Say… A Revision!

Mildred (or Millie)

I did a lot of reworking around Mildred since a majority of her characterization is basically nonexistent, so I gave her a personality with a lot of potential and complexity that’s on par with her male crew members.

Mildred comes from a very low-income, Southern family in the Wrath Ring. She grew up on a barn with her parents and several other siblings, making her essentially a middle child. She worked on their farm for most of her life as a hand and delivery girl to send fresh produce to buyers and the local market. It was like this for some time until the family business had gone dry due to some messy ties with the upper-class that resulted in them going into poverty. Wanting to help her family and support them financially Mildred left to go find work elsewhere, in which she meets Blitzo and is hired onto the I.M.P. team.

She’s very hard-working, a bit brutish but has a heart of gold, and is blunt and out-spoken. She’s not very sophisticated but has a lot of Wisdom to her and gives some great advice to Loona as the only other woman in the workplace, and someone for Loona to look up to in times of need. She gets along great with everyone except Moxxie, who she butts heads with constantly due to their conflicting personalities and backgrounds. Speaking of Moxxie, he’s next on the list.

Moxandicus (Moxxie)

Moxxie was an Imp born into the wealthier part of Imp society, basically making him the equivalent of your typical “uptight, sophisticated rich boy”. His family comes from a line of competitive businessmen, none of that mafia mumbo-jumbo, though they probably do have some loose ties to them in some way. Moxxie is the odd-one-out of his family, rather than taking an interest in the family business, instead finds his passion in Mortals History (this man is so infatuated with Humans culture its crazy). Because of this, his family looked at him more as a nuisance “wasting his time on silly hobbies”, and basically cut him off from his wealth until he “proved himself worthy” of being welcomed back into the family. Now broke and nowhere to go, Moxxie finds himself looking for work, where he meets Blitzo and joins I.M.P.

I imagine my Moxxie has a very similar personality to the one if the show, except he’s more educated, calculating, snooty and uptight, and less of.. I don’t know how to put this— coward? Butt of the joke? You get what I mean. He’s essentially the straight man and voice of reason for the group, and is the one who usually has to get them out of their pickles when working. He doesn’t have a lot of street smarts and is less willing to get his hands dirty compared to everyone else. Like I said earlier he clashes a lot with Millie and frequently questions Blitzo’s authority, but most of the time doesn’t argue back on the count of that’s his boss. He’s indifferent towards Loona, though questions why a teenager is working for them in the first place.

Blitz(o)

A lot of Blitz’s backstory and personality is mostly the same: Grew up in the circus in the Pride Ring, left after wanting to seek more in life prove to everyone someone from his social class can make it big in the world, yadayadayada. However I did rewrite some things that I believed wold make his character a lot better/more tolerable:

He’s still on good terms with his sister, they’re just really busy all the time so they don’t have a lot of time to talk or see each other (I’m so sick of this dude not having at LEAST one good relationship).

He and Verosika are still on bad terms due to their messy break-up, though I want to believe Blitzo regrets and sometimes even misses her and the actions that led to their falling out, though due to his pride refuses to admit it out loud.

None of that weird “sexually harassing my coworkers” shit. That was weird and gross.

I gave him a personality that’s more attuned to “if Weird Al was a bounty hunter who grew up in the circus”. He was always some silly little guy to me. The man grew up in a circus, I’d expect him to be a little clowned down if you get what I’m sayin’.

His relationship with Loona is typically the same. He adopted her when she was around 13-14 and has been raising her ever since as his teenage daughter (None of that weird “treating hellhounds like literal peta thing that was weird and confusing). He makes her work as their secretary and “social media manager” as a way to earn a weekly allowance and also “the kids are hip with it she’ll do wonders for us promotionally”. She does not, he just refuses to admit it.

Leona (Loona)

I’ve done a lot of reworking for Loona as well, same reasons as Millie. Istg they do not know how to wrote female characters.

Loona is a hellhound born from the Sloth Ring. She doesn’t know a lot of her background, but was raised in foster care for a small portion of her life until Blitzo took her in when she hit her teenage years. Before that however she took a liking towards astrology and magic and would constantly read about it in her formative years. When she began living with Blitz she began attending schooling to further learn about magic and how to translate older works, which is how she’s able to use Stolas’ book for the IMP team to use. She get’s teased on a lot in school for being one of the only Hellhounds there, which causes her to feel insecure about herself and shut in from people including Blitz.

Loona’s a very quiet, closed-off teenager (16-17), who’s very much in that “going through a phase” part of growing up. She’s very insecure about herself and is easily-impressionable, which is why she looks up to Millie so much, since she’s cool and is the only other girl in the office space to talk to. Loona’s relationship with Blitz is the same, except she actually acts like a teenager and not an abusive asshole. She wants to prove to herself that she’s not some “loser nobody” and can actually do magic and make friends with other teens her age.

unfortunately like we said before, if the show made its abusive characters sympathetic, then there's no difference between them and the protagonists.

which of course, could open up some interesting ideas (something that Berserk and Dorohedoro does) but no lmao.

But you're completely right, which is why im kind of frustrated but also not surprised that despite being a survivor herself, vivzie allows no nuance with her more problematic characters. it's also why im not surprised a lot of fans who admit to be victims will eat this slop up and tear apart people who criticize this type of writing.

we can't look at abusers as irredeemable evil people who love violence and chaos and abusing vulnerable people. i think most abusers, or hell, i think ALL abusers don't have this level of 2-dimensional characteristics to them.

abusers are not randos who come into your life and make your life hell. abusers are your mom who makes your favorite breakfast. that guy in school your friends love to hang out with. that boss that loves their wife and kids. abusers are messy, complicated people. abusers are people that can feel shame, regret and guilt. abusers may suffer from trauma. abusers may love you. abusers may not even know they're being abusive.

a lot of victims, struggle with that. and as a victim myself i completely emphasize and understand. its so easy to look at abusers as people who are unempathetic monsters with no sense of kindness and remorse, because abuse is always an unjustified act of cruelty. this is why so many victims often struggle with recognizing their own abuse, because to grasp that abuse means you have to grasp that someone in your life, someone that you've loved and cared about, is hurting you.

the fact that we could have seen this messy, complicated exploration of how far people will go when there's no consequences and we're denied it is frustrating. vivziepop is writing the fantasy story victims tell themselves to cope with their own trauma. that your abusers hate you. that they're evil people. that they're irredeemable and incapable of becoming better people. we're not allowed to see the scary truth that abusers can be both earnestly kind, and earnestly cruel.

Ok… I was looking at the designs and-

Has anyone realized how weird the racial implications of Hazbin Hotel (and Helluva Boss with the main characters) are?

I know someone else has already talked about this-

But Charlie Morningstar is clearly white coded. The “corrupt souls” she has to “save” are clearly poc coded or are directly poc. The “villains” of the show are MOSTLY poc with Velvet being confirmed as poc indirectly by Vivziepop not long ago and Valentino was confirmed to be hispanic too. It gets off “white savior” vibes along with the fact that 1. Theres a creole character who practices voodoo who’s stereotyped as a cann^bal 2. There being a hispanic poc (Valentino) who’s also shown to be highly aggressive, to a character thats Italian: a ethnicity thats considered as “white” in many places. Hell! Niffy is even Japanese, and she was drawn as yellow 100% of the time until just recently.

They also have this thing where theres something i’d like to call “Greywashing”: Where Vivziepop deliberately avoids using the color brown, and instead makes all of her poc (No, “Coco” doesnt count shes from another artist. This is only about the main designer.) a lighter shade of grey, giving the illusion of brown skin without actually making them brown. While Vivziepop gave Charlie a peach-like skin tone. So its clearly not because they’re demons but something else entirely.

There are SO many chances for Vivzie to add some real edge to her project but she legit never takes it.

Deep sea demon folk? Skinny guys that don’t even have underbites or the buggy sea creature eyes.

Spider demon folk? No fangs or abdomen/spider like stature, no venom no nothing

The character meant to look like a buggy B-movie alien barely looks the part, if at all (Niffty, in case you’re wondering)

Every other character? In a sharply dressed suit. Super skinny, too.

High ranking, intimidating demon antagonists? Too goofy looking and childish acting to be taken seriously.

Lucifer? Not imposing in the slightest.

Hell? Barely seems like Hell!!

There is so much vagueness and weird constantly shifting power imbalances and implications that altogether I never really get the political perspective upon their relationship since the show purely focuses on the emotional (and lack there of it, really). Divorce is apparently a big scandal, but I don’t feel the weight of consequences of this. Divorce in general is ostracized by society, but the upper society must react even more harshly at this, right? The show itself shoves it down your throat about oh! Oh how scandalous! How forbidden! But switch Stolas and Stella to an middle class status and there won’t be next to no big thematic changes.

I think in a general sense people are losing a lot of media-literacy, and both sides of the hb defenders and the hb critics tend to misinterpret a lot of things. I’m not above misinterpretation, like ever, I just feel like there’s an overwhelming amount of people who take something as the complete wrong way without realizing it, even though I myself can still see what they mean because it’s an understandably easy slip up.

I’ve seen people bring up on both sides that Stolas’s writing for s2 e1 was inconsistent with him claiming he has an excellent memory and being able to recognize somebody he met once 25 years ago - the inconsistency they like to bring up is the writers not paying attention to their own dialogue by having Stolas being able to remember Blitzo, and then backpedal and say “I hardly even remember your name” and then turn back around and say “didn’t it have an ‘o’ at the end of it? Like a clown name?” and what I’ve seen people say is that it’s sloppy writing.

It’s actually not, and while I don’t like defending Stolas, I can’t just sit and agree with people who don’t know such a common trope as backpedaling. Like a perfect example of this would be Sam Sparks from cloudy with a chance of meatballs, or jesus christ, the fuckin angry mob from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Both of these instances we have characters claim something or do something, and then back away from it when they either are exposed for it, or are paranoid about a second party’s reaction to it. In Sam’s case, her continually pretending to be an airhead when she’s in fact very intelligent comes from a fear of neglect and ridicule she never could escape from unless she was an idiot and pretended to be as unpassionate as everyone else in the room. In the crowd in the Holy Grail’s defense, they dressed up a woman they claimed to be a witch, and when she called them on their bullshit, they admitted they had added onto her to make it more believable and an easier way to burn somebody they wanted burned. (I can’t believe I have to defend two silly movies to discuss literacy and the simple concept of backpedaling but I wouldn’t feel the need to if people just paid attention in their literature classes.)

With that context, Stolas being the one to instigate a sexual desire he’s (I guess) harbored in his 25+ years in a suffocating closet with his “only friend”, him being suddenly reciprocated and introduced to instead of a fantasy he can control, a reality in which he can’t control the opposite party, he panics. Once he’s lost what little control he had, he gets flustered and backpedals has hard as he can as he tries to A) process these feelings in real time, and B) handle the idea of consequences that could come from acting in real life, than acting in his head.

I will not argue that his doubts should not have been ignored in Blitzo’s case, but the writers were desperate to give Blitzo some blame where in reality he really shouldn’t have had any. The writing wasn’t sloppy because Stolas was panicking, the writing was sloppy because the writers wanted Stolas and Blitzo to meet as kids regardless if it worked or not, it was sloppy because they even bothered to rekindle a scene from the pilot for the sake of a silly gag even though it now does not work with what they’ve done with their own show, it was sloppy because god forbid they make Stolas into an antagonist and even bring up the fact that that stupid fucking owl is as privileged as they come and yet he’s the one we’re being practically begged to sympathize with.

I sympathize with him in the sense he’s comphet, or forced into a loveless young marriage for the direct and complete result he is to have a child whether he wants one or not. I sympathize that he was verbally and physically abused. I sympathize with him as much as I can. But I do not sympathize with an upper class demon who fetishizes the same species he’s supposedly been in love with for 25 years, I don’t sympathize with the fact in his “attempt” of giving his child a normal life, he just let them both sit and suffer for whatever fucking reason. What consequence would come from him and Stella divorcing exactly? Would the Goetia family take Via away? What exactly prevented him from doing it sooner? He’s more than well-off money wise, he’s a literal prince in a large family as the Goetia, what exactly could have scared him so much of divorcing Stella to put both him and Octavia through verbal and physical and mental abuse and humiliation? Stella hardly even cares for her own daughter by not even talking about Octavia in a respectful manner, she simply refers to Octavia as an egg she popped out. That’s all Via is to Stella. This is a tangent I don’t even want to go on because it’s just so fucking stupid and it makes me angry.

Blitzo is a victim - he’s a stupid fucking idiot and he treats his employees like utter trash and he invades their personal lives and it’s played for laughs and it’s annoying - but in the situation with Stolas, that imp is a victim. He was bought by Stolas’s father and sold by his own so he could steal everything Stolas had (and like we see no consequence of that because Stolas still had money and power), we see Blitzo trying to avoid Stolas and try to get the book without any intention of actually interacting with Stolas (and the writers shoehorn him having the ‘choice’ of having sex with Stolas and he choose to fuck Stolas for the sake of pity and keeping that god-forsaken trainwreck of a ship alive and profitable), and then they give us an entire season - a whole 7 episodes of Blitzo not showing any sort of admiration for Stolas in any capacity because he’s being sexually used for something he needs more than Stolas does, and a situation Stolas could have made so much easier and better for Blitzo instead of hurt him for a canonical year for his own selfish desires. I’m so sick of people blaming Blitzo for shit that Stolas does. Blitzo is a god damn mess and he’s shit, but he’s a victim to Stolas, and the writers desperately doing everything they can to make it seem like he’s actually been in love the whole time is just shoddy craftsmanship and I’m so disappointed. It’s even more annoying to me because I am a huge fan of the trope of different social classes falling in love despite all the odds. I am so so so in love with knights in love with the one they’re sworn to protect, I love the social dynamics between people from two different places in society and yet this is one of the first times I’ve seen it just so hamfisted and messy that it’s just explicitly pandering at this point.