Helluva Critic

Blog discussing HH/HB, critical but not hateful. Nothing will make me hate you, Octavia <3

[spookycriticalblog]

Stella was canonically forced to be a child bride AND a teenage mom and gets gross comments from her brother but that fuck ass owl stolas is the victim in the story

[pushingpesticides]

This is weird but a trend I’ve noticed in the hellaverse both in the shows and fandom - is that traditional feminine/female roles tend to get placed on men.

Helluva Boss - Stolas is the abused victim of an arranged marriage forced to have a child he didn’t want (bonus points for him being the more stereotypically feminine one compared to Blitzø)

Fizz is the abused exploited worker who is exploited by his boss (also is the effeminate one of the relationship between him and Ozzie)

The thing is the women in similar situations are never met with the same sympathy or nuance as the men (Stella, Glitz and Glam)

Hazbin Hotel - Angel is the abused exploited sex worker used for his body (again, he is also very traditionally feminine)

In the fandom, Lucifer is often seen as the one who gave birth to Charlie and not Lilith.

I do think there’s something to be said about giving representation to men who are exploited and abused because those problems are very often portrayed as exclusively female. That discourages conversations about male victims and encourages behavior toward those male victims that would be seen as socially unacceptable the other way around. However, I still fundamentally agree with this point because of the utter lack of nuance and grace extended to female victims of situations like this in the Helluva Boss/Hazbin Hotel canons.

In particular, Glitz and Glam are not treated like they’re exploited or even like they’re abused, or at the very least not portrayed as experiencing these things. This is to the point where sexualized merchandise of them is defended because “twincest is marketable” (an actual argument I’ve seen), despite the fact that pretty much the only scenario where related people are comfortable marketing themselves as incestuous is one where they are exploited and abused.

Glitz and Glam are not given nuance. They are not given sympathy. It’s the exact same with the female workers for Valentino, who are never really given a serious moment of being represented as victims, unlike Angel Dust. Obviously, as a person who lived his life as a woman for many years, I understand that there’s more than enough media portrayals of women being abused and exploited and that there’s a point where it’s ridiculous.

But… like. In a show where you’re allegedly trying to make points about exploitation and employee abuse of a sexual nature, why would you exclude women from those portrayals? One of the only times we explicitly see a woman associated with Valentino being hurt is a slapstick gag where she gets thrown into a shark tank and ripped apart. It’s treated as a joke. The abuse of men is also treated as a joke, but it does get moments of seriousness that have actual effects on the story. It’s not the same for women. What’s the point of trying to posit nuanced discussions of abuse if you don’t extend that nuance to a sizable part of those abuse statistics?

[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.

[i-feel-sickk]

Wow this fandom is such a safe space for women 💞❤️💞❤️💞❤️💞💞

All three of those RODENTS will be BANISHED to PRISON and FORCED to watch adam sandler's "jack & jill" (2011) on loop with the hinges of their heels slit so they can't get up. Meanwhile stella will be treated to raising cane's (delicious!) :)

Ok in all seriousness its fucking insane how she's considered worse and more heinous than an actual rapist, an actual rapist (and whiny bitch), and an annoying worthless cringe ass sex pest to these people 🫩🫩

[monsterscave]

Chaz Dance was based off Raph-II's dance.

Soooooooooooo they based the dance off the storyboard artist who loves rape porn, and was never a victim a but often feels repressed? The person who MAKES rape art? Oof.

[fooloftheunknownworld]

I made this for the recent Chaz music video.

[hellavacritic]

from @ chiquitosimy_03 on Twitter

[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

[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]

Was no one going to tell me Brandon Rogers did a heinously racist skit that was 3 minutes of just unfettered bigotry….

It’s here, but please be aware OP is not a great person and thinks women can’t be rapists..

[vampirihound]

This was his GIMMICK for TWO WHOLE YEARS apparently. btw. It's not even that this was a one-time thing, he did blackface MULTIPLE TIMES from 2010-12 because the character he played was a black woman that he used for prank call videos where the jokes were just. him being racist.

Under the cut is a screenshot taken from this video of his channel from 2010 to 2012, in which the background for his channel is just. him in blackface.

[hellavacritic]

This is actually insane. And people are defending it too, saying it was “edgy” humor and it doesn’t count as real racism since he’s a POC himself, just a different ethnicity. It’s actually insane the lengths people will go to defend someone because they’re in their favorite media and cannot fathom that something might be wrong with it.

There is NO EXCUSE for it. We’ve cancelled celebrities and politicians for doing the same thing at the same time. Kids who do this in high school get blacklisted from colleges. Why does he get a pass?

[hellavacritic]

Was no one going to tell me Brandon Rogers did a heinously racist skit that was 3 minutes of just unfettered bigotry….

It’s here, but please be aware OP is not the greatest source…

[hellavacritic]

that last short was literally just the “sex sex sex penis penis penis dick dick dick” video

[hellavacritic]

SpindleHorse now has a formal complaint on the National Labor Relations Board.

The list essentially boils down to breaking/modifications of contract, refusal to give information to employs regarding data (such as wages, medical files, or disciplinary files), and threats/broken agreements.

It sounds like the employees contracts are being violated and/or modified and promises from bosses to employees are not being kept. It also looks like SpindleHorse is not cooperating with their animators unions.

[hellavacritic]

Stolen from another account who stole said picture, but this got me crying.

[hellavacritic]

Genuinely I cannot fathom the babying of male characters in the franchise.

Time and time again, we see male characters given an out or excuse for their shitty behavior or that the mistakes that define their lives are explained away in a way that isn’t their fault while so many female counter parts are demonized.

Stolas isn’t a sexual abuser, he was lonely and abused by his wife and lost his agency regarding his love life as a child. Similarly Stella lost that agency too but is childishly villainized and depicted as vapid. (Fans even hated Octavia for rightfully cutting Stolas out of her life when he nuked their family lives for the second time.)

Blitz didn’t mean to burn down the circus and harm Fizz and his sister, he manages to reconcile with Fizz but his sister is depicted as being mean and unforgiving when she doesn’t try to reconnect with him.

Both Lucifer and Lilith are absent from Charlie’s adult life but Lucifer is the character that appears to help Charlie even though Lilith was always the one sympathetic towards sinners meanwhile Lucifer literally hates them.

Thematically it would make sense Lilith wants Charlie’s hotel to work. Now we don’t have the rest of the story with Lilith so at least we have some reasonable doubt.

Evil Vox and Valentino got little pity party scenes, Vox with his backstory with Al, and Val being upset that Vox isn’t paying attention to him.

Even the Moxxie/Millie thing plays into this pattern because it took fucking forever to get a Millie episode meanwhile Moxxie had several episodes about his abusive family, dead mother and emotional issues and even had a short as well while Millie was recent just forced into the god awful pregnancy trope.

And of course there are plenty of male characters that are evil for the sake of being evil, but we aren’t supposed to sympathize with them and it’s clear by the writing- Striker, Mammon, Adam fit that bill.

We also do get sad and sympathetic backgrounds or moments for Charlie, Vaggie, Verosika, Luna and Octavia, so it’s not a complete lack of care for female characters.

But I do find it strange that the man:woman ratio of ‘sympathy or excuse for shitty actions’ is so heavily favored for male characters even in the show that’s supposed to be focused on the woman.

Anyways, I wrote this spur of the moment and didn’t check for typos, please excuse the tangents, ramblings and any mistakes.

[sleepyicon]

in like the least weird way possible, it’s kinda pissing me off how vivzie goes into great detail when it comes to sex related stuff for her uncomfy mlm situations (stolas and blitz, angel and val, vox and val) BUT WITH THE CONSENSUAL SEX BETWEEN HER ONLY WLW PAIR (apart from the nonsensical bg relationship of martha and mayberry) she turns it into a dance number bc “oooo she’s ace and kinda uncomfortable with sex” and “she doesn’t need to go into graphic detail to portray the sex scene” WHY WOULD CONSENSUAL SEX BE UNCOMFORTABLE TO WATCH IN AN ADULT SHOW DUDE. and if they (being the creative team, not just viv) can make graphic scenes and write graphic lines for the sickening mlm pairs, they can show 10 seconds of the wlw ship engaging in consensual intimacy. but chaggie hardly has any romantic moments in the first place, so ofc sex is something completely untouchable.

[steamgirldoz619]

Hace tiempo leí una publicación y junto a ésta les doy la razón.

Vivz dice ser asexual y que el sexo le incomoda. Sí es así, ¿por qué en sus series se hacen "chistes", hay escenas que dan referencia a eso o que en el fondo hay luces de neón con forma de pene o senos? De ser así le daría un enfoque diferente.

También menciona que a las parejas gays les da muchos minutos de trama, mientras que a las hetero o lésbicas son microsegundos en pantalla. Hasta la fecha me parece súper forzada la "relación" de Martha con Mayberry. Para empezar, ¿cómo se enamoraron? Se supone que Mayberry la odia por acostarse con su marido y le jodió la vida. ¿Y por qué la familia de Martha no está en el infierno con ella si eran asesinos también? Un hueco argumental hay ahí.

Las demás "relaciones" dejan mucho qué desear. Si no es por tóxicas es por lo mal escritas que están o simplemente son aburridas

[hellavacritic]

Ngl if I were Vivziepop I for sure would have delayed the release of that latest short….