What make you go "yeah, I got it now. Same."

[Rhaps]

When you were a reader and wasn't an author yet, what kind of plot point that make you roll your eyes and ask why didn't this character do this or do that?

But now as an author/writer, you get why they did it?

 

[Eldoria]

When you were a reader and wasn't an author yet, what kind of plot point that make you roll your eyes and ask why didn't this character do this or do that?

But now as an author/writer, you get why they did it?

Eren Yeager and Rumbling...​

As a reader, I initially tended to be a Yeagerist. I wanted to see dark fantasy fiction that was memorable and daringly different. Because from the very beginning, the author promised that, right from the very first chapter.

"Tatakae!" That's Eren Yeager's ideology. I believe that if Eren were consistent with his ideology, he should have launched a rumbling and wiped out the population outside Paradis Island. But—

That didn't happen as promised. The author chose to back away from that brutal premise. He reduced Eren to a slave to fate forced to commit atrocities to protect his friends, not out of an ideological struggle for survival, tatakae!

As a reader, I remain angry at how cowardly the author betrayed his narrative promise. Even now, I refuse to watch the final season of AoT.

But, as a niche author starting to write my own fiction, I can understand why the AoT author chose to back away from the consequences of his fictional premise. Furthermore, I also write quite sensitive, dark, and heavy dark fantasy fiction (not as brutal as AoT... but I think the level of darkness is slightly below AoT).

Writing dark fantasy fiction is indeed dark, not just the story. But the author also feels dark, uncomfortable, and even depressed, especially when writing a narrative about the darkness of the world. Furthermore, readers are also quite sensitive because they often touch on taboo issues in society.

I can understand that darkness can be a barrier for authors to write creatively according to their artistic vision. Especially when confronted by mainstream media... restrictions, censorship, narrative cuts, and even plot changes are almost inevitable.

I can understand why the author of AoT chose the safe path... he didn't want the rumbling narrative to glorify genocide, especially for the protagonist himself who committed it, which indirectly serves as the story's moral. He avoided this sensitive issue... especially since Japan is still remembered in several former colonial countries (especially Korea and China) for its war crimes during WWII.

So, changing the rumbling narrative from historical consequence to personal tragedy may have been just a safe way to avoid the issue. Finally, I understood the weight of the AoT author's choice only when I attempted to write a narrative with a similar theme.