His inner dialogue about Ed is fantastic, including the tiny details about a possible kind of attraction (like in here "but he is only a man, after everything" roy WDYM YOU'RE ONLY A MAN??? ED IS FOURTEEN).

FREAK

I am still obsessed and rolling Ed's dialogues like dough in my hands. they're so UGH. he sounds like a kid who's trying to pick big words to not sound so scared.

let's talk about Ed pov because i loved how cropped his inner dialogue is. the back-to-back usage of em dashes work perfectly to SHOW visually how much he is doubting himself, how scared and (dare i say again) SMALL and young he issss.

For folks who have been my friends for a while, they’ll know about my incessant obsession with em dashes, even from back when I wrote bkdk and I wrote Deku’s stammer with lots of em-dashes, instead of the more common “s-s-s-stutter” writing. My thoughts often stop and start with irregularity, making it easier to write in someone else, including someone who’s so youthful like Ed is.

We don’t really get into good Ed thinking until almost the date sequence, probably around the library scene, solely because Ed is stuck reacting to Roy’s actions until then. I especially like the contrasts placed in Premeditated about how in-control Ed seems to Roy (in a meta way, due to how he is in BH, post-Truth) and how out of control he himself feels. Then, we also have moments where Ed and Roy do see each other with clarity, which makes the reader think they’re on the same page (often times, they’re not), such as:

(Ed’s pov) The silence grates against Ed’s nerves and he can feel that his fuse is shortening—that he’s going to explode the next time Mustang speaks.  (Roy’s pov) Ed looks like he’s about to burst. Roy will have to be fast in remedying this, no doubt. 

Choices like these are even better in contrast with choices where they don’t see each other; having an imperfect relationship that is seen repeatedly throughout the narrative is essential to me as an author, and as an aromantic person. Having the “perfect” relationship is not only boring to me but personally discomforting. I’m not interested in telling those stories.

imma repeat myself but DAMN ed is TINY in here. their first kiss feels predatory. very good. wonderful. im very thankful you didn't go to the typical places when writing underage, aka "the underage character doesn't know what sexual arousal is"; you don't give any kind of actual clue on when he discovered how that's supposed to feel like, but he has WORDS to express that. it's refreshing.

This was such a funny comment to receive about this part because their first kiss is one of the more genuine attempts from Roy’s character to protect Ed—this is early on enough and relatively unchanged that Roy’s facade about the whole fake dating endeavor is still intact, even though that dissolves pretty quickly in the rest of the fic. In fact, it’s only mentioned like once or twice again, and with very little genuine meaning behind it.

I considered mentioning the fact that Ed doesn’t really masturbate, but even so, he’d be aware of it; I also had him on testosterone, which means he’d be ultra aware of his own arousal, just not sex terms precisely. I considered really heavily how to give Ed agency with the acknowledgement that their relationship would be REALLY FUCKING BAD irl. Like catastrophically bad. So Ed has simultaneous agency and lack of agency due to their age gap (less so because of their power dynamic, because one may assume the brass needs Ed more than they need Roy—something Ed even mentions in the fic, about how nice Roy is and how fake Ed’s job feels)

ed being a baby dom took me by surprise in the best of ways. there's something about him having a high-pitched voice, small, almost dizzy by arousal and still being able to control roy that is FANTASTIC.

Ed is such a control freak that I felt it made so much more sense for him to pursue control, and I definitely wanted to take up Roy’s fanon reverence of Ed to something that overall wouldn’t make sense, or isn’t often applicable in other situations. I wanted his submission to be organic, surprising—it was important that it took both of them by surprise, caused by Ed’s trauma and Roy’s willingness to be reverent.

(Ed pov) Mustang’s a person that Ed has to get along with in order to survive the military, and Al’s explained it to him before—Mustang’s pretty nice to them, all things considered. He doesn’t expect Ed to do all of the other shit the other people have to do, like evals or reports.

loved the dog motifs!! (don't they follow us in every fandom?) i really liked how you went from ed going "what in the actual fuck" to roy's pov in which he's also "what in the actual fuck is going on" which i feel is beautiful and really shows how little control they both have in this situation. feels a little bit like they've tangled themselves in something that they cannot control huh…

Me and my FUCKING DOG MOTIFS. Though, I’ll say that I often also explore characters through rabbit motifs, and I will also probably explore lions and tigers more often, especially within the context of hierarchical relationships and the knowledge of more profound dangers than appearances may initially entail. Kind of “big cat,” and then “ooh, big cat deadly… Danger cat…”

Ed has a sort of magnetic pull that no one’s free from, and so it’s very important to both go over it from Ed’s pov and endure it from other people’s—because no one has a full explanation for that, ever, it’s just how Ed is, which can put people into bad situations. Including strange, sexy ones, like being dommed by a fourteen year old.

Good god, Roy.

this piece of dialogue made me bark the first time i read it, and now again. it's 5pm my friend. it's way too early for me to be this horny. anyway. dialogue, yes: “How much do you want?” // “Can I give it to you?”

Ohh my god that whole exchange. I love little exchanges. I love the one about Kimblee in Natures (“You don’t have to hate him because I do.” / “I don’t.” / “I know.”), I loved this one about wanting, and the one in Board about hatred. (“I could hardly blame you after what you saw.” “You make my heart hurt.”)

I’ve told you before about my love of truth as commodity, and truth as exchange. I find it essential to any story—someone always lies sometimes, and in any good story, it comes out without your permission. Roy and Ed act like there’s bombs in their chest that keep them from being candid, but I love little moments like this of strategic truth-telling. It’s almost like it’s forced out of them, and how wonderful is that?

You don’t get to hide.

there's something about roy going from taking in all riddles, all classy UNTIL ed has control and he's QUIET. chef's kiss. love my dogs quiet and submissive. and even when he talks, he doesn't talk in RIDDLES ahhhh i love this. example because im crazy: “Are you asking for sex?” where is "could i/may i/would i" roy and what have you done with him (ed)

I STILL CAN’T GET OVER THIS. Jesus I think about the conditionals every time I write Roy now. It haunts me like a wraith, but you were so right to point it out. It wasn’t even intentional!!!

"“Do you want me to pretend to have sex with you?”" // “Yeah. I wanna get prepared for it.”

oh my god. im losing my mind again. love how you PLAY WITH THEM LIKE KEN DOLLS I LOVE HOW YOU SWITCH AND CHANGE THE DYNAMIC WITH JUST A FEW PIECES OF DIALOGUE. there's something about roy who's sooo used to having control, offering it to ed. wonderful. i am of course writing this as a normal human being. this scene ending with ed saying "this was good empirical data" make me giggle AGAIN. he is so ugh. squeezable.

I LOVED those two lines because I felt that they showed how truly underprepared Ed is. There’s another line later on where I was trying to make Ed suave, but it came out awkward—so I added the awkward feeling, but removed the dialogue. This is better benefited by when Ed is suave later and it does work, and it’s implied throughout the work that he’d been trying to find the sweet spot he finds at the very end.

(Roy pov) He looks like he wants to say more, but doesn’t want to embarrass himself—so he won’t say anything. 

(Ed pov) “You wanna taste me that bad?” Ed asks. It’s hard to want to be sensual and even harder to be sensual when you’re as turned on as Ed feels and his nerve endings are still on fire. 

(Ed pov) “Is that all I am to you? Just my mind—someone to intellectually challenge you?” Ed’s face is getting increasingly warm, but he still says, barely managing to avoid a voice crack: “I thought you liked me for my body.” 

(Ed pov) “You help me with ‘em. Won’t you?” Ed asks. He cocks his head to seal the deal, and presses his mouth into an impassive line, the one that always gets Mustang’s gears going. Ed wonders if Mustang knows it’s ‘cause it’s his face that Ed is only mimicking. 

(Roy pov) “You want me to try and get off on just you, or you—fuck, this is so embarrassing, you wanna watch me get myself off? I’ve been practicing.” (Ed’s dialogue)

This sort of build-up is only practical in works longer than 15k or multichaptered, just because they require so much repetition to truly build and have a rewarding pay off for that they can’t be done in any less. It makes me so thrilled to be able to do it well.

"“You just did not serve in it. Different. You were alive, Edward.”" --> this dialogue killed the fae. love when they don't talk but they talk about the age gap. yum

Love Roy trying to ignore their age gap. Havoc’s gotta call him a cradle robber at some point; I secretly think he did so in Prof. Ed’s au.

there's something about how you switch the focus from "oh this is very hot i am just a dog" to "i am starting to realize im developing feelings for my subordinate" which again kills the fae.

Unfortunately, the dog is capable of nuance, even if he’s not exhibiting traits of doing so.

( “Or is this like a linguistic defect that makes you talk like that to me all the fucking time?”

Mustang’s smile twitches, briefly faltering. “How do you mean?” got up off my seat just to CLAP. love this dialogue. there's something about ed using the word LINGUISTIC that screams "ive just learnt this cool word and im gonna use it in an argument with mustang", almost like he'd been saving that one.

That line in specific is almost to mock Roy’s way of speaking, right—the line right before the linguistic defect one is Roy trying to scrounge around and avoid saying that he’s in love with Ed, which he admits to later, but Ed’s not in the right mind to be fully comprehending. (I like to think they discuss that confession approx. 2 months later, when Ed realizes what Roy said that night) 

So it’s both “you motherfucker, you sound like this” and also “you motherfucker, I can talk like that too,” and it’s that refusal to back down that reminds us how young Ed is, how inexperienced at emotional regulation and how confounding all of this is. It’s such a natural, quiet reminder that it’s actually really jarring lmao.

let's move on for my own sake. "Al answers as he crosses his arms, making him look infinitely smaller in Ed’s eyes—like a little kid trying to look big, or a kitten raising its hackles. Ed’s gotta be honest, but Al’s never gonna be a big kid to him." i love love LOVE how human you've made Al. not a common thing to find in a lot of royed fics. i love how much ed can read him because HE KNOWSSSS HIM. didn't say this before but i love how you've introduced the idea of waiting as love proof. like their mum waited for hoho. and alphonse uses that same argument to STAB ED in this dialogue (“But you wait for him, don’t you?”) wonderful. ouchie.

This is actually really cool to be seen because I’ve been interested in trying to understand the characters around Ed more because it’s so crucial to him to get them, right? I’ve been writing more on-the-side stuff for Al, Riza, Winry—because it’s crucial to Ed’s character that he knows them as well as himself, and I don’t think you can be a fan of Ed without being a fan of everyone else.

Of course, figuring out them is lowkey because they’re all vehicles of understanding my favorite boy (Ed) but they’re all so important to get. Al is Ed’s NUMBER ONE, bar none. Not Roy, not Winry—it’s AL. Writing Al like a little kid whom Ed adores is crucial to writing Ed, and it is absolutely a standard I hold myself to. I’m happy you noticed!

also "i have to prove i can save myself" you are INSANE for this line.

ED MAKES ME ILL

("“Why are you like that?” Ed asks. Mustang exhales a startled laugh. “I beg your pardon?”) gotta admit you made me LAUGH hysterically.

The way in which Roy is never ready for whatever horseshit Ed is about to say will never not be included in my work. They both deliver such insane psychic damage to each other dog. It’s like a game to those motherfuckers

(“To make them believe?” “Sometimes,” Mustang purrs. But never with you, he wants to say.) excuse me this is the only characterization im going to believe now. this one is going to stick with me for a while.

HEHEHEHEHEHEHEH

(“I would love it if you were my genuine, honest-to-God boyfriend. Would you make me very happy and agree?”) YOU'VE KILLED THE FAE. MY HEART CAN'T HANDLE THIS.

This line was actually edited by Popkin, because I want to say I had Roy presumptuously saying like “I would love it” with no actual question involved—the one time that a condition would MAKE SENSE, homeboy didn’t ask. Of course.

how would you introduce the concept of waiting and then make it a MOTIF you’re insane.

HEEEHEHEHEH!!!! I think I got the idea randomly, maybe driving, when I was like—oh, that’d be fucked if… I think I got the idea for waiting for each other around the time that I started wanting to connect exes fic to Premeditated, too. Mfs who date for 8 years be like “I’ll wait for you.” NO ONE IS WAITING 

"Who were you back then? Would the you from then have loved me, too?" this part and “I would, though. I’d wait for you, Roy.” left me completely empty.

For all that I loved to give Ed agency throughout Premeditated, to toe the line between adult and child, stranger to the earth and knower of forbidden knowledge—he is just a little kid in love, and that’s gutting even if it’s good. (How can it be good if he’s fourteen, Jupes, you may ask, and good question, but one I won’t answer)

Oh, they make me so ill. I’m so glad I did them justice here, and oh man, I’m so glad I love them enough to give them that awful complexity that makes your heart hurt!!