squid!"
Zaran: Creepy? I guess muppets can be scary. About your questions on "Playing Games," it was included in the story, (Chapter 10,) it's just that it got really long so I stripped it down to only the neccessary elements. The one you read is the full version.
Varyssa: Magnus wasn't hurt by getting hit with the boots, so no worries. As far as Raziel's opinions, he does have some rather strange ones.
Northstar1982: I'm glad you liked it. It's a shame, really that I can't get it to move anymore.
The rest of Razzy Plush: Skeletal version
Janos completely loses the last traces of his former beliefs. Sometime also during this time, he finally gives in to his urges and sleeps with Diana. (Diana is a fortuneteller that Janos is friends with. I keep trying to find an actual appearance for her but it never works.) I was also thinking that Janos would finally concede to disguising himself as a human. And then maybe Jennifer, Raziel, Janos, and Diana could all go out for sushi so I could do a round of calamari jokes. There's also something that I named "The Cherub Joke." (That one is uploaded off-site.)
There are two events that I couldn't decide which should happen first; Za's visit or Kurt's.
Zaran was going to show up and remember that Jennifer had once made Razzy plush dolls. Raziel gets upset because Jennifer had made some of those dolls for other people. She doesn't tell him that she didn't do it for free. I absolutely couldn't find a place for Janos in this or get him to leave temporarily.
Kurt Wagner was going to show up on Jennifer's doorstep. (Yes, that one, complete with his hologram.) The back-story on that one was that Jennifer had made a non-living plushy for a major Nightcrawler fan. The fact that he has come to life makes Jennifer question if her DD monsters could also come to life. "Raziel, you've played Balder's Gate; you know what Beholders and Displacer Beasts can be like." She can't decide if it was accidental from her magic, or something that Kurt's owner did. Kurt's watch also gets broken, but Jennifer manages to trick him into thinking that she fixed it because he really disguises himself with the same method as Raziel. Kurt is mildly surprised that Jennifer isn't scared of his appearance, but he recognizes the fear when Jennifer talks to Magnus. Magnus mentions that there's nothing interesting to eat in the refrigerator, subtitle hints that he'd like to feed off of Jennifer. Azrael scares Jennifer by tossing the Vargouille plush into her lap while she's not looking. That plush ends up getting pinned to the wall with a dagger. Jennifer decides to never make another plushy, living or otherwise. Kurt gets to talk to Janos, and the conversation ends by them talking about how they wish they had met each other years ago. Kurt leaves because he promised that he would return to his fangirl, even though he's not fond of her attention.
Minor story point: Jennifer accidentally gets some glass embedded in her hand. Raziel gets it out with his tongue. Raziel admits to Jennifer that because of the bond he gained with Azrael when he saved his life, he occasionally feels a bloodthirst. However, tasting blood has lost its appeal.
Another minor story point: Jennifer has to ride with Azrael on his motorcycle, but he drives like a bat out of hell and Jennifer almost faints from fear. "It's called dead-man's curve for a reason, you maniac!"
Someone brought Raziel's brothers out of the game as well. Melchia was going to show up first, but no one realized who he was at first because he was human and he was going by a different name. There's a part with him getting freaked out at hearing about or meeting Janos. Melchia had come through as a vampire, but another dollmage took pity on him and pushed his memories and appearance back. He wanders off again, but I'm not sure what he knows now.
A couple of chapters afterward, Turel and Zephon would show up in their lieutenant forms, though they remember Raziel's execution. Turel explains how Melchia got turned into a human, Rahab wandered off somewhere, and Dumah met with a nasty accident. Raziel makes a crack about how killing Turel again would be boring.
Another recurring theme would be the cats and their antics. They were supposed to be used to talk about predatory instincts, the nature of evil, and mistakes about what is divine. There would also be other things, but I can't think of a good way to express them right now.
About this point, I was going to make another major break and call it "Razzy Plush Part Three." Since Jennifer no longer makes plushies, she's turned to making custom clothing, mostly cosplay outfits.
Azrael goes into evolutionary hibernation and gains his wings. His loyalty to Kain is shaken as he wonders if jealousy had any role in his future self's execution.
Magnus discovers that there are non-Nosgoth vampires in the world and about half a dozen of them come to live with him in Jennifer's basement. She's definitely not happy about this, but they don't recognize her authority to kick them out. Originally, they were going to be the world's native vampires, but they would have noticed the Nosgoth vampires sooner if they were. I changed them to Masquerade-type vampires. The freaky part about this was that they started out as real people, but the personality of their role-play characters overrided. Jennifer's upset because she realizes the harm that cosplay could cause, and that she can't sew at all even though it's what she loves.
Kain returns to Jennifer's one morning. He has found his surviving sons and knows about the masqueraders, though he is surprised to find some nesting in her basement. He's even more surprised to see Magnus. Kain is not on good terms with the masqueraders, though the ones in the basement are willing to truce.
(Back when I was going to use real vampires instead of masqueraders, Kain was going to steal someone else's childe so he could have a servant among them. Their weaknesses and social structure would have been similar to the masqueraders, except that superstitions have real power against them. A holy symbol with a will behind it would repel them, and they couldn't enter a home uninvited. That rule would have kept them limited to the basement, because that area is has informally been given to Magnus. Also because of the strict superstition, Kain dragged Jennifer out of bed at a godforsaken hour. She had been sleeping in the nude, and Kain was so concerned about his foundling that he dragged Jennifer all the way to the back door before handing her a robe. Kain also had a few tense moments when his foundling had already been taken into the basement haven by another vampire. Because Jennifer is generally non-religious, the pendant she kept with her as protection was the SR2 symbol for light. In the event that it wasn't strong enough to deter the vampires, it also contained a flare spell powerful enough to reduce them to ash.)
Azrael is unwilling to go near Kain because he's still haunted by what his sire might do. Azrael decides to go live with Raven, who had finally gotten a place where she could keep Azrael.
Deleted material: Jennifer was going to be attacked by a werewolf. The remnants of that day are in the final chapter of the first half of the Razzy plush story. I took it out because I felt that putting that on top of the vampires in the basement arc would make the story collapse. I am trying to create a set of original characters that can play out that part of the story.
After things had settled down again, Jennifer falls prey to some bizarre illness. It acts like a stroke, but it's not something that the doctors can identify. Though I never explain it in the story, it's a neuro-degeneration that runs in Jennifer's family. In most cases it causes insanity. The disease doesn't affect her all the time. Jennifer's version of the disease causes the left side of her body to go numb. She'll occasionally fall over because her leg won't support her. Jennifer carries a staff with her so that she'd still be able to walk. She is able to hold things, but she can't be sure how tightly she is holding something.
Raziel wonders if he is somehow the cause of Jennifer's illness, so he goes away for a while. He has a few random adventures and ends up coming back. Maybe he'll talk about his disappointment when he goes to Crystal Dynamics and discovers that his creator isn't there.
And that's where I suddenly run out of ideas. Like I said, I never designed this story to have an end. If I feel the urge to actually write out any random adventures that are based off of this story, I think I'll post them on my DevArt account and link to them from my profile page.