Elricest
Oh, you wanted brutal? My brutally honest opinion? Fine.
Elricest is the most tender, beautiful, awe-inspiring ship to be found on this planet. Nothing else can ever top the pure love and devotion that these two have for each other—or that they inspire in me.
I legitimately went into FMA knowing it featured brothers and telling myself “now I don’t have to ship the brothers just because they’re brothers…”
…and I don’t. I ship them because they are front and center in each others’ lives, the literal most important thing to each other, the only person they’d give up their whole life for. An arm, a leg, a heart. None of it matters, as long as they’re together.
Now, you did want brutal, so here’s my secret opinion on them: I don’t think they’re crazy enough.
Now this is more a thing about Ed and Al as characters, rather than them as a ship. But I think the narrative comes out making them seem too…squeaky clean.
Al in Conqueror of Shamballa comes the closest, with his determination to get Ed back at any cost, even that of bringing invaders from another dimension. But that choice of his is immediately chastised by the narrative. (Yes, yes, I know. Themes and everything. But what about what I, personally, want?)
I like my ships a little too devoted to each other. I like characters who are too wrapped up in each other to see the bigger picture. I guess that’s why I daydream all the time about the AU where they are like that.
Send me a ship and I’ll give my (brutally) honest opinion about it