#i looked at your older art and your terror in resonance fanart was pretty

[linkspooky]

Hi Link ! Thank you ahead of time if you answer this ask, I absolutely love your metas ! Besides the actual manga & a few other TG Blogs, it's the only thing I sit down to read, so thank you ! Do you think that maybe the reason some characters are so caught up on those few moments of happiness for years is because typically, Ghouls don't live very long to begin with, & so every moment is precious ? (Granted, this doesn't apply to all the characters who do this since not everyone is a ghoul.)

Thank you! I’ll try my best to keep making enjoyable content for you to read.

That’s a good observation... V. 

It is in fact the central theme of Haise’s birthday poem. 

“Even if you have no memories of being loved, for as long as you have memories of loving someone, you can continue to live.”

…But how is someone who has never been loved be capable of loving someone else?

A child who wasn’t able to receive the minimal love they required at the time they needed it the most will continue to gaze at the illusion of affection and never know how to love until the day they die.

Well, how about me? Can I continue to live?

Translation by @makyun [x].

How is it possible for somebody with no memories of being loved to continue to live?

This poem itself is rather complementary to Furuta’s own poem which addresses the same topic but taking an actual stance, rather than simply raising the question. “I have no memories of being loved, therefore I see no value in life at all.”

How stupid.

What’s so joyous about birthdays, I wonder.Never in my life have I ever felt grateful for being born.

But for you people, how are you still celebrating your life despite how hopelessly stupid or ugly you are?

I am genuinely impressed.

Doesn’t it make you want to die?If you die, you can get cured you know. (This is true.)

Translation by @makyun [x]

In a manga whose theme is blatantly live, there is no character who advocates for death more than Furuta. Other than the times he’s been drawn teasingly pointing a gun with his head, or playing with a noose, this theme of death and suicide are things clearly wrapped around Furuta’s character.

I bring this up now because while the manga does indeed explore the fact that it’s understandable that these characters would think this way, that these poeple so starved for love and affection would grasp onto what few moments of happiness they have. That it is therefore not wrong for them to want love when they’ve been neglected for it. 

However, while it serves as an explanation for why these characters are the way they are, eternally unable to progress, and how they reached this point as well it does not excuse them. It is not an excuse because if it excuses any character in the manga, it would excuse Furuta as well.

if we follow that logic, then Furuta has every right to obsess over Rize because she’s the only small point of happiness he ever experienced in a life where he was basically born into slavery, told he was not going to live long, and then forced to kill.

It is perfectly understandable that anybody born in those circumstances would not only develop a worthless view of life, but also an unhealthy view of romance. After all, where exactly would Furuta find a model for healthy romance in the Washuu who repeatedly rape women for the sake of breeding as if they’re cattle, then throw the children away and forget even what their names were. 

Furuta, probably moreso than any other character in the cast is raised in an environment completely devoid of love. In repsonse to that, Furuta has no regard for life and his destructive activities are all a direct and thoughtful response to how he was raised.

If Kaneki’s acts of mass murder are excusable because he does them from an origin point of being starved of love, then what makes him different than Furuta? Is Furuta worse because he actively robs the agency of his love obsession in the most inhumane of ways again and again?

In that case does Kaneki arbitrarily being nice to a few people he is close to, but not caring about the vast majority of the people around him, either letting ghouls starve, or going berserk and killing hundreds of humans any better? Getting eaten by dragon probably instantly removed a lot of people from their agency as well. 

I’m not saying that Kaneki is somehow worse than Furuta. I’m just saying if we deem Furuta inexcusable, than none of these other characters who are desperately looking for love can be excused in their motivations either because they come from a loveless background. Wanting to cling to the few happy moments you have is understandable and sympathetic, but ultimately it’s not an excuse you can use to  stop yourself from moving forward.

"Can't repeat the past?" he cried incredulously. "Why of course you can" (116).

(Hint, Gatsby fails at repeating the past). 

Not only is it philosophically wrong, but the story does not allow it. There are of course several relationships right now where characters still seem to hung up on who they were in the past moreso than who they are developing into being. (Akira and Amon mainly), but even in those cases have you noticed that neither Akira nor Amon have developed as characters at all since getting together. Or even... done much besides stand next to each other?

Anyway, onto the examples where the idealization of the past is not allowed. 

It quite literally kills Naki. The irony here being that Yamori was not really somebody that was worth dying for at all. Every small kindness that Yamori showed Naki was outweighed by his abuse. We have every indication that Yamori tortured Naki too, and if he did not do that he beat him, broke his bones, threw him out of windows. 

Naki clung to the absolute bare minimum amount of kidnness that was in Yamori’s memory because it was all he had yes, but in that decision he also failed to notice that in many ways he was a lot better than Yamori.

Hoguro and Shousei followed him for him, and not Yamori. Naki’s death isn’t really some beautiful act of sacrifice for the memory of his beloved brother. It’s ironic and sad, because Naki truly couldn’t grasp even in the end that there were people who loved him more and much more healthily than his brother who beat the shit out of him and treated him like garbage. 

Then we have a few chapters later, Hinami’s own sacrifice. For almost the exact same reason, Hinami overidealizes her brother especially the one of the past. 

She nearly dies trying to earn the praise and support that Kaneki was just never going to give her, because just like Hinami Kaneki is a grown orphan who does not really understand love, and feels like he himself is constantly weak and needing assurance from others.

It’s this fixation on the past that robs Hinami of any true ability to grow, because the Kaneki that she wants to acknowledge her isn’t even there anymore. That was like five Kanekis ago. In fact, the current Kingneki did not even talk to Hinami once the entire arc, until she was just about to die.

However, Hinami herself is not like Naki, Furuta, or Kaneki who had absolutely no exposure to love when they needed it the most growing up as children. In fact for the first thirteen years of her life, Hinami was happy, loved, secure and cared for. 

Yet, we see that loss has inspired the same reaction in her. However, to reach a conclusion to this, Ui shows an example for what these characters need to realize.

Ui who was one of the most hung up characters on the past, to the point of believing he could genuinely revive the dead eventually admits this. That all of his clinging to the past was just his own seeking of solace. 

All he wanted was a reason. An excuse. His seeking of returning to the past with Arima and Hairu became that excuse and it helped him believe he was seeking comfort, but in the end it was flimsy, not any real solace. 

It’s a lesson that i want Kaneki to eventually grasp as well. That he doesn’t need to base everything in his life on whether or not other people around him love him or not. 

There’s more to life than simply wanting to be loved. There’s more experiences to life than just the positive ones. Which is also what I think Kaneki is staring to move towards. 

There’s value in both good and bad experiences, so there’s no reason really at all to simply cling to the good ones and sip only unsullied water.

That’s why the move to the future in Tokyo Ghoul has always been framed as a destructive and terrifying one. It’s comforting to linger in past memories, to stay in familiar relationships, to simply fall back into place without having to figure out how things have changed and how you have changed. 

However, to reach a better future you have to risk losing those things. Sometimes you might even have to destroy them with your own hands, to make room for something better. 

It’s scary to let go of those things, it’s destructive, it could possibly even be self destructive, but ultimately the only way things can change for the better is if you allow them to change.