do i look like a good person to you?
tags and analysis from seekingshiganshina her analysis is flawless is2g
#hhhhhh #oh wow this hurts #i will never understand the people who ship armin/annie and say it’s because they’re cute #because this ship is only cute in an au #in canon it fucking hurts look at this fucking shit #series: shingeki no kyoujin #murderous blonde babes #spoilers #i just #look at all of this and all its implications #do i look like a good person to you #incoherent screeching in the distance
look at my two murderous manipulative blondes both of them, their hands drenched in blood. “do i look like a good person to you” you can’t tell who’s saying it, and that’s the genius of it, because it might as well be the both of them saying it to each other.
annie, mockingly and self-deprecatingly, because she may have spared armin and she may admire him, but she has also killed an innumerable amount of innocents. she’s a culprit and an accomplice in ongoing genocide.
and armin, because for all that he once called her kind, he himself does not believe in the notion of kindness, and he has also remorselessly manipulated her and caused the deaths of many within the walls himself.
annie, usually closed off in self-imposed solitude, icy and untouchable and expressionless, is reaching out to armin, even as he silences her - no, she’s helping him silence her, she’s willingly going along with it. here, she’s the vulnerable one, when usually, it’s armin who cries easily.
instead, armin - sweet, sensitive, nice-to-everyone armin - won’t even look her in the eyes, coldly looking down, even though they are both so drenched in bloodshed.
it’s an almost flawless representation of what happens between them at the end of the female titan arc. when armin and annie meet for the final time, annie knows that armin is manipulating her and leading her to her downfall, but she follows him anyway - and she does meet her downfall, and she is so very vulnerable in those last desperate moments.
armin, armin knowingly leads her to those last moments - the entire strategy was his idea. and he does it without remorse, even as the blood of innocents dirty his hands. the worst part is that in that last meeting, armin and annie understand each other so well, and that empathy is so horrible because it changes nothing.
they’ve both lied and manipulated and sacrificed and they both understand what each other is doing aND IT JUST HURTS SO MUCH they both understand the kind of decisions the other has had to made because they’ve both made it themselves having to choose between a higher goal and the lives of comrades, of innocents in that moment they both know but they both have made opposite decisions
annie spared armin. armin did not spare annie. same choice presented, same thought process, but ultimately they both made the wrong decisions the worst part is that this is a complete undermining of annie’s entire character arc
annie’s character arc involved her coming to accept that perhaps idealism could be something worthy of admiration and respect once more but armin, armin completely undermines that by betraying her, and saying he doesn’t believe in kindness armin was one of such idealists she admired but now annie has reason to believe it all a lie.