Tag: black swordsman arc

bthump:

at this point is there even any functional thematic difference between guts and an apostle

and i don’t mean like guts descending into monstrosity, with or without the armour he’s doing pretty good on that front. i mean like these apostles acting humane and reasonable

idk i feel like… a sacrifice seems to have been treated as a moral event horizon there’s no going back from, since, y’know, it turns you into a monster and whatnot. but despite the literal transformation, both in power/physicality and personality, apostles still get choices which can mould them.

i mean we got puck’s whole thing about how count slug was still human at his core, and the more he denied it the more obvious it was, and then he failed to sacrifice his daughter. we have rosine dying while filled with remorse.

i feel like maybe apostles embody the idea that some decisions are permanent. peekaf leaving home and never being able to return, that sort of thing.

sometimes there are no second chances, the people you screwed over are gone forever, and you yourself are forever changed. but despite that you still don’t have to live consumed by… all that bullshit apostles are so into. sadism and bloodlust and cannibalism and rape etc. consumed by the swirl of negative emotions, let’s say.

i’d like to get a real spotlight on an apostle like zodd (or grunbeld I guess, sure gimme that novel) who has principles, and who still strives to like… make good choices, yk? they’re not gonna redeem themselves back to becoming human and bringing their sacrifice back to life, but hey, like, do all apostles end up in hellnado?

it seems to me that apostles have the same choice guts has – succumb to the beast or make it your controlled weapon – if perhaps on a higher difficulty setting due to being monsterized, and i wanna see more.

so scrolling past this and i remembered another thing i noticed while re-reading black swordsman stuff:

so yeah what this implies to me is that apostles are not “demonkind” by default. presumably their souls can still vibrate away from the hell whirlpool.