ed's pretty gay

- Ed fcking decks anything with his right hand (and almost breaks it after a while) because he keeps forgetting it’s not made of metal and no ed you cant just crush a can under your fist anymore stop

- Al forgetting to wear affect on his face sometimes. He just sits while people are talking to him with a stone-cold murder expression and Winry and Ed constantly remind him relaxed face al! (sometimes just under their breath) and they soon learn to tell him by just a signal by tapping their cheek twice and he shakes his head to snap out of it and smiles because yes! he can smile again!

- Ed’s right arm isn’t as heavy as automail so sometimes gestures just go flying like he’ll lift a plate and accidentally fckin fling the plate across the room behind himself because he accounts for the weight of his automail by accident and moves with way too much gusto

- Al getting pneumonia because he keeps sneaking outside whenever it rains to fcking stand in the rain

- Ed just lifting hot things w/ his right hand without an oven mitt and burning himself

- Al usually sitting with his legs curled close to his chest or legs folded because he couldn’t do that in his armoured body and it feels so nice!! he feels so small!!

- Ed being ambidextrous since he was forced to master writing with his left hand and he perfects the art of drawing transmutation circles with two hands at TOP EFFICIENCY SPEED just because he can

- Ed calling Al in Xing with some bullshit alchemy theory like “if we put all the ingredients for a cake in a transmutation circle would we be able to make a perfectly cooked cake here Al I drew the circle already listen very carefully”

- Al at 3am in the morning, dead serious, drawing the cake transmutation circle on the floor

- Al trying to hide kittens under his shirt and finding it’s Not As Effective as being an empty suit of armor

- Ed: I have retired from the military,, they don’t own me anymore,,, from now on I reject and shun their moniker and I shall now be known as,,, the quartermetal non-alchemist

damn, i need more limbs

alphonse calling himself the cursed wormy armor

I LOVE DOGS

you’re the fullmetal alchemist? im sorry sir i thought you would be fuller and more metal

i’ll break off your feet and stick them on your head

havok: ah, the classic sewer escape roy: don’t follow him havok: damn it i was about to jump right in

9:46am, with papers waiting for his approval and due by noon, the colonel decided to take a nap instead.

11:03am, the colonel began furiously signing the papers, all the while cursing that he didn’t have time for this.

al: you’ve changed, you’re taller now! ed: YOU THOUGHT I’D STILL BE A RUNT WHEN I’M 18

no fair, sky, i’m the one who feels like crying

This is where I take the opportunity to debunk this really ridiculous argument about Edward Elric.

I’ve seen a lot of criticism for how emotional Ed is in this series. He doesn’t cry often, but he tears up and expresses a lot of negativity that doesn’t fall under your typical shonen macho bravado. 

Edward Elric is a fifteen year old boy.

Edward Elric is a traumatized, injured, lonely, orphaned fifteen year old boy who has had to take on responsibilities that are far above his maturity level.

He has endured pain on the level of a soldier in a full-scale war and then some.

He has had flashbacks triggered, he’s lost two of his limbs, he has nightmares of blood and decaying flesh, he has lost his mother, he blames himself for what happened to his brother, he watched an innocent child die and blames himself for that too, he has just recently admitted he doesn’t have anyone older he can trust right now, he has nearly been murdered with knives and with amplified alchemy designed to blow his brain apart, he doesn’t have a home, he’s cut himself off from his remaining family besides Al for their own protection after seeing what dangers his job incurs.

He loses sleep on research. He carries limbs that are too heavy for his body mass. He is regularly called upon to solve problems that are better left in the hands of adults by other adults he distrusts because he feels like they will only exploit him. 

All while trying to be the adult he is just not ready to be. Not yet.

You will never experience half of what this kid experienced. This orphaned, child soldier, amputee who is trying to save he and his brother’s livelihoods under corrupt authorities who’d kill him for stepping out of line.

Sure he does deserve to cry and be emotional and stuff. But that doesn’t mean that he will.

Edward has a lot of pride. He’s been through hell and back and survived. Because of his experiences, he feels the need to be behave like an adult and he expect that sort of treatment; which is why he shows a lot of anger and frustration when people don’t take him seriously due to his height and age. He puts a lot of effort to earn respect from the authorities and adults, which is why I’m pretty certain that he wouldn’t cry. At least not very easily.

And FMA2003 Ed doesn’t exactly cry easily, either. Most of the times we see him cry are when he’s still twelve or younger, and undergoing amounts of trauma and stress that would bring an adult to tears too (ex: crying when he finds what’s left of Nina’s body - remember that in the first anime, the Elrics lived with the Tuckers for around a half of a year, so Nina’s death hits them that much harder.)

I disagree about character portrayal and consistency in the different canons. I think both do a pretty good job with it. Do you have examples for “sloppy?“ characterization? Because I don’t see it.

I was gonna caption this as like moments when the turn tables in Ed and Al’s dynamic (when Ed’s the one warning Al to hold his tongue or shouting after him for being a hotheaded idiot), but then I noticed how interesting it is that these moments all take place after Wrath shows up.

I’ve been in this fandom for a very long time, and fans of the manga, and more recently Brotherhood, are often perplexed by the assertion that these versions have any problems in their portrayal of non-white minority characters. So, for the sake of clarification, I’ve written an explanation as to what I feel these problems are, and why I find them so upsetting.

I think that people who try to spin this another way are also kind of failing to see that there is worth in this badness, though. I don’t believe all media and all stories should have all their issues Nicely Solved and Nonproblematic. The issue is not always so much the presence of racism and imperial, genocidal militarism - the issue is going to be how the narrative treats it. And I totally agree with OP’s point that the narrative treating Miles’s methods as Superior is where the problem lies.

Not to be the divisive asshole who starts a game of compare-and-contrast, but I think it’s worth noting that #1 FMA03 didn’t have a Miles character, which I always thought was a shame because I do actually really like his character, and it’s an interesting dynamic which FMA03 lacked but also #2 FMA03 lacked a Miles character for a reason. And that reason is that there is none of this sort of “let’s reform the military from the inside out” idealistic optimism where really, we can make everythgin better if we work together!!! Like, Roy does ostensibly want to become Fuhrer in 03 but the most we see about his intentions as Fuhrer is the humorous miniskirts line. I have personally always thought that this was a false goal of sorts, something to talk about when it wasn’t the office he wanted at all, it was rather a shot at redemption.

Which I think is my point: redemption in FMA03 couldn’t come through the system, because the system was corrupt. Although I like mangahood, a lot, the focus was a lot more on personal responsibility than the institutional corruption.  (Think of how mangahood focuses on Envy’s one shot which started the Ishvalan War, whereas in FMA03 it’s very clear the military deliberated sowed seeds of chaos to make the entire region erupt in conflict, and then used that as an excuse to exterminate the population.)

Reforming the system from within is certainly a more viable option when there’s no fascist ideology to contend with, after all. Just underlings being manipulated by greedy superiors and monsters. Who aren’t even racists themselves, so much as greedy opportunists.

Contrast FMA03, where the homunculus Pride spouts explicitly fascist ideology during his fight with Roy. His sin of Pride (rather than Wrath, as per his mangahood counterpart) being the one of toxic RACIAL pride. It’s made completely explicit that the Amestrian government legitimately buys into this rhetoric, in other words.

Like, we know Alex Armstrong’s biggest regret was not fighting back against his superiors upon realising what they were doing was wrong but if iirc there was no further explanation given for Olivier’s stance on the matter.