FULL METAL SUZDAL ALCHEMIST

i have to say, something i love is how f'lhaminn is a deeply morally grey character who kinda very much sucks and is shown having an ambivalent relationship to the wol. she wasnt really developed as a character beyond "mother figure" and "caretaker" (especially if you haven't done the stormblood alchemist quests. still an insane move to have an entire, load-bearing lore revelation be hidden in the goddamn crafter quests. RESPECT!!), which was almost definitely not done on purpose, but makes an interesting point about motherhood and care: i.e that people take her and her labor for granted and do not care to see behind the facade. and that she kinda sucks. like i love that she used to be eorzea's biggest pop star and literally attempted a coup/terrorist attack and is sort of directly responsible for the calamity to begin with AND very much directly had minfilia's father killed (the spy who was about to confirm the meteor project and leak the intel to the alliance, no less!). and now she's playing the bereaved widow and valiant, self-sacrificing mother figure to the child she directly caused to be orphaned and a prime target for the empire, no less! it's soooooo juicy. i love it. no wonder thancred spent such a long time in a kind of weirdly guilt-based codependency/seduction dynamic with her. as far as we know, she never told him that *she* and her little group of co-conspirators were behind the *plan* to let the goobbue loose in the streets during that parade! like... girl! you let him stew in this guilt for years, to the point it had extra-dimensional ripples & fucked up a completely different girl one dimension away, and YOU DID NOT SAY SHIT! it's insane. i love her for that

hell yeah