Alastor in Hazbin Hotel Season 2: The REAL reason he’s problematic Ace Rep

Transcript Transcribed by Laura M.

Courtney: Hello, everyone, and welcome back. My name is Courtney. I’m here with my spouse, Royce. And together we are The Ace Couple. And we are back this week for round two of discussing Alastor in Hazbin Hotel after having seen season two of the series. And last week we talked quite a bit about how I think in these conversations about representation of minority identities, in such a unique case as Hazbin Hotel, we kind of need to separate the fandom from the show because they are fundamentally different experiences. And I did concede that there are many ace people who are in this fandom who adore the character of Alastor and love the fact that he is the asexual representation in this show. Allegedly also the aromantic asexual representation. I’ve also seen that floating around with quotes being either attributed to the show’s creator or the voice actor for Alastor or both. And if that is such widespread common knowledge in the fandom that everyone just accepts it as fact, I suppose more power to you.

Courtney: But that makes me even a little more frustrated that the asexual representation was not even obvious in the show, but the aromantic element even less. And as I touched on in our very first episode about Hazbin Hotel after seeing season one, so much of fandom lore is pieced together from various random tidbits across multiple platforms over the span of years. And as someone who is not in it, it is at times impossible to actually find the source of some of these widespread claims. Like, I remember after the first season seeing a post on social media talking about how Hazbin Hotel has like the most diverse cast ever and going down all these bulleted lists of identities – not only sexualities, but racial identities – saying like, “We’ve got a character who’s half Black, we’ve got a character who’s Japanese.” And just like boom, boom, boom, going down this list, and having watched the first season of the show, I could not tell you who any of those characters were supposed to be.

Courtney: And while I did have that criticism the first time, this is yet another reason why it kind of felt like season two was very much carefully written to try to address as many criticisms as possible from season one. There were more characters who just started talking another language for a line or two or a little verse in a song. And I remembered having that criticism when a character who we previously had been given really no indication of being Japanese started singing in Japanese. I’m like, “Well, I guess that’s the Japanese character.” But most of them are extremely pale. Most of them are extremely skinny. Most of them have the same color palette. And that’s the aesthetic of the show. Some people will really pick apart the aesthetics because they don’t like it. I think a lot of them are very cool, so I’m not going to just totally dunk on the aesthetic overall.

Royce: A lot of animated shows have a very specific style to them.

Courtney: Yeah.

Royce: And it’s common for bodies and proportions to be exaggerated to a point that is like not approaching realism whatsoever.

Courtney: Yeah. But even if, so– Say the fandom is like, “Well, we know anecdotally because we’ve heard these little tidbits over the span of years that these characters are from a variety of, you know, ethnicities,” there is, like, nothing visually to indicate that. So if we aren’t given anything like that in the text, that becomes a concern. Because once again, setting expectations, if people online are saying, “This show is so great, you should watch it because it’s so diverse,” and someone thinks, “Well, how refreshing, let’s go watch that.” They’re not actually going to see a whole heck of a lot of diversity. And I would argue body proportions alone, yes, there’s a style and an aesthetic about it, but like, we’ve only got one character, I think, in the whole show that isn’t like very skinny. Maybe two, but I can’t think who that is right off the top of my head.

Royce: You can’t think of the one or the second one, because I can’t think of anyone.

Courtney: I can’t think of the second one. Well, there was that short little flapper girl who I don’t even think made an appearance in the second season.

Royce: I don’t know who you were talking about. That’s okay, though.

Courtney: That is okay. There are so many things about this show that refuse to stick in my memory. And that’s why I’m gonna try not too hard to quote very specific scenes or very specific lines, because I know this fandom, more so than some others, is really gonna try to tear us apart if we misquote something or misremember something. And therefore use it as a method of saying that our criticisms are invalid. Because that even happened a couple of times in the first season. But truth be told, I probably remember a little bit more about Alastor than any of the other characters just because I was trying very, very hard to watch him and analyze him as an ace character in the media. But after so much time since we’ve seen the first season, like– I only remember one song from the first season. I don’t even remember what other songs there were, which is kind of a shame because they have extremely talented voice actors.

Royce: By the way, the character you were thinking of was Mimzy.

Courtney: Mimzy.

Royce: A friend of Alastor’s. I barely remember her existing. But, yeah, I– I can– I’m struggling to remember details about the show.

Courtney: There are so many characters that do not get fully fleshed out. There really, really are. Even some of the main cast, I would argue, are at times a bit underdeveloped. But along the lines of misremembering things, I would also argue that with the sheer volume of information based on Word of God and anecdotes within the fandom, I am confident that there has been mass memory warping somewhere at some point in the fandom. Because that’s a thing that happens when you bring in all this supplementary information that not everyone is privy to, and some people accept it as fact and just believe that everyone else also has this information or that they should also have this information. The only time, in a very different medium, but the only time I have experienced this phenomenon is with Dungeon Masters running Curse of Strahd, oddly enough.

Courtney: Because I’m running Curse of Strahd right now, and before we started playing it, I started by reading the entire book cover to cover. And I was also vaguely aware that there are some very popular game modifications in the fandom. But when I tell you that I went online to start just– I don’t even engage, I don’t post or comment, but sometimes I’ll read like Reddit threads when other DMs are asking questions, or I’ll go into forums or watch a video about, you know, what this DM did in Curse of Strahd just to see if there’s anything I also like or if I can gain any other inspiration. And I personally have not used any of the popular mods, but there’s like Mandy Mod, there’s DragnaCarta, those are names that you’ll see time and time again if you’re in these Curse of Strahd forums.

Courtney: And sometimes it’ll be very obvious that’s where it’s coming from. Someone will say, “Well, in Mandy Mod, this chapter is written this way. This is a recommendation.” But those changes get so widely adopted by the community that over time people sometimes forget that it’s not in the source book anymore. And not even with those modifications, but there are Curse of Strahd novels that are older than the fifth edition campaign book. There is an older dungeon map of Ravenloft. So there are some people who have read a ton of supplementary information and also then get their memories sort of warped over time about what is actually in the campaign book. What is every single DM going to know if they just buy this book to run it and nothing else?

Courtney: And when I was fresh off of reading the book cover to cover, I was shocked at how many times I would see a DM on this forum say, “Hey, I’ve got a question about this. I need advice on how to do this.” Or, you know, “Here’s sort of a discrepancy I noticed in the lore. What’s the deal with this?” And the number of times someone would so confidently say, this is the answer, and this is canon, and this is also in the book. And having just read the book, I was like, that is absolutely not in the book. Absolutely, it’s not. It is nowhere in there. Where did it come from? Sometimes it came from a Curse of Strahd novel. Sometimes it came from a Mandy Mod or a DragnaCarta. And I would say about half of the time that someone said something is canon in the book that wasn’t, half the time someone would identify that and call and be like, no, that’s not in the campaign book, you got it from that. And then you’d see people go, “Oh, I thought for sure that was in the book. I remember it being in the book.” No, it’s not. Which– Human memories?

Royce: Bad.

Courtney: Are bad. They’re extremely fallible. This is a thing we know. So that’s just another component of why it really gets me when the fandom will vehemently argue that something is, like, better representation than it actually is because they know something you don’t know or they remember something you’ve never even been presented with. And that’s a bit of information that they latched on and have been excited about and sort of like reconfirming to themselves over the span of years. But also, once you get into the controversies about some of the creative decisions and the writing, and folks arguing whether or not they are problematic, you also get people saying, “Well, VivziePop said–”. And you get that both ways. And I never can figure out without expending way more hours of my day than I think are useful who is right. So that’s why I tend to think Word of God just not good for arguments, not good for community and human connection.

Courtney: Just because– Let’s take a phenomenon. I’ll get into Alastor’s backstory as presented on the screen in season two. But pre-season two, my first impression of Alastor is probably a white guy. I have seen conversations about, “Oh, well, Alastor uses Vodou symbols, but he’s, you know, pale gray, doesn’t at all look like the primarily Black demographic who practices Vodou as a religion and therefore problematic.” It goes further into that. It’s not just the racial undertones. It’s also like using Vodou symbols as kind of a visual shorthand of magic and evil and demonic powers that I touched on a bit in the first season. And we’re gonna get a lot deeper into that today than this conversation I’m citing. But people will say, like, you know, why is this white serial killer demon using Vodou symbols? And then you’ll see someone respond and say, “Oh, well, no, Alastor’s actually half Black.” And someone will say, “Really? Where did that come from?” “Oh, VivziePop said he is.” “No, he’s not half Black. He’s half Creole.” And then they’ll be like, “Yeah, the creator said this.”

Courtney: And so you’ll– then you’ll have someone pop in and be like, “Oh, well, she actually changed his race. He was originally white. And then once she started getting flack about using these voodoo symbols, then she decided he’s Creole.” And people will say this as if this is very easily identifiable information. I don’t know what’s true. I have heard so many people say, “Well, VivziePop originally made him white, for instance, because she was trying to create a Tumblr sexy man for him. And she has said that she’s trying to create a Tumblr sexy man.” And then someone will say, “No, she never said that he was trying to create a tumblr sexy man, he just became a tumblr sexy man.” And then mind you, this is where I was so out of the loop in tumblr culture. I was googling: what is a tumblr sexy man?

Royce: And that’s a whole big question.

Courtney: It’s a whole big question, but the first three, like I had Urban Dictionary, I had a YouTube video, I had a Tumblr blog, I had a Reddit post opening up all, like, four of those first things, every single one said: Tumblr sexy men are overwhelmingly white. It’s like, it’s an aesthetic. They look like this, this, this. And every single one said Tumblr sexy men are white. So, ergo, when some people say VivziePop said she was trying to create a Tumblr sexy man, yeah, she envisioned Alastor to be white when she first made him. But now she’s saying he’s Creole. Or maybe he’s only half Creole. Or maybe he’s half Black. He definitely likes jambalaya.

Courtney: It’s not even a he said, she said argument. It’s a she said, no she said. Or she said, but then she said. And I have very little interest in entertaining those conversations. However, because I knew those were conversations that were happening, the fact that we got a very quick, monologue flashback from Rosie this season showing Alastor as a human with decidedly darker skin than he has as a demon…? That was another thing that really felt like I have seen all of the criticisms about this, so I’m going to show this to you to put it to rest. And it was very quick and it was in the form of narration, but we did get to visually see a flashback of Alastor as a radio host, a living human, circa 1920s, New Orleans. And we basically learned two things: how he became such a powerful demon with stronger powers than the average sinner in hell, and how he died.

Courtney: And there was an element that felt very clunky to me. Alastor has been this incredibly powerful demon. He was shrouded in mystery. And it seemed like you took the most powerful, most mysterious character and just gave us a quick little monologue telling us pretty much everything. And it was early in the season. But it also wasn’t the first monologue of a backstory that we were given either. Like, we’d gotten one for Sir Pentious earlier, I believe. And I don’t know, something about the quick monologues just really didn’t do it for me. Because Sir Pentious, as the first reformed sinner who got to heaven, we saw that his sin was just that he, like, saw Jack the Ripper killing someone out of a window and, like–

Royce: Didn’t do anything?

Courtney: Didn’t do anything. It really makes you wonder why everyone else is in hell. But then Alastor, he is an actual murderer. We see him at a party, and some white guy is just like, you know, gesturing with a drink in his hand and spills something on Alastor’s clothes, and so he murders him for it. But he takes that a step further, he actually does some kind of demonic ritual as he’s still a living human. And he basically says, “I know I’m going to hell, so if I’m going to hell, I want to make a deal to be the most powerful one in hell.” So Rosie’s the one he makes a deal with. And she, like, runs Cannibal Town in hell, I guess? Which I also think was largely missing from season two, but was present in season one.

Courtney: But then the very next day he dies because he’s burying a body in the woods at night and someone mistakes him for a deer. So now we also know why he’s kind of a deer demon. And it felt like the utility of this scene was to serve two purposes. The first being: we want to do something really cool with Alastor in the finale, but none of you have enough information for us to do that right now, so let’s front load all the information you need. Okay, now you’ve got it. Now it’ll make sense when he does something really cool later. And the second utility was: let’s address, like, three controversies with this one character. Look, he actually is Black. Look at his skin color when he was a human. See him as a human? And also the reason why he’s a deer demon is because someone mistook him for a deer and that’s how he died. He’s definitely not modeled after the Cryptid whose name I’m not going to say, like some folks have raised a concern about.

Courtney: And three, look, he’s not even using Vodou to do his evil. He drew a pentagram on the ground to talk to Rosie, not Vodou symbols. Which, all of these, because I want to give credit where it’s due, they’re certainly clarifications, if not slight improvements, for sure. But they did seem very ham-fisted from my perspective. Now I do think what they ultimately did with Alastor having the upper hand, thinking five steps ahead of everyone else, in the finale, that was cool and that’s the kind of thing I want from this mastermind demon kinda character. Rosie sort of has some element of ownership over him because of this pact that he made while he was still alive. And he also makes this pact with Vox.

Courtney: I mentioned last episode that he sort of let Vox think he won and have the upper hand on him, and he’s all tied up and being paraded around like, “Look, haha, I beat Alastor.” And we know Alastor has made deals with people, so they are in his debt. We know Husk is. We don’t know why, but we saw Husk like on a leash in the first season, which did make me a little bit uncomfortable because for as much as none of the characters have like visually racial identifiers as demons, Husk is very Black coded and has a very Black sounding voice, has a Black voice actor. And seeing the, you know, very pale Alastor just like, you know, magically tie him up was interesting. Because then I started seeing fandom conversations about how well they’re all just demons, they all suck. Everyone’s bad, there’s nothing racial about it at all. Or you’d see some people being like, “Well Alastor is Black too, so that makes it okay.”

Courtney: To those people, I really want to know how they feel now about Rosie having Alastor’s leash now. Because after she does her monologue about his backstory, they do a little song and dance where she’s like moving him around like a puppet and she has him all tied up in strings. So now I guess you could say we have the two Black characters in the show who are, like, essentially enslaved to someone else. It’s just– I don’t think that element is the most important racial aspect in the show. We are going to get to what my opinion is on that, but it is at the very least bad optics. But, you know, Alastor has made a pact with Charlie for just, like, one little favor. His pact with Vox was, you know, you can– I don’t know how they worded it. It was kind of like ‘you can enslave me’. Because then we also see Vox, like, tying up Alastor and doing whatever he wants with him. So now I’ve got two characters doing that.

Royce: He surrendered to Vox on the condition that Vox did not lay a hand on Charlie and possibly–

Courtney: Yeah.

Royce: Also a couple of people close to Charlie.

Courtney: No, it was just Charlie.

Royce: Just Charlie, okay.

Courtney: He’s like, “You’re not gonna lay a finger on Charlie,” because that was very carefully worded. Because Vox took that as, “I won’t hurt her.” But at the end of the season, there was a very satisfying moment, I think narratively. It was probably the best payoff of any plot thread in this season, I think. And I wish it had a better lead-in than a monologue from Rosie to explain why she actually has this pact with him. I wish that was either a slower burn or we got that information, you know, in more pieces somehow. It really felt to me like they had found this really cool payoff climactic moment and then they just had to cram in all the knowledge we as the audience needed in order to get us there. But Alastor’s pact with Rosie is: I’m gonna be the strongest sinner in hell.

Royce: Would you– given the content we have, I am not going to dissect the lore and magic of this world because it probably doesn’t make sense.

Courtney: You’re going to need to in a minute.

Royce: Not much. [Courtney laughs] I’m going to refrain because this is a very soft magic system and we only have so much time.

Courtney: It’ll be fine, it’ll be fine.

Royce: But, like, how is Rosie strong enough to do that?

Courtney: I assume she’s, like, not a sinner. Because like, sinners I think are humans who died and went to hell, but like Charlie was just born here. But I really don’t know.

Royce: According to the fandom wiki, Rosie is considered an overlord, and overlords are– I think they’re sinners. I think they’re sinners. I could be wrong, but continue.

Courtney: I don’t know. There’s a lot about this show that I feel like– You know, did the writers just write it assuming only people in the fandom were going to watch it? Because I’m sure a lot of this makes so much more sense if you have more information than what we were given or you had more time to sit with it at least. I feel like there are sometimes– there’s, like, a line of dialogue that’s, like, so fast and loud, and they do try to cram in a lot of characters with not enough development for all of them because of how short the season is, I’m sure. But when Vox is doing his big bad guy thing, which you really can’t think about for too long either. Because, like, there were times that they made direct parallels between Vox and Trump. Like they had Vox say, “Let’s make hell great again.” So.

Royce: Oh yeah, that was a bad line.

Courtney: You just made it so obvious that you want me to think of this TV demon as Trump. And yet we see Vox, like, in bed with another guy. Which sure, I mean, if we’re trying to do, like, a bigger, more developed, like, Peter Teal kind of allegory, I guess there is room to explore. Extremely problematic gay conservatives. But we don’t get that level of nuance in this show. But his whole– This is the climax, I am the big bad of this season is like some angels from heaven come down with actual literal fucking gift baskets that say, “I’m sowwy,” to apologize for the genocide of the sinners in hell. And Vox is like, “That’s not fucking good enough. Are you kidding me? You’ve been doing a genocide on us.” And that’s the bad guy that you equated to Trump?

Royce: You know, I just had a thought. Well, I’ve been carrying a thought that I was like, “I think this is funny, but I don’t know if I just want to turn this podcast into joking about the media.” But–

Courtney: Always say the funny thing, Royce.

Royce: I think it just got funnier. [Courtney laughs] Well, so the unintended consequence about making a very queer cast in hell is that you’re kind of implying that the straight people went to heaven.

Courtney: Yeah.

Royce: But if the scene that you just described, I was actually not thinking about this specifically with queer identities, I was also thinking about all of the racial identities. And if all of the– if such a heavy proportion of non-white and queer people are in hell, then you could conversely take that to mean that a disproportionate number of white cis straight people are in heaven. But then the gift basket apology for attempted genocide makes more sense.

Courtney: [chuckles] Well, it’s interesting, ’cause even the news in hell is very Fox News coded. Fox News if it was written by middle schoolers. Totally, it’s weird. And I have learned that in order to make it through a season of this show, I have to not try to analyze things in the moment. Because, in the moment, there are so many ideas and concepts that are just tonally weird. And so I do have to set them aside and not be too serious about them. And then there are some decent moments. But like, the heaven and hell and reforming thing, like you said, with all of the sinner sort of default being queer? A lot of people are gonna say, like, “Just let queer characters exist! Queer characters don’t have to be perfect.” They’re all bad, so it’s not bad rep because all of them are bad. But you do get very uncomfy moments where now Charlie, the princess of hell who’s trying to reform everyone to get them into heaven, is like trying to tell this gay sex worker porn star who’s being repeatedly abused over and over again, like maybe you should dress a little more modestly.

Courtney: Like, you get moments like that where, yes, Charlie’s being shown as very naive, extremely naive, sometimes frustratingly naive. And you get these moments that heaven is also bad because the angels curse just as much as the demons. Some of them are even more misogynistic than the demons. And then Sir Pentious, after getting into heaven, hates being there so much he tries to kill himself. Which doesn’t work because I guess you can’t do that in heaven. And with heaven being the one who’s doing a genocide, they’re clearly like, yeah, heaven isn’t that good. So they are long-term trying to do a, like, heaven isn’t that great. So I don’t know if they’re doing a ‘heaven isn’t so different from hell actually’. And this is arbitrary. But the entire show is called Hazbin Hotel and the Hazbin Hotel’s entire premise is to try to get sinners reformed and into heaven. But we actually see very little of the hotel.

Royce: It wasn’t a very big fixture in season two at all.

Courtney: It really wasn’t that much in season one either. Like a little bit. Which I think is kind of a shame, because I kind of like the concept, and I think there’s a lot you can do with the concept. But I think there are times where the show doesn’t know if it wants to make a bigger point of social commentary or if it’s just using this as a backdrop for these characters to do something.

Royce: Another thing, this might be just creators getting used to a medium that they haven’t historically worked in, but there’s got to be some kind of, like– The runtime of the episodes and the season length can’t be a surprise. They know what they’re working with. They have roughly this many minutes of on-screen time. Choosing to showcase so many characters and expand the plot out is a choice. That time could have been used differently. To kind of argue back against the comments of, “Oh well there’s 100 characters and there’s not time to devote to anyone independently,” or, “There’s not enough time to flesh out details or plot points,” like that’s a choice. That time was used otherwise. With eight 30-minute episodes you can’t show a little bit of everything and show much of anything at the same time.

Courtney: And I suspect if we’re gonna get a season three we’ll learn a little more about is heaven actually better than hell or not? Because Sir Pentious is still there and not happy because he doesn’t have any friends. We saw that his sin wasn’t that bad to begin with, like, compared to Alastor, who I guess is just a serial killer who’s gonna kill anyone who looks at him funny and then intentionally try to make a pact to have a more powerful afterlife in hell. Like, they’re very different. And, like, I’m– [sighs] I want to say they said Angel Dust also killed somebody, but the way the trajectory of Pentious and Angel Dust have gone, I wouldn’t be surprised if we learned that that was self-defense just given the way Sir Pentious’s backstory came, like, it kind of seemed like he was, you know, this precious little nugget of a character, and they didn’t want to make him too morally gray or too bad in his human life to take that away from someone.

Courtney: So I don’t know if it does end up being that all of the core main cast that we’re supposed to love who are supposed to be nice people and reformable didn’t actually do anything that bad at all. And Alastor and the overlords and the really powerful demons are the only ones who actually did very evil things as a human. But if that’s the case, that does bring more questions for the broader world for, like, humans and humanity in this world. Like, it sounds like if you do an action or have inaction that you’re, like, really guilty about, sounds like you’re probably gonna go to hell anyway, so might as well just, you know, become a more powerful demon, do more sins, do more murders. [laughs] But I don’t know, that’s an example of you really can’t think about it for too long or too hard.

Courtney: But anyway, that tangent aside, that was big tangent, I apologize. Vox is like, “No, we can’t forgive heaven for this genocide. They brought us gift baskets and they’ve been slaughtering us indiscriminately forever. Are you gonna take that?” And Charlie is trying to be like, “No, we should forgive heaven. It’ll be good. Let’s stop all of this.” And she sees that everyone is seeming to side with Vox. She feels like she’s losing. Alastor’s over here tied up and basically calls in his pact with Charlie and is like, “Hey Charlie, do me a little favor. Declare Vox the strongest sinner in hell.” And she’s like, “No, Alastor, don’t make me do it!” He does make her do it. But in doing so, that breaks his pact with Rosie, because the princess of hell has declared that he’s not the strongest sinner anymore.

Courtney: So she went back on her end of the deal, I guess. And then Vox just has a habit of, like, touching people. So he is gloating and, like, just lays his hand on Charlie’s shoulder to, you know, thank her for what she did. And so therefore he broke his pact with Alastor because he laid a finger on Charlie. And it was very cool because he was clearly thinking many steps ahead. He broke– He called in a pact that he made in order to break two of them. He clearly only made the pact with Vox because he knew he could, you know, weaponize all of these. And that was a very cool moment. I think it was a lot cooler than what followed. Because I’m still very confused about what followed. I would like you to remark on this, going back to the soft magic system, because then I need to talk about Vodou.

Royce: Do you mean when they basically spirit bombed the big magic explosive device that was gonna destroy everyone?

Courtney: Yeah.

Royce: It wasn’t exactly a spirit bomb, because it didn’t ex– It wasn’t thrown by Goku. It also like didn’t explode. They just, like, poured their magical energy into a spell…? I don’t know. They levitated this big bomb thingy and then it just disappeared. I don’t know where it went to.

Courtney: It kind of seems like power of friendship.

Royce: It was very power of friendship.

Courtney: Which is, I just don’t even know what to say about it. They had, like, Angel there with the same guy who’s abusing him. They had Charlie who’s like, “We’ve got to try.” And this angel from heaven who’s like, “We’ve gotta try.” And then all these sinners in the crowd are like “Okay, let’s come along.” And Alastor wasn’t going to join, and then Rosie’s like, “What’s wrong with you? Join!” And he’s like, “mm-mm-mm, you know, fix my staff, make me more powerful, then maybe I’ll help.” And so she does something for him, and then he does chime in. And so, like, Alastor was the only one who didn’t just join the power of friendship of his own volition.

Royce: He used it to fix one of his problems.

Courtney: Which is very Alastor and that’s fine, but why did all of the other demons just do this?

Royce: I mean, because they probably would have died.

Courtney: Yeah, I suppose.

Royce: But yeah, I called this a soft magic system earlier. This is one of those shows. There are a lot of shows like this. This sort of thing happens often enough when action shonen anime run on too long, where people just do stuff because that’s what the creator wanted to write and there’s no explanation, there’s no foreshadowing. You as the viewer don’t have any idea of what people are capable of, therefore expectations can’t be set and things can’t be revealed. People just do stuff and you watch it as it’s happening and that’s as deep as it goes. So everyone lined up and did some kind of magical thing that has never been shown before and it got rid of the object of doom and then everything was better. And you can’t think about it too much because there were no rules leading up to that moment.

Courtney: There’s a lot of you can’t think about it too much in this show. For me, as a necessity for getting through it.

Royce: Anyway, Vodou.

Courtney: Yeah, so here’s the deal, everyone. The criticisms about Alastor and Vodou that have become a big enough conversation that they have made it into my awareness tend to revolve around: this is a problem because he’s white, or it is a problem that the show depicted Vodou symbols because this is a closed practice. Maybe a little more nuance here and there. But there are people who have criticized this for being racist, and there are just as many people who have said, “It’s not racist because–” and the two because’s I’ve heard are: “But Alastor is actually Creole,” or, “He was inspired by the villain in Princess and the Frog. It’s not racist or problematic.” And I have seen folks younger than me even say like, “Actually, Alastor, you know, being very Vodou coded is really nostalgic for me because it reminds me of the Princess and the Frog.”

Courtney: And I need people to know that what we tend to think of in terms of popular media and Western media, Hollywood movies, TV shows, often in a horror or Gothic genre, those things we think of as voodoo are very far removed from the actual practices. It is a distinction from Haitian Vodou. There is a very specific brand of Louisiana Vodou that was very much born of American slavery. It’s a mixture of West African religious practices mixed with Catholicism. But if you are especially a white American, a westerner, or taking in a lot of this western media, think of all the times you’ve actually seen voodoo depicted in media. Like, I get that the villain from Princess and the Frog was cool. He looked cool, he sounded cool, but he was an evil, nefarious guy. Me, as someone who makes artwork and jewelry out of human hair, the number of times people will get creeped out by that and get shivers and they’ll say like, “Oh creepy. Like voodoo dolls?”

Courtney: Like even our popular understanding of a voodoo doll and what they do and how they work is very heavily removed from actual religious practices. And I cringe a little bit to see how often in this day and age one can go to like a haunted house during Halloween season and there will be an entire room or an entire floor just dedicated to something that is vaguely witchy, voodoo, swamp-hag, New Orleans, like, themed. There’s actually a name for this, and I’m gonna put a link to this publication in the show notes for anybody who wants to read further, it’s called Imagined Voodoo. The paper in question, a dissertation at Harvard University entitled Imagined Voodoo: Terror, Sex, and Racism in American Popular Culture. The entire premise of what we think of as voodoo on the screen is racist. It is so much deeper with a more complex and problematic history than, “Oh, but the demon looks white and he’s doing voodoo.”

Courtney: And when it comes to analyzing asexual characters in the media, I’m a little forgiving of evil characters and serial killers because I’ve heard over the years people say, like, “Oh, the asexual serial killer is a trope,” and I don’t even know if it is anymore. The only asexual serial killer we’ve talked about is Dexter. You can listen to that episode. Is it technically problematic that they use asexuality as a shorthand for less human? Yeah, that’s a concern. But us as two asexuals watching the first episode of Dexter and he’s looking at people getting sexual and he’s just going like, “Ugh, that’s so undignified.” It’s kind of funny. I kind of like it. And Dexter never used the word asexual or ace, but they made it really obvious that he’s not interested in that. And I think to go back to the fact that it wasn’t obvious in the show that he’s asexual, I think there’s a lot of room for that. People are being sexual all over the place in Hazbin Hotel. Giving him just a few lines and quips like that here and there could go a long way for that.

Royce: Yeah, there could have been lines delivered differently early in the season. Either in the first season of the show or in the YouTube pilot, I don’t remember where it was, there was a point in time when Angel Dust was, like, casually harassing Alastor. And Alastor gave a very firm no to something, but that could have been more explicit because Angel Dust was also annoying like everyone.

Courtney: Uhm, everyone in the show is annoying. [laughs]

Royce: Yes. But like in the first episode of the Imperfects, when we learned that one of the characters has powers that she can’t control that cause her to emit pheromones that cause people to be unbearably attracted to her, someone comments on that and she specifically says, “I’m asexual.” And it doesn’t take up much screen time, but it’s explicitly stated.

Courtney: Yeah. So there’s a lot of ways to do that. And given the setting and the time period he comes from, I don’t expect Alastor to say I’m asexual, but a little secret part of me still wants to consider Dexter an ace icon. And some people will be like, “No, a serial killer, that’s such a bad stereotype.” But honestly, my gripe with Dexter is that when they decided to make him seem more human and more relatable, they made him sexual. They walked back the asexuality, proving that they were only using it as a shorthand for less than human. And once they wanted to humanize him, they pulled the rug out from under us. So that was my bigger concern more so than he is a serial killer who is asexual.

Courtney: And we’ve talked about, you know– We have a couple episodes about a historical fiction piece of media, especially a couple of books. We’ve got The Reckless Kind, One For All that we’ve done episodes on where it’s from a time period where they don’t use the word asexual. And we’ve talked with the authors of that, about what they’ve tried to do to make it obvious without using the word, because that was something that mattered a lot to them. And we haven’t done an episode about this yet. Let us know if you want to hear it because it’s been percolating in the back of my brain for a while and I just love this show so I’d be happy to talk about it more. But the Good Place doesn’t, like, really have an asexual character, but that is a demons, heaven and hell, fictional fantasy. And honestly I really love Janet. I’d consider Janet an ace icon, I really would. Even Michael the demon, like he’ll have lines about, like, kissing’s so gross, you just mush your food holes together.

Courtney: And then you have Janet who forms a relationship with a human and is like trying to figure out how to have sex. She doesn’t have a desire for it and she doesn’t really know how to do it and isn’t really designed that way. But they’re like, “We’ll figure it out.” So there are so many things in there where even though I wouldn’t say there’s canonically asexual characters in the human sense, in the demon and non-human creation sense there was more on screen, more lines and scenes that just really made my little ace heart swell and be happy. The fact that everybody is terrible and crass, we talked about loving Bojack Horseman, very different show, but it is an animated one with an asexual character where there is a lot of cursing and there’s a lot of people doing terrible things, and there is alcohol and sex and drugs. But it is a lot more emotionally mature and I think has a stronger point of view with the social commentary it is trying to make, which is something that appeals to me.

Courtney: We’ve talked in other pieces of media about the overstatement of ace rep. Our very first rep episode was on Sex Education and the character of Florence, who– The way, not even the Sex Education– the way that not even the Sex Education fandom, but just asexual people online excited to see a rare ace character was talking about how this is such great rep and it’s so amazing and you’ve gotta watch this show. I thought for sure there was going to be a much more prominent character other than someone who got less than five minutes of screen time in, what, the second season? We had to suffer through a lot of that show to even get to those breadcrumbs. So in some ways, Hazbin Hotel does feel like the fandom has baited people a little bit with an overstatement of what the representation is that you can expect.

Courtney: The second Sex Education character in the final season was a lot more prominent and important to the plot and became more obvious later on that she is undeniably asexual. But in the very first episode she popped in on, I noticed she was wearing an ace ring. That is something that is established ace culture. It is a black ring, typically worn on the middle finger. That is an ace ring. I saw that on that character. And I went, “There she is. That is the ace character.” That’s something I don’t expect the general population to know, but that’s something I notice as someone who is in this culture and community. And little nods like that are absolutely okay. But the ace in the hole line, as we said last episode, is not common ace culture. It feels more like a nod to the fandom. And then there wasn’t further bits of evidence to back that up down the line. This is also not the first time that a creator of a cartoon has said this character is asexual but sort of only confirmed it off screen.

Courtney: We’ve talked about The Owl House, which is a show I actually really liked, but Lilith in that show was said to be asexual on, like, a live stream on Twitch that isn’t even up anymore. You can’t even go watch it now unless you, I guess, find it on the Internet Archive, maybe. So that’s always very disappointing. That’s another instance of overstating rep. Demographically speaking, in television shows, most of the ace characters are men. I don’t know why, but someone always tries to argue that with me every time I say it. But I know there are other forms of media. I know there are books where there are ace women. I know there’s a couple of shows with an ace woman. But a lot of– Especially the ones that reach a certain level of popularity. You mentioned the Imperfects, there’s an ace woman, that didn’t get renewed for a second season and flew way under the radar. A lot of people haven’t seen it.

Courtney: There’s an ace woman in Everything’s Gonna Be Okay, which we did an episode on as well. I thought that was a fabulous show, too. I did not see as many people in the Ace Community hyping that up online as the first Sex Education character. And to this day, I still don’t see it on as many lists of ace characters in media as I think it deserves. So, like, recent TV shows with an ace character that lots of people have seen and talk about – if we’re including Alastor – we’ve got him, Todd in Bojack Horseman, of course, we’ve got Ca$h from Heartbreak High. Not everyone’s gonna want to count Dexter, but I’m gonna count Dexter, at least in the first half of the show.

Royce: If we throw in– They are TV shows, if we throw in the entire Anne Rice’s Vampires series.

Courtney: Oh, and the thing is, not in the show, though! But that’s– that’s the thing we talked about, Interview with the Vampire, the TV series, I think they did many great things to adapt that. I think a lot of their changes were very good. One of them being making Louis black and Claudia and changing the era. They did that in a variety of very good ways, very thoughtful ways. But in the TV show, they made the character sexual. And this is another bit of– Oh, oh, I didn’t even talk about this. Fandom warping people’s memories. The number of people in the fandom who swear to me that the vampires did have sex in the books. No, they didn’t. We did an entire episode about that.

Courtney: Please go listen to it. I have the receipts. I have quotes and posts from Anne Rice herself. And plus, I reread the books again just to prove to all of you. But that–. That was an instance where they took a character, they made one very cool and thoughtful change, but then they thought they were also being more queer and subversive by showing him having sex. But they removed the inherent asexuality that was always in the book surrounding those vampires. And I think that was a great example of a gothic horror Black 1920s setting that didn’t rely on racist voodoo stereotypes and imagery.

Royce: Going back to rep demographics, I had to pull up our episode list: Sheldon Cooper in the Big Bang Theory; Isaac in Heartstopper–

Courtney: Elijah in Big Mouth. Elijah was one, because that’s another cartoon, that’s another very crass cartoon that is very difficult for me to watch. But they did have a Black asexual guy, which is a lot more rare than a white asexual guy.

Royce: These next two were super small, not mainstream at all, but Rabbit and High Maintenance. Also both men.

Courtney: Yep, also both men.

Royce: Viktor in Arcane, that was another big one.

Courtney: Yes, also animated. So going back to this publication on Imagined Voodoo, something that’s also very important to keep in mind time period wise. There was an American Marine occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934. And during that period of time, under that occupation, there was an overwhelming development of imagined voodoo imagery in television, film, literature. And this author posits that it was an outlet for white racist anxieties. Showing voodoo in the media doesn’t necessarily explicitly mention race, but because of that, it’s been more culturally able to avoid criticism. Because it’s able to take this fundamentally racist concept, because it is a concept of the other and what we don’t know and their religious spiritual practices look scary. That’s black magic, that’s dark. You know, all of those ideas are completely from the white imagination of what they don’t understand. So it is able to disseminate racism into culture when we use these tropes.

Courtney: And as a result, modern day practitioners of Haitian Vodou are subject to hate crimes. And I’ve seen people in the fandom try to defend that, “Oh well, you know, the show bastardizes all religions, so why does Vodou get to be any different?” Your racism is showing. Knock it off. Knock it off! I don’t have time for that, actually. And when we think, like, unencumbered about what we tend to associate with voodoo. I already mentioned voodoo dolls and the pins. That’s a very common one. But there are also elements of human sacrifice, cannibalism, dark magic, New Orleans. And because these are tropes, and there are some folks who have grown up with things like Princess and the Frog, they’re looking at it with a very myopic lens of this is just a trope. This is just a new iteration of this trope, and the trope itself is not fundamentally harmful, but it absolutely is.

Courtney: The fact that our media landscape, stemming from the occupation of Haiti during that era, has fundamentally intertwined our imagined concept of voodoo with things like cannibalism and barbarism and black magic and witch doctors. And then you see a character like Alastor who has used symbolism stemming from Vodou and is from New Orleans and is a serial killer and did perform evil rituals trying to contact demons. And I don’t know if he actually ate his victims or not, but the person he made the pact with is like, the head of the cannibals. So you’re putting all of these racist stereotypes together in a character for the white imagination. And the underlying racial anxiety too has to deal with historical injustices and this white fear that the Black practitioners of Vodou are going to use these evil powers to launch some form of retribution against us.

Courtney: It’s really– I’d probably equate it to the trope of, like, an Indian burial ground. We’ve seen that in horror. And I think people have sooner recognized that that trope can be harmful than our imagined concept of voodoo. But that’s another white racial anxiety. There are historical injustices that have been done to the people indigenous to our land, and so doing things like displacing them from their land, building on top of their sacred grave sites, like there is an anxiety that the spirits are going to seek retribution for all of that racial harm that was done. And while I don’t expect that they’re going to make Alastor as an ace character worse, I don’t think they’re gonna pull a Dexter and be like, “Sike, he’s actually sexual now.” I don’t think we have that to worry about with this show and this creator.

Courtney: And while I don’t think we have to worry about this specific subset of racist voodoo stereotypes, but there is also a heavy overrepresentation of transgressive sex in Vodou amongst its practitioners in our imagined media of what that looks like, whether it be violent or homicidal or even homosexual in earlier accounts. Cannibalistic, zoophilic, pedophilic. And we’ve talked at times both in interviews with Black members of our community about the intersections of asexuality and Blackness or in our media analysis of the precious few Black characters that we have in media, there are all of these intersectional concerns about Black racist stereotypes that do involve sex. Whether it’s becoming hypersexualized or becoming desexualized.

Courtney: So do I care about an asexual character being morally bad and a serial killer? At this point, I really don’t, unless there’s something in the media to attempt to synonymize the two or draw a parallel between them. Then I personally think having, like, a crowd favorite character who is asexual is more beneficial. So do I care that he’s a serial killer? No. Do I care about asexual characters in media being based off of historically racist tropes and aesthetics? Yes. Yes, I do. And I need people to not only understand that the aesthetics he was based on were racist, but I do think there was an attempt to walk some of that back after the callouts did begin about the Vodou symbolism. And when we saw him doing his ritual, it was a pentagram. Now, I have, you know, I have friends who are Christian and friends who are witches alike who would split hairs and nitpick what a pentagram actually means.

Courtney: And we could do that all day long. I don’t care as much about it because the history is just not the same. But I do think that decisions like doing a pentagram for that is trying to draw attention from the way that he was very Vodou coded right from the get-go and trying to separate the ‘this is not where his magic comes from’. This is not why he’s evil. But I do have a very real concern that the racist tropes of imagined voodoo are so heavily ingrained in our shared media understanding that the vibes have already been set for him. And I think drawing a pentagram on the floor is kind of a thin attempt to paper over that. It’s like reskinning something. Even the shack that he’s killing people in has some symbols here and there that are very like New Orleans voodoo as told by the white imagination. The vibes are there. And the trope is so persistent in our culture.

Courtney: And I would also like people to know that because that is so complicated, and the Black asexual identity is so complicated, especially when you get into a character who has now been equated with this imagined voodoo imagery, which often also comes with a racist sexuality ascribed to them, I need people to not give Alastor a 100% pass on being good ace rep because– And I saw this recently, and this is the only reason why I have to bring it up, someone said VivziePup herself is asexual, so she used her own lived experience when writing the character of Alastor. Fuck right off. I– Listen, she did come out as asexual on International Asexuality Day 2025, so less than a year ago. I can link to the post.

Courtney: Bluesky: Vivienne M @vivziepop: “I’m on the East Coast right now, so it’s officially International Asexuality Day. I have been doing a lot of reflecting on myself, and this year I feel comfortable being open that I absolutely exist on the ace spectrum. Where on the spectrum? I’m still figuring out. But it’s something I’ve embraced. My bisexuality is something I’ve had so long to understand about myself, but my aceness was something I denied for a long time. I now really feel like it explains a lot about myself I have always been unsure of. I’m happy to keep learning new things about myself. Happy International Ace Day.”

Courtney: And I will argue that the best asexual representation we have in all of Hazbin Hotel is that this creator is asexual. This creator has made a world and characters that capture the imagination and the love of so many adoring fans. That is the best ace rep.

Courtney: And even though there is a lot about it to criticize and a lot about it that is not my personal cup of tea, I do personally know people who adore this show. I have seen what this– what effect this show has on the people who love it, and that cannot be minimized. That is real and that is important. And the fact that we have now another ace creator who has made this widely beloved piece of media? That is awesome. But my issue lies with the fandom who are now saying, “but VivziePop is asexual, so Alastor can do no wrong as ace rep.” And I literally saw someone say VivziePop is ace so she brought her own lived experience when writing the character of Alastor. Well that coming out post less than a year ago is real and valid, and I will not minimize it for Viv’s own personal experience. But that didn’t sound like someone who has such a profound grasp of her own asexuality and asexuality and culture and the media and an acceptance that she’s like, “I’m going to put my own experience in this Creole 1920s serial killer that is flavored in imagined voodoo, who is a literal demon in hell.”

Courtney: Because that’s another thing. You see people in the fandom every time you criticize something be like, “They’re all demons. None of it’s supposed to be realistic. It’s not that serious.” Or “They’re literally all demons in hell. Of course they’re all terrible. Of course they’re gonna do terrible things.” What is it? Are they literal demons in hell or are they all self-inserts based on VivziePop’s personal experience? So if we are gonna play that game, of the creator is ace and therefore knows how to write an ace character, VivziePop is not a Black man from New Orleans, and there are intersections at play. Even if we take away the imagined voodoo imagery of it all, there are important nuances to the Black ace experience that is different. And there are other elements of historical Black Southern culture that could have been infused into this character that wouldn’t have been as racially problematic as the imagined voodoo.

Courtney: That was something that I praised the Interview with the Vampire show for cultural elements like tap dancing. There could be more to do with jazz. There’s a number of things that you can do to flavor someone from that time and that race that is not based on pre-existing racist stereotypes. I do think it is great that VivziePop is ace. I think it’s great that we have a growing number of ace creators who are getting widespread attention. I think for a number of reasons it is exceptionally disingenuous to use the fact that the creator recently came out as ‘somewhere on the ace spectrum’ to use that as evidence that Alastor is actually good ace rep.

Courtney: So I think that is going to be all for today. If you are new here, please feel free to listen to any one of the episodes we mentioned today, whether they be about other asexual characters in the media so we can compare and contrast how they are different, better, the same, worse. You can listen to any of our episodes talking about the intersection of race and asexuality, if you’d like to educate yourself further on a variety of real life lived experiences. And of course, if you are interested in more academic writing on these topics and tangentially related ones, definitely check out the publication on Imagined Voodoo. I will link it. Is free and available to read. And it does bear mentioning that the author of this paper is white. He is a gay man, but he’s also a Haitian Vodou initiate. He actually is a practitioner, and he is also an anthropologist of religion.

Courtney: For less on Vodou, but more of the intersections of Blackness and asexuality, I always recommend Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture written by Sherronda J. Brown. And for our final recommendation of the day, I’m going to leave you all off as usual with our featured MarketplACE vendor of the week. If you have listened to this all the way through and you are still a huge fan of Hazbin Hotel, that is fine. We are not here to tell you to stop being fans of this show. That has never been the intention. Honestly, I love that you love it. And have I got the perfect shop for you if you like one of the newest character additions: our featured MarketplACE vendor today is Moonbobbles, where you can find Pride accessory, fandom merch and fiber crafts by an aroaceflux disabled system.

Courtney: And they have an acrylic charm of none other than Emily, our bubbly little angel girl who wants to give gift baskets to apologize for the genocide. She feels very much like Charlie as a character to me. She feels like heaven’s version of Charlie. A little overly optimistic, a lot naive, pretty cute girl. It’s a very pretty charm. But if you are one of those who are listening because you hate Hazbin Hotel and you want to hear other people validate your opinions and that’s why you’ve lasted so long. Fear not. There is stuff for you in this shop as well. There’s a variety of other fandoms for one. So if you’re in other fandoms such as Adventure Time, Hollow Knight and Silksong, the Amazing Digital Circus. There’s all kinds of Pride merch here as well if you just aren’t in any fandom in particular.

Courtney: In fact, I myself purchased a nice little Pride keychain. There are aroace spectrum Pride keychains. You can pick your favorite color palette and design. I got what I think is the fundamental Ace of Spades with the Asexual Pride flag. It’s very cute. So as always, we will put links for you to find Moonbobbles in the show notes on our website, as well as the description box on YouTube. And so that’s gonna be all for today, and that’s gonna be all for Hazbin Hotel. Definitely for the year, probably forever. I suspect that even if there is going to be a season three, there is just probably not going to be very much new about Alastor as he pertains to asexual representation. That would be of note, but we’ll keep an eye on it just in case. But everyone, just do me a favor and keep your fingers crossed that this was in fact the scariest topic for us to cover all year and the rest of it is gonna be smooth sailing from here. All right, we’ll talk to you all next time. Bye bye!