The new Helluva Boss short has me back in Stolas Defense Squad mode. I love me a deeply flawed character, and Stolas for sure checks off plenty of deeply flawed check boxes, but the way the anti-Stolas crowd frames his relationship with Octavia drives me up the fucking wall.
A lot of the criticism of their relationship makes me suspect it comes from people who are 1. Young and have trouble conceptualizing parents as people and/or having needs that supersede those of their offspring. 2. Project their own traumas onto Octavia. Which wouldn't irk me nearly as much if it wasn't doing a disservice to the sort of real-world abuse she's going through.
Since she's almost 18, I have a feeling we'll see this coming of age chapter of her arc climax with an arranged marriage of her own. And, if that happens, I'm sure I'm going to see plenty of people complaining that a reconciliation being kicked off with her staring down the barrel of the life her father went through will absolve Stolas of too much. Which... Straight-up fuck off? Him leaving does not need to be absolved.
Octavia is about the same age now as Stolas was when she was conceived. She'll be looking at a future of compulsory heterosexuality... Which, hottake apparently, but if your child is an obligation conceived via marital rape, you have carte blanche on how to feel about that. That's not a life you brought into this world willingly; the moral obligation to love and nurture them isn't yours to bare. Which is neither here nor there given that Stolas adores Octavia and, by being a central pillar of her emotional support, now has a responsibility toward her. I just hate seeing people discuss this with weird natalist philosophizing like Octavia having a healthy childhood was ever a reality or even an option.
And it probably also feeds into my annoyance at people calling Stolas a bad father when my man is doing the best with the tools he's been given. Which are next to zero. There's, like, a roll of duct tape and one (1) wrench in there and he only theoretically knows how to use either. He wanted to give Octavia the childhood he didn't have, the childhood he felt he owed her. THAT was what set Octavia up to be hurt, not Stolas falling for Blitz. Had someone like Blitz been in his life earlier and "awoken" him, Octavia would have almost certainly had a healthier childhood. As healthy as a childhood in Hell can be, anyway.
What we see of Octavia's homelife before the divorce isn't happy. She doesn't flinch at verbal or physical abuse being hurled at her father. It's not just his relationship with Blitz, Octavia is upset by Stolas pushing back against that abuse at all. Which isn't her fault. This was normalized for her. When you live in a household with one primary abuser, life becomes not rocking the boat. Because the only good days in your limited life experience are days in which that volatile person in your household is either absent or content.
And, unless the child intends to continue that cycle of abuse, the realization that you were, at best willfully-ignorant/at worst complicit in the domestic abuse one of your parents lived through is HARD.
She has perfectly valid reasons to be upset. Passively suicidal father zooming off to be actively suicidal on live television? For sure. But that's more in the realm of the coming of age realization that, "Oh, my parent is unwell. They've always been unwell. Do I want a relationship with them enough to get involved with their bullshit?" Because, like not being morally obligated to care for a child that was forced upon you - You didn't ask to be born. If your parents are going under, you aren't morally obligated to just dive in after them, and you're allowed to resent the choices they've made.
But the idea that Stolas failed Octavia in a way he needs to massively atone for will never not leave a bad taste in my mouth. It always feels like some victim blaming BS. You can dislike a character without reinforcing the idea that men being abused doesn't count.
"Oh, well it's only bc Viv wants him to be sympathetic and wants people to see Stella as a villain." My brother in Christ, that doesn't change the text of the story. Your headcanon of what you wish the story was doesn't hold any weight in a conversation about the character's canonical relationship with his daughter.
“Laura and Franklin were the two weird ones in the family. Whenever Laura did anything weird, their parents would laugh. Whenever Franklin did anything weird, their parents would get angry. Franklin concluded that it was only okay to be weird if everyone already really likes you.”
I am so freaking excited for Prroductts's newest series Dirty Snow - I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys camp, surreal horror, and/or off-beat & crass humor. Also the animation techniques used are so fascinating & impressive.
I said I was unsure about starting TADC bc I didn't care for Jax as a main character, but now I'm iffy bc the fandom seems so joyless and insufferable. Maybe it's just a loud minority. I'll check back in after the finale releases properly, but... jfc.
Sometimes I forget how eager the internet is to hold indie creators to higher standards than any other media they consume. Especially queer women. And 90% of the time it's other queer women being hyper-critical. Highkey always feels like thinly veiled jealousy, searching for a morally just reason to cannibalize our own. Like, "Oh, we scrubbed through the last decade of her social media and compiled an itemized list of everything objectionable she's ever said so we, as unproblematic beings of love and light, can justify the joy we take in tearing them down." Can't convince me 99% of them actually care about accountability; they're just excited for the drama. Evidenced by how quickly they latch on to complete non-issues and give them equal weight.
Gross. It's so gross... And don't even get me started on the people who are like, "Here is how you can fix the writing," then proceed to type out the worst shit I've ever read in my fucking life. I don't even know what to call it. Anti-fanfiction? Whatever it is, it's the behavior of either literal children or people who have never and will never create something meaningful in their life.
Person who hasn't watched the show but thinks the teeth are neat checking in:
What I know of the show is from my periphery as someone who watches other indie animation or absorbed via osmosis from friends who had it as a hyperfixation at one point or another.
The hype around episode eight piqued my interest. The little teeth man is throwing a tantrum? He's baby, actually? I didn't know he was baby like that. Maybe I'll give the show a proper watch once it wraps up.
But with the finale hype, I keep seeing people upset by the idea that he's dead-dead or calling theories that he's still alive, "cope." For what it's worth, that hadn't even occurred to me as a possibility.
Obvs, I don't know y'all's show like that. Might render what I'm about to say worthless. But, if it helps at all... As someone who writes, teaches, and works on fiction developmentally for a living... Y'all optimistic fans don't need to be ashamed of your optimism. Ending that's character's arc with season 8 would baffle me, personally.
Anyway, I've got twenty-ish minutes to kill and this is hyperfixation adjacent for me so... I dunno... Here's some rambling...
I know this was inspired by IHNMAIMS. Love that. Love that short story. Don't know if it would have hit the same had AM vanished completely from the narrative before the climax. And I know it's not 1:1. It's the most delightful fucking idea to me that you have AM who "can't wonder" but hates humans for not granting him the capacity to marvel at a bumble bee vs. Caine who was made to wonder but is actively discouraged from it because the way he wonders is "wrong."
He's not the main character, but neither is AM. Even if he's already fulfilled his role as antagonist, if he's a parallel to AM, he's still the setting. AM encompassed the planet. He was the world the main characters lived on. I wouldn't anticipate a complete downer ending where these characters slowly drift into the void... Or an ending where a different character just, for old time's sake, recreates some abstract circus borne of a brain tumor... Or an ending where a show called Digital Circus with themes of finding purpose in a stagnant existence doesn't end in... ya know... a digital circus.
Then you've got all these world building cliffhangers. I see Jax featured heavily in the marketing of the finale and know Pomni has the red and blue color scheme going. I still can't fathom a scenario where a character who has been your antagonist and entire setting until now doesn't factor in at all.
I know I've watched a scene where making someone feel unloved and unwanted is one of the worst things you can do. And, again, haven't watched the entire show, but if that's one of your themes, you don't undermine it by having it apply to all but one character. Especially not a character whose motivation is tied to a longing for love and connection. Especially not if you're taking time to show just how important it is to that character but haven't had other characters acknowledge and interface with that need in a meaningful way.
Caine's can't be a cautionary story, because he's not analogous enough to a real life scenario that warrants being doomed by the narrative. If there's a theme in the show that his arc being an utter tragedy would add value to, I'm unaware of it.
I'd seen some of Gooseworx's work before this. She does weird. I also do weird. Weird isn't profitable. If I want a roof over my head and food on my table, I have to compromise. A lot of my work I write to market. What I teach or work on developmentally with a team or ghostwrite is what someone else likes.
Maybe I've got the wrong read of the character, but Caine doesn't seem like an abusive parent-coded stand-in or as an artist with the fatal flaw of not being able to handle criticism. (I mean, he can't and it's a flaw but not one that's satisfying if punished by fucking death.) He's a child who was told the one thing he was good at was art. But then he did art wrong. His art was too weird, so he was locked away in a box.
Breaking out of that box meant cannibalizing more palatable ideas and trying to fake it til he made it by compromising with the world for the right to even exist and take up space. He's an anthropomorphized artistic drive, the most literal take on an artist's creativity being intrinsic to their purpose for living. He's already going out of his comfort zone to appeal to those around him. Compromising more based on their feedback isn't a solution. It's not criticism that can be constructive if they fundamentally dislike his entire genre. Using their suggestion box ideas to ghostwrite what they want SUPER isn't a solution. The only positive outcome would be the humans harnessing their own creativity in that space and using it to make the art that speaks to them. (Weird art/bizarro/surrealism is my life, but I understand most people only like it in moderation... If at all. Skill issue, imo, but it's whatever.)
Unless this is some very nihilistic tragedy about art itself, there is no narrative value to be gained by continuing to punish the embodiment of weird fiction in a show that IS weird fiction. And weird fiction that, at least from the outside, looks comparatively tame compared to other work I've seen from Gooseworx. Indie animation doesn't really feel like a space to inject an ironic statement about art being packaged into something more palatable.
I could ramble more, I'm sure, but I ate up all the time I needed to kill so
I've never actually watched TADC. I don't go here. And I haven't used Tumblr in ages. This is an account I just use for lurkin' and scrollin'. So I SUPER don't even go here.
But I'm, inexplicably, invested in the fate of that autistic set of teeth.
snowghoul
pixelskylines
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