#popsies analysis

[popsicles-ya-sicko]

Radiosilence & Sexual Assault

When S2 Ep4 released, I saw a lot of people throwing around similar ideas that Vox was not being threatening towards Alastor, that Alastor was in no danger and, specifically, that Vox ‘presented no sexual threat’ to Alastor. I found these takes really odd, personally, because I felt that the episode was riddled with imager that held sexual assault implications. In knowing that Vox is evidently not someone who is against rape, given his close relationship with Vaalenrino and Velvette where he acts as an enabler, the implications made a lot of sense. I was shocked to come onto tumblr and find out that, not only did people think the show had made an “explicit effort” to make it clear that absolutely no sexual abuse had occurred (using the cuck chair scene as evidence??), but that there were also several people who described Vox as being caring towards his captive.

All that to say, I expect this whole analysis to be incredibly controversial but it’s been in my brain since S2 Ep4 came out and I’m going to lose my mind if I don’t write it. This isn’t intended to suggest that people cannot have different interpretations but I do think saying that there are absolutely no implications whatsoever of a sexual threat is a strong take. And I like discussing media.

Obviously, massive trigger warnings for discussions of sexual abuse.

This is a companion essay to my Deep Dive on the Vox and Alastor Flashback scene. They were originally part of the same essay until I moved that one, and I’ve only just gotten the confidence to post this.

The Humiliation Parade

During the Humiliation Parade, Vox takes Alastor on an interview with Katie Killjoy and publicly announces that Alastor lacks a tail. The thing is, it isn’t presented as something that Vox was already aware of. Which at the very least, even if nothing further happened, means Vox checked if Alastor had a tail. I think that already classifies as harassment, at least.

If I wanted to be really pretentious and make my literature teacher hate me, I could take the smoothie date scene during this montage to a really metaphorical level, and suggest that Vox taking Alastor on what is essentially a forced date, ordering a drink with two straws and then drinking the entire thing himself is an allegory for taking ‘pleasure’ from Alastor. But I won’t do that, because I have enough evidence that isn’t as flimsy. I just thought it was worth mentioning because it was a thought that crossed my mind while rewatching the Humiliation Parade while making this analysis, and there’s nothing I love more than turning dark situations used as comedy back into something sinister!

The Cuck Chair

If I’m being completely honest, the existence of this scene kind of renders my entire analysis somewhat useless. This isn’t an implication, or a metaphor, or imagery. It’s clean-cut, obvious sexual assault. The reaction I saw from the fandom took this as comedic. Haha, the asexual was forced to watch people have sex. I’m laughing so hard.

To be clear, I don’t think that the show entirely treated this as a joke. But parts of the fandom did find it funny. And that’s a little bit wild to me. It’s especially wild to me that, as I mentioned in the introduction of this essay, that the cuck chair scene was used as evidence that no sexual assault occurred. My brother in Christ, do you know what sexual assault is? Do you realise that this qualifies? That forcing someone to watch you have sex qualifies as a non-consensual act?

I know that there is a debate about whether Vox and Valentino even actually had sex, but to me it’s clear that they did. People use Valentino’s unsatisfied demeanour as evidence to say that they didn’t, and the fact that right before it, Vox was looking at his ratings going up. But, when he’s looking at the ratings he still has his clothes on, showing a time jump between that scene and the scene of Vox and Val in bed. As far as Valentino being annoyed, Vox was probably just more interested in Alastor the entire time. Also, during Don’t You Forget (reprise), when Alastor says “I knew you’d need me here to be your unwilling audience”, the fact that he’s making direct eye contact with Valentino, combined with the dance he does in his chair, suggests that he’s referencing the forced voyeurism.

Vox’s clothes were thrown towards Alastor, and Alastor’s ears pinned back and he tensed up when Vox stood up in front of him, as if he was expecting Vox to do something to him beyond just dragging around his chair. Vox takes Valentino’s cigar and exhales some of the smoke from it in Alastor’s face. The smoke that Valentino uses on Angel frequently, which always makes him dissociate, and the smoke is an extension of Valentino’s aphrodisiac saliva — which is likely used in Velvette’s love potion. The fact that Vox is the one using it on Alastor, as opposed to Val, doesn’t seem to change its properties, because it is still red when he blows it out into Alastor’s face, after literally pulling down the mask to force Alastor to inhale it. And then what does he say? “Isn’t this nice?”.

Let me repeat that in a shorter and more concise way: VOX DRUGGED ALASTOR. WITH AN APHRODISIAC. AFTER FORCING HIM TO WATCH HIM HAVE SEX WITH VALENTINO. This should be so obvious. It’s not even an implication anymore.

The one valid counter-argument I can imagine for why there may not have been any direct rape involved in the captivity arc that Alastor’s line, “our deal was for me to be your captive, I don’t have to tell you anything” — because it means that Alastor was still able to have boundaries based on what was and wasn’t in their deal. And Vox sexually abusing Alastor was not part of the deal, and if Alastor would resist against simply telling him something, he’d definitely resist against being raped too. But just because he would’ve resisted doesn’t necessarily mean it didn’t happen. And even if Vox did not rape him, he did assault him. The cuck chair counts.

Being Vox’s captive does mean that Alastor has to allow himself to be physically restrained, as we see, and it is very unlikely there’d be a caveat for ‘unless he’s sexually abusing you’, considering Alastor is unable to move against Vox when he electrocuted him in Don’t You Forget (reprise). Which is what we’re getting into next!

Don’t You Forget (Reprise)

This song hints at the situation going even further than forced voyeurism (in case that wasn’t enough). While I will discuss a little bit of the visual cues that are given, this will mostly be a lyrical analysis while the next section will deal a lot more deeply into specific frames while exploring parallels with Poison from s1 Ep4

“You’re in my house / With my rules / And my room / with my tools”

What Vox is saying here is ‘you’re my captive, so what I say goes’. It’s in direct response to Alastor refusing to give him the information he asked for, and it’s a threat that Vox can and will use force to get what he wants from Alastor. This shows that although Alastor can resist, Vox isn’t going to take ‘no’ as an answer, and this point is reiterated a number of times. This song is full of the possessive pronoun ‘my’, showing Vox’s control over the situation and how fixated he is with his own power over Alastor.

There is also something vaguely sexual about “my tools”, as it could be referencing sex toys, and this isn’t far-fetched because of Valentino’s background presence in the song and his general Valentino-ness, combined with the activities he and Vox had just gotten up to, making it possible that there’d be toys lying around. But simultaneously, it’s referencing Vox’s wires, and this is what is focused on visually. Even that has sexual undertones, however, as Vox uses those same wires to interact with Valentino throughout the cuck chair scene, and the wires are used to tie Val’s wrists to the bed, while they’re also used to restrain Alastor in similar ways. Additionally, the wires are a literal extension of Vox. It’s Vox restraining Alastor. Vox forcing him into compromising positions. Vox touching him. The wires are Vox.

“And worse, you’re at my mercy / Cursed to watch me take it all! / You’ve gone ass up”

…Not to bring up my smoothie metaphor again but— like— clearly my thought process isn’t entirely off the rails. He’s “tak[ing] it all”.

But in all seriousness, being “at [someone’s] mercy” is a phrase that can so easily be taken to have sexual assault undertones, especially when paired with being “cursed to watch [them] take it all”. On top of that, the visuals here show Alastor being hoisted up and restrained by his limbs, which are forcibly spread apart (and as I’ve mentioned, since the wires are an extension of Vox, he is literally being held in place by Vox).

“Ass up” has explicit sexual connotations, alluding to being in sexual positions.

“Don’t you forget / You’re on my string / You can try to squirm and struggle and it wouldn’t do a thing”

Alastor can try to resist, but he’s helpless and can’t stop Vox. This could so easily be a rape allegory. If these lyrics were in a duet between Valentino and Angel it would be so clear what it’s about, and they wouldn’t feel out of place in the slightest.

Here, Vox literally has Alastor dancing with him while tangled in the wires. If we compare this to the initial DYF song between Alastor and Rosie, there’s an interesting difference in the way that the two of them present their power over Alastor. Vox is frequently restrictive and controlling, whereas Rosie’s is weirdly lenient in comparison to other soul owner dynamics we’ve seen. It is significant that Rosie never binds Alastor in a chain, she only ever has him on strings. This is obviously an intentional decision and wouldn’t be overlooked by the animators. While these strings are used to control and guide Alastor’s movement, they’re never actually used as restraints, nor are they used to force him to be in proximity with her.

Rosie dances with Alastor without use of the strings at the start of the song, then when she does summon the string she immediately pushes him away, before putting it away when she gets close to him again. Then, the second time they dance together, the strings are completely unused. She does make him dance on the strings while he’s being puppeted, though this isn’t him dancing with her. He then falls into an awkward position, somewhat reminiscent of the compromising ones Vox puts him into, but Rosie’s reaction is to immediately pull him up again, then she removes the strings before taking his hand for the final note of the song. The cage in which Alastor is placed in by her is easily opened from the inside, he’s able to poof away from her before she puts him into a hat, she doesn’t protest against him doing that, and the net which she puts him in only lasts a few seconds. Overall, Rosie is much less oppressive with her power over Alastor than Vox is. While she is physically affectionate and this might be against his boundaries, she does have a line she won’t cross, which is forcing proximity and physically restraining him.

Contrast all of that with Vox straight up telling Alastor that his discomfort (his “squirm[ing] and struggl[ing]”) means literally nothing to him.

“You’re so obsessed with me / I knew you’d need me here to be / Your unwilling audience when you lose your marbles in Act Three”

I briefly touched on how the visual during the “unwilling audience” part of the lyric is suggestive, even though the second half of that line is obvious foreshadowing and a clue-in to the audience that Alastor does know what he’s doing to some extent. Like, it’s not lost on me that the line is about the foreshadowing of the final episodes, but at the same time, there is suggestive imagery and that idea of him being an unwilling audience drives home the point about the sexual assault that has already canonically occurred, regardless of how far Vox may or may not have taken it off-screen, which we can only judge based on implications.

“You still need me like you did before // So cute, you think I care!”

I find these lines interesting when considering that this is Vox shifting the dynamic between them, and Alastor coming to realise that maybe he’s bit off a little more than he can chew by making this deal. Because he’s made assumptions about Vox, and for the most part he’s correct, but maybe he didn’t consider all the directions Vox might go to try and prove him wrong.

While he has Alastor in captivity, Vox frequently attempts to exert control over him and is instead met with It would not be out of character for Vox to go to extreme lengths to try to control Alastor, and we know Vox enables both Valentino and Velvette in the way that they both capitalise on sexual violence, so that’s not a line that he wouldn’t cross. I think if he wanted to use sexual violence against Alastor, he’d try, and that it would be a way to prove his power to Alastor.

“Now I’m the master / And you’re my bottomest bitch / no more Al the High and Mighty now that I’ve flipped the switch”

Aside from the word “bitch” just being derogatory in general, and the fact that it is commonly used against women alluding to Vox trying to demean Alastor in a misogynistic sense by likening him to women as an insult, a “bottom bitch” is a term used in American pimp culture to describe the prostitute who is (ironically) at the top of the hierarchy of prostitutes under a specific pimp, having known the pimp the longest, likely consistently making the most money for the pimp, etc. it’s a sexually charged exploitative term which Vox is using, and the origins of the term are likely something Vox is aware of due to his closeness with Valentino. Calling Alastor his bottom bitch shows that Vox is objectifying him, and highlights the obsession he has with Alastor that does have sexual undertones in some capacity.

At this point in the song, Vox grabs Alastor by the hair and electrocutes him, and the focus in the shot is placed on Alastor’s shadow, which is not smiling, betraying his true feelings of pain, disgust, and, potentially, fear at their current dynamic.

“Flipping the switch” is clearly also in reference to their power dynamic, and the way that Vox is now the one with power over Alastor, and Alastor is below him, unlike during the rejection scene. But there are also the connotations of ‘switching’ in a sexual relationship which are relevant here. Not the main meaning that was intended, but one that does seep through.

“By the time I’ve had my fun / You’ll wish that you had Stayed Gone”

The first part of this line can also be taken as one that alludes to sexual abuse. Vox may be talking about his villainous plans, his “fun” being achieving his goals of reaching Heaven, but given that the focus is mainly on Alastor here, not on Vox’s plans, it also suggests that his “fun” is going to be some form of abuse against Alastor. Vox references Stayed Gone, too, where Alastor had said that he’d make Vox wish he’d Stayed Gone, where now Vox is flipping it and implying he’s going to take revenge in some way for the humiliation he’s faced at Alastor’s hand. Being a victim of sexual abuse often feels humiliating, so this checks out.

Vox crowds in on Alastor’s space, pushing his chair up against the desk and getting between his legs, then pinning Alastor in place by putting his hands on the armrests of the chair. Alastor appears deliberately small in contrast. All of this imagery has concerning and uncomfortable sexual undertones due to the lack of consent on Alastor’s part.

Valentino then tells them both to “just fuck already”, and this is where the episode ends, which means we do not have any idea what happened between this and Bad With Us, which begins S2 Ep5. I don’t believe that Vox would’ve gone with Valentino’s proposal, if anything that might’ve killed his mood, but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t have raped Alastor at any other given moment, or that the line isn’t there to suggest something.

Poison Parallels

While I was watching S2 Ep4, I felt that some of the imagery in Don’t You Forget (Reprise) reminded me of the imagery in Poison, and when my friend and I were discussing the sense we both got that there were allusions being made to sexual assault throughout the song, I went back through both music videos and realised there were actually far more parallels than I originally noticed, so I think those are worth mentioning here because they illustrate my argument well.

Perhaps the fact that both seasons’ fourth episodes highly centre around one character with a name that starts with A and their abusive dynamic with one of the Vees which in which the A character is a victim.. might be a parallel? But I digress, back to music.

First:

This isn’t the first one that shows up, it’s the first one in Poison but comes up sort of midway through DYFr — I’m putting it first because all of the others happen in a chronological way in both songs, and I find that relevant in and of itself, that each song hits the same visual storytelling beats in an almost identical order. The circumstances of both songs escalate in similar ways.

The parallel here is that both Angel and Alastor are dancing while restrained. I don’t think the act of dancing itself is metaphorical in the same way that it is in Easy, particularly because in Poison we actively see direct imagery of sex, so also portraying it through dance wouldn’t make a ton of sense. What this does illustrate, though, is the power dynamic at play and the lack of control that both Angel and Alastor are experiencing.

I might do a full analysis on Poison one day, but this segment of the song has always struck me as being a flashback to a period of Angel’s relationship with Valentino when he was only just starting to realise the abuse that was occurring, which I think could be mirrored well with Alastor in DYFr, where perhaps he is just now realising that he’s gotten himself into a less-than-ideal situation, and Vox can hurt him more than Alastor originally thought he’d be able to.

Both of these scenes end in the same way too — Vox and Valentino both toss Alastor and Angel away.

The first parallel that actually comes up chronologically in DYFr are these frames:

In Poison this comes after the dancing. Angel and Alastor both appear tense, with hunched shoulders, in the middle of the frame, and — while it is depicted in different ways — Vox and Valentino are looming over them. In the next shot we see that Vox and Valentino are both in essentially the same poses, with their arms out, and this is the parallel that immediately stood out to me the first time I watched DYFr.

In Poison, this shows us how afraid Angel is of Valentino, and how much of a danger Valentino is to him. In DYFr, Vox isn’t a complete silhouette, which could suggest that Alastor isn’t as terrified of him as Angel is of Valentino, but Vox is just as dangerous and just as capable of inflicting the same horrors, hence his identical posing to Val.

Alastor certainly isn’t presented as being safe. And he certainly doesn’t feel that way entirely, judging by his pinned-back ears.

Second:

Both Alastor and Angel are the main focus of the frame, and both of them are restrained by the wrists while seated in compromising positions, while Valentino and Vox are stepping into frame. These frames both lead into similar shots too, in which the respective Vee grabs their victim by the face:

These two also have somewhat similar facial expressions, I think. Both Angel and Alastor are expressing disdain while Vox and Val appear equally smug.

Next:

Of course, in the context of Poison, Angel’s dance isn’t actually happening — the images shown on the blue screens in the background are his real situation. While in DYFr, it’s all in real time, and the backing screens emphasise Alastor’s anger, which Vox is deliberately drawing to attention.

But there is still a similarity in the composition of the frame and the use of the blue screens. This shot is when Vox sings “you could try to squirm and struggle and it wouldn’t do a thing”, which could also describe Angel’s real situation in his scene. In fact, that helplessness is exactly why Angel’s coping mechanism is instead to dissociate and create a fantasy; because struggling and fighting doesn’t get him anywhere. Alastor is more powerful than Angel, but he is still rendered helpless by Vox in this moment.

Finally:

I think these two frames are actually lit in a really similar way, with the glowing eyes and teeth, the shadow on the characters which makes Val, Angel and Alastor all appear to have very similar skin tones (fur tones in angel’s case?). Though, of course, the main point here is the way that Vox/Val are both getting up in Alastor’s/Angel’s personal space, crossing boundaries, being in their faces and making themselves seem intimidating. Of course, Alastor’s facial expression here (smile not included) is not as fearful and worried as Angel’s, but the rest of his body language still reads as tense and uncomfortable, with the hunched shoulders and the pinned back ears. And Vox’s expression is similar to Valentino’s.

Regardless of whether all of these frames are intended to read as paralleling sexual abuse specifically, which is how I’m reading them, it is clear that the animators have used a lot of the same visual cues as Poison to illustrate a power dynamic between Vox and Alastor where Alastor is not the one with more power or control. We know Alastor had a plan, but there is nothing in any of these shots that suggests even an underlying sense of control of the situation on his part. I don’t think he was prepared for everything.

Hints From Other Episodes

This is a weaker and less organised part of this analysis, but I think these things are worth mentioning and I wasn’t sure how else to bring them up.

In S2 Ep3, Angel tells us that Vox “gets off on seein’ people suffer”, which we also had confirmed in S2 Ep1 with Vox finding enjoyment in the compilation of Valentino hitting Angel, and later in S2 Ep6 when Vox says he’s been wanting to hit Angel for a long time. All of these examples involve Angel, but I don’t think it would be far-fetched to think that he feels a similar way about Alastor who he is far more obsessed with than he is with Angel. It could be a thing that is reserved for those people he obsesses over, though, including both of these two because I do think he gets fixated on Angel to some extent occasionally. He brings him up often. Val only brought Angel up to Vox, like, once. Every other time they’ve spoken about him, Vox appears to have initiated it.

In S2 Ep5, directly following and seemingly only a day or something after DYFr, Zeezi tells us that rumours are going around about what sort of things Vox is doing with Alastor, and the one she mentions is the rumour that Vox “fucked him with a chair”. Not particularly strong on its own, but when combined with everything else, it holds more weight. Even if that isn’t exactly what happened, it is an implication that sexual violence could have occured. This may be an exaggeration of the forced voyeurism we saw, but I wouldn’t be shocked if it was something more direct.

Additionally, to me, the tone through which Alastor calls Vox a ‘fucking creep’ in the finale felt very emotionally charged to me. Which could mean nothing, but it could also mean something.

Conclusion

In all honesty, I don’t expect any of these things to go anywhere and I’m not sure how seriously Hazbin will take all of this stuff or if Alastair’s captivity under Vox will ever be brought up again — but I think that there is something here, and the reaction of the fandom to take all of this so comedically did upset me when the episode first came out. But I’m kind of hard-wired to pick up on these themes in media where they were not intentionally placed, because trauma, I guess. Still, a part of me wonders how much of this could have really been an accident.

[popsicles-ya-sicko]

BPD in Hazbin Hotel

So, I’m someone who has suspected that they have BPD for a few years, and while I don’t 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 I’ve 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 that’s what I’d like to analyse! I’ll be looking at Charlie, Vox, and Lute.

Before we get into it, let’s talk about what Borderline Personality Disorder even is. Personality disorders are disorders with “unhealthy patterns of thought or behaviour” which often impact personal identity and social relationships. Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) falls into Cluster B, which is characterised by “emotional instability and unpredictable behaviour”. 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 “quiet borderline” because I’ve 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 you’re unhappy, it feels like you have never been and will never be happy. When you’re really happy, the whole world feels amazing)

We don’t see a lot of Vox in S1, but the second season is enough to make it clear that he’s 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. There’s no other reason for a bunch of TVs to be strung up in a flooding room. Everyone else in there also got electrocuted so it’s 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. It’s clear that when she does get emotional, said emotions are incredibly intense, though I don’t 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.

Disturbed Patterns of Thinking

black-and-white thinking

believing self to be a horrible person

dissociation, derealisation, depersonalisation, etc

ntense fear of the future

some people experience hallucinations

lack of personal identity or sense of self

Lute’s moral compass is shown to be strictly black-and-white, as she believes angels do not make mistakes, and reacts harshly to Vaggi’s 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 — that being that she cannot envision herself outside of her job or the people she serves. Lute’s name emphasises this idea, as it is short for ‘Lieutenant’. 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 doesn’t experience hallucinations nor have I ever gotten the sense that she dissociates, but despite Charlie’s sense of morality being incredibly different and more malleable than Lute’s, 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 hotel’s “first real guest”, because Pentious is trying to redeem himself in the way that she understands redemption, whereas Angel — who obviously cares for the people in the hotel and wants them to see him as good — doesn’t 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 ‘her way’ may still be trying to improve themselves. It’s actually a common habit of Charlie’s to devalue those who are not acting in the way she wants, but we’ll get onto that in the relationships section. It’s worth mentioning here because the black-and-white thinking symptom of BPD is intrinsically tied to the idealisation/devaluing aspect of the disorder.

Charlie’s 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 she’s 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 wouldn’t 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. Charlie’s 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 Charlie’s view of her parents’ dreams, and in S2 we have it confirmed that Lilith was the inspiration behind her dreams. This means that Charlie’s 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 don’t 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. We’ve known this. Husk and Alastor both said in S1 that she wants to fix other people’s 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 Charlie’s 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 doesn’t 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 characters’ faces and voices sometimes. He knows what he wants, but I don’t 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 borderline’s 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 isn’t acting like she wants them to. She lashes out at Vaggi and Lucifer for going against Vox when she didn’t 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 she’s coming from). She also expresses annoyance towards Alastor for “letting himself get kidnapped”, 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 he’s 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 they’re 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 that’s 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 it’s spending time with Vaggi that regulates her again. It’s not a healthy dynamic, but there have been times in my own life where I’ve felt like I was emotionally falling apart, and it took me a few days of that feeling before I realised it was because I’d had minimal contact with my FP over that time period. It’s not my FPs fault, and it’s something I have to learn to cope with, but it’s difficult to navigate and hard to know how to fix it. It can also be really embarrassing.

Charlie’s 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 “didn’t know” her dad, and then her mother eventually leaving, which Charlie blames herself for.

Vox’s 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. It’s 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 Vox’s FP), he’s able to manipulate him. I wonder if Alastor recognised any of Vox’s BPD traits in Charlie (considering the two of them do foil each other) and that’s why he played with Charlie’s 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 Alastor’s 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 “you’re inspiring!” starry-eyed Vox being completely genuine. We’ve 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 he’s 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, I’m a big fan of guitarspear, so while I wouldn’t classify Lute and Adam’s relationship as an entirely abusive dynamic, it is evident that it could be read that way due to Adam’s 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 isn’t 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 Chaggi’s bickering in S2 Ep6.

Impulsive Behaviour

self-harm impulses

reckless behaviour such as overspending, drink-driving, having sex with people you don’t 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 “forward thinking” 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 isn’t usually as catastrophically destructive as Vox, but her impulsivity does still cause people to get hurt sometimes. It’s 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 don’t 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, it’s the only way she knows to express her intense emotions, but I don’t think I’d count that here.

[popsicles-ya-sicko]

Radiosilence Flashback Deep Dive

I’d like to discuss the history of Vox and Alastor’s relationship, because there is a lot of evidence to suggest that their relationship was always tense, even in the flashback scene where, at first glance, they appeared to be on good terms. I find their dynamic quite interesting.

Something that I haven’t seen a ton of people mention, but that I think is crucial to understanding Alastor and Vox’s dynamic, is to not discount the fact that this flashback scene was told from what is essentially Alastor’s point of view. It’s significant that we do not know how Vox truly felt during this interaction, or exactly how he views it now. I find the dramatic shift in Vox’s character from what he was like in his human life, as shown in Brighter (bloodthirsty, looks for quick ways to gain power, copies others) to what he is like in this flashback with Alastor (somewhat shy, naive, sweet) and then reverting back in the present day, to be jarring to the point of disbelief. Which is why I actually don’t think he changed at all. I lean more towards the idea that Alastor is constructing Vox as weak and needy based on his own perception, and perhaps a conscious effort on Vox’s part to appear a specific way to Alastor.

Perspective plays a significant role throughout S2. There’s Charlie’s perspective in which she knows that redemption is real but is unable to prove it, the way that Vox shifts people’s perspectives for personal gain, the way that Sera’s newfound perspective reframes the way she feels about her previous choices, and Lute’s perspective which differs from the mainstream view in Heaven. Perspective matters. It would not be the first time that the show frames its characters in different ways based on perception — they do it with Valentino, it’s why he’s so much less threatening in S2, because we see him more through the eyes of Vox, with his allies, than through Angel’s, his victim, like we did in S1. Alastor’s flashback could be a more subtle example of this with Vox.

It is still very likely that Vox’s feelings toward Alastor were romantically inclined, but I highly doubt that the very smitten version we see of Vox is entirely accurate. Vox plays up to Alastor in this scene; “You’re inspiring, really! And when you think about it, modern entertainment actually started with radio.” There's multiple ways this statement could be taken; Vox could be saying ‘I couldn’t have done it without you’, but he is also implying ‘You won’t get any further without me’. He says the second part of this quote slowly, obviously trying to get a point across, given the short pauses which emphasise his words. Alastor reacts with disinterest.

Their body language matters too. Vox is leaning in, attentive, focused. Alastor looks to actually be partly turned away from Vox, almost looking at him over his shoulder. This doesn’t look like a conversation he wants to be having, if he wants to talk to Vox at all. Hence my earlier statement that their relationship was always tense.

Noting his dismissiveness, Vox pivots the conversation to what is essentially a sales pitch about teaming up. Alastor recalls this as a shy and awkward change of subject on Vox’s part, but if my perspective theory is correct, I think it’s safe to assume that the shift in topic may have been far more calculated and intentional on Vox’s part.

When Vox makes his offer, Alastor sees their relationship turn into a transactional one. All of Alastor’s relationships are transactional, from Mimzy to Charlie (the one he’s known the longest and the one he’s only known a year) and from Rosie to Husk (the one who owns him and the one he owns). But the thing is, there doesn’t seem to be anything that Vox can give Alastor. He doesn’t need or want anything from Vox, so a transactional relationship won’t work. He’s already the most powerful sinner, so teaming up won’t give him power.

That might mean that Alastor spent time with Vox purely out of enjoying his company. However, I can’t help but doubt that, since Alastor seems to be so uncomfortable throughout this conversation. I’m not the first person to point out the staticky radio sounds whenever Vox touches Alastor in this scene, or how it clearly shows us that he is uncomfortable with it and that this has always been a boundary of his which Vox has always crossed. Also, Vox is almost exactly the kind of person Alastor would have murdered if they’d known each other as humans. I’m not sure why he gave Vox the time of day at all. My only assumption is that Vox just never realised how uninterested Alastor was and flitted around him constantly because of his own lack of a grasp on social cues. Or, it might have something to do with Alastor’s line “here I thought you might actually be approaching my level.” Maybe he was sizing up competition. I find that unlikely too, because Vox said they’ve known each other for a long time at that point, and it can’t take that long to decide if someone is a threat.

I do really like the interpretation that Alastor is genuinely pained by the fact that his only non-transactional relationship was becoming transactional, as his laugh in this scene does sound strained and forced, but from the rest of the context I’m just not sure it’s realistic that he was really attached to Vox.

After S2 Ep4 released, if you asked me if I thought that Vox was truly looking for something purely transactional, that he only wanted Alastor to join his team for power and the things it could give him, I would have said no. Up until this point, Vox genuinely seemed attached to the other two Vees and like he cared about his team as people, not just as tools. After the second half of S2, though, I’m less convinced that Alastor was completely wrong in his interpretation of Vox’s offer. Of course, if it is true that Vox’s reasoning for wanting to join forces was somewhat less personal, then that means the following “tantrum” Alastor mentions was more a reaction to being publicly humiliated than because of his rejected love. Which is a fair reaction when considering who Vox is, but it does make it… less tragic.

Most of us have equated the aforementioned “tantrum” with the fight which Valentino references in S1 Ep2, when he asks Vox if he’s “still pissed [Alastor] almost beat [him] that time”. I’ve always found the word “almost” to be really intriguing here? Alastor, in S2 Ep4, says he had to “put Vox in his place”, implying that he thinks he won. But Val doesn’t, or is at least trying to spare Vox’s ego (though that’s unlikely because it’s clearly teasing and Vox gets annoyed anyway). Plus, Valentino says in the same episode that Alastor owes both him and Vox “more than money”, and the inclusion of himself in that implies that he was involved somehow in the fight.

My working theory is that Alastor fought Vox and was winning, but left when Valentino got involved because we know he struggles when something isn’t 1v1. He’s the most powerful sinner in Hell, but that doesn’t mean he can match two powerful sinners. If Alastor left, then it makes sense he still sees himself as having won against Vox, while to Valentino, he’d seem like a coward who left the fight and lost by default.

In my BPD analysis, I discuss how I see Vox as having Borderline Personality Disorder and that I envision Alastor as his favourite person. I go into the fact that Vox relies on him for validation and that Vox is impulsive and emotionally unstable whenever Alastor is involved.

Overall, It’s evident that Vox feels like he needs to prove himself to Alastor. He needs to prove that he is capable of being powerful and that Alastor was wrong to abandon him. When Alastor isn’t around, Vox is composed and capable. But the second they’re sharing space or he is reminded of Alastor’s existence, Vox becomes fixated on his presence and approval, to the point that he neglects and harms his other relationships, and this eventually culminates in him being prepared to kill himself and everyone else around him just to get Alastor to stop smiling.