u/NorthernSkagosi

I've been a bit more active in the more popular AoT subs the past few days and it's i've noticed that a lot of them are unwilling or incapable of engaging with hypothetical scenarios such as the story going in different directions if characters had made different choices or the possibility that Isayama changed his mind on different things as he wrote and that the story could've gone in other directions too.

No, seriously, I don't see this with other fandoms. If you go to the Dragon Ball fandom and you say "man, I love the saiyans, but I wish the humans had not been capped out and had remained relevant" and you'll get tons of agreement. If you go to the Naruto fandom and say "Shippuden is good and all, but I wish the side characters had not been sidelined so much. I loved Rock Lee in part 1" and you'll get lots of people agreeing, but some disagreeing, citing the grueling work schedule the author when through as he wrote.

but you go to the AoT fandom and suggest these things, and they go "You vile Eldian Devil ending hater! You dare criticize our great nation of Marley Hajime Isayama, the ultimate writer? Prove that you do not have Ymir's evil blood aren't a titanfolker chud NOW!"

this isn't even about controversial stuff such as the possibility of EreHisu + Full Rumbling. Even stuff like "maybe Eren had feelings for Annie early on" or "maybe Mikasa moved on" will get you overreactions and shut downs

These may sound like nitpicking, but bear with me.

Let's start with Armin, since this one's the easiest. People claim Armin's goal pre-timeskip was to merely see the sea. no, Armin's goal was to explore the world with Eren and see it all. The flaming rivers, the snowfields of sand etc. The sea was just part of it. Yet many fans equate Armin's goal to the sea.

On Erwin: i've seen many fans claim that he had a lifelong obsession with the basement. No, Erwin had a lifelong obsession with knowing whether there were other humans beyond the Wall. the basement, as far as Erwin knew, could MAYBE hold the answer to that, but he could have not known that. Also, between Trost and Return to Shiganshina only around 4 to 5 months had passed, so Erwin was "obsessed" with the basement only for the last few months of his life.

A second misconception of Erwin is the sort of idea that Erwin was somehow selfish because "he admitted it himself" and because his plans caused the deaths of many of his comrades.

ok, dude, what? First of all, Erwin caused that many deaths with his plans because fighting Titans is hard and often you need to resort to plans with high casualties. there is no other choice. if he could avoid those deaths, he would. the very point of the Long Range Scouting Formation is to avoid deaths.

on his self-admitted selfishness, it is obviously clear Erwin is being too hard on himself. until the very end, his two goals of discovering the truth vs saving humanity were pretty much one and the same. proving the existence of humans beyond the Walls would obviously have aided in killing the Titans. and though with Levi's prompting, in the end, Erwin let go of his "selfish" goal.

remember, moral men don't always have to make the moral choice themselves. sometimes all they have to do is listen when someone else tells them what that choice is.

and i dont get what kind of barbaric mentality is the idea that Erwin deserves scorn because "he admitted his selfishness himself". he's being hard on himself and lowering himself. instead of admiring his humility, you beat him over the head with it. which means that if Erwin had been proud or indifferent towards the death of the people under him, you'd have respected him

Spoiler tags just in case.

I'm one of the guys that used to think EreHisu would be a thing. not for its own sake, but because of the growing chemistry between Eren and Historia in the Uprising arc, and because of those flashbacks in the Rumbling arc.

According to canon, Eren is a crazy guy who feels like he MUST destroy the world, not for his friends, not for the island as a collective, not for a hypothetical child between him and Historia, but because he MUST. that's just his nature, to destroy for destruction's sake. Isayama insinuated as much in an interview.

There are no deeper feelings between Eren and Historia and there never were in canon. Then why did Historia go along with Eren?

Historia at some point in their farm flashback conversation says more or less "Thank you Eren for fighting so hard for me, but we've ran out of choices. I will go along with the 50 years plan."

Eren says that may be ok for Historia, but not for him. Then why did Historia not just say to him something along the lines of "Look Eren, you are my friend and I respect you. We have fought together and bled together. But this is my decision to make"?

https://preview.redd.it/y9vaj1pxv6ah1.png?width=1242&format=png&auto=webp&s=ba1751523a31edea22dcc6d0ee8485fea45b1628

We just assumed it was false because we saw the idea of the Ackerbond be debunked. unlike the Ackerbond though, this was never EXPLICITLY debunked. think about it. Isayama himself is saying here that there is something wrong with Armin ever since the timeskip

and this also debunks all the people that say that "Armin was never meant to be like Erwin" despite the two of them having tons of parallels pre-timeskip. sure, you can argue that Armin could never have the same commanding presence as Erwin due to a lack of gravitas, stature, and a deep voice, but that wouldn't stop him from becoming a high-risk high-reward strategy maker as well as a manipulator and political player.

furthermore, Armin has shown time and time again that despite his lack of presence, his smarts give people enough faith in him that they obey him anyway.

nah man, Isayama was well aware of what he was doing when he made Armin go from a physically weak, yet brave master strategist to a guy that just wants to talk and doesn't even do that well. wonder where he was originally going with it before... whatever it is that got to him and his writing in his last 10 chapters or so.

if you do, how often, and how does it exactly manifest. sorry if it's a low-tier post

...or do you have a hard time with it?

Ymir was a non-Eldian, non-Marleyan girl who was enslaved and tormented by Eldians. If she on some level understood that what King Fritz did to her was wrong, and she suffered at the hands of the Eldians, why would she help an Eldian who at first glance, wanted to kill every non-Eldian in existence?

shouldn't she hate Eldians? shouldn't the Rumbling have backfired? why didn't Ymir choose to trample Eldians instead?

SasuSaku= the pairing of Sasuke and Sakura in Naruto

Both are about two girls who are in love with a guy that is a mix of toxic and caring towards them and that grows more distant in the 2nd part of the story. Both are visibly unhealthy, and yet SasuSaku is rightfully called out as toxic or sexist, while EreMika is not.

the sole difference I see is that Mikasa is strong and efficient in battle, while Sakura is not. so is the only thing making a ship not toxic and not sexist the woman being super strong?

First of all, i don't get why ending defenders hate it. ok, guy, you loved the ending. good for you. some people didn't. this is the case for many works of fiction. some of those who didn't decided to make what is basically an advanced fanfic to canon for wish fulfillment. fanfic as wish fulfillment has been a thing in all media for a long time. so what's your issue?

but what i get even less is ending haters who hate/dislike AoT Requiem. it's not what i'd prefer, because i believe the issues with AoT started since after the Liberio arc (even Liberio had imo a few cracks), but it's still imo more coherent to the story we had thus far than what we actually got.

so yeah, i'd like to know you guys' thoughts

main discussion seems to be between SEE and IEE

His schtick early in the story was that, despite his size, he could transform with basically no power output compared to other Titans, and disappear just as abruptly. His size made him extremely slow, but he had the steam to protect himself with. He was more powerful than other shifters due to the size difference, but he was still 'balanced', if we're gonna use gaming terms.

Then in RtS, he becomes a literal nuke. Armin's Colossal explosion is so big that he can turn the entire night horizon red.

The Colossal Titan after RtS becomes more about the transformation and explosion rather than about the Titan himself, and I hate that. And I hate just how much more powerful he is compared to the other Titan powers bar the founder.

People can say "oh, but there was no retcon, it just means the Colossal Titan can control how much power output he can do the transformation with". Okay, but in that case, why didn't Berthold just nuke Trost and let Reiner be the one to break down the doors? or if Reiner was having one of his soldier mental episodes, why not nuke Trost and then break down the doors from the inside?

I know how to go on the "following" section to only view posts from people I follow. Thing is, Instagram.says at some point that I have seen all the posts from the last 30 days when in truth it's only the posts from the last couple of days or so. No, i dont want to be "caught up". I folloe those ppl for a reason and I may want to see their posts again and again

Shoving her into a crystal that early in the story was a mistake. Either she should've escaped and went back to Marley at any point after the Clash of Titans arc and the later years of the timeskip, or the Scouts should've opened her crystal and tried to either pass her Titan to someone else, or gotten her to defect.

how to open up the crystal? Isayama could've made up that Eren's hardening, or Armin's Colossal Titan's strength, or even the Thunder Spears could've done it.

when Marley counter-attacked in Shiganshina, we had Reiner transform and Eren waits for him below. the moment is animated in an epic way to hype it up, but it really isn't hype if you think about it. Reiner had ever only lost to Eren when their titans clashed. Imagine for a moment if Eren is expecting Reiner to transform up in the sky, and in all actuality it's Annie with her Female Titan.

remember, Eren only barely defeated a mentally broken Annie using his super-berserker form in the anime (what the heck was that anyway?), and didn't defeat her at all in the manga, he simply cornered her with the aid of the SC who managed to capture her. So in truth, he never really defeated Annie

now that would've been a hype fight that late in the story.

but you know. five years worth of pie