Topic: How do you guys feel about Stolas/Stolitz in Helluva Boss?

I got into the show just recently and I know a lot of people have been following it for years since like 2019 when the pilots and stuff were in development. So plenty of fans have watched each episode multiple times and analyzed the hell out of them. I've watched them all including the shorts, but only once each. Anyways I've seen tons of fans and youtubers all commenting that Stolas and his developing relationship with Blitzø has absolutely ruined the show and is making the writing feel like badly written fanfiction. There's dozens of "Why Stolas is a terrible character" or "Why I quit watching Helluva Boss" videos and new ones being posted everyday. All of them explaining in depth why they all feel that Stolas ruined the series.

Personally I feel completely opposite of their line of thinking. I feel like what I enjoyed most of the series was the character Stolas and his f'd up dynamic with Blitzø. I enjoyed season 2 more than season one. One reason was because of Stolas shifting into more of a deuteragonist role. But most of those fans say season one was the better of the two. They all claim that Stolas is a horrible abusive jerk and he doesn't deserve any sympathy and is irredeemable. I feel like they're not understanding him correctly or considering how his life had been. He's a gay man who had been forced into an arranged marriage with a woman who's basically an awful bitch and had admitted to being abusive to him verbally and physically. He had no real friends or any sorta social life outside of events he was obligated to attend due to his status. The only decent thing in his life was his relationship with his daughter, but his abusive bitch wife was slowly turning her against him.

So then comes along the person who he felt had been his only real friend (although Blitzø didn't fully understand that at the time) albeit only for one day. Stolas couldn't remember Blitzø's name, but he remembered who he was and that night all those years ago. When Blitzø fucked him to steal his grimoire I feel like that was Stolas' true sexual awakening and him finally realizing he's gay. All that can really have a strong impact on someone's way of thinking. He developed tunnel vision for Blitzø and decided to finally get the courage to get away from Stella and divorce her. He has problems conveying his true feelings to other people or grasping theirs, but I don't think he's a terrible abusive person. Just socially stunted and not good at handling emotional nuances. His relationship with Octavia wouldn't have ended up like it did if he had been able to explain to her how his marriage and experiences with Stella had really been. She felt like he had just stopped loving them in favor of his tryst with Blitzø, but that wasn't the case. His relationship with Blitzø wouldn't have gotten so rough if he had been able to convey to him that he was starting to feel something more for him than their sexual arrangement (but then again Blitzø being afraid of being emotionally vulnerable would have been a big obstacle in that)

Sorry for that long ass wall of text, but this is something that's been bugging me for a while now. Am I crazy in feeling this way about Stolas and his development and further inclusion in the second season, or are all the people claiming he ruined the series actually correct in their analysis?

glimglam said:
Am I crazy in feeling this way about Stolas and his development and further inclusion in the second season, or are all the people claiming he ruined the series actually correct in their analysis?

Most of the people who write videos like that don't actually like the show, but videos like that get views because hating on vivziepop is fun and trendy or something.

People who actually LIKE the show and are not just farming for views or parroting other people's opinions like the show generally agree with what you've said.

A lot of people 'miss' how things were in the first few episodes where it was 'zany murder hijinx' and dont seem to realize that the show in general was already written at that point and dont really wanna acknowledge that Stolas' storyline was written out from the start of the show (I highly recommend rewatching it -- new pilot and rereleased show on Sept 10! to absorb a lot of those details. Loo loo land is really poignant when you can look at it from the lens of season 2 Stolas

"You need to understand... your mother and I... I just-... I felt-... She's always been... I haven't been- Ha-... We weren't in... I'm sorry, I- I- I don't have the words."

Stolas--as a character-- is flawed, but so is everyone in the show, and the show has been focused entirely on Stolas and Blitz dancing around each other, one step at a time.

snowwolf said:
A lot of people 'miss' how things were in the first few episodes where it was 'zany murder hijinx' and dont seem to realize that the show in general was already written at that point and dont really wanna acknowledge that Stolas' storyline was written out from the start of the show (I highly recommend rewatching it -- new pilot and rereleased show on Sept 10! to absorb a lot of those details. Loo loo land is really poignant when you can look at it from the lens of season 2 Stolas

All the hate on VivziePop is another thing that's just bewildered me. Like going back and researching everything they've given as evidence that points to her being transphobic, racist, bigoted towards certain religions (Voodoo in particular), mean to coworkers, wrongly firing the voice actors that worked on the pilots, etc etc are all bullshit and can be easily explained. Some of the things were stuff from 8 or more years ago. Like they're just jealous of her success as an indie artist and want to try everything they can to ruin her image. Yeah she's made some mistakes but people act like every little screw up from her past makes her an evil vile person or something. Anyway thanks for responding, I'm glad to know I'm not crazy and that those opinions/videos are all pretty much just salty people trying to get views and hurt the series and creator at the same time.

As for people preferring if the show would focus more on them going to missions in the human world I think if that actually happened people would regret suggesting it. If every episode was just whatever current mission they were on at the time then it would end up feeling like how those old "monster/villain of the week" cartoons from the 60s and 70s were. Like the DC Super Friends or Scooby Doo. It would end up feeling stale and boring pretty quick imo. I think the current way of it being like a character driven series with romantic subplots is the better way. The way they're handling the missions by making the short/minisodes be about them is a good way to go about it and gives us stuff while we wait for the main series to resume. I should just ignore all those negative opinions and hate videos. I don't wanna feel bad about something I'm looking forward to so much.

The vivziepop hate is *insane* honestly. Like, the lengths people will go to express and spread their hate is seriously concerning. And yeah, basically everything is either ... deliberately falsified, taken out of context or are things that are from an era when the internet was very different.

But yeah, no, not crazy at all. It's just view count hunting and screeching for clout.

Also, yep, you nailed it. The 'murder of the week' would get REAL boring real fast.

on the fanfiction thing -- Fanfic isnt a bad thing. Fanfic often gives the readers what they really want out of a show that they wouldnt get otherwise. There's not time for a heart to heart about trauma in TV show X, but in fanfic you can really dig in to those ideas. A story being written with the idea of 'this is what fans enjoy' isn't a bad one. The very last episode is a fantastic example of why that fanfictiony writing is satisfying.

between Mastermind and Sinsmas, the fandom was FULL of people speculating on various things: Would Stolas call Via, would Via answer, what would happen between them, how would Stolas adjust to peasant life, what are stella and Andrealphus up to, are Blitz and Stolas a thing now, what about stolas' happy pills, etc etc etc etc. And these questions were burning in people's minds, talked about CONSTANTLY during that month.
And Sinsmas brought up nearly everything people were talking about: We don't get a resolution between Via and Stolas, but they talk. We see clearly that Via loves her dad, but is very hurt. We get an idea what a battle against Andy would look like, we got a fucking montage of stolas adjusting to being poor... it addressed so many things and helped ensure that the wait til the next season wouldnt be as bad, while still leaving plenty of anticipation in store.

Ugh, sorry, I really love this show XD

and 100%. Ignore the haters. Helluva Boss isnt perfect, but if it makes you happy, who cares? Ignore the hate. Love what you love!

The community on bluesky's pretty nice. Twitter is more hit and miss, but block and block more if you need to.

I REALLY recommend a rewatch (Three weeks!!!!) and if you havent watched it yet, Hazbin Hotel is a heck of a ride too. --and we get a new season at the end of october~~ great time to watch! ((I give everyone the same warning: Episode 4 is heavy. read the warning at the start of the episode~)

(I pulled myself out of like over 2 years of silence on the forums to chatter about my most recent hyperfixation -- thank you for the chance to chatter about it!)

snowwolf said:

on the fanfiction thing -- Fanfic isnt a bad thing. Fanfic often gives the readers what they really want out of a show that they wouldnt get otherwise. There's not time for a heart to heart about trauma in TV show X, but in fanfic you can really dig in to those ideas. A story being written with the idea of 'this is what fans enjoy' isn't a bad one. The very last episode is a fantastic example of why that fanfictiony writing is satisfying.

I REALLY recommend a rewatch (Three weeks!!!!) and if you havent watched it yet, Hazbin Hotel is a heck of a ride too. --and we get a new season at the end of october~~ great time to watch! ((I give everyone the same warning: Episode 4 is heavy. read the warning at the start of the episode~)

(I pulled myself out of like over 2 years of silence on the forums to chatter about my most recent hyperfixation -- thank you for the chance to chatter about it!)

I'm really loving this show too, it's my current hyperfixated obsession lol I actually love reading fanfiction and have hundreds of downloaded epub files from AO3 of different series (currently 83 fics for Helluva Boss) I was just echoing them saying it was like a poorly written one (I totally disagree on that) I actually went and downloaded mp4s for all the episodes (and shorts) in 1080p from an archive page of them on Internet Archive. So I plan to rewatch them a bunch soon. Also don't worry about coming back after a 2 year silence. That's nothing, I had been completely silent on here for 6 years after just switching to only browsing without logging in. I had been active posting stuff from 2017 to 2019 or so and just recently started back earlier this month.

Edit: also if you're open to fic recommendations I've been reading Written in Moonlight by stolitzsilas with art from GlitterKoneko. The art is nice and reminds me of light novels in like how they have illustrations at important moments in the story. You can find it here

I never understood the obsession with trying to gatekeep Voodoo and Wendigos from fiction authors but only sometimes.

"Nooo W*ndigos are real and Ruby Rose can't kill them! Nooo Voodoo is le heckin wholesome and did nothing wrong!"

Persona 5 has you summon Satan to shoot God in the face to save Christmas. Shut the fuck up.

redphoenix42 said:
I never understood the obsession with trying to gatekeep Voodoo and Wendigos from fiction authors but only sometimes.

"Nooo W*ndigos are real and Ruby Rose can't kill them! Nooo Voodoo is le heckin wholesome and did nothing wrong!"

Persona 5 has you summon Satan to shoot God in the face to save Christmas. Shut the fuck up.

Yeah, people shouldn't get so butthurt over fantastical depictions of religion in works of fiction. You're right about the SMT/Persona series. God is usually depicted as morally evil in those games, but yet people don't bitch about those much. (It's particularly crazy in SMT II) But yet someone [Viv] includes a bit of Voodoo references in her content and people single it out and nitpick it as being culturally insensitive. I'll admit that I myself don't really know much at all about Voodoo, and Viv probably knows of it only to the extent that she spent to research it. But I don't believe she was being toxic at all or ever intended to be when referencing it. I'm starting to get real pissed that every time I search Helluva Boss on YouTube all I see for results is 80% hate videos about why VivziePop is "evil" or untalented and that they think the Hellaverse series are bad/poorly written etc and only a few results of videos that I'd actually wanna watch like comic dubs or people positively talking about it. It's bullshit and it honestly needs to stop. Yeah I'm all for "free speech" but not so much when it's literally unwarranted hate spreading

glimglam said:
Yeah, people shouldn't get so butthurt over fantastical depictions of religion in works of fiction. You're right about the SMT/Persona series. God is usually depicted as morally evil in those games, but yet people don't bitch about those much. (It's particularly crazy in SMT II) But yet someone [Viv] includes a bit of Voodoo references in her content and people single it out and nitpick it as being culturally insensitive. I'll admit that I myself don't really know much at all about Voodoo, and Viv probably knows of it only to the extent that she spent to research it. But I don't believe she was being toxic at all or ever intended to be when referencing it. I'm starting to get real pissed that every time I search Helluva Boss on YouTube all I see for results is 80% hate videos about why VivziePop is "evil" or untalented and that they think the Hellaverse series are bad/poorly written etc and only a few results of videos that I'd actually wanna watch like comic dubs or people positively talking about it. It's bullshit and it honestly needs to stop. Yeah I'm all for "free speech" but not so much when it's literally unwarranted hate spreading

It's envy. Just envy. Everything else is a post-hoc excuse for the hatred, not its source. Otherwise their focus would be on "worse" media.