♪ Let's begin ♪
♪ I'm gonna make you wish that I stayed gone ♪
So!
Hazbin Hotel in its fully realized form has finally premiered,
and thus its fandom has finally come into full bloom.
I watched it,
and I'm debilitatingly ashamed to say I enjoyed it!
It's downright… pretty okay!
It’s a little immature, a little stupid,
there’s stuff I’d do differently, but...
you know, there’s plenty of good stuff in there too!
If you don’t know what Hazbin Hotel is -
Hello, Mother, I know you’re watching this -
it’s a cartoon about the Princess of Hell, Charlie, trying to rehabilitate sinners so they can go up to Heaven,
because Heaven has decided that there’s too many people in Hell so they’ve started to stab them into non-existence.
So they don't, you know, like, rise up
and attack Heaven.
There, now you know.
My favorite character, and the fandom darling is Alastor, the Radio Demon.
The character that everyone in the fanbase wants to do unspeakable things to.
He's that sexy sort of evil.
Just full on 2007 Hot Topic edgelord.
The shamelessness of it all makes it extra attractive…
I assume.
If you ever say that again
I will tear your soul apart
and broadcast your screams
for every other disrespectful WRETCH
who dares to question me.
Understood.
Lovely.
He’s a full fledged Tumblr Sexyman,
up there with the Once-Ler, and Bill Cipher, and...
Sans.
And, naturally, every sexyman...
must be shipped.
Thing is though, Alastor -
he's asexual
Probably aromantic too.
Or, at least, the wording makes me believe that.
Who's this you brought with you?
Come now, Alastor, she's much too young for you!
Oh, I'm just kidding!
I know you're an ace in the hole!
A what now?
Rosie said she knows he wouldn't be in a relationship because he's ace.
So, they're doing the thing where they think asexual covers both.
An understandable and common mistake.
After all, if someone's bisexual,
you just kind of assume that term alone covers both sexually and romantically.
But for everyone's information, with asexual people,
the two types of attraction are a lot more split,
thus asexual and aromantic are considered separate but similar.
But I kind of don't expect the normies to always understand that,
especially not the writers on the horny sex Hot Topic cartoon.
So, I think by ace here, they also mean aromantic.
It’s “ace” being used like you’d use gay or straight.
So, in all likelihood, he’s aromantic too.
At least, that’s how I’m interpreting this.
But fandom…
OH...
They don't do aromantic...
So, you, you're watching a youtube video analyzing a dumbass cartoon,
you're a nerd who knows what fandom is like, right?
Not you, Mom, you don't count.
The Hazbin fandom is no different.
Shipping, fan art, rule 34, x reader fics.
And a lot of it focuses on Alastor.
Now, rule 34 isn't a problem.
Drawing a naked picture of the handsome deer man is a victimless crime.
It can become a problem if it is combined with shipping.
And ace-aro people try to tell fandoms that.
It can be potentially disrespectful to ace-aro people to ship the one ace-aro character.
"WELL, YOU KNOW, ASEXUAL AND AROMANTIC PEOPLE CAN STILL DATE!"
"THEY'RE SPECTRUMS AFTER ALL!"
"ALASTOR COULD BE GREYSEXUAL OR GREYROMANTIC!"
"AND VIV NEVER SAID HE WAS AROMANTIC ANYWAY!"
That is a common one I’ve read.
And I'm not gonna put a bunch of dumbass teenagers on blast
by showing real posts.
I just kind of need you to trust me that I've seen this.
So, okay, listen.
It is true that ace and aro are spectrums.
There's this neat thing called greysexual,
which is an asexual that does still experience sexual attraction,
just not in the same way The Sexuals do.
I think it's called allosexual.
I don't know, THE SEXUALS is funnier to me.
Maybe they experience attraction very rarely, or very weakly,
or maybe they find people hot but aren't interested in sexual activity,
or whatever doesn't fully fit the standard definition of asexual,
but also isn't as typical as to what is expected of people.
Greyromantic is similar, just swap out sex for romance.
You know, they...
feel love but very weakly or rarely, or they fall in love but don't want to date.
Here's the thing.
That isn't what the show said though.
Rosie didn't call Alastor gray or grace or anything.
She said “ace in the hole” in regard to her joke that Alastor is dating Charlie,
implying that she knows dating and fucking are not on Alastor's agenda in any way.
People who are like “but they never SAID he was aro!”
SEVERELY overestimated non-ace people's knowledge about the subject.
Asexuality, while being more recognized than it was, is still very much obscure.
I have to explain it to most people I meet.
And due to previous knowledge of how gay and straight work,
“ace” in their brains is going to default to “they're not interested in anyone.”
The poor aromantics and romantic asexuals are over here like:
"Please sir, can I have some acknowledgment?"
It's really easy to get into your bubble online where everyone already knows all of this,
and knows every microlabel and every nuance.
But when you go out into meatspace,
or even traverse the online spaces that aren't as queer focused as, like, Tumblr,
you find you will be very shocked by the average person's knowledge on how any of this works.
I was once at a convention, a nerd convention, mind you!
And I found a booth selling pride buttons,
and I was like “Can I have an asexual button?”
And the person running the booth was like “Which one is that again?”
And I was like “The gray and purple one.”
And they were like "oh yeah, sure thing."
"Sorry, I really just know my flag.”
Pointing to the pansexual flag.
How do you like that?
Even among misfits, you're mistfits!
I don't have any ill will towards this person,
they were very nice!
It just sort of floored me and really brought me back to reality
despite being dressed as a pony.
Also, there wasn't any aromantic buttons.
Now, I'm not here to be a whining Alphabet Mafioso,
and telling people that they're morally incorrect for doing any of this.
I know this is all teenage nerds trying to deal with their hellish high school years
and navigate finding their identities using cartoons as an outlet.
I don't think anyone is evil for shipping the ace aro demon man with Angel Dust.
But I do think it's telling the ways people do it, and I think it's worth commenting on.
So, at bare minimum, Alastor is not attracted to anybody.
Though it is generally thought that he is also the type of ace to not enjoy touch and is repulsed by the idea of having sex.
There are hints he’s rather uncomfortable at times in his hypersexual environment.
If you film me goin' at it with Mr. Fancy Talk Creepy Voice here,
you'd be ROLLIN' in participants willing to stay at this tacky hotel.
HAHA!
Never going to happen.
Now, there’s many reasons one might ship Alastor with someone.
The main reason anyone ships anything is because it’s a fun character dynamic
that's interesting or cute to explore through fan art and fan fiction.
Many ships are also to help the shipper explore their identity in a safe environment,
that’s why most ships online are same-sex couples.
There’s also a fetishization element,
like a portion of the JohnLock conspiracists were shipping it because male on male is hot to them.
Kirk/Spock back in the 60s and 70s Star Trek fandom was probably all these things rolled into one.
Kirk and Spock have a genuinely compelling character dynamic,
it’s clear they are very dear to each other even if they don’t say it out loud.
Jim!
I’m willing to bet a lot of these early Trek fans were queer much as many nerds today are,
and this was a good way to explore that safely.
And Shatner and Nimoy are both hot as hell!
So I'm told!
And it was hot to picture them just absolutely going at it like -
[CENSORED]
- like there's no tomorrow!
These reasons are why I assume anyone ships Alastor with anyone.
Him and Charlie have a compelling dynamic.
Alastor seems charmed by her at times, and it’s a cute idea that the scary evil one is soft for the sweet one.
People ship Alastor and Vox being they’re tense rivals,
and it’s fun to imagine them having a heated battle and then there’s a brief silence and they start making out and they just
[CENSORED]
- right there on the hotel floor.
Same thing with Alastor and Lucifer!
Though maybe don’t do that on the floor in front of Charlie…
In front of Angel Dust is fine, he’d probably enjoy it.
I think it’s okay to ship Alastor like this if you acknowledge that it’s just for fun and to explore a character dynamic you find charming or sexy,
so long as it’s acknowledged that Alastor is ace-aro in canon and this is all fanfic stuff,
and you’re under no delusion that this could happen in the show itself
or that it's being hinted at.
Going back to the greysexual, greyromantic stuff,
if you are a greysexual and/or greyromantic person and you want to use Alastor to explore your identity,
I think that’s just fine, that’s great!
However, if you’re saying “well, he could be greysexual or greyro” because you’re trying to justify your erasure of one of our few characters,
maybe rethink your motivation for doing that and how you actually feel about asexual and aromantic people.
You don’t need to bend over backwards like HuskerDust rule 34 to justify thinking a ship is cute or sexy!
You can just be like "I enjoy my fanfic shit, I know it’s not real."
Same thing with queerplatonic relationships.
The idea of a queerplatonic relationship came out of the aromantic community,
and putting it simply, it’s a committed relationship without romance.
It’s a committed friendship where you share everything and support each other, but you’re not sucking each other’s faces.
Or if you are, it’s in a no-string-attached kind of way.
There’s probably more nuance to it, but I’ve never been in one, I’m not interested in one at the moment, so I can’t speak to the details.
But the thing is, I’ve seen people bring up shipping characters in queerplatonic relationships,
which is very nice in itself, and I’d love fan stuff that actually does that,
but the thing that concerns me is I feel like I’ve seen some people doing it in a way where it’s treated like Romance Lite rather than what it actually is.
Just keep in mind, if you’re trying to use the concepts of the ace and aro spectrums and queerplatonic relationships
as loopholes rather than out of a desire to genuinely engage in the dynamics and concepts,
you might be doing aphobia!
Now, something I saw someone say is that
Hazbin Hotel creator, Vivienne Medrano said they’re allowed to have their innocent fun with shipping Alastor.
Did she really say this?
How exactly was it exactly worded?
I don’t know!
I don’t care!
And I’m not going to go looking for it, because I don’t care what Vivienne Medrano says!
Fandom constantly acts like the creator of the thing they enjoy is God
and anything they say becomes of the Ten Commandments of their fanbase.
Scouring their twitters for any scraps of metanarrative.
But I just don’t consider creators in my media diet that much anymore,
unless they’re especially entertaining in their own right, like Toby Fox.
To me, if something isn’t stated in canon, in the actual show/game/book/movie itself,
then you can’t expect everyone consuming it to know.
If I sat down and showed my mother Hazbin Hotel, she’s not vicious online, she doesn’t use Twitter.
How is she going to know or care what the lady whose name is next to the title says about any of it?
In 30 years, 40 years, what will we have?
What will you have after five-hundred years?!
Twitter might not exist anymore. Hell, it might not exist next year for all we know.
All we will have is the show, and that will be the only thing we have to go on.
Creators can also change their minds, find something that doesn't actually work in the narrative and be forced to alter it,
but if something is in the show, even if it gets retconned, it was still true and part of the narrative once.
And what of the writers?
What about the artists?
Many of them don’t have Twitters, many of them don’t talk on Twitter, many of them are ignored.
You know, we can’t just go by what this one weird lady says.
In Steven Universe, while apparently Peridot was meant to be an ace-aro metaphor,
which you can definitely read into in the show...
But you?
You're not using your combined size and strength to do anything!
I'm doing something.
And what's that?
Stargazing.
Ugh... you can do that alone.
Don't want to.
Hrm.
We're very different.
I appreciate that.
Really?
If you really want to understand fusion...
I can help you.
What do you mean?
Let's fuse.
OH MY STARS!
I get it! You're not ready.
That's fair.
Another time then.
I can't do it.
That's fine!
Peridot, I'm proud of you.
Why?!
Because you made an effort to understand me.
But I still don't understand you!
Why are you fused all the time?!
What with Peridot not liking fusion,
and being one of the few characters to not show romantic attraction at all,
it’s very clear that at least one of the writers shipped Lapidot,
which could make the metaphor less clear to people.
Rebecca Sugar didn’t and couldn’t write every episode, and always made sure everyone got everything perfectly correct at all times.
You’re allowed to Death of the Author a little bit,
because I think Worship of the Author is much less helpful, and is, worst of all…
annoying!
"Viv said this!" "Viv said that!"
Viv also won’t get off of Twitter if only for her own mental health.
She’s not always right!
So, while I generally agree that fans are perfectly welcome to have “innocent fun” shipping characters like they’re kids playing with dolls,
please just be normal about ace and/or aro people.
Please actually read into what’s being said on the actual show,
preferably outside of your rose-tinted clouded fandom glasses.
Don’t look at Twitter, look at me.
Now, this isn’t all fandom’s fault.
Many people have had critique’s of Hazbin, and many are with good cause.
I have a friend who is a lesbian who says they wish that Charlie and Vaggie’s relationship was more affectionate and loving.
'Cause all they got was Charlie quickly kissing Vaggie, and the kiss they shared in the season 1 finale.
You know, we don’t have to have a graphic scene of them violently sc*****ing, just
a little more affection.
Have them hold hands, do more casual little kisses, show them in bed together.
They don’t have to be doing anything romantic, just sharing a bed, doing the hotel budget or something.
Angel gets to be relentlessly and unambiguously gay, why not Charlie and Vaggie?
In the same vein, I would appreciate it if Alastor’s asexuality was explored a little more.
The joke in the pivotal scene is that Alastor doesn’t even know what she’s talking about.
I know you're an ace in the hole!
A what now?
He died in the 30s, he doesn’t know what asexual means.
That could make an interesting episode, where Alastor finds out he’s ace-aro.
Maybe Angel Dust can help him.
Angel died in the 40s, I think, and was in the mafia.
clearly he’s chosen to live a whole different life down in Hell,
and has discovered his sexuality, he might know something about this.
And it could be used to build the dynamic between Angel and Alastor, who haven’t got a lot of screen time together yet.
I don’t know, I don’t need a whole episode, just something, anything.
And while I can’t dictate what fandom does, I think, you know, if you’re fatigued on the same three fandom cliches,
maybe you can use the opportunity of an unshippable character to explore different character dynamics.
People ship Vox and Alastor, and I get it, it’s that rivalry sexual tension.
But, like, wouldn’t it be funnier if that sexual tension was one sided?
Vox has this repressed hateful attraction, and Alastor just doesn’t give a shit about him.
Like "Haha! You wanna fuck me so bad it makes you look stupid!"
Maybe the Charlie and Alastor ship could be about Alastor being soft for the sweet one,
but in a way where he realizes that this isn’t just a hotel gig, he genuinely values her friendship and trust.
And it wouldn't, you know, ruin anything between Charlie and Vaggie.
Alastor and Rosie are pretty close,
maybe Rosie is also ace-aro, and they bond over their shared identity.
Maybe Alastor tried to date Mimzy while they were alive,
and it made him realize that while he does love her, he doesn’t love her that way.
Just some free fanfic ideas for anyone who's into that.
Isn’t this weirdly fucked up?
We’re so devoid of ace or aro characters, I’m defending the evil fucked up demon man,
because while an apathetic serial killer cannibal sure isn’t my first choice for my rare piece of ace-aro representation,
it’s either him, Jughead, or some guy from a show I haven’t watched, but probably will eventually, it’s on my list.
While I do value and cherish Peridot, she is only a metaphor.
And metaphors for ace-aro people aren’t quite as fun or clear cut as metaphors for the other concepts Steven Universe tackles.
A straightforward actual ace or aro of any part of the spectrum doesn’t come along quite so often.
All I am left with is interpreting Rutherford and Tendi’s ambiguous relationship to be on the greyromantic spectrum,
or headcanoning Jessica Rabbit as asexual because that would be funny.
Lesbians get She-Ra, and I get…
a demon cannibal murderer.
♪ You're a loser, baby ♪
♪ a loser goddamn baby ♪
♪ You're a fucked up little winy bitch ♪
♪ You're a loser just like me ♪