For the director's cut game:
In Planetisimal Feelings, what's your input on the scars on Annie's lower back, how she was afraid of letting people see them, including Armin, but grew to be more comfortable with Armin seeing them (later chapters)
Falling into Neptune (my personal favorite of the series!), the scene where Annie describes Armin's shoulders and hands, how she thought he might grow and become
As for VBEOW, you know I want more about Annie's thought process buying the family name seal (and maybe even receiving it later on)
Heya clouds! And thanks for asking xD This becomes a little hehe sexy toward the end xD
So it's my personal headcanon that pre-shifter scars and marks remain intact even during limb regeneration and Titan healing. Good old Ymir in the paths probably has an anatomy book for every shifter in history to make sure she doesn't mess them up when she rebuilds their legs and arms. Anyway, this is why Annie has scars at all, in this series. Wounds she sustained from her dad's training.
I think Pre-Armin Annie would've cared very little who saw what and what they made of it. Post Armin however and her realisation that he saw her as a nice person, she develops a whole avalanche of emotions that she doesn't really figure out. But anyway at this point, she wants to be a good person for him... But her scars are a memory of her ugly upbringing. Proof that she was trained "not to be good", in direct contrast with Armin who's the epitome of goodness. It doesn't really matter atp because he traps her, she crystallizes and any emotional advancements between the two is pretty much doomed before it even progressed.
Post Rumbling, she's alive, he's alive, they've talked their feelings out and it can't be ignored anymore. Armin who stopped the Rumbling because he's never been a person who's liked the idea of killing anybody ever, and Annie, who killed so many out of a selfish/desperate desire to go home. She feels ugly. Not good enough. Not "clean" enough. She doesn't want him to see it. She also doesn't want him to see proof of the shit she went through as a child because now, it all seems pathetic. Her life has been a pathetic existence. What would he think of her, wanting to go back to the very man who gave her those scars? At least, these are her fears.
But then, throughout the series, Armin wears his heart on his sleeve and doesn't seem to be fazed by anything belonging to her past. He pops a vague-ish "will you marry me" question in PF. Tells her how much he desired her, physically, in Falling into Neptune. In TFLM, he tells her it's okay to live and desire happiness despite everything and that he wants to live his life loving her. Most importantly, there's the letter he gives her in which he very clearly promises to "Love her in all the ways it is possible to love her and maybe someday, the pain that rests in the scars on her back will no longer be a bad memory." which is basically a moment of reveal for her that he already knows about them through Bertholdt's memories. And he still loves her just the same. He doesn't see her as a used war weapon, now useless; he sees her as a girl, a woman, his future.
Her fears begin to dissipate. In VBEOW, she goes through a lot of reckoning over her feelings and her needs and desires, trying to make sense of them beyond just the surface level sexual frustration, and she makes several reckless (and cute) decisions that only serve to tell her that he means so much to her, more than she can even begin to describe. She wants him in her life, for good, for long, forever. And he reinforces all these beliefs by constantly telling her how much he loves her (too). By the time chap 5 comes and she learns of Pieck's sparse time with Porco, she understands the miracle it is to still have Armin alive, and the miracle of being granted long, ordinary, human lives. The scars will remain but she's fine with showing them to him, because it's Armin, he wants her and her alone, exactly for who she is and nothing more or less, and he's never going to let her go.
(More on her scars in chapter 11, Armin's going to... make good on that promise. Literally.)
2. Falling into Neptune - physical changes.
A horny midnight hour idea that arose out of the frustration of being robbed of the moment when Annie really SEES the man Armin's become, in canon material. Anyway. Since none of the sequels were planned at this stage, this was just a fic that focused on the purely physical traits that people grow to desire and want.
There's something to be said of a teenage girl's fantasies over a boy she likes. Annie, despite all her pessimism and seeming disinterest in romance and sex, was no exception. These thoughts are intrusive. You just can't help having them. At 15, as military trainees, while Armin was puny and frail, he was still taller than her. After becoming aware of her special fondness for him, she would've started becoming aware of... other things too. Like the size of his hand when he handed her a loaf of bread - a little bigger than hers. The protrusion on his throat that bobbed with every hearty laugh and shout. The back of his neck when the wind blew his hair away and how it would feel to hold onto it. The curve of her hips in contrast to his - slim and narrow. The wider shoulders compared to hers, narrow and small. The heat and scent of his body when he came especially close to her in totally normal situations, but her heart races. She would've gone to bed after training replaying all the little sounds he made while talking to her, all a little deeper in tone. She liked him, and he was a boy, so... different from her, a girl. At this age, you're hyper aware of every single change that you go through and she would've imagined how much taller he'd grow, how the features would change and etc. At the end of the day, she was just a girl with fantasies like anyone else.
At 19, things are very, very different. She's been listening to his voice deepen in register over four years, but seeing him is... a shock. Suddenly he's way taller. His shoulders are now broad. Much stronger. For all the strength and muscles she packs in her arms, his are now much bigger, and longer. Her neck, thin and long, and his neck, thicker and wider. The back of his neck, exposed permanently by that stupid gorgeous undercut that makes him look so good. Longer legs, thighs slimmer than hers but very firm and strong, and when she sits on his lap, she can feel how easily they remain in place and don't buckle under her weight. Waist and hips still narrow. When he turns his neck and yells at someone, she can see a vein straining. Beautifully long fingers and attractive as fuck forearms. The clench of a sharp jawline. He's lost the baby fat from his cheeks, but while he still looks a little boyish, there's no doubt that this is a man. And far sexier than in all her fantasies put together.
So an unplanned but very significant subplot now, the hanko is, undeniably very cute xD While she doesn't find out about the hanko's existence until she actually visits the stamp maker, this subplot begins the very moment she undertakes Armin's job of getting that official seal made. The way I see it, the common family stamp in Japan is affixed on all official documents as a signature, and everyone carries one around. In VBEOW however, I made it so that a married couple has just one, and they share it. When she agrees to visit the stamp maker, she's already begun to share his responsibilities. Seeing the hanko there is just a physical manifestation of what she wants in their relationship, both consciously and sub-consciously.
She's also impulsive. Had Armin seen that hanko, he wouldn't have bought it. (If I can say it without spoiling, I'd say Armin's... going about this in a different way xD and I'm so excited to write this scene later on!) Armin is methodical and he'd have done it by the book, and got their hanko after being married. But Annie had one look at all the family names embossed so cutely in little rubber circles, and she thought "Oh... Arlert... would look nice on one of these."
All it took was once glance. And it becomes a fixation. Better at expressing her emotions by actions (sometimes not even that) than words, she runs back to the store the next day with enough money in her pocket, little to no thought of how it would look like to get a seal typically ordered after getting MARRIED of all things, until after she actually reaches there, she blurts out his surname and scrams back home, mortified and embarrassed. Subconsciously, she wanted something of him to keep with her at all times, but how embarrassing would it be to ask him to give her something of that sort? But here's a thing she can buy, put his name on it, and keep close.
Once she receives it out of the stamp maker's kindness (for free! basically trying to say that the things you do for love, in love, are priceless), she becomes instantly attached to it. At this point, she's still battling with putting a proper name and description to her love for him, so to have this little stamp carrying his name in her pocket, in her hands, something of her own that makes her happy and warm and safe and most importantly, loved (in contrast to the ring, that reminds her of awful things) feels like magic.
The hanko will be important in future too, and there will be plenty of cute shenanigans around it :D (some moments i'm literally DYING to write T^T)
Oh god sorry this is so long T^T I hope you made it through ifhsoighsgg.
