Yeah, okay. I didn't really like this one. It has the
beginnings of a good idea, but it just didn't go far enough.
If you want to write a death fic (and at the end of the day, that's really all it is; a death fic), you have to deliver something more punchy than just Hisao wistfully reminiscing about events we've all already seen. My problem with the story is that at the end of the day all it boils down to is "Emi and Rin are both dead and Yamaku was demolished and now Hisao is sad and now he's having a heart attack." It's just a deus angst machina for the sake of itself. Though we don't really know how much time has passed since the VN, any single one of these things seems unlikely. All of them having happened is more than a little ridiculous.
Also, I'm not sure if Rin dying of a brain tumor is
offensive, but it's certainly
easy, if you know what I mean. It reminds me of how the writers of
Mad Men needed to pull a reason out of their ass for Joan Harris (the embodiment of sexual politics on the show) to require medical attention,
so, of all things, they gave her an ovarian cyst. Rin having a tumor feels the same way; like, she's not neurotypical, so she has to have a
brain tumor? I don't like Rin as a character (unless Dewelar writes her) but having her die that way makes me feel like the author didn't even fully
understand her.
Another problem I have with the fic is that it rehashes way,
way too much about what we already know for how short it is, and Hisao's blatant expository musings about what has happened
since then feel robotic, one-note, and unimaginative. "I turned to science after attending Yamaku, out of a love for the subject." No,
you don't say. And Hisao having a heart attack is blatantly emotionally manipulative and I literally rolled my eyes after reading it.
If I were to write this sort of story, I'd try to make it more of a pastiche of Makoto Shinkai's work, making it more of a
mono no aware story, if you know what I mean. Lots of poetic metaphor interwoven with brief, thoughtful flashbacks and a whole lot of talking around how Hisao feels and what really happened. Not Hisao just plopping his fat ass on a park bench and reading us back his favorite parts of
Katawa Shoujo, but, like, Hisao as an adult, drinking silently among the raucous chatter of his co-workers and wondering what his place in life is, now that Emi and Rin are gone.
The death is just way too convenient, you know? It's like something I'd tell a four-year-old.
Hisao was sad he missed Emi and Rin, so he died and met them in heaven and now they're happy again. It's way more powerful if he doesn't die. It's sadder if he cries out to the universe and nobody answers back. If he goes to the park and feels sad, knowing that he'll have to go back to work in the morning and test the new diabetes medication for the nine thousandth time.
I don't know; this story just makes me angry, because we know that Numb is capable of much better things than this and this story feels like a high school creative writing assignment. It just bums me out with how much it could be and how much it isn;t.
