Yamaku Book Club (20220124 Dish Washing)

[brythain]

ETA: One thing I forgot to mention is my annoyance at Miki running into Hisako in the hallway. She was pretty badly OOC during that scene, I think. Miki is not Emi, nor is she a blank slate on which you can overlay Eminence.

That is a very pointed, acute, poignant comment. Totally agree. Although now I'm wondering what would've happened if it had indeed been Miki running into Hisao. Since they're in the same class, why would she have been running in the opposite direction? Hmmm...

[LorSquirrel]

I think I must have zoned out while reading, or something because I honestly didn't remember Miki running into FemHisao until I saw you mention it. Yeah it did seem a bit out of character. And good point brythain. Why WAS she running that way?

And to correct what I said in my earlier post: I get that the text in the prologue helps flesh out FemHisao, but you could have easily had her flashing back to that time while she was standing in the hallway, or have the first real chapter start with her walking to class and musing on her thoughts. Having a single incredibly short prologue chapter that ultimately doesn't really say much about the story really is just taking up space. (Although I may also have done this. Not sure the prologue in WtBF counts as what I just railed against.)

And it's good to know that I wasn't the only who noticed text lifting from the VN. I thought I was just mistaken because I haven't played in a while.

[Sea]

Righto, I rather enjoyed the last one, and I've found a few candidates, but some of them are rather lengthy. AS someone who reads and unhealthy amount, I don't really find 100k+ fics to troublesome, but I'm not sure about the rest of you. Would you all rather have longer or shorter stories?

[LorSquirrel]

Although I'm not a member I think it would be best to go with shorter ones until more people come back.

[brythain]

I'm happy with somewhere up to 10k words over three days. If it's an epic like a full pseudo-route or something, that's at least a week, if not two. So my suspicion is that maybe 20k words is the upper limit, roughly. The exception would be works that are so established in KS fanfic lore that another round of discussion would be spontaneously generated.

The lower limit isn't defined (I mean, I suppose it would be one word or something like that) but you'd of course allow fewer days — anything under 5k you could probably do in two days, and one day is not practical because of timezones, people being busy, etc.

[Sea]

Righto, sorry about the long delay, some stuff was going on, but here's the next selection:

Katawa Shoujo Blooper Reel Author: Cyberchao X

Also, I recieved a rather itneresting PM that I think is quite the good idea, thoughts?

Hi Sea -
I just found the Yamaku book club recently - you found me way before I found you, because I'm not in much.

I noticed that you have some of the better writers in the group and that you seem to be searching harder for suitable material lately. So I had an idea, FWIW.

This would be a great group to preview stories BEFORE they're posted - writers (especially new ones) would benefit from the perspective of people who had done it well. You'd probably distribute stories via PM and you could collect and send comments that way too, if you wanted. You could set word limits, engage the author if they wanted (either privately or publicly) and give them your thoughts. It would be a win from the author's viewpoint and from yours, because you had more control over the amount/timing of the content.

Several groups I know work this way. As long as people stay engaged, it works well.

I wouldn't expect the group to do copyediting (but they could comment if the copyediting was bad), but you could comment on look and feel, just the way you do now with posted stories.

Just wanted to see what you think. It's a good group - wish y'all well.

PTB (writer of A Future)

It'd obviously be a diversion from what we usually do, but the book club has no borders, and if writers would want this, I'd be all for it. We shall meet on the 28th.

[Mirage_GSM]

Well several of us already do "preview" other author's stories - though I usually call it editing/proofreading…

[brythain]

I thought this blooper reel was funny—light fluffy amusement. I could imagine this happening while they were doing KS:The Movie, but apart from that, it's not quite story enough for me... even though I enjoyed it quite a bit!

[LorSquirrel]

I felt like the bloopers were very well done. I laughed at most of them and even those I didn't at least got a grin out of me. Although I did kind of feel like it kind of over stretched itself a little bit because I found myself just kind of pushing through the last few.

I would be up for the peer review thing.

[Oscar Wildecat]

As a person who has imagined the existence of a KS "greenroom", I found the Blooper Reel fanfic rather amusing. I noticed the Hisao/Emi/Rin pairing and Kenji/Hanako pairing well before the ending author note, where the author comes out and admits it and explains the logic behind the pairings. (The logic for the Kenji/Hanako pairing is rather reasonable...)

[dewelar]

Yeah, "amusing" is probably the best word for this piece. I'd say it was quite well-written - the author seems to have put a good amount of effort into getting this to feel right. As LorSquirrel mentioned, it did get a bit tedious at times, and unlike him I didn't make it all the way through. The whole thing with Rin's wall of text was particularly annoying. The best parts were definitely the Rin-Emi-Hisao bits, though. Those were fun. Not something I'd ever go back to, but above average overall as fanfics go.

[Oddball]

The joke really overstayed it's welcome. It was okay at first, but it ran more than twice as long as it should have.

[bhtooefr]

I'd say it's a sensible chuckle, but otherwise not that remarkable.

[Sea]

*Sigh*

So I'm late again. I find myself staring at this page a lot, but I just can't find any enthusiasm for it. I acknowledge it's a rather easy job, but it's just been something of a chore. I think I've lost the spark, which saddens me, but at the same time, I had a lot of good memories here, and the game changed my life for a long time, but I moved on a while ago. I might come back occasionally, but I'd like to formally put the club up for adoption. PM me if you're interested and I'll talk to SC about transferring control of the master post. I hope you all can keep enjoying the club under new management, hopefully they can make it even more amazing. Thanks everybody for the support the club has gotten already, I never really expected a random idea of Comrade's to get this big and fabulous. My one regret is we never got do do a finished Miki route.

[brythain]

Dear fellow readers,

Sea's previous post saddened me quite a bit. The Yamaku Book Club was almost literally the first stop I made when I joined these forums on 24 Feb 2014; it had just started (first post dated 23 Feb 2014!) and a lot of discussion was going on. For a new reader, it was a good place to hear from the people who'd already been around a while. (The Library was useful, but there was such a lot of it!)

The first recommendations for reading that I saw here were from Mournful3ch0: Developments (by dewelar, then at Chapter 34, now at Chapter 57), Tomorrow's Doom (by Helbereth, which had hit Chapter 45, and inches towards the eponymous Doom), the Akira Pseudo-Route ('Can You Keep Moving Forward?') (by Thanatos02, then at Act 5 Part 6, completed May 2014), and Hanako's Story (by Trivun, then somewhere in Act 4, completed in August 2014). They're all classics. They got me really involved in wanting to know what might happen to our favourite characters.

Along the way there were in-between-chapter discussions. Was Nomiya the greatest jerk, or did the honour go to Mr Hawaiian-Shirt? Stuff like that. So many great writers and readers and commenters. I couldn't get enough of it.

And suddenly, I find myself here, temporarily handling the YBC with Sea's kind permission. I'd love it to continue being a thread where discussions from material (old or new) can end up in one place for the archives and for new readers. It's always been run on a suggestions-by-PM basis, and that'll continue. I'll just be the guy who puts stuff on the front page and gets things going along. Feel free to join in. And thanks for being a great community, always.