#I was like desperately clinging to this post trying to do some not-actually-very-interesting worldbuilding

[lukewarmbreadatamoderatepace]

In the kind of setting where gods directly get their power from the belief of mortals, then like....

Gods fading out of existence due to lack of believers would be common enough, but inherently that's not going to get much attention, since by the time they die no one believed in them anyway. But if a god that lots of people still believed in died, it feels like that'd make some pretty big waves. That's a powerful being under a pretty big spotlight.

So like, say that, for the first time ever, a Major God falls (this could be from whatever cause you like but I like the bonus irony you get if it was fellow god(s) that did it). All the gods would be trying to keep it quiet, would be PISSED at the ones who did it. Can't let the mortals know we can die! But you can't keep that up literally forever. A GOD is DEAD, it's surely gonna leak out somehow.

I'm imagining kind of a chain reaction: the first prominent god dying triggers the first major batch of conversions to the "none of them are gods, actually, they're just powerful magical assholes" school of atheism. If they can die, then they were never gods to begin with.

People dying or converting to different religions wouldn't affect the net balance of power between gods and mortals-- a mortal dying removes one believer and one belief-target, someone swapping to favoring a different god is just moving the power around among them.

but atheism? That's directly robbing the gods of a follower, with no equivalent reduction in mortal-power!

[mccngzr-archive]

                     LATE MUNDAY, HAPPY MUNDAY!  //  accepting! @infernalpursuit​ inquired: 28 ( yes this is an excuse to make u talk about the beta au B) ) 36 and 37 

oh you, always knowing how to make me write a lot of things i want to write about! :3c

28.   is your muse canon divergent in any way?

oh, jacques is most definitely canon divergent! while there is no actual lore for the good hunter if not implied, so that you can build your own character in a way, jacques differs from bloodborne’s canon quite a bit further. when thinking about him in this version (since, as a reminder, this is an alternative universe for him, the original has nothing to do with the game) i took a LOT of inspiration for his lore and his story, if i ever get to narrate it in some way how i imagined it, from the alpha bloodborne. the game before it was the game we know and love! there were just... so many interesting concepts in there, especially the alpha bloodborne content in the clinic that are the basics of jacques. so yes, you can say it follows more the alpha bloodborne than the game itself, which makes him quite canon divergent indeed!

futhermore, there are a ton of interpretations and theories involved, especially involving yahar’gul which you, gio, are aware how much it terrifies me, together with the creatures with the bags that can kidnap you if they down you; not to mention blood effects and its extraction. there is a reason why jacques is so desperately trying to stop using blood, after all...

i could talk about the alpha bloodborne of jacques’ story for hours, honestly, and a single post is definitely not enough... but i might - i should, actually - start making some posts every once in a while explaining a bit of divergent worldbuilding i’m making. or i might make those short comics with jacques i have in my mind since forever... those too.

36.   do you feel similar to your muse in any way?

unfortunately, yes. and i say unfortunately because it’s easily seeable how jacques isn’t... in its best shape, really. and lately, me too - i will admit that i am venting a lot through jacques, so there are similarities between us. wihout going too deep with details, both our lives changed drastically and suddenly (only in very different ways), we both need a hand but it’s so hard to admit it, we’re both pretty melancholic and very scared lately... and we’re both really, really tired. at the same time, though, to say at least one positive thing about myself, i think we’re also both strong. we’re keeping on standing up and walking forward, despite everything. clinging to that certainty that things will get better, and not letting anyone tell us otherwise.

haha, i sound really cool said like this, don’t i?

37.   do you feel different to your muse in any way?

oh, for that, we’re also very different! we’re definitely not the same person, which makes me let out a sigh of relief. i can safely say that he’s in a situation a lot worse than mine, which makes us live and react differently, and living in much different words also make a big difference. i’m not addicted to substances, which have not altered my personality or mannerism, i have a much more decent sleep schedule that keeps me sane, and i’m learning to stop and take pauses instead of always pushing forward, which he rarely does. at the same time, i’m not nearly brave as he is, and i don’t know how to use a spear or a rifle while he’s an expert. and to be fair, i’m certain there are a lot of other differences, but i’m starting to be sleepy and i can’t focus a lot anymore. but you get the point - in many things we’re very similar, and i relate to him a lot; on others, we are definitely different.

[aspoonofsugar]

I was thinking about AOT and the first chapter: Eren was crying, probably about what he experienced or will experience before the story ends and the memories will be stored in the attacking titan. That's how Kruger knew about saving Armin and Mikasa before it even happened. However in Eren's dream there is also a moment with possibly Mikasa saying "see you later Eren". I know people disagree on which Eren it's about (Kruger or Jaeger) but actually I was thinking that since (1/2)

it’s the only memory he gets from that dream, maybe it’s a sign that eremika is really going to be plot relevant. Why would he remember Mikasa in particular (and not Armin for example), assuming these memories were really about him and Mikasa? I’m so sorry if this doesn’t make a lot of sense, I love your snk posts so I wanted your opinion. Have a great weekend!

Hello anon! I am happy you enjoy my posts! And don’t worry, your ask makes sense, but since my answer is gonna be pretty long I’ll break it into two parts:

1) Firstly I will address the scene you mentioned and some theories about it.

2) Then I will talk a little bit of Eremika.

1) I agree with you that this scene

and this scene

are both linked to a common plot point which has to do with some worldbuilding elements like the paths among Eldians, the origin of the Founding Titan, the Attack Titan and the truth about Ymir. Until these details remain unknown it is difficult to come up with a perfect explanation for these panels.

You mentioned two theories in your ask:

a) The girl Eren sees in the beginning is Mikasa.

In this case Eren is definately seeing his future and probably him separating from Mikasa since the girl’s words sound like a goodbye. If it’s so then we are inside a time paradox. I have seen people reading the time paradox as a negative loop i.e. a situation where our characters keep struggling, but are never able to overcome tragedy and so Eren keeps living again and again the same experiences in the hope of finally breaking the cycle. People who believe in this theory seem to think that we will either get a bad ending (so the end will be like the beginning with Eren waking up under the tree and the story starting once again without a solution) or, alternatively, we may have an ending where the cycle is finally broken and our characters are finally free to go on and to create a new world.

I would like to propose an alternative (definately crack) theory: the time paradox may actually be a “virtuous” loop i.e. the events we assisted, despite their violence and sadness, are actually necessary to arrive to a positive ending and Eren’s final decision will be to actually accept everything that happened to him and to “send his will back in time” to influence the past events and to be sure that everything goes as it is supposed to go (i.e. as we have seen in the series). Basically I am proposing a time paradox like the one we get in the third book of Harry Potter where the characters going back in time and interfering with the past don’t actually change it, but are used to explain details the protagonists saw the first time and couldn’t understand (like the person saving Harry from the Dementors who turned out to be Harry himself).

Thematically it would be interesting for Eren’s character because he, despite fighting for freedom, is a character who has been enslaved since when his father gave him the titan power. He didn’t choose to become the Attack Titan, so in a sense he has been negated freedom since the very beginning because he isn’t given the chance to personally make that very first choice which kicked off the whole plot. For him to eventually accept what happened and to influence past events so that things go exactly as they went in order to ensure a positive outcome would be a nice touch imo. It would make the whole story a consequence of Eren’s choice and he would regain the agency Grisha took away from him back then.

b) The girl Eren sees is actually a girl important for Eren Kruger.

This theory has its own good points. First of all it’s obvious that Isayama wants us to associate Eren to Kruger:

The fact that Eren used the name Kruger as his alias in Marley and their two designs as children being similar, not to count them having the same name, are all details meant to draw the reader’s attention to the connection between these two characters. If so then we can assume that this connection will be important both thematically (meaning that Eren and Kruger will be characters made to compare and contrast each other) and plot-wise. If their link is relevant plot-wise then it may not be too far-fetched to imagine that, because of some unknown worldbuilding elements (aka Eldian paths or something), the two of them share a special mental connection. This unique mental connection may explain why Kruger mentioned Mikasa and Armin despite not knowing them and why Eren got to see one of Kruger’s memories despite having still to receive the Attack Titan.

Even if this theory were correct, though, this wouldn’t change the fact that the scene Eren saw may be relevant to Eremika:

After all it’s Eren himself who associates the girl to Mikasa and this means that, in the case the girl is someone important to Eren Kruger, their relationship will most likely foil Eremika and this girl may become a parallel to Mikasa like Kruger is to Eren.

In short there is no doubt that the scene in chapter one will be, one way or another, relevant to Eremika and that Eren and Mikasa’s relationship will be (and already is) relevant for the story.

Now I’ll try to answer the second part of your ask.

2) I think that the most interesting thing of Eremika as a ship is that it has been set up to be solved only when Mikasa is able to make herself independent from Eren instead than when the two characters come together:

It’s interesting that we get to see this scene from Mikasa’s POV because we can contrast it with the dream Eren had. At the beginning of the series we have Mikasa looking at Eren with adoration and at the same time we have Eren having a vision of a girl he associates with Mikasa saying goodbye to him. It may very well have been an effective representation of Mikasa’s arc in a nutshell: the very beginning against the very end.

The root of Mikasa’s character is that she is a child who lost her family and who is terrified from the prospective of losing it again and to remain alone:

When she sees both her parents die she doesn’t even have the instinct to run for her life and lets herself get caught without opposing resistance because she has no idea how to live without her family. Then Eren comes into the scene and Mikasa clings to him:

Mikasa’s clinging to Eren becomes even worse after she loses her adoptive family. Let’s also notice that for her to help Eren out was also Carla’s last wish:

It is because of all these circumstances that we see her doing things like this in the beginning:

However, the narrative keeps challenging her on this aspect to the point that I wouldn’t be surprised if, by rereading Mikasa’s arc at the end of the series, it would turn out that the whole story was preparing her to say goodbye to Eren (and possibly to Armin):

After all Mikasa has been now tricked twice into thinking that she was losing a member of the costitutive group representative of her happy childhood. To me these two occurrences seemed rehearsals to what will be Mikasa’s final trial. Moreover, she is even told that both Armin and Eren won’t live long:

It’s as if the narrative is warning her that she has to move on and to become more independent because one’s life isn’t reduced to the family nucleus one is born in, but a person can forge new relationships and find warmth and happiness even outside it.

In short Mikasa’s story starts with her being totally unable to face a traumatic loss and it is possible that it will end with her having become strong enough to actually let go. It would be a beautiful way to end her arc imo because it would tie it back to her original trauma (her family being killed) and would solve it together with her relationship with Eren who firstly taught her that she could keep on living even without her loved ones.

What about Eren?

It seems to me that Eren is ironically doing to his friends what Mikasa did to him in the beginning:

Mikasa in the beginning was constantly trying to protect Eren to the point of objectifying him to an extent and of trying to control him. Now, in the last chapter we have seen how protecting the people he cares about is still a pretty strong motivation of Eren’s character:

However, he is doing it by dismissing their opinions and their feelings and by isolating himself in the process:

It’s interesting that we see Eren in front of a mirror this chapter because the place each one of EMA is at tells us something about their current state of mind.

So we have Armin in front of an enemy trying to communicate without receiving any answer exactly like any chance of dialogue with Marley has now been lost:

Then we have Mikasa who is at Sasha’s grave, but isn’t actually looking at it (she is behind the grave and not in front of it) as if she couldn’t force herself to truly face the consequences of what Eren did:

She touches her scarf instead and repeats Eren’s mantra despite Sasha’s death basically proving it wrong. They won. Sasha still died.

Finally we have Eren alone, in front of a mirror:

He isn’t seeing neither his enemies (like Armin) nor his comrades (like Mikasa), but is seeing only himself. Again, I don’t mean that he doesn’t care about others, he does, but he has assumed a self-centred prospective: he wants to protect his friends and family and will fight against whoever wants to hurt them disreguarding both who they are and what his loved ones think about the matter.

Back in Trost Mikasa was so desperate to protect Eren that she would have disreguarded her duty as a soldier in order to keep him safe and would have indirectly sacrificed others’ lives she could have saved with her strength for this reason.

In that situation it was Eren himself who woke Mikasa up and urged her to do the right thing. Now I think Eren needs a headbutt as well and it might be Mikasa the one to deliver it (since I think Armin will leave the other two). However, she will be able to do so only if she is ready to actually enter into an open conflict with Eren.

I don’t know if I was of any help! Thank you for the ask and sorry I took a while to answer it! And have a great week!