#I'm gay for morally grey women with Backstory

[simplybybea]

when I fell headfirst into movie-verse School for Good and Evil my sister looked at the trailer and then texted me 'Lesso?'

Yes little sister. Lesso.

Then she came and watched it with me and within Lessons first scene went 'yep, yeah this is so your type it hurts'

hate when you find a character whose so infuriatingly Your Type that its embarrassing like yeahg no one is gonna be surprised when i announce this is my new Guy Of The Month

[stromuprisahat]

i saw your evgeniy post and i totally agree that it wouldnt work out the same at all if genya was male, maybe he would work directly for the king but either way im willing to bet the fandom wouldnt be victimising him to that extent and the character probably would be allowed to stay morally grey instead of being forced to be "good".

as per your comments too: they probably gave ivan a love interest for "representation points" but if the show character was played more accurately to the book and looked more like book ivan people would probably ship him with the darkling a lot more and talk about him having unrequited love or whatever which is fine but certainly cheapens the characters motives.

also i dont think alina would have got on with genya if she was in a red kefta from the start as its like she saw genya in livery as "on the same level as her" as a servant and outsider, its my firm belief that if genya was introduced to alina as corporalki to start with her prejudice would kick in and she wouldnt trust her at all as she seems more prejudice against corporalki than any of the other orders (aside from the darkling)

(What if Genya were Evgeniy)

I don't think the King would require services of Tailor. The Queen remains the obvious choice for that, although there would be issues.

Regarding narrative-treatment... well, my guess is he wouldn't live long. Just look at Ivan- he wasn't easily brainwashed character, so he had to die to prop up brand new Good Guy™. Zhenya wouldn't be re-written into one-dimensional victim, because it would be easier to simply kill him off (preferably in a way emphasizing he picked the wrong side).

Fandom would simply ignore him, because he's a man in Aleksander's service. His backstory, missing sexual abuse "orchestrated" by the Darkling would also lose its appeal to antis. Loss of loved ones or torture just doesn't have the ring to it, when aimed at a man. Hell, if we'd make the King "fond" of teen boys, or came up with another molester, Evgeniy's story would include different variables. Women are easier to woobify, but then again, it could be "fixed" by making the boy gay, or better- headcanon gay. Everyone knows that makes you easier to exploit, so we can pretend lack of agency equals unfavourable circumstances etc. etc.

Since we know almost nothing about book!Ivan's personal life, I didn't mind his and Fedyor's romantic relationship, quite contrary- both actors used their minimal screentime to introduce the best romance in season 1 (in both, if I'm honest).

Ivan's in danger of simplification of his motivations no matter the looks. While book Ivan's described as good-looking, in show he's already canonically MLM. Both can work as a good enough reason to turn his loyalty into unrequired crush. Why delve into anything more complicated, if your view requires demonisation of the Darkling?

Absolutely agree on Genya's position and Alina's "friendship". Alina has been distrustful of other Grisha since the beginning. Sure, her belief she's a fraud played a part, but that would apply to Genya in red too. Grisha without colour didn't fit in. Useless Sun Summoner wouldn't either, once her incompetence becomes widely-known. Alina doesn't exactly believe in selfless unconditional friendship. Hell, she takes and takes from Genya, while offering little, with Malyen she assumes the opposite position.

[some-pers0n]

I think it’s a shame that Stella ended up the way she did. I’m not saying that she needed to be a complex 3D character or get redeemed or have a tragic backstory but it’s a shame that she was reduced to “I’m a spoiled brat who hates my husband!!!” Originally it was a morally grey thing, with Stolas cheating on his wife (resulting in a scandal about him cheating with an imp in a PUBLIC PARTY). Olivia also says that they didn’t used to hate each other, but unless she was the most oblivious 17 year old alive she would have known how much Stella loathed him (in s2e1 she says to his face that she likes tormenting him and mocks him in front of all his friends).

The reason their relationship was so interesting was that neither Blitz or Stolas were right! Blitz used him for the book and Stolas cheated. Making Stella a brat takes a lot of blame away from Stolas. You know what it reminds me of?

When female characters in fanfiction are demonized for the sake of making a gay ship look better. Stella is this trope to a T, removing any interesting things about her. I might send another ask on my opinion on s2e1.

It really is kinda terrible to see her fall so much as a character, despite her barely having anything to begin with.

Like...I don't know why Vizzie and the writers are obsessed with making Stolas out to be a perfect guy when he was the one who threw the entire family into jeopardy by sleeping with Blitz. Obviously we sympathize with him because Blitz likes him and he's an alright enough guy, but he still cheated on his wife. Even if she is a royal ass, we feel more bad for Octavia because she's clearly not handling the whole situation all too great.

It's not the most nuanced thing in the world, but it's something. It's interesting. It provides depth to Stolas and his relationships. He's willing to disrupt his seemingly okayish family life because he got horny and wanted a plaything.

Then season 2 rolled around. It retcons everything to make Stolas out to be an itty bitty lil' cinnamon roll who was pushed into marrying Stella and was actually sad the whole time because Stella is an abusive asshole who never loved him. The way she talks about him in season 1 versus season 2 is so much more different. It strips her of any sort of character and just makes her as blatantly evil and horrible as possible. Openly insults him for being bad in bed, complains about him, etc and etc.

I also hate how they retconned it so that Blitz and Stolas first met when they were kids and Blitz was Stolas's first friend. It feels something straight out of a bad fanfic. It makes the relationship less interesting to me since apparently these two knew each other already before they started this whole thing. It's just...yeah. Bad writing.

Then s2e4. I don't know what the writers did or if it was the direction the voice actor was given, but her voice is EAR-SPLITTING. Every word is so shrill and irritating to listen to. Not to also mention that she's just a stuck-up oblivious brat who behaves like a toddler. It's asinine.

It literally is just: "I don't like the Women because it gets in the way of my Hot Demon Yaoi so I'm going to make her the worst character in all of fiction" and it's really tiring.

What even happened with season 2? Where did Brandon go? What happened to the sharper and wittier dialogue and writing? Yeah, Helluva usually was about dick and sex jokes, but most jokes now are just the same old thing over and over again. I remember when it was like s1e5 and around that time when I was really on board with the show. Now it's just...yeah. This.

[rosesforwildwitches]

It's not just that he left her because he found out he was gay, it's that up until he got with Blitzø, he literally didn't see a single alternate to his life continuing down the path it was going and had no concept of a life outside of his arranged marriage with Stella. He also literally mentions that he stayed with her despite her being abusive because he believed it would shield Octavia from mistreatment and give her a "normal", happy upbringing. Plenty of parents who shouldn't be together stay together with the best of intentions because of the social pressures to have a two parent heterosexual household, and Stolas's situation is an example of that.

Stella's character wasn't assassinated because she was written as she is from the start, much in the same way that in Disney films Maleficent and Ursula (and for male examples Scar and Judge Frollo) weren't character assassinated by not being "more complex" than being power hungry and self serving. Sure Scar could've been a far more complex character with political motives and a backstory, and he explicitly has sympathetic family in the direct to DVD sequels, but him being written as a pure evil character without much moral grey is part of his appeal and it makes the story work. A character being written the same way from the being of the story isn't character assassination, it's a character being written as an evil antagonist.

Also saying Valentino is realistic and Stella isn't is incredibly biased, I know because I've met women who act like Stella and treat their partners like that IRL (where I was also a teenager at the time and didn't have enough info on the situation to get social services meaningfully involved or do anything to help). I've seen that shit happen when I've been in no position legally or financially to help or stop it, and the fact is female abusers aren't as statistically common as male abusers, but they're just as traumatic and awful to those they abuse, and it's not unrealistic to depict that. And frequently, people brush off female abusers significantly more than male abusers, because I have seen women get away with laughs from a crowd saying they throw shit at their boyfriends and laugh when he flinches, when I know those same people would call the cops and possibly actually get a response if it were a man saying that about anyone.

I'm not saying him being in an abusive situation gives him a pass, he still fucked up as a father, and I literally agree with the first three paragraphs of your original post. I'm also not saying it gives him a pass for his classism. He's literally not being babied by the narrative, his actions as a father literally got him kicked out of his daughter's life by Octavia herself and the narrative portrays it as sad and tragic for Stolas but justified and emotionally understandable from Octavia's side. He got kicked out of his position of power for his actions and is currently couch crashing at Blitzø's place and trying to learn how to live in normal society, where most of the imps rag on him for being formerly higher class. This is literally the narrative showing the natural consequences of his choices and how he's trying to deal with it.

ok this isn’t a hellaverse acc anymore but i have to get this rant out here,

octavia was not being irrational with how she acted in sinsmas!! just imagine being in her shoes: your dad cheats on ur mom with some random dude, constantly picks him, and even sacrifices his life for him on live television. how would that make you feel?

“oh but stolas has shown he cares about her!” he SAID he cares about her with words, yes, but he had never shown it with his actions, atleast not on screen. you can see it in the loo loo land ep when he claimed he wanted to have a special day for via but made blitzo tag along despite the fact he can defend the both of them just fine because?? he was just horny i guess???

you can also see it in the seeing stars ep when he goes to la to look for via but gets sidetracked by blitzo again, at the end it wasn’t even him that found her, it was loona 😭

stolas is not a good father, nor was he “trying his best”, and the fact that the show expects the audience to believe that shows how incompetent the writing is at times