Just Yelling About Helluva Boss Mostly 😆

Short summary of the dream/nightmare sequence:

Stolas envisions a (possibly younger? I'll address this later) version of himself, wandering through his father's 'stables.' He encounters a fantasy alt version of Blitz portraying some sort of stable worker, possibly, and they have a steamy encounter...until it turns sour. In the middle of the sexual fantasy, the dream-Blitz's tail turns into Striker's and he pulls out the angelic dagger that Striker used to torture Stolas in Western Energy. The fantasy then becomes a PTSD nightmare. This blonde Baron Blitz? turns into Striker and stabs Stolas. The dream sequence ends with a splash of red blood and Stolas waking up, panicked and trying to make sure he hasn't actually been hurt. But the black on his fingers isn't blood, just spilled ink from his pen.

Why This Fantasy

We know from Sinsmas that Stolas writes smutty romance as an outlet/hobby, enough that Blitz has gotten him a journal to do so. The basic tropes of the story – a shut-in prince, a suave and cocky rider/possibly stablehand, an impromptu roll in the hay – are all pretty standard archetypes stemming from older mass-produced romance stories. Stolas is clearly using this as a way to privately vent his sexual desires and to scratch some sort of creative itch.

But the story also incorporates personal touches. Stolas envisions himself as a prince, like in his actual life. But he also envisions himself with white pupils, a trait he hasn't had until he lost his powers. Incorporating the horse stables comes from his growing knowledge of how much Blitz loves horses. Blitz's blond hair is a throwback to classic romances of the 80s and 90s, but it's also based on Blitz's own preferred wig color when he does drag. While he gives Blitz a different name (that he decides he hates), it's pretty clear that, whenever Stolas is fantasizing, he doesn't really want to picture anyone else.

There are things to be said about whether or not this is 'healthy,' but he's ultimately expressing his desires in a way that is not intended to actually affect anyone else.

What His Fantasy Gets Right

Details like the incorporation of horses/the blond hair show that Stolas is learning about Blitz and what is important to him. He's putting Blitz into a fantastical and fictional setting, but in a role he feels Blitz would actually like. The fantasy also incorporates a lot of the way they interacted in The Circus, right down to Blitz dipping Stolas as a seduction method.

I think one of the things that has to be taken into consideration with Stolas' fantasies about a working class person whisking him away from his royal life is that he's never known a life beyond being royalty (except for now schlepping on Blitz's sofa) so he can't even picture what he'd be outside of that (especially because "OUTSIDE" has generally been hateful and violent to him) and has never gotten along with people of his own social status, so nothing involving someone of his own social class would be a fantasy. It's far from perfect or unproblematic, but he's trying.

Blind Spots in His Fantasy

As pointed out in my mootie's post here, Stolas is still showing a pretty big lack of knowledge about the class system in general. He knows his position as a prince and just keeps himself as that. But he gives himself no real role or identity beyond that, only wandering around and smelling flowers/petting the horses. Blitz is … presumably a stablehand or someone else who works with the horses, but he doesn't have any apparent job to do. He's seen gallivanting in on horseback, which would be something reserved for the horse's owner and perhaps a trainer. But he's certainly not dressed like someone who trains the horses in the royal stables. So, what is he? Stolas probably doesn't know much about keeping horses and what's involved with them. He has no grasp and leaves it very vague in favor of what he really is trying to do...write smut. This actually extends into a full discussion about Stolas' general lack of autonomy, which I'll touch on later.

But also, and perhaps most importantly. The Baron/Blitz in this fantasy also doesn't talk the way Blitz did when they first hooked up in The Circus, which is an important note and really starts to show where Stolas is mentally.

The Fantasy Starts Falling Apart

Baron/Blitz's manner of speak is actually a sign that this fantasy is starting to go sideways immediately. His 'dirty talk' dialogue centers on what he knows Stolas wants.

“If you wanted me to stop, we both know you could stop me, but you wanna get filthy, don't you?”

This is a sign of Stolas processing his sexual desires, and that kind of talk is pretty typical for bodice ripper romances. But it's a far cry from what his actual dynamic was with Blitz when their situationship was happening.

Their conversations beforehand involved far more question and answer. Importantly, Blitz usually emphasized letting Stolas express what he wanted. For someone as repressed and emotionally floundered as Stolas, I think that was always very key to their dynamic. Stolas has led a very specific and stifled life that robbed him of a lot of personal choice and identity. Feeling listened to in this manner is a good part of why he became so infatuated.

So why did this fantasy take this “you want to” route before going sour? For several reasons, the first and possibly most crucial being Apology Tour.

Blitz tried to show up at Stolas' palace the morning after Full Moon and practically demand sex. You could see him going through the paces trying to recreate their first night from The Circus, but his emotional walls were up, and his wording was all wrong. He told Stolas what Stolas wanted, even when Stolas was saying quite the opposite, and he insisted that this moment had to be a fantasy of Stolas' and doubled down Stolas' interest in him being entirely based on classism. Communication was gone. Stolas realized that Blitz was refusing to believe him, and the conversation devolved. In fact, the way Blitz spoke specifically reminded Stolas of the way Striker speaks.

While Stolas made this sound like a very surface level argument, this concept seemed to have dredged up a lot of internal pain, and I can't blame him. The one person he had romantic feelings for was reminding him of the guy who mocked, tortured, and almost killed him.

Then, Blitz doubled down on the hurt by accidentally admitting that he knew Striker had tried to kill Stolas already and never said anything. It hammered in the idea that Blitz really didn't care about Stolas and wouldn't feel anything if something happened to him. And this painful thought seems to have rooted itself deep enough to survive into Season 3.

And this was the last time Blitz and Stolas directly discussed sex with each other.

Now, Stolas has found out since then that Blitz does care about him post-Mastermind, but Blitz has never clarified that such feelings were there before Stolas attempted to die in his place. To Stolas, it looks like any post-Mastermind affection is borne out of obligation. Which, affection based on obligation is what he was trying to stop in the first place by giving Blitz the crystal.

Long story short, as soon as the Baron/Blitz character in Stolas' fantasy started talking to Stolas in this manner, Stolas' subconscious probably tied it to one of his most painful memories with Blitz, and the one memory that most blended Blitz and Striker together in his mind.

Blitz and Striker – Two Sides of the Same Coin

Thematically, Striker and Blitz are foils of each other. Striker appears to be everything Blitz wants to be in Season One: independent, a horse owner, works alone, claims to hate the unfairness of Hell's class system, confident, a ruthless killer, and strong enough to be Blitz's equal in the Pain Games.

They do, however, have major core differences. Despite how much he claims to not need help or complains about his employees, Blitz wants to work with others: even if they're difficult sometimes. Even if they occasionally hold him back. As much shit as he gives the people around him, his limits are drawn the moment someone else tries to hurt them. He is protective, and he genuinely at his core wants his friends and family to live up to their full potential. He very much doesn't want to be alone like Striker is, a fact that his own bad trip version of Striker even mocks him for.

Where Blitz fights the corrupt class system by starting his own business and filling it with people he feels have potential/need the stability, Striker works directly under the orders of Stella and Crimson: one of the most classist characters in the show and one who has an entire wall of “trophies” taken from other lower class denizens of Hell who have displeased him. Despite his complaints about the class system and how royalty fucks over people beneath them, he's more than willing to work for some of the worst of the worst if it benefits him. Striker will betray any of his alleged principles for the right price, something Blitz is starting to realize he doesn't want to do.

And Stolas knows Blitz wouldn't turn like that, right?

Well, from what Stolas thinks he knows, Blitz kind of already has.

I.M.P., Violence, and Stolas' Impression of the Working Class

Stolas' first experience working at I.M.P. was the terrible customer during Sinsmas, who wanted her ex-husband killed for starting a relationship with a man and raising their daughters in that “sinful” lifestyle. Both Blitz and Stolas clearly saw parallels to Stolas' own situation, and Stolas in his poor (pretty much turning actively suicidal) mental state declared that taking the job was fine. Maybe selfish men like that (like him) didn't deserve to live. Blitz hesitatingly agreed to take the job, for double the price. We, the audience, know he had an internal crisis later and didn't follow through with the kill...

But Stolas does not.

He left before they returned from that abandoned mission, and with everything that happened afterward, it's most likely he never found out, either. If Blitz couldn't be bothered to tell him Striker tried to kill him, he's not going to think of this little detail in the middle of the Sinsmas chaos.

So, in Stolas' view, Blitz has already willingly killed someone very much like him, knowing the situation is very much like him, just with the condition that it costs more. And to reinforce that, violence and shame have very much been Stolas' experience with the outside world at large. From his own years of abuse, to I.M.P.'s purpose, to the attacks at Loo Loo Land, to the mockery at Ozzie's, to Loona hitting Blitz in the crotch in Seeing Stars, to being captured and tortured in Western Energy, to Moxxie and Millie gleefully fighting each other in Sinsmas, Stolas' experience with the world has been one where violence was normalized and accepted. Even his previous sexual dynamic with Blitz was full of consensual violence: a thing that has now been turned negative when he used it as a coping method to keep his composure against Striker. Now he might struggle think of the consensual pain he experienced with Blitz without also associating it with the actual torture he underwent. That, combined with all the above factors, makes his subconscious consider...

In a darker timeline, would Blitz treat him just as cruelly as Striker did? Would he be just as willing to kill him? Would Stolas be no different than one of I.M.P.'s many targets: not someone they have a personal vendetta against, just someone they would kill for the right price?

When Stolas is startled out of the nightmare with a splash of blood, the blood is not black like his own: but red, like a human.

Stolas and Autonomy

Another thing that is subtly shown in this fantasy is Stolas' lack of autonomy. With the way he's been socially isolated, generally disliked, and lived a highly controlled life, he very much lacks a sense of self-identity and has difficulty making decisions or goals for himself. This first shows up in the fact that he has his visible pupils: a sign of his depowered state. It might just be his subconscious seeing his current self, but it also might be a sign that he's trying to “fix” some of the power imbalance between himself and Baron/Blitz in the fantasy, but at the cost of his own powers. He is still a prince in this fantasy because he can't see himself as anything else. Likely not as any sort of vanity, but because he's never been allowed to be anything else and hasn't experienced the outside world enough to find potential identity in anything else. He just literally has no reference besides fiction and has largely associated the rest of his world with something that wants to shut him out or shut him into a specific box.

Please see this other ridiculously long meta post of mine if you want to go into why Stolas has fantasies in the first place and the many, many reasons he struggles to see himself in anything beyond a prince-in-a-tower type of archetype.

Not only that, but he is well aware that all of this is only because of who his father is. His palace was given to him, his job was given to him, his spouse was chosen for him - all from his father. Stolas has never had an identity that didn't have Paimon looming over it in some form. So, even in his fantasy where he tries to NOT put Blitz directly under his influence, the best he can imagine is the stables being Paimon's. He can't even envision a scenario in which he would run into Blitz from something completely his own.

While Stolas has made a few fairly important decisions in his life, if anything, they have discouraged him from trying harder:

Raising Octavia as a more traditional parent vs. handing her over to servants/caretakers. While this was good in itself, his determination to give Via a "family" to grow up in only allowed him to live under Stella's abuse and hurt himself in the long run

Sleeping with Blitz and lending the Grimoire, which set off... everything that has happened to him since

Demanding the divorce, which was long overdue but also furthered Stella's resolve to have him murdered and Andrealphus' determination to steal his power and title

Taking the blame in Mastermind, which saved Blitz's life but at the cost of everything else Stolas had, including the trust of his own daughter.

The long and short of it is that Stolas has lived a life controlled for him, with where and how he lives and who he sees and marries and even his job/role in Goetian society determined for him. And any time he has stepped outside of that, it has come with horrible consequences. Stolas struggles to see himself as anything beyond a simple prince because anything else has always been disallowed, if not outright punished. Since the rest of Hell hates him for what he is, the rest of the upperclass have always shunned him, and he doesn't seem willing to imagine Blitz into any other form but who he is...even in this sexual fantasy where he is actively trying to “fix” some of the problematic aspects of the early Stolitz dynamic, he still can't envision anything that isn't prince/working class.

And Stolas even seems to envision himself as younger, perhaps a teen version? In an attempt to create a romance before he married and his life got worse under Stella. He envisions no way out of that struggle except it never happening in the first place, but he also can't envision being able to do that on his own.

This struggle with autonomy also circles back to the way Baron/Blitz spoke to him during their dirty talk moment. Again, it was mostly about that fantasy version telling Stolas what he wanted, rather than getting verbal consent. After Mastermind and Sinsmas, Stolas probably has issues trusting his own decisions and taking action on anything he has wanted. He is stuck: situation-wise, emotionally, sexually, in just about any way possible, and he can't see a way to improve any of them.

I'm also going to link to another wonderful mutal's post about how this fantasy likely also showed Stolas' sense of shame around his sexuality. With the way he grew up, and with how everything went down after sleeping with Blitz, he probably feels a sense of shame still having sexual wants. He likely has shame about the fact that he gave into them in the first place. So imagining a scenario where someone tells him what he wants is initially easier in this case... until it triggered everything else.

Abuse and Consent

This is a point I've seen others make, too, but the "you could stop me" argument is a misjudgement often attributed to abuse victims, especially if they are technically more physically strong or powerful than their abuser. Some people dismiss abuse on these people by claiming that they could have just stopped it by force if they wanted to. This is, of course, NOT how things often are in reality and dismisses a lot of abuse factors like societal pressure, isolation, and emotional abuse. But the fantasy Baron/Blitz using that phrasing can be a subconscious tell on Stolas' guilt and complex feelings about his own abuse. He likely has internalized guilt that he "could have" stopped the Grimoire deal earlier, or never allowed it to happen at all, and prevented all the struggles they've gone through since. He likely also has internalized guilt that he "could have" stopped Stella's abuse if he was good enough, if he could make the right choices. His subconscious is basically putting the guilt from being Stella's abuse victim on himself, which is unfortunately common for victims.

Conclusion

I think we're going to see a Stolas going into Season 3 who is struggling with himself a lot. He doesn't know who he is. He doesn't know if there is a point in trying to discover who he is. He's not sure if the people around him now will tire of him once their sense of obligation wears off. He is still hopelessly attracted to Blitz but likely afraid to act on that after Season 2's consequences and his uncertainty of where Blitz's emotions really stand. He likely won't be up for the more violent/aggressive styles of sex like they had before, as it would be a trigger, but he probably also fears that Blitz would ONLY be interested in sex with him because he was able to have that violent dynamic and enjoy it.

Stolas currently doesn't know how to function in normal life and doesn't see a future for himself.

And under all of it lurk the stains of his trauma and abuse, ready to remind him that Stella still wants him dead, and the world still wants to cause him pain. So, should he even bother to want anything in the first place, or is that just a guarantee that he'll make things worse?

Stolas was never allowed to want.

From an early age, his life was planned out for him. A wife and an heir and a Grimoire to find prophecies in the sky: those were the purpose of his existence. Whether he wanted those things was irrelevant, because his life was not his to design.

And he stayed compliant... until Blitz came (and came, if you know what I mean) along. And Stolas let himself want. Even though it wasn't for him to make that decision, as far as the Goetia were concerned. Even though it'd have real-life consequences and ramifications. Stolas was drunk, and sick of Stella's mockery and of being the laughing stock of her social circles, so he took Blitz to his chambers and flirted with him, and when Blitz restrained him on the bed, Stolas allowed it and expressed how much he wanted to be fucked by Blitz. And then he got ravished.

And it was the most liberating moment of his life. Not just that: it was the decision that set him on the path to mental, physical, emotional, social, marital, and sexual liberation he's still currently in the middle of as of the beginning of season 3. From the moment Stolas fucked Blitz, he was no longer living a life designed by someone else: he was, at long last, becoming the master of his fate.

And that led him to establishing the full moon deal. To loaning Blitz the Grimoire. To a period of joy where he truly believed he had something real with Blitz. To the crushing events of Ozzie's, and to giving Blitz the crystal to right his mistake. To facing Satan in court.

To losing everything. To losing Octavia.

Stolas feels more than just guilt for wanting.

He's expressed before, particularly at the end of Sinsmas, that he's well aware he's responsible for the consequences of his choices. But I think this new clip sheds light on something darker and deeper than guilt: I think it sheds light on shame.

"If you wanted me to stop, we both know you could stop me, but you want to get filthy, don't you?" Those are the words Stolas puts on fantasy-Blitz's mouth. So let's unpack them.

"If you wanted me to stop"

A conditional sentence. If you wanted me to stop. But that's not what Stolas wants.

The words, while teasing, are also an accusation: "You're into this even though it's wrong, even though it's filthy. You should want me to stop, but you don't. That's how dirty you are."

And what that means for Stolas is that he feels deeply that his desire for Blitz is dark, it's wrong. That he wants something he shouldn't.

(This internalised shame is also alluded to in Just Look My Way, where he refers to his desire for Blitz as a "dark temptation").

"We both know you could stop me"

Those words weren't chosen lightly. They are load-bearing, because they establish that it is mutually understood that Stolas holds all the power in their dynamic. Therefore, Blitz can do pretty much whatever he wants, and it is on Stolas to set the limit and put a stop to anything he doesn't want happening. From Stolas' perspective, their relationship, both sexual and sentimental, continued to develop as a direct consequence of Stolas' failure to put an end to it.

This sentiment is not new:

"I let you get to close. I let it go too far. I let it go too long. I let you go too deep." It's all "I, I, I". Implying it was on Stolas to know better, and thus he's solely responsible for how far things went.

It's a sentiment that removes all agency and responsibility from Blitz and places it on Stolas' shoulders. It reframes their deal not as the product of the decisions of two adults equally willing to risk the potential consequences, but as the product of Stolas' selfish choice to get what he wanted. From Stolas' perspective, Blitz is merely operating on the basis that things will only go as far as Stolas allows them to go, and it is entirely on Stolas to draw the lines he isn't willing to cross.

"But you want to get filthy, don't you?"

There's a choice being given here, and it's Stolas' to make: he can either stop Blitz, or allow him to continue. It is implied, particularly through the word choice of filthy, that the correct choice would be for Stolas to restrain himself. But he won't, and fantasy-Blitz knows it: he knows Stolas will choose not to stop him, because Stolas wants to get filthy, wants to follow the wrong path, consequences be damned.

It's what he did in his real life, afrer all. Stolas had a choice not to let Blitz use the Grimoire. They both knew if Stolas didn't want Blitz to take it, he could've taken it back with a snap of his fingers and never looked back. But Stolas, for the first time in his life, prioritised his sexual, romantic, and emotional needs, and so he allowed Blitz to use the Grimoire. And because of that, they both ended up in a mess that led to Blitz almost dying and to Stolas losing Octavia.

The conclusion Stolas drew from this was: "all I had to do was restrain myself, all I had to do was suck it up and never act on my desires, and I wouldn't have caused this mess."

(Or, as Ozzie put it: "you had it all! I hope you didn't give it up so you and him could get it up... you sold your life for a thrust.")

This fantasy he's crafted, though very trope-y on a surface level, turns the guilt Stolas expressed in Apology Tour and Sinsmas on its axis and shows us what's bubbling underneath: a deep-rooted sense of sexual shame.

Stolas has been systematically deprived of agency.

If you wanted me to stop, we both know you could stop me, but you want to get filthy, don't you?

Do they both know that, though? Are they equally aware that Stolas could stop Blitz? In the most literal sense, the answer is yes. After all, the entirety of their BDSM dynamic hinges on the fact that Stolas is practically indestructible, and could free himself from all restraints and force Blitz out of his home with a wave of his hand, if he felt actually threatened or uncomfortable in any way.

But chances are high Andrealphus' comments in Satan's court about how weak Stolas is weren't a one-time thing. After all, every Goetia in that court (except for Vassago) was willing to accept that Stolas, despite his immense magical power, was too weak to even withstand being in the presence of his supposed abuser. An abuser who was a magically powerless imp, yet who had still supposedly managed to rape him.

It seems to be that everyone in the Goetic social circles believes Stolas to have an extremely weak and passive character, to be pathetic in his inability to stand up for himself and ultimately unfit for his role as a prince.

And I think Stolas' fantasy is also, to some extent, a reflection of how Stolas has internalised the same ideas about himself. "We both know you could stop me (implied: but you won't)." And why won't he? Why didn't he stop Blitz from fucking him that first night, why didn't he stop Blitz from taking the Grimoire? Was it mere selfishness? Was it him being blinded by love or lust? Was it complete and utter idiocy?

Or... was it something else? Weakness, perhaps? A confirmation of what his family has always said about him—that he's not good enough, that he doesn't have what it takes to make sound choices? And is this line from fantasy-Blitz really just a trope-y pick-up line, or could it be pointing towards Stolas' perceived weakness and passivity? A perceived tendency to just let things happen to him, to let inaction be his choice?

Stolas is going to unlearn his shame.

At the end of the clip, Stolas angrily crosses out his fanfic in a moment that clearly parallels his crashout in Sinsmas, when he berated himself for messing everything up for a "stupid, foolish fantasy".

Yet isn't it funny how, later in Sinsmas, Stolas' desire for a romantic fantasy is rewarded when Blitz becomes his knight in shining armour and saves him from the dragon?

I strongly believe that moment in Sinsmas was the beginning of an arc the seeds of which are still being planted. An arc wherein Stolas learns he was always allowed to want. That he was right for wanting to be free. For choosing Blitz; for choosing himself. Sure, the way he went about it wasn't great—and he's already well into the process of unpacking and making up for the pain he caused—but there was nothing wrong with the act itself of pursuing his sexual (and overall) liberation.

He grew up neglected and abused. He was raised in a cult that had no care for his personhood and assigned him a role he was never meant to stray from. He was forced into a heterosexual marriage despite being gay and—in my opinion, though that's a different post—sexually assaulted by his wife. He was forced to become a father and to live the rest of his life secluded in a palace, where he wouldn't be a nuisance to anyone else.

Him breaking free of that is a good thing. His is a story of radical queer liberation. He went from barely existing—from being a ghost, a living corpse, quietly fading away, chained by abuse and societal pressure—to breaking free and claiming his own life, his body, his sexuality, his heart. Saying, "fuck this, fuck everything, I want to live."

And the narrative, while holding him accountable for the ways in which he was careless and tone-deaf and naive, rewarded him for wanting to be loved and wanted and desired. It rewarded him—and, from what we've seen in the teaser and Millie's words to him, will continue to reward him—for wanting to be cherished and cared for and wanted around.

And the narrative will continue to prove his shame wrong. It will continue to reward his desire to be queer, and happy, and free. And Stolas is going to learn there was never anything wrong with wanting out of his gilded cage. There was never anything wrong with wanting.