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Fullmetal Alchemist 2003 : episode 49

Scenery appreciation post

You walk into a bar and the bartender asks if you want a "manga/BH Ed becomes so viscerally nauseous at the mere idea of digging up what he believes to be his mom's corpse that he throws up multiple times" or an "03 Ed fights his tears and apologizes over and over as he forces himself to desecrate his mom's grave and retrieve a piece of her body"

Instead you ask for the "03 Ed passes out from seeing a corpse because it reminds him so much of the mutilated body he and Al created just a few months ago" special because that drink is unironically light by comparison

Realistically, you should walk tf out and call the health inspector to have that bar shut down for offering you such a lethal amount of angst—

ismenes

When my son was about to turn two, strangers would offer condolences. There’s a collective cultural dread of toddlers, who get described more like animals than people. Kids in their "terrible twos," I was warned, are illogical, unregulated, and feral. "Good luck," people would say. "He'll grow out of it."

I'm lucky: My son is a very easygoing kid. But I remember the first tantrum he threw for me. He was standing by our front door and asked to go outside. So I opened the door and grabbed his shoes. But as soon as he stepped onto the porch, he pointed back into the house.

"Inside," he said.

"Okay," I said. I picked him up and brought him inside.

But as soon as I shut the front door, he pointed outside.

"Outside!" he said.

You know where this is going. We went back and forth, inside and outside, again and again. He got more frustrated. And I got more frustrated. Eventually he wound up straddling the threshold of our house, sobbing. When I tried to comfort him, he screamed at me. "You go wherever you want!" I said. He just got madder. I felt trapped, convinced he’d concocted the whole episode as a pretext to unleash his rage at me. It was ridiculous. I consoled myself with the thought that he was just being a toddler.

But later I kept thinking about him wailing at our front door, one foot inside, one foot outside. His misery wasn't unreasonable, or trivial, or silly. My son was experiencing the agony of wanting two things that were impossible to have at the same time. What a fundamentally human sorrow! My son wasn't being a toddler; he was being a person. Adults may not walk around howling, but that same pain rages within us. In that moment, as a father, I was powerless to solve my son's problem. I told him he could go wherever he wanted, but of course I was wrong. To be where he wanted was impossible.

Make Believe: On Telling Stories to Children by Mac Barnett

depsidase

fangirltothefullest

ms-demeanor

"Here is our child who is very orderly and has very black and white patterns of thought and is a very picky eater, she was diagnosed with autism at four and we worked hard to make sure she was accommodated through her education because she is easily frustrated when she doesn't see the logic of a teacher's approach or thinks she's being treated unfairly. Sometimes it's a bit of a struggle with the food, but we work around it as a family."

"Our other kid is very bright and is neurotypical as far as we know, but is very stubborn and argumentative and insists on wearing one ratty old jacket every day and eating the same breakfast and lunch every day and has a sleep disorder and is messy and forgetful and always loses homework and has gotten in a few fights "defending" other kids, oh and is also dyslexic but we worked through that so they read about twenty novels a week so at least they're not getting into trouble at parties or anything, even if we are a bit frustrated that they keep failing math and science classes while getting high grades in everything else. They'd be such a good student if only they put in a little effort or paid attention."

quantumstonegarden

worst cherry on the cake is having to go through the process twice because random doctor who wasn't an autism or neurodivergent specialist said "probably not" and then your mother says "hey, maybe it's just that you're a little weird". my cousin getting diagnosed suddenly, because his meltdowns hadn't been trained out of him by belief that you're just crazy. he didn't learn to mask and she is obviously struggling with some things because he hasn't been told that everything is fine. he wasn't gaslit by a medical professional.

and you think "oh great. I'm just weird. there's no reason for me to struggle or anything. all of my struggles are because I don't put in enough effort or pay any attention. I just suck". because no amount of "weird is good" is going to cure the problems you face every day because of disabling neurodivergence, and no one else seems to care or question this 👍

altocat

Moreover of what I was talking about earlier with Sephiroth and Aerith's dynamic--I don't think it's a coincidence that Aerith very slightly resembles Lucrecia. Which makes sense considering the fact that Sephiroth and Aerith were originally supposed to be siblings.

But it IS terribly ironic in hindsight because it actually does sort of psychologically explain why Sephiroth hates her and rejects her so violently. Because, in a way, it's him confronting the image of his mother, the maternal figure he craved, but could not find. He is feeding off of Jenova's toxic connection and pushing away the salvation he longed for all his life. For him, Aerith is a dagger, a force of nature with the ability to defeat him, render him powerless. In rejecting Lucrecia's image for the image of a false mother, he associates Aerith with the invader, his destruction.

Which is poignant because we see that some part of him DOES actually want to embrace true maternal love as we saw with Kadaj at the end of Advent Children. Kadaj is a piece of Sephiroth's psyche. And Aerith's kindness and warmth was enough to bring him into the Lifestream, thereby purging him of his sick attachment to Jenova.

In the end, Aerith is Sephiroth's greatest fear. Because she can defeat him physically AND psychologically. She is everything he could have been, everything he ever wanted, and everything he never knew. And he hates her all the more for it.

Because some part of him WANTS to go with her. Wants that gentle, affirming touch. Wants her warmth. Wants to be small. And held. And safe.

And home.