#Tom Jaeger

[joogios]

I wanna grow the apple, keep all the seeds

But I can't help but get so angry

You don't listen to me

[imjustsomebodyelse]

inheritance

i actually wanted to draw this for over a year

[thena0315]

Ymir, the Scouts, the Warriors and every past Subject of Ymir in the last 2,000 Years that died, are now all finally freed from the Paths

They can now all rest in peace

[sailorspica]

for his birthday (aug. 1), zeke + gifts

[zekescherries]

if ksaver really loved zeke like a son then he shouldn't have encouraged the euthanasia plan, when you think about it; would you want your "son" to devote his life to sterilizing all eldians, "ending their suffering"? inheriting a Titan that will ultimately cut his lifespan in half?

putting this burden on zeke after he just barely escaped the heavy burden that his biological parents put on him is just cruel, even though zeke was automatically gonna inherit the beast titan, ksaver should've encouraged him to have a "normal" life with what years he had left

[twisting-echo]

My Top 25 Crossover Couples (Pt 2)

(Please click on picture for better quality)

It's finally finished! I've had this sitting in my PicsArt drafts for over four months, and that's why some of the other pictures are blurry because it's been rendered so many times, but there had to be changes made based on my mood!

Top 25 Crossover Couples (Blank) by Daniarts19 on DA.

(This will also be the last time that I'll use this template by Daniarts19 due to her disrespecting my DNI and breaking her promise about not saying mean/rude things to me.)

Loona (Helluva Boss) x Izuku (MHA) (Dekoona/MoonRabbit): My friend @amethystoceandespiser got me to ship them. I'm invested in their chemistry and emotional connection.

Sunita (ROTTMNT) x Tucker (Danny Phantom): My friend @amethystoceandespiser brought this ship to my attention and I love it!

Octavia (Helluva Boss) x Danny (DP) (Spectral Owl): This is the ship that started the friendship between me and @amethystoceandespiser and I love it! Their emotional connection and chemistry has my heart.

Jazz (Danny Phantom) x Raph (ROTTMNT) (Tough Cookie & Smart Cookie): This ship came to me after my friend and I made our Scott Pilgrim AU. They're both older siblings who just want the best for their younger siblings. They understand each other's pain.

Mayor Lionheart (Zootopia) x Anna (Frozen): My reasons for shipping Anna and Mayor Lionheart are explained in this post here.

Sparky (Atomic Betty) x Amethyst (Trollz) This ship came to me as a kid.

Buttercup (PPG) x Nergal Jr (TGAOB&M) I love Tomboy x Nerd dynamics, but it's even more interesting considering that Buttercup fights monsters for a living and Nergal Jr. is a monster-demon-demigod-nerd-boy, lol.

Lobster Claws (SVTFOE) x Bubbles (PPG) (BubbleClaws) This crackship is based on a joke between me and my sister @small-tragedies

Goo (FHFIF) x Blossom (PPG) (GooBloss/PinkGoo) This ship came to me when I was a kid, and I thought that they were cute together.

Alice (AMA/AMR) x P/Pinocchio (LOP) (Palice) I have to thank my friend, @frie-ice for getting me to ship them.

Violet (The Incredibles) x Varian (TTS/RTA) (Virian) I have to thank @virianhaven for getting me to ship them.

Lola Bunny (TLTS) x Minnie Mouse (Minola) I have @dawn64 to thank for getting me to ship them so hard.

Lucifer Morningstar x Poppy (DuckPop/PopStar/ApplePop) I have @hah-studios to thank for getting me to ship them. Watch this video here.

Rapunzel (Tangled) x Fred (BH6) (Fredpunzel/Rapzilla/Sunzilla) I have to thank @rapunzelcrossoverqueen for getting me to ship them.

Minerva Mink x Marvin Martian (Minervin/MartianMink) I have to thank @dawn64 for getting me to ship them.

Panini (Chowder) x Lincoln/Warren (Loud House): I had an idea based on the "White Hare" episode, where Lincoln has a dream about being a rabbit named Warren with 15 extra sisters but instead has an Alice in Wonderland-type adventure being transported to Marzipan City, and you can probably guess the rest.

Ami (Sailor Moon) x Sonic (Sonic X) (SonAmi, I guess, lol): Being a die-hard SonElise shipper, it's easy to assume that Sonic has a type~

Daisy Duck x Cruella (Cruaisy): I started shipping them years ago when I watched this Disney short called Electric Holiday. I've made a couple AUs where Daisy works for Cruella in the fashion industry, and they become close friends and lovers in a May-December relationship. 

Tom (Tom & Jerry) x Bright Eyes (Pound Puppies Season 1): I like to headcanon that Tom and Bright Eyes are childhood friends to lovers. I explain it more in this post here.

Frank Wolff (Jungle Cruise) x Jack Sparrow (TPOTC) (SparrowWolf/WolfSparrow): I don't really ship characters from live-action movies and shows, but Disney Mirrorverse got me to ship these two goofballs.

Cinderella x Gojo (JJK) (Gojoella): Don't get me wrong. I love Sukuella, but I solely blame @peachudumplings for giving me Fairy-God-Gojo, and thus I ship Cinderella and Gojo too, lol.

Stitch (Lilo and Stitch) x Tinker Bell (Peter Pan): My reasons for crackshipping Stitch and Tinker Bell are explained in this post here.

Alice x Peter Pan (PanAlice): I've always shipped Peter Pan and Alice, but because of their Disney Mirrorverse counterparts, I shipped them harder.

Yuji Itadori (JJK) x Yuliy Jirov (Sirius the Jaeger) (YuYu): They have so much in common! That's all I'll say about these two for now~

Tiana x Nanami (Tianami): I have to thank @peachudumplings for getting me to ship them so hard. They're perfect for each other~

I am cringe and I am free!

Here is a link to my Top 25 Crossover Couples (Pt 1).

🚫IF YOU DO NOT LIKE THIS SHIP, PLEASE DON'T COMMENT OR REBLOG 🚫🚫 PLEASE DON'T STEAL OR REPOST MY EDITS 🚫

[xstawqtys]

i think zeke and mikasa have something in common, you see, mikasa freaked out when she saw lousie using her scarf, even though she was dying, just like zeke freaked out when he realized he lost ksaver’s glasses after fighting with levi i think they both have some kind of strong and special attachment towards their loved ones’s gifts, no matter how small or banal they might look to others, both zeke and mikasa will always take dear care of that gift for their entire life, which is exactly what they both did with Ksaver’s glasses and Eren’s scarf

[redfurrycat]

🚀🤖Pacific Rim and Top Gun (AU)🤖🚀

Tom Iceman Kazansky, Commander of the Pacific Fleet, the military branch of the Pan Pacific Defense Corps, brings back to the Miramar Shatterdome the former Jaeger pilot Pete Maverick Mitchell to teach the new Rangers how to become better Jaeger pilots as well as to combat the Kaiju.

He’s the last known Jaeger pilot alive to have defeated three kaiju, despite the fact he was piloting his Jaeger alone – his former co-pilot Nick Goose Bradshaw had died during a previous simulation exercise leaving Mav without a compatible match, though it didn’t deter Mav from piloting his Jaeger alone to save another Jaeger team – Ron Slider Kerner & Tom Iceman Kazansky...

However, the successful rescue (followed by Iceman’s declaration of undying love and admiration for him – ‘Shut up, Ron! It’s not true!’ had said an unnaturally flustered Ice after Mav and Ice’s wingmen hug moment) left Maverick with severe neurological injuries including phantom memories from Goose as he died while they were still connected to each other.

It’s like having a piece of someone within your body and soul, only that this person is no longer alive, and it could be quite traumatic for somebody new to attempt a drift connection with one-and-a-half person. (Partly why Maverick was shut out from the Jaeger program, that and his famously known chaotic nature, of course.)

Because to able to pilot a Jaeger, you have to share what is known as a drift compatibility with your co-pilot. Drifting requires the pilots to share their memories, instinct and emotions with each other, and it allows them to act as one consciousness and control the very movement of the Jaeger itself, each pilot controlling one hemisphere. While drifting, pilots need to keep their mind clear of all thoughts [psspss like the ‘no mind’ from The Last Samurai! 👼🏻] to avoid R.A.B.I.T – the following of a memory to the point of losing the focus you need to control the Jaeger. As such, drift compatibility is a potential that exists between two people, that is usually determined through sparring exercises in the Kwoon Combat Room, the point is not to beat your opponent but whether or not you’re able to work in sync with each other. {Source: the Pacific Rim Fandom Page about Drift}

Twelve new Rangers are called back to the Miramar Shatterdome, under the command of Marshal Beau Cyclone Simpson. Most of them are already paired up in a Jaeger.

However, Maverick wants to try some out-of-the-box thinking by changing the designated pair of each Jaeger.  "Because –says Mav reading from a stack of disorganized papers, in front of Cyclone, Warlock, and Iceman– according to research, the Kaiju are sentient beings very much capable of in-depth reasoning, something they weren’t to do before, and, as such, I feel the need, the need to change some shit up to try throwing them off."

Thus begin the tests for new drift-compatible partners…

Before:

The Crimson Typhoon team – Bob, Phoenix, Rooster.

The Striker Eureka team – Coyote & Hangman.

The Gipsy Danger team – Fanboy & Payback.

The Cherno Alpha team – Fritz & Halo.

The Guardian Bravo team – Harvard, Omaha & Yale.

After:

The Striker Eureka team – Rooster & Hangman.

The Bracer Phoenix team – Fritz & Phoenix.

The Gipsy Danger team – Halo, Payback & Yale.

The Crimson Typhoon team – Bob, Fanboy & Omaha.

The Coyote Tango team – Coyote & Harvard.

The Cherno Alpha team – Iceman & Mav. [Even though it's super risky for the two of them, they’ll pilot one last time, and for the first time together, to help assist and rescue the Jaegers teams sent to drop a bomb to close the Breach, cutting the passage between the Earth and the Kaiju homeworld, once and for all.]

Let’s just say that the changes are not smooth for every pilot. Some get to stay in the Jaeger they’ve known all along, others don’t (let’s say some neural handshakes allowing the drifting function better in a particular Jaeger with a particular pair).

Rooster, for instance, used to be in a three-neural-handshake, and now must share with only one person, the –absolutely "despicable"– flawless Hangman. And Hangman is a bit frustrated ‘cause he used to be the best with his Coyote bro…and now feels like falling behind because of Rooster. So, he may or may not be overly provocative with his new co-pilot who thinks too much and follows the R.A.B.I.T every time he drifts with Hangman. [Nevertheless, before Rooster spirals out of control, there is a very strong neural handshake, the strongest ever registered. They just need to sort their shit out first.]

Bonus Hangster Conversation

(inspired by my beloved Chaleigh babes' stellar conversation in the movie)

Hangman: So you're the guy, eh Rooster? You're the guy who's going to be my new co-pilot?

Rooster: Yeah, Hangman. That's the plan.

Hangman: Good. Good. So, remind me again. When was the last time you jockeyed, Brad?

Rooster: You know very well it was three months ago with Tasha and Bobby…’Cause you were there!

Hangman: Colour me shocked with the way you weren’t able to stop following the R.A.B.I.T earlier…Looked like you were a Jaeger groupie just given the opportunity to pilot a Jaeger for the first time of his life. You’re a Ranger, act like one!

Rooster: Excuse-me for taking the time to feel the new Jaeger and my new co-pilot! It’s easy for you to say! Let me reorganize my feathers or something before jumping into it!

Hangman: Oh, wow, that's great. I mean, that's really useful. We get into a fight, you can build our way out of it with wings, as we won’t move a single hair of our Jaeger, eh, Brad?

Rooster: It's Bradley.

Hangman: Whatever. Look, I know you’re Commander Kazansky and Ranger Mitchell’s golden goose, but to me, so far, you're dead weight. You slow me down, I'm gonna drop you like a sack of Kaiju shit. *fingers guns and winking combo followed by dramatic exit*

[jaeger-pups]

Who gave Zeke “the talk”? Grisha or Ksaver?

[joogios]

See, Ksaver may not have originally implemented the euthanasia plan into zeke’s head but i think its obvious that his own lowkey depressive passive suicidiality negatively impaced zeke’s own already shitty mental health in the ten years they had, and bro—telling the sixteen year old who wants to commit mass forced sterilisation on your own race “oh lol don’t take this to heart but my kid was killed by my wife because of our race” instead of yanno—“that’s a really fucked up way of thinking; there’s hope for us and we Warriors can use our abilities so our lives aren’t shit” is ABSOLUTELY abusive.

That being said, I think v v v subconsiously Zeke would know he’s been groomed but if he lashes out and admits that to himself/Ksaver he’d basically be admitting that the best part of his life was shit and that NOBODY, literally nobody, saw him as his own person and wanted good for him for himself instead of instilling their own selfish desires onto him. Amd I don’t think he (at least canon!zeke) is capable of doing that.

[marixrose]

ˏˋ°•*⁀➷ REQUESTS ♡

MASTERLIST

Request Status: OPEN!!

Fandoms I write for:

AOT

Squid Games

JJK

Obey Me

Arcana

HXH

Harry Potter

Yandere

Monsters (Vampires, Ghosts, etc.)

Characters from each fandom that I write for:

AOT:

Eren

Jean

Levi

Hange

Sasha

Mikasa

Ymir

Historia

Erwin

Bertholdt

Reiner

Porco

Pieck

Armin

Hange

Sasha

Pieck

Ymir

Historia/Krista

Mikasa

Annie

Arcana:

Asra

Lucio

Julian

Muriel

HxH:

Illumi

Hisoka

Killua

Gon

Kurapika 

Harry Potter:

Draco

Harry

Ron

George

Fred

Neville

Tom Riddle (younger version)

Oliver

Obey Me:

- Lucifer

- Mammon

- Levi

- Asmo

- Satan

- Beel

- Belphie

- Solomon

- Simeon

- Diavolo

JJK:

Gojo

Geto

Sukuna

Megumi

Yuji

Choso

Inumaki

If you have any requests feel free to leave a request!

[thena0315]

[sailorspica]

sole salvation: zeke jaeger, messiah claimant

this is so long it has a table of contents, and prompted by an ask from @oxygenbefore1775:

salvation and atonement

recapitulation

genealogy

the paths as wilderness

biblical fiction

all the english bible citations are from the NRSVCE, i reference the gospel of john just once because it sucks, this is barely proofread and about ~4k. two shorter posts that might be of interest:

the founder ymir eve-mary replacement theology run

krista/christa

none of this is arguing iseyama consciously made any allusions!! this is just comparative reading

1. salvation and atonement

i looked up the japanese title for snk 114, "唯一の救い," mostly for the second part. "唯一" is kind of obviously "sole" or "only" (if i know any CJK characters it's number radicals), but i wondered about the nuances of "salvation" because of the association i have for it below. this had me running to good ol' biblegateway.com, whose only japanese bible translation is the from the heavily paraphrased/colloquial Living Bible. a search of "救い" lands us in exodus, isaiah, and my second-favorite gospel, luke.

you guessed it: it's part of the word choice for "messiah." section titles in bible translations are editorialization, really, but the beginning of the nativity story in matthew is headed

約束 さ れて いた 救い主 promise (...tense stuff idk) savior

救 = rescue, aid, salvation; 主 = host, leader, lord

in the hebrew bible context of exodus, 救い most often refers to god delivering the israelites from egypt through moses, while isaiah is christians' favorite prophet for all his shit cited as prophesying the messiah. the title "christus" is latinized from the earliest greek translation of the bible from hebrew, which used "christos" for "messiah." kings good and bad were anointed with oil (chrism) at the start of their reign, so "anointed one," "messiah," and "Christ" really just meant a monarch. quoting some old testament pseudepigrapha (psalms of solomon 17:23-24), the messiah was understood in second temple judaism as a future davidic king expected to "thrust out sinners from the inheritance / to crush all their substance with a rod of iron / to destroy the lawless nations with the word of his mouth." (rod reiss, zeke as marley's spear, the scream, etc)

now for the "sole" bit. i am cursed to read the kodansha USA title "sole salvation" with the connotation of the solae of the protestant reformation, which are 2-5 doctrines articulated by various reformers but not necessarily codified (or creed-ified, as it were), uh, in protest of early modern catholicism. theological authority comes sola scriptura (not the pope), justification comes sola fide (not by following rules the best), and salvation is available to all sola gratia (through god's grace, not individual merit/how many indulgences you can afford).

how we apply all this to zeke:

what is wild about christianity and islam after it is "humanity"'s fall from grace and the promise of a messiah to remedy it were initially about just one people. AoT's dramatic irony has the paradisians refer to themselves as the whole of humanity until grisha's basement, so jaegerist ethnonationalism is, really, in keeping with the prehistoric tribalism detailed in the history books of the hebrew bible. when the israelites encounter egyptians and semitic peoples of canaan and babylon, they know them as pagans, and proselytization is not on their minds at all, nor these other peoples' relation or lack thereof to adam and original sin. with zeke, we see this idea of salvation and its scale and recipients flipped between grisha and ksaver: grisha promises the restorationists that zeke will save eldia, while ksaver and zeke swear to save the world from titans with eldia as the sacrifice.

the lack of consensus of how to "save" eldia mirrors the hairsplitting of soteriology into what modern commenters call theories of atonement. there are many, but the only ones i'll mention are

substitutionary theory: the vague but broadly understood starting point that jesus died for humanity, and most subsequent theories hammer out the details. with this you'll often see writing connecting it to the story of abraham and isaac, and a classic work is derrida's the gift of death chapter 3, but i have to say if this story echoes for anyone in AoT, it is tom ksaver and not just because of the ram.

ransom theory: humanity has been satan's hostage ever since the garden of eden, so jesus was born and raised, incarnated as human by god, to be the perfect sacrifice to buy back our freedom. this is weird because it calls into question god's omnipotence: why respect satan as a debt collector?

satisfaction theory: jesus' sacrifice is more about ethics and respect in that his death is the "minimum" price for our sins, but he goes above and beyond by walking willingly through the exact cavalcade of physical torture that was the passion, which "satisfied" god, working from a classical/medieval fixation on honor and dishonor.

penal (not penile) substitution theory: god cannot forgive sin willy nilly, so jesus bore god's punishment for us. this is lutheran, and if you read martin luther's diaries from when he was an augustinian, this man just wanted a morally perfect Dom. libs and catholics don't like this because it makes god look bad. s/o my kenny post where i put grandpas ackerman and jaeger side by side with a bit of penal substitution, but it also makes me think of grisha (below)

and my favorite, recapitulation theory, which is simply the most literary way to read the gospels: christ's life, not just death, are a do-over of adam's. he succeeds where adam failed, perfectly inverting everything about the first man: he was born of a woman (the cause of adam's fall 🙄) but chaste himself (allegedly), he's tempted directly by the devil and resists, and in death the piercing of his side by a roman centurion echoes that eve was made from adam's rib. it's the root of the idea of jesus and mary as the "new" adam and eve that i dip into in the krista post—antisemitic supercessionism is a later addition. mary "recapitulates" eve by obeying god, not satan, etc.

i didn't do that comprehensive a skim, but grisha and zeke seem to be the only ones who use "salvation" language, while karina braun uses "atone" in snk 94. "atonement" has one of the silliest etymologies of all time: at + onement, unification, when two become one. so framing the crucifixion as "atonement," and referring to mysticism as self-effacement, jesus' death is supposed to reconcile man with god, like we were divorced. its more pedestrian, legal definition is for reparations and such, but i don't think the soteriological version can describe marley and eldia at all. it's not just penal, but penitential (sacramental) semantics on kodansha USA's part. i might go pester @tsuki-no-ura for a direct translation later. but the jesus-est and adam-est thing about zeke, to me, is physical at-onement when ymir fuses his body into the founder, or as zeke says to armin in snk 137, "did ymir eat you, too?" so the death of jesus' earthly body is a horror story if you aren't trinitarian: he is subsumed into god, made indistinct.

2. recapitulation

recapitulation is a useful idea for FOUR AoT characters: zeke, historia, eren, and mikasa. i really think the figures that do the most to "recapitulate" the eldian creation myth are mikasa and historia, though:

historia: have already said my bit! she's the anti-mary, snk 65 has the juiciest theological language of all. see my second favorite gospel luke. she disobeys where ymir's daughters didn't: she says hell no, she kills her dad. she's my hero.

mikasa: eren and armin's conversation about mikasa and ymir more casts ymir as a god with mysterious motivations, so i'd say "whatever mikasa did" gives us a more medieval "satisfaction" model of pacifying her rage

eren: the whole metaphor on humanity penned in like livestock, ymir's leaving the gate open for the pigs. eren's defence of historia, even from her own self-sacrifice in volunteering to inherit the beast, also makes him an anti-daughter of ymir.

zeke: has all of the prologue and expectation to make him seem like a savior. if he recapitulates any part of "from you, 20,000 years ago," he starts out as fritz by attempting to order ymir with his royal blood, but ends up just as bound as her. there's a screencap we've all seen overlaying the storybook illustration of "ymir" and "the devil of all earth" with eren, zeke, and ymir in the paths. i have feminist tbh satanist thoughts on the nature of knowledge and forbidden fruit that i slghtly get into in that krista/christa post

this is the point where it's important for me to say this is an atheist post and blog, and jesus of nazareth was one of like half a dozen messiah claimants knocking around judaea at the time, including his own cousin john the baptist. the first coming of the messiah was a nearly as absurd a prospect to jews in the late roman empire as the second coming of jesus is to us, so "claimant" doesn't even mean they said so themselves. some were preachers whose followers got a little too hype, or just actual con artists. but! zeke does have a lot more christian echoes going for him beyond the exact function of his death.

in the original question mae asked about zeke in either marian or christian terms, so i gotta say that jesus was also human and subordinated to god's will, in a similar position to mary, as was adam. adam's rib symbolism is so erotic and penetrative and all i think about when titans in AoT are constructed spinal cord first. to me everything about titan shifters is a feminist issue of bodily autonomy regardless of gender, and the power of the founder to "rewrite" eldian biology is the most god-like, terrifying, violating thing about it. this is where a lot of more progressive christian theologians struggle, too, with the question of how is god, in all his power and goodness, still permissive of suffering? or is it that god is not in fact powerful, simply all-knowing? and is that worth jack shit? which is the issue of the royal family keeping the founder after the walls went up.

and we leave this section with the jesussy, or more specifically "the holy lance" that made jesus' side wound. but i think levi went for, idk, his appendix? good enough.

3. geneaology

the gospels of luke and matthew start with lengthy and conflicting geneaologies in support of the claim that jesus of nazareth is of the davidic line through the tribe of judah, but matthew's is patrilineal from abraham through joseph, while luke's is surgically imprecise about jesus' father and thus is often argued to be jesus's geneaology through mary backwards to adam, supported by luke being the gospel to feature women the most prominently. not knowing those intricacies or how legal adoption worked in 1st century judaea, you can say that mary is royalty and joseph is just some guy, ben david or not, because he famously did not contribute sperm. looking at zeke, grisha is just some guy, and dina's blood is the whole justification for zeke's suffering. had she not married grisha, she still would be affiliated with the restorationists, and whatever other child she had would be sacrificed much the same. this supposes that jesus of nazareth was just some guy himself, a typical second temple jewish teacher whose followers were especially rowdy; whether god is real or incarnated himself as human is inconsequential when mary is directly descended from david.

but joseph Does matter from a purely pragmatic point of view of protecting and providing for mary and jesus, from keeping his troth with a pregnant teenager he'd probably never met before to the matthew account of fleeing with them to egypt to hide from herod, and in christian ethics through shit like the Feast of the Holy Family, which replaced the much cooler Feast of the Circumcision.

point is, jesus had two dads! joseph is generally understood as a dead during the time of jesus' three-year ministry, but any time jesus refers to his father he does not mean joseph. like ever. zeke nation knows better than i how often zeke discusses grisha, but in my recollection he calls him his full name or says "your father" if talking to eren. in my subtitles for the above panel re: the second paradis mission he says something like "as the former son of the terrorist grisha jaeger."

but to be clear joseph of nazareth is comparatively a non-person. it's reasonable to think he taught jesus his trade of carpentry, though, and two of the greatest songs of all time play with that, along with that tumblrina poem that goes around here frequently.

beyond daddy issues, protestants like this binary of "high" versus "low" christology to discuss jesus as god and jesus as man, though the exact meaning of either varies and frankly i question the historical accuracy of using either to describe ancient/antique christological debates. the way the liberal protestants at the seminary i dropped out of tended to use it is basically sorting jesus's qualities and behaviors in the gospels as divine or human. divine activities = miracles, prophecy, rising from the dead; human activities = flipping tables, being rude to his mom, getting hangry. now these mostly look like venial sins, to err is human et cetera, but the fig tree story is one of the silliest little humanizing details about him, to me tantamount to zeke having a cat's tongue. zeke's whole problem is he holds himself to an extrahuman (not divine, no, since he probably would go with demonic) standard while forgetting what makes him human. ironically, zeke rejects his inhumane father to claim his very human mentor as family, but ultimately half-lives his own life holding himself to or counter their visions of salvation.

the other bit of jesus' family worth connecting to zeke is his cousin john the baptist. but he more belongs to the next section.

4. the paths as wilderness

the torah or pentateuch, the first five books of the hebrew bible, have 99 uses of "wilderness" in the NRSV, and it pops up about 150 more times throughout the prophetic books. of all AoT's hamhanded judaic imagery, i think the paths actually get at something theological as opposed to earthly/fixated on eldia as a persecuted people. the wilderness is a testing ground and a kind of punishment itself, especially in genesis and exodus, for prehistoric figures like hagar, moses, jacob, david, and of course the israelites once they left egypt, wandering for 40 years. they starve and god saves them with manna; left unattended for two seconds they turn to idolatry; and they of course conquer various tribal people of canaan, including the philistines (root of palestine). after that, "wilderness" is much more metaphorical, referring poetically to estrangement between god and his people, the israelites exiled in the babylonian captivity, the destructon of solomon's temple, etc.

but there's one literal wilderness in the gospels. jesus' cousin john the baptist is introduced by a quotation:

In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near." This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, "The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.'" (Mt 3:1-3)

john the baptist is jesus' maternal cousin who he likely only meets once in adulthood, and i am too pedantic not to explain that baptism, or ritual bathing, is not a christian invention. he hung out around the river jordan wearing a hair shirt and preaching and dunking people in a kind of open-air mikveh. jesus visits him to get dunked as he starts his three-year ministry that ends with his death, but before they meet there are already whispers that john the baptist is the messiah. herod antipas, a roman tetrarch, had john beheaded shortly after this at the request of his stepdaughter, so when herod hears stories of jesus' ministry and miracles he dreads that he's john the baptist returned to life.

one could say the fateful meeting of john and jesus is the turning point for the birth of christianity, like the jaeger brothers in shiganshina, in part because the gospels have john insist up and down he himself is not the messiah, he's just preparing the way for him. this kind of makes him look like a bigger loser than he was; contemporary jewish historians of the time say he had a following to rival or even larger than his cousin's.

but right after his baptism, jesus fasts in the wilderness for 40 days, where the devil tempts him. it's the most detailed in luke 4 and matthew 4. jesus resists like a champ, but returning to "low" christology and questioning what actually makes "perfection:" after three years of preaching in galilee, jesus' resolve wavers, and the "willingness" of his sacrifice is 2,000-year-old point of debate. two moments in the gospels that show he fears his death are praying between the last supper but before his arrest, and just as he dies on the cross. gethsemane, or the mount of olives:

And going a little farther, he threw himself on the ground and prayed, "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want." (Mt 26:39)

And going a little farther, he threw himself on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. He said, "Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet, not what I want, but what you want." (Mk 14:35-36)

Then he withdrew from [the disciples] about a stone’s throw, knelt down, and prayed, "Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done." (Lk 22:41-42)

and as he dies in matthew and mark, he quotes psalm 22, "eli, eli, lema sebachthani?" or "my god, my god, why have you forsaken me?" he shows resolve and despair, i think so very like zeke. his line in snk 114 of "are you watching, mr. ksaver?" makes me think jesus' relationship to god was similarly distant, and three years of ministry have to have changed jesus as much as oh, 13 years of being a human weapon changed zeke. ymir "tests" both jaeger brothers in the paths, so i bet there's some heresy out there that jesus "stole" john the baptist's role and followers from him.

one thing i'm fascinated by that i haven't seen laid out is that grisha and the restorationists deify ymir, even calling themselves "the chosen children of god" (woof), while ksaver the scientist asks the more materialist question of "what was that 'something'" that ymir encountered if not "the devil of all earth"? but zeke has to split the difference between these two. or, the power of the founder and the paths are simply too "god-like" (kenny's words uwu) for anyone to remain rational.

when zeke first describes the paths after he blows himself up, the first thing i thought of was biblical wilderness. in snk 137, he tells armin he's spent "an astounding amount of time" in the paths trying to understand ymir; i'm cursed to fill in that blank with 40-something, years or centuries or millennia. zeke using the sand all around them as an example of lifeless objects that don't seek to multiply reminds me of two things in genesis:

god's covenant with abraham in genesis 15, reiterated in 22 after a ram(!!!) shows up to take isaac's place: "Because you have done this, and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will indeed bless you, and I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore" (Gn 22:16-17). of course ymir building titans from sand recalls genesis 2, that god molded adam from dust, but before god formalizes this covenant with abram/abraham, he also says "I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth; so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted" (Gn 13:16)

the memento mori verse that makes up the blessing for ash wednesday is "remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return" (Gn 3:19) as he casts adam and eve from eden.

as a metaphor, i suppose wilderness in the bible evokes a time before creation, the void of possibility, and whether you find that beautiful or bleak, whether dust to dust makes you hope or dread, makes you closer to armin or zeke. my other atheist bestie from seminary was optimistic about the death of the human race because non-human life goes on, and that's okay and probably better; the earth can bounce back from the damage we dealt it, which is what trees growing in the colossals' footprints in the epilogue makes me think of. this makes me sound pro-apocalypse and well! i think this all solidifies that armin is the perfect counterweight, not just for the leaf and baseball; armin has always been curious about the planet, is a true scout, while zeke has been beyond the walls all his life, and has seen too much to be grateful. it's very mercury versus jupiter, details versus big picture.

5. biblical fiction

if you want to read the gospels as a total newb, start with mark because it's shortest, then i recommend matthew, then you can do luke and the acts of the apostles. but for juicy fiction that really digs into jesus as a human who struggles with the weight of expectation, you gotta get into:

the last temptation of christ (1988, dir. martin scorsese): i haven't read the book and only could stand the movie twice, yes even feat. david bowie as pontius pilate, but this was my first reaction to the the endng of AoT and the eremika cabin: jesus on the cross is tempted one last time by satan with a vision of running away and living as an ordinary man with mary magdalene. unfortunately zeke does not get a cabin vision but torment, and frankly his time in the paths is more like the three days jesus spent in hell before easter.

the liars' gospel by naomi alderman: is so crazy good, i love this writer deeply. it's more like four novellas stuck together of jesus' life and ministry and death narrated by his mother, judas iscariot, one of the sanhedrin that "tried" him prior to pilate, and barrabas, the criminal or revolutionary that pilate released to mark passover—all jewish, historical judean perspectives. to mary, jesus is kind of a deadbeat, awful eldest son (two of the gospels give him siblings; she did not die a virgin) who really should be working as a carpenter; to judas, he's an unworthy leader; etc. i think it's an excellent model for a novel-length, canon-compatible zeke fanfic.

if any sources are vague it's almost certainly out of the jewish annotated new testament (ed. levine/zvi brettler, 2017)

also tagging @pisspope 💜

[paranasloc]

Spoiler for those who haven’t finished season 4 part 3/the last two episodes

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I just finished the last episode and my mind is a hot mess.

I’m probably going to miss some things but here are some of the stuff I have an opinion about:

1. Regarding armin/erwin my thoughts remain unchanged. Despite feeling strongly about it, I gave the series the benefit of the doubt when erwin got killed. I wanted to see if I was wrong. I would’ve been happy about it. In the end armin turned out to be as effective of a commander as a ten year old. The fact of the matter is that he couldn’t do much in the end. He had a number of breakdowns, he wasn’t able to control or utilize the colossal titan as well as bertholdt could in the past, he slipped up that time he was doing a little pep talk with yelena in the background, his biggest plan all along was always to “talk it out first” but that failed too, etc. Eren still did what he wanted and people still died. Except for blowing up the dock and when he tried to sacrifice himself so that falco wouldn’t get eaten by Connie’s mom, I don’t recall any other accomplishments that were of substance in season 4. It’s also possible that I’m just forgetting things because my mind is still racing right now and I’m still going through it emotionally, but for now my thoughts are unchanged. Can you imagine what it would have been like had erwin lived instead?

2. Connecting from the thought above, we can’t change that erwin died, but after finishing the series I can finally conclude that jean should’ve been the next commander. At the very least, he should have been made a vice commander. First of all it’s not impossible that floch survived all of that, but it’s pretty convenient that he did so he could shoot at the fuel tank in order to create a situation where the rumbling would catch up to them. In this situation it was also pretty convenient that Levi had been injured so badly he couldn’t be the one to fight, so as the commander hange decided she had to go, which was apparently a suicide mission because of the temperature around the colossals. I’m going to keep it 100% real here and say the circumstances leading up to this point of armin getting handed the commander’s seat were pretty convenient. Levi whose instincts were so great he managed to remain more or less unscathed for most of the series including when he had to fight kenny, he really didn’t see zeke using the lightning spear coming? And even then he couldn’t dodge it? Despite years of remaining unscathed under different circumstances that were just as if not more horrible? Levi who, along with mikasa, was the first to notice and to react to the replica of the beast titan throwing its shots at them? I just found it a bit hard to believe. And Hange said in the end, “The position calls for a certain quality― a mindset of continuously pursuing understanding”, and I admit armin did have this, but are we really going to ignore what hange also said earlier in the series just so it fits the current narrative? In season 3 when they were arguing about who to give the injection to, hange held mikasa back saying armin was indeed exceptional, but that he lacked the leadership and experience that erwin had. At least from my pov, armin didn’t really change much from the second half of season 1 to season 4. Jean on the other hand, has proven himself numerous times in this regard. He’s a quick thinker, reliable, practical, and passionate - all the qualities of a good leader. No doubt jean isn’t perfect, but imo he’s definitely more suitable. Let’s also not forget jean too has his moments of “pursuing understanding”. There are probably more than I can think of at the moment, but the ones that come to mind immediately are that scene at the end of season 1 which has really stuck with me ever since, when he asked armin if abandoning your humanity was the only way to win, and if eren did become that monster would that really be a victory for humanity, and then that other time when they were in the cell and jean asked mikasa and armin if eren hurting them had some sort of meaning behind it. I wouldn’t say jean is the smartest or the wisest character in the series, but he’s not brainless. Far from it. For some reason, and I’m guessing maybe because he can be short tempered at times, more often than not people don’t really talk about his quick thinking or about the important questions that he’s asked.

3. This is totally unrelated to the series and it’s about naruto so if you’re not into that or if you haven’t seen naruto just skip this part because spoilers.

Before eren’s intentions were made clear I already kind of guessed how it would play out because it’s reminiscent of how itachi wanted sasuke to be the one to kill him so that sasuke would be a hero of the leaf despite being an uchiha. Eren saw the crew as the people most important to him, and for itachi sasuke was even more precious than konoha itself. Eren committed genocide, itachi massacred his entire clan and more. Eren hurt the crew and especially mikasa and armin on purpose, itachi hurt sasuke on purpose. There was of course a huge difference between their executions, and imo itachi played his part much much more skillfully than eren did and for far longer, but it’s an interesting parallel.

4. I found the ending a bit weird. I can kind of roll with it but compared to the majority of the series and how it built itself up up until that point, it honestly feels off. I understand why people thought it was a bad ending, but I also don’t think the author deserved hate for it. And I mean like, there are some really angry people. In most situations, and I’m generalizing here, it’s alright to have opinions and it’s alright to feel a certain way but to direct those feelings towards the author himself is taking it a bit far. It’s his freedom to write whatever. Let’s be happy we even got anything from him. Without the author there would’ve been nothing at all. I know from personal experience it can be overwhelming at times, but it’s going to be ok.

5. I don’t have a particular attachment towards zeke but I felt sorry seeing everything that he had gone through. I’m mentioning this only because I’ve never really talked about it I think. I’ve talked about some of the other characters but not so much about zeke’s past from what I can remember. Grisha and Dina were terrible parents, and him calling Tom ksaver “father” was really sad. I know he’s not the only one and I really don’t even like him all that much but he really had it rough.

6. I felt that the love interests weren’t written very well. I get mikasa cause she’s been obsessed with eren from the start, but we really only started to see eren’s supposed “interest” in her in season 4, and only in glimpses. There really isn’t a lot of material to fall back on. I always felt he saw her as more of a sister? Of course he’s shouted at her before that he wasn’t her little brother or something along that line, but I always felt he just saw her as family. The only thing I can think of from earlier seasons to support this pair is that time when eren first wrapped the scarf around her and he was blushing. I always saw that as more of like, he was kind of embarrassed to do something like that because for him the act was a bit intimate and they weren’t too familiar with each other, but I guess you could also see it as him blushing because he had a small crush on her. On top of this they lived together in the same house and grisha has referred to mikasa as his daughter, so I just found it a bit weird. Obviously they’re not actually siblings but they were kind of raised as brother and sister for some time, so. A bit weird from my perspective. What’s more is the dynamic itself doesn’t seem to be very healthy. But I’m not mad at people who ship them. That kind of romance is definitely possible, and they’re technically not related, so it’s whatever I guess. They were also very young still so in an ideal world I imagine their dynamic might’ve been able to change for the better as they matured. On the other hand armin and Annie I found even weirder. It just felt too sudden. I get that armin ate bertholdt so that could’ve contributed, and I get that Annie literally only had armin and hitch as company most of the time for literal years, but it’s still weird for me. Like good for them but I wish it could’ve been a bit more fleshed out.

7. I’ve said this before but I didn’t appreciate the parallels drawn between Erwin and Armin. They are entirely separate characters with entirely different motives. Connecting to what I said at point 1 armin was never able to “replace” erwin. Of course the same can be said for erwin, he was never going to be another armin. I feel the same way about the parallels drawn between Sasha and gabi. Again two entirely separate characters with entirely different motives. I can appreciate parallels but only if they’re written well. These just felt like forced propaganda.

There’s more but for now I’ll stop here cause this is getting a bit long and I’m really tired

[zekescherries]

[pilots-and-protons]

Considering that Tom Paris has piloted:

At Warp 10 (Infinite Velocity, Everywhere All At Once)

An alien vessel with a Coaxial Warp Drive

Through a Borg Transwarp Conduit

With a Quantum Slipstream Drive (Temporarily)

Using a Neurogenic Interface (While Possessed By an AI)

I can't stop thinking about a scenario where some aliens pilot their ships with something like the "Drift" from Pacific Rim (sort of an upgraded, more integrated version of the Neurogenic Interface).

Would love a scenario where members of the Command Crew get kidnapped somehow and taken away from Voyager by these aliens. After retaking the ship (or even the equivalent of a shuttle), the only way for them to get back to Voyager without it taking years is for someone to pilot using the integrated "Drift" drive.

Of course, because of his broad scope of experience, Tom is the only one actually capable of it. But it would put him at great personal and physical risk. <3