Okay So VISUALLY, We Can All Agree And Angel And Husk Having Different Chains/ Rope Bindings In Their

Okay so VISUALLY, we can all agree and Angel and Husk having different chains/ rope bindings in their song, then in eps 5 and 6 is indicative of them having vastly different contracts with not only different obligations but also very different overlords. Angels is more messy and shows how unstable Val is, and that no matter how well he does he will always manage to piss Val off because the fucker just does whatever. Husks is sturdier showing how all encompassing his contract is, as unlike Angel he isn’t only under Alastors power at certain times. I COULD GO ON.

However what i really want to talk about here that I haven’t yet seen is the placement. Angel has chains around his wrist, not only could you say “yeah its reflective of the whole bondage thing” but it makes it easy for angel to tug against, despite the shit he goes through he does get a little breathing room because as long as he still makes money Val will NOT kill him. He has an unstable contract and emotional state but overall? There’s a stable motivation, money (and power).

Husk on the other hand, has his chain around his neck. Surface level its very “cat on a collar, he’s a pet, simple.” But a little deeper? It shows how precise and capable Alastor is in making deals, always going for the weak points. Husk pulls even a little and he’s just dead, no questions asked because Alastor can replace him. Husk in constantly in fear of his life because as an individual, he poses no real benefit to Alastor rather than him having a former overlord under his thumb, but added to his existing list is Husk really that impressive? Alastor is very clever, stable when it comes to dealing with others shown in his contracts. His motivations however? Unknown, unstable and probably just a greed for power with very little else to back it up. He could snap and change his mind at a moments notice and Husk has to live with the fact that one wrong move could destroy him, hell he could do everything right and still get wrecked.

Pull your hand out of a chain? Varying levels of trauma depending on how small the restraint is compared to your hand/ how easy you find it to slip out, possibly a significant number of breaks and reduced function for life. Maybe you even have to cut the hand off to save the rest of you (metaphor for certain trauma responses). Pulling out of a chain around your neck? Dead. If you don’t pull hard enough to kill you gravity will when the person holding the other end hangs you out. Oh and hanging? Terrible way to die, not the worst but i certainly wouldn’t choose it.

I'm sure we all love how happy Emily is in this scene.

But is that look on Sera shock at the fact that redemption is possible? Confusion as to how, why of all times to be during an extermination? Or is it disgust at herself for not considering it properly before allowing the extermination to happen in the first place. They've been going on for thousands of years, the anger and pain of all those souls behind her eyes at the man standing before her. The blood on her hands, not just of the demons but also the exterminators finally showing through as not a necessary evil, but a choice.

Sera in S2 is probably one of the individual character plots that I'm most exited about because holy shit.

Lute obviously doesn’t like the idea of sinners being redeemed. (Source: all her dialogue referring to sinners, ever). But what if, in trying to turn heaven towards her ideals to gain more power, she uses the fact that redemption is possible to blame Sera for Adam’s death, then slowly changes the ideals she speaks of to fit her original violent nature with the ‘winners’ of heaven not even realising they’ve been conned into thinking something completely opposite to the original.

Lute and Adam are clearly meant to depict the more violent and prejudiced side of Christianity ( with Sera being more ignorant and stuck in her ways than actually ‘evil’, like your grandma that still says slurs because she thinks its okay) so why not go the whole way and have Lute as a cult leader type character. Using Adam as her martyr and Sera as her focal point for blame she could get a large following.

For a more in depth look, it could go something like this:

Lute finds out about Pentious, realises that she’s got barely any exterminators left to lead and that if this gets out the winners and probably some of the heaven born would want to help more people get up (i think its cannon that they don’t remember anyone from earth that went to hell, but imagine if someone were to remember Pentious and convince others that there were people in hell that they knew and loved, just didn’t remember).

She knows she can’t just straight up target Pentious, as people admire him for rising. Lute goes for the next best thing, Sera, blaming her for Adams death. With the right words the angels in the courtroom may back her up despite what she says. If Lute pretends to repent for all the killing because it wasn’t necessary she could drag people in VERY quickly with pity points from being ‘used’ by Sera. Since she lied to Emily it’s entirely possible that at this point Emily would be super on Lute’s side.

From here, Lute can start to introduce the idea that while sinners can be redeemed, the hellborn are still dangerous. After all, it’s the influence of the hellborn that keeps sinners from the path of good, right? Exterminations start again, this time ONLY for the hellborn, flipping over the deal with Lucifer entirely so the exterminators have to take on a more stealthy approach. Revenge for Adam they all stick by, and they still think that by killing overlords that they’re going to help redeem the sinners.

Emily saw how Angel was treated by Valentino so it’s entirely possible that she’d, while not a fan of the violence still agree with the main message and fall down the same path as Sera (Killing THEM protects US).

Lute can then slowly go down the line as time goes on of, not just hellborn, but also very powerful sinners, but also all sinners close to overlords ect.

If she does it right, Lute can end up with the say in who dies and who doesn’t, who has the potential for redemption and who needs to die. (This is where i see Emily falling out and suspecting that Lute doesn’t actually want the sinners to be redeemed)

Anything Sera says is the opposite of what they need to do, if she preaches non-violence to make up for her errors the irony of Lute continuing to be violent after condemning Sera for it will be completely lost and they’ll blindly follow.

Lucifer gets to intercept at times but would he find it in him to kill angels who think that they’re HELPING the redemption effort?

Lute comes off as a character who is as clever as she is tough and after losing to Vaggie in a fight she’d be inclined to take a different option.

Eventually, Lute being shunned by others in heaven would be POETIC after what she did to Vaggie, so ending this plot point with the angels finding their way through her manipulation rather than a blunt murder is how i envision it. Of course it could be a range of factors that dissolve her following.

I don’t have any hope that this would actually happen in the show due to the complexity and I’ve not even mentioned how Lilith/Eve could fit into this, I haven’t even been specific about how Lute would treat the Hotel (a multitude of different, branching points there). I think this is good purely because many people have pointed out how Lucifer seemed unbothered during the finale and fighting misinformation is significantly harder than fighting in the physical sense so the hotel would lose some of its OP standing. Similar to how Alastor got beat up in the finale so the audience don’t view him as a catch all shield for the hotel.

(If anyone writes this or anything similar as a fic/ comic PLEASE tag me. I love braindumps but forming coherent and creatively adequate works takes more time and energy than i have in me)

do people who only know doctor who via fandom osmosis know that dr. who is dating the time machine

I feel very similar about this scene, to me it really was one of the most crucial points in the episode and across what we have so far, a pretty important point for Angels character on the whole, as well as a point that started to have me raise my suspicions about Charlie more.

This, alongside another scene that I can’t quite quote from memory but where Charlie says something along the lines of Pentious being the first ‘real’ resident of the Hotel in my eyes was a great way to say that while her heart may be in the right place, her head isn’t and despite her seemingly selfless nature, she doesn’t actually think that hard on if her actions will have consequences for others, leading in nicely to where she goes to see Valentino without thinking of if Angel will suffer because of it.

She’s a princess, literally had everything served to her on a silver platter and while I’m sure she’s struggled emotionally i struggle to believe that she’s ever been in a situation where she was ever really in danger. Especially having 99.9% of demons in Pride be so far below her. She doesn’t have to worry about keeping souls to keep her power and can basically do whatever she wants without any ties to anyone that could have her do something against her will. Perhaps her parents, but I struggle to believe that they’d be worse than Valentino.

Most of her attempts at redemption, like in this scene are surface level, and indicative of somebody that doesn’t fully understand that people don’t do bad things just because they can or they think its funny, they do them because they have other problems under the surface, including physically not having a choice in the matter. (Real life parallel to rich people in power where?? Oh yeah, right there)

It’s also increasingly obvious that Angels ‘free rent’ excuse is just that, and that in reality he just wants a place to be away from Valentino. The fact that Charlie doesn’t seem to notice this or even begin to question why Angel couldn’t just stay for free at the studio shows just how little attention she pays to other people.

At first i thought she was just naive, but now i see that in actuality, she’s so focused on her own goal that she isn’t helping at all, and it comes across like she doesn’t care what they do as long as they get into heaven and make her look good. Granted she isn’t malicious, but the lack of care is definitely something i want to see fixed in her character arc in order for me to actually like her.

After this scene Angel walking away does not seem out of anger or being pissed off at Charlie trying to redeem him, he actually seems sincerely upset, possibly because he feels like Pentious is removing the little care Charlie had for him, possibly because his view of the hotel is being tainted. At least the people in the studio and the street have the balls to call him a whore to his face rather than hiding it in subtext, since this hasn’t actually been resolved yet i think this is where Charlie could lead him, back to the studio (then you can all go crazy with your “Husk gambles for his soul”, “Charlie gives Valentino a beating”, “Alastor gets sufficiently pissed off enough at Vox to kill his boy toy”).

There is also something to be said for Charlie not understanding how traumatic death can be since she’s hellborn. Angel literally died from a drug overdose and who knows, a shady guy like what she’s trying to get Angel to play could have been the type of person he’d go and visit too escape from a shit life. There’s just a total lack of consideration all around.

She also displays this behaviour with Vaggie, ignoring her advice and throwing her into leading a task without asking her first. If Vaggie were not so loyal (perhaps due to Charlie helping her through something difficult) I feel as though she would have left Charlie by now, and maybe she should for a while, because i truly do not think Charlie will learn if Vaggie continues to enable her.

As a final note, you point out that she’s also calling him out for actually enjoying sex. This in my eyes tends nicely to a plot point where in actuality, due to different interpretations of the Bible, outdated views on all sorts of things and the violent nature of some bible stories, that Charlie actually does not know a ‘criteria’ for redemption and so is using shame, throwing stuff at the wall till it sticks, and hoping for the best.

In a sentence, she’s trying to play chess when she has no idea how or why the pieces move, the board is both on fire and spitting fire back at her and her opponent is an ‘alpha’ male that thinks he’s funny.

Ty for tagging me, this was really quite interesting to dive into and put into words, and I’m glad to hear other people not just taking this scene at face value.

This scene:

Shows just how unintentionally ignorant Charlie really is

Charlie wrote the script, gave Angel and Sir Pentous their roles of crackhead and innocent child and had them act it out

And soon after this clip Sir Pentous' character goes on to say that doing drugs isn't cool and then ends the skit saying "I'm off to not have sexual intercourse before marriage!"

Now I'd like to point out Angel is a known drug user and by having him play the crackhead, Charlie ends up calling him out for his addictions and then goes further with Sir Pentious' part of the script to call him out for his job as a sex worker and the fact that Angel actually does enjoy sex

This obviously upsets Angel, along with a few other moments where something is said about his efforts at getting better

The worst part is that Charlie doesn't even realize she's doing it

She wrote that script, which called out Angels flaws and labeled them as bad. She kept mentioning Angels lack of effort but never actually tried to find a way to get through to him nor did she try to figure out why he isn't trying.

I understand that she didn't know about Val yet, but at the same time she didn't seem to think about how there could have been more Angel than previously thought

And I know the scene with Sir Pentious could be played off as him saying it on his own accord because he didn't have a script, but that doesn't seem to be the case

I thought it was a good episode and added layers to the story but I felt it needed to be said how much development was going to made by the characters in order to make everything work out for them

@roguelemon, I saw a somewhat similar post of yours and would love your opinion on the scene

The parallel between " it starts with sorry" and "loser, baby" are sending me.

In the context of the recipients or intended audience of the songs, the former shows how Sir Pentious is just kind of a bitch, and does things for his own gain without regard for others in order to gain power (his poor face when Vox didn't approve of him :( ). The later is of course bringing attention to that, while yes Angel is in an unbelievably shit position, he makes it worse with his self loathing and poor coping mechanisms, it's even suggested that he stops seeing himself as a person outside of Valentino. Therefore "loser, baby" is more focused on Angel as an individual rather than the people around him.

Then, when thinking about the people who actually lead the song, Charlie tries to be selfless to a fault so obviously her trying to cheer up snakey boy is going to be through having him be better to others, but it also shows how her ideas of redemption still come from a place of misunderstanding, not really taking in the depth of him as a person and instead singing about what he can DO rather than helping him THINK better. On the opposite side Husk speaks from a place of experience (vastly different experience, but still able to better empathise) and not only comprehends but deeply understands the fact that Angel needs to be better in himself before he can be better in the eyes of others. Despite the fact that it probably wasn't his aim, Husk has probably set up Angel for a better shot at actual redemption through understanding. Husk also does not sugar coat anything, at all. He knows that it's better to be straight up about things because having to act ALL THE TIME is the problem for Angel. Its very difficult for Charlie to get her optimism across to Angel because delusion only lasts for so long. Pentious is more gullible and hasn't signed his soul away ( to my knowledge) and so is able to look on the bright side and respond to overly positive actions. Husk has the capability to help Angel, not by saying "things arnet really that shit, it will be better" but instead says that "yeah this sucks but it'll help if you just accept what you cant change and take what you can. You can't accept joy if you only self-pity/ drown in drugs and fakeness".

"It starts with sorry" was kind of cringe to me too but honestly? It fits, and that's what matters.

Sidenote: I'd love to discuss/ be tagged in other analysis, including anything critical. But I'm not looking for a fight and I'm not getting into anything with anybody who take the songs out of context. (AKA : "Husk is calling Angel a loser because he got SA'd and thinks he should just get over it/ deserved it" Husk is not that kinda guy)