attack on feelings

Umm what. How has it been 10 years since I got into SnK, started sharing a ton of thoughts about it and met @momtaku?? The fact that I’ve since fallen out of SnK and cycled through many other fandoms and interests lends some credence to this number. Still: ten years?? Sounds fake, but okay.

In honour of this dubious anniversary, I figured it might be fun to look back on the posts I've made and select my top 5 favourites (in no particular order). I instantly broke my own rules and went for groups of posts instead, but here we are:

I do still like my early post on Eren's characterisation, where I talked about how the narrative literally didn’t let Eren win on any terms on which he was prepared to fight. It got a spiritual sequel in this post, which talks about Eren in the later stages. I never finished the manga, so I don't actually know how accurate that reading was in the end... but it felt true at the time of writing:

Eren just gives the impression of a person who’s gazed into the abyss for too long, and the abyss looked back. The one thing he seems to have learned in this narrative is that sometimes Bad choices are your only choices, and even if that makes you a Bad person you still keep moving forward. At the core of him is still the same steely resolve that has kept him going the entire time, but he’s stopped reaching for moral high grounds or possibly even believing that they exist, which is the worrying part. He’s now okay crawling in the dirt with villains, if that gives him his victory. And this, this is something that no one wanted Eren to become.

Mikasa-centric posts galore. She was my favourite character for a long time, so I think that's why I have a soft spot for those posts.

I think generally posts speculating on the themes of the story: the circular nature of violence, moving forward and fighting on, redemption, the human condition, the inherent moral ambiguity...

What this story seems to be discussing—broadly speaking, right—is the human condition in general. The story talks about the kind of hell people can create for themselves and for each other, the kinds of things people are capable of, the best and the worst of them, and the paths good people might take when faced with a plethora of choices each of which is bad in a different way.

I'm torn between this piece on Levi and Dulce et decorum est, the post about Floch of all people that does also touch on overall story themes (and we've established I love talking about those).

He asks, what do these medals do for anyone? Whom does this memorial ceremony serve? They don’t help the hundreds of people that died in terrible pain, they don’t resurrect the fallen–all this pomp and circumstance achieves is legitimizing this bloody, horrendous battle as glorious.

Some visual posts, like the Hamilton mashup! And this one on the progression of Sasha, Connie and Jean. And this one about Levi and Mikasa's Ackerman awakening.

... And this was how I learned that my asks were on XD Thank you for the kind words, anon! I must confess that I haven’t followed the manga in months, so please take anything I say about it with a giant grain of salt.

That said--from what I recall, I doubt that Levi would’ve got through to Eren any better than Hange did upon visiting him in prison, due to Eren being Eren. He wasn’t in a talkative mood at the time. He’d known from the start that the SC wouldn’t look fondly on his decision to drag them into that battle in Marley, and didn’t even try to explain himself to them, clearly assuming it wasn’t worth trying to convince anyone to his side. Given his plans and the carnage that I’m hearing resulted from them, he may have been assuming correctly, but for the purposes of this discussion it’s more important that Eren firmly believed, when he came back to Paradis, that his earlier actions had burned bridges between him and the SC--or that he was about to set the last of those bridges on fire by what he did next. Either way, to his mind, explanations and conversations were futile.

Sing Me Spanish Techno | The New Pornographers

Number One | Tove Styrke

Kids | MGMT

Cruel Angel’s Thesis | Evangelion

Everybody Knows | Leonard Cohen

Paper Planes | M.I.A.

Tous Les Garcons et Les Filles | Françoise Hardy

It’s Time | Imagine Dragons

One Day More | Les Miserables

Rules: list your top 5 favorite anime characters and tag 10 people.

1. The first one to pop into my head was Touya Akira from Hikaru no Go

Again with the caveat that I prefer him, and everything always, in the manga. But I do remember enjoying the anime! (Why does Touya have green hair in it? No one knows)

2. Edward Elric from Fullmetal Alchemist is an obvious choice

(Don’t ask me in which anime I like him better. Both! Both. But mostly the manga, lol.)

3. Mikasa from Attack on Titan. This is tricksy, because I like the SnK anime for the music and the epicness, but the characters didn’t do much for me. But surely loving Mikasa on the strength of the manga (I know, I know, broken record here) means she must make the list!

4. Aion from Chrno Crusade

Hello, obscure anime nobody but me probably knows! But it was the first anime I watched, like, outside of my childhood, and the main villain made an impression. So very villainous.

5. Terry from Candy Candy

Yes, we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel here!!! This was the first anime I watched ever, and Terry was baby’s first anime crush. (I don’t even know how old this anime is. Certainly way older than I am.)

My gut is a lying liar who lies! Like, I wouldn’t dare aim for an actual prediction or anything.

But if I were to like look in my gut of guts, and arm myself with a million disclaimers, then I guess the closest thing that I have to a headcanon is that Eren’s ultimate goal is to end this conflict in his lifetime, end it himself, without any more people having to be drawn into the cycle of titan inheritance, etc. And to that end, I do think it’s possible that Zeke came to him offering just such a solution, or what Eren saw as a solution. And Eren agreed to go along with it–to a certain extent. I don’t know if he’s fully into Zeke’s current plans, but at the very least he’s taking (or has, in the past, taken) a hitchhike with Zeke to his own goal. So like in my head there is some amount of working with Zeke involved, and some plan that lured Eren to cooperate with Zeke in the first place, but I don’t know how much Eren trusts Zeke beyond that. It could very well be that Eren is planning to turn around and stab Zeke in the back as soon as he stops being useful. 

Look at the eyes on that man. These are the eyes of a person very determined to do a thing, at whatever cost. I don’t know what that thing is, but by golly he’s going to do it or die trying. He’s going to do it even if many people die because of him trying--that Eren has already made abundantly clear.

Let’s tally his actions. Having gone along with various Paradis plans and brooded quietly, ten months ago Eren was approached by Yelena, presumably on Zeke’s behalf. Despite their last meeting being acrimonious, to say the least, Eren was apparently impressed by whatever was said to him enough that he chucked Paradis and went on a rogue mission to Marley. There, he eventually masqueraded as a shellshocked Marleyan soldier and used a child’s friendship for him for his own purposes. In accordance with plans he made with Zeke, he forced the SC into a brutal military op they didn’t want, attacking Marley and purposefully killing countless civilians. That done, Eren allowed the SC bring him back to Paradis, and accepted being thrown into a jail cell and separated from Zeke. While in jail, Eren staunchly refused to give anyone any answers, but stayed put until his supporters told him to leave. According to them, the Paradis government decided that some other person should inherit his Coordinate power. Anyway, Eren breaks out of jail--demonstrating once again that he could’ve done it all along--and declares his plan is to find Zeke. His reasons for doing any of this are as obscure as they ever were.

And, like, I’ve heard a lot of opinions about it. Is Eren unhinged? Dangerously arrogant and convinced of his own greatness? Manipulated entirely by the shifters whose memories he inherited? Does he know something that the rest of the SC don’t--and, while not wanting to tell them, also pursues the only course he feels is available given that information? Honestly, until canon provides the answers, I don’t think we’ll know the details of any of that. But on, like, a meta level, one thing strikes me about Eren’s general demeanour: it seems that, having spent a lot of time in this story trying to fight for his goals as a shounen protagonist and been thwarted at every turn, he’s found that he can never achieve what he wants as a hero; so he’s decided to discard those dreams and instead do it as a villain.  

One fact I feel is important to acknowledge is that Eren doesn’t think his actions are good. Morally good, I mean. Eren is aware he’s murdered thousands of people, civilians, doing the same to the Marley as RBA did to Shiganshina. He is aware that there are people who trusted him and whom he’s betraying. He knows none of these are the actions of a good guy, but he believes all of them to be necessary, and so he does them without compunction. He’s okay being the bad guy, the villain who might destroy the world, as long as it gets him closer to his goals.

And the thing is: this would’ve been unthinkable for Eren at the start of the story. Because back then, Eren would never have seen himself as bad, or agreed to undertake actions that he thought were bad. He might’ve done ruthless things, but he would’ve believed them to be Good, because they were done for the right cause. Eren, early on, had views on morality so black-and-white, they were actually frightening. In his world, there were good people, doing good things (like fighting titans); and bad people (plus titans), who weren’t really worth consideration. Eren wanted to kill ALL TITANS, with a bloodthirsty determination that took aback even SC veterans, never mind normal people. He also, at the tender age of nine, killed his first human enemies, without shedding a single tear about it, because they were Bad People. (And they were! But Eren’s lack of concern about the deed was pretty damn illuminating.)

Fighting titans, fighting for freedom, was a thing that Good People did, in Eren’s book. That was pretty much the ultimate Best Thing people could do. So he admired the SC, joined the military with a view to get into that branch, and prepared to do Good Things with Good People.

... Only to find out that it wasn’t that simple.

I’ve already talked about how Eren’s hero’s journey didn’t at all go the way he’d expected it to, how the narrative never let him win on terms on which he was prepared to fight. He thought he’d lead a brave charge against titans and win on the strength of his bravery and determination; instead, he got defeated and eaten by a titan. He was proud of his humanity; the narrative made him into a titan, one of the monsters he so hated. He wanted to fight and if needed lay down his life for other people; his role in most of the SC’s plans was passive, with other people dying to save him as he helplessly watched. He valued his comrades; some of them ended up his enemies. He wanted glory and honour; much of what he saw in the SC were pain and death and victories won through sacrifice and subterfuge and ruthlessness.

He thought he was a Good Person among Good People, and he ended up listening to the distant screams of the people Levi and Hange were torturing in the basement, and he heard Armin say: we’re not the good guys anymore.

This was a lot to put on a person like Eren, who didn’t deal well with moral complexities. And the story didn’t stop there! Titans were, apparently, helpless people trapped in a nightmare; but oh well, we’ve still got to fight them, because what else is there to do? Inside the walls, fighting fellow humans became routine as the SC struggled to overthrow the government. (And is it at all surprising that Eren acts without compunction against the Paradis government now? He’s learned: when necessary, it should be done, no matter the cost.) 

Increasingly, it seemed like there were no clear Good choices; just a bunch of bad ones, or murky ones.    

And then it turned out that Eren had (albeit unintentionally) killed his father, and that his father had wiped out the entire Reiss family down to helpless kids, and that the whole thing about Eren having the Coordinate power might be void, because he’d never be able to use it by virtue of not being a Reiss. Such revelations, delivered in the worst, most manipulative fashion by Rod Reiss, drove Eren--Eren!--to the brink of suicide. 

Eren comes back from all this, but never quite the same. He stops shouting about freedom and determination and fighting all titans, and acquires a new air of quiet reflection. Far from promising to kill Reiner and Bertholt in the most painful way possible, now he joylessly acknowledges that he must fight them. He does his duty by the SC, takes part in battles, still moves forward towards his goal. But his moral compass is offset; he’s not so clear anymore where good and bad lie, and he’s trying to come to terms with himself and his role in everything.

And this is all, like, before the Serum Bowl and feeding Bertholt to Armin and inheriting his father’s traumatic memories and learning that he had max eight years left to live.

Eren never got a break, and the story never aligned with his value system, never let him do his uncomplicated Good Things with Good People and get his kudos for it. Whatever he tried, he couldn’t dictate the battle terms, and the victory didn’t come for the price he expected. Whenever he won, there was an accompanying loss. For every breakthrough there was a punishment, and it never, ever seemed to end. Even the ultimate triumph of humans over titans, getting to the ocean, walking free outside the walls--all that became just a footnote to another looming war, and there comes a point where a person stops fighting the narrative that’s punching them in the face.

So possibly this is what happened: Eren stopped trying. He’s stopped believing that he can win by doing Good Things with Good People; he’s stopped thinking that trying to be good will get him anywhere. But he also can’t give up on the cause he lives for, so he’s accepted fighting on different terms. Unlike your typical shounen protagonist, he’s now ready to be worse than the worst of the villains he faces, if that’s what it takes to win. He doesn’t like these terms; but he’s grimly resigned himself to the fact that, if he wants to see it through, that’s what he has to be. 

This, for Eren, is hell. It’s a hell he’s deliberately chosen, but it doesn’t mean that he likes it. He just doesn’t see another way, and he’s done letting the narrative beat him down. He’s committed to the path he’s currently on, and he’s okay being on it even if that makes him a bad person. He seems to have thrown his lot in with the devil, and hardened his heart against collateral damage, be it civilians or his friendships taking hits. 

And in the solitude of his cell, he stares into the mirror and reminds himself of what he has to do.

The one time Eren does lose his cool in recent chapters, apart from Sasha’s death, is when Hange keeps pressuring him about these choices he’s made. Because they don’t come easily to him. Because they’ve cost him something, and he’s aware they’re costing everyone something, and there comes a point when he can’t stand the joint pressure from Hange and his conscience:

At no point does Eren posture or actively proclaim himself as the salvation of the Eldians. It’s Floch and the various “Yaegerists” who indulge in that sort of language, who gush about how amazing Eren is and how the new Eldian Empire will be their glorious future. None of these are words Eren has ever said, or even appears to particularly welcome. 

His cold, curt greeting of the Yaegerists is telling; they proudly tell him of what they did, of blowing up Zackley for Eren’s sake, they declare their loyalty to him... and he says not a word of thanks or encouragement, never offers a nod or a smile. He accepts the help, and this is pretty much all he has to say after hearing them out:

He certainly doesn’t seem to be enjoying a thing about this situation. He hasn’t appeared to enjoy anything in a long time. 

Eren just gives the impression of a person who’s gazed into the abyss for too long, and the abyss looked back. The one thing he seems to have learned in this narrative is that sometimes Bad choices are your only choices, and even if that makes you a Bad person you still keep moving forward. At the core of him is still the same steely resolve that has kept him going the entire time, but he’s stopped reaching for moral high grounds or possibly even believing that they exist, which is the worrying part. He’s now okay crawling in the dirt with villains, if that gives him his victory. And this, this is something that no one wanted Eren to become.

And not even only that. It doesn’t have to be a reunion; it can also be a flashback. But I’d be mega into something, anything indicating the nature of their dynamic. 

What we’ve got is: 

Eren, right. Eren who started the series as a determined and occasionally rage-filled firecracker, has been through a mountain of crap, underwent a profound identity crisis... and then, gradually--and mostly off-screen--transformed into this tight-lipped, cold-eyed, self-contained individual. This change can be pretty much tracked to the time when Eren read his father’s diaries, which triggered some of Grisha’s coordinate-inherited memories. It started off with Eren staring off into space, being more pensive and intense. Gradually, it appeared to escalate. At the zenith of Paradis’s cooperation with Zeke’s volunteers, Eren was one of the few not looking at all hopeful. Armin hoped for dialogue with the world, but Eren was less optimistic. Face grimly determined, he practiced shooting with their new rifles. About ten months ago from now, Yelena approached him, and Eren went rogue as a result, infiltrating Marley and generally going along with Zeke’s plan. Apparently.

And then there’s Zeke. Traumatized by his parents and forced into serving their cause at an early age, he appeared to betray the cause and the parents both--only to then, years later, turn around and claim he’d been faithful to his parents’ ideals all along. Allegedly, he’d just wanted to go about implementing these ideals differently. The only support in favour of this is his decision to hide his royal status from Marley, but that may very well have been self-preservation talking. If nothing else, Zackley is smart, and self-possessed, and he knows how to play the political game. He’s got chess pieces strategically positioned across the board. For one reason or another, he’s been hiding who he really is and what he thinks all his life. One of the rare flashes of true emotion we’ve seen from him was when he first met his half-brother.

So, Eren and Zeke, both fascinating individuals in their own right, each so special he’s the boy wonder for his respective side. Upon first meeting him, Zeke vowed to rescue Eren, whatever that meant to him. At the time, Eren was definitely not inclined to let him. Something changed--something changed enough that Eren is either willing to pretend, or has actually come to trust his brother, or has forged an uneasy truce with him. I’d love to know which it is. Eren, so headstrong, so difficult to influence. Zeke, with his years of experience of influencing people. Has Zeke succeeded? Does he hold real affection for his brother? Do they view each other as tools, ready to stick a knife in each other’s back as soon as the time comes?

I really want to know. 

850:

When the action begins, Marley is politically stable. They’re merrily oppressing their Eldian minority, whom they segregate from the Marleyans and keep in walled enclaves. The reason why they keep these hated Eldians around is that they’re useful: they can turn into human weapons aka titans, and this is neat for subduing other nations. Which Marley also does, because they can. As such, the other nations aren’t Marley fans, but they’re also not Eldians’ fans, because they used to be the oppressors and their ability to turn into titans is freaky. The Tybur family, Eldians who conspired in the fall of the Eldian Empire like 100 years ago, is ruling Marley from the shadows, but pretty much letting them do whatever. The one thing Marley feels is missing from their life is the Coordinate, with which they could control the world more securely. So they’ve sent agents to Paradis to procure it.

Meanwhile, those agents aren’t having the best of luck with their task, complicated further by the fact that literally the day they arrived the Coordinate changed hands (spines?) and now resides in a teenage dude with a lot of feelings about freedom. Various shenanigans lead to the Utgard Arc, in which Reiner and Bert are unmasked and expelled from Paradis. While the SC are busy with the Uprising Arc, the two return to Marley with Ymir. They’re on thin ice with the Marley authorities for their failure and for losing Annie. Ymir is eaten by Galliard, who gets titan powers at this point. Presumably RB tell Marley about the SC’s obsession with going to the basement in Shiganshina, and so they hatch the plan to lie in wait for them there, this time with Pieck and Zeke in tow. While they get organised, the SC install Historia as queen and get ready for finally going to Shiganshina.

The second battle of Shiganshina. The SC defeat the Warriors; Reiner, Zeke and Pieck bugger off to Marley, Bert gets fed to Armin. Zeke promises Eren to liberate him. Erwin dies. The SC find the basement and read Grisha’s diaries therein. 

Return to HQ. Eren and Mikasa are in military jail for insubordination. Eren has Grisha’s actual memories supplementing the diaries. Armin writes down what Eren is telling him. Eren relates the thing about 13-year titan lifespan, which may or may not have been in the diaries. He and Armin know that they’ve got a limited time left to live. 

Eren and Mikasa are released from jail early for political reasons. The government debates the ramifications of Grisha’s info. Eren decides not to tell them he has a hunch for how to unlock the Coordinate powers, and that this involves titan!Historia. Everyone present is now aware they’ve been part of the whole Eldia vs Marley thing all along, and that Marley is coming back for more war sooner or later. They figure they shouldn’t hide it from the public. Anti-Marley sentiment presumably begins to ferment in Paradis at this point.

The SC attend a function where Historia and government officials honor warriors fallen in the Shiganshina battle. Floch muses on the meaning of life. Eren, touching Historia’s hand, unlocks a memory: Grisha confronting Frieda the day the walls were attacked by RBA.

Across the sea, Marley gets embroiled in a war with other nations who smelled blood in the water following Marley’s defeat in Paradis. A coalition of countries came together in a blink of an eye to try and put an end to the Marley threat. Marley gets bigger problems than Paradis on its plate.

851:

Paradis kills all remaining titans on the island. They get to see the ocean. 

Marley is still at war with other nations. Busy fighting all of them, they can spare only part of their attention for Paradis. 

Marley does send a survey ship to Paradis just to see what’s going on there. Paradis is ready, but they weren’t expecting Zeke’s loyalists who infiltrated the ship and mutinied in favour of the island. These loyalists, led by Yelena, claim to be Eldian restorationists. They suggest cooperation - helping Paradis in the fight against Marley, for the price of welcoming Zeke on the island and introducing him to Eren. Zeke also claims he can act as a mediator between Paradis and nations friendly to it, which he says are a thing. He also claims that there’s an ultimate secret plan that can save all of Eldians... but for this he needs the founding titan + a titan with royal blood. Eren deduces that this plan involves activating Coordinate powers to wake up wall titans and trample everything underfoot. Paradis government is hella skeptical, but Hange insists they cooperate with Zeke’s volunteers. 

Very soon after this, Yelena & co help Paradis trap the other Marley survey ship(s). Marley soldiers appear as prisoners on the island. 

Following this, Paradis and Zeke’s loyalists fall into camaraderie-like cooperation, tho Yelena isn’t allowed to interact with Eren directly. The volunteers help Paradis develop their technology and build a port. Hange plans to use the captured ships to trade with nations across the sea. Paradis samples seafood for the first time. The SC trains with Marley-style firearms. Some of Marleyan POW military engineers agree to help Paradis, kinda settling into their new life. Nations mix a bit.  

852:

Paradis now has a port. It welcomes the first foreign visitors, arranged by Zeke and his helpers: Hizuru, whose long-lost princess-type-thing Mikasa turns out to be. This is also allegedly the one country well inclined to Paradis due to their historical ties. Their leader is Kiyomi Azumabito. She claims to be working with Zeke Yaeger, who told her he was an Eldian restorationist at heart. 

According to this version of events, Zeke only worked with Marley to hunt down the founding titan so he could consume it and use it for the good of Eldia. He also informed Hizuru of the resources that exist on Paradis (the shining crystal). Kiyomi is pretty much salivating when she talks about these resources: she wants them from Paradis so they give her nation a mega boost. At this point, Mikasa suspects she’s just a footnote to those real negotiations about money and trade. 

Kiyomi claims her country’s mediation is central to Eldia’s salvation, of which there are three steps: a) give an experimental rumbling, showing the world what Paradis can do; b) grow in power with Hizuru’s help, catching up to the rest of the world... which will take like 50 years, c) so in the meanwhile, there must be an unbroken chain of founder titans + titans with royal blood in Paradis who can act as a deterrent for the world’s attacks, as they can activate the titan rumbling at any time. With this in mind, Zeke suggests feeding himself to Historia, assuming that Historia then spends her 13 remaining years popping out royal kids. 

Historia is ready to agree, but Eren says no way. His point is: how do you know you can hold the world at bay through violence for 50 years? Hizuru agrees to wait for them to make a decision.

Meanwhile, some “plans” are made between Mikasa and Hizuru (at least, Jean references their existence).

853:

Some form of rail construction is underway in Paradis. The junior SC are working on it.

Hizuru apparently promised to case the world on Paradis’ behalf and see if they could establish diplomatic relations/find trade partners, without relying on any sort of rumbling. However, at this point Paradis receives news that Hizuru failed. Hange draws the conclusion that Hizuru just doesn’t want to help connect Paradis with the world, as they want to hoard Paradis’s resources for themselves.

Here, Hange cites a Willy Tybur-esque argument: that, in fact, the world likes having Paradis as a threat to unite against. Given that she heard this from Kiyomi, whom we’ll later see being friendly with Willy, that might be exactly where the words are filtering down from.

Anyway, Hizuru’s negotiations failure means that Paradis must rely on the rumbling and sacrifice Historia to 13 years of pregnancies, because they’ve signed a military alliance treaty that’s backed by the rumbling. (So presumably they did agree to Hizuru’s conditions last year.) However, Hange hatches a new plan: sneak into Marley and try to contact the rest of the world from there, showing them that Paradisians are nice people and not at all devils. She assumes Zeke’s volunteers and Hizuru will help them with this. Eren points out that they need more time, and says they must decide who will inherit the founder titan from him... but it won’t be any of the junior SC, since he loves them too much.

854:

Current year in the manga. No better plan for Paradis’s survival than Zeke’s breed-and-feed-the-children-to-each-other scheme has been found so far. Zeke’s time is running out: he’s got less than a year left to live. Eren is restless, Hange is restless. 

Marley wins the war against other nations by the skin of their teeth. Realizes at this point that titans won’t cut it: Marley is behind the world technologically, and they need to start catching up and relying on titans less, since other nations are learning to fight against them. 

This triggers two things at the same time. First: Zeke argues to sway the Marley government in favour of attacking Paradis asap. He says that, yes, technological development is needed, but that’s a long-term thing, and in the short term they must take the founding titan and buy time for the aforementioned development. (It sounds like Zeke is doing this because he’s wants to get to Paradis for his own reasons. Given that Zeke resorts to such measures, it’s not obvious to him at this point that Paradis will go along with his plan and welcome him with open arms; he prepares a plan B, which is getting there via invasion.) At the same time, Marleyan Eldians realize that, if they’re less valuable to Marley for their titanhood, soon they might become obsolete... and then their survival as a race is in question.

Latest now, Eren breaks off from the SC to strike out on his own in Marley. Pretends to be an injured Eldian who fought in the Marleyan war with the allied forces of other nations. Is probably in touch with Zeke. (It’s not impossible that the SC is already in Marley at the time; we know they wanted to go, and Armin mentions a period of “lying low in Marley” -- that could’ve been before or after Eren left.)

Willy Tybur, concerned with the Eldians’ survival, decides to take action.  He suggests inviting foreign dignitaries to the Liberio internment zone and holding a speech to unite most of the world against the Paradisians. The Marleyan top brass believe he’s doing this to stir up support for their action against Paradis. In actual fact, Willy doesn’t give two hoots about the top brass and believes Marley must be potentially cleansed of them. He wants to stop Marley’s slide into endless warfare. More importantly, he wants to save the world’s Eldians, and he believes it’s best accomplished by throwing Paradisian Eldians under the bus.

Eren and Zeke one way or another agree on a plan to launch an attack on Marley, purposefully scheduling it for Willy Tybur’s performance. Using Falco, Eren contacts the SC, explaining that he’s going ahead with the scheme with or without them. The SC can’t let the Coordinate fall into the wrong hands for lack of backup, so they start preparing to turn up. It’s apparently Armin who comes up with their plan for a getaway blimp.

Willy Tybur starts conspiring with Magath, having singled him out as a competent, non-corrupt individual high enough within the military that he’s capable of effecting change.

Latest now, but maybe before this (depending on how much time everything takes), Yelena possibly tells Historia that she should arrange to be pregnant at the time Zeke gets there, because then she won’t be able to eat him: they’ll have to wait till after the pregnancy, so she buys herself time. Historia possibly goes along with this because she still hopes to escape the ‘forever pregnant and also dead in 13 years’ plan. Yelena, if it was her, just plots to save Zeke. According to Nile, Historia chooses a dude to be pregnant by, and either now or later retires with him to a house in the countryside.

It’s been about a month since the end of the Marley’s war with other nations. Falco has full-on befriended Eren by now. Apparently, Eren has sent a number of letters through him. 

Magath has been gathering information on Marley’s military. He informs Willy Tybur that numerous senior officers should be replaced, because they’re pursuing outdated policies that harm the nation. Willy unofficially places Magath at the head of the military (for the record, his new policy ideas involve being more reasonable about war and relying on titans less). Magath also informs him that the remaining reliable people in the army have told him that there are traitors in their ranks.    

Eren meets his unwitting paternal grandfather, who apparently has regular breakdown episodes on account of life.

Marley holds a reception for all the foreign dignitaries Willy wants to woo with his performance the following day. At this reception, Kiyomi shows kindness to a random Eldian boy, without visibly benefitting herself. This suggests that she does in fact sympathize with Eldians to some extent. 

Prior to the performance at some point, Magath briefs Willy about the likely attack on the event. Willy says they should use it to their advantage: make the intertment zone Eldians look like tragic victims with whom the world will sympathize. He’s ready to sacrifice lives to this, his own included. 

The performance. Eren, with Zeke’s cooperation, lures Reiner to a private talk. The strategic purpose of that talk is not clear, unless it’s literally just to separate Reiner from others. Yelena&co work to lock up Galliard and Pieck. They also give the excuse for Zeke to get away. Kiyomi, clearly aware that some shit is gonna go down, skedaddles away from the performance venue, having wished good luck to Willy. 

Willy reveals the truth about what actually went down when the Eldian Empire fell apart and the first king buggered off to Paradis. He says the king only wanted peace, and so did his descendants. He also says this peaceful rule has been overthrown, and paints the new Paradisian government in violent, expansionist terms. He calls them the new Eldian Empire, with everything that entails. (He’s... not 100% wrong; people like Floch will use that exact terminology for themselves later.) Willy officially declares war on Paradis.

Eren attacks, kills Willy, wrecks everything, slaughters tons of civilians and the Warhammer titan. (It seems like Warhammer action may have been among the goals of the plan, and it makes sense: that titan hasn’t come out to play in forever, and nobody knows who it even is. If other titans might be easily encountered in battle, this one must be lured out. And sure, with other titans incapacitated and Marley under attack, the Warhammer steps out of the shadows.) The SC forces swoop in, help with the fighting. The most important thing is to get away on schedule, which is presumably why Galliard and Reiner survive the battle: Eren doesn’t have time to fight them. They skedaddle, Zeke in tow. Sasha is shot by Gabi on the way back. 

The SC return home. The people celebrate a glorious victory. Eren gets locked up in military jail for insubordination, again, and goes along with it, at least for the time being. 

Zeke is taken to the forest of giant trees by Levi, who’s keeping an eye on him personally and making sure he’s not getting up to anything.

Zeke’s supporters hand over to Paradis the titan serum they stole from Marley. However, in light of recent Zeke shenanigans, trust in them has run out and they’re taken under guard by Paradis. Part of the hope is that with them as hostages, they will be able to influence Zeke a bit. Another part is, of course, making sure Zeke doesn’t have agents in Paradis.

Meanwhile in Marley, they figure out Zeke’s a traitor. The rest of the world is rallying to attack Paradis, but preparations will take six months -- time Reiner points out they don’t have. He insists they must attack Paradis at once, before Zeke has masterminded some other calamity.

A whole number of things jumped out at me while I was compiling this, but they probs deserve their own posts. One observation fits here, though: it seems the main source of pressure in the story, for a while now, has been Time. 

Half the characters are either running out of time, or trying to play for time; time is key to the development of Marley, who needs to catch up to other nations, and also Paradis, who must do the same. Titan shifters are running out of time, some faster than others. Zeke is increasingly desperate to fulfil whatever plans he has, because at this point he barely has a year. A change in Eren’s character, too, can clearly be detected from the moment he learned of his lifespan constraints: he keeps counting time, keeps trying to do the most he can with the little that’s left. Reiner has been giving on borrowed time for years at this point, and is painfully aware of every single one of them. Historia may be playing for time with her pregnancy, delaying fateful decisions about whether or not she’ll become a shifter. Willy timed his performance to what he felt was the crucial moment for the Tyburs for intervene to save Eldians, and Zeke and Eren also timed their attack on Marley to that point. The Paradisians wish they had more time to reach out to the world and show them that they’re not devils. Time, time, time: everyone needs it, and nobody’s getting it. This has been the main constraint the characters are facing, and it makes sense, given that we’re hurltling towards the story’s resolution.