Appendix: Story Notes
Character References
(you can find these folks on wikipedia)
Hermann Oberth (1894/06/25 – 1989/12/28) - wiki/Hermann_Oberth
Brigitte Schittenhelm (1906/03/12 – 1996/06/11) - wiki/Brigitte_Helm
Rudolf Hess/Heß (1894/04/26 – 1987/08/17) - wiki/Rudolf_Hess
Albrecht Haushofer (1903/01/07 – 1945/04/26) - wiki/Albrecht_Haushofer
Karl Haushofer (1869/08/27 – 1946/03/10) - wiki/Karl_Haushofer
Charles Wilson (1882/11/10 – 1977/04/12) - wiki/Charles_Wilson,_1st_Baron_Moran
Original Posting Dates
EP51 - 2004/10/02 - JP air date
Act I
CH01 - 2004/10/13 - Trains in Opposite Directions - 9,726 words
CH02 - 2004/11/16 - A Stranger's Face - 9,427
CH03 - 2004/11/29 - Those Who Watch Over Him - 9,270
CH04 - 2004/12/08 - In Honour of a Memory - 10,301
CH05 - 2004/12/22 - Media of Suspicion - 10,135
CH06 - 2004/12/24 - Father's Christmas - 6,403
CH07 - 2005/01/02 - Violation of Soul - 9,824
CH08 - 2005/01/12 - Replacements - 8,687
CH09 - 2005/01/16 - The Warmth Of... - 9,158
CH10 - 2005/01/28 - The Hermaphrodite Child of the God of Boundaries - 10,519
CH11 - 2005/02/25 - An Omnipresent Void - 9,176
CH12 - 2005/03/11 - From Beyond the Looking Glass - 9,778
CH13 - 2005/03/28 - Contrast Blue - 10,906
CH14 - 2005/04/09 - Flow of Changeover - 10,331
CH15 - 2005/05/01 - Façade - 11,869
CH16 - 2005/06/23 - The Devil's Mask - 10,028
COS - 2005/07/23 - Conqueror of Shamballa JP theatre release
CH17 - 2005/07/31 - Returned to Parent - 10,027
CH18 - 2005/08/07 - Resembool Verses - 10,270
Act II
CH19 - 2005/10/07 - Existence Revisited - 10,918
CH20 - 2005/12/04 - Eyes on the World's Other Side - 9,565
CH21 - 2006/01/03 - Delirium Ghosts - 10,501
CH22 - 2006/02/10 - Upon the Doorstep of Revolution - 9,776
COS - 2006/09/12 - Conqueror of Shamballa EN release
CH23 - 2007/02/12 - Puppetmaster - 10,676
CH24 - 2007/08/27 - Nobody's Heroine - 10,050
CH25 - 2010/05/24 - In Lieu of Armistice - 10,198
FMA - 2010/06/11 - Chapter 108 (Finale)
CH26 - 2010/06/12 - The Theory of Beyond the Gate - 11,224
CH27 - 2010/07/03 - Rebellious Ignorant - 10,530
FMAB - 2010/08/25 - Episode 64 (Finale)
CH28 - 2010/07/20 - At Crossroads - 10,084
CH29 - 2010/08/09 - The Orchestra's Conductor - 8,595
CH30 - 2010/09/03 - The Dual Tandem - 8,526
CH31 - 2010/09/24 - Pieces of Family - 9,577
CH32 - 2010/10/19 - Envy - 9,888
CH33 - 2010/10/29 - Der gute Kamerad - 8,650
CH34 - 2010/11/27 - The Cataclysm's Catalyst - 10,067
CH35 - 2010/12/17 - Atrophy of Mankind - 9,764
CH36 - 2011/02/25 - Social Augmentation - 11,087
CH37 - 2011/03/14 - Pages in the Journeyman's Voyage - 10,020
CH38 - 2011/04/10 - The Crimson Charm - Part 1 - 12,115
CH39 - 2011/04/16 - The Crimson Charm - Part 2 - 12,003
CH40 - 2011/05/12 - The Crimson Charm - Part 3 - 11,187
CH41 - 2011/07/23 - From Sunset to Horizon - 9,625
Act III
CH42 - 2011/09/04 - Second Chances - 9,447
CH43 - 2011/11/12 - Bad Witch - 10,327
CH44 - 2021/06/20 - The Xenotime Gambit - 10,504
CH45 - 2021/06/27 - Pushback - 9,663
CH46 - 2021/07/04 - Lesson Plan - 11,633
CH47 - 2021/07/11 - What Lies Between - 10,030
CH48 - 2021/07/18 - Before the Calm Storm - 11,386
CH49 - 2021/07/25 - Caution Signs - 11,090
CH50 - 2021/08/15 - Best Laid Plans - 9,538
CH51 - 2021/09/05 - The Games People Play - 9,788
CH52 - 2021/09/19 - The Trembling Foundations - 10,076
CH53 - 2021/10/03 - Dante's Labyrinth - 8,569
CH54 - 2021/10/24 - Firestone - 9,688
CH55 - 2021/11/14 - Dichotomy of the Two - 11,108
CH56 - 2021/12/12 - Worn Fragments - 10,517
CH57 - 2022/01/09 - Fractures - 9,435
CH58 - 2022/02/06 - The Trail of Breadcrumbs - 9,448
CH59 - 2022/03/20 - Inequivalent Exchange - Part 1 - 11,247
CH60 - 2022/04/24 - Inequivalent Exchange - Part 2 - 10,345
CH61 - 2022/07/22 - Inequivalent Exchange - Part 3 - 14,146
CH62 - 2022/09/10 - The Wounded Earth - 12,347
CH63 - 2022/10/02 - Silversmith - 11,259
CH64 - 2022/10/29 - Leaving Wonderland - 10,822
CH65 - 2022/11/20 - Perfect Imperfections - 11,652
CH66 - 2022/11/20 - Epilogue: Metropolis - 5,297
Closing Thoughts
(this is me rambling on about the fic… a lot)
This is it. This is my headcanon. I have lived here since the very last episode. When it was announced at the end of ep 51 that the series would be finished in a movie I was devastated! I thought they needed another 50 episodes worth… or 65, apparently… so I wrote my own ending. Though, I had no idea it would turn into something like this . I'm happy to have brought anyone who needed/wanted it along on this ride with me.
This story may already be older than some of its readers and that's amazing on so many levels. I hope FMA, especially this version, keeps on giving. It's obviously very dear to me lol and it plays a very important role in anime history.
At the time I started, wikipedia was a baby and so were resources on the internet. Offline materials didn't have little details that I was looking for (everything was very factual). If I'd known at the time that Hermann and Tilly had 2 kids already (they go on to have 4), and that Charles Wilson was married (no kids yet though), I would have included them. What fun that would have been to have Ed and Winry interact with Hermann's two young kids (while Ed may be socially antagonistic in this story, he's actually very good with kids. It would have been really eye opening for everyone, it's a shame I never had a chance to insert it). Dr. Wilson's wife would have been a fun addition to the dynamic as well.
I had a few teenagers in mind to fill the Brigitte-type role (I don't remember who they all were anymore), but I picked Brigitte because the year of her birth was disputed (1906 vs 1908 - this fic uses 1908). I remember reading on baby wikipedia that the reason it was disputed was because there was suspicion her birth year had been falsified as 1906 so she could get the role of Maria in Metropolis. I did my due diligence (because, you know, wikipedia lol) and checked sources to confirm and was satisfied. That allowed me to take Brigitte for however long I needed, because she would return around the same point in time she'd left, but be slightly older and thus validate the age change depending on how long she stayed in Amestris, because I hadn't decided on how or when I'd get her home again. That age discrepancy information doesn't exist online anymore. There's a lot of information wikipedia doesn't have about her anymore, like mention of her sister Heidi. I'm assuming that's because the sites that were once used in 2004/05 as reference have simply gone offline over the years (and the info can't be on wikipedia without a source… at least it shouldn't lol)
The fic was written with an evergreen outline - it developed with the characters. I had a rough plan in my head of significant events and milestones that needed to happen, but letting the characters write themselves on the go and dictate how some things went allowed me to be organic with them and explore them. FMA is as much about the characters as it is the story. I felt it made everyone more human that way, rather than having them perfectly planned and outlined (the more I outline, the more contrived my writing feels to me). With one significant exception (I'll get to that later) everything stayed on a general course, only a few things veered off:
- Al getting his memories back was never supposed to happen. He was only supposed to receive the revelation that Aisa had the Philosopher's Stone inside of her because it resonated with him. I didn't decide to give Al his memories back until he woke up in front of the Gate again after touching Aisa. Originally I had him drawing a transmutation circle in the black 'tar' of the Gate and activating it before it faded, but his logic process for figuring it out was too smart and convenient for where his character was at. It lacked drama too. I thought 'damn, wouldn't it be cool if Al clapped his hands and saved Ed', but Al didn't know that the handclap alchemy skill was acquired by going to the Gate. The option was there for me to let him use if he discovered it, but he wasn't just going to magically figure it out. Al with his memories solved all the problems I had - he knew a lot , and he would have enough wherewithal to put all the other missing pieces together to solve what was going on without frustrating me too much, so he got them back LOL. I'm really glad I did that :) he's a much stronger character afterwards.
- Ed and Winry… just wrote themselves together really well . I have no other explanation for that LOL. When this fic started and when I sent her over there, it was meant to be a platonic as they come. Winry was not that popular of a character in the mid-2000s and Ed/Winry did not have the popularity it has today (in 2004/05 Winry was still very underdeveloped even in the manga - lots of the classic EdWin content we look back at now hasn't been drawn yet). Once I added her she was actually really easy to write and I wanted to develop her character, and I wanted to do it without turning her into Ed's love interest (because Ed doesn't have time to worry about girls, or love, or hormones, none of that – he's focussed on Al and on going home). I wanted the both of them to develop their strengths, and discover the strengths they had with each other, without resorting to coupling troupes. Once they were home, I figured they'd earned their way out of pure platonic and into whatever this cautious business is that they're inching towards now.
On an ancient USB stick with only 512MB of space, I have the first 18 chapters of this fic and all the early workings and brainstorming that went into it. I lost it in my school library once. I left it plugged into a school computer and forgot to take it out when I left. I was more worried about my fic (and someone reading it) than I was the homework LOL. Someone kindly turned it into the library staff and I got it back (the Al dangle hanging on it was very helpful too lol).
I have a huge notes document on the stick from Dec '04/Jan '05 and the first line is Hitler = Envy. Goes on to give details of Hitler's activities in 1920/21, plus details on Karl & Albrecht Haushofer, Rudolf Hess, the Thule Society, plus other political figures that might have been relevant for the end of 1921 and how they all related to each other. I have some detailed notes on Walter Riehl, though I never used him. I also wrote out how a rebound works according to series lore and then tried to work that into the functionality of the circle etched on the Thule floor to explain how its deliberate rebound was meant to function (and ultimately get Ed home). I'm rather impressed with myself that I actually had this all worked out by chapter 7… even if it took me another 6½ years to actually stick Al there to execute it.
I'd forgotten I'd done this, but for all of part 1 and 2 I'd kept Ed and Al's sides in separate documents and then combined them to finalize the chapters.
The first chapter that actually feels like what this fic is about is Father's Christmas. That was the first chapter I wrote where I went "ahhh… that's what this story feels like". The original takes of 1-5 are me trying to learn how to be a fic writer (and they suffered for it looollll x.x). Hopefully the originals are nowhere to be found on the internet now LOL (though, I do have a binder with printouts of them that I made in 2005 haha. I had to be a real ninja at school to brave printing off a story from FFN and snatch it from the printer before anyone saw what I was up to).
One of the early scenes I remember writing that's always stuck with me was the scene at Gracia's where Winry and Al have the paper towel roll and have to take turns talking (and fail miserably). They got to act like themselves for a bit, they got to act their ages for a bit, and it was just fun.
Right after the series ended, the idea of doing AU versions of the characters wasn't a thing, and there was also no indication of Ed's age or any details to how he ended up in Munich 1921 of all places. For a short while it was up to fanfic writers to make that up and fill in the blanks *raises hand*. And then Alfons was revealed, then later a lot more of the characters, and the general scope of CoS. I wanted to stay away from doing the CoS thing of introducing AU versions of characters into the narrative. I had told readers very early on that it wouldn't happen. One day my brain went "but how about Patricia?" and I went to war with myself over whether or not to a) include her after I said I wouldn't b) do that to poor Ed LOL.
I did that to poor Ed :'')
While Ed and Winry were in Europe, my outline kept track of every calendar day that passed for them. Whenever an actual date is referred to, it's the accurate date for the passage of time & events from my outline. It helped me keep track of how much time had passed on the Amestris side, since Europe was moving faster (or if I needed to speed up Amestris, I could adjust Ed's events accordingly). There were no set dates though for when things were going to happen. The date Hohenheim died and the date Ed and Winry went home were just simply the days where the events landed, then the chapter contents accommodated the time of year. The most coordinated date is Hohenheim's passing landing between Christmas and New Years. When I realized it was going to happen around Christmas, I made sure it was after Christmas. I also made sure Ed was in Germany for his birthday.
I wanted positive experiences for Ed, Winry, and Hohenheim before he died, so I gave them a nice Christmas chapter. I didn't want Ed feeling regret or animosity over an altercation with his dad before he died, so that he didn't have anything easy to hide behind when he was faced with his emotional crisis. The couple chapters before he died, Ed and Hohenheim were on their best terms.
Since we're on that topic: Hohenheim was always scheduled to die. Other than reuniting the boys as the obvious end game, that was this story's first plot point LOL. Hohenheim never had any aspirations to get home, because he had accepted he would die in that world. I remember reading a review someone left on the chapter he died in that was along the lines of "did you foreshadow this when he stated he wouldn't be going home with Ed?" ya darn right I did :'''). Ed was always meant to reach a point with his father where he would be faced with an emotional crisis when he dies. For some reason (in the initial fic vision I daydreamed up) Winry was there to console him. I didn't know why she was there, so I figured out how to get her there as I wrote the first few chapters. It's quite possible I threw her across the Gate just so she could be there to hug Ed when his dad died LOL. The endcap image in Der gut kamerad is the oldest mental image I have of the fic.
When I wrote Dir gute kamerad, I had a teeerrrrible time trying to start it. I struggled so hard. I didn't want to do it lol. One of my guiltiest pleasures writing this fic was writing Ed and Hohenheim… and it was time to end that ;A;. I solved the block by writing Hohenheim's obituary at the opening of the chapter to make it official in my head. I wrote the paragraph, made myself cry (it's very hard to type and cry at the same time), and then I got the cry out of my system, proceeded to make Ed absolutely miserable, and deleted the obituary when the chapter was finished.
I specifically remember writing the section where Ed had to return to the empty house for the first time. It's written with a different style approach than the rest of the fic. It's very robotic and done in larger paragraphs. It was meant to help convey how Ed was (or wasn't) functioning to get through it.
I didn't directly note the date in the fic, but I put Ed's birthday on January 17th. They went home 8 days later on January 25th. I know the fanon accepted date is Feb 3 for Ed's birthday now, but at the time of writing there was no general consensus other than Jan/Feb range. The Feb 3 date didn't pop up until sometime in the mid-2010s(?) when I wasn't paying attention lol.
I wrote all 3 Crimson Charm chapters over a 4-day Easter weekend 2011 :') I lived in the corner of my couch with my laptop and that's all I did that weekend (I had to rewrite pt 3 though, too much writing at that point and it didn't land). My neck hurt like hell when I was done LMAO. I had a great time. Ed and Winry's side in the Crimson Charm was meticulously planned out. Al's wasn't. I had a few scarce notes for Al and just had a blanket "Al figures it out" to go by LOL. It worked :')
I should find something more to say about Al's side of the story, but the Amestris side feels much more straightforward. It was already well established, I was just playing around with it and expanding on what was there. Al's side got the plot, Ed's side got the angst.
Using Nina's body for Dante to hop into felt like cruel, easy pickings lol. It feels sort of foolish for Dante to not change Nina's name, but if I'd given her a new one it would be really hard as a reader (without visual aid or constant reminding) to keep in mind that she was using Nina's face. Nina's name is brought up and you will always get the right mental picture.
In Chapter 64, Leaving Neverland, Mustang wonders "Did Dante have any other loyalists to her research similar to Aisa waiting for her return?". The answer is YES, there are two. At the beginning of the fic I actually had bigger plans for Aisa and her type of role at Dante's side. There was supposed to be three of her type (clearly not with Gluttony's stomach, but willing red water study participants). Aisa, also known as Atropos (which I used for her original last name), was one of the three Greek goddesses of fate, the others being Clotho and Lachesis. Dante had run out of sins all at once and since she was experimenting with something gross and new, I wanted to use that as an opportunity for her to try on a new naming scheme. There's a note on Chapter 11 that I've always kept about Aisa's name appearing Japanese, but having an alternate language source, and it's referring to this. It's Greek lol. There was too much going on and I couldn't figure out how to insert this idea, so I scrapped it at some point before the first act was done. Maybe Mustang'll find the Clotho and Lachesis volunteers while he's out and about. Oh that's an interesting idea…
I was hesitant to add the Tringham boys when I did, I wasn't sure about writing them, but they were handy to have around. I liked having Russell ruffle Mustang's feathers in a different way than Ed did.
Mustang's eyepatch was such a crime I'm so glad I got rid of it.
I didn't really have an end game plan for Mustang for quite a while. He was recuperating and got caught in the nonsense, then he decided 'screw it, I'll try and take over this shitshow again'. But I never really wanted him to actually get the top job. Seemed too easy. Much of the character paths in the story include not necessarily getting *exactly* what you want, coming to terms/finding peace with the hand that's been dealt. I didn't know what kind of middle ground I wanted to give Mustang, but I felt REALLY BAD screwing everything up for him like I did. He deserved better, so when I realized I'd set Hakuro up for Max Paranoia, I was like "oh hoh! There's Mustang's new gig: tearing the underbelly of the country apart." It's a really ugly underbelly and it'll be a long, eye opening venture for him. He better be careful though, because Hakuro really is out there with Maximum Paranoia in his head lol.
Okay, so, many paragraphs ago I mentioned a huge exception that changed in the story…
Ed sacrificing his alchemy to get home in the Crimson Charm chapters was meant to be the original climactic ending, with a few bells and whistles tied in to address Dante (though, not nearly as significant as what I ultimately did to him). Ed had already adjusted to a life without alchemy and it was something he was willing to let the Gate confiscate so he could get home, because he had things in his life that were more important (returning to Al, saving Winry, desire to get home). The fic went on hiatus for a few years shortly after I started Act 2 because I came down with Life, but the approaching climax of FMAB and the manga (they were wrapping up almost concurrently in 2010) brought me back to the fic and I worked up the outline details that would get me to that ending. Just as I started posting chapters again Arakawa had Ed sacrifice his alchemy for Al to wrap up the manga LOL. At the time, the fic ending would have happened soon after manga/brotherhood finished and now it would look like a manga cop-out. The fic ending I was so proud of suddenly felt extremely anti-climactic. Interestingly, Arakawa has said (in the FMA 20th anniversary exhibits in Japan) that Ed giving up his alchemy in the manga wasn't her original ending. She's said Ed's sacrifice used to be much darker/sadder (implying that her original ending was Ed's sacrifice similar to the 03 anime) and she talked herself into a happier ending when it came time to do it.
For the fic though, I didn't want to look like I ripped off the manga ending, but I also didn't know what else to do. I kept writing with the original climax in mind, but I was looking for a way to get out of it. I ran into an issue with Al and Dante at the Gate: Al has very little motivation to get his brother back with Dante there, so I solved that by using Hohenheim's death to send her away and that moved me away from my original ending. Dante was originally meant to be addressed at the Gate when Ed crossed back. Giving Al his memories back also gave him the mental and emotional strength he needed to figure out what to do on his own (and ultimately the rest of the fic) from that point forwards.
I loved how the Crimson Charm turned out, this version much better than the nonsense I had originally planned (I don't really remember it very well anymore and I'm not going to open an old document to remind me LOL). But I'd written myself into a corner. I couldn't figure out a way to write the ending (which needed Ed to goad Dante into attempting to transmute him) without Ed coming off as a colossal asshole to everyone or his behaviour tipping Dante off. I needed to have Al included, but there was no sensible reason for him to go along with anything I (or Ed) was thinking up. I also needed to separate Winry from the action without hurting her anymore. I think I had them being ambushed on their way up north at one point and it was all just BLEH. I couldn't figure out how to get it done and everything came out horribly contrived and too convenient. Nothing gets handed to these characters, they have to work for them. I wrote to a point where I had to settle on a plot direction and I hated all of them, so the fic stopped.
For a long time :')
A very very very long time :''')
I tried something in 2017 but it ultimately went nowhere.
When I picked the story again at the start of 2021, the first thing that got axed was the chapter restriction (51 at the time). It was holding me back and I had to write a whole arc to address Dante.
The first chapter I came back to write in 2021 was The Xenotime Gambit. The original title was The Xenotime Sorcerers, because there was going to be a larger focus on Russel and Fletcher's rescue attempt of everyone (in both the 2012 and 2017 versions of that chapter). The only rough writing from that chapter that I hung on to for the 2021 revival was how Russel and Fletcher come in to save Maria. Brigitte was too smart in those original chapter takes… I'm glad I never posted that.
One of the big problems I had was that I couldn't actually write what was going on from Ed's PoV anymore without spoiling what he was up to, so I had to switch to a neutral or an Al-focus. The story is predominantly Ed's, so I hadn't ever considered flipping to Al to get around things before. Al used to be difficult for me to write (maybe because he used to be mentally much younger and I was dialled into an Ed-focus). He wasn't for this 2021 attempt, which made things so much easier!
Wrath's trance-like behaviour around Ed was really what helped me get the ball rolling again on the story though. I was still trying to find a way to springboard the first three return chapters and that did it. It created an element of mystery that the story lacked and once I added it (and rearranged story elements in the outline for it), the outline started to fall into place.
Roy vs Aisa was a milestone I had established very early on and I was really looking forward to getting to that. Sending Izumi out to Xenotime was something that developed later and I was able to switch neatly between Roy v Aisa and Izumi v Dante. I hope Dante getting her hand blown off was as rewarding for you to read as it was for me to write XD;;;;
The section in the underground tunnel system where Izumi and Roy have their yelling match was originally written as an information exchange section and it was very basic. Obviously the reader could figure out who was coming in through the tunnel, so the nervous setup was bland. I didn't really give much thought to the dullness, but along came a shower thought after I'd completely written it that went "lol k so instead, what if I have them get into an argument like they're angry divorced parents who care about their kids a whole lot, but they're getting to their wits ends and fuck you in particular." I laughed all the way out of the shower and over to the computer. It made things much more interesting :'). It's a very heated argument that still makes me laugh.
Winry was sidelined because her climactic event had passed (and Dante isn't relevant to her like she is to Ed and Al), so she'd earned a reprieve from the bullshit. Putting her aside (as well as Roy and Izumi winding down after Aisa as well) opened up the story for Ed and Al to sort themselves out (which was important, it's a story about two brothers trying to not just reunite, but reconcile and reconnect).
The Trail of Breadcrumbs chapter put a HUGE WRENCH in my writing schedule. It was originally two chapters. There's a full chapter worth of work that I wrote and completely scrapped. The original version was finished for over a month, then I read it before I was supposed to post it and went "this is SO BORING… it's the climax, shit is supposed to be moving". I smashed two completed chapters together to make that one and it set me back like six weeks D: (which was my entire writing buffer).
The events in the Underground City and battle with Dante were the reconciling and reconnecting point with Ed and Al (obvi). Ed coming home was the reunion, but Ed had been out of sync with Al (and knowingly deceiving him, so there's worry and guilt worked in there too). Ed's actually more in sync with Winry, because she's been with him the last while and gotten to know the person he'd become beyond the Gate. Ed didn't want Al to see the shell of himself he thought he'd become (welp), Ed wanted Al to see the ideal version of himself he'd tried to uphold. The battle with Dante also included Ed acknowledging what he was doing and to start trying to re-learn how to rely on Al. The details over how that unfolded changed over time, but the overarching point of it was for the boys to get over their differences and work together to defeat Dante. Everyone else got sidelined slowly to achieve that.
Of all of the vices Dante embodied, her downfall was ultimately greed, which I think is fitting since Greed was the homunculus she didn't have under her control. And how greed is self-destructive.
Writing climactic battle is hard… just throwing that one out there lol. The Inequivalent Exchange trio were exhausting. There's very little character introspection. There's no worldbuilding. There's no observation. There's no growth. It's all facts and reveals and solving and solutions and straightforwardness lol. It was hard for me to write. Everything from Trail of Breadcrumbs to the end of Inequivalent Exchange was a slog. Inequivalent Exchange pt3 alone took me 3-4 months to write even knowing what I would do, it was just hard to nail down to be juuuust right. I wrote Leaving Wonderland in 4 days and barely edited it LOL.
Ed was always set up to send Dante beyond the Gate, but how exactly I wanted that to play out has been revised a million times.
Post series I want Ed to go into teaching, but it might actually be really hard on him. Ed has scientific genius and he can see alchemy and other sciences in a way the average person can't. It's hard for someone who's never struggled with a subject to teach it, because a genius can't see things from the perspective of someone struggling to learn it unintuitively. It might be a huge struggle for him to actually figure out how to dumb down his knowledge, or even deconstruct his thought process and see/present things from a student's perspective. He'd either have to teach at a very high academic level or write advanced text books.
Roy's not wrong that Ed will be much happier with a woman than a bottle. Not that Ed was really going the way of drowning his miseries in alcohol, but it wasn't the first time he gravitated that way. Being his own type of disaster, Roy picked up on it after Ed was back and before everything went bonkers, catching him being in a 'wrong' sort of state. Ed was drinking alone and was jumpy when he was approached, and that set off some warning bells in Roy's head. Roy diffused that incident and refocussed Ed. After the story settles back down and he gets a moment with Ed again, Ed's visually showing signs of his problems. Roy gets Ed to drink with him in a monitored setting where he can figure out the state this Disaster Elric is in and got most of, if not all of, his questions answered. Whether or not Ed remembers everything he said is a secret for Roy to keep.
Al isn't a basketcase like his brother is and he's the least damaged of the Resembool Trio LOL. Definitely went out at midnight to roll around in the grass naked.
Is this the part where I talk at length about Ed and Winry? Yes it is.
I have a feeling some readers wanted something more official for Ed and Winry at the end, but Ed falling in love wasn't part of his character path in this story. He has too much other baggage to deal with first. What was important to his character was how he opened up with Winry, let her in, and then wanted her to stay (whereas before he'd always pushed her away). Ed grows his trust zone beyond Al - Al is his moral compass, Winry becomes his emotional compass. His motivation with her wasn't love, it was the value of her companionship (which is so high that he couldn't put a price on it when threatened). They can fall in love properly later, don't worry about that, Ed just has to address some baggage first. Ed's going to be the happiest bumpkin just to curl up in a chair with Winry in his arms and fall asleep with his face buried in her hair. He'll have the best night's sleep when he gets there *gently nudges him along*.
After Hohenheim dies, Ed starts to change how he interacts with Winry. Ed gradually starts shortening her name to "Win", that one's the most apparent change (Al picks up on it once they're home too). Also, if they're ever standing or walking together Ed makes sure Winry is on his left side, because that's the side his good arm is on and he can protect her with it. Even after he gets his right arm back, he'll still use his left hand/arm/side with her, because that's his tactile side. And Ed starts physically interacting with Winry. He'll put his arm around her shoulders a couple of times, once after the street fight and again in the Thule Hall when Hess is circling. He starts taking her hand before they return home too. First when they're running through the streets in "Atrophy of Mankind" – instead of grabbing her by the wrist or elbow like he normally would, he grabs her hand and hangs on. Winry notices he does that and because of the circumstances it adds to her fear because Ed's never done it before. A few chapters later Ed figures out how to be a gentleman and holds Winry's hand back to their seats at the concert.
The chapters between Hohenheim's death and their return home, Winry is pretty much all Ed has left. Al is out of reach. His dad's been murdered. His sense of self is a mess. The worst people in the world are looking his way. Envy's licking his lips and Ed can't figure out how to get home. He's starting to understand that he doesn't have the power to get home, but he's ignoring it and hoping he can find a way no one else has thought of yet – it's why he's documenting the Thule Hall even though he's already made it known it's not something he wants to toy with. He's going to take this BS anyways and find some way to make this abomination work in his favour. He even starts turning away from rocket science because after reading the Theory of Beyond the Gate knows it's not going to help him (Hermann is really confused why Ed doesn't jump all over an invite to a science conference).
He tries to be more open with her; Winry scolds him for not telling her about Envy, but Ed didn't deny her the information because he was trying to shelter her, he just simply couldn't find a way to relay the bad news. He's unsuccessful in this instance, but he was still trying, and he does manage to communicate his failed thought process, which was important.
Everything that goes down in the Thule Hall is Ed's worst nightmare, and the source of his later nightmares. When Ed picks Winry up to try and salvage what little he has left (their lives) he knows when they step off the circle he'll lose his chance of getting home. When they stop to look at the doll and chalk transmutation circle on the floor, Ed tells Winry 'it's a charm that makes wishes come true', he's realized he's not getting home. By fighting to stay alive he loses the fight to get home and see Al again, and all he can do is wish… which Al grants him.
So, when he gets home, Ed's suffering from some severe emotional whiplash and he's really attached to Winry. He's an absolute mess, but he keeps trying anyway, even if it's poorly. My favourite disaster :')
Ed would have done anything at the Gate to get home, so when Winry's panicking that Ed's going to hurt himself doing it, she's right to think so. Ed and Winry's definitions of 'okay' are different, but the ground they meet on is that Ed makes it clear he wants to get home and live out his life at home. Whatever the Gate's conditions are for getting there, he'll take it, so long as he gets back in as much of one piece as possible.
For the record, in the universe where I write a version of the story where Al doesn't save them and they run down the hall, they would have come out in a train yard on the other side, stowed away in a box car, gone wherever it took them, and eventually made their way back to London where Ed takes Patti up on the Scotland suggestion. At some point the bullets in Winry's leg are addressed, but not while they're in Munich (they ditch everything and get out of there as fast as possible). They live quiet lives, eventually find happiness in each other, and make a few babies. They never go home :(
Hmmmm, random thoughts!
I want to give a huge shout out to AmunRa, who beta'd chapters 8-43. At around chapter 6 or 7 she reached out and offered to beta for me. I didn't know what a beta was at the time and had to ask someone lol. I was too shy to ask anyone to proofread for me, so I was really flattered that one of my readers would volunteer. I've done a lot of revising of chapters 1-7 because they continue to suffer from unbeta'd pain, but when I went to touch up chapter 8 it was NOTICEABLY better lol. The power of your beta. She was amazing, made me and this story better, and she wasn't afraid to tell me when I'd botched something either. I will always be incredibly grateful for all her help. I reached out to her in 2017 when I was thinking about the fic again, and like, the moment I did, life went 'lol no fun for you' and I fell off the internet again. I didn't reach out to her for this last revival. It had been a really long time, and covid was really stressful on everyone everywhere, and I didn't want to trouble her. Me resurfacing years later like 'lol hey you wanna go back to betaing 10K chapters in the middle of a plague?' felt pretty rude. I also didn't know if life was going to continue doing the 'lol no fun for you' and put a stop to things again. I was using the fic to deal with (or not deal with) my own IRL troubles and I just wanted to keep all that to myself. I hid in this story to ignore all my troubles LOL. Also sometimes I get lazy if I know there's someone around to critique me, so I kinda liked the idea of adding the challenge of being my own worst critic. I HOPE YOU'RE DOING WELL, AMUNRA! Folks, if you're into Bleach or Yugioh, go check out her stuff!
The story parts seem to exist to comfort me in stressful times. Part 1 was written during my Educational Crisis (school's hard y'all), Part 2 is mostly during my Professional Crisis (when I realized I was on the wrong career path and wanted to bail oops), and Part 3 is how I dealt with my Covid Crisis. No more life crises for me I guess lol. Though I have to give a special shout out to my old library, where I wrote Part 1. I think I spent more time there in 2005 with my dad's hand-me-down laptop than I did at home. I had one spot in the library where the good vibe was and got kicked out at closing more than once LOL.
I really like how I wrote in 2010/11, there's something loose and free that I feel when I re-read it. I tried to capture that when I started up again, but I feel like I was a little stiff and stale sometimes (mostly because it was very heavily outlined). I'm not sure if that was just me or the rust I was feeling, but hopefully it wasn't too rigid.
Ed picked up one minor speech habit beyond the Gate that he's maintained the whole fic (or at least I tried to maintain *squints*). When referring to himself and another he almost always says "Al and I" or "Winry and I" whereas other characters will say "me and Al" or "me and Winry". That's me inserting how my dad made me correct and repeat all my sentences as a kid to make sure I "use the queen's English" when I spoke lmaoooo. Considering the trouble I got in for minor English infractions, Ed probably got all sorts of grief for how he spoke. Unfortunately for him, that one stuck.
The segment PoVs are generally reserved for the series cast + Brigite, but there are two exceptions for OCs: Rudolf Hess gets a PoV in 'Der gute Kamerad', which is the last time he's seen acting without Envy's influence. Hermann Oberth gets a PoV in 'Pages in the Journeyman's Voyage', which is the last time he ever sees Ed and Winry. It's Tilly's PoV in the epilogue because I introduced her in Chapter 1 and I thought that rounded things out nicely.
Something I did with both Winry and Brigitte early on was have their presence reflect the palette difference that was being used in the Beyond the Gate scenes in the series. The Germany colours are notably muted compared to the Amestris colours, so when Brigitte arrives she finds everything so visually bright she struggles with it. To her, everything is too bright and too warm. Winry's the opposite, everything for her is dull and too cold. Early on, the German characters were describing Winry as radiant and some attributed it to beauty - that was the leftover vibrancy radiating off of her from the brightness of Amestris. I was actually surprised when I found out that people thought I was using it to make Winry extra beautiful and Ed just wasn't noticing it LOL.
Also on that note, Winry constantly complained it was too cold. I had people point out at some point that damn I made 1921 have the worst winter ever. On one hand, yes my small, very northern Canadian brain did overestimate the climate, even if I'd thought I'd compensated haha, but the world was actually not that cold. Winry wasn't used to the chill and perceived everything as MUCH colder than it actually was. At the time I likened it to a Girl Guide camp I went to as a teenager. It was summer, +22-ish outside, we were all in swimsuits and going out to the lake, and the Jamaican Girl Guides who came up for the camp as part of an exchange were so cold in our hot weather that they wore their hoodies and sweats the whole time. We thought it was so nice out we needed to go jump in the lake, but these girls were so cold in my kind of hot they were having none of this adventure. Winry's impression of the weather is like that.
Something I tried to enforce while Ed was in Europe was the world and people he was surrounded by weren't as bad as he made them out to be. Winry noticed that and tried to point it out, but the problem was Ed *wanted* to hate his experience, which is a flaw he's written with. Ed doesn't want to get comfortable there, he doesn't want to enjoy himself there, he doesn't want to be happy, he doesn't want to like anyone, he wants to hone what little positive energy he has into getting home. He doesn't want to miss anything about the place when he goes home. He hurts himself by doing that. The people around him (and even those who ended up with a more sinister history later on in their lives) were just run of the mill people for their age, experiences, and time period.
If I have one regret, or maybe a thing I could change, it's taking away the feeling in Ed's arm and leg. I'd give it back to him, the manner he's bound to the Gate is enough. At the time I took it away it was more justified. He must learn to live with his own mistakes, plus mine too :''). There's a way worked into the story for him to get it back, it's actually fairly easy to do, but after all these boys have been through and learnt, there's NO way they'd chance it. It goes against their lessons and character development. Sorry Ed… at least you're not dead.
If you read this story prior to my 2021 restart, you might notice that I got rid of all the Nazi references and replaces them with another term or NSDAP (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei - the actual name of Hitler's party). 'Nazi' wasn't used to refer to the party until the back-half of the 1920s (before that, 'Nazi' had other meanings) and was rarely used to refer to them internally within Germany. It was the world outside of Germany in the 1930s that transformed the word 'Nazi' into what we recognize it as today.
I get to date myself at the end here, but I remember when I 'joined' the FMA fandom – back then it was the day you join your first series-themed community or forum. By joining, you had arrived! The day I joined was the day FUNi announced they'd licensed the series and all hell broke loose on the internet LOL (licensing was very devastating news in 2004). I showed up to a dumpsterfire and it was a memorable introduction to a fandom. It was also episode 31 of the Japanese broadcast (which was what I'd actually shown up to talk about lol). There was something about living through this series on a weekly basis without any idea what was going to come and absolutely nothing else to compare it to that really hit hard. The manga was already heading in a different direction, but was still very young for story progression, so we were all flying by the seats of our pants on this wild ride. London? AU Ed? Ed getting zeppelin'd? Ed getting impaled by Envy like that? Wild wild trauma ride with no safety nets. This fic was my coping mechanism. I have now coped LOL.
A very big thank you to anyone who has ever read this very, very, very long fanfic. I'm always shocked when someone voluntarily reads this knowing how many words they have to get through LOL. Thank you for doing that. I wrote this nonsense for myself, because I saw big things for the open ended FMA03 series timeline. I hope you enjoyed what I did with it :) and thank you for spending so much of your time in my imagination with me!
