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seasonsrpg Everybody's "writing a novel".
Gabi didn't arrive in Ellipsa with much. Besides some clothes, all she had to her name when she arrived was some writing materials such as pens, pencils, paper and an old, half-broken typewriter. Along with it, she has a box that she keeps tied closed with a small yellow ribbon. Inside the box are her personal writings, a mix of types and handwritten. What follows are those writings and any progress she manages to make on them during her time in Ellipsa.
Book 1
Title
"The Battle of Heaven and Earth" (Maybe? It's still a little too specific, but everything kinda...leads to it, I guess)
"The Power of the Titans" (I think this is closest....?)
"The Curse of the Titans" (This sounds like the name for a fantasy novel or something.)
"The History of the Eldian Empire" (Not really what it's about....)
"The History of the Marleyan-Paradis War" (Closer, but is that a little too dry?)
How have I written this much and still don't have a title?! How is a title THIS hard to come up with!? This is so annoying, I just need to pick something so I stop thinking about this. I dunno, what if I just called it "The Attack Titan" or something. The Attack Titan -- Attack...
Wait.
Shingeki no Kyojin....
Oh shit that's kinda good.
Foreword
That lie was one of convenience - people with great power told it, because the lie let them accrue more power. People with little power told the lie, because the lie let them look down on those with no power. People with no power told the lie, because the lie let them believe they may one day escape their powerlessness. The world believed the lie because the lie let them sink all of their hatred into an island of devils.
As it always does, the truth eventually had its day, and that lie evolved from a convenience into a self-fulfilling prophecy. The culmination of that prophecy was the man named Eren Jeager and he wielded the weapon the world had feared for so long, a fear born of the lie that only became a reality because of that same lie. And the world nearly paid the price for that lie with total destruction.
Here, today, on the other side of the unbelievable amount of death and destruction caused by that lie, it is our duty as those that remain to do all we can to ensure that another lie like that is never allowed to take root in our society. To rebuild our future, we must be honest about our past. What follows is an accounting of the events that led to the day our world almost ended, written by one of the heroes who helped us narrowly avoid it. Every last one of us has an obligation to unflinchingly confront our past, look our lies and hatred in the eye and then leave them all in the past, where they belong, if we're to avoid repeating our mistakes.
- Nicklas Muller
(I still kind of can't believe President Muller wrote a foreword for me. I just sent him a copy of what I had and wrote him asking if he had access to any Marleyan military archives I could use to help and he not only sent me copies of what he had, went to the extra effort to write something himself! Feels like there's a lot of extra pressure on me to make sure this thing is good, now, but...I think I kinda prefer it that way. I think something like this should feel kinda scary to write.)
Outline
- King Fritz the 145th
- The Tybur Family
- The Fabrication of Helos
- Retreat to Paradis
- The threat of the Rumbling
- The Vow to Renounce War
- King Fritz's Roar
I gotta start here, cause this is basically what led to everything (unless I wanna go all the way back to the Founder Ymir, which.......I don't, thanks for asking!). What's left of Marley's military archives didn't really have much outside of the propaganda version of history. At the very least, I was able to find a transcription of Willy Tybur's play, which is really good, 'cause my memory of that night is one long awful exploding blur at this point. What sucks is that besides interviewing the Scouts, that's pretty much all I've got. Turns out that since they just passed everything down through the Warhammer Titan, the Tyburs didn't write anything down! And now they're all dead, so I can't exactly go interview them.
Maybe there's something more I could use from Karl Fritz's side, some kinda archive or journal or something on Paradis Island, but I dunno how I'd even get that. I asked if Queen Historia might be willing to give me something like that or if she might even be willing to do an interview with me. Reiner seemed to like the idea of me meeting her. Armin mentioned that Levi's uncle worked with the previous King of the Walls. But I'm not asking Levi about his uncle.
II. The Paradis Island Operation
- Marleyan Warriors
- King of the Walls
- Fall of Wall Maria
- Attack on Trost District
- The Attack Titan, Eren Jeager
- The Female Titan
- Battle of Wall Rose
- The Coordinate
- Coup against the King of the Walls
- Battle of Shinganshina District
The good news is, I have first-hand accounts for pretty much all of this stuff. Plus, there was some stuff in the Marleyan military archives about the operation from Marley's perspective. Armin says they were writing reports on everything pretty scrupulously from the Scouts' side too and he said I can have access to all of it...if he can get his hands on it himself. But even if he can't get those for me, Armin's mind is a like a steel trap, he's recounted a ton for me already and I think all of it is pretty accurate. I should have everything I need to give a pretty complete picture of all of this.
The problem is I....dooooon't know how to write it. Do I just. Recount the events like a neutral party or do I spend more time on all of the people involved? It feels like I gotta spend at least some time writing specifically about who Eren Jeager was, but like. How long do I spend on someone like....Marcel? Or Levi's squad? "And then they died because this titan ate them or smashed them" just....doesn't feel like enough but if I try to write about every single person who died, this thing will be a thousand pages long.
Ugh. Maybe I need to split this into two books.
---CRAP, I forgot about Grisha Jaeger stealing the Founding Titan, I gotta add that to the outline....
III. Paradis-Marleyan War
- Anti-Marleyan Volunteers
- Paradis Infiltration
- Mid-East War
- Willy Tybur's Declaration
- Attack on Liberio
- Jaegerist Uprising
- Eldian Euthanization Plan
- Second Battle of Shinganshina
Okay, well this is starting to get into the stuff that I was actually there for, but I spent most of it still being. Y'know. Super angry and super racist and the more I think about it I'm pretty sure I was walking around with several undiagnosed concussions for a huge chunk of it? So my recollection probably isn't the most dependable. Armin has been a huge help piecing this stuff together, he even quoted some letters that Eren Jeager wrote him by memory, and I do have some reports from the Marley military archives to fill in some holes too.
The main problem is, this is where the order of everything gets super confusing because this is the part with the most secretive bullshit plans and double crossing going on, thanks, Zeke! I dunno how to. Space all of it out, so it's like. Coherent. Cause it certainly wasn't at the time. And I'm trying to write a history book here, not a thriller with all kinds of crazy plot twists. So do I just reveal everybody's crazy plans up front at the start of this section, or what? I dunno. Guess I just have to try to write it a couple different ways and see what feels best.
IV. The Rumbling
- The Paths & The Founder Ymir
- Eren Jeager's Declaration
- Warrior-Scout Alliance
- Jaegerist-Alliance conflict
- Military Counter-Efforts
- The End of the World
- The Battle of Heaven and Earth
- End of the Titans
....does "The End of the World" sound too dramatic?
I mean, that's basically what it was.
Obviously, I have first-hand accounts for everything that happened on Paradis. The Marleyan military archives have some data on attempted counterattacks. It was mostly concentrated on a naval front in Liberio that didn't really do anything, but there was some other attempts here and there that I was able to get some notes on.
I took a trip to a refugee camp a while back and interviewed as many people as were willing to talk to me. I have a huge stack of notes of everything I talked to them about. I haven't looked at it a single time since I got home. Gonna have to do that pretty soon I guess.
This is definitely gonna be the hardest part to write.
I. The Great Titan War
I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out what I think of King Fritz's decision. The Curse of Ymir means he could only hold the Founding Titan for 13 years, so whatever decision he did make to end the war, he had to make sure it lasted beyond that, or the infighting and atrocities of the Eldian Empire might just come back after he was gone, but...stealing his people's memories and shackling all of his descendants...I just can't get my head around how cruel that was. He condemned all of his people to death.
I dunno what I would've done in his position, but. There had to be another way, didn't there?
Meeeh, I dunno if I wanna include this part in the book. It's just my opinion and I dunno what that even is.
II. The Paradis Island Operation
Then, there's a second version of it that goes into more detail about who the people involved in all of those things were. There's more about each of the Marleyan Warriors and what led each of them to become Warriors in the first place, there's more about the people living on Paradis, particularly the Scouts. There's a couple pages about who Marcel was and how he sacrificed himself to save Reiner, there's a couple of pages about Levi's squad. There's a lot more detail about Eren and all of the stuff he goes through. Most of it is neutral, some of it is written almost kind of sympathetically, like his mother's death. The parts where Levi beats the crap out of him are definitely written with some enjoyment.
Both versions are incomplete, the second version covers way less ground than the first.]
Dude, I just don't know. The second version is taking way more time to write and is so much more exhausting, but. I just don't know how I can leave some of this stuff out. It feels like it's less honest to just. Run down everything that happened in order like I'm summarizing a baseball game or something. I'm trying to use this book to tell the true history of what happened and I don't wanna distract from that, but, I dunno, I want people to know that the people in that history were like. Real people who all had their own problems and doubts and stuff going on too, 'cause isn't that kind of the point too? That in the end, all of us were just people?
GUUHHH. Forget it! I'm coming back to this part later!
III. Paradis-Marleyan War
Gabi has tried writing this section a couple different ways. The first is where she again just tries to neutrally describe the events as they happened in order. The second is where she tries to outline all of the different intersecting plans surrounding the Founding Titan up front and explains how they all played out and played off of each other. By her count, there's four: 1) The Marleyan Military's plan to take the Founding Titan to reassert their waning control as the world's superpower until they could technologically catch up to the rest of the world. 2) The Paradisian Military Junta's plan to use the Founding Titan to cause a limited Rumbling as a demonstration of their power and using that to buy more time to advance technologically and negotiate a longer-lasting peace. 3) Zeke's plan to use the Founding Titan to alter the biology of every Eldian so they can no longer have children, essentially making it so the Eldians and the Titans will go extinct in less than a century, and 4) Eren's plan to use the Founding Titan to use the Rumbling to kill everyone outside of Paradis Island.
The third way she tried to write is almost more autobiographical, going into her own perspective and experiences. This version is extremely self-critical and at times even derails the story being told to rebuke Gabi's mindset and the choices she was making at the time.
All three versions are incomplete, but the second has gotten the furthest.]
Okay...
I'm reading back the third version now and it's just kind of me, yelling at myself a lot. It was really, really easy to write too. There's just uh. Pages and pages of me calling my 12-year old self some pretty mean stuff, here. I kinda got lost in the moment and I see I wrote "fucking idiot" a few more times than is appropriate for this kind of subject matter. It's becoming clear to me that I may have underestimated the degree to which I don't like that version of myself and I should probably talk to somebody about that.
Anyway.
Um. I think the second version works best? I just laid out everybody's plans up front and from there, it feels a lot more straightforward to just. Describe how all of those plans played off of each other. It feels more...honest, I guess, to just say "everybody's lying to everybody else and trying to stab everybody else in the back all the time, and here's who succeeded and who didn't" right at the start.
Hm.
Maybe if I can get out of my own head, I can keep the third version and split it off into its own thing. It'd give me a place to put all of my opinions and the stories about everybody and who they were as people and write a version that's just....me. And us. The more I work on this, the more I think I kinda need that.
Let's try and finish the history version first, though. That's more important.
IV. The Rumbling
Included with this section is a bunch of notes from when Gabi went to one of the refugee camps created for survivors of the Rumbling and spoke to people willing to tell their stories to her. The notes are exhaustive, Gabi wrote down everything people were willing to tell her with exhaustive detail, but none of the notes have been converted into proper writing yet. Any attempts to do so, and there is a couple of them, lasted less than a page.]