Do you think the representation given by Alastor, Husk, and Velvette in Hazbin Hotel is ultimately helpful, or harmful? Vivienne seems to mean well but as you've stated before, the representation onscreen doesn't reflect the writers' room.
My hot take on representation is that, generally speaking, the issue is trends and not singular instances. Characters of marginalised identities should be allowed to exhibit traits that they are stereotyped as having, trope-y roles, as long as there are just as many characters and shows that do not present said identities in that way. Black female characters, for example, should not be barred from being sassy β what needs to happen is that there are as many characters who are not, that the stigma goes away.
With that out of the way:
Husk β mostly positive/productive rep; negatives are that he's a furry and his relationship with Alastor in S1E5, but positives outweigh
Human Alastor β positive in isolation, but the whitewashed portrayal of the setting is harmful erasure; neutral due to equilibrium
Alastor & Velvette β carelessly handled; extremely 'colour blind' representation = barely rep; many iffy and offensive qualities to their portrayal; being charitable, I'd say their impact is neutral.
Husk
Initially, Husk was not black-coded, but Keith David's delivery changes the game. Layering Black identity onto his character has the character defy stereotypes and limitations that are often placed on Black male characters, particularly in cartoons:
Husk is not toxically masculine, being overly sexual or sexually exploitative, as shown by his friction with Angel's hypersexuality in S1
Husk is not poised as being effortlessly cool; he is explicitly referred to as a "loser", and his Blackness is not made exotic/fetishised
Husk has a romance blossoming and being given a lot of narrative weight
Husk has an MLM romance blossoming
He is not portrayed as the 'muscle' or a brute. He's not initiating physical altercations flippantly, only doing so in the case of someone trying to roofie Angel. When Vox is at the door, he says Alastor will deal with him if he gets out of hand, rather than threatening Vox himself; against Velvette, he is quite soft, trying to end the fight by summoning a bouquet of flowers in her face; against Valentino, Cherri is doing the brunt of the fist-to-fist, etc.
While it's unintentional, the Blackness added to Husk's character adds a layer to the commentary on the predatory nature of casinos, in addition to his alcoholism, given the systemic marginalisation of the Black community in the USA, with the higher concentration of churches and liquor stores in low income Black communities in comparison to opportunities for empowerment and social mobility.
In the show's questioning of sins and vices, and posing the question of nature vs nurture, Husk as a Black character really adds to the idea that the Hazbin Hotel being an inclusive, productive environment is often the difference between someone turning to immoral acts due to systemised oppression.
Additionally, Keith David is African American, as Husk is, a well-known Black voice and just quite darling. Vocally, it's a glowing representation.
Onto the negatives: he's a cat. People debate whether he's meant to be Black or not... Ugh. They're just a foolish minority, but at the same time, they're not totally wrong in saying that he's not literally a Black man.
Again, this is because of colour blind casting, not because it was intentionally done, but what shakes out is that Hazbin Hotel is another example of where there are 0 dark-skinned Black male faces; meanwhile, Black women appear in main roles (coughing violently at Disney animation and live-action remakes). This trend, as I understand, happens because femininity makes Black women more non-threatening and palatable to mainstream (see: white) audiences.
The most egregious and plain examples I think of are 'The Little Mermaid' (2023) and 'Wish' (2023), in which the black female protagonists are given non-black fathers, and in TLM, bizarrely, a queen character was added and designed as black with a convoluted adoption storyline so that Prince Eric would still be played by a white man.
Anyway, in Hazbin, Velvette and quite a few of the femme background sinners are presented with dark brown skin, whereas I have not noted this being the case for male characters. So in terms of literal visual representation, it's a dud, but as I said, Husk was not designed as a black role in the first place, so I don't hold this against the show too much, it's just unfortunate.
The next major negative with Husk comes from his relationship with Alastor as depicted in S1E5.
Mimzy and Alastor call him 'Husker', which is flying too close to the shucking/husking corn association in my opinion. When you Google 'husker meaning', removing corn husks is the first thing that comes up, and we're told that Husk, for whatever reason, has a problem getting called this nickname, despite it being so close to his own, as opposed to Blitz in Helluva Boss, who states outright why he doesn't like Blitzo (and Blitzy iirc, it's been years since I watched) β a matter of respect.
We're not provided a reason as to why, hence why I looked up what it could mean. That Mimzy and Alastor are calling him a corn shucker raises my hackles as a black person. If this isn't what it's meant to be, I think the significance of the name should've been clarified in some way.
Then there's, of course, Alastor dehumanising Husk by reducing him to a 'pet', i.e. an animal, yanking the chain, violently reminding us that Husk is, for lack of a better term, his slave, and threatening Husk with violence. While soul deals and slavery in this show were already brutally touched upon with ValAngel in S1E4, A. Valentino does not have Angel get on the floor or compare him to an animal; B. ValAngel's dynamic is positioned as capitalist exploitation via sex work; C. Angel Dust is not black, let alone a black ethnicity such as African American that is descended from enslaved Africans.
They also have Husk refer to Alastor as "boss" in this scene, when he otherwise doesn't usually. Alastor does not get any capitalist benefit from Husk, their dynamic operates in a largely domestic setting β it is extremely evocative of a house slave and a master.
The problem with this is that both Husk and Alastor, as Black characters, should recognise this, and Husk should express some sort of discomfort about this particular aspect of their dynamic.
If the racist atmosphere is not intentional, it's extremely careless to depict two Black characters, especially with Alastor having explicitly lived in the Jim Crow era, and even if Husk's era hasn't been stated plainly in the show, having the voice of an older Black man, being completely blasΓ© about the implications of their slave-master dynamic.
If it was not intentional, they should've handled that scene in a totally different way. Do not have Husk refer to Alastor as "boss"; don't have Alastor emphasise Husk's literal inferior anthropomorphism; don't have Alastor fiddling with the chain so much; take or leave this one with all the other changes, but don't have Husk pulled onto the floor, and if he is, have him show some indignation in his shock and horror about Alastor switching up, rather than immediately being submissive, as if this is a normal dynamic.
Again, comparing it to ValAngel, Angel Dust doesn't just take Val's abuse without trying to talk back, and has to be whittled down significantly into the "yes, Valentino" bit, where his line delivery is laboured, and begrudging, rather than accepting of the abusive dynamic.
Alastor
So right off the bat, Alastor is a major problem child, because not only was he initially going to be a stigmatised, demonised version of a Louisiana Voodoo practitioner, but also... he wasn't even a creole/mixed/black-ish character. Alastor was going to be white, which was changed because of criticisms. So already off to a shit start, but it was changed, so won't hold it against Prime Alastor.
I'm just going to say Alastor is Creole going forward because Vivzie has said that once, even though a lot of the fandom interprets this as meaning biracial black-white (not the same thing), but it makes little difference.
Creole Voodoo practitioner Alastor using real veves/spiritual symbols is still god-awful representation, because it continues the racist, historically precedent tradition of associating the spirituality of the African diaspora with demons and evil-doing. Diaspora spirituality is largely about connecting with our African ancestors and traditional deities, with features of syncretism, e.g. the inclusion of Catholic saints in Louisiana Voodoo. So the badness and malice Alastor does with his powers should have nothing to do with it β that's not just bad representation but it's false, pedalling stigma.
So Alastor's symbols were changed from real veves to elements from veves and sigils that resemble elements from veves. Step in the right direction, but still... associating Voodoo with bad-mindedness (sorry I keep using that word; I hope you can figure it out from context clues; a more accurate term is escaping the Jamaican in me lol).
At this point, the word "voodoo" is never uttered anywhere, and it's not technically offensive, but as I say, it's one foot over the line of offensiveness, one foot on neutral ground.
Next up is Alastor's vocal direction and casting.
Elephant in the room: Amir Talai is not Black. And unlike the VA for Clawdeen Wolf in 'Monster High' G1, or Michiko Malandro's VA in the English Dub of 'Michiko and Hatchin', and such cases, is not instructed to do any sort of Blaccent. I'm not saying this is a bad thing; we don't want non-Black people doing Blaccents, but I'm merely stating that Blackness is absent from Alastor's vocal performance. So there's no representation there.
Alastor is doing a transatlantic accent, and even in his flashback scene, as far as I hear, he's doing almost the same accent, if not the same. That is not an actual accent people had and was specifically crafted for the media to make celebrities more palatable to globalised anglophone audiences. So no representation, even beyond Blackness, on that front either.
Really and truly, they should've got a black VA to voice Alastor. I understand that the phoney accent is how the character is very married to the character's original design, but the original design was offensive and ignorant. Black characters, especially given the context Alastor is associated with, need to be researched well and handled with curiosity and education, lest we whitewash the violently racist history of the US and erase the story of the Black community in the United States and their contributions to culture as we understand it today.
The direction of Talai's Alastor is not even consistent, so I see no reason that representation was sacrificed over what we have now. The accent is not real, not directed clearly, so there's no reason why a Black voice would not suffice for the role.
Speaking of Alastor's backstory, while I now have a theory on why Rosie does not specifically call out Jim fucking Crow/racism in her dialogue... in describing the hardships Alastor faced in early 20th-century New Orleans getting a radio show, race is danced around in the most jarring way, and people have noted that the party scenes are suspect in their depiction of class and race mixing during Jim Crow. This can be addressed later if we ever get Alastor's own testimony of his life in more detail, but as of now, we are still failing to represent anything remotely black here.
Going on to his visual design, as a human, we get what is probably our one and only black win for Alastor. He has curls, he's handsome, has a realistic skin tone, brown eyes, and imo, given his being active in jazz age NOLA, freakiness (/in the most non-sexual way lol) and the shows both coming out in the 2020s, he evokes AMC's Louis de Pointe du Lac imo, which was another race-swap for sensitivity that added many layers to the character.
Human Alastor also does not summon a demon with Voodoo, but specifically with a pentagram. He's portrayed as just... generally tweaking, being a serial killer, living in conditions that are grim and unhealthily isolated. His mish-mash spirituality is presented as a frantic cry for help, throwing everything beyond major religions at the decrepit wall. He calls on "spirits of the afterlife" NOT demons, and implicitly started with Voodoo because it's what he's most familiar with, given his background. He speaks French, alluding to his Creole identity. While nothing is made explicit or commented on, there's a lot of interesting details going on here.
Kisses for human Alastor, if you take him out of the historically whitewashed context, we have a few small black wins over here. Beautifully deranged, beautifully black boy.
Had he been contextualised in a more modern era, you could imagine him as just a generally superstitious, non-traditionally spiritually wary character, which I feel like is honestly kind of a deep cut (for outsiders) culturally contextualised personality type in the black community that gives me life to see. In isolation, human Alastor has the potential to be good representation, outside of the voice issues.
...And then we come to our usual, day to day Alastor. Big sigh.
His hair is a tragedy, and without a single curl or wave. This is not implied to be a pimp perm/silk press for style. It's bright red. Not black hair. 0 points for representation. And this is obviously a matter of opinion, but his hair is just... not visually appealing enough to not have altered it somewhat.
His skin had an 'animation error' in the first season and was ghostly pale instead of the darker, sallow pallor he consistently has in S2. The fact that they just let that slide in S1 is pitiful β complexion is kind of a huge fucking deal when it comes to depicting black, melanated characters. The oversight is offensive, which is beyond what the character himself depicts, but I think it's important to mention.
Alastor is Creole, so his nose being upturned and sharp is not an issue, but when you put it all together, demon Alastor simply is not a black character design. And of course he isn't β he wasn't designed black, and he wasn't visually changed to accommodate the needed changes for sensitivity. So aesthetically, voice included, there is woefully 0 black representation in demon Alastor.
But let's imagine a world where demon Alastor looked as black as the story actually calls for him to be, and we could tell by the sight and sound of him: what's the verdict on his personality and role in the story so far?
He's a cannibal, with him eating a deer as a deer demon, the food he eats having body parts, and his easygoing affiliation with Rosie. This is not great paired with the Voodoo motif, and maybe it's the Caribbean in me talking and this is less of a thought in the US (I'm not sure), but from my experience, black diaspora cultures that practice non-mainstream religions are often associated with cannibalism. I actually think most indigenous/alternative traditional religions are stigmatised and get associated with cannibalism or meat-eating practices that don't align with mainstream American ideas on what animals are permissible to eat = immoral.
So far, while we can pull some interesting interpretations from Alastor being a cannibal, it doesn't have any impact on the story, and other than the cannibal sinners, he's the only person shown to engage in this. There's no real reason, and I personally think walking it back to hints of vampirism with the blood drinking, and the venison affinity would have the same effect while flying not as close to the sun. Although, I'm obviously biased here.
Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't actually understand the significance of Alastor being a literal cannibal. We are explicitly told that he cannibalised his fellow overlords in terms of power, but... they told us, so no real need for him to actually be eating people, too, is there? We also don't generally see him murdering people throughout the series, so it's just a kind of weird accessory.
I think an Addams family level of macabre would work fine for the gags. The cannibalism, as of now, is just kind of there, and turning the heat up slightly on the offensiveness of his character. This is a very quiet beep on the radar that I'd usually easily overlook, given the demonic setting, but everything adds up, and there's not much in terms of black rep to offset it.
Interestingly, unlike Vox, who makes quite a pointed commentary on whiteness in pop culture, even if unintentionally, Alastor's role in the story has almost no ties to blackness. The one glimmer of hope was his talk of "freedom" in 'Finale', which is obviously an extremely topical and heralded principal for black descendants of enslaved Africans, and especially African Americans, given the clash between the country's self-proclaimed concern for freedom and the violent subjugation of Black Americans throughout history and to this day, but especially pre-Civil Rights, such as during Alastor's lifetime, which has been flagged extremely loudly from his first appearance.
This tends to be something I lean on to black him up in my personal presentations and interpretations of his character, but the show is really not interested in this at all. Alastor willingly offers himself into bondage in S2 and makes nice with Rosie after she dehumanises him and it is portrayed, I believe consciously, from Alastor's racialised perspective as degradingly anti-Black. This is not the pursuit of freedom as represented by a black character. No points for rep here, which is a damn shame because it was such an easy lay-up.
Also just touching back on the aesthetic level for a moment: Alastor's musical associations so far have been jazz and that creepy, villainous orchestral music that plays for him. This is okay, but strictly sticking to jazz feels ignorant to the history and context of Black music, especially from the Deep South. Music genres do not "fall out of coconut trees" (lol), but come through evolution and weaving in elements from different, pre-existing genres, etc. I know I'm biased here, but where are the Blues and the Country? Alastor's background is so incredibly rich and vibrant, and the portrayal is so limited to the point it almost feels like erasure to me.
Fucking VOX's white ass got a Gospel song, and Alastor is pigeonholed to jazz and spooky villain orchestral. Give me a break. But more than that too, why could his ominous music not also be Jazz. How about Ragtime...?
My point here is that limiting him in this way, I feel, diminishes the character's blackness coming across. Instead, Alastor seems more like he just really likes jazz, and there's nothing much deeper to it. Music is extremely important culturally, and especially the direct derivatives of the Blues at the time for African Americans.
But okay, "jazz is for pussies", says Adam, and we're not going to have any meaningful blowback from the early 20th century NOLA Creole guy on that. Okay. Yeah, no points for me on black representation here.
Back to his role in the story, the way he's so aggro on Lucifer with no explanation could play into the cultural context of a fight against hegemony and the oppressing classes for freedom thing... except, no. We're provided no reason so far on why Alastor is so uncharacteristically pressed about Lucifer.
If Alastor's design actually represented a black man, what we'd be seeing is a black guy bullying an adorkable white guy, emasculating him (the comment on his height), basically telling a white girl to call him daddy to emasculate a white guy (LOL), and doing all of this 100% unprovoked.
We'd then be seeing a light-skinned mixed guy playing massa to the monoracial dark-skinned Black guy.
We'd then be seeing our problematic biracial* willingly let a white woman use him like an attack dog, and suddenly finding his chill when telling her to fuck off, meanwhile not having an ounce of composure around Lucifer.
*He's not biracial, but this is a topical concept in black discourse that is just hilarious to me as a mixed person hahaha
Fortunately for episode 5, Alastor is not detectably black whatsoever, because the racial dynamics are honestly outrageous and go completely unexplained. None of it aligns with what we see of Alastor at other points in the series. I think portraying Alastor's relationship with Husk in this way also raises the question of why... why doesn't Alastor have any actual black friends?
Again, somehow Vox gets away looking much better in this regard, despite being the only character to make racist comments in Prime: he champions diversity, his bestie is a black gal that he obviously adores, takes on dinner dates, we are shown he is willing to casually die for, and calls "lovely", the first overlord he appeals to is Zeezi, who is black-coded (her VA and vocal performance), Zeezi is also the main non-Vee singer in 'Bad with Us', they practically share the song...
Meanwhile, Alastor is choosing roles of servitude for white-skinned women (Charlie, Mimzy, Rosie), obsessively bitter about white men of status (Vox, Lucifer), and has a Japanese lolita maid, and a black guy he exploits... No good at all, mate π.
It COULD be interesting if it were intentional, but I highly doubt it's anything more than clumsy. And most importantly, no commentary is given in the show on it so if it's intentional, it's not only executed poorly, but simply not executed.
Alastor comes off as a weirdo without racial solidarity, which again, flies in the face of any racial undertone to his pursuit of freedom. And given that he lived and died in Jim Crow, and we are explicitly shown that he was a pioneering Black voice with his radio show, and our attention is drawn to it with Rosie's "overcoming so much" comment, Alastor not having racial solidarity at all, and being so out of touch with black people is something you just have to address if you give a shit about meaningfully representing him as a black character whatsoever.
In S1E7, Alastor being weirdly touchy and inappropriate with Charlie, and then Rosie insinuating he looks like a creep, has bad manners, and having Alastor standing up behind Charlie like a butler goes back to the servitude thing, but also there's this element of Alastor giving sex pest vibes that got sown here that, when you mix it altogether with everything else I've stated, is kind of racially iffy, considering the hypersexual mandingo stereotype.
I also believe that they are subtly sowing seeds of Alastor not being intelligent, with his chicken scratch handwriting, and the repetition of "clever" and people harping on his wordplay (I find it hilarious, sorry. "I pulled a few limbs, too" is getting a Chopz giggle every time) as kind of a sore spot. It hasn't happened yet but I can see it on the horizon, and... this too is racially iffy. Of course, black men can be dumb, but to have it as a 'thing' specifically for Alastor is deeply unfortunate, and also doesn't really align with what we're shown in S1 & S2. I'll wait until the other shoe drops to dock a point for it though.
Alastor is set to become a true villain, but at a base line is generally cocky, selfish, sadistic, hypocritical, antisocial (in S2), loves to pick fights and do violence. Definitely nothing refreshing or positive going on here in terms of black male representation lol.
I love Alastor, and I add a lot of more black details in my mind (e.g. his teeth being gold 'radio' grillz... pry it from my dead hands), but he's hardly representation, and it's not good if he is. He's borderline neutral if we're being charitable... and we really are being.
Velvette
As a Black Brit, I have the most skin in the game with this one.
Visually speaking, Velvette is fine, but not beautifully black. Her complexion is pale, because of the demon thing, I suppose. Often, the brown appears more grey. I don't think it's necessary for the demons to have unnatural skin tones if I'm being honest, there's plenty of other demonic details they can be given. Just take a look at Monster High, for example: Clawdeen Wolf and her family all have brown, human skin tones and yet they're still obviously anthro wolves. Honestly, now that I say this, I wish Alastor's complexion and hair-ear situation just looked like Howleen Wolf's pretty much lol.
Anyway, Velvette is visibly black and she is sometimes given afro-textured hairstyles. So wins here.
One thing about Velvette that bothers me, and this may be problematic of me to say, but it's that she doesn't have thicker lips. This came up for me because of her being a fashion doll, and most major fashion doll lines aligning with the beauty ideal of thicker lips, or at least having enough surface area for a cute lippy, and then there's the thing of lip filler being explicitly pulled out in 'Trust Us', meanwhile Velvette sits here clearly flouting the reported beauty ideal if that's the case. Initially, I thought that the main characters simply didn't have lips as a design principle, but Rosie and recurring tertiary characters like Clara, Melissa, and so many background characters have thicker lips, that it's started to itch at me. Her top lip (I think she's biting her bottom lip???) is also thicker in the cocktail Love Potion poster.
It's not a big deal, but thicker lips are a common black feature, so on multiple levels, including black rep, I don't think it would've hurt to let Velvette have it. But this isn't a detraction, some black people don't have thick lips, it's fine. In some scenes, however, the animators seem to agree with me and give her thicker lips. Just not really getting why not here, seems like an aversion to facial diversity in the main cast, which... you know. Not good for representation.
Of course, Velvette doesn't have a black nose either. There is a serious lack of noses in this show, which I feel speaks to the priorities of Viv's art style; noses are a really big deal to depicting ethnic diversity and they are erased in most cases in the demon designs of Hazbin Hotel. And we are stuck in Hell, so although the humans all have noses, the only human characters we regularly see are the exorcist angels who are... white. Okay.
(I know Vaggi has a nose, but being Latina, the nose doesn't factor into her representation; like Alastor as a Creole character, it could be anything and have no impact on the representation).
So this is why I say she's not beautifully black, because she has (ashy) dark brown skin and sometimes has black hairstyles, but it's bare minimum in depicting a character as black, really. But it's always good to see a dark skinned black woman, in any case.
Something that is good rep about Velvette as black female character is her fashion, in my opinion. I feel she comes off as multi-faceted, dipping into more alternative styles, going to the witch thing, more 2010s social media type outfits, business style outfits, and novel outfits like the Western getup from S2E3. Literally, we get multi-facted visual representation of black women just by them letting her do this, along with the different hairstyles. So this is a positive point, albeit a very mild one.
She is voiced by a Black woman, which is good for BTS representation, although not a black British woman. Because of this, and an obvious disinterest in black British vernacular from the writers, Velvette's dialogue and vocal direction is wholly devoid of anything black British. The closest we got was her saying "it's giving", which is AAVE, since we tend to borrow from African Americans and consume Black media, absorbing these phrases through osmosis and circulating amongst ourselves, more than our non-black counterparts. That being said, white people appropriate AAVE all the time and a lot of the black roots get erased and deemed "internet slang", so regardless of whether Velvette was black or not, they probably still would've used it. Likewise, with Alastor saying "that's the tea".
So on the voice, it's neutral: objectively it's a black performer, but the direction and performance is not meaningfully black representation. If Velvette's VA was not black, the end product doesn't change, although Lili Cooper's performance is great, and I especially love the pitch range, particularly if Velvette is meant to be from London, since for whatever reason, it seems like we tend to have deeper voices than women from other parts of the country. I doubt it was intentional, but it's a small positive from me.
Velvette's OST is fine, but not meaningfully black, and certainly not meaningfully black British. I highly doubt they are going to use Grime, Jungle or Garage elements if she ever gets a song. Moving away from black British and more onto black genres in general, there's still a chance for something, but she doesn't have song yet so we can just move on from the aesthetic stuff for now.
Though the fandom certainly love to masculinise her, she is a feminine dark skinned black woman, and treated in such a role by Vox and Valentino as far as we've seen. This is good because black women are so often denied femininity, with blackness being viewed as inherently masculine.
That being said, as I mentioned in that post I did a while ago, positioning Velvette as the third wheel to StaticMoth, one of whom is explicitly shown to be a womanising Don Juan type (Val), the other being 2 for 2 on having a crush on his bestie/person he wants as a "partner" (Vox) positions Velvette as being undesirable, since she does not have meaningful relations with any other characters at this point, and nobody has shown any attraction to her, despite her being implied to be conventionally attractive and the commenters on her social media UI vouching for this.
Portraying black women, especially conventionally attractive black women, as undesirable plays into our other-ing and dehumanisation; it calls into question the possibility of black women as a whole to be attractive, no matter how conventional or ideal appearing, and provides the opinion of 'maybe not'. While it may seem superficial, desirability is tied to ideas of who is deserving or undeserving of love and softness, and it does matter.
The decision to make the black woman a third wheel and invest so much of herself into a relationship other than her own, when as far as we're shown she doesn't have one of her own is iffy. It puts her in service of their relationship also: Velvette is the camera woman for StaticMoth's kisses, while she herself does not receive such affection from anyone. It's something akin to the mammy archetype.
Speaking of racist archetypes, Velvette most certainly is presented as a Sapphire archetype: she is portrayed as aggressive, disrespectful, stubborn, callous, prone to quarrel and violence, irritable/frequently angry.
But as I said before, and this is also a large reason why I ship StaticDoll, is that Vox is very soft with and uplifting of her in S1E2 and S2E3, in addition to the pinups visually suggesting she is seen as desirable in the environment design, even if it's never particularly gestured toward. Vox seems to have a lot of respect for Velvette, shutting down his sexy times with Valentino flustered at her presence, for whatever reason.
In S2E6, even when he's "throwing her under the bus"... he really isn't. Getting Velvette to apologise is to her benefit, too, and it's hardly a tall order, in addition to Vox truly holding her hand through the whole thing, and trying to cover for her. My running theory is that she is purposefully meant to portray impulsivity, but just taking the show at face value, it's due to her being presented as a Sapphire that she's so bothered by Vox asking her to apologise to someone to help business run smoothly.
Other than this, it's also nice to see a feminine black female character be the villain, but also not portrayed as more villainous than the rest. The Vees being a strong friend triangle really helps make Velvette's position feel nuanced and sincere, rather than falling into another iffy trope.
Overall, I think all the issues stem from the thing that Vivzie admitted:
She did not view the characters' ethnicity and racial backgrounds as important when designing and writing them. It's simply irresponsible and tone-deaf to do that for characters so entwined with History and pop culture (the overlords). This is a show that runs a commentary on culture and hegemony, whether that's a theme it intended to focus on or not. The very least that could be done is approaching the characters' cultural backgrounds and contexts with true curiosity and care. To sincerely be acknowledged is the bulk of representation, so saying that a black character's blackness isn't important to their story is just dooming the representation to be severely limited at best, but most likely offensive.
Black people living as minorities simply cannot detangle our stories from our marginalisation. From the time that we are still in nappies, we're experiencing racism, because it's on our skin, in our hair, on our eyes, nose, lips, our voices, and this isn't even to speak of more nuanced things that crop up with age like cultural capital we do not have access to for not being raised in the mainstream (i.e. marginal), therefore often limiting us from participating in mainstream society in the way our white counterparts do. That's another reason representation matters; to bridge the gap for mainstream audiences to understand marginalised people, rather than the onus always being on us to have to translate and repackage ourself to suit their cultural sensibilities.
Saying all that to say, my opinion is that colour blind representation is never good representation. It can be neutral, and maybe I can personally like the characters and see things in them that are meaningful to me, but ultimately, if there's no intention to represent us... then it's just not possible to meaningful representation. It's like if you went to watch a performance of Romeo and Juliet and Romeo is played by a black actor... Romeo's character doesn't suddenly become black. There are things that can be done to make it so, but it would have to be intentional. No intentionality = no representation.
That's my personal take, anyway.
I also believe that as a marginalised person, it's my right to not experience prejudice twice by denying myself enjoyment of something that misses the mark, whereas fans of other demographics aren't viscerally impacted. Therefore, I take what I need from these characters, have myself some black ass fun and runnnnnnnnn.
