#this will probably never get written

[the-badger-mole]

I have been mulling over a Psych!AU for ATLA. I think it would be hilarious. I will probably not get around to writing it, but here's what I was thinking.

Katara in the Shawn Spencer role. She honed her skills with Pakku, her surly, not always supportive grandfather who came to live with her family when she was very young after her mother died. He saw her knack for puzzle solving and her preternaturally sharp memory. Katara has a strained relationship with him because of his deep rooted misogyny and his insistence that despite being a woman, Katara should follow his footsteps into law enforcement. It...is a weird dichotomy, and at the start of the story, it has been years since they spoke.

Sokka is her Gus. He's a tightly wound, neurotic overachiever who feels disappointed because after years of being the gifted kid, he ends up working as a pharma rep. He wanted to be an engineer or a bio-chemist, but it didn't work out (I haven't decided why just yet). He still pursues those interests in his own time, which makes him a valuable, if reluctant participant in his sister's schemes. He initially goes along with his sister's foray into psychic detecting in order to protect her, but eventually he gets just as into it as she is. Especially after he meets Suki.

Suki is our Juliette. She's a sharp junior detective who assists the sibling detective duo from time to time. She believes Katara's psychic abilities after a few times witnessing her solving cases. Well, she mostly believes it. She can't completely wrap her mind around it, but she also can't think of a rational, natural explanation for how Katara seems to know what she knows. As time goes on, she develops feelings for Sokka, the sarcastic, logical, goofy half of the detective duo. She often acts as a buffer between the siblings and her partner,

Zuko is the Carlton Lassiter of the story. He does not believe Katara's claims of psychic abilities, but like Suki, he hasn't come up with a rational explanation. Yet. Still, she gets results, he can't deny. Their relationship is rocky at first. Zuko was the best detective in the police department, until Katara started showing him up. He is a stickler for rules and procedure, and he hates how Katara and her brother just do whatever cockamamie thing pops into their head, and it works out. As they work together more, he feels like he's on the cusp of figuring her out, but he just finds himself more and more impressed with her. Eventually, they become friends, and after that, something else blossoms between them.

Toph is this story's Woody. She's a slightly unhinged ME with an attitude problem. She is probably not completely blind, but she's severely visually impaired, which makes people doubt her abilities. At first. But then they realize why she is the ME for the most prestigious police department in the area. She likes the way Katara and Sokka have shaken up the department, so she doesn't mind helping them out every so often. She knows exactly how Katara manages to solve these crimes, but she will take that secret to the grave, because she thinks it's hilarious.

Aang is McNabb, and if you've seen the show, you know I'm right.

Iroh is the chief Vic. He runs the department with efficiently and is the one who impressed the importance of the rules in his nephew, Detective Zuko. Unfortunately, he never could get the boy to be more open minded. Iroh has no trouble employing the services of a psychic detective, as long as she gets the job done. He also finds it amusing to watch his nephew trying very hard not to be in love with her.

Obviously, Pakku is the Henry. Hakoda is Hakoda. He's a good dad, but he left a lot of the work of raising his kids to his mother-in-law, Kanna and Pakku, her husband, while he worked to keep the entire household financially afloat. Now that his kids are grown and out of the house, and he works less, he is trying to keep them all connected. He's very proud of his kids, though he doesn't completely understand what exactly it is they're doing. Either that, or he occasionally fills the Gus role along with or instead of Sokka.

[mariyekos]

Okay to reblog to help sample size!

[cashmoneyyysstuff]

“zukuu, you have to stop making faces at him.”

insulted, izuku splutters. breaking eye contact to gasp at you.

“ i wasn’t making a face ! was i..?” he trails off, you giggle, you turn your back to your boyfriend once again to continue wiping down the last of the dishes.

“he’ll pout harder if you keep making that scary face.”

“i-i wasn’t trying to scare him !” your boyfriend exclaims, looking at your baby cousin again and slumping when he sees the pout still fixed onto his face, visibly dimming “i don’t understand what i did wrong..”

“zuku, i already told you. kuma always looks like that. you’ll get used to it.” you reassure, a teasing smile on your face. your boyfriend seems undeterred by your explanation and hides his face behind his hands again, peeking through his fingers hoping to see even the minuscule crack of a smile on your younger cousin’s face.

your aunt had asked you to babysit your younger cousin takuma after suddenly being called in for work and having no one to watch over him for the day. you were free, and agreed to help her out, takuma was a sweet little boy and you didn’t get to see him super often. so the more you could the better ! unfortunately this fell on the same day as when your boyfriend was meant to come over to your house, but ever the loving, helpful boyfriend he is, izuku insisted on wanting to come over to help you out. he gets to spend time with you and get along with a cute baby, that sounded like a great time to him. and not to brag, but kids always seemed to love him.

every kid except for takuma apparently. the little boy’s face seemed permanently stuck with a frown. his eyebrows stood furrowed and his chubby pinch-able little cheeks puffed out, obviously unhappy with izuku’s presence.

you’d tried to tell izuku that this was just takuma’s resting face. that he looked at everyone this way and that it always surprised strangers. but as loving and doting as he is, your boyfriend could aslo be endearingly stubborn. he was determined to get takuma to smile at him at least once today. and now it looked like he was trying peekaboo. you couldn’t help but snort at your boyfriend’s laughable attempts at making your little cousin’s poker face crumble. “aw man, that one usually always works..” you hear him mumble. you put the final plate into your cupboard and turn with a sigh.

“izuku.”

“no no, i got it.” without realizing it, izuku’s brows furrowed in concentration, which your baby cousin unfortunately mistook for a challenge, furrowing his eyebrows even harder and even huffing at him. the nail in the coffin it looks like, izuku gasps, looking at your cousin with a betrayed expression “ ah ! what’d i do ?!”

“you were glaring at him !” you giggle, your boyfriend throws his head back, exasperated. you pull out a chair and sit next to him, giggling and pulling on takuma's pudgy cheek. said little boy does not break eye contact with izuku. you can admit he's acting kind of strange. was he actually going out of his way to challenge him ? the thought makes you giggle again. you turn to look at your boyfriend's pouty face looking at the exchange between you and your cousin.

"i didn't mean to glare at him.." he whines, leaning into your touch when you put your hand in his hair.

"i know."

"i felt like we were making progress."

"i..kinda doubt that," you snort, scratching at his green locks. desperately, he looks back at you wide eyed "but we were i swear ! it felt like he was starting to like me !"

"mhm ?" you break into a fit of laughter, and soon after izuku joins you, laughing softly to himself and shaking his head. takuma blinks at you both in confusion, and it makes you smile harder. seeing you laugh so hard makes izuku smile harder too, cheeks glowing a cute pink.

"i..sound crazy don't i ?" he asks, grinning at you. you pretend to think it over to tease him, and he huffs affectionately.

"hmmm, a little." izuku shakes his head, dropping it in shame as he stares at his lap. he heaves a heavy sigh and it makes you giggle a little bit more.

"i really don't know what i'm doing wrong, babies usually like me.."

"but i told you you're not doing anything wrong, izu." you reach to pinch his cheeks next, he yelps a little. "kuma's only lookin' at you 'cus you're new. he'll get used to you in no time, kay ?" you smile. a beat passes and izuku nods, smiling back at you.

"but i don't know, he kinda looks like he has it out for me.." he whispers, you assume so takuma doesn't hear. how thoughtful.

"yeah i did think it was kinda strange how he hasn't stopped looking at you.."

he drops his head back at your words "i thought so..!"

"but that doesn't mean he doesn't like you, per se..maybe he's just weary of you !" izuku leans back, placing a hand over his chest like he's actually been struck. he looks over at takuma still sitting proudly in his high chair like a king.

"what's there to be weary of ? i'm really nice, i promise !" takuma's only answer is a blink "that's really intense.." you're boyfriend sweat drops, "i don't think i've had anyone look at me like that before."

"shouldn't you be used to being glared at by now since you've known bakugou since you were kids ?"

"i don't even think kacchan was this bad." you scoff, slapping at his sturdy arm. "don't say that, you liar !" your boyfriend laughs to himself. struggling to hold your laughter back as you play fight. you're interrupted by takuma's whine. his poker face finally somewhat melting as he pouts, big eyes going glossy as he reaches out for you with chubby little fingers. you immediately zoom over to the child's side.

"aaww babyy," you coo "you wanna be wif me, yeah ? cuutieeee," your voice rises up an octave. izuku blushes at how cute you look and he hates himself for feeling a smidge jealous your cousin had managed to grab your attention. he shakes his head to rid himself of those childish thoughts.

you hop the baby up in your arms to readjust him, tickling his little tummy which earns you a giggle, izuku feels his jaw drop to the floor so hard if he were in a cartoon it'd make a comically loud clang sound, now he's a bit jealous of you.

"i think he's a little hungry, i'll be right back izu." you press a quick kiss to his cheek before bounding off to go get the toddlers bag that your aunt had entrusted to you in your room. the little contact alone makes heat blossom all the way to izuku's neck and he can't fix his lips to say anything, nodding dumbly.

the last thing he sees before you leave the room is takuma's gaze fixed to him. izuku sends him a determined smile and a wave. he'll win him over soon enough.

[kenneduck]

Crying over the thought of no one remembering Link’s birthday. Like after the 100 years, Link wakes up and realizes one day he cannot recall his birthday.

To his dismay, neither Impa, Robbie, Purah nor Zelda recall his birthday. He acts as if it isn’t a big deal, but he’s always finding himself quite sad when celebrating the birthdays of others.

Sidon notices at his own birthday celebration that his Hylian friend has a sense of sorrow. One that isn’t possible to rid of with his famous smile and flex. When Sidon approaches Zelda, she reveals that Link cannot recall his birthday, and that no one who knew him 100 years ago seemed to remember or take note. Sidon looks sympathetic towards the revelation, but then he has a thought…

Moments later, it becomes rather apparent that Sidon, the literal 10 foot tall birthday shark, has slipped away from his own party! A search begins around the domain. Where did he wander off to?

While looking around, Link finds himself being the one to enter Sidon’s room. He hears a flipping of pages, and he curiously notices Sidon looking through a journal. Before Link’s presence gets known, Sidon smiles his famous smile, and shouts “I KNEW IT”!

Link walks over to the happy shark man. Wondering why Sidon dipped from his own celebration to read a… paper journal. One that seems… familiar. Mipha’s journal?

Sidon, seeing his friend, scoops him up in excitement! Shouting over and over a date that wasn’t too far off in the future. Link looked confused, and when Sidon noticed said confusion, Sidon smiled. “Your birthday, Link! Mipha… she wrote it down! I knew she would!”

Link looked puzzled for a moment. What did Link’s birthday have to do with anything? But then he understood… his birthday WAS remembered. It had a date again. It wasn’t lost. Sidon couldn’t help but show the page of Mipha’s diary that spoke of Link’s upcoming birthday. Of the plans she had to surprise him despite the calamity looming.

Link couldn’t help but tear up at his smiling tail-wagging friend. Sidon looked concerned, thinking he did something wrong, but the tight hug Link gave him said otherwise. He thanked him. Repeatedly. And Sidon only began to smile again. Immediately beginning to ramble off birthday plans for his dearest friend.

But to Sidon’s dismay, Link cut him off. Telling him that it’s not Link’s birthday they should be celebrating right now. That Sidon has a party to get back to. Sidon only pouts playfully before readying to return to the celebration.

After the two do, Link couldn’t help but catch himself looking towards Mipha’s statue throughout the party. A few looks paired with a smile, but a few… a few felt tied with tears.

[feverdreamsanddelusions]

we really need more ship whump. ocean whump. stuck on a boat. whumpee going outside at night because there's not really a reason they should be restrained. because all the can see around them is the pitch black ocean stretching into infinity

[lindseymcdonaldseyelashes]

Leverage 4x1 - "The Long Way Down Job"

[forcedhesitation]

astarion origin playthrough worth it just for all the extra moments where he does the "sad wet cat" face

[sea-changed]

i. Reading Looking For The Good War has, among many other things, I think really helped me to clarify and articulate what I find so disquieting about "Points" as an episode. (Which is not all of it! There are certainly plenty of scenes that I find fascinating and/or enjoyable to watch.) But:

"It is much easier to tell a sentimental war story with a happy ending, in which valor eclipses causes and reconciliation triumphs over everything--a comedy, in other words--than it is to tell another, unsentimental kind of story." (page 89)

This is what it is, exactly--"in which valor eclipses causes and reconciliation triumphs over everything" could more or less be the logline of "Points." This is most egregiously evident to me in the scene of Nazi general's surrender, but the scene where Winters tells the Nazi officer to keep his sidearm is also I think highly indicative of this drive towards reconciliation, however rotten, above all else. And Samet articulates that wonderfully, and articulates as well the cost of this type of narrative:

"Yet sentimentality does more than shape the way we commemorate wars. It informs all those cultural and sociological attitudes in the shadow of which wartime and postwar policies are crafted, and it prevents a more productive and enduring sympathy that, in cooperation with reason, might guide our actions and help us become more careful readers of war's many ambiguities and false seductions." (page 83)

ii. The layers of dislike I have for the Nazi general scene are manifold; the mirroring of Winters and the Nazi general and thereby Easy Company with the Nazi soldiers feels incredibly sinister, perhaps most aggressively so in its weird push to rehabilitate the Nazis as soldiers, and thus to both foreshadow (within the world of the show) and echo (in the world of the audience) the archetypal defense that Nazi higher-ups would put forward at Nuremberg and beyond, that they were just following orders.

iii. The mirroring of Winters and Easy Company with the Nazis is clearly intentional, and somewhat bizarrely explicit ("You've found in one another a bond that exists only in combat among brothers") and maudlin (the panning shots over the Nazi soldiers' faces and wounds), and by the end the urge to parallel the two leaders and the two armies--indeed, to collapse one into the other, in order to make them functionally the same--seems to cause a sort of scriptwriting amnesia about who these words are actually being said by and to. Once again the greater historic context makes this especially chilling, Operation Paperclip being perhaps the most salient point to evoke. (I am also haunted, forever, by a statistic that Michael C. C. Adams cites in The Best War Ever, that a September 1945 survey of American GIs found that 22% believed the Nazi treatment of Jewish people to be justified. Granted, this survey would not have been taken using modern sampling methods, and who knows what the sample size was to begin with or what soldiers in particular were being surveyed. But still.)

iv. The scene leans heavily into the idea of a unique soldierly bond that unites not only each individual army within itself but bonds the two armies together. ("You've found in one another a bond that exists only in combat, among brothers who've shared foxholes, held each other in dire moments, who've seen death and suffered together.") Besides being disquieting for reasons I state above, I think it's notable that the Nazi general's speech emphasizing the brotherhood of soldiers happens directly after the short scene between Winters and Sobel, wherein Winters chides Sobel on a point of military ritual ("We salute the rank, not the man"). Sobel is outside the brotherhood; he doesn't understand how to be a soldier; whereas the Nazis are within the brotherhood, so much so that they are allowed to articulate its terms. (This is egregious no matter what, but becomes all the more so when it is framed as a Jewish man being excluded from the "club" of military brotherhood while WASP Americans and literal Nazis are allowed in.) (Meanwhile, Liebgott occupies a sort of bizarre placement in this scene, there to ventriloquize--indeed, perhaps neutralize, or even legitimize--the Nazi general's words, but not speak for himself.)

v. This gets to another point that Samet makes that stuck out to me, about the inherent tautology of military culture. She quotes William Styron, who in a 1964 review of General Douglas MacArthur's memoir said:

"Anyone who has lived as a stranger for any length of time among professional military men, especially officers, is made gradually aware of something that runs counter to everything one has been taught to believe—and that is that most of these men, far from corresponding to the liberal cliché of the super-patriot, are in fact totally lacking in patriotism. They are not unpatriotic, they simply do not understand or care what patriotism is. [...] A true military man is a mercenary [...] and it is within the world of soldiering that he finds his only home." (Samet quotes Styron on page 233; I'm quoting here from the full review)

The point of being a soldier is to be a soldier; the point of the military is to have a military. She also has this to say--especially saliently, I think, for obvious reasons--about Ambrose, and his perspective specifically in Citizen Soldiers:

"By means of emphasis and convenient omission, Ambrose preserves his focus on unity, not division; right, not wrong; liberation, not subjugation. Paradoxically, given that he makes so much of American idealism, he often subordinates a consideration of causes altogether to a veneration for the magnificence of the army itself. The creation of that army, rather than the victory it made possible, becomes 'the great achievement of the American people and system,' just as the nation's 'greatest nineteenth-century achievement' had been, according to Ambrose, 'the creation of the Army of the Potomac' rather than the end it eventually secured--the abolition of chattel slavery." (page 46)

Here we are back to the first Samet quote from above: valor eclipses causes and reconciliation triumphs over everything. To be a military man--to be part of the club, the brotherhood, the "bond that exists only in combat"--is to "subordinate a consideration of causes altogether to a veneration for the magnificence of the army itself." The country and the cause that the Nazi general and his soldiers fought "bravely, proudly" for become sublimated, while that bravery and pride, stripped of more specific meaning, is extolled. What matters, by the time this scene happens--and it's the last scene in the core section of the episode, followed only by the close of the frame structure with Winters and Nixon and then the baseball scene-cum-epilogue--is not the American cause that Easy Company was fighting for, and certainly not the Nazi atrocities they were fighting against, but rather a reconciliation that views the experience of war as preeminently important. Sobel, who did not experience combat, is dismissed; the Nazi general, who did, is legitimated.

vi. And that, I think, is the core of the message that Band of Brothers promotes. Fandom often refers to the show in passing as propaganda, but I'm not sure that really gets to the heart of what it is, in the end, saying. I would suggest that it's not merely propaganda; it's a recruitment poster. It's not selling truth, justice, and the American way (or if it is, it's doing so only incidentally); it's selling the experience of being in the military as a transformative and ultimately positive one, that unites (a certain subset of) men through the unique crucible of battle, beyond any concerns about what, exactly, one is fighting for. So long as you know when and how to salute, you too can be a part of the brotherhood.

vii. All of which gets back to the scene earlier in "Points," when the Nazi colonel surrenders to Winters. The colonel first makes the explicit parallel between the Nazis and the Americans, and between himself and Winters in particular: "I wonder what will happen to us, to people like you and me, when there are finally no more wars to occupy us." He serves to explicate here more or less exactly what I was saying above: he sees himself and Winters united as military men, above and beyond their particular countries and causes.

Winters doesn't look thrilled about the comparison--but then almost immediately tells the Nazi colonel to retain his surrendered sidearm. I suppose this is supposed to read as magnanimous and fair-minded on Winters's part, but it also serves to reinforce the Nazi colonel's own words, validating the colonel's prioritization of their shared military positions above and beyond their allegiance to the countries and ideologies they were (at least nominally!) fighting for. As the scene itself shows, giving up a sidearm is an expected part of the surrender process, both practically and symbolically; by refusing it Winters is stepping outside military precedent--indeed, bending over backwards--to help the Nazi colonel retain dignity as well as firepower. On its own it is, I think, a frustrating and uncomfortable scene; in the broader context of the episode it sets up and reinforces the Nazi general's speech later on and the ways that Winters and the show itself find meaning in paralleling and reconciling the Americans and the Nazis with one other. (The Nazi colonel knows how to salute; and when he does so, Winters salutes him back.)

viii. Of course it's historically true that American soldiers tended to identify with German soldiers and civilians much more than they identified with people from Allied countries, as Samet herself and even the veteran interviews at the beginning of "Why We Fight" document. (And I don't believe that paralleling the Americans and the Nazis is necessarily something to be dismissed out of hand.) But because the end of "Points" is so overtly sentimental, paralleling the Americans and Nazis serves not as an indictment of American soldiers' amorality but rather as a rehabilitation of the Nazi soldiers and officers as soldiers and a paean to military culture divorced from meaning or cause. As Samet says--"valor eclipses causes and reconciliation triumphs over everything." The military, as an institution, whether it be American or Nazi, becomes the greater good of the war; while the causes those militaries were fighting for become not only secondary, but recede entirely.

[cerise-on-top]

hi! how would Valeria and Kate react if their wife’s got hurt because of their work, both of them working highly jobs and it ended up catching up to their s/o. hoe you are doing well and drink plenty of water! thank you!

-🍒

Hello! Both of them would be absolutely distraught, but would go about it in different ways!

Valeria’s and Laswell’s Wife Gets Hurt Because of their Job

Valeria: Whoever hurt you will wind up tortured and eventually, once she thinks they’ve had enough of their miserable life, will wind up dead. Naturally, the first thing she does is check up on you, see if you’re alright and well, that’s her priority. You’re the love of her life, there’s no one else in this world she wants to see do well. You’ll be admitted to the best hospital nearby and will only get the finest treatment. Once you’re stabilized, that’s when the hunt begins. Whoever hurt you won’t get too far since that bastard’s life will be on the line. Regardless of where they might be hiding, Valeria will find them and show them that death is actually a kind of mercy. She has pretty much everything at her disposal, everything money can buy, this sucker won’t know what hit them. If it’s revenge they want, then revenge they’ll get. Valeria promises you that their head will be on a silver plate. She’s not very good with words when it comes to comforting someone, but she will have that person killed in the most cruel ways she can imagine. In fact, she’ll take the pleasure of torturing them upon herself. Once she’s done, she’ll take some days off, which is surprising since she usually can’t afford that at all. You’ll be under her direct care for those days. Anything you want you’ll get. Afterwards there will be a slight shift in her demeanor, Valeria becomes more protective over you. Sometimes she might even assign some trusted people of hers to watch over you since she can’t afford something like that happening again. While she can’t always take some days off, she’ll try to be closer to you anyway. Always texting you, finding excuses to come home for a day maybe. She just really needs to make sure you’re okay, she wouldn’t know what to do with herself if you died.

Laswell: Laswell will try to be a bit more diplomatic about it at first, trying to coax whoever hurt you out of hiding. This person will be held accountable for their crimes against her world. Naturally, she rescues you first, gets you to the nearest hospital and won’t leave your side until you’re stable again. If it takes you a while to wake up again, she’ll leave to find the fucker and make sure they swim with the fishes. She has a pretty large, efficient network and will find out who it was fairly easily. Once she knows who they are, she won’t hesitate to find out all their past crimes as well, if they hurt you then they must have done some other awful things as well. Once that phase is over, she’ll go to their home herself and have them arrested, put in the worst prison imaginable where the inmates are treated especially badly. She won’t kill them, but she wouldn’t be surprised if they wind up dead anyway. Laswell usually isn’t an evil person, but she does hope that person dies during their time. Their sentence will be as long as possible so there’s no chance of them ever seeing the sunlight again either. Once all of this is over, she, too, would take some days off to spend with you. You’re a priority above all else, so Laswell will want to be there for you, no matter the cost. While she usually isn’t, depending on how severely you got hurt she might become a bit overbearing, a bit overprotective. That overprotectiveness will last for a few months, afterwards she’ll try to give you some space again. However, she’ll always be keeping a closer eye on you, always texting or calling you every once in a while to make sure you’re okay. If she needs to, she’ll put you under her protection officially, but the situation needs to be dire for that to happen. Either way, she’ll be keeping you safe.

[kiivg]

."Oh, aye?".

[counting-stars-gayly]

They’re not going to rebuild Castle Byers because Will can’t rebuild his childhood, which is the reason he destroyed Castle Byers in the first place. He’d been trying to hold on to a level of carefree ignorance that no longer existed for him. The problems Castle Byers saved him from have been replaced by new problems that are bigger and stronger than a child’s fort. He needs to face them differently. Thank you and goodnight

[mamawasatesttube]

bruce characterization is so hard because he really has been written all over the place. generally i try to think of him as a man who really does mean well, but whose drive for justice and unprocessed traumas can blind him to his shortcomings and lead to him inadvertently hurting his children. i also think that comics are a medium that doesn't usually lend itself well to character growth, because they to maintain a certain status quo to keep telling stories from, and so the bruce in my mind would honestly develop and learn from his mistakes a lot better than canon bruce actually does, because for someone who espouses the values he does, it makes no sense for him to completely stagnate, right. he's a puzzle you can put together in a lot of different ways and it's fascinating but also can be such a pain because of all the different books writing him in so many different ways, but characterizing him solely as an asshole is just boring and reductive imo...

...but all of that said i still think if martha kent ever found out how he talked to kon in sb94 #85 or in those issues of batgirl '00, she should be allowed to beat his ass with a pitchfork. yknow?

[salvidida]

Everything about Scar's treatment in Brotherhood sucks so bad, but there was something specific that has been bothering me for awhile. I hadn't been able to quite put my finger on what it was since watching FMAB for the first time recently (as a lifelong 03 fan). So I rewatched FMA 03 again and it finally clicked what it was that further upsets me about Brotherhood regarding Scar, besides the more obvious imperialist propaganda and racism:

The Elric's relationship to him.

Now obviously Ed's racism towards Scar in Brotherhood is pointed out frequently enough, but it doesn't stop there. It's the way that Brohood Ed is incapable and fully resistant to ever bridging that gap besides a deeply uneasy allyship-of-convenience. Al is also fully distant from Scar, besides their mutual antagonism in the earlier arc. And nothing more is really explored here between these characters.

And I didn't realize how much I valued the way 03's Scar, Ed, and Al contrast, overlap, mirror, battle, and support one another. Their fates and goals are inseparable. Alchemy's impact on the Elrics' lives is reflected with Scar's life and his brother's, as well as their familial relationship to their own brothers; many point out the similarities between 03 Scar and Al, with some noting how Ed and Scar's brother match each other. And the way the Elrics here are more able to engage with the harsh realities that inform Scar's choices and actions versus that of their place as Amestrians, and for Ed as an active member of the military who, despite wanting to cling to his principle of never taking a life, at times can see Scar's point of view and even, with reticence, sympathize with him (Al even more so).

There are layers to the relationship across these three characters. The tension and humanity that arises is a driving force in revealing the dialectics of this show. It's to the point that Al and even at times Ed defend Scar when talking with other characters towards the end of the show, and they even ultimately owe their lives to him (the philosopher stone and grand arcanum that allowed both Ed and Al to live, and for Al to regain his body). And the bond between the Elrics help Scar to forgive his brother, to speak aloud that he loves him in his final moments, before triumphantly accomplishing his goal against the Amestrian military, saving the remaining Liorans, and saving Al from becoming Kimbly's final bomb.

And there are other moments, such as Scar helping Al in Lab 5, telling him he sees his unmistakable humanity after Al helps him save Ishbalan refugees. Scar attempting to help Ed in Lab 5 after he refuses to sacrifice the prisoners for the Philosopher Stone, because he sees the humanity in Ed too, the humanity that can resist merely being a ruthless military dog and scientist. The way Scar treats Al almost like a little brother of his own, and when he mentions that Ed and his older brother share the same kind eyes- said at a time when Scar still harbours ill feelings for his brother's taboos and his sacrifice; which becomes all the more poignant when he forgives his brother before creating a Stone passed down to the Elrics. Scar mentions having sworn off specifically targetting state alchemists post-Lab 5, and this feels like his way of sparing the Elrics of his wrath, even as he holds fast to fighting against an oppressive system with necessary violence. The material here is rich for analysis and appreciation! It doesn't settle on more digestible, black-and-white character archetypes and plot conveniences.

There's a reason why the final outro for 03, where it flashes across four deceased characters who mattered to the Elrics, includes Scar. The man is in the ranks of Trisha, Nina, and Hughes! This isn't a mistake, the writers are intentionally showing the indelible impacts of these people who they cared about.

But with FMAB, it's exceptionally flat here and entirely derogatory. Ed hates Scar, and the narrative treats him as wholly right to do so. Scar needs to repent and reform to the side of his genociders, and never shall these characters interact or converse beyond putting a stop to Father. Scar was nothing more than a vehicle to reach his murdered brother's alchemic research, and an example to be made of any radical who so much as raises a finger against the State. All three of these characters want nothing to do with each other, and that's about as far as we get with them. In Scar's own words, he's nothing more than the 'ooze' (the poison) that arises from military conquest, and by the end of the show it's clear that, even with Scar saving the entire country that destroyed his life, to the Elrics, he will always be that 'ooze'.

In Brotherhood Scar committed what the Elrics clearly considers to be the ultimate sin: he killed Winry's parents, and no matter the circumstances surrounding that event, no matter what else changes, no matter which mass murderers, monsters, and genociders the Elrics can sympathize with, humanize, befriend, and forgive, Scar will never be anything more than an unforgivable murderer. The best everyone gets here is moving on and living seperate lives. Nothing more.

The fact that Ed openly wishes he could beat the shit out of Scar, he verbalizes as such while Winry patches him up and Miles lectures him about the value of reforming the military regime to include more racialized people for its imperialist complex. And the big mercy Ed in this moment offers to Scar is... Not kicking the shit out of him after all.

The juxtaposition between these adaptations, the cold hatred of FMAB versus the entangled, poetic antagonism and comradery of FMA 03 makes experiencing the former anime so depressing. Until watching Broho it never dawned on me just how much I truly appreciated the complexities between Scar and the Elrics in 03. Finding Scar's Earth counterpart at the end of Shambala wasn't just a fun cameo: it feels like a road that leads back to an ally.

At least now I have something I can more consciously enjoy whenever I revisit 03, while articulating yet another reason why I can't stand Broho.

[shyguygubbs]

I was thinking about kotlc recently and how the Black Swan originally wanted to wait to bring Sophie into the Lost Cities until way later, probably when she turned 18, and how different of a person Sophie would have been if that were the case.

Like at the start of the series, she's this child prodigy who has to go to community college in the fall at the age of 12 because her parents won't let her go to Yale (a totally valid parental choice btw), and the thing is I think she would have THRIVED in that environment. Like at first she would be scared and hesitant because in all other school environments she has been bullied for being as smart as she is, but now she's going into a school that people choose to go to in order to learn. Community college doesn't just have mean, jealous teenagers who attend, there are people of all ages and all walks of life who are ready to learn. Sure, Sophie would still be the youngest one there, and I doubt it would be super easy with the whole mind reading thing, but she would be in a much more supportive environment when it comes to learning than anything else she's experienced.

She'd be able to make friends with her peers, being able to bond over a shared love of whatever they're studying, and these friends don't think she's too smart or too weird. She maybe finds some way to muffle the voices in her head better than her earplugs did. Yeah, she still gets headaches, but she can manage it. I can see her taking as many classes as she can, figuring out her passions and what she might want to do as a career. She'd be in a fantastic place academically to transfer to any school she wants when she turns 18. I can even see her parents letting her graduate when she's 17 and allowing her to transfer to a four year college to get a bachelor's in whatever she wants to study, whatever she finds her passion for, because she worked hard for this, and doesn't hate school now, and has found a path for herself in life that feels right.

And then the Black Swan shows up and whisks her away from all of that, and she's heartbroken because she doesn't need to be taken away from everything she's worked so hard for. Yeah it feels nice to finally have the whole mind reading question answered, but she doesn't need a new place to belong, she has one. I imagine this Sophie being a lot more confident in herself, but a lot angrier too. She's fascinated by her new world, but desperately wants to go back home, to just live out the life she's been working towards. I can see her working side by side with the Black Swan from the jump, because she's in a world with injustice and she can't just sit back and let this slide, but constantly fighting back this resentment for them and how they took everything from her. I think of how canon Sophie had a brief moment of hesitation when it came to training her Telepathy, and I think this older Sophie would be conflicted between wanting to know more about this abnormality that she's been dealing with her whole life, and wanting to cling to her human identity and her old life as much as she possibly can. Because she's been ripped away from it, and no matter what her genetics say, this Sophie still views herself as human.

[likeabxrdinflight]

tired of early 20-somethings acting like harry potter was never good or had no value in its day like shut the fuck up half of you weren't even there when it peaked