#Stolas like from helluva boss

[am-1-ty]

Some dabihawks (hot wings) sketches that I did the other day. Courtesy of my monthly…(weekly?) reread of cuspidgoddess’ ‘flock of villains’ series on ao3 (which is a-mazing btw go read it) despite being there since the beginning I haven’t actually drawn any specific fanart for it so I should probably get on that! (I will get on that)

A character from it that I’ve always wanted to draw but couldn’t figure out the full logistics both in my mind and on paper is Stolas! I’ve seen fanart of him but I’ve also seen him described with a beak at some points. So it’s very interesting. Being a prince of hell gives him transformative abilities so I’m guessing that his looks change? (To an extent). I’ll figure it out eventually.

Hoooo when I figure it out! AHAHA when I figure out how to art! I be coming for everybody!!!

[dragon-spaghetti]

Do you think sinners miss the night sky..?

(Please click for better quality!!)

[birdy-babe]

Helluva Boss Full Moon Spoilers‼️

Remember that anger is a secondary emotion

[vvenuspng]

company

[venus vs. color: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)..]

[mandareeboo]

Listen being off your meds do be like that.

[fletchingbrilliant]

i had to do this

it has been living in my head for so long i had to unleash it. i'm having crazy bad problems with having draw way too much for way too long without breaks and am def gonna have to stop using my hands for a day or two and that makes me very upset

but i got this out first because i'm responsible

[zombie-bait]

Full Moon

Ok so I don’t normally post about Helluva Boss but the newest episode touched on an interesting concept I haven’t necessarily seen represented in media. Back when I was on Twitter (derogatory) a few years ago there was this now deleted viral thread where someone discussed how their struggles with mental health affected their relationship with their partner and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since. 

This is such a good, short example of how anxiety and depression can play tricks on you. It becomes so easy to envision yourself as a nuisance, a constant burden to those closest to you because they cannot possibly genuinely enjoy your company, right? But in doing so you create this arbitrarily cruel version of the people you love, people who would otherwise never behave like this outside of your own mind.

It's mean. Because your mind wants to be mean to you under these circumstances. It wants to put everyone else's emotions and desires above yours, both in worthiness and validity. And that starts bleeding into your understanding of other people, especially those you care about.

Now. Helluva Boss.

"Can I get a fucking MINUTE to think after everything you put me through you pompous rich ASSHOLE? Treat me like one of your little butler imps, you can’t just dismiss me like that! I mean, you royal fucks think you can do this every time, like you can just play with our feelings because we’re smaller and not as important. Well I’m not letting you, BITCH! Let’s go!" - Blitz

I find it really interesting how Helluva Boss decided to approach this conflict between Stolas and Blitz. Obviously, the difference in power matters. It's the underlying tension of their entire relationship and their lives. Stolas is burdened by the mountain of expectations thrust upon him from a very young age while Blitz is constantly reminded that he can NEVER be part of that world, that he is "smaller and not as important" not just in Hell's hierarchy but in his own life and family. Stolas very literally has power over Blitz (through the grimoire, the arrangement, his position in society) and Blitz uses their relationship as an excuse to reverse those roles. But that power dynamic, in one form or another, never truly goes away. And for Blitz, it's a lot easier to paint Stolas as this manipulative symbol of power and himself as nothing more than Stolas' plaything. It's easier to be angry than to be vulnerable and accept that someone might care about him.

"Dismiss" is the keyword in that quote. All that Blitz has been able to process is that Stolas has decided to end the relationship that they have. He feels ls like a choice has been taken away from him so he lashes out because he's not ready to emotionally tackle what the rest of Stolas' offer might entail. If Stolas hates him, just wants to play with him, then he is justified in his anger, his self-destruction, his isolation. If the world is mean, you're "allowed" to be mean back.

But

In that moment he forgets that Stolas is someone he actually cares about. Someone he's known for way too long and clearly wants to keep in his life, no matter how reluctant he can be to admit it. Someone who is not innately cruel or manipulative but sad and desperate for connections in a lot of the same ways that Blitz is. And Blitz immediately sees that he's miscalculated something.

Somewhere along the way the fictional version of Stolas that he's allowed himself to be mad at and the real one that he's not ready to admit he cares about have merged into something real that he has actual power over. Stolas can get hurt and Blitz can be the one who does it. He has once again allowed his greatest fears (which Stolas so frequently symbolizes) to co-opt his loved ones, to give him an "out" even though he didn't actually want one in the first place.

I'm definitely not the first person to say this but I think this is an example of the miscommunication trope done right. Their individual struggles are what cause them to be unable to connect during this conversation or to even have a proper conversation in the first place. There is no convenient misunderstanding or third party fabricating this rift. Both of them have preconceived ideas of what the other one is thinking but those ideas are flawed and rooted in self-hatred. They also both shutdown in their unique ways when the conversation starts heading in the direction they'd feared it would.

Blitz and Stolas work because they're both fucked up in similar ways, because they want similar things. That's the same reason why they're uniquely designed to hurt one another. A fear of rejection and a yearning for happiness. To borrow a quote that has been used by literally everyone from Spiderman to Evangelical preachers, "hurt people hurt people."

anyway, I really liked this episode.

(twitter thread screenshots sourced from this reddit post)

[holymolyfizzie]

i don't wanna derail @kityana's post about stolas's pill popping, so i'm making a separate one. but something kityana said finally made me think about something: "i'm still not sure if those pills are actually helping him or if they were just given to him to numb him to how shitty his life is"

I've wondered something related to this a lot myself. but Stolas takes his antidepressants with alcohol (and in the aftermath of alcohol, like at the end of The Circus), which is a depressant. taking antidepressants + alcohol at best just cancels out your antidepressants so they don't actually do anything. but both at once, at worst, makes your depression symptoms a lot worse. taking them together is the sort of stuff that college girls get yelled at for, but i guess no one told stolas. i wouldn't be surprised if he's been popping them like candy and upping his dosage because he was told they would help him…and then they don't because of the rampant alcoholism. which is to say that we don't know if the meds even worked for him at all (i'd argue strongly they didn't, considering his alcoholism only ever got worse and he kept taking more and more pills, like they never worked enough) or if they were a placebo while he was taking them

and this might be a bit too nuanced for such a show, but as someone who has suddenly gotten off antidepressants that didn't work at all, the withdrawal symptoms don't always affect mood that much (they did nothing for it to begin with) and they sure as hell don't last a full month after getting off. in fact, going cold turkey off of meds that do work for you shouldn't have withdrawal symptoms that last a full month (if you do, it's a Talk to Your Doctor moment). i just really wonder if Stolas noticed the lack of antidepressants after the first few days beyond the old habit of taking them, and if we really can contribute much of his mental breakdown to getting off antidepressants

but you know what he was taking religiously, that did affect him for sure, and that we haven't seen him touch in a month now? the alcohol. he was drinking during Mastermind, but he clearly hasn't touched it since the trial. Blitz doesn't seem to have alcohol around, and Stolas wouldn't ask for the extra expense -- he's being forced to quit. he passes up Loona's beelzejuice at the Sinsmas party, noticeably. the beelzejuice is brought in, and Stolas immediately goes outside for a smoke instead. he's not drinking anymore. and quitting alcohol cold turkey is an insane process, esp at his level of hard liquor. we're talking about disastrous health consequences and a whole host of withdrawal symptoms -- anxiety, depression, irritability, fatigue, loss of appetite, brain fog, hallucinations, and much worse stuff (in humans, seizures). it's impossible to underestimate the severe damage alcoholism does to your brain and body longterm. and a lot of those withdrawal symptoms stay weeks after stopping cold turkey

like, i don't want to detract from him going off of antidepressants; he needs and obviously wants working antidepressants, he's desperate for them. but i'm gonna be so for real, i've had my experiences going off ineffective antidepressants, and i've watched family members try to quit alcohol. an alcoholic quitting is a brutal, drawn out process that shakes me to my core. there are reasons a person still says "i am an alcoholic" even a decade after quitting. that shit's insidious in a way that antidepressants aren't, and it was affecting stolas noticeably more, surely enough to render his meds useless. if you want him back on antidepressants, then you need a sober Stolas first, and this is what he's FINALLY working on

so i think more emphasis needs to be placed on Stolas's recovery from alcoholism when discussing his mental breakdown, irritability, etc. the fact that he's doing this without rehab or other interventions is miraculous, nearly impossible. i don't want his impressive recovery (so far) from alcoholism to end up getting buried under the antidepressant talk ngl, especially when his getting off of alcohol now means that his antidepressants may actually work in the future and help him. this is something to be so so proud of!!

[woodencritter]

One of the fatal flaws of this fandom is its inability to ignore hate comments

It doesn't matter how much I ignore and block, I still find out about the same discussions again and again, because the great majority, especially large accounts, are unable to protect their peace

The people has forgotten the golden rule: do not feed the trolls

There is no point on trying to defend our favorite characters from these people, they don't care, they are just here looking for a fight and this fandom always gives them that fight

I would really want these people to shut up, the only reason that these trolls return is because we continue giving them attention, as harsh as it sound, at this point this “protectors” are also part of the problem

Please PLEASE, just ignore them. “I think this character is not fucked as these people say because ...” I know. We all know. All the people who are here for love of the series knows. So I don't understand why they have to keep repeating themselves again and again. These trolls are not going to change their opinion or feel bad, they simply bloom with your reaction

So please... learn to ignore and block. Learn to stop being consumed by negative comments that only exist to bother others

[mintaikkcorpse]

Blitzø: "I'm too much imp to simp!"

Blitzø literally 3 episodes later:

[miyuskye]

I found this scene in particular so odd and out of place in the new episode. Apart from the fact that Stolas has no right to be angry at Blitz for "not saving him" when Striker kidnapped him nor to be upset that he didn't tell him about Striker's attempt at shooting him. In Loo Loo Land he's perfectly capable of defending himself (even when he hired Blitz for protection!), why is he complaining that an imp, the lowest class on the hierarchy isn't protecting one of the highest?

In that scene Stolas accuses Blitz of not understanding "how much he cared about him", but has he forgotten that he was the one who couldn't stand up not to Asmodeous nor to the accusations of him "sleeping with an imp"?

This reaction shows the actual opposite of what he's telling Blitz he did.

I read that Stolas is supposedly also not aware of ~things~ but why is the narrative conveniently forgetting about his faults as well?

Onto the "apology tour" subject: I fail to understand why Blitz owes Stolas an apology. The only time he was shitty to him was actually in Ozzie's when he asked him on a (fake) date without telling him all the story. But they didn't talk about that not during that episode neither during Apology Tour. Is it because doing this would have forced the narrative to acknowledge that also Stolas was at fault during that episode?

All the other times they interacted (on and off screen, their chats don't really mean anything since it seems that's the way Blitz writes in general), Blitz was being good to him (not that he had any other choice, due to their society ranks and their deal).

To me, this looks like bad writing. But if someone has a different take, I'm happy to hear their interpretation.

[angelshizuka]

"Thank you, Blitzø. For making me so happy. Even if only for a little while."

HELLUVA BOSS: SEASON TWO TRAILER

[a-little-ray-of-fantasy]

If I see one more post saying that Stolas is like Bojack Horseman, (AKA he victimizes himself without actually attempt to get better), I swear to goodness above I'll send Barnaby to stab someone... -_-

[thats-a-mood-gabriella]

I wonder what would happen if those cultists from Apology Tour tried to summon/sacrifice to Stolas now that he's lost his powers and title.

[mandareeboo]

HEY we've all done this shit at LEAST once

[ripplestitchskein]

I think the thing I am looking forward to MOST with Helluva Boss is when it’s Stolas’s turn to deal with his issues and we get the Stolas equivalent of a Blitzø Sucks party and all the ”But Stolas did bad things too! And he’s the worst for not acknowledging that” come to the realization that “Oh…they were getting to that bit of the ongoing story that is currently in progress and is nowhere near done and maybe if I had just waited and given them the benefit of the doubt I would have seen all the clues and indicators they dropped that this would be an upcoming character storyline. Looking back it was actually very obvious they had not just forgotten and brushed over it to make Stolas “look good””

But then of course we’ll still get the “HA, VivziePop must have seen how mad we got and added that in just to make Stolas look better and justify this dysfunctional relationship between *checks notes* an isolated Demon Prince and a traumatized Hell Born Imp In Literal Hell”

So maybe I’m not looking forward to it.