Rose Bridges

My no. 1 favorite album of all time is a psychedelic rock album: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. (I swear, not ALL my favorites are so "Rolling Stone Top 500 albums"!) What are some other ones I like?

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Top 5 would probably be:
1. Sgt. Pepper (Beatles)
2. Revolver (Beatles)
3. Forever Changes (Love)
4. Axis: Bold as Love (Jimi Hendrix Experience)
5. Odessey and Oracle (The Zombies)

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Others I really like: I really enjoy early Pink Floyd, when Syd Barrett was their frontman and when they were psychedelic-oriented, so Piper at the Gates of Dawn. (I like that stuff better than the later, post-Barrett Floyd, with the exception of Dark Side... unpopular opinion, I know!) The 2011 Smile Sessions release/re-issue (since a lot of that stuff was available in Beach Boys "rarities" box sets and such earlier) was my obsession when it came out, and was all I listened to for a good three months or whatever. Ogden's Nut Gone Flake by The Small Faces is a really underrated one in the USA, but very good. All of Jimi Hendrix's albums (Axis is just my favorite). The Who Sell Out and The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society, if they count. Back to our side of the Atlantic: the 13th Floor Elevators are really underrated and Easter Everywhere is a great album. I will probably think of five more after I posted this. (Btw, as much as I love the Velvet Underground, I don't really consider them psychedelic rock. In terms of "big 1967 groups I'm leaving out" here. I know some people do, but I think that while they definitely did their fair share of drugs, they were coming stylistically and culturally from a completely different, arguably opposite place.)

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So I'm generally more into the British psychedelica than the American, but the American ones I adore (Beach Boys, Love) I REALLY REALLY ADORE.

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I own a few FMA and (bootleg, I found out...) Hetalia one-coins, and that plastic Rei in an innertube thing I just tweeted about, if those count. Otherwise, nope.

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I seriously considered getting a Misato Katsuragi one at Anime Boston that was really nice and like $40. I'd like one of her or one of Asuka that isn't too fanservicey. (As much as I love other ladies, sexualized teenage girls makes me feel icky.) I'd also be totally game for a Roy Mustang figurine, if I could find a good one that isn't super-expensive. Or one of Wolfwood. Basically, any character I really really like :-)

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I do have some figurines for characters from Western cartoons, though. I have an entire set of the main characters from Yellow Submarine (not just the Beatles, but the main Blue Meanies, too). And of Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd from the "What's Opera Doc?" short. I'll have to remind my parents of that if I acquire some anime figurines and they bug me about it. I mean, they bought me those Yellow Submarine and Looney Tunes ones!

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I...would take it! Mostly. I understand why other people don't like it, since it's definitely not as good writing-wise as the main series, but I think people can be a little too hard on it sometimes. (As someone who has actually read quite a lot of FMA fanfiction, it's not "fanfic-quality", c'mon.)

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I should acknowledge that 1920s Germany is one of my weaknesses fiction-wise; it's an era that I'm really interested in that is underutilized in fiction (imo), and so if a work is set in it, I'm probably going to like it unless it's really inaccurate or something. And CoS is not, for the most part. The only real criticism in that regard I have is that I think they make the Nazis look way more powerful than they actually were in 1923, but besides that it's clear the team did their research, and most of the inaccuracies beyond that are just nitpicky stuff that doesn't really matter.

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The issues I do have with the movie were: I think Dietlinde Eckhart is a terrible, terrible villain. People with that kind of deep prejudice are never that self-aware about it, and she just comes across as an unrealistic character shoehorned in to Make A (stupid) Point, and I think FMA 2003 can do way better than that. (Mangahood has some characters like that, but even then, they're handled with way more finesse and believability than Eckhart is.) In fact, for all the ways the main series was a really sophisticated examination of what could lead otherwise good and rational people to follow a Nazi-like government, CoS sells the actual Nazis kinda short with how it handles Eckhart and her cronies. I thought the new characters in general were pretty bland, too (sorry, Alfons Heiderich fans). One of my friends said the movie would've been stronger if Envy had been the main villain, exploring his animosity and baggage with Ed a bit more, and the Nazis/Thules had been some secondary issue, and I'm inclined to agree with that.

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What I like about it, though? The visuals are top-notch definitely, especially the cinematography (especially especially the contrast between our world and Amestris in that regard). The music is great, like Oshima's score for the original series was. And I really like some of the stuff it does with the existing main characters. I really liked how it explored Ed's and especially Roy's psychological states, and the decision to have Roy be all traumatized in the wilderness. People complain about that a lot, because it makes him a sad pathetic figure rather than the badass he was in the series, but as a huge Roy Mustang fan I think it tied in with his character development perfectly. I love watching the man suffer under the burden of all his baggage. And now he's got more, and he doesn't have a larger goal to distract him... of course he's going to lose it. (Can you tell I've spent a lot of time defending his characterization in this movie?)

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A big one that is important to me is her having at least one motivation that doesn't revolve around a guy - I think that's because I'm really tired of hearing characters described as "feminist" who are wrapped up in some dude and nothing else (*cough cough* Riza Hawkeye *cough*). It just seems like this basic, basic thing in terms of showing that you value the inner lives of women and their potential as characters in and of themselves, and not just as plot devices to further men's stories. And it really says a lot about the author's attitudes toward women if s/he (because women do this, too) can't imagine women having other motivations in their lives besides men. I've seen so many stories where this is a pattern among the women in them and it's very frustrating.

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Of course, there are real women who are that guy-oriented, so I don't think there should never be characters like that, and I can think of a few that were handled well: Mikasa Ackerman, for one. But Mikasa is important to the story for more than who she is to Eren; it values her own potential and depicts her own inner life. Her codependence with him is acknowledged and shown as unhealthy. So I still think she's a good character. Plus, Attack on Titan's other female characters have different motivations and those get their own development and plot importance. It really shows a diversity of women in its cast.

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Honestly, this really ties into a lot of things I personally like in female characters. For example, I like to see women who grapple with mental illness or disabilities, since those depictions in media are usually male. But - make it about HER issues with it. Don't use her as some quirky Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Don't make her pain about how it affects another character, especially a male one. (Actually, that's a good thing to avoid with mentally-ill characters in general; the media too often characterizes people like that as burdens on others around them, rarely caring what they THEMSELVES think.)

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I think that while, ideally, the rules for writing women should be the same as writing men, in our sexist society it's still important to be aware of some common sexist stereotypes in media that impact how women are treated in the real world. The idea that we're nothin' without a man, is one of those things, and so writers should be careful about avoiding that with female characters, even if they are really hung up on a guy. I think the key here is (to quote John Green) "imagine people complexly" - male writers just need to
realize that women are as complex as they are and stop seeing them as some mysterious other species. (And female writers with internalized sexism need to stop listening to what men think women are, I guess?)

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