It’s rare that I can pinpoint a favorite chapter in a manga, but I’ve poured over this series like a religious scholar for about two years, so I can confidently state that my favorite is chapter 195. Yeah, I know that isn’t the chapter I’m supposed to be talking about, but I’m not going to lie for points. If you search irumeanie on tumblr, a good half of the posts that show up are mine, so there’s really no point in trying to make myself look better. However, I can also state, with equal confidence, that the most important chapter in the series (as of now at 262) is 123, when everything that Iruma had been repressing up to that point can’t be held back any longer and bursts free. I mentioned earlier that the Harvest Festival contains what I believe to be the most emotionally cathartic scene in the series, and this is what I’m talking about. Despite how expressive he is, Iruma really isn’t that open with his feelings. I’ve already discussed how Iruma lacked desire or ambition early on in the series, but there have been other similar incidents such as at Walter Park when it takes several pages for Iruma to understand he’s upset, indicating severe emotional repression. Overcoming this repression is Iruma’s first major step in his overall character arc, which occurs in this chapter (conveniently titled “words I couldn’t say”) meaning that by the end of the Harvest Festival he’s entered a new leg of his journey. And it shows. The Iruma we see post-Harvest Festival is fundamentally different than the one we see before. He voices his desires proudly and is even referred to as having bottomless greed, while retaining his kind nature, which is all possible because of this one chapter.
Orobas has a tricky ability. The initial illusion is bad enough, but the greater the opponent’s trauma is, the higher the likelihood is of having lingering effects in the form of more illusions. Both Jazz and Clara’s experience with Orobas’ illusions only last a few pages and just end with them shaken up. Iruma faces the illusions for almost the entirety of three chapters. After he falls from the shock of seeing his parents and hurting his leg, the illusion shifts, getting closer to his true fear. It starts with Asmodeus and Clara abandoning him for being human, accusing him of lying and basically saying that everything he did was fake. Next, it’s Kalego that appears and tells him that as a human, he doesn’t belong in the underworld. Then finally his grandfather and Opera-san enter, the two demons who originally knew about his identity, who rescued him and gave him the home he never had before. And just like the others, they send him back to his parents too. It’s not just one more illusion. He sees at least four, not counting the horrific monsters that the illusions eventually shift into. What Iruma is facing is 14 years of non-stop trauma with the added fear that the relief he only just got from it will be ripped away from him.
Trapped in his worst nightmare, Iruma is forced to confront the feelings he’s been trying to hide his whole life. He spent his whole childhood alone without any meaningful connections and was fine with it because all he could do was focus on survival. Reading between the lines, what Iruma is saying is that he convinced himself his feelings didn’t matter, and he did this for so long that even when he found a loving home, he subconsciously continued to keep his true emotions buried, hardly recognizing them in himself. But, faced with the prospect of losing everything he’s gained, of returning to that unending isolation, Iruma can’t stop himself from breaking his self-imposed rule.
“I’m lonely.” For all his complexity as a character, Iruma can be broken into just these two words. Everything he’s been repressing and everything that’s driven him thus far in the story is encapsulated by the intense loneliness he lives with, and it’s delivered in the two most heart wrenching panels. No amount of danger is going to make him give into despair, his defense is too well trained, but the threat of losing everything while completely isolated breaks him instantly. He could ignore it when he had nothing to lose, but now there’s so much he wants to hold onto that he can’t handle being alone again. And that brings us back to Iruma’s desire to belong. He voices this desire a few different ways, from embarrassing to grandiose, but the true feelings behind it boils down to what he say in that second panel. The sense of belonging he yearns for stems from his fear of being left behind, tragically demonstrated by the focus pulling out to show his curled form, looking tiny in the large open space. It’s shown that his parents left him alone all the time until they needed him again, so it’s only natural that from the very depths of his soul, Iruma would fear his newfound family and friends no longer wanting him, but he also feels like he shouldn’t voice this fear, which ended up amplifying that aching loneliness.
Ultimately though, this is a hopeful series, and one final illusion of Bachiko reminds Iruma of what he learned during his training. Technically, this panels are from chapter 124, but it’s a continuation of chapter 123, and the positive parts of this series are just as important to cover as the negative. It’s important that Iruma didn’t give into despair. He remembers his training as an archer, and that he can pierce through all his hardships, so he stands up even as he’s still in tears and his leg is killing him, because all he wants is to stay with the people he cares about.
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I’m not ace myself, so I’m coming at the whole acephobia thing from an outsider’s perspective, and as such, it’s not my place to speak to the experience of those on the receiving end of it.
However, as a bisexual dude, I can observe that many of the arguments that are employed to establish that ace folks have no place in the queer community are strikingly similar - indeed, at times practically word-for-word identical - to the arguments that were for many years (and in some circles still are) employed to establish that bisexual folks have no place in the queer community.
It’s enough to make a guy suspicious on general principle, you know?
Did you know that Karkat is also a city?
hey im back on my bean mothman bullshit again
reblog/like if you use please!!
obligitory tag for @mothmnn bc their blog is the reason i keep drawing little moth boys
its nearing the end of pride month but dont forget that transmen and nonbinaries face more sexual violence than any other transgender group.
according to the 2015 survey of violence against transgender people (with the titles those people identify with) provided by transequality dot org and the human rights campaign, this survey was promoted and distributed by over 300 LGBT organizations in the united states with an accumulated 27,715 transgender respondents to this survey.
the charts for each poll of highest rate of sexual violence resulted in these graphs
this is a reminder to cis people (cis women in particular) in the LGBT community to please stop leaving out transmen and nonbinary folk in your activism. we dont have the rights that you assume we do just because of our pronouns. and us non-passing or non-transitioned afabs are at a higher risk for sexual violence than our fellow trans sisters. being sexually assaulted is still horrible and awful to experience.
we still face sexism and are demeaned and belittled for being afab and cis men still treat our bodies like it is their property to own just as they do to cis women. we routinely place ourselves on the back burner to give transwomen spotlight to sit in and be supported by the LGBT community instead of turning them away, because they deserve the love, so why dont we get the same treatment. why is it that he/him or they/them suddenly makes us less valid for protection or opinion? why is it that cis women were the ones deciding which transgender group was more valid than the other based on who was going by she/her.
why is it that yall think just saying “youre a boy!” or infantilizing us is, like, all we transmen need in order to feel accepted or better about ourselves? like we’re fucking hamsters in a cage and we’ll take care of ourselves if you just change the water once in a while ??????
stop pushing transmen and nonbinary folk away and pretending like we dont have problems in the LGBT community, or outside of it, and like the harassment that society gives us ends just because we arent using feminine pronouns anymore.
trans allyship for transwomen started out really great and amazing but somewhere along the way yall decided transmen were horrible and undeserving of any type of sympathy or acknowledgment for our issues. thats just wrong.
crow king
Some may say it’s odd to craft a 58-slide presentation on a series that doesn’t even have an official translation for the language I speak, but even though I rely on our lord and savior Misfits Scans, I can honestly say there’s not another series that brings me so much joy. I would like to clarify that I made this out of my own free will, I’m simply the type of overachiever to answer a fairly easy question with a presentation so long that it needs sections and subsections. Considering its length, I invite anyone reading to skip around. I’ll be covering my overall opinions, the training arc, character development, trauma, chapter 123, undemonlike demons, Lied, and how the arc fits into the overarching story. Hope you enjoy :)
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me, saturday: let’s do homework
me actually, the whole day: OOOOOOOOAH ITS SATURDAY NIGHT YEAH
I literally don't post anything, why are you here
128 posts