This is where I ramble about all things fandom, fanfic, and the act of writing. Ship and let ship, kinktomato. AoT, rivamika, arumika; TAD, jinmao; Yubiren. Born in the 20th century. AO3/IG: nuri148 | Tw: nuri_148
Armin is a certified Armin Hater™ in every universe :)
you just KNOW redditor nerdmin loathes Armin's character for being "soft" and indecisive, unlike his GOAT Erwin who should've been chosen over that worthless traitor (it's because Armin reminds him of the parts of himself he hates and doesn't want to confront)
1) if you can find me a 160yo to be friends with, I will do so in a heartbeat, but until then no I do not.
2) this is a very badly-conceived question unless you're literally only asking like. KIDS. Because that is such a HUGE gap to the point of the question being laughable. A 13yo, the youngest age someone can have an account on tumblr to vote on this poll, would need to have a 52yo friend to vote "yes". By the time they're 16, they'd need to have a 64yo friend. the 18-24 demo is (i believe) the largest on the site. I don't think most 18-24yos have friends in the 72-96yo range.
I'm not saying that's impossible, obviously, but like... it's VERY unlikely. Plus once you pass 29, you officially can simply no longer have a friend 4x your age, given that the oldest (age independently verified) living person is 116.
(side note but shout out to Jeanne Calment of France, 1875-1997, oldest recorded and independently verified person to ever live, at 122 years. She lived on her own until she was 110, met van Gogh when he moved to her hometown of Arles, France when she was a teenager, and recorded a spoken word musical album shortly before she died. Absolutely fantastic.)
Anyway, as I said, this is a very badly-conceived question by the asker, the percentage of people who are even theoretically able to say yes is already pretty low, let alone taking into account how few people are ever actually going to be friends with people that much older than them. Not related to, not "I know someone this age" or "I'm fond of someone this age" but actually friends with them.
At least it should've included the opposite option of having friends that are a ¼ of your age, as at 51 I'm more likely to have a friend that's 13 than one who's 204.
Do you think that Levi's first scene ended up being a bit out of character for him after his development throughout the rest of the story and spinoff material like No Regrets?
Long story short, if you're talking about the famous kicking Eren scene, the whole thing was an intentionally executed plan so that they could get Eren (alive XDD)
I'm going to confess that so much of my understanding comes from this post and OP explains things so well:
Hi! You mentioned in the comments on Twitter that the court scene (when Levi beats Eren up) gets misinterpreted a lot. What exactly do you m
Apologies for farming out the meta XDD, but also
I had to unearth the ancient works for this XDD
But for my own contribution XD, I would like to offer a deeper explanation about the "teaching a lesson" word in the Levi and Erwin beer coasters translation.
iirc (I’m at work now so can’t look up sources), Levi’s first scene is actually the one where he holds the dying soldier’s bloody hand. IDK if Anon refers to this one or not, and this may be a hot take but, tbh, although this scen gets usually brought up as an example of Levi’s compassion, when I first came accross it I got the impression he was kind of a dick. The way it was presented, and not knowing anything else about Levi’s character and background yet, to me it looked like he was more concerned with having made a good impression on the dying guy, rather than having actually comforted him.
(OT thanks for that linked blog about the court scene, it's a great read!)
Hi! You mentioned in the comments on Twitter that the court scene (when Levi beats Eren up) gets misinterpreted a lot. What exactly do you mean? I don't know where else to ask, Tumblr seems like the most convenient place for long replies. I love your drawings btw and have a nice day!
Thank you very much for loving my art <3
And YESSSSSS THANK YOU FOR THIS QUESTION I really needed an excuse to talk about it and now I finally was enabled to do so lol
When the anime first came out, this scene absolutely blew my mind, I watched it like 100500 times. It was so intense and interesting to me for all the wrong reasons lol Looking back, I think it’s fair to say that this was scene that cemented Levi’s status of a violent and dominant person who is all about discipline and showing brats their place, so to speak. So yeah, in retrospect, this whole situation did him dirty.
After some time passed and we revisited SnK again, this scene suddenly felt… off. And this is why I love rewatching/rereading stuff: when you know Levi’s character better, his motives and priorities, and come back to this scene, you just know there is something wrong about it. It was the first scene when Levi got physical. We’ll see him getting aggressive and kicky again (I’ll address this later…), but this particular scene is very different from the other ones.
I also want to mention that what really got me thinking about all that is this scene. To me personally this reads as “oh come on, I said so much cringey hot bullshit to them, how am I supposed to show my face to them now that we failed miserably?”, and that was the moment when I realized that Levi didn’t mean anything there at all. It was all bs.
I also need to mention that we’re slow af and it takes ages for us to come to the most obvious conclusions, so I’m sorry if some of the things here are too obvious.
Since I can’t just write a short and lovely answer to your question, why don’t we analyze the scene and figure out what the hell happened back then.
Starting with Eren losing his shit and shouting, scaring the heck out of people who are already horrified of him.
These people have no idea what to do with Eren, to them he is a monster, an anomaly, an uncontrollable unpredictable beast who can end the humanity if they’re not careful (lol the irony). They panic to the point of almost shooting him to death.
They are scared shitless, they’re in panic.
And then there comes Heichou. Like a wrecking ball.
«Bonk»
At first glance, the scene is very obvious: the entire manga page is dedicated to Levi kicking Eren and basically asserting his dominance. He shows that he isn’t scared of the monster that Eren is. Other people might be threatened by Eren, but he isn’t – he can deal with him easily and can shut him up with just one kick.
... except this isn’t true.
I want you to take a closer look at Levi’s face on this page, especially the third frame.
This frame got me thinking because at first I wasn’t sure about what emotion it can be (just in case Isayama doesn’t know what he draws, which isn’t really true. I feel bad for doubting him lol). And if his emotion isn’t important, then why did Isayama make such a big deal about it: he basically dedicated an entire page to it, the frame with Eren is much smaller in comparison. Levi isn’t concerned about Eren slightly throwing up, all the people that watch them have mostly the same expressions.
After thinking for a while I realized that the emotion on Levi’s face is fear. We’ve seen this face before (and after…):
If we don’t interpret it as fear, then well what is it? What did Yams want to say? Levi isn’t smug, he isn’t strict and stoic, he’s not mad or firm (his mouth and eyebrows show it), he has a clear emotion on his face. I think he’s most likely afraid that Eren might transform because he was kicked so harshly (or because Eren would get angry thanks to that horrible treatment), but at the same time it’s not like Levi can hold back: the whole thing needs to look believable. He’s fully aware that Eren is very dangerous, he knows it better than anyone else.
And yes, believable. Because this is a fucking stage play.
After looking at Eren all shook and stuff, he continues with his performance for the crowd:
What an interesting opinion you got there, Levi. The most interesting part is that you never ever mentioned it after that and we’ve never seen you act upon it, unless future chapters prove me wrong. Also... a punishment for what? For Eren defending himself, especially when Levi was the one who said that people from inner walls were pigs? Levi himself was mad at MP and would actually most likely openly agree with Eren lol
I said it 1004552 times already: Levi doesn’t care about subordination or discipline. He never punishes his subordinates, he isn’t strict and he lets people decide for themselves. He loves giving everyone a choice because it was his first lesson with titans which made him change his mind about many things. He is physical, can’t argue with that, but he isn’t sadistic and doesn’t think it’s a good punishment either.
… he said, looking at the people around them and not Eren.
Why is he looking at them and not Eren who he's supposed to teach some discipline lesson? That's because this lesson is not for Eren, it's for convincing everybody else that there is a lesson to begin with. He needs to see their reactions and he honestly doesn't give a fuck about Eren here, even though he's supposed to be the most dangerous person here. Why? Probably because if Eren wanted to transform, he would've done it already. It's a reach, but it might be the same logic with torn off fingernails with pastor Nick.
In the court scene Levi plays the role of a lunatic who is also a titan whisperer with questionable but effective training techniques. Because people wanted an uncontrollable beast to be either tamed or killed. I already said that this was a stage play, but dang it, this is such a stage play.
Look at these frames and what they’re focusing on. The second frame, the one with Eren’s angry face on it, takes like 2/3 of the overall space there. We see what these people see, and they see something dangerous, something that can snap and kill them all. Understanding how dangerous the situation is, Nile asks Levi to stop.
But Levi is too busy smacking Eren with his foot, he says “what” like he’s doing something so insignificant that idk anymore. Look at this frame. It’s small, it’s almost comedic. It shows how easy for Levi it all is. At least it looks like it to Nile and his folks, and this is what Levi and the SC are going for.
Aaaand this is where it gets more than obvious.
Now, when people started to have doubts about this whole situation and think that maybe Levi is the only one who can work with Eren, Erwin suddenly has something to say.
Look at this mastermind of a script writer lol.
They couldn’t have just suggested this plan in court. They NEEDED to be convincing, they NEEDED to SHOW that the plan would work. They needed to show that Eren can control himself perfectly despite of his emotions when he was beaten up and it worked. So they prepared an entire spectacle, although I’d say it’s more of an improv show lol.
It was just another gamble for Erwin. He gambled that Eren would lose his cool and they’d get a perfect opportunity to show that they can control him easily. With the ways that these people can understand – violence and aggression, something that’s hard to argue with.
And these aren’t Levi’s ways to control someone. Both Erwin and Levi know that people see Levi as a cruel lunatic and they wouldn’t doubt that Levi would be strict and controlling enough with Eren (especially after that convincing rant about discipline...), so Levi easily takes this role for the greater good.
He even got Eren confused about all that:
By the way, I’m pretty sure you also remember that this isn’t the only time when it’s mentioned Levi plays the role of a lunatic. And although the situation is slightly different there, this is still the same role:
Ok, so back to the courtroom scene. I mean, the scene after that.
This is one of those moments where I go “wow why didn’t I notice this earlier” because Erwin basically admitted it openly: he said that he was a gambler and he made his bet, the bet paid off, the plan was successful, Levi was going to get recognized by the Academy for his amazing acting skills. But to be fair, I didn’t really carefully think about Erwin’s plan before, this is why the scene was so confusing to me.
Aaand the first thing that Levi does after all that is running to Eren to make sure what he doesn’t hate him, which to me proves ones again that Levi isn’t sadistic and he doesn’t really believe in what he was talking about back there. He’s always so concerned about his subordinates, why would it be different for Eren?
I don’t see an aggressive and cruel man who is also a dog trainer that deals with every situation with disciplinary kicks.
What I see is a socially awkward grumpy man who ruined Eren’s first impression of him and doesn’t want Eren to hate him. He is relieved when Eren says that he understands that it was all a show. If he really believed in what he was preaching back there, he wouldn’t care.
So yeah, the thing about Levi being physical. He is physical and sometimes aggressive, I can’t deny that, it’s an important part of his character. But he kicks and punches people only when he’s emotionally frustrated (or angry), most likely thanks to Kenny who taught him how to fight to survive in the Underground. That’s why it’s the first reflex for him when situations get stressful. All of this is purely my assumption though, the reasons for Levi being physical are purely something that I have no solid proof for, so feel free to disagree here.
He punches Jean and Eren when he’s mad at Erwin (and I think he feels guilty about it afterwards, when he went to talk(?) to Eren and ended up listening to EMA’s conversation about the ocean); he punches Eren on the roof because Erwin is fucking dying; he stomps Annie’s head because he’s irritated and mad at her for killing so many people; he kicks Eren on a blimp because he’s sad af about Eren and doesn’t know what’s going on with him + the situation Eren put all of them in was extremely dangerous, and... you get the idea.
All these scenes (apart from Annie, ofc) show Levi being violent towards his own people, and they actually have little in common with the way he treats his enemies – Levi is brutal to them, he doesn’t show mercy, he breaks their bones like nothing. I know Eren got the same treatment once, but let’s not forget that Erwin was dying, and Levi remembers that Eren can heal himself pretty well. Levi didn’t touch Mikasa who held a sword to his throat in the same scene.
And this is why I don’t think the courtroom scene shows us anything about Levi and what he believes in. this just isn’t the same. I’ve never properly been a part of the fandom, but you don’t need to be a genius to notice the way people treat this scene since 2013. It fucked up people’s perception of Ereri and Levi, thus so much hatred towards them.
TL;DR: Levi kicked Eren as a part of Erwin’s plan, not because he wanted to show the brat™ his place and to discipline him with his sick moves.
Two war-torn kingdoms were held together by a brittle betrothal. Just as a peaceful future began to glimmer on the horizon, it was shattered in an instant, leaving many to believe all hope was lost.
Only Levi believed his betrothed still lived, but would his determination to find Mikasa be enough to see through the spell placed upon her?
Heavily inspired by The Swan Princess (1994), with several creative liberties taken.
Read on ao3
Some say, once upon a time, peace was more than just a legend in the lands surrounding Paradis. Although, any actual documentation of said peace was lost to over a century of war.
Years of destruction meant that not even the most scholared chancellors could say for certain when the wars began. Only that a kingdom across the sea had fallen to corruption from practicing the forbidden arts, and in turn used their power to force any surrounding countries under their command. During their conquest, any materials with knowledge of their magic were swiftly collected, stored away, or outright destroyed.
The kingdom originated in the land of Marley, though it now bled into surrounding nations as the ruling Yeager family spread its reach across the countryside. As their borders grew others were forced to be altered, or were erased entirely.
Such abuse of power rarely came without a price. Generations of destructive magic led to a near inability to use healing or regenerative spells—what could once save a mortally wounded soldier could now hardly be relied on to remove a splinter. Thus, the whispers of former Yeager kings and queens who were gentle—who used their magic to heal and create instead of to kill and destroy—were seldom believed.
Countless family lines had already been snuffed out, and that prospect now threatened the Ackerman clan of Paradis.
So much of discovering or diagnosing autism is focused on autistic suffering. I feel the reason so many actually autistic advocates are told we're not really autistic is because we show more than just the negatives of being autistic. We show ourselves surviving, and thriving, which goes against the narrative of what autism is.
AOT headcanons — How much imperfection in perfection?
For what concerns AOT, I support everyone's headcanons. They surely are, tons of times, something personal we want to see in our favorite characters. It's true that sometimes they might be ooc, but depending if they're lore-wise or based on an AU, I would say. You do you.
On the other hand, I noticed that sometimes, when fanfictions or HC are based on the original lore, it lacks that one normalcy that these characters require. They were born and raised in a place like Paradis, where only wealthy people got access to certain luxuries: health, for example. That being said, I see how certain characters are, quite literally, perfect in some people's minds. Not a crooked or missing tooth, not pimple marks, etc.
So, here it is my quick and personal take on this.
- Wearing those sturdy and heavy boots gave soldiers calluses and mycosis. I wouldn't be surprised if some of them had bunions, too.
- Their teeth reflected their social status. Erwin, canonically, was upper middle class and surely had a filling, but overall his teeth were white and well kept. But I'm sorry to break your bubble: Levi surely missed a molar or two. No access to a decent quality of life for years in the Underground, malnutrition, that did a lot to his teeth. He surely got better care growing up and how he could, but we can't pretend he had a perfect row of straight, pearly white teeth. And it's ok. That's the realness we need. Soldiers like Miche or Keith Shadis, seasoned veterans, surely had more fillings of some metal alloy, and they too will have at least one missing molar due to a bad fall, fighting a titan, or an infection/abscess. On top of that, let's not forget having yellow teeth, some more than others–which is, again, normal. They're not models with teeth straight out of a commercial. The realness of it all is to acknowledge that it happens and not pretending it doesn't.
- The levels of stress made them get either white hair earlier than expected, pimples or acne with scars, dark circles, eyebags, and the habit of biting their nails (I can imagine Connie biting his nails a lot).
- Their hands would be calloused, but not just in an "attractive" manner. Rough, with damaged knuckles or rough palms.
Adding those details isn't going to make any character uglier, in my honest opinion. It's indeed going to make them more human, and real. A chipped tooth, a nail that's too short, blisters on their feet are part of their life as soldiers and people who didn't have certain privileges. Surely some of them had indeed more access to healthcare (if there was even one), like Military Police officers, the King and later Historia, citizens from upper classes.
My post isn't intended to change your perspective on the characters; if you believe Levi had the best teeth known to mankind, so be it. Just, don't think that giving him any kind of imperfection like missing a molar isn't going to make him less appealing; to me, that means honoring his difficult background.
Tbh I think the "but data centers are important infrastructure, not just AI" talking point misses that like
Ok so roads are important infrastructure. A lot of stuff that's important happens on roads. Now, let's imagine that quadrillionaire Matt Stench has decided that the next big tech innovation is the Wide Car. It's a car that takes up six lanes despite seating only one passenger.
The Wide Car is supposed to be the future, and everyone's going to be driving Wide Cars, even though nobody who makes Wide Cars is turning a profit. Employers are offering Wide Cars as an employee benefit, and getting "nah." Some employers are going as far as demanding their employees drive Wide Cars, and the result is that people take time out of their workdays to get in the mandatory gas usage for their Wide Car before driving home in a regular car.
In spite of the fact that the Wide Car is clearly set to fail, there's an enormous push to expand to twelve-lane roads to accommodate a bunch of Wide Cars that simply will not materialize. This is not an organic response to demand, but a speculative investment that amplifies the existing issues with road development for no good reason.
Oh and the road infrastructure project is buying up resources other people could have used for literally anything else. With money they promise they'll be making from Wide Car sales any day now.
Okay so what I'm getting from the notes is that when you try to transplant some techbro nonsense into an offline equivalent, you have to be careful to avoid simply inventing something the Americans are already doing in real life
