#i've gone up to lesson 50 when i was playing regularly but i wanted to go back and really go through each lesson

[666writingcafe]

Lesson 1: Welcome to the Devildom

In typical fashion, MC forgets that they had submitted an application to be a human exchange student at RAD, so of course they're surprised when they find themselves in the assembly hall at the academy. As one might expect, MC was the last one to know that they were selected, as their parents, their human school, their coworkers, and just about everyone else they knew had already been told this information in advance. It was unfortunately quite usual that people wouldn't tell MC things because they either assumed that MC already knew, or they just wanted to surprise MC. Still, it wasn't nice that MC wasn't at least given a heads up that they would be in a strange room, being stared at by strange men in strange uniforms.

MC's First Impressions of The Student Council

Diavolo: He seems nice enough. It's a little spooky that he knew my name before I knew his, but he's at least welcoming. Although something tells me I shouldn't get on his bad side...

Lucifer: I know he's obviously trying to give off an air of authority, and I do respect that, but I sense that he's hiding something. It's probably deep, deep down, and most people wouldn't be able to pick up on it, but I get the feeling that he's actually really insecure. I could just be projecting, though. I'd like to get to know him more and see if that's the case. He's also one of the most beautiful people I've ever seen, but that's beside the point.

Mammon: I can't believe I have to allow a stuck-up, airheaded demon to be my Devildom guide. He doesn't even speak properly. I just have to do what I always do: act nice to him whenever I'm around them, and then complain about him when he's not around.

Asmo: First of all, gay. Like, actually gay. Second of all, he's just as arrogant as Mammon. I doubt he's as sweet and charming as he claims to be.

Satan: Clearly the middle child. Also, he looks and acts remarkably similar to Lucifer. Too similar...

Beel: Definitely relatable in this moment in time. The only thing I've had to eat today is a bowl of cereal from this morning.

Levi: I like him already. I know it's toxic to form friendships based on a mutual hatred of somebody, but I do kinda wish I could vote Mammon to die right now.

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Notes

MC's actually quite excited to do tasks and write a paper about their experience in the Devildom. One of the first supplies they get is a notebook to document their thoughts on things as they happen. This proves quite handy in getting to know the demon brothers and exchange students, so much so that MC collects several notebooks full of information.

When MC looks into Asmo's eyes, they immediately get nauseous to the point that they almost throw up all over the fifth born.

As soon as Lucifer mentions that the House of Lamentation was originally a cursed house in the human world, MC makes it a priority to learn as much as they can about its history.

MC does not appreciate Mammon yelling at them. At all. If it weren't for their manners, MC would have told him to shut up. Thankfully for everyone in the room, Lucifer's the one to voice those thoughts.

If any of the men in the room were to glance over at MC when Lucifer asks Mammon in an angry/nice voice if he objected to being MC's guide, they would have caught a flash of arousal in MC's eyes.

When Mammon tells MC that they better know who the boss is, they immediately think, "Lucifer."

First thing that winds up in MC's notebook: "Demons like humans with nice souls. They will use their wisdom and abilities to tempt the humans so they can get their hands on their souls. Either humans will be tempted by demons, or demons will lose against the shiny and noble soul of a human and make a run for it. This is an experiment to find out who will win."

While Lucifer's statement of MC not having any magic in them is true at the time he says it, it naturally develops inside of them the longer they stay in the Devildom.

MC makes a mental note to hit the nearest dance studio and learn some moves, because they want to eventually take part in the dance battles without the assistance of the demon brothers.

MC's thoughts as Mammon talks as they arrive at the House of Lamentation: "What's insulting is that I have to be guided by someone who won't stop talking. What am I, his diary? 'Dear Diary, today Lucifer was weally mean to me. He makes me angy. I wish I wasn't so insecure. You think I'm tough, right, Diary?' Also, who the fuck goes around calling people peons? And then you want to get on my case about stopping to read the flyer just to turn around and tell me that I can look at it myself when I ask you about it? Maybe I wanted to get a part-time job to help support myself, you nitwit!"

When Mammon states that it's been 260 years since Levi gave him money and not 200, it takes everything in MC's power to not reply, "Aren't you supposed to make that number lower than what was initially stated?"

MC overthinks about Journey to the Devildom: The Tale of a Little She-Devil and Her Reluctant Companion. Is MC the She-Devil? Does that make Mammon the reluctant companion? But Mammon's the devil, not MC, so would he be the she-devil? Would Mammon like being referred to as a she-devil, or would he bite someone's head off?

MC really doesn't care about labels or status. They will befriend people based on their personality and their actions. So, it slightly offends MC that Levi makes a big deal about otakus and normies.

MC's fascinated by The Tale of the Seven Lords not because of the size of the books, but because of the fact that there are seven demon brothers that they just met, and it can't be a coincidence that there's a series about seven lords.

The second thing that winds up in MC's notebook: "Each of the seven lords is so unique. They're all so interesting in their own peculiar way. The lords are all brothers. The oldest is called the Lord of Corruption. He doesn't come across as being so bad at first, but he's always plotting and planning in secret. The second oldest is the Lord of Fools, a scumbag who'll do anything for money. The third oldest is called the Lord of Shadow, a brooding recluse. The fourth oldest is known as the Lord of Masks. He masquerades as a high-status, upstanding member of society, but underneath it all, he's an inhumane monster. The fifth oldest, the Lord of Lechery, only ever thinks of sex. The sixth oldest is the Lord of Flies, and he only ever thinks of food. Then there's the seventh oldest, called the Lord of Emptiness. He's weird; you never know what's running through his head."

Underneath Levi's speech (which can also be found on Levi's blog, as MC discovers when they type in "The Tale of the Seven Lords" in Doogle) is a t-chart assigning each demon brother to a lord. This t-chart proves extremely useful to MC.

MC likes Henry the goldfish.

Levi may have been talking a mile a minute, but MC caught the fact that Levi described this Seraphina character as seeming to be cold and prideful at first but really wanting affection without knowing how to admit it. That also makes its way into MC's notebook.

As much as MC sympathizes with Levi's predicament with not being able to get his money back, they really do not want to make a pact with Mammon. However, Levi doesn't allow MC to say this, but instead just launches straight into his plan without any consideration towards MC. So, MC really does not have much choice but to go along with it, because the last thing they want is to experience a demon's wrath before they've even been in the Devildom for a full day.

[twiststreet]

I'd be curious for more of your thoughts on that Hibbs piece. I've read him for years and often find him insightful, but this one seems very reactionary in a very typical retailer way ("blinkered" was a good word Kim O'Connor used). Particularly, he seems to pretend that Diamond is just fine as is and that DC had no reason to want to switch distribution. I recently swore off DC, but I've noticed since the switch that those comics have been on time at my lcs each week. Diamond, not so much.

Yeah, I don’t really agree with that (I missed whatever Kim said), though I really don’t know what’s going on at a retail level.  I haven’t gone regularly to a comic shop in years.   

(Setting aside the health stuff, which is the most striking thing in there:)  Hibbs is a retailer writing from a retailer perspective, so wishing that he was saying something else”... I mean, we know what we’re signing up for when we read it; we know how to slot it into our own personal worldviews. I’m not to going to complain that Hibbs isn’t going to tell me how long to cook a steak for, or that he’s not yelling that the Direct Market should be dismantled because if those were what I was looking to read, the egg should be on my face for pulling him up to begin with.

The question with Hibbs I think I always have is “how representative is he of retailers generally, as a store in San Francisco.”  (And I think people slightly overstate how non-representative he is because if you hear him talk about his operations, he makes clear he operates differently for different retail audiences, when he had that second store going-- I don’t know if that’s still a thing, but.  And also: I don’t fucking know what it means to be San Francisco anymore because what is that city even...). But generally, you know, you take that data point into consideration but still try to get at what you’ve signed up for, when you read what he says-- where are retailers’ heads at... You know, you go “well if Hibbs is at 8 then even adjusting -2 for factors x y and z, that mean Joe Median-Store might be at 6 and 6 is great / isn’t great, etc.”   

Hibbs has always erred slightly worried, on the spectrum of human reactions, so you know, (even though I personally tend to be drawn to that more than optimism), I’m not sitting here going “I bet DC’s going to license all their characters tomorrow because he says so” because it’s not like the first time I’ve heard that-- though it remains entirely possible, possibly a good idea for the suits (though probably not for anyone else), who even knows.  (Though if you’ve been listening to Rob Liefeld talk on Robservations about Heroes Reborn you’ll already know a significant challenge that would face-- that if they do a trial balloon, the people who already entrenched will do whatever they can to poison the trial balloon so as to make the case for not doing it and remaining entrenched...)(that becomes tougher after multiple waves of layoffs, though).

But what he’s talking about-- DC just did its own Heroes World...? As soon as I heard all that to begin with (and I didn’t pay close attention because the world was happening), my first reaction was “oh shit, Heroes World!”  So a comic retailers saying “this is looking the same after __ months in these specific ways” ... I’m going to pay attention to that.  I just remember how spectacularly unlikely it was that comics cleaned up the mess they’d made of themselves in the 90′s. It was a ridiculously unlikely set of events that turned things around, and I don’t think you can reasonably expect those events to happen again.  (Especially after the “we learned a lesson from the 90′s” part turned out to be a lie, which is something I know I was yelling and screaming about for years and I was getting called like “ungrateful” or something by the Serious Comic Voices of Seriousness for it, there were entire CBR blog posts about how I didn’t understand how great things were now, etc, etc, etc... I don’t think they pull that “we learned not to rip people off” lie again, not this batch of assholes.  Though who knows, maybe....)

I mean, sure there are criticisms of Diamond to be had, of trad retail to be had.  And there’s the giant black box of “how desperate are people right now” that hasn’t been reported on.  There was a time in ‘02-’04 or so  when a book distributor or somebody like that went down, and it almost took out Fantagraphics with it. And this seems worse than that! Where’s the money flowing here and whose debts are getting paid first?  I don’t have any idea.  There’s all these systems in play that have been knocked out by COVID, and who knows who’s owed how much money or how much product is sitting in a warehouse collecting warehouse fees, etc., like this is all a fucking disaster and there’s no reporting on it (comic reporters are too busy encouraging Damon Lindelof to make Watchmen TV shows) and there’s ... DC is a black box in a black box in a black box (he said, having waited for 3 years for DC to answer an easy question once). 

But even if DC had good reason to do whatever it did?  It doesn’t seem to matter much if the rest of the comic market’s built around Diamond and if no one has the health of the Direct Market on its radar.  And DC doesn’t if they fucking fired everyone who understands the health of the Direct Market as even being a fucking concept to begin with, which is extremely likely at this point.  Or ... I don’t know-- it’s the old comic problem of people wanting to argue that “the thing is bad an we need to replace the thing.”  Diamond’s bad and we need to replace it.  Okay.  With what?  And with comics, the answer is usually “moonbeams and hopes and hugs.”  There’s just a lot of wishful thinking out there that a Better Answer just shows up.  I don’t know about that... 

Comic retail’s built around selling Batman. For DC’s moves to be this impactful, that’s a problem at the core of the system.  The undoing was in the origin.  So i get that criticism,  and it’s well taken (except to the extent there’s an entirely speculative argument built around it that either (a) there would be some other system that’d exist but-for and (b) there’d be some flourishing of human creativity but-for). But that’s still a lot of people and a lot of human energy that’s at issue.  And the few life rafts that are out there, you’re not going to get a lot of people on them.  Digital is a joke (according to me, a digital comic publisher! hahaha)-- hibbs if anything overstates the possibilities there because as a retailer, he doesn’t want to bring up that we’re in the Golden Age of Comic Piracy.  (And ... I like being a digital comic publisher!  I’m having fun.  But). And bookstores-- bookstores are great, provided your readership expectation are 10-14 year old girls.  Which might be better for comics if that became the default comic as compared to 35-50 year old bachelors that’s the DM’s bread and butter, but... I think you probably have to be okay with a lot fewer people having gigs.  Bookstores can’t even remotely support the same level of human activity that comic shops can, by the look of things.  (You know at some point you have a larger cultural heat death going on, that’s the part I find interesting, but...)

I don’t know. Hibbs might be to an extreme.  I might be to an extreme.  But having seen people voting for Biden and then going “wait, he’s going to hire racist industry-controlled centrists??  we got nothing for our vote?  we’ve been betrayed!”... having seen people talk about what a great human being George Bush was (I saw a tweet fucking today that was like “George Bush was underrated because he was nice to a trans person once”)... I’ve become very cynical about the human memory or ability to learn lessons.  I don’t think people remember 1995-1999 in comics, and just... how ridiculous it was when that got turned around.  It was like watching them pull off a fucking heist to turn things around last time... Comics are selling-- people are buying comics.  So it’s not as bad as last time.  It’s nowhere close.  But... People overestimate how structured the industry is, and obviously the DC layoffs suggest that the people looking purely at the bottom line don’t understand and didn’t account for the unique levels of institutional knowledge required for the industry... Other media, you don’t hear about hand-selling as much.  When have you ever seen a movie because the guy who owns the theater told you it was good?? Or because you saw the director standing over a flea market table looking like they were about to cry...?  Like... I don’t know.  

I do know for me, I want to start thinking about a next project, and I’ve been looking again at what the Big Hit Books have been these last couple years (I kind of avoided new stuff when I was working on my things) and... You know, part of what changed things in the early 00′s was there were new voices with a new style ready to come in.  Now?  Jesus, I don’t know.  At first blush, everybody’s writing books nearly identically, and it’s just this massive level of bombast and confidence (good for them!) and huge splash pages and hyper-emotional narration and... it all just is this blockbuster schmear that’s very impressive but entirely skippable anyways.  None of it’s as a bezerk or strange or just weirdly interesting to me as 10 seconds of  a Metal Gear Solid video essay... it’s a lot of big splash pages of Thanos or Thanos-for-creator-owned-comics... But it all seems like halls of mirrors-- none of it seems very outward looking... You know, Kojima did halls of mirrors by the 4th game, too, but in Death Stranding, he had like Amazon deliverypeople, and you’d play the game and go “oh shit, this gig economy is making my formaldehyde-baby cry” and like... he had something besides the hall of mirrors to him.  (And I mean, the 4th game is a criticism of the hall of mirrors, according to a video essay I saw, but...).  Or you know, it’s like the thing that Rebuild of Evangelion 3 is criticizing, they’re doing unironically... I don’t know.  It’s weird; the books are weird; I keep wanting to ask like “what should I be reading here” because I’m mostly ignorant besides a Hulk or a Long Con or Sink or ... I never saw the end of Seeds but I thought Seeds had something...

Sorry to ramble.