Raising Cain By Every Highway In Hell

On hiatus

[chaifootsteps]

God, it's like getting a backrub.

[justdoodleartist]

I've been wanting to make this meme for so long because the ending scene with Stolas and Blitz singing is literally a meme

Only the Satan part of the song is actually good

[chaifootsteps]

interesting thing about Pink King's video - there's a watch graph suggesting the dropoff wasn't just from s2, it was Full Moon and Apology Tour specifically

https://64.media.tumblr.com/fb127d8872486ad90142e72299a00150/f098ca713cb9ac8e-bb/s540x810/807ad9376e69d16f22df8b947f5a5255f87d11fa.pnj

the episode before, Mammon's, wasn't doing s1 numbers but was doing better

then FM and AT caused a crater the show hasn't recovered from since

side note, but I'm surprised Ghostfuckers didn't do better. it's not a great episode but it's miles more watchable than the Blitz dragging we got in the Stolas episodes

Very interesting! Love HB criticism with some real numbers behind it.

[newbtheveryawesomeandkindanewby]

Short so ass not even the fans are defending it

[hellavacritic]

That bait and switch was actually diabolical.

We were excited to get a short diving into one of the relevant female background characters of the show, one we didn’t get a whole lot of depth and detail in except for her relationship to the male lead, and instead we get… that.

They know one of their most common critiques is how they treat female characters, and they do that bait and switch anyway in favor of the most blandest, irreverent and unliked male character in the show.

For the amount of screen time and relevance, he has gotten an insane amount of love from the merch and writing teams. Whether intentional or not, it reeks of misogyny to write like they have through this series. To constantly overlook or under develop women characters sometimes even in favor of the most irrelevant male characters.

For years now, some of the deserved criticism has been about women characters, but some more screen time in shorts doesn’t fix these issues. It is not a screen time issue alone either, it’s a writing one.

At this point, I can believe Vivienne and SpindleHorse are purposely ignoring critique and even going as far as making writing decisions to spite “the haters” even if it comes at the expense of the success of their show and angers fans who anticipated something else.

[hellavacritic]

But to wrap up my final thoughts on this

-The music was bad. I don’t mind satirical lyrics or corny ass songs but the actual composition was bad.

-I’m very very very tired of the constant dick jokes

-Also very very very tired of women constantly being demeaned in passing by being called whores or similar words when it’s really not necessary

-I’ve come to the conclusion the nicest way to put my feelings about the treatment of female characters is that the writing team struggles with internalized misogyny.

-some of the background characters designs were pretty cool. Art team pulled through as usual.

-god just let this character die

[critical-hazbin]

I'm not watching this short because I value my time too much to do so, but this person's take on Shark Boy Summer actually made me laugh out loud. HB has become a parody of itself.

[critical-hazbin]

Viv's statement addressing the controversy on bsky is awful. I'm not sharing it here because I don't want that pile of blame-shifting and DARVO on my blog.

It's one of the worst public responses I've seen in a long time. Truly embarrassing for her to think that was in any way acceptable.

If she doesn't want to drop Brandon from her shows, that's her prerogative, and the rest of us can choose to not watch anymore. Blaming the "hatedom" and "Xitter" when people of all races have a valid negative response to extreme racism is disgusting.

[pushingpesticides]

I found Barbie way more of a likable protagonist than Blitzo. Like yeah like she’s kind of a sleazeball like blitz, but she seems more down on her luck than a straight up asshole like Blitzo is. Her relationship with her girlfriend is cute and is interesting. I like how she let the little girl on the bus hold her hand despite being annoyed. If that was Blitzo he probably would’ve hurt her or been rude.

When the side characters are more appealing as MCs than the MC not because of the depth of their lore or how interesting they are but because they are less insufferable and outwardly horrible to others than the MC, then you have a reaaally bad main character. Hard agree, though, I love Barbie Wire so much.

[crooked-wasteland]

Accord to the directors commentary alastor wasn’t supposed to be grey it was an error that made throughout the whole season. How does that something like that get pass an entire season? I can get an episode or 2, but 8 episodes?

This was the promotional material about Alastor that was released a year or so before the first season ever aired. She had 3 years to fix it. That's either claiming you did absolutely nothing as the director making the show between 2020 and 2023 or you're lying.

Just saying "The viewers had a point about Alastor's design not reading as anything but white, but we also didn't want to drastically change his design so we gave him a slightly warmer skin tone in season 2"

That's all you have to say to sound like you're not insane. Trying to blame Bento Box and A24 for HER choices as a director is insane.

[critical-hazbin]

I know mastermind is full of plotholes, and blitz need to be saved first.

But there was a way for stolas to be punished and lose power.

As the Goetia are Elitist, as Paimon, Stella and Andrealphus are all abusive and proudfull. And Blitz was being acused of abusing Stolas and the whole point of Satan was actually make a lesson of him for teying to be above his status.

Why not let Stolas be punished for "being weak", so much that an Imp could abuse him, unworthy of Goetia title, unworthy of his powers?

Makes so much more sense by the worldbuilding!

There's so many ways Mastermind could've been rewritten to make more sense. Maybe Satan decides to punish Stolas because he's the one who allowed Blitzø to kill people on Earth, or because he loaned out a powerful object to an imp, or just because they want to make an example out of Stolas to discourage the other Sins from dating their partners and essentially breaking the class barrier.

It doesn't really make sense for Andrealphus to be targeting Blitzø in the first place instead of Stolas, or for Stolas to claim to be masterminding his own assassination attempt, so any attempt to analyze the scene falls apart immediately. You just have to completely turn your brain off while watching that episode.

I agree that punishing Stolas for being weak and giving into the demands of an imp would have made more sense, though like everything else, it would require the show to have properly set up for this result.

[critical-hazbin]

Helluva Boss is everything what Steven Universe haters believe Steven Universe to be: Everyone is an annoying crybaby, who think having an abusive childhood is a personality trait.

I'm not a fan of Steven Universe, especially its ending(s), but it did have some amazing episodes and songs before the dictators got woobified and the quality fell off a cliff.

I think the writers of HB just don't know how to give the characters angst other than just giving them a sad backstory. There's nothing wrong with having that as part of your characters (even though the dead mom trope is getting extremely old). But if there's nothing interesting to challenge them in the present day, it kinda comes across like you just like writing tragic backstories and don't actually know what else to do with these characters.

Loona is probably the prime example of this. She has probably one of the most tragic backstories of all of them and yet the show never seems interested in giving her an interesting plotline in the present day for her to learn and grow from the trauma she experienced. We haven't even gotten a scene of her grappling with feelings of abandonment from her birth parents or expressing how grateful she is to Blitzø. The most we get is that she has a crush on Vortex that is not reciprocated.

Stolas is really the only one I'd consider to be an annoying crybaby, everyone else is mostly fine. But he's definitely dragged down the entire show with his whining and entitlement, and is obviously the worst part of the whole thing. If there's one character I would delete from the show, it's him.

[critical-hazbin]

About vox tieyng her up to prevent helping Alastor.

She is still princess of hell, how could she not break free?!

I can see Charlie being weak in a fight for lack of training and experiência because of her pacifism.

But not untie?

And where did they show she knew he has a plan?

The powerscaling in both Hazbin and HB is atrocious. Any attempts to understand or predict who would win in a fight again whom is a pretty hopeless endeavor. This extends to pretty much every single situation where it would make sense for a character to use their powers but just don't for plot contrivance.

Interestingly, Charlie wasn't a pacifist in season 1. She was ready and willing to fight Adam and the exterminators to protect her home. Then season 2 comes around and she inexplicably is unable to do anything when Vox is directly threatening her kingdom. She never states that she is a pacifist, that's mostly just an excuse the fandom came up with to explain her uselessness this season.

There's no reason why she couldn't have changed into her demon form, which gives her some fire abilities, and burned through the rope. There's also no good reason why she wouldn't at least attempt to rescue Alastor earlier if she is as worried about him as she says she is. How would she know that he doesn't want to be rescued if he never told her?

TL;DR - It's just bad writing.

[critical-hazbin]

It’s funny how team CLAIMS the main theme for HB is “character relationships” but the show doesn’t showcase this with its poor writing lol

Hell, the show doesn’t feel like it has a theme AT ALL.

I wish we could have had a show that focused on the character's relationships. I was looking forward to seeing the relationships between Millie and Loona, Loona and Octavia, Blitzø and Barbie, Moxxie and Crimson. And yet we are halfway through the show with many of the cast's most significant relationships completely underdeveloped and underbaked.

I guess when the HB team says they are writing a show about character relationships, they specifically meant the one between Blitzø and Stolas, with everything else being an afterthought at best.

As far as the show's themes are concerned, the show has no foundational moral core. Is it bad to exploit someone for sex, or is it okay if you really really love them? Is it okay to kill people, or is it bad when the target in question is in a same-sex relationship? Is physical abuse wrong when Stella does it, or totally played for laughs when Loona does it?

Due to the show's ongoing issues with lack of focus, it's hard to say what the show is really about anymore or what it's trying to communicate to the audience about class issues, found family, homophobia, or anything else. Just when you think the show is close to making some kind of point, it inevitably fails to stick the landing.

HB is bad in such a way that it defies any attempt to analyze it, because the show has nothing to say and what little it does have to say is so poorly communicated and contradictory that there's little point in dissecting it further.

[critical-hazbin]

Honestly, I think The Smiling Friends Pilot was a bit more tasteful with putting serious topics like suicide in a comedic atmosphere than episode 4 of Helluva Twat.

Still haven't seen Smiling Friends, and I don't think I will, but I've heard it's better than HB, so I'm glad you liked it.

[chaifootsteps]

If anyone was betting that Viv would be a professional, decent adult about Brandon's three minute minstrel show, I've got some unfortunate (but predictable) news.

[critical-hazbin]

Apparently, people on Twitter are just now realizing that Brandon has done blackface. It's totally understandable for anyone to be upset about this, what he did was disgusting and I am not defending it. But this has been public knowledge for years. People were talking about this when HB's pilot first came out.

If you're expecting him to apologize, he won't. If you're expecting Viv to drop him from her shows, she won't. If you think that he will face any significant consequences for this, I wouldn't hold your breath.

He has built his entire channel off of making edgy, extremely offensive humor and has brought that humor into Helluva Boss for two seasons now. If Viv really had an issue with this kind of offensive content, she would've let him go ages ago. At the very least she'd show some restraint in the number of misogynistic slurs Blitzø constantly uses. (At least some of this is coming directly from him, if the behind-the-scenes info is to be believed.)

I know it's frustrating and people want to cancel him, but Brandon is not Michael. He's not going to put out a statement or step back from social media, even though his offense is far greater. Pretty much any offensive thing he does in the future can be brushed under the rug so long as Brandon brings in money. In this world, some people face consequences for their mistakes while others get by unscathed even when they're doing something as morally bankrupt as using blackface to perform racist stereotypes. It's horrible.

[critical-hazbin]

I saw that Brandon did acknowledge that his old videos were racist in a video a few years back, though he didn't directly say he was sorry about his old content. I still stand by everything else I said, I don't expect him to actually apologize and I don't think what he did was acceptable. He continues to post offensive videos on his channel regardless of any change of heart he's had since those days.

I am willing to forgive a lot in people. I know no one is perfect and pretty much every comedian has said some jokes they regret later. But what Brandon did was over the line and it was as disgustingly racist back then as it is today.

I don't care if anyone else still likes or watches HB, but you should at least know what kind of person Brandon is and set your expectations for the show's quality accordingly.