The thing about how women in comics used to be drawn and sometimes are still drawn, you can only really understand the difference between an action girl being forced into unrealistic sexual, sensual positions, and an actual strong and well posed, empowering but still sexy female character, when you see what it looks like to have male characters depicted in overtly sensual poses
And I’m not talking about the Hawkeye Initiative or any given parody
I actually want to draw a comparison using art by Kevin Wada
Kevin Wada is a proud part of the LGBTQ+ community and he has this unique ability to sexualize mainstream male heroes without it looking like a parody. He draws covers for multiple big comic companies and his style reminiscent of old fashion magazines, drawn largely in traditional watercolor, has made him a stalwart of the industry.
He also draws a lot of naked Bucky Barnes.
Anyway, I want to talk about how interesting his art is, the difference between his power poses and his sexy poses for male and female characters.
A typical power pose for a male comics character would look like this
Whereas every so often with female heroes you get something like this
Not all the time, of course, but it happens and it happens in the wrong places. You wouldn’t be posing like a cover model in the middle of a battle, you really wouldn’t.
But when it comes to Wada and male and female characters, the difference is pretty clear.
When he draws male characters, they more often look like this
Sensual, in a pose you wouldn’t usually see a big, muscular hero doing. If not that, then playful, sexy, for looking at, but nothing about their anatomy overly exaggerated
How he draws women is also very clearly different from many other artists, from sexy pose to power pose.
Still posing for the camera, still to be looked at, but very, very different from how we’ve seen female characters portrayed in mainstream comics in the past.
And I guess it’s really just a matter of variety? Objectification in art is a long time debate and appears everywhere always, but for all that we can argue about its impact on popular media, there are a few things I know for sure:
1) having a female character pose like a playboy cover girl in the middle of a battle scene is just Bad Art and y'all need to find better references
2) female power poses will never look quite as right as when they’re drawn by people who know the value of expressing personality through pose (it’s basic animation principles and some artists still need to learn it) and who actually know what a female character’s personality beyond “sexy”
3) Iron Man or Batman posing like they’re about to beat somebody up is 100% not the same as a fashion drawing by Kevin Wada where a Typical Beefy Action Guy gets to pose like a flirty pretty boy
4) the MCU films have figured out the value of pandering to female audiences by sexually objectifying all their male action heroes while simultaneously appealing to the male demographic’s action movie power fantasy. Quoting Chris Hemsworth and Taika Waititi: “I’m not a piece of meat” “Uh, yes you are.”
They definitely struck some kind of balance there.
Also, more important than this entire post: y'all should follow @kevinwada on Tumblr and give him love because his art is divine and his talent beyond words
i know this has probably been said a billion times but honestly?? i really prefer the beginning of fullmetal alchemist in the 2003 version because it takes its time to actually explain a lot of major things in the plot.
don’t get me wrong; brotherhood does a great job at mirroring the manga’s overall plot–and especially the ending– but it just throws you in and you either stumble to understand or just get completely confused at first. with the way that fmab introduces alchemy, you don’t really get to understand what ed’s automail really is. a lion chimera biting into that shit really helps you understand how strong it is more than some weird ice alchemy(especially when it isn’t explained how strong it is).
i remember when i first started watching i honestly got upset at how fast paced it was and that it barely gave time for the viewer to understand alchemy and the elric brothers. granted a lot of the people who’ve watched brotherhood have seen 2003 prior to it, but with all the circumstances i’ve seen of people saying to new fans to “watch fmab first and only fmab,” it really puts me down that those people won’t be able to understand the feeling of watching an old, iconic, and classic anime that 2003 is!!
edward cries! you get to realize that ed is still a child and he’s 12-15 years old for christ’s sake!!!!! ed and al depend on each other so much, you get to see how close they are and that they’re all they have!!! there’s so much more comedic relief(see: episode 13: fullmetal vs flame), yet it reminds you that these boys commited alchemy’s greatest taboo and have to pay the price for their mistake.
tldr; 2003 is worth your time, trust me.
The 2003 anime have 2 chapters based on extra chapters from the manga: “Fullmetal vs Flame” and “The Flame Alchemist, The Bachelor Lieutenant, and the Mystery of Warehouse 13“
Fullmetal vs Flame even tell you how Riza got Black Hayate.
So yep, watch the 2 versions, both are good
yes!!!!! i love how they took the extras and actually inserted them into the overall plot without them seeming like filler episodes!!!!!!!
2003 did such a great job at giving shallow characters deeper backstories (like sheska, rosé, lust, shou and nina tucker, hughes to an extent, etc) by using those extra episodes and i give all my kudos to them for it!!
THIS IS SO LEGIT. I absolutely adore FMA:B, don’t get me wrong, but FMA03 was a gem in a completely different way. I could probably write a dissertation about why FMA03 is important (especially for Team Mustang and NINA!!!!!) but instead, I will leave you with this: my husband and I kind of compiled a list of “how to watch FMA03 and FMAB and get the full-ish story.” Now granted, it’s not perfect - you get some shots of Archer, and you kind of meet Hughes twice, and two different babies are born that the brothers see/help with, but overall, it works rather well. I didn’t do the whole we’re-going-to-tell-Rosé-this-story-in-a-flashback thing, so the beginning is actually chronological, starting with the boys and Trisha in Risembool.
Here’s the list if you’re interested:
FMA:03 - episodes 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09
FMAB - [OPTIONAL: episode 01 - husband says it fits, I disagree, you can decide] episode 03
Watching it this way helps with character development (especially in character episodes that revolve around Roy Mustang and Nina), slows down the pacing of everything (interludes with Psiren and the Tringhams help with Ed and Al’s character development, too), plus you get to see some stuff that was only alluded to in Brotherhold (the Youswell story and the story of Barry the Chopper). Like I said, it is in no way, shape, or form completely perfect, but it does help give a more complete and better-paced story than just only choosing to watch one of them.
“Zero is a difficult concept to understand and a mathematical skill that doesn’t come easily – it takes children a few years to learn,” Dyer said.
“We’ve long believed only humans had the intelligence to get the concept, but recent research has shown monkeys and birds have the brains for it as well.
“What we haven’t known – until now – is whether insects can also understand zero.”
it makes sense. bees have the ability to search for food sources and communicate whether they found them. ‘nothing here’ is a reasonable thing for them to need to understand and communicate.
smart little fuzzies, i love them so.
Of course they can understand 0, how else would they communicate in beenary
things that make me feel happy & give me hope when my mood is down: the refurbished furby community. specifically @plushieshrine‘s hodgepodge (i tried to draw hodgepodge. this is not hodgepodge. who is she? idk but she calmed me down. blitzed my chakras. enlightened my spheres)
