time is the ultimate cage (or: why nothing in aot actually matters but i am still going to write 50k words of fix-it fic where sasha eats a potato and thrives)
bruh.
i am sitting here staring at the wall at 6:00 PM because it finally clicked, and honestly? i feel like i’m on crack right now. this is just depressing.
everyone talks about how the titans, or marley, or the walls are the ultimate enemy in Attack on Titan. but no. Isayama, you absolute madman, when I get my hands on you!!! (i love him, but i also want to throw his manga volume across the room).
he didn’t just write a tragedy about war. he trapped the entire cast in a B-theory of time closed loop and called it a day.
The Ultimate Cage Isn't the Walls(or humanity either). It's Time.
For those of you who DONT know what B theory of time is, there are 2 theorys of time, B theory and A theory, the B theory of time(which im 100% sure attack on titan runs on) states that there is no such thing as a "free" future, both the past, present and future exist simultaneously all at once in a "Block", just in different coordinates of the "Block", While A theory dictates that the future isint "real" now, its something that is decided by the present and what's happening in the "now".
Now, think about it. In Aot, The past, present, and future all exist simultaneously in aot, as Eren so famously says "The past, present and future, all of them exist for me now" or something along those lines in chap 139 I think, now, AOT isn't a story about people making choices to change the future; it's a story about dominos that were already knocked over before the first chapter even started.
Did Eren actually want to do the Rumbling? It literally doesn't matter. Whether it was his deepest, darkest desire or a horrific fate he tried to run from, the result is identical. Every single "choice" he made just lined up the shot for the future he already saw. He thought he was chasing freedom, but he was just the ultimate slave to a timeline that was already set in stone ever since Ymir freed those pigs.
Gabi killing Sasha? Looking at it through this lens is deeply fucked up. It’s like getting angry at the rain for falling. From the moment Gabi was born, her trajectory was locked onto that airship. From the moment Sasha was born, her expiration date was printed in bold ink. They never had a choice.
The true horror of AOT isn't the gore or the global genocide. It’s the sheer, suffocating nihilism of a universe where free will is a total illusion. They fought so hard to get outside the walls, only to realize the universe itself is just a bigger cage.
Anyway, Here is My Coping Mechanism
Because this universe is a deterministic nightmare where everyone is traumatized and everything is scripted, I am actively choosing to ignore it. If time is a fixed construct, then I am constructing a reality where Niccolo and Sasha open a restaurant and live happily ever after. The canon timeline can keep its cosmic horror; my AO3 dashboard is where the real freedom lives.