hushpiper

I think I’m largely with you on this anon. I definitely think Eren cares, and I think Jean and Connie are misinterpreting him in general, and specifically over the laugh. (Understandable; he’s gone spectacularly off the rails, and they’re all second-guessing their understanding of him.) I think Mikasa knows him better and is much closer to correct, but I suspect her opinion of Eren here is probably a little… overly sunny? That’s my compact answer.

For my less-compact answer: Eren does care about his friends–about their safety, their dignity, their rights, their happiness. But about his relationship to them? Look, I’m not exactly saying that Eren could be perfectly content if his friends were safe and free but they hated him and he never saw them again… but I am kind of saying that.

Eren’s pretty shit at relationships, I think. He’s always been an outcast due to his uh, radical ideals–ideals he was never willing to compromise on, regardless of the social consequences–and I suspect he just got used to that. (See his exchange with Grisha over his lack of friends as a kid; it’s very telling.) Solitude and ostracization is, in a weird way, his comfort zone.

I’m sure that having friends has been wonderful and comforting for him these past years; not only friends but comrades in his fight. People who accept him for the weird-ass ragemonster he is, who even value that in him. This is kind of new, for him, and we see him glom on to new friends–like a good shonen protagonist!–despite himself, as soon as the opportunity presents itself. If they died, or got hurt because of him, he would be heartbroken–we’ve seen that. And losing their acceptance would be a blow. But he’s used to not being accepted; his heart will go on.

So I think the way he’s acting now–as though he doesn’t care–is less about him changing, and more about him… going back to his baseline. They’re angry, they disagree with what he thinks and what he’s doing, fine. Story of his life. He will do what he feels he must, what he feels is right.

I don’t know whether I think Mikasa’s right that he’s doing it all/specifically for them (as opposed to partially for them, or for Paradis in general). Actually if you’d asked me around chapter 107 I would have said he did it all either purely for The Cause or specifically to try to save Historia; but after 108? I’m coming around to Mikasa’s view on it a bit. I think there’s an element of rose-colored glasses there, but I suspect of anybody in the room, she’s the closest to the truth.