#e: mastermind

[nyxofdemons]

IT'S THE WAY THEIR INTERNAL WORLDS BLEED TOGETHER. the way blitz still looks up at him, still in front of him and bathed in light, but the way they're on equal ground this time; there's no pedestal. the golden chains forcing blitz away from stolas vs them dragging blitz to him in truth seekers. stolas on his knees looking up at blitz (the moon) vs blitz on his knees watching stolas. the way that stolas has the freedom to fly after the moon vs blitz being chained down and unable to reach for him. the golden feathers. insane

[nyxofdemons]

oh i'm gonna need a thousand years to recover

[nyxofdemons]

The Full Moon & Mastermind

[nyxofdemons]

NOBODY TOUCH ME THIS IS SO IMPORTANT

[nyxofdemons]

don't get on that train

[nyxofdemons]

i love his scheming face

[nyxofdemons]

i'm literally still not over the duet btw and i will never be over the duet, like i cannot tell you how absolutely SHOCKED i was when blitz started singing. the full moon duet had been REALLY built up by the time it happened, but i feel like i was totally blindsighted with this one. blitz softly started "what have you done?" and i nearly fell out of my chair

[nyxofdemons]

ALSO i LOVE the reveal that stolas' pupils aren't a display of power after all but a LACK of it. in every previous instance we've seen of his white pupils showing it's when he's been highly emotional (excited/angry/afraid) -

- and i had initially assumed that it was a show of his power flaring up, but since he's stripped of his powers, suddenly they're present 100% of the time, so it seems like what was actually happening is that, at a certain power level, they "lose" their pupils.

(note: he also gets that gray stripe in his head feathers only AFTER being stripped of his powers, and he previously had had it during ozzie's, so either that's naturally there and he hides it most of the time (and chose to show it to blitz during their first real date), or it had only been makeup during ozzie's.)

and knowing this now, it actually tracks with what we've seen of the other goetia! andrealphus has them, too, but we only see them once, when he's yelling at stella in the beginning of this episode; stella has them all the time, and as far as we've seen, she doesn't seem to have any powers whatsoever? we know octavia can do magic, but she's still young and learning, so she's not really powerful enough yet for it to obscure her eyes.

(the only one throwing me for a loop on this is paimon, whose white pupils are also always visible, but he also has distinctive black sclera and red irises, so maybe he's got something different going on.)