Of The Demons That Here Dream

Firstly I love this new demons design. This smoking nurse (as a sign of rot) using a gun was so cool. With the fights Yukio has been in recently, it was nice to see gunman against gunman.

The whole thing of possesed Rin was cool as well. The funky mushrooms and spiraled eyes were really cool. I like how Kato also did acknowledge that Rin has fought this guy before in the beginning and all the changes that have happened since, especially since Astroth was the catalyst for the story kicking off.

I think it's really important that this gives us confirmation that when a demon possesses someone they can see their mind. This confirms a few ideas I had about Satan and Mephisto and the bodies they possess. Also Astroth just being a people pleaser and seeing the good in Rin and vowing to change for the better hopefully gives us a hint for a better future thne the demon king Rin future.

From Astroth's heart reveal to Rin's face forbidding him to kill himself is perfect. Rin absolutely standing his ground that Astroth should live if he vows to change his ways after Rin pretty much said he hates the guy is amazing. Astroth swearing loyalty to Rin is also has some amazing future implications. Rin is finally being treated like the demon royalty he technically is.

During the buildup to the fight between the Uchiha brothers, Itachi says something which stuck with me, probably because I study philosophy and it was overtly philosophical but that's neither here nor there.

Itachi's words are as follows: "Each of us lives, dependent and bound by our individual knowledge and our awareness...All that, is what we call reality...However, both knowledge and awareness are equivocal..Ones reality might be another's illusion, we all live inside our own fantasies."

I just think this is such a fantastic character choice because it's using Itachi's view on perception, and thus knowledge in order to tell us about his character.

Given that he thinks perception is a good source of knowledge we can roughly infer that he is some sort of empiricist, we are able to gain knowledge about the world by experiencing it using the five senses is one way of wording such a view.

Another implication of this quote is that we can ONLY gain any worthwhile knowledge from these experiences, and this all culminates in an understanding of the universe which is then called reality.

Now the thing that really interests me is that he seems to be some sort of anti-realist about truth, talking about how each individual has their own reality constructed from their individual experiences.

He isn't empiricist - he outright mocks viewing world by what you experience alone, because that's how manipulations and propaganda works. That's how he constructs the perfect fantasy Sasuke is supposed to live in and it's only knowledge he's never supposed to actually gain that would tell him the full story.

For me Itachi is cynical. He doesn't defend the system because he thinks it's good - he sees exactly how broken and rotten he is, he just doesn't see a better alternative. All he sees beside it is war. Uchiha might see their coup as righteous revenge for years of oppression, but villagers will see it as violence destroying their peaceful lives - and both sides are right. Both live their own 'reality'.

He essentially is acknowledging the fact that humans believe narratives, not truth. Which in turn is why information by itself doesn’t alter attitudes. The story you build around that information does.

I refuse to believe, I'm the only one that saw that new panel and didn't make the connection back to the very first chapter!

that way we know we’re from tumblr without revealing anything

I’m just going to say this to strangers until i find a tumblr person

must keep reblogering!! Im going to be so suspicious if any one tells me this now!

Remember the answer is: I stole them from the president.

You want to know when a god stops being a God, and starts being a fun little story we tell children before bed. There was one who could clear a field of men with no weapon nor voice, only the sudden certainty that the emptiness around them was looking back. The ancients didn’t consider that sudden panic in the forest a nervous misfire. They knew it as visitation, and it came often enough, and to enough of them, that they gave the feeling his name, because naming terror is the first bargain humans make with it: a shape for the shapeless, a culprit you can flatter before he comes around doing his bullshit again. Now he’s just a nice boy in green with big saucer eyes who won’t grow up. Same forest, same name, tooth and claws filed down, all very nice and family friendly, a fairy tale. That is our clue, though, not yet the answer. The transition isn’t so much a matter of belief, which the thinking mind can decide as easily as it can undecide about any silly thing. It is in the curious numbing of that involuntary reflex that used to fire before you had time to consider whether you believe in anything at all. A living god doesn't wait for your permission to frighten you. He arrives ahead of thought, and the body answers before the mind understands there is a question.

The day a person can walk into that same woodland dark and feel nothing… no goosebumps, no chill, that’s when we can demote the god to myth. Legends remain, no verse of the stories changes, the idols may keep their old posture just as crafted, maybe even their devotees, but something essential has gone out of it all, the way a house feels different the day after someone dies in it, even before anyone starts moving their things out. Mythology is what religion becomes once it can no longer touch the animal part of you and wrench obedience out of the body despite all your high-minded objectivity, your happy nonchalance enjoyed from a safe distance. This wire running from the symbol to the spine isn’t cut all at once; it frays through a repetition that sees no consequence. A child is warned, disobeys, and survives. A village blasphemes and nothing happens. The sacred grove becomes a picnic spot and then a parking lot. The body learns that this particular realm no longer has an officer assigned to it. So the link is severed, and our symbol only hangs there, loose and decorative, a nice ornament to be admired, instead of a power you arrange your life around.