2023 the year of the Rabbit
2023 is the year of the Rabbit, which I believe to be a lucky year ahead for everyone. The rabbit is associated with the moon and its lunar cycles that coincide with 28 days (actually ~29.53 days) and the earliest time a rabbit will go into labor is 28 days. “The hire on the moon.” The luckiest days for rabbit people are the 26th, 27th, and 29th of every Chinese lunar month, and their lucky numbers are 3, 4, and 6.
Rabbits are fast and versatile, jumping and hopping forward in life as well as into new opportunities, this is how they cover great distances with ease and avoid predators. The rabbit has a keen sense of hearing what is around them(are you listening to what is being said?) Their ears point toward having a higher level of thought.
“Rabbits tend to move in quick, unpredictable ways. They zigzag and dart off suddenly in unexpected directions. The rabbit power animal can be a reminder that a little spontaneity in life is a good thing. It may appear to you if you feel bored or stuck in a rut, reminding you that moving in an unexpected direction may help bring about positive change. If you tend to want to plan and control every detail, the rabbit totem may be a reminder to let go of that occasionally in order to experience things you would miss otherwise.” - (https://www.spiritanimal.info/rabbit-spirit-animal/ )
The rabbit is a symbol of luck, and wealth in many cultures, bringing abundance and fertility. They work hard storing food for the winter months in their burrows and procreating. Rabbits are creative and clever thinkers but can also become overly anxious feeling threatened by everything that moves. Rabbit teaches us that in order to survive we must work hard and store what we need for the time when food is scarce. One of the rabbit’s traits is the remain still when danger is near to go undetected by predators, but stillness also should be utilized when thinking of what to do next in difficult times. To look outside the box to find a creative solution about what to do next
The Rabbit is associated with Easter and new beginnings (the egg) where the yolk is the sun, where the sun gives life to the embryo. The egg brings hope and purity to the new year and symbolizes the circle of life. “Ancient traditions used to link the egg to the creation of the universe, suggesting that the Earth itself may have been born out of an egg.” - ( https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwj-2vab9oj8AhUiLFkFHZ8xDzcQFnoECBIQAw&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.artdependence.com%2Farticles%2Fsymbolism-in-art-the-egg%2F&usg=AOvVaw3ggPXwUkcLT_hZ_MRjhLsH )
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The Exorcists’ Masks of Virtue
The vast majority of Exorcists in Hazbin Hotel have a notable design element that other angels don’t: their masks are missing an eye. Specifically, the right eye.
I believe this is a reference to the Bible, Matthew 5:29. Jesus says, “If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.”
He’s being hyperbolic. Mr Free Healthcare was not pro-mutilation. What he means is that you have to be willing to make sacrifices to prevent sin. The context of the eye metaphor is him condemning adultery and warning that even something as easy, casual and small as a look full of lustful intent can lead to further, worse sin if you don’t notice your sin, hold yourself accountable for it and do the work to not let it influence your decisions. This will probably be hard. It could be very, very painful. Changing your perspective can feel as horrible as plucking out your eye, so many people can’t bring themselves to do it. But although it won’t feel that way in the moment, it’s healthier for our general wellbeing in the long run to abandon traits and behaviours that damage ourselves and/or others.
(You may notice that Jesus’s teaching that you can have sinned, redeem yourself by giving up sin and thus escape damnation is the founding principle of the Hazbin Hotel. You may also notice that it contradicts everything the Exorcists believe.)
The Exorcists seem to follow this idea of painfully excising badness for the sake of the greater good devoutly to the point of placing it above teachings like ‘Thou shalt not kill’, with their job being to remove sin, in the form of sinners, to protect Heaven. Hence the missing right eyes. They’re a declaration of moral righteousness and inability to stumble.
But the truth is that the Exorcists all have their right eyes. Their flawlessness is a facade. Underneath, they are untouched, think themselves morally untouchable and, as shown by their horror and outrage when even one of them is killed, would much rather be physically untouchable too. This perfectly represents their complete unwillingness to acknowledge their own faults, let alone improve. They are never the ones who sacrifice. They force the sinners to sacrifice and don’t compensate it with any salvation. They metaphorically rip out the sinners’ eyes, but still condemn their entire bodies as inherently, permanently sinful. So they’ll just have to do another Extermination to get the other eyes! And another one to cut off their right hands! And so on until there’s nothing left.
The only exception to the rule is Vaggie, both in appearance and character. Her mask has the left eye crossed out instead. Even before her expulsion, she’s set apart to the audience as an Exorcist who has the capacity to, shall we say, see a different side of things. Her mask having its ‘sinful’ right eye reflects her understanding that the Exorcist worldview is wrong.
When she almost kills a demon child, her hateful vision clears. She discards the part of herself that’s an unquestioning, merciless agent of death, terror and grief… and as punishment for what Lute perceives as treacherous weakness, gets her eye plucked out.
Of course Lute leaves her with only the ‘sinful’ eye. It brands Vaggie forever as the inversion, a perversion, of what the Exorcists are meant to be.
You know, all this talk of eye removal in the Bible reminds of another line - ‘an eye for an eye’. Adam directly quotes it in “Hell is Forever”. He uses it to frame the Exterminations as Old Testament-style punitive justice; the sinners did harm and so they receive it. But putting aside the debate about how ethical the concept of revenge is, the entire point of taking an eye for an eye is that it’s proportional. The punishment fits the crime. If someone cuts your eye out, you shouldn’t murder their whole family in front of them and then slowly disembowel them to death. That would be the sin of wrath. You should just make them pay without excessive pain or collateral damage. This is the fairest form of revenge.
The Exorcists don’t do that! The Exterminations aren’t proportional to the wrongs of all they hurt, nor was Vaggie’s brutal punishment equivalent to her extremely mild insubordination. Lute literally takes Vaggie’s eye, and more, after Vaggie does nothing to her! That’s the opposite of the phrase! Adam and his soldiers are wrathful and cruel, deriving satisfaction from others’ suffering. But they just can’t stop going on and on about how disgustingly evil the sinners are, in total hypocrisy… despite some of the sinners being far better people than the genocidal Exorcists are… it’s like they’re obsessed with specks of dust in the sinners’ eyes when they have massive logs stuck in their own. Oh hey, that’s in the Bible too!
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comparison and analysis on eve and mark's colors
i know this miggght be me overthinking but i really need to get it out of my system ahahajshajsha
Pink is definitely Eve's signature color, it's the main color of her costume yet somehow you don't see that in her casual attire. As for Mark, no doubt his signature color is blue (even yellow can be included), and that's obvious in both his costume and his casual attire.
this post contains pics from season 1 and the atom eve special, putting a cut here cause this is lowkey long so,,,, oops-
Eve wore pink a LOT when she was a kid, it's in her every outfit throughout all the time skips in the special. When a character has a signature color, it's something that's reflected in (nearly all of) their outfit/s.
So where did the pink go on Eve's casual attire on season 1? Where did she even got the idea of wearing yellow of all colors when it's so far from her favorite color? There's red that when you mix it with white, it gives you pink. So she could have had a red top and white pants in her current casual attire, but that's not the case.
We got our answer on who she got the idea of wearing yellow from in the Atom Eve special: it was from Betsy.
There's a key thing that I noticed from the shade of yellow Betsy wore and what Eve is currently wearing. Betsy's yellow seemed happier. It was more vibrant.
Comparing Betsy's yellow to Eve, Eve's yellow is lighter. It's dull. As if it was drained of its vibrancy. And with what we saw of Eve's past in the special, it checks out that she must've have become so, so tired of so many things.
In animated series, yellow is often associated with warm, happy, and energetic characters. But when it comes to cinematography, yellow represents other things. From the link, I think cowardice is the symbolism of Betsy's yellow - due to her fear of Eve not being "normal" and her inability to accept Eve as she is. And @mandareeboo even pointed out Betsy telling Eve to "try harder" which leads to the symbolism of yellow that I associate with Eve: insecurity. There is no bigger source of insecurity than having your own parent say that to you, especially at a young age when a lot of things feel they're scary and overwhelming that you need a parent to guide you through it but instead they just tell you to repress yourself.
It's no wonder that Eve's yellow looked pale in comparison to past Betsy's yellow, pretending for years must have been exhauasting.
(Before anyone comment that Zak could be the reason Eve wore yellow instead of Betsy, I have an explanation I'm going to be giving later so please bear with me on this one hahahsdfjahsfda)
Now on to Mark!!
In the Atom Eve special, Debbie wore no shades of either blue or green. In fact, her top's color leans more to give a nod to Nolan's signature color (red). That, and their family pictures from season 1 showed that aside from Debbie, there was a time that Mark wore red too.
Compared to Eve and Betsy, I find it so fascinating that the opposite applies for Mark and Debbie.
We can see that kid Mark's shorts and top are currently the colors of Debbie's top and pants.
It was a nice switch to see the mom's colors reflecting her child. You often see the kid copying the color of their parent/s. This doesn't necessarily mean Debbie copied Mark, as a mom, this is her way of commemorating her son.
The two stripes on Mark is a brighter shade of aquamarine while Debbie's top is a darker shade of Caribbean green, and both colors are near to each other in the color spectrum. Which is definitely something we can describe their relationship: they are close to each other.
I always thought that the stripes across Mark's chest was sort of a subtle design thing to show that he keeps his mom, who represents his humanity, close to his heart. Seeing that Debbie got her colors from kid Mark adds a whole new layer to it.
This is the part where I compare the then & the now:
The reason why I mentioned Eve would never have picked up yellow with Zak in mind was that he was just a temporary figure in her life. Eve used to wear pink so much before, it was her favorite - so one can assume that the color itself brought her joy. You see Betsy wearing pink (this is the episode Eve left "home"). So my reasoning for Betsy wearing this color was to appease Eve, while Eve wore yellow to represent her trying to please her mom.
For Debbie and Mark, it was crucial for Debbie to wear the colors Mark wore as a kid. Throughout the series, we see how desperate Mark wanted to be like Nolan, to be good with his powers so he can be a good hero. One would think that Mark would have incorporated red in his outfit, but he didn't. What stood in the place of red in Mark's outfits was yellow, a color that's close to red in the rainbow arrangement. Using the same link for the meanings of the color yellow in cinematography from earlier, Mark's yellow symbolizes two things: naivety and idealization.
See how Mark has a yellow button-up underneath his sweater? It's his naivety about his father, it's not all out there yet it's on all the ends of his sweater as if making sure you know that the yellow is something that should be seen. And Mark's yellow I in his costume? That's idealization. In his eyes, Omni-Man is (probably, I can't speak for Mark 100%) the best hero. He idolizes his dad, there was never a doubt about it. He has put Nolan in such a high standard that there was more yellow in his costume to represent his idealization rather than his own signature blue.
That's why it's so important that Debbie wore his colors from the Atom Eve special in season 1. That Mark sees that on his mom. It was a reminder of kid Mark. That even then, he was just as precious. That he mattered even wayyyy before he had powers. That he mattered because of his humanity.
[inhales deeply to catch my breath] NOW FOR THE FINAL PART!!
i'm sorry this is so long i had so many thoughts about colors, color symbolism in characters is so personal to me.
you guys can skip these pics and list cause this is kinnnnd of a stretch now hahajsdfha - feel free to go straight at the portion after the bullet points end, that's just my final ramblings dedicated for season 2
Back to topic of colors!! It's obvious at this point how relevant both Mark and Eve's moms are when it comes to their colors. So it leaves me with two remaining things about Mark and Eve: (1) the color red on Mark on his casual outfit and (2) the color pink on Eve on her casual outfit
The only moments we saw red on Mark that isn't blood is when he wore his bag. Now I know this is a pretty small thing but that bag could literally be ANY other color - and it isn't, it's specifically red. It could have been white to match his shoes or black to match his hair but it's neither of that. It's red. It's Nolan.
I think it's really important to know the relevance of that red bag, especially in those two pictures. (1) The moment Todd was harassing Amber and Mark wanted to intervene, it's totally obvious that Mark carries the heavy fact that at the moment, he's powerless unlike his dad. And it sucks. Cause he's his father's son and even though he carries his blood, at the time, he doesn't carry Nolan's powers. It doesn't stop him from defending Amber, but it still hurts bothliterally from Todd's hits and emotionally. Mark's carrying the feeling of inadequacy cause he has no idea how to defend himself in this situation, his dad never taught him how to fight because he didn't have powers.
(2) The second picture was Mark rushing to school because his training with his dad made him late for class. He got powers now, and it's literally dragging him from his education (among other things and that's including his relationship with Amber). His power of flight, no matter how fast it is, doesn't get him to places on time. Even when he got his powers, he still had problems. They actually piled up now.
Now as for Eve, sure her casual attire doesn't have any pink on it but her bags are pink!! (1) The first picture of her was when she and Mark met at school. During my first watch, I found it cute that she held on to the straps cause it's a little habit of mine when I wear backpacks. Then at the (2) other picture where she had her luggage out so she can run away from "home", I noticed they're pink too. And it's a small observation but compared to Mark that just lets his bag hang down, Eve holds on to her bags.
The bags are both pink, and pink is her color. It's not a piece or part of her, it's her. Pink has been something she deprived herself to wear but it's something she still wants to keep, even if it's just with bags. It's the thing she's comfortable to carry, it's something she wants to hold in her hands.
I know bags are a practical item for any student to have and I overthought a lot about their bags' colors but yeah hahasdfjasdfha I'm done with that now
CLOSING WORD TIMEEEE HAHAHADSFAHFAHA
man that was a lot, anywayssss
The season 2 poster showed that Debbie has a new outfit. As for Mark and Eve, they're both wearing their hero costumes.
Slight spoilers from the comics: When Nolan left, there was a time that Mark began to dress himself in a style similar to Nolan (I can't tag op for some reason :(().
I feel there's a big chance Mark and Eve will also have new casual attires this coming second season.
Mark is likely to dress similar to Nolan just like in the comics. He will definitely have questions about his identity now that he knew the truth about Nolan, so I think Mark won't be able to wear his usual colors to show that he's figuring things out.
Mark could also wear that blue and black costume, the one that doesn't have the yellow anymore. Because he won't be idolizing his father's heroic persona anymore.
Mark, of course, misses his dad but he won't be looking up to him anymore after what happened.
As for Eve's season 2 casual look though, now that she has her own treehouse and starting to feel free from her parents, I hope she allows herself to incorporate pink in her clothing. She deserves it <33
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