People had an extremely disproportionate response to Vivzie’s work, but especially Helluva Boss, which is more raunchy and vulgar than its parent show and prominently features queer characters front-and-center.
The reactions range from juvenile - the “lol Vivzie put gays in hell, what did she mean by this” types - to the type that makes me worried that people don’t read books or understand how storytelling works anymore. Every detail of the cast’s characterization has been nitpicked to hell and back, Stolas most of all due to the complicated relationship and the power dynamics he has with Blitz during the course of the series.
There is incredible nuance, beauty, and tragedy to Stolas’ story - a prince of Hell, forced into marriage with a woman since childhood despite being gay, never given love from his father, forced to produce an heir with an abusive wife, longing for genuine affection and falling for the one person that’s ever shown him kindness, and being forced to reckon with the consequences of his desire to break free from the social constraints that been forced on him since birth, some consequences including assassination attempts, losing his magic, and losing custody of his daughter.
Meanwhile, he gets lambasted online as a genuinely evil figure unworthy of sympathy; a horny, abusive, selfish man who ran away from his family to chase imp tail. The bitter irony is that this is exactly the kind of attitude Helluva Boss is trying to criticize with this plot. People are nuanced, their struggles are nuanced, and flattening people into solely “good” or “evil” destroys the more thoughtful critique that could’ve been had. And then that flat, nonconstructive criticism leads to an endless sludge of bad-faith arguments. “Helluva Boss is the worst queer rep and here’s why (5:36:25)”.
I really, truly implore people to read more books. I’m dead serious. Please. I don’t care how you get it. Please read some of the classics. Analyze the stories, the characters. Try to think of why these characters are doing the things they’re doing. Try to analyze why the author made the story choices they did. Broaden your horizons. People talk about “media literacy” a lot, but it’s not just about being able to ascertain the meanings of stories; it’s a deeper focus on everything, from character motivations, to what words are used in the text, down to nitty gritty like shot and text compositions.
I implore this now because as queer media becomes less accessible thanks to the rise of right-wing movements globally, it will become harder to discern bad-faith attacks on queer media from the truth, attacks that will be used to justify the removal and banning of queer media. Getting better at analyzing media broadly will help you discern what’s really going on when a group of people shout down a queer indie game and implore you to play their shitty ripoff of it instead. *cough*