#i find this show interesting to examine as a piece of media spawned from internet ocs

[voidlingduck]

Hazbin Hotel - Thoughts and Rewrite

Having seen the first four episodes of Hazbin Hotel, and having been casually following the Hellaverse since the pilot (I have watched the shows but not consumed any outside material) - I have had a lot of thoughts about the storytelling of Hazbin Hotel so far. In discussing my thoughts and feelings with @ekholocationn I ended up having some ideas on how I would handle the overall arc and plot of the show to make for a tighter narrative and address some of the flaws I found with the work.

This is very much a broad strokes kind of rewrite at this point, and trying to stay relatively true to what has been presented to us so far - it mostly involves shuffling things around and reorganising/refocusing the plot.

The main complaint with the plot of the show is that the Heaven plotline feels rushed and the cards are being played too soon, what feels like it should be a twist is laid bare in the first episode and furthermore it undermines the very purpose of the Hotel and Charlie's plan. Heaven as not merely an antagonistic, but an actively villainous force, feels like it's come too soon - and the way it's being explored isn't really satisfying. Camilla's reluctance to fight is difficult to justify, where Velvette, who is arguably framed as a villain, seems to be onto something and correct.

Speaking of Velvette however, her and the Vee's are what I feel are the shows strongest aspect at this point. These are villains that have incredibly strong personality and presence, and moreso, personal connections and investment to the cast at the hotel. Vox and Velvette's songs are some of my favourites, and Valentino is shown to be a serious threat to Angel and his potential for redemption.

This in mind, in my rewrite of the show, Season 1 of Hazbin Hotel would cast the Vee's as the primary antagonists to the hotel, and leave the angel's in heaven and their villainy as a mystery and twist reveal for later in the show.

Charlie has no reason to believe her plan won't work, in fact, she has a powerful Overlord as a benefactor - who while he seems to be a little disparaging, is still putting resources into her project. She is doing what she can to try and rehabilitate these sinners, however, the Vee's want to see this project fail and become active threats to the Hotel. Vox, because of his rivalry with Alastor, and Valentino because he wants to keep control of angel. The primary tension is the push and pull between Charlie as a force of redemption and light, and the Vee's as a representation of temptation, vice and hell's worst qualities trying to keep the sinners down. Charlie does not meet with Adam and the angels in Episode 1, rather, she is seen to be optomistic and hopeful, and Heaven is kept as this guarded mystery and protectors of order and goodness.

What about Velvette the other Overlords, and the angels though? I greatly enjoyed Respectless, and I don't want to snub Velvette, who is clearly a powerful villain in her own right. I don't want to completely erase the plot of the exterminated angel and Heaven's violence from the show. I would keep the scene of the Overlords meeting, and Velvette revealing the angel's severed head, however I would make a few tweaks. Firstly, this would be the first time we find out about the fact that an angel was killed - we are just as shocked as the other Overlords. Secondly, the Hazbin Hotel would be more of a point of discussion, and we would get a more overarching conflict between the Hotel and the Vees regarding what to do about the problem of Angel Extermination. Do we attempt to redeem sinners? Or do we just kill the Angels? I think for the purpose of this plot, the revelation that Heaven is moving up its extermination would coincide with the meeting of the Overlords, really being a trigger for it, and this episode would act as a midpoint - raising the stakes and introducing the broader conflict after a few episodes settling into the attempts fo the Hotel to redeem sinners and the Vee's attempts to intervene.

In this story rather than being the way the show opens, Charlie meeting with the angels would instead be a sort of climactic moment - and the revelation that Adam is a jerk and Heaven has no intention of letting sinners rise but instead wants to exterminate them would be a sort of Darkest Hour moment for Charlie. Her plan has failed, the Vee's are gaining more support... This way, there's been some build up, and the twist feels more like a twist - and it also feels like more of a gut-wrenching betrayal because both us and Charlie by this point would have investment in her plan and a hope that it might actually work.

I want to see how the show handles it's ending before I fully flesh out this rewrite, but for now this is the sort of broad strokes as to how I would approach structuring Hazbin Hotel if I were to rework it. I may or may not expand on these thoughts later when there is more material to work with! This post also does not touch on more nuanced topics such as the shows handling of sensitive issues and character arcs, it is more of a broad strokes analysis and retooling.

I thought it might be fun to share my thoughts and I hope people enjoy them! I would love to hear other peoples thoughts on this as well :)

[thinkveganworld]

For anybody interested, the following is from an article I wrote in ‘06 about the phony war on terror and ways the war has been used to eliminate civil liberties, justify torture and erode democracy.  My article was published at the late Robert Parry’s Consortium News, Online Journal (now Intrepid Report)  and other Internet sites.  This is a look at fairly recent history, and it shows the extent to which government will lie to the public to deceive us to support war and other unsavory policies.   

Robert Dreyfuss covers national security for Rolling Stone.  He interviewed nearly a dozen former high-ranking counterterrorism officials about Bush's approach to the war on terrorism. In his article, "The Phony War," (Rolling Stone, 9/21/06) Dreyfuss says these officials conclude:

· The war on terror is bogus.  Terrorism shouldn't be treated as if it were a nation to be battled with the military, but should instead be fought with police work and intelligence agencies.

· Terrorism is not an enemy, but a method.  Even if the United States were to wipe out every terrorist cell in the world today, terrorism would be back tomorrow.

· Bush lacks a clear understanding of the nature of the "enemy" and has no real strategy for dealing with them.

· The Bush administration confuses the issue by grouping "Al Qaeda" with everything from Iraq's resistance movement to states such as Syria and Iran.

· Today, there's virtually no real "Al Qaeda threat" to Americans.

· Bush's policies have spawned a new generation of "amateur terrorists," but there are few of them, and they're not likely to pose a major threat to the U.S.

· Though Bush has said he will fight his "war" until every last terrorist is eliminated, terrorism can never be defeated, merely "contained and reduced."

Dreyfuss says, "In the short term, the cops and spies can continue to do their best to watch for terrorist threats as they emerge, and occasionally, as in London, they will succeed.  But they are the first to admit that stopping a plot before it can unfold involved, more than anything, plain dumb luck."

Not only has the Bush administration falsely characterized and exaggerated the threat of terrorism; they have gone out of their way to mislead the public by claiming credit for preventing attacks.  Dreyfuss points out that although Bush has claimed we've fended off 10 terrorist plots since 9/11, "on closer examination all 10 are either bogus or were to take place overseas."

Dreyfuss also notes that, although in 2002 the Bush administration leaked to the press that Al Qaeda had 5,000 "sleepers" in the U.S., there were, in fact, none.  (Or, as Dreyfuss says, not a single one has been found.)  If the administration believes the facts bolster their case for a war on terrorism, why do they find it necessary to leak false information?

The administration has done little to secure U.S. borders, ports, airports and nuclear facilities.  What could logically explain their inattention to these vulnerabilities if they believe a terrorist threat here is likely?  Bush has said he'll do anything it takes in order to protect the American people.  Why hasn't he secured our nuclear facilities?    

Exaggerating the terrorist threat does give the Bush team an excuse to seize more power for the Executive and shred the Constitution.  In an article for Foreign Affairs (September/October 2006), political science professor John Mueller supports Dreyfuss's view that the war on terrorism is bogus.

Mueller points out that not only have there been no terrorist incidents here in the past five years, but there were none in the five years before 9/11.  Mueller asks:  "If it is so easy to pull off an attack and if terrorists are so demonically competent, why have they not done it?  Why have they not been sniping at people in shopping centers, collapsing tunnels, poisoning the food supply, cutting electrical lines, derailing trains, blowing up oil pipelines, causing massive traffic jams, or exploiting the countless other vulnerabilities that, according to security experts, could be so easily exploited?"

He also bolsters Dreyfuss's conclusion that the Bush administration can't take credit for the fact that we haven't been attacked again.  He says, "the government's protective measures would have to be nearly perfect to thwart all such plans.  Given the monumental imperfection of the government's response to Hurricane Katrina, and the debacle of FBI and National Security Agency programs to upgrade their computers to better coordinate intelligence information, that explanation seems far-fetched."

Mueller addresses Bush's irrational argument that we're "fighting terrorists in Iraq so we don't have to fight them here."  He points out that terrorists with Al Qaeda sympathies have managed to carry out attacks in a variety of countries (Egypt, Jordan Turkey, the United Kingdom), not merely in Iraq.

He adds that a reasonable explanation for the fact that no terrorists have attacked since 9/11 is that the terrorist threat "has been massively exaggerated."  He notes that "it is worth remembering that the total number of people killed since 9/11 by Al Qaeda or Al Qaeda-like operatives outside of Afghanistan and Iraq is not much higher than the number who drown in bathtubs in the United States in a single year, and that the lifetime chance of an American being killed by international terrorism is about one in 80,000 - about the same chance of being killed by a comet or a meteor."

Although Bush's justification for the war on terror has been illogical and deceptive, the administration has used it as an excuse to abuse the U.S. military in Iraq, tear down our system of government at home and seize power on his own behalf.  

Can George W. Bush be trusted with absolute power?  Here are some things he has done with his unchecked power:

· Stolen two presidential elections.

· Exaggerated and falsely characterized the terrorist threat.

· Misled the country into war with Iraq.

· Urged the U.S. intelligence agencies to fix the intelligence around the Iraq war policy (as confirmed by the Downing Street Memo and other sources) in order to mislead the Congress and public into supporting war with Iraq.

· Abused human rights by promoting the use of torture and setting up virtual gulags.

· Suspended habeas corpus for some.

· Tried to silence political opposition by pronouncing them "weak on terrorism" or somehow "with the terrorists," and

· Placed himself above the law by issuing more legislation-challenging signing statements (around 800) than all of his predecessors put together.

Bush's unnecessary invasion of Iraq alone has cost nearly 3,000 American lives. An October 11, 2006 article by Greg Mitchell at Editor and Publisher says that a new study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, "suggests that more than 600,000 Iraqis have met a violent or otherwise war-related end since the U.S. arrived in March 2003."

The Bush administration's policies have not only resulted in high death counts, but also in widespread, out of control torture.  A September 22, 2006 Christian Science Monitor report says:

"The United Nation's special investigator on torture said Thursday that torture may now be worse in Iraq than it was during the regime of deposed leader Saddam Hussein.  The Associated Press reports that Manfred Nowak, who was making a brief to the United Nations Human Rights Council about the treatment of detainees at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay Cuba, said the torture situation in Iraq was 'totally out of hand.'"

The CS Monitor mentions the fact that the recent compromise between the Bush White House and dissident Republicans (including Senator John McCain) allows torture to continue.  The article quotes a Washington Post piece:

"The bad news is Mr. Bush, as he made clear yesterday, intends to continue using the CIA to secretly detain and abuse certain terrorist suspects…It's hard to credit the statement by [McCain] yesterday that 'there's no doubt that the integrity and letter and spirit of the Geneva Conventions have been preserved.'  In effect, the agreement means that U.S. violations of international human rights law can continue as long as Mr. Bush is president, with Congress's tacit assent."

Congress has given Bush a blank check as he's bulldozed toward an imperial presidency.  We have the outward forms of democratic institutions such as Congress and a so-called free press.  However, the people currently managing those institutions behave as if they're being forced to serve a totalitarian dictator.

A perfect example of this surrender to Bush's virtual despotism is Congress's and the mainstream media's compliance regarding Bush's Military Commissions Act. Congress has done little to challenge Bush, and, overall, the press is eerily silent.

In The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich, William L. Shirer said the Reich Press Law of October 4, 1933, ordered editors not to publish (among other things) anything which "tends to weaken the strength of the German Reich or offends the honor and dignity of Germany."  According to Shirer, Max Amman, Hitler's top sergeant during the war and head of the Nazi Party's publishing firm and financial head of its press said that after the Nazis seized power in 1933, it was "a true statement to say that the basic purpose of the Nazi press program was to eliminate all the press which was in opposition to the party."

The U.S. mainstream press doesn't have to be coerced by a government Press Law to avoid publicly opposing Bush's most egregious policies.  Television news networks, in particular, have voluntarily held back serious scrutiny.  They have not only failed to discuss the recent Military Commissions Act at length, but in the run-up to the Iraq war, liberal talk show host Phil Donahue and comedian Bill Maher were fired for challenging the White House spin about Iraq and the 9/11 attacks.

Shirer also describes the ease with which the German Reichstag gave Hitler the power to change the nature of Germany's parliamentary democracy.  He writes:

"One by one, Germany's most powerful institutions now began to surrender to Hitler and to pass quietly, unprotestingly, out of existence…It cannot be said they went down fighting.  On May 19, 1933, the Social Democrats - those who were not in jail or in exile - voted in the Reichstag without a dissenting voice to approve Hitler's foreign policy."

Shirer concludes:  "The one-party totalitarian state had been achieved with scarcely a ripple of opposition or defiance, and within four months after the Reichstag had abdicated its democratic responsibilities."

The U.S. Congress, like the German Reichstag, has abdicated its democratic responsibilities by granting Bush an inordinate amount of power - "with scarcely a ripple of opposition or defiance."  The U.S. press has abandoned its role as democracy's watchdog by failing to question this development.   Both of these institutions have failed the American people.

Considering Bush is using the war on terror to justify seizing undue power, both Congress and the media should question his reasoning and offer opposition.  Just as they didn't effectively challenge the administration's shifting excuses for attacking Iraq, these institutions haven't scrutinized Bush's claims about the need for the Military Commissions Act and the apparently endless war on terrorism.

Among things Congress and the media should challenge is George W. Bush's false claim that the United States does not torture.  In an article published at the CommonDreams.org site, journalist Molly Ivins reports that in one case of death from torture by Americans, the military at first said the prisoner's death was caused by a heart attack.  Ivins adds that the coroner later said the heart attack occurred after the prisoner "had been beaten so often on his legs that they had 'basically been pulpified.'"

She adds that the Bush administration's officially sanctioning torture "throws out legal and moral restraints as the president deems necessary -- these are fundamental principles of basic decency, as well as law."  Ivins isn't inclined to hyperbole, yet she says of Americans' passive acceptance of this new law:  "Do not pretend to be shocked when the world begins comparing us to the Nazis."     Future generations will wonder why the U.S. Congress and mainstream press helped Bush build up an imperial presidency and eliminate Constitutional protections.  Coming generations will also ask why  there were so many who failed to notice the obvious holes in Bush's logic and why so many turned a blind eye to his numerous false assertions and cruel policies.  They'll wonder why so many supported, whether by direct action or by silence, the Bush administration's changing the fundamental nature of the democratic Republic we were given by America's founders, based on the flimsy excuse of fighting a war on terrorism - a "war" Bush defines falsely and fights ineffectively.

Generations to come might ask why this president who lied so often, about Iraq and other critical matters, was ever entrusted with enough power to damage this country's founding principles and wage endless, unprovoked war on other nations.  If Congress and the media would ask these questions now, they might prevent Bush from doing further harm.  This might save many lives, prevent much unnecessary suffering and possibly steer this country out of its present darkness.