Yamaku Book Club (20220124 Dish Washing)

[Comrade]

Minus points for not ending it with fin, but i think thats passable.
Excomunication-lifted

[Helbereth]

Yaso Atoza

Yeah, so... I told ya.

[GorisTheKing]

The Night Before Tomorrow

I am absolutely amazed that this is the first Yuri fic I've found of Hanako and Lilly. Not too much to say about it, well written and sweet. It seems a bit short, but that's the nature of 'shorts'.

[Comrade]

The Night Before Tomorrow

I am absolutely amazed that this is the first Yuri fic I've found of Hanako and Lilly. Not too much to say about it, well written and sweet. It seems a bit short, but that's the nature of 'shorts'.

Please wait for the meeting to start.
And on that note, the meeting may begin

[brythain]

It's a nice vignette, like a 20-second window into Hanako's consciousness. I like the moment, but the intention appears to be leaving as many questions unanswered as possible, with no hope of answering them. There's even the idea of one or both of them being deluded by the nature of their physical or psychological shortcomings. So, more bittersweet than sweet, always on the edge of disbelief. What a sad thing, this love is.

[Mirage_GSM]

but the intention appears to be leaving as many questions unanswered as possible

Aura was pretty clear about his intentions in the introduction.

I have to admit I forgot about this one. Thanks for reminding me.
There's not much to be said about it, though. It's short, sweet and doesn't have any problems worth mentioning.

[brythain]

but the intention appears to be leaving as many questions unanswered as possible

Aura was pretty clear about his intentions in the introduction.

Yes, it's quite clear it's an exploration, and that the stated intention is clear that way. But if you were to read the text as is, it would appear to be something deliberately left hanging until it (so to speak) fell into context - a vignette, in that sense.

[ProfAllister]

I think I can see where Aura is coming from with his self-criticism here. Thematically, it's the extremely standard "I'm in love with the perfect woman, and, against all reason, she loves me back. It's pretty hard to get more cliche than that.

I may harp on it a bit excessively, but this is definitely a case of "generic scene with a couple extraneous comments/details that make it KS." It mentions Lilly's blindness, but, in this situation, the lover is always "blind" even when she's not actually blind. Ditto for Hanako's reflection on her own ugliness.

Similarly, it's "Yuri" only insofar as all the pronouns are feminine. Whether or not that's a good thing is a question for individuals more dedicated to the genre.

In short, the story could remain more or less entirely intact if you replaced "Hanako" with "Hisao." Or both names with "Jeff" and "Suzette." The blindness is slightly more integral, but not by an excessive amount.

On the technical side, nothing really comes to mind - it's pretty solid there.

So, in the end, we have an extremely well-written, extremely cliche, extremely generic piece. It's not "bad" by any stretch of the imagination, but I can certainly see why Aura was less than thrilled with the final result.

[bhtooefr]

I actually thought that it was a Hisao fic until Lilly mentioned Hanako, although admittedly I skimmed it a bit quickly.

And, except for that one line, it could reasonably be a Hisao fic.

[AntonSlavik020]

I really enjoyed it. I'm one of those people that don't mind somewhat cliche stories like this, as long as it makes me feel good by the end of it. That said, Lilly x Hanako is actually my least favorite of the yuri parings out there, and I think that's at least partially because, since Lilly is blind, her being in love with Hanako doesn't do much to help her self image of herself, compared to, say, Shizune. This is actually the only fic of that paring I did enjoy.

[Helbereth]

Usually I'm not one to suggest such a thing - I'm really not fond of Lilly-centric tales - but this piece may have been a lot more interesting and less cliche had its roles been reversed; if it were Lilly lying awake pondering the incorruptible beauty of Hanako, it might make enough of a reversal for it to pass muster as something like literature, rather than a simple experiment.

[Mahorfeus]

I think what bothers me about this one is that it's not really a story, so to speak. There is a monologue, and it all occurs within one fixed point in time. I'm not saying that it isn't a thing, just that the overall style doesn't suit my fancy.

[Comrade]

Anyone remembers what that Hanako X Shizune fic about chess is called?

[Helbereth]

I think what bothers me about this one is that it's not really a story, so to speak. There is a monologue, and it all occurs within one fixed point in time. I'm not saying that it isn't a thing, just that the overall style doesn't suit my fancy.

It sort of reads like an excerpt from a larger story - like a monologue section from my own story, for instance. It lacks a clear beginning, doesn't establish characters or explore the plot to any extent, and provides no realistic resolutions; we're to assume all that stuff happened in the rest of the story. Meanwhile, all we get to read is a snippet of Hanako's thoughts somewhere in the middle of Act 2.

That's sort of what Aura intended, though - or so it seems - so I'm not really complaining.

[dewelar]

I completely missed this whole cycle, but fortunately the piece was short enough to read quickly. I've already mentioned that I don't care much to read pre-full release stories, and here we have a pre-Act One story. However, since it's written by one of the devs, that makes everything about it fair game.

A lot of what I'd say about it has already been said (seems I'm late to these parties more often than I should be). The piece is competently written, to be sure. It reads like what it was supposed to be, which is an effort to test the author's chops at writing a particular type of scene. I'd say, therefore, that its generic nature is also intentional. I'd almost say it's something we shouldn't be discussing at all, but it does have merits on other fronts.

I definitely agree with AntonSlavik020 that, in the context of KS, the last thing Hanako needs is to fall in love with someone who can't see her scars. It's a cop-out, in that it allows her to deal with her appearance without dealing with it. It's likely that she's going to think that nobody who can see her could love her, which is quite sad. That it's Lilly, given what we later discover in KS itself about their actual relationship, is doubly damning. Could I see it happening in real life? Absolutely, since I've seen it happen personally. The thing is that that's exactly the antithesis of what KS is supposed to be.