Yamaku Book Club (20220124 Dish Washing)

[Helbereth]

Curses! I don't think the fireman story is on the page and one of the rules is not external links . . . . . Would anyone be adverse if we read it?

It's pastebin. Mehkanik maintains an archive of KS fan fiction on pastebin. There are a LOT of things there that have never been mirrored here, and I don't see why we should limit ourselves to the forum.

Anyway, we were talking about Titanium, right?

It's what I'd expect from Meadows in terms of writing quality, though the subject matter is a little weird. The idea that robotics and cybernetics could advance that quickly is rather optimistic, but the dystopian theme of the tale sort of punches holes in that optimism - kinda like how Miki punches holes through people.

Starting in media res with Miki being chased through a government facility by a team of inept goons is a little jarring, and the first few paragraphs don't quite establish the setting. It almost sounds like a peaceful run out on the track from the first sentence, and then it sort of becomes more urgent with each line. Basically I like the beginning, but there's some sloppy execution in the first few sentences.

The whole scene with Molly is sort of written in the wrong tense, which may indicate it was written first and later sliced off the beginning and placed after the initial run sequence so the story could start on a more urgent note. That said, it's a nice bit of catch-up coupled with some appropriately Miki-esque banter. Molly becoming a doctor specializing in cybernetics makes sense, though it's a little cliche - the Indian girl studied medicine? Really?

Hisao is dead by this point, and ye olde "died a week before the cure" cliche gets tossed in a little too conveniently. That, of course, doesn't set Miki up to be the brutal, dead-eyed avenger we see later, so Suzu is given a tragic backstory and placed in animated suspension, thereby providing Miki with a goal that allows her assault to make some semblance of sense.

Then we cut back to the facility, and Miki makes her mad dash through an ocean of uncoordinated flesh, battering, brutalizing, and bludgeoning her way toward the exit. But, wait, isn't she doing this to save someone's life? Aren't these guards just doing their job, trying to protect federal interests? With that in mind, Miki ripping them to shreds - going so far as to reach through someone's abdomen to break their spine - starts to feel a little excessive.

Granted, it's her best friend's life she's trying to save, and these soldiers wouldn't hesitate to kill her to neutralize the threat, but the savagery Miki displays just seems out of place. Given the advantages she has over them, it would be simple enough for her to evade, incapacitate or immobilize rather than engage in senseless slaughter, but I guess it was fun to read.

When she finally makes it through that door and meets with the entire Army, including the armored division, a sortie of helicopters and whatever other ridiculously excessive machinery her future world possesses, I half expected her to just start ripping tanks in half with her bare hands, flinging their torn metal carcasses at the helicopters, and then slaughtering all the soldiers via twisted metal pirouettes. That didn't happen, of course, but I guess nano-tech armor that deflects bullets like they're pillows is kinda cool.

In the end this sort of felt like the opening scene for a modern video game. The hardened heroine assaults a government facility seeking the latest tech to help save her comatose friend. If it were a little more Shaolin rather than straight-up Predator, it wouldn't be a hard premise to sell to a Hollywood studio. The ultra-violence would guarantee an R rating, but in an age of Lollipop Chainsaw, I think Titanium - with a good team of writers, actors and directors - could find an audience.

That said, I would need a bit more justification for the ultra-violence, if only to make Miki seem like less of a completely psychopathic antihero.

[brythain]

Liked it as concept. Didn't like it as KS fanfic. But… given the timeframe and subject matter of KS, it seems inevitable that epilogues ought to contain references to technology of the near-to-not-so-near future, especially in terms of how it's used to handle disabilities. That particular thread of the story is fascinating to me. Also, Miki.

[Mahorfeus]

Yeah. Early in the story, I get the impression that this could have been an original, if not somewhat cliche work. I thought that the quick exposition on Yamaku's fate after the technological revolution was pretty neat; it was a somewhat logical if not unlikely conclusion. The Hisao tragedy was a bit much, I agree. From what I've seen on the internet, artificial hearts seem to be a lot further along than limbs and neural implants, so I'm not so sure about him being left in the dust and dying. Of course, that might be justified by the fic's assertion that those technologies were developing a lot faster than the public realized.

Helbereth more or less captured my thoughts as far as the video gamey feeling thing goes. The premise is pretty interesting, but I wasn't given the impression that the society was sufficiently dystopian for her to callously murder people with her Wonderful Toys. She has motivation, but I have a hard time accepting that it would be enough to drive her to the point of channeling God of War. I think it might have been a little more believable if she went in like Batman (well, not Frank Miller's) instead, taking a nonlethal spy fiction approach to things.

On the bright side, at least Suzu didn't end up being her cybernetic limb in the end.

[Helbereth]

On the bright side, at least Suzu didn't end up being her cybernetic limb in the end.

Who knows, though, right? What if Miki gets back and they discover that Suzu's body has succumb to some kind of advanced ataxia that renders her completely paralyzed, even if she does wake from the perpetual coma. Then all they could do is download her into a computer. I'd be more inclined to create a holographic Suzu, though - something along the lines of The Doctor from Star Trek: Voyager. She would lack the tangibility, but could function like a conscience to accompany Miki on her revolutionary missions and provide tech support and ensure her moral compass always points North.

Now I'm giving myself ideas...

[brythain]

Actually, I'd pegged Rin as the most likely to achieve some sort of cybernetic ascension. I can imagine the more culturally-traditional or eumorphic characters actually avoiding the more inhuman alternatives.

[Helbereth]

Actually, I'd pegged Rin as the most likely to achieve some sort of cybernetic ascension. I can imagine the more culturally-traditional or eumorphic characters actually avoiding the more inhuman alternatives.

Right, but this story puts Suzu in a brain box, basically - not necessarily by choice.

[brythain]

Actually, I'd pegged Rin as the most likely to achieve some sort of cybernetic ascension. I can imagine the more culturally-traditional or eumorphic characters actually avoiding the more inhuman alternatives.

Right, but this story puts Suzu in a brain box, basically - not necessarily by choice.

Yes, was just musing about the possibilities and the psychology behind them. One thing about the opening of Japan (both from within and without) was the huge and messy, sometimes dichotomous, gap it created between love and dislike of technological enhancement from a cultural viewpoint. In the later 21st century, it will be interesting to see how it turns out.

[ProfAllister]

(I sat out of the MitC discussion because of time constraints and because much of what I had to say, I had already said in the thread.)

Not terribly much to add to what's already been said - I'd put this in the category of "KS Fanfic that probably should have been divorced from KS entirely." That's the same category that contains wonderful works like "Closure," but the fact remains that these kind of fics feel a little stretched.

I kind of feel like I want to go into detail about how Suzu's situation seems a bit unlikely, but that would be missing the point.

My biggest criticism, however, is the assymetry of the conflict. I get the whole cyberpunk setting, and it's all about making the runs and everything, but there's a hierarchy to these things. In the grimdark cyberpunk future, as we all know, business replaces/becomes government. And bigger bizgovs have tougher security. The problem is that this isn't Al's Toy and Munitions Barn, or Lowell "The Hammer" Stanley Private Security, or even Saint Monestle - This is Lockheed McWalton we're talking about here. They wouldn't have a top-security research compound staffed by third-rate rent-a-cops that would be lounging around during a red alert; they would have their own detail of top-tier state-of-the-art cyber-rent-a-cops that understand that the only way to deal with an intruder is full force and with extreme prejudice. This isn't the kind of job that's done by a dime-a-dozen street samurai with nothing left to lose, no matter how good she looks in a skin-tight black cyberarmorcatsuit.

That's not to say that he run isn't possible, especially considering she had a starman. I'm saying that he run-in with security needed to be a little less Equilibrium and a little more Neo vs Smith (from the first Matrix).

A fun read, but the lack of polish (understandable for a one-shot made while doing a major project) made it a little jarring.

[AntonSlavik020]

Honestly I wasn't a fan. Wasn't a fan of the setting or the general tone of it. I don't really like stories that have his so dead before they start, or the fact that the backstory wasn't really set up at all. Makes it hard to connect with it. And I vote HAPPY!

[Maristo]

I'm not surprised to see that the reaction to Titanium has been a bit negative. First and foremost, it doesn't feel anything like a typical Katawa Shoujo fan fiction. ProfAllister's critique is reasonable; the story has, at best, a tenuous link to the canon world of Yamaku. The entire story could have been written without any link to KS and suffered little for it. In addition to this, dsytopian sci-fi stories are, in my opinion, particularly difficult to write short stories about. It is very difficult to develop a setting for such a story. The background must be both futuristic and yet still believable; logically acceptable and yet still jarring and unrelatable. This fan fiction tackles an even bigger task in that it must accomplish this while effectively linking itself to a set of predetermined expectations laid out by the KS universe. I certainly don't think that this is an impossible task, but it's a difficult one to do well, especially in ~5,000 words. I think many of the complaints voiced thus far would have been avoided, had the author written a similar story over the course of a 30,000 word series of multiple installments.

Perhaps exacerbating the problem was the author's tendency to explain everything. I fall into this trap often in my own writing, but in situations where the reader must exercise a significant suspension of disbelief, it's easier for a wide audience to accept fantastical scenarios if some portions of the story are left to the imagination. This story anticipated many of the reader's potential questions and pre-empted them with answers woven into the story. What happened to Hisao? Do people intentionally get these new prosthetics? Why is Miki such a cold-blooded killer? In my opinion, a truly excellent one-shot short story raises these questions and hints at answers, but ultimately lets the audience make its own interpretation. Titanium checked all the boxes and wrapped things up nicely with a bow on top. While that approach is satisfying when the entire story is about love, relationship dynamics, and interpersonal struggles, it's less effective in this situation.

Looking at specific parts of the story, I noticed a few things that felt out of place. For example, it's hard to imagine that a girl who is capable of mutilating ten armed guards in the space of a few seconds would find it necessary to run so frantically from a bunch of hired goons, as described in the opening scene. If the communications jammer worked so effectively, it seems that this unstoppable demi-god of a character would simply slice and dice her initial pursuers. While the final scene was indeed supremely cool, I can't help but feel that Miki should be very much a dead person after her encounter with the tank. Even assuming that the nano-armor can effectively dissipate the vast majority of such an impact, the kinetic energy of a tank round is too immense to be ignored. Any collision that sends flying backwards a person previously running at a full sprint is likely to cause serious internal injury, even if no external damage is present.

Having said all that, I quite liked the story. Ultimately, short one-shots such as this have the simple task of creating a perspective for the reader, and then making them feel something. I'll readily admit that I felt tense and worried as circumstances were explained, and then like a total badass as Miki systematically wrecked some fools at the end. The story effectively conveyed Miki's sense of determination, and I finished it with sort of a "grim smile" mentality. In my opinion, despite its faults, Titanium is a pretty darn good shot at a very unorthodox approach to KS fan fiction. It was well worth my time.

[Mournful3ch0]

While the final scene was indeed supremely cool, I can't help but feel that Miki should be very much a dead person after her encounter with the tank. Even assuming that the nano-armor can effectively dissipate the vast majority of such an impact, the kinetic energy of a tank round is too immense to be ignored. Any collision that sends flying backwards a person previously running at a full sprint is likely to cause serious internal injury, even if no external damage is present.

Yep. I'll go ahead and assume that they are still using ye olde 120mm smoothbore cannon with 'modern' rounds.
An 8.6kg projectile traveling at 5,700 feet per second is approximately 12.6 million joules, or 9.2 million pound-feet of force. To put that in perspective, my .300 Win Mag rifle, which has some very stout recoil, produces approximately 3,570lb/ft of force at the muzzle. She was likely hit with a canister shot of tungsten balls with greater than 2,500 times the force of a .30 caliber magnum rifle cartridge which can harvest a 3/4 ton moose without an issue.

Sorry, I got off topic. Just let it be known that it bothers me.

I wholeheartedly agree that this story was good and all, but really has no ties to the KS universe. It has Miki, Suzu, Molly, and to a limited extent Hisao, but the rest is all futuristic dystopia and edgy plot. I don't have a whole lot to say about it that hasn't already been said, but I will go out and state that I was very impressed at the density of the story. 5,000 words is not a lot, but it managed to finish up pretty quickly and made me interested enough to search for a sequel.

Verdict: Not bad, but not KS/10

[Sea]

Announcement time! Happiness has won the day! (sorry Helbereth)
As such, or sun shine and rainbow-y story shall be:

When Hisao Was Rin – Epilogue by Oddball (completed, 4.103 words)
PoV: Hisao; Pairings: Hisao X Rin; Begins: after Rin good end
Remarks:

(I may be slightly biased towards authors who are active on the forums) So yes, I had this one picked out a while ago and now seemed the time to throw it in here. Im thinking next meeting we have a larger fic, perhaps the Fireman one, but don't go reading it now, go read the current story, then we'll get to it. I also may have tweaked the rules to allow a out-of-site fic. The meeting shall be 24:00 GMT on the 11th (24 hours from this post for all you less-than-time speaking people (That sentence made no sense)) I usually give at least 2 days, but this one can be read in a bout 10 min so it should be easy to catch up even if you miss it.
Note: Damn, I tabbed out of this and now its an hour later and not posted, very sorry

[Oddball]

Hey! I've read that one!

[dewelar]

Hey! I've read that one!

Me too, and I remember enjoying it quite a bit . I'm just surprised it took until round 4 to hit one that I've read...

[brythain]

Hey! I've read that one!

I imagine you must have read it many, many times…