Jokes aside, I wouldn’t need to insert an original character when I could just use Elise Starseeker for whatever narrative I might otherwise plan for Lintian. All I would need would be to flesh out her backstory, revealing how she left her homeland and joined the Explorers’ League.
(In the main universe, not the Hearthstone universe. She probably wasn’t a wasteland freedom fighter in a badass hat.)
But she could have been.
Bit late to it, but one of the prevailing messages of Attack on Titan is that hatred/bigotry and so on form a disastrous feedback loop. Eren is the protagonist of the story but he’s not the hero – it very specifically frames him as the consequence of the world’s hatred. A monster all the powers that be contributed in making.
That’s not to say the story doesn’t have its problems but I’d describe its core as anti-fascism. Even the Not-Japan of the setting are not depicted in an especially positive light.
I haven’t watched/read enough of AoT to form an informed opinion - I watched season 1, then learned of the author and decided I wanted nothing to do with it - but I have heard enough people whose opinions I respect speak on it to deeply dislike the vibes
That and it is very common in fash literature (or interpretations of non-fash literature) for ‘everything is garbage, everybody sucks, you might as well burn it all down’ to be a central point - it’s why warhammer 40k attracts a small but notable fash audience
Or alternatively: “everything is garbage, everybody sucks, our ideological opponents are no better than us, so you might as well stop resisting and submit to our rule”.
(I don’t know anything about the specific work you’re discussing.)
Do u not respect me… I have read the whole thing
Eren burning it all down isn’t depicted as a good thing either, which is why we get all his mates saying “whatever his motivations, genocide ain’t the answer”
The pretty objectively fascist powers in the story are not the good guys. Or they start as ‘good’ but it shows that a military coup never ends up going well in the long term
Again this isn’t to say that the story is without problems and I can understand why it might fail the vibe check for some people, but neither is it pro-imperialism whatsoever. It’s anti-imperialism
I respect your interpretation but find it difficult to believe that an open fascist intentionally wrote anti-fascist media, is all
I’m not disbelieving you I’ve just never looked into Isayama as a person, is there anything definitive that shows he’s a weirdo fash?
Because when I read the manga, at no point does it seem to promote the ideology. Marley (the primary villain) is a fascist state, Eren himself isn’t a fash (all sis cares about is freedom for himself and his friends); he’s fundamentally a selfish character who puts the people he loves above literally everybody else.
I’ll see if I can find receipts, bear with me
It tries to smack watchers and readers over the head in the same way Starship Troopers does, I think, but unfortunately that way can also be miscontrued as being pro-fascist in nature. I’m not personally invested in AOT and know little-to-nothing about it, but as far as I can tell whilst it does use heavily militaristic themes and undertones, it never portrays them as good, in fact it shows that the quasi-authoritarian state is, in fact, an utterly miserable place to live both for those native to it and for those who are forced to being part of it simply for protection in a apocalyptic world.
attack on titan will live rent free in my head forever by virtue of the season 4 (yes i’m an anime person) rug pull which was masterfully done
i didn’t read it in anyway as being pro fash, though i’m not as politically minded as the rest of you. the primary message i took from it was the virtue of freedom as well as the dangers of the lengths people will go to to achieve it or restrict it
ehhhhhhhhhhh
It does, at times. It definitely does early on. By the end of it it’s arguably more of a wash but there’s a strong sense of “military good, so long as the ‘right people’ are in charge”. The Survey Corps - of which our sympathetic and quirky protags are part of - is almost universally intended to be viewed as ‘heroic’ for the vast majority of the series, while those dumb nobles who want to restrict them are the bad guys.
Likewise the military coup to oust the leadership and install Historia - who is essentially a puppet who spends her time on a farm raising orphans while the military rules? Portrayed pretty solidly as the ‘right choice’.
It gets a bit more muddled with it post-timeskip, though less because they’re like “Eldia’s way is bad, militarism bad” and more “Marley sucks way worse”.
For my uneducatedness, would the survivor-corp be something similar as to, say, the Rebel Alliance or Rebellion from Star Wars? A Militaristic group who make use of the violence and terror to try and bring down an authoritarian, galaxy-spanning empire that’s left people in a state of complete misery? If so, I can understand why that might not necessarily be evil, the Military does have good uses and reason to exist provided that reason isn’t just for imperialistic ambition and is instead for the defence of one’s home, family or friends.
Knaak always had the talent of creating and breathing life into other folks’ settings.
I don’t know how many of you herr have ever read the dragonlance book series, but he wrote all of the minotaur wars books, and he does a really good job writing and breathing life into characters previously unknown to the readers.
I do believe, if you want to, you can distance yourself from a setting you do not own and still have a passion to write it in a way that resonates with the fanbase and the source material.
However most people rather leave their mark and influencw on other people’s work. Lile Star Wars, WoW, Halo, or a myriad of other settings. I very much dislike that and despise writers like Danuser and co.
Edit: that being said, Knaak did/does have an odd fetish of writing dragons and deities of all kinds having hanky panky.
All the people who unironically think Floch is based is a testament to this. I think he’s a well-written character, but a good guy he is not.
I think it’s a running theme that, by the end, shows the cyclical nature of things. Marley were heroes who overthrew their Eldian oppressors a century ago but ultimately took their place, doing the exact same things as the evil they’d fought to defeat. Paradis’ government does this too by the end – heroically overthrow a selfish, capricious aristocracy, but ultimately become heavy-handed and bluntly refuse to listen to the demands of the people.
This is very much not the case basically immediately after the timeskip. Eren is pretty justified when he says “I am not going to let them turn Historia into a breeding mare if that’s the price of our freedom”. Granted his alternative isn’t exactly better, but his conflict with the military dictatorship is clear.
Oh and also, the Scouts are shown to be just as corruptable as anyone else, outside the main cast of good guys. Hange loses control of them to the Yeagerists pretty damn quickly.
The eternal question is; how would things have gone down if they had given the serum to Erwin instead of Armin.
The Colossal Titan would have had extremely impressive eyebrows.
truly we were robbed
Okay so from research so far, I can first conclude that ‘open’ fash was way off the mark. Stealth maybe, still double-checking to see if I can find the original sources, but open is just wrong - my mistake on that, I think I meshed together a few things and came together with the wrong conclusion.
having to do a lot more reading than I thought I would to find out sources for the rest because a lot of people are infuriating in not citing where they’re getting things from