Happy(?) Gold Morning! Here's The 'thing' I Mentioned I Was Working On A Few Weeks Back: A Map Of All

The only stuff that made it from the book into the movie are some of the aesthetics, Michelle's name, and her motivation to find her brother.

List of stuff down below of what the book had that the movie didn't have. Spoilers for people who haven't read the book. (Read the book it's great)

There is no AI.

All the robots are controlled by humans.

The USA had a civil war that was fought by drone pilots who wore older versions of Neurocasters which required them to use addictive drugs that also destroyed their ability to reproduce.

People who wear the Neurocasters too long meld into a digital hivemind.

Neurocasters keeps the mind alive as long as it is worn. It does not protect the body from harm.

Graphic description of someone's brain getting chunkified by an anti-matter round.

Michelle's bio parents didn't die in a car crash. Instead her father is unmentioned (if I recall correctly) and her mom was a veteran who died from a drug overdose after being abandoned by the government. (foster parents "died" due to the Neurocasters)

Michelle dyed her blonde hair black because she wanted to distance herself from the "popular" girls and to spite her foster mom (who Michelle beat over the head with a lunch tray after she mocked her for wanting to dye her hair). Kind of important to her character. They keep her blonde in the movie for some fucking reason.

Michelle had a girlfriend who broke up with her after a crazy priest converted her. Heartbreaking to read.

Michelle found her brother's body rotting away in a house while wearing a Neurocaster. Still alive and in control of Cosmo.

It is implied that she and him rowed out into the ocean in a kayak to be swallowed by the waves.

Cultist working for the hivemind hunting for her brother as well, possibly what Giancarlo Esposito's character was based on though I doubt it.

Another new critique video I mostly agree with, this is made by the same person who made that “How to waste a villain” Stella video. I’m sorry but the female characters just don’t get the proper focus and time the same way the male characters do. They’re all obstacles for the male characters, mainly Stolas and Blitz because the show is fucking revolved around them. Octavia can’t be a character on her own or focused on alone without be attached to her father, Millie has the personality of stale bread and is attached to Moxxie, having absolutely NOTHING going on for her other than being a southern bad ass fighter, Verosika is just a standard tool for Blitz’s “development” to show that he’s a 2 dimensional character who deep down “cares” despite Verosika not even showing up since episode 7, Loona is an unlikable bitch who never changes even when the show tries to give her a sad backstory and have her be “lonely”, and mainly only gets focus when the show wants to dive into her relationship with Blitz despite that never changing either, and finally Stella is a one note boring bland villain who could have been a 2 dimensional character that actually had a relationship with her daughter and still been the antagonist, just EXPLORED more to make her actually interesting, but we can’t have that since the all the show wants to do is suck off Stolas and Blitz and paint them in a godlike light where they never get the consequences of their actions and get praised for being “2 dimensional”.

The funny thing is that I say Millie has the personality of stale bread, but honestly? This is just my opinion but I think almost all of Viv’s female characters have the personality of stale bread, or they’re at least so by the numbers like I said before. I literally don’t blame the fandom for favoriting the male characters more because the female characters are so bland and uninteresting compared to the males, and that’s the writers faults because you can smell the favoritism. They all try so hard to make characters like Blitz and Stolas into 3 dimensional characters that they push the others to the back and only focus on THEIR perspectives and are so AFRIAD to actually paint them as flawed beings that can be in the wrong and do bad things that aren’t excusable. I think that pretty much sums up Viv’s outlook on her male characters as a whole. She tries so hard to make most of them either 3 or 2 dimensional, especially the ones she favors and are her “babies”, she adds so many things to them, once again being an overly ambitious writer, for example look at all the things she’d added to Angel and Alastor’s characters over the years compared to Charlie or Vaggie. Even fucking Husk has more stuff to him than Charlie or Vaggie does. This is why everyone thought Charlie was so fucking boring compared to Alastor or Angel because she is. She only has one thing to her and isn’t developed enough to even be interesting compared to them. While the majority of her male characters are either 3 or 2 dimensional, her females are either 2 dimensional (but flat) or 1 dimensional, having basic labels to them like “the nice but snarky one” or “the edgy mean bitch”.

Viv just clearly enjoys writing and developing her male characters more and that’s been clear even before Hazbin came along. I don’t understand why both her male and female characters can’t be interesting. What’s so hard about creating a female character that’s on part with her males? What’s so hard about putting the same energy and effort she does for writing characters like Angel, Blitz, and Stolas for a female one? What’s so hard about making her females 3 dimensional and engaging? I’ll never get it. In my personal opinion guys, I don’t think the show is sexist nor do I think Vivzie as a person is, but one thing is clear, whenever she creates a female character, she sees a VERY limited option on what they should be like. It’s like she doesn’t know ANY other kind of tropes or character quirks outside of being eye candy or extremely edgy, and that’s the problem. No character should be so damn limited or by the numbers, any character can be many things as long as you put your mind and effort to it, and that’s something Viv and HB writing team hasn’t done. They would rather focus on their male twink yaoi fanfiction soap opera that HB has become, and as for Hazbin? I’m expecting the same thing honestly, just the female characters to be mainly flat and the males being more dimensional and developed.

reminder that Scott Cawthon, creator of five nights at freddy's, is a sincerely evil bastard who loves Trump and has donated the maximum legal amount to ragingly bigoted republican politicians.

he cowrote and produced the film. if you pay to see the movie, that's where your money is going. just pirate it.

I am so fucking tired of communities saying "separate the art from the artist" when the problematic creator of the art is actively benefiting from the art itself. I don't see why people who interact with these works instead of either finding new works or interacting with fanmade projects. IF A CREATOR IS STILL GETTING MONEY FROM A WORK, DO NOT SPEND MONEY ON SAID WORK.

This post is mostly for FNAF and Harry Potter fans. Yes, Scott Cawthon can spend his money how ever he wants but that does not make it okay. The people he spent and may still spend his money on are racists and are active harming the Trans, Gay, Black and POC communities. He gets the money from us.

I don't think I should have to explain J.K. Rowling, but I may have to later.

I understand that it's hard to move on from things that have been in your life for years, but PLEASE spending your money and time on something else.

Ewww why'd you put Scott's Republican face next to Toby? What the hell did Toby do to be put next to him?

Scott Cawthon & Toby Fox

I just wanna know why you don't seen to like Scott Cawthon, I tend to stay far away from drama so I ligetatmently have no clue.

He is a republican who donated money Trump and Mitch McConnell

I grieve alongside you

aw heck nah Netflix got to The Electric State noooooo 😭

Watched the Netflix trailer for the Electric State movie and a recap of the movie

And as expected, they don't seem to be following the book much... at all...

It's more like they glazed the plot and pictures and went off that

For those curious, the Electric State is a novel by one of my favorite artists ever, Simon Stålenhag. The original graphic novel is so calm, melancholic and dystopian. The best I can do to describe the plot is it's about a girl and a robot controlled by her brother as they travel across the almost post-apocalyptic Western Coast to find said brother; it has themes of hyper consumerism. Sadly, the movie has the typical "epic action movie" vibes starring Chris Patt and Millie Bobby Brown and treating the AI like they're friends and we're one in the same (in the book the robots were contributors to the hyper consumerism). Doesn't help that this over 320-million-dollar movie was directed by the Russo brothers, people who've gone on record to endorse AI, which is funny considering Electric State condemns it.

Heck according to the comments under one of the trailers, one of the trailers for this didn't even credit Simon.

I'd highly recommend checking out the graphic novel The Electric State, and shoot, check out Simon's other works too.

They're beautiful, but somber.

Here's some pics from the book and a video talking the book too if anyone is interested

The Breathtaking Horror of 'The Electric State' - Curious Archive

Nuanced and Multifaceted Conflict vs. “Good v. Evil” in fiction

So. This is another thing I’ve wanted to talk about for a while. I promise I won’t always be focusing on Helluva Boss in my critiques, and I actually have quite a few other series I want to talk about.

There’s a big chance that I’ll be saying everything other people have already said, but I can’t help but WANT to talk about this specific character in regard to the story’s conflict. I think that it’s important to recognize when a character is written to be a complex person, and when a character is written to be an enemy to be defeated, and how not following through with your set-up can affect your story.

And HB does that A LOT in my opinion.

So. Let’s get into it. This time I’ll be talking about complex conflict between characters vs. black and white conflict, and I’ll also be touching on story set-ups and audience expectations.

I want to talk about a character who could have really made some of the internal character conflicts have so much more depth and intrigue. I want to talk about Stella Goetia

*as a side note this post is MUCH longer than I intended but I really wanted to get into a lot of the background and reasons for how Stella’s character development has actually completely changed what HB’d story conflict could have looked like. I’ll try and sum up everything in the end in a TLDR for y’all

So. Most of the reviews of her character I see talk about how she’s been “ruined” by the writing team revealing that she’s always been very abusive towards Stolas

I have to start off by saying I actually don’t think that Stella or her portrayal was “ruined” by the writing direction her character has been taken in.

In fact, this critique bothers me, because it doesn’t really get to what I think the actual root of why people are disappointed in Stella’s characterization, and the type of conflict that now exists between her and Stolas.

The main reason I believe people are unsatisfied with Stella is because they believed that her character was being set up for a complex and nuanced conflict between her and Stolas, and then that turned out not to be the case.

A quick disclaimer- I do think it’s possible to subvert audience expectations about story and characters in a satisfying way. But it has to be done in a way that respects the audiences intelligence and willingness to think about the story.

If your plot-twist, unreliable narrator, subversion, or what-have-you is done well, the audience should be able to either figure out what’s going based on the little information you’ve given them, and if they don’t, the change or subversion should still make sense and CLICK in hindsight.

Otherwise, your subversion will end up feeling cheap or confusing. Or worse, like a lie.

And this is one of the MAIN issues I think people have with Stella.

As the audience, we were NOT given enough information on her or her character before it’s revealed that she’s just “evil” and always has been, apparently since she was a literal child.

Again, I don’t think it’s an inherently bad decision to have a flat or pure evil villain. I’m fine with Stella being one, even if it’s less interesting to me personally.

But it’s definitely very different from what was initially implied and set-up, and the audience can pick up on that.

Before S2E1 “The Circus” we see Stella a total of 3 times in person, with one time being a flashback.

I’m going to go over those times to analyze if anything set-up in Stella’s appearances points towards her being. Well, totally and irredeemably awful and abusive I guess.

The very first time we see Stella is in the same bed with Stolas—Octavia calls for her parents, both Stolas AND Stella. Stella grumbles and refuses to get up and tells Stolas to go. This doesn’t immediately strike me as a sign of her being a terrible person. That exact scenario is present in a lot of family comedies, kids’ movies, and sitcoms.

Nothing about this screams that Stella is a terrible parent or an abusive partner to me. It just tells me she’s tired and doesn’t want to get up, which again, is not uncommon.

The next time we see her, she’s yelling at Stolas, and she throws a servant at him in anger.

Now, there’s no excuse for this, her behavior here is not okay, regardless of her feelings. But we understand why she’s acting the way she is--she’s furious with Stolas for cheating on her. At this point with the information we have, it’s also very reasonable to believe her feelings have been hurt.

Later Octavia talks about how her parents didn’t used to hate each other, and the way Stolas’ tries to explain their failing marriage to her comes across like his relationship with Stella is one that’s always had difficulties that they have tried and failed to overcome.

None of this information is enough to really convey or hint that Stella is and has always been abusive or evil. It shows that Stella and Stolas have a very rough relationship, and that Stella most likely has anger management difficulties, but you have to do lot of extra work to come to the conclusion that Stella is completely at fault here.

The next time we see her though, things have clearly escalated, because it’s revealed that she’s one that hired Striker to assassinate Stolas.

Now. Usually. Yeah. That would be a HUGE red flag. And I mean. It still obviously is.

But, and I never thought I’d use this uno reverse card, this is one of the few times where the explanation of “But it’s hell, what did you expect???” actually makes sense to me.

Because yeah, it is hell. It’s the end of episode 5 when we learn this, and our protagonists have killed and assassinated multiple people. Taking a hit out on people really doesn’t seem to be that uncommon of a thing in hell.

Even the next scene after the reveal that Stella is the one who hired Striker makes light of how serious this is, by showing that Stella was basically yelling her assassination plot right to Stolas’ face.

This is played for laughs! I genuinely am not sure if the writers intended for this to be foreshadowing of Stella’s abuse or not because if so, they turned her attempting to kill her husband into a joke!

If you cannot keep your themes or tone consistent, how is the audience supposed to follow your story?

There is subtle storytelling, and then there’s tacking information and character points later on in your writing. And this can have two causes.

Either your audience has to do the work of story-telling for you and make up their own reasons for what’s happening to make the story coherent OR they will be disappointed and dissatisfied by the final product.

I think that’s the main reason why S2E1 of Helluva Boss felt so jarring story-wise, and why Stella, to me at least, suddenly felt like a brand new character.

Like I haven’t been this confused by a character being suddenly evil since Hans from Frozen.

(like seriously why the hell did they put this scene in if not to just trick the audience. This isn’t giving us any plot info it’s only giving us contradictory info on his character. Like I talked about before, Hans’ heel-face-turn doesn’t feel like a twist. It feels like a lie.)

Okay so, how does any of this actually affect anything? Who cares if Stella is evil, that doesn’t automatically make the story bad!

Well. Yeah, of course not. Ironically, having the main conflict your story being a battle between “Good v. Bad” characters is neither good nor bad. It’s just a story decision. And ultimately at the end of the day, the writers of Helluva Boss can choose to tell their story however they’d like.

But, depending on how this is executed, good v evil stories can be a lot less interesting than morally grey or complicated conflicts and characters.

I am more interested in the version of the story where Stella and Stolas are imperfect and messy people. I am more interested in the story where Stolas has an affair to escape being in an arranged marriage, and Stella overreacts by arranging a hit on her husband (unless calling out a hit is normal in hell, but we can’t know b/c there is no baseline for what is considered normal in hell)

I am so much more interested in the story where Stolas and Stella are both depicted as being in the wrong, as being incredibly hurt by each other’s actions, and as not knowing how to repair their broken relationship for the sake of their daughter.

That story feels very real to me. It’s one I want to engage and invest in.

I want to see if these characters can grow to accept their mistakes and learn and change for the sake of Octavia and having to co-exist with each other, or if they’ll slip back into mutual destruction and toxicity.

But that’s not the story we’ll get to see, because it seems like the writers are more interested in keeping Stolas from having to grow as a character. And because of that, Stella has been turned into an evil obstacle that must be defeated, instead of a nuanced and real person.

I also feel like I have to say. I know I would be MUCH less frustrated by this if I hadn’t seen an HB crew member talking about how their show is similar to Bojack Horseman.

Because. It’s just not. I’m sorry, I’m not saying that to be mean, or condescending, or rude, but the way characters are written in Helluva Boss is almost completely black and white at this point.

Regardless of the writer’s intent, the vast majority of the choices they have made in Season 2 come off as explanations to excuse the protagonist’s mistakes, and give them a “get out of being potentially in the wrong” free card.

Compared to the writing decisions in Bojack, which almost always has characters confront their wrongdoings, for better or worse, HB honestly feels like it’s the Anti-Bojack.

It would take a TON of character development and time to make HB’s characters as interesting, fleshed-out, and as real as Bojack’s are, and at this point that’s I don’t think it will ever happen.

Again. Having black and white conflict is FINE. It is a choice in story telling that can be done very effectively. But if you are making a black and white story where one side is always terrible and evil, and one side can do no wrong, you can’t act like you’ve written something that is deeper and more emotionally complex and grey than that.

And the first time the writers gave Stella more than 3 sentences to string together, they made it very clear that any chance of her being a more complex and engaging character was being tossed out the window.

————

TLDR:

The main reason people are upset about Stella being shown as abusive in S2E1 of HB is probably because the initial depictions of her didn’t give us enough information on her character to tell that she was just evil/a terrible person.

The way the story was written in S1 to set up the possibility of a very interesting and complex conflict between Stella and Stolas, and when it was revealed that she’s just. The worst. There were people that were disappointed by this, because they expected more.

Audiences actually aren’t idiots, and when you subtly foreshadow something and then completely change things, that can be frustrating.

It’s MORE than okay to write a straightforward good v evil story, but it depending on the way it’s written and executed, it may not be as interesting to mature audiences as a more morally grey story would be.

If you can’t write characters confronting their flaws and being in the wrong, please don’t compare your writing to Bojack, I mean. C’mon.