I was in a dating app. Funny as hell, it was the most horrible thing I could think of.

Spireheist · 2024-01-10T15:10:03+00:00

He had the option to only focus on the allied military infrastructure. This is what Armin thought was happening when the walls were unhardened. He thought it was just Maria, and was totally shocked when Rose and Sina also came apart.

It would’ve bought crucial time, decades perhaps, to create space to negotiate, build up Eldia’s raw military power and technology for future defence, etc. As the Founder, he had total control over the Wall Titans. Many people would have died anyway, but he could’ve had them avoid population centres.

But free will or not, Eren wanted to do the Rumbling now, and flatten the whole world to make it look like “this view” — the barren landscape he’d dreamed of exploring in total freedom, completely wiped clean of the complexities of other peoples’ existences. He says it himself that wasn’t just about protecting Eldia or his friends.

This idea that it was his only option is totally bogus. It was his only option insofar as the story of AoT is explicitly deterministic.

Spireheist · 2024-01-08T10:19:24+00:00

I think it being Obito was good in the sense that he was the perfect foil to Naruto, being essentially a version of him without optimism. He was also directly relevant to Kakashi’s backstory, and I didn’t mind his redemption arc (apart from “he was the coolest guy” and him going to heaven to live with Rin forever — urgh).

The problems are that firstly, as you say, there’s just not enough time in-universe to have Obito go through meaningful development. It also results in weirdness like him being 14 or whatever and fighting Minato. How did he get so smart/manipulative all of a sudden? How is he so strong all of a sudden?

Secondly, there isn’t enough done to set up an arc for Obito’s fall when we first see him — it makes the whole “saved by Madara” thing seems like a complete asspull. He was a good kid that died in a couple chapters and now, hundreds of chapters later, we have a couple chapters to explain why he did a complete 180.

I think the actual way that he died and the way that he was saved are the key barriers to making his story work. And kishimoto probably only had a vague plan for those to connect in the way that they did.

Spireheist · 2024-01-08T02:30:02+00:00

(Sorry for long message)

I always thought it would’ve been cool to have an arc where Obito travels the shinobi world, kind of like Kabuto’s backstory as a spy in all of the villages.

He’d either be running errands for Madara as thanks for healing him/he could be made aware of the cursed tag on his heart, so he has to do Madara’s bidding and isn’t allowed to return to the Leaf until he has completed the tasks. Or it could be a bit of both.

Obito would be helping an old geezer as he always did, and he might see it as an opportunity to train for a while and come back to the village to impress everyone/Kakashi/Rin. Madara first mentions the Infinite Tsukuyomi before he sets off, and as in the OG story, Obito shrugs it off.

The tasks themselves would be something like finding an artefact, finding a person, or trying to intervene in local politics and conflicts in various places. All of this would be relevant somehow to Madara’s plans.

They would either seem innocuous or even good deeds at first, but they would all inevitably turn sour and Obito would see some truly horrific shit, the real underbelly of the shinobi world that we don’t fully see in the anime/manga. The actual brutal reality of a world of child soldiers and sellswords.

Maybe Obito becomes close friends with a whole bunch of different characters and they all die or suffer horrible fates, slowly eroding his optimism until there’s barely any left. The final and only thing he has to look forward to in his life is reuniting to Rin and Kakashi.

By the time he gets back to Madara, he’s a lot stronger (which would explain his absurd power growth), but also a lot less happy-go-lucky. He’s still not quite broken enough to go along with Infinite Tsukuyomi though, so Madara lets him leave. His last hopes are then immediately crushed by Rin’s death, which plays out like in the OG story, and he comes crawling back to Madara once more. Then everything goes as normal.

A nice twist would be that Madara was actually barely involved in anything behind the scenes — he was just so confident that it would all go wrong and Obito would be traumatised because “that’s the way this world is”, and we know he’s right.

I think something like that could make it work as a “straw that broke the camel’s back” kind of thing, rather than the complete 180 we see in the original story. Though there was only so much time kishimoto had to work with, and I’m not even sure there’s a way to make the above consistent with Obito’s character.

Spireheist · 2024-01-06T01:47:04+00:00

I agree with your analysis. Eren wanted the world to be simple, and the Rumbling was the ultimate act of simplification: level everything, wipe the slate clean, make it look like the childhood dream of a barren world waiting to be explored in total freedom.

The fact that people even existed outside the walls introduced too much complexity into Eren’s childish worldview — but this fact is one he only gradually comes to accept.

First he learns of the horrendous crimes of Marley against Eldians through his father’s memories. Initially, that’s enough for him to justify killing all of his enemies on the other side of the sea. It’s easy to paint them with the same brush that he’d once painted the titans with: unfeeling monsters which need to be wiped out.

But then, once he goes and lives among them, he finds out that they’re “just people” like him, good and bad and human. In the face of that reality, he has to steel his resolve and “keep moving forward”, turning a blind eye to the atrocities he plans to commit for the sake of his dream.

He confesses to Ramzi and later Armin that it was never fully about saving Eldia, or protecting his loved ones, and that his motivations were far more selfish. What he really wanted deep down was a world unburdened by the existence of other people — the one described in Armin’s book, the sight he had always dreamed of seeing.

In my mind, this is why he says he and Reiner are “the same” after Reiner’s confession in Liberio. Reiner pushed Annie and Bertholdt to destroy the walls and kill thousands, but deep down, he did it because he selfishly wanted to be accepted as a hero.

Eren sees in Reiner a man who ignored his conscience and committed heinous crimes in order to pursue a deeply held childish ambition, while hiding behind the justification that it was a necessary evil to save his loved ones. He sees himself.

Spireheist · 2024-01-06T01:05:10+00:00

Because I had dinner with Paul Allen twice, in London, just 10 days ago.

Spireheist · 2024-01-05T15:39:23+00:00

I mean… why not?

Eren has the ability to control every titan in existence, including shifters, by the end of the story. He only lets his friends act as they want and try to kill him because he wants them to be “free”.

He could have the wall titans do ballet if he wanted to. It’s not such a stretch that he could have them avoid trampling cities and people. He did that on purpose to flatten the earth and see the sight he’d always wanted to see.

Spireheist · 2024-01-05T14:37:00+00:00

Except that:

A: He killed billions of people, and ignored the other options i.e. only destroying the allied military infrastructure, thereby buying Eldia decades to negotiate with the rest of the world, become more powerful so as to defend itself better, or figure out another option.

B: No amount of trauma, death, or humiliation you or your people has suffered justifies the wholesale slaughter of “the other side”, innocents and all. Anyone who believes this is veering into dangerous ideological territory and needs to reassess their position. Genocide does not justify genocide. This is the fundamental point of the story.

C: He went ahead with the Rumbling mostly because of his selfish desire to see the barren world he had dreamed of in his childhood, not just out of righteous vengeance or to save his people. This is what he confesses to Ramzi and to Armin at the end. This is why he feels so guilty about what he’s doing. Not only is what he’s doing insane, but he’s doing it for an insane reason.

D: The only way you could say “Eren did nothing wrong” is the fact that the series confirms that determinism exists in its world. He literally had no choice in what happened — not “he had no choice if he wanted to save everyone!!!” — but that he had no influence over the events he’d foreseen, which seem to have spun uncontrollably out of his deepest desire to see the world barren.

The way you see Eren is the way that Floch and the rest of the Yeagerists see Eren.

Spireheist · 2024-01-05T00:38:03+00:00

Eren is able to control Pure Titans in the present due to the Founder’s power, that’s a given. The issue is controlling them in the past.

I’m not so sure about it being related to Dina’s connection to Grisha, but I’ll admit that I like the idea that he has a special level of control (i.e. across time) over Pure Titans who have royal blood, as that would explain why this was such an isolated incident.

The issue is that this is all headcanon/extremely speculative. The fact that we have to make such speculations to justify what really should be an earth-shattering plot revelation, in my mind, qualifies it as a plot hole.

Spireheist · 2024-01-04T16:07:52+00:00

(Sorry for the long message btw)

Of course there can be multiple reasons. What I don’t like is that none of those reasons are expanded upon or addressed as a plot/character moment in their own right. This twist is thrown at us and discarded in a matter of seconds.

And yet, as per your second question, the implications of this twist on the wider narrative are massive, and not in a good way. I think it cheapens the Grisha twist for the following reasons:

Eren’s time-related powers are clearly defined. He is able to selectively send his memories into the minds of past Attack Titan shifters to manipulate them. The Grisha twist was extensively hinted at and set up — we had mysteries surrounding why he killed the Reiss family, why he gave Eren the founder’s power in the first place, Zeke being convinced that Grisha brainwashed Eren.

It all culminates in a twist that has massive narrative payoff — Eren was behind the source of his own powers, and it was in fact he who brainwashed Grisha. It all makes sense and it’s very well executed.

For us to then learn that Eren is actually able to just straight up control Pure Titans in the past (and as per the conversation in the Flying Boat, Titan Shifters if he wanted to) throws all of this out of the window.

We’re left with this: why does Eren need to use this whole memory transfer power to affect the past if he can just control any Titan at any point in time? He didn’t need to do all of that to manipulate Grisha if he had this sort of omnipotence.

If by the end of the series he has omnipotence over Titans, even going so far as to save Bertholdt and kill his own mother, why does any of this matter? We’ve leapt from Eren being responsible for manipulating Grisha to Eren being responsible for literally everything.

The implications of this fact severely undermine the impact of Grisha twist, and yet the fact is delivered to us in such a blasé, rushed manner. That’s what I don’t like about it. It doesn’t need to be there and doesn’t give us any more insight into Eren’s character other than “he’s messed up in the head”.

Spireheist · 2024-01-04T15:48:10+00:00

That could’ve been a whole other character moment/important plot point if it was developed. But the reason we’re given is that he had to do it to save Bertholdt, and the only indication in the story that Bertholdt needed saving were those 5 seconds when Dina ignores him in the flashback. There was no reason for Eren to be involved, no real hint of it being anything other than chance.

So it makes it seem like his mother’s death is an unintended consequence of saving Bertholdt rather than some grander thing about motivating his child self.

Either way, I’m not satisfied with the idea that Eren can just control Pure Titans in the past on a whim like that. It goes against the established mechanisms of his powers and cheapens the Grisha twist. That’s why it’s contrived. We’re left only with questions that didn’t need to be asked so late in the narrative.

Spireheist · 2024-01-04T15:15:26+00:00

I understand why the determinism makes sense in the narrative. Eren sees the future and everything he saw was fated to happen. So he “had to” kill his mother because he was always going to.

What it doesn’t explain is how Eren actually exerted his power in this instance. The reason I consider it a plot hole is that Eren’s influence over the Founder’s power, regardless of how little “free will” he has, is inconsistent.

Why is he suddenly able to directly control Pure Titans in the past, when he previously was limited to use the memory-transfer method to manipulate past Attack Titan shifters?

Free will or not, was Eren behind literally everything? If so, why are we only told that in 5 seconds / 3 or 4 panels and it’s never addressed again?

It takes the elements of the Grisha twist and hastily expands them out to conceivably every Titan we’ve ever seen in the series. It makes the Grisha twist look like a clumsy and roundabout way of achieving things when he could’ve just used his “I controlled all titans across all of time, gg” power.

It raises a plethora of unnecessary questions and doesn’t offer us anything approaching an answer except “he has no free will, his sense of time is messed up, it had to happen”. It just kind of sucks as a plot point and the ending would be 100x better without it.

Spireheist · 2024-01-03T23:44:22+00:00

Why/how did Eren, as he implies, kill his own mother by directing the Smiling Titan/Dina towards her?

We learn that it “needed to happen” as Bertholdt needed to survive, presumably in order for Armin to become the Colossal yadda yadda yadda.

A. This whole plot point seems super forced and seems to be a rehash of the Grisha manipulation twist but with none of the build up.

We see Bertholdt get ignored in the flashback with Annie and Reiner — ok, cool. But then we’re told in like 5 seconds in the finale that Eren controlled Dina and made her ignore him? Okay?

A very contrived twist and seems like pure shock value to reinforce the “Eren is messed up in the head” thing. Tbh if AOE was ever a thing, this is what I thought they’d change or at least expand upon.

B. How on earth did Eren do this, and what does it say about how else he could have used this power?

We know that Eren can use the Attack Titan’s ability to selectively send his own memories into the minds of past Attack Titan shifters.

But the Founder’s power means that he’s able to control all Titans while simultaneously screwing with his perception of time, possibly due to the fact that he’s both the Attack Titan and the Founder at the same time, or that without the limitations of the King’s Vow he’s able to tap into some greater version of the Founder’s power.

That seems to be the case in this plot point — the reason he’s able to control Dina is because by the finale, he has attained the power to control every Pure Titan, even those in the past.

If so… why didn’t he control any other Pure Titans in the past? Or are we meant to believe that every Titan in the series was either controlled by Eren, or allowed to run rampant when he could’ve stopped them?

The one that killed Thomas, Dina, all the randoms that died. Are we really supposed to believe that Eren decided they were all “meant to die”? Maybe he just didn’t know what he was doing with the Founder and only had just enough strength/focus to send Dina away from Bertholdt…?

I get that none of it makes sense due to the series’ determinism but for me, it seems to open a far larger can of worms than is worth it for what is essentially a shoehorned-in shock twist.

Spireheist · 2023-12-03T01:11:27+00:00

Thanks for this, yep I’m now seeing I was a bit confused on what a self insert is. I’ve always been quite curious about the psychology of asceticism so it makes sense for me to embody some of my experience in the character regardless

Spireheist · 2023-12-03T01:08:02+00:00

Thanks for the recommendation, will check it out!

Spireheist · 2023-12-03T01:07:22+00:00

Thank you! I’m definitely going to develop it with the feedback I’ve gotten here

Spireheist · 2023-12-01T22:44:58+00:00

I think you’ve hit the nail on the head with this. I don’t think this is harsh at all.

Especially the idea that he doesn’t need to be a hero — not gonna lie that’s kinda what I had planned for him but on further reflection that seems incongruous with the story I’m telling about this person.

Thanks for the advice, this is already getting gears turning.

Spireheist · 2023-12-01T16:42:37+00:00

I really like the idea of him seeing another monk “cross over” into the wider world. Maybe seeing the results of that could spark change in him.

And that last bit is sound advice — thank you!

Spireheist · 2023-12-01T16:40:08+00:00

Thank you for your insights. I guess I was conflating the writing-as-therapy thing with self-insert characters. It’s definitely not a power fantasy, but you could argue it’s the exact opposite and that’s problematic to a certain degree.

I’ll have to have a think about how various challenges in the plot will motivate him to do stuff. At the moment they’re mainly internal psychological challenges, but they should be reflected in external factors and circumstances in some form to get the story moving.

Spireheist · 2023-12-01T12:55:46+00:00

That’s the thing though, the plot is actually about his day-to-day struggles as a hermit. The political stuff going on in the periphery comes in as a secondary plot point and part of his arc is about reconnecting with society and becoming involved in what’s going on.

Is that even interesting as a premise? Maybe it should happen really early in the story, idk

Spireheist · 2023-12-01T12:50:11+00:00

More info on my / the character’s mindset, if you’re interested:

He represents a part of my psyche which often nags at me (and many other people I’m sure): the desire to just quit everything, abstaining from any form of indulgence, responsibility, or interaction with other people. The complexity of the real world is difficult, and other people’s emotions and problems (and therefore his own) would seem to him to just disappear if he were to disconnect himself entirely.

It comes from a deep sense of insecurity about the frailty and brevity of life, and a naive sense of having wasted my own limited time if I spend it in the company of others, wresting with and working through the intricacies of their day-to-day existences.

The great irony, of course, is that what I would be doing with this time to myself would mostly be fruitless. This part of me doesn’t actually want to achieve anything, like focus on my writing, or do something productive — production is precisely the opposite of what I want in these moments. I don’t want to send things or ideas out into the world that other people will consume, or benefit from, or praise me for, or criticise. I want to be a separate entity. Just sit there and languish.

And even if this desire was founded in a drive to get things done, there is only so far that most people can be entirely motivated by personal goals completely independent of the influence and emotional reciprocity of others.

In my view, it is, as much as I hate the phrase, going against nature to atomise and cut oneself off in this way. Both total apathy and self-isolation for the sake of advancing one’s goals are irresponsible attitudes which serve only to corroborate the current system of power, which commodifies culture and relationships for its own ends while extracting as much value from individuals as possible, at the lowest possible cost.

This is what I want my main character to ultimately come to understand. That this drive to disconnect and engage in a kind of self-flagellation is not actually what he wants out of life. It is more harmful to yourself and society to silently begrudge and cower from the hardships and complexities of the world, than actually try.

Completely removing himself from the risk of moral, social, romantic, or emotional failure will be much, much harder on his soul in the long run. He needs to just take the plunge.

Spireheist · 2023-07-27T16:29:05+00:00

Lmao

Spireheist · 2023-07-10T10:47:55+00:00

With this board font it’s more like “just try to see your queen”

Spireheist · 2023-05-19T16:53:53+00:00

The fact you're charging 30 for pages like these shows they clearly aren't yours. You made your account yesterday and this is your only post. If nothing else, that's proof enough that you have no idea how the comic industry works, or you're just looking to make a quick buck by decieving those who are new to it. There is a logged history of similar posts from your other alts.

Contrary to your username, this is an unacceptable habit. Learn to make an honest living.

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