First off, blame Tony Amato for all of these anthology vignettes.

I’ve been attending Tony’s writer’s workshops since 2000, aside from a brief hiatus between 2013-2023. Each workshop has two prompt-based sessions – Tony provides a prompt to encourage you to write something based on whatever the prompt is about, or, as I do, completely ignore the prompt and write about something silly. For the past couple years, I’ve been using the writer’s workshops to explore the characters in my shows, or more recently, to explore scenes in future episodes of Blood Doll. I’ll figure out a setting for the character to be in before I start writing, and then I write to explore how the character would respond to that environment and what they end up doing.

I find out a lot about my characters in this way and often, bits of these vignettes end up back in the show. Amanda and Penelope’s spat was conceived in the vignette (Episode 3 in the Anthology), as was Aaralyn’s early days as a chemist/alchemist (Episode 5 in the Anthology). I highly recommend doing this for your own writing. (Also reading terrible books as inspiration.)

As a sneak peak behind the curtain, I actually began investigating the Blood Doll project with this piece, prior to planning anything else about the show, that included these paragraphs:

I am under no delusions about my life. Each day you allow me to return home is unexpected. I do think if I die, I will find solace and comfort in dying for you. To die for someone, a god one can talk with and be honest with, anyone can find peace there. Imagine a cop dying in the line of duty. Or a serviceperson in the Armed Forces. Who do they know for whom they would die? I plan to die for you someday. Do I want to? No. Will I work to the best of my abilities to prevent it from happening? That depends on whether you want me to die or not. I’m under no delusions about what life under you would be. I’m agnostic, but I think of Jacob in the Old Testament wrestling with the angel. I wrestle with you, to understand my place and abilities under you. And like Jacob, I start with knowing a god exists and I have a place under them.

They say the Torah is not in heaven, assuming that Abraham’s God is. I know nothing about Heaven. I know my own two feet are planted on this earthen ground. And your feet are planted near mine. I feel your holy call over me. There are scriptures to be written. There are hymns to be sung of my body, of sex, of blood, of corruption, of glory. There is so much we can do to define each other, to know our places, to celebrate the dance of death and flesh around us. Halleluia. Halleluia. Halleluia.

So I probably freaked the rest of the workshop the fuck off with that.

I only recorded fifteen of the vignettes, but trust me, there are [goes to count] thirty-four in total for Season 1. Not all of them are winners. There’s like three for Cassandra that do nothing for her characterization. Stephanie has two and neither of them are indicative of how she eventually came out. In them, you’ll learn that Vanishing Girl’s real name is Blaise and Silver lives in a run-down house in Rainier that only has electricity from a solar panel out back.

The fence and the front porch have partially collapsed, as the wood grew soft and cracks in the paint let in the rain. The windows, mostly cracked and a few broken, are sealed with Styrofoam and newspaper. The front yard regularly blows weed seeds onto every other yard in the neighborhood. The newer neighbors have complained to the city, who repeats that it’s their issue, not the city’s. So those neighbors stroll up to the still-solid Wall of a door, strewn with ancient locks, and bang on the knocker that threats to break off with every impact. Typically, no one answers. Maybe today, after dark, Silver will come and open the great entryway and the neighbor will see the mess inside; giant wood spools for tables, mattresses of varying grunge-levels everywhere, and books scattered with a few laptops on extension cords snaking out the back of the house.

Stuff like that. Nothing that really matters in the course of the show.

I got the idea to record these vignettes from the previous, uncompleted show Victory Asterisk, as I had written a ton of vignettes for the characters in that show. I thought it might be fun for the actors to read these bits of their characters, and the audience might enjoy hearing more about the world these people live in. I actually wrote a lot more of the Hermanubis Anthology, as I called it (the town in Victory Asterisk is called Hermanubis, or Hubris for short), than of the Blood Doll Anthology. I think it was easier to summon my Prairie Home Companion roots in stories about a small town in the middle of nowhere. Blood Doll is so much more show than backstory for me though. I worry about contradicting something about the Blood Doll characters that I’ve written somewhere else.

We actually did record quite a few of the Hermanubis Anthology vignettes, and I may release them someday, who knows. I’m not sure any of my actors are ready to go back to that project after the whirlwind of Blood Doll.

I suppose I should add some trivia about the Blood Doll Anthology vignettes in order to pad this post out more. Here it goes.

Samael (1) is one of the later vignettes I wrote, but I thought it was fun so I started off the Anthology with it. I read Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter in high school too. I thought it would be amusing to see Samael at the gas station.

Cassandra is the only Cassandra vignette I wrote that actually deals with her as a character and not a person walking through a scene. The whole boat/fishing thing was from my childhood, when my dad would take me out fishing around Bassett’s Island in Pocasset. I liked it enough to be social time with him but not enough to do it myself. The whole “friends fall off from attending birthdays” was me too. Wheeeeeeeeee.

Amanda and Penelope are cartoon characters of old dykes in this vignette.

I have no idea where Lorea, as a character, came from. I was just thinking about having a competent, wealthy woman who was still blue-collar at heart, happy being among of a group of anarchists.

Aaralyn looks like someone I knew back in the 1990s fetish scene and I can’t fucking remember her name. Tall, cropped black hair, once talked about how she was “all sorts of randy.” Well, the Aaralyn version of her was more conceited, set to run an organized crime ring. Anyway, I watched enough BBC to be able to picture her in the late 1700s/early 1800s at a dinner party she had no desire to be at.

I didn’t originally want to record this vignette from Judith, but Dee was so excited by the fact that Judith was a Swiftie that she convinced me to. Dee also decided at the last minute to switch the narrative from third-person to first-person and she absolutely rocked it. The fact that Judith doesn’t like The Cars is from a story that another trans friend of mine told me, about being in a punk rock scene in the late 70s, seeing The Cars, and nopeing out. FYI – Judith’s name is meant to evoke the Biblical Ruth as well as be a reference to my cousin Aunt Judy.

Samael (2) is the first piece I wrote about Samael when I was feeling their history out. Again, I’ve watched a lot of BBC.

Jotham was a piece I was particularly proud of. It really gives the full history of a man who’s been through a lot.

Rachel was invoked from kids I knew growing up on the edges of wealthy families, and the copious Cursed Zillow streams from Geop that I’ve seen over the years.

Naval Liaison was based on a former boss of mine, who also lived in a very demanding HOA.

Leviathan was a neat imagined history project.

Samael and Elijio came from me imagining the conflicted times they were experiencing, paying the price to their souls to be together. They had to steal moments between their terrible obligations, which is why their minds are always half-doing dirty work and half-being in love together. I wanted to convey this conflict within them, jumping backwards and forwards between scenes to explain their headstates throughout the centuries.

Lorea and Siobhan came from a discussion with someone else in my writer’s workshop, who told me that my anarchists didn’t feel like the anarchists they knew. I then wrote this piece and they changed their mind. I was proud of that. Not that I would know anything about anarchists or Georgetown bars.

Judith (2) was yet another instance of me making a silly story for Judith. Someday I may make a serious one for her. I dunno. Spoilers: I actually don’t like coffee. I never got the taste in my 20s.

I love William‘s story so much, even more so because I had no idea where I was going when I started writing it. I can’t believe my brain took me to such a good twist and ending. Tony was like, he couldn’t believe I let Joshua survive in that story.

That’s all for now. See you in Season 2! Josephine, Mara, and Justine say hi.