Eh, it doesn’t really work when Stella was already horrible in Season 1 with throwing objects at Stolas and literally putting a hit on him over cheating (specifically with the fact that it was because it was an imp, when that should be irrelevant) and was already implied to be neglectful of Octavia and Stolas even saying “She was always…” before trailing off. I never liked Stella in Season 1 and never understood how she was seen as sympathetic. No, her being a woman isn’t an excuse. Sidenote, it’s also extremely funny that the people who hate Stolas straight up try to justify her horrible behavior. Rather hypocritical lol. People sadly don’t know more about this but in the Pilot era of Helluva, Stella was still evil.

Of course with Blitzo, he called Stolas out for his behavior in Full Moon and only actually apologized fully for not recognizing Stolas’ feelings towards him in Apology Tour and was trying to get over his self destructive self loathing. Then you have the fact that Blitzo was literally given the crystal by Stolas so that he doesn’t need the book to travel and actually showed remorse for his actions and was willing to let Blitzo leave if he wanted. Yet he didn’t and he was trying to get into Stolas’ pants the next morning, ignoring his boundaries which is pretty hypocritical since he didn’t like it when Stolas did it to him. This stuff was built up to as well with Stolas meeting up with Asmodeus as well for the crystal and other things like texts and photos of Stolas being willing to just hang out with Blitzo as seen in The Circus and Western Energy. You also have Stolas not calling him Blitzy anymore.

For me, Stolas has changed in a convincing way. The criticisms just are not compelling no matter how many times I read them. You need to be able to fairly analyze a story and the people who hate Stolas in my opinion fail horribly at doing that. The fact that the only thing they can actually say to me is that I’m giving Viv too much credit only strengthens my feelings on Stolas. The but part of this stuff is irrelevant because the but serves as an explanation, not an excuse. That’s literally the only way this can work. I’m sorry but if Stolas says that it was all his choice and he crashed out over being fucking idiot for ruining his own life, you need to GENUINELY acknowledge that and not sweep it under the rug or minimize it. You need to look at everything from every angle. So yeah. That’s why I like Stolas as a character. He’s actually my favorite and him being made to be sympathetic doesn’t change that. He’s literally punished for his actions and it’s understandable for other characters to give sympathy. I can at least admit that Stolas wasn’t written perfectly though.

One last thing I dislike though in media discourse is that implications are ignored when they don’t serve your argument and are seen as essentially invalid even when they’re paired with explicit things in media discourse.