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This entry was originally posted on Livejournal on April 19th. I was inspired to post it here after reading a dream entry by Destiny. I also edited a bit of text here and there. I wasn’t sure if I should use past tense or present tense, so there might be a mixture of both XD. Usually I write dreams in present tense, but >_> dunno…
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I took a 2 hr nap and had the most interesting dream! Long time no write - dream wise - so yeah here goes.

My family were I are staying at a massive hotel. The strange thing is we stayed in separate rooms. The room I stayed in had four beds. They were all queen sized beds at that. The room was pretty spacious with a balcony to the left. Another weird part is there were mannequins laying on the beds. on the far right there was one mannequin. four on the next, and I think two on the third bed. The fourth bed, closest to the balcony was the only one left open.

So I slept there but in the middle of the night, I woke to the change in brightness of the room. I remembered turning off the light, but the light was obviously on now so I walk all the way across the room to turn off the light but it wouldn’t turn off. Sure enough the switch was at off before I switched it. This creeped me out - to think that the mannequins didn’t. So I leave the room to find my mom and dad to see if they noticed anything strange about the place.

Apparently they stayed in separate rooms from each other. The corridors were like a labyrinth sprinkled with hundreds of rooms throughout its meandering pathways. When I finally found my mom, she was awake with the light dimmed, sitting in bed. She told me to go find Dad in the computer room. So I find him and decide to work on a school project. This school project had a lot to do with Chinese history and such. As I was saving my document, I realized I forgot to pay attention to which folder I was saving it under. I was unable to find it after that. Also, apparently my old mp3 player was like a USB drive that stored documents and images. I was scrolling through that to find documents from the computer….which makes no sense now since it wasn’t hooked up to the computer, but perfect sense then. My dad volunteered fervently to help write my paper and guessed at the topic I may be writing on yet none of what he said came through to me as my mind was still on the paper I wrote.

I decide it was getting late, that the light must have turned off by now so I head back to my room. On the way I stop by Mom’s room and find she’s still awake with some strange blue light on in her room.

As I pause in front of my door, I sense this ominous aura as the light was still on and the mannequins start looking strangely knowledgeable on the situation and the hotel’s happenings in general. I try to casually walk back to my bed and as I do so, I realize the sky is getting brighter outside. The curtains are translucent so the light from outside is glowing through them and the silhouette of the window / door frame can be seen clearly. I ponder on whether or not to sleep with the curtains closed or opened and decide on just leaving it closed. Neither way mattered really.

As I lay in bed with the light on, a mannequins walks over to me and says not to worry, that I shouldn’t feel lonely in a room full of companions. (Lonely?!) She was pretty friendly and we introduced each other. Then she told me of her previous life in Nevada I think. I can’t remember where she or any of the other mannequins were from but I was fascinated by the fact that they each had their own life outside of the hotel. I told them about dorm life at college. We shook hands, though some of them were really weird about it and had their hands in weird positions while shaking mine.

Later, I’m on campus again and I think I’m in a geek club of some sort founded by a freshman. Yeah a freshman. But she was actually a sophomore because of the amount of credits she had and she had pretty good leadership skills. She looked strangely like Mrs. S my fifth grade social studies teacher, which meant she looked very old. We were gathered there to plan who was going to write what for the college newspaper. I volunteered first to write a paper on a play I couldn’t even remember but I took notes on it while I was attending the play. I told the “freshman” that it was by Macbeth. She said “who cares and why would it matter who it was by?” Yeah apparently Macbeth was a well-known playwright and …. didn’t I mean Shakespeare?! Clearly Macbeth is the creation of Shakespeare…but whatever.

Now I’m in front of the Union or so I think and an evil villain whom I’ve met before is hosting a wedding ceremony there. He was evil in tricking people with the amount of money he was willing to pay for the food and other expenses. Instead of paying full price, he was paying one fourth that. I know, wicked right? I knew of his sham and warned the suppliers but they wouldn’t listen to me. I think I saw Envy and other sins from FMA there and they were part of the “evil family”. I think the villain behind everything was Wrath (from the manga) aka Pride (from the anime). I knew of their other schemes but now I’ve forgotten them since I was interrupted twice by my mother who yelled at me to go downstairs to drink milk shake and then again because my brother wanted me for something before I could write anything.

I hadn’t recalled this while watching Fullmetal Alchemist but now that our Western Civilization class has read Frankenstein, it finally dawned on me that Victor Frankenstein studied Alchemy was well. But, alchemy is viewed differently in Victor’s world than Edward’s world. It is out-dated and pale in comparison to modern science. In Edward’s world, alchemy is modern science, and it’s pretty powerful, used in the military in Amestris and for medical purposes in Xing. I read the book for the first time Junior year in high school and thought it was a pretty interesting book, but the second time around, I found it to be even more fascinating than the first because now I can compare and contrast Frankenstein with Fullmetal Achemist.

Both Victor and Edward were pretty absorbed in their studies on human life and the idea of creating life or restoring life. Victor Frankenstein’s mother died as well, but his objective to create a living being is different from the motives of the Elric brothers. He simply wanted to see if it was possible to create life without biological means (asexually). Edward wanted to bring his mother back to life to see her smile again, out of love for his mother.

Victor created a monster who was largely grotesque yet intelligent and compassionate. Edward, however created a monster that died right after its creation, but in return he lost his leg and arm. He lost his leg as a passing fee when he saw the gate and his arm when he tried transmuting his brother’s soul to a suit of armor. Alphonse had his body taken to the other side of the gate and almost lost his soul as well when it was somehow taken by the monster, but luckily was rejected because the soul is only compatible with certain media. In a way that suit of armor is like a time bomb because he will never know when and if that suit of armor will reject his soul.

Well, that was the manga version of human transmutation. The anime version somewhat flows better with Frankenstein’s monster since the monster or better known as homunculus created by Ed and Al did survive. But Ed and Al’s monster was not rejected by society because she was not grotesque and looked pretty human from the outside. Had people known she was a homunculus, however, like Ed and Al later, she would have been somewhat of an outcast, but still accepted by the other homunculi namely Wrath. But then again, she did resemble of a decayed body till after eating the Red Stones or incomplete Philosopher’s Stones.Yet Ed and Al’s homunculus had an evil conscience and Frankenstein’s monster was only driven by revenge after being shunned by society as well as his creator. I wonder if that would have been the case for Ed and Al’s homunculus had it not been fed Red Stones.

Now I’m wondering if Frankenstein’s monster can be considered a homunculus since it probably didn’t have a soul since there’s no way of creating one. Victor didn’t use a Philosopher’s Stone or Red Stones - at least not that I’m aware of. He did use various dead body parts and human sacrifices were also needed in alchemy to resurrect the dead. There was even mention of the Philosopher’s Stone, transmutation and chimeras. Perhaps Frankenstein’s monster can be more accurately defined as a chimera. According to the MSN Encarta Dictionary, “an organism, or part of one, with at least two genetically different tissues resulting from mutation, the grafting of plants, or the insertion of foreign cells into an embryo.” And homunculus in our world are classified as basically a “little person.” and Frankenstein is a giant compared to human.

As for themes, both Frankenstein and FMA have Dangerous Knowledge as a theme. With the knowledge in chemistry/anatomy/alchemy, both Victor and Edward go beyond accepted human limits and access the secret of life. Whereas Victor’s obsessive hatred of the monster drives him to his death, Edward has his brother’s support and they had no idea that they had created a homunculus till much later. They were both able to defeat their homunculus, but not without difficulty as she resembled their mother so much. It was especially hard for Al to see the homunculus die in the anime.

Monstrosity is another theme. Though both Frankenstein’s monster and Ed and Al’s Homunculus can be considered monsters, so too are Victor Ed and Al. Both Ed and Al were alluded to as monsters at some point or another because Al does not have a body and Ed doesn’t have an arm and a leg. One can argue that Victor himself is a kind of monster, as his ambition, secrecy, and selfishness alienate him from human society. Ordinary on the outside, he may be the true “monster” inside, as he is eventually consumed by an obsessive hatred of his creation.

Both Victor and the Elric Brothers carry an unforgivable sin. For Frankenstein, however, he had lost more of his family and friends and was driven with revenge and the want to kill his monster. His ending was a tragic one whereas the Elric Brothers - in the anime - were able resolve their problem and kill their homunculus. According to the movie, they ended up living together, Al with his body back, though they lived in our world, where alchemy is devoid of its powers found in Amestris in their world.

Changes will take place throughout the week. So far I have the static homepage accomplished. Afterwards, I will change the layout so I can fit more links in the main navigation bar. I will be using a different banner image for each different section. For more information see this forum topic. To view the main blog for now click Journal.