u/Oddity312

That was such a great season!

But I might have seen this expression more than enough 😅

>[TL;DR: The Founding Titan/Worm doesn't control you but it freezes your deepest desire and makes it absolute.
Karl Fritz wanted peace, thus his successors were slaves to peace.
Eren wanted to be free so he became a slave to freedom by "killing them all".
Without the Titan, he might have matured. But with it, it wasn't possible at all!]

Eren tells Armin that he is slave to freedom and the rumbling was done in his own will. But is this really the case?

I've just finished the show, but I was not convinced by Eren's motives. It could possibly be how much I loved the little boy in season 1 and the fact that I couldn't accept the things he had done.

Then I remembered this thing that Eren said about since he acquired the Founding Titan messed up with his head bugged me and I immediately remembered the Reiss Family.

King Fritz desired peace no matter what. It was his greatest desire. And with the power of the Founding Titan he achieved to create his "paradise of peace".

But here I will suggest that the power of the Founding Titan consolidated this desire of his and passed it down to all of the subsequent inheritors with royal blood and they could not escape the king's will. It became their own unwillingly!

And what about Eren? Well, which is Eren's greatest desire? Gaining freedom by "killing them all". So, when Eren inherits the power of the Founding Titan, this desire starts getting frozen!

Eren is not of royal blood, so he is not subjugated by Fritz's will and by teaming up with Ymir, he made his desire all the more possible.

And don't forget the Hallucigenia's role in that. Since it is the embodiment of life sustaining, it will do everything in order to secure survival. So, maybe it is not the power of the Founding Titan but the Worm itself that messes with its host's mind.

Eren without titan powers might have been more open to reevaluate the situation. Eren's initial motive to start the rumbling was that the world was not what Armin had described. But isn't it such a ridiculously childish reason to annihilate the whole world? So, Armin, Mikasa, Hange and the others could have played a part in changing his view and helping him mature.

But here's the most heartbreaking part. When Eren breaks down to Armin in the Paths, he admits something that contradicts everything he just said about "freedom". He doesn't want to die. He wants to be with Mikasa. He wants to live with his friends. He says he doesn't want to be forgotten; he wants to be important to them.

That's the real Eren. The boy who loved his friends. The boy who wanted a simple, happy life.

But his frozen will wouldn't let him choose that path. He saw the future. He knew what he would do. And even as he cried to Armin about wanting something else, he couldn't stop the Rumbling. That's the true horror of being a "slave to freedom"; you want to stop, but your own frozen desire drags you forward anyway!

That is the tragedy in a nutshell! Eren was enslaved to his desire and was given immense power to make it happen. He could not be rationalised. He was in some ways possessed. Not by Karl Fritz, not by Ymir, but by his own frozen desire, made absolute by the Worm and thus became a monster.

A monster that was created by others, though. Grisha first and foremost, the Scouts using him as a tool and ultimately Marley.

So, all in all, that's what I personally think Eren being "slave to freedom" really means, just like the Fritz dynasty was "slave to peace".

And just for clarification; I'm not saying Eren had no agency. He chose the Rumbling. But the Founding Titan/Worm made that choice permanent and unchangeable. That's the tragedy of his story.

i.e. I just finished the show and I'm literally blown away by the quality in every aspect! I can't stop thinking about its story and things like the one I discuss in this post!

I think my main concern is the bass sound. I was aiming for a Fallen Down (Undertale) bass sound and tried to replicate it in Vital. Also I believe the pads feel a bit thin.