On the topic of deaths in FMA (so, major spoiler tag right now for the FMA:B anime/manga) there’s one that’s just so well-constructed, so well-executed, and I’ve never seen anyone bring this up:
The Death of Wrath, Fuhrer King Bradley
It was Bradley who ordered and signed the extermination campaign in Ishval. And he did so unflinchingly. Partway through the war, the High Priest of Ishval offers himself up to Bradley in an attempt to end the war–one leader turning himself over to the other.
And Bradley, Bradley scoffs. He laughs at the notion that any one human life can be worth more than any other. He states that this priest’s life does not equal the tens of thousands of Ishvalans.
They curse him out. They tell him God will punish him. And Bradley invites it
He dares God to strike him down! He dares God’s Wrath to find him, and end him. But of course, nothing happens. The war continues. The Ishvalans die.
Then, we have Scar, who’s seeking vengeance for his murdered people. He does it in God’s name. He targets State Alchemists, because they are blasphemers. They distort things from the form God gave
them. They create, when creation is
the domain of God alone.
Al attempts to call Scar out on this hypocrisy later when
they battle in Central. Scar claims he’s working a loophole though. His arm
only destroys. He’s not encroaching
on God’s domain. He does not create.
Fast forward many many chapters. Scar is the final person to battle Bradley. And he finds
himself losing at first, even with Bradley as injured as he is. Then Scar pulls
out his trump card, gains the upperhand on Bradley, gains the advantage.
He’s tattooed his brother’s other design on his left arm. He’s
embraced the creation arm. Against
his beliefs, against his morals, against his creed, Scar has become one of the
blasphemers. He’s encroached on God’s
domain, because the magnitude of failure outweighed the sin of creating.
Bradley mocks him for this. He claims Scar must have finally
realized God is fake. That He’s a construction of humans, and the war has
finally broken Scar of his faith. If Bradley were right, Arakawa would probably
have him win this fight. He doesn’t, though. Scar beats him.
Scar, finally,
kills him. And he does it by embracing creation.
After countless attempts, after the train explosion, after Buccaneer’s death, after Fu’s death, Bradley remained alive. It was Scar, in the end, who got to kill him, and he succeeds in the face of Bradley claiming he’s surrendered his faith. So no, it’s not that Scar’s given up his faith.
Far from it.
By embracing creation, Scar has, symbolically, BECOME the
God of Ishval.
He creates. He destroys. He is nameless, yet acts in the name of Ishvala. He is Wrath. And it’s not just that “Wrath was killed by a wrathful man.”
Scar is the Wrath of Ishvala.
Bradley is killed by
the God of Ishval.
Bradley invoked the Wrath
of Ishvala, and he dies by it.
God did find Bradley, in the end. He was late on the invite, but He answered. Oh god, did He answer.
Maybe medieval people happened upon a T-Rex fossil and came to a relatively logical conclusion that dragons existed.
I’ve read a couple books on this actually, thats exactly what happened. Also cyclops are from looking at bones from a certain type of baby elephant. The giant note hole and tiny eyes made it look like a single eye.
Yep, can confirm! And what’s even funnier to me is that back in the dark ages, Greek people used to find a lot of prehistoric bear skeletons – and those look exactly like human skeletons, except they’re like eight feet tall or something – so they naturally assumed those were the heroes of legend, and made armour and clothes for them and reburied them with the most splendid and sacred religious ceremonies they could think of? Fast forward five centuries, Athens’ all modern and rational, philosophers and scientists aren’t taking any shit from anyone – but the problem is, people will randomly find graves containing giant-ass warriors, so that’s something that can’t be explained away and yeah, demigods were a thing and yeah, they used to be eight feet tall and sorry I don’t make the rules.
Some scientists suspect that the origin of the cyclops myths came about because of elephant skulls, which are vaguely human in shape but with a honking big hole in the middle for the trunk but easily mistakable for an eye socket without any flesh
bullshit central 