Talk:Father (Fullmetal Alchemist)

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Character Outline

paragraph 1:

Father is a cold and pitiless person who makes use of people not only without remorse but without ever feeling that he could possibly be in the wrong, although he can display a manner pleasant and even affectionate, in a paternal way, toward anyone he esteems as useful. His own view of his personality includes the fact that all his sinful passions are supposed to have been removed from his soul and put into his children, the lesser homunculi with the names of the Seven Deadly Sins.^{[citation needed]} He takes himself very seriously and is given to grandiose turns of phrase and symbolic, operatic flourishes,^{[citation needed]} and seems to have built up an image of himself as an ultimately wise fatherly figure in robe and beard, terrible when necessary, any act against whom is a sin. Essentially, he has a god complex. The sequence where he lowers the rebellious and unrepentant Greed, pinned and shackled to a great crucifix cut out of the floor in the outline of his transfixed body, into a great vat of boiling oil (as per the punishment outlined in Dante's "Inferno" for people with Greed) to be destroyed, and then drinks the purified essence of Greed down again should be mentioned here.

• There are a few assertions made within the above paragraph that require citations. If anyone happens to know which chapters in the manga proves these assertions, by all means insert them into the main article. In the mean time, I'm rereading all relevant chapters dealing with
  Father to see if I find anything. -- Watemon (talk
  )
• There are a many subjective assertions about the character I suggest should be either edited to show objectivity, cited to show verifiability, or removed. -- Watemon (talk)

"Essentially, he has a god complex."
". . . is a cold and pitiless person. . ."
". . . seems to have built up an image . . . wise fatherly figure in [a] robe and beard, . . ."
". . . is given to . . . operatic flourishes."

• I feel these should either be edited or deleted because they sound more like personal research; Readers may come to their own conclusion upon reading the manga, but that's exactly it: reading the manga doesn't explicitly tell us this, we can't cite it, it's unverified. -- Watemon (talk)

"The sequence where he lowers the rebellious and unrepentant Greed, . . . drinks the purified essence of Greed down again should be mentioned here."

• This sounds more like someone was making a suggestion for a future edit, and doesn't really belong in the article, itself, because it doesn't mention any particular details about
  Father, himself, instead replaying a particular scene in the manga. -- Watemon (talk
  )

paragraph 2:

Father's "goal" appears to be to create the perfect Philosopher's Stone and to 'open the gate' (i.e. to an uberdimension that is the seat of all true knowledge), by using all of the citizens of Amestris. This plan entails the use of 'human sacrifices' to open the gate, alchemists of notable skill, with those who have 'opened the gate' before (Elric Brothers, Van Hohenheim and Izumi Curtis) as 'confirmed sacrifices.'^[citation needed] Because 'opening the gate' requires a sacrifice or 'transferral fee,'^{[citation needed]} it is implied that Father intends to sacrifice the physical bodies of those who have 'opened the gate' as the transferral fee, possibly to acquire all knowledge from it as the more that is sacrificed the more knowledge is received. How he intends to force them to do this for him, when he has allowed them all to find out the gist of this plan, is unclear; perhaps he must simply force them into the right place at the necessary time. There is apparently a particular day on which this plan must be executed - based on remarks of Hohenheim's, a day of astrological significance.^{[citation needed]} There is very likely more to the plan than merely creating a new stone, as Envy has let on several times to characters who have attempted to figure it out ("Are you planning to create a philosopher's stone using this country?!" "HA! That's close!"). It is revealed that Father created the country of Amestris solely for the sake of his master plan,^{[citation needed]} and is directly responsible for all of the deliberately bloody and chaotic wars of expansion that it has waged, to bring it into the form of a perfect circle with sites of bloody carnage at all the cardinal points--the necessary configuration for the transmutation of a Philosopher's Stone.^{[citation needed]}

• The above paragraph seems more appropriate for the Plot Outline and not the Character Outline, meaning these details list more of the Character's participation within the plot, and not details pertaining the outline of the character himself. I suggest removing this information and using whatever we can to flesh out/improve the plot outline.
  -- Watemon (talk) 07:14, 30 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The preceding discusses material in need of improvement. Please post within this tag if contributing to the discussion.

The following discusses content in need of improvement. Please add comments within this section in order to facilitate an organized and legible discussion.

Plot Overview

The character Father was originally a sentient shadowy substance called "Homunculus" (who at times could form eyes and a wide grin), which was created in a flask during the time of the ancient civilization of Xerxes. To leave the flask would mean death for it. The purpose of its creation has never been explicitedly revealed, although the king consulting Homunculus for the secrets to immortality suggests that it was created to acquire knowledge.

Homunculus formed an attachment to a young slave boy, whose blood had been used in his creation and gave him a name in place of his identification number. Homunculus also taught him alchemy, the knowledge of which was viewed by the boy as freedom. The boy was Van Hohenheim, the father of the Elric Brothers. With Homunculus' teachings, Hohenheim rose from slave to associate alchemist. Hohenheim and Homunculus had a friendly relationship and were together for awhile; Homunculus identified Hohenheim as being 'like his father,' since it was from Hohenheim's blood that he took life.

Homunculus, in order to obtain his freedom, told the King of Xerxes the secret to immortality, but deliberately omitted that everyone within the empire-encircling transmutation circle would be killed by its activation save for the person at the center. After the alchemical process occurred, it was revealed that Homunculus had deceived the king. The true center was not where the king stood but several feet away, where the now fully-grown Hohenheim stood holding Homunculus. All of the souls in Xerxes were ripped from their bodies, and Van Hohenheim's body was sacrificed to open the Gate of Truth. Using the energy from the souls, Homunculus created new bodies for himself and Van Hohenheim, effectively becoming Philosopher's Stones. Half of the souls he kept for himself, while the other half were given to Van Hohenheim. Using Hohenheim's blood, Homunculus created his body in the image of the now-immortal alchemist.

Amestrian legend holds that their alchemy was taught by the 'Sage of the East,' who hailed from the fallen civilization of Xerxes. Due to the fact that he seems to be in control of Amestrian alchemy, it is heavily implied he is this legendary figure. This is further reinforced by the fact that Xing, the country on the far side of the desert where Xerxes once stood attributes its alchemy to a 'Sage of the West,' with golden hair and eyes, said to be immortal. Amestrian alchemy is specialized for war, Xingese for healing, and Hohenheim knows Xingese medicine. It can be assumed that, if this is true, Hohenheim and Homunculus left the ruin in opposite directions.

• The sections above are marked out because they are effectively covered in the revised character outline. -- Watemon (talk)
• Per
  the Manual of Style followed by the Anime/Manga project, most of the above material should probably be listed under Fictional Character History, as it doesn't actually pertain to Father's involvement within the Fullmetal Alchemist plot. -- Watemon (talk
  )

"Amestrian legend holds . . . left the ruin in opposite directions."

• This entire section should be removed because it is completely original research. Only speculation leads to this line of thought and has no explicit or verifiable evidence to support it (unless some can be found from a notable and verifiable secondary resource). -- Watemon (talk)

The following discusses content in need of improvement. Please add comments within this section in order to facilitate an organized and legible discussion.

• The article does not pass WP: Notability. See Edward Elric, Mukuro Rokudo, Rukia Kuchiki, etc. All those article have reviews about the character. I think Hohenheim would have more possibilities to have reviews than Father.Tintor2 (talk) 13:44, 1 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Do you mean to suggest the article's deletion? Or comparisons to improve it? -- Watemon (talk) 14:03, 1 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Deletion is unnecesary. We can just merge it.Tintor2 (talk) 14:05, 1 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with this line of logic, however I think if we simply tagged the material here at the end of Hohenheim's article, wouldn't that make Hohenheim's article unnecessarily long (as his page is already the largest of the supporting characters)? Also, just for consideration, this article suffers mostly from lack of citations and the incorporation of original research (in addition to several editorial issues). As it stands now, this article doesn't suffer from lack of size (almost double is written about Father than about Winry); I'm confident we can at least reorganize the current material and rewrite it to fit acceptable standards. Either way, whether this page is merged or not, these steps will have to be done, mostly because the information in this article is unacceptable in many forms, and would likely bring down the quality of Hohenheim's article as well. (whew, mouthful) Then maybe we could discuss how the information could be merged. What do you think? -- Watemon (talk) 14:26, 1 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• also, I have a duplicate page where I'm gathering material for. You can check it out here; on the talk page, I'm gathering relevant assertions about Father and creating inline citations to be used later as appropriate. -- Watemon (talk)

Probably rewriting it like this. "Father is the main antagonist from the manga and the 2nd anime series. He is the creator of all the homunculi, with each of them being based on him." Bla bla (stuff about his history with Hohenheim, alchemy, desire, his personality etc.). The official FMA brotherhood website sometimes gives an image in the start with Father and various homunculi. Maybe it could be used to replace the one in the character list.Tintor2 (talk) 15:47, 1 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• In regards to Hohenheim's page, I could see having a section pertaining to his relationship with Father, however in the overall scheme of the article, I think it would seem rather off-topic to start talking about Father's personality and desires (at least of the length done on this page) on Hohenheim's article. I kind of see your point merging the articles, but at the same time I don't for these reasons:

1. Dante, the anime antagonist, has her own article at substantially less information than Father's (I mention this for the sake of consistency amongst all FMA standalone character articles).
2. Father is a major character in the manga (especially by this point), and has received enough face-time and backstory (approximately the same as Hohenheim) to merit his own reference separate from that of a supporting character.
3. And finally, though certainly not the least: the only individual character articles that fit Wikipedia's notability standards are Ed and Al's; none of the others cite any secondary sources (i.e. Anime News Network, AnimeOnDVD, etc.); this article suffers from lack of notability on fault of us, the editors, not necessarily because the character or the article genuinely lacks notability.

I agree that notability is questionable as the article currently stands, however I also think that Father does merit his own article for his status as the series' major antagonist. I went ahead and attached a notability tag on the article page (and articles for Hohenheim, Scar, Winry, and Dante), and will begin my own search for verifiable and notable secondary sources as I come across them. According to the Notability page, a "good-faith" search for secondary sources must be conducted first before a consensual decision is made to merge (or delete) articles for lack of notability.
This is a great opportunity to improve these articles, I think, and on that note: would you like to help start the Fullmetal Alchemist workgroup on the anime/manga wikiproject?! I think a concentrated effort could greatly improve the class of the FMA articles as a whole! -- Watemon (talk) 20:39, 1 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Father may be the main antagonist, but he almost does not do anything. It happens with the Naruto articles that antagonist like Madara Uchiha and Pain are not having their articles despite their role in the story. Dante should probably be merged too, but I decided to stop these things when the main list was becoming very long. A wikiproject of FMA would be very hard due to the few users in these articles. There have been wikiprojects for various but they are becoming very inactive.Tintor2 (talk) 20:48, 1 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Not a full-on wikiproject, it's more a
  subgroup of the main Anime/Manga wikiproject. Basically editors who follow the wikiproject but have a certain dedication to FMA (for instance, Bleach has one). And I'd have to disagree; as of late, Father has seen a lot of recent activity, and, again, the amount of information on the character from primary sources is substantial, it's been the fault of the editors working on the page that it's not properly or adequately sourced. If we were to merge articles, I would say merge Father with the Homunculi in general, but give them their own article again. That way any depth we go in explaining Father won't detract from the overall article (like it would in Hohenheim). We could also do the same with Dante, by splitting the article by anime/manga differences -- Watemon (talk) 21:03, 1 May 2009 (UTC)[reply
  ]

• • That already happened once and FMA ended having 7 (more or less) seven articles that ended with a pretty bad condition.Tintor2 (talk) 21:07, 1 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

    Wait, which are you referring to: merging Father with Homunculi? I did notice a while back there was discussion of merging all the accumulated Homunculus info into their current form on the character list. In case you misunderstood what I meant, I'm basically suggesting taking all the code we currently have under Homunculi in the List of FMA Characters, giving them their own page, but then pasting what we're currently working on for Father on top of that (considering he is technically a FMA homunculus), then possibly merging Dante as a reference per her role in the franchise/anime. The accumulation of all that information (Father-in-detail + Homunculi + Dante-in-a little detail, in addition to other plot/conceptual details) does warrant its own page, I think. Then we'll have essentially consolidated 2 pages into one while also having significantly shortened the List of Characters page (which is currently tagged {{

    toolong}}). 3 birds with one very large stone. -- Watemon (talk) 21:28, 1 May 2009 (UTC)[reply

    ]

• • • But we will probably have another bird without Notability.Tintor2 (talk) 21:38, 1 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

      And again, we'll need to do what the notability page called a "good-faith" search for verifiable/notable secondary sources. We've recognized Father's lack of notability (at least as his own standalone article), the next step is to verify whether there is an actual lack of genuine notability. Either way, combining the 3 subjects will decrease the need for individual notability, and a continuing search for notable secondary sources (which I'm sure there will be some at least between the 7 regular homunculi out there somewhere), will have been substantial enough in at least taking the appropriate steps to solving the notability issue (let's pretend there are a total of, like, 6 birds; we have the potential of maybe getting rid of 4!). -- Watemon (talk) 21:46, 1 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The preceding discusses material in need of improvement. Please post within this tag if contributing to the discussion.