штельваг

Ok, so, one thing I really liked about this season, (and do try to stick with me on this one), was how much they humanized Valentino. In a lot of media, abusers are depicted as horrible monsters 24/7, and while, obviously, abusers are pretty terrible, it’s not the most realistic. Abusers are human too. This type of portrayal can be dangerous because some people already use the excuse of “they’re not like that all the time” to justify to themselves why it’s ok for their abuser to hurt them, and why it’s ok to stay with them. Having Val be more than just a terrible person all the time this season, weather it be the fleshing out of his relationships with the other vees, or him having some actually funny moments this season, make him all the more realistic. There are also moments that show him being the abuser we know him to be. They are sprinkled throughout the season, like right before he gives Angel to Vox and during the fight with Husk and Cherri, to name a few. We have these to contrast the moments that show a more human side to him and it makes it all the scarier. It shows that he’s human, and that he has the capacity to care for others, but he still chooses to do all of those terrible things to Angel (and probably his other employees though we haven’t really seen much of that). He even keeps trying to talk Vox out of his spiral all thought the latter half of the season. It’s going to hit so much harder when we see him hurting Angel now that we’ve seen him in a relationship where he actually tries to communicate.