Insane how if you look at the playing-by-the-tree scene from Helluva Boss s2e1 "The Circus" you can see definite trajectories in Blitzø and Stolas’s attitudes towards agency and freedom *before* the big traumatic event of their life (the fire, the wedding) happen, and you can see it later reflected in thier sexual behaviours and attitudes.
Blitzo (the o isn't silent yet) wants to be able to "do what I want to do!" His fantasy of an adult life is freedom, is being in control, is being the boss of circus-biscuits business. By the age of, what about 10? he's noticed and internalised his place in hell's hierarchy and how his dad constantly exploits and emotionally blackmails him, and is already desperate to break out of it. Cut to him 25 years later and his response to his reunion with Stolas to ask for the book not going to plan is to immediately try to seize initiative and take control of the conversation, steer it to a place where he feels safe and in control (sex). How he can't identify as anything other than "The boss" and "a top", how he keeps all his relationships transactional or with co-workers even if that creates horrible personal problems that makes him suffer. How fear of loss of freedom or control, and of being seen and judged for the fire, makes him afraid of being oven and vulnerable (nods at Full Moon and Applogy Tour). Where the walls have to stay up, because if he relinquishs control for even a second he might have to confront someone seeing the real him, and he hates the real him.
And then there’s Stolas who even as a child has accepted that his destiny is fixed, written In the stars, and he cant change it, even if he doesn’t understand it. "That will be my job, when I'm older... but i dont know." How growing up in a privilaged but high-control environment has already destroyed his confidence in his own decision making. How readily he goes along with the pirate game despite absolutely knowing (and having written sources) that pirates did not have windows. How he willingly lets someone else take charge even if he's told repeatedly that that person is below him, rather than assert himself and face backlash. Cut to 25 years later and how willingly he ignored the obvious signs that Blitz was there for the book, and not him. How he lets himself get robbed by him for the second time because having someone see and acknowledge and pay attention to him even if it's clearly with an ulterior motive is thrilling. How bottoming and dirty talk and all the other things that fall outside of his role as a prim and proper husband, of having the class and control dynamics played with, is thrilling. How that "real fast" sex-as-distraction-from-grand-larceny is enough to change the entirely trajectory of his life: he yells "that was the sound of a FAUUUCKING divorce." mere minutes afterwards, with no plan for what to do next. This is the first time he's ever gone off-plan, done something that wasn't in the script his father wrote for him, and that's liberating, a hole in the guilded cage, and how he's quite understandably deeply weird about it for some time and makes terrible, poorly thought out choices because he's trying to make decisions and have agency for the first time and his role models for what that looks like are romance novels, telanovelas, and Blitzø.
These fuckers never had a chance at normal, did they? Thier dad's saw to that even before the *big* trauma hit.
EDIT: oh good and this is before we get to the possible implications of neurodivergance:
Blitzø is very ADHD coded, so of course he's not going to puy himself through the forced inactivity and lack of novelty and stimulation that comes with serious introspection and soul-searching, that would be akin to psychology torture for him ( and it is in Ghostfuckers).
Stolas, however is strongly autism coden and seems to rely a lot on mental scrips for how an interaction should go and gets upset when they don't (Full Moon), to the point he's re-using scripts he learnt from his father even when he knows they suck (Child is upset-> take child to circus events over thier objections/lack of interest).
The playing-by-the-tree scene even highlights the future problems with thier body language: Blitzo is climbing all over the place, never letting themselves rest, ignoring the clear affection Stolas wants to show him, active to the point of hyperactivity, while Stolas never moves: he hardly looks up from his book; he's defined by his passivity when the person and the life he wants is right there in reach.
