#ao discussion

[vamparanormal]

[silverdphantom]

Iblis' child and motherhood

So... With that new chapter, we learnt something I was honestly not expecting AT ALL. Iblis, King of Fire, a fierce opponent of humankind, who had also been expressing a strong dislike for Nephilim... had conceived a child herself ?!

That raise a lot of thoughts in my head, hence this tumblr post ^^. I was really not that expecting that "backstory" for this character for several reasons.

She hates humans.

I thought that before Satan, the Grigori were the only royal demons with hybrid descendants (meaning that Azazel was the only Ba'al who had fathered Nephilim).

Before this chapter, Iblis was little more than a powerful opponent but was hardly a real character.

... How did she have him ???

Not in the sense "How do you make a baby ?" ^^', rather in the sense : "How/why did a demon like herself go through all the trouble to conceive, carry, birth and raise him ?"

"For fun." This is the explaination we got from her, and it perplexes me a bit. I don't have the experience of pregnancy, but from what I got from others, even if can be a very happy moment in the best case, it is certainly not "fun". For demons like Satan and Azazel, who are possessing male bodies, I can imagine the conception can be qualified of just "fun". The difference is, Iblis is in a female body, she is the MOTHER, not the father : she had to do all the hard work. Nine months of pregnancy, hormonal imbalance, body alterations and most of all, a very painful CHILDBIRTH. And after, you have still years of child rearing ahead (unless you have someone else do it for you, but it looks like she did her part in raising him. And she must have done at least some things correctly because he looks pretty attached to her).

It seems a bit contradictory with the characterisation of the demons, and more particularly the Demon Kings. They are hedonists, careless, selfish and easily bored, who go after materialistic pleasure and whose number 1 priority is to avoid pain. All of them (as far as we know, given that we never met the original Grigori who side with humankind) see themselves as above humans. Iblis especially wants to remain beautiful, young and perfect. So, why did she accept all the troubles to get that kid ?

Did she even love him, in her own way ? She liked raising him, yet she killed him when he dared to grow old and weak like any human. She similarly hates all other Nephilim, yet I can't help but thinking the way she acts around Egyn has something to do with her lost motherhood and long-dead son. And Lucy herself shows sympathy for the loss of her child, as if she thought this was a source of pain for Iblis.

Are demons unable to love, as Mephisto suggested, or is there something more ? A psychological defense mechanism ?

Well she is "dead" now, so we might never know more, unfortunately.

PS: Do we have to expect more Nephilim reveal ???

[t4toro]

i think i’m gonna b sick i gotta lie down…

[tonguetiedraven]

So I was cleaning up a few manga panels for my other blog, and darn it, I need to talk about my thoughts on two scenes in the Shimane Illuminati arc (specifically chapters 61 and 62) because Kato deserves all the applause for everything. This post will be for chapter 61 and I'll post 62 later.

TW/CW for character death, medical abuse, and mental health struggles. Content below the cut.

First, in chapter 61 we get this heart breaking page when Tamamo Kamiki dies.

To get into what I'm seeing with this panel, I need to give a brief (or I'll try and make it brief) overview of Tamamo. Tamamo gets introduced to us in chapter 52 and the first panel we get of her is her sobbing into the camera that everyone acts so cold towards her because she is sleeping with the head priest and not married to said high priest.

We are then told that she was an irresponsible and careless woman by Mike. We find out three really important things though.

Tamamo is judged by the people around her and gets a cold shoulder

Tamamo relies heavily on her daughter and the byakko to have the house run at all and has dreams of a fantastic family and house she has shown no ability to actually run.

Tamamo is in love with the (shitty) Chief Priest of Inari and that he isn't married to her.

We then find out:

That Tamamo and her entire line have always managed the terrifying and unruly Nine Tails by assimilating the god and becoming her, and that the town/shrine distrust her because of that, even though she does it to protect them. They ostracize her for the duty her family has and they judge the entire family because she had Soji's children.

Notice Soji isn't in the judged club and that Soji has never seen his daughters. He's never been to her house. It is always her going to him.

This theme of ostracization is something that pops up over and over and over again in Blue Exorcist. Almost all of the main characters had a childhood that was lonely and where they were rejected by their peers--almost always for things outside their direct control and almost always in someway connected to demons, even if they didn't know it, but I'll get to that more in a moment. Suffice to say, at this point we can see that Tamamo is isolated outside of her illicit meetings with Soji (not at all healthy as we'll see later on) her interactions with the demons around her, and her daughters, neither of which are old or mature enough to offer her the type of companionship she's in need of, which leads to everyone in this tangled dynamic having unhealthy relationships with each other.

We see Tamamo seeking connections and affections and largely being rebuffed by it everywhere except Tsukumo and the byakko. Soji's affection has strings attached, and Izumo is too fed up to offer any affection. The other members of the shrine ostracize her and give her a cold shoulder, and I'd bet money that they're vocal about their opinions any time she's around. (And they likely don't care if the kids are around or not.)

What I'm getting at is that Tamamo is lonely and you see that in how desperate she is for approval and connection and it mostly comes out with Soji. She does whatever he wants to keep her connection to him intact. We've also had a few indications thus far in the manga that isolation and depression and poor mental health are things demons take advantage of. We'll get more explanation on that later on, but suffice to say that Tamamo is not at all in a healthy spot to be constantly risking possession against an immensely powerful and evil demon.

I'll be honest and clear up front that I have no love for Soji and think him deplorable and he did not do anything to help Tamamo that we see. Rather, it seems he exclusively used her for his own pleasures without any care for her or the consequences their time together had.

I also think it's important that everyone know that Nine Tails -- at least the Nine Tails in this story -- is based of Tamamo no Mae who is an infamous yokai in Japanese lore. She has a long and complicated history with her origins unknown and a lot of political manipulation, but an important thing to know about her is that she is always depicted as a child eater. She devours women as well, and thrives on seducing men. She's beautiful and powerful and alluring, and she's manipulative.

So generations of women manipulated and regularly partially possessed by Nine Tails down the line, we have a shrine and town that reject Tamamo and her losing her grasp on the one adult who 'likes' her, and we see this moment:

We see her staring at him, enjoying the light atmosphere and gathering her courage (the sweat drop in the panel has me thinking she's nervous about this because it's not the first time this convo has happened.)

She wants him to come to her house and is trying to make it as appealing as possible. She wants a family and the life she's been dreaming up.

Soji rejects the idea entirely and pushes further by saying if she asks for him to interact with the kids in any way he'll dump her. The one adult connection she has will be lost because of her children. (Not actually. It's because he's a dick but she sees it as the children being the problem.)

She then goes immediately to Nine Tails to do the dance of spirit invocation which we're told this about:

So Tamamo--who has been isolated and lonely for at least a large chunk of her adult life is now seeing the one connection she's made with another adult (and an unhealthy one at that) potentially break because of her children-- goes to assimilate the Nine Tails in that unstable and unhealthy emotional and mental state.

It is heavily implied that Nine Tails started to take her over at this point, and you see her become more and more obsessed with Soji and more angry with her children, further isolating herself away from the small amount of support and connection she did have until she's entirely possessed by the vengeful and malevolent spirit of Nine Tails.

She murders Soji and tries to do the same to her children before the Illuminati take her and subject her to years of torture, all while she's still possessed by the Nine Tails.

One more detail and I'll get back to the scene in chapter 61.

When Tamamo was last fully in control of her faculties and saw her daughter, she saw Izumo in the same place she was. Ostracized by her community with no one but their small family to lean on. Her daughter was doomed to follow the same path Tamamo had, and at this point, it looks like this was a cycle that had been going on for at least a few generations. Isolated and connection starved women raising daughters who were isolated and connection starved children. Tamamo became overly touchy and clingy to everyone where Izumo became mistrustful. (And man does she have a lot of reasons for that.)

Now back to chapter 61 and the moment Tamamo dies.

She wakes up amongst the chaos of the zombie hoard going towards possessed Izumo, and she immediately intervenes to get the Nine Tails spirit back inside herself to save her daughter.

That's important to understand for her. She moved before the next moment I'm going to talk about. She saw Izumo possessed and didn't seem to hesitate to save her daughter. She has been tortured for five years and immediately moves to start that horrible possession again.

But while she's dancing to contain Nine Tails in herself, this is going on in the background:

Each of the other teens in the room came to get Izumo and they're shouting their support of her even while they fight an endless hoard of zombies because they came to get her. Tamamo can hear that happening and she can see that they came to help Izumo.

No one came to help Tamamo. At no point did anyone ever come to rescue her or fight for her. She was blamed for everything and was left to bear all the consequences for five years. (I am not blaming Izumo for that. She was a child and was not responsible for saving her mother.)

But with "We're here for you!" ringing in Tamamo's ears, she completes the ritualistic dance and frees her daughter from the possession.

Tamamo in her dying moments looks at her daughter and sees a community around her that Tamamo didn't have. She sees people willing to intervene and help and fight even though Izumo is pushing them away and possessed and not easy to get along with.

Tamamo, from everything we saw, was isolated and rejected by her community and had no one to support her. She was manipulated and played by her significant other and left vulnerale to possession by a society that needed her to do the thankless job and hated her for doing the thankless job. She was bubbly and friendly and still pushed away and rejected and ostracized until she succumbed to Nine Tails.

back to chapter 52

Blue Exorcist talks a lot about curses and ostracization. All the main cast suffer from it in some way or another. They've all been called terrible things and most of them have been treated as if they aren't human, and a lot of them have complicated lineages and may not be fully human which just amplifies the amount they're rejected by their peers.

For Tamamo, that curse was literal and figurative. The literal curse was the constant absorption of an insane demon that eventually consumed her until she'd destroyed what little family she had.

It was figurative in that as the head priestess and medium in charge of the rituals, she was rejected by the community she needed to support her. She was left floundering on the outside, always given just a taste of what she could have had if she was born to a different family, and left with a longing for what she would never be given and always wondering why she couldn't have it. (And yes, I'm probably reading into some things and filling in the blanks with hypothesis and assumptions.)

But in that final moment, Tamamo sees that curse of isolation and rejection has been broken by Izumo. That her daughter, who like all the daughters of the Kamiki line was alone, is no longer alone. That she has friends and support. Support that followed her into this hell and reached out to call her back even from a demon like Nine Tails.

I don't know if I've made myself all that clear, but I love the way that Kato has shown this over and over again and keeps showing the rejection of isolation and ostracization as any kind of solution. That she keeps showing through each of these relationships and arcs that it's reaching for and connecting with other people that brings change and healing and hope, and I love how she shows that through moments like this. It's a little moment that's so easy to miss, but it's so immensely huge when looked at in the context of the entirety of Tamamo's life.

I wish she knew that they would have come for her if they'd known she'd been there all this time. I wish she'd have found a community to support her and I wish she'd had someone to tell her Soji was a dick and she could do better.

I wish she could see Izumo now, still connected to her friends and even though it's the end of the world, she's fighting with and beside them. That she's seeking out connections and learned her lesson about not needing to be alone. That she's teased and loved and welcomed.

But I'm pretty sure in that final moment, she saw it all anyway.

As always, check out my tag #raven rambles for more aoex meta and analysis

[agentmilayawithshield]

Coriolanus Snow - a proud graduate of Grant Ward School for Mass Manipulation.

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

Charlie Tangaroa and the God of War

book 2 in a middle grade series about a boy whose father is a Ponaturi (sea-goblin)

charlie and his brother are back living their normal lives - until a visiting scientist is stabbed in a local campground, right before a meeting between iwi and the government over local resources

they try to investigate and quickly learn that Whiro, atua of chaos is involved, sowing discord between various groups, and they have to figure out a way to solve things before anyone else gets hurt

cover & illustrations by yours truly!

[thefoldedbird]

What if the reason Isami's clothes disappeared is because Bravern was supposed to deck him out in a suit like Lulu's?

There's a chance that this suit has something to do with granting the Mecha the ability to control the pilot in some fashion. Or perhaps the suit just has some general adverse effect that Bravern doesn't want to reveal as it could oust him in some way?

Of course this works off the unconfirmed theory that Bravern is a high ranking Deathdrive that turned traitor.

[everyryuujisuguro]

[tiredtriedfailures]

im a different anon talking about kendrick related matters, but i need to tell someone about something that's been really bothering me

so obviously everything that comes out of drakes mouth is bullshit but there's a specific line in family matters that's been really irking me

the one where he's like 'where is your uncle at? cause id like to talk to the man of the house' the implication being he's talking about kendricks trans uncle. and like. wow drake what's so funny about that. what's so funny about the idea of a trans man being more masculine than kendrick. what's the joke in comparing kendrick to a trans man. enlighten me, drake, on the comedy in this line. id love to know.

it's just been really bothering me. it's not outwardly transphobic maybe, but man.

oh he ABSOLUTELY wanted to call him Kendricks "aunt" and THEN say "the man of the house" you can smell it. its basically a "youve failed at manhood so bad this X woman is more masculine than you" joke (the same angle he took w kennys wife) that correctly genders the uncle only in word.

it IS transphobic on paper too btw without even reading into it as its most simplified form is "even your TRANS UNCLE is manlier than you" which is yeah. straight transphobic lol.

im sorry man no way out drake i guess you gotta kill yourself to repent

[chaztalk]

[marsixm]

im trying to wrap my head around why i dont get enthusiastic about reddit style fiction (not a dig but a descriptor) like scp and shit like that, bc its not that i can’t enjoy them but i think its like… when stuff is framed as if it were real, but its fiction, its like, well KNOWING its fiction eliminates a huge element of the intrigue, but also, crucially, i like character-driven stories, or at least stories WITH characters. but i also like it when things are interesting for said characters to experience, like, i want the ghosts and monsters and conspiracies but i want the characters to be character-ing, yknow? not that i dont enjoy slice of life and… what would u call the first thing, non-character specific horror? idk? but i prefer when its both. its like i love kirk and spock but also i do enjoy watching them Experience Situations when i watch star trek. i enjoy the idea of spooky national forest monsters that arent real but experiencing it alongside a character would be better, and i want more trans and gay characters whose lives are clearly trans and gay but i want a plotline to unfold too

[pinkshadesofshame]

damn I really like my new therapist a lot 🥹 it's only second ses with her but comparing my time with her to with ashley there's some stuff I didn't notice that made me uncomfortable thats just completely not there with liz

[ichigosoju]

🕷️

[violentdevotion]

was gonna wear an outfit tomorrow a little out of my comfort zone but then remembered I might be getting fired tomorrow lol so the old baggy trousers and hoody it is

[hailbop1701]

Now I've been wondering... 🤔

If TOSMcCoy and AOSMcCoy were forced to go on an epic adventure/rescue mission to save the crew, how would the dynamic be? I feel that it would be a rocky start but they would end up trusting one another and learning from each other.

What would the TOS crew think of AOSMcCoy?

What do y'all think? Discuss 🖖

[mythvoiced]

OPEN STARTER | Baek Eunjae

"Science can explain fuck-all about bees and their fat bodies and their tiny wings, but we're definitely equipped for space-travel, sure, why not, sounds logical."