#eren crying at the very beginning of the story because of his future memories

[rivangel]

inch resting

[aotopmha]

Saw the first part of the AoT finale.

And this once again just hit at the right time for me personally.

It's not just about 'oh protect the kids' 'oh Eren is the poor victim bby'.

Eren is a victim AND perpetrator. He literally tells you this.

I'm currently feeling that sentiment of 'take responsibility you stupid fucks' very deeply.

But to start somewhere, I think the strongest part of this portion of the story to me is absolutely the character writing.

Eren is horrified at his own thoughts and what he felt in the future. (In fact the reason why he is stuck in his head are at least partially his own destructive feelings from the future. He's interesting because he has feelings. His future self wanted this while his current self is sitting there horrified and crying.)

Him not being free is absolutely the right read. It's simply about not being able to see past his feelings – his state of mind. Which is absolutely influenced by several factors as well like OG Ymir's feelings, his knowledge of the future outside of his feelings and his father's memories.

But he's also genociding people. And getting out of that prison is only possible if he is willing to engage with other perspectives. It's all this sort of a greek tragedy loop where his own dark thoughts amplify everything else and the other elements amplify his dark thoughts.

And because he values freedom so much, he could never actually restrain anyone from fighting back.

It's these character elements that determine the narrative direction. The story at this point is deeply character-centric.

Yet despite all seeming lost, his opponents feel it's worth to keep fighting for those who yet live. They can't take back what happened, but they can try to move forward in the circumstances they are in. I think this sentiment is so deeply important going into the finale.

Hange's decision is all about this position of responsibility she was pushed into following Erwin's death, too.

She values the pursuit of knowledge, so she picks Armin as the commander.

I really like her response to Yelena because she's basically talking past her. She admits she failed with Eren, but she never says Zeke is right.

In line of with this moment with Hange, I think a lot of this has very specific emotional nuances and I find that really important.

Yes, Eren's friends are begging with him in Paths, but I also think it's not just because they just love him so very much.

They are also desparate to throw everything at him because he's kind of destroying the world and killing humanity.

So any reason is okay as long as it gets through to him.

Just like that speech by the old guy is equal parts military speech, emotional desparation and thematic statement.

I could logically and clinically tell you that someone else could've technically replaced Hange or maybe Hange held on too long to the point of it being too much.

Or how Annie just could've pieced herself together and gone with them.

But to me it at least all makes sense from the character perspective.

I think it makes sense Hange went instead of Armin or Reiner or even Jean not just because she felt responsible and all Titans are needed, but also because she is also a better, more experienced fighter. What the anime improved is the sense of suspense of just how close the escape was. Her feat was successful as much because of her skill as it was luck and while I think this was the intention to begin with, I think the pacing and depiction of her battle was so much better in the anime. It was a desperate charge picking out Titans in a smart way to protect that one building.

On the other hand, Annie was drafted against her will. It's dumb another strong weapon chooses not to fight in the middle of an apocalypse, but we're also in the middle of an apocalypse and it's better to not have a liability making things worse in there.

That's the kind of story I view this series to be. And technically the story never brings of the experience thing or Annie being a potential liability, I think the framing makes at least the tone clear.

And the very final chapters are the peak of this, I think.

Which is also why it sucks that Historia is treated the way she is. Everyone else is great and gets to be complex and she is sort of just written out in the most sloppy way possible. I think her scenes will all probably be consolidated in the finale into a single timeline, if that. (Though the truth is, I think even completely skipping them would treat her better, so I'm sort of holding out for that.)

I think the final chapter is exactly like this. I think it has a much more nuanced, but more importantly consistent thematic perspective than people give it credit for undermined by not letting it sit has much as it should and follows through from this material.

We can't change what happened, but we can try to make the best of the circumstances we are left with and move forward the best we can.

I think this series is flawed in more complex (and to me interesting) ways than I see claimed, too.

I think there is nuance to the potential read that the story is about Isayama painting a facsmile of imperialistic Japan as victims because he clearly wrote the the representitive of the fictional Japan in her story regretting her actions of exploiting a minority and admitting they only care about themselves.

Hizuru was basically destroyed because of its own greed and that's a very clear (and true) statement about Japan.

She goes on to say you only truly understand you've done wrong once you've actually done the wrong thing.

This feels like an apology to me. And that's good, but she's also a tertiary character, so much does it matter?

And how much of painting Hizuru as an ally is patting yourself on the back?

This story is full of these nuances to me, be it in a straight-forward reading of the text or on the meta level and that's why I will always have a soft spot for it.

I think there is so much more to it all on all levels.

But right now I felt like addressing these elements.

[hollowandmerciless]

So it was a love story after all

One of the things that has been said over the years about Attack on Titan is that it had no romance. Isayama, was the general consensus, didn’t write a love story. AOT is not about ships. It’s about the nature of humanity, about hatred, about racism and the will to survive. It’s got its roots in Norse mythology, in real life events from the recent past and a more ancient past. But love and romance, so everyone thought, never had a place in this story.

How wrong we all were.

As it turns out, Eren’s motivation for everything he did was always his eternal and undying love for Mikasa.

Here’s where I stumble.

I never saw any convincing signs of Eremika in this story. I didn’t like their dynamics in the first place – Eren seemed annoyed with her a lot of the time, or at best consider her his adopted sister – and what really rubbed me the wrong way during the entirety of the story was Mikasa’s unhealthy obsession with Eren. Yes, he saved her, and yes, she’s an Ackerman, who are known for their intense bonding to their host (although this was a false assumption as well, according to Zeke), but her obsession was unhealthy and annoying to the point that I was unable to see her character development or her actions. 

Her looks didn’t make her special to me (contrary to a lot of male fans I encountered on social media and irl), to me she was just one of the characters, albeit a rather uninteresting one, so I wasn’t paying as much attention to her as they did – we all pay most attention to our favourites (which in my case are Eren and Levi and to a lesser extent Hanji and Connie), and as a result I may have been blind for any character development she had. 

Maybe it’s because I’m a woman and I feel like she’s one of those poorly written -“the man is my only goal in life” -women. Women who in a story solely seem to exist as an appendage to the main character and have no life or will of their own. Eren and Mikasa were, in my opinion, never equals in this story.

I know many people do see Mikasa’s character development, and do see meaningful interactions between Eren and her, but I’m sorry, I can’t see them unless I use a microscope, and I think this is the main flaw in Isayama’s writing: with all the twists and foreshadowing (which I so thoroughly enjoyed), some hints he left are way too small, while some of his red herrings are too in your face to ignore. 

It also feels like Isayama changed the ending too often and forgot about a lot of foreshadowings along the way.

This is why it feels that we’re left with so many plot holes – if you read closely, there aren’t many, but the red herrings were sprinkled so abundantly throughout the story that we may have expected way too much. The origins of the Ackermans, the importance of Historia’s’ baby and “who is the father”, Zeke’s presumed 4D chess and Eren’s 5D chess, the Underground cities as protection against the rumbling, what caused the titan forest trees to grow so large, what happened 854 years ago in the year 0, Reiner heavily being foreshadowed to become the new Helos, what is the Hallucigenia thing, where did it come from and how does it create titans, where did Ymir’s first titan come from if there was no one in PATHS yet to build it – we don’t need all these answers, but somehow Isayama made us believe there was more to this than there actually was, and that’s why many of us feel robbed of the ending we wanted or expected.

The Historia storyline bothers me the most. The dynamics between her and Eren were much more interesting and realistic than those between Mikasa and Eren. To begin with, they were equals. Whatever happened, they always had each other’s backs. So it made sense to me that Eren had at least something to do with her choice to have a baby, especially because he was so vocal against it. Instead, she too married a guy who hadn’t been particularly nice to her in the past and nothing of it had anything to do with Eren or his plans, or their shared memories of previous founders. 

Parallels between OG Ymir and Historia seemed abundant, but apparently, in the end, we were supposed to see an essential parallel between Ymir and Mikasa. Her Stockholm-syndrome-love for the first King Fritz felt like a sort of deus ex machina (and yes, if you reread chapter 122 there were hints, but so scarce, so small, that they didn’t seem to hold much significance).

I find the fact that OG Ymir needed to see someone break loose from the clutches of obsessive love in front of her own eyes to finally break loose from her own love for Fritz a bit far-fetched, especially since I consider that this is what the entire story hinges on.

(Now we do understand why Isayama had Levi so severely wounded in chapter 114 (the explosion). Had he been fit, then he had most likely been the Ackerman who killed Eren (because this has been foreshadowed too, multiple times) – and that wasn’t supposed to happen. It had to be Mikasa, or else OG Ymir wouldn’t understand how to break loose from her bond.

Another thing that bothered me was Eren’s sudden confession of his love for Mikasa to Armin. Like I said, I found the Eremika dynamics particularly uninteresting, so this confession felt very unnatural and far-fetched to me – but, again, this is what the entire story is built upon. 

He does what he does for them, specifically for her.

It’s actually kind of sad that some fan theories were better/more interesting than the canon ending, but Isayama is the creator of this story and we’ll have to accept his ending – I do know that the more I’ve been rereading the final chapter, the less it bothers me how the story wrapped up. I might even come to like it, and when I reread the full story (which I will certainly do, I LOVE this story) I’ll pay more attention to the small hints Isayama sprinkled between the lines for us about the love Eren felt for Mikasa, to see if his words in 139 will finally make sense to me.

For now, Eren’s motives don’t feel real or grounded. If he’d cried about the millions (billions?) of deaths he’d caused instead of about Mikasa, it would have made more sense in the grand scheme of things. He’d cry for the lives he’s taken, and for the realisation that it has all been in vain, because the ones he tried to protect so that they can live long and happy lives, will now be consumed with grief and survivor’s guilt.

Still, could any of this have gone differently?

No.

Eren was rightfully desperate when he, from behind the bars of his cell, yelled at Hanji if there was another way. Because there wasn’t.

The irony was that Eren always fought for freedom, but all his life he had been a slave to his own destiny. He was unable to change the future, and could only try to influence it. Or else, as Kruger said, this cycle would repeat itself, again and again.

All in all I feel there was more to this story than what we got, it could have gone deeper, more foreshadowing could have paid off instead of being a red herring.

A bittersweet ending

Levi surviving and finally getting closure with the knowledge that this was what all of his old SC friends died for, brought me to tears. And that smoke, was that the disappearing of his Ackerstrength? 

The frame where he travels the world with his carers/adopted children Gabi and Falco and his new best friend Onyankopon (friend? lover? just look at that glance they share) made me so happy that this is now the desktop background of my laptop.

(I hope they’ll travel to the AOT equivalent of the UK so he can finally enjoy some decent black tea)

To me, at least this part was sweet. The rest: bitter, even the fates of the Alliance members. This is a story with an open ending. We don’t know if they’ll succeed on their peace mission, we don’t know what the Yaegerists will accomplish, we don’t know what the rest of the world will do; all options are open again, but maybe that is the point. Eren never meant to end the hatred, there’s no fighting the nature of humans. Erwin knew this already: mankind won’t stop fighting among themselves until there’s only one person left. 

Eren’s goal was to end the titan era, and at the cost of his own life and that of 80% of humanity, he succeeded. 

Learning that Eren, who held freedom in such high regards, was a slave to his own destiny all along was painful and ironic, but in a way he lives on as a bird, finally free, finally Vogel aus dem Käfig.

Thank you, Isayama.

[letusmeetagain]

“Love someone”

I wanted so bad that Mikasa wasn’t the one having to take him down... At the very least and as I could consider time ago, it would be more like a mercy killing. I also wanted to believe that it was already done and there wouldn’t be more major losses such as Falbi, Connie, Jean or the remaining Eldians.

However... this will be probably a really long post but I don’t care, I’ll include every panel I need... The circumstances justifies it...

In the end, it seems to be that Reiner wasn’t delusional at all.

Eren wanted indeed to be killed but not by a random person. It had to be Mikasa, as he saw.

And probably, this is related to the way she did it. Mikasa displayed whichever feeling you could imagine regading love, loyalty, compassion, dignity, pride, mercy...

Conversely, Ymir died trying to show her love and found a bitter, humiliating. The king deprived her from her status of human and attacked her dignity. This disrespect, the way she couldn’t reach his heart at least as human condemned her to serve him in paths from eternity.

Eren, who was born somehow fated by his own nature and the circumstances to this role, freed her. Maybe she doesn’t want to see Eren suffering her destiny.

On Eren’s approach of his own existence

I have tried since ch. 130 was out to explain the connection between this chapter and chs. 88/9 Eren and the baby, explaining that there was just a thematic connection related to death and birth. I still don’t know if the baby will have a more important role in the ending: I started to think that there won’t be a major meaning for the baby more than the beginning of a new era.

          [BIRTH                                                                 DEATH]

Meanwhile, Mikasa’s feelings for him represent his attatchment to this world and the importance of his existence into it.

I happened to find a philosophic discussion on existence between Arendt and Heidegger and I found interesting that Arendt criticized Heidegger’s more “pessimistic?” approach for attributing the meaning of existence out of the idea of death (thus the finitude/end of the being) and the acceptance of it.

Then, Arendt, introduced the focus on natality and birth as the main point of life when a new unique person enters the world and introduces the new into the world while being born free through their innerent capacity to act and think... thus to “begin” [events].

The latter reminded me of Carla’s words to Eren. She wanted to highlight Eren’s existence and its legitimacy based on the start of his life and the way he “touched history” (I’m quoting “The poisonwood bible”) in the sense that he his doing brought change to the lives of his friends and humanity.

To contextualize a little this discussion, the first approach was born in the middle of a period where death was the law... I’m talking about chaotic, hard times for humanity that were the period of the WWI and WWII. Arendt, a victim of the Nazi regime, built a conception that aimed to retrieve the dignity of humans not as if they were born to die but to live. She thought that focusing on death mislead and hurt the essence of human existence reducing it to its end.

(trans. yaboylevi)

On Mikasa’s love for him

What it means to love someone in Isayama’s work?

Be free. To love someone means to want them be free from pain and everything that goes against their dignity and the undeniable fact that they were born into the world.

The greatest act of love is to wish them to live proudly and free. It’s about life, a life without regrets and guilt.

It’s not power what leads someone to be free, but love. Love reaches trascendence in the memories of others as it touches their existences too.

Witnessing love was in the end something Ymir pursued during the rumbling. Some chapters ago, I couldn’t tell if Ymir was the one needing to see it or that she wanted to deliver this message of love as the path to freedom for everyone.

Freedom can be attained through love.

Meanwhile, the way to this...

It’s already explained that child Eren was crying because of the happenings he would experience in the future, the way he was cornered between being a livestock and the genocide. He cried for the first time in front of Ramzy acknowledging his reasons to cry that were that he couldn’t accept the end for Paradies.

Facing this big tragedy, the unbearable feeling of loss, Mikasa wished to go back to their home with Eren and enjoy a peaceful life together. But let’s not romaticize it too much...it has a small letter that explains why Mikasa is crying and why she chose her reality.

This... “something” (like in Lost Girls), let’s say it’s an experience which nature can and can’t be described as reality... It doesn’t really matter if it was real as it was experienced by both of them. At this rate and judging by Eren’s faces while talking to Zeke about Mikasa, he even saw this experience in his memories of the future too.

The small letter is exactly that they live a life full of regrets. They betrayed their friends and the island in order to spend Eren’s remaining time alone. In ch. 123 we see a key moment for Eren to avoid having to make a decision exaclty because he was doubting about his decisions. We indeed know that he couldn’t change the future and that Mikasa didn’t chose this answer. I also wonder if such a AU is viable as Eren never got to paths to force his father to steal the founder and thus... How did they managed to come to this point? I wonder. Still, as I said, even if it’s not viable as reality, things can be real as both of them have this memory and the interaction/communication is still real.

This long dream helped Mikasa to realize something she needed to know. She finally understood why Eren wanted to throw the scarf, why he told her that he hated her. The reason why he pushed her away without explaining her nothing.

She knew he loves her and wants her to be free from any kind of suffering related to the loss of her family. He wanted to vanish from her life. That way she could give meaning to his words to Louise about the scarf: it wasn’t lack of love what made him want to erase the proof of their bond and his promise to her, it wasn’t his will what prevented him from staying with her but his circumstances. This experience reminds us the letter Ymir sent to Historia.

The conclusion of this experience is that such a life hiding from their friends, full of regrets and just waiting for Eren’s death wasn’t the right choice for none of them. The irresponsibility of letting the world they were born into was the reason why she was crying as she knew she was letting things happen in the real world without doing anything. Contrary to Eren’s wishes, she doesn’t want to forget him. That’s the decision she made. She chose to show him that she doesn’t to let him being forgotten and this means that she won’t allow him to think his existence was a mistake.

In Trost, she decided to live to remember him. She decided to reaffirm her life and their story together. Now she reaffirms her reality and her wish to express her true feelings regarding his existence. All in all, Mikasa wished for him to be free from the pain as he did with her... thus the reason on why she decided to wear again the scarf.

One important part of Eren’s development in the last chapter will be probably with Grisha...

“Someone may see them later”.  Eren. Probably Eren. After these panels, Krüger tells him to love someone. To wish someone’s freedom in his individual story means to love someone... and this will affect humanity’s future and avoid making the same mistakes over and over again. Interestingly, the panel when Eren tells Mikasa to be free resembles the provisional last panel.

As I discussed here Mikasa could relieve Eren’s pain and she chose to kill him in order to save him from the pain of being the devil. Her determination, her refusal to regret having met him and remembering him and also her words to him... “See you later”... those words mean pride and will to see him again. Maybe a promise about meeting again. But the next development involves Eren acknowledging Mikasa’s determination and leaving his guilt and regrets behind while reaffirming his existence since his birth... until he asks her to remember him and his truth she got to know.

[tamhrayis]

I brought a theory from Reddit.

Disclaimer:

I am here to not disrespect the author by any means. I simply have questions as a person who is reading it and pointed out which parts are confusing. It’s up to you to believe this theory or not.

What’s more, reborn Ymir will be in the same position as 2000 years ago – the Founding Titan's shifter. BUT, this time she's free. Therefore, once she pops out and gets her abilities back, she can do whatever she wants with them. She no longer needs to be commanded by royals, which gives her the ideal opportunity to conclude everything. [How does Eren know that an infant can assist him in such an endeavour?]

Well...Ymir was definitely not free, but Ymir wasn’t born with her abilities. She got them because of hallucigenia attached to her back when she fell into that water in the tree. She wasn’t born special.

Another point. How Ymir being born with titan powers will stop the cycle of hatred?

Zeke’s death was a necessary distraction, deliberately included by Isayama to divert our attention. It tricked us into thinking that the baby inheriting Zeke’s titan is relevant as it would help Eren resume the Rumbling. But that’s not the case. The child will indeed inherit the Beast but what’s important here is the baby inheriting the Founder (what Isayama tried to hide behind Zeke’s death). Also, his death served the purpose of stopping the Rumbling as it is not needed anymore. Most of the world's population is already massacred. [What was the point of Zeke dying? Will the baby inherit the Beast Titan?]

Hm...Yeah, Zeke’s death indeed helped to stop the rumbling, because Eren could reach the Paths because of him and killing him stopped the whole process, but why would Isayama make such a distraction at the last third chapter of the whole manga? Shouldn’t he kill Zeke before, so Eren and Historia’s plan would work and it had more screen time?

“In a vision, Eren saw that Ymir will be reborn after his death. He told Historia that he has to figure out which random child will inherit the Founder”. [“What would you think… about me having a child?”]

Which vision? Ch.1 or after kissing Historia’s hand? Ch.1 vision was Eren and Mikasa’s shared dream and we still don’t know what exactly Eren saw while kissing Historia’s hand.

Of course it’s safe to say that it was his future memories, but it yet has to be revealed.

Random child. How Eren can predict that the baby will be Historia’s? Does he know how many pregnant women are there on Paradise? Okay, let’s say that it’s FT and Paths magic, but can he control which child will be born with Founder’s powers?

It would also explain why Historia didn't appear in Ch. 138 – if Isayama showed the baby coming out seconds after Mikasa decapitated Eren then it would’ve been obvious what’s going on.[“What would you think… about me having a child?”]

Chapters are 45 pages long. Why Isayama didn’t cut out some panels and didn’t put it here? Why not to show it right after the kiss page? Distraction?

Moreover, Ymir is smiling at Eren and Mikasa not simply because she saw affection. Yes, she does care about bonds but another thing could be that Eren's plan downed on her – she connected the dots and figured out that it's now her turn to contribute and complete the mission Eren wordlessly gave her. I believe next chapter will start with her disappearing from inside the Founder's mouth and switch to her being born. [“What would you think… about me having a child?”]

Okay! I agree with the part that Ymir smiled at Mikasa and Eren because of the affection they showed to each other and the part that she will contribute to the “mission”.

They showed affection to each other. Why would Eren show affection to Mikasa if he is having a child with the woman he loves?

What about the hallucigenia? Will it still stay there or disappear with her?

Immediately after she cries for the first time, all Eldians will perhaps be summoned in Paths, where Eren will be waiting. To their surprise, he will announce the end of the Titan Age. Then, Ymir will make the command and Paths will begin collapsing. Eren will hold her in his arms as all traces of titans disappear. "You're free." will collectively be directed to Ymir and all of her Subjects. [What will happen after she is reborn?]

Hold on. Can the power of Founder be shared between two people? Is it like One for All? If Ymir was born with FT, doesn’t that mean that Eren no longer has FT, AT and WHT? How Ymir can summon them? She is an infant. She doesn’t have a proper consciousness to purposely summon everyone into Paths. Where AT and WHT will go? To random Eldian children or Ymir?

It has always been suspicious as to why Eren teased Zeke about them not reaching "the part where he eats their old man". It's strange that Grisha gave Eren the power of the titans when beforehand he begged Zeke to stop him. The only logical thing would be that Eren showed him what I described above: the resolution. [What did Eren show Grisha?]

Wait. Why would Grisha be this heartbroken and scared if Eren showed him the resolution? He doesn’t look like crying from happiness. Sure, he was crying because he killed children and others, but why would he look at Zeke like that? He was in literal pain.

What used to be nonsensical before is now super logical. Grisha and Kruger were not helping the Alliance because Armin’s TnJ (talk no jutsu) worked. They aided them because beforehand Eren revealed the truth of what is to come and that they will NEED to kill him in order for Historia’s baby to inherit the Founder. Basically, they didn't feel sympathy for Marley all of a sudden – instead, they were helping Eren in liberating Eldians from titans. [Why did Grisha and Kruger help the Alliance? Why did Ymir revive them if they were going to go against Eren?]

Well...Besides Grisha and Kruger, Marcel, Ymir, Mr. Xavier, Porco and Bertholdt were there. Did they want to help Eren too?

As it has been confirmed by Isayama's notes on Ch. 138, it’s not an AU. So we should probably forget about time loops. It's a dream. Eren entered it (through Paths, duh) as he wanted to convince Mikasa to behead him as fast as possible as they have no time left. Him joining her is why Aaron Yogurt dream Eren got shifter marks on his face and why in Ch. 1, he saw this particular moment. [What’s up with Mikasa’s hallucinations?]

Oh! “A long dream” topic again. I went to the link author put and this is what I see (see below).

Okay, let’s say that he entered it via Paths, but why not to straightforwardly say that? Why to create a dream where they live happily? Why to show this hug, “I want to live with you for the rest of my 4 years”?

I don’t really like the time loop concept myself, because I don’t like time travel stuff, but why then he saw the exact same dream in ch.1? Something is not clicking.

The former will likely return to being humans. There’s no reason for them to disappear as they’re material beings that exist in the physical world – what will be removed is just titanization. Plus, with this, Eren will keep his promise of his friends living long lives. Though, this is something I cannot predict properly and just speculation. The latter will be free from the Curse of Ymir (good luck, Reiner, no dying for you). [What will happen to the titanized Eldians and titan shifters?]

Fully agree! No debate.

There's no question really. I feel like it should be self-explanatory after everything discussed so far. The farmer being Ymir's father would be a more shocking twist than Eren being the dad. [Is it sure that Eren is the father?]

Why wouldn’t Isayama add a plot twist into his story? It’s not hard to do. But Isayama’s plot twists work because he visually foreshadows it or uses characters’ dialogues. He already has showed us farmer. Why he is here? For cover up? Why would Isayama put these words if farmer is unnecessary? Why not to add more information?

To stop the cycle of violence and hate once and for all. If Eren removed titan powers without the Rumbling, most people (especially Marleyans) would’ve still despised Eldians and they would've just been defenseless. So Eren wanted to prevent that. [Why did the Rumbling have to occur?]

I agree with this. Rumbling was a cause for people to work and stop fighting each other as I said here. Rumbling plan was very risky, but it was unavoidable, because Marley is way more advanced and Paradise would terribly lose. Good point!

But why would Historia, who has decided to live for herself agree with Eren’s plan? How would she benefit from it? Okay, she and Historia are in love, but why would she want the person she loves to become a mass murderer? Why she couldn’t stop him? Why she was crying when he told his plan? She is a royal blood after all too! They could come up with another plan which wouldn’t involving Zeke.

I assume it would just die/disappear/go back to the tree it emerged from. [What about hallucigenia?]

Where’s that tree? How it will get there?

In conclusion, the theory isn’t bad, but it would work if Historia and Eren had more set up, the importance of Zeke would be explored a little more here and ch.138 didn’t have clear symbolism between Eren and Mikasa. There’re some holes, but the author gave some good points, which is truly appreciated!

[fefipranon]

List of my works

Saved By Deception

Description:

Mikasa is an independent, strong, and self-made successful woman. She is a force to be reckoned with in a field dominated by men.

What happens when she is held hostage by an arrogant, jerk who is the leader of one of the most dangerous and powerful gangs that exist?

Will she follow the orders of this chauvinist pig or will she make his life a living hell?

Comedy, drama, angst, smutty lemon, and a cat. This story is a wild crazy ride.

Author notes: 

You don’t need to read or watch anything prior this book to understand the story. It’s mostly comedy, but there is also action, angst and smut. Topics I addressed here are feminism, the struggles of the LGBTQ community, PTSD, rape, and abuse of power.

Some reader’s reviews:

“I totally loved it from beginning to end!!! It was such an amazing rollercoaster! I was so invested in this story that I ended the hole thing in one day!! If you write and post the sequel, well... count me in!!! I wish I could give more kudos!!” -  Avalon_Titania

“It took me a while for the story to settle down, to figure out what it means to me, and to finally comment here. But here we go. Reading this story was an amazing journey which gave me lots of joy, some tears and unaccountable amount of smiles. Now, thinking about it makes me feel warm and grateful that you shared this work with us. I love how freely you wrote about everything, how you broke various stereotypes, and spoke about the things that matter. All of this, while managing to make us laugh in every chapter! You are a truly amazing writer and I would gladly read the sequel if you decided to share it too.” -  Not_Orange

“I just found out this story. I can’t believe I missed this. This is amazing 💐💐. I haven’t finished the story yet, I felt that I need to leave a comment first of how amazing and funny the story is. I can’t wait to finish this and omg the sequel. Sign me up for the sequel, needs more stories of them. It’s just, we haven’t got enough stories of them 🤧🤧.” -  avaleen

“I LOVE your story! I adore the way you depicted the characters, how you mixed fun and dark themes, and most of all, I really enjoyed the way you included some schooling on the feminist cause, sexual abuse and the psychology behind it. It was very well done! I can’t wait to read the following story! I found a few grammatical mistakes here and there and sometimes, the way you build your sentences could need to be a little lighter but overall, nothing that really disturbs the story. Thank you for writing this, this is probably my favorite Rivamika story. Keep up with the good work!” -  Valkorian

You can find the story in the following links:

Archive of our own:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/27557422/chapters/67401547

Wattpad:

https://www.wattpad.com/story/247716329-saved-by-deception

____________________

The power of death

Description:

Mikasa is a woman suffering from clinical depression. There is one thing that she is sure of: she wants to die. But when she received some unexpected news that makes her death wish a reality, she starts to wonder if that was really what she wanted. She starts a journey to discover the truth about her biological parents that gave her up for adoption when she was a baby. This journey will guide her to cross paths with someone as broken as her, someone that hates her to death for what her biological family did to him. Will she have the courage to, for once, fight to live? or will she let him drag her to hell with him?

Author notes:

You don’t need to read or watch anything prior this book to understand the story. Topics I discuss here are depression, anxiety, anti-depressants, racism, genocide, LGBTQ, terminal disease, racial trauma, euthanasia, adoption. It has comedy and smut but is mostly angst oriented.

Some reader’s reviews:

“Why am I suddenly crying?!? I will always remember this story... I loved every single character of it, both with their funny and dark sides. Because that's life sometimes... 🎭 Thank you author for this beautifully written story!! I already miss it “ -  Levi_is_a_dilf

“Dude this book was great, not to mention all of your books are! Always so well thought out & planned. The fact that some chapters if not all were hours long really shows how great of a creator & genius you are as well! Anyways can't wait to read this again once my forgetful brain has erased my memory of the whole plot.😅” - lolzleigh

“The most beautiful conclusion to one of my fave stories!!! I'm honestly so moved and proud of the message you wanted to transmit there. The last phrase sums it up , to never give up easily because of a difficulty. A bad day doesn't indicate a bad life. Thank you author for your hard work, I'm looking forward to your next story!! 💪🏻🧡” -  Leyla

“ Loved it!!!! You have such a beautiful smart and unique way of writing, I love the way you express their personalities including their silly moments Please don’t stop writing I love your stories and I’ll be looking forward for your next work!!” -  Fiorylita

You can find the story in the following links:

Archive of our own:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30452145/chapters/75087657

Wattpad:

https://www.wattpad.com/story/264598251-the-power-of-death

____________________

Twisted Fate

Description: 

Eren and Levi share a secret about Mikasa's past. Mikasa confesses her feelings to Eren, only to be rejected. After watching her almost die, Eren realizes he has feelings for her, but she has already moved on to Levilandia.

"I thought they hated each other"

Before losing hope he thinks that maybe... if he tells Mikasa who the captain really is... he might have a chance, or fuck it up?

Is the Ackerman bond stronger than a lifetime of memories together?

Jealousy, drama, a shared secret, and Titans, what could possibly go wrong?

Author notes:

Everything needed to understand the story from ‘Attack on Titan’ is added in the story already. Optional reading or watching of ‘Attack on Titan’ anime if more information about the general universe is desired. It’s a comedy but also has angst and smut. Topics I addressed here is the difference between a healthy and a toxic relationship.

Some reader’s reviews: 

“Omg this is by far one of the best stories I’ve read!! You’ve done such an amazing job at capturing the characters!! I’d love to see a continuation of this story or just more rivamika” -  mori87

“So I binge-read this fic and devoured it in half a day reading between breaks at work and on the way home till I'm done right now just before midnight -in my time zone anyway- and BOY THAT WAS SOME FIC!!! It had me laughing so hard at times and holding my breath waiting for what's to come at times. I loved the way you portrayed Levi here. This arrogant, annoying, funny, caring fighter and leader and the way you made Mikasa an even more bad-ass warrior. Looking forward to reading more of you.” -  Marwa_Aslaa3

“ Thank you so much for this amazing story! I read the whole story in one sitting and I can't remember when was the last time I was so happy about something. It made me smile and giggle the whole day, it made me feel warm. You are a true hero and have the ability to give magic to the sentences you write”-  Not_Orange

You can find the story in the following links:

Archive of our own:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/26397433/chapters/64303924

Wattpad: 

https://www.wattpad.com/story/240534704-twisted-fate-rivamika-lemon

____________________

How to be happy

Description:

What would happen if Mikasa was pulled out of her universe into ours after Eren saved her? What would happen when Levi is pulled out of the rumbling straight into Mikasa's apartment in our world?

Author notes:

It is necessary to read or watch ‘Attack on Titan’ prior this book to be able to understand the story. This one can be said that is half canon verse half Alternate Universe since Levi jumps to our universe straight from the rumbling. This is one shot I did for Rivamika week. It’s mostly fluff and a little comedy.

Some reader’s reviews:

“ What can I say? It's perfect as always ((X You really are talented in writing so I hope you'll keep doing that in the future! I think we (rivamika peeps) all agree to say that you're a special someone in this community (as well as our Dildo Queen, this one may be my own thought though^^) (Saved by Deception story reference) I'm glad you participated in this event because this one-shot was wonderful, inventive and fun to read! Keep going Queen, you're nailing it!!!” -  Hayden_dsc

You can find the story in the following links:

Archive of our own:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/28809051

Wattpad: 

https://www.wattpad.com/story/255240403-how-to-be-happy

[liddolwhynot2000]

SPOILERS: DUN READ ANIME ONLY

......

THE ENDING: possible theory

......

I've been reading those Falco theories and I had to add my own two cents.

So, we all all that the entire reason Eren got the co ordinate was because he doesn't have royal blood, so he wouldn't fall under the first Kings curse. Which is true, but it also meant that he couldn't utilise the Co ordinate power without zeke or historia. Which means he isn't the perfect vessel, like we initially thought.

Falco was turned into a titan using Zeke's Royal blood, which gave him a degree of control over his titan that the previous jaw titan shifters didn't have. Like the flying upgrade. So if he eats Eren, THEN HE'LL BE THE PERFECT VESSEL.

Because Falco technically has unlimited access to royal blood, in his spine. But he's not actually a member of royal blood. So the curse of renouncing war won't affect him. It's Isayama way of finally creating a loophole in the curse. Falco can use the power of the co ordinate the way a member of royal blood could have before the curse (before the walls were built) just like how he used the jaw titan to make it fly!!

Oh and why falco in particular? The episode we saw today, it mentioned falco saying he dreamt of flying with swords. And maybe it was ymirs memories? Except no. The jaw titan doesn't have that ability. However, the attack titan is shown to send memories back to its shifter, even before they become shifter. Attack on titan episode 1, Eren wakes up crying from a dream. A series of flashes show him seeing his mothers death. Except it hasn't happened yet. Its the future. Falco likely saw Erens past memories in a haze.

OKAY SO COMING TO YMIR. I promise I'm trying to make sense.

We all know she's calling the shots right now. My own theory is, Eren bargained with ymir. She wanted to kill everyone by forcefully taking control of eren in his titan form.

Remember Mikasa nearly getting punched the first time he transformed? That was probs ymir being too excited and ready to just kill everyone using Erens titan form.

However, she got overwhelmed by Armin talking to Eren, causing him to regain control. Which is why she shut Armin up just now. If he talks to Eren, Eren might waver and force Ymir into making a mistake. One that could make Eren vulnerable to being attacked. Or eaten. Something she's clearly trying to avoid, as evidenced by the army of titans protecting him.

Okay so basically, Eren promised to lay the ground work for the rumbling, getting to zeke and all, if Ymir spared paradise Island. Eren is by no means innocent, because ymir killing everyone else off is beneficial for his people and he's okay with billions of people being sacrificed. But his hand has also been forced.

Because people, Eren isn't the perfect vessel to use the coordinate power. He's the perfect vessel for ymir to extract her revenge. For her to use the founding titans power. All these years, why didn't she just take control of the coordinate shifter and release the rumbling? Simple, becuase every single one had royal blood. Ymir is helpless against Royal blood, she can be controlled and contained as long as the co ordinate shifter has royal blood. Eren is the one she's been waiting for, for all the following reasons:

(a) he doesn't have royal blood, so she can use the co ordinate power through him. Forcefully if she wants to and he can't do shit about it because he has no way of controlling her.

(b) Erens personality and goals line up with hers. He actually allows her to use him, making it easier for her to carry out her plans, as we see in the new chapters.

(c) this goes with (b). Remember all those times eren struggled to use his powers when he needed to most? Like hannes dying? Countless cormades dying for him? I think it was ymir messing with him on purpose. A way of showing him who the real boss is by cutting his power off at will. Reminding him how helpless he is. Eren didn't notice it at the time, but once he started accessing memories, he realized what she had been doing and recognised her power over him. Hence, why he bargains with her for paradise. He can't win against her.

Why didn't ymir immediately take control of eren when he became a shifter? I think the attack titan and its drive for freedom impacted her efforts back then. The attack titan might have kept her at bay for a while, rendering her unable to fully control eren from the very start. Maybe thats why she could never fully cut off erens access to his powers, instead ymir ended up rendering eren powerless during specific, imapctful moments that would haunt him. The attack titan probs gave eren an urge to fight that overwhelmed her ability to control eren completely back then. Also, she needed a member of royal blood for the rumbling, so she probs wanted eren to find that person.

OKAY SO BACK TO FALCO NOW

Falco, however, does have some royal blood, because he was turned into a titan through royal blood, meaning ymir can't take control of him like with Eren. This is the loophole. Falco will be the only Co ordinate titan shifter, since the conception of titans, in 2000 years, who technically doesn't have royal blood. But also does have royal blood. He has immunity to Ymir controlling him because he techncially has some royal blood and won't be held back by the vow of renouncing war becuase he technically doesn't have royal blood. Unlike the shifters who existed before the vow, with full access to the co ordinate powers, he genuinely wants to end the war.

The war could have ended before the walls were built, if the greedy royal fuckers who had the founding titan actually wanted to end it. To them, it was a way of clinging to power and earning riches. No one who had the power to end the war, ever wanted to actually end the eldian war. Until Falco.

Eren bumping into a Falco was no accident. Falco witnessing the brutality of the war firsthand, watching everyone die in all these chapters was no co incidence. His young age. Combined with his genuine intent to fight and protect, he'll make the deicison that someone should have made hundreds of years ago. To end all titans.

It's likely he'll end the 13 year curse with that too. Just ending titans themselves will technically set ymir free to just die. Her own access to power stems from the paths I think, so Falco might chose to just destroy that dimension. Thus ending titans from being created by ymir. She finally just dies, no longer a slave who has to build and heal titans and titan shifters. She will truly be free from her suffering.

In the anime opening, we see erens titan and some colossal titans in hardened form. I think all the colossal titans will harden, then turn to dust. The walls on paradise Island will cease to exist. The titan shifters left alive will lose their powers and will no longer deal with the curse. Maybe Mikasa and levi would lose their strength because titans not existing anymore could mean that the by products of titan science, much like shifters, will just be normal human beings again. No eldian can ever turn into a titan again, including Falco himself. The titan war will come to an end.

But this is no happy ending. Because the equivalent to a world war would start. People will seek revenge on paradise Island. Eren, who committed henious crimes to protect his people, damned them for eternity. No one will believe that the people had no hand in a erens crime (Well, mostly) and they'll blame all the inhabitants equally. I can see war being waged on the island, but there aren't any titans to fight with. Just sub par military forces having it out. Just like in our human history, senseless human violence will take place. Its likely the island the entire story had been about, the island that just wanted to exist in peace, will perish in brutal wars. Other countries, weakened by the rumbling, will be attacked by those who weren't harmed by the rumbling. A destructive world war, that'll cast the world into a dark age, will begin.

Eldians will be free from being turned into titans, but the freedom came at the cost of a war they could never win.

....

[erenspaths]

What do you think will happen to Eren at the end of the series? Do you think he’ll be “saved” by Mikasa, killed, or something else entirely?

My theory based on the set of events thats currently happening in the Manga. 

Eren is born for a purpose to achieve what he has set for himself and we see that being iterated many times. [Because I was born into this world] As long as he is born, he will continue to move forward until all his enemies are destroyed to break the “Ymir curse of 2000 years”. 

In his journey, Armin became the first catalyst for Eren that planted the seed of Freedom in him, that which gave him strength to move forward.

Next was his father, and all of his memories further guided him. 

The events thats been happening are already PAST. This is all a script Eren is executing as PATHS does not have TIME DIMENSION and also we do not know how many number of times Eren had to do this and failing every single time and this time it’s different and the change he chose is to save Ymir from the clutches of slavery, that’s when he went into the root of the problem. [Only by changing the PAST, the FUTURE can be changed]. He is doing everything to save Ymir Fritz who is part of him. “Freeing her is Freeing himself”. No matter how painful this path is he needs to undergo it and he has set this path for himself and for the very same reason, he can’t let Historia used by the government. If she becomes a sacrificial titan fodder, she would end up exactly like Ymir fritz and this is just going to repeat the history. 

There is lot of stress in these panels talking about ETERNITY and YMIR being all alone all this time; that’s why I also believe that the timeline of 2000 years is repeating.

As long as Ymir is alive, if the root itself has the problem the foundation needs to go no matter how cruel it is, thats why the rumbling, thats why Ymir is shown to witness it, because the entire world is built upon her slavery no matter how you look at it. It’s the humans who took advantage of her not the other way round. Eren got the real true history and he continued to advance towards it. 

When he says he was disappointed when he learnt humans are outside the walls, they were the reasons Ymir Fritz is trapped and they were the people that's why he was disappointed and when Eren wakes up from crying in the first episode I really feel he is crying because he failed again and again and again and this time he will wake up where he will say to his friends that we will see each other again where they will meet without the walls. I came to this conclusion when they released chapter 122 because they revealed the root cause of all of these problems.

And also the entire story of SNK is revolved around Eren being in PATHS. 

Below are the lyrics of one of the song in SNK. It’s directed towards Ymir Fritz.

If you could make one of your dreams come true, what would you want? This is really important, so think carefully before you are born. What do you want? (What do you want?) What would you like to do? (What would you like to do?) For what reason and where will you go? And… What kind of person do you want to be? OR, Do you just want to erase your existence? For you in 10 years, what is your dream now? For you in 20 years, is it still the same? For you in 2000 years, are you free? I will ask again when spring comes… Advance towards the truth

Ymir gets to chose whether she wants to reborn again or erase her existence. No matter what she chooses, she is FREE because it is out of her OWN WILL.

But if you wish to know the truth, the world will come to collapse.

Is the sky you’ve admired in your cage really the freedom you seek? 

- Requiem der Morgenrote [SNK Ending]

I had to give some background to base my conclusion to your question. 

Eren is already dead as I said this is all already done and he has died so many times and reborn again. 

Eren cannot be saved by Mikasa nor she can kill him. His actual dream apart from the purpose he drove himself into is living with Mikasa and his family in the house how it was before. 

Armin has a bigger role to play the part as we saw it at the end of the Ch 131, where he called to Armin of the “FREEDOM VIEW” which I mentioned in the beginning of this post. 

Personally I feel there is no one who can do anything about it other than what Eren has to tell to Armin. 

And also there is chance of everyone being ALIVE again in a WORLD where they live without the walls because there are future panels of EREN where he says, he wants them to live a long life including those who are already dead in this series.

It has a bigger picture to what Eren is doing than simply choosing the 50 year old plan.

[ghostmartyr]

But will 6 chapters be enough to aside from stopping Eren and finding a solution that doesn't involve genocide, also show us what's Historia thinking, that 104th's Ymir is alive and my YumiHisu ending ? Isayama better not disappoint me or else I'll cry

I think I have too many ranty promises about what I’ll do if I’m disappointed, so in the scheme of really not wanting to do things, here’s hoping for a satisfying ending that makes literally only me happy.

Storyboard time.

By which I mean fanfic, but really really lazy fanfic where I put zero effort into any real plot. There is some stuff that could arguably be taken seriously, but no. Effort not found.

130 ends volume 32, which means things are allowed to happen. Not necessarily that they will. We arrive at Odiha, and our heroic motley crew gets to discussing where Eren could possibly go.

(If the manga thinks finding the giant stegosaurus is a problem it gets to be a problem okay.)

Odiha conversation progresses to the point of someone threatening to break Yelena’s arm, and Yelena finally admits that even without Eren sharing this specific part of the plan, he had shown some interest in one of Zeke’s contingencies.

Interspersed with this is shots of the torched Marley coastline, and maybe some of the screaming people, including the refugees everyone partied with. Stego-Eren is off in the distance, and we pan even further out to a freckled figure watching the new horizon from a cell. Insert dialogue here about more nightmares.

131, start of volume 33. Let’s open on Shiganshina, with casual soldiers talking about what went down at the port, and telling off random civilians from getting too close to Eren’s ground zero. NPC Farmer Guy, aka a suspiciously tall blond man, is walking around through most of the shots of the soldiers continuing to talk current events. If you look closely, sometimes the blond guy is accompanied by a short woman.

Odiha side plot is still ongoing, with top tier Mikasa moments because my city now. They get the airship prepped by the end of the chapter, but have solved no problems. Connie has punched Yelena, and Falco is wondering next to Armin what it must be like, to be able to undo being a Shifter.

A few pages cover freckled Ymir reading Marley’s propaganda history books in some prison. Lingering shots on the relevant imagery while the sound effects reach peak rumble.

Back in Shiganshina, the weird blond guy is wandering around still, but is missing his iconic hat. The soldiers decide to finally tell him to get lost. Insert ominous comment about how his work here is done, anyway.

We hit the last few pages with Ymir’s prison being War Hammered, the face of Stego-Eren specifically lowering to glower at her.

At the same time, a different blond guy, now in possession of NPC Farmer Guy’s hat, is being dragged through the streets of Shiganshina by shorty.

Last page is a spread with both scenes, with one dialogue bubble telling the unmoved Ymir and unconscious Zeke that they don’t get to quit just yet.

132. The airship is probably up in the air at some point somewhere around here, but we’re not here to be overly particular. This installment mostly belongs to Zeke and Ymir. Ymir has no idea what Eren’s deal is, except that he’s the guy who announced the quality idea of killing everyone, but he’s made a point of retrieving her and killing none of the people in the prison except by falling rocks. He’s not putting on a good show of knowing how to do any of this. She’s not going to turn down being left alone, but following him along on his journey to wherever with nothing to do is proving very boring. Talking at him is as well. Eren is distinctly not in the mood for talking.

On the other side, Historia’s having the same problem with Zeke. He’s basically trapped himself in the same mode Reiner falls into after his Liberio talk with Eren. It’s not obvious unless you look closely, and with the state of Paradis, no one is looking that closely. Though some people do offer to give the poor young pregnant lady some supplies. Historia politely takes every advantage, and makes sure to hide Zeke’s face whenever someone in uniform walks by.

It’s a traveling chapter, and all the travelers look pretty drained. Toss the dice over the specifics, but near the end of the chapter, Zeke finally starts to come back to something resembling consciousness. Enough to ask why Historia’s even bothering, when everything’s ruined.

“But you’re still standing. Someone with a will like that shouldn’t be giving up.”

Zeke asks if that’s what she plans on telling her condemned child. She gave up the second she agreed with Zeke’s plan, and motives don’t excuse what she has already done to it.

By this point all pretense of putting up with Zeke is gone, and Historia takes out a knife.

Instead of slashing his throat, she drives it into her stomach, and pulls out nothing but fluff through the hole in her shirt.

She announces that Zeke’s plan hasn’t been running this show for a while, now, so he might as well get up and start walking instead of making her carry him the rest of the way.

133. Flashbacks. Not all of them, but enough to cover Historia’s end. Years ago, she thought she saw a dead future. Every year that's gone by without the vision coming true has felt like a gift she can’t accept. Killing Eren would have stopped all of it, and she’s still the one who chose to save him. Because regardless of the future, the person saying he never should have happened was someone she needed to protect. This is what she does. She rescues anyone who thinks they’re beyond hope.

That includes her, it turns out.

Through her perspective, we see her and Eren both starting to spiral, just a little. They can’t see a way out. It finally comes to a head once Eren’s approached by Yelena, and indirect details about Ymir makes Eren feel compelled to have an information sharing/apology session with Historia.

Enter the memory shard. Historia admits that she’s seen Eren’s role in her family’s deaths. She’s known for a while, along with what he’ll do, and, well. Sorry for not saying anything. Eren is visibly fracturing, and being the enemy of humanity is starting to sound pretty good. He wonders out loud if this is fate.

That’s the turning point.

If it is, they’ll change it.

Back in the present, Historia is still with Zeke. Who’s awake, even though he’s looking at her like she’s a monster. Historia makes the point that he’s always searched for a way to end this world. His method’s out, but they’re still here. If she has to drag him along, she will, but him going along with everything would be easier on both of them.

134. This is where everything has to explode, because it would be the end of volume 33. We still don’t have much of Eren’s perspective. Team Airship knows very little except that he’s been overly curious about Ymir, who’s alive for some reason, and also in where the original Eldia began.

Team Airship is avidly chasing after Eren, who is Stego-Eren and easy to track. Shocking. Eren’s perspective begins to have flashbacks.

Ymir still has no idea why she’s here.

Falco has her memories, and the closer the airship gets, the more Ymir is like... wait... do I know this genocidal bastard? Things be trippy.

Airship gets to Eren as Eren finds the spot with the primordial ooze. Directed to it by both Ymirs; one who’s been there before, and one whose only memories include a cult who wished they’d gotten to go there.

World goes back to black and the giant tree, and Mikasa has one last look at Eren before things go really weird.

135.

EREN RUNS UP A HILL AND MAKES A DEAL WITH GOD.

More Eren flashbacks establishing sense.

Historia and Zeke are hanging in the Reiss cavern, as the other point on the planet with the most concentrated Plot Magic. They’re the last two links to OG Ymir, and OG Ymir’s deal with whatever is what’s led them here. She started this story, and with Eren as a vehicle, she’s the one who gets to end it.

Via some complicated ritual, you have Historia and Zeke, who are the OG Ymir’s truest flesh; you have Eren, bearing the OG Titan as well as the Attack and War Hammer; you have freckled Ymir, who is a Titan returned to her humanity; you have the uncaring ooze, who looks at all this and is like, why did you disturb my slumber wtf have you all been doing to this child I made a demigod.

Primordial ooze hears a request, and remakes the world.

136: WOW THAT SURE ALL HAPPENED.

Whatever happens in 135 is addressed, and we all get to spend a few final, treasured moments with the cast. The end.

This is a cop-out.

Because I do not actually know what mechanics are going to be at play.

I’m going with the Madoka option of the world being changed, but with the added bonus of Historia and Zeke acting as a conduit for the memories of the original world, so they don’t fade out. The curse is lifted, and Eldians can no longer be forcibly transformed. Throw in a little, “everyone in the world is now patched into Paths, and Historia and Zeke are absolutely going to use that to convince folks that war ain’t it, chief.”

Eren went into the ooze chamber, and OG Ymir is what walked out. Mikasa puts Eren’s scarf around her.

And obviously, as part of the memory resorting, freckled Ymir gets her memories back from Falco, and has a promise to keep.

Give me an extra two chapters and I could even it out a little better.

Really, I do not know what is going to happen, and that throws a wrench in any and all speculation. There is a singular, “what is it all leading up to?” X marks the spot eureka moment that I do not have where the main plot is concerned. As far as I can tell, Eren’s made such a mess that I don’t think there is any good way to repair it. Mass Madoka powers feel like cheating, considering all everyone’s been through, but without a magical rework of the world, Eren has had a net negative effect on Paradis’ everything, deepening the cycle of hatred, and that’s where the curtain closes.

So I might joke about no effort going into this, but more honestly it’s that I feel like the important parts have to be deliberately vague, because I have yet to come up with something that works well as an ending.

In any case, you can do a lot in six chapters. Especially if you go pure id on it.

[makiema]

Possibility of an Eren vs the Devil final showdown

Okay so I saw @marley-warriors-of-demon-blood's post and I pondered over it for a few days. I finally had the time to write it all down. What I have to say draws a lot from the original post. I'd just like to mention some more hints that I picked up while doing my research along these lines.

First off, I'll elaborate on the recurring mentions of "devil" we get throughout the anime and the manga (also talk a bit about Paths) and secondly, on Isayama's subtle inclusions of numerous other Judeo-Christian references. All of it directly hints at a dramatic ending that may involve Eren, the protagonist, and the main antagonist- the Devil.

1. The Devil : We have had an eerie account of direct or indirect references to the Devil.

• One of the earliest comes from Bertholdt in Season 2 Ep 36 when we first hear him addressing Eldians as "spawns of the Devil"

• The next time we literally get to see the Devil is in Season 3 Ep 43 when Historia revisits her past and the book she reads show us the picture of the Devil and we also see Ymir Fritz for the very first time.

She's present in the story under the alias of Christa, who Freida points out to be a kind girl, always thinking about others.

However, this unsuspecting nature also makes her dangerously gullible and thus, the Devil tricks her into consuming the fruit which'd vest her with incredible powers that could be used to do some potential good work but also wreak havoc on Earth. The illustration was already a foreshadowing of the immediate future event whereby Rod Reiss would try to beguile Historia and get her to eat Eren but she'd see through the ploy and stand up against him. But, that's a different topic and I don't want to digress from my primary point. However this illustration carried an even darker foreboding as we'd realize in the course of the manga.

• The next implication comes from Floch, quite shockingly, during the Serum bowl, also in Season 3. We find him referring to Erwin as the "devil" out of nowhere, that too twice.

It was horrifying yes, but could it be a darker message for events yet to unfold? Surely Isayama wouldn't drag in the word "devil" out of nowhere. Also, another thing I want to point out here is Levi's decision of finally using the serum on Armin. No, not the usual why (because by now it's clear that he wanted Erwin to rest) but whether or not this action of his, that earned him hard opprobrium from almost half the fandom, had some underlying meaning for us. Maybe more than the shock factor, the serum bowl was allegorical of future events- that the Devil, like Erwin here, is not dead yet and has been playing the strings since eons ago; that the character who is following in Levi's footsteps, i.e., Eren will have to make a difficult choice (which is why Isayama had been stressing on how he'll hurt the fans in the conclusion) and bring an end to the Devil who is still at large. Choosing Armin over Erwin seems to be an absurd decision from a logical pov and Levi's action maybe more than just "letting him rest". Isayama loves foreshadowing. Killing off such an important character could very well be an indication of something more than what's visible on the surface. Perhaps, it was symbolical of how, in the near future, the actual devil, who shares the same caliber as the Commander in plotting, will be forced to rest by Eren, who was trained by Levi to make difficult choices by himself.

• After this , Eren Kruger mentions how "anyone can be the God or the 'Devil' " in Episode 58, while also explaining how everything is connected by PATHS.

• The final and the clearest reference to the Devil is found in Wily Tybur's speech where he informs us of his devilry and we also come across Ymir Fritz, the girl who fell into his trap, and apparently consumed "the source of all organic matter".

There couldn't have been a more prominent Biblical allusion than this one. Now, endowed with such power, Ymir Fritz sets off with beneficial work but, as per the Curse of Ymir, she dies in a few years and we learn that her power is eventually divided into Nine Titans.

• The Devil and PATHS : Only, in chapter 115, do we realize that she hasn't died or at least her spirit hasn't (I'll elaborate on this later). She's STILL very much functional in PATHS - this another universe or another place (whatever term you deem fit for it). When I say functional, I mean how she has to tend to and help her subjects respawn as per the contract with the Devil.

However, notice the rather dark shading on her face? Those are similar to Isayama's signature stress lines that indicate Ymir Fritz is in pain or at least, she doesn't look like she's willingly up for kneading soil to help her subjects reincarnate. Now, if Ymir Fritz from Tybur's tale is still active, how can we rule out the possibility that the devil is active too? PATHS connects the future and the past. Eren Kruger can send words of advice to the future via PATHS, every shifter who's endowed with powers of the past has access to PATHS. In short, PATHS could be the place of any probability. PATHS is the place that warps time, history and even reality. If Ymir Fritz has indeed digested 'the source of all organic matter on Earth', then PATHS, where Ymir Fritz is struck, could be what supports this source or more clearly, it is what nourishes the root of the Titan Power. We know that Ymir Fritz obtained the source from the Devil and now, if PATHS is like nourishment to the source and is sort of a massive energy center (where even the concept of time is lost) it might very well be the Devil's residence or the physical manifestation of the Devil's will. The Devil, as part of a greater ploy, intended to do away with mankind and wreak havoc and that's why duped Ymir Fritz, a naive young girl, into consuming something that'd bind her and her progenitors to his evil will forever by genetic alterations, making it susceptible to his wilful morphing. With this, the main plot that revolves around slavery can finally reach an end. And breaking that tie to the Titan DNA, by destroying the Devil or PATHS (which helps the Devil to enslave Eldians/Subjects of Ymir no matter the era) could resolve the main issue and pave the way to freedom. If Eren does that, it'd be poetic given that Eren Kruger said that the Attack Titan and it's owner has always chased freedom. It's only fair that the Attack Titan (the embodiment of freedom) destroys PATHS (the embodiment that allows slavery). It all sets out beautifully and maybe this is the reason why Isayama even ensured that we get to see PATHS animated as early as in Season 2 Ep 10. Thus, we get a sneak peek of it in Ymir's memory.

It just gives more corroboration to my hunch that PATHS is THAT important and can possibly be the abode of the Devil and hence, be crucial in the endgame. Also, isn't it ironic how Ymir says "I saw freedom spread out before me" in this scene? Or could Isayama be hinting at a possible conclusion that Eren would finally achieve freedom once he is also in PATHS dimension and destroys it? That this scene would be included so early in the anime but not carry some deeper meaning just doesn't settle well.

2. Other Judeo-Christian references : The manga is brimming with those but I'd just point out to a few as some interpretations may seem too far off and I have the habit of snowballing every minute detail.

• Violets : These flowers keep popping up time and again and is even there in the very beginning of the show. Eren wakes up crying from his 'dream-vision' and we find those violets right beside him.

We again see these flowers very briefly under Armin when Eren consciously transforms for the very time in Season 1 Episode 10. This was not in the manga but Isayama wanted this to be animated. He wouldn't have stressed on the importance of including the violets if he didn't have a motif.

Violets have strong religious connotations in Christianity. They blossomed when Gabriel told Mary of her son's impending birth. Now, Gabriel is the Angel who communicates with humankind and thus stems the potential meaning associated with violets - connections. The symbolism is a very important one as it could be a allegory to how PATHS connects the future to the present, connects all the Subjects Of Ymir. Isayama even canonically included the violets in PATHS dimension in Chapter 115, when Zeke meets Ymir Fritz.

Isayama's emphasis to add violets in the anime and also later, to draw them in PATHS couldn't be for naught. The flowers and what they stand for must be crucial in the final resolution. Also, just as violets blossomed when the birth of the Saviour was prophesized, here in the the SnK universe, violets pop up when Eren is in the frame in the very beginning and when he first reveals his power, indicating he'd be the eventual saviour. If Eren is an allusion to Christ it also justifies what Isayama said : that he wants to 'hurt' the readers. We all know about Christ's sacrifice and perhaps Eren is also going to do something similar which will leave the readers hurting.

• Allusions to literary classics : There are a lot of allusions to Dante's Inferno and even to Milton's Paradise Lost, both of which borrow heavily from mythology and the Bible. But, I'd discuss the ones that I found the most suggestive-

1. Nine : The power of the Devil that Ymir Fritz inherited was split into Nine Titans. In Inferno, we get the Nine Circles of Hell that will eventually lead the poet to Satan. And like we have discussed before, the Devil has striking semblances to Satan. Satan lies below the Nine Circles of Hell and the Nine Titan Powers combined is equivalent to the power the Devil possessed. Uncanny similarity, eh?

2. Ymir and Virgil : Like @marley-warriors-of-demon-blood mentioned, Ymir Fritz is currently caught in a Limbo. She was just a naive little girl and hence, what ensued from her making a deal with the devil wasn't technically her fault. In Inferno, Virgil is distraught similarly- fated to remain trapped in Limbo forever. Now, like I said earlier, PATHS is connected to everything. And Limbo, the first circle of Hell, is also connected to the later circles. I hypothesized in a previous post how I think Ymir Fritz and Eren will meet next in the manga. (with Eren being decapitated and everything) Virgil was the one that guided Dante in his journey in Inferno and Ymir Fritz, currently just a lost spirit in another dimension, may become Eren's guide. She can advise the holder of the two most powerful Titans (the Attack and the Founding) on ways to resolve Eldia's problem by killing it's source, i.e., the Devil, considering she's really a girl with good intentions. This would also resolve her character arc properly. She'd get a stance in the story and not just be someone who was used by the Devil for his conspiracy. After all there's no one more suited for the task than Eren. I'm probably taking it too far but I do think Ymir will have a similar role like Dante. Both are caught in the Limbo, both are not at fault, and both are destined to meet the protagonist.

3. The Crystal : Annie enclosing herself in impenetrable crystal, which outwardly looks very much like ice, could be an allusion to Satan again. In Inferno, he's trapped in ice at the centre of the Earth. Annie is being held captive 'underground'. A very similar process is applied for Satan. He's held underground too and he's enclosed in hard, impenetrable ice, akin to Annie's crystal.

4. Paradis : The name itself could be suggestive of Paradise, i.e., the Garden of Eden, which is mentioned in the Bible as well as in Paradise Lost. The place is described as magical. The 'Paradis' in Isayama's story is not far from being extraordinary and is peppered with rare resources as Kiyomi points out in Chapter 107.

It has "the forest of giant trees", a plethora of resources, and is teeming with diversity. It's equivalent to a biodiversity hotspot, a very rare place on Earth. It has an aura of supernaturality and extravagance, much like the Paradise of Milton. Also, the whole Satan luring Eve with the apple thing (and the Devil's likewise conniving) is also mentioned in Paradise Lost.

So, in conclusion, with this many underlying religious motifs it's highly possible that the Devil is the ultimate villain, like Satan is in Christianity, and Eren's final confrontation is going to be with him- the one who is the root cause of all evil. Even the final exhibition gave a lot of importance to the Devil tricking Ymir Fritz scene. It definitely has much more significance than is apparent.

One of the key themes in SnK has been gray morality. All the characters have their own reasons to justify their commiting the most horrible atrocities they inevitably had to, as per orders. Marley is not exactly on the wrong for torturing and ghettoing Eldians. They fear power that can actually trample on the whole world. Eldia is, of course, not at fault. Their genetic make up may spell impending danger but that doesn't make them any less human. They're cursed alright but that doesn't automatically strip them off their humanity. They have as much right to live as Marleyans. In fact, as we have seen Eren reinforcing from time to time, "Nobody has the right to take that away from us".

Here, Eren also expressed his denial of any plan that even remotely suggested using this probability of turning into a Titan as a weapon to fight. Thus, we can trust that what Eren aims will cause the eradication of this possibility altogether. He will make it so that such a cruel way of fighting doesn't exist ; that nobody will have to be forced to turn into a Titan and die no matter the cause. And the only possible way to do away with this is to kill it's source : the source being the Devil or his instrument, the PATHS.

But, even if nobody is at fault, one cannot veil the truth that Titans exist or rather, the Titan DNA and the inadvertent possibility of an Eldian turning into a Titan exists. It still looms in the SnK universe like 'the grim reminder' we have heard over and over again in the anime. The reminder of humanity being caged and the humility of living under constant fear of Titans popping up suddenly called for invariable Fighting since the very beginning and had also inspired the chase for Freedom. So, how will Isayama bring the main plot/theme revolving Fighting for Freedom to a close? Of course, the answer is by ending slavery in all forms, including Eldians being a slave to the Devil via their fundamental genetic constitution. The Devil is the one responsible for making them Titans, for making the world see them as dreadful enemies. He is the one infringing on their right to freedom and right to live. Thus, Eren WILL face off with the Devil, the cause of all slavery in their world, and finally bring Freedom to humankind. After all, hasn't Eren's character always been all for freedom and for detesting and aiming to do away with every possible form of slavery? If the Devil's very existence is the cause of Eldians being a slave to devilish power, it's only fair that the one character, who has reasserted the importance of Freedom more noticeably than any other throughout the story, is the one that brings the curtain down on the Devil and all his ploys of enslavement and wreckage, consequently freeing his men.

[sparda3g]

Attack on Titan Chapter 121 Review

The truth hurts. The truth will not set you free. It goes without saying: this series is full of surprises. At the same time, the actuality made a lot of sense. The next anime season can’t come any sooner; the reactions will be jarring. I believe so, because I was floored by the revelations. This chapter had me in one crazy emotional roller coaster; the cliffhanger was the cherry on the top and that’s one sundae I don’t want to have.

Going in to the chapter, I was expecting Eren to try to convert Zeke’s opinion with the rest of the memory trip. Technically, I was right, but not the exact outcome I was expecting. Zeke summarized the last chapter well by stating Eren wasn’t manipulated by Grisha. His life was all lively and well until the wall was tore down, of course. The point is, Grisha has nothing to do with Eren’s influence. So why Eren backstabbed Zeke? Why not end the war? What is his agenda? Life truly began with Eren saving Mikasa. Remember the image of Eren and Armin happily hanging out. The tone is going to get heavy.

The scene with Eren’s first visit with Mikasa now carries more weight than simply Mikasa’s turning point, let alone a defining development. It speaks for Eren’s character to be a boy who will grow up to be a man who will fight for his freedom. If there are men that intend to steal his freedom, he will steal theirs. The shot of the worrisome father trying to calm his furious son let out a troublesome feeling.

The way I see it is, Grisha didn’t want to see his son to go to the path he made a mistake to take. When you recall the last chapter, life was going to be normal with not following Krueger’s order. However, this moment was the beginning of a path that will ultimately set the story straight. Eren’s pride denies Grisha’s desire to restore Eldia. In a twisted way, Eren should be thankful for Grisha’s actions to open his eyes, which means the father is the savior of the world. Wrap your head around that.

I do wonder what is up with Eren’s expression when he watches his young-self wrapping the scarf around Mikasa. It’s a look of guilt if anything. I don’t want to interpret as a pairing moment, but I do believe Eren owes her an apology after that act of heartbreak. It was seriously messed up; hate is a strong word. Hopefully, they patch up their relationship and well, we’ll see where we go from there.

I recall fans were confused on why Zeke, who has the Founding Titan’s power in control, would go to this memory trip to help Eren. I called it, he did it to save him; not going to abandon him. I like the fact he referenced Tom; clear indication of what he considered family. Eren is the only one Zeke has left and despite not being the little brother he wished for, blood is thicker than water. I also like more of the collage of Grisha’s moments, including the famous basement; leaving the note for the story’s great advancement. Then, this is where the chapter unfolds the craziest revelation to date.

Shifting back to chapter 1 left me feeling a good kind of nostalgia. However, that’s not the intention. It builds up the moment when Grisha leaves the house with his family alive and well for the last time. The tone I’m feeling is morbid because we know the downfall begins on that day. The panel paid close attention to Grisha’s expression as Eren argues with his mother about joining the Survey Corps. It’s all going accordingly, but then shocking part number one comes in.

The scene when Grisha promised Eren to return with secrets waiting to reveal is seen much differently. In fact, I was horrified. The truth is, Grisha was in fact staring at adult Eren when he made that promise. I couldn’t shout, “What” any louder. The scariest part is, the scene wasn’t altered; it’s like that in chapter 1. It’s not like Isayama went out and retcon the position. It was designed that way from the very start. It’s most likely just me, but it’s downright eerie to see Grisha watches his family one last time with only Eren being happy and joy. After all, the path will be favoring him from this point on, and Grisha can’t escape the inevitable. Massive foreshadow for the major revelation.

The confrontation with Grisha and Frieda is an emotional roller coaster that I won’t forget for a long time. This is the moment where the series took the course of the story we know today. As we all know prior to this extended scene, Grisha invaded Frieda and the King of the Walls’ HQ, and killed them to devour the Founding Titan. My first impression was Grisha was a murderer that would do whatever it takes to fulfill his destiny. After the last chapter, I assumed he had no choice but to kill them because of the invasion; awakened his old mission to fulfill and carry forward. Now, I am lost with words.

Right from the start, Grisha announced his heritage and plead them to save his family and citizens of the walls from the titans. This completely destroyed the thought of him killing them from the get-go. The fact he begged them first gives me a better impression of his character. He was no longer the old self who was hell-bent to save Eldians; he wanted to avoid hell at all cost. I felt bad for him before, but now, my sympathy is growing more. It doesn’t stop there.

Frieda turned down his pleading, because of her belief. She believed this is their sins and judgment day has come. They can’t afford to use the Founding Titan and fall to the wrong hand. They must accept the price they made. In short, Frieda told him to deal with fate. I guess it’s not a bad argument on falling to the wrong hand, but it does irritate me to think maybe the conflict could have been prevented. I find it funny how Zeke thinks he and Frieda will get along well. They might as well, considering how their train of thoughts are quite similar. The sensation gets worse.

Grisha begged them again, but now it’s making me sad. His expression screamed pain, agony, and broken apart. Frieda, on the other hand, started to frustrate me. Maybe you don’t find her wrong, but it’s mainly due to how Grisha was suffering from a possible solution. If it wasn’t for the last chapter, I wouldn’t be this sympathetic. It’s not to say she’s the villain, but two different belief don’t collide well. No matter how much he cried for help, she stick to her words and let them perish as they felt they are rightfully judged. Eren’s face is filled with anger. I got chills. Now, this is where the chapter begins to drown me in a pool of revelations.

Grisha finally gets to the part where the fans know exactly what happened: genocide. Not without a shocking reveal. We all know that each Shifting Titan has its own perks. Attack Titan was interpreted as a fighter, hence the title, “Attack.” But, was that really it? The real perk is the ability to receive the message from the future successors; in other words, foresee the future. Many have guessed it, but it’s great to have clarification now. I’ll explain more on the reveal later.

The amazing part about this reveal is the contrast. Attack Titan revolves with the future as the Founding Titan revolves with the past. It’s practically the future versus the past. It gives the name “Attack” more meaningful when you include the mythology, let alone the fitting nature for Eren. Isayama, you are a sly man. Grisha was ready to shift to Attack Titan and begin to kill them all for the greater good; well, at least in story viewpoint. I think. Then, a big surprise happens. The scenery led me to believe this is the moment. It was, but something is different. Grisha refused to kill them. I was downright confused.

I thought we have a multiverse in our hands. I thought I needed sleep. Part of me believed he gave up now, only to rebound later to kill them. But, it wouldn’t be necessary for Isayama to write this. It was depressing to watch him cry and refused to kill children, which again, gave me a much better impression of his character. However, if the timeline is fixed for him to kill them, how can he recover?

Adult Eren approaches to Grisha; screaming at him to get up and kill. Like Zeke, I was completely lost with words. Eren shouts at Grisha in tyranny tone and words that are painful as stabbing. It’s not even encouraging; it’s purely manipulative. He pressured him on and on, until he finally made his move. This is the story he started. The scene is far worse than before, and that’s saying a lot. I couldn’t comprehend on what just happened, but it’s actually what it was shown: Eren manipulated Grisha.

HOW IS THIS SHOUNEN?!?!

My brain isn’t processing well enough to continue. Our hero is the main villain. Well, not really, but the action is incredibly twisted. When you have to fight, you fight. Eren has stuck to the code since the beginning and this is where it led him to. It’s not to say he loves to kill, rather had no choice on the matter to advance to freedom. You can tell by his reaction towards the mass killing. It’s “whatever it takes” gone horribly disturbing. This is madness. As for Grisha, I’m astounded. First, he came off as a villainy character. Then, a redeemed character. Now, I can safely say, he’s the most tragic character of them all. That is unholy.

It’s incredible how Isayama can decipher a character that is more than meets the eyes. I haven’t changed my opinion on a character this many times before, but here we are. It’s hard to watch him cry; wondering if this pleased Eren. He also begged to see the rest of the future. Attack Titan was tearing him apart. Although it’s more than black and white, Eren comes off as a villain to his mind. The son manipulating the father; that’s messed up. Grisha’s life is suffering.

To add more weights to his character, he can finally clearly sees Zeke in the current time. The following scene is really heartbreaking. I didn’t expect Zeke to receive a closure under this circumstance. The way how it was written made it seem like Eren is hell, but Zeke is the son he wants to communicate. He tells him that Eren’s future is chosen and Zeke won’t have his. Once he sees him clearly, he embraces for forgiveness. It hits me in the feel with Grisha hugging his first son, and Zeke calls him, “Dad.” That’s powerful. Family is family. Before closing out, Grisha has one last words: stop Eren. It seriously paints Zeke as the protagonist.

In case this is too confusing for anyone, Zeke summarizes the whole revelation. I like the detail on Zeke calling Grisha dad, only to revert back to calling his name. The embracement affected him dearly, and understandably so. It’s the fatherly love he wished to have, and he got it. Long story short, Eren foreseen the future through his future-self’s memory, which led him to manipulate Grisha to set the path we’re journeying through today. Eren learned about everything four years ago; the moment when he held Historia’s hand. How rewarding.

Let’s discuss about the reveal on time messaging. Some speculated that they can travel through time. The reality is, they can only receive the message from the successors as well as see their presence, based on Grisha’s early turmoil. This eliminates actual time traveling, and it’s probably for the best. The series could get really messy when one can actually jump through time and alter it at will. By that, I mean changing a timeline multiple times alas multiverse. It narrows down to one timeline to focus on with the use of possibly multiverse visions.

It’s kind of hard to explain. I like to think of the series Orange. In there, the story involves with students that received messages from future selves in order to correct their mistakes. There’s no time jumping, no other multiverse to explore, aside of one for characters’ purposes, and it only focus on one timeline. In short, what we see is one timeline that has been “invaded” by the future. It doesn’t mean they will jump time now; the damage is done. This is the path.

As for Eren the Mastermind, it made tons of sense. It’s no wonder Grisha appeared in miserable pain prior to passing down the Titans to Eren. Now I get why he told Shadis to not get involved. He was manipulated by that point and his destiny was to fulfill Future Eren’s future. It connects far back to Krueger with his confused statement about Mikasa and Armin. Maybe there will be more towards it, but since Eren is the mastermind, it’s no wonder those two names were brought up. It’s incredible when you look back and see the pieces coming together.

As for Eren’s character, it’s believable to think he has changed when he saw the memories. The only part that is missing is whether he can see everything or only certain pinpoints. It’s addressed more or less at the end, but we’ll get to that very soon. The reason to be concerning is due to how Eren has been plotting and reacting. It’s not said the future is pre-determined, but perhaps it’s why Eren has been trying to change something.

Once he saw the memories, his focus changed drastically; wanted to take down the world for freedom. What I want to know is, does he know every outcome, including Sasha’s death. He was frustrated when he heard the news; was it a reaction to his future fate unchanged? Connie did say he laughed as well. Did he laugh because of an act of a villain, or was it a reaction towards his destiny to be inevitable. It’s clear that Eren is trying to change the journey, but the destination is locked in. This is merely a speculation. There’s a chance for Eren to elaborate his memory trip in depth. We know he has, but we don’t know what he has seen.

One of my predictions has Zeke converting to Eren’s side alas the good side; if you can even call it that. Honestly, it sounds pretty damn silly. Reminds me of Naruto in its worst days; which is why I hope it doesn’t happen. Fortunately for me, Zeke resume his first and only intention and force Ymir to enter the PATHS to end the Eldians. You would think Grisha’s forgiveness will change his mind. Instead, it encouraged him; now, against Eren and favor for Grisha. What a crazy round about.

Zeke does bring an interesting point though. If Eren becomes desperate to stop Ymir, wouldn’t that mean he didn’t see this coming? Can he only see certain destination? My guess is, he has seen everything, so he is trying to change its journey, but the destination remain the same. That or it’s gotten worse. It’s hard to say, but regardless, if Eren fails to stop Ymir, the future doesn’t belong to his.

This chapter was quite something else. It’s remarkable with its execution and paneling. I couldn’t do justice on describing the impact of these panels, especially the last scene with Grisha and Frieda. The artwork has come a long way from chapter 1 and it’s fortunately presented really well here with deep and sorrowful expressions. The revelations were mind-blowing, yet the puzzles fit in place. It ended on a hell of a cliffhanger; probably worse than the time Eren lost his head. This is it; the path to end all. We’re in the endgame now…

[aspoonofsugar]

I was thinking about AOT and the first chapter: Eren was crying, probably about what he experienced or will experience before the story ends and the memories will be stored in the attacking titan. That's how Kruger knew about saving Armin and Mikasa before it even happened. However in Eren's dream there is also a moment with possibly Mikasa saying "see you later Eren". I know people disagree on which Eren it's about (Kruger or Jaeger) but actually I was thinking that since (1/2)

it’s the only memory he gets from that dream, maybe it’s a sign that eremika is really going to be plot relevant. Why would he remember Mikasa in particular (and not Armin for example), assuming these memories were really about him and Mikasa? I’m so sorry if this doesn’t make a lot of sense, I love your snk posts so I wanted your opinion. Have a great weekend!

Hello anon! I am happy you enjoy my posts! And don’t worry, your ask makes sense, but since my answer is gonna be pretty long I’ll break it into two parts:

1) Firstly I will address the scene you mentioned and some theories about it.

2) Then I will talk a little bit of Eremika.

1) I agree with you that this scene

and this scene

are both linked to a common plot point which has to do with some worldbuilding elements like the paths among Eldians, the origin of the Founding Titan, the Attack Titan and the truth about Ymir. Until these details remain unknown it is difficult to come up with a perfect explanation for these panels.

You mentioned two theories in your ask:

a) The girl Eren sees in the beginning is Mikasa.

In this case Eren is definately seeing his future and probably him separating from Mikasa since the girl’s words sound like a goodbye. If it’s so then we are inside a time paradox. I have seen people reading the time paradox as a negative loop i.e. a situation where our characters keep struggling, but are never able to overcome tragedy and so Eren keeps living again and again the same experiences in the hope of finally breaking the cycle. People who believe in this theory seem to think that we will either get a bad ending (so the end will be like the beginning with Eren waking up under the tree and the story starting once again without a solution) or, alternatively, we may have an ending where the cycle is finally broken and our characters are finally free to go on and to create a new world.

I would like to propose an alternative (definately crack) theory: the time paradox may actually be a “virtuous” loop i.e. the events we assisted, despite their violence and sadness, are actually necessary to arrive to a positive ending and Eren’s final decision will be to actually accept everything that happened to him and to “send his will back in time” to influence the past events and to be sure that everything goes as it is supposed to go (i.e. as we have seen in the series). Basically I am proposing a time paradox like the one we get in the third book of Harry Potter where the characters going back in time and interfering with the past don’t actually change it, but are used to explain details the protagonists saw the first time and couldn’t understand (like the person saving Harry from the Dementors who turned out to be Harry himself).

Thematically it would be interesting for Eren’s character because he, despite fighting for freedom, is a character who has been enslaved since when his father gave him the titan power. He didn’t choose to become the Attack Titan, so in a sense he has been negated freedom since the very beginning because he isn’t given the chance to personally make that very first choice which kicked off the whole plot. For him to eventually accept what happened and to influence past events so that things go exactly as they went in order to ensure a positive outcome would be a nice touch imo. It would make the whole story a consequence of Eren’s choice and he would regain the agency Grisha took away from him back then.

b) The girl Eren sees is actually a girl important for Eren Kruger.

This theory has its own good points. First of all it’s obvious that Isayama wants us to associate Eren to Kruger:

The fact that Eren used the name Kruger as his alias in Marley and their two designs as children being similar, not to count them having the same name, are all details meant to draw the reader’s attention to the connection between these two characters. If so then we can assume that this connection will be important both thematically (meaning that Eren and Kruger will be characters made to compare and contrast each other) and plot-wise. If their link is relevant plot-wise then it may not be too far-fetched to imagine that, because of some unknown worldbuilding elements (aka Eldian paths or something), the two of them share a special mental connection. This unique mental connection may explain why Kruger mentioned Mikasa and Armin despite not knowing them and why Eren got to see one of Kruger’s memories despite having still to receive the Attack Titan.

Even if this theory were correct, though, this wouldn’t change the fact that the scene Eren saw may be relevant to Eremika:

After all it’s Eren himself who associates the girl to Mikasa and this means that, in the case the girl is someone important to Eren Kruger, their relationship will most likely foil Eremika and this girl may become a parallel to Mikasa like Kruger is to Eren.

In short there is no doubt that the scene in chapter one will be, one way or another, relevant to Eremika and that Eren and Mikasa’s relationship will be (and already is) relevant for the story.

Now I’ll try to answer the second part of your ask.

2) I think that the most interesting thing of Eremika as a ship is that it has been set up to be solved only when Mikasa is able to make herself independent from Eren instead than when the two characters come together:

It’s interesting that we get to see this scene from Mikasa’s POV because we can contrast it with the dream Eren had. At the beginning of the series we have Mikasa looking at Eren with adoration and at the same time we have Eren having a vision of a girl he associates with Mikasa saying goodbye to him. It may very well have been an effective representation of Mikasa’s arc in a nutshell: the very beginning against the very end.

The root of Mikasa’s character is that she is a child who lost her family and who is terrified from the prospective of losing it again and to remain alone:

When she sees both her parents die she doesn’t even have the instinct to run for her life and lets herself get caught without opposing resistance because she has no idea how to live without her family. Then Eren comes into the scene and Mikasa clings to him:

Mikasa’s clinging to Eren becomes even worse after she loses her adoptive family. Let’s also notice that for her to help Eren out was also Carla’s last wish:

It is because of all these circumstances that we see her doing things like this in the beginning:

However, the narrative keeps challenging her on this aspect to the point that I wouldn’t be surprised if, by rereading Mikasa’s arc at the end of the series, it would turn out that the whole story was preparing her to say goodbye to Eren (and possibly to Armin):

After all Mikasa has been now tricked twice into thinking that she was losing a member of the costitutive group representative of her happy childhood. To me these two occurrences seemed rehearsals to what will be Mikasa’s final trial. Moreover, she is even told that both Armin and Eren won’t live long:

It’s as if the narrative is warning her that she has to move on and to become more independent because one’s life isn’t reduced to the family nucleus one is born in, but a person can forge new relationships and find warmth and happiness even outside it.

In short Mikasa’s story starts with her being totally unable to face a traumatic loss and it is possible that it will end with her having become strong enough to actually let go. It would be a beautiful way to end her arc imo because it would tie it back to her original trauma (her family being killed) and would solve it together with her relationship with Eren who firstly taught her that she could keep on living even without her loved ones.

What about Eren?

It seems to me that Eren is ironically doing to his friends what Mikasa did to him in the beginning:

Mikasa in the beginning was constantly trying to protect Eren to the point of objectifying him to an extent and of trying to control him. Now, in the last chapter we have seen how protecting the people he cares about is still a pretty strong motivation of Eren’s character:

However, he is doing it by dismissing their opinions and their feelings and by isolating himself in the process:

It’s interesting that we see Eren in front of a mirror this chapter because the place each one of EMA is at tells us something about their current state of mind.

So we have Armin in front of an enemy trying to communicate without receiving any answer exactly like any chance of dialogue with Marley has now been lost:

Then we have Mikasa who is at Sasha’s grave, but isn’t actually looking at it (she is behind the grave and not in front of it) as if she couldn’t force herself to truly face the consequences of what Eren did:

She touches her scarf instead and repeats Eren’s mantra despite Sasha’s death basically proving it wrong. They won. Sasha still died.

Finally we have Eren alone, in front of a mirror:

He isn’t seeing neither his enemies (like Armin) nor his comrades (like Mikasa), but is seeing only himself. Again, I don’t mean that he doesn’t care about others, he does, but he has assumed a self-centred prospective: he wants to protect his friends and family and will fight against whoever wants to hurt them disreguarding both who they are and what his loved ones think about the matter.

Back in Trost Mikasa was so desperate to protect Eren that she would have disreguarded her duty as a soldier in order to keep him safe and would have indirectly sacrificed others’ lives she could have saved with her strength for this reason.

In that situation it was Eren himself who woke Mikasa up and urged her to do the right thing. Now I think Eren needs a headbutt as well and it might be Mikasa the one to deliver it (since I think Armin will leave the other two). However, she will be able to do so only if she is ready to actually enter into an open conflict with Eren.

I don’t know if I was of any help! Thank you for the ask and sorry I took a while to answer it! And have a great week!

[ghostmartyr]

SnK 114 Thoughts

This is going to be done a little differently than my usual chapter posts, because I can. Or I guess a nerve got struck or something, who can say.

Attack on Titan is about humans and monsters.

It’s about the monsters humanity faces, and the monsters that humans can become.

It’s about fighting those monsters at both ends.

It depicts this fight as never-ending. You might not see the end. Your children might not see the end. Your grandchildren might not see the end. But for the generation that does see the end, for time that you’re here, you’ll play your part.

If you beat down one monster, another will take its place.

If you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time, you’ll be the monster.

There is too much wrong in this world for it to ever be right.

“I remember the pain again... Do I... have to... start all over again? This is a... cruel world. And yet... so beautiful. It was a good life.” Mikasa, 7

“They would all be happier... if I wasn’t alive.” Historia, 52

“They said just killing you would solve everything, but...” “I’m the same way. I thought it would be better if I’d never been born. The world hated me for just existing. To bring happiness to many people... I died.” Ymir, 40

“I... never needed to happen. Do it... At the very least... I want you to end it all for me.” “It’s bad for everyone if I keep on living!! Please, just hurry up and eat me!! I can’t go on living like this!!” Eren, 65, 66

“If Marley decides to exterminate all Eldians... I will accept it. That is how grave the crime of us Eldians were. They could never be atoned for. Eldians... Titans... they never should have existed in the first place.” Willy, paraphrasing Karl Fritz, 99

“Of course this danger now facing our world... can all be traced back to the existence of Eldians. I... would choose to have never been born, if it was up to me. I’ve hated my blood. More than anyone else... I wished for the extinction of all Eldians." Willy, 100

“I... can’t stand this anymore... Just... kill me, I beg of you... I want to vanish.” Reiner, 100

“You don’t really think ‘I don’t want to die.’ Youve always tried to think of a way to martyr yourself so everyone will praise you!” Ymir, 40

“I became a Warrior... because I wanted to kill myself in the grandest way I could. That’s all.” “How much better would it have all been... if I was never born into this world?” Xaver, 114

“If we’d never been born in the first place... we never would have had to suffer.” Zeke, 114

Death is nothing new to Attack on Titan. It’s everywhere. The very concept of the heroic group the protagonist wants to join is founded on the belief that their soldiers’ deaths will pave the path to a better future. It isn’t a kind future. Eren’s called a suicidal bastard for dreaming of being a Scout.

From the very start, though, that’s what the chosen protagonists are going to represent. The wings on their backs stand for freedom. Going outside the walls, even if it only leads to their deaths, is what it means to be free.

Death is a side effect.

It’s an inevitability. The world is too cruel to bypass it for the things you value, so you fight for the hollow spirit of your beliefs without seeing them ever come to fruition.

Endlessly.

Uselessly, darker thoughts start to argue.

For Eldians with a fuller history of the world, they’ve been aware of it on some level for all their lives. They have a monster waiting to be unlocked inside of them, and the longer they live, the greater the risk of that monster being exploited. They grow up hearing the horror stories of what they’re capable of.

The people of Paradis know it first-hand. Their lives for the past hundred years are forged through fear of the titans, with an entire branch of their military devoted to going out and dying in attempts to make the world less scary.

Even in the renewed version of history Willy Tybur offers, Eldia is full of tyrants until Marley becomes the tyrants. Using the same power Eldia did.

Xaver’s wife kills her son. She specifically kills her son before she kills herself. She has a man she loves, and in theory a child she loves, and the moment she understands that her child has that monstrous, tainted blood, she kills both of them.

In response, Xaver kills himself.

As slowly as possible. Learning as much as he can.

But he becomes a Warrior to die, the same way Krista Lenz joins the military to die.

A generation and a world apart, and still these things come up. Only Historia’s mother is the one who doesn’t have the courage to kill her child. Historia’s mother dies by someone else slitting her throat.

This world eats apart most of the characters we’ve seen. They’ve suffered losses and hardships, and the only release they have left becomes continuing forward. Developing their tactics, learning what they can, but living on. Killing themselves and their comrades again, and again, all for a small scrap of progress.

It’s behavior Zeke can’t stand.

“I’m sure that by the end, they’ll be sending every person inside those walls off on a suicide charge, from their elders to their children... they’ll go on saying if they’re going to die anyway, might as well make it a proud death. ...It only proves how unimaginative and set in their ways they are. ...The little fools.” Zeke, 81

All this suffering, and for what?

Titans are still going to exist.

People are still going to be terrified of them.

People still should be terrified of them.

It would be so much better if none of them existed. The memories of baseball and research can stay, but it stops there. No one will carry it on. No one’s life will be shortened so they can be someone else’s tool of destruction.

From the very beginning, there’s been a loud cry to exterminate all the titans.

Eldians are just embryo titans. All of them. For their own sake, as well as for the sake of the world around them, it’s better off if they just don’t exist anymore.

Zeke’s plan won’t cause them much pain, really. Yes, most of them will probably die in the coming war, but a few will surely live out their lives to their natural expiration date, childless, and then the threat of the titans will be a distant memory. How awful is that, really, compared to the atrocities their powers have played party to?

It’s preventing so much future pain, and the cost is what? The selfish joy of having your bloodline continued?

Zeke knows how perverse that joy becomes. Children only end up inheriting their parents’ sins and problems. He escapes them by a man he has no blood relation to coming in and saving his life.

It’s practically humane.

It’s one person deciding to rewrite the infrastructure of his entire race because the world has been so incomprehensibly cruel he can’t think of a solution that isn’t death.

Zeke’s not a character I ever expected to identify with. He’s a hypocritical jackass who’s so arrogant about his own life’s purpose that he’s turned off his ability to evolve. He isn’t responding to the world around him and seeking to change it; he’s already decided what he’s going to do.

This cycle ends. No one is coming after them. There is never going to be another Eldian Empire. There is never going to be another person who suffers from the existence of Eldians.

That fixes it, right?

If it all just stops, somehow that will make it okay again. You don’t have to fix it. It can’t be fixed. It is impossible to fix, no matter how hard you try. Trying just casts more ruin upon the world. Give up, stop, and it will all be better.

The content of what Zeke’s doing could be an interesting discussion all on its own, but that isn’t what makes this chapter hard to write about, for me. It’s that one screencap above that sea of quotes.

So now let’s make this awkward.

I’ve wanted to kill myself for months.

The thought has been present for years, but the want has mostly been since this summer. Am I out of good things that might happen? No. There are plenty of baseball games I could enjoy. There’s more to learn and experience. There are definite things I’ve lived through that brought me joy that I wouldn’t have had if I killed myself when I first had the crushing want to.

There isn’t one grand, unifying way to feel suicidal. You’ll get similar stories if you gather people into a clump, but people always insist on doing everything differently.

But since the very start of not really caring about Zeke, his conversation with Reiner and Bertolt on the wall stuck out.

He doesn’t talk about the suffering he’s experienced. Or caused. His aims are very straightforward.

“We have one goal, right? Regain the Coordinate here... and put a stop to this cursed history. Let’s just... end this. I want us... to end this.”

Three times in one page, he just talks about things stopping.

It’s something exhausting, to feel that tired. To look at the world around you and decide it’s beyond salvation. It isn’t always sadness or pain. Sometimes it’s just... being done. There’s no will left to fight, and could it please, please stop now. The ride isn’t fun, it’s not going anywhere fun, it’s not going anywhere at all, so isn’t it better if it just doesn’t exist anymore?

Living stops being the point. Cutting things off before they get even worse is the best you can hope for. Everything is just that bad. Surviving in hopes of changing it? That will only make it worse.

At some point, every avenue of thought in your head turns into thinking that everything would be so much better off if it died. Sometimes it isn’t even about you. It’s about random strangers on the news, and thinking that if whatever injury they got in some fire killed them, they won’t have to worry about finding a new place to live, and wouldn’t that be better?

Living is hard.

Stopping it all... that sounds good. It is the only thing in the world that sounds like hope after hope stops existing for you.

That makes this chapter such a pain to go over.

Because whatever the hypothetical merits of Zeke’s grand solution, all I can see is one more voice added to this series’ suicidal idiots. One more person who is so done with life, he’s decided to make sure everyone else will be done with it too.

I’ve said a few times that this is a series about genocide and how it’s bad. I still feel that is a correct statement, but in a very frustrated comment I made to a friend earlier this evening, I said this series is about suicide.

Most substantially, it’s about, fuck suicide.

Fuck it right off a cliff.

Over and over again, we see characters pushed to the brink. We see them give up, and hate themselves. We see them begging for death.

Then they get back up.

“That’s right... I still have... them...” Reiner, 97

“I’m keeping my name as I live this new life! Living this way is my way of getting revenge!! I’m going to be living proof that your fate isn’t decided at birth!!” “So what about you?! You’re going to kill yourself, the ultimate act of submission. Is that how much you want to please the people who treated you like a nuisance?! Why are you trying to hurt yourself?! If your will is that strong... then shouldn’t you be able to change your fate?!”

“...I died. But--when I did, I wished for something from the bottom of my heart. If I could be born again... I wanted to live my next life for no one but myself.” Ymir, 40

“It hit me that living was like a miracle.” “I can’t... give up. If I die now... I won’t even be able... to remember you. So--no matter what... I’m going to win! Whatever I have to do, I’m going to live!!” Mikasa, 6, 7

“When I see someone crying, saying... no one needs them... I want to tell them... It’s not true. No matter who! No matter where!” Historia, 66

“I want you to let me do it... just once. Let me believe in myself.” Eren, 66

“...But. I do not wish to die. Because... I was born into this world.” Willy, 100

“When we’re born... all of us... are free. People who reject that, no matter how strong they are... don’t matter.” “It doesn’t matter... how terrifying the world is. It doesn’t matter... how cruel the world is. Fight!! Fight!! FIGHT!!” Eren, 14

Zeke rejects that fight. He’s done with the world. He alone sees the truth, and that truth is that the only way to save Eldians from harm is for them all to die out.

Chapter 114 is called, “Sole Salvation.”

It isn’t a hard thing to fall into the belief that the only net good waiting lies in death. It’s very, very easy, and for my part, that makes reading this narrative, which this chapter specifically calls home, difficult.

Zeke is not unsympathetic in his life’s hells. The little boy who so badly wants to spend some free time with his father who only sees him as a tool--he is a child, and what he goes through at the age of seven is enough to call the tragic backstory a wrap.

He’s pretty clearly an antagonist.

The themes the story has allied itself with are that of fighting for better, even if that better can never be yours.

Zeke’s sort of there, except his entire strategy hinges on the idea that better can never exist while Eldians walk the world. Their entire presence is a blight. Zeke’s decided that the only better that can happen is one that doesn’t include Eldians.

Thematically at least, the story so far isn’t so chill with that.

Zeke is still working towards a goal, and he’ll sacrifice everything to get there, fighting his heart out, but he’s given up. He’s looked at an entire race of people and decided that there’s nothing but pain to be salvaged in them.

Part of me resents arguing against that, because yeah. Even just reading the manga, I’m looking at all of the possible happy endings I can come up with and they’re laughable in their optimism. Calling it quits and wiping your hands of the whole mess doesn’t sound like such a bad deal, really.

Only that’s not the mindset this story operates on.

If you don’t fight, you can’t win.

It isn’t about not losing.

It’s about winning.

It’s about living.

Laced through quite a few of the quotes up there is a concept that Carla puts rather nicely in the 71st chapter.

“He’s already great. Because he was born... into this world.”

Life has meaning the second it starts. Not what you do with it. Not what you contribute to the world. Those things matter--of course they matter--but that’s not the driving spirit that keeps on coming through.

So many characters talk about being born. When they look inside themselves for their reasons and beliefs, they start there. They start before they’re even cognizant.

Life has meaning because it’s life.

You don’t have to be worthy of it.

You don’t have to deserve it.

You’re allowed to have it because you are a person.

Zeke wants to deny that for Eldians. The ones who are around can stay, but the very concept of life for its own sake is one he’s given up on for his people.

I’ve never really gotten people who feel a need to have themselves continue on, but it isn’t a choice anyone else should get to make for them. Their lives should belong to them. They should be able to live them how they want.

Zeke the only way to justify the lives of Eldians is if their genetic code is altered so that more of them can never exist.

Because he wants the pain to stop.

The pain never stops.

That’s why Mikasa’s line is so iconic. There’s always pain. That doesn’t mean there can’t still be beauty. Heck, the other one she says is almost better; “It hit me that living was like a miracle.”

Zeke’s ripping out a rosebush because it’s covered in thorns. The beauty of the roses is less important to him than the cruelty of the thorns.

Relatable.

Deeply, deeply fucking relatable.

And I hope the narrative does what it’s done every single time with this kind of thinking and kicks it bloody.

Beauty means more than cruelty. If it doesn’t feel that way, that’s all the more reason to fight for it, until it feels like it matters as much as something that glorious should. The cruelty is not the end of the story.

Zeke wants it to be, because he can’t see how there will ever be a different end.

Fantastic. Good luck, Eren. Fuck knows you aren’t the gold standard for dealing with this in a healthy way, but maybe enough of your friends will be around to kick you in the head that you’ll think of something clever.

-sigh-

I guess I’m done. Even if this is more of a series post than a chapter post, but I guess technically these are just my thoughts on a chapter, and heyo, my thoughts.

Though one thing.

One thing I will mention.

Is that Zeke shouldn’t want Historia to be pregnant.

Like, he’s generally very anti-pregnancy already, but if he does his Founding mojo, he’ll still die, and the current generation will still be around, and as long as there’s someone of royal blood, said Founding mojo can be undone.

Geez I need a drink.