Paradise Lost!Adam🤝Children of Eden!Adam
Hating the fuck out of Hazbin Hotel!Adam if they ever somehow met him.
ooh boy! I don’t know anything about Children of Eden, but I am a nerd about Paradise Lost so let answer this ask a little bit too thoroughly.
Honestly, I could see Hazbin Hotel!Adam being exactly like Paradise Lost!Adam in the beginning. Whether he would hate what he later became, is a different question altogether.
But if I were ever to write a Hazbin fic taking place during the Eden era, I would choose to characterise Adam as he is in Milton’s epic. It fits.
Okay, let me make my case.
In Paradise Lost, Adam embodies all the virtues of an enlightenment era gentleman, as a matter of fact, he is written to be the platonic ideal of the enlightened man. He is rational, interested in science, reason, and turns away from temptations of desire and emotionality. He loves Eve in a paternalistic way which borderlines on loathing at times, and feels uncomfrotable whenever Eve manages to awaken any "baser" feelings in him. The only fault he finds in himself- and is at the time angry about- is his temptation to admire Eve’s sexual beauty- And if you’re ever been on the internet, you will know that every misogynistic reddit-incel fantasises about being this man. The whole enlightened philosopher king is exactly the insufferable archetype that weird, friendless, red-pilled guys latch onto, with no self-awareness for the fact that they fall apart shitting and crying every time there is a lesbian in a tv show. Anyway, this enlightened philosopher king is an archetype that is based on a real, popular ideal from 17th and 18th century, and Paradise Lost certainly employs it.
Adam first awakens in God’s light (he is enlightened from the moment of his creation) and proceeds to wonder at his surroundings with a scientific wonder. When he meets anyone from heaven, whether it be God or later Raphael his instinct is to ask questions, and more importantly, he understands all celestial mysteries without a problem. When Raphael reveals the shape of the galaxy to him, he immediately infers the laws of gravitational forces moving the planets from it. He’s a very special genius boy, as all the angels around him keep telling him!
He is also very aware of the fact that Eve is not her equal, and at the same time threat to his enlightened rationality. Eve, who awakens in shade rather than daylight (she was not created enlightened), Eve whose first action as alive is to stop in front of water to admire her own reflection for so long that God himself has to guide her away, or she would stay there forever “pinned with vain desire”, Eve who is “so lovely fair, [-] Yet innocence, and virgin modesty, Her virtue, and the conscience of her worth”, is everything Adam wanted when asking for a mate, but at the same time…not. Once God sends Raphael down into the garden to teach the new humans all the knowledge of the world, (so they would not be tempted to eat from the tree of knowledge)
At thy request, and that thou mayest beware
By what is past, to thee I have revealed
What might have else to human race been hid
(which an interesting aside, in PL humans already have free will when choosing to eat the fruit AND God has taken active steps to lead them away from temptation. Without the misogyny, I would be VERY into this interpretation of the story. Where the forbidden fruit is a literal red button which reads do not push or paradise will explode and the test is if humanity can resist the irrational temptation to push anyway)
Adam gets to eagerly attend the full lesson, while Eve excuses herself midway through because:
such pleasure she reserved,
Adam relating, she sole auditress;
Her husband the relater she preferred
Before the Angel, and of him to ask
Chose rather; he, she knew, would intermix
Grateful digressions, and solve high dispute
With conjugal caresses:
Eve 1. wants the pleasure of being explained things by Adam (a real mansplainers fantasy lmao) and it is hinted that 2. her sensual nature would prefer such lessons to happen while she is also being physically caressed. Unlike Adam, who gains pleasure through his rational mind, Eve only gains pleasure through sensations and submission to her husband. Of course, it becomes kind of inadvertently funny because the next thing to happen after Eve leaves, is that the BOYS immediately start to talk shit about her, behind her back. Maybe the vibes of that gathering were just rancid, and Eve was picking up on it.
For well I understand in the prime end
Of Nature her the inferiour, in the mind
And inward faculties [-] All higher knowledge in her presence falls
Degraded;
-Adam confidently states the second Eve walks off his sight, to which Raphael responds
Dismiss not her, when most thou needest her nigh,
By attributing overmuch to things
Less excellent, as thou thyself perceivest. [-]
self-esteem, grounded on just and right
Well managed; of that skill the more thou knowest,
The more she will acknowledge thee her head,
And to realities yield all her shows:
Which pretty much sums up with: yeah, I know she sucks, but that’s why she has you to manage her. Having had a wife for a day, Adam is already complaining about what a dum-dum his wife is, and he is getting: yeah women, can’t live with them, can’t live without them, am I right LOL, type of bro-bro affirmations from the angel Raphael himself. Guy is getting a speedrun in how to make MUH WIFE type of jokes from day one as part of the celestial plan.
And in the end Adam’s misogyny is validated, because the only fault he has, is that he put too much faith into his wife’s ability to use faculties of rational reasoning.
But know that in the soul
Are many lesser faculties, that serve
Reason as chief; among these Fancy next
Her office holds [-]
Which gives me hope
That what in sleep thou didst abhor to dream,
Waking thou never will consent to do.
When Eve tells him off the dreams Lucifer sends her, Adam trusts that Eve will be able to overcome feminine fancy in favour of masculine reason. His trust in his wife is his sin. When Eve suggests to “divide our labours; thou, where choice Leads thee, or where most needs [-] ; while I, In yonder spring of roses intermixed With myrtle, find what to redress till noon”. Eve wants some space from Adam, while Adam immediately is against the idea. “Doubt possesses me, lest harm Befall thee severed from me; for thou knowest What hath been warned us”. Eve follows her immediate desires (for some alone time AND to prove to Adam that she can be left alone) while Adam is capable of rationalizing why that would be a bad idea according to the warnings they have received from the angels. Lucifer is lurking somewhere out there!! Eve, who makes promises she can’t keep insists that “that thou shouldst my firmness therefore doubt To God or thee, because we have a foe” finally wears Adam down until he exclaims: “Go in thy native innocence, rely On what thou hast of virtue; summon all!”
Eve does not summon it all, because when Lucifer finds her alone, he immediately appeals to Eve’s vanity:
who should be seen
A Goddess among Gods, adored and served
By Angels numberless, thy daily train
So glozed the Tempter, and his poem tuned:
Into the heart of Eve his words made way,
It has already been established that it is not a desire for knowledge which tempts Eve, because in literature supporting enlightenment ideals, seeking knowledge would never be villainised. It is instead stated that the evils of the world come from the lack of rational thought, and that women naturally lack the capability for rational thought, so this is what happens when their rational husbands let them out of their sight. Eve, incapable of pure reason, hears Lucifer’s words and thinks them reasonable.
and in her ears the sound
Yet rung of his persuasive words, impregned
With reason, to her seeming, and with truth:
When Eve bites the apple, she is also immediately overtaken by this ecstatic, good feeling, like she is drunk. She thinks that this is the most awesome thing that has ever happened.
Her first independent idea is that she should plant an entire garden full of trees of knowledge and make sure that every living creature gets to eat one. (That’s right! The knowledge inside the forbidden fruit was communism all along!)
She goes back to Adam, afraid that if Adam also doesn’t partake of the fruit, God will simply make him a new wife “And Adam, wedded to another Eve, Shall live with her enjoying, I extinct; A death to think! Confirmed then I resolve, Adam shall share with me in bliss or woe:” Eve wants to share the fruit for selfish desires. Adam accepts as an unselfish sacrifice. He knows exactly what it means to eat of the fruit “Adam, soon as he heard The fatal trespass done by Eve, amazed, Astonied stood and blank, while horrour chill Ran through his veins” but he still chooses to stay by Eve’s side. She is his wife, and she needs someone by her side. Adam is “Against his better knowledge; not deceived, But fondly overcome with female charm.”
Then they fuck, and unlike the first time when their “love-making was untainted by lust” this time they FUCK. Like nasty.
Sure, at first glance the fact that Adam chooses to embrace damnation to stay with his wife comes across as a real sweet wife-guy move. Expect that in the actual text it comes across as very paternalistic and guilt-trippy move. Sure, Adam does stay with his wife, but BY GOD does he milk that out later. Unlike in other interpretations, in Paradise Lost, Adam, technically speaking, never sinned, as such. He did not partake of the forbidden fruit because of desire or selfish curiosity. He’s going to prison for a crime everybody knows he didn’t really commit. He does it out of sacrifice and love, which kind of makes the heavenly forces treat him as not-really-a-sinner. The final judgement for Adam is not that he ate the forbidden fruit, but that “thou hast hearkened to the voice of thy wife”.
When Arch-angel Michael shows up to kick them out of the garden, he first takes Adam up to a mountain to show him more visions of heavenly knowledge/plan, while knocking Eve unconscious. One of them is not treated like the other.
Adam’s bout of goodwill and sacrifice does not last long, because almost immediately after making the choice, Adam starts yelling at Eve: “Would thou hadst hearkened to my words, and staid With me” and Eve yells back how “Being as I am, why didst not thou, the head, Command me absolutely not to go”. Adam blames Eve for tryingt o be independent and Eve blames Adam for allowing her.
Adam then threatens to commit suicide, while wailing about women. Just in general.
O! why did God,
Creator wise, that peopled highest Heaven
With Spirits masculine, create at last
This novelty on earth, this fair defect
Of nature, and not fill the world at once
With Men, as Angels, without feminine;
(Also, considering that Raphael told us earlier that angels do have spiritual, ephemeral sex with each other in heaven, heavenly gay sex confirmed!! (This was actually something that really bothered C. S Lewis who spent considerate time trying to explain away the "homosexual promiscuity" in Paradise Lost))
Which finally prompts Eve to start soothing him. “with tears that ceased not flowing And tresses all disordered, at his feet Fell humble; and, embracing them, besought His peace”. Adam, finally seeing his wife “at his feet submissive in distress;” relents and stops threatening suicide. Instead, he once again finds that paternalistic grace, promising that if only he could, he would TOTALLY ask God to put all the blame on him and only punish him. “That on my head all might be visited; Thy frailty and infirmer sex forgiven” of course that’s impossible, so whether he would actually do that can never be tested. Adam and Eve promise to not fight and blame each other anymore and Eve is joyful that she is “Restored by thee, vile as I am, to place Of new acceptance, hopeful to regain Thy love”.
This leaves the couple in a situation where Adam rightfully can forever dangle the fact that he chose to be damned with her, that he had no fault, he never succumbed to temptation, that he exchanged his rightful place in paradise to help her survive the woe and wastelands outside of Eden, over her head. imagine trying to have an argument after that? Of course she should cater to his every whim and will!! Of course she should be forever grateful! What do you mean I need to do the dishes more, I literally gave up paradise for you!!!
though all by me is lost,
Such favour I unworthy am vouchsafed,
By me the Promised Seed shall all restore.
So spake our mother Eve; and Adam heard
Well pleased, but answered not
(Not wife-guy behaviour, my man)
looping back to Hazbin Hotel, yeah, give this guy 10 000 years and I could absolutely see him growing into HH!Adam. The fact that he’s treated as the most special bean in Paradise and never gets knocked down a peg, expect for that one time he accidentally treated his wife like a person. PL!Adam is at that M’Lady stage of insufferable dudbroism where he fully believes that he is a gentleman willing to sacrifice his comfort to take care of his little wife. But we’ve all seen examples of that kind of personality very quickly morphing into those fucking femoids all deserve whatever’s coming to them types of personalities. It’s a pipeline we all know exists, and personally, I just think that PL!Adam and HH!Adam would fit into the two ends of that pipeline perfectly.