kenny ackerman

in my heart, kenny was born in the middle of the night with scorpio on the horizon, making his chart ruler mars ♂. i've leaned toward capricorn or aquarius before (closer to sunrise, i like saturnine men (he already is one through aquarius)), but i don't think his sun ☉ is in his 1st or 2nd houses. a scorpio ascendant puts his sun ☉ in his 4th house, associated with home and family of origin, especially your parents.

kenny is our way into learning about the ackerman clan. although he claims in snk 69 that "i don't think i even really cared much about my family's grudge," it's a mistake to say that significant natal placements relate to the native's feelings on the matter or their priorities; whether he likes it or not, his family affects his life, including in the shounen sense of the ackerman power. consider the ackermans were once a noble house, and he's about as burdened by the family name as any aristocrat. i get a sense that his and kuchel's childhood was cut short, and might have been transient with the ackerman persecution, because how else do you lose track of your baby sister? whatever time he had to form the bond he had with his grandfather was an exception to the rule, or a brief bit of peace before shit hit the fan. lacking a physical, stable home that the 4th house rules, kenny had no foundation but his last name; the birth chart is sometimes described as a tree with the 4th house as the root, and what an inconvenient root "ackerman" is.

the only other planet the sun ☉ shares aquarius with is mercury ☿, which forms a trine to mars ♂ in libra. this is an exchange of air between the planets related to intellect (mercury ☿) and drive (mars ♂). this can mean a lot of things, but one is kenny's no-bullshit, cruel, and correct call-out of historia in chapter 65, badly adapted by the anime. it also means that the way he moves through life heavily relies on his wits, and the reserve to a detrimented mars ♂ (mars ♂ hates being in venus' ♀ signs and vice versa) makes this more of a hands-off observation, lying in wait. he figures out titan inheritance just from his proximity to the reisses, not them revealing any secrets. his plan to steal the founder is a long con, a libra mars' ♂ habit of biding its time.

unfavorably, mars ♂ in libra or taurus can seem "too late" in life, a late-bloomer or a slow-starter, getting around to things later than socially expected or the native means to. kenny's canon run is a bit of a story of running late, not by his fault alone. he's too late returning to kuchel in the underground. stealing the founder doesn't become a serious prospect until the formation of the anti-personnel control squad in 847, but when did he first start thinking it? when frieda held it, probably, and i wonder if he was content to let her keep it for thirteen years or not. i like to think he was, given his open contempt for rod sacrificing his brother and daughter to it, so perhaps he kid himself he was sparing the next reiss child (historia being frieda's pick) by making the choice for himself well into middle-age. but again, that takes too much damn time, time that grisha jaeger didn't have in 845. i've ruminated on the planets and titan shifters before, and attack exemplifies mars ♂ (keep moving forward); you didn't stand a chance, ken. he's helped somewhat because mars ♂ forms aspects to the two dignified benefics, jupiter ♃ (exalted in cancer) and venus ♀ (exalted in pisces), a kind of devil's luck despite it all.

a weakened chart ruler like his mars ♂ is more susceptible to influence from any contacts it forms, so mercury ☿ is a huge deal for kenny, especially since mars' ♂ two houses are pretty damn boring to me (1st and 6th, shounen shit about physical strength). mercury ☿ rules his 8th and 11th houses from its place in the 4th, which i can't describe as anything but uri. the 8th house is probably the most relevant for attack on titan canonverse because it rules death and inheritance. modern astrologers will say it has to do with "other people's wealth," "shared resources," but the only way wealth passed hands in medieval europe and the hellenic world was death. the 11th house rules friendships and our participation in groups like unions and book clubs and other organizations, and is often significant in the charts of political and military leaders. the entire reason, or excuse, for the ripper's body count (8th house) is his family, not necessarily vengeance or protecting them—see kuchel's fate, hell, even mikasa's parents—but because the military police are simply on his ass; once he meets uri, his priorities change, and he kind of reinstates the ackerman family's role as the reiss's retainers (11th house). it all springs from the 4th house, all these relationships to non-family.

i've given him a sagittarius, 2nd house moon ☽, and i think it goes a long way to explain some his priorities that you could easily call selfish. the 2nd house is about personal possessions and security, on the same axis as the 8th. i think it has something in common with the 4th. don't get me wrong; this man dillydallies. i also have a libra mars ♂. i get it. but i think having your emotional life so tied to the material, a roof over your head and enough food, is sane and human, and in frankly every ackerman's case, comes from knowing privation. tumblr kenuri nation population 3, we like to call kenny a sugar baby and a freeloader, but in my more charitable moods i think of his choices as quite pragmatic and animal. sagittarius itself is mutable, so it doesn't like restriction, feeling walled in (ba dum ts); security for kenny is strongly related to freedom of movement, from when he meets uri ("it wasn't as if i could walk around in broad daylight, but my list of enemies seemed to be getting smaller") to his reunion with levi ("the day we found out how big the world really is"). maybe he needed a taste of the safety and freedom that uri afforded him before he thought to bring kuchel into it.

the 7th and 11th houses are interesting for the ackermans because they're bonds made by choice. i've already hit the 11th house via mercury ☿, but the question of the 7th house, classically ruling marriage, takes us to venus ♀, the most indulgent placement i've given him uwu. venus ♀ rules his 7th and 12th houses from pisces, his 5th house. venus ♀ in pisces is a damn near magical placement among astrologers, the most giving and consuming lover there is. pisces is mutable water, utterly unbound and gushing everywhere. it's the knight of cups, in tarot terms. even for a nonship agenda, the 7th house rules close partnerships and collaborations. kenny is all-in on serving uri and really only uri; i imagine him going on to the first interior squad as him unmoored, like levi after erwin's death. then the 12th house gets a bad rap as being about isolation and imprisonment, but it's much more mystical and introspective in my view. his life with uri seems pretty quiet and contemplative if half the job was taking him on nature dates. i connect the founding titan to jupiter ♃ and neptune ♆ for its porous, expansive power, so if i were to do uri's chart he's coming out sagittarian or piscean.

besides venus ♀ in pisces, kenny also has jupiter ♃ in cancer—both signs these planets enjoy very much. his jupiter ♃ happens to form angles to both the malefics; i already mentioned jupiter ♃ helps out his unfortunate mars ♂. jupiter ♃ is about big ideas, and in kenny's chart is in his 9th house, which i've previously described as a pirate house. while his mars ♂ struggles to initiate anything, his grand dream simply is jupiter ♃ in cancer. the 9th house is about seeking truth, whether objective truth or metaphysical, and the founder manages to be both: the root of the wallist conspiracy and godlike power. this jupiter ♃ is also less potently affected by saturn ♄, which i read like a more flattering version of libra marsian dillydallying: sustained, patient effort towards a jupiter ♃-sized goal, jupiter ♃ brought down to the ground to actually be effective.