leraje
God cared for Adam until he cast him out of Eden. Adam and Eve were punished by god which is an abandonment of sorts. A turning away at the very least.
When the Shelleys (and others) were writing it was the time of the Enlightenment (and Revolution) and writers and political thinkers from across Europe and the US were using god and satan in a new way - less as supernatural beings of unlimited power and more as allegories - god was superstition/tradition/the ruling class and satan was science/progress/revolution. For anyone interested, the academic Peter Schock wrote about this in his Romantic Satanism book and Per Faxneld of Stockholm University wrote an excellent paper on Milton's Satan as a political rebel.
I think they're both pretty monstrous but in different ways. We can empathise with the plight of a creature that has no purpose other than to (essentially) satisfy the ego of its maker and still be appalled at its actions. Victor is monstrous in his inability to take responsibility and not consider what he's doing.
There's an argument that Mary Shelley was putting Frankenstein in the role of God and the monster as Adam as a commentary on religion. She, like her parents and her husband, was inspired by the Satan of Paradise Lost (the monsters reading primer!) in which Milton had his Satan question what right god had to 'rule' just because he'd created. And just like god did to another of his first creations, Lilith, Frankenstein cast away the 'bride' of 'Adam'.
It's a truly excellent read, however you look at it.
My own take on it is that growth is not very important in terms of how a network develops. The only truly successful growth is that which happens completely organically. Worrying about why one service has 'stopped' growing is pointless. Those who are unhappy jump ship - those who remain are likely people who are never going to and/or bots or influencers who aren't interested in being part of a community just finding a way to exploit it.
I would propose so-called 'smaller' networks (such as the fediverse) concentrate on quality not quantity. That has the duel benefit of making the experience for current users even better and makes the network attractive to those who are outside looking in.
I don't know that it is objectively the best - but its the best fit for me right now (LMDE).
I learnt to speak French by living there for a year or so but I still cannot read it at all beyond short sentences because how a word sounds is different than how it looks.
As for English, I think both learning English and English speakers learning other languages is extra hard because English is such a hodge podge of random bits of other syntaxes and structures. Its a mess of a language in lots of respects making it hard to learn and hard for native speakers to get past the messiness and learn a better structured language.
The threadiverse tech is better (Lemmy/Piefed/MBin etc) and it is a great feeling to know I'm not getting tracked and profiled by big tech or inundated by ads, or force fed ragebait via an algorithm I neither want nor need. The users are better, mostly, although I have noticed an uptick over the last 3 or 4 months of reddit-style dickheads being dickheads - but I can just block them.
Niche content will come I think. If the threadiverse can resist the self-defeating drive to 'grow at all costs' and just let it organically grow, more people will come but a lot more slowly. But of course that will bring a change in the user culture too. Its quite nice being somewhere with low to no tolerance for right-wing shit.
As for Reddit, I don't have an account any more. My main of almost Digg migration antiquity was deleted when Spez shit the bed over the API thing but I'd been on Lemmy prior to that anyway off an on. My alt got deleted about 6 months ago when I realised I hadn't used it for months. If I absolutely have to visit a sub I use a front end.