#honestly kinda wish I'd done this BEFORE writing the first couple chapters but ah well

[hazbincalifornia]

Yeah, yeah, more Stolas/Blitzo analysis. I want as comprehensive an understanding of their relationship as possible as I write the fic so the growth comes out of where they actually are in canon at the moment. This time it’s about the phone call in the pilot because Blitz is in a less freaked out place there than he was in Murder Family and thus it’s a better sort of ‘ground zero’, but there’s also a comparison of the two calls to see what may have changed (or stayed the same) in the transition between pilot and show. It’s capped off with how they might get to somewhere better in the future, since it’s pretty clear that they’re going to be A Thing.

Note that this isn’t in any way ship-bashing, I personally hope that they do get some development on-show and think that they’re a compelling ship.

His expression combined with ‘So, what can I do you for this time, Stolas?’ (on top of Loona’s comment about Stolas being clingy and sounding DTF-y and Blitzo snapping at her) heavily implies that this kind of call happens fairly often. (On insta, both Stolas and Blitzo have mentioned calls like it being regular, to the point of being incorporated into Blitzo’s schedule.) The strained smile and the fact that he was putting it off... even if he may play a bit dumb, he 100% knows the power Stolas’s got over him and probably the potential consequences if he isn’t at least somewhat pleasant.

With the first comment about the political candidate on Earth, I’m guessing (I don’t know if this is still a thing carried over to the main series) sometimes Stolas just sends IMP to do dirty work that he’s supposed to be doing because they have the book and it was part of the initial deal to let them keep it. 

‘Okay, well, yeah, that makes sense.‘ He’s semi-bored but again is affirming Stolas. He’s probably used to hearing Stolas mentioning stuff like being lonely.

Realization when Stolas mentions ‘You know what happens when i’m lonely?’

‘Oh, God fucking dammit.‘ Yep, this is definitely going where he hoped it wouldn’t- if he was lucky, today’s call would just be Stolas asking him for a murder-favor or something, but nope, the guy’s going to just be really, really horny at him again. This isn’t an unusual occurrence but he’s got to put up with it.

This was what really sealed it for me as not just irritation- he makes this expression for a full ten seconds. I counted. And with how he feeds the phone-smoothie to Loona, he’s trying to get out his aggression at the situation in any way that he can.

I get that snapping the phone in half and blending it up is a comic exaggeration, but let’s take this whole exchange as flatly as possible:

There’s a person who owes his livelihood to being able to borrow a magic book from someone much richer and more powerful than he is. He has to repeatedly take calls from that powerful person that sometimes asks him to complete jobs that are already in his line of work, in exchange for the book since it’s needed to complete them. That can be considered somewhat of a fair trade. However, sometimes the calls devolve into sudden and extremely graphic sexual talk, something that clearly upsets the person a fair amount. He has to deal with this on a fairly regular basis in order to keep both his business afloat and himself from getting squashed like a bug if the word gets out to the wrong people that this whole affair is illegal and I doubt Hell plays nice with second chances when it comes to something like this.

Blitzo definitely knows he’s between a rock and a hard place here. He knows he’s got some wiggle room- he did end the call in the middle of Stolas ranting after all- but he can’t pull away entirely without risking everything and the sexual harassment is just par for the course when it comes to dealing with Stolas.

The call in Murder Family brought a new layer to this. It’s possible that Blitzo generally tries to be polite to Stolas but he was just really, really stressed- and even then, the worst he says is that this is a really bad time and he’s trying to not get fucked up at the moment. He snaps back ‘what did you call me?’ and that’s fairly accusatory, but consider how he talks to Moxxie vs how he’s talking to Stolas.

Stolas’s little cooed ‘When isn’t it a bad time, Blitzy?’ does some work of its own- it’s got that air of this being a thing that happens regularly enough that Stolas feels comfortable teasing Blitzo on the fact that he’s heard his excuses for not answering a call from him, and uses a nickname to show familiarity right off the bat. He expects Blitzo, to some degree, to drop everything for him. The point is, obviously, to establish this relationship to anyone who didn’t see the pilot, and Blitzo’s annoyance the whole call has the same feeling of ‘this is a regular occurrence and I just have to put up with it’. There’s the leveraging of the book for sex made even more explicit, and Blitzo just kind of agrees, probably only half-listening because he’s heard this all before and he’s got other concerns at the moment. The line delivery cements this.

‘Fine, whatever!’

His expression is definitely still uncomfortable when Stolas slips to the horny talk, even though it’s a little subtler this time, and his breathing is animated in a way that shows he’s still in panic mode.

He still actively grimaces and briefly glances at the phone before telling himself to shake it off and focus on the problem. I note that he doesn’t mute the call despite there being way more reason to here- maybe something shifted between pilot and episode 1 that he’s not supposed to do that?

There’s also the fact that Stolas is apparently willing to go on his horny rant completely undeterred by the fact that Blitzo isn’t responding at all. He isn’t even near the phone after the first minute or so, but he’s still clearly talking when Moxxie heads back to the house later. It can’t have been less than ten to fifteen minutes of radio silence from Blitzo and he’s still going. Blitzo’s participation isn’t necessarily needed here, and I don’t doubt there’s times where Blitzo just leaves the phone on and does other work in his office until Stolas burns himself out. 

There’s a lot of subtle ways they used to make it clear that this is noooooot something Blitzo’s really that comfortable with.

Of course he was the one to start it by sleeping with the guy in the first place to get access to the book, which was a colossally stupid move (the hell did he think was going to happen when Stolas found it missing?) but it’s evolved into something beyond his control. He’s not great at conceptualizing consequences, I don’t think, and this is one he’s stuck with.

From how the instagram accounts behave, it seems pretty likely that they’re endgame, and I’m fascinated to keep watching and see how the relationship develops both of them as characters. It seems the biggest barriers here are both communication (Stolas seems to talk at Blitzo more than with him) and the fact that Blitzo doesn’t have much of a choice in having this relationship with Stolas.

If they were given a chance to bond on more even ground... well, Blitzo chases after Millie and Moxxie and their healthy relationship, he clearly wants something like that, but what Stolas is offering right now is leaned way too heavily on sex and seeing him as a singularly sexual object. Stolas clearly loves his daughter and can have a healthy relationship based off of that, it’s just a matter of actually listening to what Blitzo says and not forcing himself on him.

I don’t doubt that at some point, Stolas is going to have to confront that when Blitzo ends up having enough and blowing up at him.

I know, this is a lot of words for a comedy series, but the fact that in both calls, Blitzo is clearly and viscerally uncomfortable makes me pretty certain that they’re going to do something with this. If it was just ‘haha that dude’s horny’ they wouldn’t have played it the way that they did, Blitzo would have just been more annoyed and it would have ended at the ‘god fucking dammit’ in the pilot and Stolas wouldn’t have made Blitzo agree to full-moon meetings. That’s, again, specific, and one episode will probably address it again.