I originally started Episode 4 with a flash-forward to the Dybbuk conversation between Cassandra and Samael. Then I thought about it during edits and cut it for length. The episode is already as long as the first episode and y’all are saints for making it this far.

Speaking of Samael, I gave them that name as an in-joke because there are so many Liliths out there, I wanted to increase the Samael-count. Also it sounds like a name an 18th century bureaucrat would choose to piss off their boss. But I get ahead of myself.

So I ended Episode three with Aaralyn’s decision to build Cassandra’s Blood Temple and it pained me – it PAINED me y’all – that I couldn’t finish the episode with Jotham’s traitorous reveal and staking. I didn’t think it would make a great opening for the next episode, particularly when that episode needed to do a lot of heavy lifting. An hour and forty-five minutes of heavy lifting it turns out. Nonetheless, like the bad ending to the Wisdom of Solomon, the scene was cut in twain and I hope you didn’t start with Episode 4 because you will be lost.

This episode features character growth for a lot of characters, and Aaralyn is not left behind. She’s obviously a monster considering what she did to Cassandra last episode, but as Samael says, she is the power structure under which the Camarilla work. I wanted to show how adaptable she is as a leader, and that even the worst of us is still capable in a number of ways. And you often have to work with your abuser. It fucking sucks, and the abuse is always there, but (as a major theme of Blood Doll), life goes on. All sorts of things happen and life goes on.

(Now to deal with the Dragon in the Room – pronouncing Camarilla as Kam-ah-rill-ah and not Kam-ah-ree-ah. I have no pony in this Umamusume race. I simply went with the pronunciation that Jacob Burgess used in Not a Drop to Drink and that Dee (who played Judith) also reiterated that I use. As I recall, Amber wasn’t thrilled with that pronunciation so we do have division in the ranks and all y’all on the Kam-ah-ree-ah side can be assured that I knew better and chose not to go down that path.)

Next up, Cassandra gets her first taste of power by arranging for the CamaRILLLLLLLLLa to meet with the Anarchs over the Blood Temple project. Aaralyn struts her stuff and comes across as reasonably convincing without being explicitly manipulative. I felt that was very important – she doesn’t bullshit the Anarchs the same reason that I don’t bullshit my audience. I’m old, y’all, and I don’t have time to pussy-foot around topics of contention.

Another aside – I don’t know if you noticed but there is no single antagonist in Season 1 of Blood Doll. There are just people – terrible people – but it’s still an ensemble cast and no one is any more evil than anyone else – including Cassandra. We’ll get there with her. I thought it was important to give everyone their own motivations and plot through-lines and not have everyone gather together at the end to defeat the Prime Antagonist in a rousing display of unity. That’s not how this world works. That’s not how *our* world works. We’re just people doing our own shit and often shit sucks but Life. Goes. On.

Anyhow, in the Camarilla/Anarch meeting, I emphasize a distinction between people who use hierarchical methods of organization vs. anarchic methods of organization. Samael comes to the Anarchs with a plan to show that they’re serious about making the Blood Temple and Siobhan throws it back in their face – no. Anarchists don’t show up with a pre-conceived plan. They sit down together as equals and hash it out from scratch. Showing up with a plan tilts the scales toward the assumptions provided in that pre-conception. (This is me begging all other authors to read modern anarchist literature or go down to Left Bank Books Collective and talk to people about how anarchists actually operate, I’m begging you.) In the few TTRPG campaigns of VtM I’ve seen, the Anarchs don’t work like anarchists and it bugs the ever-living FUCK out of me.

Next, we FINALLY get Samael’s background with William. As Baldrick to William’s Blackadder, until they turned the tables in the 1960s/1970s (I haven’t decided which yet). Samael is hurt by being excluded from the Blood Temple and it was important to show them invoking the Circle and opening up to Cassandra. The all-powerful vampire persona that Samael presents is a facade, and this scene concludes it, letting Cassandra completely in. The scene also features a bit of dialogue that I couldn’t believe I’d written:

BLOOD DOLL: (DRINKING THE GLASS SAMAEL POURED FOR HER) This is pretty strong.
SAMAEL: The night calls for it.

I was like, “this is fantastic, who wrote this?” And then I was like “oh shit.”

And then Cassandra goes into the discussion of the Dybbuk. (Thanks again to Esoterica for educating me on this particular concept.) It’s a question that must have plagued the minds of religious scholars – are there exceptions to every spiritual process under (Abrahamic) God? How does Gilgul handle the excessive accumulation of sin? I guess it just sloughs it off as Dybbuks which present their own problems in the world. Anyway, this discussion is more of the religious wankery wandering, presumption, and reinterpretation that I love to do. And hopefully contribute to the vampiric canon, if you’ll have me.

Next up is Jotham’s trial…. ha ha ha… ah ha ha ha… oh, you thought this trial was going to be fair? And not just something else to pad Aaralyn’s ego? Y’all probably saw this coming so I got it out of the way. (Side note, I originally had Jotham’s body remain after beheading, but during recording, Amber informed me that Jotham would have been dusted so I retroactively made him do so – and even found the foley to make it happen!) Also, Aaralyn is managing the transition to the Blood Temple as best as she can – by making it Judith’s problem. Poor Judith.

Speaking of Judith, I typically named a lot of characters in this show from prominent Bible names to give the show a more spiritually-epic air. And not just because my dad’s cousin is named Judy. Look, the Holy Bible only has so many names in it which are still in use.

When I’m working on a script, conversation bits will come to me and I’ll write them down in my notes. The section with Samael and Lorea were a couple of those, namely Samael literally dropping the book on Lorea, and telling Lorea that to second they admit to loving Cassandra, they have to kill Lorea. Because to the CamaRILLLa, giving up the pretense of distance with a loved one is dangerous. Suddenly Samael is opening up to getting hurt again, and their culture demands that kill rather than do that with an enemy.

Oh, and Lorea tells Cassandra about the Sabbat and here is where y’all Sabbat players, led by Amber, pierce my heart twixt my bosoms and demand that I treat them better. Folks… there’s going to be a Season 2 in which I might do that. However, this is not your season. Sorry. I need to show how the Sabbat are the bogeymen (not the antagonists) that the CamaRLLLa and Anarchs fear.

Next up, we finally get around to Samael’s Gender Shit. Samael is canonically non-binary and came out at a time before being enby had great words to describe it. How does an enby manage living without a supportive community for almost three hundred years? Not very well! Now, I planned for Samael being enby long before I cast Soleil, also an enby, in the role. It just happened to work out and I’m very pleased by the synchronicity. Anyhow I wanted to explore what happens when You’re Queer But Don’t Have A Great Way to Describe It and Samael is my vehicle. This also explains why Samael connects with Cassandra like they do – their Gender Shit. (Gender Shit for life <3.)

Next, Lorea introduces Cassandra to the Skunkworks. This place will become very important in future episodes. For now, it’s where everyone meets to discuss the Blood Temple’s creation. Poor Esther, having to take notes in the first meeting. But everyone need to take their turn to diffuse the labor! Soooooooooolidarity foreeeeeeeeeever! Soooooooolidarity foreeeeeeeeeever. I mean. Uh. No, that’s those other guys. Bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao! Anyhow, I tried to make this scene interesting and by that I mean Tony cut like two pages off my original script and he was right to do so. Also I appreciate Siobhan’s voice actor barking enough for me that I could put together the Gangrel part of the scene. They were very confused when I first asked them to do so!

Next up was a scene which wasn’t in my original outline for the show, but one I thought was strongly needed. Judith gets more characterization so y’all can continue to lust over her. In particular, she gives Cassandra enough rope to hang herself and makes her point that she doesn’t want anyone hanging around the Blood Temple thinking it’ll protect them. It is Not. A. Sanctuary. Gods, I love Judith in this scene, where she has to deal with Cassandra as That Human That Unfortunately Isn’t Going Anywhere And Will Become The Power Structure With Which I Have To Operate. (I remember Vanishing Girl’s voice actor telling me it was amused by the concept of a human in the VtM world who, for political reasons, everyone is highly discouraged from killing.)

Now, we get to the design of the Harbinger’s Blood Temple. (Why “Harbinger’s”? Fucked if I know. I just needed a placeholder for the Blood Temple name and “Harbinger’s” stuck.) Lorea guides us through the club to give the listener a sense of place, since I can’t exactly use anything visual in a strictly auditory medium. Originally I was going to only have one feeding chamber but when thinking about it for more than one second I realized they’d need a bunch. Also, the bouncers somehow have never pieced together what’s going on in the feeding chambers when the lights go out. Don’t think too hard about it. For the love of the gods, please don’t think too hard about it.

And then we get to Steph’s assault. In my original outline, Cassandra wasn’t going to spend so much time in Harbinger’s. The Anarchs were going to dump a beaten-up fash on the steps to Aaralyn’s mansion with the message that, if the CamaRILLLLLa were going to own Cap Hill, they should handle the shit there too. So Cassandra would go out with Q squad along with Steph. Steph would then criticize Cassandra for showing up again after their breakup and says basically everything she does later and I ended up cutting all that and just had Cassandra learn about Steph’s assault. (That original outline was so fucking cringe but I couldn’t have made this show without it as a potential future.) Anyhow, why did I make Steph get beat up? Say it with me. Character development. Cassandra needed something of her own to fight for outside the Kindred’s world, and also needed a way to reconnect with her old touchstone – to show off how far Cassandra has come since being the “uwu I’m so weak and reliant on Samael” woman she was before.

So Cassandra goes to Amanda and Simon to have them do something mysterious to revenge Steph. And this pays off Samael’s previously stated desire to help Cassandra grow. “Are you sure you want to revenge Steph?” “Bold of you to assume that, having vampires at my beck and call, I wouldn’t want to revenge Steph.”

And now everything the episode has been building to comes together – press night at Harbinger’s. Cassandra helps break up a Kindred fight in the basement because, like, a fight was going to happen just to test out Judith’s guards. And Cassandra gets to lay it out to the Kindred that she’s sick of their shit. She is not taking it anymore because she has been granted responsibility for making this fucking place work.

And then there’s Mr. Boswill. I met Patrick, his voice actor, at a garden party over the summer where I was force-fed fresh strawberries and blueberries from the garden. I heard Patrick talking to someone else about wanting to do some voice work post-retirement and wasn’t I the lucky bitch who happened to be sitting there nearby? I told him about the character, showed him the script, and I’m so grateful to him that he played this character as well as he did. Bravo, Patrick. Also, if you want to be cast in Season 2, I advise you to attend a party, invite me, and talk within earshot about wanting to be a voice actor and maybe, just maybe, I asked you for a demo reel.

I wrote the scene in which Mr. Boswill finds out… well, you know, his livelihood has been wrecked (by vampires) in my writer’s workshop and got a good reaction from folks when Cassandra drops, “Are all the cars in your lot okay?” I don’t typically like to write show scenes in workshop but this scene really needed to happen, as many scenes do.

And then the power goes out because, of course it does. I had always planned for the power to be cut on press night but I didn’t know who would cut it until I started plotting out the Episode, when it made sense for Siobhan to do it.

So.

Y’all.

Did you understand that Cassandra performs a literal exorcism on Siobhan? And it works? That she is so creeped out by Cassandra’s rendition of Psalm 91 that she freaks out and runs?

Anyhow.

When I was first proposing the role of Cassandra to Rachel, this scene was one of the big ones I gave her to read. And as I recall, she fucking loved it. When we recorded it in the studio, we did it twice, of course, and Rachel nearly blew out her voice on it by the time we were done. It was glorious. (Side note: I do not recommend that directors ask their actors to blow out their voices in recording. That’s bad. Shame on you if you’ve ever done that. Now, if the actor happens to do so on their own, it’s your job to do aftercare and take them out for ice cream afterwards.)

When I originally wanted to have Cassandra do an exorcism that worked, I told Dee about it. She didn’t understand me at all why it would have worked. So – true story – I went to her kitchen, squeezed a handful of blue Dawn dish soap on my hand, smeared it on my face like blood, put Psalm 91 on my phone, and slowly approached Dee while reading it increasingly loudly. She got the idea.

Okay, so this is the Cassandra at the height of her power. Let’s get around to that tragedy bit next time.