#based on the hunicast streams

[fanby-fckry]

Alastor: Would you like to hear some dark humor, Angel Dust?

Angel Dust: Sure, I love dark humor.

Alastor: Alright. :)

Alastor: *Turns off the lights*

Alastor: Knock knock. :)

Angel Dust: Turn the damn lights back on.

[chaifootsteps]

Incoming supposition on what I think is going on in terms of Hazbin, and why Helluva has shifted focus in Season 2: Viv overpromised and underdelivered, forcing Helluva to cannibalize Hazbin's leftover ideas.

Let's for the moment discard rumors about Viv being difficult to work with and that Hazbin was cut from 10 to 8 episodes to get it out of the way—I wouldn't doubt that, and we know that 8 episodes are indeed happening. but since the former parts are technically rumors at this point I don't want to base this analysis on rumors wrapped in NDAs. Let's just look at what we know for absolute certain, which is the following:

-Viv wanted Hazbin to be at least 3 seasons, per her past streams (might have been a Hunicast one but I don't recall)

-A24 announced they picked up HH in 2020. Said pickup announcement is the only thing they've said about Hazbin Hotel in 3 years.

-what little marketing exists has been sparse, and solely limited to already existing fans. None of the stuff on Hazbin's Twitter has been retweeted or acknowledged in any way by A24 proper.

-the show has passed its intended release date, with no cast, platform, or staff revealed at all, when the cast is generally revealed for a show a year prior to release

-early on Hazbin was said to be the serialized storyline, while Helluva was said to be more episodic. Now, we have no Hazbin, and Helluva has gotten more serialized in Season 2

-several comics were planned for Hazbin, one of which being about Charlie meeting an old boyfriend in what looked liek Greed callerd Exes and Ohs. Said comic appears to have been cannibalized into Helluva Boss's S2E3, complete with Charlie's old Von Eldritch boyfriend looking quite similar to Chaz, just not a shark

Given all that, I think during production of Hazbin, something went wrong. Maybe it turned out Viv didn't plan as much as claimed, frustrating the crew. Maybe A24 had too much executive meddling, frustrating Viv. Maybe there was too little meddling and A24 started realizing the show was going to fail so they decided not to advertise it.

]It's anyone's guess at the moment what went wrong, but it seems behind the scenes something went wrong. And whatever the reason, the Hazbin Viv initially set up, the Hazbin Viv promised with the pilot, is not the Hazbin that ended up being produced by A24.(edited)

So Hazbin's serialized ideas were squeezed into Helluva, and Helluva scrambled in Season 2 to create a story because the story Viv intended for Hazbin fell through, so she haphazardly decided to utilize it into this other story because Helluva is all she has now.

Yes this is all speculation, but given A24's utter silence, delays, and Helluva becoming more serialized and provably taking on at least one story intended for Hazbin, I think it's at least somewhat likely.

At this point I wouldn't be surprised if Hazbin turns out to just be episodic like Helluva was originally intended to, turned away from the "Disney meets The Good Place but R-rated" story it was originally going to be and now turning into an episodic "Family Guy in Hell". Which as someone who fell in lover with the pilot for its "Disney meets The Good Place" vibes, is incredibly heartbreaking to think about

This is pretty much shot for shot what I think too. When you lay it all out like that, I'd actually be more surprised if it wasn't what's going on.

(That "R-rated Disney meets The Good Place" description especially hurt, because my pitch to friends I wanted to hook into Hazbin was always "Superjail meets The Good Place." Knowing how close we came to having that story is more tragic than if we'd never gotten it at all.)

[kimsj90]

Hazbin Hotel Reworking Pt. 1

Many Hazbin artists really inspired me to join the whole Hazbin redesign. It’s actually based on the whole Pilot and the streams aka Hunicasts, and some of the ‘creative freedom I had’

I am still reworking on the worldbuilding aspect as the plot and worldbuilding in the series are too confusing to digest.

(EDIT Sept. 13: I changed Valeria’s color scheme to fit the vibe of her being in Wrath Realm)

First up, Charlotte Magne (yep, I wrote Magne not Morningstar so sorry) - yes, she is a princess of Hell, and shares the same as Pilot!Charlie: full of optimism and empathy, wanting to solve the issue of Overpopulation crisis through the Hotel, even though the sinners don’t think about her own ways. She had one flaw: Her excessive kindness always lead to a lot of problems, and is being sheltered, not knowing what is happening. But do not worry, she always seeks advice when things go wrong.

Next is Valeria, my version of Vaggie, she is indeed a moth sinner (not an exorcist anymore) trained by a mentor after surviving from an assault using the divine weapon she caught from the field. It was her survival instinct that she also got recruited to be one of the staffs for the hotel. She still has girly stuff going on in private, so I don’t blame her for that.

[petitprincess1]

Trick's comment about being upset that Michael was having Angel flirt with women is so fucking funny because its confirmed Angel Dust will sleep with women for (extra) money.

Not to mention his cries about Angel Dust making sexual comments to Alastor and how he's "super pushy" or whatever

Not only are the streams literally not canon, and just friends fucking around as characters, but also are you telling me Angel wouldnt flirt with Alastor to make him uncomfortable? I love angel but that doesn't make him a good person. If it was canon I'm sure he wouldnt mean any REAL harm, just based on what we know about his personality but that doesnt change anything. Do we not remember the taco comment to Vaggie?? Which he said just to piss her off??

Please tell me how Michael Kovach is predatory because he's flirting WITH HIS GIRLFRIEND (as Angel) WHICH, IM PRETTY SURE, WAS A REQUEST BTW

Hell, Angel's first line to Alastor is "I can suck your dick". Yeah, it ain't like he knew his sexuality, but still. Plus, Angel telling Vaggie to not get her taco in a twist. When she asked whether he was being racist or sexist, he just said whatever pissed her off more. Angel was never an....well....angel. idk why he's all surprised Pikachu over this.

Also, highly agree with the rest of this. The man's an uneducated moron, who probably didn't even know what the hunicast was even for.

[ckret2]

So I've been deeply pulled into the Radiosnake pairing bc of your fantastic writing! Problem is, now I have fic ideas but no knowledge of the Hazbin background. Can you tellI me where I can get more Hazbin info? I've only watched the pilot and read your stuff. I heard there were comics??

That is an excellent question anon, because right now it is really hard to get Hazbin background easily.

Okay, so, the canon info on Hazbin Hotel can be sort of sorted into four tiers, from most to least canon.

Tier 1: The Definitely Canon

There is, of course, the pilot. And then there is an Angel Dust prequel comic, only seven pages of which have been released so far. We’ve been told it’s gonna be finished and we’ve had glimpses of in-progress prequel comics for a couple other characters—most prominently Alastor’s and Charlie’s—but so far that unfinished Angel Dust comic is the only one that’s been officially released.

Finding the in-progress comic pages is... a challenge. Nobody, as far as I can tell, has been specifically collecting all of the pages we’ve seen so far. I was able to scrounge up:

Couple more Angel pages

some Alastor pages

another Alastor page

a random Alastor panel

another random Alastor panel—I’ve seen the full page of this before, Alastor goes “Hello ladies!” and they go “HELLO ALASTOR~<3″ but I can’t find the full page now

There’s a smattering more canon panels on the artist faustisse’s twitter, but I haven’t dug them all out, and some of the posts I’m gonna link in a lil bit have a glimpse of another panel.

If you haven’t already heard of Helluva Boss, I recommend looking into it as well. It’s a second series being created by the same folks, different cast of characters but set in the same version of Hell, so any canon details we learn in Helluva also apply to Hazbin.

Helluva’s pilot is here. Plus a cute music video here.

Earlier this month, during a BLM charity stream hosted by show artist Ashley Nichols—she runs regular streams under the title “HuniCast”—they released a few sneak peaks of future Helluva scenes, all compiled here.

And that’s it for canon. Two pilots, a music video, a smattering of future scenes, part of one comic, a few WIP pages/panels from other comics.

Tier 2: Pseudo-Canon

Everything else we currently know about Hazbin (and Helluva) are things that the creators have told us. Consequently, they’re all pseudo-canon—and likely subject to change in the future as the shows and comics are further developed and released. Some details that were released/described in the past have been contradicted at other times, or else radically changed by the time the pilot came out.

(For example, when Alastor was first created years and years ago as an OC with no plans for Hazbin, he was a demon deer who could shapeshift into a human shape—now he’s a demonized human with a few deer traits. And Charlie and Cherri Bomb used to look very different.)

So until and unless they make it into canon, all these pseudo-canon details are subject to change and should be taken with a grain of salt—but, they also comprise most of what we know about the characters’ backstory and the as-yet-unaired characters.

Pseudo-canon info on Hazbin is scattered mainly between two sources: the creators’ twitter accounts, and livestreams where they take questions and talk about the making of the show. If you and livestreams do not get along (my ADHD and livestreams do not get along), or if you don’t want to wade years and years back into twitter accounts to dig up every scrap of info on the characters the creators have ever mentioned, collating all the pseudo-canon info is gonna be hard. (It’s gonna be hard even if you do want to sit through the streams and dig through all their tweets.) Lots of fans, me included, depend on the absolutely heroic work of various fans who are willing and able to watch hours-long streams and collate a list of canon factoids released during the streams. I’ve reblogged as many of these posts as I’ve been able to find:

Alastor’s sound design (on twitter)

Alastor's Sound Design (post I made with screenshots of weird—but very interesting—subtitles slipped into the aforementioned video)

Sir Pentious and Cherri Bomb’s sound design

Niffty and Husk’s sound design

Charlie, Katie, and Tom’s sound design

Intro song’s sound design

Happy Hotel’s sound design

details from Faustisse (including a pic of a couple costume designs. Most of these posts come from zatyrlucy, who’s been doing a fantastic job of going stream-by-stream to get lists of details from the regular streams by Ashley Nichols and by comic artist Faustisse.)

more details from Faustisse (including a pic of the Von Eldritch family dining room)

Faustisse 3 (better look at that table)

Dollymoon’s Hazbin Hotel Facts - PART ONE (Shoutout again to dollymoon for compiling these, we’ve never spoken but I am eternally grateful for this service. Dollymoon’s posts are THE single most reliable compilation of Hazbin Hotel’s nebulous pseudo-canon facts that I have found to date, including both links to the sources and timestamps where applicable. Dollymoon’s URL has changed since making this post so the “read more” link doesn’t work but the “source” or “reblogged from” links direct correctly to the new blog. Incidentally, the risk of other blog creators deleting their blogs/posts or changing their URLs is why in info posts like these, I always link to my own reblogs rather than their original posts—their original posts might vanish without warning, but I know I ain’t gonna delete my posts, so these links will still work in the future.)

Hazbin Hotel Facts - PART TWO

Hazbin Hotel Facts - PART THREE

Faustisse 4

HuniCast - Australian Wildlife Relief charity stream

I think this was a faustisse stream (the original source deleted these posts, so the comic pages that were originally behind that read more cut are now gone.)

Faustisse stream 6?

And those are all the masterposts of factoids I’ve managed to collect. If anyone has more masterposts, chuck ‘em at me.

Even this isn’t all the knowledge that’s been released about the show. The posts that dig the farthest back are Dollymoon’s, and even they don’t comprehensively cover all of Hazbin’s production. A couple of these characters, Vivziepop created as a teenager, so there’s some truly ancient concept art floating around out there that will have details that probably aren’t canon anymore... but might still be until something happens to actively contradict them.

Tier 3: The Wiki

The wiki is kind of an absolute mess. It’s a chaotic blend of things actually seen in the pilots/comic, things mentioned at some point in some stream somewhere, and wild fan speculation based on what they headcanon as plausible based on the above, all mixed together with very little indication for which is canon, pseudo-canon, fanon, or speculation. Most of the statements on the wiki don’t have citations.

(And, on top of that, half the main characters’ info gets split up into separate tabs instead of just having a normal-ass wiki page, AND their image galleries are on COMPLETELY SEPARATE pages that are linked to in one of the tabs, and the most important characters all have TWO SEPARATE GALLERIES. Which doesn’t have anything to do with the quality of the facts hidden underneath those tabs, but nevertheless drives me up the wall.)

Some things on the wiki were added according to info released so long ago it’s probably changed by now. Some are possibilities that got reported as facts. Other things on the wiki have unambiguously changed, or else are just flat-out incorrect. (For instance, at this moment Alastor’s page still lists him as an overlord, even though it's been confirmed that Alastor is not an overlord despite his power level because he isn’t interested in and didn’t pursue that position, per this stream. For a little bit, somebody’s fanart of their headcanon human Alastor got added to the wiki as concept art.)

tl;dr: the wiki should never be trusted as a primary source. The wiki’s better than it used to be. Even so, at this time, it’s only trustworthy to fill in the gaps of what you already know is true from other, better sources.

The thing it’s good at is it more or less compiles all the known info all in one place. Trying to figure out who the hell this Vox guy is is really hard if you’re reading for mentions of him in compilations of a dozen different streams, much less if you’re trying to comb through those dozen streams yourself, plus a dozen more, plus three different artists’ twitters. In comparison, it’s really easy to, say, just go look at Vox’s wiki page, where all the trivia is compiled. (And Vox’s page is actually one of the better cited on the wiki. Look at all those numbers!)

So, if you need to find out who this character is you’ve never heard of before, if you want to see a full list of the thus far named characters, if you don’t remember whether Alastor likes coffee or tea, if you want to know what Angel’s twin sister looks like, if you need a reminder of Sir Pentious’s death year... check the wiki. It’s an okay starting point.

But, if you see a “fact” on the wiki that you yourself don’t remember from straight out of the pilot, and it doesn’t have a citation that links to a tweet or a stream... regard it suspiciously. And do not trust it unquestioningly as fact until and unless you have seen the source.

Tier 4: Noncanon Creator Shitposting

I’ve mentioned Ashley’s HuniCast streams a couple times. The biggest draw of them is that she usually gets several of the voice actors in the streams, where they’ll happily say nonsense in their character voices. For the most part, they’re not sharing any actual canon info they’ve been given on their characters, just goofing around pretending to be their characters. Nevertheless, a lot of the things that happen in streams get accepted as broad fandom headcanons, like Alastor being into dad jokes. (My favorite, for obvious reasons, is this one.)

It’s easy to find the source audio for all this wonderful nonsense by searching youtube for “HuniCast highlights,” and then rummaging around for animatics people make out of the audio. The only one noncanon video of this sort I can think of that didn’t originally come from HuniCast is a lone one from Alastor’s singing voice (who’s a different voice actor than his speaking voice).

So, obviously, none of these are canon. But they do come from some of the people actually involved in the creation of the show, and they are in the characters’ canon voices, so a whole lot of people treat them as semi-canon anyway. (Even the wiki lists “dad jokes” among Alastor’s likes, which to my knowledge hasn’t come up anywhere except for HuniCast streams.) Since they’re so broadly-known, they’re worth knowing about as important sources of fanon, even if you don’t want to adopt them into your own headcanons. They’re basically the same level of canon as blooper reels.

[just-honey-dewd]

Day 4: ALASTORCAST

Damn it. Yesterday was booked, so the moment I came back home I collapsed on the couch. Anyway, everything deescalated after all the codes got deciphered -- our theory room completely got disillusioned after the announcement that the ARG had nothing to do with the big news Viv announced. So this post is definitely gonna be a day late in retrospect but timezones mess me up so who knows....

In regards to the fifth image I posted on Day 3...

Pigpen deciphers it to the repeating code of muq3mnliwu4

Putting it into youtube gives us this.

Notably, basketball is Edward Bosco’s (va of Alastor) thing.

One of the comments from the video offers us a good perspective of what could be going on here.

Very cool DeadStranger404, very cool.

Moving on to Day 4, these are the new thumbnails 

According to our theorists, it reads ‘Beware the ego‘ in pigpen. We’ve speculated that it could refer to pride -- Lucifer’s main sin. But alternatively, it could be in reference to Bosco as Ashley always did say that he had a big ego. Not sure what the black substance there could be though....

Perhaps it’s to represent a broken ego? Has the consistency of blood... or so I’ve heard... *sweats*

As a whole, it’s been noted that these messages have definitely had something to do with Ed and that last image definitely cements this as a high likelihood that he’s gonna have something to do with the next Hunicast stream. DeadStranger404 definitely seems to have the right idea...

New thumbnail and name change...

Huh.

There’s not much up for interpretation at this point. It’s and Ed and Al podcast. So that’s what was happening for the Hunicast. Not sure if there’ll be any more ARG-based codes at this point, but guess they trolled us. To make light of the situation, I like both of them, so I’ll still come to the Hunicast unless I’m booked again...

On a complete upside...

We finally got the big news from Viv -- the show’s officially set, and with A24. Which is a win in my book! They’re known for making good films and shows, and from what I’ve been told, they give more creative liberty to creators than other studios. They’re the studio behing Lady Bird, The Lighthouse, The VVitch and many more.... I’m personally excited for Saint Maud... 

So Hazbin Hotel looks to be in trustworthy hands. Let’s hope this fandom can survive till its release. 

Doubt I’ll need to make a Day 5 post, so best expect nothing, g’day lads.