How do you think Ymir's idea/founding of Freedom in 89 connects or contributes thematically throughout the series and how it may come up in future chapters? Or what Isayama has left to address in these final arcs/chapters. Honestly I'd just love to read your thoughts/writings on the characters, the details you've noticed that are tying it all together and where it may end up. (not concrete predictions, your chapter 90 thoughts highlighted the joy in the spontaneity and odd choices the writing)

This question is my new favorite.

The intensely interesting thing about Ymir is that in her story, it is spelled out as explicitly as you ever could ask for that Paradis is her freedom.

Chronologically, at this point in the story, everyone is running around screaming over their home being destroyed. They’re buckling down and racing further inside the walls as fast as they can, filling their cage to max capacity and throwing people out to die so the rest of them can survive.

Ymir opens her eyes in this place, and she sees freedom. She’s alive, and she has her mind back, and there’s no one nearby who wants her dead. She can do whatever she wants, and it’s the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen.

That’s the vision we’re presented with as Paradis comes to grips with the fact that they’re hated by the entire world. Ymir doesn’t see the walls closing in; she looks up at the sky and finds life.

And she opens that statement with how little individual humans matter. They’re sort of meaningless, right? There’s no real value in any of her flailing, or anyone else’s.

Except when she reaches Paradis, she can choose.

She doesn’t matter. There’s no significance to her struggles.

She still has the power to do whatever the heck she wants.

That’s so cool.

What makes it cooler is that what she wants, over and over again, is to protect people. Does it Matter? No. But it matters to her. Historia matters to her. Sasha, Connie, and Reiner and Bertolt all matter to her.

And all of these people live in a world where they are so tiny that they can be smacked down in an instant. Some by titans, some by mean ol’ humans. The girl she’s in love with has a death wish and joins a military branch with the highest mortality rate. The two randoms she saves are alive to live out indentured servitude with a dash of genocide until death.



Ymir still finds personal value in keeping preserving the lives of people she cares for.

It’s particularly telling with Reiner and Bertolt.

She saves them from being executed, but Bertolt still dies his next time out. Reiner barely survives, and he’s now alone. There’s no great end game for them just because she gets them out of the most pressing sign of trouble.

She does it anyway. Even if it’s just earning her people one more day of life, that means something to her.

Ymir’s one of the smartest characters in the series when it comes to personal motivation and basic human emotion. She diagnoses and makes snide remarks about everyone’s issues as a character trait. She’s clever, and sees the big picture, and a whole lot of other smart things.

But there’s a reason that Historia has repeatedly called her simple. Her tactics aren’t about saving the world, or any deep, grand meaning. She just wants certain people to keep breathing. That’s how she ends up revealing her powers to two people who can turn her in (and to the Survey Corps, which never had the opportunity to turn into a problem, but could have easily headed that way), and it’s how Reiner and Bertolt survive to assist in slaughtering the comrades of people she cares for. Heck, it’s why she’s looking at a death sentence.

Ymir has the simple, straightforward strategy of a person who cares deeply, but lives so much in the moment that very basic flaws get pushed aside until the moment where it’s become a problem.

To put it in a way that makes this post easier to write, she’s grown into the kind of thinking that drives Eren in his early days. The difference is that it isn’t the consequences of impulses she can’t control; she’s looked at those impulses and decided that yeah, that’s what she wants to be doing.



That all works together to make her marvelously relevant to the recent happenings.

In my chapter post, I bring up how the question of what will end up winning at the end of this series. Will fighting for your friends be rewarded, or will learning to make hard sacrifices? Or will both those choices end in death, eliminating the conflict.



Everyone cares about this question, right? They’re soldiers, brandishing the flag of humanity’s best qualities and fighting for them. The motives that fuel their cause are never without an answer, but they’re still human. They are thinking of the larger picture, and they do believe it matters, and they want to do the Right thing–but they want their friends to be okay, too. Enter question marks.

Then you have Ymir.



Ymir doesn’t give a damn about that question. She has her answer. She’s going to look after her and hers, and nothing exists that can change that priority.

From a series perspective, that’s incredibly neat.

She’s uniquely personal in all of her experiences. The selfish whims that get constant censure from older and wiser parties are what she’s chosen to build her life around.

What makes that more interesting is that, due to the connection her arc has with Historia, you see the direct way that ripples. Historia happens to be the kind of person who wants to look after orphans and keep people safe–but the only reason that gets discovered is thanks to her deciding she’s not willing to sacrifice her autonomy or her friend.

The only reason anyone survives that is because Eren wants to try believing in himself, and downs the armor vial.

Out of that mess, Historia claims her crown, bringing a peaceful end to the coup, through her personal desire to settle things with her father herself.

Ymir’s particular brand of selfishness is the inspiration for Paradis’ current stability.

There’s this line at the end of the Fellowship of the Ring. Gimli, Legolas, and Aragorn stand on the river’s shore, contemplating their very recent failures. Their ring bearer has chosen to go on without them. The fate of Middle Earth is seemingly beyond their hands.

“Then it has all been in vain. The fellowship has failed.”

“Not if we hold true to each other.”



Then, you know, holding true to each other leads to there being a Middle Earth left for the ring bearer to try saving.

On the surface, the Serum Bowl, following up and concluding Erwin’s arc, is about adhering to the responsibility the Scouts have as humanity’s, and learning to let go despite the great personal agony.

That lesson is presented, and it’s made very clear that all of its good sense loses in the face of how much Erwin means to Levi (and arguably how much Armin means to Eren). Levi, who is responsible for dragging Erwin back to the side of the greater good, flies right in the opposite direction.

So we’ve got all of this angst for easy pickings, and I think a… possible key concept skates on through without standing out too much:

How much do individual lives matter?



After the 104th makes its way back to the walls post-kidnapping arc, Eren looks around at all of the lives sacrificed to get him back. It isn’t the first time, and it might not be the last.

Jean, being Jean, adds his two cents.

“Whether you’re really worth paying that kind of price… is something I still don’t know. As to whether the people who were killed to get you back died for nothing… That depends on you now, doesn’t it?”

–51



It’s a fair statement, if a bit demanding. That’s what Eren’s position means, though. He’s humanity’s hope thanks to his abilities. That’s why so many people die trying to get him back; there’s a real chance he can do something against the titans in a way no one’s been able to for a hundred years.



Of course, it turns out, smack dab in the middle of Historia’s arc, that the powers Eren has could be more useful in someone else’s hands, and he self-destructs over his appalling lack of value.

But the part about it being Historia’s arc is important, not just a side effect of me name-dropping her at every opportunity.

In the moment Eren tells her to eat him and save humanity, he’s thinking of himself as a tiny human being with no significance. He isn’t humanity’s great hope; he’s one more instrument keeping them chained. There’s no reason for him to stick around keeping that up.



Historia rejects that on every level.

She doesn’t save Eren because she’s thinking about humanity and what he can do for them.

She saves him because he’s her friend, and she’s his. She saves him because in a world full of terror and trauma too big for either of them to bear, Eren’s emotions reach her, and it doesn’t matter what he isn’t. He is her friend. He can be insignificant, and ineffective, and sure, maybe someone else could do his job a little better than he can, but Eren, as a person, is still valuable.

Flying further down the road, that’s a similar philosophy to what his mother tells Shadis.

“He’s already great. Because he was born… into this world.”

–Carla, 71

The desperate need to Matter isn’t a requirement. A human’s worth is argued for through their ability to be alive.

In the huge, ongoing fight for humanity, the lesser concept of humans is not treated as lesser. Humans make up humanity, and each one has a life of value that can’t be replicated or repudiated.

Bringing this back into a post that has, like, a point or something, that presents a new side to the argument of individuals versus the world; without individuals, there can’t be a world.



And once you’ve gone there, you bring in the FMA concept of humans continually looking out for each other on a person-by-person basis, which eventually turns into everyone being excellent to each other and etc.–

–Which finally brings us back to Ymir.

Who owns looking after the little guy.

A pastime that gives Paradis a Queen, and keeps the First King’s philosophy separate from the Founding Titan for the first time in over a hundred years.

Um. I think that’s it. Thanks a million for the compliment and the ask, and pardon the ludicrous bouncing around this post does.

