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opinion-piecemeal · 2 months ago

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Just to preface: this post is not about Vivzie. She is kind of a scummy creator and I’ve recently learned about several controversial things she’s done. No I’m not talking about lewd art, I could not care less about that. She has done some scummy questionable things to real life people that she’s interacted with and I implore you to look into it on your own time. Just wanted to get that out of the way because I won’t be addressing it further but I want it known that I do in fact know some of the things she’s done.

I think most of the discourse on Hazbin Hotel is done, but I didn’t have this tumblr when it came out. So fuck it here’s my opinion now:

I really liked the Hazbin Hotel pilot when it came out, like genuinely. It was a decently made piece of indie animation, and they did a lot with a little amount of time. I even kinda liked Helluva Boss when that show came out, it toned down a lot of the more obnoxious elements of the HH pilot, the designs became less cluttered and the sound effects were toned down, the writing was even decent, it was funny sometimes, and it could tell an emotional story if it wanted. I didn’t care for the musical numbers (not because they were bad, I don’t even remember them it’s been years. I just don’t care for most musicals, if any at all), but I could get through those portions and it was fine. Some decent jokes, and I didn’t hate the characters.

So I was relatively…. Marginally slightly elevated when I heard Hazbin was getting an actual show release. That’s pretty cool, indie animation getting bigger and getting more funding? Hell yeah we love to see that. It’s been a minute since I watched through HH, but I remember my reactions to it and some key points of criticism.

This is gonna be just a compilation of ramblings and rantings because I do have a lot of disparate things to say about the show. Bear with me here.

Just gonna start off with: it’s one of the worst animated shows I have ever seen. I’m being 100% serious. It’s not paced well, none of the elements of the show itself are utilized properly, and every musical number has to be worse than nails on a chalkboard. It’s not funny, and it has NO idea how to structure interesting storylines to tell their stories effectively.

I heard nothing but praise for HH when it first came out from queer people I know. Being a queer myself, I understand why that is. It’s colorful, has a lot of vulgar yet not actually edgy jokes, has some gay characters in it, has some “CrYpTiD” character that everybody loves for some reason, and it’s about demons. This shit screams that it’s supposed to be appeal to YOU 🫵 THE AVERAGE QUEER! I know my vague description here might not be screaming “gay culture” but if you’re a queer in your 20’s in the year of our lord 2024 I think you know what I mean. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying media meant to appeal to you!!! Not even enjoying stuff that’s obvious pandering, I have my own media that is very meaningful to me because it tries to appeal to my sensibilities in an obvious way. But HH is. It’s bad for other reasons, this is just why I think a lot of LGBTQ+ people were hyping it up like it was a gift from… god? Gay Satan? Yeah anyway.

Just gonna rant about some things I remember, bear in mind I haven’t rewatched the show in a minute, but I’ll do my best not to say anything blatantly inaccurate to the general sentiment of the show.

The first episode of the show was an immediate dropping of the ball. It’s trying to act like a re-pilot, and yet if you haven’t watched the pilot there’s details you aren’t ever going to get. It starts with a really boring stylized exposition dump about the setting. I think it’s insanely mishandled because EVERYTHING that’s explained in it you can gather from context clues throughout the show. It genuinely might have been a stronger overall show if the entire exposition intro was entirely removed. It explains the angels doing the yearly culling, something you learn about by the end of this episode after the intro, you learn about Charlie’s parents, something you learn about much later and is introduced better in the original pilot through naturalistic dialogue. We learn about ummmm. That’s it as far as I can remember? I guess the setup for hell happens. Idk it feels like a clunky way to try to introduce new people to the show. Genuinely think a cold open to the moments after the intro would make for a stronger overall episode.

I do not like Adam. I know that’s the point, but I hate that he isn’t even scary. Like they don’t try to make him the least bit threatening, or intelligent, or at all… idk, cool? He’s a lame college frat boy dickhead stereotype, and I don’t even hate that on its face. If it was done in a way where we could see how he’s been leading heaven’s armies, maybe something a little more subtle, something a little tiny bit more interesting. It doesn’t make sense that any of heaven’s forces take him seriously. Like maybe it’s actually a reveal in the court scene that Adam is actually just the worst, instead of just “no actually he sucks the whole fucking show”. Not that he has to be a good guy, obviously, I just wish he was done with ANY amount of restraint to make him interesting. But he’s just a frat boy toxic masculinity stereotype that says very little about that stereotype itself besides “lol isn’t heaven hypocritical???” Like yeah. We knew that in the first episode when Adam did each of the 7 deadly sins in his literal first interaction. It’s so heavy handed.

Tbh I do wanna say that there are elements I like from the show, it just sucks because there’s always something with how they’re executed that just infuriates me. Like I enjoy the idea of portraying Angeldust in the way he’s portrayed, and exploring his trauma and awful situation, and overall they handled it decently. I don’t like the song, and I think the song has some questionable decisions with how it comes across, but overall it’s pretty clear that were meant to be sympathizing with Angel, even if it’s in poor taste to do a pop song over horrific abuse, which it absolutely is. It does fit his character overall, it’s how he copes. He takes control of his sexuality in order to hold onto some facet of control over his life, even if that means distancing himself from reality and constantly putting himself in dangerous situations. But like I said, something has to ruin any good thing within the show. It was extremely poor taste to put Poison and Loser, Baby right next to each other. I understand they wanted to add levity after the darkness of the previous section, but it’s poorly done to have The Arbiter (I forgot both his character’s name and his actor’s name and this is way funnier) go “oh I understand your plight! I’m a gambling addict!” Like no. Those aren’t comparable. I understand the point of it, it’s just horribly done because the team of writers who worked on the show were so chock full of ideas and they couldn’t reign it in to focus on other elements and space out these character arcs.

Angeldust in general suffers from wasted potential. You can see the potential of his character in the obvious arc they were trying for, that sinners can not only be redeemed but that anyone no matter how “far gone” they may believe themselves to be can come back from a horrific situation, or even can take some control. They can choose to do better, and can choose not to let their hardships define them and instead influence them in a healthy way. You can see the pieces of the arc they wanted, but because there’s all of 2 or 3 scenes dedicated to it in total it doesn’t come across like an earned change in Angel’s character. He just. Is suddenly a good person now. All of his progress started in one episode, was never expanded upon, and otherwise happened off-screen and was only really addressed towards the very end.

They completely tossed Sir Pentious’ potential out the window. He just. Comes around to the gang and is a good guy after the first episode he’s introduced. Doesn’t even TRY to space it out in any way. It’s just like. Yup. Sure is a good guy now. Found family!!! Yippee!!! It just doesn’t feel earned. It feels like there was no buildup or actual work into changing. He’s just. Basically good now just because. His egg boys are my favorite though, unironically love those little guys. Besides that though, there’s clearly some small sliver of growth shining through with him. He goes from a timid demon, unwilling to just be openly vulnerable and instead coming across as pathetic, to a confident and slightly more assertive demon who can take charge and be honest with himself about what he cares about. And then he gets disintegrated the moment after this for a cheap laugh. And then he… goes to heaven??? Idk how that works and why other demons aren’t already in heaven then???

Lucifer. Hated how he was done. Like okay, I like him as a character, but the actual function he served in the plot was to resolve Charlie’s daddy issues in half an episode and then disappear for most of the rest of the show so he could come back in at the end and handily stomp Adam without even trying. Thereby completely removing the win from Charlie and her friends. Like. They really could have had something with the ending if he wasn’t in the show at all so Charlie would have to win this battle with Adam by the skin of her teeth with the help of all the friends at the hotel to, at the very least, try and tie together these people into a cohesive unit.

The dragons appearing for half a second and then immediately getting killed. Like why even bother including them?!?!

Oh my god. They didn’t even focus on the redemption aspect. Literally the entire premise of the hotel and they cast aside that entire plot idea so they can focus on the slaughter instead of. Um. Actually interesting funny episodes about demons trying to redeem themselves??? Like I think we should be seeing the hotel get more populated throughout the season with different demons who DO want to redeem themselves and give up some of their vices to get into heaven. But nah, let’s have 8 episodes of meandering plot with no consistency in terms of pacing or time in between episodes. Let’s just completely throw out that whole entire original idea, we just have too many good ideas guys we need to include everything!!!! Like idk maybe I’m not articulating this part well but it’s such a wasted opportunity. They could have had this first season be an episodic relatively formulaic series of episodes where Charlie is trying to prove to herself and to the rest of the demons of hell that she can and WILL help these souls be redeemed one demon at a time. So we meet a new character every episode and get a rundown of why they’re in hell and then we get Charlie trying to determine how to properly address the core issue causing their sin in the first place, and then that character kind of gets relegated to the background. We can actually see the progress of the hotel in a very consistent easy to follow way, and instead of focusing on this half baked plot line about Heaven coming down to purge the numbers in Hell (which could help to set the stage for the stakes still but be relegated to the background). We would instead be focusing on the actual premise of redeeming the demons and proving to heaven that they can be saved. And we could still have this plot line of the angels coming down to kill demons once a year, and Charlie trying to stop the next one from happening. Maybe Adam gives her a number of demons she needs to redeem by the time the next purge would be, and then even if she reaches it he goes “haha no we’re gonna fucking come kill you anyway” which would let them get into it in the next season and explore the hypocrisy of heaven still in a more cohesive and earned way. Like yeah, Charlie ACTUALLY did her best and she ACTUALLY managed to show that demons, on a base level, are capable of change if they see the benefit of changing. But nah. They did all of it in the worst most uncontrolled way possible with no restraint.

I did not care for the way the plot was paced out. In fact, I would say the worst part about the show was the pacing. Even people who liked the show thought it was poorly paced, and it is. They did eight episodes. EIGHT. Each one 20 minutes, and Vivziepop couldn’t help herself but to try to cram in each and every single idea she possibly had into the season. A season where they KNEW they had another season lined up. They had 10 writers. More writers than fucking episodes for God’s sake, and they decided not to attempt to pace it out using the knowledge that they had another season to work with. Nah they just decided not to let any of their scenes breath, let’s cram in constant cuts, constant dialogue, constant jokes. Oh and we NEED to have 2 songs per episode. Episodes that were woefully underwritten to begin with. They could have only done just ONE musical number per episode and at the very least this would have given them more room to breath with the rest of it. But nah. Gotta cram in as many underwritten musical numbers as physically possible and further destroy the pacing.

I hated every musical number. They aren’t interesting fun songs to me, they aren’t lyrically good or subtle or funny, and almost every singer is pitch corrected for no reason. I’m not gonna talk about any of the numbers individually, as it would get redundant. They would have appealed to me at 12 in terms of their comedic value.

I could genuinely keep going here, I have a ludicrous amount of thoughts about this show. It’s incredibly disappointing for me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad it was made, and I’m glad the audience that loved it DID love it so so much, I am appreciative of the fact that it was originally an indie project that could have had an even worse go of things. But they did not do the original pilot justice and it sucks to see. HH could have been one of my favorite shows, or at least one I appreciate greatly for what it managed to do, but as it is it’s a half baked overstuffed pastry of pure ambition and hubris, with none of the charisma to pull that off. From a story writing perspective, it’s very poorly executed and does not properly explore any of the concepts it touches on.

I will never escape Hazbin Hotel. It infects every single corner of the internet that I interact with. Memes from the least funny people you know with random pictures of these characters, characters which, themselves, also aren’t funny keep cropping up in group chats and discord servers, and every time I hear about the show it makes me see fucking red. I HAD to get this shit out somewhere because the only partner I have that would be interested in talking about the show itself actually kind of likes it and I know they would hate to hear me endlessly shitting on it.

And if you managed to get through this long as fuck text post, and you’re a mega fan of this show, just know that I’m so glad you got something out of it. I just thought it was poorly done.

And for everyone else who managed to read through the whole thing, thanks for taking the time this thing turned out to be so so long.

Anyway. That’s just like, my opinion, man.

#negative #opinion #hazbin hotel #look I just don’t like how it was executed

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