I take Francis having a ponytail back. I was wrong. Thanks! 🙂
Yeah, Frances doesn’t wear her hair in a ponytail. ^^
Maybe Lizzy will have her hair in a similar fashion as her mom when she’s older. She surely won’t have her twin tails forever and I guess loose hair wasn’t ‘proper’ for noble ladies back then. Apparently, buns and chignons were quite popular in that time. (Here’s some information on Victorian hairstyles.)
But now I kinda want to see Lizzy with a ponytail, too. XD
Frances did use to have a ponytail tho, at least for her fencing matches 😀
Ohh, you’re right! XD
wait actually, now that you’re mentioning it @thedarkestcrow (and Anon), I totally dig the idea of Lizzie getting a ponytail as her next hairdo, maybe to mark a change consequential to her next step into her character development?Especially considering that her mom once wore her hair like that yes (and Sensei confirmed that Frances totally is Lizzie’s role model) + that
even Claudia did (at some point) too!
Besides, it would certainly be the perfect way to show an even bigger gain of maturity, when one’s comparing the cute pigtails she’s been wearing ever since childhood to the long, more adult-like, ponytail!
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
there is a natural evolution of the haircut of Phantomhivian women through life:
childhood: pigtails (Lizzie but ?? => Claudia/Frances)
gaining maturity/beginning of adulthood: ponytails (Claudia & Frances)
motherhood: hairbun (Claudia & Frances)
seriously now I totally want Lizzie to start wearing a ponytail… xDD
I discussed this privately with a few friends but I actually love the idea a lot so I’m sharing with everyone. 😀
So far in this very long arc, there were a few occasions the focus drifted away from Ciel & Seb. The first major time was at the very beginning of this arc
with Ed being the reason Lizzie went to the Sphere music hall in the first place and the second major time…
led to very unfortunate circumstances. T_T
So I was saying to my friends that I’d love to get some more chapters not focusing on Ciel and Seb, especially now that they’ve been put in a rather awkward position…
and might need the help of others to clear their names if they’re really arrested. And since Soma is hurt, more Ed-centric chapters could be more likely and I’d personally love that.
First of all, it’s hard to believe that Ed won’t question if real!Ciel truly isn’t involved with the Sphere music hall considering that Lizzie is with him and that she left the house for the Sphere music hall over two months ago.
Secondly, Ed is currently the only one who was also there at Weston when UT explained about his latest BDs to Ciel
so, should he recognize UT (even if we know Ed can’t see anyone else when Lizzie is here), he might be able to suspect that something is up with real!Ciel.
As for a team up with Soma, the reasons I find this idea so cool are because Edward and Soma both are characters who are very close to our!Ciel + at the time of ch143, what they know about the current arc is complementary, meaning that if they were to assemble their information, they would both easily realize that our!Ciel was framed.
To explain: what Soma knows and believes is that…
someone who looks exactly like our!Ciel attacked him and Agni, leading to Agni’s murder. So now he’s pissed at our!Ciel because he doesn’t know about the existence of the twin (since our!Ciel never mentioned anything about it).
Meanwhile, Ed just found out that the twin is back…
and that our!Ciel is believed to be behind the blue sect arc for different reasons.
So should Ed see Soma and find out about this…
If Soma tries to argue that our!Ciel did this even if this doesn’t sound like him, then Ed will at least be able to tell Soma that “wait, he actually has a twin brother who just came back???”, which could make Soma realize that his friend is innocent and Ed that the twin is up to no good (especially if he remembers about Weston previously to finding out about the attack on Soma and Agni).
Add Sieglinde…
who heard this, who can confirm that Ciel and Seb are the ones who brought Soma to her and who researched about the blood samples Seb found in the Sphere music hall + Nina…
who helped Ciel and Seb with getting into the Sphere music hall that one time, they will barely need Violet’s confirmation to understand that “Lord Sirius” is in fact the twin (even though I think Violet’ll confirm it either way, because our!Ciel helped him and his friends).
Violet (and also Lizzie) is more likely to be necessary in order to convince the other people involved in this arc that our!Ciel is not Lord Sirius: like the Double Charles (who may end up accusing Ciel of the Parliamentarians’ murders next), Randall (because Abberline won’t be able to convince him on his own I guess) and maybe even Alexis.
TL;DR Ed investigating some more as Ciel is possibly arrested and meeting with Soma could surely be one way for the entire truth to be revealed + also for Soma to stop believing that his best friend attacked him.
I just hope Ed does realize, one way or another, that there is definitely something not right about the twins and Lizzie.
I forgot to add that this idea is also likelyas a parallel to the Weston arc (additionally to UT creating even more perfect BDs)…
…and the Maurice Cole incident.
Except that this time,it’s Soma who’s falsely accusing our!Ciel and Edward who is more likely to investigate for our!Ciel’s sake. :)))
That’s also a big part of why this idea is pleasing me so much, because I loved the Weston arc!
Ed bby, ur sister just told u that real!Ciel and UT were doing some bad shit, so whenever u’re ready for some personal investigation to get ur cousin out of this mess! plz go see Soma, he needs to find out there is a twin.
“Fuck I didn’t wait a whole month just to read Elizabeth’s monologue“
“Yet another useless chapter Yana whyyyy“
“What is there for her to be confused about?? It’s so obvious she’s just in love with the title of being Ciel’s wife“
“Bocchan’s world is ending and she’s here thinking about love ugh this is why I never liked her even in Book of the Atlantic she’s so obnoxious“
“Bitch is turning this into a shoujo manga pfffff“
When the chapter came out over here I remember seeing a comment saying ‘well at least she won’t be getting that much hate now, thank goodness’ and I thought you must be new to this fandom.
As much as it hurts I am completely, utterly in love with chapter 144 I can’t even English it. These are thoughts Lizzy’s kept in for months, emotions she locked inside a box all this time and she’s finally, finally able to tell her brother (who thankfully loves her unconditionally god bless), her brother who after seeing how quiet she was during the carriage ride had to give her a little push and make her talk. That’s how we got to peek inside her heart. Let’s not forget Lizzy is the type of person who will put on a smile during a zombie apocalypse and make it seem like everything is fine just to lessen other people’s worries.
I love how honest this chapter is (ironic that it’s talking about lies) I love how she’s telling Edward that if OC never lied in the first place then perhaps it’s true, yes she might’ve been happier had it been RC. I love how she feels bad about it and how she thinks of herself as cruel—okay that came out wrong—but you know what I mean…I hope? I love how she’s admitting she knew something was up but she did everything for RC’s sake because she couldn’t bear to lose him all over again. I love how torn she is, because her whole life revolved around being the wife of the Queen’s Watchdog. Yana is such an amazing writer (understatement) and she’s doing such a great job at making us readers empathize with this 15 year old girl and it kills me that there are still people out there that cannot relate emotionally but for some reason picture OC as someone with a pure heart of gold who’s actions can all be excused over his tragic past.
As readers we know why OC took on his brother’s identity and I don’t know how many times this has to be repeated but the characters in the story don’t. I know after this chapter there will be complaints about how Lizzy is viewing OC when he’s been nice to her and how she’s ‘demonizing him’ but can we walk in her shoes for a minute? From her point of view OC lied to her for 3 years and all of his actions were probably out of his duty and because he wanted to keep up that lie. No, it’s not obvious at all that it came from the heart and no, I don’t remember OC telling anyone about any contract. At this point it’s all been ‘wtf is going on’ for our entire cast; you think Abberline signed up for this shit?
This is the longest I’ve written (my most being 3 sentences) but I’m losing it when people are complaining about Lizzy being an ugly crybaby when we’re getting to hear her thoughts and bonus! see her have a breakdown LIVE. For free, no charge. Can be replayed over and over. A girl who smiled all the time and buried her insecurities for the sake of someone she loved the most, now having all walls down. A deep dive into character development. What was it about reading an irrelevant chapter again? Feel lucky and pay up, fellas.
“Yana is trying to redeem Lizzy but it’s not going to work for me” redeem what…that she was closer to RC when she was 10? That she pointed out the truth that was going to be exposed whether she said something or not?
On another note: it amazes me that I’ve scrolled through dozens of complaints on 144 about there being no Undertaker’s handsome face this chapter holy shit. Remind me again why everyone is hurting in this story right now?
Political Position: Libertarian (extremist version)
Goals:
Destroy universe
Better employment conditions for members
More taxes to use for organization
Support science and technology
Body that doesn’t fall apart as an equal right
Higher standards in healthcare (especially better life support machines)
Make “Illuminature” a school subject
Open borders (Gehenna gate)
Famous political quotes:
“Freedom and harmony are the essential factor of happiness for our population. It can only be achieved by unifying the worlds Assiah and Gehenna.”
“Why is it, that we must maintain this state of existance while shouldering such responsibilities and pain?”
“Some of us can’t incarnate into this world without using a human as host. So what happens if you make it illegal, dear True Cross Order? Right, these people can’t incarnate at all. You take away their right to live and the right to live is a basic right. The True Cross Order ist the real enemy of democracy!”
Mephisto
Party: True Cross Japanese Branch (the shameful extremist wing of the True Cross Order)
Name Origin: something with religion
Political position: Anarchist
Goals:
activism against Illuminati
free instant noodles for everyone
disconnect life support
anarchy
Famous political quotes:
“I think peace is surely the disorder where different things exist together!”
“I am the revolution!”
“Fuck the system.”
Gedoin
Party: LLL (Lord Lucifer Love)
Name Origin: Gedoins love for Lucifer
Political position: Far-right authoritarian
Goals:
Legalize experimentation without limits
Legalize forced marriage
Legalize murder
Legalize everything else
Make Gedoin world ruler
Expand territory to entire universe
Press censorship
No human rights
Famous political quotes:
“I WILL KILL YOU!”
“hehehehehahahaahahhaha”
“I hate all humans equally”
“Humans experiment on animals, so it’s only fair humans experiment on humans”
Amaimon and Egyn
Party: BMSB (Broccoli man and shark boy)
Name Origin: Mermaid man and barnacle boy (Spongebob)
Political position: Environmentalist
Goals:
Save the whales (and sharks!)
Bigger punishment on polluting the ocean
Minimize deforestation
Bigger punishments for animal cruelty
Environmental-friendly cars in big cities
Finance new resources of energy (even though they don’t have the money for that)
Make demon cruelty illegal
Famous political quotes:
“Errrm…we want to make our planet healthy and a good place to live I think” -Amaimon
“Amaimon, what do we tell them when they find out we have no strategy for realizing these things?” -Egyn, secretly caught on camera
“To the people who tell me my concept doesn’t work in society – why do you always make me cry :(”
“To the people who tell me I’m too young for politics or to kiss someone older than me – fuck you Shiro!”
“Why would someone harm demons just because they’re another species? They also feel pain! Don’t treat them like trash because no living thing is trash!”
Arthur
Party: PAD (Party against demons)
Name origin: Arthurs hate for demons
Political position: right, conservative
Goals:
Stronger border controls for illegal immigrants from Gehenna (including Mephisto)
More investments in exorcist education
Weapon arsenal for Vatican
Expand Vatican territory
Bigger punishments on crimes committed by demons
Famous political quotes:
“Demons don’t belong to Assiah”
“This campaign is only about me”
“I’m going to build a big wall around Lucifers Gehenna gate and Lucifer is going to pay for it”
If you’re confused or angry about Lizzie’s actions/feelings in this arc or in general, just understand that she was groomed. Her entire life purpose was to be “the wife” and as been raised to act and think that way. Having that changed on such a drastic level, especially at 14-15, is messing up her entire way of thinking. She was raised to mentally handle violence, but not to be anything other than Ciel’s wife
@anafeloz don’t mind me, OP, I just want to add one thing to this.
There are a lot of good posts on Lizzie going around (I’m so happy :D), but in my opinion, what you’re saying here is possibly what’s not considered by most readers who don’t get her character.
Yes, Lizzie was groomed, more so than her brother or her two cousins, and the result is her hyper-focusing about her future as “the Watchdog’s wife”, hence the confusion & the pain when she started to realize that the boy she was falling in love with was technically “not the right one”.
That’s also why years ago she was drastically affected by real!Ciel’s claim that “strong women are scary”, because her whole life revolves around becoming the Watchdog’s wife and she’s supposed to live as happily as possible with this fate.
But, and that’s what I found interesting, Lizzie was not groomed out of anything besides a desperate need for survival and that’s why it’s also so tragic. Honestly, the circumstances of the P family suck and that’s why all these kids (all of them, with this chapter focusing especially on Lizzie) have so many issues.
Like, the twins went through all that shit in the first place because Vincent was violently murdered, for a reason linked to the Watchdog’s duty. As for Lizzie, the only reason Frances raised her to be the way she was until this arc is the result of her losing her own mom (probably murdered too) when she was a little girl and not wishing to lose her daughter the same way.
It’s fucked up, the parents aren’t even to blame (unless you really want to argue that Vincent can be held responsible for being murdered and Frances for being traumatized by her mom’s death), it’s the circumstances of this family that are.
All that to say that Lizzie’s reasons to be upset at herself (and not even at our!Ciel) are very relevant to the context of her whole life so far, as well as to the past of her family. And, personally, I think it’s amazing writing by Sensei to address this & I couldn’t be happier.
This chapter is everything I had been waiting for and more, seriously. There are a couple of things that stood out to me while reading the raw and I want to note them down before I forget (and to compare once the official English version is released)! Just in case, here’s my rudimentary translation of their scenes in case anyone’s a bit lost with my commentary.
(Spoiler images inside! Don’t read if you don’t want to spoil yourself!)
the greatest thing about touken as a ship (my fellow future writers, please take note) is that Ishida took his time to tell their story. That’s why i personally prefer, in fiction, romances that aren’t the actual center of the story, because many other things are happening and it helps to slow down the development of the relationship, making it way more realistic.
touken had so many different stages in their relationship, & they were humanly realistic:
;first meting, mutual disinterest, friendship, romantic feelings, heartbreak, memory loss, bittersweet reunion, final reunion, love confession, & then having intimate relationships.
Ishida took time to explore&develop each one of these stages, he gave us many moments during the mutual disinterest, where they were basically forced by Yoshimura + others to spend time together. We had many moments of friendship, the feelings of some kind of romance lingering in the air but we weren’t sure, then the heartbreak… their time apart was LONG, and Ishida took his time with it. During the memory loss + bittersweet reunion, Touka&Haise had barely seen each other that much, and when the time came for the love confession, it had a huge impact because we had already explored all those different stages in the past, it was like a balloon slowly inflating and inflating and inflating until it couldn’t hold the air any longer and bursted.
that’s why touken feels like something very deep and personal for all of us, because it wasn’t a first-sight love, or something that happened out of the blue, in the midst of only two arcs. It costed Ishida to write the entire first TG AND TG:re to make them officially canon, and during that long process he made sure to give them an actual story of their own, as a couple in fiction they have an identity, a journey. We were there from the first moment to the last, and everything that happened in between.
They had moments together even when they were not actually interacting with each other; but scenes like Banjou asking Shironeki if he was going to see her, standing right in front of her school ((the fact that banjou mentioned that reinforced the idea that Touka wasn’t just a regular friend in Kaneki’s life, but someone special, he always gave her a special treatment and all of the other characters knew that, and they were vocal about it)) + remembering her birthday after a long time not seeing each other;;; or Touka thinking about him while holding her parent’s ring ((the romantic connotation here is huuuuge)) help SO MUCH to build up their relationship, but they weren’t necessarily having a scene together, conversing and clearing things out.
i think the most important thing when it comes to writing a couple in fiction is to give them a story of their own. That even if the main plot of the story doesn’t exist, or something happens and everything goes to hell except for the characters, they will still have a connection with each other, they will still have their own story to tell even if the plot falls apart.
anyway i don’t know where this came from i just watched the first amv i did for touken and there was a lot of shirotouken in there and it reminded me of the years i spent crying for them and it made me realize how perfectly well done their story was
also also also, i feel like touken was unbreakable even if they had many circumstances breaking them apart, drawing them away from each other… their bond and affection for each other was so strong that i knew, deep in my heart, that no matter what could happen, they were unbreakable.
Mmm good question, but imo he has no other choice? Of course he could escape with Seb’s help if he wanted to, but i don’t think that’s a wise thing to do. For one, if he escaped, it would look like he’s admitting his guilt and that would put him in an even more difficult position. Secondly, where should he go? Who would support him now that he was exposed and became the prime suspect of a murder? (I mean, yes, the members of the ‘Aristocrats of Evil’ like Chlaus & Diederich might be willing to harbour him but they don’t live in London and I don’t think OC would want to leave London). Also, Abberline knows that OC is innocent (at least in the case of the Sphere Music Hall murders), so as long as he’s the person in charge of the investigation, he surely won’t treat him badly and will try to help him. So if I were OC, I’d save the escape/prison-break as a last resort, but idk, maybe he has other plans.
what is RC trying to do with all this? Why is he setting OC up?
“Destroying everything OC has built up in the past 4 years (title, fame, social status, relationships, etc) and isolating him away from anyone” is my guess. RC probably wants his little brother to be that helpless, weak child he used to be until 4 years ago.
Do you think he even knows that he doesn’t have a soul anymore?
Most probably! He said “How dare you do that to me that day” to Seb in ch130 so I guess he knows that his soul was eaten by Seb!
midnight-in-town 