Yuletide unofficial chat

The Switch is a tiny little 1-season, 6-episode comedy about a trans woman living in Vancouver. It’s part quirky workplace comedy, part quirky roommate comedy, and part “she moves in with her ex who’s secretly an assassin, who spends the whole season trying to dodge the investigation for an executive they recently killed, but, like, in a funny way.”

Half the cast is trans, a ton of the crew is trans, so it’s a big part of the show in a way that feels genuine and natural. Even though the show in general has a fun heightened-reality vibe. (The original Kickstarter campaign mentions a sorceress character. She’s not in the final cut at all, which I kinda suspect was a broader “oops, we’re trying to stuff too much in 6 episodes, we need to cut the magic subplot” decision. But, listen, if they had made a second season where Sabrina the Teenage Witch moved in down the hall, it wouldn’t feel out-of-place.)

I watched the whole thing for free on Tubi! There are some other streaming options on their official website. They also just straight-up tell you “want to be a pirate? here are the torrents” — but give them some ad revenue, if you can.

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So I guess I’m a Hazbin Hotel fan now, huh?

FFA did a rewatch of season 1 in the leadup to season 2, so I rewatched it along with that. Then ended up watching S2 as it came out (dropping two episodes a week), because now I’m invested enough that I didn’t want spoilers.

(Couldn’t totally avoid them, because…listen, there is a deep vault of Fandom Lore here, which I have never actually looked at. So there were regular comments like “sure, we already basically knows Plot Point X, because of the leaks/interviews/character designs posted on DA in 2012” where I had no idea about X at all. It worked out fine, though, because sometimes the fandom was wrong! And I had no way to predict when.)

All the music is good, and some of it is great. Their animation budget must be incredible, and you can see it paying off — Vox Populi showcases some amazing dynamic tracking shots, and the reprise Vox Dei has them just showing off. It has the same overstuffed pacing as S1, where they’re trying to pack about a thousand different character beats into eight episodes — there are setups that never get payoffs, and payoffs to things that weren’t actually set up — but the central arc of the season does hold together, and all the individual moments are fun to watch.

There’s a recurring theme of “look, this is shameless pandering to the iddiest of fandom desires” that goes so hard, you have to respect it. The saddest woobie with the softest vulnerable heart gets manhandled in all-new ways!

The most Tumblr Sexyman spends multiple episodes tied up and gagged, strapped to a chair, in his jealous rival’s bedroom!

There are moments that honestly feel like “the show won’t bother going too deep into this, because they know they can just toss the idea in front of their audience, and wait for a million fics to fill in the gaps.” And given the size of the fandom, I don’t think they’re wrong, either.

…The size of the fandom means there’s an overwhelming number of Youtube videos. But a lot of the ones I’ve watched are, well. Bad? Like “hidden details you missed” but it just lists basic plot points, or “fixing the character designs” but it’s fixating on things that aren’t problems.

Have a few recs, because these deserve to be watched without viewers having to dig them out of the heap first:

• An Exhausted Defense Of Angel Dust (posted before S2, has some heavy discussion about sexual assault)
• The Character Design of Hazbin Hotel (also posted before S2, the only video about the designs where I haven’t gotten exasperated and stopped watching)
• Collider Ladies Night interview with Vivziepop (released after S2, plenty of spoilers)