#forget me. it's easier that way

[bloodystray]

considering leaving all my old friends' servers again

[licorishh]

double ?? upload ???? yeaaaahh i've gotten FASTERRrr for whatever that's worth so complementary blyla because guess what i miss them too (nobody was surprised by that)

[lost-family]

Sharing a small snippet wip! Currently halfway through sketching the chapter pages, kofi members get to see the first 16 pages sketched out of the chapter! Hoping I get to post the other half soon

[pansyfemme]

spending time with family and realizing that forgiveness for me is very different from forgetting or diminishing the hurt it caused me

[rxttenfish]

merfolk in general are just. horrible horrible polyglots. their brains are already hardwired for language and quick language acquisition that remains active all their lives, further helped by retaining a high neural plasticity for their long lives, and especially enjoy complex language and language-based play and problem solving. but they also tend to have a lot of their society arranged where there's often multiple different languages at play within the same area, and only really stops being so once you get into especially small villages that have below the merfolk norm for outside contact. every merfolk alive today knows at least two languages, but most of them know far more than that, especially because one of those two will be the common-technical language. its been standardized and wide-scale implemented across the merkingdom after their dominance, to help bridge the gap between these different languages, basically as a successful version of esperanto. but its a trade language, and is mostly used for information you might want to reach as many people as possible, such as laws or business dealings or public announcements or the like. most merfolk don't view it as and don't treat it as a language proper, and its not what they prefer to converse in if they have another choice, usually finding it pretty limiting and restrictive, which is why its called common-technical.

miranda, being a royal who is regularly in contact with many different people around the merkingdom and regularly expected to be fully able to converse with them to do her job, knows just. so many languages. i might be changing exactly how many soon, but last time i counted it was in the low teens. like its just a perfect storm of her brain being wired for swift language acquisition and having a job that requires it and a position that means shes constantly around people from all around the merkingdom. not to mention having to know english too, which isn't just not her first language, it's not even her fourth language.

meanwhile, aaravi knows english and a little bit of hindi, less because of her mother and moreso because of her nana... its not that her mother never used it with her, but she was. less focused on using it or teaching aaravi, let's say. nana mishra uses it a lot more and is more interested in teaching aaravi when she asks her, especially in the intermittent period after her mom died and nana mishra was able to come back into her life to help aaravi pick up the pieces (though not after aaravi kind of. got left on her own. for an unfortunate amount of time). its just also fallen by the wayside with aaravi's whole Everything Else and kind of having a hard time accepting her nana's help and kind of being terrified of her (of no fault of her nana's, aaravi's just. she's just really traumatized after Everything, alright. having someone try to offer her help afterwards, especially when aaravi's scared of getting singled out as half human and half monster, is just. it's not something she can bring herself to trust.)

[marblerose-rue]

click for better quality!

whaddaya think makes tracks like that? / needletail and violetpaw

[wifihunters]

mind boggling how sometimes time apart makes old wounds stop stinging and gives a chance at meeting old friends again but as a new person--and then sometimes time apart just gives you a chance to fucking breathe and realize you're far better off this way.

[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

[brothersonahotelbed]

one of these days i'll remaster this but for now its crudeness will be part of its charm. nico music be upon ye

[cranberrymoons]

.

[moe-broey]

I think they're really cute as a platonic possibly even found family pairing, but. A Reminder

[good--merits-accumulated]

sometimes the brain worms get you and you start writing a secret life of walter mitty anderperry au

[milfbrainrot]

i feel like i type so much more than is reasonable when i do talk to people but i also don't get to socialize a ton so i just have soooo many words in me and if i'm like, tired or short on time, it is so much harder to restrain to the already-pushing-it point i can sometimes manage ;-;

[necrowtlc]

Get a room 🙄

[tj-crochets]

Hey y'all, I am blanking on a word so hard I am even blanking on the words to describe that word What's the term for like...groups of colors? color palettes but more specific? I'm looking for the generic term, but the specific words that are versions of that generic I can think of are things like earth tones, jewel tones, pastels, and maybe brights/neons I'm trying to figure out other categories like those but I cannot figure out what the word is to search

[transzilla]

I feel a massive disconnect from a lot of other lgbt people with kink, like as a rural stealth trans person ... like the way metro queers do kink is SO DIFFERENT than the way I do it. Like it's a choice and a fun little thing, kink is revolutionary, we want REAL KINKSTERS not your mamas lame tenderqueer shit... like whats wrong with tenderqueer shit and vanilla sex and monogamy i want all that too :') doing kink and hookups are a lot of the time your only option and only way to find other gay people if you're in a place where you can't really be gay in public. I guess if you live in the city you can just meet people respectably. But like when you have no choice but to do kink and hookups to find human connection tbh it's not really that awesome and revolutionary, mostly it's just banal and horrible.