Having poked my head back into Helluva Boss a bit after the I.M.P. Training Video short, I am reminded of something I think is a very core aspect of the show’s story, narrative and themes, yet is also something I wonder how much of the fandom actually fully grasps, or wants to grasp.
Namely, that Helluva Boss is a show about messy, fucked-up, ‘disaster’ characters. But very pointedly not just the fun, silly and sexy parts of ‘disaster’ characters that fandom loves so much. It’s ALSO about the actually messy, uncomfortable and UGLY aspects of these characters as well. Specifically, how deeply hurt and traumatized people can all too often and easily make TERRIBLE decisions that end up hurting themselves, and OTHERS around them.
As in, this is the CORE of both Stolas’s and especially BLITZO’s entire characters, as well as the source of basically all of their relationship conflicts. Blitzo and Stolas are both deeply hurt men who’s deeply ingrained trauma and inability or refusal to recognize or understand it leads them to make terrible decisions that end up hurting themselves, each other and many others around them. And it is notably something that, by the end of Season 2, they have both only just started to recognize and take steps to improve.
It’s why Blitzo has left a trail of broken-hearted and often traumatized exes in his wake, it’s very likely why he destroyed his relationship with his sister (I have a hunch it wasn’t just the fire that drove them apart…) and it’s why he still has an understated but very dysfunctional relationship with Loona that is sure to blow up sooner or later.
It’s why Stolas unwittingly drove his own daughter away from him by unknowingly giving her the, frankly entirely reasonable, impression that he simply did not care about her anymore, or at least cares FAR more about his imp boyfriend.
It’s why Blitzo’s and Stolas’s big fight and breakup in The Full Moon wasn’t just likely, but frankly INEVITABLE.
And so much more that we’ve seen so far, and no doubt WILL see in the upcoming seasons.
Now for me, this complicated, ambiguous and general messiness just makes the characters in Helluva Boss all the more INTERESTING. It’s why Blitzo is probably my favorite example of the ‘sympathetic asshole’ protagonist trope (at least the male version) that’s become so popular over the last twenty years. It’s why I find Stolas to be one of the most compelling and interesting ‘entirely-loving-yet-super-dysfunctional-dad’ characters I’ve ever seen. It’s why I find Blitzo and Stolas interesting as a VERY dysfunctional relationship between two very flawed people who nonetheless have grown to love each other and are now trying to make things work. And it’s likewise why I find so many other characters in the show so damn interesting and compelling.
But I have to wonder how much of the rest of the fandom feels similar, or even just recognizes all this complexity and nuance to begin with? Given how fandom seems to so often prefer trying to sand off all the edges of characters like this so they can use them as some metaphorical stuffed animal to cuddle with.
Like as someone who has been fairly distant from the fandom for a while, I have to ask: At this point, has the general HB fandom actually recognized Stolas’s major fuckups and how that makes him all the more compelling and interesting as a character? Or is he still the fandom’s favorite ‘poor and precious little sadboy-uwu-blorbo who can do no wrong’?
sure stella sees stolas’s adultery as cheating but it’s not so much cheating “on her” as it is cheating at a really shitty game they’re being forced to play at gunpoint lol. cheating at being a demon of the ars goetia. cheating at crab bucketing. its a betrayal of the institution of marriage and their class position, not of her specifically. which to stella is so much worse!
The new Helluva Boss short has me back in Stolas Defense Squad mode. I love me a deeply flawed character, and Stolas for sure checks off plenty of deeply flawed check boxes, but the way the anti-Stolas crowd frames his relationship with Octavia drives me up the fucking wall.
A lot of the criticism of their relationship makes me suspect it comes from people who are 1. Young and have trouble conceptualizing parents as people and/or having needs that supersede those of their offspring. 2. Project their own traumas onto Octavia. Which wouldn't irk me nearly as much if it wasn't doing a disservice to the sort of real-world abuse she's going through.
Since she's almost 18, I have a feeling we'll see this coming of age chapter of her arc climax with an arranged marriage of her own. And, if that happens, I'm sure I'm going to see plenty of people complaining that a reconciliation being kicked off with her staring down the barrel of the life her father went through will absolve Stolas of too much. Which... Straight-up fuck off? Him leaving does not need to be absolved.
Octavia is about the same age now as Stolas was when she was conceived. She'll be looking at a future of compulsory heterosexuality... Which, hottake apparently, but if your child is an obligation conceived via marital rape, you have carte blanche on how to feel about that. That's not a life you brought into this world willingly; the moral obligation to love and nurture them isn't yours to bare. Which is neither here nor there given that Stolas adores Octavia and, by being a central pillar of her emotional support, now has a responsibility toward her. I just hate seeing people discuss this with weird natalist philosophizing like Octavia having a healthy childhood was ever a reality or even an option.
And it probably also feeds into my annoyance at people calling Stolas a bad father when my man is doing the best with the tools he's been given. Which are next to zero. There's, like, a roll of duct tape and one (1) wrench in there and he only theoretically knows how to use either. He wanted to give Octavia the childhood he didn't have, the childhood he felt he owed her. THAT was what set Octavia up to be hurt, not Stolas falling for Blitz. Had someone like Blitz been in his life earlier and "awoken" him, Octavia would have almost certainly had a healthier childhood. As healthy as a childhood in Hell can be, anyway.
What we see of Octavia's homelife before the divorce isn't happy. She doesn't flinch at verbal or physical abuse being hurled at her father. It's not just his relationship with Blitz, Octavia is upset by Stolas pushing back against that abuse at all. Which isn't her fault. This was normalized for her. When you live in a household with one primary abuser, life becomes not rocking the boat. Because the only good days in your limited life experience are days in which that volatile person in your household is either absent or content.
And, unless the child intends to continue that cycle of abuse, the realization that you were, at best willfully-ignorant/at worst complicit in the domestic abuse one of your parents lived through is HARD.
She has perfectly valid reasons to be upset. Passively suicidal father zooming off to be actively suicidal on live television? For sure. But that's more in the realm of the coming of age realization that, "Oh, my parent is unwell. They've always been unwell. Do I want a relationship with them enough to get involved with their bullshit?" Because, like not being morally obligated to care for a child that was forced upon you - You didn't ask to be born. If your parents are going under, you aren't morally obligated to just dive in after them, and you're allowed to resent the choices they've made.
But the idea that Stolas failed Octavia in a way he needs to massively atone for will never not leave a bad taste in my mouth. It always feels like some victim blaming BS. You can dislike a character without reinforcing the idea that men being abused doesn't count.
"Oh, well it's only bc Viv wants him to be sympathetic and wants people to see Stella as a villain." My brother in Christ, that doesn't change the text of the story. Your headcanon of what you wish the story was doesn't hold any weight in a conversation about the character's canonical relationship with his daughter.
Chapter six? already? of my fic that I'm writing just for "fun" (to be weird and depressing I guess) Evocation which is about Crysania having prior knowledge of stuff and things in the beginning of the Time of the Twins due to time travel magic schmagic of questionable nature.
Farcical sadness, or something. I think I was getting tooth rot from how cute Doctor Welch has been lately in my modern day Dragonlance AU fanfic, and I started to deal with that through tragicomical downer thoughts.
I wrote AU fanfic of my AU fanfic, because of reasons, I guess.
Younger, 21 and 24-year-old nerds meet at Laura's university student house party by the beach, kind of a what-if-they-met-earlier.
An infernally hot summer by the sea at night. The sun had set, the moon was rising, the stars were out. There was a party that sprawled over the beach, a pool, and a richly furnished, lavish beach house.
Thomas had brought their entire group, apart from old Flint who’d gone back home to get some work done, to visit his quasi-maybe-girlfriend. A very rich heiress. This was supposed to be about the weird platinum disks they’d found in the wastelands near Schallsea, and getting Laura or her father to pay them a handsome finders fee, but it had turned out to be about Laura’s father not being there at all, and Thomas and Laura vanishing somewhere into the party to talk about their feelings, which were notably not related at all to the disks, or any money.
The party had something to do with Laura’s university – or maybe not. It was difficult to discern. The attendees were mostly that age, young people in their early 20s, talking about studies in economics and business, some in politics. Lost in the party, looking out of place and trying to ”enjoy and make themselves at home” as Laura had asked them were Thomas’s friends. Since they’d almost been killed for the platinum disks, there was no chance he was moving with them across Abasinia alone.
There was Dave, who was already smoking someone else’s pot and had no trouble making small talk, in his tie-dyed t-shirt and bermuda shorts, asking a wasted business major what was his investment portfolio like. Cameron getting a lot of fans among the bikini-clad, eating-disordered young women who all laughed in a slightly mean way when they heard he had just completed all his classes in a small-town community college, but not so that he would catch it; Tina was following around from a short distance, probably asking herself if she should try and hit on a hot politician to try and make Cameron jealous. So thought Robin Welch.
He avoided the party. He was looking for someplace to wait in peace, and maybe try make the time pass in a non-complete-waste-of-time-way. So he intruded.
There was a library of sorts in the house. It was dark, and probably off-limits to the party, he guessed, since the doors had been closed and the lights turned off, but since it wasn’t locked …
The room had plenty of books, there was also a lot of art. Sculptures and paintings. The room had been done to such a degree of casual minimalism to highlight the artwork that there wasn’t a lot of comfort in there.
Robin eyed the spines of the books, which were a little less impressive than he’d expected. Popular crime mysteries and ”inspirational” political biographies by ghost writers about events and opinions that probably had some kind of relationship with reality. Hardly anything worth reading. But he stuck with it, went through the shelves one by one, and eventually found older novels, titles that were casually dropped sometimes as ”classics,” some thick, some thin. He picked the slightest of them, something he thought he might manage as the night drew on. He really doubted he’d get any sleep.
The dust jacked let him know the book was about a blind girl experiencing a war that had been waged a hundred years before. Based on true events. Uplifting. But also: interesting enough.
He tried to make himself comfortable on the sofa, which was surprisingly difficult: the minimalistic furniture had not been designed with comfort. Robin moved on to the uncomfortable-looking reading chair/recliner in the corner, which in turn surprised him by being deceivingly well-made.
As he opened the book and tried to find his way into the world inside it, he also tried his best not to think about how embarrasingly attracted he’d felt to Laura. He wasn’t used to the experience, there was something off-putting about it. Perhaps because it reminded him that relationships were something that were reserved for the Thomases and Camerons of the world, not the 1.2-lunged, easily exhausted nerds like him.
But the book was rightfully a classic. It drew him in, gradually made him forget about Laura. The far-away sounds of the party were ignored and forgotten, in the book a war raged on.
He’d just finished chapter five when the door to the library opened. A young woman stood in the doorframe, looking somewhat puzzled.
”I’m sorry, is this room… occupied?” she asked. She was probably one of Laura’s university friends. In a sundress, not a bikini, like most of them had been outside. She wore way less make-up, no glittering metallic all over her eyes and lips, or enormous fake lashes with little gemstones at the tip of each lash, and that made her stand out a little from the crowd seen so far. Perhaps another less-well-off friend-of-a-friend kindly allowed at this event of future leaders?
Robin was temped to say yes. It was. But technically he couldn’t. He stared at her.
”I usually come and read here when I get tired of too many people around,” she said, stepping in and closing the door behind her.
”So not your first party here?” Robin asked.
”Oh, not at all. My family has a little cottage nearby, we’re here just for the summer.” The woman went to the book shelves and pulled out a book she’d already known she was going to pick up. ”I like Laura, and I’m glad to be invited, but it’s just so many people, and it gets a bit much after a while. How do you know her?”
The young woman sat down on the sofa. It was rare to see someone sit upright like that, how she did. Most people Robin knew relaxed when they sat down. This one was rigid like a steel pipe.
”I’m a friend of Thomas’s, if you know him.”
”Ah, the Thomas. I’ve only heard of him, not seen yet. Is he here, right now?”
”Presumably. I’ve no idea where they went. My brother and two other friends of ours are here as well. We’re not here for the party, we have a … thing to deal with.”
The young woman stood up then and briskly crossed the room, extending her hand. ”Claire,” she said, and Robin obliged, extending his as well to shake hers. ”Robin,”
”Ah, like the bird?” she asked, taking her seat again. Robin saw the book she was holding. It was a novel, another classic. He didn’t know what it was about, but there was a huge whale on the cover. The book was thick.
”Probably a reference to the colour of my hair,” Robin presumed. Claire. Referenced clarity. Clearness. Brightness. Robin was about to open his book again, but Claire lifted up her hand to stop him.
”I’m sorry to bother you, but would you mind if we talked a little?”
”I was under the impression you didn’t want company.”
”Not of drunk business students talking about investment portfolios, or political science majors... you know, I can’t even go there. But you’re not a business or polisci major, are you?”
”No. Computer science. I’ve graduated already a few years ago.”
”Ah. Interesting choice of reading for a computer scientist,” Claire said, pointing at the cover of his book.
”It’s short.” Robin was temped to open the book again and let her start hers, but he wondered why she’d picked the thickest one on the shelf. ”Unlike yours. Why pick that one?”
”I’ve read it already. But it’s got some good parts I can come back to, again and again.”
”What’s it about? The sea?”
”On the surface maybe, but I think it’s a metaphor for the insanity of industrial capitalism murdering its workforce and nature in a quest to fulfill a dark, bottomless sense of greed that nothing in the world can satiate.”
Robin nodded slowly. ”How topical. Recent events.”
”Quite. And is that your first time reading your book?”
”Yes.”
”Do you like it so far?”
He wasn’t sure. It had been only a distraction so far. ”Enough to keep reading.”
”Ah, in that case,” Claire smiled, and concentrated on her book.
Robin finished the next chapter of the book in his hand. Then he checked his phone. No messages from anyone at the party. It was getting close to midnight. He imagined he should check on Cameron soon, to see how he was faring with the locals. The task didn’t appeal to him, however. He was over twenty and out of college already, he should be able to manage by himself.
”So what do you study?” Robin asked Claire, to draw on his stay in the room.
”Social sciences at the University of Palanthas.”
”That’s a long way away,” Robin replied. Social sciences, not exactly the subject of a rich heiress, he thought. His theory that she was a friend of someone attending gained weight.
”Seventeen to twenty hours on the rail,” Claire said, and closed her book, letting it rest on her lap. ”So, what do you work on?”
”I’ve done short contract jobs in generic programming here and there. But I have a position lined up for August in Neraka.”
”That’s… even further away than Palanthas,” Claire said. ”Which company?”
”ISA.”
Claire frowned ever so slightly, and so quickly, that her face smoothed instantly. She seemed to be informed of what the International Security Agency was. They did not have the best PR company at the moment. That was probably because they were the most intrusive private data gathering and analysis company in the world.
”I’m sure there’s better places to work than ISA,” she said civilly, almost managing to smile. ”If you could do whatever you liked, what would you do? Would it still be ISA?”
Make a lot of money. Their mother was in a hellscape of a nursing home. A better one cost an arm and a leg even with county benefits helping along the way. Do something more interesting than work in a code pit. Research in a university or a corporate R&D department. ”Maybe, perhaps, develop some way to optimise energy use, bring the carbon footprint down, or something.”
”And stop the world from burning,” Claire said. It wasn’t a question. ”Why not do that instead?”
”Not a field easy to get into without contacts or experience. What would you do, if you could do anything?”
”Bring down the billionaires and the trillionaires. Tax them to the Abyss.” Claire laughed a little, a joke Robin wasn’t sure he understood. ”To the Abyss and back.”
”And you think social sciences is the way to get there?”
”What is money but shared social faith…” she said, making herself a little more comfortable on the sofa, still remaining rigid in some way.
She spoke about economic systems and political science, income and social classes in a way that made Robin lean forward a little bit, trying to keep up with her. He wasn’t entirely lost, not at all, he was very well aware of what was going on in the world and the mechanics of it, but she seemed more immersed in the soft humanist sciences behind some of it. Perhaps a too little taken in by her studies: she spoke with the fervour of an idealist, a barely twenty-year-old who had found a faith of her own in university lecture halls.
She caught herself, realising she’d gone on a rant, and calmed down. ”I’m sorry, that was a bit odd. I was carried away by my passion for saving the world, I suppose.”
There was a healthy blush to her cheeks, and a radiance to her eyes that transformed her from what one might say and everyday beauty to something strangely attractive. Intrinsically beautiful how a flower garden or a misty sunrise in the mountains was like. The thought caught Robin unexpectedly. He wasn’t used to talking to beautiful women alone in the middle of the night.
”It’s just that everyone laughs at my ideas,” she said, her smile dying down.
”They’re not bad ideas,” Robin said.
”So, would you like to tell me more about yourself? What was it you’re here for again?”
There was moonlight reflected on the calm sea outside by the time Robin finished his long tale on the story of their trip to the massive junkyard. In that single tale he’d outed himself as functionally near destitute (has to take odd jobs with his brother for an ill-tempered short person) and physically next to disabled (can’t ride a bicycle, not enough lung capacity.) He was expecting repulsion as well as pity.
”You sound like you’re amazingly clever with technology, how old were you when you started out?” she asked instead, but that annoying, damning sense of pitying care was in her voice that made Robin want to snap at her.
”Five.”
”Oh wow. Against … well, you’ve got a lot stacked against you. You must be some kind of natural genius,” she said, leaning against her hand and relaxing. ”It’s such a shame that I’ll be going away next week. And you’ll be headed home soon, right? After your business here is completed. It would have been nice to speak to you more before you go join the forces of darkness.”
Robin wasn’t entirely sure what to say. Same? He guessed? Thought? She was perfectly adequeate company for conversation. Well, probably the best he’d ever had in his life so far. She seemed intelligent, genuinely interested him and what he had to say (a little too interested perhaps, he found himself holding back.)
”Do you go to parties often?” she asked.
Robin was relieved, he didn’t have to come up with a reply for her previous comment. ”No. Not at all.” He was a non-needed person at the very poor versions of the event they were currently at.
”Why?”
”It’s a waste of time of time and money. Same people talking about same things. Getting drunk.” Robin had seen enough to get the gist that this was very much the same in both these worlds.
”But there’s some things that are fun. Just meeting strangers can be very refreshing,” Claire said. She got up and put her book back in the shelves. She lit a very designed lamp in the corner of the room that emitted a warmer colour light into the room than the ceiling lamp. She turned that one off. It got a lot darker in the room.
”Why are you changing the lighting?” He asked.
”I thought it would make the mood a little… cosier. Do you want to come sit here with me?” she asked, completely serious, as she returned to the sofa.
Robin was about to ask why, when the probable reason struck him. It was so entirely out of the blue he had a difficult time comprehending it.
--
Thomas was tired. He’s spoken with Laura for hours and hours, and barely about the platinum disks. It was three in the morning, and he had his friends to collect; Laura had given them two rooms at the guest house to sleep in tonight, before they’d continue more on the disks in the morning, once her dad got back from where-ever he was.
Cameron, Tas and Tina were easy to find, but Robin had vanished. He wasn’t picking up his phone, which wasn’t a surprise, it usually had sounds turned off. They started looking for him through the house, Cameron headed for the kitchen with Tina, Tas upstairs. Thomas figured he might be in the library, there was a sofa there, and books. Maybe he’d fallen asleep.
Not expecting much, he opened the door. There was a soft mood lighting there, and two people making out on the sofa, alright so definitely not Robin there.
”Sorry,” Thomas said, and closed the door behind him, a little embarrassed. And if he wasn’t entirely in the wrong, that had been Claire Van Tarren, heir to the biggest fortune in all of Krynn back in that room. It was always a little strange, visiting Laura, there were always these famous faces in her vicinity half the time, it was like she was living a life of a storybook character.
I feel like all my recent fanfic writing has been mostly about me vomiting a lot of text in order to look at what and how I write, and then analysing the themes I'm interested in, and if I can use them elsewhere, and also thinking about how do I feel about writing, and how do I feel about editing, and how do I feel about my texts, and it's been a lovely refuge. Also I think I'm writing too much. I don't know. I suppose I'll just go on until I crash? A mystery.
In a recent string of silly life decisions, here's another one of them, and by that I mean: I started a new multi-parter Crysania / Raistlin fanfic, this one not an AU (!!) - now with series typical nonsense time travel.
Evocation (at Archive of our Own.)
Sometimes you hear a song and a fic pops into your head full formed. This is a trap. The fic may be fully formed in your brain, but you still Have to write it down. This is an important step that most people forget about.
“You feel the bulge in his pants” - implies that you are feeling some guy’s penis, may be sexy depending on context
“You feel the bugle in his pants” - implies that this guy has a military horn in his pants, invites confusing questions like why does he have that and how big are his pockets
I finished writing Confessions (ch 15) which I vibe-wroted for myself because of reasons I do not fully comprehend, but I am glad I did. It was an experience. I wish I had written it better, but maybe I can write other things also, in the future.
