brythain wrote:After looking at the patterns of readership in our beloved fanfic library, my conclusion is that Rin is least favoured and Hanako most favoured in terms of readership per piece over time. I genuinely wonder why. Is it because Hanako stories are heavier on the emotional impact, perhaps?
I think it has more to do with the fact that Rin is generally considered the hardest to write of the main cast, by far. Therefore fics that don't capture her very distinct speech pattern as well as her mannerisms tend to ring false. This has ruined several Rin stories that I know of.
That being said, Rin is best girl.
Hanako seems to be the favorite, indeed, right up there with Lilly, for the exact reasons you said. Sisterhood is a fantastic example of this. It's well-written, cathartic, and packed with "the feels". Which is pretty much what everyone who read Katawa Shoujo came away with, anyway, so it also feels closer to the VN in that regard.
Damned if that ain't the truth. I'm finding it pretty challenging to have her be both in-character and contribute to the story, and mine isn't even Rin-centric. Making her the focus would be maddening.
My take on it is that part of it, by now, is also expectation—not only of how the characters should behave, but how hard it will be to 'get into' a story from a certain character's POV. I suspect if some people see a self-declared Rin story, they will just bypass it; this would be less true of Hanako (and Lilly, as forgetmenot reminds us). I hardly see Rin stories necro'd unless they're book club selections or something.
If the issue is quality of Rin-writing, hmmm, that's plausible. Does this possibly least favourite girl have any good writing in the medium-to-large range?
Post-Yamaku, what happens? After The Dream is a mosaic that follows everyone to the (sometimes) bitter end. Main Index (Complete)—Shizune/Lilly/Emi/Hanako/Rin/Misha + Miki + Natsume
Secondary Arcs: Rika/Mutou/Akira • Hideaki | Others (WIP): Straw—A Dream of Suzu • Sakura—The Kenji Saga. "Much has been lost, and there is much left to lose." — Tim Powers, The Drawing of the Dark (1979)
brythain wrote:Does this possibly least favourite girl have any good writing in the medium-to-large range?
For my money, the best Rin stories are the ones by cosmicmustache, but the only one that's of any length is Osmosis, which isn't really about Rin per se -- which is quite appropriate when one thinks about it. Beyond that, my go-to Rin fic is Direction.
Rin is orthogonal to everything.
Stuff I've written: Developments, a continuation of Lilly's (bad? neutral?) ending - COMPLETE!
dewelar wrote:Beyond that, my go-to Rin fic is Direction.
Yes, indeed. This is the Rin story I most often think of whenever I need to dig up authentic-feeling Rin dialogue that for whatever reason isn't in the VN. Worth the read.
dewelar wrote:Beyond that, my go-to Rin fic is Direction.
Yes, indeed. This is the Rin story I most often think of whenever I need to dig up authentic-feeling Rin dialogue that for whatever reason isn't in the VN. Worth the read.
Oh yes, I remember reading this one. It's one of the very few long Rin pieces I remember, I think. Marvellous. And this response seems appropriate.
Post-Yamaku, what happens? After The Dream is a mosaic that follows everyone to the (sometimes) bitter end. Main Index (Complete)—Shizune/Lilly/Emi/Hanako/Rin/Misha + Miki + Natsume
Secondary Arcs: Rika/Mutou/Akira • Hideaki | Others (WIP): Straw—A Dream of Suzu • Sakura—The Kenji Saga. "Much has been lost, and there is much left to lose." — Tim Powers, The Drawing of the Dark (1979)
Like others said, Rin's very difficult to write properly. Both her way of thinking and her way of speaking are so unusual that writing her is probably a matter of instinct. Without that connection, every single line you'd have her speak would be a puzzle you had to figure out. It's hard to write a fic that way. Rin's whole point is that you can't really figure her out all that well and that you don't need to figure her out in order to be with her. Hanako, on the other hand, is fairly easy to write. Put very bluntly: she's shy, she stutters (more in fanfics than in the VN since stuttering is a useful, albeit lazy, way of showing who's speaking), she has low self-esteem and is prone to anxiety. Hanako's remarkably normal underneath that shell of hers, so it's fairly easy to emphatize with her and deduce how she thinks and how she'd react in certain situations. Unlike Rin whose leaps of logic can rival Kenji's at times.
There's probably another reason. I think a lot of epilogue fanfics are some kind of wish-fulfillment. We didn't want the VN to end, but it ended anyway and now we're fantasizing about how things would have proceeded. I'm not sure if Rin's route really tied things up nice and neatly, but at least Rin was no longer starving herself and was at peace with the way she was. Hisao still didn't really understand Rin and actually accepted the fact that he might never actually get her, but he still enjoyed her company. It's kind of a weird ending, but personally I didn't really feel like it ended prematurely. I think if you asked 10 KS fans how they thought things would go afterwards, 9 would answer "Dunno". People didn't really feel like there were immediate things that remained untold. After all, even after 10 more acts, the player might still not have come any closer to getting to know Rin better.
With Hanako, the gist of her ending was definitely that it ended prematurely. It kind of ended around the same point as Rin's...at the point where Hisao got into a relationship with his chosen girl, but unlike Rin people most likely had pretty clear-cut expectations of what comes after. Dating, lovemaking rather than merely physical sex (the fact that Hanako only had one H-scene that didn't even involve emotional intimacy didn't help) and Hanako slowly coming further out of her shell. She and Hisao didn't really completely understand each other by the time the VN ended, but they expressed the hope they would eventually. Those expectations weren't met by the VN's good end, so enter fanfiction. It's no coincidence that Hanako has the largest amount of epilogues written...her route ended at the very moment the relationship started and people were dying to see more. That's why Hanako epilogues have always been kind of popular. Most of KS' endings didn't leave a void the way Hanako's ending did and people don't like voids. Sisterhood was actually one of the many epilogues that were written. (from the top of my head I recall at least 4 others, some finished others not)
brythain wrote:Does this possibly least favourite girl have any good writing in the medium-to-large range?
For my money, the best Rin stories are the ones by cosmicmustache, but the only one that's of any length is Osmosis, which isn't really about Rin per se -- which is quite appropriate when one thinks about it. Beyond that, my go-to Rin fic is Direction.
My personal favorite is still The Lamb and The Fox. I can't really speak as a writer, but she definitely seems to be difficult to write. I'm not even sure if doing so from her perspective is feasible. I mean, her dialogue is the way it is because she has difficulty putting her thoughts into words. So how does one write out those thoughts?
At any rate, for some reason I had Emi marked here as my least favorite. Funny how opinions can change over time. I wonder who it will be next year.
"A very small degree of hope is sufficient to cause the birth of love." -Stendhal
