I'm finally making a pinned post so that you can find the stuff I've made that I want you to see.
My A03 (fanfic, sometimes NSFW).
My Helluva meta. There's plenty here (over a hundred by now maybe??), so click if you want to see the newest ones first, but a few of my favorites are linked below too.
Blitz and ADHD
Blitz and dyslexia
"I can do better-" about Blitz and RSD
Blitz and insecurity
Striker the "supremacist"
Blitz and social class rage
More about Blitz and anger
Loona. :)
Does Blitz blame himself for Cash's abuse? (Ghostfuckers)
Can you imagine how Blitz must have felt, walking into Stolas’s bedroom every month and being met with someone so genuinely excited to see him?
I know he purposefully compartmentalized and rationalized it as Stolas just wanting his dick but even so…how must it have felt, to be wanted like that?
To know his actions, his words, his touch…all of that could make someone feel good?
We know Blitz pushed it down, never allowed himself to believe what it was becoming, but do you think he ever just basked in it for a second?
Turned toward Stolas who had his eyes closed, breath still heavy after his orgasm, and just ruminated on being called darling, and remembering every moan and sigh and Stolas telling him over and over how good he made him feel.
People can only fake something like that in the heat of themoment for so far, right? So…Stolas had to be genuine in his words, in his touches, in his sounds, right?
I wonder if Blitz would subtly move closer, allow their shoulders to touch. Tell himself he would get up and leave in a second but then Stolas would let out a contented little hoot, wrap himself around Blitz, nuzzle into his cheek, and Blitz would just…let it happen.
Trying to tell his rapidly beating heart to shut up, that it didn’t mean anything. But he would just feel his body leaning into the touch, accepting it...craving it.
Allowing himself to think, for just a second, that he belonged there. That he was wanted there.
When the clip starts, we get thrown into a classic romance novel trope.
Stolas wears flowy clothes, literally all buttoned up. He smells flowers and wanders his world with a type of bright-eyed awe often reserved in media for children and Disney princesses. We take in a make-believe castle landscape that seems to . . . strangely have a lot in common with his actual palace and garden that he's been banished from.
He wanders into a stable which seems to be located on his driveway. There, he runs into Blitz, the stable boy. Is stable boy a little on the nose with the class stuff? No one actually calls him that. But look- based on what Blitz is wearing, and the context, and what does get said . . .
Okay, but am I reading into this a bit much? Doesn't Stolas just love Romance novels? It doesn't have to be about their real social positions.
It's a stereotype that came out of the Fabio era of romance novels (which Blitz's hair and general look in the fantasy is a direct reference to) that women who read romance fiction fantasize about being prim, proper, virginal noblewomen, who get ravished, sometimes in dub-con situations, by strong, tough, rough-around-the-edges, lower class dudes.
And yeah, there are exceptions, but the class thing is big in this trope. And not the only thing that's big. SNL knew it. Check out this Aidy Bryant sketch with John Cena and Kenan Thompson circa 2015. The entire joke is that we know this trope, and it's absurd.
The appeal, assuming the stereotypical audience is heterosexual women. . . is something about being desirable and repressed and pursued, and being so overwhelmed by the raw appeal of this sexy brute man that you give into something primal and animalistic and um . . . being freed. Notice Blitz literally opening up Stolas's shirt and letting all the chest fluff out.
The trope is as society-laden as any other trope. Which is to say, I fully support enjoying it, and I kind of get the appeal but. Social class is there. And I don't really think Blitz would like learning that in at least some of Stolas's fantasies, after everything, he's an actual stable boy, a servant, with his big hands and big bulge and big abs doing some serious heavy lifting when it comes to his look.
The problem is that Stolas actually is a prince, and no amount of banishment can make Blitz his social equal. It's no mistake on the part of the writers that the fantasy setting is just a transformed version of Stolas's own house.
Is Stolas aware? Not at all. If Blitz were to ask, Stolas would probably say that he understands now. He doesn't.
Now. Some good news. Stolas's fantasy world is unstable as it meets the reality of Blitz's life and the new situation Stolas finds himself in and the trauma and emotional baggage that Stolas is having trouble keeping separate.
I say good news because, while I'm sure it will be a long road with ups and probably devastating I'm not scared who's scared?? downs, Stolas's framework for understanding the world is crumbling, and he's going to have to rebuild something new.
This aspect of the clip just signals to me that addressing The Class Thing™️, really addressing it and the way it lingers in the corners of a mind that means well, is going to have to be part of that journey, and I'm so glad.
Because this is so good. Blitz and Striker are foils specifically with regard to social class and how they deal with very real anger about their positions in society. So it makes a lot of sense, for Blitz, who yelled at Stolas about this class stuff, to turn into Striker who tried to kill him and directly linked it to the same topic. Because Stolas might fear that underneath the affection and the guilt that led Blitz to rescue him and take him in, there's the same class-based hatred.
Fuck there is so much good stuff coming up that we're going to get to sift through.
Stolas' budding S3 arc: his relationship with want, shame, and queer liberation
So. About that Helluva Boss season 3 clip.
There is so much to unpack for a clip that's less than 2 minutes long, which is not surprising for Helluva Boss. But today, I want to delve into this particular line from Stolas' imaginary version of Blitz, which gave me a lot to think about:
On a surface level, this is your typical, trope-y smut scene: the romantic interest meets the main character and is so allured by them he cannot control himself. As he throws himself onto the MC, he teases the MC about how obvious it is that they want this. In smut, this teasing can take many forms: think "I can smell your arousal" in omegaverse or the more generic (and physiologically realistic) "you're blushing so hard, you're breathing so fast, you're not resisting me at all, you're so wet/hard for me already".
Stolas' fantasy plays with their power imbalance: despite having visible pupils and a hair streak, this is still a royal self-insert; one with magical power. Indeed, if he didn't want Blitz to be touching him, Stolas could easily overpower him and get Blitz off of him. But he doesn't, because he does want Blitz, because that's the whole point of this kind of smutty fantasy. So Blitz teases him about it.
Without the context of the rest of the show, Stolas' fantasy is... actually pretty generic, with the exception of the details that signify their particular likes (ie. horses, plants, and blonde wigs).
But with two seasons worth of context, I find Stolas' sexual fantasy tells us quite a bit about the emotions Stolas is currently struggling with, both in his past and present relationship with Blitz and in his life at large.
So let's dive in.
Stolas was never allowed to want.
From an early age, his life was planned out for him. A wife and an heir and a Grimoire to find prophecies in the sky: those were the purpose of his existence. Whether he wanted those things was irrelevant, because his life was not his to design.
And he stayed compliant... until Blitz came (and came, if you know what I mean) along. And Stolas let himself want. Even though it wasn't for him to make that decision, as far as the Goetia were concerned. Even though it'd have real-life consequences and ramifications. Stolas was drunk, and sick of Stella's mockery and of being the laughing stock of her social circles, so he took Blitz to his chambers and flirted with him, and when Blitz restrained him on the bed, Stolas allowed it and expressed how much he wanted to be fucked by Blitz. And then he got ravished.
And it was the most liberating moment of his life. Not just that: it was the decision that set him on the path to mental, physical, emotional, social, marital, and sexual liberation he's still currently in the middle of as of the beginning of season 3. From the moment Stolas fucked Blitz, he was no longer living a life designed by someone else: he was, at long last, becoming the master of his fate.
And that led him to establishing the full moon deal. To loaning Blitz the Grimoire. To a period of joy where he truly believed he had something real with Blitz. To the crushing events of Ozzie's, and to giving Blitz the crystal to right his mistake. To facing Satan in court.
To losing everything. To losing Octavia.
Stolas feels more than just guilt for wanting.
He's expressed before, particularly at the end of Sinsmas, that he's well aware he's responsible for the consequences of his choices. But I think this new clip sheds light on something darker and deeper than guilt: I think it sheds light on shame.
"If you wanted me to stop, we both know you could stop me, but you want to get filthy, don't you?" Those are the words Stolas puts on fantasy-Blitz's mouth. So let's unpack them.
"If you wanted me to stop"
A conditional sentence. If you wanted me to stop. But that's not what Stolas wants.
The words, while teasing, are also an accusation: "You're into this even though it's wrong, even though it's filthy. You should want me to stop, but you don't. That's how dirty you are."
And what that means for Stolas is that he feels deeply that his desire for Blitz is dark, it's wrong. That he wants something he shouldn't.
(This internalised shame is also alluded to in Just Look My Way, where he refers to his desire for Blitz as a "dark temptation").
"We both know you could stop me"
Those words weren't chosen lightly. They are load-bearing, because they establish that it is mutually understood that Stolas holds all the power in their dynamic. Therefore, Blitz can do pretty much whatever he wants, and it is on Stolas to set the limit and put a stop to anything he doesn't want happening. From Stolas' perspective, their relationship, both sexual and sentimental, continued to develop as a direct consequence of Stolas' failure to put an end to it.
This sentiment is not new:
"I let you get to close. I let it go too far. I let it go too long. I let you go too deep." It's all "I, I, I". Implying it was on Stolas to know better, and thus he's solely responsible for how far things went.
It's a sentiment that removes all agency and responsibility from Blitz and places it on Stolas' shoulders. It reframes their deal not as the product of the decisions of two adults equally willing to risk the potential consequences, but as the product of Stolas' selfish choice to get what he wanted. From Stolas' perspective, Blitz is merely operating on the basis that things will only go as far as Stolas allows them to go, and it is entirely on Stolas to draw the lines he isn't willing to cross.
"But you want to get filthy, don't you?"
There's a choice being given here, and it's Stolas' to make: he can either stop Blitz, or allow him to continue. It is implied, particularly through the word choice of filthy, that the correct choice would be for Stolas to restrain himself. But he won't, and fantasy-Blitz knows it: he knows Stolas will choose not to stop him, because Stolas wants to get filthy, wants to follow the wrong path, consequences be damned.
It's what he did in his real life, afrer all. Stolas had a choice not to let Blitz use the Grimoire. They both knew if Stolas didn't want Blitz to take it, he could've taken it back with a snap of his fingers and never looked back. But Stolas, for the first time in his life, prioritised his sexual, romantic, and emotional needs, and so he allowed Blitz to use the Grimoire. And because of that, they both ended up in a mess that led to Blitz almost dying and to Stolas losing Octavia.
The conclusion Stolas drew from this was: "all I had to do was restrain myself, all I had to do was suck it up and never act on my desires, and I wouldn't have caused this mess."
(Or, as Ozzie put it: "you had it all! I hope you didn't give it up so you and him could get it up... you sold your life for a thrust.")
This fantasy he's crafted, though very trope-y on a surface level, turns the guilt Stolas expressed in Apology Tour and Sinsmas on its axis and shows us what's bubbling underneath: a deep-rooted sense of sexual shame.
Stolas has been systematically deprived of agency.
If you wanted me to stop, we both know you could stop me, but you want to get filthy, don't you?
Do they both know that, though? Are they equally aware that Stolas could stop Blitz? In the most literal sense, the answer is yes. After all, the entirety of their BDSM dynamic hinges on the fact that Stolas is practically indestructible, and could free himself from all restraints and force Blitz out of his home with a wave of his hand, if he felt actually threatened or uncomfortable in any way.
But chances are high Andrealphus' comments in Satan's court about how weak Stolas is weren't a one-time thing. After all, every Goetia in that court (except for Vassago) was willing to accept that Stolas, despite his immense magical power, was too weak to even withstand being in the presence of his supposed abuser. An abuser who was a magically powerless imp, yet who had still supposedly managed to rape him.
It seems to be that everyone in the Goetic social circles believes Stolas to have an extremely weak and passive character, to be pathetic in his inability to stand up for himself and ultimately unfit for his role as a prince.
And I think Stolas' fantasy is also, to some extent, a reflection of how Stolas has internalised the same ideas about himself. "We both know you could stop me (implied: but you won't)." And why won't he? Why didn't he stop Blitz from fucking him that first night, why didn't he stop Blitz from taking the Grimoire? Was it mere selfishness? Was it him being blinded by love or lust? Was it complete and utter idiocy?
Or... was it something else? Weakness, perhaps? A confirmation of what his family has always said about him—that he's not good enough, that he doesn't have what it takes to make sound choices? And is this line from fantasy-Blitz really just a trope-y pick-up line, or could it be pointing towards Stolas' perceived weakness and passivity? A perceived tendency to just let things happen to him, to let inaction be his choice?
Stolas is going to unlearn his shame.
At the end of the clip, Stolas angrily crosses out his fanfic in a moment that clearly parallels his crashout in Sinsmas, when he berated himself for messing everything up for a "stupid, foolish fantasy".
Yet isn't it funny how, later in Sinsmas, Stolas' desire for a romantic fantasy is rewarded when Blitz becomes his knight in shining armour and saves him from the dragon?
I strongly believe that moment in Sinsmas was the beginning of an arc the seeds of which are still being planted. An arc wherein Stolas learns he was always allowed to want. That he was right for wanting to be free. For choosing Blitz; for choosing himself. Sure, the way he went about it wasn't great—and he's already well into the process of unpacking and making up for the pain he caused—but there was nothing wrong with the act itself of pursuing his sexual (and overall) liberation.
He grew up neglected and abused. He was raised in a cult that had no care for his personhood and assigned him a role he was never meant to stray from. He was forced into a heterosexual marriage despite being gay and—in my opinion, though that's a different post—sexually assaulted by his wife. He was forced to become a father and to live the rest of his life secluded in a palace, where he wouldn't be a nuisance to anyone else.
Him breaking free of that is a good thing. His is a story of radical queer liberation. He went from barely existing—from being a ghost, a living corpse, quietly fading away, chained by abuse and societal pressure—to breaking free and claiming his own life, his body, his sexuality, his heart. Saying, "fuck this, fuck everything, I want to live."
And the narrative, while holding him accountable for the ways in which he was careless and tone-deaf and naive, rewarded him for wanting to be loved and wanted and desired. It rewarded him—and, from what we've seen in the teaser and Millie's words to him, will continue to reward him—for wanting to be cherished and cared for and wanted around.
And the narrative will continue to prove his shame wrong. It will continue to reward his desire to be queer, and happy, and free. And Stolas is going to learn there was never anything wrong with wanting out of his gilded cage. There was never anything wrong with wanting.
He deserves happiness. He deserves joy. He deserves love, and freedom, and sex, and kink, and laughter, and queerness, and friends, and safety, and fun. He deserves to be the protagonist of his dream romantic comedy and have all of his dreams come true. (And he deserves to make amends with his daughter, though that's also for another post).
When the clip starts, we get thrown into a classic romance novel trope.
Stolas wears flowy clothes, literally all buttoned up. He smells flowers and wanders his world with a type of bright-eyed awe often reserved in media for children and Disney princesses. We take in a make-believe castle landscape that seems to . . . strangely have a lot in common with his actual palace and garden that he's been banished from.
He wanders into a stable which seems to be located on his driveway. There, he runs into Blitz, the stable boy. Is stable boy a little on the nose with the class stuff? No one actually calls him that. But look- based on what Blitz is wearing, and the context, and what does get said . . .
Okay, but am I reading into this a bit much? Doesn't Stolas just love Romance novels? It doesn't have to be about their real social positions.
It's a stereotype that came out of the Fabio era of romance novels (which Blitz's hair and general look in the fantasy is a direct reference to) that women who read romance fiction fantasize about being prim, proper, virginal noblewomen, who get ravished, sometimes in dub-con situations, by strong, tough, rough-around-the-edges, lower class dudes.
And yeah, there are exceptions, but the class thing is big in this trope. And not the only thing that's big. SNL knew it. Check out this Aidy Bryant sketch with John Cena and Kenan Thompson circa 2015. The entire joke is that we know this trope, and it's absurd.
The appeal, assuming the stereotypical audience is heterosexual women. . . is something about being desirable and repressed and pursued, and being so overwhelmed by the raw appeal of this sexy brute man that you give into something primal and animalistic and um . . . being freed. Notice Blitz literally opening up Stolas's shirt and letting all the chest fluff out.
The trope is as society-laden as any other trope. Which is to say, I fully support enjoying it, and I kind of get the appeal but. Social class is there. And I don't really think Blitz would like learning that in at least some of Stolas's fantasies, after everything, he's an actual stable boy, a servant, with his big hands and big bulge and big abs doing some serious heavy lifting when it comes to his look.
The problem is that Stolas actually is a prince, and no amount of banishment can make Blitz his social equal. It's no mistake on the part of the writers that the fantasy setting is just a transformed version of Stolas's own house.
Is Stolas aware? Not at all. If Blitz were to ask, Stolas would probably say that he understands now. He doesn't.
Now. Some good news. Stolas's fantasy world is unstable as it meets the reality of Blitz's life and the new situation Stolas finds himself in and the trauma and emotional baggage that Stolas is having trouble keeping separate.
I say good news because, while I'm sure it will be a long road with ups and probably devastating I'm not scared who's scared?? downs, Stolas's framework for understanding the world is crumbling, and he's going to have to rebuild something new.
This aspect of the clip just signals to me that addressing The Class Thing™️, really addressing it and the way it lingers in the corners of a mind that means well, is going to have to be part of that journey, and I'm so glad.
“Good thing this birb who absolutely doesn’t like me and just saved my life because he likes my dick can’t see the actual goo my guts are turning to when I look at him.”
It's a classic that never gets old. It is done spectacularly with Stolitz to show the back and forth between them. These are three of the many, many moments in which their hands are used to show the push-and-pull nature of their relationship, their feelings, and their intentions.
Blitz is the first to reach out, on their first meeting as adults. He does so again on their second meeting in his office. Both times, Stolas pulls quickly back, which is interesting, because both times Stolas was forward with his words, asking to be ravished, only to be taken aback when Blitz uses touch to do the same.
Ozzie's changes things, though. It's Stolas who reaches out first. Wanting to offer comfort and also seeking it out; wishing to establish that he and Blitz are together in this mess, and being denied by Blitz, who draws back. They're not in this together, there's no us. Far from it.
And yet when they see each other again, in the human world, Blitz catches Stolas' wrist before he falls.
After that, their relationship goes from complicated to uncertain. They don't see each other for months, even though they both want to. So when Blitz gets invited to Stolas' palace again, he's the first to reach out. He needs to bridge that gap between them, to go back to how things were. Stolas doesn't let him, though: he quickly moves away from the touch, because things can never go back to how they were. If they are to stay in each other's lives, they need to start over in a way where neither is getting hurt.
So uncertainty turns into rejection turns into an actual fight. The next morning, Blitz is still grappling with the night's events and coming to all the wrong conclusions. So he pushes. And pushes. And pushes. Reaching out for Stolas constantly, putting his hands on the prince, and, ironically, pushing him farther and farther away.
Cut to that night, when Blitz reaches out again. His intentions are different this time—genuine, comforting—but Stolas never sees it, and Blitz never does gather the courage to touch him. He's not ready to believe he's worth it, he's not ready to be the person he wants to be for Stolas. It shows us something crucial about Blitz's character, though: it shows his answer to wanting to be the person Stolas needs isn't no, it's not yet.
A month goes by, maybe two. Blitz and his crew get sentenced to death, except Stolas jumps in and sacrifices himself in Blitz's stead. Blitz despertately wants to reach out, but he can't, not with the chains around his wrists. When they're finally taken off and he can touch Stolas, he's forcefully yanked away and out of the room, Stolas still out of his reach.
But Stolas survives. And Blitz is allowed to take his hand; to take him home. They're on the same team now, except... They aren't. Because now Stolas has lost it all, and he's drowning in loss, and he's not in a mental space where he emotionally has anything to offer. So when Blitz reaches out, he still pulls back and retreats into himself.
Not yet, is what this tells us about Stolitz. Not yet.
Blitz is okay with that, though. He's not going to stop reaching out. He doesn't need reciprocity; all he needs is for Stolas to know that he's here, that he's not going to let Stolas face adversity alone.
As a sidenote, I am very unwell about the way this moment uses their hands to express their conflict in S2:
In a single moment, we are shown how compatible they were as kids: perfectly in sync, running in the same direction while holding hands; and how that contrasts with their bond as adults. They were contract-bound. They clung to one another, refusing to let go, keeping themselves tied to the other—but facing away, existing as opposing forces who each refused to let go. It shows how Stolas was the first to sever that tie; how Blitz reacted with surprise first, then anger at feeling rejected and wronged. How Stolas clenches his fist at hearing Blitz stomp away, as if having received confirmation that Blitz never wanted to hold on to him in the first place. How the conflict is unresolved at that point in the story, only one of them briefly looking the other's way.
Which leads to the eye motif, which is another of the main ways in which body language is used to communicate where Blitz and Stolas are in their relationship with each other!
Anger is a super stigmatized emotion. That's for a reason- it's powerful. When we see it from other people it's usually externalized- it's ugly, aggressive, shows up in abusive situations- it sometimes leads to violence. But when we talk about righteous anger, or the anger of marginalized people, we sometimes praise it. That's because anger can be empowering too.
I want to talk about how Blitz's anger, while it's also destructive at times, has empowered him.
Personal note: when I was a kid, I was yelled at frequently by my mother. The house I grew up in was a 60's rancher with a long hallway in the center, and she would chase me down the hallway yelling. As I grew older, I learned to yell back. Feeling anger and externalizing it didn't make the hurt go away, and it didn't solve our problems- it turned us into two people yelling at each other- but it did make me feel less helpless.
So let's look at Blitz as a kid. In addition to guilt tripping him, his father tells him that "there are scarier things," than stealing from a wealthy and (literally) powerful family, and he doesn't disagree. I think this screenshot captures their relationship pretty well.
We see moments of defiance from Blitz though, even as he's very much under Cash's control. Georgia Dow pointed this out in her video about how Blitz learned resilience in his childhood. Here, have some defiant expressions:
Notice Blitz's eyebrows here, mirroring his father. I suspect that as he grew older, Blitz learned to push back harder, to argue, maybe even to yell. He learned to channel his anger- at being used, diminished, devalued (very likely yelled at and probably physically hurt too) into expression, into fight (I don't picture him physically fighting Cash, but the guy has fight in him- of all kinds).
He learned to feel angry at the world and express that too- for treating imps as lower than other demons, for limiting his options in life, for filling the road to success with exploitation (as we see in the Mammon flashbacks with Fizz).
Speaking of that flashback, he's very ready, as a teenager, to express anger exactly when he needs to for the purpose of protecting a loved one.
Fast forward to the present.
Blitz's anger helps him stand up for the people he cares about- see Fizz in the present at Mammon's show but also Moxxie in Spring Broken.
It helps make him good at his job too. When we see him fight, he doesn't tend to seem all out enraged, but he's super determined and all in. He's at home in a conflict. When he's doing his best fighting, we see a mix of the "angry" facial expressions and pure confidence.
Anger also helps him manage a lot of difficult emotions. Disclaimer (and idea I'll get back to soon)- I said manage, not deal with.
When he interacts with Verosika and with Robo Fizz early in season 1, there's genuine underlying pain from how the relationships with Verosika and the real Fizz ended, but he channels that into anger. The anger makes him take action (Good action? Eh. But still action- he's not crying on his couch.) rather than get consumed by more painful emotions. He's able to keep going.
It also gets in his way, even as he uses it as a coping mechanism. Is his anger at Muffy and the Karen in the doctor's office understandable as he's dealing with his frustration about the inaccessibility of healthcare for Loona and his worries about losing Stolas? Yes. Is it helpful? No, probably not.
It isn't useful with Stolas either. Stolas is this person who's kind and beautiful and quirky and able to match his wit, and who Blitz has grown genuine feelings for, but who is also deeply entwined in the unfairness in Hell's society that Blitz has grown to resent throughout his life- AND Stolas unknowingly participates in some very familiar microaggressions himself.
Blitz channels a whole range of complicated emotions- love, fear, despair at the thought that he isn't loved back- all into anger because he HAS been wronged and his world IS unfair, and anger is COMFORTABLE because anger is ACTIVE, and with it he doesn't have to just let things happen to him!
Stolas has not gained back his palace or his title or his powers in this clip.
The evidence:
Yes, he's wearing his royal outfit, but it's the one he had on during Mastermind, so he has it with him at Blitz's place and could have cleaned it.
He still has his permapupils.
The location is Stolas's palace, but if you look around, it's still in Elsa mode. This is not a version of the palace that Stolas is in charge of.
He looks really worried every time we see his face in this clip. All is not well. And I don't think it only has to do with Blitz going to work.
Stolas is framed to look small here.
There are other cars parked. There usually aren't at the palace. Some sort of event is going on.
I think he's either visiting Via (maybe for some sort of coming of age ceremony- creds for this theory to others on a certain discord server) or there's some kind of infiltration plot that they're both playing roles in. Or maybe both.
It turns out the drug H8, which Barbie is fighting her addiction to in the new short, has a very literal name. It seems to bring out rage (or hate) in the demons who take it.
But why would someone grow dependent on something with that effect, or even enjoy it in the first place?
Anger is a negative emotion, right?
The thing is, if you're spending a lot of time feeling things that are worse, anger is a better alternative sometimes. Walking around feeling grief-laden, depressed, scared, sorry for letting people you love down ... it's hard to get any relief for those feelings.
Rage simplifies what's hurting a person and allows them to fight it. It's not happy, but adrenaline comes with it, and it's the sort of adrenaline that can make you feel like you're right, and those you're facing down are entirely wrong. It's simple and explosive. It can even give you a kind of high. It can feel like you finally have agency.
Rage can be addictive.
Let's look at Barbie. Barb tries to distract herself with positive things- a good sandwich, make-outs with her adorable girlfriend, Kendra... and she summons some significant but hollow anger here and there (rightfully) as her day gets worse and worse.
BUT look at our girl during the quietest moments in the short.
Her anger, righteous or otherwise, is gone, and she's just miserable.
And when she's angry, her face keeps betraying her. She feels hurt and betrayed and guilty and worried underneath. She uses anger just like her brother does as a shield. Between herself and others' ability to hurt her if she shows vulnerability maybe, but also between herself and The Bad Emotions ™️.
The thing is, acting out of rage has consequences. And Kendra doesn't walk out on her over the job, or over the drugs she finds. She does it when Barbie lashes out at her, and from "don't give me attitude," one can assume that this is a bit of a pattern whenever this couple fights.
I suspect that this is why Barbie is so committed to getting off the drugs.
The H8 itself is.. I know... kind of a joke and a hopeful moment at the end of the episode. But it also brings to light a lot of complicated things: the way anger can turn into a crutch and a protective outer shell, how people don't always get addicted to things that make them feel "good," and how trying is a hopeful act, even if you're far from perfect.
