The Poet’s Corner - My Favorite Book

Poet's Corner
Written By Ryan

Welcome to the poet’s corner!

This week’s topic will be pretty simple: My favorite book.

You know when you are on a hangout or date, or Tinder/Bumble these days, and the girl you like asks you a question and you know your answer is unique? “Hey Ryan what’s your favorite book?”, that’s mine.

When I hear this question I just look her in the eyes and say “My answer is a bit weird. My favorite book is not actually a book”. Then I get that beautiful ‘What the hell is he talking about?’ you are probably making and, hopefully, it gets progressively better from there.

That’s right folks! My favorite book is not a book outright, but a visual novel by the name of ‘Fate/Stay Night’. So for those unfamiliar with visual novels and the work itself, worry not, I shall explain.

A Visual Novel is an interactive literary genre in which a narrative has elements of interactivity with sprite-based visuals. In layman's terms: an story with visuals in which you can interact in some way.

For better understand it let me show you it’s predecessor, the gamebook:

Yes, bubble analysis is a thing.

Yes, bubble analysis is a thing.

“Oh yeah that one!” Yes! Those old books where you go to another page to read depending on what you choose. Well VNs (Visual Novels) are the electronic form of that. The reason they are considered literature is that they are mostly books, where your interaction only impacts the way that book’s ‘pages’ shows up.

Now that you know what is a VN, what is Fate Stay/Night?

FSN (Fate Stay/Night) is a Dark Fantasy VN written by Nasu Kinoko. The story centers around Emiya Shirou, a teenager who unintentionally enters a deadly competition in which the winning pair are granted a wish. Pairs are made between a modern-day mage and a ‘heroic spirit’, the manifestation of a famous hero (e.g. Hercules), and eliminate other pairs in the fictional city of Fuyuki in 2004.

The story itself has many charms. A very detailed setting, deep character development, beautiful artwork, thrilling fight scenes and three major routes for the story. The main theme is “conquering oneself”, and in turn the theme is expanded on the three routes as follows (Ohara, 2006):

  • The first one, Fate, is the "oneself as an ideal".

  • The second one, Unlimited Blade Works, is "struggling with oneself as an ideal".

  • The third one, Heaven's Feel, is "the friction with real and ideal".

The Original Cover

The Original Cover

So why do I like FSN so much? There are a lot of reasons.

Firstly, the narrative is amazing. All three routes deliver powerful messages effectively leading to the main theme of “conquering oneself”, in the shape of the game’s beautiful true ending. Additionally, the cast of characters is very well chosen and developed. Within creative liberties, they are very believable. Through this you understand why it is they do the things they do and most importantly, question yourself.

This last point is probably the most important one for me. When I read this book, I was around 17 or 18 and was really struggling with my ideals and reality. This book gave me a solace I couldn’t find anywhere else. FSN’s story is shaped by your choices and in turn those choices shape you, making you question who you are and why you do the things you do.

Even the posters are great!

Even the posters are great!

At that time I really needed that, it’s no exaggeration to say it changed my life, so to this day it holds a very special place in my heart. I deeply respect Nasu Kinoko, for being the kind of author that makes you a different person after reading his work, all while being very fun and entertaining. Since I read his work I realized he was also very similar to writer I wanted to become in the future.

To summarize, this work represents both an important part of my life and as an example of the kind of work I want to make. In hindsight, it’s really funny that as a game designer my favorite book is the closest a book can come to being a game.

This game inspired the Fate franchise, which has many award-winning works and to this day continues to grow. It became rather popular with the animated series “Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works” and “Fate/Zero” by Ufotable, available to see in Netflix, as well as the award-winning mobile game “Fate/Grand Order”. While the franchise has evolved and shifted as it spans over different media, it has always kept it’s core of a deep story with interesting characters, which makes it a personal favorite which I recommend if you are into that sort of thing. Plus if you got a mobile game which has generated 4 billion dollars in 5 years (Forde, 2020), you are probably doing something right.

Be advised that franchise is a big rabbit hole, which I believe is explained very well in the following video:

“JUST READ THE VISUAL NOVEL!”

Disclaimer: I would like to make it very clear that I don’t go into this much depth on a casual conversation. I don’t fan girl in front of potential romances or friends, and would advise against it unless you know what you are doing.

And now this week’s poem:

Inspiration

The moon shines bright,

marking the beginning of the fight,

with each keystroke,

my work is evoked.

“If only it stayed”,

the heart heart prayed,

“let us be done”,

the brain continues to run.

Much like time,

it can vary,

so why make it a chime?

when it can be a library.

Thanks for reading. See you next week!

Bibliography

Images:

Videos:

Ryan

Head of Writing and Programming

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