momtaku:

It would not be possible for me to write that meta because it’s my opinion that little about Ymir’s death fits her established narrative. 

I know people are saying that Ymir’s demise fits the theme of Attack on titan – that people don’t get what they want, that people die, and that no one is immune. But Ymir is no victim of circumstance like Marco or Mike or Carla. We’re expected to believe that she CHOSE this. We’re expected to believe that fiery Ymir screaming at Historia to live for herself did just the opposite. We are expected to believe that she willingly went to her own death without a fight.

And most significantly, we’re expected to believe that she abandoned Historia to do that–that she willingly walked away from the one person she worked hard at saving because some sense of guilt overshadowed her feelings. I’m not buying it. 

I’m not opposed to that being Ymir’s story arc – that choosing to die for Reiner and Bert was her way of “living her life with pride”. My problem is we never saw the transition. Sure, I can go back now and pick out a sentence or two here and there to support this new narrative, but they are minuscule in comparison to the vast ocean of evidence that Ymir wasn’t someone to give her life – and her titan power – back to the Marleyans who were intent on killing her, her people, and Historia. Why on earth would she assist them this way?

My meta on the subject of Ymir’s death is this: it seems to me that some characterizations and world building are being sacrificed for sake of speeding the story along. Ymir is a victim of this. There just wasn’t time to fill in the gaps from the Ymir we knew to the one who walked away.

I agree with this. I was expecting Ymir’s death ever since the introduction of Galliard and the 4 year time skip, but it’s the first death in the series that has left me feeling a bit underwhelmed. I suppose it’s tragic irony–that Ymir did the exact opposite of what she begged Historia to do, possibly for the sake of becoming a good person to people like Reiner and Bertolt who helped give her a second chance even if not consciously, so perhaps she was yelling at herself as much as she was yelling at Historia, and in the end Historia can overcome this thanks to Ymir, but Ymir, ironically, cannot–but it feels a bit hollow because of the gaps in her characterization. I love a good tragedy and tragic irony, but right now I can’t quite appreciate it as much as I would like to, because I feel as if there just wasn’t enough foreshadowing to make this tragedy resonate properly with the reader, at least for me at this time. I still hope that some gaps will be filled in, but I’m not necessarily counting on it.