#like truly even if envy is pettier greed is not immune to being petty either

[spidermanifested]

apologies in advance for Long Comment on Funny Post but ive thought about this a lot for purposes of my own fic, and ive come to a conclusion, and i want so bad to share it because while somebody probably could just boil it down to "greed doesnt like any of his siblings but envy is the kind of person to get petty and escalate drama so they hate each other in particular" and call it good i think theres a very specific reason both of them have been diametrically opposed since day 1, and here it is

greeds entire thing is that he wants things. but he also (and i could honestly even say PRIMARILY) wants other people to want things. hes DELIGHTED that ling has the audacity to want the entire philosophers stone and become emperor, he thinks winry insisting ed save the whole country is great, he admires "greed" in all its forms (and i have my thoughts on Why that is but thats a whole other post). he likes people in general but he especially likes when they know what they want and go after it, the bigger the prize the better.

envy? the exact opposite of this. not only is their primary goal in life just to follow fathers orders like the other homunculi, but the core of their personality is that they can only find enjoyment in tearing the things they dont have away from others. envy can never want anything except for other people to have less. if they ever got what they really wanted, they wouldnt know what to do with it, so they wallow in pettiness and cruelty and misery, and for greed, who WANTS them to have good things, that has to be absolutely infuriating!

so!!! like you said, their sins might seem similar on the surface, but in practice theyre polar opposites. greed wants the world so he can hand it back to his loved ones on a silver platter. envy wants everyone on earth to be just as sad and lonely and angry as they are. putting them together is like trying to mix oil and water and they are both always, always, always going to act like 5 year olds about it

trying to decide if there's a specific event that made greed and envy so antagonistic towards each other for fic reasons and such and i think the funniest option is that one day someone was like "aren't those basically the same thing" and they both took such deep offense at it that they decided to hate each other forever <3