InsaneJournal

Current mood:

thoughtful

FMA reflections: After the breakup
So I just watched the first episode of Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood. And I enjoyed it a lot! But it also got me thinking about some things about myself, which I will meditate on for a while, cos that is TOTALLY a good thing to be doing at 3 AM. :Db


You know how it is when you break up with someone and you see them a good deal of time later and even though you're not interested in them That Way anymore you still feel kind of nostalgic and 'mmm, those were the days~'? If that is how it is, then tell me, cos while I've never had that exact experience (my breakups have mainly been associated with lingering feelings of awkwardness and shame on my part) but I imagine if that WERE the case, that's kind of how I'd feel about Brotherhood.

As I'm sure many of you know, I was really into FMA for a while there. I suppose there were many reasons for this; one, I was a teenager, as if I didn't have an obsessive enough personality already; two, it was the first only fandom I really got into and made friends with and contributed to a lot. I cosplayed a total of four different characters for that series, I drew seemingly numberless pieces of fanart, I participated in fandom RP for the first time ever. (It was also the first fandom I read and wrote erotic fiction for, and if you think that's tmi, just wait till I fill out sigelphoenix's sex meme). The original reason I got a LiveJournal was so I could participate in FMA communities. And I can unironically say that if not for FMA, I wouldn't be where I am today. If I hadn't been involved in FMA fandom I wouldn't have met and become friends with laylah; if I hadn't been friends with her, I wouldn't have participated in "Broken Eden" and wouldn't have thus met and befriended coramegan; if I hadn't known her I wouldn't have had nearly so much reason to be interested in University of Washington, nor would I have had a convenient inroad into her awesome group of friends.

So clearly FMA has turned out to have been a powerful influence on my life. But then I burned out on it a few years back. I'd just had enough. I was burned out on RPing, due to what I now recognize as overidentification with the character due to personal insecurity (something I think I'm getting better at dealing with, although god knows it does come up from time to time, and I want to say sorry to everyone my insecurity affected); I was feeling abandoned and unwanted by friends who weren't so much in the fandom anymore and who I just wasn't as close with anymore (again, insecurity lol); I was feeling insecure about my art, because I wasn't as good and/or as popular as other artists in the fandom (ARE YOU NOTICING A PATTERN HERE?)

So I just stopped, and I haven't really been back since. And any tangential encounters with the series that I had in that time made me feel more embarrassed about my behavior back then than anything else. I'm not like this with other old fandoms. Slayers just fills me with goofy happy nostalgia. I'm writing my thesis on Utena, for crying out loud. But FMA still makes me feel pretty Awkward Turtle.

But then I watched the first episode of the new series and... it was fun! Slightly different animation style, different take on the story, a few different voice actors, but still very much recognizable as the series I know and loved. I'm enjoying it a lot, it makes me nostalgic in good ways, while also making me interested in what's going to happen and how this reimagining is going to play out. But there's none of the old mad passion for me; my old favorite character now just seems doofy (but amusingly so), and characters I once felt... resentful towards? Now I'm all intrigued and looking forward to seeing more of them.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that watching this has made me realize just how far I've come since that time, how much I've changed, how much more steady and secure I've become. Sure, I still struggle with my neuroses and anxiety and all that fun stuff, but nowhere near to the degree that I did then. I'm a happier, better, more confident person now, and I hope that I'm a better friend, too.

So to everyone who put up with me during those difficult times, thank you. And thank you, FMA, for getting me where I am today.