I fucking love this episode.

Today on a new segment we’re calling “Alicia goes back and reads her original outline for this episode,” apparently I wanted to start it with a court sequence that would be a follow-up to Rose’s branding. Cassandra would be made to declare herself Camarilla before Sophia and oppose the Fire Brigade with all her might. So yeah, glad I cut that. It would have been redundant.

I love this sequence in which Elijio gives her a VIP pass to Krafthaus and Cassandra tells him the fuck off. I felt this would be a strong scene in Cassandra trying to maintain her independence, which… well, this show is a tragedy after all. This scene also features the incredible line, “I’m not stubborn. I’m relentless.” Which I thought was going to be all over the trailer for this season but whatever. I also wanted to establish that the Samael/Elijio relationship is not forgotten, but is kinda on the sidelines currently.

Next, well, if the Camarilla are going to use the Cassandra/Samael wombo-combo, they might as well use them for tasks that Samael was good at, namely, extracting confessions. I wanted to bring Simon back, as I love Robert Lopez’s work. So I had Simon do a little assassination to help out Felix, knowing full well the consequences. To be fair, I wasn’t sure what Simon’s deal was at the end of Season 1, so this gave him some agency. And this gave Cassandra the opportunity to raise her objection to being part of an interrogation, at the cost of a conflict with Samael. Look, this was a part of Samael’s life that Cassandra wasn’t exactly exposed to so you can’t blame her. Well, you kinda can. She knew what she signed up for when she Kindredized. Samael knows how these interrogations go and is extremely upset at being silenced and yes, Cassandra will pay for this later. I like drama and conflict.

I also love the “yes, Ma’ams” Cassandra needs to give after Rose clocks her to the floor. Cassandra is so not a Mary Sue. It doesn’t matter how right she is or thinks she is. The world will not be kind to her.

Cassandra’s return to Krafthaus is supposed to be uncomfortable. I wanted to show why she wouldn’t want to eat there.

Next up, Josephine tells Cassandra about the Redbox. You used to see these things disused all over the city at every 7-11 but they’ve been since decommissioned and replaced with Amazon lockers. I felt they were iconic and deserved to be remembered. I actually had Josephine introduce them in Episode 10 originally, but I moved the introduction to Episode 11 with the numerous version 2 rewrites. Anyway, we finally have a bit of levity with Cassandra and Samael’s bit about naming Boxes of Many Colors around the city. But because I’m a hack, we interrupt their humor with Stephanie’s appearance. Look, sometimes if you have headmates, you’ll talk aloud. It’s normal. It’s only weird when normies hear you. And in this case, when people you died in front of also hear you. Whoops. I love Stephanie’s absolute “fuck you, I watched you die, what are you” reaction to seeing Cassandra again. I think Rachel went through two accents with Cassandra trying to hide herself before we settled on the one you hear in the final cut.

Well, the show is called “Blood Doll” and it’s about Blood Dolls, so it makes sense that Cassandra wants to start up a new project for Kindred to find Blood Dolls in. With Ruth’s help, of course. We start with a soft music D/s sequence, where Cassandra and Ruth sway together and I had to add cloth movement effects for every sway they make. It’s a personal fetish of mine to have the top clothed and the bottom (me!) unclothed and vulnerable. (Tops DM me, email in the RSS feed.) They establish their space and of course I’m going to throw an Edmund Burke quote in there. I’m not sorry. Finally, they stop dancing and discuss how to create a safe space for Blood Dolls.

This discussion was heavily revised during the version 2 rewrites, but its contents are pretty much the same, only streamlined. They are the result of extended conversations I had with Foxfire, Rachel, KC, and some other folks about what’s the best way to create this sort of space, what everyone’s responsibilities are in the space, and how to maintain silence when out of the space. It was important that people needed to be able to leave the Blood Doll life but still needed to be checked up on. Everyone that I spoke to agreed that it would be especially dangerous for someone to get mad at someone else in the Circle and lob in Drama Grenade in there, fucking up and endangering everyone so they could feel better briefly. I won’t mince words. The trans community and fetish scenes are rife with traumatized individuals crossing boundaries left and right with purity politics and fracturing subgroups and polycules. Asking someone to make a lifetime commitment to the Masquerade is fucking dangerous among marginalized communities. (Not that it’s any better in non-marginalized communities but we’re not inviting any of them into the Blood Doll life.)

KC was very particular that:

• Friendships and relationships would be built out of this Blood Doll community
• For any issues that arise between members, everyone needs an advocate (not someone you’re playing with).
• Defendants should be able to appoint a contact who they can speak with.
• Members need someone who is helping get them through the emotional aspect – believing in them and understanding where they fit in in the larger situation.
• You don’t have an org to be someone’s entire social circle – need contact outside it & form lasting relationships within & without the org.

Foxfire brought up that to mitigate broken scenes, you need to give people the chance to cool the fuck off and not burn bridges in the immediate aftermath. You need to determine what kind of communication is safe at this point. For some people, certain communication is fine; for others, it will make things worse. You need to determine how not to make these conversations into conversation trees, that is, people actually listening to one another and addressing grievances directly.

I also heard the quote from someone I spoke with, “resilient communities require resilient individuals.” Truer words.

I had a lot of notes about this coven project and I whittled them down to what you hear in this scene between Cassandra and Ruth. Did I say more in version 1 for this scene? Absolutely, but it wasn’t all necessary to get the gist of the rules for this coven.

Also I’m very happy with Samael’s “Let that be the wages of your sin” semi-forgiveness of Ruth. Ruth will never achieve full forgiveness, of course, but there are worse wages of sin than love.

And then there’s the Fuck ICE scene. I wrote this scene in Tony’s writer’s workshop originally, and I thought it worked so well. Sarah did a fantastic idiot brownshirt voice. I needed to show that the Anarch’s schism didn’t have a “good” or “bad” side. It was just about priorities for a community being beset by enemies on all sides.

Cassandra and Samael go walking and Samael is finally able to voice their concerns about the Blood Doll coven. Which are reasonable enough. I needed Samael to get absolutely emotional with their fears about what Cassandra’s efforts might lead to, and Solei nailed the delivery as they always do. Samael was always indebted to the status quo and so I needed their arguments for the status quo to be believable. I needed to reiterate that Cassandra almost never is convinced of anything Samael says and, well, there will be consequences.

And then there’s the posters for Cassandra’s whereabouts that Stephanie put everywhere. Steph doesn’t realize that she’s set a target on her back. She’s alone and confused and wants answers for a terrifying mystery. Any other Kindred would have just killed her. Cassandra gives her the benefit of the doubt. She wants to be honest with Steph, and to terrify Steph into staying quiet forever, like her Blood Dolls potentially will. I went through a number of filters on Cassandra’s God Voice before I reached the one I used in the show. “Nothing gets easier. Even for a god.” Cassandra wants this to work so badly.

Ah, the party prep scene. I wanted to capture the “oh shit, we need to get going and also look incredible for the scene” vibes that come before you go out for a fetish party. I’m especially proud of Aurora’s take on the line, “(OVERWHELMED BY GOOD FEELINGS) Ummumuwalmumum.” She knew the sort of subby brain-melt sound I wanted. And I couldn’t help myself – on their way out, I wanted Mara to absolutely troll them. I love their exchange in the elevator. (And I love those elevator effects!)

Rachel told me the play party background ambiance was her favorite of all my ambiances. It took a lot of work. The slaps are my partner Rowan hitting her arm with every flogger I own. Some of the moans are also from Rowan and me, and if you’ve ever heard me orgasm at a party as some of the cast have, you’ll recognize that. A lot of the moans were purchased though. I did try to record people faux-moaning at an actual party once but the recording itself was awful and unusable so I scrapped it. So here we introduce our core three Blood Dolls; Melissa, Autumn, and Maple. I actually knew an Autumn in college and Maple was just one branch away. (Melissa was the name I’d thought worked back in 2025 when I was working on the Season 2 ideas.) Anyway, I think I was successful at making this a hot, hot cutting scene and I’d love to see this done live, except without the blood licking. Seriously, that shit is biohazard.

So now that we have Potential Blood Dolls, they’ll need protection. So it’s off to see Josephine. She’s wary but into it. And highly suspicious of Cassandra’s intentions. Josephine’s just fun to have in every episode though.

The final “Interview with the Blood Doll” scene was one of the earliest pieces I wrote for Season 2 in writing workshop. It’s pretty much the same as I originally wrote it, aside from a little editorial clean-up, but I had a good time with it. I wanted Melissa to be in a chair to show how the variety of folks who can be Blood Dolls. I needed a good sound effect for the chair, though, and when one of the more prominent audio drama editors on the Podcast Book Club Discord mentioned that she used a chair, I asked her to record a track of her moving in it and she did so. I had to clean up the track a bit but it worked well.

Now, what did the original outline have as the ending for this episode?

Oh.

OH.

“In an armored truck, CASSANDRA rides in the passenger side while AMANDA drives.

• They hear a police siren coming. CASSANDRA: “Don’t pull over.”
• While the truck drives, CASSANDRA opens the door and climbs out on the side of the truck.
• JOSEPHINE’s fake police undercover vehicle hits the back of the truck.
• CASSANDRA climbs on the back of the truck and pulls down her mask. She shakes her head at JO after JO recognizes her.
• A second police siren goes off. JO: “What the hell?”
• Naval Kindred hunters in police vehicles pull up alongside JO’s trucks. They fire nails and break the windows on JO’s vehicles.
• CASSANDRA jumps onto JO’s car. “You were set up! They’re Kindred hunters!” JO: “Fuck!”
• Naval Kindred hunters wreck one of JO’s cars.
• CASSANDRA jump onto a Naval Kindred vehicle. They fire nails through her arm and chest, missing her heart.
• CASSANDRA kills the driver through the windshield and forces their truck into a building. The Fire Brigade from the wrecked car fight and kill the stopped hunters.
• The second Naval Kindred hunter vehicle drives away, escaping. CASSANDRA makes sure they see her face. The money truck escapes as well.
• JOSEPHINE: “How did you know they were coming?”
• CASSANDRA: “I have ears at Kitsap. I tried to warn you.”
• JOSEPHINE: “I’ll respond quicker in the future.”
• CASSANDRA: “I have something else I want to ask you.”
• JOSEPHINE: “Later. We have to run. (BEAT) Thank you.”
• CASSANDRA: “Stay dangerous.”
• JOSEPHINE and the Fire Brigade drive away.
• SAMAEL: “They actually bought it.”
• CASSANDRA: “For now.””

What the fuck was I thinking?

I was talking with Solei after I had the idea for this heist at the end of Episode 11 and I remember they convinced me that it was a dumb idea. I needed to keep things simple.

So there you go. Outlines are weird things that you can mostly ignore when you’re working on the meat of the show.

See you next episode!