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Making my way through HB, getting about to where I need a thread to read peeking through fingers. Truth Seekers is 
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Feb 13, 2024 02:36
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Something I appreciate quite a lot about HB's musical sensibility is that it's very "classical Broadway" in style, like it's kind of a throwback to the pre-LMM, pre-Come From Away, even pre-Les Mis formula of very carefully structured musical and lyrical patterns that don't go flailing all over the place with weird arrhythmic patter or barely-rhyming words that put the emPHAsis on the wrong syLAHble for no particularly good metrical reason. After seeing so many songs coming out of well-regarded musical-bearing shows like that stop-motion Pinocchio movie, or the "Taking Over Midnight" song in Gravity Falls (it happens in like every single line, wtf, they're definitely doing it on purpose), it's rather refreshing to see something that rather improbably seems to want to reject all that avant-garde nonsense and give us some real old-school showstopping numbers with genuine earworm music and well-turned Disneyesque lyrical structures the way the South Park movie did.Dapper_Swindler posted:yeah, dont gently caress with daddy hoothoot. Having just gotten through The Circus, unless there are some big surprises and recharacterizations still to come, god loving drat, that poor bastard. Most empathizable character I've seen in a drat long time. Maybe not since, uh, Satan ^^
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Feb 14, 2024 00:08
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I gotta say following the mafia episode that I'm not super jazzed at how front-and-center it put the gay-hating father element. Up till this point it felt like everybody in hell was just some flavor of bi and there just wasn't any homophobia. But then I suppose it wouldn't be hell
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Feb 14, 2024 15:06
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Props for the mob heavies all being sharks though. Loan sharks lol
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Feb 14, 2024 15:29
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Maybe one of the biggest surprises for me in watching fully through HB now is that just about all the central cast of characters are perfectly good people, relatable, empathizable, admirable in their own way. This isn't a show about awful people like Arrested Development or Venture Bros, it's a show about some nice normal folks who just happen to work as murderers in hell. Only a few of the characters who show up on the fringes are reprehensible fucks, and they're usually reprehensible in a highly "real" way—Mammon being a manipulative, abusive talent leech, Moxxie's dad being a homophobic power-hungry tyrant, Stolas' wife being vindictive and bitter—are all ways people are terrible in real life. This isn't fantasy in any way. (And relationships like M&M and Asmodeus/Fizzy are just wholesome as gently caress) Blitzo is complicated in that he is pretty terrible (the date at Ozzie's was one of the most low-key excruciating things I've ever seen) but he has excuses for most of it. I started the show thinking it would center on him and wallow in his terribleness for lols like Master Shake, but no—this is set up as a redemption story for him as he slowly makes amends with all the people in his world who have forced him (or "forced', through happenstance and misunderstanding) to become this cynical. Data Graham fucked around with this message at 19:36 on Feb 16, 2024 |
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Feb 16, 2024 19:01
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Larryb posted:That’s one of the things I love about both shows, despite the crass humor, excessive swearing at times, and the fact it stars literal hellspawn most of the characters are complex people with their own emotional arcs (also the fact that if you ignore the above points it’s basically a Disney musical, even moreso with Hazbin) Lol so after three episodes of HH I was all set to post a followup to this about how it seems like it's not really the same kind of show at all, or to a much lesser degree, than HB — way less of the character deep-dives, way more high-concept, way more characters who just seem like one-dimensional ciphers and way less effort spent on figuring out who and what they are. It seems like it's more interested in the overarching Good Place type story than in exploring why people like Alastor or Vaggie or Angel or Husk are the way they are, and certainly nobody turning to the camera to narrate exactly what each character's personality is all about in one reductive sentence. ... Anyway then I just now saw episode 4 and  okay you got meStill though, and I realize there's still plenty more for me to watch so I'm probably jumping the gun a lot still, but — it seems like the feel of HH is pretty different from HB. Even now that we've gone through the backstories of Angel and Husk it still feels like a seedier, more hopeless kind of world than HB. I haven't seen anything like the kind of aching transcendent beauty that you get from something like one of Stolas' songs. If there's something that these shows have in common it's that they give you a facile perfunctory first impression of each character—like Stolas as some rich kinky twat who uses people he considers inferior and tosses them away when they bore him—and then you are given more of them and realize that your first impression was only what someone else (i.e. Blitzo) sees and refuses to understand more. Or assuming Fizzarolli is going to be some kind of devilish sinister ringmaster clown like in The Amazing Digital Circus (wtf happened with that? My niece was obsessed with it for a total of 15 minutes I think) and then turning out to be ... whoa. THAT.  So I appreciate them doing exactly that same kind of narrative maneuver with Angel, but it's still pretty brutal and not the same kind of experience at all.Also I'm not sure but it seems like the writing is not quite as claw-sharp in HH as in HB? Maybe not as gnat-footed and mile-a-minute? I wonder if there was a lot of smoothing-out of the production when they were given a full A24 budget and seasoned staffers to file down the rough edges.
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Feb 17, 2024 18:50
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Of course they would Furry: the cradle of the best and of the worst
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Feb 17, 2024 21:16
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OK, so—done with HH now, and I have to say the middle of the season was the strongest bit. The ending did feel rushed, though they did bring all the threads together—if barely. Not sure the "radio vs TV" thing went anywhere it seemed like it was planning to, and I'm still not real sure what Alastor's deal is even though they tried addressing it in exactly those words no less. Plus Angel feels like he got too little attention following the Ep.4 high. Seemed like the season needed maybe like 4 more episodes to really give everything the space it needed. Ultimately it's good poo poo, but HB is what has some kind of i-don't-know-what that will make me want to go back and watch it all again soon. And hopefully what's still to come of S2 will keep its crazy we-do-what-we-want momentum going.
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Feb 17, 2024 22:53
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"power bottom at rock bottom" top tier loving lyrics lmao
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Feb 17, 2024 23:30
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Oh btw one thing I guess I meant to give more weight in the back half of HH was Angel's turn as the "adult in the room" at the party, watching out for Niffty. The writers, uh, do know their poo poo
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Feb 18, 2024 03:10
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How does the "rings" layout square with the "pentagram" map?
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Feb 18, 2024 17:56
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(Just rewatched the HH pilot now that I've seen the whole thing, and HB 1 and 2, and I guess what strikes me most is how fully fleshed out everything was from the beginning, alluding to things that will only be revealed much later; and it has the effect of the early episodes on the first watchthrough really just being a complete information overload as dense as all the jokes are that you're already struggling mightily to keep up with. But on a rewatch it all clicks into place incredibly well)
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Feb 18, 2024 18:00
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I mean if the show actually tries to do any kind of real physical modeling based on Dante it's going to get wild, especially if it pays any attention to all the crammed-in detail within the ninth ring where he realized he had way too many grudges against contemporaries to write about and was already out of rings so he made hundreds of little sub-rings for all their petty transgressions. There's even kinda-sorta a cannibalism motif to be had there but I doubt this answers any questions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugolino_della_Gherardesca
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Feb 18, 2024 19:09
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Anyway it's pretty funny how Moxxie does a little Godfather riff on "mob familly 🤌" in episode 1 knowing what we learn about him later.
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Feb 18, 2024 22:25
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Now having seen all of both shows (thus far) I'm reasonably confident in my read that Hazbin is more about "big world-scale conflicts" and "cool conceptual worldbuilding" rather than "personal-scale character development". Both shows have elements of both obviously, but Helluva Boss seems to really be taking the time to dig deep into its characters the way Hazbin isn't; setting each one up as a person who we all can understand on a human level, and setting them against "villains" who are evil only in the way that real people are evil. Which in its own way makes for a way weightier, more powerful artistic statement on the human condition. Sure it's a big deal to talk about armageddon or about an impending genocide with existential implications for the entire universe. But there is no scarier villain than "your landlord" or "your ex who knows your secrets". Or "your own insecurities" I like Hazbin plenty, don't get me wrong. But Helluva Boss is churning in my head and it won't stop e: the "You Will Be Okay" song in particular. I don't know why some songs just have this weird ability to turn me into a loving idiot. But holy drat. "lullaby about the end of the world", what an elevator pitch. And that chord progression, jesus. As apocalyptic as you can get in a major key. Why do I wish I could have been involved in this, I want to have drawn that frame of Stolas in profile against the bright dying sun. IF THE SEVEN RINGS COLLAPSE  E: lol that the online lyrics sources all say “constellation’s gone so soon” when he is clearly saying “consummation’s gone so soon” god I'm glad tomorrow is a holiday Data Graham fucked around with this message at 02:02 on Feb 19, 2024 |
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Feb 18, 2024 22:39
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There is a pilot for Hazbin Hotel and another pilot for Helluva Boss that are both on YouTube and date back to about 4 years ago. You may like to scroll down and watch those first, but it’s not required.
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Feb 19, 2024 18:12
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I don't know about "better", but it doesn't hurt anything to do it that way. The pilot isn't redundant with the show, it's contiguous with it, it just serves as an excisable part of the story that you can sort of take as read if you missed it entirely. The pilot's plenty good on its own though.
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Feb 19, 2024 19:46
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I mean, so is The Good Place. It's not the premise itself that's novel, it's the execution. As any nerd who came of age reading Preacher I appreciate a sarcastic postmodern take on Christian eschatology as much as anyone, where the afterlife is run by morons and sadists and has all the same relatable problems and struggles and daily-life features as the real world. This one's particular angle is a stylish fresh flavor though, and as in any present-day standout work it's the characters and their foregrounded arcs that are doing the heavy lifting of making the premise and "lore" seem so compellingly well developed.
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Feb 20, 2024 11:37
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I'm dumb, what was the "you're still on the horse thing?" joke about? I rolled it back several times to make sure I wasn't missing something, but all I could connect it to was Fizz talking about Ozzie's huge dick, which seems... oblique?
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Feb 20, 2024 15:24
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oh lol ok
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Feb 20, 2024 15:37
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Awesome. I remember seeing most of those as they went past now in retrospect but I didn't put them together into any kind of running theme in my head. Speaking of running gags though, is it just me or does the "the O is silent" thing not seem like a very good one? Just seems arbitrary and annoying. I'm sure I'll change my mind once we learn the pathos-filled backstory (or if it's an oblique deadnaming riff of some kind) either of which will make me feel like an rear end
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Feb 20, 2024 18:47
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Maybe. Still, it feels kind of out of step with the rest of the writing to just keep going back to that well over and over without developing it or anything.
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Feb 20, 2024 19:13
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This is gonna sound weird but I feel like I'm rather privileged to be able to witness this explosion of mainstream TV/movies/etc that are this unapologetically gay. Like there was always "gay media" and works that could be read as a metaphor or allegory or analogy of the LGBT+ experience, and they existed along a millenia-long spectrum according to how "visible" they were trying to be about it or how niche the audience; we could be talking about The Aeneid or Holmes or Jeffrey or The Matrix. But until just this past decade it's only now become possible to be completely casual about it, making gay relationships not be a tokenized aside or a Very Special Episode kind of thing, but leading material no matter who's meant to be watching. A decade ago we could point to She-Ra or Korra and say "wow holy poo poo, this is actually super gay" and not mean it ironically. But just recently it seems like things have stepped up beyond that, and now it's just become another completely natural way to frame a story. Because once that seal is broken, where it's no longer a situation where a show might go "let's put in a gay-themed episode or character, you know, as a sop", and where it starts being treated as just another baseline default, you start being able to explore all the wild proliferations of stories that are fundamental to that experience, but dependent on the audience being part of that community in order for it to hit. I'm thinking of things like Walter and Simon's relationship in Human Resources, which goes into how two people who rarely see each other can have a wild time together on a weekend, but then decide to move in together and it turns out to be miserable because they don't actually like living with each other or even like each other beyond the faces they show during a tryst. Of course this isn't an exclusively "gay" kind of story but it sprouts from a whole gestalt of experiences rooted in non-traditional non-hetero non-marriage-based relationship dynamics, where there's a clandestine element and a level of play-acting and a certain expectation of no-strings-attached. And what you get is a new kind of storytelling, one that gets to break fresh ground and find new tales to tell that any open-minded audience can appreciate, rather than the same tired centuries-old tropes and archetypes. So with Hazbin and HB now we're getting these new stories that are gleefully bursting into this new territory, smashing through catacomb walls and finding gold. The vein Stolas' story is mining is the one where a rich former party boy feels the inevitable march of time and age and worries that his best days are behind him, which combined with his nerdy overthinking nature makes him wonder whether hedonism was all there ever was to him in the first place—and just as he's realizing that his most important accomplishments are still ahead (raising Olivia), he gets another chance to revisit his youthful wildness, to feel wanted again—but it's just out of reach because he's not sure whether he's even being taken seriously, or whether he's making a fool of himself by trying. And then with Ozzie and Fizzy it's a whole different dynamic where despite a facade of "it's just about the sex" which is held up to the semi-public as a weird kind of dignity-preserving shield in a world where the characters are basically hedonism embodied as part of their brand, we find that there's a foundation underneath all the posturing and kayfabe of two people who are so madly, die-for-each-other in love that they can't even find the language to express it, even in private, and they nearly jeopardize what they have going just because they can't be fully honest about what they mean to each other. Certainly there's nothing that's fundamentally "gay" or even fundamentally novel about these kinds of relationship dynamics in fiction, but being so overt and matter-of-fact about it is what's new and what I feel is a really great thing to get to witness as the art form matures. Brokeback Mountain is maybe the obvious point where the mainstream mood started to turn, but I remember back when the South Park movie was in theaters and in between the dildo sight gags the backwards-ballcap-wearing dudebros in front of me were turning to each other and muttering "Man, Satan deserves better than Saddam", I felt like I was on the cusp of something really interesting and unstoppable once it got moving. It's taken a bit of time since then to really start to catch fire but it's happening
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Feb 21, 2024 14:33
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It's the "smurfette" problem as I once described it Kind of a twist on the Bechdel Test. If you make an all-female cast (or a majority-queer cast in this case) you get to tell a whole different set of stories because now you don't have just a "the girl" character or "the gay" character, you have all kinds of different ones and you get to treat all their stories as unique in all the ways mainstream white/cis/straight society's stories are used to being treated as unique. And true that Stolas' story isn't intrinsically gay or anything, there's still plenty of ambiguity about it but you're right, what we've gotten doesn't pigeonhole him (as it were). But even at that it's a textured character portrait that you rarely got to see in fiction without all these possibilities floating around the fringes as potential influences on his character as we get it. Maybe it's the way I like to read him and those haunting song lyrics that has me so jammed up. e^3 Ok yeah I'm convinced, Stolas doesn't strike me as experienced enough to really know what he missed out on in his youth, he just knows he missed out on something. He married young and for duty and now he realizes there's a whole side of him and a whole set of cravings and yearnings he never got to exercise, so he jumps at the first gesture that may allow him to do so when Blitzo shows up. If Blitzo had been a woman it would have been a simple "midlife crisis/infidelity" story, and would be hard to treat it as sympathetic. But the gay element gives it a kind of cover, because it's all tied up with him denying a major part of his identity for most of his life. e: And if this all sounds self-indulgent paying this much attention to cartoons and such, my whole gist is that fiction is how we talk to each other as a culture, and stuff like cartoons (the raunchy fringe ones at first, then the prime-time ones, then the ones for tweens, etc) is what tells society what it's cool to talk about and to be and to do. Once you've got the kind of representation that is not just "hey there was a character who looked like me on TV" and is more "wow I just saw my relationship with my ex captured in a super relatable way in this show", it helps people process things on a much more productive level than they might have had the tools to do on their own. and then people become more empathetic with each other's problems and what's important to various different people in our lives, and we all move forward to new levels of intelligence about each other. As go cartoons so goes society lol Data Graham fucked around with this message at 20:13 on Feb 21, 2024 |
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Feb 21, 2024 15:59
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The Last Call posted:It's why Blitzo is always is around Moxxie and Millie the way he is. He wants what they have. Love. True love. He wants that more than anything but he believes he’s going to die alone. It played into episode 8 when he went to pick up Loona from the party. The infamous delayed eighth episode of the season featuring KESHA! For those who haven’t watched season 1 episodes 7 and 8 back-to-back really need to do so. It tells a much greater story with a ton more impact. Yeah I gotta fix that episode ordering in my rewatch. I mentioned this before but there's a common thread/thru-line between both shows of "chaperoning someone who's gone past their limits in a no-holds-barred environment"; we see it with Angel turning to babysit Niffty in Hazbin, and in Queen Bee there's the whole "yo come get your dad" scene which they lean on with so much weight it's clear they're really trying to push it home that this is one of the main tenets of responsible adulthood. Both Angel and Loona have to learn how to be that adult figure when it's called for. Loona also had to talk Olivia down in that other episode. She's got quite an arc going on
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Feb 21, 2024 20:05
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I don't even understand what that guy's alleged point is. Is Hazbin woke or not woke? Is it successful or not successful? Is it original material or derivative? Is it a positive example of whatever the gently caress or a negative one?
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Feb 22, 2024 18:06
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Ok cool, I wasn’t sure whether they were going for some tortured explanation of how Hazbin is in fact anti-woke for the following nonsensical reasons and that explains why it is a smash hit, like what happened with Barbie
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Feb 22, 2024 18:12
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Watch it turns out they are, but their viking ancestor is Ulf the Knave or something who was just as much of a dweeby pimply uggo as they are Like yeah, not only idolize an arbitrary race of humans from some random point in history, also picture them as just rank on rank of square-jawed Chippendale dancers because that's how humans work
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Feb 22, 2024 20:04
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Lol why do I keep thinking Octavia is Olivia. Probably because Owlivia would be a good pun
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Feb 23, 2024 04:05
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Happy Landfill posted:loving love it when artists post their refs for their animation! This poo poo is so cool! Just wanna dredge this up because I saw it when skimming the thread to catch up. I super love the fact that these shows are not just traditionally animated, but going absolutely balls-to-the-wall with the quality and ambition of the animation. A decade or so ago I was getting pretty nervous that Flash and CGI would take over the animation world and traditional 2D stuff would gradually die out and be treated as an expensive and impractical relic by penny-pinching studios. Which of course is still a danger, especially in the age of the "live-action remake", but way less so than I was afraid of. Shows like this (and more mainstream stuff too) are finding a good balance where they can give the audience the vibrancy of hand-drawn 2D but augmented with judicious use of CGI elements and Flash and other such tools whose labor-saving benefit is obvious when used well. And Hazbin/HB is just so ridiculously lavish in its directing and its acting and emoting and the feature-level smoothness of characters' movements. Given its crowdsourced roots (which is also finding expression in things like Lackadaisy and The Brave Locomotive) it's hardly a surprise, but it's absolutely invigorating to see that there is this much enthusiasm in artists who really want to pull out all the stops to remind everyone why traditional animation is so irresistible, and the more so the more effort goes into it.
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Feb 23, 2024 17:28
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Larryb posted:Yeah, for a free animated webseries Never mind the qualifier, it’s impressive by any standard. I’d put it toe to toe with just about anything I can think of. I don’t even understand how it’s possible
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Feb 23, 2024 17:44
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Rewatching HB now that I know what to watch for, and it's kind of wild how different the tone of the early episodes is. I'm up through CHERUB and what's striking is that it's largely taken up with toony gags, slapstick, and general situational stuff deriving from the "job of the week on Earth" frame. Really Loo Loo Land is a huge outlier in tone for the whole early arc, especially in light of all the groundwork it sets up with Fizzarolli and Stolas. Now I see why when I first started watching the show it mainly made me feel like I was watching a studiously edgier and intentionally more offputting version of Ren & Stimpy or something. "Like drinking pickle juice" is the phrase that came to mind, it's like, yeah I like it and I'm gonna drink all of it but like not all at once okay And now I'm remembering why Truth Seekers was the first episode that made me want to go "okay wait there's some real HERE here" and then Ozzie's was like .Harvest Moon Festival was a bewildering swerve on first watchthrough, but now it's going to feel a lot more like the mainline poo poo. The episodes start getting longer at this point and there's a lot more to chew on.
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Feb 23, 2024 23:07
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Yeah that’s the main reason I’m rewatching so soon tbh, just taking another run at picking up all the dialogue and looking up the lyrics in wikis and the like. It’s kind of a dirty trick that the faster and more frenetic and more layered shows get, the more important subtitles are to me (and my hearing is fine!), and HB which is the most frenetic thing yet is just missing them lol
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Feb 24, 2024 12:59
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Yeah that’s what I keep saying
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Feb 24, 2024 15:39
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OK so yeah, watching Truth Seekers a second time it really does seem like this is the point where suddenly the show kicks into a much higher gear on all fronts. The main thing that slammed me across the face the first time through, and again this time, is the fight scenes—both of them—and that jam of a score behind the second one (and the credits). How would you even describe that poo poo? It's like a thrash metal Irish drinking song or something. And the fight choreography, and just the absolutely lavish way it just goes and goes and goes, taking breaks every few seconds for another sight gag or ridiculous character aside or showoffy camera flourish (each one a character bonding moment serving to drive home how these four weirdos are an inseparable unit now and Blitzo will not die alone), it's like four straight minutes of that 360 degree sweep in Teen Girl Squad #10 BWAAAOOOOOMP So that's where I was sitting there with my mouth agape thinking, how much money are they actually spending on this. And secondly, was animation really the only medium where a battle royale like this could really shine properly? In live-action you would have to fight for every split-second facial expression to read, every sight gag to come through. Whether it's the Matrix or John Wick or whatever, it seems like a taller order to try to pull this off with real actors, whereas in this show you can make every toothy Loona face and every Millie axe-swing or every shot of Moxxie or Blitzo making shark faces and dual-wielding guns just pop right off the screen. It's like the animators just rolled up their sleeves and said "okay fuckers, wanna see how it's done huh" and that's without even going into the Bad Trip song (and the torture-chamber repartee leading up to it, which is one of the first places we really see Moxxie's mental agility. Lmao at the coffee order, not to mention the commentary on the efficacy of torture) which is brilliant enough to carry an episode all on its own. "I've been a jackass, it's true, but soon as we're back as ourselves", haha god I love this show's way with lyrics. Not only do they play with rhyme and meter, they also do this three-card-monty game with expectations all the time, leading you to expect one thing and then pulling off the lid and revealing something else entirely, like Blitzo's expression as he delivers "Why, Moxxie, why do you have Millie put it in your butt" . Or to take a different example from another song, when Stolas sings "in my gilded ... jail", the line is being delivered so slowly and deliberately that I'm thinking gilded cage is coming, especially considering the bird pun angle, but then he's giving me enough time to think "but no wait, that wouldn't rhyme. What else could he possibly be about to say instead of cage? What was the last line again?" And then he says jail and it all falls into place, but in that couple of seconds leading up to it my brain is working overtime and when the resolution comes it all smooths out at once in a really satisfying way like one of those "unclogging a drain" videos.It's just so dense e: I noticed some construction lines left in place on Moxxie's face at the end of the song, it's like some of the crowdsourced Lackadaisy style animation showing through e2:  how Stolas made sure Blitzo was okay before laying into them (and directing most of his ire at Moxxie and the others)Data Graham fucked around with this message at 03:25 on Feb 25, 2024 |
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Feb 24, 2024 23:39
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Something that keeps nagging at me about Queen Bee is how weird and novel it is that the whole bacchanale is not presented as a great big self-immolating trap for the participants. Like maybe there's more to be told still, but all the signals we get from the poppy Cotton Candy song and her attitude toward the partygoers are that she's just fattening them up, hypnotizing/drugging them into working as unwilling biological slaves to produce the fuel on which Hell feeds as will be revealed in some horror scene yet to come. It's a device so well-established that it crops up in everything from Cowslip's Warren to The Matrix to "The Great Heep" episode of that Droids cartoon in the 80s lol. But ... that doesn't happen in the episode, and it doesn't feel like it's coming. Instead it's ... just a party. Everyone knows the role they're playing and they all seem cool with it; Beezlejuice itself isn't being presented (yet) as anything more significant or that behaves any differently from, well, alcohol. And Queen Bee's whole role ends up being not that of a mass abuser like Val or a manipulator like Mammon, she's just a kind of drug mama who exists to give people a good time and cut them off when they've had too much. And what it sets up is interesting questions about what role the sins play in Hell. Looking at Lust and at Gluttony here, the two places Blitzo visits on his night of self-destruction and debauchery, it seems like establishments like Ozzie's and Queen Bee's are there to let people indulge freely in the sins they would indulge in on earth, but without the societally-imposed consequences? It's like the only thing from earth that's missing in Hell is shame.
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Feb 25, 2024 18:06
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Something else weird that has been nagging at me: for a character who is ostensibly the central figure of a personal-growth-and-redemption story that involves his romantic entanglements and fragile self-esteem and fear of solitude and abandonment, Blitzo is not ... coded? ... as someone you'd expect to see as anyone's love interest. Is that too wild a take? I mean, it's all over his design, from visuals to writing to acting, he's all sharp angles and sharp sarcasm, a cat with claws and teeth perpetually bared, to be petted only at your mortal peril. But then you see him curled up on his couch shuddering in pain and you're like ... wait, who even is this guy? And that's a very strange, daredevilish kind of tack for the creators of the show to take. Usually you'd get a POV character who's more everyman/woman, a makeover and contact lenses away from being revealed as some kind of classically-pretty diamond in the rough. (Like Charlie not to put too fine a point on it.) Moxxie is way closer to being this kind of character, all padded edges and couched confidence and heart worn on his sleeve, but this isn't about him, it's about the pointy fangy beanpole who is his Michael-Scott-from-literal-Hell boss. We're supposed to feel sympathy and empathy and warmth for this self-destructive, unapproachable rear end in a top hat? We're supposed to see him through the eyes that apparently only Stolas has? We've already had a few moments of unexpected vulnerability and sincerity from him, like during his reconciliation with Fizz, and I'm sure we can expect plenty more, but the way he's been set up design-wise, to make him as unlikable, as prickly and volatile as possible, is as much as to hide that whole arc from us in plain sight the entire time. And if in four planned seasons he's going to end up in a better place, be it with Stolas or someone else or nobody, he's surely going to have worse times ahead between now and then.
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Feb 27, 2024 03:08
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It's like, I look at the "Look My Way" song and the way spectral Blitzo shows up there is as this hulking, hunched-over, crane-fly-looking figure, arms and legs dangling out of a sort of trench coat shape, like a Tallest from Invader Zim. And that's the way Stolas sees him, presumably the most idealized way possible
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Feb 27, 2024 11:44
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Good points, yeah. And I need to get to rewatching S2 because that's going to be way denser in this stuff episode-to-episode than S1 was. I guess what I keep thinking it reminds me of is, like, the supervillain therapy circle in Wreck-it Ralph or something. ME GROG HAVE FEELINGS TOO. It's played as a joke in that kind of situation but in this show it's front-and-center, and that's novel.
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Feb 28, 2024 15:26
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| # ¿ May 11, 2024 18:46 |
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Okay so Brandon is just a living toon. OK that all clicks into place
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Mar 1, 2024 02:57
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