#everything’s better with fma

[t1meslayer]

Wasn’t expecting to get too excited about the 2024 Pokemon Presents, but that curveball Pokemon Z as a Legends game with Game Freak taking extra time for development is pretty hype.

Kalos deserved better than X and Y, so hoping it gets a lot of love!

Anyway. I’m here because I want to share my day 1 moonshot theory before theory-crafting goes out of style.

It’s all based on this image here from the Legends Z-A trailer:

I understand the point of this trailer is to show Lumiose City’s redevelopment blueprints coming to life. But my brain said “Fullmetal Alchemist.”

So, what if this game reveals that the city planner behind modern-day Lumiose (preferably a cunty, femme-coded ancestor to Lysandre and/or Sycamore, let’s be honest) designed the equivalent of an Amestris transmutation circle? Either to reactivate the ancient weapon or mess with the balance of nature some other way to draw out Zygarde for yadda yadda evil plotting.

[bratzboykai]

Like in all seriousness Bebop is considered an absolute ledge status anime because it introduced a sort of hyper genre hybridity that hadn't been done at such a level before in its respective medium. It's one of those animes who's impact on its industry led it into new playing fields which is something that cements its importance to me. Like there's a reason it's like top of the list for most people that says, "Hey look anime isn't just this one sort of thing, it can be a lot of things, its a complex medium, and it includes this."

It achieved this by creating a perfect storm of execution on multiple levels: character design, strong characterization and backgrounds for all its main cast, general solid main narrative thread under the episodic formula, mastery of tone with a solid sense of comedic timing, killer animation style with a distinctly thrilling use of action sequences, lush world building, script writing with an emphasis on great dialogue, strong understanding of what makes noirs, westerns, and sci fi's tick as genres with their own respective tropes as well as their unique pacing, scoring/soundtracking that not only achieved wonderful synergy to its visuals and tones but ultimately became a character all on its own, creating a perfect blend of Japanese and American influences both in terms of media and culture granting it accessibility to a broader audience, understanding the perfect formula for "cool" and avoiding the pitfalls of falling into cringe try hardness that most people fall into, etc Like I truly could go on!!!

Very few shows as a whole can create that kind lightning in a bottle!!!! Personally I understand why people are sooo attached to fma-b, i think especially because it's a lot of peoples "baby's first serious/mature themes" anime, and that leaves a big impression. But I think there have been works before and after it that handle mature themes a lot better (not the exact theme, just mature themes in general). I think the way it handles it's own underlying main themes is flawed in a way that contradicts it's aims and thats its biggest problem, and I think the older you get (and if you're more conscious of these subjects) the more apparant it gets. To be, idk, fair?? any show trying to tackle the subject of violent colonialism and imperialism written by someone who is of a group of people who are colonizers themselves is going to have a harder time trying to nail an anti-imperialist narrative without bias absolutely showing through and it uh, definitely shows through (once again the mangaka IS NOT indigenous and has never identified herself as such for the love of god...).

[akkivee]

ichiro➡️❤️hatsune miku

kuukou➡️💜urameshi yuusuke

🆕nemu➡️🩷riza hawkeye

is what i’m thinking lol

[gogogoat495]

[Image ID: Tweet by Crimson Mayhem (@/Crimson_Mayhem_) reading "'I hope that someday people will stop viewing animated movies as rough drafts of live action movies.' ~ Owen Dennis, creator of Infinity Train and the Among Us animated series" /End ID]

Me too, man 😞

[finalexpenses]

im the number one expert on wanting my wife and wanting to be with Her no one not even a physical incarnation of greed could beat me on this

[llamasofchaos]

While I love how people analyze fma and fmab something I find that they always miss or disregard despite the fact that it is literally a huge part of the story is that when it comes to making the decision to try and bring back Trisha it wasn't just Ed.

I have seen so many posts about Ed's growth and how he was selfish and yes he was, because he was a grieving child who didn't know any better. But you know who did everything with him because he was going through the same thing? Al. There are multiple scenes of Ed trying to make up for what he sees as his sins only for Al to remind him they made those choices together and they share the sins.

Ed and Al weren't perfect, and seeing only Edwards flaws and mistakes is missing the point of the story, and Al would beat you up if you insisted he was innocent where Ed wasn't, they did everything together the story was about these two orphaned brothers who in their grief made a mistake and then spent years trying to heal each other and despite the odds managed to do that while saving the world.

They did it together, so stop ignoring Al's part in the story, because he was so important his triumphs and mistakes were just as important as Ed's and he would absolutely deck anyone who said everything was Ed's fault.

[with-my-calamitous-love]

i could go for hours and hours about nina tucker. about her innocence, about her victimhood, about everything she could have been, and what happened to her.

the more i think about it, the worse it gets. nina didn’t realize what happened to her. she was just a girl, excited to spend time with her dad, excited to help him with his research. i wonder how quickly that excitement morphed into confusion. did it hurt? was she scared? questions ed and al still ask themselves, years after it happened.

oh, and speaking of ed, he still wakes up thinking about it. obviously, for the sheer terror of what happened, the heinousness of the crime, the tragedy of what he saw.

but less obviously, he wakes up thinking about alchemy as a whole. because for edward, its so much more than just a tragedy. its a crisis of faith. it was the moment ed realized that alchemy- his creed- wasn’t the pure, righteous discipline he thought it was. he had seen alchemy perverted, twisted.

but deep down? he always knew alchemy wasn’t perfect. he knows that because of human transmutation.

edward knew, from the moment he saw that grotesque, black mass that should have been their mother, that alchemy was not always noble or right. from the moment he drew a transmutation circle in blood for alphonse, to save the only person he had left, that alchemy had an undeniable twisted nature, hidden beneath a guise of brilliance. edward always wanted to believe that alchemy was a force for good. but deep down? he knew better.

so when nina happened, it wasn't just about the horrific cruelty of the act itself. it was a cruel reminder of what he and al did. a reminder of greed and its consequences. and shou tucker? a warning, of who he and al would have become, if they had let that greed consume them.

for anyone who hasn't seen FMA or FMAB and would like too, don't let this stop you. it is a FANTASTIC show and i have so much more to say for it <3

[marciaillust]

the older i get the more I fall in love with kuroko no basket. I wouldn't say my enjoyment of it comes from the strength of its writing or the depth and pathos the characters bring to the table but it's just so. so. it frog boils you

it starts off by introducing the generation of miracles and its just a buncha kids that are super good. one is turbo fast, one is naturally turbo tall, one can make 3 pointers from far far away. like sure there is a gimmick but its tiny, it's *believable*. these six kids are just that good whatever you watched sports anime, you know how this goes

but all in all the show starts off as. hey. we love basketball. this show is named kuroko's basketball, it is gonna be about what basketball means to its characters', especially kuroko. ok. fine. you have this duo and one is loud and obnoxious and the other one is quiet, they are the opposites but they are like light and shadow, we are gonna root for them as they go on their basketball journey and tell us what basketball means to them. ok

but the shadow guy. he's so much of a nothingburger he disappears on the court so he can make surprise moves. ok. wow. kinda funny. kinda gimmicky, more than being just tall or just fast, but like. its his whole personality anyway. everyone doesnt notice him off the court in real life too. it causes problems for him. its his dominant trait as a person on the whole. gimmicky but in character. out there but lowkey fits the threading of the fabric you're weaving here. that's just our main character and who he is as a person.

and then for the next 100 episodes you're slowly. with every match. getting exposed to new characters. with their little gimmicks. but you've seen anime before, everyone's got their thing. One will be less agile but the brains of the operation. One will be good at observing. One can do really really good fakes. Ok fine. But then. then the plot keeps escalating. the stakes keep going up. we need more characters. new matches. new gimmicks.

One of our characters can see the court really well, he knows whats what immediately in his surroundings. Eagle eye, they call that sense. But then he meets another guy, an opponent, who can see the court EVEN BETTER. He has got the HAWK EYE! the zone (state of intense focus) becomes a mythical land that only select few have the access too. Regular dunks become *METEOR STRIKES*. Slapping a ball away from your opponent becomes a *SPEAR*. Dribbling with 3 fingers becomes an indicator that you're actually on LEVEL 1 of your dribbling skills and it can go up by TWO MORE LEVELS

But throughout all of this you're like. Ok. Ok. Obviously this is basketball. The things we're seeing are merely visual metaphors and allegories for my enjoyment. It's not meant to be taken literally. BUT THEN. EVERYONE REACTS TO EVERYTHING. DIAGETICALLY. ITS WATSONIAN ALL THE WAY DOWN? EVERYONE is aware of the eagle eye and the hawk eye and the technical differences between them. Noone has done a meteor strike before! That's only theoretical! THE ZONE? its a door. Its like the door from fma. you can get cast out, the door can close on you. AND It guarded by someone! WHO IS STOPPING YOU FROM CROSSING THE THRESHOLD? Search. Find out. Withstand the storm. Open the door!! The dollar store yaoibait becomes all but text. The bonds between characters get elevated to biblical proportions. The main charas are light and shadow. But that shadow already had his light in the past. But they had a breakup. Now its like being in a new relesh looking to prove your ex boyfriend that he was wrong to dump you. And the new light is gonna stand up for his man, he's not gonna take the disrespect laying down. And the pot keeps boiling until the final bad guy of the whole tournament, the defending champion, is this redheaded twink with heterochromia in his eyes and hes GOT THE EYES OF AN EMPOROR! AND PEOPLE FALL TO THEIR KNEES FROM MERELY LOOKING INTO HIS EYES ON THE COURT! HE SAYS BOW BEFORE ME AS HE DRIBBLES PAST THEM AND THEY FALL!!! AND HE TALKS TO EVERYONE LIKE HE'S A DIVINELY PROTECTED TSAR OF REALITY! AND EVERYONE TAKES HIM SERIOUSLY!!!

BUT THEN YOU LEARN THAT ACTUALLY HE'S GOT A SPLIT PERSONALITY THING GOING ON AND HIS REAL SELF IS BEING HELD HOSTAGE BY HIS EVIL AND MEAN BASKETBALL SELF AND THAT TO DEFEAT THE GAY LOVE THAT OPPOSES HIM (the main characters) HE MUST SUICIDE HALF OF HIS PERSONALITY TO FREE HIMSELF TO REACH THE BASKETBALL HEAVEN AND HE DOES THIS VIA A CONVERSATION IN HIS HEAD DURING MATCH AND I CANT STRESS, A "PERSON" DIES, AND HE LOSES THE HETEROCHROMIA AND ITS LIKE. ITS TEXT I GUESS HE WAS POSSESSED

AND ALSO EVERYONE IS COLOUR CODED AND LIKE 17 AND ALSO THE 3 WOMEN IN THIS SHOW HAVE AT LEAST 5 SCENES DEDICATED TO SIZE OF THEIR BOOBS BECAUSE IT WAS 2012 AND THAT'S WHAT WOMEN FIGHT OVER IN PRIVATE AND THE LIGHT AND THE SHADOW WANT TO PLAY TOGETHER FOREVER AND THEY WANT TO GET BASKETBALL MARRIED AND THEY LITERALLY HAVE AN AIRPORT SCENE IN THE FINAL EP IS ANYONE ELSE SEEING THIS HELLO? TAPS MIC HELLO???

[stackslip]

the thing at the heart of fma 03 is the grief for something idealized and half remembered that you desperately, truly believe you can bring back if you try hard enough, but that thing is long gone and maybe it never existed in the first place, and you spent half your life chasing it instead of looking around you and loving what's in front of you. you clung so strongly to an ideal, a half remembered dream you were sure would fix everything, if you try a little harder and do a little more surely your effort will be rewarded and you'll get that idealized eternal thing. you're so deep into the sunk cost fallacy and the aim for that dream, what's one more attempt? so either you snap out of it and face the harsh reality, the cost of your ambitions, the bitter loss—and you accept it, along with the cost, and choose to build a better world with what's in front of you. or you keep running after it even if it means leaving bodies and broken people in your wake.

[moonlit-bunny]

honestly, I can't think of a single reason to enjoy or tolerate k@t/ang - everything about it gives me the biggest ick. usually I'm not that frustrated by ships, but this one really nags at my "this feels unjust" part of my brain. what likable quality is there?? even before I had any real opinion, I knew it was eugh... the way their interactions were written and shown always made me uncomfortable. "the younger boy has a crush on the babysitter" canonically being the creators' intent for their dynamic is not cute, wholesome or appealing to me whatsoever - particulary when that dynamic never changes throughout the entirety of the storyline, and their fundamental disagreements and conflicts are left unaddressed (to the BOY'S benefit).

the worst part is that the shippers try to make it seem like they're more cognizant of social justice, genocide, interracial relations (especially against zk fans) and a girl's needs. but the thing is, their arguments fall flat because the main character is so clearly the white creators' self insert whose romantic portrayal undeniably gives major "Nice Guy" red flags and treads incel territory: he doesn't need to earn her love - no, he is entitled to it. this is actually anti-feminist messaging and we never saw our girl's needs met in that dynamic. instead, it was him who was one-way benefitting from her mothering (which he wasn't bothered by), and his actions kept pulling her back into that role. in TSR, we see it even more - assuming the worst, lecturing and imposing his beliefs based on his idea of how she should be, not trying to listen or be present when he very well could have due to shared experiences of colonial violence. not to mention the grace, presence and non-judgmental comfort she'd offered him when he lost his bison and lost his temper.

at this point I am reminded that this series was made by white americans, so while the other characters can push the boundaries a little, the main character must be an enlightened boy with a supposedly higher moral conscience (in contrast to the angry, irrational brown girl) palatable to an audience residing in an imperial core (in which the majority of us do not regularly encounter or fight off the horrors of an active genocide). in other words, he unfortunately plays the role of a white man's mouthpiece for lukewarm takes - telling us essentially doing nothing is the correct answer to your loved one learning that an imperial soldier who murdered her family has made no amends and is out there walking free - no haunting, no memory, no consequence.

how does all of this not make one raise an eyebrow? by season 3 I really felt like someone had just thrown a tantrum in the writer's room and that's how we ended up here.

in some ways we got to see a fuller development and journey for zuko: we find zuko confronting his father become a better parallel to her confronting her mom's killer (that he considerately does not bring up on her journey), with both of them overcoming a generational trauma that share the same root cause. maybe we are drawn to this, maybe this feels more gut-wrenching, maybe this makes for a richer character arc because he is not a wide-eyed baby-faced self-insert, journeyed alone, and therefore was not shielded from having to make tough choices (like the main character's s2/s3 final dilemma). to think - his story more closely mirrors Buddha's own origin story! the irony.

it really is mindboggling because there are so many beautiful ways to write a friends -> lovers story, and it doesn't even need to be complicated. (if anyone's read fma, just look at ed/winry - heartwarming, reciprocated, felt natural and earned.)

this one's an unfortunate, utter mess, and season 3 plus the comics and LoK seemed to rub salt on the wound instead of making any meaningful attempts at clarifying previous issues and improving their relations. I just feel like seeing this pair as overall wholesome or something is ignoring certain key moments in the storyline, especially those concerning our girl. you'd really need to AU-ify their dynamic to get to a point where a romantic relationship between them (that is actually mutual) feels right or compatible.

[littlebigmouse]

List of Small Things�� I enjoy about Fullmetal Alchemist in no particular order

Everyone in FMAB/manga is just Some Guy™ and very human and I love that so here goes:

Falman getting stuck with a serial-killing suit of armor in his appartment for days and his reaction to it. It may have been weeks. He's been on sick leave the entire time. He's a guy in his early thirties with a flock of early-greying hair because being in a dead-end-role in the military is stressfull, ok. He gets stuck at home with a funny little serial killer (and eventually some foreign body guards, and a foreign prince?? lighting signal fires in his backyard?? like man what a week)

The whole military ambush against the Devil's Nest was yes, kind of kickstarted by the gang kidnapping Al for Greed, but it was mostly kickstarted because Ed was down south to do his yearly official report and Bradley and Armstrong just happened to be present when he was informed Al had gone missing. Greed's entire operation was done in by a teen doing his paperwork

on that note, Greed really decided to spend his immortality wisely by pursuing absolutely none of his supposed ambitions and just decided to settle down with a bunch of buddies. An offshot of the buddies he was initially made to guard, too. I don't think Greed is aware of this either

everyone on that radio building. The radio host 100% down to get some coup-shenanigans into his station to drive engagement. The guys sympathising with Mrs Bradley and taking care of her. Breda taking control of the narrative with a perpetual frown by the skin of his teeth.

I know the story of how the Bradleys met is technically not canon(?) but Mrs Bradley slapping her future husband upon their first meeting because he got his flirting tips from his siblings will never not be funny. Idiots. All of them.

EVERYTHING about Darius and Heinkel. They lost their jobs and became wanted criminals upon helping out some scrawny 15 year old. They have families they miss dearly. They haven't looked back since. "You guys don't HAVE to help me save the world" - "It's not like we have anything better to do"

i was going to say the Ice Cream Truck, because it's iconic, but actually, when told to disguise a vehicle, 15-year-old pinacle of edgelord fashion Edward Elric turned it into a colourful nightmare of spikes that barely resembled a car but might be closely related to the worlds deadliest parade float. None of this was necessary. Ed is just like that.

Hawkeye growing her hair out after meeting Winry, and Winry getting piercings after seeing Hawkeye's

Denny Brosh bursting into tears when he sees Maria Ross is still alive. Dude managed to not quit his job despite working in the same city (department?) where his best friend's killer was his supervisor. They were also very real for showing us that this is a guy who oversleeps and is older brother to at least three younger siblings. There was no need to give us more on Denny Brosh but every little detail hit so hard when they reunited.

okay so remember that time Ed and Ling ate Ed's shoe. Remember that Ed spend some time on a "deserted island" as a kid. Gluttony's stomach had nothing on him. Izumi raised some anime-ass boy-scouts. 100% Farm boy behaviour. These kids are so 15 it makes me want to bite things

immortal, soul-spliced dwarf in a flask got rid of his Sloth and still managed to procrastinate on his world domination plan until the last minute. Most Human disaster.

the entire half-episode they spend on Dr. Knox and his regrets and family. FMA is so good about humanising everyone.

everyone bullied Yoki because he was a small town fraud exploiting workers for his own benefit. Simply a jerk. He also hit Pride with a car in an epic rescue, and cried and screamed the whole way through

that one shot of a kid curiously poking a soldier they found bound on the ground with a stick

(I know it's technically not canon, but-) "I'm trying to save your life, asshole!"

Edward Elric

[qs63]

FMA 03 appreciation post.

Aside from the fact that FMA Brotherhood outright assumes you have watched FMA 03 — and skips a lot of the early events and world building — everyone should watch 03 because the manga/BH resolution also takes it into consideration.

FMA 03 is in many ways a mirror image to the Manga/BH story. It's a bit of a “what if these characters turned left instead of right” situation, and that makes 03 more significant if you want to understand how and why the manga ends up like that. I already talked in another post about Basque Grand and how much he changes from 03 to manga, but he's not the only one nor the most important character to do so.

Ed's core beliefs is that every life is precious and shouldn't be taken. He repeats this again and again throughout the story, and manga Ed manages to uphold that belief to the very end when he refuses to kill Pride. 03 Ed is no different, he too holds this belief dearly, but since FMA 03 makes the characters take a different turn, 03!Ed ends up accidentally killing Greed, effectively shattering his ideals. This single event marks the end of 03!Ed's innocence and childlike idealism/positivism. It pushes him into a more adult cynical and practical outlook of life.

This new outlook is what leads him to kill sloth (when manga Ed wouldn't kill Pride) and then sacrifice himself to get Al back despite knowing this decision would hurt Al, and so many others.

The Manga ending is very aware of the 03’s ending and outright references it when Mustang says Ed would never sacrifice himself as he knows the pain of being left behind. But the truth is that manga Ed is only able to reach a different conclusion to 03!Ed because he was able to maintain his stubborn idealism to the very end and find a solution his jaded practical self could've never reached.

Mustang's 03 ending is also another excellent example of what would happen if the character didn't uphold their beliefs and — somewhat naive— idealism to the end.

There are two key differences between 03!Roy and manga Roy. The first is Ishval. 03!Roy is all alone in Ishval and that makes a world of difference, 03!Roy doesn't get Hawkeye to question the value of alchemy/power, he doesn't have Hughes to support him every time he's facing the abyss, he doesn't have his squad to thank him for keeping them alive. The lesson 03!Roy takes from Ishval it’s not “We need each other to succeed” it is “I need to be stronger to succeed”, because 03!Roy was alone and never learned to share his burden, or the value of having someone to lean on.

It's no surprise then that 03!Roy ends up facing Pride ALONE, which is the second difference. The 03 ending where Roy turns his back to everyone and everything is exactly what would've happened to manga Roy if he too had been alone in Ishval, if he hadn't learned that he needed people at his side to keep him on the right path, if he hadn't had someone to stop him from making the same mistakes as 03!Roy when he faced Envy and almost embraced revenge over his values. Just like 03!Ed, that forceful break from his ideals (the core belief that you need the help of others to succeed and to work for something beyond yourself) is what makes 03!Roy ends up as a mirror image of his manga self.

So really go watch FMA 03 if you haven't because both endings become so much better when you understand they're a juxtaposition of each other, one that showcases the importance of hope, ideals, and companionship.

[girls--complex]

hi, love your work a lot! it manages to blend coherence with layers of esoterica, in a fun & meaningful way. do you have any big influences with your style?

Writing this as a narrative because my whimsicall mind can't seem to organize information logickally otherwise

So

When I was a child my Dad would show me a lot of comics/cartoons in all different styles/eras and so I was internalizing comic book logic from the very beginning. He really liked American comix both capes and Indie stuff but was also into franco belgian artists and let's be clear my papa has good taste so I was readying good stuff though I couldn't remember it all too reliably... Also Comics Journal, so I was reading comics & meta about comics. So basically I have like a deep archetypal brain stem dark spring of mind that spits out raw comic information like a dream that I can't place until I rediscover them, and a lot of deep unremembered imprintations that R kinda roiling around under the surface #Stupidsoldier

N then I was a deviantart kiddo and a reading manga at barnes and noble kiddo, and then I went and got a formal art education and learned about all these artists that sort of did pseudo comics or cartoons but didnt articulate it that way-- The German xpressionists are a big example of this -- and also about overall principles of like scale and hierarchy and time and presence -- and also just that I really like drawin the human figure in particular :)

I'm really grateful that my parents especially my dad were actually really supportive/invested in me being an artist even though they had very little faith in my character or overall competence. so I was always doing art activities to make me better at drawing because that was like the one redeeming quality I had, a lot of household resources went into me having art tutoring or doing community classes, and I was really strongly encouraged to get ma BFA

So 4 influences well I like things that are very stylish but very specific in how they represent figure N physiognomy... Naoki Urosawa & Jeff Smith were fascinations 2 me along this line... Arakawa is good too... I feel like this is a strength of American and British cartoonists generally but struggling to think of names

My favorite painter is tied between two commies: Siqueiros, who was a Mexican muralist and chaotic socialist, really specific markmaking and texture, pathos drenched figuration, charged epic landscapes, and Petrov-Vodkin, Russian ikonographer who became a propagandist for the USSR, semi-social-realist, semi-ikonographic compositions in which space is wrapping around itself to organize human figures according to a mythological logic, flattish, very cartoons/comics aligned, strange treatment of color but all really effective

History painting overall is everything to me it really doesn't show in Coward but I think it shows elsewhere some of my other dramatic sensibility is a lot from 00s action movie shlock which I would always enjoy to go see when I was younger and was somehow fascinated with the environment of government buildings and prisons and secret operations happeningunder the surface of every day life erupting into wet violence of men punching each other

I love the movie THE RAID redemption !!!!

I learned a lot of the logic of pacing N building pages around Tezuka's work as well as FMA N Death Note I think were big 1s to teach me that logic. Tezuka is a really good artist to look at for how to compose a page that supports the energy of the events that are happening on it, not that that's something I personally am good at. Favorite mangaka for tone and environment and visual identity are Katsuhiro Otomo, Tustomu Nihei, Suehiro Maruo, Nishioka siblings, Hideshi Hino

A lot of my sense of timing is also from news paper strips tbh. It's just a gut thing to me at this point hehe , Character design is also a gut thing for me I draw a little thing and I can either ensoul it with psychosexual fixation or I can't

I was born in the hospital Henry Darger worked at St. Joe's he's an ancestor to me but ofc inimitable by virtue of GOD being his sole audience

As for the esoterickal dimensions I feel like it's all it's own post let's just say I lack the inclination and ability for systematic and rigorous study but I am really interesting in gathering little packets of information and arranging them into dioramas and the longer I do it the more packets I accrue

I want to make a list of artists on here that I like/admire sometime too but that's too much for me rn. I also suspect a lot of people R mad at me for arbitrary reasons just as I also am mad at a lot of people for arbitrary reasons so I dont wanna bother no one ...

Oh well so I'm intentionally reorganizing how I draw right now because I sense a shift in my trajectory again so thanks for making me reflect

[waitineedaname]

Came here because of your FMA Post-Canon GreedLing series and now I want to read/watch/idfk what this is SVSSS now. You've infected me and now I need to do research

YESSS READ MY SICKOS NOVEL!!

my very basic pitch: SVSSS is Scum Villain's Self-Saving System, a Chinese transmigration novel! the premise is that Shen Yuan is the #1 anti-fan of a trashy stallion novel -- he likes the monsters and the little crumbs of plot and loves the protagonist, but fucking hates literally everything else about it. when he finishes it, he's so overcome with rage about the ending that it literally kills him, and his dying thoughts are "dumbfuck author, dumbfuck novel." much to his surprise, he wakes up as the central villain of that novel with a transmigration system essentially telling him "you think you can do better? just fucking try it buddy"

it's a hilarious series, and a very quick read! the characters are really fun, the two main characters are completely deranged (a classic example of "I can fix him" *makes him worse*), and the balance between ridiculous humor and genuine emotion is excellent. also, as a loving satire of stallion novels/BL novels/webnovels in general, it has a lot of interesting things to say about the tropes embedded in those stories, as well as interesting things to say about being a writer and being a reader!

there are official print translations in English, so I recommend checking out your local library/bookstores, but if that doesn't work for you, it's also available on the Internet Archive and Anna's Archive! it's fairly short, only four books (three for the main plot + fourth book of plot-relevant extras)

enjoy!!

[blueikeproductions]

Well it’s official: EarthSpark is dead. The next cartoon is being worked on as we speak.

Via Protoman of the Slag Podcast on TFW2005:

“All I will say is my source is someone working on the next Transformers series and *spoiler* it's not Earthspark.  Ratings were bad, toys have had a very soft distribution restocking (It's not about how much that Wave 1 is ordered, it's how much gets reordered after by retail wave after wave) and well....... better luck next time.”

If he says it’s dead, it’s dead.

What’s next?

As of typing, we dunno.

The only successful non toy media currently are the Skybound comics, and while TFONE is coming out this September, we have no idea how well that will do. The general confusion and backlash from the more comedically cut first trailer doesn’t … bode well from normies and hard cores.

One is said to have tested well, but so did RotB and it didn’t do so hot in theaters despite people liking it better. It’s still doing VERY well on Paramount+, but I don’t know if that means anything because P+ is the red headed step child of streaming… Also Paramount’s current… EVERYTHING.

So big coin flip really.

A cartoon based more directly on what One sets up makes sense, a lot of people have said it looks like a pilot for a future cartoon anyway.

An anime adaption of the Energon Universe is also possible, but it’s a little … too soon and if they adapted it now it would basically be the first Dragonball Z and first FMA anime, taking liberties and going its own direction because it couldn’t realistically keep up with the manga.

Best case scenario: a new co produced Transformers anime that uses TFONE & Skybound as a spring board for its own ideas.

What becomes of the Terrans in the future? I hope you weren’t attached to them being their own species because I guarantee it’s gonna be like post Beast Wars stuff.

The Terrans will largely just be Autobots and Decepticons like how the Maximals and Predacons tend to be like Cyberverse Cheetor and EarthSpark’s own Tarantulas.

RotB at the very least reinvigorated the Maximals as a faction, but the Predacons are largely missing from modern televised and comic media. They’re kinda there post WFC, but Transmetal II Megatron is curiously labeled a Prime Predacon…

The Prime Predacons are great but still…

Hasbro remains very weird about non Autobots and Decepticons. Mini-Cons kinda luck out by having the Cassettes be retroactively be Mini-Cons, but screw you if you want proper Maximals, Terrans, Predacons. Terrorcons are another current anomaly that I don’t know will make the cut either.

As it stands, expect Twitch and Spitfire to be Mini-Cons, Aftermath a Decepticon, and everyone else an Autobot, with Jawbreaker specifically as a Dinobot. Whether he gets used just as much as Slash remains to be seen. -sarcastic-

[irontragedyreview]

I know I said I wasn't going to write about bnha for a while, however there is one (of the many) that makes me hate the ending but this particularly bothers me so much in the interpretation and the way it was executed, Izuku being a teacher during his retirement years. I'm going to be honest, I don’t call what I write below as an analysis or it will be handled objectively, because in truth I’m going to put a little of my own experience on the subject, not from a professional point of view (I’m not a teacher) but as a student at the different educational levels that I have attended.

I want to start saying that I love the idea of ​​Izuku becoming a teacher, this isn’t a post that seeks to spit on those who decided to choose teaching as a job, but rather the hateful way in which at least the leaks and many interpretations make this election looks like his biggest failure. The main problem with this decision was made hastily (like almost the entire ending), because it’s just a passing decision to then see Midoriya again in his modified hero suit.

It’s the end, everything needs to be closed, we have a window of time to see the UA years, the graduation and how the embers are extinguished, to bring us to the reality that Izuku has accepted that without his quirk he can’t be a hero, grateful for the wonderful dream he was able to live, but now looking for other alternatives consistent with his current situation. This is a direct call to the first chapter, there are two moments where we can see the alternatives and the pain of a dream that can’t be fulfilled, first a panel with him trying to hold back his tears while telling himself not to be surprised that he knew that his dream was impossible and he had to be realistic, the second time when after the whole debacle with All Might, Bakugou and the pro heroes, he’s already resigned and said that it was time to think about his future with a small smile. At that moment Izuku had agreed to look for another future, which was stopped when Toshinori appears and tells him the iconic words "You can be a hero."

Quick reminder, people who complain about Midoriya's passivity and that he didn’t train and prepare for UA being quirkless, remember that from what we can see Midoriya is a child who has suffered bullying for much of his formative years, with shitty teachers and that he’s practically isolated for his classmates (he has no friends in Aldera), ignoring this information and how it affects his confidence and character development is simply ignoring an element that accompanies the character throughout the manga, it doesn’t help that Horikoshi has ignored all these details in Midoriya, but the basis is that, if no one believes in you, it’s difficult to believe in yourself, especially without external help or support. That said, the decision to stop being a hero without a quirk isn’t new, previous chapters with Bakugou in the hospital and the embers left it clear that he was not going to continue being a hero.

Everything said above is necessary so that I can explain everything else, the decision to be a teacher is not bad, with a better developed and with more substance than 10 panels would have been wonderful and that is for several reasons. First, characters can change, a first goal can lead to another one, it’s satisfying to see when a character believed that the goal to be achieved was one but then discovers that the journey he took I took him to a different place but that isn’t bad, the sacrifice of the ofa is the reason why he becoming a teacher it doesn’t need to be negative, the problem is that it makes it seem that way and that it must be fixed. In FMA Ed renounces his alchemy for his brother and while this is bittersweet, the words are to remember that what is more important than his alchemy are his loved ones, he has people around him, his alchemy isn’t the most important thing, especially because that makes him get his brother back. I think this ending wanted to start with this idea but in a horrible way because Izuku doesn't seem happy just content, especially because from what we see Midoirya feels alone because everyone else is partially fulfilling the dream he had all his life and move away from him, this could have been fixed if there were more relationships in those panels, him interacting with other characters such as faculty staff or other people (outside of Aizawa), because part of growing up is meeting different groups of people, the class A may be important but they aren’t in his daily life and they seem to have more of a relationship with each other than with Midoriya, this also weakens their relationships because he can only be part of the group at the end when he is one of them again, the quirkless Midoriya doesn’t seem to have a place in class A without keeping up with them, intentionally or not, it weakens the relationships between the characters. Although, it’s okay to understand that adult life won’t always allow you constant contact, none of this indicates that there are efforts for actively finding. This was honestly a big negative point, it doesn't take away from the fact that class A invested in a suit so Izuku could have his dream again, but being a respected teacher with friends who are around you isn't horrible either and that all this happened in secret because 8 years old, it feels cruel.

Second, I would have liked to see what kind of teacher Izuku is because I think he has the qualities to be someone great at it. One of the things that this new career brings is that Izuku can and I want to know if he became a better teacher than the ones he had, because Aldera’s guy, Aizawa, Toshinori all of them were bad teachers for Midoriya and in general for other characters. Before anyone says anything, when I say they were bad teachers, I'm not saying it because they didn't show favoritism or served everything on a silver platter, but because they were incredibly negligent. I don't have to talk about aldera’s guy, right? He saw how Bakugou directly attacked his desk and let it go along with the mockery of the class when he talked about his dream of going to UA (fictional character or I don't expect him to rot in hell). Toshinori, look, I love Toshinori and his relationship with Izuku, it’s obvious that they care deeply about each other but that doesn’t mean that he wasn’t a great teacher for Izuku, from his drop-in guidance on ofa, the secrets, the way that he found out about Nighteye and Mirio, Toshinori may care for Izuku deeply but he wasn’t a good teacher or mentor for him, it doesn't help that he had no preparation for the role.

Aizawa, to begin with I’m an Aizawa critical so I’m not going to sugarcoat his character but either defenestrate him, truth is that beyond the dadzawa fics, Aizawa is a bad teacher at least in his way of being, I don’t deny that he cares about his class more because everything he has experienced and  his relationship with Class 1 A is different from the others, but that doesn’t mean that his teaching and in many cases his reactions are negligent or irrational for someone who claims to be rational. Let's talk about his first moment as a teacher and I don't say it because of the false threat of expulsion, but because of how he handled Midoriya about his quirk, at first we are told that he doesn’t read the students' files to not have preconceptions of them or whatever, but what kind of teacher doesn't read their students' files to know what are those details that they should take into account and help them improve. His first words about Midoriya being reckless and becoming a burden are out of line and cruel not just for a student in his first year but his damn first day. Aizawa's words may be true, the heroes are in constant danger, and everyone must collaborate so as not to be a burden in dangerous situations, but don’t read that your student is new with his quirk and make a preconceived idea due to an antipathy towards All Might shows that rationality is a facade for being an idiot, you’re their teacher guide them and read the damn file, that would help you understand how to help them improve and not undermine their self-esteem in the process. Bring Midoriya and Bakugo together in a final exam, because in his words "the responsibility for their bad relationship lies with both of them" and considering how Bakugo exercised physical violence previously and again in an exercise that was being monitored but there was never call?  As a teacher, when you see two students have a rocky relationship and one of them tends to react violently, the idea isn’t to put them together in a final exercise but to treat them separately and then together. Aizawa is supposedly a certified teacher (unlike All Might) but the pedagogy necessary to deal with children is obviously not part of the UA curriculum. These are the most impressive ones that make you consider how bad teachers the UA has and its selection exam.

The great irony of all this is that Endeavor was the only one who actually listened to his student and advised accordingly, the irony of this shouldn’t be lost.

Having said all this, I would have liked to see Midoriya, who has a good predisposition with children and who has had bad experiences, be what he would have wanted them to be for him. I say this as a person who has great respect for the teaching profession, but I can recognize that not all teachers deserve to be one and use their position of power to humiliate or mistreat children in their care. Over the years but especially in primary and high school, these types of teachers can deeply mark a student. At university I have the option of leaving class and I’m able to defend myself, a child usually tends to respect the power hierarchy even in a counterproductive way. But I have also had good teachers and it is those types of teachers who can help in difficult moments and help create and shape futures, I have met people who deeply loved their profession and made it their priority not only to teach classes but to help children. Of course all of those named above (except the Aldera’s guy, you suck) were not trying to humiliate their students, but it doesn’t mean that they were not good teachers or there were many interactions missing. Before anyone says that Aizawa and All Might protected them and would give their lives for Midoirya and all their students in general, I’m talking about them as teachers in the exercise of their profession, they are also heroes and of course they don’t want to see them die to their students, that doesn’t mean that they can bad teachers due to negligent treatment of them.

I would have really liked to see what type of teaching he imparts, how he’s training the new generation because that is where you can see a change, especially from his own experience. I would have liked to know if he uses his analysis to help them improve, if even after he became a hero again he stayed at his job because he can truly make a change both by saving people and teaching at the UA. This is a plot that had a lot of potential for the character but it’s a bad taste in the mouth that the chapter itself takes it in such a sad way and even the fandom classifies it as a sign that he’s a loser, the only loss here is no see how heroes can be changed from within, as well as Ochako. Through teaching, Izuku can create a future to form different heroes, who can even achieve what he could not. Izuku as a teacher would not be so horrible if Horikoshi had not really used this idea for 10 panels and without wavering in his daily life and this happens because he developed this possibility in a last chapter and gave an ending that is cowardly because it doesn’t close plots and leaves to the viewer with the say don't show, the society of heroes felt the same way because in the end beyond Ochako, not even Shoji interests me because his work is "yes he did a lot, believe me" and that is due to how the plot of heteromorphic discrimination was practically forgotten.

Well, I think I said everything I wanted to say and it makes me sad that a profession like this feels like something of a loser when I have great respect for the people who get up every day to teach their students, especially those who do it because they really believe that they are creating a future and above all at such low salaries, at least in my country.