AruAni Analysis: A Study of Chemistry and Contrast (Part 1)
~~~ Annie and the Quiet Gravity of Armin Arlert ~~~
Annie Leonhart was born into an environment built on one uncompromising truth:
Only the strong survive.
From childhood, her father drilled into her that vulnerability is a liability and emotional need a fatal flaw. Warrior training only carves this doctrine deeper through relentless brutality and loss, forging Annie into someone who survives by crushing every trace of weakness—within herself and in anyone around her.
So, when Annie meets Armin Arlert at twelve years old, she assumes he is destined to die. By every standard she’s been taught, he should: he is physically weak, emotionally exposed, and openly idealistic.
And yet Armin defies every expectation. He endures the same unforgiving Regiment training she does on Paradis and—more unsettling still—he manages to hold on to a humanity she believes the harsh reality of the world would eventually extinguish…
Armin’s very existence becomes a contradiction Annie cannot ignore. He embodies everything she was forced to abandon—compassion, vulnerability, hope—and yet he continues to live, adapt, and even succeed in ways that shouldn’t be possible.
His presence stirs a tangled storm inside her: resentment for his supposed “weakness,” envy of his courage, and a quiet grief for the humanity she was never allowed to keep.
But beneath all these conflicting emotions lies something far more powerful: curiosity.
For Annie, Armin becomes a direct challenge to her worldview. If he can remain human in a world overrun by monsters and cruelty, then perhaps the humanity she buried deep within herself isn’t as dead as she once believed.
Yet that spark didn’t begin with him. It had already been lit before she ever reached Paradis—when her father’s wholehearted repentance and confession of unconditional love began to stir the long-suppressed longing for connection she had carried her entire life.
So when she approaches Armin, it starts as a cautious investigation—practical, strategic, easy to justify. But the more time she spends near him, the harder it becomes to maintain the emotional distance she has always depended on. Despite every intention to remain detached, Annie finds herself forming a genuine attachment, one she never planned for or meant to allow.
Armin becomes both a reflection of what she had lost and a quiet reminder of the small, fragile pieces she might still be able to keep. In him, she recognises traces of the person she once imagined she could be—kind, courageous, unafraid to hope—and that recognition unsettles her.
He becomes more than just another soldier in her orbit and more than a convenient ally. He becomes someone whose presence lingers with her, someone she finds herself returning to—not out of strategy, but out of something far softer, and far harder to name.
Over time, her bond with Armin exposes the deepest fracture within her—the divide between who she believes herself to be and who she actually is. In her mind, she is still an inherent monster who destroys everything in her wake; Yet beneath that hardened self-image remains the kind, merciful, deeply compassionate young woman she has always been—the one who still longs for connection, and who is still capable of sincere love.
Through Armin, she is forced to confront this buried truth, a reckoning that both terrifies and strengthens her: the realisation that she still has a choice.
She can retreat into the world she was shaped to survive—cold, controlled, and governed by the instincts of kill or be killed—or she can step toward the unknown, risking the fragile peace she clings to for the possibility of something more. Something better. A future richer, gentler, and more human than anything she has ever allowed herself to hope for.
But the freedom of choice never comes without freedom of consequence.
A single act of mercy would expose her darkest secret and, worse, leave her vulnerable to the one terror she fears above all:
Betrayal by the person she had allowed herself to need and trust… and the heartbreak that threatened to crush whatever remained of her as a result.
My Unpopular Opinions #2: Strong Female Characters & Love Interests and other Misconceptions - No Fandom
[When I say unpopular that means one of two things: a) stuff the people I know don't give a damn about and don't care to hear or b) stuff the people I know don't agree with and don't care to hear.] (Technically this fits into neither of my usual "unpopular opinion" categories. I just get pissed about this a lot. It's almost a third category: things I see/hear people say - often enough to my face - that I just get pissed about)
Why do so many people seem to think a "strong female character" cannot have a love interest or be in a relationship? Does having emotions suddenly make them less of a compelling character?
I had a conversation once about how Rey from Star Wars can't end up with Kylo Ren (their opinion, not mine). Since this was before TLJ I gave them the benefit of the doubt, there was after all, at that moment, still an argument to be made for it (though the strength of it would have been debatable). So I asked why they were so convinced, it could have made for a nice conversation. The answer they gave me really had me thinking whether I should groan or laugh. "Because she's a strong female character". The conviction with wich they said that was almost ridiculous. As if that was a legitimate argument.
Why the hell should a female character not have a love interest or a relationship and still be considered a "strong female character"? Does having emotions - or, in the case of our example, being the recipient of implied affections - make a character weak now? Or does being in a relationship take away from a female character's accomplishments?
I think we have a wrong picture of a "good" portrayal of female characters. What good does a representation of "strong female characters" do, if those characters are forbidden vulnerabilities or love? That's not the way I want characters to be portrayed, male, female and everything in between alike.
I want interesting characters. Complex characters. With strength and weaknesses and room for personal growth. A character driven story, interactions causing reflection and change, character development. Three-dimensional characters, so to speak. What good does a hard-assed steel core woman do anyone? (What do we need generic muscle men with half a brain for? Or those sleek jack of all trades device guys that can do just about anything? But the portrayal of male characters or protagonists in general is no the point of this post, so that's a rant for another day.) Those kinds of characters are boring and easily forgettable.
Maybe it's a misnomer. Because by now, experience causes me to associate "strong female character" with the type of female character that are basically the generic male action movie hero turned into a woman, without the arm candy. Maybe this expectation is half the problem. Maybe it would be better to call the kind of character I wish I would see more often "dimensional character". Because quite frankly, half of what I've heard called "strong female character" was either inconsequential or flat.
There's good examples for dimensional female characters too, though, so not all is lost. One of my favorite examples of complex characters are Star Trek Voyager's Captain Janeway.
Captain Janeway is the female captain of a spaceship in a 1995 - 2001 sci-fi TV series. She's stranded half a galaxy away from home with her crew and has to get them home, basically. She's commanding, curious, assertive and decisive, but over the course of the show you also get to see that she can be merciful, vulnerable and uncertain. (Plus there's that on-going will they won't they with her commander but that's a rant for a different post, too.) She is clearly in command over characters older than her (and yes, males as well) but not at the expanse of her feminity. She is neither sexualized nor treated like she's devoid of passion. She is complex and intriguing. (There actually went a lot of thought into the conceptualization of her character and the portrayal before the show started and during it to find the precarious balance between Captain and woman.)
Obviously this is not a general thing. This is mostly a problem I'm faced with talking to people who I meet at university. As a history student, most of my classes are in the arts faculty. Now I have the problem that the town I'm studying in has a very strong left movement. And I always seem to get caught up with the narrow-minded ones. Then again, there seem to be infinite amounts of them at my university alone. I mean, a guy can't hold a door open at the arts faculty without someone calling it sexism. That's not sexism, it's manners! Those doors weigh more than me and are easily two feet taller than my meagre 5' 1" too.
Hey, all! I don't normally post book reviews here (quiet in the back about me not posting much lately! The internship on top of my regular work has taken a lot more out of me than I thought it would) but this new release falls in line with something I advocate quite passionately.
So, someone I adore to the ends of the earth as both a writer and a person publicly released a new book today. It's a dark adult novel. An EXTREMELY dark adult novel. I'd steer children well away from it, but, if you're mature enough to handle graphic or unsettling scenes and enjoy a good gangster story, I'd recommend this to the moon and back. It left me feeling charged, like my body was buzzing with the story's potent electricity when I finished. What book am I talking about? The Evil and the Pure.
In the shadowy underground of the world, there's darkness in the sweetest people and gentleness in the roughest. They go together like this, hand in hand, the shadow and the light, the bad and the good, the evil and the pure. Sometimes, you'll be surprised which side takes precedence. This is something that winds its way throughout in THE EVIL AND THE PURE.
From the onset, the use of voice in this novel is spectacular. It grabbed me from the start and didn't let me go until long after the final page where my head remained reeling. It uses a colloquial, well-crafted narration that provides insight beyond the limited scope. It lets the readers develop an intimate relationship with the main characters, letting the reader see their lives come together and intertwine, then individually fall apart. The pacing is smooth and carries you right through, where personal promises of "just one more page" are hard to keep. It was an engaging read, but by no means does that mean it's light, playful reading. It had moments of pure darkness with some of the most vile monsters because of how plausible and REAL they are--because they're HUMAN, in all of their wiles and perversion, greed and guile.
Personally, I absolutely adored this. This book was gangsters and grit. It brought forth some characters I positively love and others that make me feel ill. It had me cringing and on the edge of my seat in rotating intervals. Definitely not a book for the under aged or overly squeamish, but so, so potent and powerful. If you like gangster stories and are willing to venture down the crooked path of sex, money, drugs, and mobsters, this fantastic, gritty, gripping work has your number.
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Now, I'm not going to go about trying to spoil anything for you guys, but I do want to talk about it a bit, or, at least, the characters. I've mentioned a time or two before about the importance of making characters multidimensional. I think enough of us have seen ones that are all-powerful or so perfect the sun shines on them alone.
The truth is, a character should be like a person, with qualities both positive and negative. All of the main characters in this book have traits that are often seen as admirable--or at least relatable--in many respects, whether it's their gentle soul, love and faith, work ethic, charisma, ability to maintain calm under fire. Those aspects do not make up the sum of the characters, however. Some of them do deplorable deeds, some are considered weak, some are utterly evil. Even the protagonists you want to root for aren't static good. The good guys are anti-heroes in the truest sense, and they're flawed--sometimes deeply so--and even the villains have have pitiable moments.
Honestly, guys, if you want to see characters with dimension and both ends of the spectrum in action, if you can, I'd say to check this book out.
