roy mustang should've died

this is where lucy cries about fma

[combustiblegarbage]

Fullmetal Alchemist 2003 Discord Server / FMA 2003 Discord Server / FMA03 Discord Server

If you are 18+ and want to join a server full of people who appreciate FMA 2003 and often discuss themes in the series (with plenty of occasionally talking shit about FMAB) then please shoot me an ask or a DM to join the server!

[silentwalrus1]

doodled a Scar-chan for my dear friend nonymos bc she’s right scar is the protagonist of FMA

[envy03progamer777]

I finally finished.... The studies really slowed down the whole process, but it was possible (burn the school../hj)

The drawing of my baby, my son, my child is finished...

[combustiblegarbage]

@ the anon literally dm me come off anon. talk to me like a real person or at least let me block you

[combustiblegarbage]

@ anon that was not appropriate to send to me just fyi

[combustiblegarbage]

reminder also that if i never followed up on a dm to join the server it's entirely possible i literally just missed it LOL so no harm in dming again

[combustiblegarbage]

What are the rules for the server?

a quick rundown:

you must be 18 or older

you must tolerate people talking shit about mangahood (lol)

use the channels appropriately (there are divisions for fma related, non fma related, streaming, etc)

no significantly heavy nsfw (like graphic stuff - obvs discussion of what's in the series is all included) and some strong limits on triggering topics (again, everything that's in the series is ok)

basic internet safety rules apply!

[combustiblegarbage]

Fullmetal Alchemist 2003 Discord Server / FMA 2003 Discord Server / FMA03 Discord Server

If you are 18+ and want to join a server full of people who appreciate FMA 2003 and often discuss themes in the series (with plenty of occasionally talking shit about FMAB) then please shoot me an ask or a DM to join the server!

[yui-hibari]

Which of these two versions of Edward Elric is your favorite?

Edward Elric {Fullmetal Alchemist 2003}

Edward Elric {Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood}

Voting ended onMar 4

[whitehairandtraumatized-bracket]

White Hair and Trauma Brawl Round 3; Poll 6

Scar (Fullmetal Alchemist) vs. Astarion (Baldur’s Gate 3)

Scar

Astarion

Voting ended onFeb 24

remember, voting is based on swag, trauma, and favoritism!!

trauma and propaganda under the cut!

Trauma!

Scar: “tldr survived a genocide”

“survivor of a military genocide of his people”

“His entire culture got attacked in a massive war, he himself got badly wounded and only survived because his older brother sacrificed his own life to safe him and the efforts of two doctors in an emergency clinic. He ended up killing them after he found out about his brother and becasue they belonged to the enemy nation.

This does goes against his religion by the way.”

Thorough trauma summary from @spidermanifested:

“scar (not his real name) was a warrior-priest who grew up in the fictional occupied desert region of ishval at the turn of the 20th century with his parents and older brother. he was a devoutly religious man with a strong moral compass and didnt approve of his brother studying alchemy, which the ishvalan religion forbade.

near the end of the genocide, a state alchemist of the western-european-coded amestrian army bombed and killed the brothers' parents in front of them while they were all preparing to flee their neighborhood. scars arm was caught in the explosion. before he could bleed out, his older brother used alchemy to transplant his own arm in its place, presumably dying himself shortly afterward.

the following only takes place in the manga and the brotherhood anime, and ill touch on the first animes version of events later, but sometime after this is when the amestrian medics (mentioned in the propaganda above) found scar and relocated him. he woke up in a crowded field hospital, and through the blood-loss-concussion-just-woke-up-etc fog he saw his own arm in his periphery, recognized his brothers tattoos, and thought, oh, my brother is here! he must have survived!

so the situation is not "scar realized his brother was dead, got mad and killed the doctors". its "scar realized what hed assumed was his full, alive brother was instead his brothers Disembodied Limb. -> Attached To Him? -> Oh My God What Did They Do To My Brothers Body. What Did They Do To MY Body". and then he had a panic attack and lashed out, like anyone with the strength to do so would have done, because fascists just killed his whole family, he was trapped on a cot in an unfamiliar room surrounded by white strangers and blood, and his first waking realization was that his body had been violated by the exact same process that, again. killed his family

and tbf im sure whoever submitted the propaganda just didnt think about it for very long, because if you ask me the source material doesnt do much better. fma (manga/brotherhood) seems to try to narratively parallel scar killing the doctors, and subsequently (and with a lot more actual intent) a bunch of state alchemists, as revenge for the genocide. with... the genocide in question? or at the very least, the actions of the handful of Sad soldiers who feel Bad about what they did (genocide). as part of a larger thesis about "hate" and "responsibility for past harm" and "cycles of violence". which is already a bad place to start

but then, UNLIKE any of said soldiers, scars arc culminates in being roundly berated by a bunch of the main cast and absorbing it without complaint, to prove hes willing to Atone. and they all STILL proceed to complain and call him a killer the entire time they have to work with him. genuinely the worst part of the show. its not like everyone on screen regularly interacts relatively cordially with roy mustang, the guy with the world record for "most helpless civilians burnt to death", or anything

which leads me to circle back around to the 2003 adaptation: having watched both shows i was blown away by how much more sympathy and understanding scar is granted by those writers. they largely dont shy away from his violence, but one major difference is they dont cast him as having killed the doctors. instead its the aforementioned roy mustang who killed them, and theres a very telling gap in the way fans assign blame and agency depending on the version being discussed. for whatever mysterious reason, scar catches more flack for killing winrys parents with an iv pole in a fit of panic than mustang does for killing them both with a gun on purpose because Orders.

even in the manga/brotherhood, theres so much depth to scar that goes understated. his being forced to inherit his brothers arm and its destructive power, something hes always wanted to reject but can no longer afford to, is really illustrative of how aware hes been made to become of his own capacity for violence, how deliberately he has to decide where and when to use that violence in a world so unthinkingly and unceasingly violent towards him. and fma 03 clearly recognized that exact premise, because as a result you have a show from 23(!!) years ago that dissects and denies the phantasm of the scary brown religious "terrorist". i think we should all strive to clear the same bar when we talk about characters whose lives closely parallel real colonial atrocities, because it definitely reflects how we think and talk about the real thing. scar should sweep this whole poll as well but thats a given”

Astarion: “tortured for 200+ years by his vampire master who loved treating him like shit and pimped him out against his will”

“local racist got the shit beaten out of him and then coerced into vampirism by a guy who saw him as a protege, in the sense that a protege is someone you abuse worse than you were abused. got forced to honeypot people and lead them to their deaths. the one time he refused he got shut in a stone tomb for a year. spent 200 years in a horrible crab bucket of vampires, getting resented for being the "favorite" when all that meant was that he got tortured the most.”

Propaganda!

Scar: “he's the best <3 my fav serial killer”

“Kills people by just touching and then disassembling them. Has killed multiple state alchemist and has even fought homunculi. He really likes cats.”

[Astarion did not receive propaganda. Rip.]

[combustiblegarbage]

@ the ed hater in everyone's assbox come off anon i just want to talk

[makiswirl]

to whoever sent this ask several minutes ago that i accidentally deleted thank you this is legitimately the funniest shit ever. i love the visual of you walking up to the askbox like a confessional booth after several years of waiting for me to lose interest to confess this

[spiral-shape]

Anon Alfons would've died soon anyway that's like a pretty important thing and Winry isn't alone she has friends and family outside of the male protagonist you know that right. Her world doesn't revolve around Ed and Al. I can appreciate the love towards Alphonse though

[scarwasright]

i just wanna say, love the 03 love and I agree with a lot of the things you say here on this blog, and want to contribute my own experience: I watched 03 first when I was really young because I was recommended fma, and I didn't know that people generally preferred brotherhood (I kind of thought brotherhood was a sequel). I then heard about and watched brotherhood, and I thought liked it more at the time. It was basically more of my favorite little guys, and to me it was like having two cakes. The story had a cleaner ending (because I never knew that I had to watch CoS) and it seemed less confusing/the definitive version. But that was the thing, it was less confusing because it was fundamentally shallow. The more I watched Brotherhood over and over with my friends, and just on rewatch I got more and more tired of the victimblaming and both-sidesing of the ishvalan/amestrian conflict. Even at the end, the one villain^tm is killed and then it's over and nothing fundamentally changes, and it just didn't seem to have the bite I originally thought it did when I originally watched it (because I was remembering 03 and transferring it on to brotherhood). I almost got tired of fma altogether but kept seeing gifsets and posts from 03, and eventually watched it over. I was blown away by what I remember as a confusing and unfocused story being way more compelling and deep than brotherhood to me by a longshot. I tried to tell my friends who hadn't seen 03 to watch it but they dismissed me almost immediately citing things like "Ling isn't there" "Brotherhood is better (they haven't seen 03)" "Aren't there nazis in that one". I feel crazy. No one will give it a chance!! and so, I guess I'm just once again putting this here to say thank you for posting your thinkposts and fics and 03 stuff on here. I would be lost without having all the peeps on tumblr who also love 03 to fall back on, you're doing the lords work frfr

hi anon I'm glad this little place has contributed to your enjoying the show! unfortunately it's pretty much a lost cause to expect that fandom will do even the bare minimum to take art seriously, and there's always going to be thoughtless takes about how There's Yucky Nazis In The Show With An Onscreen Genocide with zero awareness of such a statement's contradictions. and that is, ultimately, the essence of fmab. it's saccharine and comfortable and absolutely drowning in its own contradictions. very glad to never have to interface with it ever, especially when there's its endlessly interesting sister series to rotate in my head.

[i-m-p-a-v-i-d-u-s]

There is not a piece of media on this earth that people get more bent out of shape about you not liking than FMA Brotherhood. If I say I don't like it: "Well have you watched it?" Yes. "I mean have you like... REALLY watched it?" Yes. I still don't like it. "Well you have to admit it's better than the 2003 series" No, I don't. I prefer the 2003 series. "But Brotherhood is better!" I don't agree. "But?????"

[pinketine]

There are actual tears in my eyes rn can you believe people are this stupid and walk among us all the time

[spidermanifested]

so heres what ive been working on this past month mostly. (half of) my gift for an 03 gift exchange!!!

and the other half, in case youd like to know the story of how scar got his scarms:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/77769221

[combustiblegarbage]

Completely random but i was casually scrolling through your blog (i do this when i get nostalic for 03) and saw you posted a secene from the movie judgement at Nürnberg. And it made me think of something if you're in the mood for recommendations. There's a really great video essay by jacob geller about the Nürnberg trials on yt. As many people as possible should watch it.

Love your blog, bye <3

(cannot be bothered to do the english version of Nürnberg rn, sorry it's clumsy)

hi! I have watched it and it's pretty good: