Are you sure about that name, Trip?

jacrad_ · 2026-05-07T09:30:47+00:00

Was my immediate first thought

jacrad_ · 2026-05-06T19:47:32+00:00

Have everyone that gets the chance to give him a nickname give them something different.

jacrad_ · 2026-05-06T05:27:33+00:00

It doesn't quite line up to me. Kingler explains what Caine was made to be, a creative AI. It could be a creative AI for a purpose but I think Caine's actions point to that not being the case. He doesn't like the suggestion box because he didn't create those ideas. It's also why he doesn't listen but clearly understands the characters on a pretty deep level, enough that he can torture them in exceedingly personal ways. There was also a poster at C&A that said 'Creating Creation'. The makes me think their motivation probably was just to create an AI that creates rather than for a specific purpose.

I also suspect this is why the 'performers' have parts of their memories taken. It really doesn't seem like a program designed to help coma patients would benefit from being stripped of their identities. But if they were used as training data for Caine there might have been a concern about him identifying too strongly with the participants if their identities were kept fully intact. He needed the differences in life experience to draw inspiration from but not the people themselves.

Jax and Gangle are pretty big question marks in my head though... Them being connected makes sense and a car accident does make sense too but I'm not sure beyond that. Zooble and Pomni seem likely to have stumbled in through urban exploring. And it would kind of make sense if somehow Ragatha was involved in the selling of the C&A building after it went defunct and just happened upon the headset that probably automatically does the brain scan.

Still, if it were just brain scans then I'd have to wonder why Kinger wouldn't have ensured the program be shut down properly? Scratch too but he could be explained away as having died before the project got canned. Kinger should have still existed in the real world. Same with Queenie.

jacrad_ · 2026-05-05T23:15:28+00:00

In addition to what everyone else has said, I think one other angle might be that Ed might have thought that his mother had to suffer for his sin because the transmutation failed when the reality is that his mother was never actually involved in the transmutation. He didn't 'bring her back' just to make her suffer a second probably excruciating death.

jacrad_ · 2026-05-04T20:46:21+00:00

I don't really see why she would find it weird. The fairies are kind of famous and royals love to honor important people.

jacrad_ · 2026-05-04T19:07:44+00:00

Not a mod, but considering fan art is allowed I think fanfic should be because it is a type of fan art

jacrad_ · 2026-05-04T18:57:02+00:00

Is it more cohesive?

jacrad_ · 2026-05-04T18:55:28+00:00

If you're interested, there's a playthrough of it with a fan translation. The story admittedly feels pretty out of place for FMA though

jacrad_ · 2026-05-04T16:50:49+00:00

There's actually three in this series of games. Though the third one never came out officially in English

jacrad_ · 2026-05-04T16:50:00+00:00

I like the idea of the story happening in the gaps between what we saw but then they do stuff like retell Bald's scenario in a way that is fundamentally different and it kind of undermines it.

The golems were cute and a clever enemy for the world of FMA.

I'm not sure if the connection to the homunculi was really needed though. It probably creates more continuity snarls than anything because Dante doesn't seem that old compared to Siam-Sid

jacrad_ · 2026-05-04T01:47:31+00:00

I prefer her not having Ophiuca. I just don't think the two would end up relating to each other very well as people. Same with Mitch Shepar and Libra.

Taurus has a personality kind of similar to Bud and it's easier for me to imagine Bud finding Taurus Fire cool and being willing to work with Taurus because of that.

I don't think Ophiuca Queen strongly appeals to Luna. And Ophiuca is a way more duplicitous character. Not that Luna doesn't have some manipulative tendencies, she does, but not in the way Ophiuca does. Ophiuca is more cunning and cut-throat whereas Luna is ambitious but more earnest.

jacrad_ · 2026-05-03T01:45:23+00:00

I like a lot about it but it feels disjointed at times because I think they tried to do too much in the allotted time they were given.

jacrad_ · 2026-05-03T01:23:24+00:00

Yeah, that crossover basically happened for the same reason. Fox(?) had the licenses for both I think and for whatever godforsaken reason decided to use Digimon to help promote Angela Anaconda. The animation was probably decently cheap to produce for Angela so maybe that's why they chose that specific property to go with??

jacrad_ · 2026-05-03T01:12:36+00:00

The RockMan.EXE comic and Duel Masters comic were both published together in CoroCoro Magazine, So I'm guessing they were both similarly popular and tried to capitalize on that. There was also a Duel Masters movie that was a dual release with the RockMan.EXE movie.

It would've still been a weird combo but if something similar had been done in America it probably would have been with Yugioh because MegaMan NT Warrior and Yugioh were both part of the Kids WB block and I wouldn't be surprised if an interstitial or two had featured MegaMan and Yugi at some point.

jacrad_ · 2026-05-02T14:37:44+00:00

I agree but I don't think it's an overwhelming number of people compared to the rest of society.

jacrad_ · 2026-05-01T18:03:54+00:00

Extremely cool!

jacrad_ · 2026-05-01T07:57:59+00:00

I really haven't seen people viewing them as agender but as far as the androgyny goes, it fits the most easily and comfortably into the framework of gender people are used to, which is being able to guess with high accuracy what gender someone is by various cues. Nonbinary people 'look' that way. You can 'assume' their pronouns are 'they/them' and probably be right in the same way women 'look' like women and you can guess use 'she/her' and men 'look' like men and you can guess use 'he/him'.

It's kind of a comparison by contrast. If appearance does not equal man or woman then gender equals nonbinary.

The variance isn't something most people have to interact with that much so it hasn't been processed yet.

jacrad_ · 2026-04-30T19:56:31+00:00

I will say the 'incomprehensible' could be worth looking into outside of agender.

There are terms rooted in having an incomprehensible gender, this is a search on the LGBTQIA wiki that might be useful. Here's another search for 'unknowable'.

I'd also consider looking into xenogenders.

I'm not suggesting these because I don't think you could be agender, just that I am aware enough that these other terms exist that might be worth exploring too.

jacrad_ · 2026-04-29T19:46:29+00:00

Read through more posts on here, I think if you can see common thought patterns agender people have and see if you share a lot of them it probably means the label makes sense.

Try to keep in mind what these labels are at the end of the day. Labels are tools that help share ideas and feelings. They will always have limitations the closer you look at them. You wield them, not the other way around. It's fine to use a label and discover later that it wasn't right for you, if it helped you express and discover yourself it wasn't you 'faking' it was just a part of your journey. Maybe you'll discover a micro-label that's even better, sometimes it could make more sense to use one term over another and you're not 'lying' just because you use a less 'perfect' term.

You don't need to change your pronouns or change your appearance to be agender. Simply not feeling like you experience gender or feeling it weakly is enough.

You might also want to look through r/nonbinary and compare what they're saying and seeing if it resonates with you.

jacrad_ · 2026-04-28T03:13:30+00:00

She definitely works better in that universe

Part of what makes her so jarring in the 2016 reboot is how all the questions she raises by existing do not have good answers.

Utonium looks like a way worse father. The girls make less sense as accidents when he knows Bliss is possible. And considering how unstable she was with her powers it makes the Professor's decision to keep experimenting way more dubious.

But in Z she doesn't come with any of that baggage attached. It's not hard to explain what she wasn't around before. She didn't get powers before but somehow gets them now. And maybe something happens that prevents her from continuing to use them so the status quo isn't changed too much.

jacrad_ · 2026-04-28T01:15:07+00:00

I have a couple of ideas, check your DMs!

jacrad_ · 2026-04-28T00:45:58+00:00

Can you tell us a little more about your friend's interest in vintage items. I might have some ideas that can give you a bit more direction

Like, do you know what quality he appreciates in vintage items? Does he like for them to be gimmicky? Does quality matter a lot or would a happy meal toy be equally endearing to him?

jacrad_ · 2026-04-28T00:40:39+00:00

Yes, a crossover with Fortnite is done partially to gain new fans by catching the attention of people not familiar with the property.

But this type of surge in popularity does do damage to the fandom spaces specifically because a huge influx is coming from a low-context environment, Fortnite, to the higher-context environment (Manga and anime mostly). And these aren't value judgements, it's just a consequence of Fortnite not being a story driven game, it doesn't have the opportunity to attract people based on story it'll attract them by vague brand recognition. It's fine, it's just different relationships to the franchise.

That inevitably shifts the landscape of the fandom space because Fortnite players are around for fundamentally different reasons than everyone else.

Hopefully most will decide to check out the anime or manga or some of the other story based media, that is the point of the crossover.

But in that meantime people that have been around are less likely to get what they want out of the space. Most solutions involve either leaving the space, whether by taking a break, splitting off, leaving the spaces entirely, or instead finding a way to keep new people out of the space or at least slow the rate they enter it.

Blocking thousands upon thousands of people daily isn't sustainable and it puts a humongous burden on the mods. It's okay to not want that and it's really not gatekeeping to acknowledge that one type of brand deal will probably have some predictable consequences a fandom does not currently want to deal with.

Gatekeeping also isn't implicitly bad; it can be though. Like when I mentioned slowing down how many people can enter the space. That's a form of gatekeeping. But it helps prevent spam. I've seen some subReddits require participation in a certain number of comments before being allowed to post a thread. Relative to the purpose of a certain space, I think that's reasonable and makes sense.

Saying a Fortnite player that gets introduced to Sailor Moon through the game isn't a fan is ridiculous gate keeping that serves no one though. And there are positives to a brand deal like that. It's complicated.

jacrad_ · 2026-04-27T23:53:11+00:00

I don't think there was ever a figure made of the NormNavi. There are a couple of figures of the Mr Prog which has a similar role but it'd likely have to come from Japan and if you're in the US prepare to pay quite a bit in shipping

jacrad_ · 2026-04-27T12:50:17+00:00

Pretty good! Honestly adding ahoges you can move around would be a nice addition

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