Writings of Attack on Titan

Daniel | 28 | He/Him - Askbox is open - Contains Spicy Content™️ Follow me on Twitch!

[attackontitanwritings]

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[multiversepostalservice]

✉️ Letters from across the multiverse! 📬

Imagine for a moment that you are going about your day while traversing everyday stressors—maybe you’re focusing on difficult classes or are dealing with a lot of responsibilities at work, or perhaps its simply a bunch of small things that altogether can be exhausting.

Now imagine that you get an alert that you have a letter waiting for you—a letter that is customized and designed specifically from a beloved comfort character! Perhaps it’s encouragement to get through your studies, or a casual conversation to take your mind off of work; who wouldn’t want to have something like that to brighten their day?

To many people, a comfort character is a fictional character that someone uses to cope with difficult life experiences. They may be used as an escape from reality, or to help work through periods of stress and uncertainty. Sometimes a comfort character is simply a person’s favorite in a work of fiction, or it is a character that they feel a personal and genuine connection to.

My name is Daniel, and I have been writing for well over a decade across original and fandom-based content—and most of that has been for a style of writing most commonly called reader-insert, which allows the reader to immerse themselves in the world of the writing itself. I have always enjoyed exploring a variety of characters and how they resonate with people across the world, and have myself found comfort in the safety of fiction during stressful periods of my life.

With the Multiverse Postal Service, I’m offering my skills and experience to craft you, your self-insert, an OC or a loved one (because who doesn’t love a gift?) a customized letter from your favorite characters!

For more information, or if you are curious to see some of the traditional content I have written, check out the links below!

Etsy Shop | FAQ | Available Universes

AO3 | Main Blog

[darthsuki]

Not dependent on the responses, but I’m curious to get some general feedback!

I am interested in opening a small shop (via Etsy or another service, still deciding upon that) that will offer letters and a pen pal service for fictional characters across all fandoms I am familiar and experienced with.

These letters could be in a digital or physical form, customized and decorated, and may even come with small handmade trinkets for the fandom or character. A pen pal service would be offered in tandem for those who would like to reply to the letters, which then would of course feel further personalized because of that back-and-forth communication.

It’s a venture I’ve wanted to try for several years, especially since I’ve myself used similar services a time or two previously, and it was a lovely experience to receive a letter from a character I liked! I feel it’s a nice way to try and spread some kindness in the world in a way that utilizes the skills I’ve inadvertently grown in the last decade.

Would you be interested if I opened a shop that offered products and services like that?

I am very interested and might likely use the service!

I’m interested, but am not sure I would personally use the service.

I am not very interested in the service nor would likely use it.

Voting ended onMar 11, 2023

[attackontitanwritings]

Hi, are you still taking requests?

Sorta! I’ve been in something of a writing funk, but I’m always happy to take ideas and requests even if I can’t get to them right away, not to mention I’ve been itching for an excuse to get back into AoT (or at least my heavy AU variants of it) for a hot second 👌

[attackontitanwritings]

Hi Daniel! Wanted to know if you are still active and if so - to thank you for your works, they are truly amazing!! 😭 I've always loved Eren titan form but it's so hard to find fics with him, that's why when I've found your masterpiece I was in seventh heaven! You're such a great writer and your works are magnificent 🤍🤍🤍 I'm so happy such works exist and I'm really lucky I could find yours!

And thank you for your kind words! As a writer it's always nice to know that someone is enjoying my works regardless of the fandom, especially since so much of my content is geared towards an audience and often for very niche things.

While I am not currently active in my writing for Attack on Titan, I am active however for another fandom (Final Fantasy 14 to be specific, at @finalfantasyxivwritings) but otherwise I can always be found being a gremlin on my personal blog at @darthsuki 👍

[attackontitanwritings]

Did you deleted the discord server?

I did (you're not crazy), though it was only after making sure that there wasn't any content or important information that wasn't hosted elsewhere!

The decision is mostly due to the fact that nobody had joined or posted in any of the channels for the last several months, and I'm of the mind that it wasn't worth keeping open if there wasn't going to be any activity since it had less than ten or so people.

[attackontitanwritings]

What happened to the story?

Hiatus I suppose? Mostly from burnout that stemmed from AoT and some previous fandoms mostly--one can only push out massive quantities of content in a short period of time for so long! But it's certainly the fault of nobody but myself and I'm doing my best to help the creative crops grow back, so to speak c:

… It certainly didn't help that the series had such an anticlimactic ending as well--I had been running on motivation from excitement in the then-ongoing series itself, so when it ended like it did... well, at that point I was already tucked well beneath my exhausted burnout rock.

[attackontitanwritings]

How'd you find the last chapter of AOT? 😳

To put it simply, my reaction to the final chapter was really ‘meh’. While I don’t really hate the ending and how it tried to tie up everything, I don’t particularly like how it was paced and how most of the characters were written.

[The rest of my thoughts under the cut due to spoilers]

Don’t get me wrong, this series has been going on far longer than Hajime Isayama would have liked; I get the idea that he largely wanted to get it finished one way or another, especially since creators like him tend to experience a ton of burnout from creating a series even half as popular and half as long as something like Attack on Titan. But that said, the ending is extremely underwhelming and tries to tie up too many loose ends at the same time.

Considering the themes and symbolism that the series had been setting up for the ENTIRETY of it’s run (war is bad, the cycle of violence will continue unless stopped, etc) it feels like the last chapter just sorta.... forgot about it. We’re left on a really underwhelming note in terms of in-universe politics, where Eldia is once again an overwhelming militarized force, and Eren’s whole ‘kill everyone’ rampage seems more-or-less successful in terms of influence to the Yeagerists that wind up controlling the country.

Like, what was the point of it all? I didn’t expect it to be all happy and rainbows, but it doesn’t feel like anything’s really changed.

Each of the characters had their own close as well, and some were certainly done better than others. I like where Armin is, I think it fits for what kind of character he’s been developed into. But characters like Historia? Reiner? I just... their endings didn’t sit right with me at all, and left me just scratching my head while I tried to figure out how the hell these characters felt ‘OOC’ despite the fact this is canon material from the author. 

I particularly am disappointed how Historia is just... off to the side. She was such a fantastic female character and I love how much she grows in the early to mid chapters, and I was certainly invested when the topic of her pregnancy came about - it was presented as something IMPORTANT, a detail we shouldn’t forget as readers! And then it was just... there. There she is, there’s her baby, and the father is really just some Random Dude that we don’t care about at all.

Also, remember how everyone got to see a vision of someone they lost? How Jean and Connie saw Sasha? So uh, where was Marco? You know, a character that had a lot of meaning into Jean’s shift of perspective and viewpoint, and was one of the fundamental forces that drove him to be a Scout in the first place? Yeah, uh, where was he in those touching final moments?

It seems the series itself even forgot about Marco

I honestly don’t have a lot of thoughts for the whole Eren and Mikasa thing. I personally never shipped them simply because I never saw their relationship as anything beyond a deep platonic friendship - something akin to siblings. Don’t misunderstand, I totally support my fellow fans who DO ship them! As a writer, I simply thought their dynamic feels so strange by the last chapter, especially since Eren’s HORRIFYING WAR CRIMES is still seen as something heroic in the overall themes of the story. Like it’s great that your intentions were good, and it was all just an act of self-sacrifice for the good of your loved ones Eren... but you also murdered countless innocent people, abused and neglected your friends, and turned Eldia into a militarized and hyper-patriotic state of chaos.

WITH ALL OF THAT SAID, PEOPLE ARE ALLOWED TO LIKE THIS ENDING. This is what Isayama wanted for his story, and I respect that from one creator to another, especially since this man is likely Exhausted and deserves one hell of a vacation. 

But I’m still allowed to be confused as hell by some of these creative choices because most of them don’t make any sense or pointedly detract from all of the meaningful themes that Attack on Titan spent chapters and seasons putting together.

[attackontitanwritings]

"s16" of woodkid gives me huge "home in your hands" vibe. great series by the way!

Thank you! I’m giving that album a listen and you’re totally right - it has major Home in Your Hands vibes, especially ‘Horizons Into Battlegrounds’ because the line ‘You are a promise of brightness / The triumph of life over self-hate’ outright grabbed me by the throat and I LOVE it.

The dark and gentle mix of the tones across the album as a whole really add to the overall vibes, and it will certainly find a home in my writing playlist :3c

For anyone wanting to listen to it yourself, you can find the full album on youtube here!

[attackontitanwritings]

What would Titan Eren's reaction be if Reader gets periods? I can only imagine him panicking at the smell of blood.

Read more about this AU

-

Eren is clueless enough when it comes to his own humanoid body functions, so you can bet he’s going to understand next to nothing about your own if you’re a person who just so happens to have a uterus that decides to bleed painfully about once a month. It’s not even something he considered to be possible, let alone commonplace.

The first couple months together are a bit blurry, and honestly the stress from surviving the last year in Quinta might itself be enough for your body to put that whole menstruation thing on pause for a bit. Long enough at least for you and Eren to get somewhat comfortable together as a duo, and maybe even long enough that it doesn’t pop up again until the two of you are settled in the Giant Forest.

Mother nature eventually finds a way to pop up again when you least expect it, and it’s hard to keep in check; everything from the cramping and mood swings to the bleeding are all difficult enough to deal with even when you aren’t trying to survive in the middle of the wildlands outside Wall Rose. What’s even worse, Eren’s incredible sense of smell - as well as his general familiarity with your body language - will be some of the first things that tip him off that something isn’t normal.

Because to him, this isn’t normal. 

So Eren starts to wonder why he smells the scent of iron around you on some days even though you have no open wounds, or why you seem to sleep so much around the same time. Are you ill? Hurt? After a few months he starts to get a sense of your cycle even though he doesn’t yet know what kind of cycle it is. Eren is only concerned with keeping enough rations stockpiled and you warm, though he does find it curious how you ask constantly to be taken to one of the nearby rivers to wash clothes and bathe - more often than you normally would at least.

The totally of the situation doesn’t become obvious until one such time, when Eren is acting as a lookout while you take care of your washing of clothes and body within the gentle roll of the river’s current. Though he doesn’t normally tend to look at you while you bathe - be it out of a sense of respect or otherwise - all it takes is one flick of Eren’s massive gaze for him to learn the source to that lingering, sharp smell of blood. Though it’s incredibly faint, the color of red flows from your thighs and even off some of the clothes hung to soak within the river’s gentle current. 

It isn’t until Eren is suddenly scooping you up into his hands and looking you over for a hidden wound that you realize how little he actually knew about you or your body and how it worked. It wouldn’t be that much of a surprise in hindsight, but there’s not much you can do to suppress the sudden shock as Eren worriedly looks you over, nudging each one of your limbs with even more gentleness than normal.

So, after assuring him that you’re not injured, you have to explain to him what periods are and why he’s been smelling blood on you for some days every month. You’re not even sure if Eren entirely understands you even after the fact, but it does seem to comfort him - and worry him all the same. Starting a mere day after this interaction, Eren begins to bring back ever growing piles of cloth and clothes alike. It takes a little longer before you realize they’re to help replace some of those that had been ruined a bit by bloodstains, or for you to salvage into pads to wear to help make each monthly cycle a little easier to deal with.

But the nicest thing that you come to learn with Eren is that, even with the most painful cramps and the most mind-wrenching of aches, there’s nothing as innately comforting as the warmth of his body or the gentle vibration of his breathing. It’s not perfect, but it’s enough to know that he is trying his best despite his ignorance in things.

[attackontitanwritings]

@qualitydreamercrusade reblogged your post and added:

Okay, this kind of makes me wonder now. Is half of your soul left in that world when you wake up? Do they remember you or has their memory of you been erased? Like what the heck would happen if you did something in that world to change it?

Would it change the story or would the story stay the same as it’s been planned out? Like, how would this work I wonder. It’s so interesting to think about. Like if you’re watching it would you see yourself in the background interacting with the characters or just catching glimpses of the characters but not being able to do anything? GOD this is so interesting.

Hell what if you have a f/o from that show? Does the half of your soul now stuck in that world end up living through the aftermath of the show? Like after they grow up and shit? Does your soul finally get to materialize and be happy while also making your F/O happy?

-

I actually just made a post talking about some of the bigger parts of this AU, but I’m gonna try to answer with all the details that it doesn’t otherwise cover 👌

Is half of your soul left in that world when you wake up?

In the most honest and technical sense, any shifter's soul is already fractured from the moment they are created, with the other part of their soul innately woven into another reality. This is referred to as the shifter's bond, and functions very much like a soulmate but on a much larger scale.

In essence, it's this bond that allows the shifter to shift in the first place - because a part of themself has been within the other universe all along, and they're merely becoming aware of it.

Do [the characters] remember you or has their memory of you been erased?

From the first time that the shifter awakens their power and responds to their universal bond, their influence on the other reality is permanent and ongoing. People in that reality will remember your face and name, the things you did and said - so a shifter has to be careful about how their first interactions within their bonded universe will affect things down the road.

Would [your actions] change the story or would the story stay the same as it’s been planned out?

The actions of a shifter will never influence the media that already exists within our world. The true reason is unknown, but it is theorized that the versions of universes we get to see filtered through storytellers are simply how that universe would play out without any outside influence.

In other words, the canon series of events for Attack on Titan is what will happen if a shifter never enters that universe or changes anything at all. It is simply one possibility of endless multitudes, but is nevertheless an important facet to take into consideration if you are a shifter bonded with the Attack on Titan universe.

You have the power to change everything if you play your cards right, but you can't undo or erase anything if you make a mistake. The AoT universe in this fic and AU is just as real as our own, and all the relationships, triumphs and mistakes are meaningful no matter what.

Does the half of your soul now stuck in that world end up living through the aftermath of the show?

Luckily, a shifter is never truly stuck in one reality and therefore doesn't have to worry about any negative effects from even the worst outcome of darker universes. They might even lose their bond if they choose to ignore and distance themselves from it for long enough.

But this is assuming the shifter doesn't do anything to change the events of the show or story. If they so desire, a single shifter can make the difference for a universe to have a happier ending than it would have experienced otherwise. So go forth and create the version of the universe you want to see!

[darthsuki]

Somniverse (Reality Shifting AU)

- Introduction -

Somniverse (via Somnium, the latin word for ‘dream’) is a pan-fandom AU designed to merge the concepts of dream shifting and the isekai genre of fiction. 

In short, it proposes the idea that some humans have the primordial ability through their dreams to shift their souls into other universes and realities - and the phenomena is thus called ‘shifting’. By using this power (knowingly or not) a person can find themselves dropped into the universe of any fandom and are further able to interact and change the course of events of said fandom depending on how one chooses to utilize the AU. 

Someone who is able to harness this power is called a Dream Shifter, or simply Shifter, though plenty of other regional words exist for this phenomena - the concept of metaphysical experiences being found within dreams is a very ancient concept across a multitude of cultures.

Within the Somniverse AU, parallel universes exist infinitely and are often (but not always) interpreted as fictional stories by some who merely have the power to observe them from our own universe. These people were once referred to as Oracles or, more generally speaking, storytellers. Those who could transfer their soul and consciousness entirely into another reality to directly interact with them were instead called Emissaries. Many of them were highly regarded as spiritual leaders, but were eventually lost to the endless sea of time as humanity continued to grow and advance into the modern age.

- Basic Concepts of the AU -

✦ Anyone can become a shifter, but harnessing the full potential of the power takes awareness, training and experience. Few people can access the ability  without realizing it.

✦ Shifting takes place primarily through dreams. While it is possible in theory for someone to shift while not actively sleeping or dreaming, it has never been documented.

✦ It is nearly impossible to detect when someone has shifted - this is due to the fact that each reality runs by its own laws of time and space. In other words, when someone shifts to another reality, time and space seem to freeze by comparison in one they came from - someone can sleep for a few hours in one universe, but spend several days within another, and vice versa. 

✦ Though in theory there should be many other worlds able to shift in and out of our reality at will, our universe is the only one with people capable of utilizing the power of shifting - nobody knows why.

✦ It is possible for a shifter to pull other people and objects back into our world as long as they had the focus, intention, and willpower to do so. Unfortunately, it is also the responsibility of the shifter to put them back.

✦ Each person capable of shifting is born with a single, unique attachment to another universe - almost akin to having a soulmate. Some may theorize that this bond is what allows a person to shift to begin with.

✦ Regulation of shifter powers and activity can vary from creator to creator, be it a big government-controlled secret or a power held solely by one special person at a time.

-

TLDR; This is a sub-genre of isekai fiction where people can shift their soul and consciousness into a unique, bonded universe when they’re asleep or dreaming. They can return to their home universe in the same fashion and bring people with them, but are otherwise afforded no special powers or influence while within their bonded universe.

[attackontitanwritings]

In case anyone is curious, here’s some more information about the AU for the In Somnis Veritas series!

[attackontitanwritings]

I wonder how you'll continue with that story. Will the reader character find a notebook with a script? Or are they just an (un?)fortunate mortal in the aot universe?

Right now I’m running with with the concept of shifting as an inspiration, where the reader is someone with the special and ancient ability to traverse into other realities but does not have control over them outside of their own words and actions! In this way these other realities are more than just dream states, but are concrete alternate universes that exist beside our own and can have just as much of an effect on the reader/shifters as the reality they’re from.

I think it’s best described as a combination of shifting and the isekai/reverse-isekai genre, but with extra worldbuilding and universal laws tying it all together to give it more depth and utility! UvU 

[attackontitanwritings]

Ok but imagine scripting immortality for when you shift and you expose your secret to the characters in the dumbest way✋😭 that's definitely me

See I’m the person who, in that circumstance, would be the one to start tossing myself at all the situations that would have otherwise killed or nearly-killed another character of the show. If I’m gonna be immortal in some form, then you can bet your ass I’m going to maximize its utility to the fullest. 

Some of the Scouts eventually start putting the puzzle pieces together like ‘man, isn’t it weird how they keep coming back from the brink? nobody should be able to survive that kinda stuff’ and then it’s either I let them assume I’m a titan-shifter in hiding or just really dumb and extremely lucky.

Some are convinced more than others, admittedly, but we all know how dangerous it would be to let Hanji be aware of having powers like that @w@;

[attackontitanwritings]

In Somnis Veritas

Summary: One might say that our world is just one of many siblings, our universe just one reflection within the crystal that comprises of everything that exists. Some people call these other realities parallel universes, but there are some people who call them by another name: dreams.

While there may be an uncountable number of these multiple realities that exist within the limitless confines of Everything, there are only a few people who are able to interact with each individual one. In a way, one might label these individuals and realities as soulmates in themselves, connected in a way that can't be fully understood but nevertheless real in the bond they share.

You are one such person, soul forever intertwined with a reality that everyone else in the world knows simply as 'Attack on Titan'.

Read this on AO3 | Read about this AU

-

You wish that it wasn’t obvious where they were keeping you. You wish that you didn’t recognize the walls, the cell, the atmosphere of it all around you. The stone wall felt cold against your back and the air tasted stale and unfiltered, but neither of those things were nearly as disconcerting as the fact that you shouldn’t be here.

It’s impossible. 

But no matter how much you shut your eyes and tried to put some sort of logic into your brain, every silently deafening command echoed uselessly across your thoughts. The stone still felt cold, the air still tasted stale, and you remained yet sitting in the middle of the empty cell with nothing but the dull flicker of wall-mounted lanterns and the endless abyss of your own confusion. A mattress creaked quietly beneath the weight of your body, barely thick enough to be comfortable. Other than the bed upon which you sat, where was nothing else in the cell with you.

“Are you awake yet?” came a voice, all too familiar but not your own

Your eyes open again to find that you’re not actually by yourself. There’s a man on the other side of the cell bars, staring at you with an expression of cold indifference. The sight of him should have intimidated or frightened you from within your confines, but there’s a stark detail of the man himself that seems to negate it all into nothingness. A detail that leaves you almost shaking, convinced that everything around you is little more than a lucid dream weaved together by an overactive imagination.

“...Levi?”

His expression shifts so subtly that you barely miss it in the flickering darkness; the stern line of his lips, the sharpness of his gaze, or even the careful way he starts to bounce his fingertips over his crossed arms. 

“Why do you say my name like that?” his fingers start to tap even harder. “As if you know me? Or the commander? Or even that little Yeager brat?”

His voice sounds like an accusation, and he isn’t entirely wrong in wondering how you had half of the information that you do. Dimly, you recall what had happened when you awoke into this world, feeling lost and confused and being surrounded by faces that are as familiar as they are alien. 

-

The feeling of cold raindrops barely seem to break past the steadfast focus your mind has on the people surrounding you. 

You turn your eyes one way and the next to try and take it all in, mind trying desperately to make sense of what is going on - you had been embraced by the dark warmth of sleep one moment, and shocked awake by the sheer cold of a sudden storm the next. Where you’d been laying down, you’re now kneeling with bent legs sinking into the soft mud beneath you.

Panic turned into confusion when your ears started to recognize several of the voices murmured across the crowd of people surrounding you. Voices you’ve heard before, but not outside the confines of a screen. Bright green cloaks with feature-obscuring hoods only serve to confuse you more, because you recognize them. 

Rain yet falls, and the voices fall quiet enough to disappear within the white noise. One voice however stands above the rest, and eventually raises to be loud enough that your brain instantly registers it as being directed towards you.

“What are you doing this far from the wall?”

One figure steps out from the sea of emerald cloaks, close enough that when he kneels in front of you his face is visible even beneath the dark shadow of his hood. It takes a few moments for you to capture the detail through the haze of the rain and the darkness of the clouds above, but nothing could hide the way he looks at you with sharp, icy-blue eyes.

And while you are absolutely certain that you’ve never met this man once in your entire life, there’s a deep sense of familiarity that splinters deep into your very sore.

“Erwin Smith?”

His eyes narrow for a moment, but only a moment.

“Yes?” he sounds more as if he’s responding to a call for his attention than confirming the name, but there’s an underlying curiosity all the same.

You blink. For all the confusion lacing through your brain at the impossibility of him kneeling before you, very real and very physically there, there is an entire sea of questions that start to pour into your thoughts and press eagerly against the back of your tongue. 

Most of all: ‘how are you real?’

But that isn’t what falls from your lips. Despite the fact that you’re shaking from the cold downpour of rain, despite the fact that you feel an exhaustion in your bones and a dull sense of ache across your body, you can’t quite get through the concept that what you’re seeing is real . That anything around you right now, Erwin included, is actually real .

So you do the first thing that comes to mind and reach a hand out towards him. Even with half-numb fingertips, you reach until your hand makes contact with the center of Erwin’s chest and you feel a defined firmness against your palm. No matter how hard you push forward, nothing but the distinct resistance of a physical body is all you feel. 

Erwin, meanwhile, stares at you the entire time you do this. He watches, albeit with a subtle flicker of confusion barely recognizable across his otherwise indifferent expression. Other than that he simply keeps his balance, almost leaning against the push of your hand to keep himself stable. He says absolutely nothing, but watches you through the entire motion down to the way your eyes widen with a sense of dismay colder than the very rain falling over your head and shoulders.

You slowly blink, and look up to meet his eyes; they’re still sharp and honed onto your face. But when your hand begins to shift, to move off to one side of his body - your left and his right - that’s when the confusion starts to simmer more obviously over the man’s expression.

Numb fingertips grip at the shape of an arm beneath the thick cloak and cloth of his uniform. An arm that, last you were aware, would not have even been there. Technically if you were ascribing any actual logic into the moment then Erwin himself shouldn’t even be alive , but for some reason the fact alone that he still had his right arm is more of a mental sweep than anything else. Something about the detail, the realness, the distinct sensation of thunder in your ears and ice numbing against your skin - it alone pushes out the words from your lips,

“Has Wall Maria fallen?”

A moment of silence falls between you both. Though you’re certain that the words would be confusing to most people and downright boggling to others, Erwin still eventually offers you a wordless nod.

So you think it safe to ask the next question, temptation unignorable and distinct in your mind while the words pass unfiltered over your tongue.

“...and what of the Trost District? Has Eren saved it yet?”

Those are the words that finally make Erwin’s expression go colder than ice.

-

Though it had likely just been a few days since, it feels like an eternity; the endless stretch of time within a dream that never seems to find its end. In that same time you’re offered next to nothing in terms of explanation, but mountains of things that only serve to confuse you further. More faces, more names, more details that all culminate into the raw fact that this world around you is as real as can be. 

Levi scoffs after a few moments.

“Not the talkative type, I see,” he murmurs, the cell bars creaking when he finally leans a shoulder against them. “Unless you want us to assume the worst, mind telling me how exactly you knew the Trost District was going to be attacked?”

You blink at him, mouth slightly agape more in the fact that this is happening than anything else.

Levi’s eyes narrow and he straightens himself, his shadow falling over you.

“How did you know anything about Eren Yeager or his part in it?”

Finally, realization breaks through the confused haze in your mind.

“I don’t... I...”

“We just finished cleaning up the mess in Trost a few hours ago, and Commander Erwin’s team found you last night.”

Suddenly, the situation feels heavy, the weight falling more and more over your shoulders as it all begins to dawn on you, and the question of ‘is this real’ falls away into the abyss in the back of your mind. It barely matters anymore to question whether anything around you is real or not - because it doesn’t change the fact that it’s real enough to keep you confined and confused, pressed beneath the weight of questions and accusations that nevertheless leave adrenaline and fear coursing like ice in your veins.

“I’m not-” your voice feels hoarse and dry. “-I’m not allied with the Colossal or Armored titan. I promise.”

“You’re not exactly in a position where your word holds any weight,” Levi comments idly, but seems satisfied enough in getting a reply from you at all.

“Honest,” you assure, lifting your hands for a moment but quickly realizing that they are cuffed together and further chained to the wall behind and above you. The chain itself is just long enough so you can lay down with some level of comfort, though your arms still have to hang up above your head. You tug at them a time or two, the metal just a bit too snug around your wrists but not entirely uncomfortable. “Wh-...why am I-?”

“Because you’re an anomaly,” Levi says simply. “Your clothes are made of strange materials and all the items we confiscated from you are unlike anything we can identify.”

For a moment you’re not entirely sure what in the world he’s talking about. But when Levi reaches into a pocket and pulls out a dark rectangular object, your eyes almost light up with recognition.

“That’s my phone! Give it back!”

Levi simply glances towards the object. He hums and muses, “So this is called a ‘phone’?”

“Yes,” you pull at the chains again, a few seconds passing before a sense of understanding begins to fill your mind. “It’s… an object used to call other people.”

Levi’s steel-gray eyes narrow.

“Call as in…shouting?”

“Uh, n-no,” a sense of nervousness starts to trickle through you. “Like… talk to people, even if they’re far away. If they also have a phone then you can talk to them using it.”

He hums again, then turns your phone around in his hand to glance at the glass screen. It’s obvious that he’s looked at it at least once but not more than that, as he seems to know where the power button is to make the screen flick to life. He flashes it in your direction so you can see the likely incorrect time across the top and the bright background image that takes up the entirety of the lock screen.

“What really is this?”

You tilt your head and stare at him for a moment.

“...my phone?”

“Why would a device that lets you talk to people have… small paintings on them?”

“Pictures,” you correct, reply so quick that it’s honestly just habit breaking through the now-dulled sensation of fear. “And it’s because it… well, it lets you do more than call people. It does a lot of things, really. Like take pictures, record videos, browse google... I’m honestly surprised that it hasn’t died yet since I haven’t had the chance to charge it.”

Levi’s face breaks from it’s cold apathy the more that you speak, to the point that one might have wondered if you were speaking an entirely different language to him. It even takes you a few moments to realize that he’s just staring at you by this point, equally confused as you are by now.

But at least the feeling is mutual.

“...where are you from?”

A dull sense of panic begins to envelope you at the question. Not because you’re afraid that Levi or anyone else is going to hurt you or even believe in the answer, but because it’s not quite clear what the answer even is to begin with. 

“Outside the walls,” you say quietly after a few moments. “Beyond that I’m not… sure. The place I come from is an… entirely different world. And I m-mean that literally.”

Levi stares at you, but his expression remains unchanged. You like to think there’s even the slightest hint of sympathy but it’s nevertheless impossible to see much in the flickering darkness.

“Are there titans,” the man says slowly, “-in the world you come from?”

You weigh the options, but eventually shake your head. 

As ridiculous as the situation may be, honesty couldn’t hurt in the slightest. There’s still a vague thought in your head assuming this entire ordeal is nothing more than a long and vivid dream, but something inside you feels as if it’s something more. Something you need to be careful with - and so you can’t stop the gentle honesty as an answer flows from your lips.

“N-no! There aren’t any titans at all. In my world - which we call Earth - there are a lot of people who live all over and-”

So you talk.

And talk.

And talk .

About everything that you can think of to convince the man that you are neither a threat nor someone within the walls who has simply gone crazy - though the crazy part by itself might be up for debate. Details about the earth that you know, from information about the continents and countries, the current socio-political issues and even down to details about your own home and childhood. Levi didn’t interrupt you once, but you knew he understood only a small portion of the terms that you were using. Cars and computers, internet and iphones - even injecting a layman’s explanation for these items didn’t seem to be enough, and you know that there’s plenty of aspects that you’ve missed.

Your mouth feels almost dry by the time you’re done speaking, and your heartbeat is so quick and heavy that the sound echoes in your ears. 

But would he believe you, if even for a moment? 

Levi says nothing at first. He merely glances again at your phone and the screen as it flickers to life in his hand. If he has your phone, then you know the scouts likely have your wallet, car keys, and several other trinkets in their possession - items that they’d be just as interested to learn about if given the chance. But wouldn’t that only add credence to your claims?

But more importantly, why do you care if they believed you? And why should you care? 

After all, this is likely nothing more than a feverish dream, one so vivid that it’s impossible to discern the difference between reality and the weaving of fantasy within the abyss of your sleeping mind. The only annoying part of it all is not being able to  control  the dream itself, or simply pull enough awareness into yourself to wake up. No matter how hard you think, how hard you tug or how desperately you yearn to come to consciousness nothing at all comes of it. It’s as if the air around you carries the shackling weight of a nightmare without the sense of fear and terror that so often accompanies it.

“Hey.”

Levi’s voice draws you from the snowball of thoughts within your head. His tone is firm, but soft - and you can see it echoed across his features. Perhaps your words had fallen honestly upon him. Though you’re still caught in the question of if his sympathy even matters, it still settles the quick beating of your heart somewhat.

“I’m going to report what you told me on up,” he says softly. You’re not sure if it’s meant to be a comfort or not. “As long as we don’t consider you a threat, then you’ll be allowed a bit more freedom for us to… figure this out.”

You look at him and nod after a moment. Levi hums as if satisfied with your understanding, but suddenly turns on his heel to start walking away from the cell. Shock flicks through your brain. Your body moves without command, legs kicking out to try and drag you off the mattress and hurry over to him before he has a chance to slip away with your phone-

But you forget about the chains binding your wrists. It takes only a step or so before the metal links go tense and stop you from moving any further, but it takes a hair too long for your brain to register them accurately against the motion of your body - it throws your balance off just enough for not only one of your ankles to roll out beneath you, but for a sharp edge of the bedframe to catch against the side of your leg and rip straight through your pants.

By the time that your brain catches up to the moment, your body is half-slumped off the bed, hanging only by the strength of the chain itself. Metal edges of the shackles bite into the skin around your wrists, though you are able to ignore most of the pain if only by the genuine surprise yet pumping adrenaline into your veins.

By the time that the rest of you catches up Levi is already turned back towards the cells, watching you with some semblance of worry across his face.

“It’s not that easy to forget when your hands are bound,” he says simply, though the quirk of his brow betrays the rest of his cold expression. “...are you alright?”

“Yeah,” you say warily, slowly pulling yourself back up onto the bed and only belatedly realizing of the dull ache beginning to echo up your leg and down your arms. “S-sorry, I just. Wanted my phone back.”

“Enough to hurt yourself?”

To that you simply glare at him, shoulders absolutely aching but stubbornly not allowing yourself to show it. “It’s not like I did it on purpose.”

Though you almost expect the man to offer some curt response, all Levi does is sigh and close his eyes.

“I’ll send someone down here to make sure you’re alright. Don’t do anything dumb - the last thing I need is two impulsive brats to deal with.”

Eren. Though Levi doesn’t so much as mention a name - he’s not even speaking directly at you by that point - you know he’s talking about Eren. Nothing more than a dull annoyance settles across your face, giving away little towards the fact that you understand far more about what Levi is currently dealing with than he himself knows by now. If Trost had only just been attacked, then that means Eren is being kept somewhere while the Scouts scramble to make sense of the incident and the reveal of his titan-shifting ability.

So does that mean he’s nearby? It’s possible, but it’s unlikely that they’d put the two of you near one another after a disaster like that. Even if you weren’t thought to be allied with Reiner, Bertolt and Annie - and THAT is another secret entirely - then it’s possible they assumed you and Eren were accomplices in some way and keep the two of you entirely separated.

By the time you think to glance back up towards the cell bars, Levi has already left. A busy man, you suppose; the Scouts have a lot on their plate to deal with right now, but you’re left a little awed by the utter vividness of the entire situation. Even for a dream, the level of logic flowing through your mind and the world around you is almost frightening. 

Dreams aren’t supposed to make sense.

The feeling of dull exhaustion starts to diffuse across your body and muscles. It feels as though every ounce of energy has been all but drained from you, only the last few drops mingling in the tips of your fingers and in the back of your mind. 

You’re so… tired.

That doesn’t make much sense, which in itself is hilariously ironic after all the time you’d spent wondering why the rest of this dreamscape seemed to gleam with clarity. Though you’d felt just fine but a few moments before, you can feel a gentle tug on your eyelids and belly; it doesn’t take more than a few moments to settle back on the bed, ignoring the ache of your arms and leg to just… lay there. And think.

As your eyes stare up towards the stonelaid ceiling, thoughts begin to wander and weave through themselves, tangling together until they are just a mess of visions and words behind your eyes. The weight on your eyelids continues to grow until they flutter for a moment, then two - eventually your vision falls dark as a slow sense of peace falls over you. 

You feel a gentle tug at the center of your belly. It’s as if the motion is coming from far away, beyond the edge of your mind and fingertips alike, but so close that you can practically touch it if you reached out to do so. Even with your hands bound and your body aching, you feel a sense of weightless shift to your mind as the weight and the tugging seem to feel even stronger; it’s more like a presence now, although yet faraway from you. Something familiar and warm, something that by instinct alone you recognize.

But you could touch it.

You can touch it.

So you reach out with a thin tendril of consciousness towards the unknown force within your mind - 

-

...

You wake up.

Your eyes blink open to a bright light somewhere above. There’s a dim awareness in the moment that the air feels warmer and fresher now, the walls around you less stone and more...familiar. The couch beneath you feels far more comfortable than the thin mattress you clearly recall laying on not even a moment before and - with a sudden turn of your head to the side - you realize that the television is turned on, volume low but the noise easily discernible despite it. 

The familiar visuals of Attack on Titan’s first season ending sequence greets your eyes, but you can’t understand why the recognition suddenly causes a sharp tug in the center of your belly.

A clock ticks dimly from across the room. Each tick cuts through the air like a knife, sharp and sudden.

The rest of your mind is quick to catch up with the rest of you. Awareness feels like a shocking bath of cold water tossed over your head and down the length of your spine, jolting and sudden enough to leave you almost gasping for air. A hand moves to one of your pockets, and there you feel the familiar shape of your phone sitting comfortably against your thigh. Then your wallet, car keys, and all the other trinkets you had expected to be there are exactly in the place you’d left them.

But even as the memory of you falling asleep on the couch not even a few hours before bubbles up, you can’t help but feel an overwhelming sense of unease just behind it. It’s as if there’s something else missing from the picture, a part of your dream left unfulfilled or misunderstood.

It makes no sense, but it’s as if there’s some piece of you that’s out of place. The world is tilted just slightly to the left and it leaves your entire mind unbalanced - but it doesn’t stop you from moving around on the couch until you’re sitting on it correctly, legs stretched out and shoulders rolling forward to try and soothe the sharp ache within them. It almost feels like they’ve been wrenched out of their socket, but there’s no possible way even the craziest sleeping position over your cheap couch could have done something like that. 

You’re dimly aware of a sharp pain down the side of your thigh, though when you move a hand to see if you’d cut yourself on something, you find your pants unmarred and leg otherwise fine. But the pain echoes for a few moments in the back of your mind until, slowly, it ebbs away - along with the pain in your shoulders.

The sound of the television continues to fill the air, the sound of next episode’s preview a too-familiar background noise to the otherwise silence of your apartment. With a quick glance towards the clock across the room, you decide that there’s enough time to kill to watch another episode before you’d need to get back to the weekend chores.

But you still can’t quite shake the feeling of subtle unease when you realize that the next episode is the one that takes place just after the battle of Trost.

What a strange dream.

[attackontitanwritings]

Me: You know, lucid dreaming, the concept of shifting and the isekai/reverse-isekai genre are all very cool things individually and I-

My Brain: -should throw them in a pot together and make an AU out of that.

Me:

My Brain: Listen, this is exactly what you always thought about in middle school. You now have the power to make it happen. Think of the potential.

Me: I dunno...

My Brain: You’ll be able to finally organize all those random ideas about putting your favorite characters in domestic situations that likely only you will understand and enjoy but will nonetheless have a coherent AU with it’s own set of universal laws attached to it so you’ll feel better about writing them.

Me: Hmmmm....

My Brain: *sighs* You can write about taking the entire 104th Cadet Corps to Walmart and giving them the domestic sense of happiness they deserve.

Me, already opening up a doc: One entirely self-indulgent story concept coming right up

[attackontitanwritings]

@qualitydreamercrusade​ from this post:

HOLY SHIT! How? How did you make me love Eren even more than I already do? HOLY SHIT! Eren. Eren baby… EREN! Ooooh I wanna just… take care of this poor man in your world holy SHIT. He needs a fucking nurse s/o I swear to god. EREN! EREN MY LOVE! Not gonna lie, I ain’t know titants couldn’t feel pain. Wow.

First of all yes, Eren in this universe DEFINITELY needs to have someone keep an eye on him for the first couple months post-Trost. I like to think it’s a group effort between the reader, Zeke and Carla for the most part. Eren is far from being a child or mentally infantile, but he’s very aware that there’s a lot of things he has next to no natural experience with despite being somewhere around 20 years old chronologically speaking. 

I try to communicate this balance in his non-verbal communication since, you know, speaking is one of those difficulties for him, and I hope it comes across well enough!

And as for the second thing (titans not feeling pain) it’s actually quite a subtle fact of canon! I don’t think it’s really touched on in the anime and maybe briefly in the manga, but Isayama confirmed in a 2018 interview that the titan shifters don’t register any sort of pain when their titan bodies are hurt - only when something harms the human body inside the nape!