hushpiper | Entries tagged with eren jaeger

(This entry is in response to both a Tumblr ask and a followup anonymous comment here.)

Asked by Anonymous

Did Eren really mean it when he said to Levi Armin is different than him because he has dreams and all he had was killing the titans and revenge? I think he either didn’t understand himself or i didn’t understand him right

You’re referring to this page?

Eren: But that was a dream we had as little kids. I’d forgotten it a long time ago… All I had left in my head was hate… getting revenge for my mom… and killing the titans… He’s different, though. Fighting isn’t all he has. He dreams, too!!

I do think Eren meant that, yeah.

From a story perspective, I think that page is less about Eren than it is about Levi. The whole stretch from late-Uprising through Return To Shiganshina could in some ways be characterized as “Levi Has Thoughts: The Arc”. People say things, and we see that Levi hears and is thinking about them, but he keeps the actual contents of his thoughts private. But while Levi is that sequence’s main purpose, it does also say a lot about Eren, and about how Eren sees himself and Armin. I don’t think Eren is in any way duplicitous when he’s saying this: he is desperate, and entirely earnest. This is what Eren truly thinks.

And the thing is, the rest of the story supports it.

Before shipping out to Shiganshina^(c72), the trio discuss their future while Levi eavesdrops, and Mikasa asks whether they’ll be able to go back to the days when they were children. Eren’s answer is his typical combination of determination and anger, saying they’ll bring back what they can, and make them pay for the rest. It’s Armin who turns the gloomy tide of the conversation by telling them stories of the outside world, even calling Eren out for seeming doubtful–a moment so important that we see it twice, first in chapter 72, and then again in Levi’s flashback in 84.

On their way to Shiganshina, we get to see Eren recounting his memory of the first time Armin talked to him about going to the ocean, and how it affected him. The most striking thing there–other than how strong an effect Armin’s dream has had on Eren’s life–was that Eren never talked about it inspiring him to explore or see these things for himself; only about the realization that he had, when looking at Armin excited face just then, that he wasn’t free. He caught a glimpse something beautiful and reacted with anger.

In the battle at Shiganshina^(c81) we even get a direct contrast: we see Eren in flashback saying “When I think about getting my freedom back, I feel strength welling up inside of me,” followed by Armin in the present thinking back on Eren’s words and saying “When I think about the outside world, I feel courage welling up inside of me.”–and then a beautiful repeat of Armin waking Eren up as he did in Trost.

We get sequence after sequence painting this same picture, of Armin filled with awe and optimism, and Eren able to find nothing but anger in response–and by the end of Uprising, Eren is aware of the pattern. I was talking to a friend about this, and she said she thought the whole thing was deeply sad: Eren knows that the kinds of feelings he saw in Armin exist. He isn’t blind to them. And he knows that he doesn’t have them.

Chapter 72, Eren: You looked like you were having an amazing dream. A dream I couldn't see.

Chapter 72, Eren: You looked like you were having an amazing dream. A dream I couldn't see.

Eren sees Armin’s dream as a beautiful thing that he’ll never be able to fully experience, and when it comes down to life and death–and it does come down to life and death, not only in Shiganshina but all the way back in Trost, when Eren pulls Armin from the titan’s mouth–we’re shown that this is what he sees in Armin that’s so important to him that he’d rather die than see it go out of the world: Armin has a dream, where Eren doesn’t. Armin opened his eyes.

Anonymous asked:

So what do you think is going on with Eren in terms of his relationship with the 104th? Do you think he cares (as Mikasa indicates) or do you think he doesn't anymore/isn't the same person (as Jean and Connie imply)? Personally I think they're both wrong and right. I think Mikasa is lying to herself a little bit ("he's doing this all for us") but I do think she's correct in saying Eren cares about them. Similarly I don't think Jeans wrong in saying that Eren certainly isn't acting like he cares. But him and Connie misinterpreted the laugh he gave at Sashas death. So they aren’t completely correct either. Where do you think Eren’s headspace is at in regard to his friends?

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.

Asked by Anonymous

Thank you for answering my question about shifter lifespans! I loved what you had to say, and I had never thought about how gaining the shifter power might actually end up lengthening Armin’s life considering how fast the SC are dying . Also interesting how Zeke may be replacing Armin in Eren’s life. Do you think Eren and Armin will ever be at the same level of friendship as they were before the time skip, or do you think they’ll only grow further apart? (I’m trying to avoid spoilers)

Thank you anon! I’m glad you enjoyed it, cuz I enjoyed answering it. And I support you in your spoiler-avoiding endeavours! (Do blacklist “snk spoilers” though, since I occasionally reblog spoiler content with that tag.) So I’ll answer before reading the 106 leaks, and we’ll very quickly see how wrong I end up being. ;)

For anyone reading who didn’t see the previous post: I mentioned in the tags that Zeke may potentially be replacing Armin’s role in Eren’s life as the more level, strategic mind telling him where to direct his efforts and channel his energy. Eren seems at his best when he has somebody like that in his life, but with his apparent split from his friends, it seems Armin may no longer be that person.

It kills me to say this, because I have always been so emotionally invested in the EMA dynamic, but I don’t think Eren and Armin will ever get back to where they used to be in their relationship. Too much has changed.

One of the trends in the EMA relationships in general is that though they are close and though they love each other, basic misunderstandings abound. Each of them are very different people with very very different goals in life and understandings of the world. Eren and Armin in particular are opposites in a lot of ways. This starts to become clear in the return to Shiganshina, but is really driven home in the ocean scene: they’ve both been devoted to the dream of reaching the ocean, but their reasons have been completely different this whole time.

Armin is driven toward the ocean by a sense of curiosity and awe, traits that were probably encouraged in him by his parents. (After all, he got those banned books from somewhere.) The world, he learned early on, is enormous–far bigger than what’s inside the walls, where he’s bullied and disdained. It’s full of oceans and deserts and mountains that spew fire, strange and amazing things that he wants to see and understand. He looks toward the ocean with a sense of hope; he smiles when he talks about it, and you can see him light up.

Eren’s drive is very different. When he looked at those books, he didn’t feel curiosity or awe. He felt anger. Little bitty Eren, lying in bed, covers pulled up to his nose, stewing: beyond the walls there’s oceans and deserts and mountains that spew fire and he’s never gonna see them and it’s not fair. He should be free to go see them, everybody should be, but instead they’re penned up inside these walls with wolves snarling at the gates and nobody cares. Fuck that. He’s going to be free, he’s going to make it to the ocean, with Armin at his side, and fuck anybody who tries to stop them. He looks toward the ocean and feels righteous determination.

They’re two outcasts who found each other, and found a goal that inspired them both, and this carried them a long way. Armin never would’ve dared to make the push to get out to the ocean without Eren’s drive, and Eren would never have gotten anywhere without Armin’s guidance. But when they finally made it to the ocean, the fundamental differences in their viewpoints became impossible to ignore.

Any reconciliation that Eren and Armin have will have to come only after they realize their differences, and build new bridges and new bonds accordingly. They have to shift their relationship and reconnect as adults. It won’t be what they had as children, and it might always be bittersweet. But it might also be better, because they may come to understand each other in a way they never did before. I hope they get there–I hope they have time to get there. (And if they don’t, well, bury me in a pile of fix-it fic, friend.)

Anonymous asked:

Thank you for answering my question about shifter lifespans! I loved what you had to say, and I had never thought about how gaining the shifter power might actually end up lengthening Armin’s life considering how fast the SC are dying . Also interesting how Zeke may be replacing Armin in Eren’s life. Do you think Eren and Armin will ever be at the same level of friendship as they were before the time skip, or do you think they’ll only grow further apart? (I’m trying to avoid spoilers)

Asked by Anonymous

How do you think the knowledge of his limited lifespan influenced Eren’s choices and decision making after finding out about it, if at all? How do you think that knowledge affect Armin? This was something I was thinking about after reading the latest chapter and I was curious to hear you thoughts! Would knowing there is no possible way you’d live to old age make fighting and killing easier or harder?

Hi anon! This is a great way for me to distract myself from upcoming spoilers, so with the standard meta writer “this is just my personal, falliable interpretation of their characters and psychology” disclaimer:

I think the knowledge of their impending doom adds to the weight of pressure and depression for both of them, but the differences in how they’d think about this really highlight the ways in which they differ as people.

Death itself isn’t something Eren fears. But my instinct with Eren is that what he does fear–deeply, desperately, more than anything else–is powerlessness and insignificance. Of dying with the knowledge that he’s accomplished nothing, that he wasn’t strong enough to change anything. So there’s no new sense of doom here: I doubt Eren ever thought he’d live to an old age anyway, or particularly wanted to. He’s just not built for peace. He’d take a short and brutal but meaningful life over a long, peaceful, unimportant one in a heartbeat. “I would happily give my life if I knew it would change something.”

All the knowledge of his own short lifespan would do is increase his sense of urgency: if he wants to make a change, well, gonna have to make it quick. He’s on a deadline. Which… could be a problem. The last thing “suicidal bastard” Eren needs is a reason to become more reckless.

Armin, on the other hand, does fear death–like any reasonable person. And unlike Eren, he’s the sort of person who would want to live to an old age if he could, even though he knows logically that his choices in life have made that possibility very slim. Armin would thrive in peace, but peace seems unlikely to come in what’s left of his lifetime. All he has left to look forward to now is the fight; he’s never going to see the metaphorical ocean. That would be a difficult blow for him to take.

But Armin has time now. Yes he’s going to die in thirteen years–but considering the death rate in the Survey Corps, he’s also more likely to live thirteen years than he was before. Shifters are hard to kill. He works best when he has time to think things through, without the pressure making him freeze up; well, he’s got time. Thirteen years. He just has to make them count.

But I suspect that we’ll find that the effect of Ymir’s curse on Zeke played a bigger role in Eren’s decisions than any worries about himself, and likely influenced Armin and other decision makers as well: Zeke is the key to a potentially war-winning weapon, and his time is very short indeed. If they’re going to use the coordinate for anything, they’d better make it quick, and they’d better make it count. The more dramatic and permanent the impact, the better.

Whatever they do, it needs to outlive all of them.

Asked by yuu-nat

Since you said it's easier to write your thoughts when you have a specific topic to talk about (and I really liked the way you talked about chapter 105 Eren when we were discussing the chapter in the Eren discord server), I want to ask: thoughts on Eren in chapter 105? and also on his current mental state? thanks <3 (this is daya btw)

Ahhhh! Hey there, Daya! Thank you for the ask!

Eren’s mental state in 105: pretty fucked, all around.

The ways that people realistically react to and cope with seeing or doing terrible things have been a primary feature of this manga from day one. We see people shaking, screaming, and crying with fear, throwing up, lashing out in anger, going blank, questioning themselves, rationalizing their actions, repressing memories, forming separate identities, falling into depression or self-loathing–and that’s not even a complete list. In a genre usually characterized by power fantasies, Shingeki no Kyojin instead goes to pains to show us the powerlessness of its characters, and Isayama puts a lot of time and care into depicting their reactions to the trauma he inflicts on them.

Eren’s probably pretty depressed at this point. Mind, it’s hard to be a character in this series and not experience some depression, especially after the revelations in Grisha’s journals. In the past, Eren dealt with trauma and depression by pushing and fighting harder, and he only started to despair at the times when he thought his anger and determination wouldn’t be enough to change anything. But after the basement, it seems that he really isn’t strong enough to change this, at least not in any way that will matter. The world will never stop hating him and his people, simply because of what they are. No amount of shonen protagonist grit and determination can change that. Anger isn’t enough anymore.

Which of course is nowhere near enough suffering for Isayama’s taste. So on top of having the dreams that drove him kicked over like a sandcastle on the shore, and on top of all the events of the series up until the timeskip, he also has several lifetimes of traumatic memories seething somewhere in his mind. So: you have the memories of devouring your father, of yourself being devoured, of watching an eight year old girl being devoured by dogs–and the list only gets more horrible from there–all forcing themselves, in full sensory detail, into your consciousness without warning. The memories are there now, out of the box, you have them. What do you do with them?

Put them away again.

So let’s talk about dissociation. Speaking very generally, dissociation describes the human mind’s ability to disconnect parts of itself from the rest as a way of coping with stress. It covers everything from daydreaming to depersonalization to amnesia, and most people have experienced low-level versions of it. In intensely traumatic or stressful situations a mind can keep itself calm by putting the emotions (or even the memories) over there, far away from itself. At its most dramatic it can take the form of identity issues like Reiner’s, but at other times it might “just” feel like the world is strangely far away, and you’re not really a part of it. Like whatever awful thing is happening, you’re not the one experiencing it, or doing it–or you are but it doesn’t seem real–and in any case it just doesn’t hurt like it should. And you can’t snap out of it.

Dissociation probably isn’t a new coping mechanism for Eren: his memories of his father’s death were locked away tight for years, and he can press on through enormous amounts of physical pain. He’s never leaned on it quite this heavily before, but with the constant pressure he’s under, his old responses of anger and determination just aren’t enough to help him cope anymore. And when he reaches for something stronger, the dissociation is there, letting him take the things that would be too much to deal with and–not necessarily consciously–put them over there. That eerie calm that we’ve seen in recent chapters is alarming, but not surprising. It’s not even new: we saw it begin to take hold before the timeskip–and even earlier than that, after the coup.

And so we come to Liberio.

Although we don’t yet know why Eren decided to take this course of action, he clearly did feel that it was necessary. But the cost is high. This wouldn’t be the first time Eren has killed, but in the past he’s killed people he’s thought of as animals and monsters, not people he’s seen as being victims like himself. He’s jeopardizing his relationships with the people he cares about. He’s playing the part of the murderous monster that someone has to be, he’s isolating himself from others, and he doesn’t even know if it’ll be worth it. (”Maybe it’s hope. Maybe it’s yet another hell. I don’t know which it is.”)

There’s an element of walking stoically into the flames to Eren here. The person he’s always looked up to is looking down at him with disdain. This is fine. His friends are angry and may never trust him again. This is fine. He killed a lot of people today, including children. This is fine.

His friend is dead, and her last words were absurd, and this is not fine.

It’s hard to say where Eren’s going to go from here, emotionally. Sasha’s death overwhelmed him, but the dissociation will probably come back, and keep coming back, until he no longer needs it in order to keep going. That is Eren’s defining characteristic, after all: he keeps going, no matter what. Fight, because if you lose you die, and if you don’t fight then you can never win.

“Keep moving forward. That’s all we can do.”

There’s something about Eren that I don’t think I can emphasize enough:

No matter the age.

No matter the time or place or circumstances. Eren is the Attack Titan. I don’t know how the paths between the Children of Ymir are supposed to work, but if we look I think we have to conclude that Eren’s own fate and personhood were deeply tied up in what he would become long before it was ever certain. Maybe it’s so strong in him because he would eventually become the Coordinate, where all the paths converge–I don’t know. But:

No matter the age. Eren could have been born in paradise, in a world of perpetual peace–he practically was–and he would still be angry, and he would still be seeking, because there is no amount of freedom that is sufficient. (Thought: how much of Eren’s reaction to the slavers who took Mikasa was down to the fact that they were slavers?)

He’s doomed to restlessness, in any life. He can’t just stop and be satisfied, any more than he can stop breathing. Even if he settles down, even if he forgets, that’s the truth that’s always going to smolder at the bottom of his heart, and all it will take is a tiny blue-eyed boy telling him about the sea to wake him up to fight once more.

That’s who and what Eren is.

I want to talk about the incident in the cabin all those years ago, when Eren rescued Mikasa. This topic is the grapeseed in my wisdom tooth, the thorn in my boot, the irritating pop song stuck in my head since six episodes into the anime back in 2013. My frustrated curiosity over this is what originally kept me going with the manga after the anime ended. If I had one thing to say about this series, it’s what’s in this meta.

Of course, this scene has been commented on before, all over the place! But in the commentaries I’ve read (admittedly nowhere near all of them), the consensus seems to be “wow, what a fucked-up, rage-filled child, he can’t possibly be mentally stable”, and that, to me, seems to miss the mark. Because what we saw in that cabin wasn’t rage.

It was training.

There’s still something here that we’re missing.

Let me tell you what’ll happen if you throw your average adult into a room with a knife, two aggressors and a tied-up girl to save. For this example let’s say they’re also the bravest, ballsiest, angriest person you know. You put them in that room and they’ll try to brute force it: they’re gonna run at the nearest guy, and they’re not gonna prioritize targets or watch their backs or look for potential advantages, because rage blinds you and makes you stupid, and most people don’t have the experience or tactical understanding to turn a situation like that to their advantage. If you put a child there–especially a fucked-up, rage-filled child–and it’s even more true, because children are not great at tactics, or emotional control, or like, cognition. The adult, if they’re fast and strong, has a chance of getting out of it okay. The child is pretty much fucked.

But Eren came to that cabin with a plan, and once he was inside he quickly sized up the situation and improvised. He didn’t just kill two adults, he did it quickly and efficiently, while taking no injuries himself. The only reason he got in trouble at all was because there was a third assailant that he didn’t know about. That’s… honestly, that’s impressive. That’s impressive for an adult. For a nine year old…

Let me take a few screenfuls of screenshots and text to explain what I mean.

Eren’s got a lot of disadvantages in this situation, mostly involving his size. He’s a kid: he’s small, and he’s not very strong. He’s too short to reach many vulnerable spots on an assailant, and any adult will have the reach to hit him before he can get close enough to hit them.

The thing is that Eren knows exactly what his disadvantages are, and everything he does from the moment he opens the door is geared toward mitigating them. Throughout the scene he finds ways to overcome the reach issue, and leans heavily on the advantage of surprise to cover for the strength problem.

For the first guy, he accomplishes both by playing the lost and frightened child:

This entices the man to let down his guard, yes, but it also lures him close. He actually bends down until he’s eye-level with Eren, so that Eren has no problem whatsoever getting at the man’s throat.

But then there’s still another target to deal with, and in killing the first man, Eren’s lost the element of surprise. The second man has seen what just happened, and he’s momentarily stunned but will recover and charge Eren within moments. Eren can’t win a head-on fight here–so he doesn’t try. And this is the part where I went “whoa whoa whoa, wait, pause. What?”

He beats a tactical retreat. This, first of all, is not what you do in a fit of rage, and it’s not the sort of thing we’d expect of the Eren we eventually get to know, but we’ll put it aside. By closing that door between them, he breaks line of sight, and suddenly he has the element of surprise on his side again. And then:

He improvised a weapon to overcome the reach disadvantage. I don’t know if he did this before he originally opened the door and initiated the encounter, or if he did it in the precious few seconds before the second man opened the door to come after him, but either way–he finishes the job.

His actions may be fueled by rage here, certainly, but that is only the fuel. They’re guided by cold, hard, practical tactics.

Children do not do this. Children aren’t necessarily innocent–plenty of them have violent thoughts and urges, either because of their background or just because. But they don’t do this. They don’t think in terms of tactics–they’re barely capable of understanding them.

Understand, if this child was Levi, or one of the titan trio, I wouldn’t be writing this meta. We know that Levi was raised in part by a serial killer whose entire relationship to him was based on teaching him this sort of thing, and that he spent his childhood in an environment surrounded by death, suffering, and human cruelty. The incident in the cabin would be normal–though troubling–behavior for him. I would understand it coming from one of the titan trio as well, because they were literal child soldiers, and would have been coached in it extensively. But children don’t do
this sort of thing unless an adult has taught them to do it, and
increasingly, I think Isayama is aware of that.

So this is where we stand: Eren couldn’t have learned to do something like this on his own, but we have no idea where–from whom–he might have learned it. So far as we know, Eren had a normal childhood, in a peaceful town, with
a loving mother and a caring, if distant, father. It seems that as far as Eren’s past and character go, there’s a shoe that has yet to drop.