Case (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
case) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomsecrets2013-01-23 06:51 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2013-01-23 06:51 pm
[ SECRET POST #2213 ]
⌈ Secret Post #2213 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
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Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 042 secrets from Secret Submission Post #316.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - request for assistance ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
no subject
What did you dislike about the manga ending?
(Also, it blows my mind when people keep saying the first series was more angsty, because manga seems pretty angsty to me -- )
no subject
I wrote quite a bit for FMA, but hardly any of it is archived there, just becaues I can't be arsed to re-upload everything. There's probably a ton of fic that just never got moved, or the active people may still be posting on the LJ communities. Back in the day, LJ was the real center of the fandom, and it was super active.
Concerning the ending: it's not that I didn't want them to have a happy ending, or that they didn't deserve a happy ending (a common accusation against anybody who didn't like the manga ending). It's that this ending was presented as a happy one, and I couldn't buy it.
For me, a lot of my investment was in Ed and Al's relationship, and Ed was my favorite character. Ed losing his alchemy at the end seemed to me like an obvious sacrifice, but the text didn't treat it like one. It acted as if everything was happy.
For one, it seemed weird to me how Ed suddenly came to the realization that he could sacrifice his alchemy for that. Until now, nobody seems to have been able to pick and choose what they're sacrificing, in that way. It felt like Arakawa was exploiting a loophole I'm not quite sure was actually there before.
Secondly, I find it very hard to believe that Ed didn't find it difficult to get along without alchemy, afterwards. Alchemy was a central part of Ed's life. We've seen how much he used it, how much he *loved* it. If Izumi had lost her alchemy, I can see her moving on serenely with her life. But Ed... I mean, what's he going to do now? It's like being a world-class piano player and then having your hands crippled. Even if you figure out what you're going to do afterwards, I imagine there's still some vertigo. Had Arakawa shown him capitalizing on his academic skills, or branching out into regular physics/chemistry/engineering, I would have been okay with that. But Arakawa shows him fixing a roof in Resembool, and then some photos of him traveling around. Ed is sixteen - that's not nearly old enough to retire.... And you know what, if he's emotionally ready to retire at sixteen? That's some serious damage there.
Thirdly, there's the issue of "is it better to be without alchemy or with". If the message is that it's better/just as good to be without, why is Ed the only one who loses it? If that's a universal solution, it should be for everybody. Al gets his body back, retains his alchemy. Roy gets his eyesight back and leads the country. Scar fixes up Ishbal. Havoc gets the use of his legs back.
But Ed loses his alchemy. In effect, he ends up being the only one to end up really losing something.... Essentially, he's the only one who ends up 'punished' by the plot.
Arakawa didn't show Ed considering a life without alchemy. She didn't show him seriously wishing his alchemy would be gone, or acting like alchemy was a burden for him. It was the other way around - he always played it up, always showed it off. I didn't feel like there was any of Ed *dealing* with losing alchemy, because the narrative treats it as something that doesn't actually need to be dealt with (which is really my main issue).
Lastly, in terms of in-world mythology. You have this force called alchemy which can change the world in amazing ways. You have the Doors, which have the Tree of Life on them, and are the final interface between man and this great/godly power. In front of the doors, you have a being which reflects the person, saying that he is one and everything and god and you. With all this hefty symbolism going on, what does it *mean* to do away with it? What does closing the Doors mean for the human soul, for the human's connection to the world? It just seems to me that there are some seriously weird implications going on here, but Arakawa basically ignored it all. This is a pretty world-changing event, to me, but it got no closure in the least.
In terms of Ed and Al's relationship - it started off as their journey together, but ended with them apart. The thing is, I didn't feel like that's what the story was leading up to, that the point was them "learning to live on their own" or anything. Thematically, it left me feeling a bit lost. The beginning was very Elric-centric, whereas the ending was more ensemble. It's not that I don't like the other characters, but that family theme kind of drowned, for me, in the sea of drama and zombies and whatnot.
(and, of course, there's the ridiculous kitsch that came after)
tl;dr: my problem with the ending is that the narrative presents as a happy ending a situation which I find really hard to believe is quite so sunshiney-roses.
(sorry about the length, I've just had a few years to think about this >_>)
no subject
Right, that's why I was taking it as an indication of what new/current fandom is like, and numerically is very heavily Roy/Ed. I've followed the LJ comms on and off for the last couple years, and they are more varied.
And your thoughts on the ending are interesting and well thought out. I do think the ending of the manga is a bit abrupt and not quite logical all around, like it ended more because Arakawa was ready to stop doing it than because that was what it had been leading up to. Which doesn't super bother me (and, I'll be honest, the climax *I* cared about was that bit in volume 2 when Riza draws on Roy and there's the whole showdown about whether to kill Envy, and everything after that I was just kind of 'sure, whatever.' obvs, your mileage/investment may vary)