Frankmunculus

Frankenstein and Fullmetal Alchemist both address the morality of artificial humans, termed Homunculi in the latter. In both novels, these creatures serve as the main antagonists of the story and their desires and emotions are discussed throughout the narratives.

The Homunculi serve as the major antagonists to Fullmetal Alchemist.

In Frankenstein, the monster is portrayed as a pure being who had descended to becoming a demon. Though he knew of virtue and kindness, he had become envious and possessed by the desire to destroy the bonds from which he has been forsaken.

The Homunculi from Fullmetal Alchemist differ from Frankenstein's monster starting from their creation. For one, these creatures cannot be generated using the remains of humans at no cost. Instead, a new life created is an old one lost. The main antagonist, known as Father and The Creature in the Flask, sacrifices souls order to create his Homunculi, each born from a fragment of his sins. His seven Homunculi are named after the seven deadly sins, but interestingly, although they are by nature evil, they are in fact as tragic as Frakenstein's monster. Envy is envious of human bonds, sloth wants to escape the creeping of death, lust desires the joys of family, pride wants to accept his true form, wrath wants to escape the violence of his creation, and greed wants to fill the lack of friendship within him.

Both Frakenstein and the Homuncluli can be considered slaves in one sense or another. Frankenstein became enslaved to his own rage and envy, despite feeling disgust for himself for it. He did not want to commit crimes and he felt remorse for his actions, yet he could not control himself and willingly continued. The Homunculi were all slaves to Father, the Homunculi that gave birth to them. Like Frankenstein's monster, they looked down on humans as lower beings, and found solace amongst each other. The Homunculi may well have represented what Frankenstein's monster had hoped to achieve by gaining a mate- a society of monsters that seeks to annihilate the ruling structure and usurp the regime.

Franken;Steiner

Frankenstein. Stein. Steins;Gate. To be fair, these two topics have absolutely nothing to do with each other besides the usage of the phrase "Stein", which means "stone" in German. "Franken" means "genetically engineered", which relates to how Frankenstein's monster is the product of human design of "stone", the hard, cold portions scavenged from graves by Victor Frankenstein.

What about Steins;Gate? What does Steins;Gate mean? If if you take it to mean "Stone Gate", well, that still doesn't make any sense because the concept of a significant "stone" exists neither figurtively nor literally in Steins;Gate. A quote from the main character, Rintarou Okabe, perfectly sums up the meaning of the title "Steins;Gate":

"It doesn't really mean anything."

Steins;Gate is a science fiction about a self-proclaimed mad scientist.

...Well that can't be right. For a science fiction narrative whose protagonist consistently advocates that the series of events that play out is the "choice of Steins;Gate", there must be some sort of meaning to the phrase, especially since it is the ultimate goal of the protagonist. Looking at it linguistically, Steins;Gate could be akin to some sort of "Stones;Gate". Perhaps a gate of stone? Then what are the stones? Two possible interpretations arise: the concept of World Lines as being vehicles of time and time travel is a river that carries the "stones", our characters, through to them; or the goal of reaching Steins;Gate is difficult because it is "made out of stone".

Neither of those interpretations are coherent with regards to the plot, the former unrelated to the struggles the protagonist undergoes and the latter unrelated to what the former is related to. The perhaps, since Steins;Gate was once a visual novel, the phrase "everything is the choice of Steins;Gate" refers to the fact that the plot is partially directed by the player character. While this is an interesting idea, it is also dismissed on the basis that such an interpretation is essentially a pun that adds no literary meaning to the story while also maintaining the basis that the title, in fact, doesn't really mean anything.

Just as I feel that Frankenstein is aptly named to capture its contents, so too is Steins;Gate. The whole basis of titling the novel Steins;Gate is on the basis that Steins;Gate doesn't really mean anything- if there is value in there being a meaning in the title, then the delibrate use of one that does not have a meaning can have an equal value. The point of Steins;Gate not having a particular meaning relates to Steins;Gate's ending.

"No one knows what the future holds. That's precisely why, just as this reunion demonstrates, the possibilities are infinite."

The value in the lack of meaning stems from the meanings that Steins;Gate takes otherwise. The phrase can mean several things to several characters, but its meaning is never set in "stone". Steins;Gate teaches that time can never be truly overcome, merely decieved, and the character's abilities to continue forth is the "gate" towards an unknown future. 

Freedom Writers

Freedom Writers reminds me of Great Teacher Onizuka, a manga about a thug who suddenly makes the decision to become a teacher as a result of a misguided impression that teachers get the ladies.

Great Teacher Onizuka is about a punk who becomes a teacher.

Onizuka soon learns to error of his ways however, when he sees that the students he is assigned to teach are as troubled and misguided as he is. Though he lacks knowledge, what Onizuka does have is life experience. He sets out to help each misfit in his class solve their problems through his own, strange methods.

Freedom Writers follows Erin Gruwell and her attempts to reform a class of misfits, much like Onizuka. She goes to extreme lengthes to educate the children and change their attitudes, empowering them to find the courage to overcome their own problems. Onizuka takes a similar attitude. Like Erin, he dislikes the condescending approach the school systems takes towards children and resolves himself to become the greatest teacher who ever lived, starting by breaking through to each of his students one by one. However, unlike Erin, his approaches are occasionally illegal and dangerous or otherwise completely illogical. He enlists his students in beauty contests and accepts challenges he cannot hope to succeed in, and yet is able to inspire his students regardless, teaching them life lessons they learn themselves instead of being taught directly.

Onizuka focuses on life lessons. He teaches children to be confident in themselves and to enjoy life. Erin teaches compassion and morals to the children. The both look out for the kids, though their methods are radically different Onizuka shows his kids how to have fun in life instead of being destructive while Erin gives her children history lessons and teaches them to forgive others.

Why don't we all just play more visual novels?

Visual Novels are extremely similar to regular novels in that they are primarily story driven, in addition to having other attributes including animated sprites, voice acting, and being able to choose your own adventure. 

So why is this artistic medium relatively unknown to the western world? Probably because of this:

This is a Visual Novel. Yeah...

The first stigma against visual novels is that the majority of them appeal to a niche audience enthralled with 2D girls. This results in a large majority of visual novels that are targeted towards that audience. In turn, the overall opinion of the general public towards this genre lowers, despite the potential for a powerful narrative.

The second stigma is correlated with the first. There is an inherrant lack of deep storylines and more emphasis on visuals novels that are targeted toward the audience described in the first stigma. In a positive feedback mechanism, these visual novels are less inspired from original concepts and its writers are less populated with those interested in literary fiction. Because, unfortunately, literary fiction doesn't sell as well, and, compounded by the fact that visuals become a primary production expense, literary fiction isn't as popular as topics as visual novels. The topics that are are generally twisted, like Saya no Uta, a story about a man who becomes a cannibal with an incomprehensible flesh monster:

Do not let this caption fool you. This is about an insane man who sees the world as a mass of flesh- imagine what normal looks like.

The final stigma is that several people who would appreciate these novels do not want to read in general. Reading is a time investment and the presence of dynamically updating sprites and a branching storyline is not enough to convince these people to read them. In fact, these aspects may in fact discourage them from reading them at all- since visual novels are relatively unknown in the western world, most of them are difficult to acquire legally and require torrenting. Most people are unwilling to learn how to or take the time to torret, much less read instructions for installing Daemon Tools and patching the game to install to their computer. And then comes actually reading the novel itself, which will take even longer since you are fed only one line of text at a time.

Maybe we will all play more visual novels in the future when books do not require high production costs to generate visual novels from literary novels. 

Linton has Sickle Cell Anemia

Everybody in Wuthering Heights is afflicted with either a mortal disease or crabs. As in, a crabby personality. Especially Linton, who has both. He loses the entirety of his stamina traversing a distance of six feet. 

Linton is worthless.

I imagine this seventeen year old man writhing on the ground pitifully and I begin to cringe at how undeserving he is of education in Hareton's place. It strikes me odd that Catherine still clings to him even when he establishes his stance against her after they are married and after the way he has treated her like a possession and a servant. This guy reminds me of Caren Hortensia from Fate/Hollow Ataraxia.

Caren is malevolent for no reason.

Both of them are fragile as glass and derive pleasure from others' sufferings. They also have their brief, single moments of goodness, like how Caren as a priestess is obligated to provide sanctuary for the defeated while Linton lets Catherine out of the Heights out of guilt. Both of them are horrible, horrible people that are loved for no palpable reason. Linton is something to cling to rather than something to be actually loved. In this respect, Catherine resembles Isabella in the way that they refuse to acknowledge reality and favor delusions instead. Caren at least has some redeeming qualities in that A. She doesn't explode upon walking halfway up the stairs and B. She like Catherine can find love loving someone equally as malevolent as her.

Heathcliff is an Anti-Hero

As the title strongly implies, Heathcliff in the book Wuthering Heights is an anti-hero in the way that he does not adhere to common virtues present in the majority of protagonists. He is vengeful, unpleasant, cruel, and lacks compassion, avoiding "just desserts" and failing to meet the stereotype of redemption before death.

I show a picture of Robert Pattinson here because Edward is apparently a representation of Heathcliff

Heathcliff reminds me of other anti-heroes, including Light Yagami from Death Note and Kiritsugu Emiya from Fate/Zero.

Light Yagami is the first human owner of the Death Note

Light Yagami is the epitome of a perfect human being. He is athletic, compassionate, ethical, intelligent, good looking, and strong willed. From every angle, it is clear that he lacks any glaring weakness what so ever. Except for one: pride. He is a model citizen, and he knows this. As such, he falls into a self delusion over his superiority to other humans and feels the right to judge them as evil or good and to purge all of this evil with the Death Note. In the end, he nearly succeeds in his goal. He nearly eradicates crime altogether, but the police force constantly pursues his persona Kira to end his murdering spree. And despite how righteous Light sounds, he is portrayed as maniacal as he continues to abuse the Death Note, beginning to quantify people's worth and desiring to ascend to the status of God. For all that he is worth, Light craves the top of the food chain. While he was the top of his class and the leader of the police force, once Light attained power beyond others' fathoms, he began to corrupt and rot. Light eventually meets his end, cornered, bloodied, and dishonored in a warehouse confronted with his misdeeds. To the very end of his life, he begged to be spared, despite his own cruelty in life. 

Kiritsugu Emiya follows an uncompromising sense of justice.

The protagonist of Fate/Zero, Kiritsugu, lost his entire village in his decision to not shoot his friend Shirley moments prior, who turned into a vampire as a result of his father's research. This left Kiritsugu empty and resolved to end tragedies before they can evolve, electing to immediately shoot and kill his father with no last words before joining a mercenary to hunt down other rouge mages that threaten the general populace. He is not afraid to take down entire hotels to eliminate his foes and makes the decision to sacrifice his wife in order to obtain the Holy Grail and grant his wish of "saving the world". His motto is "the needs of the many of the needs of the few"- thus, he is quickly judges the worth of something over the number of lives it would save in exchange for a fewer number. He seeks to not only follow his own sense of justice but fulfill his childhood dream of becoming an "ally of justice" in order to justify his actions and constantly remind himself of the choice he made with Shirley. To this end, he deceives everyone around him and willingly sacrifices the people he loves in order to "save the world". At the end, he is confronted with his own motto, which reveals that the inevitable result of his philosophy is the need to eliminated slightly less than half of the people in the world over and over again, until he can find solace in the number two, where he cannot divide lives into two unequal sections that forces a choice from Kiritsugu. In this way, the Holy Grail reveals to Kiritsugu that saving the world meant saving himself, living with his wife and daughter isolated from the remainder of the world. The narrative explores how holding onto childish ideals of righteousness is fairly impossible- that humans continue to replicate errors upon errors and that solutions are mere bandaid fixes that must be implemented despite the impossible nature of fixing problems.

All three anti-heroes express a similar trait: a strong sense of justice. In this respect, anti-heroes can be seen as the distortion of morals by taking them to the extreme. In having such a powerful sense of justice, Light Yagami deludes himself into thinking himself a divine being and imposing his will on others. But he was a good person innately. Light emphasizes the corruption that pride brings with power and an arrogance to play God.

Heathcliff seeks vengeance against the people who wronged him because he seeks his own variation of "just desserts". Though taken at our standpoint, Heathcliff appears boorish and disgusting, in his eyes he is simply exercising her right to torment others as they tormented him. We are unable to understand his capacity for cruelty because we cannot emphasize and truly understand the humiliation, degradation, and disappointment he felt in his life. The characters of Wuthering Heights have stripped him of everything, Hindley of his dignity, Edgar of his pride, and Catherine of his love. Heathcliff feels justice reigning down upon his foes rather than cruelty.

Emiya finds himself trapped in a cycle where he is forced to make two decisions that save larger amounts of people. However, making this choice twice results in him making the same choice as if he had chose to save the small amount of people. Kiritsugu resolves himself to prevent tragedy by enacting uncomprimsing methods, but he inevitably harms more than he saves because he cannot save himself.

How Long Should A Story Last? Endings as Capstones

At what point should we decide that a story has gone on "too long"? One of the most important aspects of a story is its ending, which can make or break a story. However, in addition to many writers failing to write a complex and satisfying conclusion, a few exploit their series far past their prime and do not write the ending to a story they should have concluded long ago.

Stigma of the Wind just kept going until its author died, leaving behind no conclusion.

To begin with authors that end their novels poorly, Haruki Murakami is one of the most notable, due to the stark contrast between his ability to write rising action and climaxes compared to the flimsy excuses of endings that he provides to them. After Dark is notable for telling a compelling tale of people experiencing supernatural, yet unmistakably human, occurrences in the dead of night. His metaphors are surreal yet natural and the provide for a suspenseful story throughout. Then, it abruptly ends. An innumerable number of loose ends are left lying on the ground, with only a single potential character relationship being established while everyone moves on with their lives. 

His novel 1Q84 was powerful and suspenseful, displaying the subtle insecurities of the lead characters supported by deep and interesting side characters. Then the ending happened and everything went to hell. Characters began randomly disappearing, one was encased in an "air chrysalis", plot points that suspended the climax amounted to nothing, and almost no issues regarding the world of 1Q84 were resolved. 

Murakami himself in an interview stated that he "doesn't write endings".

Haruki Murakami, one of the greatest worst writers of endings.

That's a pretty glaring flaw. In most of Murakami's stories, the plot falls apart because there is no ending capable of melding their elements together. He leaves it open ended and engaging but not memorable. I can't go back to one of Murakami's stories, say "this was wonderful", and then re-read the book and relive the action. In this sense, Twilight finds itself superior (as a memorable story). Though far inferior in terms of its execution, one of the most important aspects about the novel and the series itself was that it produced characters that, while they were comparatively shallow, stuck in the minds of the readers. And I attribute this to a narrative having a strong ending; when it came down to it, I cared more about Edward than I ever cared about Tengo in 1Q84, simply because Tengo just disappeared into the distance without resolving a single problem while Edward tried his best and ended his first book in satisfying fashion.

Endings should be fairly abstract, no doubt about that. But endings that are too abstract are meaningless, with too many valid interpretations for them to even mean moot. In turn, endings that are too concrete are too boring because they do not draw the reader in to ask any questions at all.