YMMV / Owl's Hell That Ends Well

• Catharsis Factor: After all the vicious abuse that Baron inflicted on a seven-year-old Octavia, nevermind the lingering consequences of his gaslighting, it's a pleasure to watch Blitzo beat him down, with Octavia herself getting some cathartic licks in, until he's too maimed and beaten to even move or flee.
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • There's something poetic about how Claw, a hellhound, suffers from a condition of some kind which causes insatiable Horror Hunger, since hellhounds tend to be associated with the Ring of Gluttony and are outright confirmed in the fic to owe their origins to Queen Bee.
  • Stolas states when Loona asks to be taught magic that she has a surprisingly strong aura for a hellhound, which gives her a better chance at learning to cast magic. Fitting since in canon, Loona was always the I.M.P. member in charge of using the Grimoire's magic to open portals.
• Fridge Horror: It's observed that Ars Goetia demons have a much longer lifespan than hellborn, which means that Octavia will outlive her adoptive father Blitzo by a long stretch. The same applies to Stolas and Stella once her relationship with Loona warms up: Stella and Stolas will have to watch Loona, who is Stolas' adoptive daughter, grow old and die while Stolas remains ageless and while Stella barely ages at all.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Blitzo and the real Fizzarolli's reunion, and the fic's expansion on how and why they fell out, became a lot harsher in light of the release of "Oops" several months later. Both the fic's and canon's versions state that the pair's falling-out was the result of a single but significant miscommunication when Fizzarolli was feeling vulnerable leading Fizz to believe Blitzo didn't care about him, said misunderstanding was directly instigated by Blitzo struggling with an overwhelming trauma that Fizz wasn't aware of, and the pair only realize the truth and that their spurning of each-other was all for nothing after many years have passed.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Stolas compares his adoptive daughter Loona to Earth's moon, with his Affectionate Nickname for her and with his affirmation of how much she means to him in Chapter 19. Over a year after Chapter 19 was released and little under five months after Book I was completed, the canon music video "Just Look My Way" featured Stolas likewise comparing his lover Blitzo to Earth's moon when expressing his feelings for him.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The fic's portrayal of Stella and Andrealphus' relationship in light of the latter's canon debut in "Western Energy". In the fic, Stella loathes her brother, and she reacted with disgust and fury when he tried to proposition her for sex. In the show, Andrealphus also makes advances which appear incestuous toward Stella, but Canon Stella appears receptive and the siblings have a more amicable relationship.
  • Or Harsher in Hindsight, depending on your point of view. Book I's ending depiction of C.H.E.R.U.B.'s post-debut fates ended up being a dead ringer for the hints about C.H.E.R.U.B.'s canon reappearance in the Helluva Boss Season 2 Part 2 trailer which released in the following year: in both versions, C.H.E.R.U.B. are joining forces with the D.H.O.R.K.S. to get revenge on I.M.P., with Collin being more reserved about this course of action than his teammates are.
• Jerkass Woobie: Stella. She's still a prideful, spiteful, bigoted, petulant and loud-tempered woman, and she gave Loona a lot of unjustified misery for years; but the latter stems from her being just as grief-stricken as Stolas was at losing Octavia, and angry when she found subjective evidence that her husband was unconsciously replacing Octavia with Loona. Lacking the shallowness of her canon portrayal, almost all of Stella's negative personality traits and shortcomings stem from her horrific unresolved childhood traumas, many of which came at the hands of her own family and have given her an extremely jaded and bitter worldview; from being abused by her parents (particularly her mother who molested, assaulted and raped her in her bedroom when she was just ten years old), being constantly passed over in favor of her slimy younger brother, and being seemingly betrayed and abandoned to her horrible home life by the only real childhood friend whom she'd thought she could count on after they'd both suffered her mother's abuse and she'd opened her heart to him.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Baron Wastes crossed it when he caged and viciously abused a seven-year-old Octavia for months on end, keeping her in a cage and beating her to the point where the small owlet lost consciousness, on top of threatening to cut out her eyes or fingers, and gaslighting her into believing her parents had willingly thrown her away to him.
  • Baroness Eathelin crossed it years ago. She's a vicious serial pedophile who has outright raped and tortured an untold number of prepubescent hellborn children for years, her own son and daughter among them (causing almost all of Stella's issues which made the latter grow up as a bitter trainwreck of a woman), a young Blitzo (which at the very least contributed to his disturbed mental state and emotional problems as an adult), and the imp who would one day become Baron Wastes (directly triggering Baron's entire start of darkness and all the misery it caused for Octavia).
• The Woobie: Good God, where to begin with Octavia? She was just an innocent little girl when she was kidnapped from her own bedroom by Baron Wastes, she was locked in a cage to be humiliated, brutalized to the point of passing out, and she was threatened with having her eyes and fingers cut out; for three months on end. During that time, Baron fed her lies that her parents had willingly given her away to him for "being a bother"; gaslighting which was slowly vindicated in Octavia's mind by her parents never coming for her (knowing that they should have had the means to track her down via magic), and by her learning in one of the worst possible ways about Stolas' adoption of Loona in her absence and seeing how happy he was with her. In the present day, although Octavia has a loving and doting adoptive father in Blitzo and makes friends in Millie and Moxxie, she's still buried under a mountain of deep-rooted issues from everything, included her feeling constant terror that she'll be abandoned and thrown out again if she doesn't make herself "useful" to Blitzo, even if the latter means doing harm to herself behind her loved ones' backs.

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