#vivziepop critique if you squint

[wishful-thinking64]

HH Rewrite Related Post #03

I've finally finished Lavanya's (renamed Charlie) key information for her character sheet! And with it comes a bit of lore for what I have in store. __________ [FULL NAME & NICKNAME] 🞂 LAVANYA MORNINGSTAR. 🞂 PREFERS TO BE CALLED ANYA. 🞂 With her first name meaning beauty and grace, Lucifer & Lilith thought it was the perfect name to give to their little princess. [D.O.B] 🞂 BORN DECEMBER 31ST, 2002. 🞂 Anya can't help but see her birthday as a bad omen due to having been born on the last day of the year when Hell's annual Extermination takes place. She'll put on a smile for her parents when in their presence but otherwise she'll be sulking in her room, silently wishing for the day to be over.

[AGE] 🞂 BIOLOGICALLY 22. [SPECIES] 🞂 HALF BAPHOMET DEMON (OTHER HALF UNKNOWN.)

[GENDER & SEX] 🞂 FEMALE.

[SEXUALITY] 🞂 BISEXUAL.

[SOCIAL STATUS] 🞂 PRINCESS OF HELL.

[ROYAL EMBLEM] 🞂 THE FORBIDDEN APPLE OF KNOWLEDGE. [IMMEDIATE FAMILY] 🞂 LILITH MORNINGSTAR = MOM. 🞂 LUCIFER MORNINGSTAR = DAD.

[EXTENDED FAMILY] 🞂 1 GRANDFATHER. 🞂 1 HALF UNCLE. 🞂 5 UNCLES & 3 AUNTS. 🞂 2 COUSINS. 🞂 Anya's never met most of her extended family thanks to two main reasons. The first being that most of them are in Heaven and the second but more important reason is that most of them have been and STILL are missing with the exception of her aunt, Adina Delacroix, and her daughters, Raquel & Amariel. In the absence of Elohim, Jesus (yes, he's the half uncle), and the 7 Heavenly Virtues, Adina was selected as Heaven's de jure leader as she is the only angel who both birthed and mothered an Archangel's children.

[FRIENDS] 🞂 ONLY 6. 🞂 As Princess of Hell and heir to the throne, her parents made sure that their daughter understood that she had to be careful choosing her friends as there’ll always be people who just want to use her money and her status. Her parents' words would lead to Anya's very seldom way of thinking when it comes to making friends as she would make her very first friend in the 3rd Grade. Over the years she’s amassed a tightly knit friend group consisting of six other demons excluding herself. Sometimes she jokes about them being the new Seven Deadly Sins.

[RELATIONSHIP STATUS] 🞂 FORMERLY DATED LAZARUS VON ELDRITCH. 🞂 CURRENTLY DATING VALORIS CARMINE. 🞂 Going from dating a fellow aristocrat in Hell’s hierarchy to dating the daughter of an Overlord isn’t too much of a leap in logic but it is still a noticeable difference. Thanks to her parents not many people publicly commented on their daughter’s romantic life (lest they wish to be publicly executed or suffer true torture for the rest of their damned afterlife) though people have always wondered what caused the end of her and Lazarus’ relationship along with the beginning of Anya’s relationship with Valoris. At the very least she seems to be happy with Valoris. [CORE PERSONALITY TRAITS] 🞂 AMIABLE. 🞂 AUTHENTIC. 🞂 AUTOCRATIC (you’ve gotta be a bit bossy if you’re going to be the future face of Hell.) 🞂 CLUMSY. 🞂 COMPASSIONATE. 🞂 CREATIVE. 🞂 DETERMINED. 🞂 INDECISIVE. 🞂 NAIVE. 🞂 OPTIMISTIC. 🞂 OVEREMOTIONAL. 🞂 SCATTERBRAINED.

[CORE ASPIRATIONS] 🞂 HAVING SINNERS ACHIEVE REDEMPTION AT THE HAPPY HOTEL. 🞂 PROVE TO EVERYONE THAT SINNER’S CAN BE REDEEMED. 🞂 DISCOVER MORE WAYS TO IMPROVE HELL. 🞂 HELPING OTHERS TO THE BEST OF HER ABILITY. 🞂 BEING A GOOD PARTNER. 🞂 NOT BEING A FAILURE.

[FEARS] 🞂 AUTOPHOBIA & KAKORRHAPHIOPHOBIA. 🞂 Autophobia is the polarizing fear of being abandoned and alone. If one day, the majority of Hell’s denizens suddenly decided to turn their backs on Anya, she wouldn’t care as long as her friends and family remained at her side. However, if her friends and family had ALL abandoned her, not only would she genuinely have a full blown mental breakdown and sob for months, she’d never be the same again. This does not bode well at all with her other biggest fear being Kakorrhaphiophobia which is the fear of failure. Anya does her best to follow the expectations set on her from her citizens, her parents, and even herself. So when she fails to meet this internal quota of hers, she’ll feel like shit but she’ll convince herself to do better in the future and focus on the Happy Hotel staff and its residents. [THOUGHTS ON HOTEL STAFF] 🞂 FAIRLY POSITIVE. 🞂 For the most part, Anya can see that everybody is trying their best to keep the hotel in business even if they don’t believe in the thought of redemption. She has faith in at least five out of her seven employees coming together to help her make the Hazbin Hotel work.

__________ I hope you guys liked reading Anya's character sheet and I'd like to know what character you'd like to see me write about next. I'll probably do this through a poll so keep your eyes peeled for that and I'll see you guys later!

[hell-is-not-an-excuse]

Not so sorted Ghostfuckers thoughts

Firstly, this episode was an improvement over the last few, at least in my opinion - That isn't to say that it's great, or even particularly good, but I can say that I was more invested in this episode, even if only a little. It had more focus on the original concept of the show with an I.M.P mission finally not just being reduced to a short... Though the mission still doesn't take full priority, something I will expand on momentarily.

Before that though, I'll start off with the things I did actually like.

The bankruptcy joke got a quick giggle out of me. It may be that I'm still an immature little homonculus, but the jokes that don't fall into the unnecessarily crude/sexual category still elicit a reaction from me.

This joke got me too - I know that this was almost definitely intended as a jab towards critics, however it loops back around to being funny to me, as I joke a lot about being "objectively correct".

These frames of Moxxie specifically - I love him a lot and wish he was in a show that took better care with its character writing

I enjoyed seeing the flashback designs for the I.M.P crew - Moxxie isn't too different, but I actually sort of prefer the others past looks here.

Lastly, this specific moment/line! This is a massive improvement over what was given to us in those leaked boards - In the original boards, I had a hard time believing that Millie would have this suicidal fit out of seemingly nowhere because... Some other demon told her she was a bad wife? This is a much more "in character" line for Millie, given what we already knew about her as an audience (which admittedly, wasn't a lot, but she never gave off the sort of insecurity/suicidal ideation that the original boards appeared to have been pushing for).

I think I've gotten all the praise I can wring out of my system - Now comes all the issues I take with this newest episode. These criticisms come in no particular order.

There's the usual thought that comes whenever a new episode drops - The swearing and sexual humour is too frequent and over the top. I'm an enjoyer of well placed crude and sexual humour, but this isn't well placed. With every second line containing profanity, innuendo, or explicit sexual content, they become less and less special and interesting to hear, to the point that watching characters interact becomes a slog.

Blitz is supposedly having this month long breakdown because... He had a breakup that wasn't really a breakup? He himself admits they were never in a relationship, and gets upset at the concept that him and Stolas will never be together. Obvious criticism of Stolitz notwithstanding, until Apology Tour, there have been no genuine moments of "love" between the two - This all comes off more as Blitz mourning this potential (now dead) relationship because the writers feel it's time for him to do so, without selling to the audience why he would give a damn about Stolas in the first place. I hardly believe Stolas and his pining back in Ozzie's, let alone the shameless display that we're getting now.

Speaking of Stolas, this is a perfect segue into what I said I was going to expand upon further down in this post; despite this episode having an I.M.P mission be a main setting, that's all it is - A setting. I wouldn't mind so much if this was purely for character building, but it's yet another instance of things happening because of Stolas. This feathered fuck haunts the narrative even when he's not present! The mission is presented more as an avenue of helping Blitz "get over" Stolas as opposed to just being a job that the members of I.M.P need to, you know, live.

Speaking of, how financially stable are I.M.P and its employees? Despite having nearly two seasons to expand on the concept of a business owned by the lowest caste of Hell's systems, nothing is done with it. With a setup like that, there should at least be some narrative drama involving the company facing challenges and instances of being in financial dire straights. Instead of this however, Blitz is able to blow a months worth of money on useless knick-knacks and owls to burn? With no real show of consequence as a result of this?

While I enjoyed seeing a bit of Millie backstory and her relationship to Blitz, Helluva still suffers from its "tell don't show" rule. Millie mentions she loves to have fun with Blitz, but we have never seen an instance of these two having fun together in show.

Honestly, the backstory of Blitz/Millie's meet and subsequent partnership should have been its own episode; we could have actually seen her steal the target from I.M.P as a solo assassin, we could have seen the state of I.M.P before her addition - If you wanted a bit of shipping fuel, you could also have an instance of Moxxie being too starstruck by this mysterious, wrathful rival to take a shot on her. So many possibilities! All wasted.

Millie's development episode shouldn't have come at the tail end of season two - She's been in the show since episode ONE, she deserved something in the first season to flesh her out.

I do not buy her reasoning for looking up to Blitz; if she thinks of herself as only a simple country girl or a brute, this would have been nice to actually see hinted to us throughout the show.

The casual ableism in the joke about the Hotel Owner's new cleaner - Not only is the way he is depicted simply dehumanising, framing him as this object of disgust rather than a person, this is driven further by being called a "poor thing" and only being reacted to with vague disgust by Blitz and Millie. And of course he's barely verbal, with the exception of a funny swear word (/sarc).

The whole sequence where Blitz is alone and being tormented by visions of Millie and Tilla is... It sure exists. Subtlety is lost in most of this dialogue here as once again, we are bluntly told what the problem with Blitz is - We know he makes decisions that fuck over others for his own benefit, we know he's selfish. We've seen this time and again!! This is not something that needed to be explicitly spoken for what feels like the millionth time in this (so far) two-season run.

Speaking of mothers! Millie and Loona get shafted into a role of taking care of their respective man for the episode - As a matter of fact, both their conversations involve Blitz or Moxxie. After nearly two seasons, I don't think they've had a conversation that wasn't about their male coworkers/relationships.

What is an infestor demon? Have they shown up before? What in God's name am I supposed to know about them? Somehow when it comes to worldbuilding, the need to explain everything explicitly is gone.

Why is Blitz being emotionally tortured again while Stolas sees no real consequence? This is getting to be a really tired pattern.

The whole ghostfucking bit was already testing my patience within the first couple of minutes.

Anyway, that's all I have of like... More surface level critiques of this episode. I'll probably make a few more minor posts about this episode later and elaborate on some new thing my brain is sticking to.