hello everyone, I was recently reminded of how badly I want fic that’s just Beau and Mollymauk stumbling into 80000 traditional shipfic premises, but they actually don’t have any UST whatsoever and are both just having the Worst Time
There Is Only One Bed. they spend thirty minutes snippily offering it to each other while insisting they themselves are Very Tough and Don’t Need A Bed and it very nearly ends in both of them sleeping on the floor next to a perfectly good bed before they calm down a bit. Beau takes the mattress and Molly gets the floor but takes the blankets and pillows.
they are caught in the cold and the rain and have to cuddle naked for warmth. it’s just forty-five minutes of them lying back to back and complaining about each other’s elbows and personal hygiene.
for outside plot reasons they need to disguise themselves as a couple. Molly immediately announces that they’re ascetics and for religious reasons barely touch in public. Beau has a horrible coughing fit at the very idea of Molly and ascetic in the same sentence but appreciates the save
Oh No, We Are Skulking In An Alley And Need To Provide An Innocuous Reason For This To The Nearby Guards, Better Pretend We’re Fucking. the guards immediately come to investigate what the hell is making these extremely unconvincing moans and finds the two of them leaning gingerly against each other and looking absolutely murderous. it’s immediately obvious they’re faking but they pretend they were trying to cover for the sale of untaxed moonshine and are let off with a warning. they spend the entire trip back to the group criticizing each other’s acting.
probably all of these are in fact a bonding experience but they also hate their lives so much.
HGKFJHGHDKJGF OK SO. At first I thought maybe this was some confusion having to do with Makoto Inoue’s pet flying squirrel (or was it a sugar glider? I can never remember), but I looked at the interview in question, and this is what Arakawa says:
“Although the story’s changed a lot, originally the main characters were going to be a father and son. The protagonist would have been the son, who was 18 years old and had automail. Despite being a prototype Ed, he wasn’t really short. The father was a talking flying squirrel. After a training accident, much like Al’s soul is attached to a suit of armor, the father’s soul was transferred into the body of a flying squirrel. In the end, though, in order to better suit Shonen Gangan’s reader demographic, I reduced the protagonist’s age and made the partner character his brother instead of his father. The reason why Al’s soul is attached to a large suit of armor is because I wanted to make a big character to contrast the small protagonist.”
XI's Archived Tumblr Blog 