Wondering about Li Tianchen's powers being related to touch and how that informs his relationships with others.
There are three people we really see him interact with who know of his powers: Qian Jin, Li Tianxi, Liu Xiao.
Qian Jin always wears gloves in the present day, something that shows his careful personality, but is also likely habit from interacting with Li Tianchen considering he never wore them as a cop. Qian Jin doesn't truly trust Li Tianchen, even as he plans to use him for the same powers he shields himself from. Their relationship should be closer to parent-child, considering their circumstances, but is instead more a fragile balance of mutually using each other as tools. Qian Jin maintains distance, always seeking the next betrayal. There's no trust between them though, so betrayal is inevitable.
Li Tianxi doesn't wear gloves and willingly takes Li Tianchen's hand when offered. To some extent she is conscious of being used, but that's still her brother, and so she doesn't shield herself from him. For them as siblings, touch used to be a source of comfort, guidance, and protection all in one. Over time though, that's become twisted. But Tianxi still lets Tianchen use her and Tianchen still sees what he's doing as some form of protection. There's trust here at first, but it's stretched thin, and love can only try to paper over the gaps. Which is why Tianxi eventually reaches her breaking point and runs away. She didn't entirely give up on their relationship though. Even to the end, she was willing to save her brother, despite what he'd become.
Liu Xiao offers Li Tianchen his hand. It's reminiscent of shiguang, especially of the hospital scene when they do the Chen Bin dive by mutual agreement. But also a mirror of Li Tianchen offering Li Tianxi his hand as he uses her.
Liu Xiao's overall relationship with Li Tianchen is a dark mirror of both the twins' relationship and of shiguang, but with the added element that his "friendship" is conditional. With the twins and shiguang, there's still faith beneath any hurt they may cause each other. It's a two-way street. For Liu Xiao, he says Li Tianchen has to "earn" his friendship. The onus is always on Li Tianchen to prove himself in some way. And Li Tianchen is in a position where he needs to believe he's in control because the alternative is too horrifying to consider. So Liu Xiao says "jump" and Li Tianchen asks "how high?"
Liu Xiao can trust that Li Tianchen won't betray him. He is in control of the situation and in control of Li Tianchen. Li Tianxi is dead, Qian Jin in custody. He can't go to the police because they've cottoned onto the idea of powers and he's left a trail of bodies in his wake. At this stage, Li Tianchen has no other ties left but Liu Xiao.
Liu Xiao offers his hand. It's not gloved. It doesn't need to be.
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something really gets to me about eiffel and hera talking to themselves while addressing each other - in am i alone now? and the watchtower in particular. i can't say this to you, but you're still the person i want to tell it to. i know there's no way you can hear me, but if you can...
eiffel talks to himself a lot, and he is very used to being alone with no one paying much attention to the things he says, so i'm not sure he ever realized exactly how much until he was on the hephaestus. in the early days of the mission, i imagine hera responded to a lot of eiffel's asides and sort of embarrassed them both. and then that sort of... shifted. their relationship shifted, they got comfortable being around each other, and eiffel's conversations with himself started including hera, too. i like the idea of that as an establishing moment: that, at some point, there was a first time eiffel said something in an empty room, and hera was so used to him talking to himself that she didn't realize it was meant for her, and he asked her, "hera? are you there?"
i imagine hera still talked to eiffel, too, when they all thought he was dead. with each day increasingly longer and more difficult, that she would vent her frustrations to the empty comms room the same way he would've encouraged her to when he was there. she can't talk to anyone the way she can talk to him, and they just... keep talking to each other, even when they can't. they are so much a part of each other, the voice of encouragement and comfort in each other's heads. for so long, all they can really do for each other is talk, and they maintain that connection even in absence. they ask each other "are you there?" like reaching for each other's hands in the dark.
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So, the season finale of Hazbin Hotel came out last night.
Spoilers ahead
I was never part of the Hazbin Hotel or Helluva Boss fandom(s), though I have been watching Helluva Boss since about midway through when season one was being released. I only watched the pilot for Hazbin Hotel maybe six months to a year ago, and I only ever watched it once. I never kept up with VivziePop or whatever was happening behind the scenes. I watched Hazbin Hotel as it came out the past few weeks, I’ve watched some TikToks about it over the past week, and I read through a few (like, three) of the character’s wiki pages like, yesterday.
So, with all of my inexperience in the fandom and in this universe, I’m going to try to predict how the show is going to end.
Kind of.
Well, I’m going to make a prediction.
I think Angel Dust will be the last resident of the hotel we see get redeemed.
Angel was the first resident of the hotel. It’s only fitting that he’d be the last (that we see, anyway).
I think that season one was almost like a set-up season. The main characters and their characterizations/arcs have been established. The main problem, the extermination, has been temporarily dealt with. It’s been proven that the main objective in the show, redeeming sinners through the Hazbin Hotel, is possible. Seeds of a bigger plot and future trouble have been planted.
Now that the bigger plot things are out of the way, I think the show will be able to (hopefully) slow the pace down now and really focus on the hotel itself and the redemption process of the sinners that choose to be there, along with the individual characters and their personal journeys and arcs.
I think that Sir Pentious getting redeemed and making it into Heaven proved that the concept of the hotel can work, so now that they have the bigger, newly built hotel, they’ll start to get more residents. We’ll meet and bond with more characters as the seasons go on and they’ll go through the hotel and eventually get redeemed and go to Heaven.
I think that during all of this, for the next few seasons, we’ll see Angel work towards redeeming himself too. At this point, he’s accepted the hotel. He’s accepted his place there and he’s been visibly getting better. We’ll see him continue his path to redemption while also dealing with Valentino, his contract with him, and any other personal conflicts that arise.
I think that partway through the show, we’ll see Angel start to kind of put off becoming fully redeemed. Maybe he’ll just slow down, but I think we’ll see him become more apprehensive about completing his redemption.
At this point, he’ll probably already be in an official relationship with Husk, and his situation with Valentino might be resolved or at least not as much of an issue anymore. I think he’ll start putting off officially moving on into Heaven because he realizes that he doesn’t want to leave his friends behind. He won't want to leave the friends he’s made at the hotel, so even though he might be ready or almost ready to go to Heaven, he’ll just keep putting it off.
I think Angel’s ascension to Heaven will be the big series finale. I think that it’ll be a big emotional moment. Angel will accept that it’s time to move on, and there will be an emotional scene where he says goodbye to Charlie (who, as a Hellborn demon and not a mortal soul, can’t go to Heaven like the other sinners), and Vaggie (who will choose to stay with Charlie and has no desire to go back to Heaven), and probably Alastor (who loves his power and control too much to want anything to do with redemption himself) and maybe Niffty (I’m undecided about whether she’ll try for redemption, but I’m thinking no, at least as of right now). If Husk stays behind, that’ll be an absolutely heartbreaking goodbye too, but I’m thinking that, at some point in the show, Husk might decide to try for redemption as well, so maybe he and Angel are going together and saying their goodbyes together.
I think we’ll get a teary goodbye for the people Angel is leaving behind in Hell, but we’ll also get a joyous reunion scene where he meets up with all the redeemed souls in Heaven as well. He’ll get to see all the former residents we got to meet throughout the show, and maybe he’ll even have a moment where he gets to reunite with his sister, too. It’ll be a somewhat bittersweet moment, but a happy one overall, because Angel Dust, the first resident of the Hazbin Hotel, who didn’t take it seriously in the beginning and thought redemption wasn’t possible, who went through so much in Hell and who didn’t think things could get better for him, will have finally completed the journey to redemption and moved on to Heaven.
And then maybe we’ll get an epilogue-esque scene or series of clips of Charlie and Vaggie happily continuing to help redeem sinners in the Hazbin Hotel, of Angel and the other redeemed souls happily living their best afterlives in Heaven, of the redeemed sinners meeting and welcoming new redeemed souls into Heaven as they come in.
And maybe, taking place some time in the future, maybe years after Angel goes to Heaven, we’ll get a moment of Charlie and Vaggie, and any of the other original cast that stayed in Hell, being allowed to take a day trip into Heaven. Maybe we’ll get to see them reunite with the redeemed sinners in Heaven in person for the first time since the redeemed souls left, and it’ll be a happy reunion where they’re all just happy to see each other again and catch up. Maybe at this point the show has already established a way for the redeemed souls to still be able to communicate and keep in touch with those in Hell, so maybe this isn’t the first time the two groups have spoken to each other since the redeemed souls left the hotel, but maybe it is the first time since the redeemed souls left that they’ve been able to see each other in person, so the teary hugs all around are expected and maybe even appreciated.
Maybe the show will end on a happy note, where our first and most skeptical hotel resident ends up happily redeemed with a partner who loves and values him for who he is and friends who care for him, and where our main character is able to fulfill her dreams of helping her subjects find the best version of themselves and move on to a better place.
Maybe the extermination no longer happens, so there’s no more deadlines. Maybe being redeemed is no longer just an escape from second death. Not every soul in Hell is going to want to change, but for Charlie, it’s not about redeeming every soul. The Hazbin Hotel started as a way to decrease Hell’s population so that the extermination would no longer be necessary, so that no more souls, however awful, would be needlessly killed, but Charlie knows that the extermination was never about overpopulation, and yet she’s still going through with the hotel and she’s still working to redeem sinners.
So, maybe the extermination is a thing of the past, but Charlie will still continue running the hotel and giving sinners another chance, because everyone deserves another chance. Because Hell isn’t forever, and despite whatever some people did when they were alive, they deserve the chance to try to redeem themselves. They deserve the chance to try to be better. And that’s Charlie’s dream. She just wants to give her subjects the opportunity to do better, and not everyone will take it, but in the end, we'll see that all the effort was worth it for those few souls who do.
So, to recap: I think Angel Dust will be the last sinner we see get redeemed. We might get clips and/or mentions of souls after him, but he’ll be the last character to go to Heaven who’s journey to redemption we’ve seen. In the series finale, he’ll be the last major character to be redeemed, and we’ll get to see him live his best life in Heaven while Charlie happily stays behind in Hell to help guide more souls along the path to redemption.
Or at least, that’s something I’d like to see, anyway.
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Niche history ramble(also boy king mention at the end ofc) //
I was reading abt Maximillian I today, the second Habsburg emperor, bcs ive prev read about his father who I think is very interesting. But omg somehow this guy is even more interesting, but in a completely different way(I like his father Frederick III bcs I think his life is very funny ooc, but Maximilian I is genuinely really cool!) Also it's surprising to me that it took me this long to read about him, considering I very vividly remember seeing his portrait in a museum in Vienna. It's weird looking at it being used as the display pic for his wiki page bcs im like ...I've seen that in real life omg....
He's referred to as "The Last Knight"(as well as being nicknamed "Heart of Steel") And god I love now having random knowledge, cause I'm reading this like "ha, how very Don Quixote of him" and then the very next line in the biography was like, historians question whether he genuinely was like a knight or if he was a Don Quixotic figure 😭😭 glad to see I was on mark. Anyways, I wonder if Cervantes knew abt this, like I wonder if him being popularized as the last knight was a widely known thing back then. It's funny how Don Quixote was written at the end of the 16th century, but even back in the beginning of the century, being a knight was still kinda an outdated thing. I like how the two views on Maximillian I are either that he was the Last Knight or the first Rennaisance prince who had Machiavellian ideals. It fits into my weird obsession w those two works(The Prince and Don Quixote)
Anyways that being said. Boy King au Fernando is def like this, except he has literally nothing to back it up djfkkglg. Like at least Maximilian I was actually out there being insane. Fernando just sits in his cozy reading room, fantasizing while reading The Prince, and commissioning suits of armor as decoration(thats what he says. The real purpose is to dress up in them so he can feel cool.) I think this is honestly a reason he goes along with the marriage. He begrudgingly finds Seb's family history to be very cool and interesting, and he isn't opposed to being around it 🤭 Well, begrudgingly isn't the right word. He's very earnestly obsessed with it, but he can never tell Seb that bcs Seb will literally never let it go.
Seb just finds him staring up at paintings of Seb's ancestors, and Fernando, tears in eyes, hand on his heart, proclaims "I'll continue your legacy!!!" Seb is both mocking him like "he's not even your relative" but also has tears in his eyes like omg he's my family 🥺 he's accepted being my family 🥹
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