I have so many problems with Attack on Titan, but right now I want to talk about the illogical world-building.
Giant creatures who only eat humans and only have one 'Achilles Heel' to take them out. Got it.
And you want to fight them with swords?
How did two swords win? They went through the trouble to build a whole, physics defying harness contraption to make them fly?
There were so many other weapons they could have used if they couldn't get to 'the weak spot.'
Step One, discover electricity. Step Two, build a goddamn fence.
Do they breathe? I don't remember, but poisonous gas. (Not in a civilian setting obviously and you'd need a breathing apparatus.)
Invent the flamethrower.
Too much to ask? Fine, here's some less technical solutions:
Caltrops.
Boiling oil poured over the side of the Wall.
Sulfuric acid and other dangerous chemical compounds that will break down organic matter. (There's gotta be a chemist somewhere here.)
Put spikes on the Wall.
Survey Corps all gathered together in a concentrated group to lure the titans in to a trap...coulda used that tactic to dig a pit trap, no?
Set the titans on fire.
Let's also address the fact the Survey Corps was completely useless by existing as the living embodiment of Einstein's definition of insanity. “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” That 'brilliant idea' of Armin's where they travel to Shiganshina at night because the titans are less active..............you're telling me....that in a hundred years...nobody else thought of that?!
The government and public were right; they were a strain on resources and brought little benefit to society. If they wanted to be useful, the purpose of the expeditions should've been more forage/hunting based in order to bring food back to a starving populace. And there would have been food. The people of Wall Maria had to abandon their homes within a twelve hour or less span, so there is no conceivable way everyone could have brought all their livestock with them. Survey Corps could've been protecting civilians as they rounded up lost cattle, pigs, chickens, sheep, etc. And Sasha might’ve gone down in history as the greatest Scout of all time.
Another thing that doesn't add up: the textile industry. With as much land as they had, the pasture land food-clothing ratio was not adequate for the population.
There are not enough cows!
Based on available materials, I assume the ODM harness and boots are made of leather. With the limited space for cattle, that supply could not meet the demand at the rate the Scouts were being killed off. (They were definitely recycling dead people's boots and gear.) That's not even taking into account regular people who need footwear or the countless other things that require leather: saddles and other horse tack, gloves, tools, heavy protective aprons for factory workers or smiths, etc.
Cotton requires a long growing season. Do they have that? Linen comes from flax seed. You'd need space to grow that and flax doesn't have much nutritional use other than soup. Same goes for jute. Wool is a possibility, but is everything made of wool? What about silk? Do they have silk worms? What are the wealthy wearing?
We can probably rule out synthetic and mineral fabrics as I don't think they have the technology.
Natural resources: They use firearms and cannons, which means there has to be a sulfur mine somewhere to make gunpowder. Except naturally-occurring sulfur is most commonly found near volcanic regions. Volcano on that island? Maybe, if sulfur was one of the 'resources' the Marley people were after.
Where are they getting the alcohol? There's a food shortage and no sane nation is going to allow citizens to plant vineyards on land that can be used for crops and they're not going to use grain for beer when it could be used for bread. I get there was corruption in the government, but limited space is limited space.
Another thing I would like to point out is no matter how many times the Founding Titan suppressed knowledge of the outside world, any mathematician with enough determination could have gone rogue and calculated the size of their world. Despite what we were told in kindergarten, people did not 'discover' the earth was round when Columbus 'discovered' America and nobody believed the earth was flat. (He also didn't discover America, but that's not what we're here for.) Ancient Greek mathematician, librarian, astronomer, scholar Eratosthenes of Cyrene determined the circumference of the earth by comparing the sun's position in the sky in relation to two different points on earth.
He was off by 2%.
Why is this important? The old order of the Walls was very much greed-based. When word of exactly how much land (and wealth) they were missing out on got out, the merchant guilds would have had their own coup against the king.
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Shingeki no Kyojin headcanons: 104th training corps (College AU)
Hello, Postmodernbeing here. This time I wanted to write about things that I actually know, since I’m a college student and I’m studing History and Social Sciences I found myself wondering about what would the 104th training corps focus their studies on if all of them had chosen humanities as their career. I hope you find this funny and at least a bit accurate.
IMPORTANT: I do not own Shingeki no Kyojin, only these HCs are my own. // Might contain a few spoilers from the manga. // English is not my first language and I study uni at Latin America, so scientifical terms/words/concepts may vary. Anyhow, I thank you for reading and for your patience.
Eren Jaeger
He’s passionate about Military History, not to be confused with history of army. Eren’s rather focused in strategies, weapons and semiotics involved in military speech.
First started with books about great wars in modern era. The use of certain weapons took him by surprise due the technological development.
Then he took classes about discourse analysis, semiotics and such, and felt inspired by the discourse reflected in emblems, uniforms, flags, etc.
Eren doesn’t really have a preference between occidental or oriental, North or South, Modern or Ancient settings. He would simply devour all the books that deal with military strategy and warlike conflicts. Although he has more experience and information about great wars in modern era.
He’s fascinated with the inexhaustible human desire of freedom and the extent that it can reach. This fascination might not be very healthy, he concludes.
Also, finds a cruel beauty in violence when showed in freedom and ideals are protected over one’s own life. But he won’t tell his classmates or professors. He knows is a controversial opinion for he’s still aware the implications of massive conflicts and the abuse of power.
One thing led to another, Eren is now taking classes and reading about philosophy in war and anthropological perspectives about violence through time.
He’s so into social movements besides his main interest in college: “No one’s really free until all humanity is”, that’s his life motto pretty much.
Due his readings and researches he decided it was important to develop a political stance about the world’s problems. Eren strongly believes all lives worth the same, but systems and nations had imposed over others and vulnerated other human's lives.
Yes, Eren is anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist.
Mikasa Ackerman
Asian Studies Major / History Minor.
She thinks by studying these degrees, she pays honor to her heritage. Specially to her mother. Her family is the proudest for Mikasa is also the best student in her whole generation.
Mikasa received a scholarship thanks to Azumabito family, who are co-founders of an academic institution dedicated to Asian historical and cultural research. She might as well start working when she graduates.
Although she’s passionate about Japan’s history, she has written a few articles and essays about Asian Studies themselves and the importance of preserving but also divulging by means of art and sciences.
In her essays and research work, she likes to employ tools from many disciplines since she strongly believes all humanities and social sciences serve the very same purpose at scrutinize the social reality all the same. Might as well use demographics, ethnology, sociology, philosophy, anthropology, archeology, and so on. For it proves to bring light into questions that history by itself could answer unsatisfactorily (in Mikasa’s opinion).
Even her professors wonder how she manages to organize that much information and pull it off successfully. She might as well be more brilliant than a few PhD’s students.
Armin Arlert
Prehistoric studies / Archeology
He’s so into the studies about the prehistoric humans and routes of migration.
Passionate about the ocean and natural wonders since kid, Armin believed his career would be environmentalist or geoscience related.
That was the agreement he had with his grandad since middleschool, until he read Paul Rivet’s “The Origins of the American Man” book and captured him thoroughly. The way the book explained logically the diverse theories about global migration and enlisted the challenges of modern archeology -for there are numerous mysteries- simply devoured his conscience.
He knew from the books he’d read that most evidence of the first settlements are deep under dirt or far away in the ocean whose level has risen over the centuries leaving primitive camps – and answers – unreachable.
That’s the reason he is so eager to study and give his best to contribute both archeology and history disciplines. Also, he’ll forever love the ocean and nature, just leave him do all the fieldwork, please.
Jean Kirstein
History of industry / Industrial heritage / Historical materialism
Jean first started interested in capitalist industries and production development in first world countries. Kind of rejected other visions and explanations since he’d read about positivism studies.
His interest in such matters started when he was a just boy. He often found himself wondering how things were made and that question captured him ever since. As he grew up, he realized that machines and industrial processes were highly involved in the most mundane objects creation.
Nonetheless, he learnt that not always the best machinery was used, nor the best work conditions were available for mass production. From that moment he’d started to read about the First Industrial Revolution and his mind just took off with questions. Invariably, he learned about labour struggle and the transforming power due workforce.
Between his readings and university classes, he’d knew more about labour movements, unions. And in the theoretical aspect, he'd learned about historical materialism analysis.
One could say that Jean possesses a humanistic vision of the implications in mass production under capitalist system along history and nowadays.
Marco Bodt
Royalty's history / Medieval Studies
I wanted to keep his canonical fascination to royalty and the best way to do that was including Medieval Studies.
Marco would study since the fall of Roman Empire until the latest gossip of royal families all across Europe.
Might get a bit of Eurocentric with his essays but in real life discussions he’s always open to debates about decolonization. He has even read Frantz Fanon books and possesses a critical thinking about colonial countries and their relations with the so named third world.
Nevertheless, Marco finds a strange beauty in the lives of monarchs and he’s interested in study from their education, hobbies, strategies, relationships, everything.
I’d say that his favorite historical period is probably the establishment of the descendants of the barbarian peoples in the new kingdoms such as the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Franks, Vandals, Huns, Saxons, Angles and Jutes (holy shit, they're a lot).
Because this would transcend as the beginning of his favorite matter of analysis.
Sasha Braus
History of gastronomy, development of cooking, antropology and archeological studies.
Sasha’s interested in the history that shows human development of food and cooking. She finds wonders when she inquires into cultural aspects from the first farming till modern artistic expressions that would involve food.
Such as gastronomy. But her attention got caught in literature’s food representation too, with its symbols and allegories, also in paintings that belong in still life movement, but also Sasha finds interest when food is used as rhetorical devices (for example: the apple in Adam and Eve’s myth).
She’s curious about primitive systems of irrigation, cultivation, food distribution, adaptation of wild species; as well as the domestication of animals, the diversification of the diet and its link with sedentary life, as well as the subsequent division of labor once the need for food was assured in humanity’ first cities.
Sasha’s convinced that alimentation is the pilar of civilization as we know it. For it involves cultural, artistic, economic, emotion and social aspects. Food is a microcosm of analysis of humanity.
Sasha hasn’t a favorite historical period or setting. But she definitely has a special fascination for first civilizations and their link with alimentation. Also, she likes to study the development gastronomy in occident world around different regions, social classes, and time.
Although, let’s be honest, Sasha would devour (lol, couldn’t help it) ANY book about agriculture, cattle raising, cooking or gastronomy.
Connie Springer
Micro-history / History of everyday life.
Connie loves his hometown, has a deep respect to his family and traditions. That’s why he finds himself wondering about the most ordinary events that developed in his dear Ragako.
The book “The Cheese and the Worms” by Carlo Ginzburg changed the way he used to understand history and capture him into meaningful discussions about what he learned was called micro-history.
His favorite quote from that book is: “As with language, culture offers to the individual a horizon of latent possibilities—a flexible and invisible cage in which he can exercise his own conditional liberty.”
Once deep into studying the Italian historians and their works, he decided to give it a try, and ever since he’s mesmerized with the mundane vestiges craftsmen that worked in his village left behind.
Connie’s parents are so proud of him and his achivements, but mostly because he became a passionate academic over human and simple matters, (so down to earth our big baby).
His attitude towards his essays and research works truly shows his great heart and humility. Connie is aware that academic works have no use if they are not meant to teach us about ourselves too and current times.
Empathy and hard work, that’s how one could describe the elements that integrate his recently started academic career.
Historia Reiss
Political History / Statistician
Her father’s family pressured Historia since she was a little girl into studying History just like his dad. For he’s a very famous historian that had made important researches and books about the greatest statesmen of Paradis.
She thought in numerous ways that she could sabotage her career or study any other career without her family’s consent and end with her linage of historians. But she ended up enrolling in tuition and so far, she is trying her best in her studies. Historia swears this is the right path for her.
But don’t let the appearances fool you, even thought she studies her father’s career and the very same branch of history’s discipline, she has her own critical sense and she’s so talented on her own, very meticulous with her research papers.
Definitely wants a PhD about women, power and politics. We stand a Gender Studies Queen.
Her complementary disciplines are Political Sciences. Historia also has a talent for philosophy and owns a diary with all her thoughts about them. She hopes one day she would write a book or a manifesto about an innovative methodology for research and teaching History of Politic Thinking.
Ymir
Religion’s History / Theology
Just like Historia, Ymir was pressured into studying History. And if she’s totally honest, she still has some doubts about it. Even if she couldn’t imagine herself studying anything else.
Anyways, Ymir thought that she could build her career around topics that she enjoys. So, she finally chose theology for unusual reasons.
Her classmates had grown up in religious families or had experience studying the doctrines they practiced. But she, being an agnostic, found satisfaction in unraveling belief systems in different cultures and time periods.
Albeit she studies in Paradis’ University, she currently has the opportunity of taking an academic exchange at Marley’s University. This only made Ymir more conflicted about her future, for she wants to stay (near Historia) but she’s aware that Marley would offer her more academic opportunities for her specialization.
Nowadays she’s working in some collaborative research paper with some people from Mythological Studies from the Literature department. She’s nailing it, writing some historical studies about titans in Greek mythology and its impact in shaping neoclassical poetry. Her brains ugh, love her.
Reiner Braun
Official History / Biographies of heroes and great wars.
His mother convinced him with numerous books about great national heroes, but mostly because she knew that would mean sure job to her son. All political administration in every level requires of an official chronicler.
When he started his college courses, Reiner felt motivated and he was actually convinced that he had the vocation. But the more he read the less sure he felt that the academic world was for him. He wondered if he made the right choice. If he did it for him or for his mother.
Stories and myths about heroes have always cheered him up. That gave him purpose and consoled him when feeling down. Or at least it was like that when younger. Reiner truly didn’t feel like himself when regretting his choices, but he couldn’t help it for he was changing in more than a way.
That’s why he decided to experiment with other disciplines and with time he would find joy in historical novels. He would analyze them just as good as a litterateur and research about historical context in the written story AND study the artwork’s context itself.
His favorites theorical books are: “Historical Text as Literary Artifact” by Hayden White and Michel de Certeau’ “The Writing of History”.·
Heroes stories would always accompany him, just differently now.
Bertolt Hoover
History of mentalities / Les Annales
Intimate relationships, basic habits and attitudes. / Culture
Bertie has always been a much reticent and shy guy. As he grew up, he consolidated his sullen personality, but maintained a friendly attitude towards anyone who needed him. That’s why he thought that the priority in his studies was to be at the service of his classmates.
So, although he was passionate about research and was a fan of the French Les Annales current, he considered his mission to be in the Archive. As a cataloger, organizer and curator of ancient documents.
But the ways of History are always mysterious, and Doctor Magath showed him that other way of being was possible. Before Bertolt picked his specialty, he met Theo Magath, a professor who recently had finished writing a book: “The Idea of Death in Liberio’s Ghetto in Marley During its War Against Eldia (Paradis)” (long-ass titles are historians specialty btw). After Magath ended his book’ presentation, Bertolt reached him. They talked for hours and finally, he felt inspired into pursuing his true passion. Magath gifted him “The Historian’s Craft” by Marc Bloch as a way to reminding him his way.
By the time Bertolt took History of Mentalities as optional class, he already had some basic notions about Les Annales, Lucien Febvre, Marc Bloch, Fernand Braudel, Jacques Le Goff and such.
Being the gentle giant he is, Bertolt finds joy in reading about different lifestyles in diverse cultures. He constantly wonders about the origin of social constructs and the way they shape thinking as much as identity.
This boy is a wonder, he might not be the best in oral presentations or
extracurricular activities but sure as hell he’ll graduate with honors.
Annie Leonhart
Oral history, about institutions. Particularly, police and justice system in early XXs.
Albeit she got into the same University than Bertolt and Reiner, even shared classes and hopes, Annie regularly felt disconnected from her studies. With time she realized it wasn't due her career itself but rather because of the currents that her professors had suggested her taking. Until now.
Talking with Hitch and Marlow about their doubts concerning subjects and departments it came up the topics of history and present time but also oral history. She’d never heard something like that before. So, that very same week, Annie started searching for information about that.
She ended up with more questions: is it all of this just academic journalism? Or maybe sociology? When we can talk about regular history and when it starts being present time? If she introduces interviews due oral history, then that makes it an interdisciplinary work? Which are the best systems for analyzing data? Definitely, she’ll need help from anthropology and sociology departments if she wants to keep going.
Contrary to her initial prognostic, philosophy and history of historic writing became her new allies, and the text “Le temps présent et l'historiographie contemporaine” (Present Time and Contemporary Historiography) by Bédarida among others, provided Annie another perspective.
Regarding her favorite topics, she wouldn’t say that she selected them freely. They were just practical preferences. For institutions own extensive archives and numerous functionaries. One way or another, she ended up tangled in judicial system and police issues.
With new tools and object for studying, one could find Annie having a blast as detective too. Even if her academic essays focus on institutions’ history and configuration, she’s also working in corruption and more. She doesn’t do it because she believes it’s the right thing, but besides, the thrill of the tea is spicy. Although she won’t admit it.
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