Regiment Registry || Issue 3

𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐑𝐎𝐃𝐔𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍

Hello again! Thanks to those of you who made it through my first two ridiculously long blogs for this challenge xdxd. This time I don't have nearly as much to say, so fear not! I promise to make the next few answers of a much more palatable length :joy:

**WARNING!**

This post will contain manga spoilers beyond this point, so continue reading at your own risk.

𝐐𝟑. 𝐖𝐡𝐨 𝐢𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐟𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐞 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐰𝐡𝐲 𝐝𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐡𝐢𝐦?

Ugh. Listen, I know that I'm part of a very small minority in the AOT fandom here, but I absolutely despise Zeke Yeager. Like, to the point that I feel this immediate visceral repulsion at anything involving him. Call me dramatic, but its just my opinion 🤷‍♂ :joy:

Why do I feel that way? Well, of course there is the one glaringly obvious reason that he was directly responsible for Erwin's death. An unforgivable crime.

But I also just objectively hate him in general. That's not to say I think he is a *bad character.* Zeke is actually very well written, interesting, necessary, yadda yadda yadda. I agree. The problem for me is that I just find him unrelatable and unredeemable. Much like my boy Erwin, he is a brilliant strategist; however, he KNOWS he is smart and, more infuriatingly, seems to assume that others are just so far beneath him intellectually that he is living on a different plane of existence. He doesn't treat the people he interacts with as his equals, they are pawns on a chessboard. It is an analogy that I often see applied to Erwin (see my previous post for a rebuttal to this characterization), but its much more accurate for Zeke who feels no hesitation to sacrifice any number of lives to achieve his goals nor regret for any of his atrocious actions. After all, Zeke believes that his goals are simply so unquestionably correct that he owes no justification for how he gets there. Those who would question his choices simply don't know as well as he does.

And I really cannot overlook just how cruel many of his choices truly were. The man literally ed eugenics and forced sterilization. That's PRETTY DIFFICULT to defend as a reasonable strategy for protecting the rest of the world from the powerof the Titans possessed by the subjects of Ymir. Its still genocide, just at a slightly slower pace than killing everyone outright because it will technically take 1 generation to wipe out all remaining Eldians. I see his plan defended as the "more humane" option over the rumbling, but bruh... that's not a very strong argument when you think about it. :skull:

He absolutely does not care about the Eldians literally at all or have any regard for the values of any lives outside of his own. And the amount of times I see him compared favorably to Erwin is just infuriating. To review: Erwin lead armies of willing volunteers in pursuit of truth and freedom, inspiring loyalty and dedication against seemingly insurmountable odds. Zeke repeatedly used his titan ability to forcibly transform unwilling Eldians into pure Titans and thereby turn them into weapons against their own comrades to fight his battle for him. (Smart? Sure, its a sound strategy. But just indefensibly disgusting.) And I'm not gonna lie, the way Zeke has pretty much become a walking meme in the fandom and the manner in which he is frequently presented is pretty telling...

OK, sorry, that ended up being WAY longer than I expected. Moving on! :sweat_smile: :sweat_smile: :sweat_smile:

𝐐𝟒. 𝐖𝐡𝐨 𝐢𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐟𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐟𝐞𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐞 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫? 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐫?

Does genderbent Erwin Smith count?

I'm gonna be totally honest here, my devotion to my one favorite character runs so deep that I don't really have very strong feelings one way or the other toward any other characters in particular. I mean, there are plenty that I "like" but the threshold for where a character crosses into the realm of favorite for me is just so high at this point that it's practically of unattainable.

That being said, could I possibly include Hange into this category? Their gender is technically unspecified, but as they are often depicted in a more feminine way and frequently interpreted as female, I think this would be the most sensible place to talk about them given the binary nature of the questions. Anyway, I simply adore all the Survey Corps veterans and, as much as I hate certain tropes, the whole 'quirky scientist' thing definitely resonated with me right away when I first started watching AOT. But they received so much more development to their character outside of this as the story progressed that I didn't really expect at the outset. I will say that I don't believe they were a very good Commander compared to their predecessor, but their own insecurities in this regard are part of what also made them all the more relatable and so I don't hold these shortcomings against them.

𝐐𝟓. 𝐖𝐡𝐨 𝐢𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐟𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐟𝐞𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐞 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫? 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐫?

There isn't really one who immediately sticks out in my mind as being my least favorite. I find Sasha to be pretty bland most of the time, I guess? Maybe I'm missing whatever it is that others see in her (beyond food jokes), because I know quite a few people who rank her as one of their favorites. But I just never really found her to be all that important or in any way compellingly written. I don't know if that really qualifies as "dislike" for me - more like indifference.

#RRC2K21

Art credit: @maino_merry on twitter