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just-some-random-girl · 1 month

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See, this is what happens when people don't count important details in storytelling just because it's not being said outright, but rather shown through character expressions without dialogue. There were hints from the beginning that Stella was always meant to be a bad person and an obstacle to Stolas' feelings for Blitzø.

Don't believe me? Watch Loo Loo Land again with more open ears and eyes. Stella is shown throwing stuff at Stolas, including his sentient plants which he values highly and she was likely aware of that. That imp butler she threw at him means she not only abuses Stolas, but her own servants too, especially those of a particular lower class race.

Octavia's expressions here imply that this isn't an isolated incident either. That's the look of a girl who's heard this same type of arguing from her parents everyday. With how annoyed she looks, Stolas and Stella might as well have been fighting like this for years. It'd be more surprising if they didn't.

Octavia's lack of a reaction to her mom throwing a plant that almost hit her implies that this is far from the first time Stella has thrown things around the house. That is a concerning thing to get used to. Stella is also heard yelling about Stolas sleeping with an IMP, in THEIR bed. Notice the emphasis on "imp" and "our" bed. Even Stolas' only response to that is "I didn't have time to go to a motel!" It's pretty clear here that Stella is more concerned about about Stolas cheating on her with an imp specifically and ruining her reputation than the fact that he cheated at all.

If she was truly upset about the cheating itself, she would've said something more along the lines of "I can't believe you slept with someone else!" or something like that. Throwing their imp butler and him saying "You wanna fuck this one too?" and calling Stolas "pathetic, imp-sucking face" is all you need to know that Stella is making it more about WHO Stolas cheated on her with than the fact that he cheated. Keep in mind that this argument was going on right in front of Via, who didn't even say anything or try to stop it.

Octavia here says "You two done screaming for the day?" with little emotion, and Stolas' reply basically amounts to "Yup" without hesitation. More and more proof that his marriage with Stella was NEVER happy and never something that he wanted.

Later in the episode, Via does say that her parents used to love each other, even though we as the audience know it's not true. Stolas even tries to explain to her that he and Stella were never in love to begin with, but he didn't have the words. Because how exactly can you explain to your daughter that you and your wife were in an arranged marriage since you guys were kids for the sole purpose of producing a child, without offending her and making her think she was only born for one purpose? Or better yet, what reason is there to assume that she'd actually believe you?

People have looked at this picture on the wall and somehow came to the conclusion that Stolas and Stella used to be in a happy, loving relationship based on this picture alone, just because Stella is smiling in it. But if you look cloesly, you'll see that smile on Stella is barely there. She's very obviously faking it to keep up an image. She's forcing it so people won't get suspicious. This is the vision of Stella that Octavia remembers from her youth, which is exactly why she was naive enough to believe that her parents genuinely loved each other before Blitzø came along for a one night stand in hopes of getting the grimoire. Sure, she had seen them arguing and fighting with each other before that, but that's mainly because most if not all parents have gotten into nasty arguments at some point that their children were more likely than not to witness.

Stella is barely looking at Stolas there, clearly rolling her eyes and just wanting the picture to be overwith already. Stolas is genuinely happy there, but that's because his "little owlette" is there with him. He's not looking at Stella at all. Another picture in their house with just Stolas and Stella together has both of them frowning and looking at the camera, not each other. Octavia is the only thing to come out of Stolas' marriage that ever gave him any real happiness. She was the only reason he stayed at that house.

That scene where Stella ignores Octavia's cry for help when she's having a nightmare and tells Stolas to go check on her instead is more evidence that Stella had never been a nice person or a good mother. You could argue that she was just too tired to do anything about it, but look again. Stolas was just as tired as she was, yet he still went out of way to comfort his "little Starfire" when she was having a bad dream. Octavia may have called for both of her parents, but she said she had a bad dream about her father disappearing. Not her parents, just her father.

Also notice the drawings in Octavia's bedroom when she's a child. Look at how many of them are of her and Stolas together, but Stella is nowhere to be found in those drawings. That shows how close Via is to her father, especially when she was a little girl, but was never really close to her mother at all. Sure, those drawings are no longer in Via's room when she's a teen in the present, but remember that her and Stolas gradually got less close to each other as the years went by and their relationship got more flawed, to the point that Via questions if her dad even loves her anymore and literally listens to music about hating dads. But the fact remains that there were never any drawings of Stella in her daughter's room and there still isn't now is pretty telling that Stella was never a good mom, still isn't now and likely never will be.

Now look at The Harvest Moon Festival. If Loo Loo Land didn't convince you that Stella was a bitch, then this episode sure will. Stella's only scene in the episode is her screaming into a phone while she's talking to Striker about wanting Stolas dead. Right in front of him and Octavia. While Via is listening to music that's too loud for her to have even heard the screaming, Stolas heard it pretty clearly. But he had no reaction to his own wife screeching about hiring an assassin to kill him. Him being completely unphased by something like that is surely a sign that Stella had always hated his guts and he knew about it. He likely heard her shouting at the top of her lungs about wanting to murder him with her own bare hands. If he's not reacting to Stella talking to Striker on the phone about planning his death in front of him, he might as well have been hearing shit like that from her for years.

Not counting the pilot, those are the only two scenes with Stella in season 1. Both scenes depicted her in the same light. A loud, violent bitch in a loveless marriage. Therefore, her reveal in The Circus about always hating Stolas from the get go is not a retcon. Not that there was even much known about her character for there to be retconned in the first place, but her few scenes before that episode showed her doing and saying nothing BUT horrible things.

As for Stolitz, Blitzø is more than once implied to return Stolas' feelings for him. He just never said it out loud and is in denial about his own feelings. He's not even aware that Stolas' love for him is genuine because between their reuniting at the Not Divorce Party and their fumbled fake date at Ozzie's, Stolas has only ever talked to Blitzø with sexual innuendos. So Blitzø had no reason to assume that Stolas was legitimately in love him and didn't just want him for sexy times, because Stolas hadn't really been helping his case. Blitzø ranted to Fizzarolli about Stolas "acting" like he cared about him outside of sex.

Everytime Blitzø talks about Stolas treating him like his own personal fuck toy, he looks and sounds pretty upset about it. I doubt he'd care all that much about his relationship with Stolas being transactional fucking if he didn't like him back. Right after the fake date gone wrong at Ozzie's, Blitzø is looking at several pictures saved in his phone, one of them being a photo of him Stolas laying together in bed. Blitzø looks genuinely happy in that photo, he's even smiling. He DOES enjoy being around Stolas. After Loona comforts him, he can be heard whispering the names of all the people he cares about and is close to. Those people being Loona, Moxxie, Millie and.... Stolas.

In Seeing Stars, Blitzø blushes when seeing Stolas in his human form and you can see his pupils dialating for a few seconds before he changes for a few seconds. I don't know about you, but I don't blush at anyone i'm not in love with when they get a new look. Pupils dialating are also a commom indication that you're looking at something you love. Later in that episode, Blitzo nervously sweats when Stolas whispers into his ear with a seductive voice, smiles at Stolas specifically when he causes the whole audience to laugh, and holds his hand while they run out of the burning building. Blitzø did not need to hold Stolas' hand. He could've just said "Hey, let's get the fuck outta here," and Stolas wouldn't have hesitated. On top of that, they are still shown holding hands long after they escaped and only let go once they see their daughters.

Now, onto the most complicated scene involving the Stolitz relationship, during Blitzø's ball tripping hallucination where he sees Stolas on top of a staircase and is being pulled towards him with chains. Already not a good sign. But Blitzø was already climbing the staircase before the chains appeared. Even when he saw Stolas above him, he didn't run away. He briefly walked towards him before being dragged towards him. He's seen blushing once he reaches the top and Stolas caresses his face. Also notice how the art style in Blitzø's ball trip sequence was completely different from how the show normally looks, but the moment he saw Stolas the art style changed back to normal. Meaning that Blitzø feels the most like himself when he's around Stolas.

He just wants to be in a legit, healthy relationship with Stolas out of love, not the transactional fuck buddy situation he's in right now. He wishes that Stolas would stop calling him degrading nicknames like "impish little plaything" and is bothered by the power imbalance between the two of them.

"Show, don't tell" is an important writing tool that isn't respected these days. If a story isn't being anvilicious and spoonfeeding you information with heavy-handed exposition and infodumps left and right, then foreshadowing details get dismissed and ignored, with some people straight up saying they don't count because it's not being spelled out to them every 5 seconds. This is why some people still insist that Stella's villainy was retconned and that Blitzø has no interest in Stolas despite evidence to the contrary. They were paying more attention to their headcanons than what the show actually presented, and got mad when their headcanons were contradicted by canon.

#helluva boss #blitzø buckzo #stolas goetia #stella goetia #octavia goetia #stolitz #character analysis #show don't tell

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funhouse-mirror-barbie · 5 months

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Nuanced and Multifaceted Conflict vs. “Good v. Evil” in fiction

So. This is another thing I’ve wanted to talk about for a while. I promise I won’t always be focusing on Helluva Boss in my critiques, and I actually have quite a few other series I want to talk about.

There’s a big chance that I’ll be saying everything other people have already said, but I can’t help but WANT to talk about this specific character in regard to the story’s conflict. I think that it’s important to recognize when a character is written to be a complex person, and when a character is written to be an enemy to be defeated, and how not following through with your set-up can affect your story.

And HB does that A LOT in my opinion.

So. Let’s get into it. This time I’ll be talking about complex conflict between characters vs. black and white conflict, and I’ll also be touching on story set-ups and audience expectations.

I want to talk about a character who could have really made some of the internal character conflicts have so much more depth and intrigue. I want to talk about Stella Goetia

*as a side note this post is MUCH longer than I intended but I really wanted to get into a lot of the background and reasons for how Stella’s character development has actually completely changed what HB’d story conflict could have looked like. I’ll try and sum up everything in the end in a TLDR for y’all

So. Most of the reviews of her character I see talk about how she’s been “ruined” by the writing team revealing that she’s always been very abusive towards Stolas

I have to start off by saying I actually don’t think that Stella or her portrayal was “ruined” by the writing direction her character has been taken in.

In fact, this critique bothers me, because it doesn’t really get to what I think the actual root of why people are disappointed in Stella’s characterization, and the type of conflict that now exists between her and Stolas.

The main reason I believe people are unsatisfied with Stella is because they believed that her character was being set up for a complex and nuanced conflict between her and Stolas, and then that turned out not to be the case.

A quick disclaimer- I do think it’s possible to subvert audience expectations about story and characters in a satisfying way. But it has to be done in a way that respects the audiences intelligence and willingness to think about the story.

If your plot-twist, unreliable narrator, subversion, or what-have-you is done well, the audience should be able to either figure out what’s going based on the little information you’ve given them, and if they don’t, the change or subversion should still make sense and CLICK in hindsight.

Otherwise, your subversion will end up feeling cheap or confusing. Or worse, like a lie.

And this is one of the MAIN issues I think people have with Stella.

As the audience, we were NOT given enough information on her or her character before it’s revealed that she’s just “evil” and always has been, apparently since she was a literal child.

Again, I don’t think it’s an inherently bad decision to have a flat or pure evil villain. I’m fine with Stella being one, even if it’s less interesting to me personally.

But it’s definitely very different from what was initially implied and set-up, and the audience can pick up on that.

Before S2E1 “The Circus” we see Stella a total of 3 times in person, with one time being a flashback.

I’m going to go over those times to analyze if anything set-up in Stella’s appearances points towards her being. Well, totally and irredeemably awful and abusive I guess.

The very first time we see Stella is in the same bed with Stolas—Octavia calls for her parents, both Stolas AND Stella. Stella grumbles and refuses to get up and tells Stolas to go. This doesn’t immediately strike me as a sign of her being a terrible person. That exact scenario is present in a lot of family comedies, kids’ movies, and sitcoms.

Nothing about this screams that Stella is a terrible parent or an abusive partner to me. It just tells me she’s tired and doesn’t want to get up, which again, is not uncommon.

The next time we see her, she’s yelling at Stolas, and she throws a servant at him in anger.

Now, there’s no excuse for this, her behavior here is not okay, regardless of her feelings. But we understand why she’s acting the way she is--she’s furious with Stolas for cheating on her. At this point with the information we have, it’s also very reasonable to believe her feelings have been hurt.

Later Octavia talks about how her parents didn’t used to hate each other, and the way Stolas’ tries to explain their failing marriage to her comes across like his relationship with Stella is one that’s always had difficulties that they have tried and failed to overcome.

None of this information is enough to really convey or hint that Stella is and has always been abusive or evil. It shows that Stella and Stolas have a very rough relationship, and that Stella most likely has anger management difficulties, but you have to do lot of extra work to come to the conclusion that Stella is completely at fault here.

The next time we see her though, things have clearly escalated, because it’s revealed that she’s one that hired Striker to assassinate Stolas.

Now. Usually. Yeah. That would be a HUGE red flag. And I mean. It still obviously is.

But, and I never thought I’d use this uno reverse card, this is one of the few times where the explanation of “But it’s hell, what did you expect???” actually makes sense to me.

Because yeah, it is hell. It’s the end of episode 5 when we learn this, and our protagonists have killed and assassinated multiple people. Taking a hit out on people really doesn’t seem to be that uncommon of a thing in hell.

Even the next scene after the reveal that Stella is the one who hired Striker makes light of how serious this is, by showing that Stella was basically yelling her assassination plot right to Stolas’ face.

This is played for laughs! I genuinely am not sure if the writers intended for this to be foreshadowing of Stella’s abuse or not because if so, they turned her attempting to kill her husband into a joke!

If you cannot keep your themes or tone consistent, how is the audience supposed to follow your story?

There is subtle storytelling, and then there’s tacking information and character points later on in your writing. And this can have two causes.

Either your audience has to do the work of story-telling for you and make up their own reasons for what’s happening to make the story coherent OR they will be disappointed and dissatisfied by the final product.

I think that’s the main reason why S2E1 of Helluva Boss felt so jarring story-wise, and why Stella, to me at least, suddenly felt like a brand new character.

Like I haven’t been this confused by a character being suddenly evil since Hans from Frozen.

(like seriously why the hell did they put this scene in if not to just trick the audience. This isn’t giving us any plot info it’s only giving us contradictory info on his character. Like I talked about before, Hans’ heel-face-turn doesn’t feel like a twist. It feels like a lie.)

Okay so, how does any of this actually affect anything? Who cares if Stella is evil, that doesn’t automatically make the story bad!

Well. Yeah, of course not. Ironically, having the main conflict your story being a battle between “Good v. Bad” characters is neither good nor bad. It’s just a story decision. And ultimately at the end of the day, the writers of Helluva Boss can choose to tell their story however they’d like.

But, depending on how this is executed, good v evil stories can be a lot less interesting than morally grey or complicated conflicts and characters.

I am more interested in the version of the story where Stella and Stolas are imperfect and messy people. I am more interested in the story where Stolas has an affair to escape being in an arranged marriage, and Stella overreacts by arranging a hit on her husband (unless calling out a hit is normal in hell, but we can’t know b/c there is no baseline for what is considered normal in hell)

I am so much more interested in the story where Stolas and Stella are both depicted as being in the wrong, as being incredibly hurt by each other’s actions, and as not knowing how to repair their broken relationship for the sake of their daughter.

That story feels very real to me. It’s one I want to engage and invest in.

I want to see if these characters can grow to accept their mistakes and learn and change for the sake of Octavia and having to co-exist with each other, or if they’ll slip back into mutual destruction and toxicity.

But that’s not the story we’ll get to see, because it seems like the writers are more interested in keeping Stolas from having to grow as a character. And because of that, Stella has been turned into an evil obstacle that must be defeated, instead of a nuanced and real person.

I also feel like I have to say. I know I would be MUCH less frustrated by this if I hadn’t seen an HB crew member talking about how their show is similar to Bojack Horseman.

Because. It’s just not. I’m sorry, I’m not saying that to be mean, or condescending, or rude, but the way characters are written in Helluva Boss is almost completely black and white at this point.

Regardless of the writer’s intent, the vast majority of the choices they have made in Season 2 come off as explanations to excuse the protagonist’s mistakes, and give them a “get out of being potentially in the wrong” free card.

Compared to the writing decisions in Bojack, which almost always has characters confront their wrongdoings, for better or worse, HB honestly feels like it’s the Anti-Bojack.

It would take a TON of character development and time to make HB’s characters as interesting, fleshed-out, and as real as Bojack’s are, and at this point that’s I don’t think it will ever happen.

Again. Having black and white conflict is FINE. It is a choice in story telling that can be done very effectively. But if you are making a black and white story where one side is always terrible and evil, and one side can do no wrong, you can’t act like you’ve written something that is deeper and more emotionally complex and grey than that.

And the first time the writers gave Stella more than 3 sentences to string together, they made it very clear that any chance of her being a more complex and engaging character was being tossed out the window.

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TLDR:

The main reason people are upset about Stella being shown as abusive in S2E1 of HB is probably because the initial depictions of her didn’t give us enough information on her character to tell that she was just evil/a terrible person.

The way the story was written in S1 to set up the possibility of a very interesting and complex conflict between Stella and Stolas, and when it was revealed that she’s just. The worst. There were people that were disappointed by this, because they expected more.

Audiences actually aren’t idiots, and when you subtly foreshadow something and then completely change things, that can be frustrating.

It’s MORE than okay to write a straightforward good v evil story, but it depending on the way it’s written and executed, it may not be as interesting to mature audiences as a more morally grey story would be.

If you can’t write characters confronting their flaws and being in the wrong, please don’t compare your writing to Bojack, I mean. C’mon.

#helluva boss critical #helluva boss critique #character critique #stella goetia #hb stella #helluva boss stella #media conversation #media critique #media criticism #writing female characters #writing critique #writing #funhouse convo

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