Alright here's my full (possibly hot) take on redesigning Hazbin Hotel characters and making a video showcasing those redesigns while you criticize the official designs.
First and foremost, you are redesigning someone else's OCs. Hazbin Hotel is, in essence, a passion project for Viv. How she talks about it makes that incredibly clear to me. The only difference between Hazbin Hotel and, for example, the story I'm developing surrounding some of my D&D OCs is that Hazbin Hotel got picked up by a streaming service and is significantly more popular than most passsion projects get.
Personally if someone wanted to redesign my D&D OCs, I wouldn't mind it, in fact I'd probably think it was really cool that someone would want to redesign one of my OCs to be closer to their tastes in terms of what they like to draw. I would, however, be made incredibly uncomfortable if someone made a video redesigning them where they also pointed out everything they thought was wrong with the designs. I didn't design these specific D&D characters to be 1-to-1 accurate to their classes in D&D or to look professionally designed. I designed them how I wanted them to look for the story I'm telling because I don't plan to ever play them in a campaign. The main character Avlan is a paladin, and I can acknowledge that his design might not look exactly like a paladin. One of the tabaxi in the story (Ice) is a bard and the other (Spark) is a ranger, and I acknowledge that their classes might not come across well in their designs. The single tiefling I've designed for this story (Tragedy) is a cleric but might not come off as one in their design. But I specifically designed them to be easy for me to draw because I want to be able to tell this story through my art. Having someone say "oh, Avlan's armor isn't paladin enough!" or "Avlan's fur colors and patterns should be closer to a wild rabbit's because harengon shouldn't be based on domestic rabbit colors!" would fucking hurt (especially because I'm so attached to Avlan, but it would hurt just as much if similar comments were made about Ice, Spark, or Tragedy). I am so passionate about these characters and being told their designs are bad or wrong in some way would be like a stab in the heart, and it would still feel like a stab in the heart if this story ever got a massive fandom behind it. Giving Avlan more complex armor because you think it'd look cool or just want to see what it'd look like? Sure, if I could draw more complex armor I'd give him more complex armor too. Giving him more complex armor but also shitting on the armor I decide to draw him with? My motivation to draw him in his armor, potentially draw him period, would be dead for WEEKS.
Why is it suddenly okay just because someone's passion project was picked up by Amazon Prime? Why is it suddenly okay to be "fixing" someone's character designs just because the project has a much bigger budget than most artists get and is on a popular streaming service? It's not. I don't care if you're a professional character designer, or think a specific character would look better with certain traits, or just don't like the character designs.
Hazbin Hotel is still Vivienne Medrano's passion project, and redesigning her characters and making videos talking about everything you think is "wrong" with them is, honestly, disgusting. You can make videos explaining your choices in your redesigns without putting down the designs that already exist, whether you like them or not. Me thinking Lucifer looks better with his tail not restricted to his full demon form doesn't suddenly mean I don't like his official design, because I fucking love it. If you wouldn't do it to an artist whose passion project is just a webcomic here on Tumblr, don't fucking do it to an artist whose passion project got picked up for a cartoon by a big streaming service (or any company for that matter).
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My name is Ariel. I'm the first ever person to be recognised to have a PDA profile (of autism) without autism. And I've realised recently how much the random stuff I do on here, is what I want to be doing for the rest of my life.
So much of my existence has been spent masking, hiding who I really am. And how could I not? When there is no representation of a neurotype anything like mine. When there is no category for it in people's heads either, and so the way they perceive me--and I see it in the way they communicate with me, in their language and behaviour--tends to be a facet, a side, a view of the real me that never shows the whole picture. It's exhausting, never really being known. Existing in fragments of myself to accommodate for people who genuinely do want to know me, but I don't have the language to explain the extent of who I am to them and as a result, the first thing they see becomes everything, in their mind. After that's happened it's hard to explain how it's always not been the case. How I didn't mean to deceive them. I didn't ask to be this way.
I relate to late-diagnosed autistics in this, the confusion of people around them as they unmask. But they often will say they get to fully be themselves in autistic spaces. I don't experience that relief. I feel the kinship of being neurodivergent, and I share the experience of hyperfixations and overload in the ways they present for me. But it's like communicating with neurotypicals, only different. I don't feel a sense of home. I'm like you in some ways. In other ways, not so much. Just different ways. And it's exhausting living in fragments. But this weird partial dual citizenship has superfinetuned my communication skills. My empathy. My ability to understand brains and experiences which are wildly different--and when I'm taking in all of this information all of the time, feeling all this empathy, shifting gears in my brain for every neurotype of every person I lose myself in the experiences of a little--it gets overwhelming. I get overloaded, yes, from the volume of it, and I wish I could relate to empaths more on these things, that I didn't have to expose myself to problematic takes to try. But I also see patterns and trends. I'm hyperaware of authority structures and power and hierarchies as a PDAer. And so some of these patterns concern me. But who can I debrief what I'm seeing, what I'm exposed to every day I interact with people (and I always am interacting with people) with? No one sees it from the vantage point I do. And it's exhausting to have to explain it.
But a silver lining, I guess, is the sense of purpose it brings. The sense that maybe little by little, I can be a part of putting some of the things I see right. There are many areas I'm passionate about, and I talk a lot about them on this blog. It's good to have the outlet. There are many ways of addressing them that I can see, and imagine playing out from my unique perspective, predict how every stakeholder will interact with them. See whether they work, or it's time to return to the drawing board. I'm a PDAer, I'm a natural problem solver. And every effort I make takes a weight off my chest. I'm processing things and doing what I can for them. I can rest knowing I've done my part. I'm not ignoring the injustice, the elephant in the room or in my vision, the thing that when I'm involved with gives me sensory overload (or the closest thing to it) and I'm so empathetic to the people involved with at all times, I can get overloaded from feeling how it must be for them.
I have to look after myself. Manage my energy. But it's hard, because the accounting formulas we're given don't work for me. Even common profiles of neurodivergence--I'm energised by novelty. By connection. By creativity, not by routine. I need each of the carefully constructed tasks in my routine to regulate me in order to be able to do the next, which will regulate me for the next and so on. It's a hard system to put together. I don't know anyone else who has to do the same. And I know a lot of people.
I think my neurotype only assists me with my biggest form of art, the main thing I want to do with my life. I like to joke that every urban planner/designer who graduated from my high school is a PDAer. I don't have a large sample space for that observation. But I'm usually right. We see the big picture. We care about justice and we're good at finding it among fake claims of it. We're natural problem solvers. We're empathetic artists. We're practical at our core. We hyperfocus. And perhaps most of all, we're communicators.
I've heard the main thing an urban designer is is a communicator. No wonder. I shuffle through information and perspectives like a deck of cards I'm trying to sort by colour, number, and shape. I match up people's opposing perspectives and I unpack their fears in front of me. And then I draw. I write. I compose melodies--anything to get this constant stream of ideas out of me and doing something productive. So of course I'm going to be standing up against power abuses in religion, unpacking every way this infiltrates into our lives and all of its impacts. Of course I'm going to dissect colonialism and present ways we can do better. Face and push through the fear that has us trying to lord over others without realising. Of course I'm going to reach out to anyone even vaguely like me that they might not have to be alone in it. I might not have to be alone in it as well. And of course I'm going to understand them perfectly.
Is it a skill? Sure. Is it a neurotype? Absolutely. It's myself, the 'me' I never understood how to be until I understood everyone else. Is it a disability? It disrupts any ability I have to do anything else I or anyone else might want me to do with my days. It tires me out. It overloads me in ways there aren't really any normalised ways to explain and I can't say no to it when I feel compelled to do something. It impacts my mental health. It limits me. But it's who I am. Why would I want to try to be anything else?
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