Talk to the characters.

[AndaisQ]

Harry is roughly this uncomfortable regarding sex with women as well. It would help very little if David were instead Lavinia.

Actually, considering his history of being nonconsensually screwed (and screwed over) by seductive and evil women, it might be worse.

[Eva]

Harry is roughly this uncomfortable regarding sex with women as well. It would help very little if David were instead Lavinia.

Actually, considering his history of being nonconsensually screwed (and screwed over) by seductive and evil women, it might be worse.

So many of Harry's problems can be summarized as 'he lives in a Noir universe.'

[DanielH]

Sadde, Cam, have you considered that maybe you actually want the door in the park to remain openable from the other side? How else are you going to get back in touch with Sadde’s world, which is one of the ones you want to demon at?

[pedromvilar]

Sadde doesn't care that much about demoning their world 'cause it's already got a nice benevolent shadow government going on, and keeping the door open's dangerous, and it's not like they can stay around there all day waiting for someone to come on the off-chance they can be fast enough to convince them to keep the door open. It could take many years for someone to stumble upon that door.

[MTC]

Cam, you should probably try making a scale model of “everyone who came through that portal in the park”, just to check that Sadde was the only one who came through before the camera was placed there.

[DanielH]

And they can’t pay other people to stay there because it’s Hell.

I feel they would change their minds about the importance of going back if they knew more about the new Empress. Similarly, they would change their monitoring strategy if they knew that they could check the place in-person only semiregularly and be nigh-guaranteed to intercept the Empire’s delegation when they decided to check this patch of globe, which they eventually will.

Even here I imagine that Addy will walk through the portal at some point in the next century and contact will be established from there.

[pedromvilar]

Nigh-guaranteed?

[Adelene]

From a Doylist perspective, anyway.

[pedromvilar]

I think we've all seen how Saddes tend to react to figuring out there's a Doylist perspective to have :P

But from a Doylist perspective, I at least am exactly the kind of author who would screw my characters over and not let them meet like that. Wayyy too easy.

[DanielH]

Nigh-guaranteed because the Imperial Minister for Temporal Affairs would tell them when to check out that spot, and the optimal time to do so is right when Sadde and Cam are on the other side.

That does not help with unImperial excursions, though.