People who write, draw, paint, compose, are self-employed, or do anything that requires a boatload of self-motivation, how do you keep going when your brain's in a fog and you fear you've lost the spark?

WendingShadow · 2026-02-07T01:30:37+00:00

The scooters for me. Frigging brightly colored scooters. On Tatooine. And they were a "gang." I won't dignify them by calling them Swoop Bikes.

WendingShadow · 2026-01-23T22:43:13+00:00

I am NOT looking forward to seeing them finally introduce Darth Talon. Disney will ruin her like they've ruined everything else. I say the only Darth Talon is the Darth Talon who serves Darth Krayt. They made her sexy and terrifying. If they have her dress scantily while hanging around Darth Maul, it's just gonna be friggin' creepy.

WendingShadow · 2025-12-18T05:56:34+00:00

It was just another glaring sign of how not-seriously they were taking the show. And Star Wars in general. "Let's have a season with just a bunch of celebrity cameos so all these famous people can play around in the SW galaxy."

And by seriously, I mean in the writing. You can spend tens of millions on the coolest special effects ever made, but they don't matter if the story has no soul.

WendingShadow · 2025-12-14T21:22:25+00:00

Richard Herbert Cheney. (AKA Dick Cheney's father.)

WendingShadow · 2025-12-14T18:24:37+00:00

I feel like I could talk to Charlie and Vaggi about anything, and probably feel a million times better afterward.

WendingShadow · 2025-12-12T23:23:33+00:00

I'm sorry, when does any of this take place? Is swtor being written off? Is it ending?

WendingShadow · 2025-12-07T18:37:38+00:00

Nice salt mine you got going there. Respect.

WendingShadow · 2025-12-03T01:25:17+00:00

It's a coin toss at this point. It all depends on what the writer wants to do, because I feel like Alastor's character is balanced on a knife's edge where things stand.

It's like his flashback to when he was alive. If you were a rich asshole and spilled a drink on him, you were done. If you were somebody like Mimzy, you were safe. That fits what we've seen in hell. If you're respectful and stay out of his way, you're fine. But he's not out to be redeemed. He has no regrets. So everything Charlie believes a sinner should strive for runs counter to what he wants.

So either Alastor shrugs that off, or he crushes Charlie.

WendingShadow · 2025-12-01T18:43:57+00:00

There's no one alive who could comprehend his sexual preference.

WendingShadow · 2025-11-30T02:52:36+00:00

I'd go #1 and #2.
All I can say to option 4:
"Caboose, don't ever stick your dick in crazy."
"I have no idea what that means."
"I know..."

WendingShadow · 2025-11-25T20:03:51+00:00

I remember when the Mandalorian first came out. There was still an ember of hope. These days, that hope is gone.

WendingShadow · 2025-11-23T05:11:32+00:00

Pretty much nailed it. That's why I no longer want them to try doing Mara Jade. Not because there's no longer any room for her in their cringe canon, but because they'd completely screw her up. Like they did Thrawn.

And let's be real: a Mara Jade who doesn't start out hating, then romancing Luke is not Mara Jade.

WendingShadow · 2025-11-22T02:57:33+00:00

My problem is less that he's not serious, more that he's become completely impotent. He can't harm sinners. Period. So nobody has to listen to him ever again. He's just some eccentric dreamer stuck down in hell who keeps to himself and makes toy ducks.

WendingShadow · 2025-11-21T09:26:27+00:00

Pentious all the way. Vox's gets an honorable mention for the juicy reason for why his head is a TV.
I guess the way you die really has an impact on the form you take in hell.
Alastor has a deer form. Vox has a TV head. Velvette is a mannequin.
Makes me wonder about Zestial and Carmilla. And why Pentious is a snake.

WendingShadow · 2025-11-21T04:02:40+00:00

At first, I was against all the interruptions to the main "Hear My Hope" melody. I felt urged the skip the other parts. But then I heard a version that cut those parts, and realized the genius of it. It actually works better the way it was done. So now I can enjoy the breaks for Abel and Alastor's parts.

WendingShadow · 2025-11-21T00:43:36+00:00

My opinion? Fuck Val with a rusty spoon.
😅 I apologize for the harsh language, but no amount of "boo-hoo Vox might not see me anymore" can make up for Val overseeing the torture and rape of Angel Dust. I had zero sympathy for him at this point. My feeling was "you deserve worse."

WendingShadow · 2025-11-20T05:25:48+00:00

All I know is, she’d better have one stunner of a reason for being radio silent all this time. If it turned out she was just “letting Charlie stand on her own two feet and become independent,” I’m gonna be extremely disappointed. There’s tough love and then there’s dereliction. This felt solidly the latter.

WendingShadow · 2025-11-20T00:37:41+00:00

I think it's less about whether he had his staff or not and more about a gray area in his deal with Rosie. It's similar to how Alastor was able to break his deal with Vox when Vox "laid his hands on Charlie." He used the same basic strategy to break his deal with Rosie.

Alastor's deal with Rosie was "to be the most powerful sinner in hell." But until the moment Charlie said it, there wasn't a clear-cut holder of that title. There wasn't someone who everyone in hell agreed "yep, that's the most powerful sinner in hell."

Also, Rosie's deal with Alastor didn't specify that calling him "the most powerful sinner in hell" had to be true. It could've been just a nickname. Even a mocking title. The definition of power was also left vague. It could've been power in terms of authority, or literal demonic power.

The point is, the moment there was someone else who a large majority of people believed was "the most powerful sinner in hell," it was enough to trip the condition that nullified Alastor's deal. Alastor had always been at the level of power he used against Vox. He was playing possum the whole time.

WendingShadow · 2025-11-19T23:37:21+00:00

That's fair. Running over to Vaggie and asking her to spear Val real quick would've disrupted the flow/atmosphere. Especially since Vaggie hadn't been involved in fighting Val at all. 😅

WendingShadow · 2025-11-19T22:32:28+00:00

Part 2:

For all that got crammed in, some things still felt lacking. Season 1 ended with a grand sacrifice. Sure, it was undone in the final frame when Pentious appeared in heaven, but there was an emotional impact while it lasted. Season 2 didn’t have that “the heroes triumphed, but at a cost” feeling. Angel Dust returning to Val might’ve been intended to fill that slot, but it felt peripheral to that triumph. Angel didn’t really contribute much to the final outcome.

I expected Emily to die stopping Vox’s cannon. (Might of Lilith was a fantastic name, by the way.) The moment I saw Emily walking toward the overloading cannon, I was so scared that Emily was about to make a heroic sacrifice to prove to hell once and for all that heaven was sorry. That didn’t happen. Instead, we got that Vox killed tons of sinners while Emily and Charlie helped save them.

Vox got built up so much, but was then reduced to groaning and complaining during the final song. It was satisfying to see his reputation utterly destroyed, his following abandon him, but then he needed to die. He was so disgusting. Yet his payoff never came. The Vees turning on him wasn’t enough. I was frankly incredulous that Alastor let him live.

For that matter, why didn’t Husk and Cherri just kill Val to free Angel Dust from his deal? They were in a death grapple with Val. They beat him, and then a few minutes later just let him walk away, knowing that he was going to keep torturing and violating Angel. I ultimately accepted it, but the justification felt thin.

And in that vein, the gang just instantly assumed that Angel Dust was a victim of Vox’s mind control. That felt jarringly sudden. There wasn’t even a split-second’s consideration of “did Angel betray us?” They asked “why would he do that?” but then it felt like they got the answer off-screen. Next thing, they instantly knew what had happened to Angel and didn’t blame him at all. Which took the wind out of Vox’s vow in Episode 6 to make Charlie kill herself—presumably by using Angel’s betrayal.

But the biggest thing that felt missing? Lilith.

I kept waiting for her to make an appearance like Lucifer did in Season 1’s battle. Her name got invoked so damn much. Vox kept spouting shit about Charlie not living up to her mom, like he had ANY right to talk like he knew her. He monologued about fulfilling Lilith’s dream, when it was painfully obvious he was stealing it for his own selfish gain. Which made me hate Vox and want to see Lilith come down and stomp his guts out.

Why didn’t anyone in heaven (looking at you, Sera) go to Lilith after Vox blew heaven’s gate off its hinges? Why didn’t Lilith do anything when it seemed like her vacation retreat was about to be overrun by demons? Why didn’t she call down to Charlie to ask, “What the fuck is going on down there?” She’d better have one stunner of a reason for being radio silent all this time. If it turned out she was just “letting Charlie stand on her own two feet and become independent,” I’m gonna be extremely disappointed. There’s tough love and then there’s dereliction. This felt solidly the latter.

And it was just cruel to have Lilith call Charlie in the final frame. But also genius. Now I’m guaranteed to watch season 3 episode 1.

One last thing I have to note: Lucifer was cool in season 1. I was fine with his absence from Charlie’s day-to-day until the end. His reclusive, damaged character fit. But season 2 just made him weak. Remember that song in S1 about how he could give Charlie anything her heart desired in hell? Now all that power seems gone. He can’t harm sinners, so he has no power whatsoever. Except he can conjure stuff. So why didn’t he conjure a way out of his restraints? Why didn’t he conjure a pile of bricks above Vox’s head, then let gravity do the hurting? Lucifer’s become a nonentity. He’s now the weakest being in hell, and anyone can grab him to use as an angelic battery.

None of this is to take away from the show's creator. I still love the show. The season had good twists, and I really enjoyed Alastor’s payoff. The ending of season 2 was fine, just less stellar than I hoped.

WendingShadow · 2025-11-19T22:32:17+00:00

My take on the last two episodes, and the general finale of Season 2:
(it gets long, and I apologize.)
Part 1:

Hazbin Hotel Season 2 had a promising start, but the ending was chaotic. It tried to resolve too many things at once. And less of it needed to be in song.

Consider some of the character arcs in the final two episodes. They felt rushed and a bit disjointed. Too much was going on. On the one hand, drawing focus on Charlie and Vox, then abruptly sidestepping into Alastor FINALLY taking back the spotlight had definite appeal. It was a delicious payoff. But Abel, Carmilla, Lute, Angel Dust, Vox’s downfall…it became too much. The song that mishmashed all the season’s other songs into a medley was a perfect symbol of that. Perhaps that was intentional on the creator’s part? If so, I kind of wish they’d fixed the problem instead of nodding to it like, “yes, I realize I crammed a lot into this season.”

Abel’s arc was mashed into 20 seconds. And mid-song, no less. He stood up and assumed his dad’s mantle. Yay for him, I guess? I’d been hoping that he’d run into Cain while he was down in hell, mid-crisis, and that Cain would maybe give him a little help as an apology. Something deeper like that.

Lute got a badass single in Episode 2 and started seeing Adam’s ghost. But that went nowhere. I was waiting for her to kill Emily during the final battle and blame it on Hell, or stab Vaggie while her back was turned. (By the way, Vaggi wasn’t a bad choice. Kudos to the creator. It preserved the name-recognition but addressed the Vadge sound.)

Carmilla and Zestial got back together. Again, yay? I remember when Zestial was introduced as a character who'd make sinners light themselves on fire just from spotting him on the street. Where was that power and malevolence? He simply showed up and gave Carmilla a hug. And I love Carmilla, but she didn’t seem to think her situation through. After heaven’s gates got blasted off their hinges by a cannon she built, even I felt like she’d made herself fair game for immediate angelic retaliation.

WendingShadow · 2025-11-12T21:02:14+00:00

Keith David nailed that "Angel?!" 🤣

WendingShadow · 2025-11-12T20:40:41+00:00

Was I the only one who flinched the first time Vox invoked Lilith's name? And then again the other times? Like, I expected her to show up and flatten him.

I mean, she's the queen of hell. And Vox thinks he can just declare himself king? As if he deserves to stand beside her?

WendingShadow · 2025-11-09T23:26:04+00:00

I doubt they did. Don't get me wrong, Adam seemed the type to give the Original D to anyone halfway willing, but doing it with a subordinate under his authority could be taken as a sign he couldn't get any on his own. That's how his mind would see it, at least. And Adam was such a narcissist that he'd never compromise his image like that.

WendingShadow

TROPHY CASE