Appreciation for Ozzie and Bee
(TW for mentions of rape!)
Reporting on more petty Hazbin/Helluva discourse, apparently there are people up in arms about how the Seven Deadly Sins are portrayed. And Asmodeus and Beelzebub somehow get the worst of it.
While they both have their own personality flaws, Ozzie and Bee are still pretty likeable characters for the most part--at the very least, they should be appreciated for standing up for Blitzo during "Mastermind". Even if it didn't go anywhere, but hey, A for effort.
Yet the two of them tend to get bashed for being "terrible representations of the Seven Sins", for starters "being nice". Honestly, I don't know where that criticism is coming from, I just like that the in-universe reps for Lust and Gluttony don't conform to the usual associated stereotypes. For starters, compare them both to the presentation of Lust and Gluttony from Fullmetal Alchemist (no shade!)
Not to mention, Ozzie and Bee's own respective characters offer some analysis into how Lust and Gluttony can manifest.
Asmodeus hates love potions and forced displays of Lust, such as rape. "It's an art, to be earned and enjoyed", he explains in "Oops". There is a further explanation to this: Rape is nonconsensual, thus only one party enjoys it while the other party very much does not--hence, Greed. It's also forceful and is known to get violent a lot of the time, so Wrath can also be sensed in that way.
(glares at Valentino)
Bee, meanwhile, shows concern when Blitzo overindulges in her Beelzejuice.
People called this moment "the nadir" of Bee's portrayal, but if you noticed Blitzo's behavior throughout the episode, you can tell that he's not overindulging out of genuine desire--he's depressed and despairing because of an earlier incident at Ozzie's club. Essentially, there could be a pragmatic angle to Bee's concern for Blitzo--he's not drinking because he wants to, he just sees it as a way to numb his emotional pain. Indeed, if you overindulge as a means to an end instead of because you enjoy it, then it stops becoming "Gluttony" and becomes more "Despair".
So basically, Ozzie and Bee having standards isn't meant to purely show them as "nice", they both have a certain idea of how their respective Sins should be enacted. And they both have a point! And "nice" isn't all they are--they're both still members of the Seven Deadly Sins, with all the moral ambiguity that entails.
My train of thought is losing steam, but basically, it sucks how Ozzie and Bee get hated on just because they don't fit the general public's one-dimensional ideas of "Lust" and "Gluttony". I'd say it's about time these two showed some nuance to those very concepts.
But also, again, we should appreciate how these two characters are pretty reasonable, at least compared to the likes of Mammon and Satan--genuinely, they would be pretty fun to hang out with in real life.
When did it suddenly become "unacceptable" to play fast and loose with established mythologies...
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