#snk chapter 105

I see no difference tbh

so after intense mourning for Sasha's death I analyzed that chapter further. I was looking forward to Eren meeting Levi because I saw shit coming. Levi kicked Eren in the face. That was obvs. a call back to the courtscene.

I want to point out first that Levi probably hasn't seen Eren for a long time. (perhaps those 4 years) because when Eren was about to enter the Zeppelin, Levi comments that Eren looks like he fell into the shithole. Levi was visibly angry and took it out on the one responsible for that. He didn't stick to the plan, killing civilians and forcing your own comrades into a dangerous situation wasn't part of the original plan. Saying that Eren is easy to kick around, is probably a metaphor for using him tiredlessly for humanity's victory like a tool.

However Eren reacts cold and empty. Unlike angry courtroom Eren.

Or angry Eren from the dungeon, who shows his rage towards the titans. It's the scene where they met each other for the first time.

Levi remembers Eren as the emotional, angry and insecure kid, who was very aware of the role he played for humanity and suffered from doubts and regrets.

But now he just sees that despicable face

He remembers it very well. Because he had that look on his face himself as a child in Chapter 69.

He reacts very sad, because he understands. He knows the feeling of coldness and emptiness. The feeling of waiting for death. It really gets me cause he can't believe that Eren, that one passionate boy who was full of will and was burning for a goal of freedom, slowly becomes an empty shell.

Like, excuse me, the new Eldian WHAT? Did Floch literally just talk about a new Eldian empire while his comrades rejoiced around him? 

What on earth is happening on Paradis that this is an acceptable statement to make?? The old SC crew seem to be the only ones not joining in the celebrations, so it seems that someone still has their heads screwed on straight, but like. This is what you get from Grisha’s journal? You read the thing, you read about how the Eldia restorationists were consumed by their passion for the cause to the point of sacrificing kids to it, you read about the world who believes the worst of you, and your thought is–great, what we need the most is to get that old empire back?

… Maybe there really is no hope for humanity. Maybe they deserve to perish, all of them, if these are the circles they’re walking in.

Except that’s exactly the way Zeke and Eren seem to be thinking, don’t they? I mean, not quite, but like. After everything that’s happened, these words of Zeke’s seemed to me to ring quite hollow:

I don’t for a moment believe that Zeke dreams of liberating Eldia, new empire or otherwise. Maybe I’m wrong! But I really find it hard to swallow that a man whose life got essentially derailed and ruined by the zeal of Eldian restorationists, a man who betrayed his own parents for it as a child, a man who, not too long ago, gave every appearance of gleefully murdering his fellow Eldians inside the walls gives two damns about Eldians or their future.

No, what I keep thinking back to is the last time we looked through Zeke’s POV and the thoughts he was having then.

And the goal he stated back then was:

And it could be that I’m completely wrong, but it seems to me that what Zeke mostly wants is for all of this to end. He attacks Eldia with abandon; he schemes against Marley; he doesn’t seem to care who burns, as long as someone does. Because they’ve all failed him, one way or another, and he has a year at most left to live, and not much left to live for. Setting the world on fire might seem like a fair price for everything humans have done to each other in Zeke’s experience.

He does, admittedly, seem to care for his brother, insofar as I believed the sincerity of his promise to ‘come back for’ and ‘rescue’ Eren. But I’m not convinced, at this point, that he cares for Eren as a person, as opposed to a mirror of his own convoluted path. Eren, after all, was also raised by Grisha; Eren, he assumes, was also told to fight for Eldia’s freedom, and Eren was given some of the same tools to do so. And Eren’s life, too, was derailed by this; and Eren, too, has come out on the other side battered and disillusioned and too old for how young he was.

After all, this is the last time we saw Eren before encountering his current self:

I know I keep getting hung up on these frames, but they’re so striking! The resignation is so antithetical to everything Eren stood for prior to this–but this is also the Eren who will later take up actual plans to ‘kill them all.’ Not because he wants to, or is fired up to. But because he sees no other way.

So mix that boy with Zeke’s brand of fatalistic nihilism, and you get a hella cocktail made with two parts of Jaeger determination and one part bad decisions. Shaken, stirred and aged a few years. Again, I may be totally, completely wrong! Maybe next chapter will reveal their plan for world peace that doesn’t involve, y’know, annihilating the world, and also explain why the Marley battle was an A+ humanitarian choice to make. Maybe. 

It could also be that they’re playing each other, somehow. Maybe all of this is a long con on Eren’s part to bring Zeke to Paradis and use his royal blood without remorse. And maybe Zeke is just biding his time before… something. I’m sure Zeke can think of a lot of somethings. So, like, in the absence of proof, we can talk only of possibilities, and the very picture of the Jaeger brothers making plans side by side is surely one that should make blood run cold in the veins of anyone who knows them. Ruthlessness runs in the family, to say the least.

(What would Grisha do? Cry, probably, but with anger or joy I can’t decide. His boys are definitely changing the world, in one way or another.)