#they and the series fully acknowledge the horror of what happened and spare no bones about it | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

pisswizzard · 10 months ago

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[ID: tags that read: #like the entire point is that You The Reader could be any one of these people #ticked by the system #blinded by propaganda #and before you know it you hae blood on your hand #fma is about what you do after that #how do you recover from that? #how do you pay the world back for that? /end ID]

“FMA is bad because it portrays war criminals as sympathetic, likable people” bro that’s the point. That’s the whole point. That is THE point. Did you think Ethnic Cleanser is some kind of special category of person that gets separated away from all the Good People at birth? Did you think there’s some kind of barn full of Genocide Doers that only gets deployed into the general public during world wars? Did you think assholes who do terrible shit in real life are never charming or likable or capable of doing good things and helping people? One of the best parts of FMA is how we the audience realize that some of our core protags have made irredeemable choices, and we have to reckon with the fact that they’re still people, with the unalienable rights and qualities thereof. Sorry if the Problematics aren’t constantly wearing a dunce cap and a list of all their crimes and this makes the media incomprehensible to you

#and at no point are any of them ever ‘forgiven’ for their crimes nor are they applauded for their later work fighting for justice #they bare the full weight of their choices and acknowledge nothing they do makes up for it but that they're obligated to do the work anyway #Roy and Riza make it their life goal to make sure they/everyone else involved is held accountable even if it means their eventual execution #they and the series fully acknowledge the horror of what happened and spare no bones about it #we live in a world with very similar horrors and we need to be able to imagine a better one that comes after #we need ideas for how genuine accountability and progress could look as we move forward. it's not a perfect ending but life won't be either #and for anyone that doesn’t know (cuz I didn’t til like a year ago) the author is of Ainu heritage #she wrote this with personal familial history of genocide at the hands of an empire

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