Talen Lee

i loved reading this!!!

This was a really interesting read, considering that I watched Hazbin Hotel last week with similarly low expectations and also came away having really enjoyed it a lot.
I was interested to note your observation that all the Sex Stuff happens through Angel Dust - as an ace man, it never even occurred to me that Vaggie and Charlee lacked Sex Stuff, but it makes sense now that you've pointed it out.
I had similar thoughts to yours as far as the "sin seriousness" aspect of "being a porn star," "being a murderer," and "creating social media content," being essentially treated as equally bad, such that I was almost convinced that the series was poking fun at the American Evangelical version of "Sin Levelling" but in retrospect I'm not so sure that's the case.
The soundtrack is at least 2/3rds "certified bangers" as I believe the kids would say, and the vocal performances are all excellent.
As a deconverted former conservative American Evangelical, I have a very special interest in the World of Darkness tabletop game Demon: The Fallen. Despite having the most incoherent ruleset out of all the White Wolf WoD games, the setting and feel of Demon really gets my storytelling juices going. It's been years since I've GM'ed a Demon game but I had been considering getting a group together to play.
So watching Hazbin Hotel also made me sit up and take notes - although I wouldn't want to lift anything directly from the series, there are a lot of interesting ideas about demons here that I think could be translated to work in the Demon setting. Like, while I don't think you could directly put Alastor into Demon, you could totally have a news anchor Demon who gained Faith from his listeners who believed he was telling them The Truth.
In any case, I enjoyed the read, thanks!

Just got through reading this as someone with the same "didn't expect to like this, watched it because someone I think highly of likes it, came out of it pleasantly surprised" background. I think you hit on a lot of points here, good and bad, that I wish more people would discuss; the bit about Vaggie and Charlie having kind of a flat relationship as a consequence of Angel is a much more nuanced take than the other review/critique I'm reading through as I type this, and I much prefer your assessment of why the mouths don't work for you than most folks' blanket "why does every character have sharp teeth" complaint.

I also hadn't considered the applicability of the musical numbers to the sort of...exaggeration the characters tend to have going on - the way it helps to paint them all as toeing the caricature line, makes them all feel that little bit less...human? - until you pointed it out. I liked the songs, I know the series is a musical, but it never felt quite right to me until you mentioned that.

This is also coming to my attention at a time when I most needed it; bluntly, every circle I've been in has felt very...soured on Hazbin Hotel, for the same tired reasons I've been hearing every time the show (or Vivzie at all, really) gets mentioned, and I've been noticing the writ-large sour sentiments more prominently now that I've gotten into the series than I feel I ever did before I got into it. It's a breath of fresh air to hear someone else who ended up more interested coming out of it than going into it, who's actually able to point to specific things he didn't like about it and explain why those didn't work for him. So...thank you, in short!