Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018), the triple-A video game. Bonus points for including New Orleans as an explorable city, taking right smack during Alastor's childhood years. Nothing beats the feeling like you're walking right by Al's childhood shanty house on your way to the French Quarter.

To Kill A Mockingbird (1962), taking place in Great Depression Alabama. A closer look at what race inequality looks like in the poverty-striken parts of a city, chipped enamel sinks and all.

O Brother, Where Art Thou (2000), taking place in the deep south during the 30's. A comedy retelling of the odyssey featuring tweed suits and cloche hats. Less of the city and more of the wet fauna of Mississippi.

Malcom X (1992), a biopic of the American civil rights activist. Spans his entire life, from the 1920's to the 1960's, from the deep south to inner-city Boston. A look at not only how black American men lived back then, but also how white people reacted to them. Bonus, a little segment on how mixed black men lived.

12 Angry Men (1957), the all-star classic, taking place during contemporary times. A cast of nothing but Vox look-alikes and sound-alikes! Enjoy tidbits like the rotary cloth towel dispenser in the washroom, and a rounding stance against racism that aligns very much like ours today.

L.A. Noire (2011), the video game, taking place in the late 40's. Technology limitations of the time means certain environmental details are kinda cardboard-looking, but otherwise you can actually walk around in boomer-era Los Angeles. Bonus points for having a chapter focused solely on the predatory cinema industry.

The Help (2011), the mediocre drama starring Emma Stone as the 'unattractive' nerdy lead. But the historical accuracy of 1950's Mississippi is there, focused primarily on the lives of women - white and black.

The Hours (2002), another white-woman-feature and how they make do as 'accessories' to men like Vox, bonus points for segments featuring a heavy emphasis on 50's family cooking.

Mafia (video game series), spanning from the 30's to the 50's. Some take place in places neither of them wouldn't have touched (like Italy or Hawaii), but otherwise? Enjoy a meticulously crafted Great Depression/boomer-era city!

You might notice a lack of certain movies/games like The Great Gatsby or Fallout. It's 'cause this post is about true historical accuracy, and not the Mr. Sandman-fueled parody we see in Back To The Future. Other movies like Seabiscuit or The Sound Of Music might have the historical accuracy, but not the setting adjacency to Alastor or Vox's lives.

The biggest visual hint to Al's masculinity is his antler rack. It grows bigger when he gets bloodthirsty. In the show proper, it's probably a visual cue of a manifesting 'animalistic' side. But it can also mean that Al relates his masculinity with violence.

Antler racks are very culturally masculine. A hunter displaying a huge mounted antler rack is basically just a less crass way of showing off the huge chub of a rival male he's slain.

Alastor having antlers was most certainly one of the few ways of making demonic form look more like his animal inspiration, like Vaggie's segmented white hair, or Vox's hidden gills. Notably, sinner designs with animal traits tend to not prioritize sex dimorphism: Husk doesn't have huge chunky tomcat cheeks. Angel Dust doesn't have spots of shiny iridescence.

There's only one example of clear sex dimorphism can think of: in Helluva Boss, Stella and Andrealphus are clearly female and male peafowl. Andrealphus displays a huge train, while Stella has a less extravagant tail display if any at all. But in that case, they wanted to show something of a species lineage between the two siblings. They had a female peafowl design, so her brother would be the more flamboyant male.

Gun to my head, giving Al antlers probably wasn't "this is MASCULINE SYMBOLISM" and more like a "this is a deer character". The only other 'male' deer trait Alastor uses is an elk bugle. Which is a sexual tool. It's used to attract females and challenge other males. I seriously doubt the creators are implying that Alastor is in rut when he bugles. Like his antlers, it's there for the directing and not the literal.

Al's actual body is also more masculine than it may seem. He's got huge shoulders and a wide chest compared to his hips and legs. These don't get skinnier the more elongated he grows, they get even wider and bigger.

Think the sexual violence of Silent Hill's Pyramid Head, mid-life crisis dad Mr. Incredible, Bluebeard-equse bride killer Barkis from Corpse Bride, Zeus-expy Lord Gwyn from Dark Souls. It's about that inverted triangle figure that speaks to adult maleness. And from there, a common theme emerges - the dark sides of masculinity in the form of murder, assault, infidelity, and abuse of power.

Designs that want to add androgyny sometimes include both a hyper-masculine chest and shoulder PLUS a lithe emphasis on the limbs, like the xenomorph, or 80's rock glam.

Along those same lines, what softens Alastor's masculine silhouette is his shingle bob haircut. I have no idea if this is the intention, but Al's hair (as has been pointed out before) is a very close rendering of the female shingle bob of the roaring '20s, complete with shaved nape. Only his coiffed bangs break the clear comparison.

(Jordan Baker from the 2013 Great Gatsby film had a classic shingle bob. This flapper mainstay was intended to be androgynous and youthful.)

Alastor's beginning (humanized) designs were more 'scene' raccoon-tail hair. As time went on, the length shortened, but the shaggy edge cut remained. Perhaps at some point, the designers took to designing it after the shingle bob, as opposed to the Sasuke chop or Visual Kei rattails, but it's perfectly likely its just the modern evolution of Al's middle school beginnings.

Alastor's Acting Direction = overall masculine score of 2/10

Al's body language took a 400% increase in fruitiness since the pilot. A stage/entertainment persona will always be more flamboyant - and therefore 'less masculine' - but now he's got the limp wrist, the hip checks.

I hypothesize that this change came with Amir's acting. Sometimes the artists reference how the actor gestures during their recordings. Sometimes it's a case of going, "hmm, the body language is kinda understated compared to the VA, let's up the camp".

On a meta level, his effeminacy pairs well with his androgynous appearance ... HOWEVER, androgynous men can have strong feelings about their own manhood. The cross dressing queen of the 1980s expresses his masculinity through sex, not clothing, whilst the closeted stock broker husband does the opposite. An OnlyFans femmeboi has a purely male identity that morphs 'girls clothes' into 'HIS clothes', and his straight weeboo fan goes in the completely opposite direction to trans-spot people based off of length of hair or color of socks.

We don't know how Alastor's 'old fashioned'-ness translates into his relationship with masculinity, but we've picked up some cues: he tips his head to people and offers his arm to a lady. He takes the 'male' lead during partnered dances. He always covers 90% of his body, even in supplemental merch designs.

But he also dressed himself in a nun's habit for fun. He uses flamboyant hand gestures and modern campy slang. Al's been in hell for nearly a century at this point, and his appearance alone would be improper for a man of the 1930's (long hair, no hat).

Plus, people of the past weren't always as conservative as we might think. It's for sure a man living in roaring 20's/great depression-era New Orleans would have had close contact with the local queer crowd. Add onto that his mixed race, you've got a man who spent his living years with as much potential for social equity as the modern audience.

(The 'Pansy Craze' of flapper nightlife referred to drag performers and lgbt+ visibility in both American and European mainstream media. It would remain strong until the Hays Code and rise of Fascism.)

At the same time, the progressives of the past could hold views we'd find very shocking. The pioneering civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois was an advocate for government eugenics (which was considered a liberal movement, btw). Susan B. Anthony HATED the idea of the black man voting.

For all we know, Alastor represents the man who loves women, but also the practice of being more competent than the woman. He's there to provide his services 'cause women need him. And on that note, we've one more angle to tackle Al's masculinity:

Alastor's Motives = overall (hypothesized) masculine score of 7/10

There's one Alastor trivia that we pay extra attention to: his reputation as a 'momma's boy'. From there, a lot of us have headcanoned him as being the neglected, illegitimate child from a mixed union. The Jim Crow laws during the turn of the century would have forbidden anybody of the "one drop rule" of marrying a white person. Was his father a white man who abused his illegitimate family?

There was a very, VERY slim chance that a woman of color with a bastard son had disposable income. Alastor was in his early 40's when he died in 1933, which meant he lived through the latter years of the 1800's. The times of horses and dirt roads. You ever played RDR2 and strolled through Saint Denis? Yeah, if mom and Al lived there, it would have been in the shanty shacks of the segregated slums.

(Rockstar made great lengths to condense real-life 1899 New Orleans into the fictional Saint Denis. On the outskirts of the city, populations of color live in neglected neighborhoods.)

We don't know if show canon will ever make a character's living years a plot point. After all, Angel Dust was a full on WW2 vet mobster. Vox was (supposedly) a cult leader. Husk lived through 5 wars and the moon landing. We can see hints of these origins in the show proper, but not a full-on flashback of someone's tragic origin story.

By Alastor's estimated birth date, USA slavery had been outlawed for roughly 40 years, but it was a slow process that involved individual states doing their own thing, and lobbies disrupting the process, A 24-year-old mother in Louisiana wouldn't have been born into the slave trade, but her own parents likely might have been involved.

This is assuming Alastor is mixed Black specifically. We don't know for sure: his creole ethnicity and association with voodoo screams Haitian descended, but perhaps he's First Nations, or SEA, etc. But all nonwhite races suffered during his time. It would have been illegal for him to work in the same building as white people. He couldn't touch the same bibles, or the same watering holes, or the same seats in public transit.

Common work for the financially insecure woman would have been hard labor like a laundress, farm labor, livestock husbandry, scullery maid, and other dirty jobs that had her enter through the back door, out of sight. She might have earned 30-50 cents a day. As attitudes changed for the slightly better, she could have found work as an in-house maid, nanny, seamstress, retail clerk, or a switchboard operator for the new-fangled telephone industry.

During all of that, we have an adolescent Alastor who's starting to find his way. He could have wrangled a spotty education from the nuns at church, which got his foot in the door when it came time to earn a proper payroll. Perhaps he has a military career from WW1 to help cushion things. Perhaps he was able to pass 'white enough' to work directly for the privileged white man.

(Being an Overlord is a dead-ringer to being a slave owner. You become more powerful by the quantity of those you 'own'. The imagery of chains is unmistakable. Having the two black characters - both having Overlord experience - be the ones who bring it to the forefront muddles the waters of Hell's soul economy.)

Vox is a much more blatant visage of toxic masculinity, and he makes an effort to broadcast himself as a sea captain, a pope, and a chef. Lucifer follows the same lines and has himself be a referee, a 'Boss', and another chef role. Alastor, on the other hand, he's the nun and the busboy. His two hired minions become the maid and bartender, while he has a not-particularly-glamorous-but-vital job of facilities maintenance.

Vox and Lucifer - two grandstanding masculine characters - see themselves as the leaders. Alastor in comparison values the hidden labor of domestic staff. Even down to the eggbois. In life, there would have been almost no way a man of color would be the chef, captain, ref, king, boss, whatever. He'd truly be the busboy, the maid, the bartender.

If we're gonna take his mixed heritage at face value, we already have a mess of suppression he had to contend with. Then he gets his demon powers. And suddenly, the hierarchy of race and privilege gets to be toppled. By his hand.

Maybe not as a conscious 'fuck the white man' sort of decision. But instead a 'I worked HARD to get to where I am now, and I'm gonna milk it for all its worth."

("Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.")

The male entitlement of the white man is different from the man of color. But it's still there. My Asian brothers compare themselves to whiteness for sure, but they also compare themselves to their Asian sisters. And there is a certain masculinity entitlement that's implanted within them.

Simply put, men of color see themselves as the main contender to the white man. If they get that slice of pie, they don't see themselves standing next to their women counterparts. They don't see themselves working next to - or under - the white woman. If it was a 'fair' slice of the pie (from their perspective), it's a matter of breaking through the white male barrier in lieu of the man of color. Women are an afterthought.

Alastor isn't after the Senior Manager promotion or whatever. We're not sure what he's after, but it rings of a bid for freedom. He feels constrained and chained down. His abilities are muzzled. He's likely had a long time of 'earning' his place as a feared Overlord, and now it's threatened.

And look: I get it, liberty is certainly not a gendered aspiration. If anything, it's associated with the downtrodden, not the entitled. But its the situationship of a man suddenly losing his birthright liberation that would make aspirations for freedom drenched in his masculinity.

We see this in ep. Dad Beat Dad specifically. He is seething with contempt the moment Lucifer barges into the hotel doors, and immediately tries to fill the 'paternal' shoes of Charlie's emotional support. Al only calms the fuck down once he gets to monster-munch a large group of hotel invaders, and from then on, he's seemingly not threatened by Lucifer finally making a proper fatherly connection to his daughter.

(A king is the 'father' of his people. As an actual christian angel, he's the divine emperor patriarch of hell. There's something to be said about a man who feels very threatened by this.)

'Cause Alastor's 'father' beef isn't so much for Charlie as it's for the hotel. Lucifer and Alastor battle for the position of 'dad', but more accurately they're battling for the position of 'patriarch'. The Hazbin Hotel is Alastor's labor of love as much as it is Charlie's. It's a position of power he'll fight hard to prove.

There are those who see the sexless man as less masculine. And not just sexless as in 'not sexually active', but also the man who has no relationship to marriage and fatherhood. The boyish, slobbery, depressed Eddie of Silent Hill 2 has no interest in protecting the wandering child character, whilst James (the player character) is stuck in Silent Hill 'cause of dead wife problems and he expresses concern for the child. By the end game, it's the sexless Eddie who packs this huge magnum revolver and initiates some fucked up boss battle in a meat locker full of hanging pig carcasses. A villain of toxic masculinity whose aggression stems from a lack of healthy sexuality.

In a different world, Alastor might also be the sexless masculine disaster. He is not a sexual figure in his wardrobe, or canon sexual orientation (asexual). His relationship with women lack romance, sex, or marriage. He's a cannibal; someone who desecrates flesh.

He DOES have this ... very tentative, spotty, and developing relationship with fatherhood. Not just with Charlie, but also with Niffty (who is 22 compared to Alastor's early 40's). Even singing to the children of Cannibal Town could be a nod to a grown man not being entirely sexless.

True to Hazbin Hotel being dedicated to breaking the mold, Alastor's sexless character instead softens him. We make an abrupt switch from the 'evil deal-making devil man' to 'cute guy has an actual human side his friend pokes fun at' within 10 minutes. This is in stark opposition to the sexless male archtype before this point.

In a world where the sexless masculine monster becomes murderous because of his sexual problems, Alastor is an outlier.

I believe he's still written to have his masculinity linked to his violence, just not through the sexual lens.

Alastor's Overall Masculinity Score = 7/10

Higher than you might have thought? It surprises me, too, but I retain that the current canon Alastor of Season 1 is a very subtle exploration of maleness through violence and a yearning for power. We see it in his bid for freedom - which is actually a self-entitled bid for power. We see it in his mark of ownership of the hotel. We see it in his self-reliance as a man of competence and skill.

When mortal, Alastor’s body hair was curly, and there was a single very sparse stripe of minimal hair down his sternum that really only betrayed how svelte his figure was, if anything. By adulthood, he had long since accepted that he’d never be the image of masculine fevor. 

And yes, the dick has also changed upon death. It didn’t outright turn into an actual deer’s dick, but it now rests inside a pouchy sheath to protect its coat-less flesh. He actually likes that development. Extra coverings. Nature’s own athletic cup. 

His asexuality + his age (early forties) means that he has trouble getting it up. If he’s ever getting down and dirty, half the time it’s ¾ mast at most, and it won’t stay hard for long. A lot of his cums are dry, limp ones, and only if he makes the effort at all. 

Sinner bodies change based off of what they like about themselves, what they don’t like about themselves, and are largely intended to be ironic caricatures. Alastor’s very aware of the whole ‘deer symbolism’ thing he’s got going on. As the years went on, he also noticed that his chest expands in direct relation to his antlers, and so does his scrotum. Yeah, you heard me. 

Basically, I headcanon that Hell sometimes takes a Silent Hill-esque tulpar approach to a sinner’s body. A buck’s rack is symbolic of masculinity, and so is violence. The more bloodthirsty Alastor feels, the more his body morphs its superficial masculine traits. Popular fanon has Al’s father been abusive whilst his mother a supportive and loving figure. In Alastor’s world, violence is masculine. 

And by the way, did you know that deer antlers are actually a controlled form of cancer? It begins as cartilage supplied by blood vessels and living tissue, then turns into bone and dies, sitting there as dead weight until the skull decides to sever it. Alastor’s antlers aren’t bone, they’re carbon - the hardest element in mammal bodies, lightly conductive to electricity, and a great transceiver for radio signals. His talons are the same. Sharpened carbon/iron is very deadly. 

Alastor’s radio powers have a hard limit on their bandwidth - he can only use the lowest and widest wavelengths. So no atomic powers for him. He can’t even microwave his enemies. Radio waves can transmit very far and deep, but have the lowest effect on atoms. AKA, they’re perfect for relaying sounds and images without irradiating a country. 

Now, radio waves need a transceiver to broadcast. Alastor’s entire body is one big transceiver, with his antlers acting as antenna, his body bulk encoding the frequency modulation, and his feet electricity conductors that receive energy from the ground. If none of his body is connected to a power source (like, he’s floating in the air or something), he can still do radio shit, but only AM waves, like real-life radios before electricity. 

Now, all that frequency translation takes its toll on the body. Constantly passing low-vibration waves throughout his organs mean a weak heart, varicose veins, brittle bones, lung inflammation, and more. All that, combined with his low BMI and poor diet means he is a sickly man. Tuck into the bedsheets like a dying Victorian child sort of sickly. A doctor from his lifetime would be prescribing him a diet of milk toast and citric acid tablets. 

You know he’s letting huge walls down if he so much as coughs whilst in your presence. In public, he’d never be seen rubbing at his aching chest or slouching from his cramping intestines. He’s got an Image to put on, after all. 

Where he went for primary school:

His favorite cafe/diner:

His favorite jazz club (Mimzy performed here):

Where he went to buy groceries:

His favorite barber's:

And finally, this is where he buried his bodies (and also where he died):