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[forestwind1234]

Okay but the weirdest thing about the whole "Brotherhood is better you should skip 03" discourse that's become commonplace now, it sort of forgets the world Brotherhood came out in and why you should watch the original Fullmetal Alchemist. When Brotherhood came out, the original Fullmetal Alchemist was one of the most beloved and most watched animes of all time. Brotherhood assumes you the audience have already seen it because of course you have, everyone has seen it, so it skips important information and speeds the story up because it doesn't want to bore you with things you already know. Have you ever wondered "hey why does the first episode of Brotherhood kind of suck, and why am I being introduced to like 50 new characters, and why are they acting like I know what the hell an alchemist is?" It's because Brotherhood thinks you've seen 03.

The first 7 or so episodes of Brotherhood constitute dozens of chapters in the manga, and the first 25 or so episodes of the original Fullmetal Alchemist. The Nina Tucker episode in Brotherhood, in FMA 03 takes up nearly three episodes. Yoki gets a backstory in 03 and it's genuinely one of the best episodes and taken directly from the manga and Brotherhood glosses over it because: duh, you've already seen it. And so if you skip the original you miss out on dozens of really great character building episodes like Ed and Al meeting Hughes for the first time and getting to spend a whole episode helping him free a train from terrorists, or Ed and Roy having a duel that expands on the relationship they have, or episodes where the brothers just help out random people in towns before the major story gets going.

The original also paces itself quite a bit better than Brotherhood and is more in line with the mangas storytelling. In the manga we don't find out about The Gate until nearly two dozen chapters in, and the same goes for the original anime. Like, that's a twist reveal in those stories, and it's weird that the most watched series is the one where they tell you all about The Gate in the first two episodes because they assume you've already seen the original show.

What's more, people don't know that Hiromu Arakawa helped write for the anime while she was still in the middle of writing the manga, and as a result was inspired to write scenes in Brotherhood that the anime did first. That scene of Edward getting impaled by a falling beam? Directly inspired by a similar scene in the original anime. There's a lot of little instances of that and they're great when you can recognize parallels and things in Brotherhood that are direct references to the original anime, but people don't notice any of that anymore. Because the original anime is just an automatic skip these days, and it's a bummer because people don't realize what a giant it was back before Brotherhood was released. They treat it as *bad,* not realizing it was one of the most beloved anime of its time and the problems people take issue with have a lot more to do with personal taste than any kind of actual flaw in the writing. Brotherhood was never meant to dethrone it, and the original anime was always supposed to be part of the viewing experience which is why those first few episodes of Brotherhood are so fast paced. So like, please stop telling people Fullmetal Alchemist 2003 is a skip, or it's bad, or you don't need it because Brotherhood is better. Regardless if you think Brotherhood is better or not, the original wrote Brotherhood's check. It was huge, it was beloved, and Brotherhood is *banking* on the knowledge you've seen all of it and loved it. And trust me when I say there is so much to love about the original series. It's still my favorite branch of the FMA franchise, and it's worth your time, I promise you.

[forestwind1234]

[forestwind1234]

i think it’s funny that kirk is always picking the flowers on alien planets

[forestwind1234]

Couldn't find Eris today for a hot minute. Counted the birds in her pen and came up 1 bird short, but I was SURE I didn't leave the door open. I looked all over the coop, I walked to her favorite dozing/sunbathing spots in the pen. Finally I thought, there's only one place I haven't looked, behind the door to the coop....

There she is. Mud colored little hen. Laying.... down.... like a broody.

Hey Eris..... what... whatcha got there...

Can I see it please?

Oh for pete's sake, not this again.

That's not an egg, that's a ball pit ball, Eris. It's goddamn blue.

This is why I can't take people seriously when they tell me mother birds will kick a bad egg out of the nest because They Know something is wrong. No, they don't. They don't know anything. Look at her face. Look at those completely blank eyes. There's not one single thought in that head. In fact, if you get close enough, you can hear the faint echo of elevator music drifting from the empty cavern of her skull.

By the way this is hands down the smartest bird I own.

[forestwind1234]

It’s time again

[forestwind1234]

You roll up to the Wizard Battle and your opponent takes out his spellbook but it’s just one of these

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[forestwind1234]

Posts that change your life

[forestwind1234]

using public transport as an alterhuman:

[forestwind1234]

Poll: Last Communion

[forestwind1234]

Bilbo barely passed Old Took's record lifespan after having a supernaturally-life-extending ring for 60 years. which begs a question. what the hell did Old Took do

[forestwind1234]

[forestwind1234]

Izutsumi in a traditional persian dress!! Her ears poking from under the veil is so cute to me

Sort of talked about this in my last post but ! I really want to see more persian representation in media, specifically animation. Really disheartening when most of the "popular" animated movies taking place in west asia are about war, revolution or just generally orientalist D: Hopefully one day that'll change !!

But till that happens >:) ill make my own representation

[forestwind1234]

I think a lot of what's currently informing my fellow white people curdling like milk and shitting their pants when asked to interrogate their relationship with rap is the way many people (especially well-meaning white people) still can't help but think of racism as something that you get accused of rather than something that influences the entire world in pernicious ways.

like, I think a lot of people currently posting the most cringe takes about rap right now would very much agree that Racism Is Bad and probably even acknowledge that rap has been and is still widely maligned and devalues for racist reasons.

but that last step, acknowledging that your personal tastes and interests are also influenced by systemic racism, is where a LOT of people stumble. it's very easy to assume that because you consider yourself against racism, then your tastes and interests cannot possibly be at all informed by racist. if you're a white American, that's simply extremely unlikely to be true.

speaking from personal experience, I had to Work to decenter whiteness in my media tastes. when I was like 19 I listened to a podcast where a white Jewish man talked about keeping a spreadsheet of the books he read to make sure he was reading a roughly equal number of men and women, and I started doing the same thing to track how many authors of color I was reading. at the time I took pride in my belief that I was reading diversely, but when the year ended I was shocked to discover that people of color had written barely a quarter of the books I'd read. I had been giving myself way too much credit while still unintentionally prioritizing white authors, because white authors were the ones I knew best. so I started making an extremely conscious effort to seek out books by authors of color, both fiction and nonfiction, that sounded like my kind of shit.

music was extremely similar. I grew up a little white girl in a very white city in a very white state; nobody was offering me an education in rap or r&b or soul or hip hop. as an young adult there were definitely some Black artists I liked, like Janelle Monáe, but I had to take the initiative of seeking out more artists to find out who I fuck with. you're not going to like everybody, which is fine, but are you even giving anyone a chance? are you even looking?

racism has roots everywhere, bro. it's not enough to just acknowledge it, you have to actively get digging.