#on anything fma

[patron-saints]

i was tagged by @memesmadefullmetal in a "list 5 topics you can talk on for an hour without preparing any material" post, which, what an honor, hello <3

so!

fullmetal alchemist brotherhood/manga (but i could honestly just do an hour on femslash rarepairs no problem)

tenchi universe: character analysis, ship dynamics, writing choices, inconsistent timelines, gender, you pick

MDZS/CQL/the untamed: recently @waitineedaname and i did a phone call where we basically talked about the untamed for 6 hours without stopping so i'm pretty confident i could carry just one on my own lol

trying to think of things that AREN'T fiction is really hard because most of the stuff i'm really passionate about is fiction BUT i actually am developing somewhat of an academic expertise on queer culture in the 1940s-60s in the US or at least an expertise on how to best research it! i made a guide with over 150 sources and i've written a paper on historic butch/femme culture too

cheese! it's my favorite food and i used to work at a cheese shop so i know a lot of fun facts

tagging: @waitineedaname @acornered @iernos @bunramen and @princeheathen but no pressure!!

[phantomrose96]

Thinking about Edward Elric as the Amestrian Military's specialest little unfireable boy

State alchemists can be fired for underperforming. We know this up front from the likes of Shou Tucker. And this makes a ton of sense from the homunculi's standpoint since the state alchemists are sacrifice candidates, and the homunculi would want to cull the weakest candidates and focus only on cultivating the strongest ones who stand the best chance of opening the portal.

........Then there's Edward. Who's already opened the portal.

There's no need to cultivate him. No gamble taken on whether he's good enough to open the portal. He passed the final test already. Graduated 4 semesters early.

And as such, has a free pass to do Absolute Fuck All.

And I'm imagining how funny this is from like an outside perspective.

Some newish state alchemist who'd only ever read up on the stories of Edward Elric, ready and excited to start their career of being paid handsomely with endless freedom to research and travel and do anything they want in the pursuit of science... surprised and confused to find themselves put on probation their first month for things like "ignoring orders." Which is, as best they had thought, a famous Edward Elric pastime.

Roy showing a slight bit of stress about his yearly state alchemist report, and Ed just snorting and rolling his eyes at Roy because every year HE just hastily does his on the train ride over (canon in the manga, a travesty it was left out of the anime) and it gets rubber stamped. Ed not realizing that other alchemists' reports get genuinely scrutinized and torn apart while Ed is free to turn in whatever absolute bullshit he thinks of 36 hours ahead of time. One year his report was about whether alchemy could be done via dance (conclusion: no it can't) and no one cared. Roy WANTS to tell Ed there's some kind of unknown favoritism around Ed making him literally bullet-proof but Roy has no way to phrase this that doesn't sound like he's just in denial and mad at how good Ed's train-reports are.

Guy from the Internal Amestrian Affairs sector who's responsible for auditing other internal military personel for any suspicious activity hitting about 1 million red flags for Edward Elric, issuing a STRONG and URGENT recommendation to suspend the alchemist pending further investigation into things like "literal bunk-buddies with two members of the Xingese royalty (enemy nation)" and "spent $10,000,000 of his stipend on a librarian to make her re-copy (what he seemed to interpret as?) military records in some extremely transparent effort to unearth state secrets (it was a recipe book but he was literally asking her about state secrets)" and "literally has never once obeyed an order, ever, not even once in his career, and is on public record having said 'I do not care about the goals and protections of the Amestrian Military. I am in fact only pursuing my own interests several of which are diametrically opposed to the safety and well-being of the governing body of Amestris'"

The issued recommendation is intercepted before it even reaches its intended desk. President Bradley himself has taken issue with it and denies it before a single set of eyes has seen it. The President's veto stamp is a terrifying hammer, used rarely, and it is now sitting on the auditor's desk.

The auditor sleeps with one eye open from then on out.

[courtmartialme]

transmasc riza sketches ^__^ i think a lot about riza being scared about coming out and changing his relationship with roy while roy is just so happy riza wants something for himself. and also roy learning chest binding safety because his captain is stubborn

dont tag as gndrbnd thankyu

[josukespimphand]

Haven't drawn her in forever ah.

[slushglow]

where are my edward elric fans in the crowd tonight

[madootles]

looking back on a crime scene that he created

[strawbie-doodle]

Bury my heart at the rodeo 🐎

[hi i also drew cowboy ed a while ago and these kind of match]

[humming-fly]

I know I've thought of a good shitpost when the premise is only funny to me and maybe three other people

[tbartss]

happy FMA day !! Have this piece that I made for a zine last year :'))

[rayshippouuchiha]

royed:

Al looking at Mustang being useless in the rain: Are you sure you want that one brother?

Edbwith heart eyes at this man's stupidity and looking like a cute wet black cat in the rain: Yep he's perfect. That one's definitely mine.

Ed: I'm smart enough for the both of us and he's the perfect amount of pathetic.

Al: *to himself* obviously brother gets his taste in men from Mom.

[ilovepannacotta]

reads left to right →

This was suppose to be for the second and third day of the @edling-week sorryyyy

[the whole pages after the cut]

[memesmadefullmetal]

Hey so.. am I the only one who thought Bradley just had a really weird title? I was like "wow he's the fuhrer, president and king?? Little overkill" only to realise his name is king......

Honestly, your mods must admit, we may have gone through a similar thought process once upon a time… 💀

It’s like a rite of passage for FMA fans

- Mod Mustang & Mod Hawkeye 🔥🦅

[despazito]

They both married a guy who doesn't age normally and didn't tell them his entire deal, had kids with them and then vanished

[courtmartialme]

redraws of the poster of The Lobster for my 03 AU where roy ends up crossing the gate to our world with the brothers, gets involved with a different riza, gets painfully aware of what he could have had if his head wasn't too far up his own ass, and gets punched in the face at some point

[thejojolands]

Saw this post and was compelled by a powerful force to draw him

[sidewalk-cracks]

okay everybody, listen up, because I need to talk about Edward Elric. I've started watching fmab and I am losing my mind over this boy. There's so many incredible things about this kid; he's such an incredible protagonist.

the realism of Ed is so painfully wonderful- this is a fifteen year old child. Remember what you were like when you were fifteen? Yeah? Fifteen is so young. This is a child who's had to grow up WAY too fast and has been through so many unspeakable things, but he's still a kid and he actually ACTS like it. He gets irritable over small things and acts "childish" when he's excited and has that touch of arrogance a teen gets when they know they're important.

Ed gets scared. He's not like a lot of your "unshakable" shounen protagonists, who, when faced with something shocking in a fight, eyes only widen and mouth only frowns and they only worry a little and maybe ask for an explanation. No, Ed is a kid and he gets scared. Sometimes he handles fights well, but sometimes he freezes. When Scar found him and Al, when he hurt Al and tore out Ed's arm and pursued relentlessly in the rain, standing over Ed as Ed writhed on the ground, Ed screamed for his brother and froze in his fear and thought he was about to die then.

He's so fifteen in everything- in his anger and his arrogance, in his fear, in his trauma, in his reverence of life. Ed is at the age when your eyes truly start to open to reality and society, though given his past he probably started earlier. But he holds life so preciously, so closely, cradles it in his arms and declares over and over again that it is one thing he will not trample, will not hurt. That fifteen-year-old conviction and the leftover naivety from childhood, paired with the newer discovery of just how sacred, how beautiful and important life is.

He's fifteen in his love. You ever been around teenagers, especially today's teenagers, and you know they do everything fiercely, most things boldly, and Ed screams it in his love. In his protection of Al, his absolute dedication and protection to the one person he has left, can hold close. He's a teenager in their banter but such an eldest sibling in every way- in his drive to protect Al from anything, everything he can, in his leadership, in his fear of losing his sibling.

Ed is such a real person, such a real kid. He's incredibly mortal, unlike a lot of op shounen protagonists. He hits his head and it bleeds. He gets impaled and struggles to stand at all. Every time he's injured we see him recovering in the hospital after. He has nightmares from his fear of failure, about Al and his mother and Nina. He's smart but not indestructible. He's incredibly earnest about his convictions, earnest about the beauty of life, just like a teen.

Edward Elric is probably the most realistic anime teen I've ever seen, and I love him SO much