Writer. Once an artist. Maybe again? Crocheter. Unapologetic slash fangirl.
***
OG Fandoms:
Gundam Wing
Fullmetal Alchemist
Naruto
Harry Potter
***
Recent Fandoms:
My Hero Academia
The Witcher
The Untamed/Mo Dao Zu Shi
***
Find me on AO3
Chapters: 4/?
Fandom: Gundam Wing
Rating: Explicit
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationship: Chang Wufei/Duo Maxwell
Characters: Duo Maxwell, Chang Wufei
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, 5x2 - Freeform, Crossdressing Duo Maxwell, Crossdressing, Duo's Biological Family, Homophobia, GNC Duo Maxwell, Angst, Angst and Feels, Family Drama, Established Relationship, Transphobia, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Series: Part 2 of Pride of Place
Summary:
Finding his biological family is something everyone seems to think that Duo should celebrate, but Duo has good reasons for never seeking them out. Those reasons haven't gone away just because they decided to find him, and they're going to make everything about Duo's life a lot more complicated.
Inspo for Duo's dress in Chapter 4
source (as far as I've been able to find, no way in hell is a dress like that $35)
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
ā Live Streamingā Interactive Chatā Private Showsā HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch ⢠No registration required ⢠HD streaming
I hate the āwhy canāt they just be friendsā ship hate.
Because I donāt want them to.
āI personally see them as friends.ā
I donāt care.
āTheyāre sibling codedā
I wish you were silent coded.
āDonāt ruin their friendship. Me and my bro are just like this.ā
I donāt care that you self insert onto one of the characters. Youāre not that character, get over yourself.
I donāt caaareeeee you hate that theyāre shipped together. I donāt caaareeee you think theyāre sibling coded or whatever the fuck. Man, just shut up.
sometimes Iām reminded that there are still people who donāt know ao3 was literally created by incest shippers ā and the siteās sole purpose is to 1. be completely against censorship and 2. host all kinds of dark, taboo fics that are banned on other platforms ā and the first ever fic that was posted on ao3 was a fic about an incest ship from supernatural.
you are in the house that was created by freaks. for freaks (affectionate). every disgusting thing you can think of is rightfully allowed and welcomed on ao3, because they are exactly the reasons why ao3 was created in the first place.
ao3 was created because its creators got tired of censorship, they got tired of dark and taboo fics getting banned on pro-censorship platforms, and they wanted a place that was safe for ALL FICS THAT WERE DARK AND TABOO.
ao3ās main principle is being against censorship and being proship / profic.
there are some things in fiction that make me uncomfortable, but instead of shaming people who are just minding their own business and not harming anyone in real life, I choose to curate my own internet experience by blocking/muting what I donāt want to see. ao3 has excellent tagging system, so instead of being a bitch, use their tagging system properly and you wonāt see the things you donāt want to see.
itās your job to curate what you see. itās not other peopleās jobs or responsibilities to censor themselves for your personal comfort. the world does not revolve around you.
also you cannot censor āonly the things you personally hateā without expecting everything else, that isnāt of conservative beliefs, to be censored too. because censorship is a slippery slope and a fascist tool. I promise you there are people who think āwhy do tags for queer love even exist on ao3? theyāre grooming childrenā.
if you allow the things that you hate to be censored ā because someone with enough power gets to control what other people can and cannot create/consume, it will not stop at the things that you hate.
Wait Iām sorry parent/child incest fic?????? Why does that exist? Why do you KNOW that exists?????? What the fuck š¤¢
I feel like you can sort of tell how long (or not) someone has existed in fannish spaces by how outraged they get about things like this. Like rings in a tree trunk lol. I've been in so many fandoms. At least one, but often multiple at the same time, since I was a teenager. I've seen just. Everything.
Sex pollen. Mpreg. Incest. Monster fucking. Tentacles. Pairings like Snape/Hermione that would be crazy abusive and illegal if they were real. Wild kinks. The babygirlification of all kinds of villains. So much RPF (the 'I sincerely believe they are secretly a couple' kind and the 'this is fictional but it's fun to imagine they're in love' kind.)
You learn to just scroll past shit you don't like or unfollow people or filter tags. The tldr of fandom is that humans are weird as fuck. And creative, and unhinged, and traumatized, and talented. And amazing. And every single thing that you clutch your pearls about 'well surely someone doesn't want to read/write THAT!' - someone does. Probably lots of people do. And those people are perfectly normal. In their offline lives, they're parents and siblings and they have jobs and friends and they go about their lives and they don't cause any harm. And that's the sticking point. There's this really concerning, frankly highly Evangelical idea that if someone enjoys the wrong kind of fiction, they are obviously a Bad Person. But nothing is that simple, and thought crimes aren't real, and you definitely have some thoughts or ideas that someone else would find fucked up. You don't have to like every kind of fic that exists. I certainly don't. But shaming people for their harmless fantasies about fictional characters is so boring. I saw Goody Proctor enjoying a Toxic Ship! Good for you, I'll alert the pope.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
ā Live Streamingā Interactive Chatā Private Showsā HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch ⢠No registration required ⢠HD streaming
ao3 tagging isnāt always intuitive and some tags are highly subjective but some are really really not. If I see āmutual baby trappingā Iām expecting two people in a situationship whoād rather engage in absurd manipulations and shenanigans to obtain a baby rather than communicate clearly āhey I want to be serious with youā; if theyāre *already talking about marriage and kids* then itās not babytrapping. If I see Underage I am expecting at least one Mrated scene with a minor, not ātwo teens kiss but donāt even get to second baseā. If I see the big Rape/Noncon tag and then the authors note says āthe Rape tag is cause they have sex while A is slightly drunkā then I am backing out of the fic and never trusting your tagging again!
Like! Tagging is for two populationsāthe people who explicitly want to see X and the people who explicitly donāt want to see Xāand neither population is served by overtagging! If there was a fic tagged, idk, āSwedish Politicsā because in one throwaway line someone mentions Sweden has political parties, Iād be upset if I was looking for Swedish Politics and this was all that came up. And Iād be just as upset if I was filtering out fics with Swedish Politics and missed the perfect fic that was overtagged!
You are aware that a fictional character is just a rhetorical construct designed to fulfill a narrative/thematic purpose right? That their actions are written by an author who wants to use them to explore complex ideas and moral gray areas within the safe confines of fiction right? That they aren't a real person who has killed real people right?
I genuinely wonder if people realize how many projects get abandoned because the readership "wasn't there", when in reality, the readership just stayed silent. It's a big thing in trad pub that book series get discontinued because readers pirate the books or wait until the series is finished to buy a copy, leading the publisher to think that nobody actually wants the book enough to continue the series, but it happens with indie creators too.
I've discontinued a lot of free, online series because it's not worth putting 3-5 hours a week into posting a project for no readers. Sometimes I finish the series for me but just never post it again, other times I don't finish it at all because it feels more worthwhile to put my time into other things. Sometimes I hear from readers who are sad or upset that I didn't finish something they were liking, but the *reason* it never got finished is because I didn't know anyone liked it. If you like something, tell the creator, tell your friends, make some noise about it. If you would be sad if a story never finished, make that interest known because one of my biggest considerations before discontinuing a series is "will people miss this? Will I be letting people down" and 9/10 times, I come to the conclusion of "no, it doesn't even seem like anyone's reading this" only to learn after I've moved on that apparently someone was.
I've said this before in a different way, and this post said it so well. With real examples.
If you like something, tell people.
If you want more content from an artist or author, if you like their stuff, tell them. It will give them creative fuel to keep going. And often it gives them other resources as well.
Recommend a work to other people. Leave a comment or a review. It doesn't have to be long, just genuine, a sentence or two.
Not many people know that a book's success is judged by book reviews as well as sales. Review the book on Amazon or another site to help it pass the metric of success and be recognized by publishers and retailers.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
ā Live Streamingā Interactive Chatā Private Showsā HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch ⢠No registration required ⢠HD streaming
"Try our ai-powered-" and I've stopped reading. You've instantly lost me. I don't trust anything that labels itself ai-powered. I'd rather deal with something that's squirrel-powered. Like Norm. I trust Norm. He won't try to sell my data.
A scene from future at a price I was working on yesterday. Selene mentioned she didn't understand why Ed was enthusiastic about chimera research at first (in 2003) - beyond a knee jerk "it talked? cool!" - before seeing that research up close (and, you know, Nina happening).
I think I've figured out a scientific reason our little nerd could have been interested while writing last night. He's not interested in this fic, but I think he could have been if he didn't know shit he wasn't supposed to yet.
Background: FMA03 timeline where Ed is 11. He knows about Roy's history and Tucker's crimes. Roy doesn't know Ed knows and isn't aware of what Tucker has been up to. Cue miscommunication.
See wip under the cut:
Chapter 5 Excerpt
āWhat he did is vile, you bastard.ā Ed grit his teeth. At this rate, heād be the one with teeth ground down to nubs. āGuess I shouldnāt be surprised that someone like you wouldnāt care a wit about the suffering of others.ā
āSuffering?ā The bastard sounded confused. How could he be confused? āDo you mean the animals? Elric, animal testing is standard procedure in multiple disciplines. Not just alchemy.ā He sighed in exasperation and Ed genuinely thought he was going to break his teeth if he clinched his jaw any harder. āEven medicine. Especially medicine.ā
Ed hated him.
āI saw your cousinās dog. You think he was the first animal to be subjected to prosthetic surgery?ā
That wasnāt the same thing.
āYou think scientists didnāt test the nerve connections and bone implants on pigs and monkeys for proof of concept long before the first human trials?ā
They had. Ed knew they had.
āAnimal testing is also foundational to alchemical research,ā Bastard insisted.
Would he have a convenient excuse for his own actions, if Ed confronted him about it. Would he actually claim immolating living people somehow improved the world?
Ed hated him.
āChimera research is primarily interested in altering and boosting physical health, endurance, longevity, disease resistance, and environmental adaptation, with the long-term goal of directing and enhancing human biological evolution.ā
How was this all sounding so reasonable?
āResearchers combine different species in an attempt to mix advantageous adaptations together in the hope of increasing survival in disadvantageous circumstances.ā
Why could Ed feel himself believing this bullshit?
āTuckerās own research is dedicated to advancing communication efforts -ā
--
So yeah, this is how I've solved the FMA Chimera Problem of "but why bother?"
Oh this does nicely solve it. āDistasteful but necessary,ā and Ed sitting there seething because he knows what Tucker has actually done. Our poor Cassandraā¦
Love the miscommunication. Ed is under the impression Roy is already aware of what Tucker was up to, which makes Roy's defense of Tucker making chimera twice as damning. Oh, you think animal testing is ok? You think human testing is justified???? Fuck you and the horse you rode in on, Mustang.
I also wanted to show that Ed's not immune to Roy's charisma even when he neither likes nor trusts him. "Why could Ed feel himself believing this bullshit?" He's being swayed even as he's aware of it.
(Sadly, Roy isn't even trying to manipulate here. He's being genuine and talking science with a fellow scientist. Ed's resistance is baffling to him.)
More under the cut:
The "Problem of Chimera" is something that bugged me for years. I couldn't ever see the point of it. Was convinced it was just a case of "they were so concerned with whether they could, they didn't bother to ask if they should"? Otherwise, why waste the resources?
So many alchemists getting into chimera creation makes some more sense in Brotherhood because, I would assume, if you fuck up making a human-animal hybrid you get thrown through the Gate - which is something Father wants (well, he wants them through the gate and surviving, not through the gate and dead which is probably what happens most often). He wants more breakers of taboo for his plans. That there were only four to choose from when the time came and he had to have Roy strong armed into it is actually fairly impressive. Make's Ed's survival in the basement even more unique if a lot more people have done human transmutation and died as a result (though a lot of his survival is due to Al getting him to Pinako before he bled out).
I'm still not clear why making human-type chimera doesn't count as human alchemy, honestly. Unless it does and all the alchemists who've done it have also died about it. But I can 100% see the military funding that research to secretly encourage people to break taboo.
But that's not the official reason. They need an official reason. For tax purposes if nothing else. Need the research to seem above board to the public and greater military or else they'd riot.
Animal testing for medical purposes made the most sense to me. We already know Amestris's medical technology is better than our own in many ways. Looking at the Rockbell's dog, it's easy to assume that animal testing for automail was a thing in the not-to-distant past.
We also know Amestris doesn't have strong medical alchemy despite having advanced mundane medicine. Even Marco was using a stone for his work. But Chimera research could very well be a move to change that, it's just in the early stages yet.
Can you imagine being able to splice another animal's disease resistance into a person? How about a lizard's ability to regrow limbs? A shark's inability to get cancer? And all it would take was sacrificing one animal?
An entire economy around raising the best host animals in captivity would spring up, poaching would increase, charlatans would try to get in on the action. Different schools of thought around human raised vs wild caught animals giving best results...
Hell, the automail industry might even partially collapse if people could regrow their limbs. There'd always be those who didn't trust alchemy and refuse the new treatment (I'm convinced Hughes would be in this camp), so I don't think automail industry would collapse entirely. And probably chimera based healing would be massively expensive at first because not many alchemists would be trained to perform it. But I can see it becoming standard practice in a couple generations. It would completely change the economy around amputations and, given how often Amestris is at war, that's no small thing.
Granted "with the long-term goal of directing and enhancing human biological evolution." is pretty eugenic but that still sounds reasonable for where Amestris is at, socially and politically. Eugenics was pretty prevalent in early 20th century western philosophy.
If human-chimera creation was expanded past medicine to include environmental adaptations - humans who can breath under water or have echo location or can survive temperature extremes for use in industry? Hells, a new form of slavery or second class citizen could arise. Be sentenced to the salt mines for a crime and have bat bits spliced into you to make working in the dark easier. Or reversed, not having some animal bits seen as old-fashioned and conservative. Some people are proud of being 100% human, others proud of their animal traits and they fight about it.
I... may have gone a little overboard with the world building. I love trying to figure out how Amestris works on a foundational, legal, and social level. The existence of people who can - to the average citizen's eyes - alter the world around them at a whim can't have left the country completely unaffected.
I'm still not clear why making human-type chimera doesn't count as human alchemy, honestly.
I've always thought it's because it's the difference between transmuting something living vs. trying to resurrect life. After all, we see Ed *continue* to use what's technically human transmutation throughout the series, usually to heal himself, without getting thrown back to the Gate. If all human transmutation were the same as resurrection, there would be no justification to merging humans and animals. We don't see any alchemists use it for strictly medical reasons (I would imagine that having been through the Gate has given Ed somewhat unique knowledge of the trade-off between his future life for healing a wound), or--without knowing what the cost is--even that kind of human transmutation *does* land people through the Gate, and they just... don't survive.
Why there aren't more survivors is probably a combination of "they literally don't survive the trip to the Gate/they die of their cost (like Ed nearly bled out)" AND suicide. I don't imagine most people who see Truth come out entirely sane, and what they "create" in their failed attempt could easily push people over the edge all on its own. Between the two (and the sheer rebound rate for failed attempts killing the alchemists), there just genuinely aren't a lot of people who have done it *and survived.* At its heart, what is called "human transmutation" is actually *soul alchemy.* That's what brings people to the Gate. Merely combining two living things isn't the same as touching their souls (though it does kind of lowkey imply that animals don't have one or that both souls can coexist in the single body).
I do think, for conventional/legal understanding, medical alchemy *is considered* human transmutation, so it's subject to the same taboo as the "raise the dead" part of it is.
Granted "with the long-term goal of directing and enhancing human biological evolution." is pretty eugenic but that still sounds reasonable for where Amestris is at, socially and politically.
I mean, Ishval. š Safe to say it's in line with the world's ideas.
As for why combining humans and animals doesn't count as human transmutation *legally*, it probably does. That's why Tucker lies about it, after all (well, that, and there's no way his wife consented). But the corrupt government secretly testing against its own laws doesn't exactly feel like a reach.
Millennial Sisyphus keeps entering all the information from his resume into the web form, only for it to delete everything when he tries to move to the next page. He just goes back and types it all up again, over and over again, forever, and he never gets a job.
Millennial Tantalus has been promised that his unpaid internship will become a paid position as soon as the company has space for him. Every week he sees their new job posting. Every week he asks his boss if he can have a real job. The boss shrugs apologetically and says heāll just have to make do with being paid in experience a little longer. He goes back and keeps working, over and over again, forever, and he never reaches the fruits of his labors.
Millennial Persephone canāt get a job without a degree, but because she had to take out loans to pay for college, she must spend 1/3 of her life working just to pay them off.
Millennial Cassandraās title is Social Media Coordinator, she was hired to be the expert, but every time she tries to explain the problems in her companyās social media decisionmaking, the managers donāt listenā¦and end up hiring expensive PR flacks to repair the damage to their reputation when things blow up exactly as she predicted.
Millennial Medusa uses multiple shades of primer and opaque foundation to cover the scars snaking across her face, hiding the bruises, aligning the asymmetry in her broken nose and jaw. Red matte on the lips, green shimmer on the lids. Flawless liner on the first try. Sheās had lots and lots of practice. She films her transformation in secret for all to see and learn, and again, men are turned to anonymous stone faces screaming in horror.Ā āLiar!āĀ āWitch!āĀ āTake her swimming on the first date!ā These words do not discourage her. These words are a challenge. GlamGorgonXx posts another video.
Millennial Prometheus uploads another PDF to his site. Heās lost track of the printing and edition of this textbook. He knows they just rearranged some of chapters then charge 150 dollars per copy, and the professor wrote the book himself. the ZIP fills uploads successfully, and he starts uploading the next one. He isnāt afraid of the potential lawsuit. knowledge shouldnāt held out of reach like this.Ā
Millennial Circe screenshots all the lewd messages she gets from men on online dating sites and posts them on her very popular Instagram along with their pictures and usernames. When people accuse her of attempting to destroy their reputations, she insists sheās just revealing them for the pigs they truly are.
saw a post letting people know that your ao3 bookmarks are viewable on your account unless you make them private, which suggests that the median ao3 user does not use ao3 in what i will call 'the optimum fic-finding treadmill' where you find a fic author you like and look through their bookmarks to find more fics that are good and then look through that author's bookmarks for even more good fics. like a conga line of great but extremely specific tastes. or one of those chessboard rice doubling analogies and oh no that is a LOT of ao3 tabs.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
ā Live Streamingā Interactive Chatā Private Showsā HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch ⢠No registration required ⢠HD streaming
I think that if you had enough daughters AND played your cards right you could spring Mambo Number Five out at the EXACT right gathering and shatter your entire family's trust forever
I currently have nine (9) Fullmetal Alchemist Roy/Ed fic in my WIP. As someone who only started writing in the last month, this is ridiculous. But I can't get the ideas out of my head!
In total, I have two (2) Time Travel fic, three (3) PWP's that, per my madness and against my will, gained fucking plot (pun intended), and another four (4) non-PWP plotfic.
I was going to write up a quick synopsis of each of my fic and post it in one go, but that ended up with over 2K words and was a pain to read on tumblr, so I decided to break it up into individual posts. Therefore:
Silk Flowers - a Time Travel fic
Wherein 45 year old Edward Elric violently loses the life and family he's built for himself after someone commits taboo in public, he gets caught in the array, and Truth throws his soul back in time to when he was 14 in response, leaving him stranded as an adult in a child's body with none of his support system intact and a brewing war a la Promised Day coming up.
I always thought it was funny how so many timetravel fic have the traveler easily accept they're in the past and start making changes with little thought to what they've lost. This happens, I think, because most time travel was either intentional or the result of a Crapsack World, and the traveler realizes they can now make things better. And even in the fic where the world was fine, there is normally still something in the traveler's life that they could now change for the better.
Not so here. The future was good. There had been genuine peace for years. Amestris was on the cusp of becoming a true democracy. Ed and everyone he knew were all happy and thriving. And then in a moment, it was all erased. Ed is devastated, depressed, and doesn't really want to engage with the world but forces himself to because he's still Ed and can't stand back while the people he loves are threatened, even when they don't know or love him back.
I will read this setup (if it's RoyEd) pretty much as many times as it comes across my attention. It's always so good, but, man, time travel is so. fucking. hard.
I CANNOT believe there aren't more FMA timetravel fic, much less RoyEd specific. FMA is written in just the right way to Encourage timetravel!
"but, man, time travel is so. fucking. hard." - Especially given I intend for this to go more a drama/psychological horror direction. Just, can you imagine being effectively married for 30 years and have your husband look at you with no real recognition? "Hi, you used to be 15 years older than me. I'm now 15 years older than You. We were married for 30 years. Stop fucking looking at me like that."
The "Time travel is so fucking hard" is why there aren't more of them and why the majority are unfinished. They are just that challenging. Yes, the idea of someone going back in time to end up with their younger partner? You know how I told you that we have extremely similar tastes? One of my current running longfics is this, just a different fandom. It plays out a little different than back into his old body (he goes back so far and the age gap is so large that he's not going to be born for a decade when he goes back, so it's Old Him going back and hooking up with the Young Version of his Husband). But in any case, I freaking adore this setup so much. It's so good.
[end copy/paste]
I think I have been spoiled with my other favorite franchises because I come from a MARVEL/IronMan, Supernatural, Naruto, MDZS/CQL, and Harry Potter background and there are just so may time travel fic in those worlds. The moment I think I've read them all, another ten spawn without warning.
Omgomgomg, you're doing a Time Travel?!? :swoon: What fandom?
Oooh, Old!Him with Young!Husband is such a fun dynamic, especially if Old!Him is anticipating interests and reactions that would make sense to Old!Husband because he's Old but Young!Husband doesn't have those reactions because he hasn't had the life experience to create them yet. Coming to realize that you don't actually know Young!Husband - even as you still love him, will always love him - has to be devastating.
Ed's actually dealing with something like that in this fic because even though he looks young, he's really really not.
At one point, he hasn't slept in a week because he can't sleep alone/every time he closes his eyes, he sees his husband die, so he decides to seduce Roy in desperation. In his sleep deprived state, he figures he's only a year younger than he was when he and Roy actually got together, so what's the difference? And he's an Actual Adult this time, so Roy should have even less objections than last time, right? But he stops at sneaking naked into Roy's bed. Really looks at him for the first time since waking up in the past and finally takes in how different This!Roy is to His!Roy.
He realizes that This!Roy is essentially the man he initially fell in love with as a teen but not really the Roy he continued to fall in love with, over and over again, for thirty years as they aged and matured and lived their lives together. That This!Roy may have once initially fallen in love with his young, teenage self but there's no guarantee he'll fall in love with the more settled, more mature, and severely grieving adult Ed has become. They just don't have the same experiences anymore.
(Roy wakes up to a naked 14 year old crying in his bed and is Very Concernedā¢ļø)
I come from a MARVEL/IronMan, Supernatural, Naruto, MDZS/CQL, and Harry Potter background and there are just so may time travel fic in those worlds.
I am chuckling at this because these are some of the biggest megafandoms *ever.* And while FMA has always been respectable, it hasn't been a megafandom in the same way. I know a ton was lost before Ao3 became a thing, but FMA only has 30k fics in total. MDZS has over 90k, at the *smallest* of he mentioned fandoms by a substantial margin. š These fandoms have the power of sheer volume to give people virtually anything they want.
So, of course, in an absolute megafandom, I'm writing my time travel fic in is BNHA... and I'm writing it for the tiniest rare pair that has like... a grand total of 33 fics, 7 (and over 70% of the word count) of those are mine. š
Oh man, my heart. Ed being like "one year doesn't really matter" when he's *fourteen.* Only to realize it's not his Roy and break his heart open with his own hands. I love it and it's crushing, and you are a delightful *tease* because I want to read it... but you have monster fic of monster fics on your hands to work through first.
Yeah, like i said, I was spoiled for time travel fic. And I'm a bit of a basic bitch when it comes to fandoms, apparently. lol
My hard drive crashed and burned a while back and I lost all of the fic I had downloaded. I've been able to rebuild my collection for most fandoms but somehow most of my favorite fic in FMA are just... gone. And because I can't remember their names - just what happened in them - I can't even wayback it. I Am In Mourning. It feels like there were just so many more FMA fic ten, twenty years ago.
Funny that you're feeding the megafandom with time travel.
Oh man, my heart. Ed being like "one year doesn't really matter" when he's fourteen. Only to realize it's not his Roy and break his heart open with his own hands. I love it and it's crushing, and you are a delightful tease because I want to read it⦠but you have monster fic of monster fics on your hands to work through first.
Not trying to be a tease, dear.
He's thinking one year doesn't really matter because he's forty-five and hasn't really internalized being physically fourteen yet. It literally wouldn't matter if he were in his former body. There's no functional difference between forty-four and forty-five. And given he was sleeping with Roy at fifteen, he's extrapolating that out to his current situation. He's just in such a bad headspace right now that he's not really thinking about the optics.
Thing is, he's a father. If any 30 year old touched his 15 year old kid, he'd alchemize magma, start at the toes and work his way up. But he's been an exception to the rule for so much of his life that it honestly doesn't register that similar rules should - or even could - apply to him (which is something that comes up in Price but from a different direction).
I think I'm going to have Roy become a little addicted to how much Ed loves him even though Roy doesn't (yet) love him back. Riza gives him loyalty but Ed gives him devotion. Probably the only time I don't Roy Fell Harder just because there's no real way he possibly could.
I would be in mourning too! Heart broken! There were definitely tons more fic for FMA ages ago, but they were in decentralized archives, and I don't know that any of them made it to Ao3.
Oh, I totally understand how the mess of his warped perspective and his feelings about his own age/body, and Roy's age/body are getting all tangled up. I also love the concept of Ed being completely detached from the idea that rules do or even should apply to himself. That feels very in-character for him. After all, this all started because he didn't believe the taboo about human transmutation applied to him.
Yeah, no way for Roy to Fall Harder in this one, but also Ed falling in love with Roy all over again... *soft sigh*