ghostmartyr answered:

©willingness to face certain death is out of extreme nationalistic pride/glory - Grisha/Eldians. Because the warriors didn’t understand their enemy, or get to know the Scouting Legion long enough to take into account the sheer pragmatics, horrific selflessness the members choosing to embrace that ideology are capable of - willing to throw everything away for a victory/gamble the Scouts’re not sure they can attain/pay off? Also what’s your favorite moment in the Shiganshina Battle? Mine 77 & 80 ©Erwin: “You’re right. It doesn’t matter… All men eventually die… The people who have chose to walk the same path before us, meaningless as well? NO!! ABSOLUTELY NOT!!! It’s our action now that will give meaning to their efforts… the only one capable of paying them respect are us, the living… and entrust those next in line the task of giving meaning to our choice. And that’s the only way for us to oppose this cruel world! RAGE! SCREAM! FIGHT! My soldiers~…” -chapter 80-81. Because©

(Might still be a little jumbled, but I get the drift. That is an awesome speech.)

I think that Bertolt and Zeke have been living in a system that allows for so little free will that they have trouble believing in it even when it’s right in front of their faces. By the time he dies, Bertolt’s found relative peace in deciding that his actions have limited importance; this is just the way the world is. That’s counter to everything the Survey Corps fights for.

The Scouts fight against a norm that violates their sense of self. Bertolt’s path, and Zeke’s as well, follows the rules that other people gave them, and as distasteful as they find some of the things they’re doing, they believe that if they keep sailing down the stream, they’ll reach an end.

The spirit that the Survey Corps represents leads to death. Constantly. All of these ridiculous people just keep galloping to their deaths, seemingly heedless of common sense for the sake of some ideal they won’t be around to see fulfilled.

If you look at it objectively, how much sense does it really make? All of these people dying on the battlefield could have lived full lives if they’d never stepped outside the walls, but instead they choose this mess.

For someone like Bertolt, who saves his sanity by dismissing the option of free will, it makes no sense at all. For someone like Zeke, who’s only known a life of being someone’s pawn, it’s infuriating.

Favorite moment? Aha… If I were to slice any of the arc into pieces, 84 is my favorite, but that’s hardly a moment.

I think I’ll go with Levi ordering Erwin to give up his dream. Despite how it ends, there’s something soothing about seeing Erwin reclaim his heroism after chapters of denying that it ever existed.

