#anti-shingeki no kyojin

[hopeymchope]

One last time, for old time's sake: Fuck "Attack on Titan."

It's been a while since I've posted some hate about how badly Isayama killed SNK/AOT for me in its last third. That series — which was a big fave of mine for roughly 89 chapters — eventually just completely fucking shit the bed and then faceplanted right INTO the shit. I got pretty upset about it, and honestly? I STILL get riled up when I think about it.

(If your HOT TAKE in response to this is "Y R U so emoshunly invesstd in FICSHUNUL CHARAKTURS?????? LULZ" just stfu and gtfo, ok?)

But of course, I'm referring to how I felt RE: the manga's events and ultimate ending. Said ending is relevant once more, though, because just this past weekend? The anime hit its conclusion.

As a manga reader, I tried to hang in there for a LONG time after the unfortunate timeskip hit with Chapter 90. But they finally lost me so hard at Chapter 124 that I walked. And that's the reality for most of us who were angry and disgusted. We just... left. We stopped talking about it.

That's why, today, those who're still discussing AOT are almost all the die-hard fans who never stopped loving it. Which is part of why talking smack about AOT right now has got me feeling as paranoid as Sasha trying to stealth-cram a potato down her gullet.

Even so, I soldier forward. I've been thinking back on how bad this one hurt when it killed itself, which led me to looking over my old posts on the matter.

So, in "honor" of the end of the anime series, let me take a moment to look back on how they Shat on Titan.

One my first posts explaining the downward spiral was this long boi that attempted to summarize my MANY negative feelings at the time.

More thoughts on how it all went wrong in response to an Ask.

The timeskip was a mistake, and it felt wrong in many ways. This was the moment it began to most clearly go to hell... even though there WERE earlier warning signs.

...actually, I'd better rant about that some more.

For a while, we thought Isayama was maybe just screwing up an attempted "hate leads to more hate" message? (The ending of the series made it clear he was never trying to go there.)

Of course, at one point it was pointed out to me that the Eldians are maybe supposed to represent the history of Japan instead of the Jews, which... honestly doesn't help the situation very much, actually? It's still REALLY fucked up?

Thankfully, I wasn't totally alone in all this. (Even if it sometimes feels like I am.)

I did come back and read through the ending of the series, which... surprise!... sucked hard.

One last negative ask/response.

I see you wreckin' the tale of the peeps I loved And I'm like, "Fuck you" (ooh, ooh, ooh) The characters you had weren't enough, so I'm like, "Fuck you, and your story, too"

[pinkdivinite]

anyway implying a man being short decreases his manliness is not only wrong but also icky fyi

[sonofthesaiyans]

I'm suddenly reminded again how pissed off I still am about Sasha Braus on Attack on Titan.

Will we EVER get any justice for that fucking stunt? Or for how that stupid ending just glossed over all the characters who were killed for no reason at all in the end?

Yeah I'm still angry at the ending, at season four, and the final 48 chapters of Attack on Titan, none more so than everything from Assassin's Bullet onward. So many offensive scenes associated with Isayama's determined effort to abuse and obliterate one character for his own sick games. Hajime Isayama is a truly impressive kind of asshole, because what he did...........A fucking nightmare that actually did come true.

I still dream of the day where I spit on his work right in front of his face.

And oh yeah, fuck Gabi Braun, if she has any remaining fans here, sorry not sorry. She's an overplayed, OP bitch. And so is her big brother Eren Yeager.

Yeah seeing images of that one moment in anime that left you bitter like few others have will bring some pretty hateful memories back to the surface.

[lenok993]

Source

[six-paths-of-jeanmarco]

Thank you for killing me slowly by a thousand mental cuts the ask, anon! First of all, lemme apologize for taking so long to answer, but in my defence, you asked me quite the question here.

I want to say first that I used to be a big snk fan. And then the final chapter was released. It was so bad that it made me look at the whole series with a very critical eye, which made me realize that snk has never been that great to begin with. What really made this story good was the anime produced by WIT, and what really carried the story was its big mystery box. The moment we opened it, everything went downhill bc this was no longer a fantasy world, but a lazy parody of ww2 Germany & Japan.

But more importantly, and referring to the final arc, I started to notice all the rot hidden in plain sight: its fascist and antisemitic undertones, the awful writing, the lackluster worldbuilding, the braindead politics and the inconsistent treatment of characters.

Despite my newfound interest for the cautionary symbolism of Reiner and his character arc, I still think it was handled poorly. I have the same problem with characters like Gabi, Annie, Magath, and Pieck. Their individual arcs ended with them facing no real consequences for their crimes. Magath, despite being a literal representation of the nazi, was rewarded by the plot with a heroic death (a baffling choice when you think about who he is and what he did, and just how brutal and meaningless all of the Scouts deaths were pre timeskip). Reiner, Annie, Pieck, and Gabi were all rewarded with the promise of a new, happier life ahead of them, despite being responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths directly or indirectly.

Gabi herself is proof of just how bad the writing is: RBA lived inside the walls for around 3 years, and yet they still went on with their mission. They still killed Marco. Annie still massacred those Scouts. It took Reiner 7 years to fully acknowledge that what he did was wrong and to finally make amends ... by joining an alliance that had the same goal as that of the warriors for the whole goddamn arc: take down Eren. However, Gabi realized she was wrong in like what, just a few months at best? Their development is dictated by however the plot needs them to be or act. But there's more:

Marco, the Levi Squad, Sasha, and -- as victims of similar circumstances -- Pixis, and Hange, the embodiment of pacifism, were all condemned for being good people, and some of them for believing that there is good in everybody, even in their enemies; and punished for believing that conflicts could be solved in peaceful ways. Does the cautionary symbolism of their brutal deaths still holds up when the story rewards violence and crushes pacifism?

I don't think it does.

Showing that even the worst of the worst are capable of change and doing the right thing in the end is an important message, but. The idea that everyone is just a victim of their uprising or their circumstances is simply wrong. Ideologies don't exist without people, cowardice does not justify orders carried out that lead to attrocities. This idea fails to acknowledge that evil exists. Not just nuanced evil, but pure evil as well. It also goes the other way around. This idea also fails to acknowledge that good can exist.

And also to sympathize with Pieck, who was still loyal to marley despite what they're doing to her own people. And Magath, who in his final moments, revealed that he actually cared about the kids he was indoctrinating and instructing to commit genocide all along. I can't ignore the similarity with the way neonazi like to bring up hitler's friendship with Bernile Nienau, a girl of Jewish origins, as an attempt to humanize him. Heck, even Zeke's final moments painted him as more sympathetic than he was. Such is the case with Floch, and the way Jean reacted to his death. All those characters were redeemed in the audience's eyes without facing any substantial accountability.

I also have a huge issue with the false equivalences that were supposed to show us how morally grey everyone and everything is.

-> The link to the post in the screenshot

Jean and Connie and the Scouts that attacked Liberio aren't just wrongfully presented as something they're not, they're also used as tools to rationalize what Reiner and co have done to them throughout most of the series. Jean briefly does that with what Reiner did to Marco before he punches him to a pulp. Then again with the "we're the same" bs. Then again with implying Reiner is one of them as a Scout. There's also no real tension between the warriors and the Paradis side of the alliance. What the warriors did to Paradis is truly horrific, so their only way for redemption is through their victims.

The mistake that most people do when they interpret their relationship or the characters themselves is to only look at the characters' in-story intent. But there's also this thing called the author's intent that overrides everything. Sometimes, you cannot separate an author from their work. Especially when it comes to the final 12 chapters, where the quality of the writing is in the sewer.

But there's actually another way through which these characters were redeemed: the introduction of a much greater evil and a much horrific event that makes everything else pale in comparison. The main conflict of the story was revealed to have always been Eldians vs Eldians. But that wasn't always the case. Not until isayama retconned Eren, and then treated him the same way he treated the warriors. Eren's friends refused to condemn his actions, and instead repeatedly rationalized, then absolved and thanked him for what he did. It doesn't matter that they still did what was right in the end, that Mikasa killed him, or that Armin admitted they're both going to hell for the atrocities they've individually committed. In the anime. Which came out almost 3 years after the release of chapter 139+the extras and the massive backlash that followed. Let's not forget how that conversation went in the manga:

None of that matters because there's a dissonance between their actions & words and their attitude. isayama couldn't condemn any of his genocidal characters in a way that matters, in a way that would leave no room for moral ambiguity. But perhaps the greatest injustice isayama has committed to his own characters, story and messages was to retcon Eren, the character that was at the center of a message as powerful as the idea that we're all special because we're simply born in this world, into a genocidal maniac that cared about no one and nothing (if he actually cared about his friends, he wouldn't have put them through living hell, not when he actually had the power to prevent it, and if he actually cared about his mother, he wouldn't have killed her) through one of the worst executions of the time travel trope I've ever seen.

Snk is not a story that condemns fascism, let a lone a "masterpiece" when it comes to social or political themes, because it's centralized on justifying the oppression of the Eldians and making it an integral part of the plot. Not only are the Eldians an obvious metaphor for Jews, which is antisemitic on its own given how it's executed, but isayama ends up making them truly horrific because he takes real world antisemitic conspiracies and turns them into factual realities in his own story, all while seemingly acknowledging that Jews have been oppressed and the victims of the worst genocide in history. Moreover, the Eldians also seem to be ideologically inspired by imperial Japan, Paradis in particular. As @ shangyang points out in their essay, we shouldn't forget the fact that this is a manga authored by a Japanese man, nor that Japan has its own history with fascism. (Plesse don't skip any of the posts linked here)

All that being said, isayama's true intent is more than clear: violence is praised because his characters were written so to see violence as their only option, and the fascist mentality of eternal warfare as the status quo. Pacifism is not presented as an option. There's no nuance, only extremism. Even the cycle of hatred at the very end only serves as proof that the intent of the story is to present an extremely narrow worldview in which the human species is only capable of perpetual warmongering, hatred, destruction, and death. Which is wrong and is the very opposite of what I'd call "nuance", imo. And the reason this bothers me so much is because snk and other "morally grey" works alike aren't portraying evil people as just that, people, and evil as something that exists in all of us - no, what they're doing is making the unlikeable likeable, the unjustifiable justifiable, and they're making people sympathetic towards things they shouldn't be sympathizing. Such narratives are banalizing evil (if I had a nickel for how many posts I've seen justifying what Magath did or outright saying they love the guy, well I'd have a lot of nickels) and depreciating good (lots of nickels for all the posts I've seen bashing the Scouts). Such narratives serve as propaganda for the things they claim to condemn.

The result is that such stories beget ignorance, and ignorance is a fertile ground, whether is the case of people who are only interested in shipping and blorbofication, or the people who are not properly educated to know what they're dealing with.

And there's a reason actual fascists and neonazi are circling the series like flies, identifying with the yeagerists, and saying that "Eren was right". They're not taking control of the narrative, they're seeing it for what it really is. The progression of Eren's character arc, his motivations, the retcons, the conclusion of the story, Ymir's motivation, the undeserved redemptions, the characters not behaving in ways they should based on their history, none of those things make sense because they don't have to make sense. They're only pretexts meant to mask the actual intent of the story. The cycle of hatred didn't end because the rumbling truly failed. Because "the enemy" (the people outside Paradis, all of them, as Eren made it very clear) wasn't completely obliterated. Because as long as there's "the enemy", there can't be peace. Fascists have a complex relationship with war. They don’t like it, but "the enemy" is always forcing their hand. The rumbling was meant to succeed.

This is not a cautionary tale for anti-fascists.

Snk is a cautionary tale for fascists.

Now recontextualize all of that in present-day fascist politics, and see where it takes you. But ofc, this is only my interpretation, based exclusively on the story itself.

[melishade]

Attack on Prime: Eren's Trials

Main Story

....DAMN IT I HAVE NO SELF CONTROL! FUCK SHIT BITCH MOTHER-!

Deep breath. Okayyyyyyy.

So this is not official. This is going to be a demo. I want to see how well this tracks on Tumblr. If it tracks well on Tumblr, I might be willing to continue writing it in full. If not, I'm just gonna write a summary of it with a few little snippets. The only reason I'm even thinking about doing this is because @justawannabearchaeologist and I have been brainstorming ideas and it's just been spiraling out of control!

So if you guys really want this to continue: please actually let me know what you think because it will gauge how this proceeds!

Okay?! Okay.

Also spoilers.

Summary: It is the end of Eren Jaeger's story. The boy who sought freedom had failed to complete the Rumbling. His friends opposed him, his family disowned him, and Optimus had killed him. He expected to be suffering in hell for all eternity, or just stop existing. But divine intervention has offered him a chance at reincarnation, if he can pass thirteen trials from the Primes that proceeded Optimus Prime. Succeed, he will be granted a new life. Fail, and he will disappear forever.

If Eren wishes to survive, to win, then he must fight.

Eren felt his eyes twitching when he realized that he was able to think again. He slowly opened his eyes to a rather strange sight. He could tell that it was nighttime, what with all the stars, however, he also saw clouds of colorful gas slowly floating along. Eren groaned, forcing himself to sit up and study his surroundings further. He found himself surrounded by a purple fog with no end in sight. The floor beneath him felt smooth and he looked down to see his reflection in the water. His hair was still the same length from when he was dragged back from Marley and when he was in the Paths. He wore those dark pants and hoodie along with his green shirt, but his eyes were still blue as the color of energon.

"Where am I?" Eren mumbled to himself. He felt something in the grip of his right hand and looked over to see...

Mikasa's scarf. He was holding Mikasa's scarf in his hand. He pulled it slightly, and the motion caused ripples to form in the reflective water. But the scarf didn't touch the water, nor did it get wet. What...what happened? Why did he have this? Why was he-?

Eren yelled and clutched his head as memories came flooding into his mind....He activated the Rumbling.

Eren! NO!

He attacked his comrades, along with Optimus' comrades.

Someone help me!

MURDERER!

Eren please stop!

MEGATRON!

He...he was killed by-! Eren covered his mouth and held his neck as he remembered the searing hot pain of the blade going through him, tearing him in half.

And...Armin and Mikasa....

You don’t get a say, Eren! Not anymore! You’re dead to me! I just can’t do this!

See you later, Eren.

Those words hurt more than the blade lodged into his body. Eren fell backwards onto the reflective floor, feeling the ripples form at his motions. That was it. He failed. He was officially dead, and everyone who knew of him, alive and dead, no doubt hated his guts. Eren raised his hand to see the red scarf dangling in front of him. He blinked, feeling tears starting to form in his eyes. All he had left now were memories, hateful memories, memories of bitterness, and this scarf. This scarf that once represented his connection to Mikasa was now severed. He would never be able to give it back to her. Not that she wanted it anymore. She would forget about him and move on with her life.

Eren's arm rested on the floor again. It was probably good for her anyway. He probably would have told her to forget about him at some point...but his last words to her were nothing more than that of a pathetic man. Armin made it clear her never wanted to see him again. He destroyed the connections he had with his very first friend. He destroyed the outside world they both wanted to see...did they both have the same vision of the outside world?

And then...there was Optimus...who told him that he considered him son and would always love him...he was certain Optimus hated him now. And now...this was his hell...

He didn't know how long he was waiting there, but the longer he did, the more nervous he felt....why....why the hell wasn't anything happening? He's heard different versions of hell when he was exposed to the outside world. Fire and brimstone, demons torturing you, darkness, anything? Why was he just forced to be here? Was this his own personal hell: to be idle for all eternity?! That can't be it! He needed to leave! He wanted out! There had to be way out before he lost his sanity and-!

"Eren Jaeger." Eren force at the sound of a voice, stopping his mind from spiraling further into madness. He bolted upright, and froze at the sight of...something standing before him. It...it was a metal being, a metal being that was the size of a human. The being was completely white with hints of blue that flowed through its armor. But those eyes, those eyes that mirrored his own, with that same shine of blue, it was energon. This being was a Cybertronian. But...That couldn't be right. Appearances alone, it should be a Cybertronian, and they were usually bigger. The size of titans. Why did this one look his size?

Even so, Eren couldn't help but feel unnerved at the way it looked at him. The expression was neutral, but its eyes showed contempt. "Who...who are you?"

"I am Prima: Primus' first creation, and the first Prime," he answered.

Eren's apprehension was replaced with contempt. Primus. Of course this had something to do with that god! The whole place looked like something that he would design! "You have to be fucking kidding me." Eren stood up. "Primus couldn't finish me off himself, so he decided to pawn me off to some dead Prime with a name that just screams ego?!"

"I'd advise that you watch your tone, boy," Prima warned.

"Or what?! Primus is too hypocritical to actually follow through on his-!" Eren felt something graze his skin and cut strands of his hair in an instant. Eren looked down towards his left cheek and gasped in horror at the sight of...it. The weapon that appeared in Prima's hand without Eren noticing...the weapon that Optimus used to end his life, the weapon that had just grazed his cheek and remained by his face, causing a sting of pain and drops of blood to appear: the Star Saber.

Eren's legs wobbled before he collapsed to the floor on his rear. The titan shifter breathed heavily, but froze in his panic when Prima raised the blade towards his chin.

"Primus might be a being of compassion," Prima began, "But we were forged to be weapons of war, with the sole purpose of slaying gods."

"That..." Eren gulped, "That's...Optimus-!"

"Optimus barely knows how to use this weapon," Prima declared, "Meanwhile, I have used this weapon for eons. I am much more efficient in using it than he is."

Prima lowered the blade, but Eren couldn't help but be nervous at the presence of it.

"To answer your question: Primus is busy," Prima explained, "He has no need to spend any more time on someone like you."

"He interfered with a place he didn't even belong in-!"

"Have you forgotten why Primus went there in the first place?" Prima shot back, "To save the Little One from an eternity of solitude and slavery? To end the power of the titans? He wanted to save your world. But you? You have enacted a genocidal plan, wiping out at least 50% of the population. You have killed one of the people you swore to protect, and worst of all: you have tried to kill Optimus Prime. All of that, was your choice."

Prima kneeled down to look Eren in the eye. "Know this, Eren Jaeger. We hate you. We despise you. And if it were up to the rest of us, we would shove your soul down to the pits of Unicron where you belong to be tortured for all eternity."

Prima straightened himself out. "But thanks to Primus' 'hypocrisy', he has granted you clemency, and you will be given a chance."

"A chance for what?" Eren asked.

"A chance at a new life," Prima answered, "However, we will be the ones to decide how you earn that chance."

"Who's we?" Eren asked.

Prima raised the Star Saber into the air before tapping it against the reflective floor. The floor rippled in response, and the fog started to move. It swirled around both Eren and Prima, forcing Eren to cover his eyes at the strong winds. Eren could feel the ground beginning to shake, but didn't dare open his eyes until the storm passed. When he felt the wind die down, Eren mustered up the courage to open his eyes and gawked at the sight that was behind Prima.

A jagged rock formation had risen up from the ground, almost looking like a mountain. On this mountain, stood nearly a dozen other metal beings he couldn't get the full details of. Their colors and shapes were different, but they all looked down at him from their vantage points with contempt. Two of them, looked furious at the sight of him, one of them looked like a beast, and the other had glowing red eyes similar to Megatron.

"The Thirteen Original Primes," Prima introduced them, "If you are to take up this task, you will be subjected to thirteen trials." Prima raised a finger. "One for each Prime in existence. If you succeed in your trial, you will be granted passage to the next one, all the way until you have completed all thirteen of them, granting you the ability to reincarnate into anything that you so desire. Fail in any trials we subject you to, and you will be forced to repeat the challenge over and over again until you pass."

Eren grimaced at the explanation. Thirteen trials? That felt like some twisted joke to mock the thirteen-year curse that all titan shifters faced. "And what if I say no?"

"Refuse to participate in the trials, or forfeit the trials before completion, and your soul will be barred from reincarnation and destroyed," Prima answered, "Do you accept the conditions laid before you?"

Eren couldn't help but think it over. He shouldn't have to think it over. Instead of suffering through hell for all of eternity, he was given the option to reincarnate into a better life, so long as he completed these trials. But...he knows for a fact that these Primes are not going to make it easy for him. They are no doubt going to put him through hell and make him suffer until he passed their tests.

Eren closed his eyes. If he wanted to live, if he wanted to survive and live another day, he had to win. And the only way to win was to fight.

Eren opened his eyes in determination and forced himself to stand before looking Prima in the optic. "I'll do it. I'll do the trials, and I will make sure to pass all of them."

Eren knew he was glaring at Prima with contempt, but Prima wasn't fazed at Eren's attempt at defiance towards him. Eren couldn't help but glance behind him to look at the reaction of the other Prime. Some of them glared at Eren for his blatant disrespect towards who was no doubt their leader. Some were apathetic to his attempt at looking strong. However, there were quite a few of them that...smirked...or grinned with delight. They were giddy at the fact that Eren accepted the trials.

"Very well." Prima turned away from him and walked towards his fellow Primes. "We will commence with the first trial: my trial. Let us see how fast you are able to complete it. Vector."

Eren saw a golden titan with a cape stand up and began to float, conjuring an abundance of energy in the palms of its hands. Eren then turned his attention to the rest of the Primes...and noticed something was off. Prima stated that there were thirteen trials for thirteen Primes, but...he only counted twelve. Where was the thirteenth Prime? Why-?

Eren snapped his head downward when he noticed a golden circle forming around him. Eren gasped when the reflective floor gave way to a dark abyss below. Eren felt his stomach drop and screamed as he fell through the portal into the darkness below. He tried to hold onto Mikasa's scarf as long as he could, but in his panic, he let the fabric go. Eren saw it fly away before the portal closed above him, leaving him in darkness.

(So this is the idea, and basically an expansion of this ask. But again, if this doesn't get a lot of traction, I'm not really going to waste my time writing out the rest of it in full. Because coming up with the mechanics of the trials will be a lot of work. So please let me know what you think because that will help me decide.

Also I was listening to this:

And this:

I felt like both were pretty fitting.

[prettydeeryess]

can I be a bitter hater for a sec? I actually hate eremika more than i've ever hated any ship in my life, even the thought of them gets a physical reaction out of me

I hated to see people shipping them in the early seasons, hate to see them being right about it now and will probably throw up everytime I remember they are canon

[sungkaan]

Are there any other anime-onlies who thought it was weird that Mikasa was suddenly Ymir's parallel? Ymir's (initial) backstory prior to the last ep was about the struggle for freedom from slavery (slavery from Fritz and her slave mindset) but now it's suddenly about letting go of a toxic relationship?? So what does it now imply about Eren and Mikasa's relationship?? That he was abusive to Mikasa and Mikasa was such a simp that she initially couldn't let go of him???!! Why do eremika shippers consider this beautiful?? I'd be angry if I wanted a positive (and mutually in love) ship and the author portrayed them to be similar to a toxic one. Like wtfuck??

Also is anyone feeling that there's a dissonance? That there's a disconnect between the ep before the final ep?? I feel like I'm being gaslighted into liking an ending that doesn't deserve praise.

[natsuki208]

i know that you have no love for floch and rightfully so. what do u think of people romanticizing him or i saw people or at least one person here on tumblr actually shipping him with jean and i hate it so much! its so wrong! jean deserves better :c

You’re right. I don’t like Floch in any shape or form, nor do I care about shipping him with anyone.

God I especially hated seeing him trying to manipulate Jean into staying behind and become like the old Jean he was in the cadets. Marco would not approve!

Jean, of course, still felt pity when that a**hole died but I could care less. You’re better off with anyone else, you majestic stallion. 🥺

[storiesofaot]

A few weeks ago I was looking at this scene in 3x08 for another post, where Erwin asks about who is injured and Hange lifts her hand. And immediately, this part of the song "Anti-Hero" came to my mind - so I had to make this little edit because it fits just perfectly 😂

[marosina]

Remember when they just straight up spoiled the ending of Attack on Titan in 2015 with this song

And THIS IN PARTICULAR:

[sonofthesaiyans]

You know for years I was desperate to see Attack on Titan end. I was so goddamn fed up with the series, with the manga, with the fanbase and ESPECIALLY with the self indulgent asshole who wrote it that I never stopped wishing it would just crash and burn. The ending was bafflingly stupid and unsatisfying, and I stand by that opinion, I am at a total loss as to why anybody believes for a minute that the anime ending somehow redeemed what was first presented by the manga.

I was so furious at AOT, the whole timeskip made it the bane of my existence. Something I followed casually but with dedication became something I felt actively insulted by after what began with the fucking Marley arc. And after the events of that arc nothing else mattered to me except that the fucker ended.

Well it finally did. And that still brought me no satisfaction. Looking at you Gabi, looking at you Eremika......and yeah the Rumbling and the time loop, I hated all of it. Some of the worst and most delusional writing I've ever seen.

So why the hell then am I still somehow upset that it's over?

Any normal person would drop a bad experience and move on. But I have a hard time moving on from this. And part of me is upset it's done after all these years of cursing its existence.

It's a feeling I cannot make sense of. Can anybody else?

[lenok993]

[six-paths-of-jeanmarco]

Hange dying for nothing, Levi never confronting Annie for how she brutally murdered his squad, Historia being sidelined after a marvelous character arc, and Jean going back to being buddies with Reiner, the man that murdered his best friend/ actual lover (don't give me any Mikasa bs, Marco was his one and only), after one single confrontation will never sit well with me. Ever. Isayama let down his characters.

[klaradraws]

I have this thing where I get older but just never wiser

Midnights become my afternoons

[salvatoreren]

you know, it doesn't help the fact that in the final op they show baby eren reaching to his father then to ymir or the fact that deep inside the attack titan there was ymir who always sought freedom signifying that eren was always meant to be the one who would free ymir ultimately, that eren was that somebody that ymir was waiting for only to then subvert it then make mikasa as the one who freed ymir like...

i don't think that to be the chosen one, you have to exactly parallel and ymir and eren do parallel in a way in which they were controlled and only used to do this and that, most of the time being disregarded for who they truly are, a human and most of the time being put in a pedestal, a god and humanity's hope. Eren is the total opposite of Ymir while she is passive and submissive, Eren is not, he's full of rage and hate and he does not back down without a fight regardless if the fight would come out fruitless, only the fact that he got to fight.

And in Ymir's belief, which I think is one of her main drives in serving Fritz is that she needs to EARN her freedom whereas Eren believes freedom is a RIGHT, it is something that is already granted to you the moment you were born to this world.

Eren is exactly what Ymir needed in that moment. I believe Ymir did wanted to rage at the world for everything.

Like, the rumbling isn't just an alternative for Paradis to be liberated and be safe, it is a personification of rage, human rage, it is misdirected, yes, there is no arguing that but it is rage.

And most would argue, it would deconstruct eren being not special and how that's okay that he isn't well, important and all that but it really isn't because this isn't a jon snow story book wise, in which it would be okay that jon isn't azor ahai nor is he the prince that was promised nor that he had targ blood in him because everything he got was done straight from the ground, no shortcuts.

but the thing is there was plenty of buildup for Eren and the way the narrative always veered away from him, always showed him losing in some way and how him being the ONE, how the final arc was now focused on eren and eren alone. It reminds people who is the main protagonist, reminds people why Attack On Titan is named from his titan.

And there was a price to pay indeed if he ever was the one, what bastard, what non special people, what second choice in aot ever won without paying a price? He killed thousands of innocent people and is deemed a monster, he would not attain his freedom in the end because if Ymir was freed, the power of the titans would cease to exist and the founding titan is what kept Eren alive the whole time.