#I have so much to say about my favorite and longest running blorbo

[spitfirerose]

hey I saw that commissioned art of Ed and Elena from today and I'm super curious about her !! how do you fit her into the timeline of fmab ? is she Ed's twin or is she younger than him ? is she younger or older than Al ? how does she feel about Hohenheim ? what does she think about team Mustang ? what is her role on the Promised Day ? is she an alchemist like her brothers or was she born without the ability ? no worries if you can't or don't want to answer these, I'm just really intrigued by Elena. I don't think I've seen an Elric sibling OC before and I think it's a really cool idea. :)

Hello! Thank you for your expressed interest :D I actually have a whole FMAB timeline that I'll one day transcribe into fic. Elena is the youngest of the three, putting her about a year younger than Alphonse (making Ed two years older). Being the baby in the family makes them protective of her, and so she doesn't join them on their journey until after the Fifth Laboratory when Ed is hospitalized. She's spent all this time at the Rockbell's practicing her alchemy, reading, training -- anything she can do to help out around Resembool. All Elena wants is to be like her brothers, unaware that she *is* enough just by being herself.

Elena doesn't remember much about Hohenheim since she was very young when he left, but the few memories she does possess are kind, at least. It doesn't seem fair to hate him like their big brother does. Hohenheim is their Dad, and she wants to believe he's a good person even though she knows next to nothing about him. It's heartbreaking for him to meet his daughter he never got to see grow up, but there's also an immense sense of pride over the strong, kindhearted young lady Elena has become.

As for Team Mustang, it varies from member to member. Elena has heard numerous complaints from Ed, but thinks they're unfounded. Everyone is kind and respectful towards her (because she isn't Edward, they say), so clearly they must be responsible mature adults. This opinion quickly sours when she goes with Mustang and Havoc to fight Lust and they run away scared. Hawkeye is the ideal role model that gives off Mom Energy. Fuery is a kindred spirit. Falman and Breda aren't really around for her to form an opinion, but they're still cool.

(Speaking of Team Mustang, Elena only knows Hughes for a couple days and grows very attached to him and his family. They make her think what could have been. Nostalgia for a time that never existed.)

Elena's role for the Promised Day is a candidate for sacrifice like her brothers. She participated in human transmutation and paid with her voice, so she uses sign language to communicate as well as simply writing things down in a notebook. This book also contains handwritten transmutation circles until she remembers Truth. Alkahestry becomes an interest of hers since it seems like a very useful skill to learn -- particularly the healing aspect --, and tries to have May and Lan Fan teach her the basics. This is put to the test in the commission art, but as to how that works out....

Anyway I just have a lot of feelings about character growth and development in response to life-or-death situations and trauma :) Thank you again for asking about Elena!

[daydreamerwonderkid]

What fandoms you currently hyperfixated on?

Your oldest fandom?

Your favorite animes?

Favorite games?

How long you've been drawing?

Your favorite character from any franchise you can think of rn?

Sorry for the introgation LMAO, i just want to know more 👀

Lol you're all good, I don't mind asks like this :3

What fandoms you're currently hyperfixated on?

-Currently I'm pretty stuck on Batman/DC (can you tell?), but I'm also really into Dungeon Meshi and Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint. My sister recently introduced me to The Greatest Real Estate Developer and we've both been having an absolute blast with it. Idk if it has that big of a fandom, but it definitely should pffftt

Your oldest fandom?

-I wanna say Marvel and Star Wars since the first movie I ever saw was A New Hope and my first comic books were Spider-man and X-men comics. I was really hardcore into the MCU at its height and I'm a diehard fan of the Clone Wars series.

-Funnily enough, I was getting a bit burnt out by both the Marvel and SW fandoms a while back and that's actually why I got back into Batman and DC XD

Your favorite animes?

-My #1 favorite anime/manga/story of all time has got to be Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood. I don't know what to say about it that hasn't already been said, but it really is that fucking good and Hiromu Arakawa is definitely a huge inspiration to me.

-Other than that, I gotta say Paranoia Agent, Mob Psycho 100, Love is War, Spy x Family, Trigun (haven't seen Stampede yet), Mononoke, Castlevania, and Mushishi. I'm sure there's more, but those were the ones I could think of off the top of my head.

Favorite games?

-There's so many games I play, so I'll try to narrow it down a bit. Tbh my longest favorite running series/franchise has got to be Legend of Zelda. The only game from the series I didn't enjoy was Spirit Tracks, but otherwise I've pretty much enjoyed every single entry.

-I also love the Ace Attorney series, Stardew Valley, Jedi: Fallen Order (I have Survivor, but haven't played it yet), Disco Elysium, the Yakuza series, Ib, etc.

How long you've been drawing?

-Genuinely don't remember when I started. I think I've always been drawing. Of course, I was taught traditional art mediums first. I did a lot of oil painting, watercolor and charcoal drawing. It wasn't until, I wanna say, my third year of college that I started learning about digital art. It's not a medium I'm a 100% comfortable with and I've only recently started feeling more confident with it when I realized I could download brushes that were similar to pencils/ink/charcoal/watercolor/copic markers/etc.

Your favorite character from any franchise you can think of rn?

-That's a little difficult since I have so fucking many XD

-Atm, I can say my brain has been super fixated on Marcille Donato (Dungeon Meshi) and Dick Grayson (Nightwing/Batman). Tbh my brain is constantly rotating my favorites, so it really depends on the day or the week who my new top blorbo(s) is gonna be

[utilitycaster]

Ok I’m curious, what *are* your top like, 2 ships from each campaign? I’d love to hear more about what you feel constitutes a compelling relationship/theoretical relationship for CR

Ok I'm not sure what this is in reference to but:

Campaign 1: Percy/Vex and Keyleth/Vax

Campaign 2: truly cannot pick from among the canon ships we got so I'm going to say Fjord/Jester and Beau/Yasha just because I liked those ones the longest

Campaign 3: Currently, Chetney/Fearne and Imogen/Laudna. If this question was prompted by this post then yes, said post is in part about Imogen/Laudna, a ship that only I am correct in my feelings about. The other two ships I had in mind are not CR ships.

As for what constitutes something compelling:

In case it's not clear from my C2 answer: in actual play specifically, I will always prefer canon ships unless someone can prove beyond reasonable doubt that something fucked up happened behind the scenes. Because the character's actor is also their originator and, essentially, writer, I am not interested in the ship becoming canon if the people involved aren't all in.

For what it's worth, the (requited) romances that occur in a well-made written work will support the plot or themes of said work, and the choice to make a romance unrequited is itself a significant part of character commentary (C2 also did a fantastic job with this; the ships that were confirmed to be one-sided say a ton of interesting things about the character who had those feelings). What this all means is that if I'm explicitly shipping against canon for a finished work, it means either I don't think it's well-written, or it's a case of people being unable or unwilling to depict gay ships but providing the subtext. (On the other hand I do occasionally have 'I don't want this to be canon but it's fun to think about' and that's just like, its own separate thing, but that's relatively rare for me).

In case it's also not clear from my answers: my absolute favorite ship dynamic is people who have the same or similar flaws, who see those flaws in someone else and still love that person, and in doing so, can respect themselves; this is true on some level for all the Campaign 2 canon ships, and very much so for Perc'ahlia as well. That also means I like ships to be earned through conflict and development in the narrative; the course of true love never did run smooth. The course of really boring bad writing does often run far too smooth.

Also in actual play my rule of thumb is "do the shippers seem to genuinely like both characters involved, or is the ship patently BLORBO/uhhh whatstheirname." Obviously this isn't always true (*cough* that's one of the scenarios the post I linked is about *cough*) but like...without going into details, several of the most popular ships in C2 that didn't become canon were noticeably one-sided in whom the shippers actually cared about as a character, and who they felt should become a mostly voiceless appendage thereof, and that was a real turnoff. It's not the only reason I lost interest, because I do try to consider canon over fanon/fandom, but it definitely accelerated my loss of interest.

In terms of theoretical/not-yet-confirmed ships specifically, the main thought process is: "do all involved parties seem into it," and "can I see an interesting potential path forward with this."

[majorxmaggiexboy]

D'Artagnan for @therapardalis!

I have to pick the Everyone But Me Is Wrong About Him square bc while there is a ton of variation across adaptations, and they all hit on different things and tend to cover the same general basis, d'Artagnan has long been an Archetype as well as a character. The young pup new blood who comes in full of sunshine and recklessness and romance then generally has a coming of age arc. He's basically got a checklist of traits for setting up the d'Artagnan for any given adaptation. So, and not just for him but really any kind of iconic character with multiple adaptations, a lot of the time it seems like narratively that checklist is leaned on a little too hard, which creates the problem of running out of stuff to do with the character once the type's checklist has played out. BBC specifically lost traction with d'Artagnan immediately after season one and proceeded to bobble for th next two seasons.

on that note also the Wasted Potential square bc s1 pretty much covered d'Artagnan's classic characterization so, had the BBC wanted to, instead of doing....really most of what they did after that they really could have doubled down more on d'Artagnan's couple of little bitchy episodes in S2 and have it narratively acknowledged that yes he actually is still emotionally immature and has a long way to go despite having become a musketeer, go ahead and let him start learning some lessons and also lean into the ups and downs with the king so that by s3 there's groundwork for real intense questioning and reevaluation of loyalty and duty and such. Actually let the Constance romance steep a little instead of just going Lol Psych Actually She Was Wrong They're Happy Now Lol nO! There was more stuff to explore, dammit!

D'Artagnan is one of my first blorbos, the earliest and longest-lasting, he is blorbo to me.

Deeper than they seem, yes. Not going in too much but again, he tends to get boiled down to The Reckless New Guy when actually the og d'Artagnan regularly impressed with his planning and such. Even in the BBC there could have been more there if the writers had wanted and imo the character himself could have broader storytelling uses too.

...yeah i can say not much that i like about BBC d'Artagnan is canon. Some, yes, i absolutely appreciate s1 d'Artagnan and a lot of s3 as well, and all those moments where you see that soft, caring side on him, but most of my favorite aspects of BBC d'Artagnan actually come from headcanon and/or fanfic or at the very most are just barely almost implied in the source material.

and still trying to figure out why he looked Like That in s3e1 with the little miniature armor situation. Idc if it was a real thing, it was not a fun look. If my boy is going to wear some armor at least give him something better than that 😭

[elysian-prince]

A, C, K, U for the ask game, dear 💖

Thank you, darling ☺️💜

A - Ships that you currently like a lot. (They don’t have to be OTPs because not everyone has OTPs.) Friendships, pairings, threesomes, etc. are allowed.

I would say right now my top three ships are obikin, taibani, and geraskier. C - A ship you have never liked and probably never will.

😂 are you really gonna make me say it? c*dyw*n, but also really just any Obi-Wan ship that's not with Anakin.

K - What character has your favorite development arc/the best development arc?

I feel like the obvious answer for this one is Tony Stark because his journey of growth is just... the Best. Not just in IM1, but all the way through to IM3. Barnaby Brooks Jr. has to get a special mention on this answer though because obviously I've been thinking about him a lot lately, but I'm not expanding on that one because spoilers, LMAO. This is my plug for people to please watch Tiger & Bunny.

U - Three favorite characters from three different fandoms, and why they’re your favorites.

Initially when I looked at these names after I typed them out I was like "oh they're all attractive, selfless idiots with beards," but there truly is a lot more to them than that 🤣

Obi-Wan Kenobi - buuuhhhhh I don't even know where to begin with Obi-Wan. He's Obi-Wan. Is that not explanation enough? He’s the perfect Jedi, not because he tries to be, but because he’s just such a caring and compassionate person. But he’s also snarky and an asshole, and he’s just so much wrapped up in a perfect little bundle.

Tony Stark - My longest running blorbo. My mans since I was 14 and my middle school boyfriend took me to see Iron Man when it came out. Tony just cares so much, and tries so hard to make up for his past mistakes and shortcomings. His story has always meant a lot to me, and it’s a reminder that your lowest point doesn’t have to become your ending.

Kotetsu T. Kaburagi - MY SECOND LONGEST RUNNING BLORBO. No seriously, I got into Tiger & Bunny when it aired in 2011, and Kotetsu has never left my mind. On the surface he's such a goofy character who messes up a lot, but he tries so hard and never gives up. He's grown so much since Season 1, and I just adore him in Season 2 so far. I am fully capable of gushing about this old man for hours right now but I’ll leave it at that.

(from this ask game)