The Patreon Letter - 9th September, 2018

Hello everyone, Em here with a letter for you all today! I've been in a real funk lately due to personal circumstances, but hopefully you can bear with me as some stuff slips a bit as I work my way out of the hole. These letters should really be out on Saturdays, for one!

Also, this letter is going to talk really frankly about the Fullmetal Alchemist manga, so if you haven't read it or seen Brotherhood and want to not be spoiled, PLEASE don't read any further, because I'm going to be talking about some of the biggest plot points. Okay? Okay.

Maybe six months or so ago I asked twitter whether it was worth actually watching/reading Fullmetal Alchemist, if it had something to say or was just the show everyone of the age group a bit below me got really into because it was on. To be honest, the response I got was pretty tepid. Most people said it had some things to say about the evils of militarism, but nobody really went to bat for it outside of just being a fun show they watched back in the day. 

Which is a shame, because I absolutely think Fullmetal Alchemist is worth it now that I've read it, and the pitch is easy: Fullmetal Alchemist is about living with the reality that you are trying to be a good person in a fascist country, and how difficult and murky that can be. 

Amestris is a fucking disaster, the perfect picture of a lot of well-intentioned liberal people becoming the army of actual fascists. The entire country is predicated on a long-term experiment to force murder an entire continent to create a magical superweapon, but even on the micro level it's a country predicated on endless war being the only way to defend the borders and oh, it just so happens that so much of the industry and wealth of this nation is tied up into that ongoing conflict too.

I was so surprised when Fuhrer King Bradley, the president of the military (and thus the nation) was introduced wearing four swords like they were the Attack on Titan military gear, in part because how amazing is it that FMA did fascist AoT looks before AoT even existed, but also because it's played as a reveal that a guy named FUHRER. KING. BRADLEY. is actually an evil fascist pulling the strings on nearly every bad thing in the land. Shock! Never let it be said manga isn't subtle.

But then the actual plot occurs, and what FMA really settles into is these people being roped into joining the cops, committing war crimes, and generally abdicating moral responsibility for the greed of the state realizing that's exactly what they've done because it's so normalized as part of Amestris' natural state of being. Everyone comes to the realization separately, sometimes even divorced from being told Fuhrer King Bradley is a villain, and everyone processes it differently on a spectrum that feels honest to how people actually are.

• Some examples:
  Ed and Al decide that they're personally good people, so try to continue doing their own thing and only step up against the system when it really encroaches (there's some reasons they can't be super active for a while, to be fair, but also I think the book is good at showing that they take their passivity too far during the middle segments).
• Olivier Armstrong is appalled at the actions of Bradley & company but only because it's dishonorable and ethically bad to murder civilians. She never really sees Bradley as being similar to her ethos of pure Darwinian survival of the fittest mentality, and manages to continue just being the most Bad Cop of the heroes throughout. I get that she's a fan favorite, but she's also absolutely a libertarian who would advocate for jailing the homeless and still be against the fantasy nazis so, you know, a mess.
• Roy Mustang, one of my favorite characters, decides that the only way to combat the bad leader is to ... make himself the leader, because the only way to ensure a benevolent dictator is to make sure you're the one dictating. He thus signs up for ousting Bradley for as much as a play to the throne as realizing Bradley is evil. Nobody really points this out to him as a stupid play, though nobody also takes his ambition very seriously until it becomes clear the end of the story is going to result in the entirety of Amestris' government being destroyed.

When everything does fall apart, everyone ends up on some level of burnt by the reinforcing of a soft status quo, without the True Bad Guys on top. Olivier remains who she is and goes back to her survivalist base, content to be left alone in her pursuit of the most hardened warriors, which is perhaps the worst end of all of our heroes. 

Mustang loses his vision and with it his fitness to serve in the military, which means he can't be the president of a martial state like Amestris, which is a fitting end to him until someone offers to restore his eyesight in favor of him abandoning his pursuit of the presidency in favor of working to rebuild one of the countries devastated by the endless wars. Mustang agrees and seems totally aware that a life in service is more fitting than one ruling over others, which is a pleasant character beat even if you could see the story 20 years later where he goes for the other thing anyway.

It is Ed, then, that really takes it on the chin for a vision of a new world. Refusing to use any of the philosopher's stones to achieve the restoration of himself or Alphonse, he instead offers an exchange of the one precious thing left to him: his ability to perform alchemy at all. But in the best beat of the ending, Ed is happy to give it up, recognizing that he has gained more and accomplished more through the friendships he's forged than he ever has with his abilities. What matters is the building and preserving of community, not the skills of an individual within it. 

It's this moment, when Ed gives up his powers and then works to understand why the world has such power in it and how people can stop exploiting it through a life of research, that FMA offers up an answer to living under such a regime that speaks to me. You can't just take away the leaders and put in good people. You can't just be strong enough to oppose those who would lead the state astray. Both of those things might be useful and necessary, but it's the desire to understand beyond the short term gains and the ability to form bonds and lift others up that will truly begin to change the world. 

It's hokey, and shonen as hell, but Fullmetal Alchemist is a story about a boy who can literally move mountains learning that stirring hearts to empathy is a far more valuable skill, and what more can we ask for in our shonen really? For all of its great cast and exceptional fights and cool worldbuilding, FMA recognizes that it's the power of community and coalitions and supporting others that matters. And that's why, despite the fact that it never quite challenges its status quo enough, and too many characters settled into remaining The Good Cops, I found the ending deeply fulfilling, as it points to a place beyond the now where people can be changed and society can be moved into a new world better than the one we struggle in now. 

A hope I want to believe in, given the times we find ourselves.

Until next time,

Em