#reblogging is fine if anyone wants but snk is still something I'm avoiding so uh ...I will be avoiding the heck out of anything this spawns

[ghostmartyr]

From his opening note, Jean is considered the everyman of Attack on Titan. He isn't special. His parents are inconsequential. He's here to get a cushy job in the interior and not have to worry about death knocking down his door or any of the other inconveniences that plague the masses. That's the dream, and he comes very close to living it.

Only death doesn't stop knocking just because his door is a little further down. Death is everywhere. That's instrumental to the growth of so many of these characters. Death is everywhere. What, then, is your response?

Getting the hell out, fuck this place, fuck dying for anything other than your own interests.

Some characters embrace death and its oblivion. Bertolt finds calm when he stops struggling against his oppressors and accepts being their weapon. Reiner longs for it, terribly, but he can't leaves his dependents behind.

Jean doesn't want to die.

Death is everywhere.

Jean's decision to become a member of the Survey Corps is not a triumphant claim of his principles, it's a dawning horror that this is the world as it stands -- unless there's a change. There is only one branch that is willing to fight for the change.

Jean is willing to die for that change. He doesn't want to. He doesn't want to fight this war. He doesn't want to be in the line of fire, he doesn't want to be eaten alive. Why should he? Why can't other people just deal with it?

Because everyone wants someone else to deal with it. Everyone would rather be alive. The world isn't kind enough to respect that.

Yet. Jean joins up praying for that yet.

And he lives.