#knowing that as good as SNK has been it could still fall flat on everything it tried to convey

[amandabe11man]

so far i’ve managed to keep myself from looking at the last SNK-chapter before its official release tomorrow, but if the vagueing by others is anything to go by, it seems like a thematic disaster of an ending. people have said it is a perfect showcase of how to not write a story. if this is all true (i will trust nothing but the official release rn, omg), i’m feeling Isayama was just ready to end it, in one way or another, final message be damned.

here’s hoping the leaks so far has just been.... one last easter egg or something though

[ghostmartyr]

/clears throat/ so, Immi, I hear you like the locked tomb, which is fantastic! from one person also escaping the snk series into TLT to another, what did you think of the characters and plot in HtN? are there any things you're most excited to see when Alecto comes out in 2022?

-pats lifeboat- This baby can fit so much trauma.

SPOILERS, naturally.

With another paragraph informing the curious that unspoiled is the way to go into HtN, since if you aren’t lost and confused, are you really reading Harrow the Ninth?

I read it all in one day, and that was a choice. It does mean my memory and understanding of what all went on is slightly dependent on someone else on the internet exploding over a particular set of paragraphs and explaining their significance to me, but I still enjoyed the hell out of it.

HtN disappointed me on one front in that I was hoping seeing more of Harrow 1.0 would help out any future fic endeavors. On everything else, like the first one, being told the story is such a good time that I’m willing to wait on a full comprehension of where it’s going.

I also really like second person.

What I loved most about HtN is how even without Gideon mentioned until very, very late in the book, you can feel her absence everywhere. In the wrong bubble flashbacks you’re commanded to examine the strangeness, but even in Harrow going about her day, the isolation and the wrongness of it decorate her every action. She’s alone, and she shouldn’t be, and the loss she’s unaware of bleeds into a constant echo of grief.

I don’t think I’ve ever appreciated absence as a narrative tool so much. Obviously griddlehark hours go hard once they start in HtN, but even before then, there is so much power to their connection that looking into a world where it never exists still manages to punch you in the heart with how much each one inhabits everything the other is.

The whole series is amping me up with a few thoughts on loneliness, honestly. Gideon and Harrow grow up alone on the Ninth, save for each other. It takes leaving for that to be any kind of good thing. The first book is tag team Among Us with everyone in their little clusters, slowly learning what other people are about as they all drop dead.

The second book has a different vibe and different plot things going on, but it’s similar in that the protagonist gets thrown into a world they don’t fit and have to put on a show. Only now there are even fewer people to familiarize with, with that number correlating directly to how they all killed the person closest to keeping them from being alone.

Lyctorhood is taking the person dearest to your heart and trapping them there forever while they’re stripped of everything that made them who they are.

...Also Ianthe is there.

Gideon, Mercy, and Augustine are the last Lyctors standing after 10,000 years. There were only seven, starting out. Sixteen acolytes who came to the First. The only pair who didn’t succeed in condensing themselves is separated from the pack and sent to live away from their peers on a tiny planet that no one has anything good to say about.

Alecto is John’s -- who even knows, past A Lot, and he puts her to sleep and locks her in a prison no one but he can get past.

God has seven friends. More if you want to count the people in the Cohort, but realistically, he has seven friends. Then they keep dying.

Harrow spends HtN in a spaceship with five people.

One is trying to kill her.

One ordered that one to try to kill her.

Two could not care less about the useless baby Lyctor.

One is Ianthe.

There is no real endgame. There is surviving life, and life has become a game of running as far away as possible so you don’t share your ruin upon your inevitable death.

It’s bleak and sad.

Harrow’s healthiest relationships are with dead people, and some of them she didn’t know at all in life.

Reiterating it, the most plot significant bit of the world is finding someone else in the world, swearing yourself to them, and smashing your souls together until you’ve lost the connection entirely.

My brain’s not in the best place so I can’t do more than gesture loudly at it, but a few people have mentioned that the series’ thesis is a counter to Ianthe’s statement that love is acquisitive.

Harrow tightens her hold around Gideon until Gideon would rather she just strangle her and get it over with, all things considered. It fucks them both up, and when they start working to get past it, circumstance wraps a chain around both their throats.

The necromancers who become imperfect Lyctors have all acquired their cavaliers, and besides the cav, it kills that bond.

Harrow’s rejection of that is why Gideon’s soul is still in the world of the living (and John blood).

She has spent her entire life eating pieces of Gideon to keep herself a horrid imitation of whole, and when she is finally offered that, she refuses.

Grief and how Harrow just can’t are active elements of the book, and Magnus gives her more therapy in five minutes talking about it than she has ever had in her life, but the reason why that isn’t the end of Gideon is because, unlike all the other Lyctors, Harrow turns the offer down.

With the exception of Babs and Ianthe, the relationship between cavaliers and necros about to do the Lyctor thing is cavaliers promising to burn for an eternity while their necromancer lives off the fumes.

Fuck that is Harrow’s response.

Cytherea says, in the aftermath, that they had the choice to stop.

Harrow stops.

A lifetime of doing exactly what Gideon is telling her to do with her death, and Harrow chooses to stop.

Harrow remembers Ortus’ poetry. She regularly sees her congregation off to their deaths. She keeps Gideon’s glasses. She views Palamedes, head exploded and all, as an infinitely better person than she is because of the quality of his exemplary character. She pulls Gideon the First from the incinerator on the night she plans to kill him.

Kiddo has so many fucking issues, but somewhere, she has learned to respect people for being people. That’s why she and Gideon are the heroes of the story, ultimately, and Ortus saying that they’re heroes worthy of the Ninth doesn’t fall flat. They’re actually trying.

Where that puts us for Alecto, I don’t pretend to know.

Since the first book is the temptation of an end to isolation, only to have it snatched away, the second book is the continuation of isolation with a few promising sparks of human connection that pave the way for hope...

That leaves the third book to shed the isolation and allow the connections to thrive.

With Gideon and Harrow MIA.

I know that the books kick things up into high gear in the final acts each time, but if they’re both gone for the majority of the book, no matter how much fun it is, I’m going to miss them. They’re the core leads, and I don’t want to be without them in the final part.

The 2022 release date has aged my soul. I deliberately planned my GtN read to land a month before HtN came out, then suffered when that was delayed. When really that was nothing at all. I hate waiting.

(Insert note that I’m very glad they aren’t forcing Muir to rush anything out. It’s been a rough time, but also, just in general authors should have the opportunity to create the best versions of their art they can, so the extra time hurts, but it’s obviously for the best.)

What I’m most excited for is probably the cover art. The first two have been awesome, and the artist said he’d likely do print sales for all three when the third’s revealed. My wallet cries but my heart does not.

What I dare not be excited for is the potential for Gideon and Harrow meeting again and perhaps hugging. In their own bodies.

I’d take other bodies, but ideally, y’know.

Also I would love for Harrow to finally meet her popsicle girlfriend.

I doubt it would be a wholly positive experience, but by golly I want it. Maybe they could hug too. It would probably kill Harrow again, but who doesn’t expect several people to die again in the third book?

However it plays out, I’m expecting to enjoy AtN. The writing’s the sort that I’ll happily follow wherever it goes. For everything else, there’s fanfic. The only real worry I have is the whole book will be narrated by Ianthe, and while I mentally groan at that, I actually find Ianthe’s commentary delightful, so even in the worst case scenario I’m having a good time.

Thank you so much for the ask.

[ghostmartyr]

SnK 98 Thoughts

Can my post this month just have a bunch of pictures of fish flopping around on the ground? Because at this moment, that is what this chapter has spawned the greatest empathy in me for.

At least the fish get to die.

The Marley saga never dies.

It is an evil Energizer Bunny come for us all.

My ability to care about the Marley side has been dying (dead?) for a while, but I think this chapter is where I just can’t stand it anymore. I just. The last bit of my creative energy went into being envious of a dying fish. I don’t care about Marley’s continued horribleness. I don’t care about moments of levity for the young kidlets who are either going to die terrible deaths or coerce other cast members into dying terrible deaths. I do not care about Diet Reiss. The Giants aren’t in the playoffs, so I really don’t care about baseball.

Have a Zeke.

.Someone wake me from this nightmare.

Turning the volume down on my mental screams a tad... I’m still trapped in how little I care about any of this.

Large portions of it are clearly framework for things that haven’t happened yet. Staring at scaffolding that doesn’t even have the decoration of drying paint isn’t my usual definition of fun. I appreciate that the story is setting up its dominoes, and looks to be taking significant care with doing so, but--well, in lieu of repeating myself ad nauseam, yeah.

What it really comes down to, I think, is that these aren’t our protagonists. The kidlets and the Warriors are all the shining stars of the Marleyan Eldians, and Magath and Willy surely have some other grand scheme going on to propel the plot into interesting places for their country.

So what?

For ninety chapters, the story has been preoccupied with the concerns of a tiny island. Eight chapters with people who don’t consider their stories worth hearing about can’t elicit the same responses.

We get the highest concentration of levity we’ve had in ages with this chapter, and a lot of it is thanks to tiny children. They’re small and cute and innocent. The impulse to sympathize is ready and waiting, and it is very keenly exploited here. Who wouldn’t want two pages depicting how completely whipped Reiner is by a set of four children?

It’s a humanizing element, and more fun to read than much of this arc has been, but it’s difficult to feel that it has a real point.

One of the reasons previous chapters have worked, even through some pits and clumsiness, is that Reiner gets most of the attention. Reiner, happy about it or not, is a person who is familiar with both worlds of this conflict.

Paradis is not just a place with monsters to him, the way it is for Zeke. It’s the place of Reiner’s nightmares because he lived a life there, and deep down, he understands the citizens of Paradis.

His denial of that is a whole separate topic that could use a different chapter as a launchpad, but Reiner is still aware of the world in a way that the other cogs of Marley aren’t. He’s fully committed to our current perspective side, but he carries the burdens of both.

No one else has that problem. They have the age-old problem of titans in the world of humans. The kidlets are Eldians fighting for a better life for Eldians through supporting Marley. The Marleyans are trying to keep the rest of the world from eating them alive. The rest of the world is waiting to hear why they shouldn’t.

Paradis barely exists as a real place for the rest of the cast. It’s a mine. It’s there to supply people on the outside with the resources to survive.

All on its own, that’s not a bad thing to explore. The complete obliteration of any Paradis perspective is very much how the outside world functions in regard to the island. No one on any mainland cares about those people.

The audience doesn’t have that problem. Ninety chapters is a lot of history.

So that’s part of it. The other part is what I’ve been railing against nearly every month since this arc started.

Marley sucks.

The players of this arc are occupying a different story than the one we’re used to, and the fights they’re embittered in are ones that begin in such moral depravity that attempts to make their plight sympathetic fall flat. The Warriors are sympathetic because they’re being used, dragged forward by a carrot that no one seems to care about delivering. Likewise with the kidlets, since they’re too young to know anything but putting their best game face on and trying hard.

But the core of the conflict is that a bunch of jackasses can’t go a single generation without genocide, and those jackasses are not who the protagonists of this arc are preparing to go up against.

I have to compliment Isayama on how frustratingly human the night before the festival is, really. We get a more expansive look at Marley’s victims, and they have no love in their hearts for Eldians or Marley.

Willy’s okay, though.

Willy’s their buddy.

It doesn’t make any sense for people who hate Eldians and hate Marley to be okay with a man who represents both. But they are, because Willy is just one person, and he’s a person that these people have come to know. They’re familiar with him. He isn’t like those other Eldians. He isn’t like the rest of Marley. He’s a worthy human person.

No one at that party’s going to look at him and the little serving boy and think they have anything to do with each other, even though their blood has everything to do with why the little boy is going to be belittled by the people he’s bringing food to.

It’s disgusting, and it’s exactly what people do. As long as they never become the rule, there’s nothing wrong with exceptions. The idea that those exceptions mean the rules are ridiculous somehow never comes up.

As a depiction of humanity, it works pretty well, but going back to whining, it’s one more layer to how meaningless the destruction of this conflict is. This chapter’s ending tagline is, “Those who seek peace have no choice but to fight others who seek the same for themselves.”

If this statement is shooting for aphorism, no.

If it’s a commentary about Eldians fighting Eldians, yes, and the above no is why this is such a pain.

The Eldians in Marley are seeking peace from the treatment bestowed upon them by Marley. They are doing this by going after Paradis. The resulting sensible reaction to threat of genocide means that fighting happens, and that is a very sad thing.

Two sides, desperate for peace, should have the choice of not fighting. That can be very helpful for a thing like peace. But that choice has been systematically removed from one side, so. yay.

Characters with the very real and sympathetic desire for peace have all of that undermined by the active role they take in constantly keeping everything from being peaceful--in the name of peace.

What it boils down to is that the characters who have motivations that are understandable are repeatedly reaching the conclusion of genocide. You can’t sell that. Rooting for the bad guys is only fun when their selected aim is relatable.

Pulling off the perfect heist? Obviously wrong but LOOK HOW COOL

Defeating the undefeated superhero? Holy cow someone really did it.

Protecting your country? That’s normal, right?

Wanting a better world for your people? Awesome!

Genocide? ...

That is supposed to be one of the universal Not Okay things of the world. History books written by the societies who did that are very clear about it.

Even if all of the lives Marley has already cost Paradis are ignored, their mission statement when it comes to that island is that they want to steal something they have no claim to whatsoever. Solving your country’s problems by being the same entitled pricks that caused them to begin with is not a good thing.

There’s a lot of relatable material to be found in the hearts of Marleyan people. That doesn’t make their conclusions any less appalling, so all of this time devoted to this side of the conflict feels really, really pointless. Their reasons are nowhere close to excusing what they’re up to, and the story stepping into their world and listening to the side that says it totally does... The overall picture is pretty clear on condemning this tripe. These aren’t the people who are going to change the world for the better, and one thing this series consistently cares about is people trying to shoot higher. The close-ups of Marley digging a pit instead just aren’t working.

Now that I’ve said all that, the only logical conclusion is that Willy is going to announce at the festival that it is time for the world to become the bestest buddies with Paradis and not actually declare war on them or hurt them, and then they’ll be pals and prance off into the sunset with rainbows scattered like rose petals.

I’m only sort of kidding. Like I said, the story’s pretty clear on the whole that murder, oppression, and all the other things Marley picked up from their time under Eldia’s thumb are wrong. This deep into their perspective, one of the few twists remaining is doing something right, and less murder and more diplomacy might not be a bad start.

But this chapter kicks off with Reiner being ignored while he tries to help devise military strategies against Paradis, so that’s probably going to end up being too much to hope for.

I’m pretty terrible at plot speculation, which is probably another reason why this chapter finally sent me over the deep end. Magath and Tybur are clearly up to something, and I don’t care enough about either of them to be curious instead of frustrated. The basic thing was Magath needing an exterminator and an explosives expert, and Diet Reiss putting on a show, and I imagine both of those things are ominous foreshadowing of some kind and aaaaaaaaa

The one thing that I did kind of wonder about was Eren being a mouse with a baseball mitt. A few people have speculated that he’s actually in contact with Zeke, not island buddies, and if that’s the case, of course big brother is responsible for the glove, because baseball is the only way Zeke knows how to pretend he’s well-adjusted.

If it is from Zeke, then it seems likely that Eren is very much one of the mice Magath is talking about (and I’d very much like to know who the other ones are), but then that’s... its own type of weird. Presumably, Eren’s only contact with Zeke was that one awkward battlefield moment. Eren choosing to communicate with Zeke while he’s behind enemy lines just seems really, really risky, and I have no idea why he’d do that, but I also don’t know why the series would be so heavy-handed with the baseball stuff if it wasn’t meant to intensify the blood family feels in a significant fashion.

Knowing what the heck Eren is up to is probably going to help my feelings on these chapters greatly in the future.

Alas, that is not the now, and so I am left to suffer and ask myself why I ever thought writing a thing about a thing every month could end positively.

I do find it vaguely amusing that Eren’s first contact with his grandfather is encouraging him into a screaming fit. That probably just makes me a terrible person, but it feels oddly appropriate.

...Maybe Zeke left the glove for his grandad and Eren nicked it.

Wow, Eren. First stealing all of dad’s love, then stealing memories of precious moments with grandpa. This is why your found family is bonded to you through murder.

One thing in this chapter I did really like was the scene between Colt and Zeke. For Colt, watching Falco succeed is a horrible thing. He doesn’t want his little brother to end up cursed.

Galliard, watching nearby, had an older brother who thought the same thing. Marcel’s dead because of that fear.

Zeke, whose little brother is alive and who knows what else to him, understands big brother instincts and decides to go play catch with his successor (probably the closest thing to a brother he has access to at the moment).

Meanwhile Galliard sulks at the brotherly love, Pieck notices and cares, and Reiner is trying to ignore that his life is happening.

Beautiful.

Everything to do with Falco is also wonderful. He works hard, improves, thanks the person who’s helped him, and even shouts his feelings out to the girl he likes!

Unfortunately, the girl he likes is Gabi.

I really have to laugh, though:

“So you’re trying to say you’re getting in my way for my sake and claiming that you’re doing it for me??”

Yeah. That’s about what romance looks like in this series. Have fun, you two.

(The wounds Gabi leaves on Falco’s heart are the real reason he hangs out in hospitals.)

And of course, the most magnificent Falco moment comes from being so purely happy at leading Reiner down a creepy abandoned cellar to meet with an escaped hospital inmate. This kid is so jazzed over doing good deeds for Eren. He deserves a better setting. Say... a farm. On an island. With other children who have suffered the world’s cruelty. ...Would his parents have to get killed off first?

I hope his brain doesn’t break too badly when he finds out what he’s started. I also hope that one of the adults in the room asks him to leave before things get too messy. Falco’s a good kid and doesn’t deserve a quarter of the angst gathered in this dark room.

He’s smiling.

How many characters even know how to do that in this series?

Please let him die last. Or first, if that would be easier on him.

Anyway, I should probably say something about Reiner and Eren.

The only thing I can really think of is the first thing Eren says to Reiner is a reference to Reiner’s stated goal of living while they were pals, and in a similar time frame, Eren’s stated goal was eliminating every last titan.

...That’s probably reading a bit much into it.

It’s loaded enough that Eren is willing to reference Reiner’s desire to go back home. That’s the only thing that Reiner got out of that whole mission, and what he lost possibly wasn’t worth it in his mind. But of the two, he is the one who achieved what he said he set out to do, so kudos.

This really can’t end well.

I’d like it to. Eren and Reiner are both so incredibly damaged by everything they’ve done and had done to them that it would be nice if they could just agree that this is all fucked up, btw, we’re back to killing each other tomorrow, see you then, just wanted to say hi first. Or they could skip the killing each other part entirely.

I don’t know about deserving peace, but they both need it, and I think it would be nice if they could reach it somehow. Meeting underground is a good start; it means Eren isn’t looking for a brawl.

(There is no way this is a sanctioned Survey Corps assignment. Too many people would yell at him for trying to do this on his own.)

Next month, place your bets. Are we finally going back to Paradis? Will Eren and Reiner be left staring at each other for four months of infodump? Is Willy going to finally fulfill his dream of being a director? Is his play going to be any good? Will I finally stop typing the same monthly rant about Marley?

I fear the answer to that last one is no, but for the rest, oh, the possibility!

Something

might happen!