Reneha

When the same basic thing happens in FMA, as far as Ed and Winry go, Ed NEVER FORGETS IT. “I will not do things that hurt Winry, and when I don’t value myself or communicate it hurts her” never stops being a thing in Ed’s mind. He still sometimes acts recklessly but then literally thinks “I fucked up better fix this I promised not to make my girlfriend cry” She is genuinely always in his thoughts.

like other shonen action manga try to replicate this but don’t do the followthrough. It’s just a one episode thing and then it’s like BYE CIVILIAN FEMALE CHARACTER BACK TO THE SHELF WE’LL NEVER THINK ABOUT YOUR NEEDS OR THE EMOTIONAL LABOR YOU DO AGAIN but Winry’s needs and the moral of valuing her emotional labor and getting her up to date on what’s happening are present throughout the whole narrative. She’s not an action hero yet she has an arc?? She’s important? this STILL is never present in all the shonen I’ve seen that have come out since, like somehow arakawa still stands out for grasping this simple concept, we haven’t gotten past this yet.

Seriously. It was such a bittersweet ending to a sad series.

Innocent little me decided to look up fanfiction for the first time. I came across a wonderful and very character accurate fanfic about Ed and Al finding their way back to Amestris.

It was so fucking good, I couldn't stop reading...

Until they finally got back, and Edward started making out with Mustang...

Deserted Island from Hiromu Arakawa (also known as the "Royai is Canon!" comic 😂😂😂). Comic obtained by Robi/kachouhuugetsu.

This is a bookmark from the 20th Anniversary exhibition.

For more translations, go to bit.ly/PeartatoDraws.

This is the word Arakawa used when talking about Roy/Riza's feelings:

The word (ryou-omo-i) is written in the dictionary as 両思い, but the comic actually says 両想い. This is an unconventional spelling, but a significant change. Both 思 and 想 mean "thoughts", but 想 has a more sentimental nuance to it and is used when talking about something you really like/love, and all the reference examples I found dealt with love and relationships (as one user put it, 想 = 思+愛).

So after discussing with another advanced Japanese speaker, I think it's reasonable to say Arakawa intentionally meant to say Roy and Riza have romantic feelings, which is why I felt comfortable writing "両想いな二人" as "they both love each other."

Sidenote: the title of ths comic is a pun:

火 is the character for fire, and 火曜日 (which is written above in kana characters as 火ようび) means Tuesday (this is Tuesday's souvenir bookmark).

Ed admiring the hell out of Winry, gushing about how amazing she is and basically worshiping the ground she walks on: a photoset.

Bonus:

And then I met Dominic when I was 12, and people could see how in love we were. And we got the shit beat out of us. The year I met him, some kids in the grade above me held me down against the bleachers in our gym and stomped on my hand until my fingers broke. Instead of sending me to the nurse, the teacher sent me to the assistant principal to explain the situation. She asked why the kids had beat me up. I said, “They were calling me gay.”

Her response was, “Well, are you?”

My, “I don’t know,” earned a call to my parents, and I was outed. Efforts were made to keep me from seeing Dom. Throughout high school, Dom’s stepmother intensified these efforts. He slept in the basement of the house. Although he was an incredibly talented student, he was prohibited from participating in any extracurriculars. He suffered a lot of physical abuse during those years.

The day he turned 18, he packed up everything he had and walked to my house, and we’ve lived together ever since. Things are better, but they’re not perfect. I’ve had trucks pull up next to me at stoplights and, seeing the pride sticker on my car, through old drinks and garbage into my window. I no longer speak to my dad’s side of the family. I haven’t been to see them for Christmas or Thanksgiving in years. One of my uncles had cornered me at Thanksgiving when I was 17 and said, “I’m not going to judge you, but I’d be happy to break your neck so God can do the judging a little sooner.”

I joined a support group for trans and intersex people. When I joined, 40 people attended regularly. Within the year, the group was half the size it had been. Some couldn’t make it anymore, because they were staying at the shelter, where their stay hinged on them agreeing to instead to attend homophobic sermons. Some were put in correctional therapy. Five of them died. Three of those, I didn’t know, but I knew Alex, the 19 year old who was fag-dragged in Kentucky and died a day later in the hospital, and I knew Stephanie, who went home to Alabama to care for her mom in hospice and was beaten to death with a baseball bat by her mom’s boyfriend.

Tumblr is not reality. The dynamic here does not reflect the dynamic out there. Here’s the part where I finally make a point, and it might be extremely unpopular - but guys, value your allies. Value each other. We are met with enough hate in our daily lives to enter an online safe-space and meet more hate from our own, over petty things. Don’t go after one another over every little thing you find problematic.

Learn to see nuance. Maybe the word “queer” bothers you, and you see a gay man using it as an umbrella term. Maybe someone called a trans man a trans woman because they’re confused about terminology, but the post where they did it was voicing support for the trans community. Maybe someone is just asking a question, wanting to learn more. Stop. Attacking. These. People.

Allies are being driven away. Members of our own community are being ostracized. Others are feeling nervous and estranged, and it’s largely because of places like Tumblr, where the social justice movement is quickly becoming violent and radical. I am begging you, stop nitpicking “problematic” things and start directing your efforts to create real change. When it comes to comes to your allies, forget the “social justice warrior” mentality and put down your torch. Educate calmly. Be respectful. Be understanding. Be forgiving. And I’m certainly not saying that your anger doesn’t have a good place - when you are met with bigots on the street, congress members who want to pass hateful laws, violent protesters, abusive parents, prejudiced teachers, that is when you need to be a warrior. That’s when it counts. In the real world. When you have the opportunity to protect people from real harm. Attacking your would-be allies via anonymous asks is just going to lose us ground in the long run. And we don’t have time for that, not when trans women of color are being murdered every day, not when states are still fighting against marriage equality, not when there are politicians in office who believe that trans people are possessed by demons, not when we’ve just lost 50 brothers and sisters to one gunman, not when the media won’t even admit that the attack was homophobic.

It would be more accurate to say “Tumblr is not the entirety of reality.”

Because, and I want to stress this, Tumblr is, in fact, real. It has the capacity to help, and it has the capacity to hurt. Most of the people that have been driven off didn’t leave because they just weren’t having fun anymore, they left because they were being hurt and chose not to continue being hurt.

In the world of Fullmetal Alchemist, all the State Alchemists have titles bestowed on them. Here's a comparison of some of the names along with their English translations.

The word for alchemist in Japanese is 錬金術師 (renkinjutsushi).

錬 (ren) - tempering, refine, polish

金 (kin) - gold

術 (jutsu) - art, technique, skill

師 (shi) - expert, teacher, master

Sidenote: You might already know the word 先生(sensei) for "teacher", but 師 kind of goes a step above that. 先生 is more for your schoolteacher, professor, or someone older than you, but 師匠(shishou) is a master that trains apprentices/disciples in a skill. Roy always addresses Berthold Hawkeye as 師匠.

The Strong Arm Alchemist (豪腕の錬金術師)

Armstrong's title, 豪腕の錬金術師(gouwan no renkinjutsushi) is a pun that doesn't really carry over into English. 豪腕(gouwan) literally means "powerful arms", but it's also a term for a capable person, or someone with the ability to carry out a difficult job. So his name means both the "Strong Arm Alchemist" and the "Super OP Alchemist" at the same time.

The Fullmetal Alchemist (鋼の錬金術師)

鋼 is the word for steel, so Edward's title, 鋼の錬金術師(hagane no renkinjutsushi) translates to "Alchemist of Steel". The change from "Steel" to "Fullmetal" is probably a reference to Stanley Kubrick's film Full Metal Jacket, which itself refers to full-metal jacketed bullets, sometimes called steel-jacketed bullets due to the steel-alloy exterior that encases them.

鋼の人(hagane no jin) can also refer to a determined or strong-minded person.

The Flame Alchemist (焔の錬金術師)

This one confused me at first because I thought it'd be 火の錬金術師(hi no renkinjutsushi), which simply means "flame alchemist". Nope, it's 炎(honoo). One fire kanji wasn't enough for this dude, he had to go and stack two of them on top of each other.

(Jokes aside, Roy's title is usually written as 焔の錬金術師 in the manga. 炎 and 焔 have the same pronunciation and meaning - they're just variations on the same kanji, and if you search up 焔 you'll be redirected to 炎).

炎 takes the fire a step further and can mean "flames" or "blaze", but can also refer to metaphorical flames (of intense emotion, e.g. love, jealousy, anger). Foreshadowing much?

The Crimson Alchemist (紅蓮の錬金術師)

Kimblee's name, 紅蓮の錬金術師(guren no renkinjutsushi) doesn't just mean "crimson", it literally translates as "crimson lotus". While 紅蓮(guren) does refer to the red lotus, it's not really used outside of artistic connotations in Japanese literature. It's usually a metaphor for the color of flames, or to refer to a burning fire.

So why would Kimblee get the Burning Fire name, and not, you know...the guy that actually shoots fire?

I'm not sure if it's official, but the popular interpretation is that 紅蓮 is short for 紅蓮地獄(gurenjigoku), or "Crimson Lotus Hell", which is the seventh of the Buddhist Eight Cold Hells. It is said that this hell is so cold that a person's skin breaks open, making their body look like the petals of a crimson lotus. Kimblee's alchemy explodes people in a similar fashion, which is probably why he was given that name.

It might also be that they just tested him first, and then had to scramble for a cover story.

"Congratulations, you've passed the exam! We'll call you the Crimson Lotus Alchemist because the explosion looks like the color of a burning flame. You're dismissed. Send in the next candidate!"

*snap*

"Look, I made some fire!"

awkward silence

"...Fuck."

If you’re writing something that involves an aspect of life that you have not experienced, you obviously have to do research on it. You have to find other examples of it in order to accurately incorporate it into your story realistically.

But don’t just look at professional write ups. Don’t stop at wikepedia or webMD. Look up first person accounts.

I wrote a fic once where a character has frequent seizures. Naturally, I was all over the wikipedia page for seizures, the related pages, other medical websites, etc.

But I also looked at Yahoo asks where people where asking more obscure questions, sometimes asked by people who were experiencing seizures, sometimes answered by people who have had seizures.

I looked to YouTube. Found a few individual videos of people detailing how their seizures usually played out. So found a few channels that were mostly dedicated to displaying the daily habits of someone who was epileptic.

I looked at blogs and articles written by people who have had seizures regularly for as long as they can remember. But I also read the frantic posts from people who were newly diagnosed or had only had one and were worried about another.

When I wrote that fic, I got a comment from someone saying that I had touched upon aspects of movement disorders that they had never seen portrayed in media and that they had found representation in my art that they just never had before. And I think it’s because of the details. The little things.

The wiki page for seizures tells you the technicalities of it all, the terminology. It tells you what can cause them and what the symptoms are. It tells you how to deal with them, how to prevent them.

But it doesn’t tell you how some people with seizures are wary of holding sharp objects or hot liquids. It doesn’t tell you how epileptics feel when they’ve just found out that they’re prone to fits. It doesn’t tell you how their friends and family react to the news.

I love the people who are a part of a minority, that are gushing about their favorite fics or books that seem to have done this and offer proper representation. 

I love the people who are bringing up the toxic mindset that is very popular on tumblr, the “you can’t write about it if you haven’t lived it” ideology that makes writers feel guilty for providing representation.

My comic for the FMA Anthology! Sweet Elric boys )-: