Helluva Critic

-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

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.

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.

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.