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Ok so this is a bit of a crack theory, I don’t actually believe it, but it’s funny so I’m posting it anyway.
Hazbin Hotel. Alastor does not show any parental bond towards Charlie until episode 5, when Lucifer shows up. Alastor quickly deduces that Lucifer’s lackluster parenting skills is a weak point, and thus makes himself, someone Lucifer had previously dismissed as beneath him, out to be a more capable father figure.
That itself is not the theory, just the setup so we’re all on the same page. So. What if Charlie saw right through Alastor’s plan to one up her actual dad, and, fed up with Lucifer’s past behavior herself (we see earlier in the episode that she is the one who is reluctant to call Lucifer), she, hear me out, PURPOSEFULLY GOES ALONG WITH IT.
Like, she sees that Alastor doesn’t actually view her as a daughter and is just saying so to get under Lucifer’s skin, but instead of calling him out she plays along! And that’s exactly what happens in Hell’s Greatest Dad, Charlie is very much on board Alastor’s side of the song, agreeing at every opportunity, while with Lucifer she is just… lost, confused. Occasionally awed, but she never really joins in on his part.
Of course, unlike Alastor, Charlie actually has a more benign reason to be tricking her dad. She wants him to see sinners as people, and what better way to do that than to show how one of the worst sinners has helped her? And later in the episode, Alastor is the actual reason Lucifer changes his views and agrees to help Charlie with her dream! I’m too lazy to get the actual quotes, it it went something like this:
Alastor: in the background, giant, terrorizing the loan sharks
Lucifer: “This is why you can’t trust sinners, they always end up destroying everything.”
Charlie: “His method’s are a little… extreme. But he’s doing it to protect the hotel!”
Lucifer: “Uh huh. Isn’t he the reason you’re being attacked in the first place?”
Charlie: “At least he’s actually been here! How come he believes in me and you don’t.”
Lucifer: (thinking) Oh crap oh fuck
Something like that lol. Again don’t feel like finding the actual quotes. But yeah even if Alastor’s showboating about being a better father were exaggerated, the fact that he presented himself as a better father is the silver bullet Charlie needed to change Lucifer’s point of view, or at least give him a wake up call.
To reiterate, the “crack theory” part of this is just that Charlie purposefully went along with Al’s embellished motivations during Hell’s Greatest Dad. Personally I think she was blinded by Alastor’s change of tone that her optimism made her actually believe what he was saying (I think Charlie and Lucifer were the only two actually fooled by Alastor, but they were the only two that mattered for that particular trick)
Everything else, like how Charlie used Alastor twisted version of help to convince her father to help her, is either canon or a more solid theory.