brigdh

Mmmm, meta. And manga.

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HE IS AWESOME, YES.

Slef-pimping, yay!

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bluedelirium.livejournal.com

Anything by Haru (http://harukami.hanashika.com/fanfic/FMA/indexfma.html) if you like shorter stuff, though she has a few very good long pieces. All of Coyo's (http://ciceqi.slashcity.com/FMA.htm) work is also very worth taking a look at. They're both Roy/Ed fans, for the most part.

Sol 1056 (http://www.scimitarsmile.com/alchemy/01_sol.php) is very good, particularly the Contraries Arc. It's more on the gen side, and excellent, excellent characterization.

That's all older stuff, though, I've since fallen out of reading the fandom since it is, as you mentioned, wank-tastic.

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Thank you! I've liked Haru and Coyo's stuff in other fandoms, so I'm sure their FMA is excellent as well.

And hey, it might be old, but it's new to me!

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I hated Kimberly when I encountered him in canon, and wasn't exactly eager to hunt down stories that centered on him, but I'd recommend

laylah's The Shallowest Dreams (http://laylah.livejournal.com/130365.html#cutid1) anyway. And that's probably all I should say lest I spoil it.

She's also done some interesting stuff with the less-written-about women of the series: if you're in the mood for pure smut, there's a kind of neat Sloth/Archer PWP that I've lost the URL for, but that I know you can find via her tags. It has tentacles in it. You wouldn't think this would work -- or at least, I wouldn't -- but somehow it does.

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He, like many other things in FMA, creeped me out, but that's an excellent story. Thank you for the rec! I'll have the author's other stuff as well.

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Glad you liked it! Yeah, all those twists and turns were very suspenceful and worthwhile.

Sadly, the fandom is truly awful. Hardly worth the time or energy. But I don't have any good recs with me.

And yes!! Roy Mustang is awesome!!!

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Everyone seems to dislike the fandom so much. It sorta makes me curious. *laughs*

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Well, if you can stomach Ed getting the same abuse the YnM/DoD fans do to Hisoka accept much worse and Roy being turned into a blackmailing rapist half the time then you should have no trouble. XD

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Oh, but that's not all. Go in too incautiously, and you will come to suspect that Roy the blackmailing rapist is a fandom reaction against Saint Roy of the Glorious Voice, and/or Saint Roy of the Quivering Sensitivity and Eternal Angst. It's a scary, scary thing.

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I'm not 100% sure what you mean. Can you explain more? *is a little frightened to know*

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Don't be too frightened. Fortunately for both of us, I can't link you to examples, because I worked hard at repressing even the memories of where I had found them. But for the sensitive, even a broad description may be icky enough.

You know that thing where people fall in love with a character, and it makes them focus with strange and singleminded precision upon anything in canon that might suggest emotional damage, or vulnerability, or deep psychic pain? And then dismiss anything from canon that tends to suggest that this character has ways of coping with all the trauma, ways that perhaps do not include a whole lot of self-destructive behavior, or crying, or melodramatic self-harm undertaken as atonement? Or, if they do not dismiss the canon evidence, they recast it as a mere shell that the character uses to hide his suffering from the world?

Well, you get that with Mustang. You get it kind of a lot. Which I find (i) odd, inasmuch as the character I met in the anime was on a personal crusade, all right, but was not exactly inclined toward sentiment and emotional collapse over it; (ii) kind of repellent, which admittedly is merely my personal taste; and (iii) really annoying, because I have reason to believe that it makes writers whose work I like reluctant to write about Mustang at all, having come to hate him through overexposure to the fandom version.

Or, if they do write him, they go and do something like the blackmailing rapist Mustang, as a direct reaction against all the self-punishing angst-puppy Mustangs out there.

It's not wholly unlike the weepy!Hisoka problem. It's hard for me to look at the manga and have any clue where people are getting weepy!Hisoka from, but if you went into the fandom incautiously, you'd never know that the actual Hisoka, the one from the manga, was smart and poised and had nerves of titanium and a vicious sense of humor. I have to assume it's a cross-fandom kink, because it seems to be a not-uncommon phenomenon, and otherwise I have no damn idea where it comes from.

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I have to assume it's a cross-fandom kink, because it seems to be a not-uncommon phenomenon, and otherwise I have no damn idea where it comes from.

I've always assumed that it comes from an over-identification with the character, plus a bit of trauma in the author's current life. Something that he or she might might feel a bit silly angsting over themselves, because it's not really too big of deal and their friends/confidantes would call them on it, but hey! Mustang has legitimate reasons to angst, ones far bigger and more serious than the author's, and so the story becomes an excuse to wallow in the tragedy and indulge themselves.

Though that doesn't explain why certain characters seem to get the treatment far more often than others, or why people other than the author would want to read the resulting story.

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I see what you mean. I DO like reading a good angsty!Roy fic but I DON'T like when he's killing himself over unrequited love, the tragic death of Hughes and other things that are painful but he got by them fine in his own way. I mean he DOES have reasons to angst and be a little broody but geeze!! He's not going to cry in EVERYONE'S arms!

Also, the treatment of Hisoka is awful. What they do to him in fandom... G-R-O-T-E-S-Q-U-E.

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solo.livejournal.com

A few recs (of very, very various stuff):

Through a Glass Darkly (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2798444/1/) by Cephied Variable

Memento Mori by

inklikeoil

By Sighless Lightning (http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=anax&keyword=ficcage&filter=all) by

anax

Firebird by

devils_devotion - unfortunately I can only find the parts from 12 onward here (http://community.livejournal.com/caveat__lector/7315.html)

Enjambement (http://www.scimitarsmile.com/alchemy/01fiction/01_kaltia_en01.php?title=Enjambement&author=Kaltia&list=01_kaltia) by Kaltia - WIP warning

The Rust Within Their Throats (http://community.livejournal.com/fma_7sins/12132.html) by

anax

Contact (http://ciceqi.slashcity.com/FMAcontact.htm) by

ciceqi

Some of these are very long, some are short. Some are gen, some are not.

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Ooo, thank you! And it looks like you've got a nice mix of stuff here, which is very good.

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solo.livejournal.com

I meant to add... if you come across anything good, would you let me know? I find the recs in this fandom quite unreliable, and have never really had time to go hunting for good stuff on my own.

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Sure! I'll probably make posts rec'ing my favorites, because I tend to do that with stories I like. So far I've really enjoyed The Shallowest Dreams (http://laylah.livejournal.com/130365.html#cutid1), though it's very dark, so avoid it if that would bother you.

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solo.livejournal.com

Thanks for this! :-) Dark doesn't bother me at all! (I'm an X fan. How would dark bother me?)

Kimberley, though... I believe that appreciation for him comes from reading the manga. I certainly haven't managed to find him even remotely interesting based on what I saw in the anime. The story is extremely well written; so good that I finished it despite really not caring whether the guy lives or dies. That's saying something! Thank you for recommending it. I look forward to the rest.

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(Heh, good point.)

Yeah? I thought he made a fairly good crazy-villian in the anime, although I personally wouldn't have been inspired to write a story for him. Still, the turning-people-into-bombs things is creepy enough that I probably gave him a pass on fairly weak characterization.

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boniblithe.livejournal.com

You know there's a movie too, right? *g*

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Yes, but does the movie even count?

I don't want to be awful about it if people have been happy with it, but I was surprised to find that it felt to me like, well, fic. Nicely produced, and with some interesting material in it, but nothing that felt remotely like canon to me.

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I know, but I haven't managed to see it yet. I think it's up on youtube, though, so I'll probably watch it in the next few days.

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angharadd.livejournal.com

If you read get, I would highly recommend zauberer_sirin's fics. (http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=zauberer_sirin&keyword=Fullmetal+Alchemist+fics&filter=all) They tend to be really beatiful.

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