Roy Mustang - Blog Posts
Two wildly different responses to the systemic dehumanization of being a soldier.
If you put them together they almost form one(1) functional adult.
Also bonus doodle because I couldn’t get this post out of my head
Roy Mustang Q&A (Character Guide Translation)
from pages 122 - 123 of Fullmetal Alchemist Character Guide
T/L notes: [comments/additions]. I did not translate literally, as usual, but I tried my best to keep the essence/tone of the sentences.
Q&A | REVELATION OF MUSTANG’S SECRETS
Four men + α (with no girlfriend) will answer questions about Mustang! Let’s reveal the secrets of the Colonel!!
Q: With whom did he spend his 30th birthday?
HAVOC: Somebody finally asked! [lit. trans.: I’ve been waiting!]. He was so proud that he celebrated every year with everyone, but only for his 30th birthday, he was alone and lonely, and went home and drank all by himself. Colonel Mustang — the king of popularity — drinking alone!! He was busy with the transfer to Central, and that’s on top of the mess with Barry, right? Moreover, he was confined in a military hospital so he could not make an appointment for a date. Serves him right!
FALMAN: While he [Mustang] was in the hospital, a bunch of visitors arrived at the headquarters [looking for him]. There weren’t any for the second lieutenant, though.
HAVOC: SCREW YOU!!!
Q: Is it true that he is the type [of person] hated by dogs?
FUERY: Instead of saying hated, I feel that it is at the same level as being regarded with dislike. In his attempt to make the dog obey, the colonel approaches it bossily, which in turn, makes the dog wary of him. He tried to lure it with bait before, but it seems he failed. So even the colonel has his weak points…
Q: Is it true that he has a habit of sleeping with his mouth open? [it comes with the picture of Roy in the Archives Room with Szieska waking him up]
FALMAN: It’s true. While on duty, he is quite focused on showing that he is finishing his work that is why he is exhausted. I’ve also heard of a testimony that he was sleeping while hugging a pillow and was drooling with his mouth open in the nap room of the Eastern Headquarters. [this is based on Havoc’s report from Roy Mustang Observation Diary]
Q: How does he code his research notes?
BREDA: It seems that everything is [coded with] female names. Furthermore, his notes are written as a date diary. Well, in that case, he has to come up with women’s names one after the other.
Q: Did he really steal someone else’s girlfriend?
HAVOC: Some guys were jeering [at Mustang] when he fought Ed in the parade grounds in the past [in Flame vs. Fullmetal battle]. That would be unjustified resentment from a misunderstanding if the break-up line was “I have someone else I like.” Even so, I understand the desire to think that the girlfriend was stolen. Me too… *tears*
Q: Is it true that his drawing [skill] is bad?
FUERY: Rather than saying he is unskillful, [we can say] he is as good as an elementary school student. An alchemist is someone who can draw a perfect circle with his bare hands, but this is quite interesting. Edward seems to have the same level of drawing skill as the colonel.
Q: Is it true that his type of woman varies [i.e. he has a wide scope]?
EDWARD: He is on the same level as everyone else!! This is annoying~ You’re right. The Colonel smiles at any woman — no matter who she is — and he says the sweetest things to her that teeth could fall off. He’s a scary bastard. I think older women are no exception.
Q: Which part of a woman is the most attractive?
MUSTANG: Wow. I would say a woman is attractive no matter where you look at, I can’t decide. *laughs* But if I may dare say, it’s the “thigh.” [yes, I triple checked the translation, it’s not the leg, but thigh!!]. With that said, Havoc…
HAVOC: BOOBS~!!
I really like the questions from this Q&A (OMG, the first and last Qs killed me!!), but translating Edward’s answer was such a pain. His speech pattern is so informal, I got confused with the words several times!!
I was laughing my head off while translating because Team Mustang (especially Havoc) is epic <3 Falman’s replies are very polite. Fuery’s answers are kind and cute. Havoc’s bitterness and snarky comments are absolutely hilarious. Ed is being annoying and angsty, while Roy is smooth as silk as usual.
I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did. There are still some interesting Q&A pages I’ve bookmarked from FMA Institute DX that I’d like to translate. I hope I find enough motivation to do them!! Until next time~
I genuinely love so much that Roy Mustang, for all his brutal pragmatism and haughty coldness and quick ruthlessness, is an idealist. I especially love that his idealism is explicitly different from a naive idealism that does not yet know what the reality is, like that of his youth.
The idealism he carries during the series is a very conscious, active, vicious idealism armed with teeth and claws that he stubbornly and aggressively chooses to possess. He tells Hughes, as the war ends, that he is aware that these are pipe dreams, that this is unrealistic, that this is runaway hope, but he chooses to dream anyway because it is necessary for better futures (and he's right, imagining a better future believing that things can become that IS necessary for change). It's an idealism that is wildly optimistic but in a very grounded, pragmatic way. And for that reason, it's actually never at odds with his very calculating and aloof manner.
It's just so great. He is a ruthless idealist, and his idealism itself is vicious in the way that it is prepared to fight bloody to protect and enact this dream of things getting better.
DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN HAVOC EXPLAINED FLAME ALCHEMY FOR THE AUDIENCE WAY BACK IN CHAPTER FOUR? IT WAS BECAUSE HE ACTUALLY KNOWS WHAT THE HELL WAS GOING ON.
Roy can transmute no matter what, but he can only start a spark if his gloves are dry. His gloves are wet, and they look screwed. But they’re not, they’re covered in water. And Roy’s just like jeeze, I’m totally underrated here, and he says I have unlimited resources. Havoc’s mind makes the jump in a matter of seconds. Roy has all the fuel he needs. Water is nothing more than two parts hydrogen to one part oxygen, and if he splits the molecules, he’ll have hydrogen gas which is highly explosive. So he needs a contained room to do it in, or else they’ll be dealing with a hydrogen fire explosion too.
Of course Roy can transmute water. He just needs something to light the fire, and Havoc tosses his lighter like a grenade into the room, and kaboom.
Don’t look so shocked. This is his field of alchemy. The only reason Roy doesn’t set fire to the rain is because doing so in a wide open space would set off a chain reaction of gas explosions and hydrogen fires that could potentially concussively kill/incinerate everyone in a nearby radius.
Roy is always holding back.
As much as I loved Brotherhood’s version of this scene, there is this wonderful detail in the manga:
He took off his glove.
Roy and Riza vs defeated idealism.
Roy and Riza's journey in Fullmetal Alchemist is the struggle of the naive idealism of youth against the cynical realism of adulthood. At the core of their characters there is a tenet: that Alchemy — or rather power — should be used for the benefit of the people. Like many things in FMA there is an irony in this. This belief that's so crucial to their characters is something they inherited from someone who, in a way, represents the antithesis of this idea.
Berthold Hawkeye.
The Manga goes out of its way to tell us this is something Behold believed in and passed on to them. First when Roy uses it to justify why he joined the military, and then when Riza admits that she believed in her father's words.
The thing is that there is a dissonance between Berthold's teachings and his character's actions. Berthold is a recluse living away from the people his hoarded knowledge is supposed to help. Roy and Riza know this, and they call him out on it.
They both fervently believe in Berthold's teaching, and they don't understand why he's so adamantly against putting it to practice. When they join the military they don't do so to spite him, they do so because they believe in what he preaches, so much so that they want to prove his cynicism wrong.
The problem is that Berthold is right.
He's sooo freaking right.
Their government is corrupt. All that talk about protecting their people is pure propaganda. His cynicism is the pain of someone who was burned too much by the world's cruelty. Berthold is an idealist that has given up, much like Hohenheim before Trisha. He is someone that once wished to help people, and probably came to the same painful realization that Roy and Riza eventually had in Ishval. The path to hell can be paved with good intentions, and sometimes you're completely powerless to do anything about it.
Now, what makes Riza and Roy such great characters, is the fact that instead of falling into despair and secluding themselves like Berthold did, they decide to fight back and continue clawing at the world with their own — no longer so naive — idealism. They have seen where defeat leads to, and they refuse to walk that path.
My favorite example of Roy's acceptance of both Berthold's teaching, as well as his rejection of Berthold's character, is his conversation with Hughes in Ishval.
This conversation is such a beautiful call back to Berthold telling Roy that alchemists die when they cease to think. This is Roy doubling down, acknowledging that yes he was naive — the world is a much more complicated and painful place than he realized — but still he refuses to give up on the face of reality like Berthold did. Where Berthold accepted his fate, as a man who was already dead inside, Roy and Riza continue to struggle to survive.
Berthold might have taught Roy and Riza that power should be used for good, but his biggest lesson to them was perhaps serving as an example of what happens when you allow your dreams and hope to die.
Ps. This thematic of children following on their parent/mentor footsteps and surpassing them is constant on FMA. Winry being a mechanic like her grandma and deciding to be like her parents by forgiving Scar. Ed and Al becoming alchemist like Hohenheim, but also embracing their familiar bonds and continue to help people despite their trauma. Ling Yao becoming emperor and dismantling the infighting his father had promoted. Scar embracing his brother's alchemy and dream. It is then fitting that Roy and Riza also inherited something from Berthold and then surpassed him.
Roy Mustang snaps his fingers accidentally (while wearing his gloves)
What people think will happen: fire, death, destruction
What will actually happen: a small spark
Why people are wrong: they think Roy’s Flame Alchemy actually creates flame, whereas what he’s alchemizing is the oxygen concentration of the air. Alchemy takes concentration and intelligence so he can’t accidentally move air particles around to make the air so oxygenated as to be flammable. The finger-snap just ignites the oxygen. If the air is normal, it’s not going to ignite.
Extra fun fact: you can probably tell if Roy Mustang is about to set you on fire. The air will feel intoxicatingly easy to breathe because it’s pure oxygen. During the war, Ishvalans probably learned to GTFO if they felt heady and energized.
Extra extra fun fact: Roy Mustang doesn’t need to set you on fire to kill you. He can probably just remove all the oxygen from the air around you, and you’ll suffocate.
The point of this post: flame alchemy is both really cool and really simple.
The kicker: to use flame alchemy effectively, you probably have to visualize the shape of the oxygen cloud that’s going to form. This probably requires a lot of focus.
I am: a nerd.
I think it’s worth pointing out that after Riza, Ed and Scar manage to talk Roy down from his rampage, his eyes look exactly the same as they do in the Ishval chapters. Even after he’s decided NOT to kill Envy, even after he’s backed away from the line between monster and human, he has the eyes of a killer. It’s not until he’s realized how far he almost went that Arakawa draws his eyes like this, btw. Here and in volume 15 there is a sorrow and a weariness in his eyes that only comes with the guilt and self-disgust that he feels when he realizes he almost crossed that line between human and monster.
Plus, he looks like this for the rest of the scene. Realizing he almost let himself become “a beast hiding in the skin of a person” (in Scar’s words) affected him more deeply and lingered with him a little longer than I originally thought.
I’ve been meaning to draw this au forever
Good job, you beat me! Goodbye, Edward Elric!
The piece I made for Resilient: a Riza Hawkeye fanzine (@rizazine), back in 2021
I forgot to post it here for some reason heh
It's avaliable as a print on my Redbubble!
recently watched this fresh hot new anime called fullmetal alchemist: brotherhood for the first time and i absolutely loved it! also these two made me deeply unwell (positive)
I hardcore headcanon that Ed became something of a mythical figure to the Amestrian military (and probably Amestrian public) after the Promised Day
Like immediately afterward he goes home and stays home to help Al recover, then travels the West as like a scholar, then settles down with Winry and has kids–it’s pretty obvious he never went back to the military at any point during that, and that he’s stayed well and far out of the public eye.
So what’s that leave the military with? “Hey you heard of Edward Elric?” “Oh yeah isn’t he that dude who passed the state alchemy exam at 12, punched God in the face, toppled the whole military coup with Fuhrer Mustang, and vanished? Yeah he had a cubby here for like…4 years.”
And with so many people knowing half-truths about what really happened in Amestris, I fully believe that hundreds of fantastically stupid and marginally correct rumors spread about Ed. “I heard Ed Elric met God twice.” “I heard he’s the only person to ever successfully break the core law of alchemy.” “I heard he’s a 4,000 year old prophet who discovered immortality and that’s why he’s so skilled.” “I heard he fought a tank.” “I heard God personally took his limbs away and that’s why he’s half-metal.” “I heard he actually invented alchemy.” “I heard he once beat up Fuhrer Mustang with his own hands.”
Like it’s the most central, prominent piece of small talk among new recruits–who knows the best little factoids about the child prodigy who hangs with God and saved the world and disappeared Jesus-style immediately after. Mustang walks out into press conferences, maximum security with reporters clamoring to lobby their questions at the leader of the entire nation, and somehow he always ends up with a flood of “Can you confirm?” tall tales about Ed.
“Fuhrer, is it true that Edward Elric discovered how to transmute his soul into a higher plane of existence and so he quit the military to achieve the status of a god?”
“Edward Elric is a 32 year old man who lives in a farmhouse out east and raises sheep part-time. Last I heard from him he was learning how to make raspberry pie and trying to teach his daughter how to count to 7. Who the hell feeds you this information? Next Question”
finally finished fmab so i thought i’d redraw some cursed stock photos,,, as one does,,, 💀
The whole idea of Hawkeye, Mustang, Ed, and Al being a kind of pseudo-family unit will never not be both hilarious and adorable. Ah yes, Mr. and Mrs. War Crimes and their not-children, the unstoppable force and the immovable object.
Edward and Roy don’t have a found family relationship, not really. They also don’t just act like coworkers. Truth is, ed treats Roy like his mom/older sister’s (Riza) new shitty boyfriend
In this essay fanfic, I will
chat drop your fave war criminal in the comments
This is my favorite panel in the manga