Vivzie Critical - Blog Posts

sanguine-prince

4 weeks ago

okay so i just finished helluva boss (but not the shorts which i don’t think i’ll watch)…

and i enjoyed it for the most part. it’s a fun little show and i think that’s how people ought to treat it. i’ve a few thoughts below the cut. i’ve read a lot of glazing and a lot of hate and tbh i think i’m somewhere in the middle which seems like a rare thing in this fandom lmao

my favorite characters were fizz and moxxie & millie (tho the camp episode was so boring oh my goddd) and also ozzie however his design drives me up a wall why does he look like that. however his VA is sooo good

why do they say fuck so much

it feels like a show made for edgy high schoolers idk like it’s fun but it’s 90% sex jokes, ‘witty’ one-liners, and ship content

they interact with issues shallowly—like classism in hell and possibly racism (? if imps are a separate race ? idk)—and tbh i think they should stick to shallow examinations. social commentary is not their strong suit. things won’t hold together if they try to go deeper with this; it’s not a serious show and it should not be taking itself seriously. it works best when it’s interpersonal

i have a big issue w how viv/the writers/character designers portray fat ppl. i rly didn’t get the fat jokes about moxxie in that one ep like was it supposed to be a running gag? the character designs make everyone thin as a toothpick except for mammon who also happens to be the one sin they portray as being the worst and most disgusting. even bee who literally *is* gluttony is disgusted by mammon in that one scene where he’s chowing down in the courtroom. like what sense does that make.

which gets me to my real question that consistently bugged me throughout the whole series: what is the standard of morals in hell? the sins are personifications of their domains, so why are most of them decent folks? does this imply that people are sent to hell based on very conservative christian views—like is that the moral standard in this universe (i haven’t seen hh if this is explained)? like there genuinely weren’t a lot of indications for me for why a sin was a sin. ozzie emphasized lust being consensual; bee was concerned for blitz overindulging; but then verosika and her friends sexually assault moxxie and it’s implicitly brushed off as funny and not a big deal because oh well it is hell after all. idk it just felt inconsistent to me and i’m not sure why everyone and everything was so sanitized if this is supposed to be a terrible place

i liked the backstory episodes those were fun

i feel like they babygirlified stolas by making stella so unlikeable. it feels like the show runners were begging for us to sympathize with him when i thought he was a plenty decent character on his own and they could have made him much more morally complex by letting stella be an actual character. i was hoping there would be a little more ambiguity to it (rather than ‘yay stolas is finally divorcing that bitch’) because i genuinely was a little confused by why octavia was so mad at him at the end of s2 when the show covers his bases—she saw that stella wasn’t letting him call? idk i feel like the conflict should’ve come around the stars episode not the end one it just didn’t make sense to me. her struggle with the divorce made sense in s1 but by s2 they’d made stella such the clear-cut villain that it seemed like she never had a happy family to mourn the loss of. it felt forced that they transferred the conflict she seemed to be set up for having with her mother to stolas just to give him something to be upset about.

i’m not a big fan of stolitz im gonna be honest. idk why they like each other. they went from stolas essentially being a funny thirsty character to making their relationship the main plot line. it felt forced on blitz’s end especially like he went from not caring about him to ‘no actually he’s just too insecure to admit his feelings’ to madly in love?? within the space of a few episodes? there was also the problematic classist overtones as well but i think giving them an overtly toxic situationship would’ve been better and more fitting to the fact that they’re in hell than airbrushing things away so they can be an uwu yaoi pairing.

i enjoyed some of the songs especiallyyy the asmodeus one is s1 that was groovy as hell

i love fizz and ozzie they’re really cute :)

some of the designs got on my nerves (like ozzie and striker etc) but some of them were pretty cool (like fizz and stolas!)

in closing, i think the show is fine and a pretty fun watch it just shouldn’t take itself too seriously because then it breaks down.