After Rewatching Mastermind, I Feel Like The Episode Actually Draws A Very Interesting Distinction Between

Random thought: Do the other Sins have their own versions of Asmodean Crystals?

I’ve been thinking about Barbie Wire a lot lately. So of course I can’t help but notice (and become absolutely obsessed with) the way her Asmodean Crystal differs from all the other ones we’ve seen so far.

Now granted, I may be overthinking things again and it’s just a matter of Barbie needing a different version of an Asmodean Crystal due to her being an imp that doesn’t have the magic needed to make a human disguise herself. Or it’s just a repurposed crystal that was stolen from one of Asmodeus’ workers and altered somehow.

But I REALLY like the idea that it’s actually an Asmodean Crystal knockoff made by another Sin.

Mammon in particular is already known for stealing the ideas of his fellow Sins for his own gain. Loo Loo Land being a cheap copy of Lucifer’s Lu Lu World being a prime example. I can easily believe Mammon would copy Asmodeus’ actually legal Asmodean Crystal with a “cheap” illegal version that unsavory businesses like Barbie’s would use to get to Earth when they usually couldn’t. And with Mammon holding a grudge against Asmodeus in particular over Fizzarolli quitting, he’d be more than willing to make knockoffs that could be blamed on Asmodeus since they’re Lust’s design and jurisdiction.

And that’s before even considering Leviathan!

Envy is notorious for generally being a sin portrayed as jealous of what others have and wanting it for themselves. Sometimes going so far as being portrayed as wanting to BECOME a different person altogether (think Fullmetal Alchemist). I can definitely see Leviathan as a sin of envy making knockoff Asmodean Crystals, but with her own spin on it to make it “better” somehow.

Or, maybe she’d even work with Mammon on making their own version. After all, Greed and Envy are pretty compatible sins, and that trial in Mastermind did reveal an interesting dynamic. I can definitely see them using each other for their own gains.

I absolutely love Blitzø’s reaction to Stolas mentioning his horse collection!

This lovable dork is absolutely ecstatic that Stolas is talking about his collection. Blitzø is proud of his horse collection, and he’s more than ready to geek out about it with someone he loves.

The feels man, I just can’t with this gremlin lizard! 🥰

If You Act Like You Don't Need Support, People Believe You: Blitz's "Bulletproof" Act

We know pretty well by now how Blitz's outer shell looks and why he built it. He's carrying a whole cargo load of trauma, and he doesn't want to get hurt anymore. So he puts his natural resilience and charisma front and center and channels all negative emotions into being an asshole. No one gets in.

I think we often fall into seeing Blitz's mask as all negative. But one thing I took away from Ghostfuckers though is how much the people in his life actually find security and comfort in that same shell.

Millie:

Based on her backstory, who can blame her? The final sign that made Millie trust/respect Blitz enough to agree to his job offer?

I can blame this partly on imp culture (valuing toughness), but also, Millie says "you're fucking weird," and I think that comes down to how Blitz doesn't look angry or scared even for a moment. He keeps the smile. The charm. "Unbothered."

When M&M give each other most of their attention (understandable), Blitz just pushes his way past their boundaries anyway, seeming to make a game out of it. We see in Ghostfuckers that his jealousy of M&M, his fear that they don't really care for him . . . that becomes part of his trauma reel. But his friends have no way of knowing that.

When he's on a solo mission in Wee-a-boo-boo, Blitz tells Millie in no uncertain terms that he's got this.

So yeah, Millie's truly never seen him SERIOUSLY upset before, even if WE'VE seen him screaming into the abyss (Truth Seekers) and crying himself to sleep (Ozzie's).

Luckily, Millie has the capacity to adjust and offer the support that Blitz needs.

Loona:

I think Loona gets comfort too from Blitz's outer shell. This time, it's not so much that Blitz never shows her that his feelings are hurt. But that he bounces back quickly. That he always ends up fine.

And at an even farther extreme, Loona can literally throw Blitz across the room and have him doting on her again later that day.

There's comfort, especially when you're someone with a temper, in knowing that there's someone who you can't really hurt, who will stick by you no matter how you behave.

But again, in the Ghostfuckers trauma reel, we get a clip that shows us that's not true either.

Like Millie, when Loona sees Blitz at a true emotional low (this time, his guard is lowered by alcohol . . . and perceived rejection from Stolas), she's able to adjust and be supportive.

Stolas:

Was fairly careless with Blitz's emotions in Season 1, until he saw some vulnerability in Ozzie's and immediately started rethinking his approach.

We often talk about Blitz not realizing that Stolas is vulnerable, but the opposite is also true.

I'm thinking about the flirtatious classism, the teasing, the initial idea that the book deal would be fun and sexy. I think it stems, at least in part, from the idea that Blitz is amazing, that his spirit is kind of unbreakable.

Which again, is not true. His optimism and resilience are wonderful, but he can be hurt (intentional reference to Blitz realizing the same about Stolas).

After the debacle that is Ozzie's, after Stolas sees Blitz in pain from the treatment he received and unable to believe that Stolas's romantic interest in him is genuine, he understands much more. He immediately starts trying to undo the deal, and later in that process, there's this beautiful line . . .

"It's not enough to get through the walls you've conjured up to live."

Stolas isn't there yet by any stretch, in terms of understanding Blitz fully, but even while hurt, there's a part of him that wants to understand, that knows that Blitz is hurting under his mask.

Moxxie:

Ahaha. I bet you thought Stolas would be the twist ending of this meta. NOPE. It's Moxxie. He's the only person close to Blitz who hasn't even begun to adjust to seeing Blitz be vulnerable yet.

Not to psychoanalyze the poor guy, but. His daddy issues are off the fucking charts. Not in a sexual way (though who knows). In a sad way.

Moxxie was raised to follow authority, and the consequence for not doing so was death. Crimson made it very clear. And that's horrible, obviously, but also, there's a certain level of comfort in having everything decided for you.

In having someone who's "got this" in charge. Cult survivors often recall feeling this way.

And I'm not saying Moxxie wasn't incredibly relieved to be rid of Crimson or that he was happy under his control in any way.

But he likes that Blitz is confident, unbothered, and takes care of his team.

I'm done looking for exact lines and screenshots because I have a dinner to get to, but Moxxie does ask in his Truth Seekers hallucination why Blitz pushes his friends away. But he never gets a clear answer, never sees beyond the symbolic mask that Blitz wears there.

And in Unhappy Campers and in Ghostfuckers, we really see him crumble without Blitz's confident leadership. Millie, letting Moxxie take charge and having her own needs that have to be met . . . isn't really enough.

And this is a problem.

Moxx needs to learn some confidence because the unshakeable Blitz he follows . . . doesn't really exist. So I'm interested in seeing how this develops in upcoming seasons.

Arcana Analysis: Helluva Boss--Blitzo (Wheel of Fortune)

Now we move on to the other half of Viv's Hellverse, Helluva Boss! also I hereby acknowledge that I'm walking into a warzone but whatever

First off is the protagonist of the show, Blitzo. At first fitting the "laughably incompetent main character" archetype we see in many other cartoons, there turn out to be a lot of tragic reasons for that.

His card is the Wheel of Fortune, number ten in the major arcana deck. Its very name and imagery go hand in hand with the show's musings on the respective cycles of life and misery.

The core of Blitzo's character is that he's rather contradictory. First impressions show that he's obnoxious, boorish, and pretty stupid, which would turn people off from him instantly. Yet during his more vulnerable moments, Blitzo reveals that he's afraid of being alone, even more so that he'll die with no one by his side. All of this causes him to take part in a pretty bad cycle of misery: he thinks so lowly of himself that he pushes away people interested in him with his bad behavior, best seen in his relationships with both Verosika and Stolas. And in turn, they form a pretty bad opinion about him--best shown in "Apology Tour", where the former organized a party dedicated to hating him, with many the attendees being people wronged by Blitzo one way or another. In a way, this also serves as a self-fulfilling prophecy; part of why Blitzo has so many enemies is that he was caught up in his own self-loathing and repulsed the people who would come to hate him.

This cycle can be traced back to Blitzo's childhood working at a circus with his family. Back then, his problems weren't quite as bad; despite growing up with a shitty father, he at least had his mother, his sister, and his best friend and co-worker, Fizzarolli, there to comfort him. Even then, however, Blitzo's self-loathing was starting to bubble up with Fizz being much more popular among the circus than him, with even Blitzo's own father outright saying Fizz should've been his son. Making it much worse is that Blitzo was implied to have a crush on Fizz, and was about to give him a flower and a letter for his birthday before seeing his father and Fizz together. And everything goes to Hell from there--literally. Blitzo, in his sadness, accidentally knocked someone with a lit birthday cake down, starting a fire that horribly maimed Fizz and killed Blitzo's own mother. As if that wasn't enough, his piece-of-horseshit dad blocked him from seeing Fizz while he was recovering, and then didn't tell Fizz that Blitzo tried to visit him, causing the friendship between the two to deteriorate for a long while. Combine that with his sister's current hatred towards him for the incident, and you have the biggest reason why Blitzo doesn't think he's worthy of love.

On a more positive note, however, Blitzo has broken the cycle quite a few times, evoking Fortune Reversed. It's most prominent in his forming of his company, IMP, which he calls "family". As a matter of fact, after he met his three employees, their lives started to improve bit-by-bit. He adopted Loona, a Hellhound, when she was living in a downtrodden orphanage that she almost aged out of. Despite the occasional misgiving between the two, she's truly grateful for him bringing her in a much better place than she was in before. He met Moxxie when the two were imprisoned, the latter after being abandoned by his ex boyfriend in a failed robbery. By taking him under his wing, Blitzo opened the opportunity for Moxxie's second, more successful chance at love. Said second chance came in the form of Millie, who was much more morose and caustic when she and Blitzo first met. After a scuffle between the two, she joined him out of respect, and meeting Moxxie led to her becoming much happier with herself.

The biggest triumph for Blitzo comes in "Mastermind" and "Sinsmas", the most recent episodes as of this writing, when he makes amends with Stolas. Blitzo is about to be executed by Satan for his past use of Stolas' grimoire when the latter shows up to save him. When he spins a narrative painting himself as the villain the situation between the two, Blitzo is horrified and scared for Stolas; during the eponymous song, he sings stuff like "Don't give your life to clean my slate" and "You're my heart", affirming that he's genuinely started to care for Stolas. When Stolas successfully convinces Satan and his court with his story, his punishment is a hundred years living among the common people, IMP included. Afterwards, Blitzo is quick to offer him shelter at his own apartment. Sinsmas then shows the two bonding on equal ground, further mending their strained relationship. Not only does Blitzo help him adjust to his new circumstances, but when Stolas' own daughter denounces him for his gambit in the previous episode, Blitzo comforts him again by relating to his situation. He then invites Stolas to dance with him, capping their first moment of romantic intimacy.

To cap it off, Blitzo represents both sides of the Wheel of Fortune, all positive and negative, with the circumstances of his life and how he grows in dealing with them. Starting off contributing to the cycle of misery with his crude behavior, the close calls he's had as of late have made him reflect on that behavior and clean up his act, breaking that cycle quite a few times and gaining the sincere love of many in the process. I make no apologies for diving into this show

A detail I don't see mentioned about the confrontation between Blitzø and Stolas is that while Blitzø is understandably angry and lashing out, he also ends his rant with an invitation to Stolas, imploring, no, demanding he meet him at his level, to get as angry as he is, to FIGHT HIM, right then and there.

We've seen frequently that imps are violent in general, they're originally native to Wrath, and we see that most of their bonding rituals often involve violence and/or bodily harm (just look at how much Millie and Sallie May messed each other up at the end and while being able to laugh about it; a broken bottle fight and broken bones is their version of a light-hearted pillow fight)

While Blitzø is also very self-destructive, even by Hell's standards, it should be noted that he's technically begging for Stolas to connect with him in this moment, to speak a language he understands. "At least respect me enough to fight me! If you care, why walk away? Get real with me, if we can't get physical with our genitals, then at least let us get physical with our fists!"

Unfortunately, Stolas has had the exact opposite cultural upbringing, having been taught his whole life that emotional outbursts are unseemly and improper, so his main go-to for conflicts is avoidance. He avoided confrontation with his father, he basically avoided Stella as much as he could even when she was openly shitting on him at parties; and ONLY just recently has he managed to stand up for himself and when he finally does, it's not to strike back, but simply stand his ground for once, emboldened his new-found love for Blitzø and the knowledge that his daughter isn't fooled by the act anymore and will soon be of age anyway.

It is not currently in Stolas' nature to be confrontational the way Blitzø desperately needs him to be.

Blitzø says: "Please, if you ever actually cared, you'd fight for us Get mad, show me that you care!"

What Stolas hears is just the most literal interpretation with zero subtext, because he isn't attuned to the subtleties of arguing and especially not what it looks like for imps, i.e. he focuses on the "I always hated you" interpretation.

Both gave the other an opening, but only heard dismissal, because it wasn't spoken in a language they were familiar with.

I'm not saying either handled things well here, Blitzø shouldn't immediately respond with anger and Stolas shouldn't default to walking away, that's my whole point.

I just thought it was an interesting angle that their differences aren't just societal (privilege/wealth/respect) but also cultural in how it influences how they each handle emotional confrontation, or, in the case of Stolas, how they don't.

The Fellowship movie did Bilbo so dirty ☠️ I know they didn’t make the hobbit movies yet so they were trying to keep the focus on Frodo but:

Bilbo is friends with Aragorn and comes to his defense over Boromir rather than Legolas

Bilbo volunteers to take the ring to Mordor first so nonchalantly like an old queer professor on sabbatical volunteering to cover a 101 course and everyone at the council is honored by his offer

Literally not even scared or sad about it or anything — just straight up “yeah okay I see what you’re getting at, Lord Elrond, I’ll do it 💅 guess I’ll have to rewrite the ending of my book”

Bilbo doesn’t ask to see the ring again or make a go at Frodo but instead sings a sad little song out the window after giving him Sting and his mithril shirt

“it is my dwarf-mail that Thorin gave me” AAAH

Bilbo’s there when they leave Rivendell in the winter and tells them good luck like a worried little peepaw

Also the movie makes it sound like he never got to Erebor but HE DID and was traveling with some of the original company including Gloin who’s the only one who smiles when Bilbo volunteers to take the ring to Mordor

Blitz appreciation post!

Season 3 prediction: Andrealphus and Stella will try to set Octavia up in an arranged marriage.

And it will either result in her being put in a position where she is powerless/unable to take her place as Stolas’ heir, or she will renounce her position as heir altogether to avoid said marriage.

As we know, Andrealphus’ claim to Stolas’ position is on a time limit. Not only does Stolas get his power and position back in 100 years (a mere blink of an eye to immortals), but Octavia’s impending 18th birthday seems to also be a point of contention. Especially if Andrealphus wants to keep his position of power.

As things stand now, Stella and Andrealphus really have nothing to fear of Octavia coming of age and inheriting her father’s position. After the events of “Sinsmas”, there’s no way she’d kick her mother and uncle out after her confrontation with Stolas. Octavia will want stability more than anything after that, and she’ll cling to Stella and Andrealphus in desperation for even a chance at that stability/normalcy.

Which makes her the perfect target for Andrealphus and his scheming. There’s no way he’s going to hand over his new position of power willingly, especially not after all the work he put into getting it in the first place. So, what better way to get Octavia out of the way than to make her marry into another Goetia family altogether?

Without Stolas there to prevent it, Stella would happily jump at the chance to further their family’s standing by marrying her daughter off.

Not only would this be the perfect way to reveal to Octavia her parents’ arranged marriage, but it’d also give Stella a good excuse to reveal to her daughter (and us) her own backstory/experiences with the Goetia.

Just as promised for season 3.

Something I have been wondering because I do think it is a valid concern I have seen floating around, do you think next season Stolas will acknowledge and address the ways he fucked up in his and Blitz’s relationship?

Because we have seen Blitz be explicitly remorseful for the ways he fucked up, but we haven’t gotten explicit confirmation that Stolas understands where he went wrong yet.

For me, I personally think it's going to happen. Stolas is just now starting his arc and he has a lot to learn regarding his more classist tendencies, and what went wrong with his relationship with Blitz beforehand. (By All 2 U he's aware he did something wrong, he just doesn't know what).

The writers are extremely aware of Stolas' flaws, moreso than even fans care to admit. (I mean to say that some fans don't want to admit that Stolas has these flaws, but if the writer of the show- basically points out that he has these flaws, than yeah- he has these flaws).

Stolas has a problem of getting stuck in his own head, and so caught up in his own feelings that he's extremely unaware of the effects his actions has on people.

Stolas' main problem lies in the fact that he unknowingly hurts the people he cares most about without meaning to. Stolas always has the best of intentions, but he fucks it up anyway because he sucks at communicating.

Stolas, for example, never knew till it was too late that him pursuing a relationship with Blitz- and not reassuring Octavia properly, ended up severely hurting his daughter.

By the time he realized the errors of his ways, the damage was done.

Also, as stated in the Apology Tour description, "more apologies to come"...

It's just that the same way they took their time addressing Blitz's intimacy issues- they're going to take their sweet time when it comes to developing Stolas' character.

In Defense of the Mastermind Ending

Stolitz is NOT a couple. They both have a lot of issues to work through. The kiss on the cheek was not them becoming canon (AHEM SARCASTIC CHORUS). Blitzø still hates himself. Stolas is still horribly depressed. The kiss on the cheek was Blitzø finally coming to terms with the fact that he can love and that stolas loves him back. The happy music at the end does not mean that Blitzø is happy Stolas is not a goetia anymore, it's bc Blitzø is happy that stolas ISN'T DEAD. Blitzø more than anyone would understand the gravity of the situation Stolas is in. He's been pushed out of his home, shunned by his family and taken the blame for something huge that was not his fault and ripped away from the people (person) that he loves. Who in all of hell understands that better than Blitzø? He wasn't forcing affection or forcing Stolas to talk. He was treating Stolas with the gentleness he NEEDS right now. Blitzø isn't gonna keep him trapped in his one bedroom alone with him and Loona, he's gonna do whatever he can to get him back on his feet after the life-changing day both of them have had. Is he happy he's getting attention and praise for the FIRST TIME in his life? Understandly, yes but he was also protecting Stolas from the other people's vomit and trash so the attention isn't getting to his head and it won't anytime soon because that's not who Blitzø is. The writers aren't making them jump into a relationship. Hell, they weren't in a relationship when they were having sex every month, a kiss on the cheek means something definitely and im so happy about it, but it certainly doesn't mean they're dating. Mastermind was a brilliant episode with a brilliant ending and I'm tired of people complaining about problems that don't even exist.