#rambling on how fandom can get too fixated on everything being sweet and wholesome

[anthurak]

I’ve talked before about one of the big reasons I DON’T think Loona and Octavia are actually going to have the straightforward ‘wholesome sisterly relationship’ that a lot of fans seem to have latched onto and might be expecting. But more than that, I’d like to talk about the main reason why I just don’t like this interpretation of Loona and Octavia, at least outside of AU settings, and why I don’t think we should be expecting it from the show itself.

What I feel a lot of fans don’t seem to quite grasp is that possibly the greatest strength of Helluva Boss’s character writing is the use of contrast.

Helluva Boss is a show set in actual Hell, with all of the misery and torment that implies, and that’s not even going into how Hell is deliberately written as a dystopic, crapsack world to live in. Our main characters are a company of assassins, hired killers who murder humans for a simple paycheck. And most of them are fairly miserable people with deep-seated traumas and very messy and dysfunctional relationships.

But it is precisely all that negativity which those positive emotional moments hit all the harder. It’s what makes Moxie’s and Millie’s relationship seem all the more special and wholesome when it seems like they are the only couple in Hell to have found such a genuinely and unconditionally loving and HAPPY relationship. It’s what makes the times Blitzo is able to genuinely bond with Loona and the M&Ms or Stolas is able to connect with his daughter feel special because it’s clear this is NOT an easy thing for them to do.

So if we start trying to ‘sand off the edges’ and downplay the uglier, painful problems that our characters are dealing with, or even try to pretend they don’t even exist, then we start depriving these characters of precisely the things that make their successes so meaningful. Like the big thing that makes Blitzo’s and Stolas’s relationships with each other and their respective daughters so compelling and interesting is BECAUSE these two are such utter disastrous WRECKS as both parents and people in general. Of course, that’s not to say they have to STAY miserable and dysfunctional messes in order to stay interesting. Just that the way they should be getting out of this mess should be through hard-earned character development and not simply having the writers or audience wipe the problems away and pretend they don’t exist just to create some arbitrary ‘wholesome family dynamic’.

The whole reason Loona’s and Octavia’s scene together in this latest episode hits as well as it does is because we know what both these girls have been through. We’ve seen the kind of trauma and baggage they’re both carrying around. So when they finally find SOMEONE who they can truly relate to, someone who they know actually GETS what they are going through, it hits SO much harder. We’ve seen Loona be this very mean, confrontational, incredibly abrasive and extremely guarded person who seems to can’t help but keep both a physical and emotional distance from basically everyone she meets. So when we see her finally let her guard down and show this incredible openness, empathy and warmth to Octavia, it makes both the scene and the blossoming friendship between these two feel all the more special.

And this all leads back to my issue with how a lot of the fandom seems to expect Loona, Octavia, Blitzo and Stolas to form some straightforward wholesome, homogenous family unit.

Because that’s just NOT the kind of show this is.

Everything we’ve seen of Helluva Boss paints this show as the story of people with a LOT problems. Hang-ups, baggage, deep-seated traumas and dysfunctional relationships. Yet it also seems to be the story about how those people yearn for happiness and fulfillment, and can one day even find that happiness. That certainly seems to be the story the show is playing out with Blitzo and Stolas.

Helluva Boss seems to be a show about people finding themselves in weird, unconventional and even dysfunctional relationships, yet ultimately finding a way to turn those relationships into some happy and fulfilling. I mean, just look at the M&Ms. The whole narrative point of Moxie’s and Milly’s relationship is to show these two oddballs in the middle of actual Hell who nonetheless clearly couldn’t be happier with each other. Despite all conventional wisdom of those around them, these two have found a way to make their relationship WORK.

And it’s for that reason that I just don’t see Blitzo and Stolas winding up with some straightforward ‘happily ever after’ where they’re married and raising their two daughters like a lot of the fandom seems to be expecting/hoping. Can these two ultimately be happy together? Of course. It’s just going to take a whole lot of WORK from both of them. And it’s NOT going to be easy OR pretty. And I highly doubt it’s going to end with Blitzo and Stolas forming some idyllic nuclear family with their daughters.

Like that’s not even touching on the fact that Loona and Octavia are clearly NOT kids anymore. Loona is already freaking 22 and the story seems to be view Octavia MUCH more as a young adult than ‘just a kid’ (more on that in an upcoming post). So by the time Blitzo and Stolas are able to work out an actually happy, healthy relationship, they’re NOT going to be two dads raising two daughters, but rather two dads with GROWN-UP daughters who have probably figured out their own lives independent of their dads.

I do think we are ultimately going to see Blitzo and Stolas in a genuinely happy relationship together, and find a healthy, functional relationship with their daughters. It’s just not going to be tight-knit family unit that I think a lot of the fandom is expecting.