Inkarmat - Blog Posts

Time for Inkarmat meta.

Inkarmat's cunning and manipulative nature is a product of the oppression she faced both as a woman and an ethnic minority. She developed these skills as a coping mechanism precisely because of her status in society.

Noda went to great lengths not to fall into the "noble savage" trope & made the Ainu characters in GK just as interesting as the Japanese ones. Also, given that Ainu independence is a big theme in GK, it makes sense that these concept would influence Inkarmat's development.

Inkarmat was a female orphan, traveling by herself since a young age, getting into dangerous situations and needing to learn fast alternative means to defend herself.

As an adult Inkarmat is depicted as sexy, flirtatious, and manipulative but as a child she has an innocence that is comparable to Asipra. This is an explicit parallel as we see Asirpa is reminded of her relationship with Sugimoto, when Inkarmat recalls her love for Wilk.

Also Yes, Asirpa's canon crush on Sugimoto is paralleled by Inkarmat's crush on Wilk when she was a child. Inkarmat's sadness that Wilk may have forgotten her represents an insecurity Asirpa carries with her for most of the plot.

Asirpa is afraid one day Sugimoto will leave her behind for another woman -the woman he loves as he said himself. Just as Wilk did to Inkarmat when he fell in love with Asirpa's mother, not even sharing stories of Inkarmat to his child whom he told so many other important things.

Carrying on. Noda empowers adult Inkarmat by having her taking advantage of Japanese people, the oppressors of the Ainu, and on that it is largely men she is taking advantage of. Yes, Inkarmat uses her wiles to manipulate men, and take advantage of them to secure her own safety.

But she is still very much vulnerable to the majority power. The narrative emphasizes this in the subtext. She is working under Tsurumi, the primary representative of imperialism by the plot, a man who does not rely on the subordination of the Ainu to accomplish his goals

And she is later imprisoned by him proving that Tsurumi had always been the one in power all along, she is sexualized and victimized by other random Japanese men, and she relies on Tanigaki (a Japanese man) for safety.

Need to add you can compare the way other female characters are depicted sexually based on their societal status. O-gin is very empowered and free even during sex. And Sofia has personal agency and is regarded as a leader of men so when her tits are out it's just for a good time.

Also kind of on a similar note. Inkarmat and Ienaga end up sharing a positive relationship which I find kind of cute but also when you think about it. Ienaga is also a suppressed minority as a transwoman, and similarly being held prisoner by Lt Tsurumi.

Anyway, Inkarmat operates with a certain inevitability in her mindset. She has accepted the state of things as an Ainu woman, and that is why she does not care about the gold, or her own fate as dictated by her divinations.

However much like the rest of the cast, she is influenced to have more hope by Asipra who by her very name represents a "new kind of Ainu woman".

And she learns to love and feel the security of family by the influence of Tanigaki and Cikapasi. Likely this is what encourages her to leave clues for Tanigaki so that he can find her after she is taken hostage by Tsurumi.

Inkarmat and Tanigaki get a happy end and I think it represents something very important and also compliments the theme of Ainu liberation pretty nicely imo She was always independent but now she also has security. Anyway, we stan Inkarmat, she is an amazing character...

soc Gk au

Can't stop thinking about Ogata and Inkarmat with a Kaz an Nina dynamic. They hardly interacted in the original series but as designated fox and cat I kinda wish they had. Kaz and Nina have something akin to a sibling dynamic where they aggressively annoy each other. They could have been annoying let them be annoying.

And I haven't actually watched the SaB show but I have seen clips from season 2 where Nina gets a flash of Kaz'a past when she touches his hand. Now imagine that but Inkarmat and Ogata. Where Inkarmats probably trying to use her ability to heal him (because Ogata doesn't really have anything that makes him panic like that) or just mad at him which is also understandable, and catches a glimpse of a figure just barely in her vision. She flinches but nobody is there when she turns.

The crew doesn't have a member that gets called Wraith like the crows (sorry Koito no scary nickname for you), there is an honorary seventh that one believes might actually be a wraith.

SoC AU again, long ramble about how i imagine Vasily's character in this

Vasily being the groups Fjerdan would mean that something needs to push him to defect. Just like with Matthias at the beginning who is willing to give up secrets in exchange for killing Nina, that's basically why he joins. He just sees this as an opportunity to get payback and kill Ogata at some point. He would probably enter the story already having been shot, which could be interesting in him drawing the Ice Court himself instead of verbally explaining. But he also would be somewhat duty bound to not letting parem be weaponized. I don't know how snipers work with the Fjerdans or if they are just marksman in general, but I imagine they aren't seen as the most respectable of warriors since they don't get up close to kill grisha. This and the fact that his sniper pride was greater than his patriotism (during their first duel Ogata remarks on how a sniper is motivated by just the cold ability to kill not the hatred to dive headfirst into battle, which is kinda your average Fjerdan fighting style against grisha specifically) is what lead him to defect in the original so i think that would be enough for him to leave. I also think he would have never gotten a wolf, he wasn't 'chosen' by one and he didn't really want one either which really didn't help people's opinions of him. It actually might be interesting if he never passed the bridge to become a full Drüskelle, since Matthias said your told by a superior if they liked you how to pass, and he might have not been told. But I'm not sure if that would work, and maybe he was seen as not honorable but necessary so they just let him through.

He can bond over this with Ogata when he starts complaining about how if there were more sniper groups in the war there would be less causalities.

Overtime I feel he would become closer to the crew. Friends even. He might find a reason to live that isn't killing Ogata in actually making friends and having a ride or die group. Before all he had was the Fjerdan military, but now he has actual friends. Very flawed and kinda awful friends but still. The Vasily-Ogata dynamic is like Matthias and Kaz but instead of a duo with Nina or Inej they just have eachother. And they don't make each other better, only worse. That might change eventually but definitely not at the start. Vasily might slowly put killing Ogata behind in priority while Ogata has kinda the opposite development as he distances himself more and more from the crew. I always thought it was funny how they were written so passionate when they really wanted to kill each other. So Vasily would eventually 'let go' of (killing) Ogata. Also it would be funny if he became the go to marksman of the group just because you don't have to do mind games to get him to do something and isn't an asshole about everything. Ogata will totally not take this personally.

Endgame for him would be mostly the same in that he becomes a famous painter somewhere because this Fjerdan is actually surviving.

And I also think whatever prejudice is left against grisha would be destroyed by Inkarmat by explaining the fear they hold for eachother, she also wasn't ever in the Second Army. I think they could become friends. I love found family.