remember when like a year and a half ago me and Aila (@ailaxolotl) joked about an FMA:B Prom AU and I started writing out like 14 drabbles for it but never finished any of them and then intermittently forgot about them? well, look! I stopped forgetting for a sec! and, like, it’s prom season, so why not add a little bit more to it? so so here’s a good ol highschool au featuring the Central High crew (Ed, Al, Winry, Ling, Lan Fan, and Paninya.) ships include ed x ling and paninya x lan fan.
“I don’t mean to sound like a cynic here,” Paninya said as
she eyed her friends, where a good 2/3 of them looked inches from death, “but I
could have sworn the point of a movie night was to watch the movie.”
Ling didn’t even stir from where he laid sprawled out on the
couch, cheek resting on one of Ed’s legs while a small puddle of his drool
darkened a patch of Ed’s jeans. Ed himself was barely conscious, his head
bobbing up and down as he slipped between sleeping and waking every few
seconds. Winry had left the living room a while ago to go make herself some
coffee, though it was debatable if she ever made it to the kitchen. Paninya
half expected to find her lying face-down in the hallway to match the younger Elric
brother, who was currently lying on the floor and groaning.
“What even happened to you guys?” Paninya asked,
suspiciously poking at Ling’s face. He let out a half-hearted whine and swatted
in the vague direction of her hand.
Lan Fan emerged from the kitchen with a bowl of popcorn and
sat down on her end of the couch next to Paninya, shaking the bowl in her
girlfriend’s direction. Paninya took a handful.
“They pulled an all-nighter working on a AP Chem project,”
she said simply. She held up her phone. “Ling tweeted about it the entire
night.”
Paninya looked down at her girlfriend’s phone and scrolled a
bit, seeing tweet after tweet from Ling in all caps.
Ling Yao
@actualprinceling
I HATE THIS I WANT TO DIE
Ling Yao
@actualprinceling
NO ONE CARES THIS MUCH ABOUT CHEMISTRY
Ling Yao
@actualprinceling
IS IT OKAY TO BREAK-UP WITH YOUR BF OVER A GROUP PROJECT
Ling Yao
@actualprinceling
WILL DESTROY THE NEXT ELRIC NERD WHO CORRECTS MY STOICHIOMETRY I SWEAR TO FUCK
“Um, is the happy couple still together?” she asks
carefully.
Ed stirred from his daze long enough to nod slowly. “Only
because he said he didn’t have the energy to dump me after staying up all
night. Plus, it’s his own fault for not checking his math—”
“—I will punch you in the dick, Edward Elric,” came the
muffled groan from his lap.
“—or paying attention, like at all, in class. Really he’s pretty useless as a lab partner.”
Ling stirred for a moment like he might actually rise to fight Ed, but Ed
reached down and carded his hand through his boyfriend’s bangs, placating him.
Ling hummed softly and laid back down.
“Wait,” Paninya said. “Why is Al tired? He’s not even in AP
chemistry. He’s a junior.”
“They were doing it all wrong!” Alphonse suddenly cried from
the floor. “Like, you guys had to memorize the entire periodic table for class,
how could you not know the difference between a lanthanoid and an actinoid?”
“No matter how many times you say that, we’re still not
gonna know what it means!” Paninya heard Winry call from the kitchen.
Both Elrics groaned in contempt. Paninya rolled her eyes. This
was the problem with being friends with science nerds.
“Alphonse came to help them with their project halfway
through the night. Winry and Ling weren’t much help to Edward,” Lan Fan
translated, still scrolling through her Twitter Feed and munching on her
popcorn.
“It’s moments like these that really make me value my
general ed education,” Paninya said haughtily. “Like, I can’t remember the last
time I had to pull an all-nighter for remedial Earth Science.”
“That’s because you conned me into doing it for you,” Al muttered angrily.
Paninya shrugged. It wasn’t her fault that he was gullible enough to be tricked into doing
everyone else’s science homework.
“Some famous CEO once said he’d choose a lazy person to do a
hard job because they’d find the easiest way to do it,” she said with a smirk. “I
happened to find the easiest way to do homework is to have others do it for
me.”
Lan Fan snorted. Alphonse groaned again.
“And anyways, I didn’t invite you guys to a movie night to
have you all fall asleep on me,” Paninya said with her hands on her hips. Lan
Fan quirked an eyebrow at her, and Paninya amended with a pat on Lan Fan’s
knee, “Besides you, babe.”
“Paninyaaaaa,” Ling cried pitifully. “Can’t we watch the
movie another night? I don’t even remember what we’re watching.”
It was some sci-fi B movie that Ed picked out during their
last fight about what to watch for movie night, which meant that Paninya didn’t
give a crap about the movie either. “Well, I didn’t actually invite you here to
watch a movie, either,” she said with a grin. “I gathered you all here today to
talk about prom.”
The three tired teenagers groaned in response. Paninya was
pretty sure she heard Winry make a miserable noise from the kitchen as well.
Paninya pressed on. “One, you’re all horrible when you’re
tired. Two, are we getting a limo?”
“Too show-y,” Al said from the floor.
“Too expensive,” Ed said from beside her on the couch.
“Mmrph ih,” Ling mumbled sleepily into Ed’s leg.
Winry finally returned from the kitchen, holding a
dangerously large cup of coffee. She sat down cross-legged on the floor beside
Alphonse’s sprawled form. “I don’t know, guys. I think a limo could be kind of
fun.” The Elrics bristled briefly before she continued. “Come on, guys. You
have enough money from babysitting Nina to pitch in. And what’s wrong with
being a little corny and flashy for one night? Isn’t that what prom is all
about?”
Paninya’s smile lit up her whole face. “That’s my girl! I
vote limo too.” She held up her hand and ticked off her fingers. “All right,
that means we have two for the limo, two against the limo, one—” Paninya nudged
Ling with her elbow. He didn’t move. “—unconscious person, and one vote left.”
She turned her full body to face Lan Fan. “So. Babe. As the tie-breaker vote,
what’s the final decision?”
Lan Fan scrunched up her nose, adorably and angrily. “How is
that fair? I didn’t even want to go
to prom and now you’re making me the swing vote?” All eyes remained on her, but
Lan Fan was only looking to Paninya, who was doing her best to give her
girlfriend the strongest puppy dog eyes she had in her arsenal. “Now that’s definitely not fair.”
Paninya did not waiver. Lan Fan continued to scowl for five
more seconds.
Then she gave in.
“Fine! We’ll get you your stupid limo.”
“Yes!” Paninya fist pumped in victory. “You’re the best, did
you know that?”
Lan Fan grumbled unhappily until Paninya kissed her, a
million little ones on her nose and cheeks and lips until Lan Fan was giggling
and pushing her away before she knocked the popcorn off her lap. “You’re lucky
you’re cute,” she said breathlessly, trying to return her face to its usual
sternness and failing.
Paninya kissed her once more. “Oh, I know it.”
She turned to her friends once more, already pulling out her
phone to bring up the info for the four limousine websites she had researched,
but when she looked up, half of her friends were asleep. She turned to Winry and
Paninya, the two most perfect girls in the entire world and also the only conscious
people left in the room, and sighed. Instead she reached into her front overalls
pocket, where she had kept an assortment of different colored markers for this
very purpose.
“Ladies, I’m afraid we’ll have to wait to book a limo for
now. Until then,” she gravely handed the two girls a marker each, “there’s only
one thing left to do.”
The photos were posted on Instagram immediately, as was
tradition for any sleepover Paninya hosted. “FLEA” in all caps was written
across Edward’s forehead in rainbow colors, Winry’s sketchy script recognizable
to anyone. Ling’s cheek, the one that wasn’t resting on Ed’s thigh, had “PEASANT”
scrawled on it, a meme from ages ago that Lan Fan knew Ling hated with a passion. Alphonse’s
sleeping face was mercifully saved, since Paninya owed him for him doing all of
her science homework for her since the beginning of time. Paninya instead
slapped a sticky note to the unconscious junior’s forehead with a little halo
drawn in orange sharpie.
“Which do you think they’ll be more mad about, the limo vote
they missed, or the face doodles?” Winry asked as she pulled out the air
compressor our of the storage closet for the blow-up mattress.
Paninya shrugged, leading the girls into her room and away
from the snoring boys in the living room. “Doesn’t matter to me,” she said with
smile.
This is was what they got for falling asleep during movie
night, anyway.
it literally just dawned on me that Pinako probably thought Winry was dead
Winry goes to Briggs to help with Ed’s automail, and that’s normal enough – but she never calls to check in. And maybe Pinako thought, oh, she’s growing up. She’s off in Rush Valley now, she’s not going to call me every time she goes somewhere – except Winry never calls. Weeks pass. She calls Garfiel, who says he hasn’t spoken to her since she left. She asks around other places and comes up with nothing. She even tries to contact the Briggs military, but it’s a mess and no one will talk to her. She tries to find Ed and Al, but no one knows where they are either.
Months pass.
She starts to wonder if she’s going to lose Winry the same way she lost her son – if Winry was going to leave home to go help someone and never return. She wonders why she keeps losing everyone she cares about. Her house felt emptier when Winry left for Rush Valley, but it feels like a graveyard for those six months, and she tries to fill the space with just herself and Den, and she tries not to imagine that Winry’s dead.
and then finally, after nearly half a year without word from anyone, Winry comes home.
I have a lot of feelings after watching Brotherhood…have an emotional sketch dump of Al getting used to feeling alive again and catching up on lost time with his brother!
listen one of my absolute favorite things about roy is how an absolute MOSH he becomes around riza
like you see this charismatic, cunning, and honestly, pretty terrifying man, and then, when Riza is mad at him , or anything like that, he’s just
i mean come on
like roy mustang is, by all means , not a loser. he is a highly intelligent, strong man that can make an all-powerful being like a homunculus squirm, but with his Lieutenant, he somehow seems to lose that whole effect
1. The plot moves a million miles per hour and has like, a minimum of two plot twists an episode. It’s super serialized and feels like a novel.
2. Answers that most series would drag out until the end are answered super quickly to keep the story moving.
3. The protagonists’ plight is really sad/interesting and you actually feel invested in their story and how it ends right from the first episode.
4. The protagonists have lots of agency and drive the story forwards, and there are multiple protagonists with their own plotlines.
5. Multiple interesting antagonists with intriguing worldviews.
6. The antagonists are super intimidating, not just to the characters but to the audience. Every scene one of them is in is extremely tense.
7. Unique setting that isn’t exactly fantasy and isn’t sci-fi.
8. The world’s “magic” has all of it’s rules explained so characters can’t manifest abilities you’ve never seen before without it being logical or foreshadowed.
9. Lots of tragic backstories, but the story has a light tone, and doesn’t try to be dark for no reason.
10. Never afraid to kill off characters, no matter how important, but gives lots of importance to every death that does happen so none of them feel “cheap”.
12. Romantic plotlines that don’t feel forced or boring. No love triangle nonsense to be seen.
13. Side characters that are actually given importance to the overall plot and are given their own characterizations and motivations.
14. Multiple badass female characters.
15. Midwifery being presented as awesome.
16. Gender norms being subverted left and right. Giant, muscly men full of emotions and tears. Women with majestic, long hair that have killed before and will kill again.
17. Deals with race, genocide and the aftermath of war, showing both sides of the conflict.
18. Doesn’t take itself too seriously. Contains the most masterful humorous to emotional tone shifts I have ever seen. They feel seamless.
19. Well choreographed combat scenes with innovative tactics abound.
20. This is subjective, but there are many, many scenes that are sad, or thought provoking, or spine-chilling. It’s a series that constantly shocks and amazes, even on rewatches.
21. AMAZING ending. You’ve heard of 2 episode climaxes. You’ve heard of 4 episode climaxes (hello, Avatar the Last Airbender). Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood has a 15 EPISODE CLIMAX. That’s 5 straight hours of finale that literally NEVER GETS BORING.
bullshit central 