#Spookymedusa

[tobrodachi]

spookymedusa replied to your post “spookymedusa replied to your post “OH, RIGHT, TODAY I JUST FOUND OUT...”

your hair gel? WACK.

Its brand name? WACK.

Its mascot? WACK.

The way it doesn’t shine? WACK.

This skeleton? IT’S TIGHT AS FUCK!

[deeeepsteep]

@spookymedusa replied to your post: Harvey just became the “Boy who doesn’t want to be...

hE’S SO GOOD

He should be the Archie Comics character all of the teenage girls are chasing, not Riverdale’s shitty adaptation of Jughead

[zodiac-rave]

spookymedusa replied to your post: my ps4 lives in the living room and my roommate...

Me shoving Nier Automata down my brother’s throat when he was like “hm looks cool.”

AAHAHAH OH GOD SAME I feel like I did this to any of my friends who vaguely mentioned it, but so far all of them who’ve tried it loved it so we’re validated man

(I let a friend I work with borrow my copy of FE Sacred Stones and she beat it and gave it back in a few weeks. I haven’t even beat my copy of Sacred Stones)

[natecronomicon]

spookymedusa replied to your post: Hezza and Ducky: There’s a new character in the...

another wife

You mean for you or for me?

Because I saw her smoking a cigar in the game and I wished she’d put it out on my forehead. 

[guccimedusa]

spookymedusa > guccimedusa

[tobrodachi]

spookymedusa replied to your post “OH, RIGHT, TODAY I JUST FOUND OUT THAT THERE’S THIS HAIR GEL WHERE THE...”

my brother uses this brand lmaodjskfsh

That’s so sad, Alexa, buy suavecito

[deeeepsteep]

@spookymedusa replied to your post: Tbh I had a soft spot for Jasper Cullen

i liekd Emmett too. he was such a dumbass.

spookymedusa replied to your post: Tbh I had a soft spot for Jasper Cullen

o same!

Jasper was def my favourite Cullen

And I loved Emmett too!! He was the Nine of the Cullen family

[natecronomicon]

spookymedusa replied to your photo: Raz: I should know, I’ve fucked plenty of guys in...

how…how is she pretending to be a guy? are they all blind?

Honestly I have no clue why she’s even doing that when in the VC universe the army is coed with no problem. 

[guccimedusa]

ronsenboobi replied to your post: spookymedusa > guccimedusa

halloween’s body ain’t even cold yet….

if i don’t change it now then i’ll never change it. it’ll be the equivalent of leaving the christmas lights up all year round 

[natecronomicon]

@spookymedusa @spookylainnalter

considering that the general audience consensus is that venom (2018) is a cinematic masterpiece, i’m gonna be REALLY disappointed if the new romcom genre isnt “accidentally falling in love with the monstrous entity that possessed you”

[maggyfall]

spookymedusa replied to your post “@6′ anons who I don’t know who they are”

can we say AND torture you? ;)

YOU probably do Prince Sébastian!

[natecronomicon]

@spookylainnalter @spookymedusa @edwardsisland @spookyfreakingkatsu

I don’t know if someone already did it, but please accept this thing.

Please don’t repost, I will find you and I will eat you.

[tobrodachi]

YOU CAN'T DENY THE TRUTH

CAREN ORTENSIA IS THE PRODUCT OF KIREI KOTOMINE BURPING THE DEVIL'S SNAKE ON THAT GIRL'S MOTHER'S PRIVATE EDEN

HE SPRINKLED HIS HOLY WATER

HE EXORCIZED BOFA HEES NUTZ WHILE RECITING THE KYRIE ELESION

THE MOMENT KIREI ATE THE FRUIT OF KNOWLEDGE HER FATE WAS SEALED!

K I R E I! A B S O L U T E L Y! F U C K S!

[deeeepsteep]

@spookymedusa replied to your post: You know how in movies and TV, after the sex...

Everyone knows after sex it’s a race to the shower

RIGHT??? ALL YOU WANT TO DO IS CLEANSE YOURSELF OF THE SIN YOU JUST COMMITTED 

[choemy]

I bet ur an aries

I’m actually a Scorpio but I think I act more like an Aries too

[edwardsisland]

@spookymedusa

The Women of Fullmetal Alchemist: Lust

The third in a series of feminist-minded analyses of the major female characters in the first Fullmetal Alchemist anime, to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the anime’s premiere. You can read all the entries here.  

by: Rose

I wanted to write at least one of these entries on the actual anniversary of the first FMA anime’s premiere in Japan - October 4th. What better than to feature an analysis of my favorite female character in the 2003 anime and the FMA franchise as a whole - the first anime’s version of the homunculus Lust? I’ve made previous, long-winded entries on my main blog about why I love her, but I figured now would be a good opportunity to explain in a more concise manner why the 2003 version of her is a fantastic character, a truly strong female character and one of my top 10 favorite anime characters ever.

For starters, let’s talk about her origins: the version of her shown in Hiromu Arakawa’s original manga. For all the scorn the 2003 version gets from some feminist critics in the fandom - not all of it unjustified - the writers of the first anime did a lot to find and exploit the potential of female characters who weren’t used as much in the source manga, such as Sciezka, Rose Thomas and Martel. Even Izumi got a major character development upgrade here. But truly the best example in that vein was their version of Lust, in how they had so little to work with and managed to make so much out of her. More or less, they took one of the most one-dimensional of the homunculi in the source material and turned her into one of the most nuanced and dynamic characters in her 2003 anime incarnation.

Lust in the manga and Brotherhood is sexy and bloodthirsty, and not much else. She’s the sole female homunculus - and thus, sole female villain - showing that even FMA is not above stooping to the Smurfette Principle. In a weird reversal of another common sexist cliché, the “Women in Refrigerators” trope of killing off women/girls to fuel male angst (that we see at play in both canons with Trisha and Nina), she basically exists solely to die in order to give Roy Mustang his first big triumphant moment when he burns her to death. Arakawa wrote many interesting, well-developed and sympathetic female characters, but unfortunately, her version of Lust was not among them.

So it’s amazing to me that the 2003 anime was then able to take those crumbs and use them to build an entire delicious cake. (I’m hungry, so you’ll get some food analogies, okay?) Rather than being the first to die for good (since Greed in Mangahood comes back as Greedling), Lust is the first to really get fleshed-out and explored in a way that hints at the 2003 series’s moral ambiguity and explorations of the human condition and what makes our lives meaningful and worth-living even in an often-unfair world (probably one of the key themes of the 2003 series). How does she do it? Let’s talk about that.

In a feminist analysis of FMA, the 2003 version of Lust is particularly remarkable for having something that a lot of equally well-written female characters in the franchise don’t have: a character motivation that isn’t oriented around a guy. (Thus, she single-handedly ensures that the 2003 series passes the Mako Mori Test.) Men play a role in her arriving at that motivation - her memories of her former self, as Scar’s brother’s lover, are triggered by her experiences with Lujon and his attraction toward her - but ultimately her arc becomes about her self-discovery, her search for meaning in her own life. It becomes about the female character she had previously defined her life around following (Dante) and Lust beginning to question and defy her orders. 

Lust is an example of one of those most classic and reusable of sci-fi and speculative-fiction themes: What Measure Is A Non-Human? In this trope, the writer uses a character who is mostly human, but has something slightly “off” about them - they’re a monster, a robot or, of course, a homunculus like Lust - in order to explore what they see as essential parts of the “human condition” and what makes us unique and who we are. It’s defined by giving us something to contrast with, often in a way that shows that while this character is non-human in some superficial way - like being mechanical or artificial or undead - he or she retains the more intangible, spiritual aspect of what it is to be “human”, and what separates us from other animals.

Well, really, we should say he retains. WMIANH is usually reserved for male characters, like Lieutenant Commander Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation, or in FMA itself, Alphonse as a human soul in a lifeless suit of armor. When women get this arc, it’s usually oriented around love for a man, or it’s about the man himself realizing that his Supernatural Girlfriend is, in fact, special and human despite being immortal or whatever.

Lust doesn’t have this, though. Thinking about men helps her to come to this realization but it’s not the realization in and of itself; that’s about who she is. And she makes it very much about her, specifically stating that her memories are not about the man who made her, but that they’re hers and hers alone:

“Books say we shouldn’t have memories. Or at least that they’re only the memories and emotions of the alchemists who made us. But they are wrong. Those memories are mine.”

As the two female homunculi, Lust and Sloth serve as foils to each other (and also contrast with their female master, Dante, in their own interesting ways), and as I explained in the Sloth essay, that is tied up in the way they try to take agency back from the men who have defined them around them by creating them. Sloth sees her memories as intrinsically tied up in the Elric brothers, and as such, tries to escape them. Lust, however, prefers to reclaim that past for herself rather than abandon it. Her logic is contradictory in a sense - she insists she “was an Ishbalan woman” while simultaneously insisting that she is her own woman, not defined by the man who her former self loved - but perhaps part of Lust’s arc is wanting to embrace the world in all its complexity, all its contradictions. Which ties back into the larger themes in the 2003 series, about how we create meaning out of our lives even in an often cruel, unfeeling and confusing world.

I talked a little bit in the Sloth essay about how the two female homunculi and Dante can be read as symbolizing the female literary trio of maiden, mother and crone. Occupying the first position puts Lust in the slot usually reserved for the most innocent (when the maiden isn’t a seductress type, as Lust is clearly based on) and naïve character. While it’s hard to argue that she is that - especially when compared to Sloth - as I said before, the characters both embody these stereotypes and defy them. In certain respects, Lust is one of the wisest and most clever of the homunculi as she’s only one of two (the other being Greed) who comes to actively disobey Dante - and the only one to really strongly work against her (since Greed was mostly off doing his own thing).

Yet occupying that position also can cause one to interpret Lust’s arc - and how it’s contrasted with Sloth’s - as one that holds messages particular to teenage and young adult viewers, the age of the “maiden” archetype. Because Lust’s story is all about coming of age, coming into your own, when viewed in a particular light.

Think about it. We all have pasts we couldn’t necessarily control that we have to contend with; none of us chooses the family or the environment that we’re born into or where we grow up. Becoming an adult is often about taking those parts of your past that other people created for you - just as the homunculi’s memories were chosen by the alchemists who made them - and deciding which parts are going to define us as adults and which parts are not. Do we run from our memories, like Sloth tries to? Or do we embrace them and see them as an essential part of who we are, even though we have other parts of us that are unique and individual - like Lust does?

We’re all like the 2003 homunculi in that we have to deal with other people’s baggage, other people’s ideas and memories and experiences, from the time we’re born. Those of the people who raised us - more often than not, the people who literally created us - shape the person we grow up to be. And as such, FMA is able to use its homunculi’s differences to explore what they have in common with humans, and thus what the writers view as key parts of the human condition.

It’s all this which makes me love Lust so much and see her as a feminist character. She embodies what writers should be shooting for with how they write women, as not just characters who speak to particular issues of female empowerment, but who can reach viewers regardless of gender. Because they’re just strong characters, period. It’s writing women like we write men, making a character like Lust as able to speak to male viewers as characters like Ed, Al and Roy are relatable to women who watch the series, in spite of the gender divide.

Which is what Lust does. While she searches for how to be human, Lust shows all of us who already are what exactly that means.