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sailormoonandme · 3 years

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Why does Usagi think Mamoru might leave/cheat on her?

Occasionally during Sailor Moon R, S and SuperS Usagi seemed to have these moments of insecurity where she was concerned that Mamoru was either interested in other people or else other people might make a play for him.

The real life reason for this I suspect is simply because Sailor Moon has a lot of sitcom sensibilities alongside it’s romantic elements, so milking comedy from a romantic topic by having our lead act over the top or goofy is a logical writing tool to reach for. Especially when you have such a large quantity of episodes to produce.

However, I have a more in-universe explanation to propose.

In real life Usagi’s behaviour would most likely be connected to trust issues with her partner, with other people or else concerns about her own inadequacies. However, I don’t think that’s the case here.

Rather, I think it’s actually far more connected to the numerous times Usagi has loved and ‘lost’ Mamoru.

Back in the Silver Millennium days there was this low key implication that romantic mingling between the Moon Princess and Earth Prince was somehow forbidden. After all when Endymion came to the Moon and tried to warn Serenity about Metalia and Beryl the royal guards chased him away and he needed to disguise himself. So from Serenity’s POV the social system she was living in was limiting her ability to be with the man she loved and made their future together at best uncertain.

Now, I admit that’s perhaps a bit too big of an extrapolation to draw from, especially for the anime version of the characters where we got far less info about their past lives. However, the more significant part here is the fact that Endymion was taken from her when he was killed by the Dark Kingdom. Seeing her lover murdered in front of her whilst her home were also being destroyed (and her friends killed) would obviously be very traumatic, particularly if Serenity was mentally and physically the equivalent of a fourteen year old like Usagi.

In her next life she was crushing very hard on Tuxedo Mask who routinely showed up to aid her and then rarely lingered. That’s not exactly traumatic, but the early days of their relationship would’ve still been founded by Usagi seeing the person she wants to stick around and spend time with her leave her when she wouldn’t want him to.

She also feared Tuxedo Mask had died in episode 13 when Jadeite announced that he’d killed him. True, he was revealed as alive and well shortly afterwards, but the horror of that moment (however brief it may’ve been) could’ve stuck with Usagi.

Then, in the iconic 34th episode of the show, Mamoru was violently impaled right in front of her. We can debate if he died and was consequently revived by the Dark Kingdom or if he was merely close to death before his abduction. But either way that’d inevitably be an instance where Usagi once again traumatically lost the man she loved, or at least came extremely close to doing so if not for the emotion of the moment re-awaking her old memories.

Speaking of which, as episode 35-36 make clear, the mere act of abruptly regaining all her memories would be emotionally wrenching all on it’s own. When combined with the tragic and traumatic nature of those memories, it’s far from unbelievable that subconsciously this would further mark Usagi’s psyche.

The reveal that her lover is alive but no longer remembers her and is actively a threat to her now would obviously compound this. As would the fact that in episode 36 he uses a rose to hurt her. It’s not a serious wound at all, but he still hurt her and used an object that up until then he’d used explicitly to help and protect her. Within Usagi’s mind his roses would’ve likely been ‘coded’ with positive emotions, so seeing them used in that way would’ve been further upsetting for her, in essence a perversion of what they should mean to her mind. The roses now being black are an apt metaphor for this point.

Of course during the final stretch of episodes in season 1 Usagi almost restores Mamoru. But that’s the key here, she almost succeeds. First it the ski episode where he briefly seems to break out of his brainwashing and then again in the episode where Ryo (and the other Rainbow Crystal hosts) returns. In the latter she actually succeeds in restoring him to normal but he’s abducted immediately once again. Not only did Usagi lose Mamoru a few more times but her active efforts to bring him back to her failed.

We then come to the most traumatic events in Usagi’s second life (up to that point), episodes 44-46.

In episode 44, not only did she once again re-experience the tragic destruction of the Silver Millennium, but she got a ‘bird’s eye view’ of everything that happened, including the specific moments she, Endymion, her friends and even her mother died. True, her sadness or trauma over everyone else isn’t specific to her losing Endymion/Mamoru, however because these events happen so close together and are connected it’s not unbelievable that Usagi’s mind might’ve created an association. So her pain over seeing her mother die is associated also with her ‘losing’ Endymion as well. By that same token, the death of her beloved friends in episode 45 might’ve consequently become associated with what happened next.

In episode 46 Usagi is outright attacked by a brainwashed Endymion. First she sees him loyally serving her enemy who (by proxy) murdered her friends like an hour ago. Worse she might’ve picked up on the obvious romantic undertones between Beryl and Endymion, including him kissing her hand, and let’s not forget in the flashback from episode 44 Beryl clearly desired Endymion. Whilst intellectually Usagi might know he’s not in his right mind, emotionally seeing him like that with Beryl in that context could emotionally upset her, almost as though he was betraying their love in the worst possible way.

Endymion’s efforts against her are also significantly more violent and active than anything he did before since episode 36. Dashing a rose across the back of her hand pales in comparison to ensnaring her and shocking her with his roses. Not to mention trying to slice her up with the very same sword he would’ve used to defend her in the Silver Millennium. Even if you don’t buy into my point about perverting these symbols of their relationship, the mere act of him hurting her and trying to murder her like that is going to obviously be emotionally arresting.

In a sense in those horrible moments for Usagi Endymion/Mamoru really was ‘lost’ to her, he merely looked like her lover. This I think is why it was significant that she actually fought back against him with her tiara. But since he still looked like her lover and intellectually she knew he wasn’t to blame (and emotionally hoped he was still salvageable) her own act of self-defence horrified her.

Of course she does save him, but then he dies again. Depending on how you look at it, from Usagi’s POV this is at least the second time he’s really died and that number climbs higher if you include his presumed death in episode 13 and the number of times she had to re-experience his death in the Silver Millennium. And that isn’t even counting traumatic dreams about him dying in the aftermath of episodes 34-35. It doesn’t help that his mortal injuries in episode 46 are eerily similar to the ones he sustained in episode 34, namely a violent impalement.

We might even argue this is categorically the worst instance up until this point of Usagi watching her lover die or seemingly die. In the Silver Millennium she herself died seconds later. In episode 13 they weren’t nearly as close as they’d become by episode 46 and she at least had friends and family in her life she knew she could lean on. This equally applies to Mamoru seemingly dying in episode 34 and even his abduction in episode 35. In fact with Minako, Makoto and Artemis Usagi had an even larger support network than before. In episode 46 though her lover has died in her arms, she’s left to go on and the Inner Senshi are dead, Luna and Artemis aren’t around and the end of the world is imminent. She’s truly all alone in her grief and intellectually she knows that even if somehow she resolves the crisis her support network has been mostly gutted. THEN she herself dies to defeat Beryl/Metalia and save the world.

She gets her fondest wish, to go back to a normal life, but that’s also taken from her due to the arrival of Ail and An. Yay for Usagi, she gets to have ALL of those traumatic memories from the Silver Millennium rerun through her head AGAIN. And this time they’re complimented by the Hell she went through in losing her friends, her lover and dying herself in the Arctic.

But hey, at least now she and her lover can finally be together right? Nope. He literally doesn’t know her. He isn’t Endymion. He isn’t Tuxedo Mask. He isn’t the Mamoru she knew and doesn’t even want to know her. Meanwhile a prospective romantic rival is sniffing around him and for all she knows he may well be interested in her. She gets a tiny ray of hope when Moonlight Knight shows up but that’s abruptly squashed when she receives (seemingly) hard proof this guy who seems oh so similar to the man she loves definitely isn’t that man. So her tiny hope of maybe getting him back is taken from her almost as quickly as it came.

After Ail and An depart Earth Usagi finally has what she wants…until two episodes later. This time in the cruelest twist of fate for her, it isn’t external forces that tears Mamoru away from her. This time he takes himself from her. From a certain point of view this is sort of worse than him dying. Usagi knows death and reincarnation are a thing and that magic exists. She already knows that, as traumatic as it might’ve been, the pair have been given more chances than most people to get together. But how is that to happen when Mamoru, in his right mind and fully possessing all his memories, clearly conveys he doesn’t want her. In the same way Tuxedo Mask pulled a disappearing act early on, now Mamoru in normal life begins actively avoiding Usagi and even saying hurtful things to her.

It is in episode 61 (the break up episode itself) that we arguably first see this insecure side to Usagi where she questions if Mamoru prefers a child under 10 years old to her. From there we also see Mamoru try to hint to her that he’s seeing Unazuki.

Of course Usagi eventually learns that it WAS another external force pushing them apart again (well sort of but that’s for another day). However, to lose Mamoru again after all she’d already gone through to be with him was emotionally going to be a serious twisting of the knife for her, in addition to his efforts after episode 61 to push her away. The fact that his own desire to be with her caused him to still help and even hang out with her on occasion would’ve further confused her.

But even after this mess is cleared up, in Sailor Moon R The Movie: Promise of the Rose Usagi has to witness Mamoru nearly die for her again. And like on other occasions it comes via an impalement right in front of her and a consequent abduction to boot. And the abductee happens to be someone she and her friends suspect might harbor romantic feelings for Mamoru as well, someone who actively insulted her, actively tried to dissuade Mamoru from dating her and who literally pushed her away from him.

When taken collectively, I think all these traumas associated with Usagi ‘losing’ Mamoru or otherwise being prevented from being with him would make Usagi subconsciously on the alert for the next thing that might take him from her.

I propose that this is the actual reason for Usagi’s concerns that Mamoru might like Chibiusa more than her, for why she gets concerned when Ami and Mamoru chat together in S, for why she goes all ninja in SuperS, etc. Deep down she does trust him and deep down she trusts her friends and doesn’t actually feel threatened by anyone who might try to hit on Mamoru.

It’s in reality a case of her gripping too tight precisely because the object of her desire has slipped through her fingers far too many times in the past.* Or if you like, from Usagi’s POV destiny might’ve pre-ordained that she fall in love with Mamoru but she may well be concerned that it’s also pre-ordained that they be allowed to enjoy being in love, not for too long anyway.

However, I think this in turn set up a great example of character development for our heroine.

First of all, in episode 132 we have Chibiusa outright warning Usagi she has a romantic rival and that if she doesn’t shape up she will lose Mamoru to her, and yet Usagi shrugs this off.

Of course, we could argue that this is Usagi trying to simply one up Chibiusa in this moment, or else she is dismissive of the warning precisely because it comes from Chibiusa whom is both a child and someone who makes a point of trolling her. On the other hand we might view this as an example of how Usagi has in fact grown and is more at peace with the idea that she isn’t about to have Mamoru taken from her for the umpteenth time.

Granted her over reaction in episode 136, wherein she dresses as a ninja to ensure Rei and Mamoru don’t get up to anything, goes against that idea. However, we could just as easily argue that Usagi’s reactions in that episode were an example of her backsliding precisely because of Rei and Mamoru’s history. She might not worry about Rei and Mamoru deep down, but the idea of them living in the same place when they used to date and when she knows how active Rei was in pursuing him back in the day? It’s not beyond belief that in these specific circumstances Usagi’s resolve faltered whereas she’d have been less concerned if it’d been a stranger or someone with no romantic history with Mamoru.ffff

More significantly though is Sailor Stars. Once more Usagi ‘lost’/nearly lost Mamoru. This time this was due to Queen Nehelenia, whose efforts poisoned the Earth and by extension endangered the life of her lover. Then she did that AGAIN, this time outright brainwashing and abducting him.

Even if this didn’t remind Usagi of her horrible experiences with Evil Endymion and Beryl, it would’ve still been disturbing and upsetting, especially when Mamoru developed a mirror fetish. Usagi went through Hell and physical torture to try and save her lover and this time the stakes were even higher. Because this time losing him would also mean losing the other person she loved the most, (Chibiusa) a horrible event that she eventually witnessed happen.

Sure, she saved the day and got both her future husband and future daughter back, but she still had to live through those horrible experiences to get to that point.

And yet, despite these fresh traumas regarding losing her lover, in episode 173 Usagi handles Mamoru leaving for America surprisingly well.

It’s made clear she’s upset by his departure and doesn’t want him to go. But she comes mere inches from seeing him off with a smile as she intended, demonstrating her increased strength and maturity.

And despite her tears, despite her not wanting him to go, she still sees him off, she doesn’t try to dissuade him, she isn’t worried that he’ll meet other people or that their relationship will get torn asunder once more. She is sad because they are going to be physically separated by a long distance for a long time, but that’s the only thing that’s of concern to her. And her reaction even then is relatively reigned in (by her standards) even in the privacy of her own home.

And from a narrative/emotional POV it is almost like the universe rewards her for that growth via Mamoru giving her a promise/engagement ring, saying he loves her and kissing her in the airport.

Whilst the significance of the ring is obvious (albeit not to Usagi) we shouldn’t undersell Mamoru’s words or the kiss.

I’m willing to be corrected on this but I’m fairly certain that episode was the first time Mamoru (not Endymion, not Moonlight Knight talking about Mamoru, etc) had ever told Usagi he loved her. Of course, his actions spoke louder than words on this front. Even before Usagi knew Mamoru was Tuxedo Mask she suspected the latter rescued her because he was in love with her. Nevertheless, having your partner actually look you in the eye and say the words can be incredibly emotionally significant for a lot of people. In a sense it is the ultimate unambiguous proof of the other person’s feelings (in theory anyway). Even if Usagi hadn’t been waiting to hear him say the words (personally I think her expression implies she had been) it would’ve nevertheless been a significant development in their relationship all the same.

And as for the kiss, I admit I only vaguely know about Japanese cultural norms regarding PDA, but it is to my understanding that kissing in public is frowned upon. Even if I’m wrong about that, Mamoru (as evidenced by the R movie) certainly doesn’t like to kiss Usagi when anyone else is around. If you go back to check most of their kisses, either they are alone or else it’s obvious Mamoru doesn’t think anyone is observing them. The fact that he kisses Usagi not only in a public space, but an airport of all places (when there are crowds there for three big celebrities no less) is a huge deal for him. And in turn it’s a huge deal for Usagi because, whilst Mamoru might have more reservations, Usagi clearly cared a lot less about PDA, typically being the one to initiate their kisses.

Consequent episodes further demonstrate Usagi’s growth regarding her old insecurities with Mamoru. Putting aside how we never once see her worried about him seeing other girls, in episode 181 Seiya outright raises the idea of him seeing other people. Usagi casually, without a hint of aggression, dismisses the idea.

The irony is that it is Usagi who’s in the situation she so often worried about regarding Mamoru. She is the person being pursued by romantic rival to her lover, namely Seiya.

The cruel irony is that Usagi having matured enough to accept Mamoru leaving (despite being deeply upset and lonely about it) actually had lost him yet again.

She just didn’t know it.

*Not to mention…she is a teenager. Those people tend to be ever so slightly prone to emotional over reactions at the best of times.

#Sailor Moon #Tuxedo Mask #usagi tsukino #Usamamo #Mamoru Chiba #Chiba Mamoru #tsukino usagi #pretty soldier sailor moon #pretty guardian sailor moon #bishojo senshi sailor moon #Prince Endymion #Princess Serenity #My Essays

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beneaththetangles · 4 years

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BtT Light Novel Club Chapter 20 (Part 2): Tearmoon Empire, Vol. 1

And here is the second part of our discussion on the light novel Tearmoon Empire, Vol. 1! If you haven’t yet, please check out Part 1 of our discussion first.

We’ve got a lot to talk about, so let’s jump right in! Just like with Part 1, Jeskai Angel and Gaheret are joining me in the discussion.

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4. Is there a “god” in this story?

Jeskai Angel: It would easier to write off references to deity as a way to evoke Roman Catholic France…if there weren’t so many examples. One of the last things OG Anne says to Mia in the original timeline is, “I pray that the gods will smile upon you. May you go with their blessing.” Immediately afterward, Mia dies and travels back in time. Coincidence? Ludwig thinks “Surely, she is a great leader bestowed upon us by the heavens…” The narrator makes light of this, but is attributing the situation to a god really so farfetched? Mia died then traveled back in time eight years, accompanied by a diary stained by her own blood. How? Why? While gods don’t come up in a major way, the visit to the church in the slum is another reminder of religion. After Mia arrives at the academy, the escort captain says “May God be with you in your new life at the academy.” Well, Mia is living a “new life” in more ways than one, and again I must ask: how? I couldn’t help but ponder whether the chill Mia feels when she almost ignores Tiona, that sense that she was at a crossroads, “almost as if… As if the decision had already been made,” might be providential guidance. The narrative here doesn’t mention any god, so maybe I’m reading too much into the scene though. On various occasions people compare Mia to the moon goddess, which doesn’t prove much, but is another way the story keeps reminds us about the idea of gods.

There’s also the Duchy of Belluga / its ruler. They form a clear analogue to the pope / the territory historically ruled by the pope, sometimes called the Papal States. It’s played for humor when Mia writes in her diary, “Basically, being the wise person that I am, God in all His Greatness saw fit to make me the chosen one…To put it simply, it is my duty to save the Empire.” Leaving aside the “wise person” bit, remember we’re dealing with postmortem time travel. Is it really that unreasonable for Mia to see divine providence in this?

Again, maybe all these examples are just meant to give the setting the flavor of eighteenth century Roman Catholicism and don’t imply anything about an active role for deity in the story. But I wonder.

Gaheret: I think that there are three ways religion is present in the story: first, as all time travel stories (I would argue), this is a story concerning a fate or vocation. In this case, it is a vocation. Mia is called to be a force for good, and directed towards that end by Providence. And there is a physical reminder of that mission: the diary. I find it sort of odd that the diary would keep changing, taking into account what she does to the timeline, yet she does not expend all day reading it and searching for a way to change what will happen the next day, given her approach to the rest of what is happening.

The other two are: as a force for justice and charity, which clearly presides both the approach of Rafina and that of the international church which aids in preventing the plague and adopts an orphan boy. Placed at the slums, it works for the poor.

And as a political force, given its role in Rafina´s kingdom. We still don´t know the specifics, it is true. There is a moment when Mia is on the verge of praying, but she does not, and as Jeskai notes, at first she comically reflects that she is chosen by God. Which, being this kind of story, must be literally true. I wonder what will happen if Rafina, Keithwood and the rest will think if they learn of Mia´s experience, and how will they square it with the rest of their beliefs, of which we do not know much.

stardf29: Well, when it comes down to it, there are two clearly supernatural elements in play in the story here: Mia’s return to the past, and also the diary that tells her how events will lead to her execution, which even changes as she performs different actions to account for those and show how they might still lead to doom. With no other obvious magical elements in the story, I have to assume that there’s at least some “god” that is at work here.

The question then is, based on that assumption, how much that god is like the Christian God. The thing here is, we have a situation where this “god” seems to have turned back time in order to change the course of history. Now, the whole concept of time travel is one that is very hard to grasp due to how it seems nearly impossible in real life, to say nothing of its philosophical/theological implications. Is this an actual rewind of time? Is this an alternate universe that had followed the same events of history until the point where Mia basically gains the knowledge of events in a parallel universe? Or was Mia’s past life beyond her reincarnation point basically just one long and extremely visceral prophecy that never actually happened, which was shown to her alongside the diary in order to avert a terrible fate? Each one would have different implications on what the “god” of this world is like. And really, at this point, I have no idea what the case is here. I’m definitely curious on this point, but for now, I can at least appreciate that there are higher powers in play here.

Jeskai Angel: I found it curious that throughout the book, there seemed to references to a variety of deities. One is just called “God.” Another is identified as the “moon goddess.” And there’s also broader mention of “the gods.” It’s unclear to me for now which if any of these is actually “real” in-story.

5. This novel seems to take inspiration from European history, particularly the French Revolution. What do you think about the similarities and differences between the story and the history of our world?

Jeskai Angel: Tearmoon Empire uses its background material quite well. This is not historical fiction, thankfully, just fiction loosely inspired by history. The author paints in broad strokes, piggybacking on popular knowledge of the French Revolution to help tell the story, without being slavishly beholden to historical minutia. A great example of this is the “Let them eat meat” quote attributed to Mia. Marie Antoinette never said “Let them eat cake,” but the quote is so strongly identified with her at a pop culture level that putting a paraphrase of it in Mia’s mouth becomes an effective way to tell readers Mia should bring to mind this historical figure. The rest of the book is similar, using historical allusions or resemblances to give readers a feel for the setting and characters.

I also love the overall premise, using fiction to give a happy ending (or so we hope!) to a tragic historical figure. About a decade ago, I took a course on the French Revolution at FSU, under Professor Rafe Blaufarb. It was my first time studying the French Revolution in any depth, and I came away feeling a lot of sympathy for Louis XVI and Marie. So a story where Marie Mia goes back in time to avert the revolution strongly appeals to me.

stardf29: All I’ll say here is that, whereas it seems like for you two, your interest in the French Revolution got you more interested in Tearmoon Empire, for me, it was the opposite: Tearmoon Empire got me more interested in the French Revolution. So that’s +1 for light novels encouraging academic learning. Yay!

Jeskai Angel: I like that Mia and the Tearmoon government more generally are not simplistically presented as evil. Some are rotten apples, as we see at the highest levels of the nobility, but they weren’t all horrible people. Some, like Ludwig, meant well but lacked power to effect change. Some, like Mia, simply aren’t equipped to deal with the disaster. She was selfish and arrogant in her first life, but hardly a monster. It’s impossible to celebrate her death as the story opens, only pity her. Especially in the first timeline, Mia was flawed yet also faced unfair condemnation. This again fits nicely with history. Despite a few philosophers braying about absolute monarchy, in actual practice Louis XVI’s power was far from absolute. (If France really had been an absolute monarchy, maybe the revolution could have been prevented!) Like Mia, Louis and Marie were not educated and equipped to deal with the challenges they faced. Many of the problems related to the revolution preceded them or were beyond their control. They were flawed and made mistakes, yes, but they weren’t evil monsters who deserved to die.

Gaheret: Yes. And even if that was not the case, the tyranny of the revolutionaries was far worse than that the government of the Monarchy. It actually lead to a period of madness and totalitarian terror, followed by an actual Emperor, Napoleon, that created an actual secret police, tried to conquer the world and assasinated the Duke of Enghien. Among other things, because the old France, with all its flaws, actually had some checks and balances between aristocracy, monarchy, the cities, the customs, the Church…

Jeskai Angel: True. So much unnecessary bloodshed and death.

Gaheret: Discrimination among the three states was one thing. A national Church, the Terror and the massive murder of priests, nobles and people of La Vendee was another, and far worse.

In the case of the Tearmoon Empire, things may be more different, but I´m all for Mia.

6. To what extent do you consider Mia “selfish”? Does her acting primarily out of self-interest diminish the value of her actions?

Jeskai Angel: This comes back around to the issue we keep harping on, that Mia is an impressively realistic example of how complicated we humans are. Undoubtedly, some of what she says and does is ultimately motivated by selfishness. Where the narrator goes wrong, in my view, is in talking as if that selfishness negates everything else. She was selfish, period, end of story. I don’t think that works.

When Mia drags her retainers to the slum and gives away an expensive piece of jewelry to help fund medical care for the indigent, there was certainly some selfishness involved (e.g., I don’t want to die on the guillotine again). But as you read her words on this occasion, is it really plausible that she was acting for purely selfish reasons and completely inadvertently spoke in a way sounded more benevolent? Again I remind the jury that the narrator never suggests Mia was a liar who schemed to trick people into thinking she was kind and good. The narrator just claims Mia is a doofus who expresses herself poorly.

When Mia first encounters Tiona and stands up against the bullies, there was certainly some selfishness involved (e.g., I don’t want to die on the guillotine again). But as you read her words on this occasion, is it really plausible that she was acting for purely selfish reasons and completely inadvertently spoke in a way sounded more benevolent? Again I remind the jury that the narrator never suggests Mia was a liar who schemed to trick people into thinking she was kind and good. The narrator just claims Mia is a doofus who expresses herself poorly.

What is more plausible? That Mia is such a derp that she tries to be selfish and keeps failing at it by accidentally sounding wise and compassionate without meaning to? Or that she isn’t purely selfish and her fine-sounding words and deeds are more genuine than the narrator, and perhaps Mia herself, realize?

I think again of the how before Abel’s fight, Mia tries to think of something clever and diplomatic to say…and then wishes him victory, and, according to the narrator, “let slip her true thoughts.” There’s something similar in the scene where Mia tries to convince herself that Abel is just a little kid and there’s nothing special about being with him, and is puzzled with herself as to why she would be so flustered. Is it not reasonable to suppose to that on other occasions, too, Mia’s motivations may have been less purely selfish and more complex than she and/or the narrator realize?

I think of Jesus’ teaching that a tree is known by its fruit. Mia promotes Anne and protects her from workplace harassment. Mia prevents a good civil servant from losing his job and being banished to the hinterlands for trivial reasons. Mia personally leads an effort to provide medical care for the poor by visiting the slum with her retainers and donating that valuable jewelry. Mia saves Elise’s life by becoming her patron and ensuring she’ll have the income she needs to survive. Mia protects both Tiona and Abel by standing up to bullies (notwithstanding how cowardly the narrator says she is). Mia befriends friendless Chloe. Would a person who isn’t good, and who isn’t trying to look good in front of others, really say and do all this stuff? Going by the “fruit test” Jesus taught, I feel compelled to suspect there’s more good in Mia than she or the narrator are willing to admit.

Yes, there’s some selfishness or other ill motives mixed in, but the same is true for every one of us. Why do we obey God? Because we fear God’s judgment? Because we love God himself? Because we want to avoid a guilty conscience? Because we want to go to heaven? Because we want to look like good people to others? Because…etc.? Who but God can hope to answer these questions? But if partially tainted motives are enough to devalue one’s actions, then nothing anyone does ever has any worth. This is part why reading this book was so powerful for me. As I read this work of fiction, I can see how wrong it is for the narrator to harp so much on Mia’s flaws & use them to ignore or minimize her virtues. And I could see that the same is true of myself. Do I ever act out of purely virtuous motives? Probably not. But that doesn’t justify treating everything I do as having diminished value. I want Mia’s good deeds to matter, despite her selfishness and other flaws, because I want my efforts to do good to matter, despite my selfishness and other flaws.

Gaheret: I would add that, apart from these signs that she cares for others, Abel and Anne especially, saving yourself of three years of imprisonment and of being unjustly condemned to the guillotine is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. The narrator may say that she is a chicken, but it’s not him (presumably) who may go to execution at twenty. But the important thing, in my view, is that she is growing. If she sometimes does good deeds without realizing or intending them, that’s a sign of hope that one day she will, and a gift, too. I am interested in seeing her triumph against her defects, but I find her to be a very enjoyable character just as she is.

stardf29: Okay, so the reason I asked this question was because this book made me think of something. Mainly: is it really that bad to be self-interested? After all, one can argue that all of our actions, even our most “selfless” ones, are ultimately done in our self-interest: we help others at the expense of our short-term interests because we believe doing so will be better for us in the long term. Even something like following Christ and living a Christian life is something Christians do because we believe it is both the best way to live our present life, and also because we believe in great things in the next life.

Maybe, what we think of as “selfishness” is really just “short-sighted self-interest”: doing things only for what we can gain in the short term, without thinking about how it might ultimately hurt us in some way or another. And that leads us to Mia…

Mia’s actions might be supposedly “selfish”, but what is the big difference between her actions in the current timeline versus the past? It’s that now, she’s acting with a far more long-term view of things, in particular how certain actions made with short-term gain in mind may lead to her head rolling in the future. And with that view in mind, the vast majority of her self-interested actions become very helpful to the people around her as well as herself. And that view, likewise, kickstarts her mind into starting to be considerate of others.

The fact that she’s still mainly thinking of her own interests makes for some good comedy, but I think it also reveals an interesting truth in that being self-interested isn’t bad in and of itself. The key is what we decide our self-interests are, whether they be short-term benefits that can bite us later in life, or long-term goals that help us grow and prevent (sometimes literally) painful regrets. And while Mia has room to grow in this way, having a self-interest of “avoid a revolt that will get my head chopped off” is quite a huge… head start.

…I don’t think Mia liked that pun. My apologies.

On that note, one specific example that sticks out to me right now: Mia selling her prized hairpiece in order to help fund a hospital. Her motivation might have been as simple as “that way it won’t end up in the hands of those horrible revolutionaries”, but in that moment, Mia has grasped one of Christianity’s big teachings: the impermanence of physical possessions. Heck, that’s something even I admittedly struggle with sometimes, and Mia has grasped that concept pretty much perfectly. I can’t see that as anything but admirable.

Jeskai Angel: I think maybe the difference between enlightened self-interest and selfishness is not time (i.e., long-term vs. short-term benefits), but that the former does not exclude looking out for the interests of others, and the latter does. A person can act partially out of self-interest without elevating their interest above the good of everyone else, but a truly selfish person is always willing to prioritize themselves over anyone else.

stardf29: I agree with you, but that does bring up an interesting thought: perhaps always prioritizing ourselves over others is the most damaging thing we can do to ourselves.

Also, when I say “short-term” versus “long-term”, I’m not strictly speaking about time, but “scope” in general. Which includes more than just time, but also things like our emotional well-being and other psychological factors that one could probably do an entire graduate thesis on. There’s probably a better phrase than “long-term/short-term” here…

Jeskai Angel: Maybe “long-term” = effort to consider all the consequences, “short-term” = paying attention only to desired consequences?

Gaheret: Well, Aristotle would say that we always move when attracted by goods, which are goods for ourselves and also open to others, as common goods. Freedom consists in the ability to choose one of these goods over others, and a good use of freedom would be the “right reason”, which brings us to the best we can achieve, integrally considered. Good things usually give us some pleasure and are also beneficial in the long term, because they are in accord with our nature. Beyond Aristotle, one could say that such a decision can also be a vehicle of love: you choose to bring good things to your friends that you share, in a way, to remove obstacles, to enjoy reality… Ideally, growing in virtue means also learning to be attracted by higher goods and enjoy them more fully. So, there is always some good for us, direct or indirect, in helping others. We are not totally disinterested: only God is, because God does not need anything, and gives of His abundance.

So, in this view, the problem with being an egoist is that either one does not follow the right reason because of a blind spot concerning others, as in the one who eats all the cake when it would be best to enjoy it together, or that one loses part of the good he could enjoy. For example, if Mia defends Tiona without thinking about Tiona herself, she gets less of that interaction that if she appreciated the good there is in defending others when they need it.

This sometimes happens to her, but less and less. She is not so clueless now, and growing.

7. What are your favorite quotes or moments from the novel?

Jeskai Angel: How am I supposed to answer this?! There are SO MANY wonderful lines and scenes in this book. For sheer awesomeness, I think it’s hard to top the scene where Mia rescues Tiona from the bullies:

“Excuse me, but what exactly are you girls doing? …It seemed to me that you were behaving rather rudely toward one of my subjects. …You see, I love all my subjects, and I love them equally. Even the child of the poorest beggar shall not be denied my affection. No matter who they are, so long as they belong to the Empire, I will not condone any discourtesy toward them.”

If any scenes rivals the above, it might be the duel between Abel and The Artist Formerly Known As Remno’s First Prince, especially after Abel hears his brother trashtalk Mia and threaten to abuse her:

“‘You can call me whatever you want. Mock me. Insult me. I don’t care. But,’ Abel stared at his brother with a piercing gaze, ‘if you say one more bad word about Princess Mia…’ He thought of the girl known as ‘the Great Sage of the Empire.’ He thought of the light she’d brought to his world. For her to be robbed of that radiant aura… Was absolutely unacceptable. …’I won’t allow you to insult her any further!'”

Cue the OHKO.

On a humorous note, I’ll offer the scene before that fight: “Mia didn’t actually think badly of Abel’s brother. She… didn’t think anything of him at all, in fact. She’d completely forgotten he existed until this very moment.” What makes this so great is that throughout the book, Mia keeps forming connections she didn’t have in her first life, seeking allies, making a point of remembering names and faces; she is far more humble and caring and interested in other people than she was in her first life. She even remembers the names of other people’s servants! The ONLY person in the whole story she so completely disregards in her second life…is Abel’s brother.

Gaheret: When the worldbuilding started becoming evocative and unique for me: “The Azure Moon Ministry was the administrative agency for the capital city. The Golden Moon Ministry handled taxes. The Scarlet Moon Ministry was the administrative agency for the surrounding rural regions. The Jade Moon Ministry handled foreign affairs. Finally, the Ebony Moon Ministry commanded the seven armies of the empire”.

Despite not liking Sion on the whole, I agree with Jeskai that this fragment about him is quite compelling:

“To Sion, the ability to feel righteous fury — to be justly angry in the face of evil deeds — was an essential quality for those who reigned over the people. However, how many people could truly empathize with the suffering of others? How many could go as far as to feel anger as if they themselves had been wronged? Even Sion, who had been ready to step in himself, would have done so out of a sense of duty. It came from the mind, not the heart. Faced with Mia’s genuine anger toward injustice, he felt that he saw in her the makings of a ruler who truly lived up to his ideals”.

“Sion Sol Sunkland was born the eldest son of the King of Sunkland. “He who reigns over the people must believe firmly in fairness and hold justice close to his heart.”

This was funny, too:

“Unbeknownst to her, the “knowledge” that she was counting on was entirely based on the romance novel Anne’s sister had written. In other words… Not once did she suspect that Anne — five years her senior — was a complete novice at relationships who had never herself been in love before. “How promising,” she said, completely unaware of her terrible misconception. “With you at my side, Anne, I feel as though I’ve gained an army ten thousand strong!”

This was a great way to introduce a character:

“Abel Remno knew he was a loser. Likewise, he knew Remno was a second-rate kingdom. It possessed neither the rich history and tradition of Sunkland nor the sheer might of Tearmoon. Outmatched by even Belluga in influence and authority, it failed to garner any real respect from its neighbors”.

And this one, again about Abel:

“He focused every ounce of his efforts on one single thing. He raised his sword, and he swung it down. He repeated it. Then he did it again, faster. And faster. He devoted all his time to honing the motion. Ever since the night of the dance party, he’d done nothing else. Day after day, he poured his heart and soul into practicing that one swing. And now, after all the sweat and fatigue and pain, it was time. He swung. Today, he would conquer genius. Today, he would slay a god!”

stardf29: So as I mentioned earlier, one of my favorite moments is when Mia sold her beloved hairpin in order to help fund a hospital to prevent a plague. Two great quotes to go with this moment:

“No matter how precious the item, no matter how closely you try to hold onto it, there will be a day… It may go missing, or it may break… but its time will come. Knowing this, the most we can do is to use it well, and thereby give it meaning.”

And then, for something on the funnier side:

And not only was it stolen, it was stolen by a hooligan of a man, rude and violent and with entirely too much beard to be proper. Not that it’d be okay if she was robbed by a handsome fellow with a dashing crop of finely kempt hair, but anyway…

And then a bit later, during a tea party:

“Whatever I did, I did following my heart. There’s no deeper meaning to it than that.” Which was really just a more diplomatic version of, “What? I did it ’cause I wanted to. Got a problem with that, punk?”

Later on, Mia forgives a horse for sneezing on her:

“Oh please. Why would I possibly want to have a horse killed over a dress?”

For Mia, it was extremely obvious which one was more valuable. A dress couldn’t help her run from the revolutionary army. A horse could.

And, finally, the one point where I am in complete solidarity with the narrator:

Anne and Tiona seemed equally mesmerized by the two princes as they watched with wide, spellbound eyes. As for Liora… She poked at the meat in the sandwich, confirmed that it was well-roasted, and nodded to herself in satisfaction.

Liora, you see, was a girl who knew what was important.

8. Final Comments

Jeskai Angel: I want to express how greatly I appreciated many-short-chapters format of the book. So many LNs have like three 80-page chapters, and it’s stupid. Like, if the chapters are obnoxiously long, why bother with any chapter divisions at all? As Tearmoon Empire demonstrates, chapter divisions are not some kind of natural resource that needs to be rationed. The capacity to include another chapter break in a book is never depleted. Please, authors the world over, if you’re reading this, I beg of you, write using more but shorter chapters. Please and thank you.

stardf29: I think the whole “having lots of chapters” thing is left over from the novel’s origins as a web novel, where it’s more natural to just post a small chapter regularly. Though many such web novels, upon transitioning to light novel form, get several small chapters combined into larger chapters. So this might be more of an editorial decision. Maybe it’s because in Japan, light novels are still a largely physical medium, and combining chapters saves paper by reducing page breaks? It’s definitely better for e-books to have more chapters because it’s easier to jump to a specific part of the book with hyperlinked table of contents.

Whatever the case, looks like Tearmoon Empire kept all of its chapters in the transition to light novel form. Maybe it’s because each chapter has a witty little title? So maybe the real advice is not just to write lots of small chapters, but to give each chapter a title so that your editor has a reason not to combine them all into larger chapters.

Gaheret: I can´t wait for the next volume! I want it to go full French Revolution.

Jeskai Angel: According to the Amazon page for vol. 2 (which becomes available 19 July), the next book does feature a revolution.

Earlier when we were speculating about the narrator, someone (Gaheret, I think?) suggested the narrator might be an older Mia in the future. But I remembered a certain comment by the narrator, about how Mia disliked her bad ending so much, she restarted the whole game to play over again. It’s an obvious video game joke. But assuming Mia’s world is reminiscent of late 18th/early 19th century France, an older Mia wouldn’t have the frame of reference to make such a comment.

stardf29: Ah yes, there is that to take into account. So… maybe the narrator is one of Mia’s descendants, after Mia has told of her story to her family and they started to realize how things got misunderstood, and then as her story continued to be passed down the generations, that sentiment that she was “misunderstood” also got embellished. In this way, the somewhat unreliableness of the narrator can be explained.

As a final comment for me, I should say that I really like the illustrations in this volume. They are clean, cute, and show quite a lot of emotion. I definitely wish there were more of them, but we still got a good batch here.

=====

Whew, that was a lot to talk about! Of course, we would love to hear what you think about the novel, so post your own answers and thoughts in the comments!

As a reminder, we will be discussing Infinite Dendrogram, Vol. 4 next! The discussion for that will be posted on June 23rd. See you then!

#Light Novels #Christianity #Tearmoon Empire #Tearmoon Teikoku Monogatari #Articles #Author: stardf29 #Author: JeskaiAngel #Author: Gaharet

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ghostmartyr · 7 years

Text

SnK 89 Thoughts

“Someone once asked me if I had learned anything from it all. So let me tell you what I learned. I learned... everyone dies alone.

But if you meant something to someone... if you helped someone... or loved someone... If even a single person remembers you... then maybe you never really die.

And maybe this isn’t the end at all.”

The above is a quote from the fifth and final season of Person of Interest. If you haven’t seen it, don’t worry; I’m about to quote something else that maybe five people will recognize. Also it doesn’t matter much. I just ran into a snag with coming up with how to start this post, so I went with the old-fashioned method of taking someone else’s words.

For the other quote, I have something not nearly as long or haunted.

“I will remember those who have been forgotten.” --The Stormlight Archive

Throughout the series, one of the recurring plot threads that I’ve been perfectly happy to ignore is the one that touches on the subject of memory.

Humanity has no memory of life beyond the walls.

Titan transformations interfere with memory.

Grisha tells Eren to learn to use his powers from the memories of others.

Frieda regularly wipes Historia’s memory.

Eren and Historia both have dreams of incidents that their waking selves can’t remember.

The cavern built by the Founding Titan, combined with the touch of royal blood, allows for the recovery of memories.

To an unknown extent, nomming a Titan can transfer their memories to the power’s recipient.

Memory has had a part to play since the very first volume. Most prominently in its absence. There’s enough amnesia going around in the series to get a soap opera up and running. Haunting every step our heroes take has been the knowledge that someone has the answers to this world, and they’re out of reach.

First, it was the basement. Grisha.

For a little while, Ymir, as one of the few big friendly giants they knew.

Next came the Reisses, with the introduction of the Founding Titan.

Eren slipped into that same arc, holding the Founding Titan but unable to access large swathes of its capabilities because he doesn’t have the blood for it.

As a metaphor, it’s already pretty nifty, but the literal truth of the situation is that the people who can provide the most help are dead, but never truly forgotten. They are remembered.

Grisha remembers his sister. He remembers Eren Kruger. He remembers Dina. He remembers Zeke. He remembers a world the common citizens of Paradis have never known. He does everything he can to pass on that knowledge.

The Reiss family sacrifice one member every thirteen years to keep the Founding Titan’s memories alive within their house. In turn, the Founding Titan remembers its hosts, keeping them alive for whoever comes next.

The Survey Corps doesn’t have magic Titan powers as a tradition, but they follow the same principle, as put forth by Erwin before his dying charge:

“Those brave fallen men and women! Those poor fallen men and women! The only ones who can remember them... are us, the living!! So we will die here... and trust the meaning of our lives to the next generation!

That is the sole way... we can rebel against this cruel world!”

And before any of that, there is Mikasa.

“If I die now... I won’t even be able... to remember you.”

People finding their reason to keep fighting has always drawn fiction’s attention. Angst calls to a lot of writers, as well as readers, and loss is such a universal concept that of course it’s going to be covered in all its gory detail long after everyone is sick of death.

When Mikasa loses Eren in Trost, you can see the light go out. You don’t really believe she’s going to die, since hey, we’re a protagonist down and she just got a flashback, but everything we know about her says that this feels like an insurmountable loss. She has Armin, but in her head, all she knows is that her family’s gone. Again.

It’s a tragic sequence in either medium you go with. I’m partial to the anime, because I love the music cues in that scene.

Then, as the story requires, she finds her way back to her feet.

Everyone remembers the line about the world’s beauty and cruelty, as well they should. It’s a beautiful line, thematically perfect, and come to think of it, Mikasa should probably get a medal for how well she introduces the prominent themes of this work.

When she makes the decision to live, however, it’s rooted in Eren’s memory.

That always felt a little weird to me, so it’s more memorable than it already was. She continues with lines about fighting, and winning (I think I said this last month, but just because Mikasa was only following Eren to the Scouts doesn’t mean she doesn’t belong there as much as any of the other chaotic dreamers), but the sticking point is wanting to remember Eren.

He’s dead.

His memory shouldn’t be.

This is the scene in the anime that forever sold me on the series. Back then, that particular line was more of an odd fascination than anything else, a touch of uneven humanity buried under the other phenomenal moments--Mikasa missing Eren, but loving him too much to let go of everything he is to her.

Just like their first meeting, Eren keeps her alive long enough for her to find herself, and what she’s willing to fight for.

So we have this incredible scene, and volumes and volumes later, it’s only now that I fully appreciate how tightly woven together all of the important moments are.

When you think about it for a fraction of a second, everyone is constantly dying in this series. Often not people we care about, but there’s a lot of death.

With so much of it, it makes sense that the memories of people they hold dear have so much power. They’ve learned to make the most of life, and that includes the pieces that come after death.

That’s the romantic view of it that really has nothing to do with Titan powers.

Now, on the subject of Titan powers, Eren’s managed to fall through one barrier of being an incomplete Founding Titan holder; he can relive the memories of stories he’s already familiar with.

That... is far from where we want the kiddo to be.

Before this extended flashback sequence with Grisha and Kruger, Eren’s memory troubles were primarily devoted to his father murdering an entire family, being eaten, the injection that was the focus of both those things--and a random shot of Frieda brushing her hair.

It’s difficult to tell how much of that flash to Frieda is a narrative cheat. He doesn’t remember it afterward. It does come after Historia recites her sad backstory to the class, but Historia doesn’t remember her sister at the time. Eren could be having headaches and leaving out all sorts of people, but we’re only going to see the relevant ones.

Still, Frieda’s the only one of the bunch that Eren doesn’t have a clear link to, and she shows up during a time where everyone is discussing the significance of the Reiss family.

That would seem to imply that the memories of the world that Eren is carrying around respond to outside stimulus. Which I guess we already knew because of the cavern and the touching, but there, we were given specific, mystical reasons. This seems more down to earth.

Making it less helpful, naturally. It’s not like they can go to Marley and kick off yet another kidnapping arc, only with them as the kidnappers, and hope someone says something that unlocks another chapter of Eren’s memory books.

Which would be why royalty’s back in play in the main plot. One day I might get to that portion of the post.

Getting back to the pages that spawned all of these words no one cares about, to the surprise of me, Kruger’s last words to Grisha are some of the most interesting in the chapter.

Kruger and Grisha have no idea who Mikasa and Armin are. Kruger is unconcerned, having been dealing with magic in his head for quite some time. He assumes that they’re the carry-overs from someone else’s memories.

This is where, if you wanted to, you can make it really convoluted.

Hiiii.

Reincarnation has been a fun theory ‘round these parts for a while, with the taunt of Ymir’s name only inspiring more detailed versions.

We now know that even if Ymir is Ymir’s reincarnation, no one actually believes that to be true--anymore.

Someone was still willing to present her as such, and believed in her enough to feel betrayed when he believed himself to be wrong, so it’s fair to say that some number of Eldians are willing to believe in their god being reincarnated. All things considered, that doesn’t really mean anything, because this manga is willing to let people believe all sorts of things.

But in the same chapter, we have a bitter old guy telling his predecessor that they’re doomed to repeat a horrible history again and again, and thinks of Mikasa and Armin’s existence as a memory, not a premonition.

So like. If you wanted to, a case could be made for and EMA reincarnation trio getting consistently roped into this, sometimes accompanied by Ymir.

A safer bet is probably just that super special awesome Titans have premonitions in addition to remembering everyone who ever was, and assume that those premonitions are things that have already happened, not things that will again.

Honestly, this is something that doesn’t interest me that much. I’m positive that this has something to do with why Eren sees an older Mikasa in his dream as a child, but what it means is still up in the air.

The straightest line through the plot is that Kruger is seeing through Grisha’s eyes before he gives Grisha the serum, seeing what Grisha will say when he passes it on to the next Eren. Supporting that is that this Eren has no clue who Mikasa and Armin are, but Grisha certainly does at a later point.

Future vision is always the simplest answer.

But like I said, if you want to bring the reincarnation madness--you have a very clear invitation.

Anyhow, as uninterested as I am in... large portions of that, the part right before Kruger brings up cycles of suffering is what I like.

“Make a family. You need a full household once you enter the walls. [...] Your wife. Your child. Even someone on the street. It does not matter. Love someone inside the walls. If you can’t, we’re doomed to repeat it all again. The same history. The same mistakes. Again and again.”

At first it sounds like Kruger’s telling Grisha to run off and get hitched and make babies, but the rest of the discussion makes the blood component secondary. It isn’t a matter of making children; it’s a matter of family.

Make a family.

Love them.

That’s the way out.

Grisha finds Carla and has Eren, but he also has Mikasa.

Eren and Mikasa have Armin.

The three of them have the 104th.

The 104th has the Survey Corps.

If you look at what happens to the mainland Eldians at the time of Grisha’s transformation, you can see the difference. Kruger watches dozens of his people die, participating in their deaths and torture for the greater good. Grisha loves his wife, but sees his child as a tool.

Love doesn’t bind these people together. A shared cause, sometimes, but Kruger doesn’t watch Grisha lose everything and hug him, or help him through it. They’re callous and straightforward.

I don’t know if Kruger is being literal or figurative about the cycle their world is stuck in, but the Survey Corps has started a broken kind of family. Somewhere inside all of the hard choices and death, there is love. There is a group of people who will fight for each other.

With the politics involved, I’m sure nothing can be that simple, but their hearts are all in the right place. They aren’t so consumed by their cause that they’ve close themselves off to everyone. A good portion of them still cry over killing traitors.

It seems safe to assume that Grisha has not designed the perfect battle plan, but he loved Eren, and Carla, and Mikasa, and whatever cruelties followed, that love has done them a lot of good.

It could turn out to be more significant than that, or it might not. We shall see.

Though know that if it turns out that the main plot truly is reincarnation madness + time loop that can only be stopped through the Power of Love...

...

I’m... not actually sure I could be upset if that happens. It sounds amazing.

Basic point: A family can be an Eren, Armin, and a Mikasa.

Moving on to something besides the last three pages now, we scurry back to Mikasa and Eren getting special treatment because they make up a fifth of an entire military branch.

There isn’t much to say on that topic; keeping the kids disciplined is good, but everyone involved knew that the punishment wouldn’t convince them out of fighting for Armin, so they might as well move on and do something productive.

Levi and Hange bickering is life, though.

Even if they’re temporarily going with the, “We’ll just let our main weapon be crazy and call it puberty,” line. I don’t think either of them believe it, and everyone’s going to have to sit down and have the memory discussion at some point (wherein Eren will realize that he fails at lying), but for right now, I think Eren’s potential lack of stability is a discussion for a less hectic day.

Drifting back over to horrible things, Mikasa is... doing about as well as one might expect during this phase of the “My family is all going to die again,” arc.

Mikasa’s tell when it comes to family worries is always holding her head in that way. It happens after Carla’s death, and it happens after Reiner and Bertolt successfully steal away Eren.

Armin and Eren are--okay, Eren’s probably right for once about emotions. I don’t think things have fully sunk in for them. Mikasa, though, is living out her worst fear again. Trapped in a cell by herself, she only has herself. She can make do with that, but she never wants to, and she certainly doesn’t want to be forced into it by losing the people she loves.

Whenever Isayama decides to make Mikasa the focal point of an arc (I refuse to believe it won’t happen), things are going to be rough.

Other horrible things include the entire world not being a safe place for Eldians. No one wants people who can turn into giant monsters around unless they can be useful, and even then it’s a stretch.

So we’ve gone from our heroes being locked inside a series of walls, surrounded by monsters, to those monsters turning out to be their own people, to their own people often being monsters, to other people, but still humans, definitely being monsters, and really, it’s a much worse monster problem than anyone had planned for so what do.

Presumably, it’s things like this that led to the First King locking everyone up in the first place.

The nice thing about this flashback sequence is that we have one very simple solution for the Reiss/Fritz situation: The King likely changed his name.

Now, whether that’s actually true or not remains to be seen, but for the time being, everyone’s running with there being one royal blood line, and it not being at all weird that it’s now the Reiss line, not the Fritz. And considering new plot developments, there’s probably not much reason to look accusingly at the situation any longer.

Royalty is royalty by whatever names they dream up for themselves. That’s the story.

I think the most interesting piece of the flashback is that the First King made a vow with the Founding Titan. Somehow, he managed to communicate with his own Titan, and forge a psychic promise that has lasted over a hundred years.

Does that mean that Titans are sentient inside their hosts?

Is that what Armin sees in his dream?

How much can they control the hosts without explicit requests or permission?

I’ve gotta say, even though his Xtreme Pacifism w/ brainwashing is obviously not something a person should be doing, and obviously disagrees with the theme of fighting to win, everything we hear about the First King makes me want another flashback arc.

Not right now. Geez, no.

But one obviously needs to happen.

It was funny enough when he dragged a bunch of his people to an island, locked them inside, told everyone outside they couldn’t have his toys or he’d set his colossal army on them and they’d all die.

Now it has the companion piece of him saying that maybe they all deserve to die if they can’t stop fighting for five seconds.

This person is clearly related to Historia.

From the outside, he’s obviously made some very sketchy, probably not altogether helpful moves, and played with the lives of people in ways he had no right to.

From a character perspective, this is a person who actually had enough conviction to break all tradition, kill anyone who could remember that tradition, set up a contingency plan for which the word “overkill” is perhaps designed, and did it all because he thought that everyone deserved to die if they abused their power--oh, and he also put in a safeguard so that for over a hundred years, all of his successors would find it impossible to color outside his lines.

No other character or group in this manga has been so ruthlessly effective. You can even scrap the ruthless part. This is an individual who used his hammer, made everyone else a nail, and called it a day.

While being scornfully judgmental.

In a peace-out kinda way.

This is where the story gets even more interesting.

The world is going to want our guys dead. They’re too dangerous to keep alive, and having Titans without the Founding one isn’t the prestige boost it once was.

The Founding Titan is the best protection they have against extermination.

Eren makes the leap fandom’s been making for months. The last time he made the power work, it was while he was touching a titan of royal blood (hey look, a reason for Kruger not to give the Attack Titan to Dina!). That might be how to trigger it.

There’s only one person left in that line.

She wouldn’t eat you, Eren.

This is about touch, but the positions are still neatly reversed. Eren’s making the same choice she does--for slightly less selfish reasons. The question is if everyone else can be okay with that, and whether or not Eren will be able to justify putting humanity at risk to keep his friend.

Or maybe he’s wrong about his guess, and he’ll just end up swooping around the woods with Historia on his back. She’s short, she could totally be a Yoda.

Mikasa, Armin, and Hange clearly know something’s up. Really, it’s all about how far they’re willing to push. Can they kill the Queen to save their people? Is it even necessary? Outside of necessity, is is an action they’d be willing to participate in?

We’ll probably find out!

Though Armin’s attention in particular makes me slightly antsy.

“I haven’t lived an especially long life... but there’s one thing I’m sure of. The people capable of changing things... are the ones... who can... throw away everything dear to them. When forced to face down monsters... they can even leave behind their own humanity. Someone who can’t throw anything away... will never be able to change anything.”

Hi, Armin from Chapter 27! Please don’t foreshadow unpleasant things!

Many things in the direction this story takes are unknown. We don’t know for sure what kind of ending we’re getting, or which message will prevail in the end.

Personally, I’m an optimist. Armin talks about throwing things away in the seventh volume. Way too many paragraphs in this post talk about how people have survived by doing the exact opposite.

I want to believe that if it turns into a battle of ideals, being better than the monsters will prevail. Forming families and loving them.

But boy howdy is this an uncomfortable playing ground to feature that in.

And that’s it from me.

Time to wait impatiently for the next month.

Oh yeah, Historia read Ymir’s letter.

I suppose I’m supposed to say something about that.

Right.

HOW THE HELL CAN ALL OF THIS FANFIC NONSENSE EXIST IN THE SPACE OF SO FEW PAGES.

Do you have any idea how long it took me to realize that this latest instance of Ymir being an overly dramatic idiot is actually canon? Sure, she jumps off towers into hoards of monsters, and makes up lies in the middle of kidnapping her girlfriend, but I’m choosing to believe that the translation is accurate in representing Ymir’s writing style of horrific floweriness to play off how sincere she’s about to be.

ALSO: “I am about to wow you with a romantic tale.

It starts with me starving to death and ends with me getting stoned.”

THAT IS THEIR RELATIONSHIP. STOP POINTING OUT REASONS WHY REINER DOESN’T HAVE A GIRLFRIEND AND START WONDERING HOW THE HELL YOU HAVE ONE.

I’m mostly sure that this was done the way it was so that Isayama wouldn’t have to deal with too much Ymir speculation in the wake of revealing the ancient Ymir. The fact remains that Ymir plays up her tragic tale of woe as a love letter, and this is like a good third of why Historia has trust issues.

More seriously, this ties in to what the rest of the chapter wasn’t about, but I made it about: Memories.

Ymir believes she’s about to be very dead (we all have future vision now). She can pick what she tells Historia. She chooses her life. She chooses to tell the girl she loves, the girl she finally got to be herself with, all of the pieces that came before them. She tells her what she was. She glosses over all of the whys, and just tells Historia what she experienced.

She tells Historia the full truth about how they’re alike.

She tells her about her suffering.

She’s willing to admit that she finds the world incredible. All of her cynicism about what happened to her and how little it matters melts away, and all that’s left is freedom, and a life that she doesn’t regret.

Except for the part where they aren’t married.

You do not understand how much I enjoy Historia’s reactions to things.

Ymir gives Historia her whole history to remember her with, not just the parts they shared. She calls it a love letter, and brings up marriage so abruptly that no wonder Historia is confused, and while those are true expressions of how she feels, the romantic part of it is that Ymir wants Historia to know her. She wants to apologize, and let Historia know that them being incomplete is her only regret--and she wants Historia to know her before she’s gone. Even after she’s gone.

Historia’s the person she loves, and the person she wants to be with. She can’t be with her, but she can be remembered by her.

Yeah, that’s such romantic way to be SO UNBELIEVABLY UNHELPFUL.

Historia’s reaction is really the only correct one.

“You play it off the moment you feel embarrassed. How am I supposed to understand like this...?”

HOW ARE YOU BOTH SO BAD AT THIS.

Ymir, protip: stop bringing up marriage only when Historia is on the brink of tears.

Historia: SHE LIKES YOU.

I’ll admit to being dedicated to my belief that Historia does not have the first damn clue what Ymir wants from her, and this sequence really only makes that dedication stronger.

Historia probably understands Ymir better than anyone else on the face of the planet, but she doesn’t understand herself, and as a consequence, I don’t think she really gets how she and Ymir work, except that they do.

In the days before Ymir’s departure, Historia is still perfectly willing to believe that Ymir is only hanging about because of her family, but in the days after Ymir’s departure, Historia tells Connie in no uncertain terms that she knows Ymir. In the immediate aftermath of Utgard, she tells Hange that she knows her well.

Historia really does know Ymir--well enough to claim it as Krista, as Kristoria, and Historia.

That’s different from having faith in someone’s affection for you, and that’s where a lot of Historia’s confusion in their relationship comes from. On the one hand, she knows Ymir, and knows that she’s someone Ymir chooses to hang out with.

On the other hand, no one’s ever wanted her.

Ymir makes it more difficult by skating around her feelings so well that even when her glib remarks are serious, it’s hard to take them that way. She places implications of romance on either side of a story that’s clearly hard for her to let out. It can be read as lightening a heavy mood, or just the truth, and Historia is so terribad at trusting in a relationship that it’s like handing her a toddler’s slot toy and telling her the sdklj goes in the sdklj hole.

YOU’RE BOTH SIMPLE IDIOTS. STOP PRETENDING YOU’RE NOT.

I mean, that’s one facet of her response.

The other one connects to something a little further back.

“Ymir saw the real me… the me that chose the Survey Corps. The me that even I didn’t know about. But… after Ymir disappeared, I stopped understanding who I am… and what I want.” --Historia, 54

Ymir is still gone.

Historia has learned to understand pieces of herself, and she can be her own person, but the truth is that she only really feels secure in herself when she has Ymir, and Ymir isn’t here. Ymir might never be here again.

Ymir gives Historia her memories.

She doesn’t tell Historia who she was in them.

Ymir’s the only person who has ever had the ability to remember Historia Reiss correctly, and if she’s gone, and she never explains it, how is Historia supposed to know who that is? How’s she supposed to be the value the person she loves sees in her if she can’t recognize it?

These two have no idea what they’re doing.

They never really have, but they always knew that if they were together, somehow, that worked.

Now they aren’t.

The result is that we have the second time in the series that Historia’s tears actually fall. She tears up plenty, but the tears only make it past her eyes twice.

The first time is when he father hugs her, and tells her she’s wanted.

This is the second time, and it’s both cheeks, not just one.

Neither shot provides a clear view of her eyes.

That, obviously, is reserved for when Ymir and Historia are reunited.

(Let me have my dreams.)

Alright, having long since passed the point at which people will give up and go read something else, I... think that might actually be it.

Let the waiting commence.

#Shingeki no Kyojin #SnK 89 #Mikasa Ackerman #Historia Reiss #yumikuri #shingeki no spoilers #SnK spoilers #spoilers #tl;dr #chapter post

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