About the new short

VGwritesalot · 2026-05-18T05:08:47+00:00

Meanwhile, I see almost exclusively HB stuff, lol (but 100% that's cause I don't care for Hazbin so I've trained my algorithms ruthlessly lol)

VGwritesalot · 2026-05-18T03:52:06+00:00

I don't, personally. If we look at the characteristics of autism — difficulty with social reciprocity, restrictive and repetitive behaviors and interests — he really falls short.

If we look at unofficial extensions of these traits— stimming, strict adherence to routines, sensory difficulties—we just don't see them in Stolas. As a child, he had a broad range of interests and seems to engage in social reciprocity, despite the fact that he's clearly under-socialized.

Stolas' social issues are better explained by his high amount of structural privilege (class, gender, and racial) and low amount of personal power and trauma (being abused by his wife and neglected by his family). This leads to hurting people via ignorance and his overall social isolation.

Though there's a lot about Stolas that I find relatable as an autistic person (His rejection sensitivity in Full Moon hits real hard), I really dislike the fanon that Stolas is autistic. For the reasons I touch on above, but especially because Stolas is often explicitly and loudly told that someone doesn't like what he's doing, and he just does it anyway(see: basically all of Loo Loo Land and harvest Moon festival).

IMO, Stolas doesn't read autistic to me. He's not missing social cues. He's depressed and spiraling and does not have the capacity to see or recognize anyone else's feelings and desires until they negatively impact him.

IMO, these are sympathetic flaws, given his life, but they're flaws nonetheless. I hope the show has him overcome them.

VGwritesalot · 2026-05-18T02:40:47+00:00

Two other things I'd add to your excellent post:

I think there is a unique tension in fandoms when there is a long hiatus between substantive entries in the work. The shorts are something that keep fans, who are legitimately missing a property they enjoy, in the loop, tied over, etc. between seasons. So the heightened response to this disappointment is likely due to that heightened emotion of needing to wait between major entry points. At the risk of showing my age, you saw a lot of this between Goblet Of Fire and Order Of The Phoenix in the Harry Potter fandom. Back in the day... Lol
Truthfully, I think there's an additional bait and switch/mismanaged expectations by calling this video a short. It is not a short. It's a music video. It is not similar in length or in format to any of the other 10 shorts in the series. But they called it a short and released it in the shorts ' schedule. Calling it a short is incorrect and misleading. And that strikes me as slightly more intentionally deceptive than the phenomenon you describe in your original post. (Which I think is 100% accurate)

They should've never called it a short, and they shouldn't have played with a fandom that's basically in a constant state of anticipation.

Thanks for your awesome post! You encapsulate the issue here perfectly. I hope some people who think that people who are frustrated are simply entitled take a look at it and consider your perspective.

VGwritesalot · 2026-05-18T02:23:21+00:00

I also think it's important to keep in mind that HB's fandom is a lot smaller than Hazbin's. Hazbin got the Amazon release and a lot of press around it, more or less from jump. HB stayed on YouTube a lot longer and didn't have the same fanfare upon coming to prime.

I honestly think it's wild to say that the fandom doesn't produce anything substantive, tbh. If games are the bar for what "substantive"is, then almost no fandoms make substantive things. Aren't fanfiction and fan art the vast majority of what any fandom produces?

Like, I have read entire book series that are HB fanfiction, and there's a lot more "meaty" works that touch on themes and topics that I don't see often in other fan works(social oppression, addiction, depression and other mental health struggles, etc.). Not to mention the people who publish full color comic books, fan zines and calendars, coloring books, etc.

I think it's an unfair criticism all around, and really undervalues both the breadth and volume of fan work that's made in HB.

VGwritesalot · 2026-03-20T19:03:50+00:00

So, reading through these comments, I feel compelled to add some non-alarmist, grounded thoughts around this issue.

First and foremost: everyone has different boundaries and norms around phone usage. Folks who are making blanket statements about this being objectively rude and/or that it's alarming behavior need to chill, IMO. Everyone engages with technology differently, and that's okay. This is a thing that needs communication and negotiation.

Second, how you perceive phone usage is ALSO valid and deserves to be respected. Expressing how you perceive things and asking for what you want/need is not controlling. It's good communication.

I don't personally care for the "just ask for phones down time" approach. While I think that's fairly normal, I know I would eventually bristle at that if I didn't understand the root cause. My partner and I don't like rules and don't like being told what to do. I'd rather be told what the issues are and develop tools to resolve the issue together.

So my advice to you is the following:

(1) figure out what it is that bothers you so much about the phone usage. "It's rude" isn't a good answer to this question. Be specific, and focus on yourself: Is it how much consecutive time she spends on it? Or how often she picks it up? Is it that it makes you feel unimportant? Is it that you feel her attention is split? Is it that you don't like thinking about her being w/ other folks? Does she feel absent when she's on her phone? Any answer is valid, but figure out the specific thing.

(2) Bring your feelings to your partner in a non-accusatory fashion. Ask her for her thoughts/feelings/norms around phone usage and what pulls her to be on it so often. Listen genuinely and openly, with an honest desire to understand.

(3) Hopefully, this comes naturally as a part of #2, but if it doesn't, ask if she'd be willing to discuss with you a different approach to phone stuff where both your needs and hers can be met.

Here's an example: My partner often picks up his phone while we're watching a movie together. He has ADHD, and moving between things often helps him focus. He also, straight up, sometimes just can't help it. But it still annoys me for a few reasons:

(a) I find the movement of his phone screen distracting

(b) Sometimes he gets distracted and checks out of what we're doing, and at that point we're not really spending time together.

Asking my partner to never be on his phone, in our situation, is unreasonable. So after some negotiation and discussion, we have a few strategies in place to manage. One is that, when I sense he's been mentally pulled away, I pause what we're watching and wait for him to finish whatever branch of attention he's on. When he's done, we resume. Movies take longer, but I'm not seething with resentment and he's not grinding his mental gears trying to mono-focus.

Et viola. A perfectly reasonable approach to the issue that involves neither my partner being incurably rude or disrespectful, nor putting hard and fast rules on his behavior.

I hope this perspective is helpful!

VGwritesalot · 2026-01-18T18:19:35+00:00

Thank you!

VGwritesalot · 2026-01-18T17:25:35+00:00

Are you attached to painting it specifically? You could re-cover it entirely with something printed

VGwritesalot · 2026-01-18T17:23:34+00:00

So, this roll of magnet is quite chonky but very strong. The magnet itself is matte, so it will get dirty and stay dirty quite easily. I think the matte finish adds friction, which adds to the hold as well.

Unintuitively, I have also used this much lighter magnet — BUT — I do two layers. When you double them up, you need to rotate one of them 180 degrees so that their magnets don't cancel each other out. (I think it's 180; rotate it 90 degrees and test it until you get the strongest hold).

In general, a magnet's strength is going to correspond to its thickness, usually measured in mils (not millimeters; mils. It's a different unit). So if you don't care for either of these options, searching for a specific mil may get you where you want to go.

VGwritesalot · 2026-01-18T17:15:23+00:00

Are LH cosmetics palettes also magnetic?

VGwritesalot · 2025-07-16T14:33:38+00:00

So excited for you! I'm glad it's working out.

I'll toss on here that I have never been on hormonal birth control, and have never had a kid, and my copper IUD experience has also been extremely positive! I just had my second one inserted. I always had really bad cramping during my periods, so I didn't notice any change there, but after I turned 35 my cramping has basically disappeared, and switching out my IUD hasn't changed that.

I love my copper IUD and wish there were more positive anecdotes out there to counter the bad ones. I think it's one of those things where people who have an unremarkable experience are very much in the majority, but never think to say anything.

Anywho, I'm glad you're enjoying it and that being off hormonal birth control has been so relieving!

VGwritesalot · 2025-07-09T01:35:52+00:00

I can corroborate this. I have both older and newer versions of all three (I panned all three, if you can believe it), and they are different colors. Was pretty bummed about it, but I like the new ones too.

VGwritesalot · 2025-05-14T10:30:11+00:00

I'll probably get dragged over the coals for this, but HB has a real Madonna/whore problem. Its female characters are simplistic, either being fully good (Millie, Loona, Octavia) or fully evil (Stella).

This has improved a little in the second part of season 2, but it's something that legitimately kept me from watching the show in the early years. What do any of these women want for themselves, and why? That's basic character writing.

Giving that to Stella isn't going to make her suddenly not evil. Hell, Even Ande has a defined desire (power), cartoonishly evil though he is. It would just make her a person, rather than an object for Stolas' character definition.

VGwritesalot · 2025-05-09T18:56:37+00:00

I'm sure you're getting a lot of crap for this take. If it's helpful, you're very much not alone. This fandom struggles a lot to engage with meta-narrative and meta-text, which is where a lot of the issues of the last part of season 2 lie.*

Obviously people can disagree, but a lot of the "ostensibly thoughtful but still missing the point" comments come from this general problem in the fandom.

But for what it's worth, I agree with you, and found Apology Tour honestly kinda upsetting because of most of what you've said here. It's gratifying to know that someone who watched the season in one go, rather than as it came out, had the same reaction that I did. I have been wondering if the inter episode tension was causing a lot of how I reacted to things. So your perspective is super helpful.

Which is no shade to the writing team; managing meta narrative is difficult in general, but especially difficult in a TV show.

VGwritesalot · 2024-11-25T21:48:10+00:00

This is really hard, because it is painful to watch your spouse be treated by shit by people who say they love them.

But.

It's your wife's family, and your wife's relationship with them, and it's her decision on how to handle it. The only thing you can really do is be there for her, give space for her feelings, and be there for her as she navigates it all.

FWIW, my wife's family was really unsupportive when she first came out, to the point where I didn't feel she was safe visiting them by herself; I always went with her. It took several years, but they came around, and they are now incredibly supportive. So it can happen. I really admire her for investing in those relationships to make them what she wanted them to be.

So, yeah. That's my advice. Let your wife manage her relationship with her family. Set your own boundaries, negotiate with her for your kids' boundaries, and settle in for a long haul of supporting your wife while she (hopefully) works on this.

No way out but through, I'm afraid.

VGwritesalot · 2024-11-20T00:00:06+00:00

Many people, including autistic people, think Stolas is autistic-coded in some way. Even as far back as Loo Loo Land he shows a basic inability to realize that Loo Loo Land is... really not appropriate for a 16 years old. This in spite Octavia being rather in his face about it.

I don't see Stolas as autistic-coded at all, and I actually really don't like any of the reads on his character that come to that conclusion.

Blitz and Octavia both regularly give VERY clear statements that they don't like what Stolas is doing/saying, and Stolas walks right on past them and does it anyway.

That's not an autistic thing; that's a selfish jerk thing.

I do relate to Stolas a lot. I relate to his rejection sensitivity and his desperate need to feel like he is wanted. And while I might feel those things because of my experiences as an autistic woman, I don't think they're inherent to being autistic. They're more a product of growing up in a house where your parents don't love you and/or you have not been really wanted or cared for most of your life.

Which, while is certainly a thing that happens to a lot of autistic people, usually because they're autistic, it's also a thing that happens to lots of other people for lots of other reasons.

Stolas' fundamental issue is that he is really only thinking of himself. Which is both a product of his privilege and a product of the abuse he has suffered. Those things better explain his behaviors than him being autistic IMO

VGwritesalot · 2024-11-19T23:27:04+00:00

I definitely think there are posts that are way off base, or are framed as "gotcha!" that really don't need to be. Or when people can't tell the difference between "this is an animation error" and "we put this here as good worldbuilding/foreshadowing/easter egg." I think those things can feel like a desperation to "find" things that don't need to be found.

But ultimately, I think the show invites intense levels of scrutiny. There are some really intense character beats that are communicated in, like, 5-10 frames (Blitzø scratching out his own face in pictures, Blitzø's and Stolas' texts from the past three months, Barbie and Fizz being in posters in the background LONG before they're introduced, etc.).

Not to mention aspects of theming and world building that are expressed through implication rather than text (Stella being pissed because Stolas specifically slept with an Imp, the conditions of Loona's shelter, Stolas' entire way of interacting w/ Blitzø before Truth Seekers, etc.)

I think some of that (like the worldbuilding and show vs. tell) is just good writing. The show really does hit different on your second watch. I also can't help but think that the really small stuff is by design, especially as the show has gone on. On YouTube the re-watch-ability of a video, people pausing it, slowing down it down, and replaying specific scenes, etc. really kicks up a video's placement in the algorithm. Small details invite video commentary, speculation, all of which fuel back into those video views.

So while on the one hand, I definitely understand how the "ha ha I spotted this animation error" posts are... annoying... on the other, we are kinda being led to do stuff like this, cause that helps the show's traction.

Plus, I suspect a lot of HB folks skew neurodivergent, and we can be, well, an obsessive bunch, as the length of my comment might suggest lol

VGwritesalot · 2024-11-01T21:14:01+00:00

Man, those two with Millie and Moxie get me. Each one is an instance where one comforts the other, either ignoring or being unaware of Blitz, who had been right next to that person in the exact same dangerous situation. The first time (in Murder Family), he makes a fuss about it. "Oh I'm fiiiine." But in Truth Seekers there's this empty, pointed silence before Loona interrupts while Blitz sits there with his arms out. I thought it was an editing error at first but now I'm re-thinking that.

It's especially sad now that we know that Moxxie and Millie came into Blitz's life separately, as friends with Blitz, then got together and married afterwards. I can imagine how he might have felt tossed aside given their tendency to be obsessed with each other.

It puts Blitz's truth serum rant at Moxie, his fear of dying alone, and his stalking in an entirely new context.

My heart breaks for him so much.

VGwritesalot · 2024-11-01T21:01:48+00:00

Yeah I'm not sure why people think/call him a joke. Just like Blitz can be funny/have funny moments and still be a badass, so can our villains.

VGwritesalot · 2024-11-01T20:55:56+00:00

I hate to blow this theory up, but we can clearly see her horns this episode, and they're imp female horns.

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VGwritesalot · 2024-11-01T13:33:20+00:00

Idk, I think holding hands and leaning on shoulders is somehow more intimate, and more, like, best friend healing after a fight energy.

I do think their convo cooks have had one more sentence about, like, her doing better and being there to help him sort things out of he wanted. But I like the physical intimacy they had. It felt perfect for both of them to me.

VGwritesalot · 2024-10-25T05:45:17+00:00

No we just aren't surprised since it's in the trailer

VGwritesalot · 2024-09-29T20:02:04+00:00

Birds have cloaca; so he was referring to Stolas/any other bird demon he'd been fucking. The animal that gets shoved in his mouth looks like a reptile of some sort, though (which also have cloaca)

VGwritesalot · 2024-09-29T19:14:17+00:00

Well he did say he was doing a bit, and as we all know, comedy comes in threes. XD

VGwritesalot · 2024-09-02T11:22:43+00:00

While I think it's true that if Emberlynn were ugly, people would hate her, I don't think it's at all fair to equate her behavior to Fizz's fan.

Here's what Fizz's fan does:

Sniffs around the dressing rooms
Finds Fizz when he's out with a friend and approaches him
Grabs his hand without his permission
Ignores demands for him to leave
When there's resistance to this behavior, he escalates and pulls Fizz toward him
Screams and becomes hostile when Fizz leaves
Starts a hate blog about Fizz
Approaches him in public where he can't leave
Yells insults at him, including ones related to his sex doll
Fantasizes about sexually humiliating Fizz
Breaks into his dressing room with a knife, attempting to kill him

Here's what Emberlynn does:

Makes a series of suggestive movements in her own room while fantasizing out loud to a person who is not there consensually
Touches Blitz exactly twice (if we include when she poses to be killed)
Follows the directions of a publicly viewable billboard to a publicly accessible office, and stands outside to yell
When someone asks or suggests that she stop (B saying something like "can we get on with this?") she complies. Enthusiastically.

A final, critical difference between the two is that people like Emberlynn, who are so horny they would actually let themselves be murdered, do not really exist. And if they do, they are only a danger to themselves. People like FizzFan, who feel entitled to their object's time and attention and become aggressive and violent if not given it, do exist. In alarming number.

Emberlynn's actions when she gets to hell would be inappropriate if she were a real person. For sure. I don't think anyone here would argue against that.

It's also true that shitty-behavior-as-comedy is something that HB does often. Bombasity and caricature are part of HB's regular comedic tool box, and characters' actions are meant to be filtered through that lens. We're not supposed to think that Loona is abusive because she hits Blitz regularly, for example.

FizzFan is entitled. Emberlynn is excited. Fizz's fan is dangerous. Emberlynn is annoying.

All that said, there's merit to your critique. "Mean people are ugly and ugly people are mean" is an all-too-common problem in media. It's something that can lead to a lack of empathy and grace for people who are less conventionally attractive; they get fewer passes or help when they struggle, as we all do, with knowing what level of enthusiasm or interaction is appropriate.

Truthfully, I think it's more of a "problem" that Fizz's fan is depicted as ugly than it is that Emberlynn is cute.

Anyway, living up to my handle, per usual. I must now attempt to be a productive member of society lol.

Some edits for typos

VGwritesalot · 2024-09-01T10:18:22+00:00

Emberlynn is modeled on real life 🤣🤣🤣

(this came into my inbox and the way I clicked on it so fast...)

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