A Heart Made Fullmetal

I'm going to need one, honestly. Made it through the department meeting without slapping anyone so that's good. I am about the scream about this phone. It finally showed up voicemails from LAST WEEK (and I know this because I was looking to delete some from then because I knew ELD and my parents had both called my cell) and my OB/GYN was on there and maybe the pap smear is bad too but they didn't say that on the phone call. However they called me again today let's just go to surgery for the D&C.

Yeah No. not without discussion first. Also I'd have to cancel class AND find someone to drive me there which isn't easy. I have no family here and all my friends who work and the one retired one is actually IN the hospital so that's a no go. I'll see you on Tuesday and then we'll discuss.


So for the fannish 50, there is only one thing I can do today and that's Fullmetal Alchemist manga/Brother anime (sorry 2003 you just don't fit here this time). 10/3 is the date Edward has inscribed inside his State Alchemist pocket watch.



It marks the point where Edward (mostly) and Al (agreeing as he often does with his brother) decide to burn down the family home so they have nowhere to return to, no easy outs for them as they move toward trying to fix the horrible wrong they committed (and paid for with their own bodies) It is a very poignant moment and also a moment you want to yell because of how much the brothers have been failed by the adults in their lives.

Their father is absent (for reasons), Mom is dead. Granny is already raising her granddaughter alone and is doing her best with these two orphans. It's Izumi I do look at askance, a woman who wanted kids but once the brothers feel they're trained enough as alchemists (judged by two pre-teens), she's okay with letting them go back home (knowing the best they have is their parents' friend, Granny Pinako) You'd have thought they'd be in for a fight from Izumi but that really doesn't seem the case.

And of course, if she had, we'd have no story. Even Roy is very suspect. He has reasons for his cold calculating induction of Edward into the State Alchemy program. He's protecting the boys from anyone finding out what they did and keeping a powerful alchemist under his control and more or less (often less) in his sight. He is still using Ed even if he is helping him as there are things Ed can do that Roy cannot. He does his best to protect Ed physically and emotionally (though lying about Hughes's fate is arguably not in anyone's best interest) but on the other hand he brings in a twelve year old into the deadly regime of the military.

But what makes FMA so special, the reason 20 years later we're still talking about it (and there really are still a lot of talk on YT and if I look there are probably discords) is it has beautiful art, engaging, well drawn characters and one hell of a story arc. Yes there are occasional problems with pacing but nothing drastic. For me, someone who has been watching anime since the 1970s and collecting manga (such as it was) since the 80s, I still put this as my favorite series. If someone asks me where to start in the genre, this is where I direct them. Sometimes it strikes me damn, TWENTY FUCKING YEARS. HOW?

Then again I miss having a very active fandom for this (which helps me realize, yes this IS old) I miss the weekly challenges, the exchanges, the big bangs. I don't miss the pairing wars at all (because it was ugly) I'm pretty much live and let live with pairings. I mean look at my flist at the ones I met via FMA and some of them are very much Roy/Ed shippers, which is one pairing I personally dislike but I support them because they're cool people. Roy was my little black dress and actually the first character I ever slashed (2003 FMA was very much more slashy than the actual manga where Roy/Maes was very easy to see and yes, especially with that god awful movie Roy/Ed).

I literally had no idea that Netflix had picked up a live action version of it. If you want, you can find some amusing tear downs of it on YT (from what little I did see via that was bad. OMG bad)

I'm deep into my reread of the series (and am almost physically restraining myself from doing a rewatch, might have to take the dvds to work to stop myself as I have so much to get off my dvr first) I still tell you all if you've not read the manga or watched Brotherhood, DO. It's amazing.

I honestly forgot it was Oct 3rd until far too late so let me link up to some of my older stories for FMA Day (back in the day when we celebrated it)

Twenty Years Later ELEVEN years ago I wrote this. OMFG

Midnight Musings Wrote this one 5 years ago, probably the last time I remembered to do so

And since it's Halloween Month Have a few of the spook_me stories I wrote for the fandom

The Believers 2012

Of Sea Foam and Dragon’s Scales 2015

Beware What You Ask For 2017

ETA - of all things today on Goodreads giveaway there is this Fullmetal Alchemist 20th Anniversary Book If I don't win it, I'm buying it.

And here have some analyses from YT ( there are a few of them )