#analysis friday

[dungeons-and-dictions]

Musical-loving Americana Cannibals AND the cesspit angel getting his comeuppance? Why thank you!

SPOILERS for Hazbin Hotel Ep. 7-8

What I suspected with Lucifer’s reaction was true; most demons just don’t know exorcist features well enough to recognize an angel without wings.

Also, I have wondered because Vaggie and Carmilla look similar - is Carmilla also an angel? Her eyes and facial features especially made me wonder, and may explain her gathering up of weapons and refusal to start a war.

It was cool to see these two have another duet, this time face-to-face. It matched the theme of protecting who they loved, and without being a reprise!

And now… the big stuff!

Alastor unhinged! Loved his lack of voice when his cane broke, and his reaction. But ooooh boy, I really fear for Charlie with his meltdown. Her favor’s going to be devastating with how Alastor is taking his almost death. Also due to a note below, maybe he isn’t owned by Lilith after all.

Imagine still arguing 10,000 years later over your ex-wife (and maybe ex-wife to both?). Love the little white auras around them.

Short Duck Daddy better make good on all the caviar mountains promised! All the revamps and coverage is about to make this place lit.

Why???

Oh.

Because.

Congrats, Sir Pentious! An excellent run as a lovable, ascended extra. I hope we get more of him though!

I mean, I’m hoping between seasons this is reported on like crazy. The hotel took on Heaven, sent them packing, got a giant update, AND Charlie’s redemption theory is true?! What sinner wouldn’t want that?

A few interesting implications so far:

A sinner can only go to Heaven upon a death in Hell, aka judgement only occurs at death. This makes it analogous to the situation people on Earth face.

Death via a noble cause is what grants you entrance to Heaven. This could be another way some questionable people end up there

Angels and demons may be the same race, only affected by the respective environment in terms of powers. Sir Pentious has very minor changes when we see him redeemed.

Death in the afterlife is not the end if you now qualify for the opposite team?! A crazy loophole if this is true.

Who is excited to see Adam, who died, rejudged to Hell since he died again? Bonus points if he is in the hotel or cavorting with the BIG baddies in Season 2.

And Emily is the cutest thing ahshsjaisd

This will be fun to see progress. I wonder if we’ll get to see God or a big good in this series. Also, maybe Emily is Eve? Idk there’s so many possibilities and we really could have had 20 more episodes.

Finally, Adam had a deal with…

Lilith?! And Lute’s going to be first in command of the exorcists now.

Also, we don’t actually know where this lovely beach is. It feels to me like a private beach, in-between Heaven and Hell, tucked away in an inconspicuous corner that was always there.

So, did Lilith leave Lucifer for Adam? Maybe she decided that our depressed duck demon was too much and at least gritting her teeth and being by Adam’s side was productive? I expected Lilith to show up, but not with Lute knowing about a deal she made.

Now to hunker down and await Season 2! Vivienne and Co., it’s been an honor to analyze and theorize with all the fun goodies. Thank you for making this dream come true and sharing it!

[bluemoonscape]

Actually devastated by the central theme of the Io and Till comic.

Io loved him and yet she knew she couldn’t protect him. She couldn’t keep him. In this world, she doesn’t have the luxury of keeping something as precious and fleeting as Till. He’s a tool and she is his maker. She brought him into a world where she fears he will only suffer. And Till has suffered. Till has suffered so much.

But Io wanted him to be loved. Prayed that someone could ever possibly love her baby as much as she did because she knew one day she couldn’t offer him love anymore. All a mother can hope for is that someone will love you like you deserve when I’m gone.

And someone did.

Someone loved Till. Someone protected him. Someone’s entire life was driven by love for her baby.

Someone on Twitter pointed out that Ivan’s name means “gift of God.”

Ivan was Io’s gift from whatever being she desperately prayed to.

Ivan didn’t think he mattered to anyone, but look.

He was everything Io ever hoped and begged the universe for for her child.

[rockrosethistle]

I'm thinking about the implications again.

The numbers that the hive mind performs aren't random. Both the lyrics and the choreography will often boil down to to one purpose: to cause pain. (Pokey is ruthless.)

Sometimes it's physical, and that's easy to spot. The cops spend half of their song just kicking and pushing people to the ground. Join Us And Die literally ends with Ted getting beat up.

And when the choreography doesn't allow for it, the lyrics are specifically trying to elicit an emotional response. The hive uses Alice to torment Bill. He's watching someone he loves die in front of him. It does the same for Charlotte.

Okay, the hive gets a kick out watching people suffer. That's not new information. But the implications...

Look at Inevitable. It's a pretty significant shift from the rest of the numbers. Whereas those seem tailored for pain and fear, Inevitable seems to be comforting? Just look.

Paul walks out, and the first thing he does is hug Emma. Which doesn't seem significant at first, but think: Did Bill get that same courtesy?

Alice's first line is meant to taunt Bill. Paul's is almost consolatory; " Emma / I'm sorry / you lost." I won't dissect this completely, the theory is that this first line is genuine. Paul is actually sorry that their plan failed.

And when you take a look at the choreography, it becomes clear that it's a lot kinder than the other songs.

We see Paul waltzing with Emma and kissing her hands. And even though he's not letting her get away, he's not trying to hurt her. He's not even trying to intimidate her. He's shown more than once bending down--getting on her level, like you would to a child--as opposed to towering over her.

The lyrics aren't messing with her either. Whereas Sam is manipulative and Alice is spiteful, Paul's lyrics are reassuring.

"I'm still the man you trust," is a lot different than "Don't you twust me?" when you get right down to it. It carries with it a connotation of 'I'm okay, and you will be too.'

"What if I told you I made it?" actively contradicts the 'I killed your loved one' narrative that Alice used with Bill.

It's not like Emma is buying any of it. She's still terrified. Paul doesn't need to hurt her or taunt her in order to scare her, just singing was enough. But it's clear that he's not trying to.

The hive mind gets a kick out of watching people suffer. Emma is the leading lady. You'd think that she's the one who should have the most brutal song. But she just doesn't. It seems like her song is trying to be the kindest.

We know it's implied that once they get infected, people are still conscious inside their musical doppelgängers (source: the line "your own body is your front row seat" as well as Sam breaking through its control long enough to say "Charlotte" before falling back under).

I think Paul was conscious during Inevitable. I think he knew that they weren't escaping this. I think he knew he was eventually going to kill Emma, and there was nothing he could do about it. But I think he didn't want her to suffer.

Instead, I think he resolved to give her as kind a death as he could. He would lie. He'd tell her he was happy and that she was safe. He'd be as gentle as the hive mind allowed. She was running out of time, so he'd love her with every second they had left.

(but that's just a theory...a musical theory... and cut)

[fenrichaita]

thinking about how the monster of The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals isn't aliens, or some higher god, it's conformity. Thinking about how TGWDLM illustrates the many ways that society asks us to conform --- toxic positivity, workplace culture, the threat of force, the threat of authoritarianism. I'm thinking about how so many of us have that fear of inevitability, how many of us are told we will "understand" and appreciate the cruelties of our society as we grow older. I'm thinking about how conformity presents as a sort of death of personality, of something fundamentally human being erased. I'm thinking about how the hivemind forced Mr. Davidson to forget his desires for his wife because it recognized they made Paul uncomfortable. I'm thinking about how Paul ultimately defended those desires to the hivemind because he recognized that they were fundamentally human. I'm thinking about the way that conformity invites us and promises deeper connections with others, connections that characters like Charlotte and Bill both wanted and were ultimately betrayed by via the hive. I'm thinking about the way that the characters in the play treated the hive like they would a B movie monster, and ultimately failed to destroy it, because they only destroyed a meteor and that's never where the hive originated. Like how the threat of Black Friday was "made in America", the hive was made from our culture.

[automaticheartcrusade]

What I like about Lex Foster is that she doesn’t treat Hannah like a burden. In Black Friday, she expresses her frustration about how she never even got her life started since she had to act like an adult at a young age, taking care of her alcoholic mother and getting a job. Then when Hannah was born, Lex had to take care of her too, practically being a mother figure to her and take her away from their actual mother who didn’t want to take care of them. And yet Lex doesn’t take her anger out on Hannah for this. Hannah if anything, is the best thing that ever happened to Lex, without her her life would be so much more miserable. Lex definitely isn’t perfect or innocent, she’s closed off, has a history with drugs and alcohol and canonically has been to jail before, but she loves her sister SO much and is willing to do whatever it takes to make her safe, even if it means giving up her own life or sacrificing her own happiness. And it’s the fact that she feels like she isn’t good enough for her sister that gets me. She has so much self loathing, part of her feels like Hannah would be better off without her, but the other part wants to be her protector and not let her go. I love the Foster sisters so much.

[antimony-medusa]

Feeling some kind of way in my emduo feelings about Phil confirming last night that HC phil being c!phil and q!phil is a multiverse situation and not a literal timeline, which means that as it turns out, a constant across all the universes of this character is either the presence or the references to Technoblade.

[fridayyy-13th]

btw, i firmly believe that if Jon and Martin had met under different, more normal circumstances, they would've gotten along like a house on fire

literally the only reason they were at odds was bc Jon was already stressed about being underqualified for the head archivist position, and that was exacerbated by the Dog Incident and the idea that Elias was waiting for him to slip up & had assigned Martin to the archives to keep tabs on him

hell, i think if they got along from the start, there's a damn good chance Jon would've fallen for Martin first. not by much, given; they're both the type to fall fast and fall hard, but still. (but it would probably take Jon longer to identify his feelings, so maybe it evens out)

[ivanttakethis]

Alright, so I was joking around when I made that shitpost about Heperu iterating Luka and “twinkifying” each version of him more every time, but I guess?? I wasn’t far off???

I have a lot of thoughts on this and I might ramble a bit, but bear with me.

Holy shit! Luka clones!! Or siblings? Twins? I think they’re all Luka, so “clone” probably fits best.

The art is captioned Disgust.

Luka’s facial expression suggests that he sees the other versions of himself as beneath him. They’re inferior. He succeeded where they failed.

Each “Luka” has a different hairstyle. The two versions at the bottom caught my attention specifically:

Round 5 (left) and Round 7 (right) Luka hairstyles??

Only the current Luka has his eyes open and — while two Luka’s have their lips parted — only the one in the center has bubbles coming out of his mouth. Which suggests he’s the only one breathing.

If only one Luka is breathing, does that mean the others are dead? They’re grabbing onto current Luka, so they may have some amount of sentience.

Can they speak to him? Or can they communicate in some other way? Does he “hear” them? Since they’re all “Luka” do they share memories?

Were they ever alive and conscious of each other at the same time?

What happened to these previous versions? Are they still alive as of now? Were they discarded at some point? Scrapped for parts? Used to improve the current Luka?

Something something Neon Genesis Evangelion something something (idk I’ve never seen it, ask @awaggaa )

Also notable is that current Luka already has his scars from whatever surgery he had at some point:

One of the other versions of Luka is brushing a hand over his scar. Could mean nothing, could mean something.

Another version of Luka has two fingers resting over current Luka’s heart, the “focal point” of his character. Ruler of My Heart and whatnot.

The position of the two fingers, combined with the position of the thumb looks almost like a gun. Maybe Luka is shot in the heart (or through the heart /ref), or his heart ends up killing him instead of the competition or Hyuna. We’ll see!!

Tagging: @rockwgooglyeyes come get your food!

[ferret-does-stuff]

IT'S HAPPENING EVERYONE STAY FUCKING CALM

[anodymalion]

The hero's sword arc of Frieren is only a single chapter but it's probably the chapter I think about the most... You have the classic sword in the stone that can only be pulled by the hero who is destined to save the world. So of course Himmel, the legendary hero, is the one who freed it.

Except: he didn't. He failed. He couldn't pull the sword from the stone. He wasn't the prophesied hero who would save the world.

And he went, okay, well, people really need a hero right now. So I'll just pretend to be one anyway. It doesn't really matter if I'm a fake or not if either way we're helping people.

And he did. He was a pretend hero. And they saved the world.

And now eighty years later there is no one left to remember that he never pulled the sword from the stone at all. It's easier to believe that he did, because he saved the world, so he must have been the destined hero. But he wasn't. The sword saw him and rejected him, and he simply went on anyway, because he wanted to help people, and that's what it takes in the end to be a hero, really. The four of them saved the world, and the true hero's sword sits quietly in a cave somewhere, rusting away, forever, unneeded.

[dungeons-and-dictions]

It’s another Analysis Friday, about Hazbin Hotel’s Lucifer and those pretty, pretty wings!

(Spoilers for Season 1 abound)

Did you notice that the angels have slight glows around them?

What makes this an Analysis Friday post is that Lucifer also has a glow! How does Short Duck Daddy have a glow when he fell from Heaven and created Hell? We all know he’s fallen, but what does that mean in the Hazbin world?

Lucifer speaks of angelic power and sacrificial lambs, pummels Adam as you would expect a powerful entity to do to a human, and keeps those amazing wings. There’s no way this is a true Hell form.

But we have more evidence to consider!

When Sir Pentious arrives in Heaven, he has a color palette shift and minor tweaks to his appearance. The same form is kept. This also makes me wonder if, had Lucifer been killed, would he have undergone changes too?

If you think about it, Lucifer makes complete sense. He’s not Hellborn like his daughter, and perhaps to strip Heavenly features would mean to kill them. Lucifer is also very good-natured. He never hits first, literally or metaphorically, for one. Lucifer seems to always just end the problem.

I personally also find him endearing because we have similar strains of depression - still functional, kind, and trying, just internalizing shame to the point it seems the world is against us always.

All of this lends evidence to my theory that only the environment and expectations of it determines whether someone is an Angel or a sinner. And by another theory of mine, being in Heaven or Hell has a lot to do with your mindset, too.

Despite creating Hell millenia ago, Lucifer has never fallen to the typical Hell stereotypes. He created it for one, making his analogy to Charlie in Episode 5 an exact comparison. Because he never had those connotations of what Hell should be like, he retained his Heavenly powers and features.

I’ll even bet he just reflavored to the pentagram visuals to separate himself from normal Angels!

And of course, this whole analysis begs a final question: how did Lilith gain her horns if she fell with Lucifer and not by normal human means?

[bluemoonscape]

After today's Hyuna comic, I don't think I've ever loved her more.

It strikes me how startlingly selfless she is. The 4nakt group - Mizi, Till, Ivan, Sua - all of their performances are charged with a passion and love for one another. Luka and Hyuna's performances stand out in this way because they aren't singing for love. Luka sings to win. Hyuna sings not because she has to anymore, but because she wants to.

When she breaks out into that spontaneous performance in the comic to rally the other rebels while Jacob is gone, it looks like it's almost physically painful for her. How could it not be? The lyrics tease shows us that she lost her leg escaping Alien Stage. She lost her brother in Anakt Garden. Singing was probably so tainted for her.

But she did it anyway. Time and time again, Hyuna's entire world falls apart. Hyunwoo died, and thus, he and Luka were both gone to her. Her illusion of safety was ripped from her. She was gravely wounded in her escape. She couldn't save the other kids. She lost Jacob, who was like a brother to her - she lost a second brother. Anyone else would crumble utterly.

But Hyuna didn't. Every time, she gets back up. She fights no matter what. She takes back every little bit of her life that she lost in her own way with hands torn bloody from holding on and avenges it. She's painfully selfless, she literally gives her voice, her life, to those around her to try and save them, or even just to lift them up for the moment. It makes me wonder whether that ties into her relationship with Luka, too - he seemed so alone in Anakt Garden without Hyuna and Hyunwoo. Could she have seen him and thought, I can save him, that thing inside of him?

Hyuna's life is a sum of all the people she couldn't save. She couldn't save Hyunwoo. My fault. She couldn't save Luka. My fault. She couldn't save those kids. My fault. She couldn't save Jacob. My fault. My fault, my fault, my fault.

Yet she continues to try. After all of that pain, she still saved Mizi from her round against Luka and freed her. She tried to save her by holding her back from going after Till during Round 7 because she knew that Mizi was doing exactly what Hyuna had done time and time again, and she already knew what the outcome would be. She had gone against Luka. She had gone against the Segyein. She knew Till couldn't win. Mizi couldn't win.

She tried to protect her, just like Sua tried to protect Mizi, right up until the minute she couldn't shield her from the truth anymore.

This brings me to the apparent song for next episode, Wiege. Cradle. Hyuna's cradle was ripped from her, so she tries to be the cradle for others. The safety. The savior.

But now she has to face the music. She can't save Luka if he doesn't want to be saved. She can't save Mizi because Mizi made her choice. Maybe she can't even save herself now.

This round is going to be a hell of a time and no I am not ready like ever

[rockrosethistle]

I actually fucking hate Mr. Jägerman here's why

Mr. Jägerman is a character in the Hatchetfield universe who is never onstage and only mentioned in 1 (one) line. This was enough to ignite my rage.

It's because in this one line, so much is revealed about Max's character. So let's dissect that.

Max is mean. We know this. The very first thing established about him is how threatening he is. But I think his character often gets lost in the 'bully' identity, because just like every other Hatchetfield character, he is layered and complex.

We also find out two other things about him pretty much immediately: He has a crush on Grace (we'll come back to that) and he needs to feel in control.

There's a lot of evidence to support this. He repeatedly refers to himself as the 'god' of Hatchetfield High. He creates arbitrary rules around who his friends can date. He creates arbitrary rules around where the nerds are 'allowed' to go. And the moment someone implies he is not as powerful as he thinks he is, he retaliates violently.

This isn't just Max being a jerk. These are all signs of someone who is almost certainly deprived of control in their home life, which forces them to find it elsewhere. Max likely has little to no say in what happens to him at home. He's clinging to a sense of control wherever he can find it. And that line basically confirms that his home isn't a safe place for him.

Back to the crush on Grace, when you look objectively at the actions Max takes in the show, you'll find that he's not really a bad person, he's a mean person. He's a little shit that processes his need for control in the entirely wrong way, but people are shaped by their surroundings. The actions that come from him are different.

His crush on Grace only supports this. Every other bully in every piece of media sees the girl they like and whistle and say "yo lemme hit that." And if the girl rejects them, they resort to "tease bitch." Not Max. The first thing he does is start a conversation with her, laughs at (what he thinks is) a joke, then offers to carry her books. Like, I wish my highschool bullies were that nice to their own girlfriends.

When she rejects him, it's true that he continues to pursue her and calls her "dirty girl," but that once again comes back to his need to feel in control. But he doesn't get aggressive, he doesn't do anything that screams 'bully.'

We don't get a lot of scenes with pre-ghost Max. But when we do, they're interesting to analyze. Like, have you ever noticed that when he finds Steph in the Waylon Place, his very first instinct is to tell her, "Get behind me, I'll protect you" from, as far as he knows, actual ghosts? He feels like his life is in danger, but he's still putting Steph's safety first, despite having no interest in her romantically. That's huge.

There's even some evidence to support that Max terrorizing the nerds is, from his perspective, not so one-sided. When he finds out they were the ones who pulled the pranks, he says "I thought you guys hated me."

And he's open to change. He's not stubborn, he's not brutal. He doesn't continue hating the nerds just because it is what it is. Moments before his death, he is showing signs of opening up to them, and actually seems like he's coming around.

And none of this is meant as trying to defend Max's actions. I know he's the antagonist. I know he treats people unfairly. But all of this has to come from somewhere. I'm trying to say that there was clearly a foundation of a good person underneath all that cruelty. So what toughened his shell?

Mr. Jägerman. Max reveals in that one line that if he were to go back home from the 'party', his dad would call him a 'little cuck.' "can't even fight off one lousy skele'uhn." In this, he reveals his dad is demeaning to him. He's the kind of man who would hear that his son was in a life-or-death situation, and instead of comforting him, he would have made fun of him.

What must that do to a person? As someone who grew up in a home where Dad wasn't always a safe person to be around, I know that when I was younger, a lot of my bad bad behaviours were something I learned from him.

The prank meant to scare Max was the nicest thing anyone's ever done for him.

I think a lot of what happens in NPMD is indirectly Mr. Jägerman's fault. "Knowledge is knowing Frankenstein is the doctor, wisdom is knowing Frankenstein is the monster" type of shit. It is directly because of his actions and the way he treated his own child that any of this happened.

or maybe I'm reading too much into this. But I fucking hate Max's dad so much.

[blackblooms]

I just really wanted to talk about VS yourself from the Hit Single Real mod of Friday Night Funkin.

It does a great job of communicating the essentials of its story through the way the song is presented. At first, boyfriend is meant by a creepy figure, which players would assume is some kind of evil doppelganger, but as the song progresses, you start to connect with yourself and eventually come to understand what he really wants as the song reaches its climax. Everyone of course talks about the amazing vocal part, but i think an underrated part of the songs are those brief but very hype segments where Yourself and Boyfriend begin singing and moving in sync. It's an obvious fit for the mirror imagery but i think it's also a great way to symbolize Yourself and Boyfriend managing to connect for a moment. Knowing the lore of Yourself definitely adds to the experience, but i think the essential part of the story is perfectly communicated through the song itself. Simply someone reaching out to an alternate version of themselves, seeking to find a voice that can empathize and relate to his pain and allow him to feel understood...

[stray-tori]

i may have just understood link click on a level i thought was impossible (i had a small epiphany that was probably obvious to everyone but me)

So. for context; sth that confused me for a while, is that the CXS deaths always happen in S1 fits, which are Gone after LG gets stabbed - so I thought that LG must have already succeeded delaying CXS' death, but then his reaction to Emma in 1x11 wouldn't make any sense (i.e. if he's already succeeded at delaying CXS' death by over a month why would he assume that Emma is "saved" in a matter of seconds?)

Additionally, the paper cutout style in 2x1 really seemed to hint a sort of "overwriting"? Which I thought meant it was originally CXS dying while LG was facing off against someone (that being vein, with yingdu knowledge).

BUT. "it seems that everything is changing" (2x1) !!! I've been looking at that line wrong.

SO new theory - he didn't delay it and he didn't mean that THIS exact moment was when CXS died and THAT is changing, but EVERYTHING is changing from now on.

so this whole plot is new to LG. the stab never happened in the timeline where vein kills CXS. that's why they still have their s1 fits (didn't have to discard them because of the blood) in CXS death scenes, and that's potentially why LG reacts to things in the ways he does starting 1x11. (tho those could just as well be trauma responses. He's very hard to read)

If that is really the case, this implies that 1x11 is potentially the first big divergence we've (and perhaps even LG has) seen (Yx1 with "everything happens the exact same").

I think this implies that when whatever they meddled with in Yingdu doesn't happen, that somehow leads Liu Xiao to kickstart the whole LTX and LTC (twins) thread.

+ anyway here's the 3 dates I grabbed for this thinkening:

22/10/2021 = 1x11, 2x1 - LG gets stabbed

13/09/---- = 2x12, Yx1 - CXS death + dives back

12/04/---- = Yx1, date LG returned to

next rewatch I'm making an excel sheet.

[bookwyrminspiration]

sisyphus moanin about that boulder when he doesn't even have to write a research essay with three strangers