Well, I’ll copy-paste my own tags from here then Anon, because I find they’re pretty self-explanatory:
And also a little something else…
Listen Anon, if Frances really didn’t care about her nephews in the past or now, then…
Lizzie wouldn’t have been betrothed to them and exposed to danger till now (especially for the last 4 years),
Frances wouldn’t have shown up for Ciel’s 13th birthday and taken him hunting, so that he wouldn’t be all alone or bored on the third death anniversary of the massacre
and she wouldn’t have told Lizzie to offer him to join them for a three week vacation, which was supposed to be the Campania arc, because she found he was working a lot.
There aren’t a lot of outstanding adults in Ciel’s life, so let’s avoid dragging down the few who exist, okay? :3
Hope it makes more sense this time. Have a nice weekend.
I consider a theory to be something that is coming 100% from within the universe of the series that you’re talking about. In comparison, a meta can be written using both the universe of a series but also what you believe to be an author’s (or the reader’s own) external influences.
A theory is… trying to foresee a plot twist or character development while quoting the series itself. A meta will rather be to do the same thing but while also focusing on how the author was possibly influenced in their writing or what the symbolism they used might be hinting towards.
The thing is, I am extraordinarily shitty at the latter because I have 0 knowledge compared to a lot of great blogs, so I absolutely love reading meta but I can’t say I am writing them when I just enjoy catching on unanswered plot points and trying to imagine future developments by only reading the series.
I think that overtime “meta” became the general term to be used in fandoms (hence your question), but
since
I can’t say that my blog is on the same level as others who really make a lot of educated guesses by analyzing how an author writes their story, personally I’d rather not use it for my own posts. :))
Sorry if this sounds too self-conscious somehow. xD I never liked comparison in good or bad, so I’d rather do my own thing in order to feel less left out in some fandoms from time to time. :))
I hope it answers your question, have a nice weekend Anon!
You know what they say Anon, nothing is ever perfect. :)) That being said, overall I have enough of different fandoms to survive the episodic bad sides of some others and it’s never 100% horrible, so frankly I always managed.
In fact that’s totally the perk of being a multifandom blog, although I’m making this hard for anyone who doesn’t want to/can’t use the blacklist extension (and I apologize for that <3).
Anyway, I think a general rule should be never to forget that people can have bad days, just like fandoms can have bad moments of crisis, so everyone can actually have some fandom experiences that are less fun than most.
The worst is when it taints your personal opinion of a character or a story’s arc and I think that’s always what we should strive to fight against as a community, but easier said than done obviously. x)
Thanks for passing by and reading Anon. :)) Please have a nice weekend!
Hi Anon! And well, listen, I don’t think anyone enjoying Berserk can actually seriously say that they hate Griffith in an extremely genuine way.
It’s more like we love to hate him: because he’s such an absolutely perfectly well-written evil and we have everything we need from within the narrative to shit on him in any way we want, because he’s unforgivable and very certainly not a candidate for redemption ever now that he was reborn as an evil angel.
Most villains in fiction are now written to be grey in terms of characterization: they are made to be relatable on some aspects, they are meant to have motivations fueled by their (generally complex) backstory and so in general, this leads to fans either defending the character or shitting on them unironically.
This is something that generally doesn’t happen with Griffith because he raised the bar way too high (the reasons I mentioned above) and that’s why everyone has fun collectively hating his ass, although there are minor exceptions as with everything.
Of course, there are readers who genuinely despise Griffith to the point of not even acknowledging canon facts about his character (pre/post Eclipse), but this is actual character hate which is always useless and irrelevant (especially since without one of the three main characters of Berserk, the story just wouldn’t be the same and we wouldn’t love it as much).
On the other hand, extremely rarely I’ve seen a few “fans” who’d rather shit on Casca and value what Griffith did to her and the others, but these guys are just… people you know have a problem IRL and I choose not to consider them.
So Anon, unless you tell me that you found the Eclipse to be a very enjoyable part of Berserk in what it represents or that you hate Rickert because of this
I think we’re good. 😉
Griffith as Femto represents the epitome of evil in fiction so he isn’t relatable as a villain and that’s why it’s easy for fans to shit on him, knowing that 90% of the time, people actually love the character for being so very evil since that’s a part of why the story is so magnificent.
That’s how I feel on the matter. Once again, if you stan Griffith to the point of trying to excuse the Eclipse that’s on the same level as fans who genuinely hate his character, not understanding that this is kinda necessary for the story’s settings. I never take kindly to either, but only you know where you stand in this.
Glad you like Berserk tho’! Have a nice weekend on your end as well! :))
Hi Anon! Okay so, no offense, I already did a post on the topic in the past, but I feel like there is something that’s amiss in your reasoning otherwise you possibly wouldn’t have reached these conclusions.
So first thing first, Guts doesn’t not love his son. Especially after the tower of conviction arc. And I’m sure of this because…
he couldn’t kill him from the moment the Skull Knight made him realize that this was his baby.
Afterwards, I agree with you, Guts’ behavior with his baby was a clear parallel to Gambino’s despicable attitude towards Guts himself, the difference being that we have to consider how Guts’ trauma from the Eclipse factors into this. Look…
After this happened, Guts went on this hellish journey to pursue revenge and target every damn thing from the underworld that the brand would attract. That’s how he became the Black Swordsman and all this hatred and violence he lived with for several years is what ultimately gave birth to “the beast of darkness” within himself.
All that to say, because of the Eclipse, Guts’ hatred (and fear) of anything demonic is the reason his behavior towards his own demonic baby was particularly aggressive. That being said, his baby is also the only one Guts could never kill and not just when he was born…
…and that during a part of Guts’ life where he wouldn’t trust or care about or depend on anyone but himself.
Then the conviction arc happened, but that’s when the baby warned him about Casca, which changed everything between them…
…because Guts definitely realized that it’s thanks to their child that he managed to rescue Casca.
From this point onward, between what the baby did for them and also Guts switching objectives after getting Casca back and new friends in his life, he started to show regret about his child’s fate…
which proves in my opinion that Guts does love his baby. And this breaks the parallel with Gambino indeed, because Guts having mixed feelings all this time about his son, despite the baby being (in theory) demonic, is probably related to how he suffered from the lack of parental love as a child too.
So I think it’s important to always consider what part of the story you would include this kind of reasoning in, because Guts’ attitude/feelings towards his child definitely changed throughout the story. There is even a lot to bet that, once Guts learns that Femto was given his baby as a vessel, he’ll be extremely pissed off at Griffith again.
Also to add, if you believe in the theory that demon infant => moonlight child like I do, I’d say that the child’s apparently wary attitude towards Guts is the consequence of Guts’ previous behavior towards his demon counterpart…
…just like the reason he clings so much to Casca is possibly because when he was a demon he could never approach her due to the brand hurting her.
However once again…
our little boy here is clever and curious (”all children yearn for their parents”), so he totally played a little game to see if his dad would yell at him should he annoy him just a little like he did in the past…
but I’d say that what this boy saw of his parents’ attitude towards him after this little test…
…pleased him a lot, enough so maybe that he’d then make sure to constantly help them the two times he materialized during the full moon.
TL;DR yes, Guts initally was very aggressive towards his own child, but in my opinion, rather than no love, that was the result of the trauma brought by the Eclipse, since things got better between them from the moment his son helped him get Casca back.
Afterwards, Guts was even shown to be thinking about his baby, wondering how he was doing (since he doesn’t know yet about him becoming Femto’s vessel), and overall I’d say that Guts’ previous attitude bears no real consequence to his relationship with his son because:
Femto mentioned feeling the demon infant being afraid for both his parents’ in vol22
the moonlight child, who is most likely what’s left of the demon infant after Femto’s rebirth, tested the water with his dad and seems to be comfortable enough with the situation that he would save him plenty of times afterwards.
I hope it helps Anon! Seriously, Griffith did fuck everything up for the entire Gutsca family, but it seems that, no matter what, these three (Guts, Casca and Baby) will always manage to watch out for one another. :)) Let’s hope it will last!
Yeah, to be honest it really bugs me that rumours Ishida got axed from the magazine or that editors forced his hand are being spread around. From his message it seems like he really did need to finish for his own personal reasons. Even friends of his have tweeted him mentioning “You were so tired” in their thankyou messages so I wish people would give the rumour mill a rest and just let it be. As silly as it sounds, I’ve had the overall vibe that Ishida has been ready to finish the series for a long time now ever since he skipped doing a New Years Illustration 2 years ago. It seems like such a minor thing but it felt like a tradition was being broken and I got that gut feeling that he was tired even back then.
Even though the story was obviously cut short, I personally think that the overall main story line was what Ishida had planned all along- there are too many elements with Dragon, etc. that were foreshadowed 100′s of chapters ago for this to be a random last minute decision in my opinion.
I also think Kaneki having a happy ending was intended all along. Even though I was always hoping for a happy conclusion from the start, back during Cochlea Arc I thought a bittersweet ending was in store. The way Haise and then Kaneki’s state slowly spiraled downwards had me worried we were in for tragedy. But after Arima’s death, :re has been building up for a bittersweet but overall uplifting story for Kaneki. It kind of makes me scratch my head when people say its the “asspull married with kids happy ending” when Touka and Kaneki have been married and pregnant for a year in real time already. We’ve already had Kaneki say he’s found happiness in his life 20 chapters ago so this ending is seeing that play out.
I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Ishida had that final page in mind from the beginning since these 3 “blue sky” pages all take place on the same hill
Tokyo Ghoul started with Kaneki wishing to find love. :re started with Haise alone on the hill. The series as a whole ended with Kaneki and his family on that same hill.
Fair enough if you prefer tragedy, I absolutely respect that because tragic endings can be amazing in that kick-in-the-stomach way, but I personally don’t see much point in that besides gratuitous suffering for Kaneki. He’s been through so much; child abuse, torture, traumatic amnesia, death of his loved ones, manipulation, being on the verge of breaking again and again and again. It’s a much more meaningful ending for me personally to see a main character who has tried to commit suicide twice triumph over his tragedy.
Hello! Um, but what do you mean “why” Anon? Simply because Sensei decided it was time for the end?
And I don’t think it was very sudden? We knew it was the last arc and that the series would end this year, just like they warned us three chapters before the end.
That you feel the ending was rushed is one thing, but I don’t really think it was sudden personally. 🙂 Have a nice weekend, Anon!
midnight-in-town 