You ever see something and just have to laugh about how fucking weird some people are?
I just saw an absolutely gorgeous picture of Stella and Octavia. A decent amount of time, talent, and care clearly went into it. And the caption was: “Fuck you, viziepop. Someday everyone will see that your shows suck!”
Like… someone watched all of season 1 and 2 and felt strongly enough about characters to put actual honest to god effort into a project.
Because they hate it soooooo much. 🙄
No you fucking don’t. You love the characters and you love the show, otherwise you wouldn’t be spending time drawing those characters and you wouldn’t feel this upset about the show turning out differently than you wanted.
I mean I’ll believe they don’t love the direction the show is going in now, but they’re still watching and still creating content for the show.
They don’t hate it. But the doublethink is strong in this one.
This was supposed to be some quick casual fan art, but the winter merch outfits made me Unwell so I got a little carried away 😂
I adore when they give these two contrasting styles with the outfits, I'll never get sick of the punk x nerd vibe.
A Question to Current Stolitz Fans, not vindictive, not mean, nor am I being judgemental in any regard I am just genuinely curious bc Apology Tour is my favorite episode.
I've loosely been following the BFF comic an artist post, i think its also called "Season 2.5" and there is this whole concept in the most recent installment where Stolas tells Blitz he wants a "real relationship" with him.
Moment was cute, art was amazing, absolute cinema.
However, to think about canon for just a moment: Hasn't Blitz had his chance at relationships?
More specifically we have seen ALL the people he hurt in Apology Tour, his sister, Fizzarolli, Verosika, and so many others he has burned intentionally or unintentionally.
As a hardcore Stolas fan and current skeptic of Stolitz: What makes ya'll think he'll treat Stolas differently than anyone else?
Again this isn't a hate post or anything, but genuinely I'm so tired of being mad at Blitz lately, that I just- wanna see other people's perspectives. So please do not take this as me being an "anti" I am just genuinely curious.
I think this is a fair question to ask of any relationship. Why should we expect a person to behave differently in a new relationship than they have in previous ones? After all, the best predictor of an individual’s future behavior is their past performance. Without a major shift in skill, motivation, or knowledge, it’s unlikely a person will behave differently.
But that’s just the point. Blitzo has gone through a major shift in motivation and knowledge. That has been his entire character growth through season 2.
The problem in his past relationships has been his own lack of self worth and the self destructive behavior that stemmed from those feelings of inadequacy and self hatred.
When Blitzo was a kid, he was constantly comparing himself to Fizz, who actually was genuinely more talented than him. And the thing is, that difference in talent never seemed to bother him in and of itself. What bothered him was the way he saw others heaping love and praise on him, while ignoring Blitzo. A young Blitzo mistook the adoration of fame for genuine love and as a result, internalized that feeling of not being worthy of other people’s love.
Then the fire happened and all of Blitzo’s doubts about being good enough for someone to love were intensified. He wasn’t just someone who people couldn’t love. He was someone who was undeserving of love. He killed his mother and nearly killed his best friend. Everyone he knew or loved abandoned him because they saw what he really was.
So he started to seek out physical relationships. He was terrified of true intimacy, while also craving it. Relationships like the one with Verosika were the early victims of this fear. He was willing to stay with her for long enough that she genuinely fell in love with him, but as soon as she revealed that, it freaked him the hell out. He self sabotaged because ending the relationship on his terms felt less scary than waiting for her to see him for who he really was and reject him.
Interestingly, he behaves the exact same way with Stolas when Stolas confesses his feelings in Full Moon, because he hasn’t gone through that change in knowledge or motivation yet.
It’s the episodes following Full Moon where we see that growth the most. But before we get into that, it’s important to discuss his relationships with M&M and Loona.
By season 2 in particular, Moxie and Millie have become more of a family to Blitzo than just employees. There is genuine friendship and intimacy there, but it was a rocky start. In season 1, Blitzo is crossing every conceivable boundary with them, mostly because he doesn’t understand how to behave appropriately in this scenario. His past relationships since the circus have mostly been with people he’s fucking while trying to maintain emotional distance. M&M actually understand what healthy and loving emotional relationships look like (for different reasons, which is a whole post in and of itself) and they push back on Blitzo, trying to maintain some of those boundaries.
Loona is obviously one of the few people who does not have any sexual undertones in her relationship with Blitz, because he is actually trying to replicate his relationship with his mother in the relationship he has with Loona. He sees himself in Loona — someone the world deemed unlovable and unworthy of their time, and he wants to give her the relationship he can never have. And of course, this creates a whole host of other problems. Because he projects so much of his own childhood onto her, he fails to see her as an adult and a unique separate person most of the time.
So to sum up, Blitzo is a fucking mess.
How does that change in season 2?
1. Oops - Blitzo realizes that not everyone abandoned him after the fire. Fizz would have forgiven him, even though no one else did. He starts to realize that maybe he’s not so completely unlovable.
2. Apology Tour - Blitzo takes responsibility for his behavior and stops to really think about why he sabotaged both his relationship with Stolas and Verosika. In doing so, he learns something about himself and also admits that he doesn’t want to be the person he has become. He wants to be someone that would be worthy of Stolas’s love, even if he’s not sure whether that’s even possible.
3. Ghostfuckers - He proves that he is capable of growth by changing his relationship with Millie. He is forced to confront everything he hates about himself and sees someone who is still willing to stand by him because she genuinely loves him for nothing but who he is as a person. He doesn’t have to prove himself or trade pieces of himself in exchange for that love. It is simply given freely because she sees who he really is and what a light he can be to others. He finally allows himself to open up and be vulnerable with her in the final moments of the episode, showing he has the ability to change.
4. Mastermind and Sinsmas - Blitzo gets a second chance and this time he has the motivation and the understanding of how to be open and vulnerable and present so that he can build a real relationship with Stolas. His skills are… patchy. We see him excel at offering quiet comfort and romance, but he’s not perfect. He doesn’t always know the right words to say and has to rely on touch and physical comfort when words fail him, but he has enough skill to be a pretty decent boyfriend in most things. I assume we’ll see where those skills fall short in future episodes, but at least he know has the motivation to work through any potential shortcomings.
We also see his relationship with Loona quietly start to improve in the background. The more Blitzo’s relationship with others shifts, the more he seems to let go of his disordered view of their relationship. We never get an episode focused on it, but we see how the relationship has shifted by the time we reach Sinsmas. After confronting this fear of rejection, he no longer has to cling to a father/daughter relationship as an avatar of his own self worth. Blitzo is giving Loona more agency and she is thriving. She’s making new friends and actually seems to enjoy being around Blitzo more.
I think the show is honestly really smart to allow Blitzo to grow in his relationships with other characters before he jumps back into the relationship with Stolas. To your concern, this tangible change in how Blitzo behaves in relationships gives us hope that it will absolutely be different with Stolas this time.
Has anyone talked about how Stolas sits in the van?
Backseat:
*note: Octavia is in the van too but she has normal legs and her profile is mostly hidden, the people line is definitely all him
Front seat:
Then i got curious and looked at other times we see him sitting. Don't want to comb the show for every time, but here's an example of a chair that's too short for him but accommodates let space under the table for him and a seat that seems to be properly tall enough for his legs to go down proper:
Bird knees are super high up and they have really long feet. If you look at the diagram above and analogous structures, a is the thigh bone, 1 is the knee, 2 is the ankle, b is the heel, and 3 is the ball of the foot and the toes.
That means Stolas doesn’t have long legs and short pants. He has normal length legs, but huge fucking feet.
“Stolas is using words like ‘allow’ and ‘permitting’ when it comes to Blitzo using his book” yeah because it’s HIS BOOK. Stolas owns the damn book. He is quite literally allowing and permitting Blitzo to use it. That is what is textually happening in the show. What the fuck are you people talking about.
This is actually something that you see with antis SO much.
“How dare Stolas try to take the book back.” It’s his fucking book! Blitzo stole his book. The book belongs to Stolas. It is his and Blitzo stole the book from him. Blitzo has zero claim to keep the book just because.
“But Blitzo needs the book for his job.” Stolas needs the book for his job! He tells us he needs it and we see him use it for that job. Also, it’s Stolas’s fucking book!
“Stolas probably doesn’t even need the book. We know he can make portals without it.” That is one spell. Blitzo uses the book for one spell. There is absolutely no reason to believe Stolas was given that whole ass book for only one spell. Blitzo on the other hand COULD find another way to access the mortal realm. There are at least 2 different types of crystals that other demons use to access the mortal world, so it’s not like Blitzo has to steal this book and has no other options. It’s just the option he had the best lead on.
“He could still let Blitzo have the book part time without making a deal.” I mean, sure. He could. But lending out the book is incredibly dangerous for both Blitzo and Stolas if the wrong people catch wind of it. Blitzo almost died when someone found out and Stolas was banished. It’s a dumb risk for Stolas to take and the only reason that horny owl takes it is because he’s too busy thinking with his downstairs brain. If you remove the only reason for him making a dumb decision, why else would he make it?
By the time they start whining about the actual sex it feels a bit refreshing. Not that most of their arguments there are great, but I can at least see why they feel uncomfortable with that situation. But the way antis talk about the book itself and how much Blitzo needs it is just baffling.
A lot of antis call Stolas a horrible father for neglecting Octavia and all that, and that calls in the response of 'this is a new thing, he used to be very doting, /overly/ doting, and Octavia is just struggling to adjust to not having her father's 100% full attention'. Obviously we could debate the definitions of 'full attention', 'struggling', and all that, and while I agree far more with the second conversation than the first (fuck antis, they are either unfairly projecting or are intentionally doing bad-faith readings), I want to take the conversation to a tertiary location.
Yes Octavia is used to being her father's entire world and her 'norm' is an unrealistic standard Stolas set up for himself in the way that he raised her, because he was trying to compensate for the shortcomings of his own upbringing and he did amazing with the resources and knowledge he had at his disposal.
Yes Octavia is bitter about the changes in her life that put distance between her father and herself, which is a relatively new development and has in turn exposed her more to the unrest in her parents' marriage and the objectively unsavory personality of her mother alone.
But I don't think it's as new as the 'Still Not Divorced' party and resulting scene of Stolas's infidelity quite literally falling on the cake during morning tea time in front of Stella and her friends. When Stolas was Octavia's age in the show, he was about to get married and had spent the last decade of his life studying his grimoire and learning how to be the perfect little prince Paimon wanted him to be. Octavia has a completely different life than Stolas did, and Stolas - especially with his autism - cannot connect to that. The older Octavia got, the more used to his magics, and the deeper into a harrowing and draining marriage, it got harder and harder to connect with his beloved Starfire.
Octavia and Stolas just drifted apart in the way teenagers with depressed parents do. He still smiled for her, they still did things together and talked and they still loved each other quite a lot, but Stolas didn't know what the hell he was doing and Octavia could sense it. Not in a 'my dad is an idiot and is actively making my life horrible' kind of way but in a 'Dad doesn't understand me, he's still my favorite person here but something is wrong and it's probably his fault' sort of way.
Blitz getting thrown into the mix just gave that tension a real target, gave a name to the stress Octavia is feeling in the household, and it's given Stolas some pep to his life that gives him the energy and motivation to try and reconnect with Octavia again, like they used to, but because it's been so long he's doing it Wrong.
I don't even want to talk about 'good dads' and 'bad dads' because that's such a stupid fucking dichotomy to sort cartoon characters into. 'Good' and 'bad' are opinions that are relevant to individuals by perspective, not immovable truths. My dad was a good dad to me when I was little, but not to my brother. I was pushier for attention than my brother was, I was his second attempt at being a dad, there are a lot of factors that go into it, and it doesn't fucking matter.
I don't give a shit if Stolas was a 'good' dad or a 'bad' dad by whatever arbitrary threshold the anti, critic, or fan is measuring by. Stolas is a better father than Paimon was, and he's trying to be a better father than he was yesterday, all the time. And it isn't so simple of an issue as 'Stolas abandoned Via for Blitz', because I think Stolas drifted away from his daughter slowly over a much larger time than what we see in the show.
Does any of that make sense? Does anyone see my vision? Does anyone know/work with kids long-term enough to realize how different parenting toddlers is from parenting teenagers? Does anyone here realize how much harder it is to be a 'cool aunt' for a couple of teenagers than it is for a couple of grade-schoolers? Stolas figured out how to be an engaged and comforting dad to a little girl who had nightmares, when he was only a few years into an abusive marriage. He had a lot more trouble being on that same level when that little girl grew up and had troubles that couldn't be placated by simply giving her a hug and singing her to sleep.
This is a good analysis and I think aligns closest to the text. There is absolutely a distance between Stolas and Via right from the beginning of the show in Loo Loo Land.
Stolas doesn’t know what Via likes. He makes a lot of incorrect assumptions and when Via tells him what she likes at the end of the episode, he’s a bit confused, though certainly willing to learn.
It’s also notable that all of Via’s good memories of their relationship are shown as flashbacks from when she was much younger.
It seems clear that there is a distance between them that pre-dates Blitz showing up or the divorce, but the cause of that distance hasn’t really been specified.
A lot of parent/child relationships shift as the child grows up. Teenagers are trying to figure out who they are and form their own identity separate from their parents, which shifts relationship dynamics no matter what. Some parents can roll with that change to find a new equilibrium, while others really struggle. Stolas definitely seems like someone who would struggle with that change, and this may be why we see him still trying to relate to Via like she’s a kid.
Or it could actually be the stress of the marriage has gotten worse over time. Just because we know Stella was mean as a child and is mean in present day, doesn’t mean that their relationship was always the same level of stressful/abusive/unbearable. It’s possible that relationship has gotten worse. And even if it hasn’t gotten worse, it’s possible that the constant negativity has built up to something that feels worse and worse every day. It would make sense if Stolas pulled away from Via as a response to that stress or his worsening depression.
It’s also possible that Via pulled away because of her uncomfortableness with her parents’ relationship and hostility towards each other. Whether it got worse over time, or they didn’t try as hard to hide it, or she just noticed it more as she got older, it would make sense for Via to pull away from both her parents with that much toxicity between them.
No matter the reason(s), it’s clear that they have drifted away from each other, but not because of any specific incident. And when Stolas makes a genuine effort to connect, Via welcomes it.
This is what sets Mastermind and Sinsmas apart. Everything before this has been part of a slow and steady drift apart. Stolas taking the blame and punishment for Blitz, in Via’s mind, feels like a deliberate step away from her. Then she finds his pills in Sinsmas and questions whether her memories of their happiness were even real. Was he faking that the entire time and is that why it was so easy for him to walk away? It breaks her trust in Stolas in a way that nothing before this has.
Anyway, sorry for making a long post even longer. I just love talking about their relationship.
I love what the new Stolitz scenes in the pilot say about Blitz as a character. Specifically, how he views sex. And it's not anything ground breaking or new. It's exactly what we already knew from the first pilot all the way through season 2. It's just that Mission Zero sets up that pattern of behavior in a really effective way.
I saw someone make a comment about Blitz being the one to initiate their deal in this episode, but I think that's a complete misreading of the situation. Blitz doesn't suggest any kind of permanent arrangement in exchange for using the book. He just uses sex as a way to distract Stolas.
And again, this fits perfectly with everything else we see in seasons 1 and 2, with a notable exception, which I'll get to later.
(under the cut because this ended up being a bit long)
In the original Pilot, as well as Mission Zero, we see Blitz sleep with Stolas to distract him and steal the Grimoire. In Mission Zero, when Stolas shows up and Blitz realizes that he's not going anywhere, he's more than happy to have sex with him to get him out of there faster. Then when that doesn't fully work and Stolas gets ready to take back his book, Blitz starts flirting again and trying to use sex to distract him. (or more accurately in this moment, using sexiness to distract him) It works, but it also leads Stolas to suggesting that maybe they'll have future rendezvous just like this one. Blitz is noticeably nervous about that suggestion, but he lets it go and they go their separate ways.
Now, this is the end of sex as a distraction between them for a while. Stolas offers the deal, Blitz accepts, and now he doesn't have to put on this huge act. They have an agreement, they have certain rules, and Blitz becomes much more laid back and dismissive in how he acts around Stolas.
But that doesn't mean he has stopped using sex as a distraction. He's still doing that in a lot of season 1, just not with Stolas. He's doing that with M&M. The long-running gag of him stalking and wanting to fuck Millie and Moxie is really just him using sex as a distraction from the actual relationships that they're building. It moves them into a relationship status he's more comfortable with so that he doesn't have to think about the actual intimate friendships he is creating with them.
Then we get to Ozzie's and Blitz is confronted with multiple failed relationships (his friendship with Fizz and his relationship with Verosika, and even to some degree his failure to get with M&M), as well as pointing out how crazy Stolas is for wanting to be with him. Blitz is 0% invested in a relationship with Stolas at that moment, but he still wants to be close to someone.
And this is the first time Blitz doesn't use sex as a distraction. When Stolas invites him inside for some soft, platonic, date night comfort, Blitz assumes that Stolas is doing a bait and switch. Normally, he would jump on that as another distraction, but tonight he can't. He's deep in his feelings about those failed relationships and he doesn't want to be reminded of another relationship that's just about sex.
In season 2, Blitz mostly keeps his distance from Stolas until Full Moon. We see him distracting himself by having sex with other people (and in Chaz's case, distracting other people with sex), and when we finally get to his and Stolas' reunion, he literally sings about how they're going to have sex to avoid thinking or talking about anything more serious.
The Stolas offers new terms for their relationship. He wants it to be about a mutual desire to be with each other, and again, Blitz assumes Stolas isn't being sincere. So he tries to distract with sex again, turning the moment into a roll play scenario and setting off the big argument.
When he shows up to try to win Stolas back in the next episode, he again tries to flirt and distract Stolas from being mad at him with promises of sex. Except it's not working anymore. It hasn't been working since Full Moon, and Blitz is becoming desperate to get things back to a status he is familiar with and comfortable with.
But he can't. And in his failure to get things back to how they were before, he has a revelation.
He wants to be with Stolas, and he doesn't want a distraction anymore.
Again, Stolas isn't the only character we see this change with. His conversation with Millie after Ghost Fuckers is all about how much he values their actual friendship, and he does agree that he's going to stop trying to fuck her and Moxie as part of a recognition that he is happy with the relationship they have without needing that distraction anymore.
And of course, this sets him on the path of personal growth that allows him to comfort Stolas so beautifully in Sinsmas. He's so soft and domestic and nothing is sexual in those episodes because it's just not what Stolas needs at the moment and Blitz has finally grown up enough to realize that HE doesn't need to distract himself with sex to avoid emotional intimacy with a person.
Now, one last thing I want to circle back to. I said earlier that there is a notable exception to the sex as a distraction rule, and it's actually in that first night with Stolas. The Pilot and Mission Zero both set us up to think that Blitz had sex with Stolas to distract him and steal his book. Then 2x01 flips that assumption on its head.
Did Blitz use sexiness to try to steal the book initially? Absolutely. But once he gets Stolas tied up and blindfolded, he's in the clear to leave with the book. He doesn't have to sleep with Stolas. But he does. Why? It's not as a distraction. It's because Stolas tells him how much it means to him to be desired by someone, and for that someone to be the first person he ever cared about. The fact that this is what makes Blitz turn around and actually have sex with him tells us something very new about Blitz. It's actually not all about the distraction. There's some small piece of him that wants to feel a connection like that or, at the very least, actually appreciates other people's desire to feel that connection. It's that little spark of humanity that rears its head in so many different ways with Blitz over the series and really gives us hope that he will start letting people in.
Now the nice thing with Mission Zero is that it punches up that sex as a distraction mentality in Blitz. Even though 2x01 reveals that wasn't the motivation in their first interaction, Mission Zero still weaves it into their early relationship as a key way for Blitz to react to Stolas. It allows us to see that growth, even if we get the reveal later on that there has always been just a touch more to their relationship.
