AngelSelene

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.

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. 😂 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. 😂

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.

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