Would love to hear your thoughts on the similarities and differences between Marlowe and Eren. It's even lampshaded in-universe about how they resemble each other/are the same type of person. Marlow's more rigid/lawful in his self-righteousness than Eren I suppose?

They’re similar in that they don’t need the acceptance of the people around them to strive for a better world. When Annie says people like Marlowe are special, she’s specifically addressing that he has strong enough convictions that the world’s flow isn’t enough to make him back down from his principles. He has his own mind, and outside influences can change his thoughts on how to act on them, but they can’t take that earnest force of will away.

Outside that, he and Eren have different things that bother them: Eren thinks humans should be free. Marlowe thinks that humans should be just.

Both he and Eren are very aware of the complacent faults that humans have gotten themselves into, and have an active interest in defeating the evil that’s put humans in those cages. They just each care differently about which part of that statement matters.

Marlowe rejects corruption, and wants to restore humans to what they should be by rooting it out, while Eren is focused on expanding the cramped world that humanity’s been thrown into.

Rigid is a good word for Marlowe, I think. Besides all the tiny personality things that make them separate people, the main difference between Eren and Marlowe is the focus on the interior versus exterior.

Marlowe’s lofty aims for humanity are designed around the world they live in, initially. Annie and the Survey Corps happen, but on his own devices, he starts out wanting to fix something that’s broken inside a structured environment.

Eren isn’t so hung up on direct social reform. He cares about it, and definitely wants humans to be better than what they are, but he believes that improvement will come when you tear down the walls impeding them.

It’s a little like Lelouch vs. Suzaku in Code Geass. Suzaku wants to change the system from within, and Lelouch wants to burn the system to the ground.

…That’s a more extreme example, since Lelouch’s beliefs come with the added bonus of a very bitter vendetta, but the point is that it’s a question of the preference of reform or revolution.

Eren favors revolution, and Marlowe starts out siding with reform.

Thank ye for the ask.

