Fears After Mastermind

Blitz:

Stolas, Loona, Millie, Moxxie, Fizz:

One day, Blitz will see that he's not a nuisance to those around him who leaves nothing but suffering in his wake. One day, he will believe them when they say that they love him and that he saved them. One day, he will see that instead of being a burden, he has given them a community.

They're all, in their own ways, telling him, "Get loved, idiot. Get fucking cherished and adored, loser." And one day, he'll even realize that yes, he is worthy of such love and devotion.

this was such an important moment for his development! He genuinely believed that he and blitzø would be treated the same by the court, but they obviously weren’t because he is royal. This combined with blitzø being adored while he is ridiculed by hell is totally the push he needs to realize the class disparities in he and blitzø’s relationship.

(Just to be clear I love Stolas and do not think he is an abuser I just think he is unaware of his privilege and power and how they affect blitzø)

I think people don't take into consideration enough that Blitz likely struggles with chronic pain.

Stiffness, soreness, and an inability to handle textures or clothing types-we see Blitz either in oversized clothes or super skin tight clothes, nothing in between.

In other words, clothes that are so tight they can't rub, or clothes so big they're not going to. He likes soft things, like sweaters and hoodies, and seems to have a preference for very specific blankets.

The idea thay Blitz had to figure this all out on his own, with painful trial and error, discovering what hurts and what doesn't, what he can tolerate and what he can't. Stumbling over compression gloves by sheer accident, self medicating with booze and huge, soft sweaters on bad days, hurts my soul.

The idea that even Millie doesn't know, that bad pain days are just Blitz drunk again, fucked off in his apartment because he feels like it, or hung over and doesn't feel like coming in, with no one, not even Loona, realizing that every movement makes his skin feel rashy, raw, tight, painful-that his joints ache and his vision is blurry and his face hurts like someone's holding a flame to it.

The amount of bad faith arguments from antis is utterly astounding. I just saw 2 different people argue that Blitz being fine with killing the mom in Murder Family and not the gay couple in Sinsmas was a sign of Vizzie being obsessed with gay people and hating women.

The entire story of Helluva Boss is Blitz coming to terms with his trauma and the ways that has shaped his relationships as an adult. That’s not even a B plot. That is literally the main story.

The show begins with him hiding his trauma behind bravado. He has lost his family and feels responsible. He adopts a daughter, but is afraid to place any boundaries on their relationship and trades away genuineness for surface level gifts and compliments.

He craves intimacy but is terrified of actually finding it. He fucks around with whoever he wants and crosses every boundary with M&M, constantly trying to insert himself into a successful relationship, without putting any effort into building one himself.

He’s determined to prove he’s not just a screw up, so he starts a business based around one of the few well paid jobs imps seem to be able to get in Pride (hired muscle), and he doesn’t think twice about whether the people he’s killing actually deserve it or not.

By the end of Apology Tour (though honestly it starts before this) he has realized that he doesn’t want to be like this forever. He doesn’t want to cut himself off from people. He wants genuine connection.

In Sinsmas, Blitz immediately clocks that the family they are about to kill bears a superficial resemblance to his and Stolas’s relationship. When he goes out for the job, he sees the future he wants, the same one he has only recently allowed himself to admit he wants, and yeah, it’s too much for him to go through with it.

It makes sense that a repressed Blitz firing on bravado and overconfidence would distance himself from his hits in episode 1. It makes sense that the more he opens himself up to being vulnerable, acknowledging his trauma, and finding genuine connection with loved ones, the harder that would be, especially when his own emotions are so new and so raw.

Yes, Blitz loved his mom and he’s not over what happened to her, but his coping mechanism is to push his emotions away and try to forget about all of that. He’s not trying to do that with Stolas in Sinsmas. In fact, he’s very notably trying to do the exact opposite, so of course his reaction to this hit would be different.

If you don’t understand that, you are (at best) not paying attention to the plot or (at worst) are willfully ignorant and intentionally trolling fans of this show because you have nothing better to do with your time.

Summary:

She pushes an old shirt to the side and softly hoots in surprise at what she has found.

An old film camera.

Via blinks in astonishment and carefully lifts it out of the box. The heavy weight is expected but it still manages to surprise her somehow. This is a really old model, vintage even! Via has never seen one like this in person, only ever in magazines or in old movies.

For a moment her heart drops because at a closer glance the camera looks broken. It's dirty and banged up and there are some weird markings all over the body. In some places the plastic looks almost like it has… melted?

She turns it in her hands and runs a finger over the lid of the film compartment. What looked like ordinary scratches are actually letters, deliberately carved into the surface, faded and barely legible.

T. B.

*********** Via finds an old film camera in Blitzø’s closet. While she takes pictures of her new family and tries to come to terms with her new normal, the camera holds secrets none of them could have ever imagined.

Read on Ao3

Periodic rent-lowering-gunshots:

Fiction is not reality.

You can enjoy things in fiction that would be awful in the real world. Like playing a murderhobo in a game! In the real world, being or supporting a murderer-thief would be pretty damn awful, while in the game it's just good fun. Same with anything else you choose to do with the pixels on the screen, like kinks that don't affect anyone real, so they're okay in fiction, but would be pretty damn bad in real life.

No one else is responsible for your online experience. They are required not to harass you, but they are not and never will be obligated to not post about ships, kinks, or tropes you dislike just to avoid you seeing them. It's up to you to blacklist words or phrases, block tags, or even block users as needed to avoid seeing content that upsets you.

No one can force you to read anything against your consent. Any content you don't like seeing can be instantly avoided by closing out of the offending post/fic.

You are not owed an online experience free of discomfort.

Nothing that happens in your imagination can ever make you a bad person. Words you write or read about fictional characters will never make you a bad person.

The claim that media consumption influences real-life behavior is intellectually dishonest and serves only to excuse the behavior of real offenders.

Fiction is a safe way to explore horrifying or confusing concepts. Therapists agree that fiction, even (or especially) about taboo topics is a good coping mechanism, especially, but not exclusively, for trauma survivors. Fiction is to adults what play therapy is to children. This doesn't stop being true if the work in question is of a sexual nature.

Sex isn't an inherently worse or better motivation than anything else. A work written to create feelings of arousal isn't dirty, shameful, or in any way less pure than works written to entertain, provoke moral questions, or for other reasons. And worth noting is that multiple purposes can exist in the same story, especially fanfiction.

You aren't entitled to an explanation for why someone reads, writes, or otherwise enjoys certain works, kinks, tropes, ships, etc.

Octavia joining the family

foreshadowing and shit 🙂

Blitz answer her dad call

His phone number is saved as dad (with a few *s)

Alo can't tell me Via long winded dunk on Blitz; isn't a little similar to his on Stolas in the pilot

Blitz says let's go find our daughters, refering to Loona and Via.

(Yes I know English is a silly imprecise language, but I'm counting it).

And this moment had a big effect on Stolas

They have the same taste in music 🎶

Blitz uses the same pet name for Octavia, as he does for Loona

They have the same reaction to Stolas being overly PDA

They both Hate Fizzbot

And both think Stolas' damsel in distress act is bit much

They have a very similar sarcastic snarky wit

(She was having so much fun making Loo loo sweat)

And Stolas treats them in a similar way when they snark

He fires back with a minor piss take of his own. (Think one of the reasons Stolas wasn't as put of by Blitz's walls early on is because of understanding Via).

You can see how well this plays together when they back eachother up taking this mick out of Andy

Blaming @quillyfied for this one but she's in front of both of them saying this.

How do you build the confidence to be part of the hellaverse fandom? I adore your art and love seeing how you and other artists are just being unapologetically yourselves and having fun. I'm too anxious to ever actually interact other than liking things and anonymous messages of support...how do you do it? I want to join and have fun but I'm so intimidated by the toxic aspects of the fandom. Sorry to ramble but I wanted to know if you had any advice!

This question hit me in the feels! 🥺❤️

Okay there is a long answer to this but I think I’ll be able to keep it short and I can only talk about my experience;

- if you live in a societal context where the institutions in power insist that you hate yourself, then you probably will get some feeling of confidence as a side effect of fighting against everyone just to like who you are. Not everyone survives this endeavor, so it’s a pretty big deal to those who do. Due to the nature of the shows, I think hellaverse has the tendency to attract fans who have gone through this in some way with society. (I’ve dealt with real bullshit for a long ass time, so navigating a fandom is not so intimidating for me 💖)

-most everyone (irl and online) is a total fucking sweetie pie, which makes me feel happy to chitchat online or express my appreciations~

-block assholes liberally 🚫

Be free, have fun~

In Queen Bee we learned about Blitz's Biggest Fear...

And in Sinsmas we learned about Blitz's Dream...

It may have taken some time, but Blitz's biggest fear didn't come true in Mastermind. Even if Blitz died that day, on that chopping block, he would have died smiling knowing that he told his found family he loved them, and that his found family (and at least Millie) were there to see his final moments.

Y'all know what this means chat?

Blitz is going to fight tooth and nail to make this dream come true. The dream that he and Stolas could be healthy and happy enough to settle down with their girls and be an actual family.

So, I’ve been rewatching some of my favorite Helluva Boss episodes lately (as you do, the cope is real). And to add some variety to each rewatch, I’ve started to focus on watching reactors and seeing their takes on those episodes. It’s been a blast! Seeing the different reactions and perspectives that they bring to my favorite episodes. Some of them have even pointed out things I never even noticed while watching the episode on my own. It really adds a freshness to each rewatch, as if I’m seeing the episode for the first time all over again.

Hower, it’s not always a matter of new insights and enjoyable new perspectives. Which is understandable, and expected honestly. It’s the internet, afterall.

What I don’t understand is how every reactor has had almost the exact same response to the scene from “Mammon’s Magnificent Mid-Season Special” regarding Fizz’s stalker “fan”.

Every reactor’s initial response is excitement at Blitz’s timely arrival in intercepting Creepzo, eagerly anticipating Blitz doing what he does best and assassinate the creep. But then Blitz decides not to shoot, opting instead to just smack Creepzo with his gun and leaving him to slink off. Every reactor I’ve watched was flabbergasted by this, not understanding why Blitz didn’t just kill the creep. But then, the whole event is put to the back-burner and ultimately forgotten due to the drama that immediately follows afterwards.

Heck, if I’m being honest, I had the exact same response when I first watched the episode myself. But I’ve been obsessively rewatching my favorite episodes back to back ever since “Sinsmas” aired, so of course I noticed something I didn’t pick up on that first viewing.

Blitz’s reaction to Fizzarolli’s panic says it all. He knew that Fizz wouldn’t be able to handle it if Creepzo got shot. Heck, he was there when Fizzarolli himself admitted that he does’t handle dangerous situations.

Blitz was listening. And he handled the situation in a way that he thought wouldn’t agitate Fizzarolli any more than he already was.

And it doesn’t end there! Here’s another interesting little detail that I don’t see people mentioning.

Asmodeus arrives just in the nick of time to support Fizz and help talk him down from his panic attack. But here’s the thing. How is he there? It was stated multiple times that Asodeus wasn’t supposed to be at the event in Greed. And the whole fiasco that took place in “Oops” shows that he doesn’t keep tabs on Fizzarolli when he’s outside of Lust. So, how did he know?

Simple, Blitz told him.

Blitz was working with Asmodeus to convince Fizz to quit the clown pageant in the first place. But, when everything Blitz said went completely ignored or was outright rebuffed, he simply stood by his friend to act as support. Until he realized it wasn’t enough. Blitz actually assessed the situation and determined that Fizz needed Asmodeus more than anyone else in that moment. And he took a step back and left it to Asmodeus.

Showing yet another instance of Blitz caring about his found family, and showing his love by being considerate in such subtle ways that people don’t notice.