The Symbolism Of Hearts In Hazbin Hotel

The Symbolism of Hearts in Hazbin Hotel

In the bizarre drug trip hallucination that is Hazbin Hotel, I find it interesting that the repeating theme of hearts only revolves around a single character: Angel Dust. Angel has two hearts on his body, and three men connected to Angel have hearts in their designs too. And while thinking on it, I realized that they tell us something about Angel and the show. So, what do the hearts represent? Well, as boring and obvious as it sounds, they represent love. Affection. Or even their literal heart. Where these hearts are located might tell us something about the character.

Starting with the heart on Angel’s fur boobs, when Angel is wearing clothes, this heart is hidden. So for anyone to see this heart means that Angel must expose himself. He must shed his clothing and allow himself to be vulnerable. I believe that the heart on Angel’s chest symbolizes how he gives so much of himself to others, and his job as a stripper/porn star whose job it is to expose this mark on his chest means that he exposes this intimate place to many who don’t deserve to see it. But perhaps more interesting is the trail leading from his heart down to his crotch area. Then I looked at the stripes on his arms, and began to wonder if this was meant to look like he’s tied up or bound, caught in a rope or spider web? As such, his heart (big as it is) is a prisoner of his loins. He can’t, won’t, or avoids letting himself legitimately feel love because his heart is the prisoner of his crotch. He’s a porn star. His body belongs to the public. As such, he feels that he can’t sell public property to a private collector.

The heart on the back of Angel’s head has a few possible interpretations. Maybe it symbolizes how he’s turned his back on his feelings and emotions. It could be that it points out that even though he can’t see it, there’s love and affection in his life. Something interesting that I notice is that the heart on Angel’s chest is much more visible, much bigger, and hollow, while the heart on the back of his head is small, hidden, but full. The fact that we see the back of Angel’s head so little could mean that the heart on his chest is the fake affection he shows the world, while the hidden heart is the real feelings he hides and doesn’t show people. It being much smaller speaks that Angel isn’t nearly as romantic/sexual as the hollow heart on his chest implies, and his true heart is much smaller and much less available to the masses.

Cherri Bomb’s tattoo is very small and almost shunted to the side. Knowing that their relationship is very close and extremely platonic, I think what her little tattoo represents is that her affection isn’t romantic. She can’t offer it. That’s why it’s so small. While she has love to give, she can’t offer much because she’s not a romantic option. The placement seems to suggest that this is where Angel belongs. At her side. Arm in arm. As friends. She’s the shoulder he can lean on. The shoulder he can cry on.

Valentino has many hearts on his fur collar, clasps, and sunglasses, but all of these things are articles of clothing. They’re fake. He can put them on and take them off. This speaks not only of his relationship with Angel, but his relationship with Vox as well. He claims to love Vox, but when he gets the wrong drink, he smashes his boyfriend’s screen face. With Valentino, all love and affection is fake. Surface level. Something he puts on and takes off as easily as clothing. He doesn’t look at anyone with loving eyes. It’s an act. We see him without hearts on him quite often on Instagram, proving that his love isn’t reliable. He can take it off and put it away whenever he wants to, much as how abusive boyfriends will put on an act of love and affection to keep their abuse victim sympathetic and compliant.

Travis’ only heart on his entire design is located inside of his eye. The heart in his eye is likely a symbol of coveting and objectification. He values things for physical beauty or superficial worth. Heart eyes in cartoons are often used to represent a crush or an attraction to something or someone new. I think this placement is meant to tell us that Travis’ affections and love are based solely on appearance. But only one eye is a heart. This suggests that Travis is partially blinded by lust. Part of him knows he shouldn’t be getting involved with Angel. Part of him isn’t blind to this. But that heart eye is blinded. It only sees lust. As far as Angel is observed, that heart eye sees Angel as an object. A beautiful trinket he covets. That’s usually why a cartoon character has heart eyes. It’s not usually used for characters in a relationship with each other. It’s saved for crushes. For desires. For something the character wants to possess. And that’s all Angel is to him. A pretty face for him to chase. If he actually had Angel, he’d get tired of him, and start chasing someone else.

Most of the hearts on Husk are tiny. Honestly, I didn’t even notice the ones on his face the first time I watched the pilot. Based on my reading of the heart on the back of Angel’s head, I think the small hearts in easy-to-see places are meant to be how he presents his love being (tiny and hard to see) but then he has the gigantic hearts on his palms. Now, palms are somewhat easy to hide. We can’t see them all the time. But when they show, it’s difficult not to notice them, especially because their color is heavily contrasted by his fur, making them highly visible. So I think the hearts on his palms represents the love he tries to hide, but shows the love he has to offer if he’s willing to show it to another person. The placement may also be a play on the saying “wearing your heart on your sleeve”, painting Husk as someone whose feelings are very apparent, but he tries to hide them. He’s not good at pretending he doesn’t feel a certain way and is very expressive and vocal about how he feels. The hearts on his palms could also visually represent holding his heart in his hands as if offering it to others. The palm heart is also the same color as his eyes, symbolically suggesting that the hearts on his hands speak to the true desires of his soul, as eyes are the window to the soul. Thus, they point the way to his true heart’s desire, which is to offer his heart to another, even if he tries to hide it.

Why I Believe Angel and Husker Will (or Should) Be Endgame

As a shipper and a writer, I pride myself on finding the meat in shipping material, and despite how little official content for it is available, Hazbin Hotel’s juiciest pairing (by my observation, and not counting Charlie x Vaggie cuz that’s already canon) is Huskerdust or Angelhusk, the main mlm pairing in Hazbin Hotel between Angel Dust and Husker. While I’m a big fan of any mlm pairing no matter how small the serving size, this one is an absolute feast, and I want to explain why I think that is, because Angel flirts with multiple men in the first episode, namely Sir Pentious, Alastor, and Husker. So he just comes across as a relentless flirt, but I believe his destiny truly lies with the grumpy sourpuss bartender.

Given what we’ve learned about Angel Dust from the Addict music video and the prequel comic, it’s becoming clear that Angel doesn’t exactly love his situation. He pretends it’s fun and glamourous for his image, but it’s all an act. In the very last pannel for the comic, we can even see a box of dildos in his room with the words “for fun” crossed out, and the box being relabled as “work stuff”. I believe that Angel’s arc and character growth will be strengthened by having a love interest who cares about Angel as something beyond a sex object. Travis and Valentino clearly only see Angel as a piece of meat. Even Tom Trench one of the… less horrible denizens of Hell we’ve met, only recognizes Angel as a porn star, implying that he too only values Angel for his body. The creators have even verified that Angel will have a love interest in the series. So, that’s the easy part. Angel’s very clearly a gay man, and him having a love interest will help put the romance back in relationships with men for Angel. No surprises there. So why will/should it be Husker who fulfills that role as Angel’s redeeming lover?

In the simplest terms, it’s because their needs fit together perfectly. Angel needs someone to care about him romantically that also values his emotions, mind, and autonomy instead of just his body. Husk has likewise pretty much spelled out the flaw he needs to fix. He lost the ability to love years ago. Whether he just shuts out his emotions, someone broke his heart and now he’s jaded and bitter, or he freezes out his feelings so he won’t get hurt again, Husk has rejected love and his feelings. Learning to love and open up to Angel helps Husk to overcome those toxic coping mechanisms. Especially because his other vices such as drinking, are an extension of his core issue. His hang-ups with love. He drinks to forget and suppress. Overcoming his issues with his emotions will help Husk free himself of other sins in the process. Now the important issue though, does Husker even like boys? Yes, he does. Husker was confirmed by members of the crew to be pansexual, so he is capable of finding Angel attractive. Also, on a related note, Alastor is both Asexual and Aromantic, so he’s very unlikely to give Angel the core thing he needs, the tender appreciation of his romantic partner. That’s not to say Asexuals and Aromantics can’t date, it’s just less probable. And all the other males are either villains, or objectify Angel already. Which kind of leaves Husker as the best candidate for Angel’s love interest, at least currently. In fairness we know very little about Baxter, but that’s the thing. Without knowing anything about him, we can’t really weigh him against the other options.

Character design is very important, as it can provide visual cues about a character. Looking at these two, they share a lot of similarities. Starting from the top, while not visible here, there is a heart-shaped spot on the back of Angel’s head, and this heart appears as well on Husker’s forehead, palms, and wings. More importantly, I may be wrong, but I believe the only characters with hearts in their design are all connected to Angel. Only Travis and Val share this heart motif, two men Angel has had sex with, though in Valentino’s case, it’s not always willingly. They share their wearing of a bow tie, but to be fair, Charlie wears one too, as does Sir Pentious, so it’s a weak connection. Color theory also matters. Firstly, they are Yin and Yang. Angel is mostly white with a few dark accents, while Husker is mostly dark gray/black with white accents. Angel’s left eye, bow tie, and shorts/skirt are also the same color (or pretty close) as Husker’s darker fur patches on his forearsms, ankles, ear tips, and whiskers. The stripes on Angel’s top also repeat in Husker’s ears. Finally, while not repeating on Angel’s design, Husker’s fur on his ankles resembles spats, a fashion trend from the early 1900s. Although this trend was pretty dead in widespread use by the 1940s, it remained popular with gangsters and mafia, so much so that it’s almost a streotype of mafia. Angel’s family was an Italian crime family involved with mafia dealings. So while it makes little sense for a man who died in the 1970s to be wearing spats, it connects him to Angel’s ballpark of time as well as drawing connections to Angel’s past and his family.

Hazbin Hotel has Instagram accounts for the characters, and using Husker (bar_cat75) Angel Dust (angie_fluffy_bootz) and Niffty (babyfeathrdustr), we can put together further developments in their relationship off-screen. Starting with one of Husker’s posts, we see Angel leaning on the bar offering him a ticket to his “peep show”. The next post shows Husker still at the bar, but now there’s drool on the counter, and we can see the back of one of Angel’s legs and the red smoke from the Addict video trailing behind him with the line “Fuck, I passed out. Did I miss something?” Next, there’s a post from Niffty of Angel leaning on the railing smoking as he does in the post-credits sequence of the Addict video. Granted, I can’t tell how much of Addict is prequel and how much is happening in real time following the pilot, but we know at least the ending is canonically after the pilot episode. Seems like Angel wanted Husker there (we don’t know if he offered tickets to anyone else) and he seems bummed that he didn’t go, with a later message from Husker (that I can only seem to find in Tumblr posts) with Husker realizing that he missed Angel’s show and feels bad about it. As “owing” Angel a favor for missing his show, Angel leaves his beloved pet pig Fat Nuggets in Husker’s care, who proceeds to eat all of Husker’s limes and cherries. Now it is very important to point out that Fat Nuggets seems to fill the dual role of “purse dog” and emotional support animal for Angel, so leaving him in Husker’s care shows a lot of trust because this animal means a LOT to him. There’s also apparently rumors that Alastor keeps trying to eat Fat Nuggets which… I haven’t found a credible source for. But if Angel is worried about Fat Nuggets’ safety, him trusting Husker to protect his pig only further demonstrates his trust in the grumpy old booze cat. Upset about all the fruit Fat Nuggets ate (because it’s not easy to get in Hell) Husker wants Angel to pay to replace what the pig ate, but Angel argues that because Husker owed him a favor it’s not his responsibility. Angel says he’ll pay him if Husker agrees to come to his next show, and they compromise to get milkshakes instead. The creators said Husker was a Tsundere, and it shows. Someone called their outing a date, and Husker was QUICK to shout that it wasn’t a date, just settling up on a favor. This almost plays out like an episode 2, turning the Addict Video into the jumping off point for a second story in the hotel. I don’t know how many full narratives will come out of the Instagram accounts like this, but it’s really cool how they’re approaching this almost like a multi-media story, and I’m curious to see if this will continue when the show starts airing on television. One last thing of note is that in Angel’s latest post, there’s pictures of Fat Nuggets, Cherri Bomb, and Husker on his bedroom wall, much to Husker’s annoyance. In all of these Instagram posts, Angel seems to now be training ALL of his attention on flirting with Husk, to the point that unless another character sweeps Angel off his feet or causes Angel to start flirting with them instead of Husker, I think this pairing is sailing quickly and unopposed toward the canon zone.

I hope I’ve provided sufficient proof to back up my wild accusations, but I sincerely believe all of the building blocks have already been assembled to create a compelling romance between these characters. The flaws they need to overcome interlock with each other perfectly, their designs draw connections between them, and their Instagram accounts weave together a narrative for a soft Episode 1.5. I believe all of this together points that these two are meant to become a romantic couple, and if they aren’t, then maybe the showrunners should consider it.

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