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potatochipscree · 2 months

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I can’t believe there’s people that can hear Nicclo say “We all have a devil in us”, Onyankopon declare “we were created because we were wanted”, and that one Marley Captain’s “We cultivated hate, nurtured our resentments. We let ourselves believe that could save us. And what came of our failings, we simply dumped onto the island of devils… Those failing gave rise to the monster you see before you, and its marching our hatred back upon us.” And not realize what the story is trying to teach you. It is a nuanced tale but its primary lessons are pretty much spoon fed to you.

At its core I would consider AoT to be part of the dystopian genre, its fiction so it’s still meant to entertain but its primary purpose is to warn and educate. Dystopian as a genre is not made to have satisfying, easily digestible endings. It’s meant to make you think, make you question, make you feel unsatisfied so you can do something about the injustice of the world that that story is made to reflect. As lovely as it would be for all the beloved characters to hold hands, renounce hatred, and have everyone forgive each other and live in a world of pure peace and happiness that would completely undermine the themes. It would completely ruin the call to action the unsatisfying ending is meant to be.

Okay, I just have to address this brain-dead take I keep seeing about how AoT supposedly "justified" genocide by showing the people or Paradis supporting the Rumbling, thereby, supposedly, justifying Marley's persecution of the Eldian people because, apparently, all along, they really did want to just sow destruction and destroy the rest of the world.

I feel like even having to address this is an insult to the brilliance of AoT and its writing, because AoT does literally the opposite. It doesn't promote fascism or push propaganda utilized by colonialist nations. It shows the folly of engaging in those very things by demonstrating the inevitable endpoint of that type of injustice. It doesn't paint the Eldians as "evil" and thereby justify Marley's persecution of them, it shows that it was that very persecution that led to the tragedy of Paradis becoming, in the end, what it did, and that led to the rest of the worlds destruction. This shouldn't need to be explained, but apparently there really are just complete idiots out there that need things explained to them in the same manner you would a young child with a barely developed brain.

Paradis falling into extremism at the end is the very thing that shows why Marley's persecution of the Eldians was bad and not justified.

The entire narrative structure of AoT is to demonstrate how cycles of hatred only lead to more of the same.

I've recently seen some people on here whining about how an "ideal" scenario would have been for Paradis to negotiate with the world's other nations and band together with them to defeat Marley, and oh gee and wow, wouldn't that have been nice! What a perfect way to end a story about the perils of persecution. You know, where nothing really bad happens and the villain is defeated and everyone lives happily ever after. That would for sure teach the audience those important, thematic lessons about the evils of prejudice and discrimination and oppression, by there being no actual consequences for anyone but the perpetrators of those evils. Because that's how the real world works, don't ya know.

In case anyone couldn't tell, I'm being sarcastic.

(Also, these same people labor under the wild misunderstanding of Eren's character that he enacted the Rumbling to save the island. That misunderstanding right there is going to completely hinder your ability to understand the rest of the narrative.)

If Paradis had actually managed to negotiate peace between it and the other nations, it would have completely undermined the driving theme of the story, which is the folly of persecuting entire groups of people. The wrongness of Marley's actions is demonstrated through the extreme end point of the Rumbling occurring and the destruction of the world. The Rumbling HAD to take place narratively in order for the point to be driven home that persecution of entire groups of people, and the act of grouping everyone into one, monolithic category, is a horrifically bad idea, in order to truly demonstrate the atrocity of Marley's persecution of the Eldian's. Paradis banding together with other nations and "stopping Marley" together would have undercut that entire theme, of how persecution of people only leads to further destruction and tragedy. It would have reduced AoT to an unrealistic, ideal fairy tale with no real weight or impact, where everything gets wrapped up in a neat little bow and the bad guys get punished and all's well that ends well. It's a completely childish desire to see the story take that route, fueled by a black and white world view of morality, denying the way things actually are in favor of the way you want them to be.

AoT is so powerful precisely because it refuses to do that, it refuses to show any sort of "good outcome" from persecuting people. The worlds destruction as a result of that persecution is the punishment wrought on everyone for allowing that persecution to take place. That's the point, again. AoT is showing us through the course the narrative takes that persecution is BAD, because it only leads to tragedy and destruction, it never leads to anything good or happy. Justice doesn't prevail when injustice is allowed to exist.

The Yeagerists only exist in the first place as a result of Marley's actions and persecution of the Eldians. AoT shows us how extremism is born. How attitudes of nationalism, fascism and militarism take shape and manifest. Paradis becoming a nationalistic, fascist state in the end is a direct result of Marley's nationalistic fascism and colonialism. It was Marley's actions that led to a person like Eren coming into power in the first place. It's literally a blueprint for real world scenarios in which nations are overtaken by megalomaniacal leaders and dictators. We see this play out every day, throughout all human history. You push people enough, you press them into a corner with no way out, and they become desperate, and turn to increasingly extreme methods to protect themselves, until that desire for self-preservation shifts into something else, shifts into ideology, and gets twisted and perverted into the same, illogical hate being perpetrated against them, lumping entire groups of people together and declaring them the enemy, and the cycle continues. It's how fanatics like Floch and his ilk are born. How extremist views like the only way to survive is to wipe out every, potential threat, are nurtured. I don't understand how people can miss this point, but they do.

Paradis avoiding that outcome, Paradis and its people being painted as nothing but the altruistic, totally innocent and suffering victims who never do wrong, again, would have undermined the core theme of the story, which is that persecution and colonialism and oppression of whole groups of people never leads anywhere good. That it only ever leads to more of the same. Because the people of Paradis are still people, susceptible to the same foibles and weaknesses of everyone else, and this outcome is baked into the human condition. It's not because the people of Paradis are uniquely evil that they go down this dark path, it's because they're simply human.

I really wish some people could get their heads out of their asses when it comes to assessing this story and what it's actually saying. But, you know, AoT is clearly just too sophisticated in its presentation of these themes for some people to get. Those people need to stick to something more basic, instead of shitting all over one of the most relevant and prescient works of art created in the last, several decades.

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