already kicking the hornet’s nest by criticizing Tolkien today so I may as well praise Steven Universe lmao. I listened to a few of the better songs last night and man that show really grappled with a level of interpersonal emotional complexity that even adult shows rarely handle. at the time all valid criticisms of the show really got lost in the deluge of arguments that boiled down to “it’s bad to depict toxic dynamics between humanized characters who care about each other” which lol.
obviously it was groundbreaking for depicting lesbian relationships and genderfluid characters but it was really quite a nuanced depiction of like. the parentified child forced to bear the burden of emotional intelligence because no one else will or can. Rose as a benevolent antagonist who’s avoidant and inconsiderate to the point of profound cruelty and the frustration of not really being able to have the catharsis of properly hating your mother. everthing going on with pearl lmao. genuinely a very ambitious exploration of what it means to hurt and be hurt by the people you love and the kind of toxic baggage literally everyone carries into their relationships without intending to. didn’t always hit the mark of course but imho it was usually a smarter show than tumblr gives it credit for.
Dialogue adapted from Doctor Who s8 e11 Dark Water (scene here)
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Related to this and this. Maybe someday I'll pull this particular arc together into one thing without any borrowed dialogue, since it's one of my favorites. There's a lot that happens before this part.
A free-range group therapy called "get herded, idiot", where you and everyone in your group is set loose to run around on an open field while a highly trained shepherd dog tries to keep you all in one group. I am not sure what benefit this would have for anyone involved.
Physical and emotional release, communal bonding, Cute Doggos, mentally and physically challenging tasks, I don’t really see anything that glaringly WOULDN’T work.
I like angel Caine a lot idk why (no I actually do it's because he's a sweet angel that deserves all the love someone could ever get in existence!!!!)
I also LOVE the angel wings/hands on the caine varsity jacket. I remember seeing it and feeling the strongest urge to get it immediately, it was the first time I ever bought merch from a show and now I'm slowly buying all the caine merch I can get my hands on 😾
[Image: fanart focusing on Abel from Hazbin Hotel in greyscale but for the glowing golden accents of his halo and eyes as well as Lute’s prosthesis in the background as she argues with Emily, Sera standing behind her sister. Abel is in the foreground with a shadow over him as he turns away with one hand against the side of his head, the irises of his eyes shrunken as he sweats and grimaces. Text captions beside him read, “realizing this IS my circus and those ARE my monkeys” End description.]
[Image: fanart of Charlie and Vaggi from Hazbin Hotel inspired by a Tweet by MrsGhostStudio (originally posted at the link here) with reference sketches for several hugging poses.
The largest drawing in the center of the canvas shows Charlie leaning down to bury her face against Vaggi’s shoulder as she wraps both arms and her demonic tail around the other woman. Charlie has short wavy hair and is wearing a suit with a red jacket and white trousers with three small pink hearts on the side while Vaggi has shoulder-length hair and has on a backless white dress revealing two jagged vertical scars on her back. Off to the right is a small doodle of Lucifer grinning widely with his hands raised to his face and cooing, “Aww”
The other two drawings in the lower corners have them in their usual outfits, Vaggi’s hair pulled up into a ponytail with a bow while Charlie’s black demonic horns sprout from the top of her forehead. In the lower left, Charlie is tilting her head down with a grin as Vaggi leans in against her front and raises an arm around her shoulder for a hug. In the lower right, Charlie is grinning widely with her eyes squeezed shut while she happily wags her tails and holds up Vaggi, whose wings are out behind herself as she wraps her arms around Charlie’s shoulders and her legs around Charlie’s waist. End description.]
"Deconstruction" does not (necessarily) mean "Adding a bunch of sex and violence and drug use and suicide to a work to make it grimdark"; it means, essentially, "foregrounding the implicit contradictions in a work by making them explicit in the text to showcase and critique their ideology in the wider culture."
So, for example "Watchmen" was deconstructive because superhero comics up to that point had, by and large, not really interrogated their own role with respect to things like the military-industrial complex or the rather sordid real-life history of vigilantism in the United States or the sexual psychology of an individual dressing up in (essentially) bondage gear and going out to beat people up on the street. The sex and the violence serve a thematic purpose. It doesn't become more deconstructive by adding *more* sex and violence to it; it depends on what was in (or left out of) the original work.
That's why the best superhero deconstruction in the last 20 years was Lego Batman.
Hot Take: The Iliad isn't hard to adapt. Writers nowdays are just too chicken shit to let their protagonist be pieces of shit (Every Achean king is a piece of shit in their own ways).
If you try to adapt the Iliad for a good VS evil story, you will obviously fail, dah. The Iliad is not about good VS evil. Is about the horrors of war.
So funny enough I had a hc for y charlie dressed the way she did in your au;after finding out about the exterminations she start to rebel by dress more extravagantly and cutting her hair. Sort of the opposite way lf the serphamim. Then eventually she would leave and head to hell
she immediately ran away from home to move in with a moth demon after finding out about the exterminations, so you were right in that she took some rebellious action
[joke drawing about the nonexistent plot] [ref sheet for the animatic]
One of my goals in 2026 is to launch a video for my Archangel AU so might as well start yapping now so we all know what's up.
Update (bc I wrote this post months ago): I already posted the video preview: https://youtu.be/XWje7EKHRWw
This post is a bit jumbled and disorganized because this AU is jumbled and disorganized.
Main summary:
Charlie is an "archangel" raised by Adam and the seraphim, Vaggie is a sinner/moth demon working for Carmilla Carmine as a bodyguard. Their paths cross shortly after Charlie learns some hard truths about the exterminations and vows to make it right. It’s kind of a role reversal, kind of an Anastasia/Tangled AU, and a LITTLE bit of a Star Wars AU.
Some Lore Drops
1 Charlie's chains / "jewelry"
Charlie's cuffs and chains are part of a spell to seal away her demonic traits/powers put on her after an incident when she first arrived to Heaven as a newborn. This has been a foundational part of the AU since Day 1.
Part of the spell "locks" her in this shape when she is meant to be able to shapeshift (have a "demon form" and fully retract her wings and tail) like Lucifer and canon Charlie. She doesn't like people touching or messing with the chains so of course Adam (and later Lute) will do it to annoy her.
At some point towards the end of the story, one cuff gets broken in a battle with Adam, unlocking some of her latent powers (like the black arm from canon).
The bell on her tail is specifically so people know she's coming and can keep an eye on her. Unbeknownst to everyone else, she knows how to silence the bell but chooses not to never thinks to do so.
None of her "jewelry" can come off through any conventional means, and Charlie doesn't know exactly what the spell does. She thinks she wears them for a health reason related to why her parents left her, but mostly doesn't think about it since they've always been "part" of her. Learning the true purpose of the spell is part of her motivation to run away.
Part of the loose plot I imagine for the story is Charlie and Vaggi searching for ways to break the spell once she gets to Hell.
After the first cuff breaks they can temporarily re-seal it so she's not walking around with the black hand all the time, but with the spell out of balance comes host of other issues that I haven't fully figured out.
Charlie's whole arc in the AU would center on being an angel/demon hybrid as well as the heir to a kingdom she doesn't understand. She wants to learn more about who/what she is and find her parents who've all but vanished from Hell. Meanwhile several people in Hell look to exploit her potential power and influence for their own gains. Everyone has big ideas and preconceptions of who/what Charlie is "supposed" to be, and only Vaggi sees her for who she really is :D
2 Vaggi's Wings
(in the AU, Adam is not part of Vaggi 's lore at all. She has no reason to have any shitty name he'd come up with. For a while I kicked around having her AU name be "Van" (originally "Evangeline"). Charlie's implied canonical genuine love for the name "Vaggi" is so adorable I'm just gonna keep her name as Vaggi, logic be damned)
Vaggi was a human who died young and spawned in as a moth demon. Vaggi lost her original moth wings to Lute, and was rescued from the brink of death by Carmilla and her daughters. Her current wings are magic/prosthetic made of shadows and steel. As an untested experimental weapon system combining magic and technology, they require constant upkeep. They are removable but it is extremely difficult and painful. Carmilla's daughters are basically her pit crew.
Vaggi works for Carmilla as a bodyguard. Vaggi sees their relationship as a knight and her lord, while Carmilla and her daughters consider her another member of the family.
Neither Charlie nor Vaggi can properly fly. The spell chains limit Charlie's movements, and Vaggi's new wings make flying too difficult to be worth it except in dire situations.
Vaggi's arc in the AU would have something to do with growing past her "moth to a flame" nature. She would grow to look past Charlie as the one and only savior for hell and find strength in herself as a leader of the people (still in support of Charlie but slightly more independent).
Vaggi is one of the first sinners to successfully survive a fight with an Exorcist. She uses her experience to puzzle out the secret of angelic steel. She tells her discovery to Carmilla, who contracts her soul with the promise to restore her wings in exchange for loyalty and service. With Vaggi on her staff Carmilla continues her research into angelic steel and weaponry. Vaggi is banned by her soul contract from spreading the word about it to others, thus preventing an all out war. Carmilla tries to keep Vaggi close under the guise of bodyguard work, but she manages to loophole her way out and rescues the few people she can.
Adam takes notice of the demon who attacked and injured his soldiers, and the Exorcists take their very first prisoner the next year. This is where she meets Charlie.
(Not exactly this, but it is like this ^^)
3 Heavenly Metal
Heavenly metal burns demon skin on contact (also see in this video), so Charlie and Vaggi can't hold hands as easily. To solve this, Angel Dust lends her some oven mitts, and she wears long sleeves at home. Vaggi forgets this problem a lot and tries to take her hand or touch her arm without thinking. The metal burns fade but Vaggi quickly masses a collection of small burns on her hands until she smartens up and gets her own hand and arm guards.
After one cuff breaks off, the first good discovery they make about it is that Vaggi can grab her unchained hands without hurting herself.
(A lot of the art for this AU was drawn before I made this canon so if Vaggi is touching the chains at any moment in older art, we have two options: 1) Ignore it, or 2) decide it is burning her but she's not mentioning it.)
4 Emily and Lute are Here Too
Charlie and Emily are around the same age and grew up as best friends in Heaven. (They're technically aunt and niece, since I headcanon the Seraphim are all siblings including Lucifer.) Emily doesn't know about Charlie's parents or the exterminations, and sees her as just another Heaven citizen. They spend most of their time together. Emily has one cuff, chain, and rings set in silver that does nothing magical to her and was made specifically match Charlie's.
Emily develops a little crush on Lute. Charlie does not support this--she spends a lot of time around the Exorcists and rightfully clocks Lute as a sadistic bully--but pretends she does to be nice.
Sometime after Charlie runs away, Emily and Lute go on a mission to hell to "rescue" Charlie. Emily takes the mission very seriously and thinks they need disguises to blend in with the sinners. Meanwhile Adam tells Lute to come back with Charlie (and Emily) or not at all. Emily and Lute become close on this mission, as it requires them to spend nearly a week in enemy territory. They are unsuccessful in "rescuing" Charlie, and Emily defends Lute from Adam's wrath at their failure.
Lute and Emily might or might not have a deeper relationship, but after their mission together Emily becomes very taken with Charlie's ideas to fix Hell. Lute obviously hates this.
Archangel AU Lute might be the least accurate to canon Lute because she does not have a crazed rivalry with Vaggi consuming her every waking moment. She doesn't think of Vaggi as anything but another sinner she killed and enjoyed hurting -- until Vaggi and Charlie publicly defeat her on the "rescue" mission. After that she will obviously hate Vaggi's guts and want to finish what she started, but it's not the same since they didn't grow up together and have crazy history like I assume in canon.
In a way their usual dynamic is reversed, in that Vaggi is the one who wants revenge on Lute, and Lute doesn't remember her.
Vaggi is the first sinner to survive a fight with an exorcist, and Lute is the first exorcist to be visibly wounded by a sinner. (Scar placement not final but it is on her face)
Lute is more confused than anything when she gets wounded which is how Vaggi manages to escape. All Exorcists are taught they are invincible, especially in Hell, and have a magical healing factor higher than the average angel. However wounds from angelic steel don't heal like wounds from normal weaponry, as the magic metal affects the soul as well as the body. Lute's wound will go away eventually but she picks at it on the rare occasions when she takes off her helmet. Lute and Adam seldom take off their helmets around the troops so most Exorcists don't know both of them have gnarly facial scars. Lute likes to romanticize that she and Adam are the only people who've seen each others' true faces, but she is 100% wrong.
Archangel AU Lute also needs glasses but won't admit it, so another reason she wears the helmet all the time is to compensate for her shit vision with the targeting system.
5 Charlie's Custody Situation
Charlie is Lucifer and Lilith's daughter but Adam's responsibility. Man never wanted more kids but somehow he got stuck raising the kid of his ex and the guy she left him for. Absolutely brutal. He tended to pawn off supervising Charlie duty on Abel when she was a kid.
Charlie knows who her parents are and thinks they left her behind are coming back for her one day. Nobody is really sure why they gave her up. Adam and Lute make a lot of jokes about Charlie's dad getting lost on the way back with the milk.
Charlie knows Adam is the commander of Heaven's Exorcist Army but doesn't know what it's being used for. She sees how he and Lute (after she rises up the ranks) treat the Exorcists and tries to advocate for them but they don't want her pity and typically tell her off.
Adam and Charlie's relationship is complicated but they care about each other somewhere deep down.
6 The Shirt
In universe, Charlie and Vaggi are often drawn in Bethany Ghostf**ker t-shirts, but it is the same shirt they share custody of. This is simply because I am obsessed with Bethany Ghostf**ker and love the idea of them sharing clothes.
AU playlist (just songs that pass the vibe check for now) on YouTube here
If you got this far, thanks for your time! I genuinely treasure you and any tags/comments about the AU I see.
AU Art is under the Archangel AU tag here!
I don't post Archangel AU as much anymore but animatics are being produced for it, see you there at some point before I die. Ideally "Light or Somethin" will be done by the end of this year?
I hate you shipping discourse I hate you unnecessarily aggressive DNI banners I hate you dehumanization of those you disagree with I hate you harassment over ships or favorite characters I hate you purposeful lack of nuance I hate you false equivalencies I hate you policing how people engage in fandom I hate you actively trying to make fandom spaces hostile I hate you refusal to filter your feed I hate you making it everyone else’s problem
