Trans Stolitz Headcanons: in Defense of Something I Pulled out of my Ass
As many of you who speak to me on a regular basis already know, I am a proponent of the fringe theory sometimes referred to as Transhet Stolitz Cannon King. Now this one is pretty niche, and did get me a couple constructive notes in its time, mostly to the tenor of: “I miss when men could just be men”, or even: “What are you doing? Now I can’t jerk off to this anymore!” Still, I persevere.
I get it, though. One thing about Helluva Boss is that it might be the single most neoliberal cartoon ever put on screen, and one just kind of has to make peace with that if they want to enjoy it to any capacity. Gender variance in this show is next to nonexistent, and, when it is there, it’s nothing more than an aside which lives in the void and does not warrant any sort of further commentary. I respect the commitment to staying in your lane as a cis writer, but still. Not much for me to dig my teeth into yet.
The textual explorations of misogyny we have, too, are kind of a hack job. Helluva Boss likes to have its villain of the week make hilariously strawman-esque statements like women just aren’t funny, or stop her, for fuck’s sake, she’s a broad, but then happily glosses over its main character calling every woman he sees a bitch as nothing more than a personality quirk. This, combined with the comparative lack of attention the female cast seems to have gotten up until now, kind of gives the impression that the writing team might simply not realize how pervasive misogyny actually is in real life. Feminism is when girlboss. Peg the patriarchy. Vaginas do smell like fish, tho.
Which brings me to Blitzø’s misogyny. Nobody in this fandom ever seems to talk about it—and I don’t blame them, frankly, because neither does the show. It just exists, not as a fault and not as a virtue. Blitzø is not meant to read as a hateful person, but rather as that politically incorrect and overtly blunt guy who is not up to date on the lingo but still more or less has his heart in the right place. Your middle aged father who cried at your gay wedding, but draws the line at you becoming vegan. It’s not that Blitzø actively thinks women are lesser than men, you see— however, his ex-girlfriend is still a bastard whore for cramping his style with her silly whims and pink tampon car.
And Blitzø, more than anyone in Helluva Boss, seems to be clinging to his masculinity hard enough to leave claw marks: be it by making fun of Moxxie for being a wimp and ribbing at his sexual passivity, calling Stolas gay for trying to be open about his feelings, or loudly declaring he’s a top even and especially when nobody was asking. Textually, this is all just run of the mill male fragility, but it can easily be made more interesting by looking at another core aspect of his story arc—that is, powerlessness.
Over and over, Blitzø is presented as inherently lacking social power by virtue of his birth. He’s part of an oppressed caste: impkind was, word for word, created to be obedient. Moreover, from what we’ve seen of his backstory, being denied personal agency by his own family seems to have been a common occurrence throughout his youth. He’s lived most of his life in financial hardship, which is what brought him to first be trafficked as a child and then enter a not-quite-ethical sex work deal in adulthood. His own autonomy is constantly stripped from him, and he fights tooth and nail to retain it. That is, by word of God, the essence of Blitzø’s character. Once this has been taken into account, even his excessive, out of place assertions of sexual dominance seem to take on a wildly different light.
Which brings me to my thesis: it makes sense to me that, for Blitzø, recognition of his masculinity would be yet another thing that wasn’t a given as much as something he had to earn. It makes sense that, in his mind, masculinity would represent freedom and agency. It makes sense for him to be a trans man, which would add an even more powerful edge to his story.
It’s also worth noting that Blitzø seems to actively enjoy wearing women’s clothes on occasion, yet it’s his position as a man that he constantly feels the need to defend. Of course one could argue that a forcible distancing from normative masculinity inherently comes with the territory of him being pansexual, to which I say: why not both?
Now let’s have a look at Stolas. His and Blitzø’s lives are presented as opposite yet jarringly similar—wildly different upbringings, two abusive fathers, isolation, loss, the aforementioned lack of agency. They are both stifled by their birth-assigned roles, something that on its own could be read as a trans narrative, if you really squint.
Stolas’ arc, however, in my opinion, truly revolves around gender more than anything else. To which you guys might ask, isn’t he just gay? But you see, ladies and gentlemen and labubus of the jury, sexuality and gender cannot be divorced from each other. There was never a patriarchal society that wasn’t also homophobic, and indeed, homophobia itself is nothing but a symptom of the patriarchy.
Goetian society too seems, at a cursory glance, deeply patriarchal. As of this point in canon, every character named after an actual goetic demon—who has actual societal duties—is a man. The two female Goetias we have met so far, Stella and Octavia, seem to have very little to their existence: one with no apparent magical abilities, her only role in life bearing an heir to a powerful prince, the other born to be her father’s spare and nothing more. Combined with Andrealphus’ constant remarks about how Stella’s beauty is the only thing she has going on for her, it certainly doesn’t paint a pretty picture.
The alleged male power Stolas was born with, however, never seems to help or shield him in any way. Not from snide comments about his appearance or his weakness of character, not from reproductive coercion, not from domestic violence or sexual assault. Stolas is too physically frail, too meek, too whiny, too emotional. It’s annoying when you screech like that, Stella says as she finds him crying on the balcony. It wouldn’t look out of place at this point, really, for someone to outright diagnose him with hysteria (which, if you think about the medications he’s been prescribed with seemingly no addressing of any underlying issue, might very well have happened offscreen).
Many have joked about how Stolas experiences misogyny, both on screen and within fandom discussion. I know, of course, that this was never the authorial intent, and that old school fujoshis love putting ukes in these predicaments almost as industry standard, but what if we actually broke that thought down for a moment?
Stolas is not a goetian patriarch, he is a person who failed to become one. For this very reason, above all, he is mocked and socially isolated. The male gender role—the heterosexual male gender role—has brought him nothing but pain: what to Blitzø is synonymous with freedom is the prison he has lived in since birth. And what does his escapism look like? Like relating to female telenovela characters, or doodling himself in his diary as four feet shorter, with wide hips and dark, curling eyelashes. Maleness is something he doesn’t display much affinity with at all—and to me, there is at least one universe out there where Stolas would find his personal freedom by detaching himself from it completely. Be it opening Google and finding out what nonbinary means, be it even fully embracing womanhood.
Many trans people, including myself, speak of transness as freedom—a rebirth into something better, away from roles and constraints you never asked to be placed into. Stolas’ and Blitzø’s storylines are about the very same concept: breaking out of a cage the world built around you. When it comes to me, I like to look at that idea and make it a little more personal. Also, writing them scissoring is peak.