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There was a point, a few years back, when I would have agreed that the story was pro-fascist, around the time when it unambiguously portrayed "the military takes over the government with the express purpose of revenge-based warmongering" [disclaimer: my memory of a lot of the story is funny and I could have interpreted much of this incorrectly] as a good thing, but now that Eren is literally just trying to kill everyone, I think that take is a pretty hard sell.
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Dec 1, 2020 22:45
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HoneyBoy posted:Even if it had been portrayed as a good thing, I don't see how anyone (who actually read it) would outright castigate the military coup when the alternative was like, straight up generations of eugenics and mind control, as literal as you can be about robbing free will. Because metaphors, dude.
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Dec 1, 2020 23:24
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No Wave posted:Are there millions? I thought it would be a thousand at most. The "tens of millions" thing is actually something that King Fritz says. Just based on what we know about the dimensions of the Wall Titans and the approximate size of Eldia, it's unlikely that there are any more than 600,000 Wall Titans. Which is still an enormous number, of course, but, like, yeah. If we assume all of the Wall Titans are about 13meters wide based on their approximate height, a straight line of 600,000 of them, standing even just a little bit further apart than shoulder to shoulder, would make a line about one fifth as long as the Earth. Bleck fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Dec 31, 2020 |
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Dec 31, 2020 18:14
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RubberLuffy posted:Manga confirmed to finish up in April I just want to say that I forgot I opened this thread and I clicked to the tab after opening what I thought was the One Piece thread and saw this post and nearly had a heart attack
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Jan 5, 2021 06:03
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What is the Lelouch ending?
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Jan 8, 2021 13:41
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chiasaur11 posted:Eren set this whole thing up to make himself the villain to the world, then he dies on purpose to unite everyone as friends. Yeah, that'd be lame and lovely.
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Jan 8, 2021 14:11
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bees x1000 posted:I am by no means saying YAY RUMBLING. I am
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Jan 11, 2021 06:23
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Eren should win because it's the ending that makes sense for the story, but acknowledging this is not an ethical endorsement of his actions
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Feb 5, 2021 03:11
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Beefstew posted:The thing I'm dreading most is how obnoxious the fans will be for the next decade about this. hell of a thing to write directly after Beefstew posted:When the other two major endings that have been proposed are "Eren proves that genocide is right as long as you do it real hard and feel bad about it" and "Poor wittle Ewen didn't know what he was doing, it was all the mean slave girl's fault", I think this is easily the best option.
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Feb 6, 2021 07:36
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Armin saves everyone by talking about how nice it is to be alive would be a lame as hell ending and now I have extremely high hopes for the next chapter
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Feb 9, 2021 00:52
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how long until we're allowed to acknowledge that if this is how it actually ends then the series has flipped all the way back around to jingoism
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Feb 11, 2021 00:42
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serious gaylord posted:I mean have you actually read any of this? I sure did just read the past forty pages of all of the military children banding together and using their military training to kill a guy with a nuke
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Feb 13, 2021 01:35
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something tells me that "the only thing that can prevent total annihilation is having a skilled team of military kids" is not the Anti-War message you think it is
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Feb 13, 2021 01:38
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Asuron posted:trying to save everyone Bleck posted:something tells me that "the only thing that can prevent total annihilation is having a skilled team of military kids" is not the Anti-War message you think it is
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Feb 13, 2021 01:49
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Saagonsa posted:So is your issue with shonen having young characters, in general? Like I don't get it. here let me use as few words as possible: military, bad media where military good, bad
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Feb 13, 2021 01:52
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serious gaylord posted:I bet you think Starship Troopers is pro military too don't you. Starship Troopers manages to do what it does because it puts it's whole leg behind the kick of the Bad Ending - if Eren is actually defeated by Armin deciding to talk about how he likes being alive, then the story is, perhaps inadvertently, making the case that the consequences of ever-escalating fascism are avoidable as long as like believe in ourselves or whatever. I think it just kind of undercuts the whole "here's the endgame of fascism" thing to be like "unless you have a deus ex machina that you unlock by talking about how much you loved your dad."
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Feb 13, 2021 19:33
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Eustace posted:Im trying to understand your argument. First you said the story is jingoistic because characters with military training are the heroes and now youre saying that the anti war message is weak because the conflict is being resolved with dialogue? It's both - the conflict being "resolved" with "dialogue" is to mask the fact that the conflict is [apparently! There are still chapters left!] actually resolved via a show of force from military children. If Eren is the end result of fascism, what does it say that one of the things we needed to defeat him was A Twelve Year Old Girl With A Really Big Gun? What is the story trying to say by having what was by all accounts an unstoppable force be toppled this way? My stance here is that the story's anti-war theme is severely undercut if Eren actually loses, especially in these circumstances.
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Feb 13, 2021 20:27
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ImpAtom posted:Eren was not defeated by a really big gun. Assuming he is actually defected he was defeated by people actively rejecting his call to genocide and the fear of the other. Yes, but he was also literally defeated (again, possibly) by a really big gun. And then a child soldier that is a nuke. The intent of the characters is not in question, here - my issue is that the only people who were capable of physically actualizing their rejection of Eren's genocidal retribution are child soldiers (note that we get several scenes of other world militaries doing nothing at all to Eren, despite their best efforts). Even the Marleyans who climactically come to the aid of the Eldian military children and actually manage to accomplish anything are also military children. I think it should at least be acknowledged that, regardless of the author's intent or what flowery prose the characters use to refer to humanity's relationship to war, the story seems to holistically be poised to - perhaps inadvertently! - be saying that the only way to stop fascism is to have really good soldiers who are good at war. You know, child ones. I can't help but feel like that undercuts the message, just a tad.
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Feb 14, 2021 02:02
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ImpAtom posted:The protagonist being child soldiers is shown to be *unambiguously bad* The way to unambiguously show that child soldiers are bad would be to have the god-power child soldier who has internalized fascism succeed in destroying the world. Having a bunch of other child soldiers stop him makes it seem like being a child soldier is okay as long as you're doing the right thing with your child soldier training. The point is that it makes it ambiguous, which actually has a meaning other than emphasis, and that's a thing worth criticizing.
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Feb 14, 2021 02:30
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ImpAtom posted:Uh what the gently caress. No, the problem with child soldiers isn't that they may go crazy and murder everyone. It is that it is abusive and horrible and monstrous. It's both, obviously? Surely you can acknowledge that child soldiers existing at all is bad, and the fact that they would also go on to presumably kill other people is, also, bad? ImpAtom posted:What you are arguing is that it should ... what? Say that all child soldiers should be executed because they are irreparably broken and can only destroy? I'm arguing that, thematically, the ending to the story should follow through on showing the consequences of making people internalize fascist ideology (i.e Eren kills almost everybody). The ending that this chapter seems to suggest is in the cards will be that fascist ideology - that child soldiers - aren't really that bad as long as they fight for a good cause. I don't know where you're from, but in the country I live in, "war is an unavoidable part of humanity, and it is good and noble to be a soldier who sacrifices themselves for a just cause" is more or less exactly the rhetoric that our military uses for recruiting. I'll give you a hint to what our military has gone on to accomplish - it isn't anti-fascism.
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Feb 14, 2021 02:45
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ImpAtom posted:No, it isn't both. Child Soldiers are the victims of abuse and they are not beasts that need to be put down. The abuse they suffer is horrible but holy poo poo I can't believe you're unironically making the argument that they are better off dead. I'm... not? Are you assuming that I think the child soldiers should be killed because I said thematically it makes sense for Eren to win? Even though Eren's goal is to basically kill everybody but the child soldiers? Right after repeatedly, condescendingly, implying that I basically haven't been reading the story? ImpAtom posted:The manga literally addresses that mindset and how it is used to convince people to throw themselves into a meatgrinder for the people who exploit them. It is not what is being shown here and you have to ignore huge chunks of the manga to read it that way. The work should be examined holistically. Portraying military propaganda as a negative is arguably canceled out by then showing the heavily propagandized as the only tool that saves humanity from near extinction. It's like having a story where people develop a Death Star, while saying out loud "maybe this is too much power for humans to handle," and then showing the Death Star heroically blowing up Planet Bad Man. Again - it's kind of ambiguous. It undercuts itself. ImpAtom posted:That being said "being willing to fight against something terrible even if it costs your life" is actually something positive. Being manipulated by a racist imperialists military to do so is not, but that doesn't mean there is no inherent worth is choosing to stand up against something terrible even if it is at personal cost to you. "Just don't be propagandized," got it. Easy as pie. I'll let everyone know.
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Feb 14, 2021 03:14
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