#but FUCK do I hate it when they just replace Lilith with Alastor

[skitterjitter]

If Alastor were in a relationship with Lucifer when Charlie was a kid:

Royal Family of Hell: Lucifer, King of Hell; Lilith, Queen of Hell; Alastor, Prince Consort; Charlie, Princess of Hell

they all have specific areas that they take care of: Lucifer is more focused on the Hellborn population as well as Heaven and Hell relations, Lilith deals with Hell as a whole and Alastor usually manages the sinners

you really don’t want to piss off any of them, but Alastor is the quickest to use torture and killing to make his point

Some people would refer to Alastor as “Lucifer’s pet”. if Alastor hears that, your screams will be broadcast over the radio. If Lilith hears it, she’ll just laugh because she thinks it’s funny. Lucifer also thinks this is funny, and he will make his own jokes about it much to Lilith’s own amusement and Alastor’s chagrin

Lilith and Lucifer have the most overtly loving relationship, Lucifer and Alastor have an antagonistic but fond relationship, and Alastor and Lilith are closer to friends

Alastor maintains a relationship with Rosie that he had from before he became Prince Consort. he also continues to deal with Overlord business, which never makes its way to the palace

and as for Charlie:

she has a slight preference towards Alastor because he spends the most time with her and indulges her whims because he likes the entertainment

as a baby and even as a young child, Alastor was usually first to show up if she needed something because if he couldn't watch her himself, he kept watch over her via radios. even as she got older, he kept up the habit

Charlie refers to her parents as Mom, Dad (Lucifer) and Father (Alastor)

nobody is quite sure when or where Nifty became acquainted with Alastor, but she likes to terrorize the palace servants. she is really good about keeping the royal apartments clean, and is a good playmate for Charlie so neither Lucifer or Lilith mind

Husk will sometimes have to babysit Charlie. he’s his usual grumpy self, but she’s polite, kind, and treats him with respect, even if she has a tendency to ask a lot of questions

when Alastor needs time for himself, he’ll go visit Rosie in Cannibal Town. he’ll sometimes bring Charlie to visit Aunt Rosie, so the residents know her and she’s a bit more comfortable around them

Alastor used to take Charlie to Overlord meetings when she was little. the first time in particular was quite a sight: the terrifying Radio Demon, sitting with the baby Princess of Hell in his lap

as a baby, Charlie had a habit of biting people she didn't like. Vox tried to get in Alastor's good graces by babysitting her, but she took an immediate dislike to him. she terrorized him so badly he refuses to deal with her unless at least one of the other Vees is with him

[ceruleanwhore]

I know it's been a minute since Hazbin dropped and I'm late to the hate train but I have things I want to say, so I shall.

First off, the whole thing makes absolutely no fucking sense, conceptually. There is really no good way to execute this batshit idea of Lucifer having a daughter and that daughter deciding to start a fucking hotel in Hell to redeem sinners so they can go to Heaven. Also, the culling shit with the angels showing up to just kill already dead souls for no reason also makes no sense and there really isn't any way to make it make sense.

Secondly, when making yet another piece of media inspired by Christian canon, even if it is Christianity and you hate the religion, you absolutely have to know the source material before you go fucking with it. That's why, for example, Dogma is such a good movie but this series falls flat even though both are comedic critiques of Christianity - Dogma understands the subject well enough to criticize it intelligently whereas Hazbin feels like it was conceptualized and made by someone who only watched like two episodes of Veggie Tales and otherwise knows jack shit about the religion. Throwing Lilith in there is worse because she isn't even in Christianity and it has the same vibes as when CCD classes host a Passover Seder by and for a bunch of gentiles to 'teach' about what Jesus was up to when he was around. It's just so disrespectful. Actually, that's what it is - the creators learned everything they know about Christianity, Heaven, and Hell from Tumblr posts which is definitely why she's in there.

If they knew more about the thing they're trying to make a whole ass show about, Adam and Eve wouldn't have been angels, there would be no hotel because you could just have the creation of Purgatory instead or, at the very least, some take on the harrowing of Hell and salvation of the virtuous pagans in Limbo. Also, even if you don't want to touch the Bible because it's icky (and I mean yeah), all you had to do was read like Dante's Inferno and peep the Ars Goetia and then actually make a structured Hell with a hierarchy and everything. I think kinda like what Rachel Smythe did with the worldbuilding in Lore Olympus, they wanted to modernize Hell for some reason, so the turf war/mafia type shit was supposed to replace a stronger hierarchy of Hell with princes and dukes and presidents and such, but I fucking hate it and there's no goddamn structure.

More importantly, the worldbuilding of Hell itself completely misses the fucking point of Hell as a thing. Hell is there both to contain Satan and the fallen angels who joined him in that uprising thing that one time and also to serve as a place where sinners go when they die and are punished for their sins. We never see even once any sort of actual system for sorting all these souls and punishing them for their sins. On the contrary, characters like Angel Dust appear to get to do drugs for the rest of their immortal lives and, since they're dead, it's not like those are going to kill them so it really doesn't read like a punishment. The closest we get to actual punishments are when the sinners/demons have gone and made deals that give other residents of Hell control over them, like how Husk is under Alastor's control and then Alastor apparently also has some kind of deal screwing him over, and Angel's situation with shitty boa dude is pretty similar too. It feels like they did the extermination shit to replace punishment in Hell along with these deals we see here and there, which is utterly fucking ridiculous and makes absolutely no sense.

The other thing I'd add kind of going off that is that Heaven in this series also makes literally no fucking sense. It's actually also the biggest issue I have with Good Omens that it makes NO SENSE for the angels to have no clue what God's plan is or, in this case, how souls even get into Heaven. The whole fucking point is that there's an entire, nicely structured hierarchy for exactly this. Seraphim, cherubim, and thrones are all closest to God, so they can get the info from Them and pass it to the lower ranks. Hell, this could even be how you get problems, like you make it a bit of a gimmick that Heaven runs on a massive game of telephone. It also could've been a way to have some really cool variety in character design, so maybe some of the higher ranking angels look like the weird biblical shit with all the eyes and fire and they get progressively more normal as you go down the hierarchy. Instead, they picked like three recognizable names, made them into pretty people with wings and potentially also stupid Homestuck looking masks, and threw them in our face while just refusing to actually bother with worldbuilding or character design.

That brings me to the third thing which is that, when doing a series like this based on something like Christianity, you really have to sit down and figure out what kind of God your Christian God in your series is going to be, even if They never show up on screen. Is this God distant and neglectful and that's how all this shit is happening? Or do we have the wrathful God of the Israelites who regularly exterminates Hell out of pure sadistic rage? Or do we have a weak God on the verge of death who is barely present out of necessity while the angels take advantage of that absence and run amok? And it's not even just that determining what kind of God is supposed to be the God of this series would inform why stuff happens like it does, it would also help the writers to have a sense of direction and motive for what happens.

The writing in the show is all over the fucking place and figuring out what kind of God this God is meant to be is the very first question they should've asked themselves and it would've prevented most of the problems that currently exist in the show. If we had that, then maybe we wouldn't have weird shit with Lucifer where he very much does not feel like he's the devil at all and also Charlie is supposed to have daddy issues but then he shows up and is just a really adoring and supportive dad so that doesn't make sense. If we had that, then maybe Hell would have a fucking structure because we would actually have the motive behind Hell itself and why it exists. If we had that, then maybe we could get into the nitty gritty of the ethical/theological complexities of Hell and how, no matter how you slice it, it's really God's will at the end of the day so we could get a whole debate over if Lucifer is even evil or if God is just controlling and sadistic and all that. If we had that then maybe we could even have some reveal about how sin isn't even a concrete thing and the true nature of Hell is that it's a place people choose to go when they die because they don't feel worthy of salvation and they feel in their soul that they need to be punished. Anything, really.

Fourth is that it really, really shouldn't be a musical series. The pacing fucking sucks and they overexplain everything and I just feel like if you took all the time spent on shitty musical numbers and instead put it into showing, not telling, and also developing characters and relationships, it could be a lot better. If there was more time for shit, then maybe Charlie could not be a Mary Sue and Vaggie could have a personality and Angel could be an actual fucking character that isn't just an animated twink with trauma who gets off on violating people's boundaries. Also, I just really didn't like most of the songs in the series (outside the series they're fine) and I skipped a lot of those scenes.

Fifth and final is that it really just wasn't funny. A lot of the stuff that was supposed to be funny was just excessive swearing that felt completely unnatural, like that tiktok going around of that girl saying the n word. If you're bothering to do a whole series set in Hell that's ostensibly about Christianity, then why tf aren't you leaning more into biting criticism of Christianity for your humor? If they'd just gone full Dogma with this, it would've been so much better but no.

So yeah, it fucking sucked and so did the character design.

[grayintogreen]

im abt to be so predictable but: director's commentary on the vox/lucifer/lilith dynamic during the months where alastor was away?

HEE HEE. Predictable, maybe, but I've wanted to talk about it.

And I shall do it in a bulleted list!

So Lucifer did not end up keeping Vox's soul contract very long, because there was absolutely no way that Vox was gonna be able to FIND Alastor in a place where very few people ever actually go in Pride and well out of range of technology. Vox absolutely tried though and when that failed, he came back to execute PHASE TWO. Take everything Alastor holds dear! My hotel now, loser.

Obviously this posed a problem when he sat there in the metaphorical door with metaphorical shaving cream on his hands for a MONTH waiting for Alastor to come back and meanwhile Charlie is standing beside him like "have you considered that maybe you put way more effort into hating Alastor and being obsessed with him than is healthy." Vox didn't appreciate this.

He does realize that Alastor might not be coming back and that, in that month, Lilith has been trying to soften him up because she's hotter than Charlie and also scarier and she's very, very persuasive, so he decides, eh for a lark, he'll indulge the "therapy."

Therapy kinda works?? But it's mostly working because he off-sets his psychosexual obsession with Alastor with a new psychosexual obsession: becoming the evil vizier to the royal family. (Not his words, my words.)

Lucifer doesn't trust him, but he appreciates Vox's incredible organizational skills and his ability to actually do interviews and press for the hotel without panicking. They work shockingly well together, which pisses them both off, but Vox is delighted because he's cemented himself as Lucifer's right hand and Lucifer is happy because he isn't forced to do public speaking anymore. Both of them also bond about Alastor sucking and how they kinda both secretly miss him. Lucifer does not tell Vox about the time he visits Alastor, because he knows he'll make it weird.

Lilith doesn't trust Vox either, but she has Charlie's unflappable faith in people coupled with the willingness to destroy you if you break what trust she places in you, so Vox's dick is so scared of Lilith in the worst and best possible way. If there was a way for him to watch Lucilith have sex (there's not- Lilith's wards are amazing), he would be doing it. Instead, he just kinda showers Lilith with compliments and kisses her ass to make Lucifer roll his eyes, because he doesn't really get jealous. At least not over people like Vox.

So to recap: Vox has kinda replaced Lilith and Lucifer as surrogate Vees, except Lucifer is more of a stand-in for Alastor than he is for Valentino. He is thriving in this trio and believes it fully to be because he has them wrapped around his finger because he makes himself EVER SO USEFUL TO THEM.

they know what he's doing. they're not stupid.

they both are kinda into him in that "he is so clearly desperate for attention and approval and we are both dealing with a lot and despite his clearly overinflated sense of importance and villainy, he is actually VERY competent at what he does, so like fine we have an evil vizier now whatever."

Vox is actually winning even if he is still not fucking them. Fuck you, Alastor.

Charlie, for her credit, only thinks about this situationship in terms of "yay progress" and refuses to indulge that Vox is either secretly still evil or fucking her parents. The other hotel guests/employees have actual money on whether or not they are fucking.

DIRECTOR'S COMMENTARY ASK GAME.

[dark-ambition]

((Ok, watched episode 5 and I have some thoughts on some broader theory stuff I’ve seen across the dash that I just have to voice my own opinion on. This is not me trying to debunk anyone’s theories, merely voicing my own two cents.

I’ve seen the fandom trying to vaguely theorize that Alastor has somehow made it in romantically with Lilith and that’s particularly why Alastor suddenly tries to make himself look like a father figure to Charlie while Lucifer is there, out of some spite toward a perceived ex, and also why he showed up to the Hotel, in an effort to keep an eye on Charlie, Lilith’s daughter. To be frank, I don’t think Alastor and Lilith are in a romantic relationship. I think the notion that he’s gotten in with Lilith and in some sort of romance with her while it’s heavily implied that Lilith is the one who has Alastor’s soul on a leash is….very unlikely, to say the least.

My main proof being this scene with Alastor and Husk.

Husk says the words “big talk coming from someone who’s also on a leash” and Alastor IMMEDIATELY stops dead in his tracks. His eyes turn into dials, which the only times we’ve ever seen him do is when he is LIVID, like “I’m close to tearing someone to pieces and I am giving you one more chance to BACK OFF” level of mad. He asks Husk to repeat himself, with it obviously not being an actual question and more of a warning to not actually repeat himself. It’s rhetorical, and it is dangerous.

Husk, recognizing this, despite all the times we’ve seen him talk back to Alastor and not even so much as receive a warning, DESPERATELY tries to take his words back as he is suddenly chained by the neck and YANKED to the floor, so hard that he starts to CHOKE. His ears are pinned back, he is stuttering, he is PANICKING, he is recognizing how much of a HORRIBLE mistake he just made, and rapidly realizing how much danger he is in.

Alastor approaches Husk slowly, literally winding the very chains binding Husk’s neck around the cane of his staff so each and every loop makes the chain tighten until he finally pulls it as taut as he can make. Holding it tight in his hands like he’s about to rip Husk’s soul right out of him at any second. The threat he is making to Husk could not be anymore crystal clear here. He is NOT fucking around.

It shows on Husk’s face, he is TERRIFIED, scared absolutely beyond words, to the point where he is cowering on the ground, not moving an inch as Alastor towers over him, green chains still wrapped tight like a vice around his cane, until they finally dissipate as he bends down to prop Husk’s chin up with his microphone. He is beyond furious, he is livid, and he is giving Husk the clearest most transparent warning a man like him can give: Say that again and I will fucking kill you.

And it’s only when Husk makes it clear that he understands does Alastor finally relax, his posture relaxing, the tension leaving his body, the icy cold glare leaving his eyes, replaced with an almost smug grin. He knows Husk gets the picture now. He knows Husk won’t ever jab at him with those words again, or else he’ll face the consequences.

Then what does he do? He snaps right back into classy jazz and happy smiles like nothing fucking happened while Husk is left shaking and trembling on the ground.

Clearly, someone also happens to have Alastor on his own leash. Clearly, someone, somehow, has claimed ownership over Alastor’s soul, much in the same way Husk’s soul is owned by Alastor. And clearly, if the mere MENTION of it is able to set Alastor off SO much that he threatens to KILL Husk and subject his soul to unending torment and misery at the drop of a hat when EVERY OTHER TIME Husk has mouthed off to him being something that Alastor just shrugs off like it’s nothing?

It is something that Alastor is FAR FROM HAPPY about.

It is clearly something he HATES. He DESPISES the fact that someone is owning him, controlling him, it makes him so beyond angry that he drops EVERYTHING he is doing to threaten Husk who dared to use it as a means of getting back at him for his behavior. And if Lilith is the one to own his soul like so many people are speculating, if Lilith is the one that is pulling the strings on him from behind the scenes to have him stick around the Hotel and watch over her daughter, clearly this scene highlights that he loathes the fact that she has any modicum of control over him, has any way of being able to order him around.

And I for the life of me cannot see any situation where that somehow turns into a romance. Let alone one where Alastor is infatuated with Lilith and despises Lucifer purely on the basis of him being Lilith’s old husband. I just can’t.