Various things occupying my days
Yes, spn_reversebang is back! So I signed up, even though I'm going to be very busy at the time we're supposed to be writing. But the claiming process and writing for art was so much fun! I need to do it again. But for the moment, I need to kick my own ass and work more on my gen big bang fic. The thing is, I should have used LJ downtime to write more but I didn't. Instead I caught up on the manga Fullmetal Alchemist and read the ending. That ending was epic, people! Allow me to come back to my first love (manga/anime) and babble a little about FMA.
I think a couple of people on my flist know about it. It's one of my all time favorites and it's not surprising for a SPN fan as there are many similarities between FMA and SPN - two brothers travelling around, deeply devoted to each other, a dead mother, an absent father, a history of sacrifices... Works for me every time, it seems. But I loved the Elric brothers a long time before I even knew the Winchester brothers.
Finishing the manga brought some comparisons about how the first anime went down - and even though I loved, loved that first anime and it was my first contact with the FMA world, I think the manga is a thousand times better. You see a lot of the bigger pictures in the manga, you learn more about the history and the geography of that world (for instance, you know a lot more about Amestris's neighboring countries) and there are a lot more characters involved. I did regret a bit that the story lost some of the focus on the brothers, especially as Ed and Al are separated a lot during the last volumes. But it makes the world a lot richer to have more fleshed-out characters, and the brothers being separated allows Al to get out of his brother's shadow and have his own storyline.
I really liked that we had an epilogue to the story, where you can see what happens to various characters after the Promised Day, but I would have liked to know more about what Ed and Al do with their lives afterward. We know they travel a bit, separately, that Ed ends up with Winry and Al with May, and that one or both of them have children, but what kind of job do they do? Ed doesn't seem to work for the army anymore - probably because Ed can't practice alchemy anymore. Both brothers have always been scientists at heart, so we can assume that they keep researching or start to teach, but I don't know, I would have liked to have more details.
I did like that they left Roy's fate open, that he hasn't reached his goal of being the Fuhrer yet. I was a bit disappointed with the treatment of Roy's blindness, though - it seemed like an easy fix, and it was annoying that it was implied that being blind would put an end to Roy's ambitions. I think it would have been powerful to have him fight through against everyone's expectations, a little like Ed being amputated didn't stop him from finding his way - and about that, I liked that Ed kept his leg automail; it's kind of symbolic, really, that Al got him his arm back, which Ed had sacrificed to save him, but that Ed still has a prosthesis for the leg he lost to the forbidden transmutation. And Al, of course, it was so lovely to see Al whole again. When you think about it, it's amazing how strong-willed Al is, in his quiet and unassuming way, how he survived years of almost total sensory deprivation and sleeplessness, not to mention identity issues that would have driven anyone crazy.
Among the multiple similarities there are with SPN, the theme of sacrifice is a big one. SPN and FMA have a similar stances on it - that sacrifice isn't always an admirable, selfless thing, because what about the person you sacrificed for? In this light, the part at the end when Al has "died" was interesting. Despite how bad Ed wants to get his brother back, there are things he forbids himself to do - using the Philosophal Stone, for once, because it's the result of many people dying, and sacrificing his own life. In the end Ed gets Al back with a sacrifice, but it's something he is ready to live without - his ability to transmute. It makes me wonder if we will have a similar situation in SPN, since Sam and Dean have been learning about the bad consequences of sacrifice. For all their similarities, though, Ed and Al seem less co-dependant to me than Sam and Dean (and less co-dependant in the manga than in the first anime, interestingly). It's probably the result of the Elric brothers being far less isolated that the Winchesters. So if you wonder how Sam and Dean would be with more people in their lives, here it is!
Going back to FMA and manga brought back memories of a time when I used to draw. True story! I never had any lessons and I only learned by imitation, so my skills were very limited, and it'd been so long that I probably lost the few I had. But if you're curious, you can see my drawings on that blog I had (the link takes you to a drawing of FMA I did). Ah, good times.