We're letting go of something we never had

24 | ze/hir or they/them | main: @sevengeese | previously: pint-sizedalchemist

[greelin]

the weight this image holds

[greelin]

happy pride month everybody

[farawaydoe]

Fullmetal Alchemist 2003 : episode 49

Scenery appreciation post

[crows-murder]

to me fullmetal alchemist is just about cycles.

hohenheim, 400 years ago, created the first homunculus trying to bring back his dead son. izumi curtis tried to bring back her own child. ed and al followed both their father and their mentor's footsteps and tried to bring back their mother. time and time again, it is always about love and grief, and you can never learn, because you can never stop loving. you can never stop fully giving yourself to someone and being willing to do anything to bring them back. maybe ed and al didn't know their mother would have lost something important, being brought back to life after death, but izumi and hohenheim must have, in the back of their minds, known, lost as they were to grief and uncaring for the consequences.

this show, to me, is a tragedy because it is driven by love. love turned to grief led ed and al to try and bring back a version of their mother. ed's unwavering love for al leads him across the country, leads him to doing whatever it takes to bring his brother's body back. love drives al to the same goal. this is the price we pay to love, and fma makes sure we know this, over and over. grief is the price of love. playing god, thinking you could outsmart unmovable forces, is the price we pay to love, to grieve love lost. after all, what made orpheus walk for days in the underworld only to turn back when he was within the sun's reach to make sure his lover was still there? what made him turn back, if not love? what made them all sacrifice everything, every painful part of them they had to give, simply to be able to hold the person they love again?

[whatagrump]

i just cannot wrap my head around this kind of fma 03 critique. so because you personally enjoy reading about “a world of badass people of steel,” you get “really uncomfortable” w/ people who enjoy something a little more nuanced? you get “really uncomfortable” with a show that has bad things happen to good people? a fourteen-year-old feeling hurt/betrayed when the people he loves hit him strips him of his agency?? deconstructing the implications of shōnen/wish-fulfillment fantasy (in 2003, by the way, nearly twenty fucking years ago) is cringe and bad?? what’s up?

[starryoak]

All of the reasons that 03 is better than the second anime and IMO also the manga is specifically because of the elements it confronts and deconstructs from the original version, especially because those elements are often extremely incongruous with the nature of FMA as a series that tackles things like war and genocide and by treating them more seriously it makes the entire narrative more cohesive as a whole rather than just dropping random comedy into scenes that are made worse by their inclusion. This is more admittedly jarring in brotherhood than the manga even though both have these problems because the manga’s pacing works well for a comic and brotherhood adapts it unquestioningly even when the pacing of the joke utterly ruins the scene when it’s depicted in motion.

[fullmetal-scar-simping]

The enlightened fandomer: Agency is when you suffer no long lasting consequences, when you’re always badass, and when you never get upset about the horrific actions and circumstances you have done/have had done to you/have participated in against other people. Knowing that there are far reaching and often devastating consequences to my actions, beliefs, and experiences actually removes agency. Nuance <33333

[greedilicious-deactivated202502]

Requested by: @alexmiscellany​           ↳Sloth from Fullmetal Alchemist (2003)

[spidermanifested]

beds

[ichise]

[snarkks]

[flamealchemist]

Russell and Ed's first vs last interactions

[flamealchemist]

[stackslip]

the thing at the heart of fma 03 is the grief for something idealized and half remembered that you desperately, truly believe you can bring back if you try hard enough, but that thing is long gone and maybe it never existed in the first place, and you spent half your life chasing it instead of looking around you and loving what's in front of you. you clung so strongly to an ideal, a half remembered dream you were sure would fix everything, if you try a little harder and do a little more surely your effort will be rewarded and you'll get that idealized eternal thing. you're so deep into the sunk cost fallacy and the aim for that dream, what's one more attempt? so either you snap out of it and face the harsh reality, the cost of your ambitions, the bitter loss—and you accept it, along with the cost, and choose to build a better world with what's in front of you. or you keep running after it even if it means leaving bodies and broken people in your wake.

[stackslip]

it's the brothers chasing after their dead mom and then their bodies. it's al chasing what should have been his childhood. it's dante, never satisfied and constantly rotting and believing she can stop it when she's only slowing it. it's mustang believing he can fix amestris's military from the inside. it's ed believing in equivalent exchange and the stone's power before his world sharters and he realizes what he's left in his wake. it's scar chasing divine retribution on himself and others before he realizes he must be that retribution. it's winry believing she can bring the boys home. it's scar's brother believing he can save his beloved and then ishbal. it's the homonculi chasing the ghost of their humanity. it's wrath chasing his mother. it's lust chasing a human death before realizing she was always a person. it's sloth chasing something that isn't being a mother. it's tucker chasing the ghost of the daughter he murdered. it's archer chasing war. it's that one asshole chasing the idealized woman he never knew. it's rose chasing her dead fiancé. it's envy chasing vengeance on their father. it's noah longing for shamballah. it's ed again wanting to go back home. it's al again wanting the years with his brother back.

you cant, it's over, it's all gone, it never really existed in the first place. there are things and people here in front of you who love and need you, even if this world isn't the one you wanted or believed in, it's the one you do exist in and you have a duty to it and to others. the dream is over, wake up

[fullmetal-scar-simping]

A quick sketch of my cherished <3

[aliensamba]

Fullmetal Alchemist

[afgunst]

I love FMA 2003 it’s always so cheerful and nothing ever hurts, not even this recap special : )

[tokkimins]

my cos boys

[fuckyeah-first-fma]

Visit Original Link

FMA Best Songfile - “Ano Yume no Mukou e (Orchestral Version)” by Kugimiya Rie (Alphonse Elric)

[zyrimix-deactivated20241228]

03 ed post-anime-pre-shamballa is really living in hell. knowing he lost all contact with everyone he's ever known, likely forever. he has no idea how they are, how al is - did his self sacrifice even work? is al alive? he's taunted by familiar faces sewn on people who don't recognize him, and who won't believe anything he'd say about his past life. he wouldn't believe himself either. all he's ever worked for is suddenly gone. the people. his goals. alchemy. thrown into a foreign world, there will come a time he has to relearn to live, after all his attempts to go back yield no results. he pushes the thought away, forcing his focus onto another useless page with useless information which, he desperately tries to hope, contains the key needed in this useless situation he'd trapped himself in