I've been thinking about ghoul history and I have beloved head canons I need to share because I have a friend who has not read Tokyo Ghoul. I need thoughts/response to my head-canons. Please, I beg of you.
WW1 and WW2 are very important to the current situation of ghouls throughout out the world. Both wars led to a boom in ghoul populations world wide that caused greater conflict with humans and technology was getting better but it was still hard to combat them.
Because of humanity constantly kill the weaker ghouls that got caught they kinda created the very strong ghouls the modern age faces now. Like how over use of antibiotics can lead to the creation of super resistant bacteria.
Any thoughts, disagreements or add ons' are appreciated!
YESYESYES YOU KEEP TALKING
Ghouls have, unfortunately, often benefited from human conflicts. Whether it be on the small scale of local gang rivalry or the large scale of war and mass turmoil, the ability to hunt or even scavenge fresh bodies without being noticed as much is helpful. It’s a well known fact that areas with more violent crime often have higher ghoul populations, and in wartime, those populations bloom
Wars have been where ghouls shine. Especially in Europe, Asia, and parts of Africa, ghouls were often the first to see signs of upcoming conflicts because they’re the most sensitive to available bodies, the smell of blood, and places where it’s easy for deaths to go unnoticed. They’re the first to know war is coming and, once it has arrived, unlike the humans around them, feel some relief. It’s never a good thing to be bombarded by new dangers, but for a people who are being hunted and having to kill anyway, they’re well equipped both for the physical and psychological aspects of long term combat
Historically, ghouls have made great soldiers. They won’t run out of rations when every body is a meal. They can fight harder and longer than anyone else and can not be truly disarmed. They cat stab through armor and resist arrows and blades. They can heal fast and carry their comrades. For a lot of old history, it was an open secret among military leaders that if a man who does not seem to eat but never seems to die is in your ranks, so long as your fellow soldiers are not going missing, do not take him for granted. Never look for him when the war is over, but for now, he is your best weapon. This changed after the First World War however, because with the new mass use of tanks and artillery, being a ghoul was less of an advantage on the field. Yet that did not mean the ghouls didn’t benefit.
European ghouls in WW1 joined the army less than ever before after the first guy who got ready to eviscerate some bodies saw a fucking TANK, but that did not dissuade all of them. Plenty still joined the ranks to escape their current living situation with a good alibi or to assure they’re be fed, but many stayed home or chose to wander. Wandering and scavenging battlefields is a good way to eat if there’s a conflict, and now, those battlefields are everywhere
Trench warfare was a new issue, it made a lot of the meat sickly, but it was easy for ghouls to slip into a trench, steal a uniform, and just chill out eating the bodies that piled up. A lot of human soldiers simply pretended they didn’t know that a man in an ill fitting suit was eating their dead comrades, it spared them from having to see their brother in arms rot slowly or worse, add more filth to the mud at their feet that they can’t escape. There have been records however of more active ghouls in trenches, such as that from a french officer who reported a mass of activity from the enemy, then silence, and after a few days of waiting, sent a scout. The scout found the entirety of enemy troops massacred, and only pieces of them left. A few European ghouls however still laugh at the old family story of some of their ancestors descending on a company of Turks and feasting for days
By the time the war ended, ghouls were the only people not starving. Plenty were suspicious of those neighbors who, despite giving away their rations to them were the only ones still plump and healthy, but most never questioned them. Whatever is going on with them can be ignored if they’re the reason their children survived that winter. A lot of ghouls managed to keep people alive simply by having no use for the limited food.
By the second war, they knew the drill. Battlefields are too dangerous with bombs and tanks, so even fewer joined this one, but now they know how to get through them better. Fathers showed sons how to sort through the bodies of soldiers for those with no mud in their wounds and to always discard corpses with trench foot or mustard gas burns. Mothers taught daughters to pretend to be reluctant to share their food while secretly hoarding their real meals. They all taught each other how to go unnoticed and how to pluck bodies away
World war 2 was one of the few conflicts that ghouls primarily joined out of moral obligation rather than hunger. There were plenty of bodies, but now those who joined the armies did so because they knew better than anyone what was happening. Before the world at large saw what was happening in German camps and Japanese occupied territories, it was ghouls who could smell the bodies and did what they could to report it
The hardship of civilian life in the wars, even beyond the starvation, was more easily survivable by them. No medicine? Well it’s not like they could go to doctors anyway. People attacking each other and raided houses for supplies? Well that’s just a meal delivering itself. Men being drafted? Good luck Buddy there’s barely any official registration for ghoul families and even if they have it, they’re used to packing up and running
In addition to no resources being allocated to hunting them and plenty of food allowing them to keep their kids alive and have more, it was also a huge financial boom. Suddenly there were a lot of open jobs and bosses asked less questions. Some of the most powerful European and Asian ghoul families today got their start in WWII by taking on powerful positions that would normally be unavailable to them because the previous dynasties were falling in droves. Similar to women getting manufacturing jobs once too many men were drafted, ghouls got higher paying and even politically powerful jobs once they were the last ones left so strong, healthy, and with plenty of heirs to back them
After the wars, they remained in a population boom for a couple of years in part due to the continued struggle of rebuilding that left little in the way of anti-ghoul efforts, but also because of the sheer amount of bodies they had time to prepare, dry, and store in cellars. A lifetime supply of human jerky let them lay low whenever they had to
Unfortunately, a lot of younger ghouls, spoiled by a childhood of beneficial chaos and plentiful food, became a bit too bold. There were a lot more ghouls now, and a lot of them have never starved, and were not willing to struggle through the same hardships others have. Much like boomers fucking up the economy because they took their financial privileges for granted, war child ghouls were too obvious in their attacks and over hunted, leading to more crackdowns on ghouls
Having a common enemy is an easy way to get public support, and after a major conflict, it’s nice to have an easy, universally hated enemy who everyone can agree to hate. Especially when that enemy isn’t human, it’s nothing like what that German asshole who did all this was saying, they’re not attacking people, they’re attacking monsters. Monsters who everyone can see are dangerous. At that time a lot of armies and law enforcement had to be restructured to account for the new technologies and laws of war, so departments and policies about ghouls were easy to toss in there
By a decade after the war’s end, ghouls were back to being the number one public enemy and the bold youngsters who enjoyed easy meals either had to adapt to sometimes starving or died. The world now had large organizations to hunt them and international alliances. The era of the CCG had begun. That said, the effects of that population boom and the scraps of wealth and power ghouls managed to gain can still be felt. And for a few years, there were a whole lot of ghoul families who didn’t get reported by people who know that their children never would have made it through the blitzkrieg if not for their unsettling, too-healthy, once standoffish neighbor who failed to pretend that it was a hard choice to give them their rations
