#hazbin hotel critic

[funhouse-mirror-barbie]

Okay. I gotta talk about it.

Warning for major spoilers for season 2 of Hazbin Hotel and discussion of leaks—I will NOT be posting any links to the leaks or posting pics/screenshots from them here. Just going to be talking about a particular character.

Okay, last chance if you don’t want to know anything about the spoilers/leaks!!!

Im serious!!! Last warning!!!!!

Lute is now unironically the most compelling character in the entire fucking show and I am not kidding.

Whoever wrote the little bit of her character that’s been leaked did a really good job. She is incredibly interesting to me now because we get to see her when her entire way of life and ideology is challenged.

Lute is a very flawed and cruel person, but she has always been extremely sure of herself and that she is unambiguously CORRECT in her way of life. And now she’s being faced with the fact that she and everything she lived for is WRONG and they just CANT accept it. So much so that it appears that she’s now hallucinating Adam to cope.

Lute cannot accept redemption is possible and her viewpoint is SO black and white that it’s likely going to end up killing her or at the very least will drive her to madness. She would rather burn the whole world than accept change. There’s a tragic element as well that comes with every character that lives in the extremes—she fully believes she’s in the right. So much so that she can’t understand why EVERYONE else in Heaven seems to be horrified by the exterminations. She thinks she is doing the best thing for everyone, and is now resisting the reality that is front of her.

What would be really amazing, and what I’m hoping for is that Adam really did fall and became a “Demon” in Hell. Because then she would have to deal with the person she looks up to and admires the MOST becoming what she’s sworn to annihilate. I don’t know if she could handle that.

The question of whether or not she could reconcile Adam, someone she saw as being heavenly and perfect, could fall and become what she hates the most, a demon, is really interesting. She’d be forced again to question her ideals and beliefs about what is right and wrong. That is the sort of deep character exploration I had been hoping to see from season 1 of Hazbin and didn’t really get.

This small glimpse into her character reminds me of other characters that are so lawful or black and white that they can’t accept change or realities that conflict with their worldviews. Rorschach from Watchmen and Javert from Les Miserables come to mind.

It would be really cool to show her in direct contrast to V (not calling her that sexist ass name at least I can pretend “Lute” is named after the fucking instrument) and have Lute be the foil to V’s continuing character arc from season 1.

Please please please don’t let this characters complexity be reduced to “evil bad villain is bad and evil” for the rest of the story please please please. (Gotta say tho, given Hazbin and Helluva’a track record with writing women villains….and tbh just. Women in general. I am going to be VERY VERY cautiously optimistic)

(Also I don’t care if her song is cringe I think it fucking SLAPS)

[spopsalt]

How to not to comfort and how to comfort someone after S/A

A Hazbin Hotel and Rick and Morty comparison

TW FOR DISCUSSION OF SA AND ATTEMPTED CSA UNDER THE CUT

Honestly I discussed how Rick and Morty handled attempted s/a better than hazbin in a full on post, but here I wanted to talk about specifically how the people in Angel Dust and Morty's life comforted them. Now Angel Dust doesn't specifically say what Val is doing, buttt it's pretty clear by what he says "Maybe if I end up broken, I won't be his favorite toy anymore." And first Husk reactions seems good, he tries to relate to Angel by bringing up his gambling (Not that the two situations are similar in any way but I digress) but then he just starts victim blaming Angel for no reason!? Like calling him a loser, a goddamn baby, whiny bitch, and more because he opened up about his trauma!? What!? Don't get me wrong the voice actor's singing voice is amazing but...what's with all the victim blaming?!

Then we get Rick's reaction, now Rick is a worse person than Husk, but the way he reacted was so much better. For context Rick and Morty had a bet and Morty went to the bathroom and Mr. Jellybean (The light blue bipedal jellybean) attempted to s/a Morty in the bathroom. Nothing happens since Morty was able to fend him off, but Morty was still understandably shaken by the whole experience and pleaded with Rick to take them home. Now Morty doesn't say what happened at all, but you can tell Rick found out because of the death glare he gives to Mr. Jellybean. Now Rick's reaction was so so much better. He doesn't victim blame Morty for starters, but his voice instantly gets softer and he threw the bet so Morty would remember the good ending the adventure had, rather than the horrible traumatizing thing that happened with Mr. Jellybean. The whole time he's very gentle and sweet. And he even said "This adventure is wrapped up neat and clean because we did it Morty style" which is a very very sweet line. He does use physical touch, which I personally wouldn't recommend after someone went through attempted s/a but he clearly didn't mean anything bad by it, he just wanted to comfort the kid and Morty was comfortable with it.

[hippityhoppityyourenowmyproperty]

I'll never understand why they made Lucifer be associated with a duck, of all animals they could've chosen.

Ducks symbolize happiness, good luck, and stability. Does that sound like the ruler of hell?

What about this reflects anything about Lucifer's character? He chose against stability when he had the choice. He's not happy and certainly not blessed with luck.

I mean, ravens and crows are right there.

They're smart, independent birds who find unique solutions to problems. All of these traits would be more in character.

They could've kept his white colors by making him a white raven, alluding to his past as an angel in heaven, and Lucifer being seen as the "morning star".

Alternatively, they could've made him a white peacock, a bird associated with Lucifer's main sin.

The guy is royalty, after all.

Plus, a peacock showing off his feathers looks like an eerie, biblically accurate angel, and always wears a crown on his head.

They can't really fly, as their feather wheel, their "pride" is too heavy to let them make it into the sky. Could've been another subtle nod.

The writers still could have kept Lucifer's obsession with cute birds by making him like baby chicks, symbolizing that he misses his own child, and that he yearns for happier, more innocent times when he hadn't been rejected by his flock.

[greykolla-art]

Audio from Critcal Role, Calamity ep 4.

I’ve wanted to visualise this BANGER line for so long!

Thank you Alastor for fitting such a good villain speech!👏👏👏

Here’s also my favourite frames:

[sunlit-mess]

If loving you is a sin, then I'll gladly become a sinner

[barblaz-arts]

When Gomez Addams obsesses over his tol goth wife who he calls a million pet names, everyone calls them couple goals. But when a gay lil angel does the same thing for her tol demon gf suddenly it's toxic? As if Charlie isn't such a huge enough sweetheart to deserve having someone fawn over her anyways.

[heckdoggo]

Because I couldnt find a single post with ALL of the leaked Hazbin Hotel audition sheets, I made one my goshdang self.

[spopsalt]

Isn't Lily the same person who wrote Stockholm? I'm sorry but if you wrote something romanticizing pedophilia and abuse, you lose the right to comment on any media ever again.

[s3tok41b4]

Hazbin cast redesigns

[autumnteawithfriends]

The Pinterest side of HH/HB slander is underrated

As a bonus, some GOATED comments

(NOTE! None of these were made by me and I cropped some images so stans don’t harass these people)

[funhouse-mirror-barbie]

There’s just…there’s such cognitive dissonance in the Helluva Boss and Hazbin Fandoms when it comes to tone and portraying things like abuse vs. slapstick comedy.

Its really fascinating to me, because if you do point out that there is a double standard in the ways that violence and abuse is framed in certain plot points, you’re usually told that you’re “media illiterate” and that you “don’t understand” how slapstick works. (More below)

Which is wild because the issue is not with slapstick. It’s with the rapidly oscillating tone in the narrative. We’ll see Stella attempt to slap Stolas, and it’s treated as a serious abuse, but when Loona violently beats up Blitz during an argument they’re having, the audience is expected to see this as “slapstick”.

It’s like if Tom and Jerry had an episode with their usual shenanigans, and then suddenly in the middle of it Tom had a realistic panic attack and broke down over all the times he’s been hurt b/c of Jerry. And then in the next episode they just went back to the status quo.

We can find an actual example of this exact same tone issue though in the animated sitcom, Family Guy. Specifically, the episode "Screams of Silence: The Story of Brenda Q"

Family Guy is a show that’s had a long history of violence as a source of comedy—but in the above episode, they attempted (very poorly in my opinion) to tackle the subject of domestic abuse and violence, completely straight.

When this episode came out, it was widely panned and disliked by critics and audiences. Brenda’s initial appearance, while still dealing with domestic abuse, was played off mostly as a one time joke, and was a small bit part of the episode itself.

I think this was a really understandable reaction to the “The Story of Brenda Q” because it was such tonal whiplash from Family Guy’s usual storylines.

The Hellaverse, to me, has the exact same problem. The narrative occasionally treats the heavy topics being depicted as serious issues, but will then switch to making jokes about the exact same topics later.

We see this in Hazbin with the way sexual assault is treated—Angel Dust’s sexual assault is treated as a serious matter, but two episodes later, when Sir Pentious is sexually assaulted, it’s treated as a joke.

I’ve seen fans say that the Sir Pent joke “works” because he wasn’t “actually raped” and I just. I don’t know how to explain to others that sexual assault does not have to escalate to rape to still be sexual assault. Someone touching your body for their own sexual gratification, without your explicit consent, is sexual assault.

Sir Pentious being dragged into a designated “sex room” against his will, while he’s actively saying “no” and is clawing at the ground, is sexual assault. It just is.

And hey, if you WANT to frame that as a joke, you technically can. But doing so undeniably undercuts the anti—sexual violence and anti—sexual assault message that you claim is central to your show’s narrative.

Again, as always you can disagree, this is only my opinion. There’s definitely more examples of other shows (and of Family Guy again, with Meg Griffin) doing this tonal whiplash in their stories, but you have to really be delicate with threading that needle in order to make it work, something that the Hellaverse just doesn’t yet have the maturity to do.

[spopsalt]

Hazbin Hotel characters: *Died in different decades*

Also Hazbin Hotel characters: *Everyone knows modern slang, swear like saliors, and make sex jokes like edgy teenagers*

[hippityhoppityyourenowmyproperty]

Oh my god, imagine walking up to someone who was sexually assaulted throughout their life and calling them a "one star review", I would lose my shit so fast

[kawaiitail-chan]

I saw this peak masterpiece in my fyp LMAO!

[skyx-the-witch]

Vivziepop male character: *is supposed to be hot and attractive. Canonically everyone wants to fuck him, he is flirty, confident and makes everyone fall in love with him as soon as he appear. Hes got the best voice actor to make the most masculine and attractive voice to match his supposed sexiness. Everyone in the fandom talks about how he makes them wet their panties*

The fucking character design:

[bump-inthe-night]

Vivziepop fans claiming adding black features to her black characters would’ve made it “too difficult” to animate them is a hilarious excuse considering this is the same woman who had characters like these animated:

Another excuse fans have been using is that Vivziepop’s art style is “unsuitable” for black characters, despite her crew members proving otherwise: 

No art style is "unsuitable" for black characters because it's the artist's responsibility to learn how to draw them in their style. There's no excuse for black characters not looking black in your style.

Vivziepop could draw black features in her style but CHOSE not to, hence why none of the black characters look black outside their skin color, which sometimes they don't even have.