There was always something so dear to me about Lexa struggling with intense emotions. The commander of the 12 (+1) clans, the never quite reacting the way I expect her to.
Because I know a lot of fanfics make her this holier than though super controlled persona but like, canonically?
Clarke basically rejects her: *tears* (fair me too)
Azgeda ambassador arguing w her: chucks him off the top of the tower
Titus questioning her about her feelings: (disproportionate) anger
Girl has never felt emotion like a normal person. Always gotta be dramatic. (Yes I'm diving into society and trauma while writing don't @ me I'm having fun.)
Querydivergent, a umbrella term for terms such as -ish (xx , xx), adjacent (xx , xx), coded (xx , xx), Symptesque Holder(link), and more. This is to refer to terms that are for those who exhibit traits from neurodivergent and/or persodivergent terms, but may not want to say that they directly are due to not being diagnosed, questioning, etc. whatever the user seems fit.
Querydivergent itself is not a transID or under the unorthaid(link) umbrella. This umbrella should not be used to refereeing to āwantingā a disorder, getting a disorder, etc.. Also this is not me telling everyone they have to use this term, this is more of a suggestion for the sake of terminology, so other suggestions are open to do!
ohh having an idea about mutually assured obi-wan + anakin destruction... what if obi-wan fell with anakin on mustafar... because on mustafar, obi-wan doesnāt see an irredeemable sith, he sees his anakin, half-delirious from exhaustion, fear, and grief, and obi-wan hates himself for not protecting anakin from all of this, and the thought of losing him eclipses everything else, the thought of anakin calling someone else master is too much to handle. they reject the jedi and sith as meaningless factions. in their minds, the force is theirs. they embody its extremes. the living force -- their love, their connection, their devotion, and the cosmic force, and their rage, their will to destroy anything that threatens them, are inseparable... and twisted. what if to test his devotion, obi-wan asks anakin, vader, to kill his new master sidious for him? what if anakins counter off is for obi-wan to kill yoda for him? OH I HAVE IDEAS
So, Iām someone who has suspected that they have BPD for a few years, and while I donāt have the means to get a diagnosis I have done a lot of research into BPD and taught myself to recognise certain symptoms in myself so that I can struggle less.
Because of this, something Iāve come to notice is that many characters who I like from various media have traits that align with Borderline Personality Disorder, and one of these pieces of media is Hazbin Hotel, so thatās what Iād like to analyse! Iāll be looking at Charlie, Vox, and Lute.
Before we get into it, letās talk about what Borderline Personality Disorder even is. Personality disorders are disorders with āunhealthy patterns of thought or behaviourā which often impact personal identity and social relationships. Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) falls into Cluster B, which is characterised by āemotional instability and unpredictable behaviourā. In this cluster are the most well-known and most stigmatised of the personality disorders in my experience.
When it comes to BPD, symptoms are usually categorised in four areas. Each section of this analysis will centre around one of those areas. I will list common ways in which each area can present itself, and then discuss these in relation to the three characters. For the purpose of this analysis I will not be differentiating between male and female presentations or using the term āquiet borderlineā because Iāve personally never found these specifications helpful.
So, here are the symptoms:
Emotional Dysregulation
feelings of numbness
overwhelming feelings of loneliness
feeling emotions very intensely
severe, rapid mood swings
suicidality
anger is often overwhelming, whether directed at the self or at others
lack of emotional permanence (when youāre unhappy, it feels like you have never been and will never be happy. When youāre really happy, the whole world feels amazing)
We donāt see a lot of Vox in S1, but the second season is enough to make it clear that heās emotionally unstable and he does seem to experience pretty severe mood swings. Out of the three characters, Vox is the only one who I would say exhibits suicidal ideation. This is during the S2 finale, when he is willing to throw away his life and everyone else's just to stop Alastor from smiling. I also suspect that his death was a mass suicide, as cults have been known to do. Thereās no other reason for a bunch of TVs to be strung up in a flooding room. Everyone else in there also got electrocuted so itās not just Vox who died. His anger is intense throughout the series, even in the small glimpses we get of it in S1, though of course they become even more intense in the latter half of S2.
Lute also ticks many of these boxes. Overall, she does strike me as the most likely and most straightforward case of being BPD-coded. She could be described as experiencing emotional numbness, as she comes across as quite detached and closed off for the majority of the first season, only outwardly showing emotion during and after the courtroom scene in S1 Ep6. Itās clear that when she does get emotional, said emotions are incredibly intense, though I donāt think she particularly has super rapid mood swings, nor does she display any hints of suicidality. But her anger does frequently consume her, and overall I think she displays enough emotional instability to qualify for this aspect of BPD.
On the other hand, Charlie rarely seems emotionally numb, but has intense mood swings and feels her emotions to a very high intensity. For her, something that is very clear is the sense of loneliness and fear of abandonment she feels as a result of her parents being absent and unavailable at various points of her life. It is not confirmed if Charlie has a lack of emotional permanence, but to me it would seem in character. I think Charlie very likely has BPD comorbid with autism and ADHD which all create difficulty in managing emotions.
This, I think, is the most simple and straightforward of the four areas to dissect for these characters.
Luteās moral compass is shown to be strictly black-and-white, as she believes angels do not make mistakes, and reacts harshly to Vaggiās change of heart, therefore it can be inferred that her general thinking patterns are similarly lacking in nuance.
I would imagine that, considering her dedication to Adam, to heaven, and to her duty as an exorcist, it is incredibly likely that Lute struggles with personal identity in many of the same ways that Vaggi does ā that being that she cannot envision herself outside of her job or the people she serves. Luteās name emphasises this idea, as it is short for āLieutenantā. Her entire identity is constructed around her role, and this affects even how the audience perceives her.
In the same vein, Lute struggles with hallucinations throughout the second season. Her hallucinations are realistic audio-visual depictions of Adam, though they are not tactile. While her hallucination constantly reminds her that it is not real, she still seems to struggle with seeing it as the real Adam anyway. In BPD, hallucinations can occur as a result of traumatic experiences (like watching the subject of her hallucination be murdered), stress (such as the stress that she was feeling about demons killing her best friend) or social isolation (like her feeling ostracised by the other angels for her differing views to them in the wake of Sir Pentious being redeemed after aiding the people who killed her best friend). The other two do not show this symptom, however that is not to say they do not have BPD, as not everyone with BPD hallucinates.
Interestingly, Charlie qualifies too, albeit in a very different way. She doesnāt experience hallucinations nor have I ever gotten the sense that she dissociates, but despite Charlieās sense of morality being incredibly different and more malleable than Luteās, I do feel that she still sees things in a black-and-white way. This is illustrated most obviously in her relationship with Angel. Take S1 Ep2, for example, when Charlie calls Pentious the hotelās āfirst real guestā, because Pentious is trying to redeem himself in the way that she understands redemption, whereas Angel ā who obviously cares for the people in the hotel and wants them to see him as good ā doesnāt put the same effort into the activities she organises. Charlie does have an incredibly positive view of Angel, as we know, but she does have a tendency to place Pentious on a higher pedestal because he succeeded at redemption and Angel, thus far, has not. Charlie struggles to comprehend that someone who is not doing it āher wayā may still be trying to improve themselves. Itās actually a common habit of Charlieās to devalue those who are not acting in the way she wants, but weāll get onto that in the relationships section. Itās worth mentioning here because the black-and-white thinking symptom of BPD is intrinsically tied to the idealisation/devaluing aspect of the disorder.
Charlieās thinning is also black-and-white when it comes to the angels. I think on the surface she tries to keep an open mind when interacting with them but considering her reaction to learning that Vaggi was an angel, it is clear that at that point in the narrative she was not able to reconcile her extremely positive idea of Vaggi with her extremely negative view of the exorcists. And sheās right to hate the exorcists, of course, but it does show a lack of grey tones in her thinking.
While I think Charlie is paranoid and anxious about Hell and the future of her hotel in a sense of being afraid of exterminations and fearing that she might fail, I wouldnāt say this counts her under the BPD symptom of fear of the future because I typically find this, in myself, to manifest more as a fear of the unknown of it and not being able to imagine myself in it, rather than a sense of looming dread about a recurring traumatic experience. Charlieās fear just seems more grounded in reality than most people would assume about my fear.
What Charlie does have is a lack of personal identity. It was always hinted that the hotel was created because of Charlieās view of her parentsā dreams, and in S2 we have it confirmed that Lilith was the inspiration behind her dreams. This means that Charlieās dreams are not based on any personal core belief or intrinsic goal, but an external factor of wanting to prove herself and get her mother to come back. That is not to say that I donāt think Charlie cares about redemption or about Hell, but ultimately her motive is much less about sinners and much less about her ideals than it is about her abandonment issues. Weāve known this. Husk and Alastor both said in S1 that she wants to fix other peopleās problems instead of her own, so what that tells me is that she struggles with confronting and understanding herself.
Funnily enough, Vox, who is equally as disturbed as Lute, fits far less into this category than either her or Charlieās The way that the symptoms present themselves are just not incredibly clear in Vox. But I would argue that he at least lacks a sense of self, hence why so much of what he is actually comes from the people around him. Every person who he murdered in Brighter, he then took not only their jobs but their clothes. He doesnāt really express himself, he just copies. Even his main outfit in Hell is very close to the way Alastor dresses. Alastor plays the piano, so Vox uses a self-playing piano. He steals the motifs of many other characters in his S2 music. He even literally steals other charactersā faces and voices sometimes. He knows what he wants, but I donāt think he knows who he is.
Intense But Unstable Relationships
relationships based on idealisation and devaluing (person is either all good or all bad)
splitting between the two above opinions with little cause
having a favourite person, who the borderlineās mood is dependent on
rejection sensitivity
constant need for reassurance in relationships
very strong fear of abandonment
People with BPD often become victims of abusive relationships because they can idealise their abuser
As previously stated, Charlie does exhibit a pattern of idealising and devaluing people, particularly tending to devalue anyone who isnāt acting like she wants them to. She lashes out at Vaggi and Lucifer for going against Vox when she didnāt want them to (getting mad at someone for stirring the pot enough to start a war is more valid than I think Charlie is given credit for, even if her anger is somewhat misdirected it is incredibly easy for me to see where sheās coming from). She also expresses annoyance towards Alastor for āletting himself get kidnappedā, pressures Angel into going along with her redemption plans, and in S1 she puts Pentious on a higher place of priority in her life because heās more enthusiastic about trying to get redemption. Her opinion on Vaggi also shifts from idealising to devaluing the second she finds out Vaggi is an angel, though again I do think this has some justification as I imagine being lied to through a three year relationship and finding out your girlfriend participated in the genocide of your people to be quite distressing.
When it comes to idealising, I think Charlie does this with Alastor, saying in S1 Ep5 that Alastor believes in her more than Lucifer does when Alastor has never actually shown any sign of actually believing in her cause. He calls her vision unique and says that theyāre all proud of her while in front of Lucifer, and I think Charlie really takes this to heart despite the evidence to the contrary, because thatās what idealising is. He tells her what she desperately wants to hear and then her outlook on him quickly becomes entirely positive.
All these things are also examples of splitting, albeit some of them having a lot more cause than other examples. In the scene in S2 specifically, in which Charlie lashes out at both Vaggi and Lucifer, I see a lot of myself reflected in her. She acts petty and immature with Vaggi after the argument, which cements Vaggi as her favourite person for me. She holds Charlie together. When Vaggi and Charlie are not getting along, Charlie spirals. And itās spending time with Vaggi that regulates her again. Itās not a healthy dynamic, but there have been times in my own life where Iāve felt like I was emotionally falling apart, and it took me a few days of that feeling before I realised it was because Iād had minimal contact with my FP over that time period. Itās not my FPs fault, and itās something I have to learn to cope with, but itās difficult to navigate and hard to know how to fix it. It can also be really embarrassing.
Charlieās fear of abandonment is evident through her reactions to Alastor, Husk, Angel and Lucifer all disappearing from the hotel one after the other. It stems from her childhood, feeling as if she ādidnāt knowā her dad, and then her mother eventually leaving, which Charlie blames herself for.
Voxās rapidly changing attitudes towards Valentino and Velvette, while orchestrated by Alastor who was purposefully getting under his skin, does remind me of a BPD split. Itās likely that Alastor knows Vox has a tendency to idealise and devalue and preyed on that specifically, making Vox feel worthless in comparison to make him dislike the other two, and knowing that Vox relies on Alastor for validation (likely because he might be Voxās FP), heās able to manipulate him. I wonder if Alastor recognised any of Voxās BPD traits in Charlie (considering the two of them do foil each other) and thatās why he played with Charlieās need for reassurance when Lucifer was around?
Vox craves external validation and may rely on reassurance in relationships. Having an increased sensitivity to rejection could be taken as one explanation for his extreme reaction to Alastorās over the top rejection in the bar flashback, though I personally lean more into the idea that Vox was playing up to Alastor rather than the whole āyouāre inspiring!ā starry-eyed Vox being completely genuine. Weāve seen what he was like on Earth now, and I find the pipeline of brutal self-serving murderer with a god complex -> sweet and naive guy with a crush on his bestie -> brutal self-serving aspiring dictator to be kind of unrealistic. I think he did have romantic feelings for Alastor! But I doubt they were as naive and sweet as Alastor recalls them as. Perspective is important.
Lute clearly has a favourite person, with whom her relationship is incredibly codependent, fitting the bill for an intense but unstable relationship Her mood is so dependent on him that she is always with him until she physically cannot be because heās entirely lost to her, and at that point she creates a new version of him for herself because it is genuinely that excruciating to not be around him. Lute is even with him when he goes to talk to Vaggi while her and Charlie are in Heaven, despite Vaggi being someone Lute despises. Fear of abandonment is more than likely, and losing Adam would have probably worsened this for her. Personally, Iām a big fan of guitarspear, so while I wouldnāt classify Lute and Adamās relationship as an entirely abusive dynamic, it is evident that it could be read that way due to Adamās history and his misogynistic tendencies. He, at the very least, can be verbally hostile towards her.
The spiral she experiences in the courtroom in S2 Ep1 does suggest to me that she is sensitive to rejection, as the sense that she isnāt being listened to causes her to lash out and become frantic and overwhelmed. She does show a pattern of idealisation and devaluing that signs with her black-and-white morals, hence why she turns on Vaggi so quickly and so wholeheartedly. Splitting can happen for much smaller reasons, though, and for me tends to flip-flop more frequently between the two. This is something that I find quite difficult to find examples of in media, because petty conflict tends to be annoying to watch, as illustrated by my own annoyance in the wake of Chaggiās bickering in S2 Ep6.
Impulsive Behaviour
self-harm impulses
reckless behaviour such as overspending, drink-driving, having sex with people you donāt know very well, etc
risk-taking activities
addictions, especially eating disorders, are common in people with BPD
Vox shows impulsive behaviour really only when Alastor is involved. Other times he kind of keeps a lid on it, he describes himself as āforward thinkingā and this is evidenced even in S1 when he convinces Valentino not to do anything reckless regarding Angel being at the hotel. But it falls apart whenever Alastor is involved, from taking the deal without really thinking about it to messing around with a literal nuke.
Charlie is impulsive in a way that isnāt usually as catastrophically destructive as Vox, but her impulsivity does still cause people to get hurt sometimes. Itās a big part of what she does in S2 but is also present in S1 Ep4 when she interrupts Angel at work, or even as far back as the pilot in her interactions with Katie Killjoy.
I donāt feel that Lute has any super obvious impulsive tendencies, perhaps besides speaking out of turn in court both times she is present in one, and punching a wall so hard the whole thing cracked. Her anger is impulsive, itās the only way she knows to express her intense emotions, but I donāt think Iād count that here.
"sorry I'm hanging out with someone else right by now." someone else???? who???? have I seen them before??? how long have you known this person??? and why are you hanging out with them instead of me??? just ditch them!!! I'm more important anyway!! you should be spending time with ME!! not them!!! so leave them right now!!! you'll do it if you truly love me!!
Ok quick bit first before getting into the nitty-gritty. So to have BPD you need to have 5 of these 9 traits:-
(putting as by proxy with him cus damage your image is harmful to your psyche).
Poor bugger looks to have 9 of 9
Alot of BPD patterns and strategies comes from childhood trauma, and Blitz has this in spades.
Scapegoat and attachment style
Cash is clearly a narcissistic Dad, see the kids as tools.
Cash uses Blitz's love and Strong attachment to his Mum to force Blitz to be useful to him, and do what he wants.
This sends the very strong message that love is conditional. That it is bought through what he can do for another. And that without being useful love and affection will be withdrawn, because he doesn't really deserve it.
We see wee tinny Blitzo struggles with making balloon animals, is a little clumsy, has a sense of humour that not a crowd pleaser. This puts him at the bottom of the pecking order.
This position is the scapegoat. Blamed for anything that goes wrong (fire), to keep the others in line (Fizz told done on purpose), given the most dangerous jobs (rob a Goetia), and given the lest love and affection.
Narcissist see people as tools or a burden. All love from Cash is conditional/transactional.
How Blitz gets love is to be used or to be useful. This the rule.
Affection freely given can't be trusted. It is a lie. This why any Stolas shows has to be either ignored, or change to a kink of "getting plowed by people you look down on". Making himself used.
But Stolas breaks this when he says Blitz "no longer have any obligation to see me, to touch me, to bed me, you are... you are free of me." He panics that he's being abandoned; "I can be better", "I'm I not fucking you good enough" are his immediate responses. Trying to get back to the safety of what he knows.
If they're no 'obligation' then there can't be affection and he wants to Stay with Stolas. And if there's no 'obligation' Stolas telling him he cares must be a lie.
He's slowly coming to see that this isn't always the case in apology tour; when his "earning" his way through sex is rebuffed again.
(It may not be Stolas' kink; but being fucked by an all powerful prince who degraded his a little might be Blitz's š¤).
After the accident this rule gets a second fun extra playmate that anyone who loves him will be hurt. So Blitz must push them way, to keep them safe from him. These 2 rules give Blitz the disorganised fearful-avoidant attachment style. (Woo go him, give him a cookie. Or you know all the nope, but still give him a cookie).
Disorganised fearful-avoidant attachment comes with a push-pull of wanting to be close but close relationships are scary. (Like running away from Voroskia for loving him).
He is getting better by refusing to be dismissed by Stolas, and coming back the next morning. And even talking to him at the party.
But mostly this bit: "Oh, sorry, this entire time I assumed the worst because I was convinced a prince could never love someone like me, and I've let my self hatred stop me from apologizing to anyone I could ever care about!" Blitz in a nutshell everybody.
His self hatred makes him to self sabotage any romantic relationship before it gets to deep. To protect the people he likes and makes sure they can't love him. Because he doesn't deserve it. Thems the rules after all.
Cash and the accident has taught Blitz to hate himself.Ā Ā
It's also likely why Blitz thinks apologies are for pussys, and that no one deserves one anyway.Ā Those sound like words put in his mouth for daring to ask his dad to say sorry.Ā
He doesn't think he's worth it.
(Added the cuddles pic cus I like the cuddles). And Blitz still doesn't trust that he deserved to be forgiven by Fizz.
This self hatred is why he can't picture anyone loving him, let alone Stolas
"This whole thing we had going... I'm- I mean you're a fucking prince. How could you ever actually care for an imp... Me? How could anybody?" "Stolas, you are better off without me. 'Kay? You deserve so much... I don't even".
No one is allowed to want him.
End of part 1
I'll stick the link to the next part when I get done it, but might be a bit.
Next time some such fun shenanigans as:
Difficulty regulating emotions
Being a burden & how to be useful to IMP
Spitting
Massive fear of abandonment
Emotional loops
The Deal
Chronic feelings of emptiness
Self hatred & the Belief others Must hate him
(his cookie)
As normal is absolutely fine if you don't agree. This is just something I like to do.
Edit: this isn't exactly part 2 but it is still looking at Blitz's phycology
