YMMV / Hellish Bells

• Glurge: Most of the dates that Charlie, Vaggie and Alastor go on together are chock full of saccharine dialogue and descriptions (even moreso after Alastor begins warming up to them), and as the fic goes on start they start acting more and more like Sickeningly Sweethearts in ways that tread dangerously close to Canon Defilement, especially in Alastor's case.
• Narm:
  • The fic has some issues with overemphasizing really dramatic lines (particularly Alastor's) in ways that make them come off as corny, but it's a mostly forgivable offense. Some, however, are less so.
    Alastor:    "Beyond my purview"? Child, there is NOTHING in this court beyond my authority. I make the rules. I DELETE the rules! My word is ALL THAT MATTERS!   
  • While Adam does have an extremely filthy mouth in canon, reading him say "You clit-licking dykes are all the same" in chapter 42 is impossible to take seriously as a threatening insult due to how randomly out-of-pocket it is in context. The fact that he then goes on to call Alastor a whole host of racial slurs and insults (including the n-word) in the next chapter is even more unintentionally hysterical because of how hard the story is overcompensating to make the already-hateable Adam even more dislikable than he is in canon.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: "Alastor forces Charlie into marriage with himself in order to gain more power within Hell" is a great concept for a story and doesn't sound too far removed from a plausible prediction of where the canonical Hazbin Hotel story could go at the time the fic was written. In light of this, the story is mostly about boilerplate relationship fluff, political drama and eventually cosmic power struggle to the point where the original premise of the fic is mostly background dressing.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: The fic goes out of its way to try and portray Alastor as a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, but because he still keeps his canon characterization of brutally murdering, torturing, eating and enslaving people (he even comes into the possession of more slaves upon becoming an Ars Goetia), it can feel difficult to empathize with him or believe that he's becoming a better person.

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