(i was looking for something unrelated in the manga but perused this part as well) he tells renji that he didn't want to kill momo himself, that he actually had wanted/tried to get either kira or toshiro to kill her but i didn't work so he had to do it. why do you think he didn't want to kill momo himself?
send me a topic to write a meta about my muse on
oh boy where do we start with this one.
okay so ... first off? aizen's emotions towards momo are not the kindest of emotions. that isn't to say he was completely full of shit when he was pretending to be the kind and caring captain - which he was in many ways because that is indeed an aspect of himself and who he is and his personality - but he was certainly not honest with her as to who he was beneath that caring veneer. he very deliberately manipulated her with falsehoods of caring about her to the point of outright seducing her, all to ensure she would be exactly what he wanted her to be when all was said and done. and what she was was, ultimately, a pawn.
what he feels towards momo is a fun grabbag of different emotions; he thinks she’s very capable and has a tremendous amount of potential within her ( which does pan out when she becomes shinji’s fukutaichou! look at her growth! she’s amazing! ) but in equal measure, momo does not see him for who he is. and aizen honestly disdains that. he disdains her worshipful nature of him, even as he encourages it, because she’s proving to be useful to him in such a regard. he treats her kindly because anything else at that point in time would simply be out of line for what he wants her to perceive of him and yet he knows for a fact that she’s fragile. for that matter, momo, like kaname, puts aizen upon a pedestal and does not see that he is still, simply, a person and has his own faults and foibles.
the interesting thing about aizen? he doesn’t want worshipers. and both momo and kaname fall into that territory in varying degrees. the difference is that aizen feels a great deal more for kaname in how he understands him and understands that to do anything else would ruin his effectiveness. momo, alternatively, he wanted to ruin. in some subtle way, aizen despises her. or -- maybe not despises but he has this ... contempt for her. the contempt comes from how she, and additionally, toshiro lived for a long time. they’re both children of a first district of the rukongai. they have food and clothing, someone to care for them, and have never had to fight and struggle to survive.
aizen, by contrast, came from an eightieth district. we know, per canon, that an eightieth district is a hellhole. so in many ways, aizen’s emotions towards momo stem towards this resentment he has because she ( and toshiro, since aizen does kind of link the two of them together in his own way. ) does not understand just how truly awful things can be.
i promise all of this rambling has a point.
now, onto the main question of why aizen was less interested in killing momo himself.
quite simply? a lot of what aizen does is heavily in the nature of psychological warfare. if he could force kira or toshiro to hurt momo or even outright kill her, the guilt they would have from such a thing would cripple them permanently. if he could have had toshiro do so, then it would have probably destroyed toshiro. aizen is ... complicated. in a way he likes momo but he also despises her. he likes toshiro but he also despises him. he knows for a fact that toshiro’s animosity towards him is based, by his own estimation, primarily in what he did to momo. would toshiro have cared as much if aizen hadn’t done to her what he did? he doesn’t think so. toshiro just isn’t that sort of person.
at least, that’s how aizen sees it.
aizen’s use for momo had come to an end, after all, but between kira and toshiro being so tender-hearted towards her, she wasn’t killed and he ultimately took matters into his own hand. in a very obscure way, aizen was reaching up to tear the rose-colored glasses momo saw the world with off in an extremely painful fashion. he doesn’t see it as an act of charity, however, or a gesture of kindness. it was simply that he proved to her that her view of the world was not complete and not whole. i don’t think aizen actually did intend for her to die ( aizen knows damn well where a shinigami’s saketsu and hakusu are; if he had actually wanted momo dead, she would have been dead. ) but he wanted her to certainly be wounded, perhaps for good. perhaps enough that she’d never be a shinigami anymore.
after all, momo did say to him that she didn’t want to fight. like kaname, perhaps she would have done better if she had never been a shinigami at all or been forced to retire from it. she didn’t - and she even came to the tenkai kechuu ( how the fuck did she get there, though? ) to face off against aizen, proving she has a massive resilience of willpower and that she’s willing to fight even if she doesn’t want to for what she said. in his own way, aizen is quite proud of her and her progress - but he also, equally, has that attitude he does towards her. it is, like so much about aizen and how he sees some people, utterly complicated.
but additionally, aizen was not joking when he said that he had manipulated momo into being unable to live without him and that killing her would be an act of mercy. aizen very deliberately fostered a codependency on him in momo because, simply, he knew that one day he was going to use her the way he did in order to produce the outcome he wanted. gin’s nature of being a dangerous-seeming individual, combined with aizen’s gentle nature, led to momo attacking gin on aizen’s behalf. we saw how much momo was broken, too, in the wake of the defection when she still believed with absolute conviction that perhaps gin was the one putting aizen up to everything. this was after aizen stabbed her. this was after momo potentially heard aizen saying that the only person he has ever recognized as his fukutaichou is gin. i mean, hell, aizen tells toshiro outright at that point in time that gin is the only one who is his co-commander. so momo was never as important to aizen as gin was. she was important in her own way -- but ultimately it was just in how he could use her.
