Fanfiction: Learning Curve (Fullmetal Alchemist)

[nebroadwe]

Title: Ficlet: Learning Curve
Fandom: FMA (manga version)
Character(s): Hohenheim
Pairing(s): None.
Rating: G
Word Count: 250
Warnings: Spoilers for Hohenheim's backstory.
A/N: This was supposed to be crack, and then suddenly took a left turn into serious. (Sorry, kanja177 -- does it help to imagine Passive-Aggressive Messages Man as a homunculus? Because then you could feel satisfied about thwarting his plans?) Crossposted from nebroadwe to Höllenbeck (i.e. hagaren_manga, fm_alchemist, fma_gen, fma_writers and fma_fiction). Concrit welcomed with flowers of copper.
Dedication: For kanja177, who could be having a better week.

---

      First, he discovers that experiments frequently fail: sometimes explosively (which at least proves to the surviving observers that he tried), but more often silently, without even a whiff of ozone or a crackle of static discharge once the light of the reaction fades, leaving him with an inert heap of reagents that look exactly the same as they did before he started. He's supposed to learn from his errors -- the master interrogates him minutely after every transmutation (Did you calcine the earth properly? Did you invoke the Pure Form as the Mother of Perfect Being? Great gods, boy, you didn't use the last of the white magnesia, did you?) -- but nine times out of ten he hasn't got a clue why his circle didn't work, and says so.

      Then he takes his thrashing and scrubs the floor clean and and teases hints from the bottle-imp in the corner (Try thinking, Hohenheim, instead of invoking purity of being or whatever. What's the difference between magnesium carbonate and magnesium hydroxide?). And when he curls up on his mat at night, back stiff and palms raw and brain full of witty retorts devised too late for use (Seven letters!), he remembers the one time in ten when he did realize what went wrong, and corrected it, and felt the world reshape itself under his fingers, sand into glass. He shivers with the aftershock of that elation, still vivid even after weeks of disappointment.

      He'll know it again, he promises himself. He'll know everything someday, and never fail.

---

[Acknowledgments: Fullmetal Alchemist (Hagane no Renkinjutsushi) was created by Arakawa Hiromu and is serialized monthly in Shonen Gangan (Square Enix). Copyright for these properties is held by Arakawa Hiromu and Square Enix. All rights reserved.]

Comments

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

ooo very neat. I like it. I was so surprised at how much I came to like HoHo after he transformed from a deadbeat runaway dad into something much more exciting. It's neat seeing a little piec of his history

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

I quite like his manga backstory -- it keeps inspiring small 'fics about him in my brain, because there's so much scope for exploration of the background (as well as a great tragic denouement). One of these days I need to finish the one where he has a fight with the local free street gang. I laid that one out on the back of a receipt a year ago, and it just got buried by other things.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

that would be cool. Yes, I have various slave Hoho stories roaming in my head too

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Ooh, rope and corral 'em! I wanna see!

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

doubt that'll happen before the end of the year to be honest

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. You do seem to have a lot on your plate at the moment.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

par for the course. I'm a masochist

[anything-really.livejournal.com]

Who's not these days unfortunately.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

snort

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

All writers are. With a touch of the sadist, too.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

no argument

[dreamer1789.livejournal.com]

Very nice! Love the 'atmosphere' in this piece. ^^

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Thanks! It started out being much funnier -- I hang out with scientists all the time, so I've learned to greet the idea of reproducibility with a hollow laugh when necessary -- but then it went all serious on me at the end. Dramatic irony: I just can't resist it.

[brinylon.livejournal.com]

Mmmm, lovely *wraps self in fic*

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

It is a bit small -- a nice, scarf-like 'fic?

[brinylon.livejournal.com]

Or gloves? the fic can be warm woolen mittens ;p

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

In a brown paper package, tied up with string. :-)

[brinylon.livejournal.com]

That's my favourite thing!

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Oom-pah-pah, oom-pah-pah ...

[brinylon.livejournal.com]

*gets out the dresses made from curtains*

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

*hunts up a guitar*

[kanja177.livejournal.com]

Thank you! The week has been and continues to be thunder and lightning and downpours of hideousness, but this is a lovely ray of sunshine in the midst.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Yipe. That can't be good for NMRing. Please take care ...

[mulzrule.livejournal.com]

Well done. I think we're all seeing Hoho in a different light the past few chapters. For some reason I'm starting to think he and Sokka would get along. *head/desk*

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

I loved how he walked all badass into one of the most recent ones and laid down some alchemy with nary a gesture. Arakawa's just so good at putting characters in situations that show them off to best advantage.

For some reason I'm starting to think he and Sokka would get along. *head/desk*

[filks]Crossover, crossover, don't make me cross ... [/filks] :-)

[mulzrule.livejournal.com]

He was totally bad ass. Like son like father, or something like that. *sweatdrop* I had to laugh cuz Ed was totally ready to kill him for the hero line.

[elbw.livejournal.com]

This is very well-written thus far. You've certainly intrigued me with this!

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Thanks! This seems to be all there is for this one, but I really do need to unearth the other teenage Hohenheim story I mentioned up-comment. It's a bit long in the tooth for a plotbunny, but it's still got some spring ...

[artemisrae.livejournal.com]

This made me smile - I like the Hohenheim's thinking up witty retorts too late. For someone I see as kind of a stoic (and absentminded) hero, there's still something so hilariously Hapless Nerdy Kid in him.

Oh Hohenheim... be careful what you wish for.

(...I don't have a Hohenheim icon? How the hell did that happen?)

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

This made me smile - I like the Hohenheim's thinking up witty retorts too late. For someone I see as kind of a stoic (and absentminded) hero, there's still something so hilariously Hapless Nerdy Kid in him.

I was thinking back to those bits of chapter seventy-mumble where his master first discovers that he's been learning things from the homunculus, and Hohenheim used-car-salesmans himself into a better position. His expressions in those panels are priceless -- brash self-confidence giving way to a kind of "um, did I just shoot myself in the foot?" nervousness. He's got so much drive in youth; the Xerxes tragedy seems to burn it out of him. It's fun to look back at that less tightly wound period.

Oh Hohenheim... be careful what you wish for.

All my stories about him seem to come out like that. The dramatic irony is very hard to resist, as I said up-comment. :-)

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

Very much liking!

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Excellent! The praise of the praiseworthy ...

[ishte.livejournal.com]

Very nice. ^_^ I always like to see an offering from you. I still want to see more Ed in Europe out of you. ^_^ But I like Manga Hohenheim a lot too. I always knew he wasn't just a deadbeat, that there was a reason he had to go.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Very nice. ^_^ I always like to see an offering from you. I still want to see more Ed in Europe out of you. ^_^

Just what I need -- another plotbunny. Here, have a carrot, and go play with all your little friends.

But I like Manga Hohenheim a lot too. I always knew he wasn't just a deadbeat, that there was a reason he had to go.

I'm still waiting to see what precisely he's been up to besides running away from his loved ones' mortality. I'm also still giving good odds that he ends up dead before the end of the series (I can't quite tell which direction Arakawa is going to jump; she believes in consequences, but that could mean either that Hohenheim finds his natural end in the exhaustion of the homunculus's "gift" of immortality, or he's left to cope with it anyway, Wandering Jew fashion, because there are no take-backs in life. In which case Ed probably is stuck with his automail, too -- another point on which I'm not certain which way the story will go ...)