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humanlikeanyother · 24 days ago

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Spoilers from leaks for S2(no pictures, just me rambling)

First of all, it's funny in the saddest way to see people depicting Abel and Adam having a healthy relationship with one another and Abel mourning his father. You guys are gonna shatter when S2 releases. Second of all,

I keep thinking about Abel's behavior towards his dad's passing.

In the S2 leaks, Abel only mentions his dad a handful of times, and it's never quite.. with grief. Still, interestingly enough, I feel like he's acting almost like he's trying to be angry or sad about his father's death.

He refers to his dad as "dearly departed", mentions that he's partial on continuing the Exterminations because even though he dislikes confrontation, "they did sorta kinda kill [his] dad a little bit, so... maybe?" and also he tries to retrieve one of Adam's guitars from Adam's quarters to "remember him by" before a grief-crazed Lute screams at him to get out and tries to hit him with the guitar. But this is all said in a normal, unaffected tone, not the kind of way you'd expect someone to talk about their late father.

Overall pretty apathetic behavior, right?

But what intrigues me is the fact that Abel doesn't even necessarily need to act sad.

Lute says it herself, nobody else cares about Adam being dead. This could just be Lute's view, but she doesn't seem wrong(which I am SO pissed about). Emily seems happy as a lark, Sera is moping about the Exterminations, everyone else seems more worried about the Exterminations being kept from them/the possibility of an uprising, and only think of Adam as an example of an angel dying at the claws of a demon, not an actual mourned loss.

Ok, so nobody cares, and I doubt anybody would call out Adam's secondborn son for not caring either. After all, wouldn't that just reinforce a reasoning for their apathy? If his son doesn't care, Adam must have been a real monster undeserving of any grief. After all, according to Lute, Adam didn't even like Abel. So why is Abel still trying to act like he cares instead of just admitting he doesn't feel sad about his dad's death?

I'm going to reference a line from one of my favorite pieces of literature; "And he remembered thinking then that if she died, he was certain he wouldn't cry. For it would be the dying of an unknown, a street face, a newspaper image, and it was suddenly so very wrong that he had begun to cry, not at death but at the thought of not crying at death"(Fahrenheit 451, PDF page 44). (Wow imagine referencing a philosophical classic in a Hazbin Hotel ramble-) To sum this quote up, the main character feels less horrified at the possible death of his wife, and more horrified at how screwed up it is that he wouldn't feel grief.

I think Abel has a similar situation. He's struggling with trying to grieve, trying to convince others that he's grieving, because he feels guilty about his lack of emotions. But still, why? What reason would he have to feel guilty if Adam didn't like him?

This is where things are less speculation and more just me trying to desperately find ways to project onto characters. The chances of this being nitpicky and semantic are through the roof, but Lute's wording of "Adam didn't even fucking like you" suggests Adam never liked him, but she still didn't use the word never. Also she said Adam didn't like him, which isn't the same as dislike, it's just a lack of like. I know this is hyperspecific and far-fetched but work with me here. What if Adam and Abel had a healthy relationship at some point, but they grew apart somehow?

Let's talk about Abel's time alive. Now let's be honest here, Viv is probably gonna find a way to make Adam seem like a horrible asshole father. Obviously he wouldn't be the best dad, but he was literally the first human father. In existence. He had absolutely no frame of reference for how to care for children, him and Eve were just winging it while already struggling to survive by themselves. Please for the love of God, I hope Vivzie doesn't try to paint him as a horrible father. I want to imagine he had a good relationship with his children. Abel might have known Adam as a loving father once, and that would explain why he would feel guilty for not feeling grief. So what about them growing apart?

Well think about how Abel died-- he got his skull fucking bashed in with a rock by his older brother. That had to be traumatizing. With Adam not seeing his son until Adam passed-- maybe even longer, if it's still true that Adam is the first human soul, because maybe Abel ended up manifesting in Heaven later which is a whole nother theory-- and also Abel traumatized by his gruesome death and possibly repressing a lot of memories from life, I wouldn't be surprised if the two were just... disconnected when they saw each other again. Adam didn't like Abel. He had at one point, but now they were distant and felt like strangers with each other.

Still, throughout it all, Abel still knew Adam was his dad and he felt they had been close at some point, so when Adam died this part may or may not be me writing my own feelings surrounding my grief of my late father he felt kind of horrified with himself, that his years of disconnection with his father actually led to him feeling apathetic about his passing. He struggled to bring out any emotion or feeling of grief even if he tried to play the part and act like he was mourning, but all the same also didn't want to reflect on his relationship with his father because he didn't want to feel the anguish of losing his dad.

But let's be realistic here, we're talking about Hazbin Hotel, a show that is desperately trying to make a commentary on things it knows nothing about. More likely, Adam is a shitty father, he never liked Abel, him and Abel never had a good connection, and their relationship was so distant that Abel genuinely couldn't care less about his dead dad and is just trying to act like he does for some unknown reason.

But fuck Vivziepop I'm gonna sit over here in my corner and make these characters more complex by projecting my own experiences and emotions onto them bada boom

#reblog #good analysis(?)#I love Abel #but I hate the fact that he feels to be one of the reasons to hate Adam #or show that Adam was only a bad person with no redeeming qualities #I like the idea that Abel extremely grief his father but cannot show it #since everybody must be happy in heaven all the time and grief ruins that idea #it's an imperfection of heaven and angels hate imperfections #after all who wants to go to heaven if it isn't perfect?#abel hazbin #hazbin abel #abel hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel adam #adam hazbin hotel #hazbin adam #adam hazbin

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