chapter 100 birthday bash

[hushpiper]

Re-entering tumblr by way of writing meta on a chapter that has the fandom drawing out battle lines is totally a good idea, right? Right?

I’m not gonna touch characterization, despite my many thoughts and feels, beause we don’t have enough information on what’s going on yet. I prefer to have a better idea of what a character is thinking before I meta it up about them, and Eren’s thought processes over the past years have been purposefully withheld from us. But we will find out, hopefully soon. Steady on.

Let’s talk strategy.

Ever since the basement reveal, my real worry for this story has been that I can’t see a viable win condition for Paradis. The entire world wants them dead, as a nation and as individuals, due both to history and to undeniable, unchangeable facts of their biology. The diplomatic solution was never really an option. What do they do? Destroy the world? Quarantine themselves on their island again? Die? What?

There are at least two parties at work in Marley tonight: Willy and Magath’s little conspiracy, and Eren. Eren is not working alone, he is at the very least in communication with someone else. There may be other parties as well. One of the parties present slickly palmed two of Marley’s most important pieces magician-style, and all we know is that it wasn’t Magath. We’ll call them the magicians.

Zeke is probably working with the magicians. The soldier who did the palming explicitly sent Zeke on ahead instead of dropping him down a trapdoor with the others. He is almost certainly the one communicating with Eren as well, because wow, Isayama is not being subtle there. He may have told the magicians where to find the titan trap. He is probably both the single strong pillar that Magath was talking about, and the mice infesting it. He is now walking down the streets of the ghetto, away from the action.

Three possibilities for the magicians, then: 1. they are Eren and Zeke, who having connected as half-brothers are now acting out some kind of plan, maybe with the help of any remaining restorationists; 2. they are Paradis / the Survey Corps; or 3. an unknown third party. Pieck recognized the tall soldier who led them to the trapdoor but couldn’t place him, which tbh screams that he’s a veteran of Shiganshina. So #2 is the option we’ll run with: Paradis is making its first moves on the world stage.

Why these moves? What are they trying to accomplish? We are clearly meant to assume that the people in that building are all dead or dying at this point, plus potentially Falco and/or Reiner. Assuming that was unavoidable (perhaps there was no other suitable place for Eren to hide before transforming), what goal was worth all those lives? All that’s happened is that Willy is (probably) dead, and all the diplomats and reporters get a real good look at what the monster Eren Jaeger can do. There are worse ways to start a war than by Princep-ing it up, but to be honest, an assassination and a PR attempt feels… weak.

But back to win conditions. Here’s one: reclaim the nine titans. There’s plenty of optional subquests–find a way to utilize the coordinate power, transform pure titans back to humans, free the Eldians, bring the brainwashed child soldiers back to a beautiful farm in the country… But this one objective alone could cripple their main enemy, and boost their own tiny, backward military long enough for them to catch up, while the rest of the world piles on the weakened Marley like a pack of wolves. It’s neither peace nor freedom, really, but it’s as close as they’re likely to get.

Recall that the Warhammer Titan’s identity is a secret, and that after generations of reclusiveness the entire Tybur family is suddenly present at this festival, and suddenly the plan starts to make sense. Of the four titans directly under Marleyan control, two have been safely captured, one is working with the Paradisians, and the last was last seen having a nervous breakdown in a very cramped basement. Three more titans are under Paradisian control, and another was captured by them years ago. That’s eight. The only remaining titan is present in public, somewhere at this festival: either it was Willy and is now dead (maybe), or it’s one of the other Tyburs. Eren’s objective is to draw out and capture or kill the Warhammer Titan. Paradis 9, Marley 0. They even get to take out a chunk of Marley’s leadership while they’re at it.

Of course, there’s no way this will go that smoothly: there’s a lot of obstacles yet. The Warhammer will probably choose to fight, or may not be present at all; Pieck and Porco will probably be hard to handle, to say nothing of the panzer squad; Zeke’s motives are still obscure; Magath clearly intends to make things difficult; Reiner might well be alive and inclined to fight; and the rest of the world probably has some opinions on this whole deal. They still have to get the titans home and either win them over or transfer them to someone else. But if they pull this off, Paradis hasn’t started a war–they’ve ended one. They’ve achieved their win condition in a single move.

That’s probably worth it.