One Hell of a family.
Originally just a short 2019 student film called "Satina Wants a Glass of Water", Satina is a web series and the brainchild of newcomer artist Hannah Daigle
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Satina details the life and (mis)adventures of the eponymous cambion and her parents. Satina (Sharon Hobby) is the daughter of the overworked Queen of North American Hell, Lucia (Laila Berzins), and her father Dave (Hans Van Harken), an ordinary man working as an IT consultant in the human world. Despite her demonic nature, Satina is charismatic, playful, naughty, and a little weird. She loves her parents to the ends of both realms, even though Dave is estranged from Lucia following a relationship breakdown in the past.
The original short film can be found here, and the first official episode here. The series has made its debut on Newgrounds on April 20, 2020.
You can support the series on Patreon here.
Satina provide the following tropes:
- Arbitrary Skepticism: Satina wonders why they don't have a Christmas Tree and Dave explains that he is Jewish and doesn't believe in it. Satina points out he has literally been to Hell.
- Ambiguous Situation: While it's obvious Lucia and Dave had Satina together, the actual relationship between Lucia and Dave is unclear. Are they exes? Still married? Since Lucia is a demon from Hell, did they even get married in the first place?
- Bait-and-Switch Comparison: Dave gives one when he's afraid he's going to lose his job.Dave: I can't go back to staying in the motel! I'm gonna have to live in hell, and never see the light or, or anyone I love ever again...or maybe I could just stay with Lucia instead of my parents' house.
- Baseball Episode: The short Satina at the Bat! shows the little princess of Hell playing Little League Baseball for the Jersey Devils, but forgets how to swing a bat.
- Big Entrance: Lucia herself attempts this on Dave, using a display of all her power and unholy glory to terrify him. It falls completely flat as he's well acquainted with her, leaving the Hell Queen to exasperatedly sigh.
- Cant Get Away With Nothing: Melvin sleeps during work, then later has his soul sucked out of him.
- Cassette Futurism: Hell seems to operate like this; the technology such as phones are old and cumbersome.
- Cat Girl: Melvin at Dave's place of work has Nekomimi as his terminal's screensaver.
- Circles of Hell: There's Eight for the number of continents◊ on the planet according to the creator. Lucia rules North America, whereas her fellow Archdemon, Azalea, is the Queen of European Hell.
- Comically Missing the Point: When Dave brings Satina to work, he notices everyone staring at her, and after looking around at the other workers' daughters, comes to the conclusion that they're doing so because she's naked (see Non-Humans Lack Attributes entry).
- Continuity Nod: As seen in the fourth short, Dave's car still has the indentation of Satina's horns left on the roof after the first episode.
- Cool and Unusual Punishment: After Satina points out his Arbitrary Skepticism, Dave forces her to watch Eight Crazy Nights.
- Creator Cameo: Along with storyboarders making cameos, artist Hannah Daigle is also briefly seen in the background working at Dave's company.
- Demon Lords and Archdevils: Lucia is an Archdemon, specifically in charge of North American Hell, Hell's busiest division, making her very tired and mostly always pissed off with someone or something. In the hierarchy she has enough power to force Death to do her bidding in ending mortals lives prematurely. Other Archdemons are in charge of Hells corresponding to the other continents.
- Devil, but No God: A variant. There are certainly Hell (well, eight — one for each continent) and Archdemons running them, but no evidence or mention of corresponding Heavens or their natives are present.
- Down to the Last Play: In Satina at the Bat!, Satina needs to score in order for her team to win, as it's in the last inning.
- Dragged Off to Hell: What Lucia threatens to do to Dave if he doesn't follow through with child support. It's hard to say if that's her idea of damnation or her way of resolving Dave's Commitment Issues. Or maybe it's both.
- The Elevator from Ipanema: Satina notes that the company where Dave works uses the same elevator music as does Purgatory.
- Exact Words: Before going to bed, Satina asks Lucia to get her a "glass of water", because she likes how it tastes. She didn't actually say anything about wanting the water itself.
- Fire and Brimstone Hell: Very much North America's depiction of Hell, or at least Lucia's throne-room/office.
- Flat-Earth Atheist: Dave is revealed to be one in A Very Satina Christmas!:Satina: Daddy, why don't we have a Christmas tree like everyone else?Dave: Well, uh, I'm Jewish, honey. I don't really believe in Christmas or anything like that.(Beat)Satina: ...The ideals and concepts of Christianity have been proven to you to be true on multiple occasions.(Beat)Satina: ...You've been to Hell!
- Generic Name: The company where Dave's employed is simply called Generic Technology™.
- "Getting Ready for Bed" Plot: The entirety of the Satina Wants a Bedtime Story animated short.
- Haunted Technology: The end result of Satina "repairing" the server using Necromancy. It sucks out a guy's soul and everything.
- Hot Skitty-on-Wailord Action: Implicitly in the backstory. Lucia is a demon around eighty feet tall, Dave is a normal-sized human, and there's no implication Lucia can change sizes, which means that Satina's existence obviously came about from such a union.
- Insult Backfire: In the short Satina at the Bat! the kid pitcher for Midvale Mothmen team threatens Satina that, with this final strike, she's going down. Naturally, the cheerful demon takes it as an accolade.
- Lonely Bachelor Pad: Dave is a deadbeat dad, and lives in a dump of an apartment he refuses to move out of.
- Made of Incendium: The server room at Dave's work. After Satina accidentally starts a small fire, it was only seconds later that the servers are completely engulfed in flames.
- No Animals Were Harmed: "Satina has a Knife" ends with a notice that "no demon children were harmed in the making of this video".
- Non-Humans Lack Attributes: Lucia has nipple-less breasts and Hartman Hips, but no actual visible genitalia. Satina has no indication of her sex beyond her voice and eyelashes.
- Parents as People: Both Lucia and Dave love Satina dearly, but both of them have things in their lives that make properly raising her a bit difficult, from Lucia's reign over hell to Dave's draining tech job, though they do try their best to make her happy.
- Shout-Out:
- Dave has a "Weezus" poster in his apartment, a tribute band to American rock band Weezer.
- A short segment of A Cruel Angel's Thesis plays in the elevator. Satina believes its the same music that's used in Purgatory.
- The "bedtime story" Lucia reads to Satina is the Slayer's Testament, word-for-word.
- Satina has a copy of "My first Necronomicon" and "Green Eggs & Devilled Hams" in her bedroom.
- Soul-Crushing Desk Job: Dave's IT job is portrayed as this. Dave himself describes it as "like therapy, but with computers...and a lack of emotional fulfillment."
- Surprise Pregnancy: Downplayed, but Lucia is less than impressed her romance with Dave brought Satina into being and doesn't acknowledge her own offspring half the time.
- Take That!:
- In "A Very Satina Christmas," after Satina makes Dave question his beliefs in Judaism, he forces her watch Eight Crazy Nights with him as punishment. Her reaction is one of horror, quietly begging him to stop.
- In a comic, Satina swats and kills a spider that bears a strong resemblance to Angel Dust from Hazbin Hotel.
- "Take Your Child to Work Day" Plot: The first episode centers on one of these. Satina is reluctantly brought by Dave to his workplace. It doesn't go well initially, causing many problems for Dave. However, things get better when Satina manages to repair his workplace's server issues through necromancy, which results in Dave getting the rest of the day off with Satina and a living, demonic server eating the soul of an Otaku sleeping in the server room.
- Tiny Guy, Huge Girl: Dave and Lucia. Dave's of average height, whereas Archdemon Lucia towers over him at approximately 80 feet.
- Ultimate Job Security: Dave mentions Melvin comes to work just to sleep, and yet for reasons unknown he still has a job.
- Your Soul Is Mine!:
- Dave's co-worker Melvin gets his sucked out by the end result of Satina's necromancy, leaving his body as a shriveled-up dead husk.
- In Satina at the Bat!, Satina sucks out all the other players' souls in the baseball match to avoid costing the Jersey Devils the game, but the kids are still alive.
- You Say Tomato: Lucia pronounces Satina's name as "Say-tinna", which is close to the original pronunciation of "Satan". Dave however pronounces her name as the phonetically more correct "Sah-tee-nah".
