I’m listening to the Bartimaeus audio books at work this week, and it’s incredibly scary listening to them and comparing them to current politics. I’ve loved this book series my whole life, and known the messages it sends, but today they hit home harder than I can ever remember.
If you want a book that talks about authoritarian regimes, read Bartimaeus
If you want a book that talks about slavery, read Bartimaeus
If you want a book about systemic oppression, read Bartimaeus
If you want a book with a strong female character fighting in a resistance movement against the government, read bartimaeus
If you want a book that shows a white boy coming to terms with his privilege, and his own crimes within society, WITHOUT LETTING HIM OFF THE HOOK, Read Bartimaeus
(it doesn’t make excuses for him, it’s him making excuses and by end of book three he’s like “oh shit i’m a jerk”)
If you want a book with an agender main character, read bartimaeus (although pronouns are he/him, bart clearly states that man or women doesn’t matter. he shape shifts)
If you want a book that confronts and points out slur usage, read Bartimaeus (the word Demon is a slur for spirits, and considered very insulting. Bart consistently points this out to Nathaniel and asks him to stop saying it)
If you want a swash-buckling djinn who is sarcastic/rude to his white boy ™ master, read Bartimaeus.
And seriously, its funny as fuck. This is the book that taught me what footnotes were, and their only uses in the story are to 1) tell hillarious history lessons and 2) insult everyone including the reader.
Vin’s romance arc in Mistborn: The Final Empire is basically Cinderella, except instead of losing a shoe she lost her whole dress, instead of fleeing the ball at midnight she fled after fighting a bunch of assassins come to kill her Prince Charming, and instead of a fairy godmother she had Kelsier
Crack theory for now, but what if Yuri was the one who actually managed to put an end to the Blue Night?
Until now, personally I always considered that Mephisto or Lucifer (through deciding to go forward with creating the Illuminati or something) were the ones who were the most likely to manage talking their dad out of destroying more of Assiah for the time being.
((I also wondered about “Shemihaza” (aka most likely Shiemi’s grandmother), as a parallel to Shiemi protecting everyone from Rin’s awakening in ch98, but also because Lucifer himself seemed to be a little receptive to her.))
However, Yuri still remains the only one so far who was ever shown to have any kind of control over “Rinka”
on top of being acknowledged as a very good tamer/exorcist.
…And maybe that’s even how/why she died?
As I said, crack theory, but I would find this a really ironic development because today she’s known/seen in some parts of the Order as “the apostate who gave birth to Satan’s sons”, thus who is maybe held responsible for the blue night, when the truth could turn out to be the opposite.
In a way, it’s really on the same level as Rin and Yukio taking turns believing that Shiro raised them as weapons for the Order (mostly Yukio tho’), when the real reason he decided to take care of them was most likely out of love for Yuri.
Besides, imagine if Yuri’s death is because she wanted to protect her sons/people from Satan’s Blue Night…
Hey I wonder about if Yuri will ever search/find out about why Oku and Obaba used to be exorcists but quit at some point? Which led them to become homeless, I suppose?
With everything about Section 13 and Asylum, it would be interesting if Sensei were to show that a few exorcists couldn’t maybe handle a few secrets they found out about and chose to leave the Organization instead of being associated with it?
Especially since one could argue that the way they died was a little suspicious. I mean, there is no real argument or proof, because Yuri was 6, the scene was quick and they said it was a fire but was it really accidental? Who knows.
… Now that I think about it though, It’s kinda the same about Yuri’s biological family’s situation because…
what about this super shady family business that’s quickly mentioned?
I’d consider it random, just giving a reason to why she had no family in the first place, but her family name is also the name of the demon king of water at least in English. Maybe there is a difference in Japanese when it comes to how it’s written, I have no idea, but it would be interesting if it wasn’t a coincidence, leading to Yuri reasearching about her past and the people she used to live with.
So was Oku’s name really “Oku” and Yuri decided her sons would have a (made-up) related family name because he was like her surrogate father? Or maybe it was actually “Okumura” and it’s because she’ll research about him, find out about this and why he left the Organization, that she’ll give his name to her sons?
I don’t know but I feel ch100 and ch101 still have bits that are shady despite this trip in the past being supposed to be about giving Rin answers…
I was thinking about this again and I wonder if the cliffhanger of the last chapter couldn’t eventually lead to Yuri researching about all of what’s mentioned above, especially Oku’s and Obaba’s defections. Because…
…finally meeting Goro/Rinka/Satan (and seeing him most likely getting captured again) might make her find out/understand about Section 13, thanks to what Shiro already told her about his life.
Unless it will really have to be for later because she won’t think about her foster parents until she’s going to be pregnant herself?
In any case, there is no way that Yuri, who believes that “exorcists save people from demons (but don’t kill perfectly safe demons)”, wouldn’t be against everything that Section 13 represents, even if that gave Rinka a vessel.
I’d really love Yuri realizing that the Order is full of bad business (namely through realizing that Shiro’s awful childhood is totally linked to that) and that she will follow in the steps of Oku, the man who raised her, and leave it behind.
It would make a nice symbolism as to why she then decided (or Shiro did, if she told him about it?) that she’d give his name/a related name to her sons.
Besides, Rin is witnessing all of it and so it’d make sense that he has to see something like this too: Shiro was chained to the Order from birth to death (as Mephisto claimed in ch101) but nothing says Yuri will agree to it for herself and that could lead to Rin wondering about what he will do in the current timeline.
Bringing this post back again, because…
I can’t believe Yuri will not ever start to question if she really wants to work for long in a place like Section 13, especially when we still don’t know if there is a meaning as to why Oku would have rather remained homeless over working as an exorcist apparently.
Besides, even if just for Shiro’s sake or for these clone kids who are still going through all of this…
…I hope she realizes what she was thrown into. If she’s doing it for Rinka’s sake, because she had to get involved due to their bond, then fine, but I hope it will go beyond that and she’ll eventually call them out or something…
Cracky thought, but actually I wonder about if UT didn’t happen to really leave his scythe behind when he deserted…
only to get it back right after the events of Vincent’s death and the twins’ abduction…
which would explain why he said he had so many troubles managing to rescue the twins in the first place? He arrived after the contract was made (that’s why he wanted to check Seb’s CR during the campania arc) and just in time to collect the twin’s corpse before it got burnt.
Maybe that could also explain the change of design, from simple-looking scythe
to “skeletonized” after he got it back, even if we still don’t know whose skeleton it is (either Claudia’s or Vincent’s, but someone he most likely thinks he can’t bring back if he cut up the skeleton to make it a part of his scythe).
I know he said that he “found it hard to part with it” and that’s why until now I always thought that it was justifying why he had possibly deserted with it.
However, who knows if the English translation isn’t a little misleading and the whole thing may actually be meant as “it was actually very hard to be separated from it after/for such a long time” (aka about 45 years) “and I had a lot of troubles taking it back”.
We don’t know why UT deserted, we don’t even know when exactly in his punishment he deserted, like:
was he super close to being forgiven and he decided that he didn’t want to go “rest in peace” soon?
or did he still have some time to work and he got so fed up with it/curious about humans that he left?
but maybe his decision to desert was one he took after he got back to HQ from that mission with Othello 50 years ago and, in that case, he could have left without his scythe (especially if he was throwing away his shinigami life and wanted to meddle a little with humans).
It’s when the situation got total desperate, when Vincent was killed + the twins were nowhere to be found, that he imagined that the whole case could have a supernatural component and that’s when he had a lot of trouble getting his scythe back? Without his scythe, it’s harder to fight against other supernatural beings after all.
As I said, just a crack theory, I’m probably reading too much into this x) but otherwise I fail to see what else could have taken UT so much time to find the twins?
midnight-in-town 