AngelSelene

After like a 8 year hiatus. I have been heaps active on my furry twitter accounts for art but have neglected drawing people for years.

Thought some Royed would be a good return

How I see royed: two messed up people who see themselves in each make a mutual agreement where they both benefit and use each other. It just takes the younger a little while to catch up but he does.

Fuck, you are so right. Funnily enough, just before I saw this notification, I had been writing my version of the scene in 03 just after Ed helped Hughes with the terrorists on the train and:

Ed grit his teeth in frustration. He’d already blown up at [the Bastard] in the car for the bullshit he’d pulled with the train ride in. Telling Ed to get on the train heading for the South Provence mid-loop interchange rather than the one going directly from East to Central City like he’d planned was bullshit. Especially considering he knew there were fucking terrorists or something on the train. Bastard had just laughed at him for his frustration. Asked if he really thought the military would allow a ten year old — he was eleven, thankyouverymuch — to take the state exams without some proof that he was worth the resources to test. He said it like it was obvious, like Ed was a fool for not considering that — and why would he have? Bastard had promised to sponsor him after he was healed up; he never said anything about Ed having to prove himself to the generals just for the privilege to take the damned test. Just more proof that Ed couldn’t trust anything this guy said. Bastard had some secondary or tertiary agenda running beneath every word he spoke and Ed knew he wasn’t a priority to his schemes so much as a pawn to be played. Even as it pissed him off, Ed was mostly ok with that. It’s not like he was doing any different. He was using the Bastard just like the Bastard was using him. They understood each other that way. Didn’t mean Ed had to be happy about it.

That last bit is how I see their early relationship. They're using each other, they're each well aware of it, and they're both ok with that. It's a fairly equal quid-pro-quo dynamic that sees them both getting what they want/need without actually harming the other.

I can see Ed being really frustrated with Roy because he knows he's being used for something but can't always predict what the endgame for Roy's actions are whereas he's well aware that Roy knows his own motivations completely. But he doesn't try to stop being used because he still gets what he wants out of the exchange.

Despite his age, Roy always treated Ed like an adult - with all the respect and all the manipulation he gives to other adults as well.

I'm a RoyEd shipper myself so that's part of it but I always boggle at people who insist that Roy was like a parent to Ed. Just... Did we watch the same shows? No matter what iteration, 2003 or Brotherhood, they've got nothing like a parent-child relationship.

Where are people getting this? Roy puts that kid into danger and laughs about it. He shrugs when Ed goes missing in the north because he's got more important things to deal with. He straight up punched Ed when Ed questioned him about Maria Ross's death and told him to act like a soldier.

Cheers to 1 year of royed art

That's

That's Roy Mustang

Just the opposite.

Roy "I grew up with 10 sisters so I know how to disguise covert information reconnaissance as flirting" Mustang.

"I grew up with 10 sisters so I know how to weaponize my sexual charm to disarm others and win favor."

Roy led every higher-up to believe he was just a fuckboy and a manwhore in this for his own ego and that they shouldn't view him as any kind of violent revolutionary like "no sir I'm just a slut."

Which. is an absolutely batshit primary character backstory to mention once, late in the series, and then immediately move on from.

And actually Hiromu Arakawa did it so well that every single fan interpretation of Roy Mustang for the FMA03 anime treated him as an honest to god man-slut. Bought his whole act hook line and sinker.