Fullmetal Alchemist Characterization Thought/Question:
So, engineered famine as a method of providing an appropriately massive blood/soul sacrifice to activate one of the points on the Big Circle TM, yes/no?
I thiiiiink it would work? But we're not explicitly told that they did it in canon, despite the fact that engineered famine is a fairly basic totalitarian control tactic that causes lots of death (right up there with mass political purge as social control, which is implied in the text) which seems to be. Uh. The MO.
Totalitarian AND ritual motives for mass murder as connected and essentially the same! This is the best text ever.
My point! My point and I did have one - is famine something that works in this context? Is it the massive amount of death that counts, or is it the Death By Violence? What I mean is, is the death somehow unsuitable if it is caused by long, slow terror, the body being forced to destroy itself? Since that's almost a natural process. Is it the sudden shock, the drama of seeing and being seen, the moment of enacted knowledge that characterizes death in a massacre or war the goal? Can we assume that what works for totalitarian control also works for this particularly distressing brand of alchemic practice?
That is: is would an engineered famine in one of Amestris' border regions some, say, ten years prior to the start of the manga read as completely implausible?
This entry was originally posted at http://tiamatschild.dreamwidth.org/40637.html. Please feel free to comment there using OpenID. Or here! It'll be read either way, is what I'm saying.
I thiiiiink it would work? But we're not explicitly told that they did it in canon, despite the fact that engineered famine is a fairly basic totalitarian control tactic that causes lots of death (right up there with mass political purge as social control, which is implied in the text) which seems to be. Uh. The MO.
Totalitarian AND ritual motives for mass murder as connected and essentially the same! This is the best text ever.
My point! My point and I did have one - is famine something that works in this context? Is it the massive amount of death that counts, or is it the Death By Violence? What I mean is, is the death somehow unsuitable if it is caused by long, slow terror, the body being forced to destroy itself? Since that's almost a natural process. Is it the sudden shock, the drama of seeing and being seen, the moment of enacted knowledge that characterizes death in a massacre or war the goal? Can we assume that what works for totalitarian control also works for this particularly distressing brand of alchemic practice?
That is: is would an engineered famine in one of Amestris' border regions some, say, ten years prior to the start of the manga read as completely implausible?
This entry was originally posted at http://tiamatschild.dreamwidth.org/40637.html. Please feel free to comment there using OpenID. Or here! It'll be read either way, is what I'm saying.