This is a draft I’ve been holding onto, but it’s time to post it. These are some stories and facts from my AOT DR one of the first places I ever shifted to in no particular order :-)
Childhood in Shiganshina District
I live in this pretty estate in Shiganshina, but to my dad, it is a hovel in the mud, that’s what he’s always call it. Anyways he would commute to the Interior for work because he is a pharmaceutical magnate and a philanthropist who funds hospitals in the Interior. He would complain daily about the smell of the outer district, but my mother finds peace in the simplicity of the frontier.
I lived with my mother, father (who traveled for work often), and my uncle! My uncle spent his days teaching me to read music, playing the piano for my mother, and tending to the estate’s rose gardens. He is known in Shiganshina as the kind man who fixes the neighborhood kids’ toys. We had a cellar filled with my father’s medical supplies, and an attic where my mother kept her weaving loom and heirlooms. I remember my house vividly smelled like medicinal herbs and fresh-baked bread and while my dad was away in Wall Sina, my mom would turn the estate into a community hub and would sell hand-woven clothes and garden vegetables for cheap so she is viewed as the community mom.
Since there is no formal public school system in the Outer Districts, as a kid you could do whatever you want tbh. Something I forgot about is as kids you have so much energy and you’re so much lighter, hahaha. Every morning at 9:00 AM, the district bells would ring and that would be my sign to go find Mikasa, Armin, and Eren.
Armin is always there first, and would be holding a book. Mikasa usually arrived next, by dragging Eren by his scarf because he got into a fight on the way. Our sanctuary is the massive oak tree on the hill overlooking the district. Since I am the only one with private tutors, I become their teacher. I would bring my textbooks and teach Armin about geography and history (though he usually knows more than the books). I would teach Eren and Mikasa how to write in cursive, and trace letters in the dirt with sticks. Mikasa is very good at this and Eren sucked, so she would help him.
We play a bunch of games like the ocean game where we would lie on the grass and stare at the clouds. Armin would read descriptions of the “Ocean” from his grandfather’s illegal book and we would close our eyes and pretend the wind blowing through the grass is the sound of the waves. We would also play a game called “Titan Tag.” One person is the “Titan” (usually Eren, ironically), and the rest of us are Scouts.
Most people inside the Walls don’t know how to swim because the rivers are fast and dangerous, so on hot days, we would go to a secluded bend in the river. I would teach the trio how to tread water. Eren would splash around and sink like a rock. Mikasa is naturally good at it. Armin is afraid of the current, so I would hold his hands and pull him through the water until he laughs. It is one of the few times we are truly, purely happy.
We would stay out until the sky turns violet, which was the sunset rule. We would also always walk each other home. First Armin, then the Yeagers. Before we part ways at the street corner, we would do a special hand shake thing and say that no matter what happens tomorrow, the four of us will face it together. We’d always wish for something to happen (😭😭😭😭😭 not the manifestation lmfao), but obviously, nothing happening was the biggest luxury there was.
Going to Eren’s house felt like a warm hug and I remember it so vividly because it is small, but it always smelled like timber, yeast, and Carla’s vegetable stew. Carla is constantly yelling at Eren to wash his stinky feet, (💀)but she is the neighborhood mom.She treated me like her own daughter, and would brush my hair and compliment how soft it is compared to the rough soap used in the district. We would help Carla chop vegetables or carry firewood. Dr. Yeager sometimes lets us sit in his study. He shows us medical diagrams, and I would impress him by naming all the bones in the hand. Dinner there was always this simple, brown bread and soup, but it was good!
We rarely went to my home because if Thomas is home, we have to be invisible. We would sneak past his study on tiptoes, holding our breath. If he catches us, he looks at Eren and Armin with disdain, calling them street urchins (he’s racist, but as in classist, racism wasn’t really a thing in AoT because we didn’t know what races were, we only knew human and titan, so when I say racism I’m referring to class). Anyways, he would always order me to go to my room to study. When my dad was at work, my mom feeds them things they have never had, like white fluffy bread, sugar cubes, dried meat, and sweet tea. Eren eats like a starving wolf, Armin would savors every bite of the sugar and Mikasa tries to save half of hers to take home to her parents, but my mother always packs her a separate bag so she can eat her fill. looking back Mikasa was always doing things like this and it’s kinda annoying because there was always enough for everyone so idk why she does that..
Armin lives with his grandfather in a small, drafty cottage near the canal and it smelled like old parchment, dried herbs, and earth. Armin is physically smaller than the rest of us, so we go over twice a week to do the heavy lifting for his grandfather. While Eren struggled with one bundle, Mikasa and I turn it into a competition. I can carry three bundles of heavy oak logs without breaking a sweat duhh. Armin would watch in awe, and call me “Super [my name].” We would also help cultivate their small garden and I always get dirt on my clothes, but I found it very fun for some reason.
My mom, knows Armin’s family struggles to put food on the table. Every time I visit, she would pack a heavy basket covered in a checkered cloth, with cured meats, blocks of butter, jars of honey, and fresh cheese, luxuries commoners rarely see. When we leave, I would give the basket to Armin’s grandfather and he would always tries to refuse out of pride (literally every week bro just take it), but I always say, My mom made too much again, she’ll be offended if you don’t take it. and then he was always so grateful for it. Anyways, the real reason we go is for his cellar. When his grandfather is napping, Armin would pull a loose floorboard and reveals The Book he is always reading so we huddle under a blanket with a single candle and read his books. this was epssilly fun during rainy days.
Daily Life & Class Divides in the Walls
The food you eat depends entirely on which side of the wall you are standing on. In Shiganshina, meals are simple and focused on survival so the staples are root vegetables, potatoes, carrots, onions, and turnips, because they grow easily and store well through winter. Bread is baked daily but it’s coarse, dense, and made of rye or barley. Meat is a rare luxury, usually just small game like rabbit, or a bit of cured pork to flavor a massive pot of cabbage stew. Apples are the most common fruit, and almost the only one people in the outer districts see year-round. In the late summer, kids might forage for wild tart berries in the woods.
For regular kids like Eren and Armin, sweets basically don’t exist. Refined sugar is incredibly expensive. A “treat” for them would be a piece of bread drizzled with a tiny bit of local honey, or a hard boiled-sugar drop bought at a festival.
Inside my house, we have access to Wall Sina imports so we had the good stuff like fluffy white wheat bread, real butter, heavily spiced roasted meats, and imported teas. We also had access to exotic greenhouse fruits like oranges and grapes, and we had actual sweets like chocolates, spun sugar pastries, and bowls of sugar cubes (which Armin liked a lot).
There are no sit-down restaurants with menus and waiters in the outer district, but there are taverns and pubs which are loud, crowded, and smell like stale ale and woodsmoke. Garrison soldiers drink there, and workers stop by for whatever the “stew of the day” is. For quick food, people rely on street vendors in the market square selling steamed meat buns or roasted potatoes. Once a week, the four of us would walk through the Shiganshina marketplace. Since I have an allowance from my family, I would buy things for the group that they can’t afford. I would buy steamed meat buns for everyone. Eren always burns his tongue. If the local bullies (John, etc.) try to steal Armin’s food, I would just threaten to tell my dad and they’d stop.
When I would go to the Interior, dining out is actually a massive, formal affair. The capital has high-end dining halls with private rooms, and multi-course meals. People dress up, eat tiny portions of rich food, and talk about politics over expensive wine.
Plumbing and Living Conditions
There is no indoor plumbing. Bathrooms are outhouses located in the back garden or alleyway. At night, especially during the freezing winters, people use ceramic chamber pots kept under the bed, which are emptied in the morning. To take a bath, people had to pump water from the neighborhood well, carry it inside, and heat it over the hearth fire to fill a wooden tub. It takes hours, so baths are usually a once-a-week event, using harsh, unscented lye soap, unless you had access to the inner wall material, which we did.
We had these drills kinda like fire drills here. You always knew a drill was happening when the bells changed sounds. so Merchants had to leave their stalls, farmers dropped their tools, and everyone had to stop what they were doing etc. You weren’t allowed to pack bags or run home for valuables. The Garrison soldiers would come to the streets, and blow these annoying loud whistles and scream at everyone to move toward the massive inner gate that connected Shiganshina to the safety of Wall Maria proper.
The riverboats were immediately commandeered, but only priority citizens, which included the elderly, the injured, and, conveniently, wealthy nobles, were allowed on the boats to bypass the foot traffic.
The most terrifying part of the drill was the sound of the inner gate’s gears turning. The Garrison would slowly start lowering the massive gate to simulate how much time we had before a Titan breached the outer wall. If you didn’t make it past the gate before it touched the ground, you “failed” the drill.
One time when I got there, and I found Armin looking absolutely terrified and Mikasa gripping her empty hands, and Eren was gone. Armin was shaking and said that Eren refused to run away like cattle again. Eren had decided this was his perfect chance to sneak past the distracted Garrison soldiers and climb the Wall scaffolding to see the cannons. He wanted to see how they actually fought the Titans. Long story short, we got him and we had to run faster than we ever had in our lives. i had to carry Armin and Mikasa ran on Eren’s other side, making sure he didn’t trip over his own feet and we, of course, made it in time, and Hannes was standing right there with a clipboard, looking so completely pale. He started screaming at us for being reckless idiots, but he quickly checked our names off the evacuation list anyway so we wouldn’t get reported to the higher-ups. Eren was covered in dirt, Armin was out of breath, and Mikasa had a scrape on her cheek, and then everyone started laughing.
Late autumn was the one time of year Shiganshina truly was the focal point of the districts for once!!! The Harvest Festival was the biggest event in the district, because it marked the end of the farming season before the winter set in.
The festival was my time to completely spoil my friends. Meat was incredibly rare and expensive for normal families, but during the harvest, the stalls were packed with thick beef skewers and roasted pork buns. I would buy an embarrassing amount of food. Eren would eat so fast he would choke, and always say it’s the best thing he had ever tasted which he said she everything btw . Armin would take tiny, happy bites of a honey-baked apple, his favorite treat, and we would listen to local musicians playing fast-paced folk songs. Mikasa would politely accept whatever I handed her, but she always made sure Eren and Armin had enough before she finished hers.
The best part of the festival was the games. The Garrison soldiers set up throwing booths where you could knock over wooden blocks to win little carved wooden figures or extra rations of sweets. Eren, being ridiculously competitive, would spend half an hour trying to knock down a heavy block and failing miserably. He would get so angry, yelling that the game was rigged, so Mikasa would do it instead so he could get the prizes.
Life as a Cadet in the 104th
Ok, now I’ll talk about life as a cadet. This isn’t going to be organized, but I have character stories and things that I just want to share in no particular order.
Chores were gross and smelly
•Latrine Duty: This was the worst punishment (shadis used chores for punishment a lot). The latrines were outdoors, cold, and smelled absolutely vile. When Jean or Connie got assigned latrine duty, they would complain for hours.
•Firewood and Water Hauling: We went through a massive amount of firewood just to keep the mess hall and cabins above freezing. Because I was tying for first place in our class rankings alongside Mikasa, I was constantly given the heaviest physical chores to test my limits. I would carry stacks of heavy oak logs on my shoulders and sometimes, I would carry Armin’s share of the firewood too so he could save his energy for the evening written exams.
•Mess Hall Prep and Potato Peeling: This was actually the best chore to get. We would sit on wooden stools in the back kitchen for hours, peeling mountains of root vegetables for the evening stew. I always made sure to sit next to Sasha. While everyone else was complaining about cramped hands, I would distract the head cook while Sasha slipped raw potatoes into her jacket pockets.
•ODM Gear Maintenance: This was not a punishment but a strict daily requirement. The leather harnesses got completely soaked with sweat, rain, and mud during training. Every single night, we had to meticulously scrub the leather straps, oil the buckles, and sharpen our spare blades. If Shadis found a single speck of rust on your gear during morning inspection, you were running laps until you threw up.
•Uniform and Boot Maintenance: Uniform maintenance was the most stressful part of the week. Our knee-high leather boots had to be polished to a mirror shine. We spent hours sitting on our bunks with dirty rags and cheap boot blacking, scrubbing until our fingers were completely stained. Shadis had a terrible habit of sneaking through the barracks at random hours to check our footlockers, which was annoying.
•Laundry: This is something no one thinks about until they are elbow-deep in freezing water. We had to wash our own heavy uniform jackets and trousers by hand using wooden washboards. Wet wool smells terrible, like a wet dog, and it weighs an absolute ton when soaked. The smaller cadets like Armin, Christa, and Mina really struggled to wring the freezing water out of the thick fabric. If you did not wring it out perfectly, it would freeze solid on the clothesline overnight. Every Sunday, I would just walk down the line of washing tubs, taking the soaking clothes from my friends and Eren always tried to compete with me to see who could wring a shirt out faster, but he never even came close.
Academics and Classroom Sessions
People always seem to forget that we didn’t just swing around in the mud all day. We actually had mandatory, hours-long classroom sessions, and sometimes sitting still was worse than the physical training. We had to study Titan anatomy, ODM gear physics, supply chain logistics, and the “history” of the Walls.
The history lessons were physically painful to sit through. Listening to the instructors drone on about the royal government being the “saviors of humanity” while I vividly remembered huddled under a blanket reading Armin’s forbidden books took everything in me not to roll my eyes into the back of my head. Armin and I would just exchange these funny glances across the room.
One of the harshest realities of the cadet corps that the anime skips over is that almost half the recruits from the outer districts and Wall Maria couldn’t read or write. They were farmhands and laborers. Expecting them to suddenly calculate ODM gas pressure and trajectory angles was insane. For example, Elara was a tiny girl from a rural logging village who sat next to me. The first time the instructor handed out a written exam, she just stared at the blank paper, completely paralyzed. She had never even held a piece of chalk before joining the military.
•Sasha and Connie struggle was always fighting for their lives to stay awake. Connie would literally fall asleep with his eyes open, and Sasha would constantly get caught chewing on stale bread she had hidden in her uniform pocket.
•Jean and Eren could not even sit in a classroom without starting something. They would aggressively kick each other under the desks or throw crumpled-up paper the exact second the instructor turned to the chalkboard. Mikasa usually sat right between them, staring dead ahead.
•Marco and Armin we’re the only ones taking meticulous notes. But Marco would get so anxious about the supply logistics exams that his hands would shake. Since the material was easy for me, I would let Marco double-check with my work for errors.
•Annie sat in the far corner and never took a single note. She would just rest her chin in her hand and stare out the window for three hours straight. The crazy thing is, whenever the instructor tried to call on her to catch her off guard, she would recite the exact answer perfectly without even looking away from the window. It drove Jean insane.
•Every class has that one person, and ours was Gordon. He was a merchant’s son from the Trost District who was absolutely desperate to get into the military police, but he sucked at physical combat. So, he tried to compensate by being the biggest kiss-ass in the academic sessions.
•Since Vance had failed his final exams the year prior and was forced to repeat training, he had already sat through all these exact lectures. He was always completely checked out. Instead of taking notes on Titan anatomy, he used his charcoal pencil to draw highly detailed, incredibly insulting caricatures of Commander Shadis and the other instructors on the wooden desks 😭
Dorm Life & The Black Market
The girls’ cabin was never quiet.
Sasha was a chronic sleepwalker and sleep talker, constantly mumbling about roasted meat and fresh bread. More than once, I had to physically catch her by the collar before she wandered right out the front door into the snow. She was also a chronic hoarder. She had a loose floorboard under her bunk where she hid stolen potatoes and hardtack. Ymir was constantly threatening to throw her out the window because the crumbs kept attracting field mice, but Christa would always intervene and help Sasha hide her “stash” in a tin box instead.
Christa Had a natural talent for doing hair. On Sunday mornings before inspection, she would sit on the edge of her bunk and we would line up. She would aggressively detangle Sasha’s hair (which always had leaves in it), and she would do these beautiful, tight French braids for me so my hair wouldn’t get caught in the ODM gear.
Mikasa had her scarf routine (YES SHE WASHES IT) and it was incredibly methodical. While the rest of us were chatting, she would sit cross-legged on her bed, meticulously hand-washing and brushing out that red scarf. It was almost a meditative state for her. I would sometimes pass her a bit of lavender oil just to make it smell like something other than dust.
Clara was this girl who slept two bunks down from me in the girls’ cabin. She wasn’t physically strong, so her entire survival strategy was information. She knew literally everything about everyone. If two cadets were secretly hooking up, if someone was stealing rations, or if Shadis was planning a surprise inspection, Clara knew.
Mina was genuinely one of the sweetest people in the 104th, and she was one of the few cadets who actually felt like a normal teenage girl. While Mikasa was intensely focused on Eren and Annie was a brick wall, Mina just wanted to talk about normal things. Mina was terrible at hand-to-hand combat, but she was amazing at mending clothes. Sometimes, when the cabin was tense, she would sit on my bunk and fix the frayed edges of my ODM straps.
There was a massive, unspoken black market economy inside the training camp. For literally everything too like bread rolls, chore shifts, and boot polish were our currency. Because I tied for first place in our class rankings with Mikasa, I had a lot of social pull. If Nac or Mylius tried to overcharge Armin for a shift cover, claiming he owed them three bread rolls instead of one, I would just step right behind Armin, cross my arms, and stare at them and would ask if there was a problem with the exchange rate. And of course, there was never a problem.
We also had a squad tradition. If you got the highest score on a weekly ODM test, the rest of your squad had to donate one piece of their dinner to you. When I won, I would happily collect my massive pile of extra food, let Jean compliment me on my victory, and then secretly slide the entire pile right onto Sasha and Eren’s plates.
characters and case stories
some other people i particular remember that most people don’t talk about.
Bertholdt: okay ppl always assume Bertholdt was just the tall, nervous guy who followed Reiner around, but he was actually incredibly deep. The thing about Bertholdt was that he was completely incapable of small talk. If you asked him about the weather or how training went, he would literally just sweat, stare at the floor, and give you a one-word answer and yes it was painfully awkward. But if you caught him late at night in the mess hall and brought up philosophy, he would read these incredibly dense, heavy books about morality, determinism, and the concept of “necessary evils.” Looking back on it now, knowing he was the Colossal Titan carrying the guilt of a mass murderer, those philosophical debates about “fate” and “duty” make so much sense.
Connie gets written off as the resident idiot, and logically, yeah, he could barely read a tactical map to save his life. But what people didn’t realize was that Connie had the highest emotional intelligence in the entire boys’ cabin.
Marco was the absolute sweetheart and the peacemaker, but he harbored massive impostor syndrome. Because he wasn’t naturally gifted in combat like Mikasa, Reiner, Annie, or myself, he compensated by pushing his brain to the absolute limit. Marco barely slept. He was always the last one awake, endlessly reviewing supply route logistics, Titan anatomy charts, and squad formations. He was terrified of letting anyone down and it was kinda sad.
Hannah and Franz wait sorry rip but if you thought Hannah and Franz were annoying on screen, living with them was a thousand times worse. They were constantly in their own little world, acting like a married couple while the rest of us were literally fighting for our lives in the mud. I acted like I absolutely hated them, but honestly their delusion was kind of a protective bubble. Once, Commander Shadis was going to assign them to opposite ends of the camp for stable duty so I traded my premium interior rations with the squad leader to manipulate the chore roster so they could stay together.
Daz was easily the most cowardly cadet in our year. He was constantly complaining, always shaking, and had zero pain tolerance. During our winter survival marches, he was an absolute liability.
There was a cadet named Thomas Wagner, which was incredibly awkward because that is my father’s exact name. I would call him dad as a joke, and he hated it lol.
Johanna was this incredibly tall, silent girl from a tiny farming village. She was terrified of hand-to-hand combat and was always near the bottom of our class in ODM gear maneuvering, but she had a supernatural way with the military horses.
Vance as i mentioned before was older than the rest of us by about two years. He was a “holdback,” so someone who had failed the final exams the previous year and was forced to repeat the entire training cycle. Because of that, Commander Shadis treated him like absolute garbage to make an example of him. Vance was deeply cynical and had zero filter. I remember Jean was constantly bragging about the Military Police and Vance was the one who would sit by the fire and bluntly tell everyone how corrupt the Interior actually was.
There is one specific memory that always stands out because it was genuinely the only close moment we ever shared with Annie. It was the middle of winter, and our rations had been temporarily cut, and Sasha was literally dying with hunger. She woke me up at 2:00 AM, begging me to help her sneak out into the training woods to hunt. Mikasa, who was always a ridiculously light sleeper, woke up too and slipped out of bed to come with us mostly just to make sure we didn’t get ourselves killed.
As we were leaving, someone was waiting for us and we thought we were cooked, but it was Annie. She flat-out threatened to snitch to Commander Shadis and get us thrown in the guardhouse, unless we brought her with us. Mikasa immediately said no and they just stared each other down in the dark. But of course, we had no real choice. If Annie yelled, we were all scrubbing the stables for a month, or worse. So we had to let her come.
It was the most bizarre quartet imaginable. Annie didn’t talk much while we cooked it, and Mikasa kept a very close, distrustful eye on her. But when Sasha handed Annie a piece of the roasted meat on a stick, her entire demeanor shifted. We sat there in the freezing dirt, the four of us huddled around this tiny flame, eating in absolute silence. When we snuck back into the cabin an hour later, Annie gave me this tiny, almost imperceptible nod ig before getting back into bed. It was the most human I ever saw her. I still don’t know why she wanted to come, but it was fun I guess.
Nac Tias and Mylius Zeramus were two guys who always hung around our squad, usually trying to act tougher than they were. During a really bad rainy day of ODM gear maintenance, we were all stuck in the supply shed cleaning rust off our blades. Daz was there too, sitting in the corner and shivering because he was absolutely terrified of the upcoming cliff drop exercise. Nac and Mylius were teasing Daz, and calling him a coward. I didn’t like bullies, especially because of growing up with Armin, so I made a bet with Nac and Mylius and told them if I could beat both of their times during the cliff drop using only half my gas, they had to do Daz’s latrine duty for an entire month. I absolutely destroyed their time DUHHH, and Daz was almost crying with gratitude, and Nac and Mylius spent the next four weeks scrubbing the camp toilets.
Once every few months, cadets in good standing got a half-day of leave to visit the nearby Trost District. It was supposed to be a relaxing day, but it usually ended in madness because everyone is pretty much a strong personality. During one trip, Sasha was on a mission to find a specific local meat vendor she had heard about and we found the stall, but two corrupt Garrison guards were harassing the merchant, demanding a massive bribe and threatening to confiscate his food. Eren immediately wanted to fight them and Mikasa ofc was already reaching for her blades to back him up. Anyways, it was resolved but it was funny.
Mail day was always the hardest day of the month for the Shiganshina kids bc people from Wall Rose and Wall Sina would get letters and care packages from their families, while a lot of us had absolutely nothing to look forward to since our hometown was gone. It broke my heart seeing Armin try to look happy for the others. So, I secretly order bulk supplies through a fake name. The next mail day, a massive unmarked military surplus wagon arrived at the camp. I made sure it looked like a random military donation so no one felt like a charity case. I remember that night Armin pulled his new wool blanket over his shoulders, looked at me, and gave me the warmest, most knowing smile, so of course he knew bc he knows everything.
We only got one afternoon off every week. Most cadets used it to collapse into their bunks and sleep like the dead. Eren usually spent his downtime aggressively repairing his gear, while Mikasa sat close by just watching him. Armin would find a quiet patch of grass to re-read his old, battered books. I would usually split my time between them. so I would help Armin study the military maps, then go sit with Marco and Jean on the cabin steps. Jean would try to act incredibly cool and casual while carving little wooden figures (which he was very good at)with his pocket knife, secretly hoping I would notice his handiwork.
Also a lot of people who haven’t shifted think the regiments only pitched to us on graduation day, but that is a huge misconception. They actually came out to the training grounds every couple of months. It was basically an ongoing psychological recruitment campaign to secure our loyalty early on, like the military comes to high school and does the same in this reality lmfao. Every few months, our regular training would stop, we’d line up in the dusty courtyard, and the representatives from all three branches would try to sell us our own futures. It was fascinating to watch the shifting tactics over our three years there. The nights after these visits were always the worst. The barracks would be dead quiet because the reality of our choices was constantly being refreshed in our minds.
There were a lot more people and stuff about it, but I don’t want to make this too long, and it’s hard to pinpoint what’s interesting becaus it’s pretty normal once you have been there a whole tbh most days were boring and repetitive, as outside the fall i did not want anything too traumatic! Oh wait I forgot to explain what post- fall was like, i’ll just add that here real fast.
•The sudden influx of refugees from Wall Maria completely overwhelmed the local Wall Rose districts as you can imagine. we spent spent most nights huddled together, sleeping in freezing storehouses, muddy alleys, or makeshift refugee camps. The government strictly rationed food, meaning you spent hours standing in line just for a single, rock-hard loaf of coarse bread or a meager bowl of watery soup to split among the four of us
•To earn those tiny rations, refugees were forced to work the "reconstruction lands" which were essentially barren wastelands. It meant back-breaking agricultural work from sunrise to sunset, clearing rocks and tilling hard, frozen soil so basically slavery. due to this as seen in the show The royal government realized they couldn't feed everyone, so they forced 20% of the population (250,000 refugees) on a fake "Reclamation Mission.”
•Official rations were never enough, so a massive underground bartering system formed in the camps. Since Wall Rose locals often overcharged refugees out of spite, you had to learn how to negotiate fast.
•The anime brushes past this, but the local Wall Rose kids absolutely hated the Wall Maria refugees for taking up their space and food. Eren was constantly getting into brutal street fights with older local boys who insulted the survivors. We all had to scavenge for oversized, scratchy wool cast-offs from charity carts so when Eren inevitably tore his shirts in fights, me and Mikasa had to learn how to stitch them back together using crude bone needles and cheap thread.
•Overcrowded storehouses with no plumbing meant disease spread like wildfire during the winter. When the seasonal flu hit the camps, Armin was always the first to catch it so I would have had to pull double shifts in the work fields just to trade for medicinal herbs
and so much more stuff but most days very boring and repetitive tbh
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