One year on from Full Moon: A Prince, a Princess, and the tether-cat principle.
About a year ago, that episode of helluva boss dropped, and the fandom lost its shit so hard we’ve collectively not got it back yet.
In the immediate aftermath, there was a lot of hate channelled towards Blitzø, and then a backlash towards Stolas to try and balance it out, and he fandom has been collectively fighting about it ever since.
About a year ago, we got the finale to Hazbin and in the last four episodes the confirmation that Vaggie was indeed an angel and had been hiding it from Charlie all along. People by and large nodded that their fan theories were correct, and moved on. The lack of communication and openness and honesty between Charlie and Vaggie caused tension for exactly one episode, and then it was over. This is despite Charlie and Vaggie having a far more one-sided power dynamic that Stolas and Blitz socially, economically, and in terms of supernatural power-scaling stuff.
This is not a flaw, this is not me criticising Charlie, I love her she’s such a good egg, not me criticising Hazbin this is not me attacking the fandom. Because I don’t think that these two wildly different takes were accidental: Charlie and Vaggie were not written to have fandom drama, whereas I think Blitzø and Stolas were, and this is not a bad thing, because here’s the thing…
Philosophically, Hazbin and Helluvaboss are very different beasts:
Hazbin is about if it is posable for people thrust into in the worst posable situation, hell, to pull themselves out: it’s optimistic, and it is a comedy-drama centred on redemption.
Helluva boss, is about if people born in the worst posable situation, hell, can keep going and still have full lives. There is no redemption in this show, nor could there ever be. It is a dark comedy/drama about the journey, but with no destination. It’s very premise invites a more cynical reading of it’s characters. And then there’s the other thing…
Season one Stolas fucking sucks.
As a charicter, I love him, go, my beloved thirsty owl-dad! But as a person, He’s an entitled whiney rich snob who quite openly objectifies Blitzø, won’t even use his real name, and takes full advantage of the transactional nature of their relationship even when it’s making Blitzø uncomfortable. He's abusing his postion of power, and what's more he's writern to keep him at arms lenght from the audiance.
Where Charlie is written to present as a happy 20’s something north American queer woman (despite being at least two hundred, and not from earth let alone the Americas), something that makes her very approachable to the shows mostly American, mostly female, largely queer audience, Stolas is intentionally written to come across as an older out of touch posh pseudo-British royal, something that immediately makes him unrelatable to the target demographic.
Where Charlie and Vaggie relationship is shown in a fairly sweet, and for this show, remarkably chaste way from day one, Stolas is introduced as a complete freak into some fairly hardcore bdsm and or non-traditional use of jelly sandwiches. The fact Vaggie is Charlie’s business partner at the hotel and thus 100% economically dependent on Charlie is intentionally never brought up, whereas the class and economic difference between Stolas and Blitzø are agonised over in exhuastative detail, mostly by Stolas and Blitzø themselves. This is of course intentional: Pilot Stolas was a villain, season one Stolas was a secondary character largely there for Blitzø to angst over and to belt out the best musical numbers in the show. We’re probably not supposed to like season one Stolas, and criticisms that he was abusive and economically controlling are bang on the money, even to die-hard Stolas fans like me.
But here’s where it got interesting: the widescale fandom hate for Stolas only started after the character changed for the better. So what gives?
In episode one of season 2, Stolas breaks. He realises his relationship with Blitzø that he’s constructed in his head is “A comfortable lie, and rather that going on with that comfortable lie indefinitely, which he absolutely could, he chooses to confront it even if it hurts him. He ideally starts researching Asmodian crystals, he immediately finalizes his divorce, he begins planning to break, and, he hopes, re-forge his relationship with Blitzø. He realises “If he’s only here as a prisoner, what kind of monster does that make me?” and commits to substattive internal change even if it hurts him.
And it does hurt him. He suffers to make a change for the better… But it also invited fan analysis of his actions thus far a scrutiny of the character he wasn't getting in season one. He stopped being a joke character love interest, and started becoming the second most important character in the show and thus the fandom, and this triggered debate on if this character development was earned. (This is also why i think that Stolitz and Huskerdusk are such popular ships, Blitzø, Stolas and Angel get by far the most time for charicter growth).
And then he does it again in Mastermind were he fully commits to granting Blitzø freedom even if it kills him, and for it he is humiliated on live TV and suffers a crushing setback to all his relationships and the loss of prestige and power.
Charlie, actually does the exact same thing: upon seeing the extermination heaven wages upon hell, she resolves to use her position of power to fix this, even if it hurts her. Like Stolas, she goes on live TV, to plead her case on the TV news, and is ruthlessly mocked for it, destroying any chance of success her hotel might have had until Alastor steps in as a patron. She faces her own mockery and (minor) de-powering.
So why are these two Deeply flawed royals treated so differently by the shows fandoms when they are so very alike?
I honestly think it’s because Charlies dark night of the soul where she resolved to change for the better happened in the first seconds of the pilot. We never get to see a version of Charlie who wasn’t like this, and thus this invites no debate or scrutiny of her actions. We never get to see her first date with Vaggie or the arkwad early bits of their relationship: they’re an established and reasonably heathy couple, doing the right thing, from episode one. It takes Stolas nearly two full seasons to get to that point, and we get to see every awkward, bad and cringe moment of his journey in excruciating detail. In what I think is some of the best writing in both of these shows, Charlie and Stolas start at almost opposite points of Joseph Campbell’s heroes journey circle, and move in parallel to each other
Charlie, in defiance of convention, starts at the Abyss, goes though transformation and atonement (the Masquerade and Dad Beat Dad episodes), transformation (Welcome to Heaven) return/the Gift of a Goddess (Vaggie with Carmine’s weapons, Rosie with her cannibal army) and right at the end reluctantly heeds the call to adventure with the “I must be ready for this” musical number in “The Show must go on”, and so ends the season with the supernatural help (Lucifer) Threshold guardians (Lilith) and mentors (Alastor) that the hero normally starts the journey with. Charlie ends season one at the traditional start of the hero’s journey, ready to repeat it for season two.
Stolas, however, starts the show in a position of supreme power and comfort at the usual start of the hero’s journey, then eagerly leaps at the call for adventure (sexual freedom) and immediately plummets into the unknown facing trials and temptations (jelly sandwiches, explaining his new relationship to Via, Striker and Stella trying to kill him) , and as his first same sex lover, Blitzø takes the mentor role, and to no-one’s surprise it goes badly for both of them and these adorable morons are too traumatized to communicate their needs clearly or effectively (mood) . He comes out as a gay man, and like all too many gay men (particularly those who come out later in life) is ostracized for it and loses his biological family over it. He dives right off the top of the hero’s journey diagram and he ends season two in the Abyss, facing his long night of the soul. Charlies hero’s journey is the upward swing, ending on a victory, inviting praise, and we never see a version of her where she wasn’t like this. Stolas’s is an all to relatable dumpster fire where he starts unlikable and controling, and ends broken. Ironically, for the show about redemption, Charlie doesn’t change or grow that much as a character. Ironically, for the show about pushing on and just surviving hell, Stolas (and Blitz) does.
This, is where the dreaded Tethercat principle kicks in, and I think this is why the Stolas hate has gone on for so long.
Gary Larson wrote a lot of Far Side comics, and most of them were fucking weird and often quite dark, bu none of them none of them got so much hate or so many complaints.... as Tethercat.
He thought it was just a fun joke about how dogs find joy in chasing and tormenting cats, but the number of complaints this got was far more than his comics that involved cannibalism, death, people being either alive by snakes or ants.. the works, and in an interview, he said he thinks he knows why this one upset people: because this is a single panel comic, we have no frame of reference for before or after this moment. There is no depiction of the cat before it was being tormented like this, none after. No evidence that that cat has ever known an existence that wasn’t this awful torturous existence.
What he realised with Tethercat is that the first and last time you see a character defines their existence in the minds of the audience: we assume that they have always been this way, and always will be this way, until we’re shown new information to the contrary. It doesn’t matter how much character development a character gets or if or how their reality changes, it’s their first and last moments on screen that set audience expectations.
Charlie is first shown making a substantive change for the good, and last seen as a victor.
Stolas is first shown as a creepy rich bellend, and last seen as a broken husk of himself admitting fault.
And so, until we get another season and see the wheel of the hero’s journey turn, that’s were those characters are canonicaly stuck at as far as the story goes, even if the charciters have compleatey changed during the course of the journey thus far. (Also the show' and Stolas's popularity jumped at that time making them easy targets so that probably had something to do with it) Anyway it's just a fun cartoon show, love to you all and I hope you have a good pride.
