tate-lin

[tate-lin]

Parental!Roy Analysis: FMA ‘03 Episode 39 (Aka Ed and Al being problem children)

Ok so a lot of people like these kinds of posts??? So I guess I’ll do some more???

There are A LOT of parental! RoyEd examples throughout both series, but Episode 39: “Secret of Ishbal” really takes the cake for this kind of content. So I figured I’d write an analysis on it for you guys.

(Exasperated parents face)

•Ok so the first prominent example I see is obviously when they meet up after Ed and Al discovering Havoc and Breda following them. Immediately they start to banter, Roy saying, “Can’t say I was expecting to see you here Ed.” Ed immediately reacted, expecting an off hand comment about his height. But the funny thing is, Mustang smiles at this, immediately reacting to protect Ed when the other lieutenant what’s his face bad guy dude (Archer apparently but whatever) goes for his gun.

•This is like a “thank god you’re ok and you’re still you” kind of moment, after all Mustangs been hearing all this stuff about him messing up stuff as usual. Thing is, no matter how many times it happens, parents can’t help but get worried. Of course, when telling Ed about what he’s heard, Ed looks away, like a child getting scolded, wouldn’t you say?

•Roy immediately gets serious, saying, “No more. From now on, you’ll be working under my command.” He’s now gotten over that “oh good you’re alive” phase and is now at the phase of, “I’m going to keep you close so I can keep and eye on you so you’ll stay that way.” Al immediately protests, but Roy cuts him off, “You’re lucky Havoc’s patrol picked you up. It’s dangerous out here.” Roy is obviously worried about both of them, it’s not hard to spot.

•This was more of a bonus, but look at the positioning of this frame. If Ed hadn’t moved to the window, I bet that Roy would’ve moved closer to bad guy what’s his face so he could shield Ed and Al from him. But that’s more speculation on my part rather than facts.

•The next big scene is this one, where there is a big family dinner meet up with the Mustang gang (as I coined it), where Mustang questions Ed’s motivates for catching Scar. He’s leaning forward, his attention completely on Ed. Ed reply’s pretty nonchalantly, showing he’s comfortable around Roy. Pretty parental “how was your day” kind of vibe except military fashion, if that makes sense. Ed than questions what the map on the table is.

•Obviously he sees the Grand Archanem (spelling is fun) transmutation circle and immediately accuses Scar of doing it on purpose. Mustang and Hawkeye go into military mode, questioning why Ed would think this:

•Notice how this frame is positioned as well. Reminds you of something? Maybe your parents? That’s what I thought anyway, more speculation on my part.

•Ed, of course, asks what the city is called, discovering that it is Leore. Ed gets angry, asking why no one told him about it. Mustang responds with, “I got the report from Hughes. And I made the decision not to tell you.” And when Ed questioned why, he said, “Because it was too big for you.” We don’t get to see Mustang’s facial expression in this scene, but his voice raises slightly. Of course, this could be him talking over Ed or him being frustrated, but I don’t think he wants to be in this position, because it would put a damper on the boys spirits at the prospect of one of their victories falling sideways.

•In the next scene, Mustang’s unit is outside talking about how the Elrics don’t know about Hughes death. They all agree that they can’t tell them, because Ed’s work is too important at the moment for him to be mourning Hughes death. Hawkeye says a key line here about why Mustang isn’t telling Ed and Al about Hughes: “The Elric brothers have entangled themselves in a very dangerous web. The Colonel wants them to be under his supervision now. That’s the real reason he’s keeping them close.” This line is key because it proves one of my main points: Mustang cares about the brothers. And because Hawkeye is the character who knows him best, and is almost always at his side, it would be pretty hard for her to be wrong about that. Of course after that line Al comes and asks where his brother is.

•Now these next two scenes are one of the biggest reasons I decided to analyze this. They are dead give aways that Mustang cares about the brothers, and while this is more Ed-centric, it definitely applies. So, Ed is dealing with Archer to let him go into Leore, when Mustang bursts in. Literally his first line is, “Edward, what are you doing in here?!” He obviously was looking for our favorite blonde Alchemist, and his reaction shows that he does not want Ed to be around Archer. And honestly, who would be? Archer makes a comment about Mustang overreacting, most likely sensing that Mustang was worried about Ed, and tells him Ed wants to go scouting in Leore. Mustang tries to cover his concern by referring to Ed as a “prized state alchemist,” but come on Mustang we all know you were worried. Let me just note that throughout this scene Ed won’t look at Mustang, and for the magority of the next scene as well. It’s like when you avoid eye contact with your parents when you’ve done something bad in public, wouldn’t you say? Mustang does look at him though, looking pretty concerned. When Mustang heard that Ed is leaving Al behind, he becomes even more concerned.

•This next scene really takes the cake for being the best parental! RoyEd example I’ve seen in cannon. So let me give you the breakdown: Ed and Roy are walking through the hallway as Roy says, “Why the hell didn’t you come to me?!” To which Ed replys, “Well, because you wouldn’t have said yes.” Roy says, “You’re not thinking straight, you’re upset because you just learned the truth about Leore.” Ed turns around, making eye contact with Roy and bitterly replies, “And I wonder who I have to blame for that.” And walks away while Roy is left stand and frown, Ed’s face shadowed. This scene, wow. It’s crystal clear that Roy wants to protect them, and keep them in his sights, but Ed knows he needs to help there, because it’s his responsibility. Roy actually sighs a little as Ed walks off. He wants to protect Ed, but can’t, not only because Ed is stubborn and has trust issues, but also because Ed has a strong sense of will and a steady moral compass.

•Of course, many might dismiss some of these points as Mustang just protecting the brothers because they’re his subordinates, and I can see why they would think that. Personally though, I feel like Roy wants to protect them, not just because they’re useful to him as subordinates, but also because he’s taken them under his wing in a sense. Wether he likes it or not, he’s grown to care for the two of them. And that concludes this long, long analysis on how Mustang’s actions towards the brothers make him a dad, or at least someone who cares enough to be one to the brothers. Hope you enjoyed, and feel free to discuss it with me and/or add on to my ideas!

[tate-lin]

Robins trying to emulate Batman's posture: cute, adorable, sometimes a little scary depending on the circumstance

grown up ex-Robins trying to emulate Batman's posture: scary, but everyone knows who they're trying to be

Batkids out of the suit, in civilian clothes, suddenly standing/looking a little too much like Bruce: terrifying

[tate-lin]

If anyone wants to know my all-time favorite advice about writing, it's this video of Rebecca Sugar giving writing advice at a con 12 years ago.

I watched it before I met her at a con in 2017, and I've watched it many times since. I revisit it every time I need to reassure myself that I'm going the right direction, and every time, something clicks for me.

And it's fascinating watching it again now that I have experience writing and doing professional animation, because like, wow she was right. Like... I knew she was, but now I have my own shared experience to vouch that what she said was true.

[tate-lin]

This vendor at the queer bookfair nearly leaping at me and saying "finally another non-white person please stay as long as you like. I feel haunted by all these white people" lmfaooooo

[tate-lin]

writers think they’re in control until a side character kicks the door down like “guess what bitch i’m emotionally compelling”

[tate-lin]

I genuinely have to hold myself back from crying sometimes when I just see an image of Thistle he’s so cute WAHHHH like I can’t do this rn I got makeup on

[tate-lin]

Every time I revisit chapter 86 and the events right after the group talks Marcille down, I'm always struck by this bit here:

In particular, how similar it is to this:

The Winged Lion ate the same desire in both of them, more or less (I'm sure there are some nuances in both flavor and intent, but they are clearly similar things here). The Lion basically used this technique to kill Thistle, and for Marcille it was... not insignificant, but something she and her friends overcame without even fully realizing it was an obstacle.

I feel like this is another small piece of the story that shows how important support and love are - in navigating mental illness, in dealing with abuse or addiction, or in working through any other similar struggle that can be read into the Lion and his eating of desires.

It almost feels like Marcille was able to borrow the desires of her friends. She loves them and she trusts them, so even when she didn't have a desire to free herself from the Lion, the care they had for her well being still mattered to her.

It's the same thing later, with her hair.

She isn't able to notice the way her messy hair is making things harder, let alone do anything about it. But when Chilchuck points it out and then braids it back for her...

It's better. She likes it, things are easier now. Even though it isn't a desire she can feel for herself, it's not something that doesn't effect her. And because her friends care - because they know her well enough to notice the difference - she is given the chance to have a preference and to ask for their help.

We can obviously see some parallel ideas here with Mithrun and Kabru as well, but I'd also like to point out that Thistle gets this grace, too. Thistle, who had no one to help him up once he lost his will to resist, or to encourage him to find new desires once the Lion ate them all.

Thistle says he doesn't need anything, anymore...

But he is given an apology anyways.

It is not a kindness he desires. It is not a kindness he is able to ask for.

But it is a kindness that helps. It is a kindness that matters.

[tate-lin]

[tate-lin]

i dont think ppl understand that thistle is a good example of the “1000 year old kid” trope. it was used right, it makes such a good allegory to the adultification that happens with brown kids. everyone around him ASSUMED he was an adult and gave him adult responsibilities, and it backfired tremendously. but the thing is people in this fandom are so ship brained it flies past people’s heads so they do shit like ship him with an adult like laios or his brother.

he’s not a *literal* child but there is a reason why kui has deliberately drawn him several years younger than his first appearance lol. even his tallman form looks like a child, whereas short elves like fleki and otta look like adults as tallmen

remember, wrt full-blooded elf aging 80 year olds are equivalent to 16. if thistle was brought into the castle when he was 20, and delgal was 40 by the time the dungeon was made, he’d be 60 at most

[tate-lin]

Every week now I see this and I go 😭😭😭.

[tate-lin]

⚠️DUNGEON MESHI MANGA SPOILERS

The demon

Song: LUNCH by Billie Eilish

[tate-lin]

❝ Dreams of Distant Stars: A Star Rail RNG Zine ❞

My full piece for the zine! Really happy with the characters I got for it! Thank you for the opportunity and I hope everyone likes it too! ✨🩵

[tate-lin]

doodles of Stepping Up by @tossawary

[tate-lin]

You'll never guess who my favorite character is

[tate-lin]

Yanqing

[tate-lin]

i made a 6 phased ice theory prior to 3.0, which invalidates a lot of these points because the existence of therta and implications of 6 phased ice with her. i haven’t finished 3.0 so once i do im going to alter this theory BUT that doesn’t invalidate all these points! a lot of this is interesting information and i think that it opens up a good discussion about this!

without further ado, enjoy :D

what is 6 phased ice?

okok so for this you have to look into the two characters who DO wield it, and one of them isn’t even confirmed so if that says anything.

Yanqing and March 7th.

“Oh but yanqings isn’t confirmed so how do you know that-“ I don’t. It’s a theory so uhm

Basically, people are theorising that yanqing wields 6 phased ice for a few reasons, the main one being that in yanqings animations you can see flecks of pink in them and the other other character for the longest time with pink flecks pre-therta was March 7th. That mixed with the fact that his past is unknown and we don’t know his lineage adds to the suspicion. Even jingliu who is directly stated to mirror yanqing doesn’t have this effect.

And I am aware that therta uses 6 phased ice, I made this theory pre-3.0 and so I just didn’t really say anything but I DO believe she is implied to use 6 phased ice too. Idk parts of my theory still stand.

I didn’t know what 6 phased ice was and I thought everyone knew but me. Maybe I was just dumb and didn’t read the texts properly. Turns out, nobody knows what it is or what it does, not even March herself!

She states it’s some sort of “crystal” rather than ice, but then why call it an ice? It can melt just like one, and crystals don’t melt. Not at room temperature at least.

I saw a bunch of remembrance yanqing theory’s going about, which seemed odd because all the signs seem to point towards abundance. Just because March is implied remembrance and remembrance has a lot of ties to it? I don’t recall them ever saying remembrance uses 6 phased ice specifically. It just doesn’t make too much sense to me.

Now, assuming Yanqing does use 6 phased ice, what can we conclude/ find similarity in the two of them?

Yes, while they both have fighting spirit and passion im not talking about their personalities since I think that’s just a product of environment. What I do want to talk about is the fact both of them have little to no memory of their past. March is pretty obvious, her entire goal on the astral express is to try and find parts of her past so there isn’t much debate there

Yanqing’s is more subtle, but from one of his text messages he states “I don’t have many memories of my childhood anyways” which is definitely an odd line. His first memories are training with the general, but he was raised by him since birth and I assume (hope) the general wasn’t training a literal newborn. So what exactly happened in all that time in-between?

I have two main theories as to what 6 phased ice could be, so bear with me and make your own conclusions!

What if 6 phased ice is something that neutralises/ blocks out the power of other paths, and as a side effect causes the user to lose all their memories prior to it.

Welt states that 6 phased ice adheres to imaginary law, and the aeons I believe use imaginary as their element. Welt also states that external forces cannot change its form, which adds to my belief that 6 phased ice is not from a certain path but instead exists as an isolated substance. This ice has a lot of power, and when you ask welt about if he says that the ice could be used to either protect her or banish her.

This doesn’t seem like the work of rememberance in my opinion, why would try want to obscure the world? Why does the ice have such massive connotations to losing a part of oneself? Remembrance wants to preserve memories. Yes I know logically maybe it was a good idea, but aeons are neither good or bad. They will destroy the entire world for their belief and are very tunnel visioned, not caring how it affects humans. Even if it was a good choice, the rememberance would never do it. Even if it ruins the world, Fuli would never get rid of a memory.

This good-bad relationship reminds me of a theory I saw, about each aeon being balanced out by some other force so that the universe maintains equilibrium. I don’t personally believe in the pairs theory, as I think the hsr world is much more complex and holds much more complex dynamics than x neutralises y. More so, this facet of x is stopped/interrupted by y, however z interrupts both of them by doing something else etc. you get the point.

I mainly came to my own conclusions because it didn’t make sense to me the enigmata is the enemy of erudition and not remembrance, because to me that makes way more sense. I think both of these can exist simultaneously! (yes I am aware that enigmata rose because of the erudition, but come on do we really trust information on them?)

So what I think is 6 phased ice could be wielded by anyone, or any aeon but it can also be used against them and actually fight for the opposite cause if one is not careful with it.

Now this ties into my second theory, 6 phased ice is something that can both preserve and destroy memories. It is used by both the remembrance and enigmata.

(I also have a small little theory that fuli and mythus might be connected or the same entity in some weird way but that is for another time, i need to do more research on that one but i got sus vibes from fulis data log and description…)

So the angle hoyo has built up so far is that ice is used by the remembrance to preserve memories. In simulated universe, the remembrance specialises in giving an ice weakness to their enemies which cannot be a coincidence. And also, Fuli’s body is said to appear as though it is made of “crystals” which reminds me of March 7ths definition of what 6 phased ice is. So it’s almost confirmed ice DOES have something to do with remembrance.

So why the enigmata, you might ask. This brings me back to yanqing and March having very few memories.

When welt had said it can either protect or banish her, I thought of the dynamic between protecting and destroying memories.

The universe of hsr is implied to be built off equilibrium, and so it would make sense that such a powerful object is powerful both ways as to not tip the imaginary, literally in this case, scales of the universe. The Rememberance uses it to capture and encapsulate memories, while the enigmata uses it to obscure memories by “trapping” them in the ice therefore making sure no one can access them

And this would explain why we no virtually nothing about it, the enigmata is purposefully trying its best to hide any and all information it can on it. At this point at least we aren’t meant to know as that is the enigmata’s goal (does that make grammatical sense?)

And if that wasn’t enough, look at this line from himeko.

enigma is a very odd and specific choice of words, it could just be a red herring im looking into wayyy too much but also I wouldn’t doubt it!

small details that are interesting but don’t have much substance and are probably coincidence:

- March 7th is the 66th day of the year (6 phased ice? Why is 6 so important?) or 67th in a leap year which is coincidentally the number of potential stories she made about her past

- Fuli has 6 chains of pearls on THEIR miangguan

- this is probably a genshin thing but there are 6 eidolons

- the structure of ice itself does contain the number 6 (look at snowflakes, they occur cuz of like hexagons or sm im bad at explaining)

- in amphoreus, there is a giant block of this ice/crsystal thing, which when you read abt it, it says it apparently was going to be called “soulsteel”. The only other point we see “soulsteel” being used in the game is yanqings traces where he gains soul sync during battle which gives him buffs. However they immediately changed it and ran away from the name and no one knows why. I heard that this might have been a translation error but i cannot confirm or deny that so take it with a grain of salt but it’s still interesting.

I forgot the rest but uhm I’ll add more if I notice anything and also do feel free to make ur own theories or discuss this!!! I’m always happy to hear others takes! I hope you enjoyed this theory and if anything at all is unclear you can ask! Half my script got deleted to I had to rewrite it but I may have forgotten a lot so I’ll add that later if needed. I really want to hear other peoples takes so if you have anything and all tell me and we can discuss!

Sorry if any of this is wrong please tell me!