Thanks! Roy is a character who can adapt and work with just about any premise, given enough room to manuever. FMA characters are great for fanfic, because even the supporting players seem like real people, with fully-developed multidimensional personalities--so a writer can rely on what feels like the knowledge of a close friend to determine what Roy or Maes or even the Tringhams would say or do, presented with this or that situation
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Loved it! Nicely written and sad, especially the time jump, which was painfully abrupt - in a good way.
Also loved the little details, especially Roy's fussiness about coffee - you're so right that the vacuum brewer fits him to a tee, and looks very alchemical to boot.
Thank you! I fretted a bit about that time jump, but finally decided that the sharp cut was rather like Hughes' death, so it fit. I still miss Hughes, and revive him or go AU so he never died in the first place in most fics I write. It's a tribute to Arakawa's mastery of character development that we all mourn Hughes so keenly when he really didn't get much canon "screen time" to establish himself in our hearts.
I love the "alchemical" look of the vacuum brewer--if I drank coffee, that's the sort of coffeepot I'd want to own. I imagine Roy brews his morning coffee strong, and considers the coffee at Headquarters to be well below the threshold of acceptability. Think he might have made a minor study of the chemistry of coffee, just so he can turn HQ sludge into a bearable beverage?
Yes, totally agree about the function of the abruptness, Hughes' death in pretty much all three versions of canon is done as a very abrupt switch of mood. It's amazing how little time he's actually around for in the manga especially, it feels like he's a really well-established member of the ensemble cast.
About the coffee: I'm a terrible coffee fiend, I like it strong and black and it's got to be the proper stuff. Because this is the sort of crazy detail I speculate about when writing my own fic: I imagine alchemically-fiddled-with or reheated coffee would taste a lot like fresh coffee does when microwaved, i.e. terrible. Not that that would stop a true scientist from experimenting! Roy's best bet for decent office coffee, though, would be bringing in a French press pot and a packet of ground beans. 50/50 whether he'd make it himself as a procrastination technique, or just show a minion how to make it properly. Behold my nerdery, both fic- and coffee-related.
Woohoo for nerds! I'm not a coffee nerd, but I can claim profound nerd status on a variety of other topics--some of which appear in my fics from time to time, though I try to keep it (and my rampaging fangirlism) from showing too much.
Finally got here! I love this story! (And I promise, mine will finally get posted this weekend, if not later today.)
What I think is so interesting is that almost everything can be related to the Roy/Maes personal connection. It was so important that it's not hard to imagine most things in Roy's life eventually circling back around to that great loss.
Hughes' death is so much a catalyst, or perhaps a turning point, for the FMA canon that it's really hard to make the story work without killing poor Maes. I don't much like killing off good guys--I almost never do it in my writing--but in this case, it's so well done that not even I can call Hughes' murder a gratuitous and unnecessary attempt at drama. (Most killings in fiction are unnecessary plot devices, and as such I resent them.)
Roy really does never quite recover from either Ishbal or losing Hughes. He manages to go on living and driving toward his goals, but I think those traumas make him the more driven--not to say obsessed--to see his plans through. He's wise to have Hawkeye watching him--because he came awfully close to snapping completely under the strain of his losses, in recent manga issues. Someone needs to be a check on his sanity.
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hahaha, I almost wish I lived on EdRoy Court. XD
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Also loved the little details, especially Roy's fussiness about coffee - you're so right that the vacuum brewer fits him to a tee, and looks very alchemical to boot.
*applause*
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I love the "alchemical" look of the vacuum brewer--if I drank coffee, that's the sort of coffeepot I'd want to own. I imagine Roy brews his morning coffee strong, and considers the coffee at Headquarters to be well below the threshold of acceptability. Think he might have made a minor study of the chemistry of coffee, just so he can turn HQ sludge into a bearable beverage?
Reply
About the coffee: I'm a terrible coffee fiend, I like it strong and black and it's got to be the proper stuff. Because this is the sort of crazy detail I speculate about when writing my own fic: I imagine alchemically-fiddled-with or reheated coffee would taste a lot like fresh coffee does when microwaved, i.e. terrible. Not that that would stop a true scientist from experimenting! Roy's best bet for decent office coffee, though, would be bringing in a French press pot and a packet of ground beans. 50/50 whether he'd make it himself as a procrastination technique, or just show a minion how to make it properly. Behold my nerdery, both fic- and coffee-related.
Reply
Reply
What I think is so interesting is that almost everything can be related to the Roy/Maes personal connection. It was so important that it's not hard to imagine most things in Roy's life eventually circling back around to that great loss.
Reply
Roy really does never quite recover from either Ishbal or losing Hughes. He manages to go on living and driving toward his goals, but I think those traumas make him the more driven--not to say obsessed--to see his plans through. He's wise to have Hawkeye watching him--because he came awfully close to snapping completely under the strain of his losses, in recent manga issues. Someone needs to be a check on his sanity.
Reply
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