during my self-imposed hiatus for connie, I’ve had A LOT of thoughts on a) how i have thematically portrayed Connie and b) how I want to thematically portray Connie going forward in 2018, and well, I’ll just throw a few of those thoughts under the cut, but it may get long, so grab a coffee or something.
TL;DR expect less angst and more happiness from this Connie
For those of you that remember this and my previous Connie blogs, my blog title from the Castle Utgard arc onwards (until the timeskip) was always ‘homebound no more’ or ‘homebound no longer’ or some iteration of that phrase, because I thought it fit Connie’s attitude from that point onwards. Like, sure he left home in order to (eventually) become part of the Garrison and / or Military Police, and then brag about it when he came home again, but between those years of training and the constant relocating to different training locations, it just seemed really natural to me for Connie to be that guy who just brings up the topic of how far their homes are from their current location, and i’m pretty sure !!! that in the Trost OVA he brings up his own home somewhere but just, no matter how much he claims that he’s going to be a cool and flashy officer, he’s still thinking about his home and the folks he left behind.
Which is precisely why he’s almost absolutely destroyed when he sees Ragako completely empty, and then again, even more of a shock when he learns like 30+ chapters later what really happened to his town. My son has been, always keeping his town on his mind and just, the one certainty in his life now suddenly gone like the wind shakes him really hard, and it’s Reiner who has to remind him that he’s still a soldier, that he’s got a duty, and it always just stood out to me that Connie’s trying to put these thoughts behind him as they go into the Castle Utgard arc, but they never do die down, and it ultimately gets confirmed when Hanji breaks it to him, and he more or less breaks down on the table.
Since the first timeskip to the beach, I’ve been speculating on how this all plays into his attitude, but when he was up and about, playing around and being himself, I realized something. Connie’s the type of guy that bounces back from tragedy, and does his best to break the sullen mood, whether he tells a stupid joke to break the bleak and tense mood, or actually has positivity to spread around. What I realized is that it’s not so much that his own loss didn’t affect him at all, but more of that Connie never thinks about himself, he’s always got someone else or other people or other things on his mind that he’s worried or has a concern for, he’s not somebody who’ll be like “wait, I’ve gotta take a moment to sit down and properly give myself self-pity and think about how this will affect me for the rest of my life,” like there are character who before / during actions, they’ll be thinking about how it will affect them or get them in trouble or if they can profit off the action, BUT CONNIE DOESN’T DO THAT AT ALL, like legit this boy has everything BUT himself on his mind.
Sure, there are moments that Connie has that quiet chuckle and then falls silent to think about Ragako and his family, but other than his wish to kill the Beast Titan, it’s not crippling / debilitating / overpowering him and his attitude in life. Sure, he had a home he always kept on his mind, but Squad Levi was his home away from home, and now essentially is Connie’s only home. Sure, he’s suffered a tragedy of like none of his other squadmates, but at the end of the day, he’s not letting that get to him and permanently cast a shadow on him.
Connie just wants to have a main job in life, and have time to joke around with his friends, do obnoxious shit, check things off his bucket list, test the bounds of authority, nothing too fancy really. At the same time, I’d imagine that his status as Ragako’s only surviving son makes him hyper aware of his identity, and he kinda’ picks up a few traditions (i.e. a certain way of sewing unique to Ragako, etc) he never really liked to do when he was younger, but does it for the sake of keeping his town’s culture alive (to some degree). Maybe those traditions are customs that people would never have imagined Connie doing in a thousand years, but it’s something small he doesn’t mind doing to pay a bit of honor and respect to the town he thought was uncool to pay attention to when he was younger.
When it comes to missions, I’d imagine he’s only a little more serious when planning / being explained the plans, and then he’s hella more serious and capable when actually executing the mission. Is it because he’s a lot more able now? Perhaps, but I’d like to imagine it’s partly because he now knows both what the aftermath of a successful mission and the aftermath of a failed mission look like, and he’s determined to get things right the first time.
From the beginning of the Castle Utgard arc to the eight or nine Survey Corps members returning broken, and yet victorious, those about two months of action were most likely the darkest times in Connie’s life, but that’s not going to drag his personality down for good. He’s an upbeat fellow with a zany and slightly irritating sense of humor, and he’s true to himself, he’ll always be that way.
