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fumifooms · 5 months ago

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Makima, devils and self-fulfillment

Dumping some Makima and CSM thoughts after a part 1 binge bc I think about her forever and ever. I’m sure I’m forgetting some devil lore, feel free to correct what i get wrong/what’s been confirmed. On the table of contents there’s why & how Makima got fixated on Chainsaw, her revealing liking for the country mouse and discussion of her nature & emotions & desires. Was the scorpion doomed to be a scorpion?

The most of this post was thought of during a conversation with @saccharineomens and I don’t think it makes sense to jump into the spiral it sent me on without first laying down the interesting groundwork theorizing she did:

"Thinking about how makima herself wants to be deified. I wonder whether she recognizes the difference between Love As Worship and the love that Aki, Power, and Denji had. She says she wants to help humanity by having Chainsawman eat the “bad” devils, but why does she want to help humans? Because she was ordered to by the Prime Minister? No, her drive seems much more personal than that, it seems like she teamed up with the PM for contractual reasons. (In the most recent chapters we see governmental members wanting certain devils to be eaten, too. What was Makima’s relationship with them? She’s too independent to just follow THEIR orders, she’s Control.)

So is she wanting to better humanity for the accolades, or out of the goodness of her heart? She sees the big picture. She sees any small sacrifice as worth it for the end result, and she’s ruthless. Perhaps she thinks that a more sedate human race would be easier to control? But Makima doesn’t loathe humanity. She never acts like she sees all humans as lesser. She loves humanity’s creations, like good food and movies. She just wants Good Things all the time

She says she prefers the country mouse BUT adds a story where she helps exterminate country mice like vermin. She likes the simplicity yet rejects the idea of being simple. Makima the complex individual you are"

The story itself seems to prefr the country mouse. Well- it strikes a balance, shows that a risk to live good & fully can be very worth it, but still that stability over ambition is preferable, proning having a simple happy life over fame, a simple job instead of a dangerous one, etc etc. And I do find Makima’s answer on this so so interesting, she prefers the country mouse, but this preference isn’t out of affection or sympathy but because of how relaxing it feels to exterminate them when they cause problems.

Order satisfies her. Her order satisfies her. She likes the action of rooting out disorder. Maybe this is the devil part, like how Power especially wants blood and drinking it, I feel there’s an itch to every devil, and for Makima it’s a very rigid world view/morality/standards & making things follow her rules and submit to her order.

And maybe this is why she’s attached to humans too, why she felt it was worth it to stick with the government- because devils are chaotic by nature (it’s a whole plot point that hell is essentially a free-for-all battleground for example), meanwhile humans are the species that universally rule Earth with systems they invented and instilled. They made then enforced rules, complex and intricate webs of them. She feels alienated amongst devils but she understands the humans’ need for an orderly organised society, and now she wants to be part of it. Control and conquest require social dynamics after all, requires civilizations or groups. War is chaotic while peace is, well, peaceful— Makima resents her sisters for being death, famine and war, things that throw the world in such chaos. She wants a world of perfect order, no matter how much collateral damage there will be if the end result is control.

This is even more interesting if you consider that yes, Makima is untouchable of her own design, she deifies herself with her omnipresent amount of control and the sway over others that she seeks and encourages— There is this urge to dehumanize her for it, that yes, she is the devil of control and that means she was never going to be any different, have any more feeling be any less uncanny. And I love part 2 so much for this, because it shows us the war devil and the famine devil and we see how frankly uncharismatic with poor self-discipline they are, Nayuta too, and it helps us realize just how much Makima’s success was self-made.

She admires Chainsaw Devil, the Hero of Hell, because he had his own code and his own rules and he made Hell, the chaos pit, submit to them unfailingly. Wherever he goes he decides what he does and what happens to the people he encounters but does so consistently, he has his mechanism and his rules that he always obeys, and he fulfills them every time. It’s still a mystery the why of Chainsaw Devil’s behavior back then and how it works exactly, maybe Pochita left hell because he was tired of these rules he lived by like chains, but still, he was a servant to his code. Makima would have been glad being killed and eaten by Chainsaw Devil because it’d have been becoming part of his design, his conquest, his domination, she’d have been part of that —his— order. Through her death she would be shaping his world and be part of a conqueror’s making history. Like how she appreciates the country mice that die for the sake of order. Like how sacrifices must be made to herself, like listing the name of every person whose life was lost to the Gun Devil— All for the ~greater good~, for her vision for the world. Conquest always thinks its reasons are justified.

And she does mention with the country mice thing that she goes out to a friend’s farm every year! She has a human friend?? That she visits yearly and she genuinely likes it?? Ultimately she lives a busy city life because of her goal and drive and her urge & satisfaction with overseeing shaping the world herself, but part of her, like so many characters including Angel and Aki and Reze, wishes she could live a slow peaceful country life. Moviegoing and dogs and mice in a farm- Wouldn’t it be so much simpler if Makima could find fulfillment and happiness in being a farmer, in keeping control of her own farm, getting satisfaction from exterminating vermin and expertly getting everything right, the right crops grown at the right time on the right soil? Here, too, in a way it’s trying to have full control of an ecosystem, but her goals would be easier to achieve and better, without ceaseless sacrifice or much pressure. But Makima wants grandiosity and her goal does matter to her on a fundamental and moral level, she does think she knows what’s best for the world, and with the power to change it why wouldn’t she strive to? Visiting the farm is just a break, just something she does in fall to help out and just in time to see the vermin extermination. It calms her, then it’s back to actual work.

In capitalism, even the one at the very top of the ladder is ultimately alienated from others and often unsatisfied by their lifestyle, always wanting more and more power because surely that’s the extra edge they must be missing to be content— like how Makima thinks she wants to dominate Chainsaw Devil instead of being his equal. And she says it herself too, she likes humans the way humans like dogs…….. And she keeps so many dogs :( Makima prefers the country mice because they’re calming to root out, maybe because she usually mainly deals with city mice. It’s very easy to equate humans to the mice in this allegory because it’s pretty direct and she’s already likened humans to lesser animals compared to her. She’s self-isolating by design for her design but she still craves relationships and contentment, and the dogs are the embodiment or her want for bonds and occasional simplicity because there is no possible ulterior motive, no way they tie back into her wider plan. They’re her personal life— something that feels so alien when speaking about Makima. Personality and individuality and likes and preferences and friends they visit every year. She likes how easily she can train a dog and how they become putty in her hands, at her beck and call, how much they love her and how much she enjoys their love. How simple and straightforward and easy it is. She keeps them because she likes being loved by them and loving them, and she’s gotten and raised so many. A conqueror always wants more and more and more, is never satisfied.

Devils and agency

Like Power the blood devil wanting blood and having a fixation on drinking it like with Denji’s, or how it was shocking that the violence devil was pretty tame and nice and how he himself theorized it was because he was a fiend and possessing a human body… There’s something to be said about nature vs nurture with the devils. The way they reincarnate and always embody their fear makes it seem categorically like nature, that they always always end up fulfilling the role they were named after and born to fill… Outside influence they’re helpless but to conform with. Like the humans accepting their spot in the social ladder and the shittiness of their living conditions and job under capitalism. Makima craved being equals with someone despite being the control/conquest devil, Angel Devil despite claiming to be a devil who likes to see humans dying was haunted by their deaths and wanted to avoid ones like Aki’s. The Ghost Devil being ironically haunted by Himeno, seemingly helping Aki in her memory out of… Lasting affection? Or maybe it was less about being haunted itself and more about it recognizing how Himeno haunted Aki, and acknowledging that, with the memento, paying her respect to the ghost of her. It’s Angel Devil’s devil nature that makes him like human suffering, so then is it his angel nature too to still care about their deaths? Is there truth to this or is that just personality, just our confirmation bias haunting every part of their identity like it might in their own view of themselves too? We do know different reincarnations of devils do have different personalities after all.

Yoru, war devil, is the most interesting one when talking about the nature vs nurture debate with devils. There is how through her we see the perhaps the most the consequences of a devil stopping being feared— we see a horseman for a concept as universal and horrifying as war be reduced to some bird who needs a contract with a human to have any power even just on the situation when meeting Asa. And through the story we get to know her better, and it becomes clear that her goal is fueled in good part by simply wanting to be remembered and respected through fear. Liked, validated, seen a powerful. But what is more isolating than war? Or control? We also see Nayuta accepting others’ house rules. If part 1 shows perhaps the futility of running away from the truth, with Denji’s memory, with escapist coping mechanisms, with passivity and denial under a corrupt system and with abusive relationships- running away from your own feelings and from the reality of things and from all that you are, more complex than simply human or devil or both or neither— part 2 builds upon the theme of cult of personalities, the chainsaw church, etc. The apocalypse is coming, but this celebrity superhero might save us all, or doom us all uh, dunno. The hero of hell reliving the cycle of pressure from responsibilities and expectations, maybe the part will end with Denji running away like Pochita did~

But yes, on the reverse, I think Famine is a very interesting example of how a devil’s namesake may be more innate than coerced by circumstances. One would think that a famine devil would only like inflicting famine upon others, not being famished itself, but Famine has a bottomless stomach that can never, ever be satisfied, sated. I struggle to find a psychological explanation for this, except that maybe instead of her being hungry it’s her feeling empty when she’s not eating, tasting and having that high sensory experience that releases serotonin in humans, sort of like drugs? But I do take this as a step towards the compulsion theory overall, feels like a reach in the consistency otherwise. And compulsion does not mean it’s something that they like nor that it’s something that they fight against, pretty neutral, just a nature that nudges you towards one path. Maybe it’s even just their go-to for entertainment. Maybe it’s the only thing that makes them feel right and whole. But still the debate remains, what is it, a compulsion or an urge or an itch or an active desire or a conscious chosen want? Does it change anything in practice?

And because of all of this earlier, devils being self-fulfilling prophecies with their role is not in unsignificant part nurture, because doing their atrocities is how they stay remembered— feared, powerful, known— hell and devils are a very isolating place and breed after all, and we do see devils can want companionship. Existentially, it’s their purpose and how they justify their place in the world, in the terrifyingly vast and unknowable cosmos.

We still know so little of what makes Chainsaw Devil so special, why his carnage is so self-controlled. Despite a chainsaw maybe being possibly one of the most "nature" thing you can be— a tool to cut things, a human tool that can be helpful for many things, something to be wielding by another at their judgement on what they decide, but mainly something to cut, a tool suited for carnage, to hurt and to destroy. A blade with a toothed chain, spinning around and around and around endlessly on the same road at the same pace. Such a…. Innately circular concept. And yet the Chainsaw Devil is his own, not driven by an urge or by chaos but his very own brand of order, his own unique assigned purpose, a "if you call i’ll come running to help" policy equalizing everyone. He chooses to withhold his destruction and interference otherwise, and then he chooses to be used. If it’s a choice, of course.

Maybe this is what inspired Makima so much, that Chainsaw Devil could decide what to make of himself despite expectations or innate role. Because even Hell he decided & managed to subjugate under his will and whim, with a precise vision and process. When Chainsaw Devil acts like Denji or is defeated, Makima clicks her tongue and loses her admiration and respect. Makima admired and liked Chainsaw Devil, but only as long as he matched her great image of him in her mind, as long as he followed he rules for what she thinks he should be like. She admired him for his unrivaled self-made success, but once he stepped out of that to truly embody self-fulfillment and agency, disappearing from hell to live on his own road at the beat of his own drum… Well. Surely that was a mistake she has to correct. However their second battle ends, the better conqueror will have prevailed and she’s happy about that, all in the spirit of domination and subjugation.

Imo Makima’s biggest tool, similarly capitalism’s most helpful effect for its own purposes, is complacency. Resignation and passivity helps uphold the system and go along the flow of the will of the people in power. Aki and Reze go along with orders even when knowing their job is trash, etc. In Angel Devil especially we see him go along with the flow uncaring about anyhing, and we discover it was in part due to Makima taking away memories that motivated him. If every devil decides this is just how things are and how things should be that’s what they’ll continue to be and do mindlessly, not pursuing a better life like Chainsaw Devil and Denj and not seeking to change the world like Makima. I think even Makima veils herself to a lot of things, she doesn’t like to think deeply about some things, like her desire for connection, or how making bad movies disappear is strenuous and unsustainable and requiring sacrifices at best— how her judgement is as subjective as anyone else. How liking the country mouse and her friend back at the farm and her dogs could be not devoid of sentimality. Wanting bad movies erased is her one biggest show of selfishness, of pettiness and individuality, it’s about her tastes, simple as. About how she can have tastes, and cry seeing a scene of people hug, and want things that aren’t logical, her ideology and mind twisted into a pretzel to avoid acknowledging that she doesn’t live and breathe purely for the mission she’s made a single-minded robot out of herself to accomplish. Nayuta is assertive and selfish and loud, Makima is manipulative and strategically both for her goals and for coping hollow.

Everything in her plans and goals she says is for the greater good, necessary evil, manufactured happiness the way she’ll have decided for people— and that’s the thing isn’t it, like with War, it’s the crack that shows it was all truly about herself after all. Her self-made deification still had the flaw that a self made it. Makima is not omniscient, and it’s not Chainsaw Devil the not-so-fellow-kindred-soul conqueror who gets the best of her, but a city mouse, a dog, someone she would have never thought to respect, Denji.

#Fumi rambles #Chainsaw man #makima #analysis #meta #The goal is moreso me dropping thoughts than being flawless on every aspect of the lore so if and when i get things wrong b merciful….#Maybe her liking of control is why she remembers the ww2 authoritarian fascists. I don’t want to say the word jic for tumblr search #Pity is never a factor When mercy is a sign of a talentless actor #And as you grow its hold on your throat starts to falter And once you go beyond pure humanity's border #You will come back like a dooooog 😭#This’d be a different topic but. I don’t think makima likes denji as much as one of her dogs. If so i’d say it was in the moments where #she brought him to movies but even then….. i think she has more fondness for her dogs bc w denji it was indifference and derision #I love you please humiliate me / strip my dignity and laugh my honey #God. God i’m fine. I’m so okay about csm #Makima has a cryptic but strong sense of morals?? That doesn’t align with ours obvi but #‘Someone like you has no right to wish for a normal life do they?’ What do you meannn what do you meannnnn #What is this contempt for denji. Does she see herself as moral or part of those that are city mice bc they’re undeserving of a calm life???#Maybe famine only feels fed on humans and their blood 🤔 or their fear. man idk idk idk idk but i wanna see more of her quirks #And before someone says ‘but every demon likes to drink blood’ power is especially fixated on it tho cmannnn #Did Angel lie when he said he liked seeing humans die?? Did his haunting thing become worse after meeting Aki?? Did he suppress it #because he feels like he doesn’t belong as a devil??? bc he’s suppressing his memories of the villagers he cared about??#Has he just been trying so hard not to care for so long. Passive bc he thought that’s all he could or should be #AGHHHHH #Spoilers #There’s a lot more i’d have liked to touch on like the popular theory that Makima was *raised* by the government #and i’ve seen a take that the ‘my friend at a farm’ thing is all euphemism from makima about her troublesome human killing job ykyk #but i think the phrasing is too literal and natural for that. The snow and soil talk everything. It’s a perfect allegory but it can be both

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winds-of-zephyr416 · 5 months ago

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You know, I’ve been having a lot of OC thoughts lately. Usually my family gets to hear most of them, but none of them are available so now it’s tumblr’s turn for insanity :)

So in my fantasy world that I’ve been building for a couple of years or so now, I have these… gods. Eldritch, celestial beings who exist as spirits in the world. They don’t really consider themselves gods, they’re really more like a lost civilization than anything, but the premise still stands.

Anyways, I’ve been thinking a lot about their culture and language lately. They don’t really have to contend with things like death, they’re very much so immortal and almost impervious to harm, so they don’t really do a lot of things for survival. They also typically communicate with a form of telepathy, so language isn’t even a necessary thing for them.

But they still have a language. They still have architecture. They still have a society that comes together to solve problems. Granted, it’s a lot different than what human civilizations look like, because of the whole “impervious to harm” thing, but they have it, and that’s what’s important.

You know what else is important? Their language. Especially their language. Good lord I am not normal about their language.

Their language is made up of sounds that mimic the world around them. Some words are built up out of rippling streams and birdsong, while others are made out of sounds impossible for us to even hear. Their words are crafted, and many are made to have double meanings and ambiguity. They can’t be ambiguous when they trade thoughts and ideas through their minds, so the notion of being able to say something with multiple meanings fascinates them. They write songs and poetry, and they are engrossed with it, because sound has never carried so much meaning before. They make jokes. They find misunderstanding hilarious, because they’re so alien to their usual way of communicating. They adore puns. Language isn’t a necessity for them, but they developed it anyway, because it gave them a new way of having fun that they had never encountered before in their billions of years of being alive.

Later on, when humanity comes into the scene, they realize that they can use this thing called language to talk to them. Humanity is not like the gods, humanity needs to communicate through a physical medium, whether it be through sight or hearing or touch. Humanity is often confused or overwhelmed when the gods converse with them, because they find that many of the sounds the gods use are completely incoherent. They can’t recreate the sound of thunder in the sky, or crackling flame, and often they look around them in fear, as if the sound alone is indicative of danger.

So, the gods adapt. They learn the languages of humanity, instead, and talk to them in their own tongues. But mortals are curious, and the gods love to learn and teach, so it isn’t long until the gods try to translate the sounds of their language into something humanity can listen to and understand. The music of the slow cracking of the earth is shifted up in pitch until mortals can hear and hearken to the sound, and the mortals in turn recreate it with what their voices will allow. Slowly, the gods make their language perceivable, and slowly, humanity teaches them how to make it pronounceable.

The resulting speech is neither mortal nor divine, but somewhere between the two. Its words have a rippling quality, and in each sentence one can almost hear what is being spoken. The word for wave becomes a low crash, the word for music becomes a dancing song in the ears of whoever is there to listen. There is no doubt that there is magic in these words, with the way they call everyone in the room to their attention and fill their hearts with the very soul of what is being said. This language is not magic in a sense of control, it does not bind things in the world to its will, but it carries with it the memory of the world it was made to describe.

Later on, this middle ground, this speech both mortal and divine, would become lost and forgotten. It would not vanish violently, with the sudden fall of an empire, nor would it fade away with the few who are “worthy” of speaking such a tongue. No, instead it would grow and evolve with the people who learned it, moving across the continent and coming into contact with new lands and people. There, it would teach and learn in turn, and then diverge again, becoming yet another middle ground.

Slowly, like this, the language of humanity and gods together disappears. It does not die, but it dissolves, morphed into a thousand little pieces that stay on in other languages. It can still be found, if you look close enough, at the way speakers arrange their words, or in the rhythms they like to sing. Not even its name is truly past, still being borne by a speech that closely resembles the one long gone.

No, the language of mortals and the gods does not die, because, even in the darkest of days, when it seems like the world will perish and all life along with it, each syllable uttered in fear echoes the language that once carried nothing but joy, and each sentence given in comfort is another window into the years when things were bright. The tongues of mortals do not forget, even if humanity itself has.

And even so, were the speech of humans ever to forget what they helped to create, the gods would still remember. And maybe, the gods would teach and be taught by the mortals once again, in spite of the mutilated darkness that enshrouds these present days. Perhaps they already have.

#OH GOOD LORD I DID NOT INTEND THAT TO BE THAT LONG LOL XD #i get carried away. what can i say.#anyways this is literally all my worldbuilding is for. poetic vast avatar behavior.#if you read all of this i love you. you did not have to do that.#but yeah there’s a lot more to this world and a lot of it is super interconnected so sorry if anything was confusing #i took tolkien’s model of “make it dumbass complicated” to heart lol #the “mutilated darkness” thing isn’t just there to sound pretty. there is lore. The main villain is titled “the thief of darkness”#and it’s a huge deal that darkness was not originally malicious but was instead stolen to be used for the thief’s ill designs #good lord there is too much lore and if i don’t talk abt some of it i am going to physically explode #but also idk how or where to do that bc i don’t wanna make it inaccessibly complicated #i dunno maybe i should just bite the bullet and start writing my own silmarillion or something.#at least the novel i conceptualized when i was 15 and proceeded to do all this for #i gotta do something with it. i can’t just let it stagnate now can i #but anyway yeah this is very much so self-indulgent rambling hahaha :’D #what can i say. gods and deities and ancient worlds beyond comprehension and also the power of gay make brain go brrr :P #fantasy #worldbuilding #exestentialism #??????#idk what this is tbh #language #linguistic rambling #rambles #tag rambling #blorbo brainrot brainfog #not tolkien #ocs #long post

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