SparklinBurgndy

Back in the States, staying with my parents. You would think my stepfather is a colicky infant the way my mother tiptoes around him.  WTF?

Apparently her sheep are too stroppy for her to deal with now, too.  That sounds like a joke, but it's not. She has two rams and she won't even go into the pasture with them now. I was helping her move the hay into the barn so it wouldn't get rained on. She was on the tractor, I was on the ground.  While I was wrestling with the barn door, the young ram stepped up like he was going to challenge me.

Mom: That's the young ram!

Me: (all spoken through hairy eyeballs and vibe)  I. Beg. Your. Motherfucking. Pardon.

Young Ram: Um . . . I think I have the wrong human.

Me: I think that is entirely fucking correct.

Young Ram: I'm - I'm just going to go away now.

Me: *snatches up the shepherd's crook and chases after him swinging it*  I am the human!  I have the special stick!  I have the dogs!  That means I am the shepherd and you are the sheep!

Young Ram: *runs so fast I can't actually hit him*

*Later that night*

Mom: You need to move out of that chair.  That's Les's chair.

Me: Is he really going to lose his mind if someone is sitting in his chair when he gets home? Like, I'll move when he gets here.

Mom: Oh, no, you need to get out of it now!

Me: I'm starting to see why your sheep are bullying you now.

Because this is the internet, Vivzie's success with the popularity of Hazbin Hotel has spawned countless droves of idiots who are pure foaming that someone achieved their dream and are bound and determined to ruin it. 



Definitely watch first because I'm going into super-spoilery territory now. 

The show takes place IN HELL.  The entire cast are all demons.  Except for Charlie, they had a life on Earth that they fucked up royally, thus they all ended up IN HELL. (Charlie was born a demon)  HELL is overpopulated, so they have a ultraviolent Purge every year where they erase all the souls they can. 'They' in this case being other demons. Because this is HELL. 

Now . . . what would you expect the denizens of HELL to be like?  Charming, woke, gentlefolk who care about the feelings of others?  If you do, you're an idiot.  These people are in HELL for a reason. 

Strangely, the number one complaint seems to be that the characters are jerks with problematic language. And they are. It's on purpose. Because this is HELL.  stated that she loved shows like 'Always Sunny in Philadelphia', 'The Office', 'Parks and Rec' where the cast was all likeable jerks. 

Also, this is a show about redemption.  You have to have something to be redeemed from.  So we have this cast of likeable jerks.  Now the people who stand in opposition have to be *real* assholes.  You wouldn't think it would be a problem because we are in HELL.  The main asshole in this pilot is Katie Killjoy, who openly mocks Charlie's idea on TV and refuses to shake her hand because 'she doesn't touch the gays.'  And people actually complained because she was homophobic. Uh . . . she's the bad guy.  She's supposed to do bad things.  

Just as an aside, as a writer, it blows my mind that people cannot understand that you are not every character you write. You have to write baddies as bad people. And not even just baddies!  I wrote a scrib where Charles Offdensen had an (internal) depressive breakdown and thought of himself as a freak for being gay and of course Nathan would leave him and people wanted to hang me for that.  Like, if you have never been in that place where your own brain has turned on you I envy you, but even as that's happening, you kind of know it isn't true.   I had some person years ago say all my female characters were just self insertions ('insertions' *snicker*)  and if that was true, I was actually a teenage/adult/elderly, Native American/Icelandic/Irish, high school drop-out/professional athlete/retired spy who's interests were being a henchman/heavy metal/Nazism.  

My favorite complaint about Hazbin's characters has to be 'the only gay character is a sex addict'.  That's my favorite because it's wrong on literally every level.  The Twit in this case is talking about Angel Dust, who is a sex worker. 

[img src="images.app.goo.gl/hTryPjTKTxyF…"]

A sex worker, not a sex addict. Also, we've been introduced to six main characters, three of whom are gay and one asexual. Now, I can see missing the asexual because the pilot doesn't really go into it, only the wiki, but Charlie and Vaggy are girlfriends. They're not exactly subtle about it, either. I guess lesbians don't count?

Here's my take on representation in this particular instance.

THEY'RE IN HELL!

Just the setting alone is enough to tell you that nobody here is going to be a good person. The best we can hope for is jerk with a heart of gold. So . . . what?  Just make everybody straight so no LGBT+ people look bad?  I'm sorry, but in the circumstances, no queers (yes, I am including myself in that) in Hell means that being gay is automatically morally superior.  And it would be nice if that were the case, but it's not. When you coddle a certain group in media and never let them be shown in a bad light, it actually dehumanizes them.  

In the commentary on the Father Ted DVDs, the director tells a story about when they were hiring extras for a certain episode.  One elderly gentleman came just to scold them for 'making Irish people look bad' with their silly comedy.  The director said: If you look at it from that point of view, then Irish people can't be on TV or in movies at all.  People have to act silly in comedies, so no comedy.  In dramas people behave badly as well, so no dramas. Action movies are violent, so no action movies.  Literally the only thing left are news readers. 

So since the series takes place in HELL, if everyone had to be a good example, there would be no story. 

And they did a practice animation of Angel Dust using audio from 'The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo' and it's hilarious.