Hey yall I had a fuckin thought
So, as it’s roughly explained, the state alchemist program is a kind of “recruit potential human sacrifices” mechanism, with a side-order of “brute strength for the army”. But basically, the state alchemist title is mostly about being a researcher–given people like Shou Tucker exist, and given that the only requirement to stay a state alchemist is to submit a yearly report of your research that says “look I’m still being a useful scientist”.
So far, so far this is sensible, yeah? Father and the delightful children from down the lane are running a recruitment program for potential human sacrifices. So sure–butter them up! Give them lots of money, get them buddy-buddy with the government, and give them endless resources for research. It’s be pretty easy to trick a state alchemist in that position to open the portal if Sugar
DaddyBradley is nudging them to do it.And I’m still willing to go with this logic for the whole “draft the state alchemists into war” move. They make it pretty clear that was something of a last-ditch effort. And the blood transmutation circle around Amestris was an absolute necessity for Father’s plan. So the risk of a few state alchemists dying or resigning from your Potential Sacrifice Pool is worth it for the completion of the circle.
Now. To get to my fucking thought.
Edward fucking Elric. This fucking fight-me 12 year old troglodyte shows up to the exam and performs circle-less transmutation in front of mother fucking Bradley, demonstrating to one of the seven Actual Fucking Homunculi that he’d already opened the portal. Ed was literally prepped as a human sacrifice before he showed up to Central. A fully set human sacrifice showed up at the homunculi’s door, said “hey look what I can do!”, proved he’d opened the mother fucking portal already, and said “hey yeah hire me”. Human sacrifice, free shipping, no assembly required, handcuffs not included!
They could have just tossed Ed into a shoebox and kept him there until the Promised Day. They wouldn’t even need to make up an excuse he attacked the f u c k i n g president. That’s fucking treason babey. He’s 12, he’s an orphan, he’s from a rural town in buttfuck nowhere, he’s literally the easiest person alive to disappear. They could have arrested him for assassination crimes, kept him in gay baby jail, and just popped him out for the Promised Day
What do they do instead?! “Oh lmao this kid’s great. Let’s give him infinite money, no supervision, no governmental responsibilities, access to all our secret resources, and toss him on a train to who-the-fuck-knows-where-land”
They fucking did that
And like? They then had the audacity to be concerned when Edward “Fight Me” Elric almost got himself killed about 293 times. Just an endless game of “I thought u were watching him” from one homunculus to another when Ed fucking absconds half-way across the globe to go entice some other hostile entity into murdering him to death. That’s the whole series. Every arc is Ed baiting death while the homunculi are in the background like “:/ wish he wouldn’t do that”
This only gets worse when you consider they later learned Al opened the portal too because really?? These two stab-happy globe-trotting public menaces are 40% of your final evil plan for godhood. 40%. Almost half. You couldn’t fucking set aside a cardboard box to keep these idiots in?
We all knew Father was terrible at planning when we learned his thousands-of-years-in-the-making-plan involved him procrastinating until the last five minutes to get his last sacrifice, while he was?? playing chess in his fucking basement, I guess. But it’s like every time I think about it like really think about it I find 7 more reasons Father was a fucking shit idiot moron, king of the stupid fucking idiot club, flesh and blood founder of seven other established dumbasses, all living in their idiot hovel under central, just giving random dumbass 12 year olds infinite money, j u s t b e c a u s e.
Tag: father
itstheendandweareallfallingup:
Okay but can we talk about how when Father first met the Elric brothers he immediately dropped his cold and calculated disposition? It really just breaks my heart because here is the main villain meeting the children of his former best friend and instead of acting borderline robotic like he does for the rest of the story he laughs and pats Ed on the head like “Well would you look at that! Hohenheim actually went and got the family he always wanted! My buddy did it!”
I just feel like it really says a lot about the hidden depth of his character, and I just love the little details like this you’d only really catch if you pay attention. Idk I think about this moment a lot. I love this series so much.
I feel like this was kinda a subtle reminder that he was more human than he thought he was? I mean his whole goal was to “transcend” to godhood or such and in all of that he was trying his best to strip away what connected him to broken, mortal, pathetic human beings(example: taking away his faults, a very defining human trait) but he forgot that humans are more than just their deadly flaws?? Like humanity is super crappy, but we have our good sides too, mostly found in relationships. We bring the good things out of each other and we thrive on each other’s company. Even as he tried to prove to the world that “I’m beyond petty humans” he couldn’t help but find a little human in himself as he remembered his friend and his friend’s dream and felt the joy in his accomplishments.
There is an explanation for this behavior: He had Greed reattached to his soul when this scene happened, which says a lot about the nature of Greed’s personality and what part of Father he was: Ergo, Greed was the part of The Dwarf in the Flask/Homunculus/Father that was friendly, personable, and wanted to have and maintain connections with other people. This is why it makes sense that in the end, Greed realized that the one thing he truly wanted was friends – he was above all else, comprised of The Dwarf’s discarded desire for companionship.
Hohenheim even makes a comment that makes reference to this when he meets The Dwarf again as Father; that The Dwarf had been a much more interesting person back when he was just a little ball in a flask, long before he separated the sin homunculi from himself.
This also helps explain why after he removed Greed from himself again, Father’s personality went back to being that of a calculating, robotic villain.