dancing with the right partner

I can’t take many Stolas haters seriously because they are mad that Stella is 100% a villain and not some scorned wife with a sympathetic backstory. But at the same time they are mad that Stolas isn’t the one dimensional villain he was in the pilot who wanted more people to die from global warming instead of being the emotionally complex and well written character he is in main show who just wants to love Blitzø and make Octavia happy.

Another batch of requests from offsite. I was busy so I let them pile up for a while.

I'm hoping time an energy will permit me to do more. I was planning on updating Timewarp this weekend but my sleep was erratic.

There will still be one coming though. I wanna get this done.

One thing I really appreciate about Helluva Boss is how well Stolas' abuse by Stella is depicted and how seriously it's taken. So often the abuse of men by women is overlooked, diminished, and scoffed at, and it's so relieving that the narrative never does that.

Like most abusers, Stella is shown to be very controlling. She's furious that Stolas ruined her reputation, she demands that he stops singing, she tries to hit him when he talks back, she threatens him multiple times, she's trying to take all of his assets and leave him with nothing, etc. It wouldn't surprise me if when the abuse is exposed (because it seems likely that it will be), it's revealed that she controlled him in other ways too, like dictating what he could eat, what he could wear, what emotions he could show in public, and what he was allowed to do outside of work. Because that's what abusers like her do.

It's no wonder that Stolas, who has longed for connection his entire life, still has no friends and no support system. Stella likely controlled who he associated with, and we see on screen how she loudly and publicly humiliates him without any of the people around her batting an eye. This is a common isolation tactic, serving the double purpose of wearing away whatever is left of Stolas' self-esteem and turning public opinion against him. And she's apparently done it for so long that not only is he resigned to it, the other party guests nearby either don't care or laugh at him with her. Notice also that even though everyone else is mingling in groups, no one is talking to Stolas and he's still standing near Stella despite how visibly upsetting he finds it to hear her mock the way he dissociated while she was sexually assaulting him.

Stolas finding the courage to leave her after making an external connection with Blitz, and now that Octavia is very nearly an adult, is also pretty realistic. Blitz is brave and brash and made Stolas feel alive and happy, things it's implied he's only felt with Octavia before, and that encouraged him to follow Blitz's example. Stolas goes from trying to placate Stella in Loo Loo Land, to stopping her from hitting him and telling her to get out of his house for good, even though the way he backs away as she approaches and then collapses when she leaves shows that he's still very scared of her. He's struggling to take control of his own life and has decided to fight back, despite how dangerous that is for him.

And it is, indeed, dangerous. Unfortunately, as is so common in cases of real domestic abuse, Stella attempted to kill him after he began trying to leave her, in an effort to control him once and for all. Escaping domestic abuse is hard, complicated, terrifying, and often incredibly risky for this reason, and I'm glad that they didn't shy away from it. It's well documented that the most dangerous time for an abuse victim is after they try to leave, so the escalation from being able to hide most of the abuse from Octavia, to being openly violent with him in front of Octavia when Stella's control started slipping after the affair began and he announced that he wanted a divorce, to her taking lethal action when he refused to call off either, makes it the most realistic depiction of intimate partner violence I've seen in a long time.

The writers also makes a point to show how witnessing abuse and its aftereffects hurts any children involved as well, which is important. Octavia was sheltered from witnessing most of the abuse for a long time, but once Stella became more blatant and open with it, it rocked Octavia's world and left her feeling deeply insecure. Fighting back against Stella was healing for Stolas, who was finally starting to feel alive and a little more control of his own narrative, but seeing the fighting did hurt Octavia. And we don't even know what the social fallout of the divorce will be yet, so it's possible that even if Stolas had made his escape when she was younger that Octavia still could have been caught in the crossfire. Generational trauma like that isn't always acknowledged, so I like how they show that abuse hurts more than just the direct victim, and that sometimes collateral is inevitable.

I have high hopes for where they take Stolas and Octavia's healing arc, since they've done such a good job with showing how Stolas' childhood neglect and intimate partner violence affects him and his relationships. The way his lifelong abuse has seeped into just about everything he does isn't something I've seen acknowledged too often in the fannish spaces I've been exposed to, but I have a feeling that we'll soon be getting to a part in the story where we're told more about it and not just shown it.

I’ve been wondering for the longest time why Stolas even attended the “Not-Divorced” party. It was clearly designed specifically to humiliate him and make him miserable.

And then I realized

He didn’t want to be rude.

y'all ever think about this? about how Stolas wanted to be damned sure Octavia had not just one parent but TWO whole parents? sounds like an absolute wealth of parents to a kid raised by butlers and books. he tried. bonus:

I’ve always wanted to draw this meme! 😎

People seem to like my Helluva Boss art so here?

Headcanon that Stella straight up missed Octavia’s hatching because she was throwing a “thank god I’m not pregnant anymore” ball

Stolas, on the other hand, had camped out in the nursery for two days, reading aloud to her egg and talking to her

For added heartbreak, remember that at the time Stolas and Stella were both like 18/19 years old

Do you think when Blitz finds out how physically, emotionally, and sexually abusive Stella was to Stolas, it’ll recontextualize their first night sleeping together for him?

Do you think he’ll wonder why Stolas wanted so badly for his first night of consensual sex to be with someone he trusted?

Do you think he’ll be unable to look at himself in the mirror because he had sex with Stolas under false pretenses?

Do you think he’ll have to plug his ears whenever he hears her screechy, scratchy voice telling him he’s just like her?

Do you think he’d wonder what other words he’s used that made Stolas flinch?

Do you think he’ll wash himself raw to get the self-loathing off of oozing all over him?

Do you think he’ll watch for signs of PTSD in Stolas’s expression when Stolas drifts off for too long or looks like he’s aged centuries in a few weeks?

Do you think that he’ll go with Stolas whenever Stella wants to meet with him, not because Stolas needs protection but because Blitz doesn’t want him alone with his abuser?

have some creatures

just Stolas watering the plants!! Definitely not Stella angry in the backround..

Helluva Boss as textposts part 20/?

1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 / 13 / 14 / 15 / 16 / 17 / 18 / 19 / 20

getting down

more of the ladies being daft

photo bomb

sneak sneak sneak

As somebody who is also a fan of Alastor, I feel that if you like/simp for him, good for you, but you instantly lose all privileges for shaming people who like other antagonists in the Hazbin/Helluva verse.

Yes, Alastor is funny and charming, but he’s also a bloodthirsty cannibalistic serial killer who doesn’t even try to hide the fact that he’s helping out for personal gain.

Again. If you love him, there’s nothing wrong with that. You’re just not allowed to unironically publicly shame or judge people who are fans of other characters such as Striker, Stella, Vox, or even Valentino. (And actually, you shouldn’t do that regardless.)

It’s all FICTIONAL. People are allowed to like characters because they’re not real and fun to watch. Liking evil character’s DOES NOT equal commending their actions.