cry havoc

[ ETA: to clarify a term I frequently use (but may be unfamiliar to some), "animanga" is a portmanteau of "anime" and "manga", meant as a shorthand for "the Japanese illustrated-story publishing/production industries, including manga (graphic novels), illustrated 'light' novels, four-panel comics, animated television shows, animated miniseries/OVA (Original Animation Videos), and animated theatrical releases". Because there's often a great deal of cross-pollination between the two types (printed vs. moving), I tend to use "animanga" to refer to the entire ball of wax in one easy word. ]

We all know (and likely loathe, at least given the posts I see go past from most of you) the damsel in distress: she does something stupid, gets captured/hurt, has to be saved by the hero, and usually ends up clinging to him. I've been browsing some of the manga that readers have classified (on reader-tagging database sites) as "strong female lead" or "strong female character", and I think we need an intermediary.

Something like, "female character damselfied by the author", or "damsel with fighter tendencies," for a less anti-author spin on it.

The so-called "strong female characters" usually go like this: she's relatively outspoken, strong-willed, and ostensibly very good at whatever she does (even if in some stories we never see her do anything, we're at least told she's good). She's independent, and a common expression or thought among the transistional damsel is that she wants to 'stand on her own two feet'. ( She'll often explicitly state that she intends to fight [the big bad], alongside the hero, as his team-mate or equal. She doesn't see him as her rescuer, but as her mentor or her role model (and sometimes as the person she aspires to equal). )

All these are just more reasons on the list of why I love Balsa and Gen. Oliva Armstrong so much.

note: uncharacteristically, I wasn't inclined to or wasn't up to or whatever other lack o' motivation, thus in writing this I found myself without the energy to spell everything out as I might normally do -- so if there are any blanks for you (history-wise, mostly), please refer to the comments, where others have taken the time to carefully delineate what I let pass with vague implication. I know, unlike me! But still. I can't always be writing 10-page posts at the drop of a hat.

If you've watched your share of mecha (and related) anime, you've probably seen this trope several times, maybe even enough to know it by heart: madman acting out of self-proclaimed altruistic means, which usually amounts to, "if I destroy the world by (a) dropping a big honking meteor/planet/space-colony (b) launching a massive mushroom-bomb of horrendous power (c) whipping up the entire world against me so it stops fighting each other and instead fights only me whereupon I crush everyone (d) ending the world as we know it by some other means (e) pretty much killing everyone and blaming it all on the two-step maneuver of war and peace because anyone with a clue knows "rebellion" is just a self-justified synonym for war, you morons who can't count..."

...and that by doing so, WE GET PEACE.

Because, apparently, if you're a self-proclaimed lover-of-humanity with psychotic but ultimately altruistic intentions, of course it's perfectly logical to you that if you burn everyone's retinas with the ultimate war, that they'll all immediately come to their senses and want peace at any cost. And that of course, humanity has always become immediately pacifist upon surviving a horrendous war of attrition. I mean, look at World War I -- boy, Europe and the Americas were just swept by a craze of pacifism as a result!

Not.

This is not logic that resembles my earth logic, but then, a lot of anime doesn't resemble my culture earth, either.

Anyway. That's the basic logic: you've got your Gundams drop-the-colony versions, you've got your "I'm so depressed the whole world should suffer along with me" variation a la Eureka Seven, hell, even Naruto's gotten into the act with a combination of both of the above. In the end, it's all different harmonies to the same melody, that if one achieves peace through war, ergo a really BIG war should bring about a really BIG peace.

( That was in my head, with some amusement at the lack of parallel, when reading the FMA manga... and the eventual realization that Arakawa really doesn't play nice with some of the biggest animanga tropes. ) Wah. It just makes me wish all the more I had at least a smattering of Japanese, to be able to write Arakawa and tell her about how I've got a little shrine to her brain, right here beside me in my office, because what a brain it is. Man, I've not thought this much about a series after it's ended since, uhm... never Gundam. Okay, since Gundam, but I defend that on the grounds that Gundam was my first introduction to the madman-says-BIG-war-makes-BIG-peace trope, so I guess an evolution to the next level naturally gets me going all over again.

*reads*

*goes into shock*

*rereads*

*still in shock*

Bloody hell, is Arakawa purposefully trying to give we readers heart attacks?

I've realized the best definition for my reaction to american cartoonage: emotionally unsatisfying.

It's kind of like watching Romeo and Juliet, or Hamlet, or even Porgy and Bess... as put on by fourth-graders. Or worse: adults with all the maturity of fourth-graders -- that is to say, none.

It's a character about to commit suicide at the side of his dead beloved:

I still will stay with thee;
And never from this palace of dim night
Depart again: here, here will I remain
With worms that are thy chamber-maids; O, here
Will I set up my everlasting rest,
And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars
From this world-wearied flesh.

...who follows that with a smirk.

If -- for even the remotest second -- you, as the audience, believed, truly believed that this character was a living person moments away from killing himself -- you would be absolutely on the edge of your seat, the tragedy that much more compounded knowing that Romeo is ignorant of the fact that Juliet only appears to be dead. You might even be one of those in the audience fighting to hold back the cries of wanting to warn the character, somehow, to stop the forward momentum that will lead to eventual ruin.

( American cartoons are an embarrassed fourth-grader, wiping his mouth after faking a kiss on the dead Juliet's lips. )

Title: Restraint of Desire
Chapter: eight
Book Two of the Contraries Arc
Genre: drama, action, post-series
Spoilers: episodes 22-27; divergent future from ep30
Rated: PG-13 for violence, some language
Archiving: Ask permission for each story separately, please.
Critiques: Always welcome if constructive.

( chapter eight: content )

word count: 5600

"A what? You rode a..." Ed's gaze moved past Alphonse, and his eyes went almost impossibly wide; his mouth was as round as his eyes. "That's not a horse," he hissed furiously, never taking his gaze off Mustang - with Becky across his lap - guiding the horse down the footpath to the road. Ed swallowed, hard. "That's...that's a fucking house! On legs!"

Title: Restraint of Desire
Chapter: six
Book Two of the Contraries Arc
Genre: drama, action, post-series
Spoilers: episodes 22-27; divergent future from ep30
Rated: PG-13 for violence, some language
Archiving: Ask permission for each story separately, please.
Critiques: Always welcome if constructive.

These words are part of 18K total requested by Ravensilver, Tripoverhercats, and Mikkeneko, who together donated $180 to MSF and UNICEF. Thank you – and all others who donated – for your compassion and generosity.

( chapter six: courageous )

word count: 5400. woo!

yep, yep, yep. finishing up chapter 5, which had been left unfinished--so, another 1K knocked off the count, with 17K more to go. That's about 3 good-sized chapters, which just might finish this story up neatly.

For those of you coming in at a late date, please be aware: this story does contain spoilers for episodes 22-27, roughly. If you don't want to be spoiled, wait until the american broadcast has passed that point. Sorry. Also, this is a divergent future, meaning it does not necessarily reflect how the story really ends; I began writing somewhere around episodes 29 or 30. Anything that remotely matches the actual series' ending is completely by accident or just the product of a good guess. It's also genfic, so you can read what you want between the lines, but in the end, all good friendships have 'ai' in them...IMO.

Disclaimer, as always: I don't own the characters, nor the world; these are owned by Arakawa, Funimation, Square-Enix, et al.

( chapter five, protective )