Going on the idea Alastors controlled by Roo/Eve(possibly). She will someday take over Charlie when she’s at her lowest. And going on the idea she’s Charlie’s real mother(there’s been theories going around) perhaps created Charlie for this sole purpose.
It’s nothing new that Charlie’s made mistakes, some small, other ones pretty big. and she’s def aware of this too.
What if eventually…she starts to feel like whenever she’s directly involved in things or tries to be, will just make things worse. Begins to feel that she’s an obstacle, just in everyone’s way and that eventually she’ll just push them away and perhaps worried…that’s why she left💔
Maybe overtime with Emily around in Hell, she proves to be more capable than Charlie in things like helping people directly with their problems and issues, especially with redemption(she’s a heavenly high seraphim who’s duty was to ensure the happiness and stability of the winners)
Maybe eventually she’ll get into fights with the gang, things being said and done that can’t be taken back…and end up keeping their distances…like she did. It could get to the point Charlie begins to think she’s the biggest threat to them, not the overlords, not heaven, not their pasts…she’s the root of it all.
And if the theory that’s she’s actually…Roos daughter this would amplify this even more. Believing her whole existence is just to destroy everything afterall…in a way, she wasn’t a failure…just was succeeding in a way she didn’t want to💔
And maybe using Al, Roo will convince Charlie…perhaps it’s time to play a different role for them. Especially with Emily coming along …seeing her as the new, better her, the true Protagonist. Now they need the true Antagonist, the big bad, the root of all their evil😈🍎
Afterall, some of the mistakes she made ended up creating some big changes, like how she handled Angels situation led to Husk and Angel becoming closer, or making Vaggie the leader of the exercises helped bring everyone together, the war on the hotel made Sir P finally redeem….
She created the Hotel, a place for everyone to change, she was the catalyst, the start, the root…and perhaps the best way she can help them now…is to make things worst first. Lowkey based on Ducktales, Negaduck
Charlie-They need a big bad villain for their story of good rising against evil? Happy to play the part!😈
I think this lowkey fits. Joy would be Charlie, Husk Anger, maybe they get into a fight.
Luke and Annabeth's existence is so interwoven that the best analogy he can come up with for the reasoning and justification behind his betrayal of everything he's ever known and loved is one connected to her.
Say what you want, but I think Luke thought about Annabeth and Thalia during every part of his betrayal. He knew that even Annabeth's complete adoration and devotion to Athena couldn't make her care. He knew that the king of the gods, Zeus could have saved Thalia but instead, he turned her into a tree "as a last resort" to keep her out of the way for good.
Of course, his reasoning for siding with Kronos reminds him of Annabeth. Small and scary things will be crushed immediately, if he has a bigger power behind him he at least has a shot at making a change.
He's been mistreated by Hermes, but he's also spent years watching his little sister worship Athena, do everything she ever asked all for a hat that turns you invisible, and the occasional nod her way. He's her big brother, you don't think HE KNOWS that she thinks love has to be earned? You don't think he's done everything he could to prove to her that's not true.
Ultimately his betrayal had everything to do with Annabeth. It was for Thalia, it was for the rest of the Hermes kids, for all of the unclaimed in his cabin who had to spend their whole lives knowing that their godly parent didn't care about them enough to even acknowledge their existence, it was for Clarisse who has clearly been abused by Ares and yet would still do anything for his favour, it was for every half-blood who had ever been mistreated by the gods.
The first analogy he thinks of in trying to describe the relationship between demigods and gods is one associated with Annabeth because she's the reason he can justify his betrayal.
i hope that valentino doesn't die in s2, and not just because i like him and want to see more of him.
i actually think val is a really good opportunity for hazbin to dig into how it defines redemption. every character in the show has a different ethical outlook on hell and the idea of redemption, but the two main ones seem to be charlie (everyone is capable of changing for the better when offered support and safety, and everyone should be provided those things regardless of what they've done) and alastor/lucifer/adam (people are naturally inclined towards wrongdoing, there are no second chances, and hell is both a punishment and cosmic justice). val is the perfect character to exemplify the struggle between these two different outlooks. CAN someone as awful and abusive as val be redeemed? and if so, what would that look like? how would we ensure his victims are safe from him while also giving him space to grow and change? if he can't be redeemed, what's the threshold for irredeemability? can we agree on what makes someone so bad there's no hope? can we quantify which sins are worse than others, and how?
(and by the way, what even gets someone into heaven, and who decides? hazbin seems like this is the main question it's beginning to focus on, so i have a lot of hope for how this one will get resolved. because at the moment, it seems like self-sacrifice is what gets you there, and that is deeply unsatisfying to me—you shouldn't have to give up everything, up to and including your life, to be considered "good enough". it's a vehemently christian idea that martyrdom is righteous and i fucking hate it.)
and if charlie's ethics are universal, she'll have to commit to redeeming people like val, otherwise she undermines her entire mission by picking and choosing who gets to have support and who doesn't. if charlie's ethics aren't universal, we could start really digging more into how her personal attachments to angel dust could present a conflict of interest in her values, like we did with vaggie; are people only worthy of her unconditional encouragement if she loves them? what are the implications of THAT?
my personal value system believes that there's no such thing as someone being irredeemable. there's only people who actively choose not to try, even after they've been provided love, support and well-intended challenges from people who want to see them grow. there needs to be space for people to be safe from their abusers and space for abusers to reform themselves and participate in society, otherwise our options become banishment or execution and i doubt that's the ethical message hazbin wants us to walk away with. val's positioning in the narrative and his close connection to angel makes him the perfect candidate to really challenge charlie's commitment to her ideals, since she doesn't already love him (like vaggie) and he isn't actively trying to be better (like angel or pentious). killing him would be unsatisfying, as well as letting everybody off the hook too easy. i want these bitches neck-deep in painful ethical dilemmas.
ultimately, i hope that hazbin goes the teshuvah route regarding sin. in judaism, teshuvah is the process of repentance for sin, but it also means "return" because the hebrew word for sin, chet, means missing the mark. sin is when we don't quite hit the target how we should have. it's not something you're born with, it's something you do, and it's something you can choose not to do. teshuvah is slow and difficult and a lifelong process, not a one-time golden ticket to heaven. i hope hazbin ends up in the same vein as this, where reforming sinners becomes more about repairing broken relationships, crafting a better society, and harm reduction instead of the ultimate goal being entry to heaven. i think that would be far more interesting and cathartic to me than anything else
.... well this noir Vaggie au edit got waaay out of hand ha ha!
self indulgent au lore under the cut bc WEEEE
Detective Vaggie finally got enough blackmail on Valentino for Charlie and Angel to pin him in a corner, but as Vaggie expected, Angel Dust ends up doing what almost every other Sinner has done after Vaggie hands the evidence over to them, and chooses to just accept Valentino’s renegotiated and seemingly better soul contract rather than break it and make a mortal enemy out of an Overlord
Of course the first thing Val does is force Angel Dust to destroy the evidence they’d used against him, just like every other Overlord Vaggie's worked against always has, leaving Angel at his mercy again
And also leaving Charlie devastated. She'd given Angel her promise of protection as soon to be crowned king of hell-
(long story) (Lucifer wanted to kill Vaggie for scarring Charlie a few years back and Charlie had to beat him up to stop him) (the Overlords, led by Velvette and the Vees, decided to flex their power by saying this invalidated Lucifer as king and made Charlie the new ruler of hell) (she reluctantly accepted because..)
-hoping it would be enough to counter any Overlord threat against Angel once he was free
Ironically though, Angel Dust having come to see her as a friend after all this and not wanting to put her in the line of fire ends up with him sticking with Val instead, who gloats about it, and tells Charlie to her face what he'll do to her friend and her pet P.I. if she (as soon to be king) doesn't back down and let the Vees do all the real running of hell (like they already have been)
Charlie the Pissed let's slip she's had enough of Val as she leaves his studio (both her and the studio being on fire)
No one takes her little threat seriously, except for Vaggie, who sees Charlie picking up and weighing Vaggie's spear in her hands when she thinks she's alone. Vaggie freaks out realizing Charlie is about to go do a murder
So Vaggie decides to break her own no-more-murder vow AGAIN for a girl AGAIN (last time was for Velvette) and she kills Valentino before Charlie can reach him, regaining her wings (kinda), absorbing his demonic energy (yuck), belatedly becoming one of the Vees like Velvette had once wanted (not in the way Velvette had wanted), and accepting all Val's soul contracts including Angel’s, which she breaks
She also breaks the truth of everything to Charlie on coronation day-
(maybe also breaking up with or getting dumped by her, even though they weren’t even dating)
-confessing to the murder and her exorcist past
Now that she’s an Overlord and Charlie’s about to be King of Hell, anything publicly personal between them (like Vaggie staying the basement of Charlie's abandoned hotel instead of sleeping in an alleyway next to a dumpster every night) would throw the other Overlords into a rage over the power imbalance with normal sinners caught in the crossfire or getting used as canon fodder, something neither Vaggie or Charlie can stomach
Besides which Vaggie feels 0% worthy of Charlie anymore after breaking her no-murder vow, and Charlie is feeling more things than she knows how to name about that and the exorcist thing, none of them good
Their last kiss (for now) leaves claw marks on Vaggie’s face to match the scar she gave Charlie all those years ago-
(which Charlie has finally also confessed to her about, to Vaggie's horror, Vaggie having blotted the memory out after binge drinking with Husk the following week)
-the scar from when Vaggie happened to still be holding her spear as Charlie reached out to help her, and ended up lashing out instead of flinching back, unintentionally driving away Charlie and their happy life together
(this shit luck is what pinged Overlord Husk's gambling powers and led him to Vaggie, meanwhile Angel dropped a paying client to go check on the random demon chick- Charlie- soon to be nicknamed Apple Slice by him- holding her bleeding face in her hands as she stumbled down the street in a daze)
Charlie and Vaggie made do with other friends when what they both most needed was each other
They’ve both been miserable and lonely since then, had only just started to build up what they should have had together all along while camping out at the old hotel working on Angel's case together, but the case is done and now…. this
more rambling about a s5 au: lindsey comes back for a redemption arc to act as legal counsel for angel's team. this ostensibly gives gunn a reason to opt out of the lawyer operation, but he does it anyway because he doesn't trust lindsey not to fuck them over.
lindsey acts as a moral foil to gunn, who comes to believe his necessary contribution to the team (since he's no longer their only lawyer) is being the defender of the group's principles while working at w&h. they frequently butt heads while working on a case, but eventually develop a begrudging respect of each other's respective strengths.
this hostile-to-friendly-rivalry arc is tested when it comes out that w&h was responsible for some demon problem that's been plaguing gunn's home community. gunn has, unbeknownst to himself, been somehow contributing to it while working at w&h; lindsey knowingly contributed to it when he was last working there as a lawyer. lindsey is forced to confront who he was, while gunn is forced to confront who he’s becoming.
since he was involved in the project, lindsey uses his insider knowledge to help come up with a plan to fix the problem. they execute it, something goes wrong, and lindsey risks his life to ensure the plan goes off successfully. he expects congratulations and a pat on the back from gunn, but gunn isn't interested in absolving lindsey's sins (or his own), and their warming relationship freezes over.
at some point, gunn lets himself get taken by the senior partners in an effort to deal with his guilt over various lapses in judgment/perceived moral failures. during their rescue mission to the holding dimension, lindsey stays behind in gunn's place so he can escape, assuring gunn that he's the lawyer the team needs right now. their mutual arcs culminate in lindsey rejecting the idea that redemption is done for recognition, and gunn rejecting the idea that guilt/self-punishment is inherently redemptive.
eventually after being busted out by illyria, lindsey is there to empathize with gunn about losing parts of yourself (body, mind, and/or soul) to w&h, relationships to power when you've grown up without it, and what it means to live with the consequences of your actions. both of them reflect on the nature of redemption/forgiveness/intent as they grapple with how to own up to an appropriate share of the blame.
Made a rough sketch for my Corrupt Charlie( Green Apple Charlie )🍎🍏
Based this a bit on Harvey Dent’s Two-Face arc from Batman:Caped Crusader. It’s a pretty good series! Can’t wait for S2!!!!
Charlie-The Vees, Sera & Lute, Al…Mom, they’ve all made a joke out of me! Turned everyone against me!….no that’s not right. I’ve done things, I could’ve done so much better myself, I’ve hurt them…I deserve to be discarded…
Charlie- But what about them? They’ve hurt far more and just living the high life! Hell, atleast I was just indirectly getting people hurt! They actively enjoy ruining lives…Shouldn’t they also pay the piper for their sins, get the chance of to be…..”redeemed” or to the best they can? Afterall there’s no rainbows without a little storm 🌈⛈️😈