#idk what else to tag it with cause i don't wanna get mixed into a bunch of discourse

[sketch-wolf]

there's this really bad/annoying thing about being in the fma fandom, which is the fact that people have really strong opinions on which version people should watch first, and the moment someone asks about it because they wanna watch the show, it just becomes so messy. especially around multiple fans which each has their own opinions. and like i'm not excluding myself from this. it's like once you start talking to people about the old vs new fma anime (known as 03 and bh respectively) you get an opinion.

and regarding me and my own personality, simply gaining this insight into this discussion and opinions on it, as well as getting in situations where me and some other fans have been asked by someone which to watch, then it starts haunting me.

i'm writing this all down right now cause this just occasionally comes up in my head and starts bothering mem and i need to vent this somehow. cause the thing is i can't stand to argue with people about this without getting exhausted quickly. cause again each person has their own strong opinion about whether to watch 03 before bh.

but honestly i thing the worst thing about this is how this whole thing might actually just scare people away from watching fma at all. since like once someone asks and get differing opinions thrown at them about what's right, then it's not really a good time to be in. and i don't wanna be scaring people away from watching it.

Now here's the thing though. I'm vehemently against telling people "oh you wanna get into that? then you gotta do these 10 sidequests first" in general. like to me? that's just so tiring and off-putting.

cause here's the thing. unless something is specifically a sequel, then you shouldn't have to read/watch anything beforehand in order for it to make sense/for you to enjoy it. period.

it tired me out so much when people ask to watch and anime and people say "you gotta read the manga first thought!" like if that's the case then the anime adaption has failed and is not worth watching at all imo. like feel free to recommend people to read the manga in general if they would like the anime. like it's fun to see the source material. but it should. not. be. required.

people can watch an anime without the manga first, that's what adaptions are for! especially considering reading a comic and watching a show are such different experiences, and while someone might not have the time, energy, and/or ability to read it, they can still watch a show version. so please. stop telling people to read instead of watching.

now then, regarding bh and 03. i get that bh was made with the throught that those who watched 03 shouldn't have to rewatch a bunch of stuff in mind. i do get that. but. BUT! bh is still not a sequel.

BH IS NOT A SEQUEL TO 03. that's the whole thing. it's it's own adaption. and you're able to get a full experience by watching that alone. sure, you do get to see some bonus stuff if you watch 03 first, but that's what it is. a bonus. not a requirement to understand what's happening in bh.

so anyway after all of that. here's what i think. just in general with anime. if the question is "do i need to do anything before watching this anime?" unless it is specifically a sequel then no. hard no. you don't need to do that. like don't feel bad about wanting to tell your friend about how you went about watching it, but focus then on the fact that's how you did it, and you enjoyed it. but it's still not needed. so they can feel free to just get into the thing as well before watching/reading anything additional.

so in the end my opinion is simply just go ahead and watch that thing. you can check if it's a sequel, but if it's not? just watch it.

no need to read the manga or watch anything else before it. do your thing, watch it how you want. cause there's already so many ways to experience a show, and it's pointless to try and mimic someone else's. experience it yourself how ever you end up doing so.no need to try and optimise it. it's fine.

[burnedlegend-archive]

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[wolf-skins]

Hey, I was wondering if you could tell me what bpd is exactly... I saw you posted about it once and I... idk I kinda related but I don't wanna just grab something offline and slap the label onto me when I don't know what it is and I was hoping if you could explain it? If not that's totally okay cause I wouldn't wanna impose or anything

Hey! It’s no problem.

A lot of people find various symptoms or experiences with BPD relatable. This is because a lot of experiences people who have BPD go through comes from trauma, plus BPD has a lot of fluctuating mood things which can be easily relatable to anyone who has a mood disorder. It’s actually something a lot of people in the BPD community get upset about, when their BPD posts are high-jacked by neurotypicals who go: “I don’t have BPD, but…” A lot of neurodivergent people could relate on some level too.

Keep in mind, too, that BPD is a personality disorder (PD). People with PDs tend to have similarities to them, especially if they share a “cluster”. (PDs are categorized in cluster A, cluster B, and cluster C, each cluster containing PDs with similarities). I just want to clear that up first, because exploring mental illness is always going to be complicated as heck! There are so many overlapping things, and everyone responds to different things in their life or traumas in different ways, so that could also have an affect. I cannot stress enough on doing excessive research.

BPD stands for borderline personality disorder. It’s also sometimes called “emotionally unstable personality disorder”. The biggest, common symptoms of BPD are: extreme emotional imbalance (to quote someone with it, it’s like all of our nerves are exposed, and every little touch causes an extreme reaction - this meaning that the very tiniest thing can set our extreme emotions off, and our emotions completely overwhelm us until we can’t focus on anything else), extreme abandonment issues (real or imagined), splitting (black and white thinking; something is all good or all bad, no in-betweens), identity disturbance, and impulsiveness. You can read the basics about it here. 

BPD consists of a number of symptoms including chronic feelings of emptiness, dissociative symptoms, impulsivity, rapid mood swings, low self-esteem, instability in goals and self-identity, instability in relationships, anxiety, anger, fear of abandonment, and suicide attempts and self-harm. -shitborderlinesdo

Personality disorders are severe mental illnesses for which there is no cure - not even with medication. Meds can help, of course, and I personally wouldn’t be alive without them, but our biggest help comes from therapies, most prominently DBT (built for borderlines by a borderline, but it helps with anyone facing extreme emotions) and CBT. But looking into any therapy helps a lot.

A common, extremely common, theme around borderlines (but there are exceptions, as with anything) is extreme abuse in adolescence or adulthood. S*xual abuse is common and not unheard of. Another theory about why borderlines become who we are is that we may have been overly sensitive children, who ended up deprived of the attention/love/support we needed (through in some abuse, and, well). There are other factors, but that’s considered one of them.

BPD is one of the most life-threatening mental illnesses, following only after eating disorders. 

There are a lot of disorders that have similarities to BPD, bipolar disorder being a common one. Most of us end up misdiagnosed with BD because borderlines can have both manic and depressive symptoms. They manifest in slightly different ways, and people with bipolar disorder tend to have longer fluctuations between mania/mixed/depression. Their moods are more likely to last weeks or months, while ours can change within minutes or hours. 

If you feel like you relate to some of the symptoms, but not all, there are a list of mental illnesses/disorders which may be similar here. We also have common traits that are usually associated with other neurodivergencies, like child regression or stimming. 

I cannot sum up a whole disorder in one post, however. Like any mental illness, it’s very complex and the experiences will range from person to person. The best, concise (and not biased) resources I can give you are shitborderlinesdo FAQs here on tumblr: 1, 2. The tumblr is run by borderlines for borderlines, and many of the mods that built the FAQ have or are going through different psychology majors and the like.Keep in mind to avoid Google when looking into this as best you can. BPD has been mislabeled for years as The Inherently Abusive Disorder™, and there entire sites and books set up building around this idea. The most popular one lists that all symptoms of emotional abuse means that, of course, your abuser must be borderline! Because yeah, that makes sense. (Try imagining the affect of telling people that their mental illness makes them abusive by default…. well, you can see the results because 98% of us believe we’re awful, manipulative assholes lmao.)

The FAQ has a ton of information ready at hand, but I can also recommend Girl, Interrupted (the book, not the movie - though the movie is good it’s way off the mark and doesn’t represent any mental illness properly) by Susana Kaysen for an inside look into BPD. I also really like The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook, which is an easy to follow workbook for DBT skills. If you feel you can relate even on some level to BPD, learning some DBT skills will help, regardless if you are borderline or not!

If you have any more specific questions (like perhaps what posts you related to, because maybe I can also help point you to reasons why you related to those) or anything, let me know.

I’m publishing this because it’s a common question, and many people think BPD is relatable without realizing that our symptoms are so much more intense than they can imagine. That’s not saying that relating to a post or symptom is bad at all, and could most definitely point to something deeper going on within you/whomever, but BPD is also much more complex than a lot of people imagine.

I’m going to keep trying to post more info about it as I go along, bc I’ve always been obsessive about research into mental illnesses, and because it’s nice to be able to share things that can help both myself and others understand what I’m going through. If you don’t want to go through the frickton of resources in the FAQs, keep a look out for my ‘bpd info’ tag. I hope some of this helps, and if you want me to remove this from being public just let me know, and I can instead send this whole thing to you privately.