About the Waraider commentary ā I'm autistic and related a lot to the core difficulties he has (i.e. starting unfamiliar interactions, trying to address conflict between your values, thinking that decisions absolutely /have/ to satisfy all of those values or else you can't decision), but the setting of the battle and Waraider's narration during his extra made those struggles into something sympathetic that you can understand and address, not something you'd point and stare at.
Thatās good to know, thanks! Iām glad it came out well for you.
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How do you feel about the villains (specifically Father and the homunculi) in FMA: Brotherhood?
Spoilers below the cut!
The first time around, Iāve got to admit I was kind of disappointed when it turned out Father wasnāt actually their dad. There seemed to be setup for a very personalĀ sort of conflict there, and I was digging it, and then it just wentĀ āoh, nope, not actually him, just this unrelated malicious creature that took on his appearance,ā which turned that potentially very personal conflict into something a lot simpler with less emotional weight.
After the rewatch, Iām still not sure that fakeout was a good idea for the story. The characters end up spending pretty much all of two seconds actually thinking itās their father before Father goes āOh, did you mistake me for Hohenheim?ā and they immediately accept that as truth, so all in all I donāt think itād have had any impact on the story if Father had looked like, I donāt know, King Xerxes.Ā The only purpose of the fakeout, then, is to fool readers before the characters ever meet Father - but fooling readers into thinking the conflict has moreĀ interesting emotional stakes than it does seems counterproductive. Itās kind of like setting up a cool twist and then going āHaha, fooled you, there is no twist.ā Youāre just sort of calling attention to what could have been, creating disappointment where there neednāt have been any. Iām curious about why the author made this choice.
Overall, I would have liked to see more real characterization out of Father/the dwarf in the flask. I donāt quite feel like I ever quite got a coherent sense of him beyondĀ āis very evil, wants to consume God,ā which is a shame.
The homunculi, though, are pretty great. Lust and Sloth the least so, what with playing the smallest roles, but the others all had somethingĀ interesting to them, which was great. Envy is so horrifically evil and it all turns out to make so much sense - this persistent jealousy of humans and their strength and their support for and bonds with one another, manifesting in this vicious, manic desire to tear down that strength and support and bonds, as if just to reassure themself that humans really are worthless filth and they truly are above them and donāt need to envy anything about them at all. And I kind of liked Greed even in his original body, where he insisted he cared about his gang because they were his, so I was delighted to see that theme continued and expanded on in his revived form, where it turns out what he really desires most of all is true friends who care about him. They are great.
Envy is a perfect example of a truly, utterly despicable villain with real, coherent, understandable motivations. Understandable doesnāt mean sympathetic, or that theyāre really not so bad after all; it just means you can truly follow why they do what they do, given who they are. I live for this sort of thing.
Have you played any of the Souls or Bloodborne video games? I picked them up right after I read the end of TQFTL, and their themes reminded me a bit of how you resolved Chaletwo/Mew/Chalenor's storyline.
I have not! Shadey is a fan, but I never quite had the patience to watch when he was playing. I had no idea there were similar themes, but color me intrigued, I guess?
Congrats on your fic's fifteenth anniversary! I liked all the nostalgia call-backs you used and I think they did a great job of building hype for the climax. (Also, this chapter disproved my five-year-long overconfident Destroyer guess that entirely hinged on why Suicune would know an HM move, so I have no clue what will happen next. Aaaaaaaa)
Ahh, thank you! Now Iām dying to hear your full Destroyer theory. :P
Our class talked a little bit about the book's connection to race and technology/industry issues at its time of publication, but we talked mostly about how the Martians could be construed as commentary on British colonialism ā they effectively put Britain in the same position that it put foreign countries in during its age of imperialism. (Also, Wells apparently hated the illustrator's drawings so much when it was serialized that he took shots at the guy in a later chapter. Ehe.)
Anonymous said:
the most important historical context for wotw is probably just the history of British colonialism. that actually makes the ending even more interesting, to me at least, because it's a situation where the colonizers die of disease, rather than the people being colonized.
Yeah, the colonialism connection was one of the things discussed on Wikipedia (and is explicitly brought up in the first chapter of the novel:Ā āThe Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?ā). I hadnāt thought of the connection to colonized people dying of disease, though; thatās an interesting angle to consider.
Hadnāt heard the anecdote about the illustrator, haha. Thatās hilarious; I remember being amused when I was reading the chapter that Wells had included the narrator complaining about inaccurate depictions of the Martians, which struck me as a great little bit of realism. Apparently it was even more real than I thought. :P
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I really enjoyed your thoughts on War of the Worlds! My British literature class just finished it, and given that the course focuses on historical context, we never explored the book's Butterfree-ish character torture in any detail.
Ahaha, thanks! I am happy to provide all necessary analysis of Butterfree-ish Character Tortureā¢, please come again
(Did you learn anything fun about the historical context, by the way? I only really know what I read on Wikipedia, but Iād totally be interested in more context illuminating it.)
It's really cool how you take normal expressions and tics and body language into account for the characters you draw - everyone looks so true to who they are in the games they're from.
Thanks! My favorite thing is trying to figure out a characters expression while keeping true to their character.Ā
