Chapter Notes: Sonic

I'm going to be out of town for much of next week, so I'm posting a bit early.

This chapter brings up a few things that got implied in vol 1, but never actually got explored.  A big part of Darcy’s personal conflict in vol 1 somewhat mirrored one Loki’s, in that she doesn’t get along well with her mother. 

Her relationship with her mother is very strained, and defined almost by a vicarious need for Darcy to be her mother’s clone.  But Darcy is into “boys hobbies” and dropped out of school on a risky career gamble, which her mother doesn’t understand, and it creates a lot of tension between them.  It doesn’t matter that Darcy is making several times what most of her friends make at their minimum wage jobs; she’s not making money in the “correct” way, so it doesn’t count.  Her mother writes her own narrative for what Darcy is doing, and as a result, Darcy shuts her out and doesn’t share details.

The decision to have Darcy and her mom not get along from the beginning was a conscious one, because it gives Darcy the tools to recognise when Loki is pulling similar bullshit.  As I was going through the remixed version of vol 1 before posting it, I realised there are a lot of similar themes to Trickster God, but it goes in a very different direction.  Loki is damaged as well, and that directs his actions towards others.  He doesn’t like to get close to people, because it starts to feel like suffocation.  He doesn’t trust when people are nice to him, because being nice is a precursor to something else.  And Darcy recognises all of this, because she’s familiar with it, and now we see how and why.

I also wanted to spend some time on their show itself, setting up the rhythm they’ve fallen into.  Darcy wants to change the show, so I wanted to show what she wants to change it from.  Metamorphosis, the routine she wants to get rid of, is a classic.  Many, many acts have done their own version of it.  But it’s not a show stopper the way shooting each other in the face is.  Darcy wants to fix that, not because she wants to change Loki’s show, but because she understands the audience better than he does.  She doesn’t even necessarily want to get rid of the act altogether.  She just wants it to not be the finale.

At this point, Loki has only been in town about six months.  It’s been enough for him to figure out how things work, but he still doesn’t quite understand the nuance.  Especially since he’s having to learn two different cultures at once.  On the one hand, moving to America is a big enough shock for anyone, even without moving out to the desert in a city that’s open 24/7.  Even out in Henderson, you can do your grocery shopping or order pizza at 3am.

But he’s also having to learn the specific culture of the Las Vegas entertainment industry.  Darcy’s had her eyes on it ever since she was a little girl.  She’s seen all the shows, she knows all the acts.  Their main competition is Old Vegas spectacle, and harrowing suspense.  The first group gets away with it either by name recognition and being Las Vegas royalty, or so damn extra it’s a genre of its own.  The second group are known for eating sandwiches out of bear traps and shooting one another in the face.  Trying to pull off Old Vegas without being Old Vegas doesn’t work, because there’s no wow factor.  Especially now since they’re doing a trick teenagers are doing in their bedrooms on social media.

It’s this awkward balance between Darcy trying to help both of them by nudging him toward improving the show, and stepping all over his toes because it’s his show.

Trust and boundaries are a big theme throughout this entire fic, and right now they have none when they’re not on stage.