Lulz. this whole interaction is gonna be interrupted by Valentine’s Day Filler XD
Yosh! Saga
Lulz. this whole interaction is gonna be interrupted by Valentine’s Day Filler XD
You can almost HEAR his headache coming on! Hahaha
This makes the final line of the last page more interesting.
Oh great, mom’s home to visit, unannounced, and taking matters into her own hands again. *sigh*
I am so looking forward to the conversation they will have!
“Why were you checking out my mother’s … birthmarks, braid-boy?”
Lord Inari knows his mother will have that mark clearly visible, and we have seen recently that Yuki considers it an important identifying mark. That it was hard to not notice is a further indication that it was really her.
Doesn’t mean he has to like this peon ogling his mum. 😉
If he knows about the temple with the peeping Tom-gallery, he might be even more upset about braid-boy looking at Yuki’s “tracts of land”. 😓
Her swelling hills, her flowing river, her shaky knees the first day back on Earth, … wait, what were we discussing again!?
Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s the financial backing for that temple. Gotta let mommy keep the respect she built up.
To his credit, he’s noticed the other mole.
I freaking called it that she was Inari, so many details demanded it.
Or wait, got over excited, so Yuki is Inari’s mom.
Also time skip to afterwards why? Yuki just left the fake alone, and this guy wasn’t told off or reigned in?
My guess is she and the “Amaterasu” are currently in another plane of reality. As to how much time has passed who knows, depends on the travel speeds of Kitsune and any time dilation.
My guess is that Yuki WAS Inari in the past, but when her job required her to move to the Celestial Realm, her son had to take over the role
Inari is usually depicted as female in IRL mythology
Not quite “usually”. Inari’s depictions IRL have varied enough over the centuries that it’s functionally become part of the kami’s identity. In modern terms, Inari is treated as gender fluid, being either male, female, or androgynous as the whim strikes them.
Inari is a rather odd goddess, with rather little of her own folklore compared to the other gods. She seems a lot like they merged all the local harvest gods into one. There are two note worthy kitsune gods, a pair of male and female siblings that seem like they are major influences on her current depictions.
Add further that kitsune lore is a mess because of the way it bounces back and forth between Japan and China with them having very different takes on them. But there is part of the folklore that specifically says kitsune will take the appearance of a beautiful women shifting most depictions as female, as for which they are actually… its kind of the point that we have no idea.
“MOOOM! Not AGAIN!!!” 🦊
“Inari’s Mom has got it going on…”
Heh, yup!
I will forgive the interruption if Valentine’s Day filler is mother/son love of Yuki being doting and Inari just reacting as how is appropriate for him. XD (I am, of course, mostly joking but would love it anyways.)
But in more serious fashion, I wonder if the Kitsune use fake Amaterasu to help monitor the rise of mythical creatures that are showing they aren’t so mythic anymore, and use that by giving them to mortals they trust to handle things so they don’t have to do anything.
Lord Inari is a bit disapointed that mom is back from the celestial realm. and she didn´t even give him a call, much less visit.
Okay, so in actual Japanese mythology, Inari is usually depicted as female, yet this person appears to be male
So my guess is that Yuki is actually the original Inari, and her son took over the role when she moved up the celestial hierarchy
This would also explain how Yuki immediately knew the patron wasn’t the real Amaterasu, as Inari, Yuki would personally work for her
This is incorrect, Inari is usually not depicted as being male or female. They are androgenous in most situations and sometimes male, sometimes female. Mostly because the majority of the time they are depicted in fox form and have no visible sex as a fox. When in human forms Inari is seen as all sorts of different forms including an androgenous humanoid form. It’s very well supported that in general Inari has no set gender. I chose a slightly more male form for them here because they are the acting leader of the Kitsune and dealing with humans, most cultures still treat male leaders better (Very much the case for this Exorcist as It’s been shown previously how he spoke to Kate).
That’s what I get for only doing a cursory google search I guess
This doesn’t actually make my prediction wrong, just less likely
I would give small push back on that last statement. I cannot change how you intended it to come off. Perhaps he was intentionally dismissive of Kate due to her gender. But he legitimately wasn’t in the wrong for telling her to be quiet in what he was probably told was a hostage situation.
I would tentatively suggest you may have inadvertently fallen into the writing habit of the: “main characters are always right,” situation. At least in that one very specific situation. Rereading it again, he simply told her she had done a good job up to that point by being quiet. Which is inoffensive.
The Surin later admited to tossing out some very dangerous and life threatening curses. Had caught any of the surronding people that would have legitimately been lethal. With this in mind, he had no idea what would or wouldn’t trigger the Surin.
As readers we know those two weren’t in danger, but from his perspective he couldn’t have known that. I don’t think you did reading on hostage negotiation for this one. What he said was very reasonable. While he may have long standing prejudices against women. That example in and of itself is rather poor his character, given it was a reasonable response.
Unfortunately you cant write Tone. Even if I hand wrote it or changed the fonts, getting across the proper tone through a visual medium is difficult. What I can control is how others respond to what is said. You are assuming that what he said is perfectly reasonable. Yet, Kate and the Suijin seem to respond differently. Like, it wasn’t appropriate. They both responded to what he said as if it went too far.
Now, I could have had him say “Hey Woman, shut your woman mouth.” But that goes completely counter to how a professional and a Japanese person generally speak. I’ve had to study a lot about what kinds of words Japanese people use to try and avoid them saying something in a way that wouldn’t be natural for a English speaking Japanese person.
So logically, you are saying Kate and the Suijin are UNREASONABLE because of their response to his REASONABLE response.
In context- what he said- HOW he said it- was not reasonable. If i wanted him to say something more appropriate, I would have gone with, “Miss, thank you but please let me handle this.”
“Miss, you have done well by staying quite so far, I’d appreciate if you continued that.” is laced with “Staying silent is knowing your place, keep doing that.”
You are only taking his words into account, not how anyone responds to them. Here’s an example if it helps.
“Hey, take care of this guy.”
*They pay him some money and make sure he gets home ok.*
“Hey, take care of this guy.”
*They kill him and dispose of the body.*
How do you tell which it will be? The context, how they respond to it, if the person hears them say “take care of this guy” and they smile – hey! They are going to take care of me!
If the guy hears it and looks like he’s in trouble- or tries to run- why would he run? Aren’t they going to take care of him?
I can understand where your coming from. Tone on the internet is exceedingly difficult to write and convey. I also think your analogy is very apt and makes for a good example.
That said it still doesn’t come off in the manner you meant it previously to me. I may be miss remembering, but didn’t the Surin say something to the effect of an acid blood curse? That is sincerely lethal to most people who aren’t Phil.
This implies that what is happening is a very dangerous situation to most people. He has no reason to assume otherwise. So when he tells Kate, (to me) very reasonably to be quiet in a hostage negotiation. Then Kate and the Surin act as if he’s being disrespectful, it comes off as forced to me. The gripe I have here is that the issue is that he didn’t speak to Kate nicely in what he assumes to be a dangerous and tense situation. Yes I’m sure he could have chosen his words better. But it’s not his job to be nice in this particular situation. It’s to prevent people from dying while he and Amaterasu seal the Surin. Ergo he needs to keep it focused on him and not them.
I can understand there is difficulty in the writing and I’m sure you did a lot of studying for this part. I’m merely suggesting that this only works as a show case for his arrogance if you know from a meta perspective about Phil and Kate’s abilities.
I think a better show case of his additude towards women may have been something after the fact. It would have felt less forced to me. It’s feasible I’m just at odds with this particular sub set writing style because I can also think of a couple reasons why he wouldn’t be like that.
One of the foremost being he is a Warlock whom get’s his powers from whom he believes is Amaterasu. A woman.
@ Occasionally Posts: His stance on panel 3 of page 2843 was also looking as if he was actively dismissing Kate, which is disrespectful regardless of country. And the Suijin only attempted to curse Phil on page 2844, before panicking about Phil not being affected and outright stating “Are you trying to get me killed, disrespecting the mate of someone completely immune to me?”. So Sage did have the Suijin outright state the guy was being disrespectful to Kate.
As for the curses used, that’s listed on page 2845, where the Suijin started with an Iching Curse and went as far as it could go until it felt threated by the protections Phil has. So the curses were only applied AFTER this guy was disrespectful, and it was done in a probing manner to see if he could get something to stick. It’s akin to finding something stated to be an immovable object, pushing it yourself, with a group, and eventually moving up to trying to move it with a bulldozer and beyond. You’re only paying attention to a bulldozer being used, ignoring everything leading up to that.
Basically, he’s the one responsible for the situation escalating, and he had no reason to believe that it was serious before he was simultaneously dismissive and Japanese-style-insulting to Kate. EVERYONE else had an issue with how he acted and berated him for it. You dismissing how he acted based on things that happened afterwards is rewriting history to support him.
Though I suspect his dismissiveness was due to Kate being an Animal-Person, and them not being able to use magic (without external aids, but that’s not known to the general public), rather than gender.
You need to update the copyright years at the bottom of the image to 2026.
Thanks! Forgot that- I also need to edit it for the website as it looks like i havent fixed that in 3 years!
I’m all for the inevitable headache that Inari’s gonna have when their mother decides to baby them in front of the two-bit exorcist!
OH DANG; HOLY MOLY
Honestly based off of this page and the previous one I’m half expecting Yuki to come back and complain to her son, “why didn’t you tell me you got married?”.
oh LOL
Okay, I had been operating on the “Yuki is a zenko that operates on behalf of Inari” but perhaps a higher tiered one who was mostly independent. I had NOWHERE on my Yosh bingo card that she was Inari’s mother, which after some googling puts her as Kamuo Ichihime (if you disregard the variant accounts which make Inari the daughter of Izanagi and Izanami which given Yuki doesn’t look like a decaying corpse is a safe bet) which makes her the second wife of Susano-o. Kinda wonder if that’s accurate in this case but Yuki feels a bit too much like a free spirit to really tie herself down for long so we’ll just have to see what comes out when Yuki meets her child.
Anyways I did not expect Inari to show up either but calling in to say “I’m sorry I offended one of your 9-tailed foxes, please don’t smite me” is probably a wise decision and a call about an unknown 9-tailed fox is going to get attention. Honestly this is probably the restrained response as opposed to sending multiple other 9-tailed foxes just in case.
Also I’m kinda surprised at the number of people who freaked out about Inari showing up as a guy. Gods are mutable entities to begin with and Inari is the boss of shapeshifting tricksters known for changing gender to seduce or otherwise manipulate people when their base form is an animal. You figure if you’re gonna be the boss you should have the same abilities as those you’re the boss of.
Pfffff He may be about to hear his FULL NAME xD
Exercist : oh my god.. I called Inari’s mother a fool….
*thinks for a moment*
OH GODS…. I was thinking about killing a personal friend of Inari’s Mother!
YEP dropping that plan RIGHT now. Suddenly also kinda want a vacation…
I’m starting to get the impression that this is an organised group that has decided to take on the name of the Japanese God’s in order to give an explanation to their powers and gain legitimacy, rather than those who believed themselves to be them.
Inari isn’t the one from the mythos, but is using the name because it’s easier to explain their foxiness. Amaterasu knows she’s not the one from the mythos, but may have believed that she was the reinstatement of that being that came into existence due to the return of magic. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a half-dozen more of their senior leadership with names related to their powerset.
This would mean that Amaterasu was using the name not out of misunderstanding, but more as a title and position of authority, while claiming to be immortal as a way of displaying said authority.
@Darius Drake Apologies for the out of order response. It appears that I am having difficulties replying directly for some reason. To put a long discussion succently since mobile is being difficult for me at the moment. I’m not rewriting the order of events. I’m using the full situation as an example. My consternation is, that with all of the information available we can understand that the Suijin is dangerous and capable of lethal spells.
This is, without meta context a hostage situation. He spoke brusquely and perhaps ill manneredly. But again not his job to be polite. Even Sage admits it’s not what he said, but how he said it. He and by extension the community are upset with him for his manners when dealing with a hostile entity that could cause lethal damage to individuals. My biggest greivance with the scenario is that it is incredibly tone deaf and exccedingly ironic to tone police someone in this situation. It sincerely feels like Sage (great author that he is.) did not consider the logical rammifications of the situation when creating this scenario. They are in a foriegn country antagonizing a high level spirit in what for all intents and purposes is a hostage scenario, in public where there could be legitimate consequences that other people will have to deal with. This was a perfect opprotunity to showcase the consequences of their hubris. It is very obvious that Kate and Phil were not taking this situation seriously at all and I feel that if the community took a step back they would agree with me.
We as readers and by a lesser extent Sage as the writer know there will not be any negative reprocussions for this because of the genre. Literally no one else has access to this information. Him telling Kate to be quiet is perfectly reasonable in this situation without this context, regardless of how it makes anyone feel. Me pointing this logical fallacy out is to one: Remind everyone that not everyone is privy to the information we have. So that when characters act in ways we dislike, doesn’t necessarily make them bad or unreasonable. Two: Point out that it exceedingly forced to show case this subset of his personality here. Three: It is exceedingly weird to take a western centric perspective of gender role heirarchy and shove it into an eastern character. Especially one who derives his powers from a LITERAL woman.
To explain why you couldn’t respond, there’s a limit on how many levels of response a comment can have. To respond to you, I had to hit “Reply” to Sage’s comment.
To continue the conversation, except, you aren’t taking the entire situation into consideration, you’re cherry picking the parts that make looking at the Suijin like it’s a monster sound reasonable. You’re ignoring page 2842, where this guy specifically states that Suijin are understanding and willing to converse about their issues. You’re ignoring page 2840 where clear communication was FACILITATED by the Suijin politely being an intermediary. And you’re ignoring the fact that this guy acted in a manner so rude that the Suijin effectively went “Could I just test something on you real quick” to Phil BEFORE attempting to curse him, just in case Phil really was that much of a danger that this guy’s lack of manners put it in danger.
You’re saying it’s a hostage situation, but at no point in the story did this guy say or act like he thought it should be treated as one. That isn’t meta context, this is based on the attitude the Exorcist Character projected the entire time, from start to finish. The police officer treated it as if the Suijin was a captor, while the Exorcist treated the entire situation like it was a mild annoyance in the office. The only exception was the two-comic-page realisation that Phil might be the most dangerous person there, based on his immunity to the Suijin’s Curses, and consideration of actually trying to drown Phil & dozens of unrelated people after he got back to his own place.
“It’s not what he said, but how he said it”. No, Sage stated it wasn’t the words, but the obvious intention behind them. One that everyone who isn’t you, including other English readers like myself, picked up on. He was literally telling Kate “Shut the f*** up” in as rude a manner as the average Japanese person would apply in a professional setting. THAT is why everyone found his words to be unacceptable.
Let’s take a step back and treat it as if it WAS a hostage situation, with Phil & Kate the hostage. Are you saying that it’s perfectly reasonable for a Police Officer to demand a HOSTAGE shut up? Especially when the Captor didn’t respond at all and the Hostage’s words were helpful to disarming the situation? Because that sounds like what you’re saying.
Also, you seem to be under the impression that only Western Cultures have had gender-stereotypes and segregation. Literally in Japan, females were banned from acting in Kabuki in 1629 (date according to Wikipedia, though I remembered the historical fun-fact. I’m not sure when it was rescinded, though). Regardless of that, though, I never said that he was disrespectful because Kate because of her Gender, but rather because of her being a Tiger-Girl, aka, a Beast-Chimera.
One of the things you have NOT mentioned is the common-knowledge that Beast-Chimera do not have innate access to Magic. Something this Exorcist likely knows is that Humans DO have innate access to Magic. So I would NOT be surprised if the Exorcist saw Kate as a second-class human as a result of her being a Beast-Type Chimera.
But, hey, if you want to continuing arguing, my next reply will ignore your arguments and go through a step-by-step guide of how I read the Exorcist’s actions in the interaction with the Suijin from said Exorcist’s perspective.
Apologies, I missclicked the reply button. Response below.
I don’t mind delving into to the pages at all. For ease of reference lets start with 2840-2846 which is where
the crux of the quarrel between myself and the community or at least you and I stem from. I will also be later
referencing the comments from Sage, Myself and You from this page 2856 for context on our disagreements.
Especially since if you reread them, things Sage says specifically refutes one of your arguements. Even if indirectly.
2840: Opens with the police hailing Phil and Co, not much of merit worth noting here other than the Suijin translating for Phil to the local police.
This on a surface level appears to make the Suijin more approachable and reasonable, which will be refuted by it’s later admission.
What however is worth noting is that the officer appears to be disconcerted with the creature and thus would lead the report to likely
be filed as a hostage scene. Even if the Excorcist would later refute this idea. Though this is a false refutation for reasons I will get into later.
2841: Opens with Phil and Suijin arguing, semi diplomatically. Giving the appearance of a somewhat negotiable entity as well as bringing levity that will
be undercut later by the brutality of the actuality situation. The Exorcist, Exo for ease of further discussion, appears non-plussed but unalarmed by the
situation. Further leading the reader to presume that this is in fact a rather harmless situation. It is in fact, really really not as I will further explain below.
2842: Exo proceeds to monologue about how dangerous the Suijin actually is, but note that provided one is respectful they can often times be quite amiable
and willing for diplomacy. For humor’s sake Sage then undercuts this monologue by having Phil be flippant and moderately disrespectful. I will
address the severity of this later. Specifically how egregious this action of Phil is, and by proxy Kate by allowing Phil to conduct himself like this.
2843: This here is where the bulk of the argument or disagreement between me and the community arises. As well as the bulk of my ire draws from. Exo proceeds
to greet the spirit and Phil. Opening with what is reasonable discourse as well as base line behaviour for law enforcement for descalating conflicts. Here he
iterates his goal of minimizing intervention and maximizing safety for all parties involved. Sequentially Kate reiterates his words by suggesting to Phil
to follow his instructions. Pointing out that antagonizing the spirit isn’t a good idea. Exo applaudes her for staying silent and suggest she continues to
do so. His face is at best flippant as there is not overt scowling or other debasing expressions here. Kate then pettily suggest Phil return to bullying
the spirit out of spite.
To unpack this further from my perspective, it is not unreasonable to tell hostage be silent so as to not antagonize the perpetrator.
(Yes I will continue to use this analogy as it is the most apt. Especially since the police seem to be treating it as such. Else wise they wouldn’t be
negotiating in this manner. As opposed to moving locations out of public view.) As I will further point out later, the Suijin is exceedingly dangerous
and legitimately homocidal. Though the previous pages have yet to disclose this. While you could argue Exo has no reason to believe that it will escalate
to this degree, it is important to note that previously he had noted how dangerous they can feasibly be and with the ability to cast a wish spell, the Suijin
can manipulate reality. The extent of which is unknown for us, but the implication is that it can be devastating. Especially as I will explain further.
To me this show cases Phil and Kate’s arrogance for several prominant reasons. One they are in a foriegn nation and are disregarding instructions from local
law enforcement. Two they are intentionally antagonizing a high level entity, of which we know at least Phil is approximately aware of the danger of doing so.
If only from his near encyclopedic knowledge of supernatural and folk lore, if only through game knowledge. Three they have enough experience in the supernatural
to understand how bad of an idea this is. For reference, even things as small as goblins can and have killed adults with relative ease. Indulging in this
behavior is very problematic and strikes me as exceedingly inconsiderate for the locals. Because after Kate and Phil leave, they will have to deal with the
results of this action. This very real and very dangerous game is softened by the genre of the comic and Sage as the author. Because we as viewers understand
that Sage will not pull the trigger on this dangerous situation. For us, it’s witty banter of no real consequence or substance. To the people living in this
area and Exo. It is and exceedingly egregious thing to do, because they don’t know there won’t be fall out.
2844: This page further exacerbates my frustrations about the above behaviour, as well as for reasons that I will bring up in the commentary. But to be as
succent as possible here. That the Suijin having modern day sensibilities about socially acceptable norms is really dumb to me. The thing is as old as when not
beating your neighbhors face in for food was probably considered the height of social ettiquette. But fine, lets suggest for a moment that it holds similar
values to humans, which will be disproved later. It is interesting to note a few things on this page.
One the Suijin is a Demi-God. Giving us a general idea of what it could do if inclined to do so. While scaling it’s power is something we could do.
It’s ultimately irrelevant. We can at least say that it wouldn’t be difficult for it to wipe out the city. Or at the very least make everyone in the city
very miserable for an indeterminate amount of time.
The second thing interesting thing to note here is that it isn’t chastising him for his rudeness. At least not past a surface level. This declaration of his
is a means to openly posit the threat that Phil is. This is where the paradigm shift for Exo is. It’s not Phil and Kate in danger, it’s actually the Suijin
and by a lesser extent their society. The Suijin wouldn’t care here if Phil was helpless, this suggests that the sheer fear of Phil is what’s suppressing it.
As well in my opinion what is leading to it being incensed at the percieved insult to Kate. The Suijin doesn’t care, more over likely doesn’t actually believe
Exo was rude. It’s just terrified for it’s life.
2845: Now here is where we get into the real meat an potato’s of the arguement. This page is what retroactively fills in the blanks and colors the severity of
the situation. When Exo asks what curses the Suijin employed, the creature readily admits to starting small with itching curses and escalating to blood and even
acid curses. More over it specifically states that it only stopped when if felt like it was going to be erased from existence. As well as immediately suggests
to sink their boat far out at sea so that his body can’t escape. These two paragraphs literally undo every line previously leading up to this. The Suijin isn’t
reasonable. It has never been reasonable. It is simply afraid. As show cased in the previous page nothing of it’s good will has been legitimate or from a place
of good standing. It comes from a place of fear of erasure.
I would like to specifically point out the dialogue lines about the curses, no where in them does it hint at the length of time it took to escalate to that level.
Your previous words suggest that it took some length of time to get there. Even up to and after the arrival of Exo. This is not the case. Given it’s 180 from hostile
to submissive and ingratiating, we can surmise that it took place between initial confrontation and to the arrival of initial police. Else wise it wouldn’t
have translated for him. I am pulling this metric specifically for two reasons. One the blood and acid curse and two the sinking of the ship. With these two
dialogue lines, it’s obvious human life has no meaning to him. Neither does collatoral damage. This can be infered for two reasons. One the initial disagreement
between the two is that Phil saw through his invisibility and lacked a substantive answer as to why. Which lead to the escalating and quite lethal curses.
The Suijin had no legitimate cause to do this outside of “curiousity.” More over he had no reason to suspect Phil would survive any of them. Especially egregious
is how quickly he jumps on the idea that they should sink his ship. Implying that death is the prefered outcome for him. As well as his intention. Collatoral
human sacrifices be damned.
So no. The Suijin being reasonable is a facade. It was never true. Everything from this and the previous page undermine that narrative. I’m pointing out the
Suijin as an unreasonable monster because it is one.
2846: Nothing much to note about this page other than Kate dismissively handing Exo a BFR card. On one hand this is a good wrap up page and nice follow up from
Kate. I personally dislike it since it’s written in and irreverant, mess with us and find out way. But handing that card over was legitimately a good call.
Personally I think texting their location to Yuki and having her intervene would have been a much better choice personally. Especially sooner, since she could
have easily translated and prevented the escalation. Especially since she would have arrived faster than the police and likely cut off the escalating curses.
But it’s unreasonable to expect people to be perfect. There are more pages that show case Exo, specifically one you mentioned earlier about feasibly sinking
Phil’s ship. I’ll for the sake of breivity ignore them since they aren’t wholy relevant. As the crux of our disagreement centers around Exo, Suijin, Phil and
Kate.
2856 Commentary: To preface this I would suggest you read the leading thread up to ours, as direct quoting Sage is redundant since you can easily just scroll up
for that. The commentary on the pages is simply so we don’t have to keep back and forthing over them as well as gives us an easily citable source to reference.
To start with I will point out my quarrels with the writing in these comments. The leading thread to this is a disagreement on Inari’s gender. Specifically on
the male/female dichotomy. More to the point Sage asserts that in his canon Inari specifically is generally agendered in dipiction and that they have a preference
for male andogynous forms due to mysoginistic practices. Specifically in reference to men taking orders from women in power. Exo is specifically referenced here
for his treatment of Kate. Explicitly making this a gender dynamic issue as opposed to your assertation that it is Chimera in nature. I will further expound on this later.
But succently and as nicely as I can put this, incredibly dumb. It is infact so egregiously foolish that it’s half the reason I bothered writing this and the
previous dissertations on the matter. Let us for the moment set aside the assertations you suggested earlier about Kabuki and the laws surrounding it, as they
are to a point, irrelevant. Provided Exo is not somehow some form of immortal or youthful retaining being, the idea that he would hold such archaic values is ludicrous. We
could to a point suggest that plenty of such people hold similar notions in modern day. Which to a point would be fair, there isn’t a limit on ignorant opinions.
I’m certain I hold a few myself. Nothing would stop him from holding these opinions despite the descrepancy in cultural shift over the eras. Except this would
require us to do a few things here.
Granted I am far from literate on Shintoism, or any Japanese clergymen. But I do know, for a fact. It is not unusual for women to hold positions as priests.
Which would make his dismissal of Kate on the bases of gender alone pretty weird. But hey, fine. Weirder scenarios have happened. But to make this odd occurance
stranger, you’d have to ignore. I don’t know the fact that presumably the chief deity of his religion is a woman. That Amaterasu sweet heart. The one he derives
his power from? How odd that. But hey, maybe he’s just a really big, ingrate. Perhaps quite the dullard too. Except for all intents and purposes, his boss is a
gender fluid being whom he obviously holds reverance for.
But hey, perhaps your correct. Maybe Sage mispoke earlier and he and I were somehow just speaking passed each other. These things happen. Maybe it was an issue
with Kate being a Chimera. Which I assure you I did not forget. In fact, such a story perspective would be even dumber because one: His boss is legitimately
a foxed eared equivalent. So it can’t be an appearance thing. Two it can’t be a lack of magic thing, because up until the Suijin revealed it, he didn’t know
Phil had any and the difference between not having it and being incapable is negliable. So these two things, in conjunction with Sage EXPLICITLY saying it was a gender thing. Means that it can only be the root cause of the issue.
Which brings us right back around to how egrigious of a writing error this is. One his pantheon is literally headed by a woman. Two Inari could easily wipe the
floor with any and all humans. Either directly or indirectly showcasing the benefits of following a woman. Tribal civilizations don’t need more incentive than
I’ll protect you and make sure you have food. All of this round about nonsense exists solely for the benefit of Sage writing a character with the flaw of Misogyny.
Which is something he can specifically control. Legitimately has no narrative reason to exist, and is flimsy at best when we look at Shintoism as a whole.
Yes, segregation and degredation of women is not a wholey western issue. Yes it exists in eastern regions as well. But even if we eschew literally everything
else I have said up to this point. It does not change the fact that he obviously respects Inari and Amaterasu. Both of which are women and hold at the very
least an equivalent rank in partnership with Amaterasu and subordinate relationship to Inari. Even if you want to pull the nonsensical card of, gender fluid.
The idea that Exo is a misogynist is forced at best. More over it is exceptionally egregious in this scenario, because Sage decided to play this card in the
middle of a hostage situation. The entire fuss with this character is that he said one mean thing to Kate MAYBE. To get that angle, you have to, as you said
cherry pick your arguement. You have to disregard that the Suijin was and is homicidal and would gladly kill a sizeable number of people to end Phil.
You can make the arguement that at best Exo didn’t know that was the case going in. Which would be wrong, because he specifically said, that Suijin are USUALLY
reasonable. Meaning he was hoping for the best and expecting the worst. The idea that this wasn’t a hostage situation only works when you know the Phil is
basically Superman in this situation. That the Suijin poses no serious threat to him or Kate, which makes this even worse because Phil and Kate are well aware
of the consequences of being flippant with magic. Both with antagonizing entities and the the functional equivalent of magic radiation. The entirety of Kate’s
background is dealing with the fall out of someone else being reckless with magic. She is in every sense of the word Sub-human. Not because she is lesser, but
because as you so correctly pointed out. An abomination in the eyes of a sizeable sum of people.
With all of this in mind, both Phil and Kate are irreverently “bullying” the Suijin. Wow, what a phenomenal idea. I’m absolutely certain this wasn’t written
from the perspective of it’s web comic and the author can control the fall out. I’m absolutely certain Kate as a person would have no qualms about this despite
one day waking up as what her mother called her: “An Abomination masquerading as her child.” I’m one hundred percent certain that the quipy line about bullying
the spirit would be something she would definitely say despite having a life time of trauma from the consequences of abusing magic. I’m certain Phil having first
hand experience with monsters and the dangers there in would definitely provoke a spirit by being lippy. I’m sure all the times he’s comforted Kate from
her abusers are definitely at the fore front of his mind right now. I’m certain they are definitely thinking about all those foster children hiding at her Dad’s
from abusive family members and society.
Can you at least see how this, from a writing perspective, might be a little erronious. That maybe, just possibly, Sage didn’t quite think about all the logical
fallacies here. That maybe this might be a little forced. That maybe, just maybe, I’m not cherry picking my arguement. That maybe I sat down, for several weeks
rereading what Sage wrote. That I may have in fact, taken my time before formulating my opinion before tentatively pushing back on Sage’s writing here. I won’t
espouse that I’m equivocally correct. It is ultimately Sage’s comic and he is free to write as he so pleases. But I think it is really egregious for you to suggest
I’m not looking at this as a whole. Especially when you very specifically missed Sage admitting this was a gender dynamic issue at least three times. That maybe
I have a point when I suggest that in comparison to a Suijin that readily admited to attempted murder and a planned localized genocide, that maybe what Exo said,
isn’t all that bad. Especially considering that it was and is unhinged. At least from a mortal moralistic perspective of being happily homicidal? That maybe being quiet here wasn’t an unreasonable suggestion?
As I said before, I’m going to ignore what you write and explain, page by page, the story as I read it from the Exorcist’s perspective. I will try to review your comments afterwards.
– Page 2840: Exorcist not on this page, but the police officer is understandably worried. Known magical existences that are completely non-human are considered to be monsters, and the only known “friendly” group of monsters ended up being a den of Goblins hiding their nature to attack. In other words, big, scary water-snake is likely threatening, but the police officer learns that it CAN talk, and he has no idea how that affects the situation. At the very least, it’s turned into something other than a monster likely damaging a national monument and some tourists it’s focused on staying around it instead of running away like a sensible person would.
– Page 2841: Exorcist shows up on the scene to see a human and a Suijin arguing. Not worried at all, the Suijin hasn’t attacked anyone and they’re both communicating without issue. Reader’s can’t get more of a read on this, though the Exorcist has half-closed eyes in the way that normally depicts boredom.
– Page 2842: Exorcist explicitly explains the situation from his point of view. The obvious threat is the Suijin, but Suijin are also known to be willing to converse their way through issues while keeping violence open as an option if necessary. If I was to make an easily understood comparison, it would be two farmer-neighbors arguing in America, with the Suijin being one neighbor who is holding a rifle by their side. It’s a clear and present threat, sure, but no one there, including the Exorcist by their own words, is expecting said threat to be used.
– Page 2843: Exorcist tries to pacify the clear and present threat by pandering to the Suijin a little. The second human, who just stood in the background the entire time, decides to chastise the human who was arguing. Her words are “Stop annoying the Spirit for no reason”, and the Exorcist replies the Japanese equivalent of “Thanks for being quiet up till now, now shut the fuck back up”. The person this is said to is immediately pissed off, to the point of literally inverting their previous statement that they were just chastised about making.
I’m going to stop HERE for a bit, because THIS is the point at which our arguments divide. From my point of view, everything after this point ONLY matters in the fact that it provides additional information of the danger a Suijin provides, or in how everyone else who heard the Exorcist SAY those words interpreted them. If it doesn’t directly relate to the Exorcist’s words on page 2843, their perceived position, or how they perceived the situation BEFORE that occurred, it’s irrelevant to our argument.
– Page 2844 & 2845: The Suijin actively reacts to the Exorcist’s words by going “Person I was arguing with? I’m going to try something for a moment” and attempts a series of curses escalating in power on the guy. Then, in a panic attack about both the curses all failing AND the backlash from the last test (which was strong enough to kill a normal human) nearly resulting in the Suijin being killed.
– – This is important because the Suijin hadn’t done ANYTHING except exist, reveal itself and argue until this point. This escalation to trying to curse is a direct result of the Exorcist’s words and rudeness. And THAT is the only reason it’s relevant to this argument.
– Page 2846 has no bearing on the Exorcist’s previous rudeness, and thus no bearing on our argument.
– Page 2847 shows that the Exorcist knew he could deal with the Suijin through force if so required. No pages after this have anything I see as being relevant to our argument, as nothing affects the Exorcist’s manners on page 2843.
Now I’ll read through your comment and see if there’s anything I explicitly disagree with and haven’t already written off as irrelevant.
– Page 2844: First Thing: The Suijin doesn’t necessarily have modern day sensibilities about socially acceptable norms. You are completely understating how outright rude this guy was, because you are interpreting the cleanest possible interpretation of what the Exorcist said, while ignoring EVERYONE else’s reaction to it. If nothing else, the Suijiin could be reacting to Kate literally reversing her words in reaction to being told to shut up.
– Page 2844: Second Thing: As already discussed above, the Suijin didn’t do anything until the Exorcist was rude. It knew that Phil could see through & negate it’s illusions. It also started off mild with a basic itching curse, and raising up the strength over a rapid series of tests. The way you’re talking, it’s like it jumped straight to the Blood-Acid Curse, when the Suijin explicitly states in page 2845 that it ramped up. The Suijin is afraid for it’s life, sure, but there’s nothing to say that it would have been an obnoxious shit if Phil wasn’t essentially invulnerable to anything it can do.
– Page 2845: You put WAY too much weight on what you cherry pick from this page, particularly since Page 2847 literally has the exorcist go “I can treat you as an annoyance”. Your entire argument here is, quite honestly, irrelevant to our argument. Any part of relevance in your argument is absolutely negated by page 2847. The Suijin being a “threat” is no reason for the exorcist to be as rude as he was, and you’re basing everything off of the words of the Suijin while they were in the middle of a panic-attack.
– Argument about the Exorcist being Misogynistic & Variants – In no way was this actually involved in any part of my actual argument, i only mentioned it up because I entered the argument about how you deciding that the Exorcist doing the cultural equivalent of telling Kate “F*** off, b***h” was perfectly reasonable behavior, and I felt that claiming that Japan didn’t have the same level of gender-segregation as English Speaking Countries had was a weak point in your argument, as part of that argument seemed to be implying that there hadn’t been any. I agree that there is no explicit evidence in the comic of the Exorcist being misogynistic or explicitly racist against Kate, except for the fact that he was overly rude to her (for where he is) for no good reason. On the other hand, the Japanese have manners culturally ingrained, especially in professional settings. In other words, the level of rudeness you are stating to be irrelevant can potentially be considered akin to an American Police Officer spitting on Kate. Given that comparison, I hope that you understand where at least how I’m disagreeing with you is coming from in a way your argument has not addressed at all.
I brought gender into it specifically because Sage did. In my personal opinion a more prudent character flaw would have been Xenophobia. As allegedly this is a prominent cultural issue with many eastern countries. In so far as I am aware. Outside of Sage bringing it up via authorial intent and secondarially dragging Inari into it on this page. I woulsn’t have adressed it so vehemently otherwise. Because the sheer volume of logical fallacies this implies is staggering. I won’t be adressing this again, because it’s redundant and of a like mind in this regard. As I didn’t read that in the lines at all either.
As for our divide on the time line, I believe you surmised it best on 2844 and 2845. Where as you are in my opinion being overtly lenient with the Suijin, I appear to be in your opinion I am doing reverse.
To refute your statement I would point to 2844, I believe you may have made a logical fallacy error specifically in this page. I presume you are reading too generously into the statement: “Pardon me for a moment.” It appears to me that you infer this is where the curses are tested and escalated. Which to be fair, would give creedance to your argument.
However I disagree here; as we have no reason or visual indication that this is the case. I have reread this section multiple times trying to see if I may have missed something. That does not appear to be the case. Unless you have external information via third party source, Ie: some patreon exlusives or Sage has reference authorial intent I may have missed. I believe you are pressuposing a lot her.
Which to be fair, is MILDLY on Sage’s end for not making some sort of effect on the curse pages. Ultimately this is a gap that cannot readily be divided between us given a lack of sustantiatable evidence. However to give my perspective on the matter I read it as someone politely asking for a pause on person to unload on another. Specifically since it is aware that Phil isn’t literate in Japanese.
As for 2845 this is where I feel the linch pin in my arguement stands. At least in referencing why Exo is in the right. Even if he, for sake of arguement, was the biggest bastard this side of the Yosh verse; and specifically hated purple haired tiger girls who are named Kate.
It is important to note the conflict, rising tension and resolution from the majority of this disgreement takes place between 2843-2845. 2843 “Insult” 2844 rising narrative tension and explaination and 2845 resolution. In all of these pages it’s interesting to note Phil specifically doesn’t say anything, at least until 2845. Where he very reaaonably says; “Can we just go? We need to get back to the cruise ship before dark.”
In the same breath the Suijin, even before Exo says yes. Immediately acquices and plans to murder, Phil, Kate and a slew of innocent by standers. Zero hesitation, zero thought. This in my opinion absolves Exo, even if he is a bastard. Because it validates him. Anything could have set that Suijin off. We do not know what it would have done had Kate said anything.
My consternation here, is that it feels that the community and Sage are insolated from the consequences of this situation. I do not feel they have ever had legitimate life threatening acts of violence inflicted on them. This may just be me presuming on their part. Or projecting way to much of my personal experience onto this situation.
But it legitimately flabberghasts me, how out side of being aware of the setting of the comic. Yourself and many others have come to any aproximation to believing the Suijin was anything close to reasonable or nice. To me very specifically 2844 and 2845 clearly indicate it’s intentions to kill Phil.
I have zero understanding how anyone can’t look at these serious of comics in conjunction and not arrive at the conclusion of; “Oh the Suijin was actively attempting to murder Phil the whole time. So it’s reasonable to prevent any variables from inadvertantly escalating the situation and there is only so many ways to say ‘Shut up.’ In a hostage negotiation.”
I have been interpreting this as Exo’s stance from ground zero. That he was being safe rather than sorry. The crux of this matter ultimately is Sage has specifically said he was being rude because he’s sexist. Nothing I can say can reverse this. Even if I think he is specifically justified in his words regardless.
As for your reference of 2847 I think you are once again presupposing the ease of this subjugation. I personally infered it as Amaterasu subtly starting the spell on arrival and just finishing on this page. Again this is a bit on Sage for not really giving us a lot to work with. That said, my only arguement in defense of dismissing this feat. Is the Suijin’s surprise. We can infer that this spell should have a long cast time from it’s words. That said, it could legitimately go either way here.
Ultimately though we cannot know if the Suijin could resist if given prep time. I assume so since it’s a literal Demi-God.