A brief Fullmetal Alchemist fanfic

Sorry, I was hoping to have more Faultless but my week has been kind of shitty and it just never happened. So here's a brief Fullmetal Alchemist fanfic I wrote last year, pretty much because the Mark Watches community dared me to. It could conceivably be the beginning of a longer fic, but I have no particular intention of ever extending it, and I think it works well enough on its own.

Sergeant Lem hesitated in front of the door, checking as she always did to confirm her uniform was buttoned correctly and her hair properly up in a regulation twist. Not in front of every door, of course, but this was the door of the Director of Military Intelligence's office, her boss's boss's boss's boss. It was a big deal to be called in here.

Proper attire confirmed, she knocked. "Come in, Sergeant!" came the voice of Colonel Focker.

She entered the room and saluted, but he waved at her to close the door and sit. "At ease, Sergeant," he said. He laid a folder he'd been reading from on the table. "I've been looking over Cryptography's initial reports on the documents from the Drachman embassy. Looks like they do have a spy in Briggs, and Cryptography thinks there might be enough information there to figure out who. Well done--if this pans out fully there's probably a medal in it for you, maybe even a promotion!"

"Thank you, sir!" she answered.

"However, it's going to take them a couple of weeks to fully decrypt everything and compare it to who knows what at Briggs, so we need a short-term assignment for you." He laid a hand on an envelope on the desk. It was sealed and marked Top Secret. "I have something for you, but it's highly sensitive, and I can't tell you much without you accepting the assignment first."

She smiled wryly. "More sensitive than working in an enemy country's embassy's mail room so that I make copies of all the documents I handle?"

Focker sighed. "Honestly? Yes. This could be two weeks of sitting around in a manor garden reading books--or if it goes south, it could get you killed. Either way, there's a case to be made that taking part will make you an accessory to any of a dozen crimes, from invasion of privacy on up to public endangerment and possibly treason."

"You had me at 'reading,' sir!" Sciezka Lem smiled. "What can you tell me?"

"Well, how do you feel about working with children..?"

---

Four days later, Sciezka found herself sitting in a chair in the garden of the Bradley manor, enjoying the bright late-spring sun and listening to a small boy playing with tin soldiers. A shadow fell over her, and she looked up. "Hello, Ma'am," she said politely, and the middle-aged woman above her smiled.

"Hello, dear," said Mrs. Bradley. "Selim behaving himself?"

"Always," Sciezka answered. "He's been a delight." This was true. Selim was a cheerful, quiet, and easygoing child, happy to play with his toys or have Sciezka read to him. Sciezka had never been around children much, but he seemed more mature than she had expected. She quite liked Mrs. Bradley, too--she felt bad about deceiving them both by pretending to be a substitute tutor, replacing the regular live-in tutor while she "visited her mother," actually a cover for the biennial training and recertification everyone in Military Intelligence had to do.

Guilty as she felt, however, she understood why it was necessary. She'd read the case file, and therefore she remembered every word of it: the autopsies on the Briggs soldiers murdered by the being known as Pride, the report by Hawkeye on her confrontation with Pride, by Mustang on being forced through the Gate, by Ed Elric on how he'd fought Pride and reduced him to a fetal state. She didn't quite understand the alchemy of it all, but as far as she could gather, Ed had reduced Pride from many souls to one, turning him into effectively a normal human and erasing his memories, after which Mrs. Bradley had adopted him.

However, the other known single-souled homunculus--briefly, Sciezka wondered who that might be--had possessed frightening powers of the sort typical of homunculi, but aged normally. There was reason to believe Pride's powers might manifest within Selim--and if they did, Sciezka was to report it immediately.

"Well, I don't know about always," Mrs. Bradley answered. "Selim, dear, can you come here for a second?"

"Yes, mother?" he asked, standing and walking over to the two of them. "What's wrong?"

"One of the maids found this in a fireplace," she said, holding out the mangled remnants of a toy soldier. "Care to tell me what happened to it?"

Selim grinned proudly as he answered.

The moment she heard his response, Sciezka's blood froze. She stared in horror as Mrs. Bradley snatched up her son and clutched him tightly to her chest.

"Mother!" Selim laughed, squirming. "No, I'm too big for that."

"Please," said Mrs. Bradley. "It wasn't... it was just a child's prattling. Don't, don't tell..."

"You know," said Sciezka. She could barely breathe. She could see the tears in Mrs. Bradley's eyes, refusing to fall. "You know who I am."

"Your face," said Mrs. Bradley. "When he... you know, and if you know, that means you're one of Focker's..."

"Is something wrong, mother?" asked Selim, stopping his struggles. "Did I do something bad?"

Mrs. Bradley clutched her child even harder. "No, Selim," she said firmly, glaring at Sciezka. "You haven't done anything."

"I'm sorry..." Sciezka said. "I'm sorry. I have to."

"Do what you have to do." The bitterness in Mrs. Bradley's voice cut Sciezka to the core, but she really didn't have any choice.

--

Three days after that, Sciezka slouched despondently in a corner of a meeting room deep inside Central Command. This is not how I wanted to meet the Fuhrer! she thought despondently. Even if she hadn't been miserable, she would have been deeply uncomfortable in such a high-powered meeting. Besides her and Mrs. Bradley, who sat alone on one side of the room's long conference table, straight-backed and expressionless, there were Fuhrer Grumman himself, Colonel Focker, Lieutenant General Mustang, his aide Major Hawkeye, and Lieutenant General Armstrong with her aid, Captain Falman.

That was the reason it had taken three days to have the meeting--in the Fuhrer's words, when Focker had dragged her into his office three days ago, "It sounds like he's starting small and not fully aware of what's going on, so we don't have to move immediately. I want to bring in Armstrong and Mustang, since they're the only others outside of military intelligence aware of the Selim situation, so we can decide precisely how to proceed."

Wait they had, while the telegraph went to Armstrong in Briggs and Mustang in Ishval, and then a longer wait while the two traveled to Central. The meeting had finally begun three hours ago... but to Sciezka, it felt like weeks as she sat in the corner, imagining huge black clouds hovering over her head.

"I fail to see why we're still discussing this," said Armstrong. "Kill him and be done."

"No!" snapped Mustang. "He's a child who has harmed no one--"

"He's a mass murderer with tremendous alchemical powers, nearly impossible to contain," countered Armstrong. "If he learns to use them effectively--"

"That was a previous life!" countered Mustang. "He has never shown any signs of violent tendencies until now."

"Oh, a previous life of slaughter," said Armstrong, nodding sagely. "I suppose you'd know all about that, wouldn't you, Hero of Ishbal?"

Mustang was half out of his chair, his face contorted with rage, before Hawkeye's hand on his shoulder gently but firmly pushed him back down. "She has a point, sir," Hawkeye said. "Selim is a potentially very serious threat to national security, and we have to take that into account."

"So we're back to slaughtering children in the name of national security?" asked Mustang bitterly.

"Child," corrected Armstrong, "and not even that. He's a homunculus, a created thing, not a child."

"He is a child," said a quiet voice. It was the first words Mrs. Bradley had spoken since the meeting began. She drew her shawl around her shoulders, looking very small and very old. "He's my little boy."

Armstrong tsked. "With all due respect, Madame Bradley, every man I've killed was someone's little boy. It's a soldier's duty to protect this nation from those who would harm it."

Grumman nodded. "I take it your opinion is that we should kill him, then. Yours as well, Focker?"

Focker nodded.

"And you, Mustang?"

Mustang ground his teeth. "We should watch him more," said Hawkeye. "Keep forces ready to attack if he makes a move, but until then, do nothing."

Mustang nodded.

"Hmm," said Grumman. Sciezka sank a little lower in her chair, desperately trying to avoid eye contact with anyone, especially Mrs. Bradley. She knew what was about to happen, and wished fervently the earth would open up and swallow her before it did.

That was when the shouts started outside, followed by the thuds.

Sciezka couldn't even see the three of them move, let alone which one was first, but somewhere between one blink and the next Armstrong, Mustang, and Hawkeye were on their feet, Armstrong's sword and Hawkeye's pistol drawn, while Mustang's hand was outstretched and ready to snap.

Their came a ringing crash, metal slamming into the metal door of the room, and it dented slightly. Another crash, and then another, and the door burst open, the automail foot that had been ramming it slamming into the ground.

A tall, blonde man in his early 20s stormed into the room. "And just what the hell do you think you're doing!?" he demanded.

"Fullmetal--" Mustang began, but Ed cut him off.

"That's not my title anymore!" he snapped.

"Who told you about this meeting?" demanded Focker.

"That's for me to know!" shouted Ed. "Who told YOU you had the right to sit here and debate killing a kid like it's a zoning petition?"

"I told him," Sciezka said quietly. "I sent a telegram before I went to you, Colonel Focker."

"Sorry I took so long," he said. "It's a long trip from Rush Valley."

She shook her head. "You made it in time, though."

"This is a violation of the Official Secrets Act," said Focker, his face drawn and expression full of cold fury. "Maybe treason."

"That would make you and Mrs. Bradley the only people in this room not guilty of treason," answered Riza, smiling slightly.

"Put your weapons down," said Grumman. "Fullmet--I mean, Professor Rockbell, if you leave now we won't press charges."

"I kept him alive for a reason," said Ed. "Mrs. Bradley deserves a chance to raise her son, and it sounds like she's doing a good job. I won't let you kill him."

"Thank you," Mrs. Bradley said quietly. "Both of you..."

Sciezka stood. "Ex-exactly! We won't let you!"

"Sit down, Sergeant!" snapped Focker.

Sciezka dropped back into her chair, again sinking low. I am in SO much trouble...

"So, what happened?" asked Ed. The telegram had been very short, just a travel itinerary, with the first letter of each town spelling out the words "SELIM IS PRIDE. COME TO CENTRAL." Sciezka had remembered Ed's own notebook, and used a similar code. "Selim's shadow sprout teeth?"

Mrs. Bradley shuddered.

"No," said Mustang. "He blew up a toy with a firecracker."

Ed scoffed. "I did worse than that when I was five."

"Then he said it was his imaginary friend's idea," Mustang continued.

Ed shrugged. "Urey has an imaginary friend, too, and tries to pin things on him sometimes. It's pretty normal, Trish will probably do the same thing in a couple of years."

"Yes, but Urey's imaginary friend isn't named Solf Jackson Kimblee," said Armstrong.

"Oh."

Fullmetal Alchemist: Blutherhood

One of the other commenters on Mark Watches Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, who goes by rin-chan-san on Tumblr, created some truly hilarious screencaps combining images from FMA with dialogue from Arrested Development. My personal favorite:

But there are loads of other good ones.

Race, Redemption, and Revelation

The rather pompous title of this post refers to a panel I gave on Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood a couple of years back. I no longer completely agree with what I say here--in particular, the section on race at the beginning is <I>appallingly</I> naïve, simplistic, and, dare I say it, demonstrative of massive unexamined privilege, but still I think it's a reasonably interesting panel.

Part One:

Part Two:

Part Three:

Part Four:

Part Five:

Part Six:

Fullmetal Alchemy

Apologies for this being a few minutes late. It is, as you may note, rather a bit longer than the typical Wednesday Whatever (in word count, it is more than ten times the minimum length I shoot for on the Sunday articles).

So, as I've mentioned a couple of times, I'm a regular commenter at Mark Watches. Today, he finished <I>Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood</I>, the anime adaptation of my favorite manga. Throughout his reviews of the series, I've been posting what I call Episode-Specific Alchemy Lessons, quick mini-essays on the history and practice of alchemy in the real world, tied in to the events of the show. I didn't do them for every episode (not by a long shot), but they were a lot of fun to write and hopefully will be interesting for all of you. All of them are behind the cut, with the rot13 I used to hide spoilers removed.

As usual, I apologize for nothing

Lust: Prepare for trouble!
Envy: And make it double!
Lust: To transmute the people of this nation!
Envy: And make blood seals of devastation!
Lust: To denounce the evils of Truth and love!
Envy: And rule all things--as below, above!
Lust: Lust!
Envy: Envy!
Lust: Team Homunculi, crushing humans with our might!
Envy: Surrender now by red soul-light!
Gluttony: Can I eat them now?

Beyond the Inferno: Situational and Virtue Ethics in Fullmetal Alchemist

Warning: Extensive spoilers for Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood and the Fullmetal Alchemist manga.

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood spends a lot of time tackling some fairly complex ethical questions for a shounen series, not least of which is its examination of vengeance and situational ethics. Of course, situational ethics tends to get a bad rap, being characterized (much like ethical relativism, to which it is related but not equivalent) as a sophistic cover for amorality. But really, situational ethics is nothing more than the trivial observation that the context of an ethical decision can alter the outcome. On some level, this should be obvious; it is clear that curling one’s index finger caries different moal implications depending on whether the finger is pressed against the trigger of a gun or not. But FMA:B goes beyond the trivial in its examination, and as such, has earned some undeserved criticism for inconsistency on the question of whether revenge is justified.

A significant factor in this criticism is that we live in a culture where two major ethical systems dominate, the Manichaean and the utilitarian. In a Manichaean worldview, morality is determined by ingroup and outgroup status—anything which helps the ingroup or harms the outgroup is good, and anything which does the opposite is bad. The same action may thus be regarded as good when done to the outgroup, and bad when done to the ingroup, or vice versa. This is the moral view generally embraced by militaries (“support your comrades, kill the bad guys”), and can be found in quite a few places in our culture, such as most action movies and video games, the Harry Potter series, and the Republican party. Contract the ingroup until it consists of only the individual self, and you have capitalism, libertarianism, and objectivism.

At the other extreme, expand the ingroup to include all of humanity and you have the utilitarian view: anything which net benefits people is good, anything which net harms them is bad. It’s certainly a more progressive worldview than Manichaeanism, but still based entirely on the outcomes of actions. It does not matter why or how you benefit people, as long as you do. Which sounds reasonable on the face of it, until you realize that depending on whether you count misery as a small amount of happiness or a negative amount of happiness, utilitarianism either says that a world of 50 quadrillion miserable people is better than a world of 5 billion happy people, or it says that murdering severely depressed, unloved people is not only morally permissible but mandatory.

FMA:B, on the other hand, mostly follows an ethical system that is largely disfavored in our culture, virtue ethics. In virtue ethics, an action is good if it demonstrates that the person doing it has the qualities of a good person, and bad if it demonstrates they have the qualities of a bad person. This is where we come to the question of revenge, because FMA:B quite consistently argues that pursuing revenge turns you into a bad person.

Key to this are the characters of Scar and Mustang. Scar is the survivor of genocide; most of his people are dead, murdered by the Amestrian military and particularly its State Alchemists, their homeland of Ishbal is ruined and largely abandoned, and most of the survivors live in slums scattered throughout Amestris. Early in the series, Scar is introduced as an antagonist, murdering every State Alchemist (an organization which the main character joined long after the Ishbalan War) he can find. From the start, Scar is depicted as inhuman: nigh-superhumanly fast and skilled in hand-to-hand combat, cold, implacable, without even a name—he is known only by the prominent facial scarring he received during the attack that killed his family. As the series progresses, however, Scar slowly turns away from vengeance, ultimately adopting the twofold goal of making Amestris admit what it did to his people, and reform in order to ensure it never happens again. This is accomplished through a process of humanization, as Scar acquires companions—a cowardly, disgraced Amestrian soldier, a foreign child on a journey of her own, and ultimately Marcoh, a medical doctor driven by guilt over the experiments he performed on Ishbalan prisoners of war—and is thus given opportunities to demonstrate emotion and character depth. Key in his development are his two confrontations with the character Winry, whose parents—Amestrian doctors who tried to help the Ishbalans during the war—were Scar’s first victims.

In the first encounter, Winry learns that Scar is responsible for her parents’ deaths and points a gun at him, but is unable to pull the trigger. Details of the scene cause Scar to flash back (post-traumatic stress disorder is another recurring theme of the series) to the death of his family, in a way that places Scar in the position of the State Alchemist who killed his family, main character Ed Elric in the position of Scar’s brother who died saving Scar, and Winry in the position of Scar. Scar flees in confusion, and soon after spares Marcoh’s life in exchange for learning more about the Ishbalan War, showing that already he is acquiring motivations other than mere revenge.

In the second encounter, Scar is immobilized and wounded, and several characters are debating whether to kill him, given that he has information they need. Winry steps in and begins treating Scar’s wounds, stating that although she does not forgive him, it’s what her parents would have done. At this point Scar’s transformation begins in earnest, and the series begins moving him from antagonist to, arguably, tritagonist or even deuteragonist.

Contrasted heavily to Scar is Mustang, an Amestrian State Alchemist regarded as a war hero for his participation in the genocide of the Ishbalans. From the start, Mustang is depicted as somewhat morally ambiguous, but mostly good. He seeks to become the head of the Amestrian military dictatorship, but not solely out of ambition; rather, he sees it as the only way to institute reforms. His explicitly stated plan is to become dictator, transform the country into one where genocide and dictatorship are not tolerated, and then turn himself in to a war crimes tribunal for his actions in Ishbal. Early in the series, Mustang’s best friend, Hughes, is murdered, and Mustang spends much of the series pursuing the mystery of who killed him and why, although like most of the cast he spends much of the second and third phases of the series too busy dealing with larger events to spend much time on personal goals.

Relatively shortly after Hughes' death, Mustang encounters Lust, who contributed to Hughes’ death but is not the one who personally killed him. Lust is an extremely dangerous fighter, among the series’ more lethal antagonists, and manages to permanently disable one of Mustang’s closest followers, seriously injure Mustang, and nearly kill Mustang’s right-hand woman Riza (who is also strongly implied to be his love interest) and their ally Al Elric, Ed’s brother. Mustang responds with a furious show of force, brutally and efficiently killing Lust in an agonizing fashion. The scene is deeply uncomfortable, but played as a triumphant victory nonetheless, and indeed it is the first real victory anyone has had against the main antagonists of the series.

Much later, in the final run of episodes leading up to the series finale, Mustang finally meets Hughes killer, Envy, who not only confesses but brags and taunts Mustang about the killing. Mustang proceeds to violently, painfully, and methodically demolish Envy in a lengthy fight sequence that spans two episodes. Unlike his attacks on Lust, which looked and sounded extremely painful but were nonetheless clearly Mustang trying to kill her as quickly as possible using whatever resources he had on hand (Lust finally dies mere centimeters from striking a killing blow on Mustang), his fight with Envy is clearly torture. He gives Envy time to recover between attacks, allows him opportunities to attempt counterattacks (all of which Mustang immediately defeats), and deliberately uses attacks designed to be painful and disorienting rather than lethal (such as burning out Envy’s tongue and eyes). The sequence is extremely difficult to watch, and clearly the series very much intends it as such, because immediately after Envy’s defeat Riza, Scar, and Ed confront Mustang, persuade him that this pursuit of revenge and hatred is inappropriate for the man who will become the country’s leader, and force him to back off from striking the killing blow.

Finally, in the last episodes of the series, nearly the entire cast gathers to fight Father, the immortal power behind the throne of Amestris. Al sacrifices himself to save Ed, and Ed attacks Father in a berserker rage, seriously injuring him. There is then a brief fight between Father and another character, Greed, after which Ed strikes a final blow on Father, causing his body to be destroyed and his soul to return to the primordial chaos from which it originated. This entire sequence is again portrayed as a heroic act, with the assembled characters chanting Ed’s name as he fights Father.

Here, then, is the apparent inconsistency: Why is it wrong for Scar to kill State Alchemists, Winry to kill Scar, and Mustang to kill Envy, yet right for Mustang to kill Lust and Ed to kill Father? And the answer, of course, is context.

The latter two incidents have in common that the antagonist being killed is an immediate and deadly threat, is highly capable of defending themselves, and has only just caused serious harm to someone close to the protagonist doing the killing. The protagonist, in other words, is both acting in the heat of the moment and “punching up”—attacking someone more powerful than they. In addition, in both cases the protagonist has been well-established as a fighter, though Ed has been consistently portrayed as refusing to kill up until his fight with Father. Finally, they do not draw out the attacks more than is necessary; they are clearly acting to defeat the opponent, not cause them to suffer for its own sake.

All of the other incidents differ in at least one respect. Winry is consistently depicted as a non-combatant, as her confrontation with Scar makes clear: Ed tells her “these hands were made for healing, not killing” when he talks her down. Scar’s attacks on State Alchemists are based on old pain, and represent a premeditated plan; in addition, he targets all State Alchemists indiscriminately, not just those who participated in the Ishbalan genocide.

Finally, there is Mustang’s revenge on Envy, which of all of these scenes gets the most attention from the narrative, taking up the last seven minutes of episode 53 and the first ten or so of episode 54. That it gets this much time is especially notable given that, at this point in the series, there are no fewer than fifteen separate groups of characters being actively followed by the narrative, allowing an average of 1.47 minutes per group per episode—to give a single confrontation more than ten times that much screen time clearly marks it as both a major plot event and a key moment of character and thematic development.

All of which it is. The audience has minimal empathy with Envy in this scene, as he has been thoroughly vile throughout the series, killing beloved characters, taunting and tormenting others, and gleefully recounting his participation in multiple horrific acts, including deliberately setting off the conflict that culminated in the genocide of Ishbal. If anyone in the series deserves to die, it’s him—and yet the visuals repeatedly depict Mustang as a figure of terror, his face contorted in rage (including shadows noticeably similar to Scar’s scar) as he clinically describes precisely how little of a threat Envy is and how he plans to cause Envy maximum pain. After Envy attempts to flee, Mustang becomes much like a horror movie monster, unstoppable, implacable, and inescapable as he pursues Envy and just keeps hurting him, over and over and over again.

Mustang is consumed utterly by hatred, and the contrast between this and him fighting Lust (or Ed fighting Father) could not be clearer. In those scenes, the protagonist was immediately, furiously angry, but still recognizable themselves. They were not given over entirely to their anger, and thus still appeared human. Here, Mustang is monstrous, much like Scar in his early appearances, existing solely to make the enemy hurt without regard to any other concerns.

In both the fight with Lust and the fight with Envy, the effect of Mustang’s actions is identical: a lethal and dangerous enemy who has committed terrible crimes (and intends to commit more) dies painfully. However, the circumstances of that killing (the situation part of situational ethics) make it clear that against Lust Mustang is acting out of desire to protect his friends, loved ones, and allies, and anger at the immediate harm Lust has caused. In the latter, Mustang is acting out of desire to see his hated enemy suffer as much as possible. In other words, against Lust Mustang is being righteous, protective, loyal, and just; against Envy he is being sadistic. The former are virtues, the latter a vice, and thus under the series’ virtue ethos the former is right and the latter wrong.

This is primarily Scar’s argument in the scene where the other characters talk Mustang down, but it is not the only argument used against him. Ed and Riza instead use a slightly more complex variant of virtue ethics, in which the virtues themselves are situational—specifically, individual personality and social roles both influence what virtues apply for a particular person. This goes back to Winry’s “hands of a healer”; Ed’s argument in that scene is that it is wrong for Winry to kill because she is inclined to the virtues of compassion and empathy, and because her role in society is as a healer and maker of prostheses. The implication is that it would be wrong for Winry to kill, even in a situation like Mustang’s fight with Lust, because it would go against her core virtues and contradict her social role. Mustang, on the other hand, is neither particularly compassionate or empathetic, and as a soldier, his social role requires killing. However, as Ed points out, he seeks to become the ruler of Amestris in order to reform it. Is the kind of person who sadistically tortures hated enemies the kind of person who can transform a military dictatorship into a just and peaceful democracy?

The series is quite clear that the answer is no, and so Riza (whom Mustang ordered years ago to kill him if he ever became corrupted by power and ambition or strayed from the path of reforming Amestris) pulls her gun on Mustang and tells him that if he kills Envy, she will kill him, finish out the current mission, and kill herself. It is this ultimatum which finally breaks Mustang out of his berserker rage and forces him to back down from torturing Envy (who, for complex reasons outside the scope of this essay, commits suicide shortly thereafter).

Situational ethics, as I said, often gets a bad rap. Like moral relativism, it is frequently characterized as being a cover for underlying amorality. In truth, any sufficiently complex ethical schema can be gamed to justify basically anything, and so the extreme case of a complex ethos such as situational ethics or relativism does shade into amorality. On the other hand, simpler ethical schema lack flexibility and nuance, and so the extreme case of a simple ethos such as utilitarianism or deontology shades into extremism. FMA:B is not particularly inconsistent in its ethics, as critics allege; rather, it consistently portrays a complex virtue ethos in which the morality of an action is as much or more a function of the motivations, goals, social role, and emotional state of the person performing the action as it is a function of who the action targets or what outcomes it results in.

The Wall in the North

Sorry about lateness, I just straight up forgot that I hadn't already made and queued this post.

This is a post about one of the most awesome characters in all of animation, Major General Olivier Mira Armstrong from Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood.

 

 

If Major General Armstrong commanded the North Wall of Westeros instead of Briggs, Game of Thrones would be a standalone book. Of about 200 pages.

Just saying.

Thought of the Day: On Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood Episode 22

So, over at Mark Watches I've been commenting on Mark's reviews of each episode of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, and this is, I feel, one of the more interesting episodes, so I figured it could serve as my Thought of the Day. If you haven't seen the series, um, spoilers through episode 22? Though I suspect this would be more confusing then spoilery.

So the most obviously interesting thing about this episode, for me at least, is the way it draws parallels between different characters. In both families, the older brother is shorter and better at alchemy, while the younger is a better fighter and has a strong moral code. (Which is not to say that Scarbro or Ed are at all bad people, just that Scar and Al think about morality more often and more deeply than their older brothers.) Then of course there's Ed protecting Winry, which immediately makes Scar think of his brother protecting him--what's most interesting about that, however, is not the very obvious Ed-Scarbro parallel, but what it does to Scar and Winry.

In that moment, Scar must realize that he is playing the role of Kimblee--a mad bomber, a force of destruction for the sake of destruction, following a code utterly inscrutable to anyone else. That, as much as Ed's resemblance to his brother, is what makes him hesitate--has he become the man who took his family from him? But what no one seems to notice in that moment is that if Ed is Scarbro, then the parallel for Winry is Scar: overwhelmed with loss, weapon in hand, prepared to take her revenge on the monster who senselessly slaughtered her family without cause. But she can't, because she is a better person than Scar, and because she is a healer and maker, not a warrior; her hands, as Ed puts it, are not made for killing.

But if she is being paralleled to Scar, is that true for him too? Scar was a warrior, yes, and in the dub that is all he is stated to be; but in the sub and manga he is a warrior-priest. We see in his flashback that he is horrified by the Ishbalans who want to use alchemy to fight back, but his reasons are not, interestingly, religious, even though the religion of which he is a priest forbids alchemy. Rather, they are moral objections based on a virtue ethos--he is horrified by the bloodlust the men display, and by the idea of unleashing the same destructive force that has been brought to bear on Ishbal. His hands, ultimately, were no more made for killing than Winry's (or, to go back to the original parallel the episode set up for him, Al's). Scar is not a monster, whatever Winry may say; he is something much more dangerous and frightening, a man who has lost his way.

The three stages of alchemy, as Scarbro says in this episode, are understanding, decomposition, and reconstruction. Scar has been doing a lot of decomposition thus far in the series; here at last we see the first glimmers of him understanding. Much, much later, in the final few episodes, will he reconstruct; only then will his transformation be complete.

My second-favorite thing about this show is the many, many ways it finds to work alchemy on its characters. (My absolute favorite is the way events that would be mere drama in most shows--traumatic events that influence the characters, spark a bit of development, and then are left in the past except where the continuity explicitly calls back to them--instead keep coming back up over and over. Nina is never forgotten; 18 episodes later in an almost entirely unrelated scene, she's brought back up because the pain has never gone away. She serves no plot purpose here, just a natural consequence of Al trying to stall during the fight with Scar, but at the same time it is completely natural for the characters to discuss her, because the pain is still present and real for them. The show, in other words, doesn't treat Nina as a one-time plot device for advancing Ed and Al's characters; like a real person, she leaves echoes throughout the rest of their lives.)