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understandableparadox · 11 days

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A comprehensive rewrite of hazbin hotel

GUESS WHO'S NOT TIRED ANYMORE AND LEGALLY ALLOWED TO SPEAK, THAT'S RIGHT!!!! My lawyer has advised me that, while i'm allowed to set the joke up, I'm not legally obligated to finish it.

i'm fueled by unimaginable power and hubris, also i have a lot of free time so I would like to posit my ideas of a possible rewrite of the hazbin hotel series. this of course is not to say i am any more or less talented then vivziepop, nor that i overall hate their work, i just think that it could have been better. also i still really like helluva-boss, bring that shark guy back he was really funny.

for the rewrite, I'm going to give myself the same number of episodes to work with.

(also if you though i was long winded in the last post, Lmao, Lol, Laughing out loud. that wasent even a fucking fraction of the wind inside of me.)

Section one: systems and redemption.

To being a good rewrite of the series we must first understand create What Is Wrong. i think hazbin hotel is prime ground for the idea "if a system is rotten, rip it out."

luckily, we already have a system that is pretty darn rotten, we just need to give this more pulp for the mold to have its special little pedestal.

What Is Hell: it is a receptacle of souls deemed unworthy of heaven.

To me that sounds like you Start Worthy and as you go through your life you make decisions that can be considered Bad and Good and the more of each you make, the more likely you are to go to one place to another.

Problem though, we need a Book. a book that explains why you are in fact a naughty lil munchkin for not dropping a kudos on your buddies funny lil fic on a03! and yes we are steering directly into good place territory, do not worry this car ride is scripted and will only lightly graze your favorite actor.

we are going to work on the concept of "Commonly accepted to be Bad and commonly accepted to be "Good". does that sound boring? of course it does, that's why we are adding something Right in the middle.

Purgatory! the realm between heaven and hell! the area where god kobys those darn unbaptized babies, just three points those little bundles of joy from half court into the realm of eternal Who cares ism.

how does it work? its a somewhat de-saturated landscape that explores the deep existential horror of corporate encroachment on our daily life. if you are a soul that has been proven to be not particularly good but not particularly Good either, you show up in purgatory where an angel gives you a simple set of instructions.

They are to review 100 lives on earth and document each of their deeds as either Good or Bad. this of course comes with a vary handy and user friendly interface. What happens when they review 100 people? well depending on their job performance, they are either allowed into heaven or sent to hell. (hint hint, can you guess how you get a "attaboy" from your heavenly supervisor?)

anyways this system is designed to suck. a random asshole shouldn't be allowed to say "yeah you were bad at that time". its the point, the system is bad, its a bad system!

the only thing that defends it is the seemingly random nature of it and its ambiguity, no one remembers being in purgatory and only certain angels know that they are sending their divine judgement to a third party source.

its also the stupidest and funniest way i could possible think of for how to judge someone. yeah kyle from accounting is going to look over the vast life of someone and click the big colorful yes or no while drinking his slightly less neon green baja blast and chicken quesadilla (they were out of avocado ranch, it was a travesty).

so how do you get into heaven from hell? Simple, either you don't, or you do something so unbelievably selfless or noble, god accidentally notices and does a patch check. the last one is so fucking unlikely that more likely then not, it will not happen. (Wink Wink WinkWinkWinkWinkWinkWink, fuck i have something in my eye...)

Section two: How to structure the episodes

EPISODIC, WE ARE GOING EPISODIC, I DON'T CARE IF YOUR DAD LETS YOU HAVE LINEAR STORY TELLING! IF YOU WANTED LINEAR STORY TELLING YOU SHOULD HAVE GONE TO YOUR DADS HOUSE!

why episodic? because We Are Not Ready For Plot. we are like people in a dessert, we just got rescued. of course our first idea is to stuff our face full of a bowl of babushkas freshest hottest strogonoff that one can feasibly contain, but non non non my friend, we have to take it slow. drip feed, we need to take it slow or else we get this thing called re-feeding syndrome, that shit is real and it can kill you.

anyways, we are not aware of the world, we are not aware of the characters, we don't fucking know anyone yet. you cant walk up to a potluck in a different company and expect to bite into the macaroni and have it be your fave, shits going to be weird, shits going to have chitlins or raisins or some other insane bullshit.

so we take it slow. all of season one is the same follow through thread, its the first half of a year starting at the end of the extermination and fuck around for about 6 months, why? because the extermination is going to be next seasons finale.

another change is I'm going to blatantly steal unnus annus's idea and at the start of every episode, right under the name of the episode we get to see how much time has passed between episodes.

a little time may pass between episodes, a lot of time may pass between episodes, we don't need to see every single day, some of them are just going to be boring so we skip em!

Section 3: Characters and how they will be different:

Main cast:

Charlie morning-star:

still naive but crank it up, has only learned that hell is supposed to be the land of punishment.

Vary adamant that her grandfather, God, would not be so cruel as to eternally damn millions, thus believes she can make a few tweaks to the system and make it work.

Crank Up the Daddy Issues. Had a major falling out with her dad over her idolizing her grandfather, said some things she isn't exactly happy she said.

I'm going to be liberal with charlies age, she is the child of Lilith and Lucifer, she was born after the abrahamic times but she is still pretty damn old despite people still treating her like she's early 20 something.

instead of going directly to the hotel, she crashed in heaven (this will be shown in a flash back later one, we do not see heaven in season one) for a 100 years after her fight with her dad in the home of Micheal her uncle. there she became Uber Besties with Emily the seraphim who has the same problem as her with the fact that she whole-heartedly believes in the system, both of them came up with the idea of creating a way for sinners to ascend to heaven through becoming better people as a addendum to the current system. sharing the belief that god is kind and would not create a system that is infinitely cruel.

after leaving heaven, she returns to hell and creates the hotel through her own magic, which explains why its slightly ramshackle in appearance.

she has lived alone in the hotel for exactly three hundred years because she forgot that she was supposed to actually advertise that the hotel is open. afterwards, it has had vary middling numbers, never more then five at a time.

charlie and vaggie have been a thing for maybe 200 years. She crash landed in one of the rooms with her wings already ripped, charlie assumed she was a guest, thus never really learned she was angel.

Stout pacifist, will never raise a hand if she can help it, which she doesn't need to. she is a freak of nature and no sinner can actually hurt her without something like an angelic weapon perhaps a small localized tactical nuke. this is for some more slap stick stuff, i think it would be funny if someone just chopped her head off and she just chased after it while scoldeing them about the golden rule.

Up the condescension by a tiny bit, has major "Little bird" syndrome with sinners and feels as though any problem they face can be solved with a little tender love and care. vaggie managed to get out of this phase after year 50 in the relationship.

Hack, cough, ack, ah what the fuck, what was that werid cough i had every time i said a specific name? damn, glad its gone now.

Barbiel

the name change is necessary, im not calling a her fucking vaggie if its just a vag joke.

its the name of a semi obscure fallen angel, i think we are good.

Former guardian angel, her job was to try to guide people that the archangels have chosen to lead fuller life's of virtue, she did so diligently and applied to become a angel of reckoning, someone who comes to the call of an exorcism to rip apart demons possessing creatures, code named: Exterminators.

here she falls under the command of Agent Lute, who told her that due to her prowess, she would be given a chance to partake in a specialty mission. she was told nothing about it until she was already in the thick of it. to her, it felt...Wrong. these demons didn't fight back, they didn't scream in weird garbled latin. she saw a few fighting but almost every time her spear skewered through the backs of sinners. she stopped when she was about to skewer a soul she personally guarded, starring up at her in abject fear. lute confronts her, gives her the ass beating of a life time and hurtles her through hell where she lands in one of the cozy beds of the hotel.

Up the military girl function of her, she lives by regimented rules, and thinks that a sinner needs the same regiment and discipline, somewhat unironically believes in the bootstrap parable.

Still struggling to associate humans with sinners, still has some disdain for them. Baby steps.

barbail works as chief of hotel security with her angel steel spear she """found""".

unironically has the build of that "I do want to be strong like man who looks pretty, i want to be strong like bitch that fights bears in the forest". thick arms, torso and legs. she can toss someone to another section of pentagram city with charlie perched on her other bicep.

Why did barbial fall in love with charlie? she saw in her a genuine unmistakable kindness and desire to help people and wanted to chase after that, at some point she couldn't distinguish it from charlie and started chasing after her.

bulldog for charlie, keeps forgetting that charlie is damn near indestructible.

stronger then most sinners, not the strongest in hell by a long-shot, willing to put in the work to close that gap.

Quick interjection:

How do sinners work?

sinners work on a few simple rules:

sinners are marked with the sin that ruled their life, this is either decided by their purgatory agent or in vary extreme cases, it can be attributed to them by the ring rulers who note humans who exemplify them more.

sinners appearances are dictated by the sin, their death and the grievances of their life. the axis being that some sins have certain animals that create the base, the death creates a modification or override, and the severity of their evil dictates how monstrous they are. a demon that looks more human is usually a dangerous sign as it means they are working Extra Hard to hide the fact that they were Extra Naughty.

every sinner can create a contract with someone, given they are manifests of their soul, the contract is binding. Contracts must be mutually beneficial in some way, you can take as much as you want but their must be some sort of give. you cannot be forced into signing a contract unless through a gamble. having multiple contracts does not make you stronger inherently. the only way a contract can make you stronger is if someone breaks it, in which case you can decide a appropriate punishment for the offending party. a vary popular punishment is absorbing the soul. this allows you to gain more power. though this can be risky as you stack up numbers as you are pushing yourself further from a human soul and more into a demon. this can get you Ejected from pentagram city and into the lower rings, where more likely then not stronger demons will rip ya to shreds as your network is no longer there. lastly, every contract must include some sort of escape clause, this can be absurdly convoluted or overwhelmingly simple. A hellborn can make a deal with any sinner, but a sinner cannot make a deal with a demon. they can trap a demon until they decide to do so, but you cannot force a hellborn into a deal. this translate into the demon setting all the terms of a contract, the benefits, the punishment and the escape clause. getting a demon to break contract is like hitting the god damn lotto because wooo buddy you are about to absorb a Shit Ton of power.

in short: must be mutually beneficial, has a wide range of punishments if you fuck it up, must have a escape clause.

Angel dust

how did they die?: angel was the son of a mob don who in secret worked at a gay bar as a drag performer in order to get closer to the bar tender who he had a crush on. a lower rank member caught them, the father refused to believe it so he sent his son over to "prove he ain't some glittery prancing f-g.". in the car ride over, he saw the bartender walking into the bar to start their shift, and instead of risk letting a bullet hit him, he sprayed and prayed in the car, causing it to veer into traffic, killing everyone inside.

most of the story i have for him lines up with the story. he has family in hell but refuses to join them, meaning he had no network while in hell, meaning he turned to being an entertainer where valentino took note of his amateur work and signed him on.

his contract benefits state that any company owned by vox corps has a account for him that will pay for his expenses. Outside of work hours, any labor stipulations (the set of clauses that allow valentino to do his abusive bullshit) are non applicable. if angel dust is killed, valentinos soul will become property of asmodeous.

the escape clause: the death out noted above. angel dusts contract can be temporarily bought out, while technically not an out, it still means he is not directly owned by valentino in that time frame. the final one is that if valentino can no provide proper monetary financial compensation to angel dust. this clause is to protect valentino in case of bankruptcy to save him from having to break contract if his cash runs out.

at the moment, he is at the hotel because charlie is currently buying out his contract again and again to give him a reason to be at the hotel and away from valentino. angel dust finds this deeply annoying as charlie uses this as a to essentially Hoist her teaching on to angel dust.

despite finding it annoying, he is relatively happy that he has a running excuse to stay away from valentino. if he sees valentino he will pretend to be just as angry about not being able to come into work. this sometimes backfires as valentino will offer him time at the studio since he has free time. the moment he steps in, even if charlie has his contract bought out, he is now back under valentinos control until the work day is done.

angel dust has become a bit of a recluse, he rarely leaves the hotel and tries to stay in his room. unfortunately as the first and only guest of the hotel, he feels obligated to keep charlie happy by participating.

obvious crush on husk, reminds him a bit of the bartender he used to know. sometimes gets angry that they can't click like they used to, has a problem of projecting the bartenders virtues onto husk.

Still vary much into drag, passes a lot of the time creating new outfits and styling wigs. a vary useful part of his power is being able to create silk from his fingers. he posts most of what he makes online.

treats his pig wiggles like those hyper pampered pit bulls you see on tik tok. the editing is done by a site, he sucks with social media and isn't aware that people are commenting on his videos or posts. which is great for the mental honestly.

still has a drug problem, charlie doesn't allow drugs into the hotel but he manages to sneak them in and takes them at night.

Alastor

They are now replaced with a png of Louie armstrong

for real though, make this man black, two sugars, no cream and get that fucking at the crown ass bob with swept bangs into the depths of hell where it fucking belongs

No Voodoo, no symbols no fucking nothing. we dont need tentacles, we dont need puppets we dont need carnivals we dont need any of that shit to make this bitch spooky.

tentacles are now replaced with wires s- "BUT DOX, DOX, WIRES ARE A TV THING!!! WIRES ARE SUCH A TV THI-" gET OUT OF MY HEAD! anyways, wires are a tech thing. if you have ever seen a radio center and looked into their server room, you know that its a fucking wire hell hole.

antlers are replaced with antenna

symbols are replaced with this

(this gives us the added benefits of Sigils that the average person will not know or understand so extra spooky, and lines that can travel across surfaces when making a deal. )

how did they die? alastor was a prolific radio talk show personality, they played jazz tracks and took in anonymous calls, he was also a fucking serial killer. he enjoyed hunting people, he would take the small amount of info he received from calls and used that to find and kill them. why did he do it? because no one knew what he looked like, no one could match his voice off air to his name. he did it because he was bored and wanted to do something thrilling. he died when someone decided to hunt him. someone finally got a picture of him killing someone. he found a picture of him dragging a body into the bayou stabbed into his office door with a stag horn, warning that if he isn't where he left the body by midnight, then his mother would take the bullet meant for him. alastor refuses to talk further about it.

alastor is marked by the sin of pride.

alastor showed up at the hotel after his disappearance in hell, originally portraying himself as the second person ever to want to better himself as a person, doing so by taking a managerial roll within the hotel and even gathering people much to charlies joy.

he is vary interested in keeping his cards close to his chest. hates showing power, hates making threats, hates standing out. he wants to be anonymous.

his room is a underground radio broadcast center that he carved out.

He is Really good at twisting charlies heart strings with his poor boy act, a fact he uses to sway her towards making choices that are more beneficial, rejecting certain requests, cutting herself out of deals, forgiving him if he has a relapse by crying and saying it was self defense.

i want him to be very manipulative, i want him to take more joy in runing people by being the devil on their shoulder whispering horrible advice to them. he dose not give a shit about charlie or the hotel, he wants to see someone high and might crash and burn. he cant kill charlie but he truly wants to see if he can ruin charlies life for the shits and giggles.

throughout the season, he serves as a minor antagonist that's also part of the main group as occasionally, even if he makes something goes wrong, he may catch himself actually liking the company.

he becomes bigger in later seasons but i want him to be something a little more background, we dont need to know everything about alastor, im good with him being a snarky little shit that's good at twisting people around his finger. if anything he would be written a bit like that one asshole form fosters home for imaginary friends, that guy who kept blaming shit on blu? yeah that douche. this is the only thing im slightly iffy on because i know people love alastor, so its hard to balance how much he should be in episodes and his narrative weight. but im going to trust my gut on this.

he dosent like how much he's enjoying his time at the hotel with everyone, he really dosent like how comfortable he has gotten. i want there to be a scene where he waits for charlie to barge into his studio and a caller has to ask him if hes still there to bring his attention back to his broadcast.

lets not mince pigeons and call it quail now, alastor is still a monster, but i want to toy with the idea of being a monstrous person in a world where everyone is a monster and trying to distinguish yourself among them.

his human form is his altered form, his true form is that of a horned demon made of radio receivers bound in wire, meat and dripping mud.

feels superior to vox but is still slightly jealous of him for stealing his title of "The Vox Populi Demon" as part of his plan to go into hiding.

the song "stayed gone" is recontextulized into being about vox attempt to scare alastor into staying in hiding by showing he knows Exactly where he is and alastor responding back with image shattering shit on him.

Husk

get rid of those ye ye ass eyebrows, get rid of those marquee ass wings and get this man a god damn plate of mash potatoes and steak seared in butter, we need to put some god damn pounds on this guy.

fat cat of hell, the king of gamblers row, the owner of aces high, a entertainment company that was the only material threat to the vox media empire.

how did they die?: they used to be a vages strip mini casino attraction, forced essentially to work for this shitty joint due to racking up a major dept. they found that despite being being an unlucky bastard, he was a class act, enough to make the casino a tidy profit with his natural showmanship and magic. his death was slow, he didn't entirely mind it. despite knowing he could be more, he was safe, he had a roof, he had people clapping and shouting his name, and he could drink away all the other troubles. he drank himself into a stupor and passed away in the night from blood alcohol poisoning.

Marked by the sin of sloth.

their time in hell was a perfect intersection of luck, ability and circumstance, the old owner of gamblers row was a card counter, someone who thought that they could see through any trick, which husk was more then happy to take advantage of.

he was not a great overlord, with a body that had no functional need for a liver, he essentially partied every night on the expenses he sucked out of his patrons, letting people spiral into the same dept cycles he did and then forcing them into absurd contracts, which is partially how his own attempt at a media empire started, turns out a lot of great movie directors are in hell and also suck at gambling.

he was forced into a contract after making a bet with alastor over a poker game. alastor posed as a newbie with a bit to much money that was awestruck that he was able to play at the table of a overlord, losing hand after hand until he was offered a service contract, promising to abide by the same contract if he lost the hand. a little magic here, a bit of stronger proof in husks cup and boom. the fat cat is on a leash.

husk hates the hotel, he believes charlie is overwhelmingly condescending, as she has banned alcohol, she keeps trying to get him into "mocktails" that he can serve to guests. under threat of possibly breaking contract, he has to play nice.

has lost a lot of his gusto for practical magic trick, Really good with hell magic.

somewhat enjoys having angel-dust at their bar, they don't like the weird jokes or the way they look at them sometimes but they find it nice to have someone to be a snide bastard with.

cant help but to believe sometimes that maybe charlie is on to something, i mean... its the granddaughter of god, telling him to cut drinking, say a few hell Marys and he can be absolved and go to heaven.

Nifty

How did they die?: nifty was switchboard operator, she was good at her job, went to church on sundays and gave her husband a smooch good morning and good night everyday. if anything she was a model citizen! which is really unfortunate when she found her husband and the housewife next door dancing the cupids shuffle with some extra moves. she killed both of them in a jealous rage. she was found by the police the next day in an immaculately clean house, wearing the housewife clothes and playing host to two corpses. she insisted that she was the housewife that she killed, which lead to a insanity plea. she would die in a mental hospital.

marked with the sin of envy

got into a contract with alastor because she thinks alastor is hot, honestly alastor is worried about how willing she was to give up her soul.

has to pretend to be a repentant sinner in the hotel, dosent seem to mind it. seems to deal pretty well with charlies overly doteing nature.

angel dust has noted that she has stolen a wig that looks alot like barbiels hair and refuses to acknowledge it. he has also seen her practicing a werid voice when shes alone and on her type writer.

im keeping the fan fic thing, that's really funny to me.

not a lot to change, i think she was a fine charecter with a lot of good funny moments that added a lot of levity.

Sir pentious:

how did they die?: back in fucking Victorian England, a trans man tried to put on pants, everyone said good heavens, tried to give them a lobotomy and created a hyper intelligent super villian with apathy problems that kept creating flying war zeppelins to harass the common gentry. honestly they were british and deserved it, why pentious went to hell is beyond me. they died in a gas explosion.

marked with the sin of wrath

part of me wants to leave him unchanged because i thought he was so fucking good as the secret season one redeemed but i think in the rewrite, he ends up in heaven because of the prior mentioned "God patch note". he dosent need to do the big sacrifice, its just funnier if charlie asks "hey why are you down here?" and he disappears in a god damn column of light.

has a burning hatred for doctors

the lobotomy think lasted in hell, they are like that now forever, it has done nothing to their intelligence.

surprisingly killed no one, their war zeppelins did not have any ammo in them but they were fucking scary.

the hell war zepplins do have ammo but they have also not killed anyone. it is common to get pentious insurance.

genuinely, why are you here in hell?

they went to the hotel under the idea that they would challenge two known overlords and the child of lucifer, charlie challenged him to speed run redemption. it worked.

is currently attempting to construct a rocket that will launch them into heaven.

god i fucking love pentious

Section 3: Season one?

here is where i run out of hubris, this is a show made to be written by a group of people, this is a show where i need people to bounce things around, which is why so much of hazbin hotel is fun, its made by a group of the astoundingly talented, which is where i think the disconnect is.

hazbin hotel is marked by talent, it is marked by industry giants and those who can create whatever they want, but like all fiction, everyone wonders what it would be like if things were slightly different. what if the show did not feel as though it was forced to rush through its initial season? what if they were guaranteed multiple seasons to tell a story that they wanted?

which is why i think the trend of rewriting has occurred. we like the show, but are fundamentally frustrated by it because we know it could be better then it is If, it has all these different factors.

what if the velma show wasn't written by people who fundamentally dislike the idea of the mystery gang? What if the new kung fu panda was written by people who wanted to disregard the previous movies? what if what if what if, at the end of the day, you want to know the what if and that means the series is at the bare minimum good enough to make you think about it.

I am not talented to write a full season for a show on my own that can make you want those what ifs, I do not have that follow through. i can tweak characters, i can rewrite them into something that have more meat, more comedy, more strings to pull but i do not have the talent to create a story in which you care about them on my own. So how would you do it?

Section four: Reader input

a comprehensive list of everything wrong with hazbin hotel.

quick note before i lose myself in madness, my standards for helluvaboss are non existent because its a free show on youtube. also i kinda like helluvaboss and i will indulge in any bias i damn well please.

oh and spoilers. i guess.

the greater narrative of the entire season is "White lady civilize inner city hoodlum". ex: The blind side. rich girl, affluent family yadda yadda.

the story is set up to be like amphibia, owl house, svtfoe, steven universe, that being starting as something episodic then transforming into story driven narrative. why? because we know the benefits and drawbacks, episodic starts allows us to wander the world, it allows us to understand the dynamics, we are not forced to reckon with anything because there is no deadline. characters are allowed to bloom and shine and the audience can actually get attached.

the source material is Vary Clearly formed from remnants of something out of a middle school edgelord narrative. the usage of transformation, the big spooky grins, the "and then i smile as my eyes glow and-"-isms which in most cases i don't mind because in some instances but in a vary Particular case its astoundingly annoying and that annoyance is like a mold, shit spreads quick.

the color Red. as a lover of homestuck cherubs and karkat and aradia, as someone who fucking loves the color red, it is so painful to say but holy shit tone it the fuck down, i know its hell but their are so many other colors that you can use, its everywhere, the streets, the air, the windows, the screens, the characters, i know the pride ring is represented with red but change up the palates every so often for backgrounds

the rush, this ties into the second point made but i think the story itself is rushed. we know everything way to early. i know way to much and it makes it hard to care about anything because im still trying to digest the last chunk of info. "oh ok, so they clear out hell once a year. oh hell has a heaven embassy? ok. oh that adam the angel, i though he wou- oh its every 6 months now. wait the exterminators die a lot? then why is everyone sca- people in hell already have weapons that can kill angels? w- oh we are in heaven now, ok ma- no one in heaven except for the elites know the exterminations occur? how do-" and its that, just this incessant rush to explain everything to you. notably that's just the god damn spark notes, we need to know everything about the characters now, every single bit of their story, their insecurities, what charlie needs to fix, how she can fix them, the major bad guys, everything. you are never allowed to dwell on a character because we need to rush towards something else. it almost feels like this should have been like... season three, it would have been a fantastic season three if you dropped the introductions honestly.

the concept of redemption. for a story of redemption to work you need to look at three things. What is there crime, Do they want to change, What is preventing them from changeing? there is only one single character that has a notable path of redemption, angel dust, but if you look through their story it feels off. What Exactly is he guilty of? he has sex, does drugs and drinks. his apparent nymphomania is tied to his sad backstory as someone forced into the sex industry so how is that their fault? then if you think about it you start to spiral and notice "hey why are most of these people in hell?" like sure some of them may deserve punishment but then you see the fucking dichotomy and its like "I was a inventor in england and died of the fucking plague, i may have made evil little contraption hoohoohoo" vs "I was a cannibal, a full on cannibal, i fucking killed people and ate them and then someone shot me". ONE OF THESE THINGS ARE A LITTLE MORE FUCKING EXTREME. i'm going to go fucking nuts, the thing they went to heaven with when presenting a case to angels on the idea that redemption and becoming a better person is actually real was angel dust not drinking at a party and not having sex with consenting adults and i want to go fucking insane. WHAT IS THE CRIME, WHO IS THROWING THE BOOK, WHAT DOES THE BOOK INTEL, ARE WE ON GOOD PLACE RULES?! half the cast dont Need redemption they need fucking help, and the other half of the cast do need redemption but they do not seek it making the point moot. sir pentious acts like he has the brain of a hyper intelligent toddler tossing about toys, its almost like he did his one bad thing of spying and then got caught, sank his little diddy about forgiveness and second chances and become a null point through out the rest of the series, sure their was Some weight to him sacrificing himself, he was a decently funny character and he had good moments but him popping up in heaven felt like a fore gone conclusion, he didn't deserve to be in hell so why do i care that he is suddenly in heaven? because its working on the concept the good place already made. no one actually deserves eternal punishment they just need help processing what makes them a dick, but instead of looking at all the parts of the afterlife that make it bad, inefficient and then creating and trying ideas to see if it work instead over a few seasons, we crash dick first into all the major plot points in regards to that and say "tada, we fixed it.".

having a sub-plot about sexual assault and its victims then having multiple sexual assault related gag ruins your point.

don't make a bunch of stereotypically jewish characters into cannibals, that was a big thing, really shouldn't have to say it.

if you are going to make a character black, make them black, you can say alastor was black but sweet seren-fucking-dippity that's not a black man.

pot meet kettle but yeah the cursing could be a little less liberal. maybe just blue hair or the pronouns, not both.

there is a very distinctive art deco/jazz aesthetic which normally i love but i feel as though it is not used to its full extent and in some cases really hurts the character design in and of itself.

this is a vary obvious bit but the story is a million times more interested in gay men then it is of lesbians, which culminates in this insane thing where the writers clearly have more talent or perhaps it would be more abt to say practice writing male gay pining then they are with lesbian pining. which i personally think is hilarious because i did not know you could min max fujoshi-ism that hard.

this next section is more to do with each character on a fundamental level, for the sake of brevity whatever there is left, i'm just doing ones with speaking roles.

13. Charlie:

(see what i mean about that red thing?)

as originally stated charlie fits rather comfortably into every white saviour narrative, though that seems to be part of her joke. though i'm not entirely sure how much of a joke it can be when its rewarded and expected to advance the plot.

her character design says nothing, it has the motif of old puppets or dolls, she wears something vaguely similar to service suits, her demonic form is just some extra horns.not to say every character needs to have their life on a clothes rack but some more snake and goat imagery would be nice

its not the chol design of charlie with snake hair, not an actual problem but its a problem to me, damn you @cholvoq for ruining my ability to look at any of the characters without wishing i was seeing your designs instead.

character wise aside from the white savoir bit, i'm having a bit of trouble understanding what the arc of the character is. she is shown to be naive, someone who doesn't understand how the world works but everytime she says something its something astoundingly clear like "people can actually get better". and its treated like someone demanded faygo in every water fountain. is the joke that the world around her to cynical or is so to naive? please pick one or the other.

now if you know me, you know i fucking hate overpowered characters with a blinding passion, one that would set alit the god damn abyss but in this one special instance, i feel like its warranted, she's the direct descendant of fucking God, she can swing her weight around a little, i mean god damn. she in so many instances looks like shes cowering so often, why would the daughter of lucifer get backed down by some rando pimp? why wasn't she the one to fight adam? sure you can say she is young but how young? her parents were there since pre-abrahamic times, most of the characters showed up in hell in the 1900s, some of them showed up in the 1600s, how old is charlie??? how long does it take for her to learn how to be strong? The story does not suffer if charlie is strong and knows she is strong. it can easily be a case of "i don't believe in violence to a weird degree". fit it into her apparent naivety about the world to believe that violence is never the answer even when dealing with a being that is unilaterally horrible and abusive and monstrous.

she ga- no im kidding, i do think her romance was waysided a bit, it would have been fine to have more scenes of them togather and in love you know?

14. Vaggie

why did you name the lesbian vaggie...? Don't do that maybe?

I like how her design is almost moth like but again i feel as though you could have amped that up.

she feels as though someone tried to combine undyne and pearl from steven universe, same story beats and design elements. it makes it hard to really distinguish her as a character.

i honestly dont have much to say about her. she is fine.

christ kill me, lets just get the big one out of the way

15. Alastor.

God Damn

where to start.

"alastor is mixed race" mixed with fucking what? concrete? there is not a single black feature on that creature, now im not saying you have to make him a png of louie armstrong but it wouldn't hurt to add a curl to the hair maybe? make it a tiny bit more wavy? Something? a crumb i beg of thee?

his symbolism is all over the god damn place, native american monsters (you know the one), voodoo, radio, puppets, stitches, circuses??? and Tentacles i guess. two of those are from closed religions so if you dumped those you would actually get a more concise character focused on the concept of vox populi as a means of societal control and influence as we see in his first song. but again that gets drowned out repeatedly by all the other random toy box bits shoved into him.

tumblr sexy man bait

he serves no purpose in the story. he does spooky stuff, pretends to do things and then goes back to sitting around looking spooky. i understand that his motif is supposed to be aloof mastermind but maybe have him do more mastermindy things? if you remove most of alastors scenes, bar the songs, it doesn't change all to much. husk and nifity can still be at the hotel, they could be looking for outs in their contracts the same as angel dust. hell it even helps with the one scene where he dose some spooky shit, asking charlie for a favor in exchange for his help in the fight with the angels instead of asking him about angel weapons which should have remained a strictly vaggie scene.

his presence in a way delegitimize the story, as I noted in in the section regarding redemption, the three parts are "what is the crime, do they want to change, what is stopping them?" and alastor kinda just spits in the face of that. he is a serial killer cannibal that has no qualms about how evil he is and apparently must continue being evil due to being under the control under someone legitimately called the Root Of All Evil. show him take a slight interest in the idea that maybe shit for him could be better, make him Want Change at the bare fucking minimum or dont have him at the hotel.

his stupid little fucking horns, big shot the troll liker wants characters to have big fucking horns, make them noticeable or dont have them.

he looks more like a dog boy, which could have been an interesting thing with the collar motif but fuck me i guess.

personal pet peeve but i fucking hate characters that have a million plus powers, stick to a set number, be creative.

im getting more petty as i go on so last point: he could have been in less episodes, he didn't need to be in dad beat dad, that should have been just a lucifer and charlie episode. inverse the red and black and i think he would be fucking great color wise, his body type is the same as ten different characters, he isnt radio enough, aside from the voice and and staff if you told me he was the fucking Cat Demon i would have been just as convinced.

16. Angel Dust

what the fuck, gay spider? its hard to actully articulate all the thoughts i have on angel dust, not in the sense that he is a deeply thought provoking character but in the fact that there is not much meat on the bones.

all around i think angel dust is kinda middling. he has a decent enough romance with husk, he has a decent enough story line that revolves around battling addiction and removing yourself from an abuser (which the story tries to brand as "Redemption???")

I dont like that most of his jokes would qualify as sexual harassment, i don't mind him being sexual as a character but continuing on when clearly someone doesn't like the jokes hurts the character.

not a critique but he is pink, which honestly ill fucking take at point, as long as its not more fucking red.

i think his design is an improvement over some of the old vivzie designs but it feels like it could have done with going a few more rounds of design changes.

same thing with alastor, charlie and vaggie, there is not enough of the animal that they are supposed to be. You could have told me angel dust was a fucking bee or something and i would have had to believe you. nothing about angel dust initially says spider, hell he dosent even have enough limps to be a fucking spider.

17. Carmilla carmine

are... are you supposed to be a rabbit...?

Big Yoai Hands

ballet fighting style, could have been cool, wish she fought more like sanji or chun li.

A single mom that works to hard, who loves her kids and never stops-

her song was decent, not great, decent. it feels as though the actress has experience singing but not in the way they tried to make her sing during her two songs. they have a obvious mexican influence, honestly just let her sing in spanish in the english dub. go listen to the spanish dub, "out for love" sounds great in spanish.

i wish i had more thoughts on them, fucking rip.

18. cherri bomb

that's not a punk aesthetic that's 2010s alt

decent character, they showed up once or twice i guess, no real thoughts.

19. egg boiz

absolutely perfect, i have not notes on them, these are perfect creatures.

20. Emily

im so fucking happy to see a singular blue character

does the naive dreamer bit better then charlie

We really shouldnt have seen her until the end of season two or middle of three.

good contrast with the other angels on screen.

Wait she is supposed to be black??? Where???

21. Husk

keith david you absolute delight, Why on gods green earth did they only give you one singing part?

one of the few charecters where its clear husk is a cat, i do like the kinda... marquee design, he is a magic cat, thats neat. i still think you can toss the wings and eyebrows and still have just as good of a charecter.

has a deeply intresting story of someone who died as a nobody, became the fat cat of hell and then was forced back to the bottom by their own vices, not used at fucking all.

huge potential, little pay off.

22. lillith

I know nothing about her except she ditched her kid and husband to vacation in heaven and i think thats kinda funny.

alot of werid things floating around her, again she shouldnt have been shown in the show at all until next season.

23. lucifer morningstar

no notes, funniest charecter, did a song based on friend like me.

few notes: i do like the idea that the immortal symbol of pride is a constant emotional wreckage constantly seeking approval through grand showmanship and manic energy that threatens to take over anything they touch.

would have liked more snake stuff on him, maybe some more goat things like horns.

that is such a stupid fucking staff lmao.

24. Adam.

alex brightman you absolute fucking delight, you should have had more songs.

I wish his design was more focused on the idea of him being a glam rock wash up

I fucking hate his mask

We shouldn't have met him until the end of the season.

25. Niffty

again she is supposed to be a bug or cockroach but nothing about her points to that.

token straight

keeps rocketing back and fourth between sexulization and infantilization

you had kimiko glenn but didnt give her a single fucking song?

26. Sir Pentious

the secret season one redeemed.

the pilot version of him felt more like someone that could do a season one redemption arc, a megalomaniac constantly attempting territory grabs, there is something you can work with, actual character flaws to work through.

essentially a child after the first episode.

actually a snake which i appreciate.

no where near steampunky enough.

27. the villians of the show dont make much sense, each one feels like they should be season long deals on their own instead of a bunch of team rocket esque idiots that show up on occasion, do a bad thing and then leave.

28. Valentino

gOD THERE IS SO MUCH RED

only a moth some of the time.

sucks as a villain, maybe they need more screen time to show why they suck in a more substantial way aside from being told that he sucks.

it is interesting that angel dust is only under his magical control when in the studio, it shows that angel dust has to make a conscious choice to return, which in turn can be made to show how abusers can draw back their victims. I do not think it was done well in this circumstance as it shows him to be cartoonishly evil, constantly flying back and fourth between sweet and utter psycho, there is no actual reason for angel dust to ever actually go back to the studio, he just does so every so often.

29. Vox

legit who cares? the only thing about him that is in any way substantial is all the dope ass fan art we get.

propaganda machine angle that is not explored at all, just hinted at. no actual barring on the story whatsoever.

why didn't he try to do the same shit as alastor by the way? he knows its bad if alastor gets in good with charlie so shouldn't it be a ass kissing race?

same body shape as literally every other male character.

tumblr sexy man version of pyrocynicals fursona.

30. Valvette

the actual poster child of the shows huge problem of "Show me, don't tell me".

apparently the glue that holds the villains together. never shown.

apparently the one that makes the love potions that valentino is famous for. had to learn about that in the fuckin wiki trivias

we know so much about her from things outside of the show.

was there to call carmilla a coward, that's her plot contribution. she shows up every now and again but its never anything substantial and serves to more around take up run time for people We Don't Need To Know Yet.

im not trying to be mean, animation is animation, we need smaller studios to have success in the industry so that other indie studios can have that success, felling a tree makes it easier for others to follow. showing that its possible to number brain rot exacs helps all animators.

but this show has so much bullshit attached to it, it has so much fucking potential that it fries my brain with unyielding frustration.

this took a bit to write, im tired, thanks for reading.

#hazbin hotel

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