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clover-the-awesomest · 3 months

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Talkin bout Angel Dust (Hazbin Hotel) for a hot sec okay thanks

Okay. Listen. This is a pretty big topic I’m gonna be delving into, and it’s a topic I’ve had no real exposure to until recently, so a lot of the things I’ll be saying is of my own opinion. I will be talking about SA, child abuse, abuse in general, alcohol, self-destructing, SH, and Hazbin Hotel in general. All of these are very big topics (Yes, including Hazbin lol) so if you are not keen on listening to some outsider talk about these things, please leave. I don’t want you reading something that will actively make you uncomfortable.

And again, let me reiterate: I am an outsider looking in. I have had no real exposure to any of these topics until I watched Hazbin Hotel episode 4. This is not meant to be a call-out or me making any educated guesses. It is purely just for my sake and so I can say my piece about these topics. DO NOT, IN ANY CASE, ASSUME I KNOW 100% WHAT IM TALKING ABOUT. I AM YOUNG AND DUMB, AND I AM VERY LIKELY TO MAKE SOME HOT TAKES HERE. IF I MAKE A MISTAKE OR SAY SOMETHING CONTROVERSIAL, DO NOT HESITATE TO HARRASS ME, BUT BE WARNED THAT I WILL NOT ENGAGE.

One final disclaimer: If you know anyone. ANYONE who is going through a rough patch, or someone who has experienced any of these things before or are currently going through it, please please PLEASE just at least reach out. Say hi. Make them a gift. Listen to them talk. Sit with them for a while. Stay on call with them for a while. Just… Just be there for them. Please. Even a little can go a long way.

With all that out of the way, here is my very overdue take on Hazbin Hotel episode 4: Masquerade.

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It is depressing. Genuinely, it is a very sad and very raw episode. And honestly? It does not deserve any of the hate that it is most certainly receiving.

Masquerade is an episode all about the horrors of an abusive (Sexually and otherwise) relationship and how it affects the one being abused. Angel Dust, who’s been shown before this episode to be very toxic and sexual, is once again given the spotlight that he very much deserves, shedding light on his behavior and why he acts the way he acts.

What is genuinely saddening about this episode is that we know that what Angel goes through is not far from reality in the slightest. If we take away the magic and the soul contracts, we get a day in the life of a real human being in the world right now as you are reading this. Someone is out there being hurt, being abused, by someone they once looked up to. They are being manipulated, being slapped, being thrown against the floor, and all the while they are powerless to do anything. It’s such a sad, sickening reality that I wish wasn’t true, but it is, and that’s that. I want more than anything to be able to help these people who are being hurt and are being used, but I currently have no way of doing that and I feel so so terrible and wrong for saying that but it’s true and I just… Ugh. It’s so depressing, really. The lengths that other human beings are willing to go to just to have someone under their control at all times. I hate it, truly.

“When I say ‘Come,’ you say…”

“Yes, Valentino.”

“When I say you are fucking 20 guys before lunch, you say…?”

“Y-yes, Valentino…”

…

Valentino wants money and control. That is all this fucker wants. The moment he laid eyes on Angel’s desperate drunken ass he instantly knew he struck gold, and just like that, the spider was under his control. In the beginning, Angel did just as he was told with little pushback, because he was looking to make a quick buck and this was also literally a goddamn overlord he was working with. Disappointing his boss could spell disaster! After a while though, Val’s demands became much more intrusive and much more harsh than they were at the beginning, and Angel’s hope for a fresh start began to slowly fade away. Soon enough, he got to where he is now. Still working with Valentino, but wanting desperately to find a way out. To be free from this double-hell that he’s dug himself into. To be happy again. But of course, now that he’s dug himself a grave and has already lied in it for some time, he can’t exactly escape. Valentino has seen his work first-hand, has experienced it with his own disgusting fuzzy body, and loves it all with every fiber in his bones. He doesn’t just want someone to fuck 20 guys before lunch. He wants Angel to fuck 20 guys before lunch. He’s found his new favorite toy, and he intends to keep playing with it.

Now this is where the manipulation comes in. Angel wants to leave, he knows he does, but he also knows that he can’t. Literally, he can’t, because his soul is bound by a contract that only Val has access to, but even without that in the picture, he cannot leave. It was shown via a previous episode (I forget which one I’m not sorry) that Valentino cannot and will not let go of his favorite toy. He sends Angel text after text after text, voicemails, emails, calls, you name it. We see a clip of him sending Angel a large amount of voicemails, and in each one he switched between being nice and caring to his spider baby to going full on insane! He yells at Angel in one voicemail, then starts cooing and whispering in kindly tones in the next. It’s such a terrifying way of showing the abused that the abuser can change their mood on a dime and that they can’t control it. That they need an out, something to let their frustrations out on. It terrifies the abused into staying, leaving them both to fester in this cycle of cat and mouse for a while before one of them inevitably breaks said cycle. Though it usually isn’t broken until it’s too late.

There is one upper hand that Angel has over Valentino though, and it’s that he knows what Valentino is doing and doesn’t fall for those kinds of tricks. Angel is a spider, and spiders are well-known for being tricky and sinister and gross, so naturally he’d pick up on Val’s manipulative behavior. This then leads Angel into another issue in his life though, and that’s his coping mechanisms.

Since Angel knows how terrible Valentino’s treatment towards him is, and since he knows how much it hurts him, he turns to other things that don’t exactly help. Alcohol, drugs, clubbing, more goddamn sex like can this man please just stop having sex if he wants to get away from it please can he just have a break por favor-

These are good substitutes for the pain. They are like numbing agents, or more questionable anti-depressants. Angel goes to the club to forget it all, to forget how much everything hurts. He goes to get heavy drinks so that he can forget. He gets high so he can forget. He has sex so he can forget.

He hurts himself more so that he can forget.

Rather than talking with someone and dealing with his stress and emotional turmoil head-on, Angel pushes it away. Off to the side. Bottles it up in a small plastic container where he’ll never have to see it again! But when leaving a glass of water under the tap for too long, it’ll quickly begin to overflow, and that’s what we see happen with Angel in Masquerade. It’s been so long of him using his illegal methods of forgetting, of numbing the pain and ignoring it, that everything just begins to spill over. He starts losing his touch, starts affecting those around him who clearly had nothing to do with any of it in the first place. He oversteps Husk’s boundaries, is constantly rude to Charlie and Vaggie, and just straight up ignores everyone else. (As far as I’m aware. Not mentioning Pentious in this btw cuz he’s a temporary resident at the hotel.) Even when Husk calls Angel out on his behavior, even when he calls the guy fake, the spider does not, CANNOT, budge. He remains indignant, is still a cocky little bitch, and just tries his hardest to not drag everyone else down with him. It backfires horribly, of course, and Husk soon ends up dragging him away from his escape, from his anti-depressant. And Angel snaps.

”IT’S NOT AN ACT!! It’s who I need to be…! And this? This is my escape! Where I can forget about it all, how much I hate… EVERYTHING. A place where I can get high and not have to think about how much it hurts.”

And then… We get this line.

“And maybe, if I can ruin myself enough in the process, if I end up broken, I won’t be his favorite toy anymore.

And maybe he’ll let me go.”

…

This line hurts me so much. My chest aches every time I hear it. Because what it entails is genuinely horrifying. Angel is telling Husk that he is literally just a toy to Valentino, just a perfect plastic doll that he loves in a perfect plastic house that he owns. The spider doesn’t know how much it’ll take to full break himself, doesn’t know if he’s even able to do that, but at this rate he is very ready to see if he can. He wants to do that, he wants to break himself. Angel wants to become physically unable to do Valentino’s dirty work, to get thrown away just like all of Val’s previous toys did. He wants, more than anything else, to just get tossed into the trash and get crushed by the truck that collects him, just so he doesn’t have to be hurt by Valentino anymore.

But the part of his speech that truly hurts me is when he says that MAYBE Valentino will let him go. If Angel was so sure that his idea would work, that breaking his boss’s favorite toy will get him to lose interest, he would’ve said “And then he’ll finally let me go.” But instead he says Maybe. Because Angel isn’t even sure if Valentino will let him be free after all this. He is unsure if Val will lose interest, if he’ll be tossed aside, if he’ll be able to find happiness in his afterlife once he is broken. He’s so far from what he dreamed of that he is more than willing to hurt/kill himself, even when he’s unaware if it’ll even help him in the first place.

Seriously. How sickening is that??

And again, one of the saddest aspects of all this is that real people experience these things in real time, in the real world, right now, as you are reading this. It’s terrifying, scary, downright depressing to think about! How so many people are willing to kill themselves just for the slightest chance at grasping freedom, yet are unsure if they can even reach it once they have that chance.

The worst part is, though, is that before opening up to Husk, this was literally Angel’s only way of finding freedom. To break himself apart so that he couldn’t be used anymore. If he can’t be broken, if he can’t die, then Val will just keep using and using and using Angel. He’ll keep hurting him and abusing him and manipulating him, and the poor guy is very unable to do anything about it at the moment. It’s so sad and so twisted and I hate it so much.

This episode of Hazbin Hotel has been getting a pretty fair amount of hatred just for existing, and honestly for once, I can see why. It touches on a very, very heavy subject that not too many people are fully familiar with. And even if there are people who are familiar with/have experienced SA before, they most likely did not have the same experience as Angel does in the episode. Which, yeah duh, of course they didn’t! We’re not in Hell yet! But the way they go about it is horrible. I’m assuming people are hating on the episode for both painting SA in a terrible light, and also not being true to their specific events. So, in response to this, let me just say this…

Nobody, no matter what, no matter what you do or where you go or who you are, is gonna have the same exact experience. For example, I went on a big hiking trip with my dad over the summer, and I saw many other families go on the same exact path we did. And yet I could tell they all were doing fine, and they all enjoyed themselves, while I was feeling like I was gonna fall and die at any fucking moment and I just wanted to get back on solid ground. The view was nice but the journey honestly made me think I was gonna go splat right then and there and I was not too happy about that.

What I’m saying is that I did not have the same exact experience to anyone else on that trail. Everyone else except for me was doing fine, yet their experiences were all purely their own. This is what makes us human. The difference in appearance, expression, and experience. Thus, for people to come out and watch an episode all about SA and for them to expect it to be exactly as they imagined… No. just no. Get a therapist, please, because you clearly have something wrong with you.

And as for painting SA in a terrible light… That’s… That’s good though? SA is genuinely a horrible thing and I do not, under any circumstances, want anyone ever to go through anything remotely like it. We are human beings! We have compassion in our blood! Use it, for fuck’s sake! I do not want anyone to ever be hurt by anyone else that they know or love dearly. That is a thought I’d never wish on even my greatest enemy! So yes, it should be painted in a horrible, terrible light! It’s bad!

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This episode was… It was a lot. I still get sad and depressed to this day whenever I watch it. What I watch Angel go through makes me sick. However, I’m glad that issues like these are being addressed and that people are talking about it. I don’t like it in the slightest, but that’s why it should be talked about more. We need to be able to help more people, and even though I can’t right now, I pray to God that someone out there is hopefully getting the help and love that they truly do deserve.

Thank you so so much for reading through that whole thing, I know it was a long one. I just have so many thoughts on episode 4. I’ve been working on this for almost an hour and a half now btw so I am very gladly going to end it here. Hope you show some love and respect to those close to you and I really do hope you keep the negative thoughts to yourself. Now go get yourself a drink of water, go eat a banana or a bowl of cheerios, text your loved ones and hug ur stuffed animal, and have a great day/night! Thank you.

#That was… That was a lot. Yeah.#Come harass me all you want idgaf #wordz #random shit #angel dust hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel #has been hoe tell

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