I'm sitting here on bed rest after finding out I have pneumonia. Figured now was as good a time as any to do some mindless rambling.
So, episodes 3 & 4 start to flesh out the world of Project Haven a little bit more and I thought it'd be insightful (fingers crossed) to delve into a few of the inspirations behind the creative choices.
First, the Haven complex itself. Rob Kenneth, my right hand man on most of my projects, was instrumental in helping me lay out the actual look of Haven. We'd gone over the size of the complex a few time and determined that with that many people running around and that much equipment to house, it wasn't feasible to just have a one man "batcave" sized place. So I kept going bigger and bigger until I decided on the place having two levels (the Sim Stages are on the lower level). Eventually I'm going to put together an image so everyone can see it visually.
Second, the missionary system. I'll freely admit I stole this from the underrated Arnie flick Eraser. The idea here was I didn't want Haven itself to have such extensive resources that they could basically do whatever they wanted (something that always bugged me about Batman). I liked the idea of Bishop having to outsource for help. Rhonda Asher was a big part of what I can now publicly refer to as the Euphoria arc. There's another web series that just ended called Watchers where all of their research was done in house. We're talking autopsies, chemical research, it's like they had the entire set of CSI built in house. I wasn't interested in that. The missionary system gave me a chance to introduce some people around the city and flesh out Seraph itself a bit more.
Lastly, there's the notion that so many people know who the Preachers are, even going so far as the Mayor of Seraph being fully aware that Bishop Baines is the original Preacher. This is something Rob proposed pretty early in the planning and I agreed with it wholeheartedly. I even toyed with the idea of the Field Squad not wearing masks, an idea that got 86'd when I crafted the cast and having two characters like Lokesh and Sage didn't allow for the general public to know who they were. I'm fascinated by the idea that even though Haven brutally executes any "bad guys," there are still people (like Maynard, like Asher) who believe in their mission and support what they do.
