I stopped after season 1 when it was revealed that the walls were made of titans...because reasons. I told my brother then and there, there would either be no explanation for this or it would be so asinine/convoluted that it wouldn't be worth pursuing. I really don't understand why outside of schlock titles, people can't write fairly simple, straightforward, and sweet, tragic, or epic stories. Instead we've been getting for over a decade, we get this crap where the writers think they can intelligently subvert the audiences expectations. Then again I find the whole notion of subverting audiences expectations patently overrated. Wtf exactly are you subverting and why should I care? Can you just deliver us a stories where the motivations of characters are guessable and things don't veer off in a direction the story shouldn't be going?
I'm going to pimp my own thread on Subverting Expectations:
Now, the long and the short of why authors do this is because of multiple reasons:
- Desperation. These days, with the prevalence of the internet, there's this desire to keep ahead of your fan theories. So in order to do that, the only way to operate is to alter the organic growth of a story to make it something it isn't.
- Hubris. Authors feel like their stories need to be grander, more complicated and 'deeper' and defy genre conventions. The reality is that since antiquity, every story has been told. But instead of combining different elements, like cooking, they decide to try fucktarded combinations that don't work, like adding vinegar to ice cream. Its idiotic, but it makes them think they're smart.
- Lack of Creativity. Its very easy to make a mystery. It is very difficult to solve a mystery. Modern stories are composed with a need to explain everything, and this leads to half-assed writing.
- Lack of Planning. Mysteries and stories and series are usually planned. More often than not, due to unexpected popularity and desires for constant sequels or to keep a story going as long as possible, things are done on the fly. These lead to disjointed narratives.
- Contempt for the audience. There's a very big resistance to giving the audience what they want. This stems from contempt of the audience and the lack of desire to provide for them.
Subverting expectations relies on taking something away, but also bringing it back. Nearly all authors and creatives who subvert expectations do the first half, but rarely the second.
For example, the Titans in the walls was explained, but the reason why such a powerful entity put them there and allowed his people slaughtered wholesale not. The Titans in the walls were put there by the founding titan, who, for no real reason mentioned, abandoned his people and basically put them in the internment camp. In the thread, we refer to the original founding titan as King Cuck, because he went a pure pacifism route that literally makes no sense. He believes his people the
jews eldians, deserve to die, so he lets them get devoured, suffered and tortured by a nation called Marley, which he could crush at any moment. The walls in the titans were a deterrent so that if Marley ever fucked with them, he'd unleash them and destroy the world. Then when Marley attacked he did nothing.
The author attempts to portray him as sympathetic, but it laughably backfires completely as when him and his whole dumbass family gets killed was rightly deserved. Also for some reason, every single inheritor of the founding titan got his re.tarded vision of pacifism and the founding titan NEVER told anyone why he was willing to let his people live in perpetual suffering. When asked, it was basically 'trust me, its better this way'. How getting devoured alive, getting memory raped and genocided and executing anyone who went against his will remains a fucking mystery to this day. He didn't tell them because Isayama didn't know why and to this day it remains a huge plot hole.
I know you didn't follow the series, but Marely is the nation oppressing the island. They have internment camps that are literal concentration camps, guards willing to rip little girls apart with dogs, transform eldians into Titans to eat their kinsman and the all-powerful founder doing NOTHING about it.
In truth, Marley deserves to be annihilated completely. Isayama tries to portray it as black and white, but has hilariously failed so terribly.
And they didn't.
They first had to overthrow the monarchy which took for fucking ever. I had started to write a summarized version of events, but even that was too long because there was so much shit in that arc (both figuratively, and literally) that it was like five paragraphs long, and not even done yet.
Anyways after they did that, they finally tried going to the basement, but got ambushed by Bertholdt, Reiner, and Zeke, and had a fucking long battle, and then had a long fucking slap fight over who to save after Erwin got his side taken out by a rock, and Armin got turned into charcoal.
We finally got to the basement around like chapter 100 I think, and all that was in there was a photograph, and the revelation that were people living outside the Walls. That would normally be a huge deal, but the characters just reacted with dull surprise like they usually do, so the impact was greatly lessened.
The problem is that we already knew people were outside the walls with all the hints he dropped. So it wasn't much of a surprise. The problem is he dragged it out for so long that it was obvious he had no idea what was outside the walls.
Then he did a time skip because he had no idea how to continue from the point he left off. This lead to a 50% drop in readership. The anime is only popular because its fucking gorgeous compared to the manga. A majority of the manga has been a delaying tactic to try and figure out what to do with it. Isayma has been struggling in the dark for years now.
