Silly_little_starchild

Hell is Other People

In Heaven, there's no competition. No one has to use any powers they have to survive, so the weaker powers and the people who wield them are still around. There are no challenges in Heaven, and while powers exist - like flight - there doesn't appear to be much need for them.

But in Hell, if your powers can't defend you, you're unlikely to get anywhere - just forced to continually reform, or end up inevitably at the end of an Exorcist's blade.

And sure, reforming isn’t the same as permadeath. But you’re bound to keep a low profile and scurry around if you don’t have what it takes, given it’s Hell and what people could do to you here. It’s a form of social death, if anything. We have seen sinners literally set themselves on fire rather than be on the same street as an Overlord. You might as well be dead, in that your options are probably very, very limited, if you don’t have powers that can do something to protect you.

(Actually, it's probably the best punishment of all for the sinners of the very worst type. To be helpless among people just like them.)

So I’m wondering - yes, new sinners are coming down all the time, adding to the overpopulation. But the ones we see having a semi-normal existence? They must be ones that have powers, abilities or skills to keep everyone else at least a little at bay. And if they don’t, they have to use other means to get by, like Angel Dust.

Winners, though? Look at how helpless they are.

I've written about Heaven before in these two posts, and commented on the general blandness of their existence, how their lives are arranged like that of a pet whose owner didn't quite look them up well enough - like a hamster being given skiing equipment, or a snake being shown the finer points of watercolours, in the name of 'enrichment for their enclosure.' It's a very slapdash attempt to entertain humans, and it seems to speak of a general lack of idea as to what humans want and what would make their afterlives meaningful. It's angels looking at each other and going, "I...guess? They seem happy?"

So winners are perpetually trapped in a forever childhood full of ball-pits and sugar/confectionery stalls - an empty-headed existence that takes the people who have supposedly done such good things in life and reduces them down to being childlike and dependent on others.

It wouldn't surprise me if they didn't have powers at all.

Either way, when Vox speaks to Heaven, none of the winners react with the drive of people who have faced overwhelming odds in life, who fought for others, who gave everything to do the right thing - as presumably they did to get there in the first place. Instead, they blindly panic, crying out for help from angels who are just as lost as they are. What a comedown that is.

Just as Hell encourages people's worst traits, Heaven seems to encourage complacency, to take those sharp edges of people that let them do good things as well as bad and soften them.

And this made me think about winners as a whole, in comparison to the sinners we know so well. How much of that oddness around the winners' lives is down to them, or down to their environment?

What Makes a Winner?

Let's look at the winners, shall we? They seem to come in one of two - no, three - flavours. They're cute and cuddly, which in itself is dehumanising, bland, or they're oddly abstract.

Maybe 'bland' seems nasty. Let me be clear, I think that's actually pretty important and I'm not bitching about the animation here.

With Hell's sinners, there's a lot of visual clues to how they ended up where they did. They are tied down to a time period, have markers of their profession, or how they died, or simply make us wonder what their great sin was. At the very least, their designs are very striking.

With Heaven's winners, there seems to be a distinct 'otherness' to them - they seem rarely tied down to a time period in the same way, and seem distant, with their life stories rarely easily identifiable.

For example, our fox-butterfly friend in the image above - what did they do to get to Heaven?

(Yes, I know there's a Horus-inspired sinner behind them, who is pretty Ancient Egyptian coded. But he's the exception that proves the rule.)

What did any of this odd, unreadable collection of winners do, if you look at them individually? Where did they live? When did they die? What was their great moment of divine grace?

It's difficult for us to make these assumptions when the only winner we know is Sir Pentious - who hardly came there by normal means.

I think there's something really interesting here (as I always say, I know: it's my version of the angry gf, I just think it's funny how...) about the nature of goodness. How goodness, of the kind that Heaven seems to champion (which, notably, no one seems to be able to define for certain), is harder to understand, harder still to predict, and even harder still to guess at. It's quite different from the simple banality of evil, the predictability of evil.

(Ursula K. LeGuin, goddess that she is/was, spoke about the banality of evil if you’re interested in that.)

When we look at a winner, we can't quite tell why they're there, what choices got them here, and why their forms are the way they are. The better they are, the less human they appear to be and the less relatable they are.

(If you're still on the loo at this point, by the way, I'd consider consulting your doctor.)

Because in many ways, evil, and doing evil, is simple. It doesn't take much effort. But working out the right thing to do, especially when there's a lot of bad options, is complicated. Minimising human suffering, or any suffering, requires nuance and compassion. You have to deny a lot of base ideas about yourself and your own survival in favour of others.

No wonder they don't know what to do with Vox's threats. It's been a long time since they've ever had to think about concerns like danger.

So while the sinners are easily identifiable, and have that 'survival of the fittest' mentality I spoke of earlier, I think that the lack of one for the winners makes them considerably more alien, both to sinners and to us the audience.

And that does reflect in their appearance. Goodness is either cute and cuddly, Disney-like animals, or it's said to be bland and boring, or it's just....hard to relate to. A "couldn't be me." "It would be nice to do, but." And I like that Heaven's designs are really different to Hell's because of this, and I also like how Heaven as a whole treats people.

Their good acts are already distant and remote to us, but Heaven seems to take this form of 'otherness' and dilutes it further with the way they treat winners, the childlike entertainments they arrange, the wilful ignorance they're kept in. Their lives are so different to anyone else's, devoid of the problems we experience and encounter, rendering them so far away from anything else in the Hazbin universe. Do winners have secret powers they're unaware of, purely because of the way Heaven is and the fact no one ever has to use them?

And that makes for a really interesting setup, actually, when you think about it. Hell is clearly a form of exaggerated Earth, but what is Heaven exaggerating? It's so difficult for anyone to imagine a utopia. Utopias have a very, very long history in the English canon at least (yes, yes, 'canon is dead,' I'm aware, but bear with me.) You've got Thomas More's Utopia, Milton's Paradise Lost. You've even got Aldous Huxley's The Island. But there's always a certain stench of artificiality about it - we can't quite get our heads around what we're proposing, even in imaginary spaces.

I'd be fascinated to know if we get more insight into winners in series 3, even just following a winner who sees with horror Vox's broadcast and the way their afterlife changes as a result. Let's not forget, in the words of Rosie, that this is the end of an era in Heaven, where actions do have consequences again, and where social inequality still exists - and secretly always did.

It makes me want to write a fic, actually.

But just as Hell is changed by Emily and Charlie saving people after Vox's breakdown, what will make winners reach out the other way?

Charlie - Ariel

Charlie too wants to be ‘part of their world,' just like Ariel. Unlike Ariel, she decided that the world she wanted to be a part of was one full of misery and murder. But she too didn't listen to anyone who wanted to tell her and forged ahead - and just like Ariel, she fell in love with one of the outsiders. Ariel didn't go quite so far as to go for a man who straight-up murdered mermaids, but it's not that far off. And, like Ariel, Charlie also has a difficult relationship with her dad.

Vaggie - Merida

The fierce and headstrong Merida is a perfect match for Vaggie. Like Merida, Vaggie refuses to simply go along with her intended purpose and vows to change her fate. Merida likes weapons, as does Vaggie of course! But they both share the same fiercely independent nature. Adam and Mor'du also make for interesting parallels, as relics of a time long past where things had gone wrong long ago. Rather than repeating the same mistakes, Vaggie and Merida both choose their own path, even if it's not traditional.

Lucifer - Elsa

Lucifer stands in for the similarly melancholy and isolationist Elsa! Heavy is the head that wears the crown and Elsa and Lucifer share that same heavy burden of responsibility and knowing how it is to be ostracised and alone, especially when that isolation comes from your own family. (While with Elsa it was for her own safety and that of her sister's - I think we can all say that the Arendelle royal family desperately needed a child psychologist.) Lucifer, like Elsa, has incredible power but doesn't always use it. He also cares deeply about his family.

Niffty - Cinderella

Cinderella, queen of housekeeping! Niffty and Cinderella share an affinity with mice/rats respectively. Despite being made to work by her wicked stepmother, Cinderella still puts her heart and soul into her work and keeps her home spick and span, much like a certain pint-sized cleaner who, um, "likes being forced". I can also see Baxter putting every scientific atom in his body into forensically scanning that glass slipper and finding Niffty through some obscure tracking of a cleaning product molecule stuck on the sole.

Angel - Aurora

Angel, Angel, Angel, sleepwalking into chaos - remind you of anyone? Angel is Aurora, the princess famous for, um, not doing much but falling asleep. Angel is of course hypnotised by Vox and is stuck in a living nightmare. Time will tell if Husk will be his Prince Philip. (Here's hoping.) Valentino's constant search for Angel Dust and badgering him to return to the Hotel is also very similar to the mad search Maleficent embarks on to find the now teenage princess.

Husk - Rapunzel

Husk and Rapunzel are two feisty characters who are held in bondage. I can see Husk wielding a frying pan, can you? Rapunzel’s hair is both the source of her power and also the thing literally holding her down, and just like her, Husk’s gambling affinity is both his power and his weakness - something that he can never quite put down, but needs to if he can progress. Maybe Husk will have to cut himself off from his vices as much as Rapunzel needs to cut her hair to be free of its influence. But I can see Rapunzel learning a few magic tricks to pass the time up in her tower, can you?

Alastor - Belle

Now I wanted Husk to be Belle, but Alastor’s recent arc with Vox clinched it. He, like Belle, walks into a scenario where he willingly opts to be held prisoner, and manages to talk his way out of it. He and Belle also share a similar 'outsider' status within their own town, being declared as odd or different for acting outside of the supposed expectations for their demographic - Alastor as a mixed-race man, Belle as a woman.

Velvette - Tiana

Like Vel, Tiana is an entrepreneurial woman with her heart set on her own business. Sadly Velvette is nowhere near as kind and lovely as Tiana, but they both share the same drive to succeed on their own terms. The plot point of Vodou dolls* is vaaaaguely similar to Velvette's own doll-like Hell persona. It's a weaker link, but it's still there. Almost There, you could say. I'm so funny.

*I think Vodou is the right spelling but please correct me if not!

Vox - Anna

Vox as Anna? Really? Hear me out. In particular I mean Anna from For the First Time in Forever, that instant earworm that's all about an idealistic form of what life will be like once the gates open, and, also, the importance of a romantic partner. Like Anna, Vox is just a little out of touch but is always striving to be with the people. He’s a bit of an oddball, got obsessions, and fails frequently in his urge to ‘be somebody.’ There's always someone better for Anna in the form of her sister Elsa and in the first bit of the film she's this elusive figure who always manages to do better than Anna does, always knows what the social cues are and seemingly how to behave (even though we later find out she's just as traumatised as Anna is, just differently). For Vox of course this figure is Alastor.