Yamaku Book Club (20220124 Dish Washing)

[Atario]

Classroom Game, by Oddball.

Entertaining, for sure. Though that seems like an uncharacteristically graceless stunt on Shizune's part. Also I think it would have been funnier if the "invisible bird" from Miki had been on purpose.

[dewelar]

Another one I've read a couple of times, because I'm a big fan of humorous one-shots. They get a good deal more leeway from me in terms of characterization and continuity issues.

Classroom Game, by Oddball.

Entertaining, for sure. Though that seems like an uncharacteristically graceless stunt on Shizune's part. Also I think it would have been funnier if the "invisible bird" from Miki had been on purpose.

I agree with all of this. Still, one-shot or not, this is one of the more in-character, and, better still, likable Mikis I've seen in the 'verse. Really, this is the response Shizune should have expected .

[HipsterJoe]

Classroom Game, by Oddball.

Entertaining, for sure. Though that seems like an uncharacteristically graceless stunt on Shizune's part. Also I think it would have been funnier if the "invisible bird" from Miki had been on purpose.

It got a laugh out of me. I agree that it doesn't make sense for Shizune or Misha to be a random dick here unless it was in retaliation for something earlier. All together a great palate cleanser.

[Mahorfeus]

Wait, I actually accidentally recommended our next fic? And I neglected to actually comment on it? Whoops.

But yeah, I really liked it. Even reading back on it now, it is still written in such a way that you might be convinced that Akira is actually there. Harking back to the discussion about twists, I thought there was enough foreshadowing to make the whole thing an "Ohhhhhh!" moment rather than a derisive "Really?" It requires us to accept that Akira has been essential to Hisao and Lilly's relationship, which is hardly implausible, especially given the conflict that is alluded to within the fic. I also liked the strategic spoiler at the end.

As for Classroom Game... eh. I do admit that it is amusing, but it still feels like an out-of-character question for Shizune and Misha. I mean yeah, they've messed with Hisao before, but here it just seems crass if not outright cruel.

[brythain]

The Yamaku Book Club June meeting so far:

Theme: Hisao Nakai—the man and his times

... we've had differing takes on a certain fluffy supernatural element in 'Reunion: Hisao and Akira Avoid the Family';
... we've had amused responses about invisible things and oddball activities from 'Classroom Game';

... and now, we continue with a 'lost' (or at least absent) Hisao in 'Observations'.

It's certainly a Hisao-centric fic.
I shall leave you all to read this short little piece, and we'll continue any time you're ready.
This weekend is about right.

[brythain]

So... how did you all find 'Observations'?

[dewelar]

So... how did you all find 'Observations'?

Well, I followed the link...

I like this piece a lot. This is the only story I've ever read that, while it's within the KS continuity, doesn't feature any of the VN characters (beyond just mentioning them), and yet still feels like part of the continuity. For that reason, among others, it remains one of my favorite one-shots.

[Alpacalypse]

Wait, were we supposed to comment on that fic?

Anyway, I thought it was pretty fun - the idea of the nursing staff betting on Hisao's relationships is rather amusing, if a little far-fetched. I also like that it was the one relationship that nobody saw coming - the little exchange at the end makes me grin for some reason.
Writing itself is pretty good, too.

[Blank Mage]

Being the overly critical jerk that I am, I'm not altogether impressed with the writing. His choice in words leaves something to be desired. All the same, there's something appealing about the concept of an in-universe Greek Chorus, who voice our sentiments, and mirror our hopes and expectations for the characters. Better still, it works; you can easily imagine just such a network to form among the Yamaku staff. Gossip is just human nature, and everyone has favorites, if we're any indication.

Maybe that's what makes this so compelling: the idea that each of these characters, that all of the students, have someone pulling for them, offscreen. The idea that these people wish only the best for their charges, cheering their success and lamenting their failures, unheard, content to simply watch them from a distance. I like to imagine Hanako receiving a holiday gift in front of her door, never knowing who delivered it or why. Shizune might be confused to find a mysterious increase in funds available to the Council, despite her flawless accounting. Lilly assumes it's Hanako who's been restocking the tea cabinet.

It's... it's goddamn heartwarming.

[Mahorfeus]

I thought it was a bit creepy. I mean, I understand the premise, and I like it. It came off as ridiculously meta, but only because it was supposed to, I believe. Some of the dialogue felt just a little too inorganic though.

But maybe I just haven't been in the workforce long enough to ship my students/customers/patrons/patients. And well, betting money on them for that matter.

[brythain]

I thought it was a bit creepy. I mean, I understand the premise, and I like it. It came off as ridiculously meta, but only because it was supposed to, I believe. Some of the dialogue felt just a little too inorganic though.

But maybe I just haven't been in the workforce long enough to ship my students/customers/patrons/patients. And well, betting money on them for that matter.

'Creepy'? 'Inorganic'? It sounds like 'Westworld'.

From personal experience, staff rooms and their equivalent in teaching, medicine or law are the most gossipy places ever. And I've actually seen bets on relationships...

[brythain]

All the same, there's something appealing about the concept of an in-universe Greek Chorus, who voice our sentiments, and mirror our hopes and expectations for the characters.

Now that's an interesting concept. We've already seen how Nurse is with regard to Emi, but we aren't given much of it. It's a concept not very much experimented with. What do the rest of you think? Suggestions about practical implementation are welcome!

Edit: It seems that everyone found this piece entertaining and generally pleasant. Somehow, that put me in mind of finding a counterpoint of sorts.

*****

Early Warning

The next reading for our 'Hisao Nakai: Master of Romance the man and his times' theme will be...
'Boundaries' by the inimitable Master Chef himself, Silentcook!

We'll resume on 14/15 June to give you a chance to digest all of our four Hisao pieces so far. And there is yet more to come...

[Leaty]

Okay, let's start with Observations and maybe work our way backward, depending on how I'm feeling.

I... Hmm. Right, so this is the thing: All fanfiction writers are amateurs, but not all fanfiction is amateurish. But this story?Definitely amateurish. But aggravatingly so, because it occupies this sort of liminal position where it's not terrible enough not to read, necessarily, but it's certainly not good enough to recommend. 'Mediocre' is a mean word, but basically every element of this story could have been—and needed to be—executed better. At the risk of sounding crassly unkind, this is the kind of story I would picture being printed in double-spaced Times New Roman on a blank white Word file. (If you get my drift.)

Like, the plot, conceptually—it's kind of ridiculous. Not "lol I dropped your toaster in my koi pond" ridiculous, but, like, "none of this is reasonable at all" ridiculous. Gonna have to echo Mahorfeus, here: fully-grown adults should not be nearly so excitably invested in the lives of teenagers. That really is kind of, like, unacceptable, or something. It's weird. None of the adults in this story sound anything like adults, which is a problem for the story, because these characters are not merely adults but the kind of adults dignified and professional enough to get hired in an educational setting.

Now, I'm not inherently opposed to a Greek Chorus fic, but LiTF went in exactly the wrong direction with it. This isn't the kind of story you write about adults: it's the kind of story you write about firsties. Had this story been about first-years at the dinner table swapping rumors about the rather well-known upperclassmen, this story could have been twelve times more realistic and more reasonable. Plus, you could have fleshed them out a bit more. Create a clique of gossipy girls with various interesting personality traits. Give them little eccentricities—maybe make one of them a complete airhead and another one a snarky bookworm. You could proceed with the same themes—that these students are being cheered on from the sidelines—but from the perspective of kids admiring their senpais, rather than adults being kind of disturbingly involved in their students.

So, I finished a draft of this post without realizing that the narrator wasn't Nurse—I had to reread the story to pick up that this was a lowercase 'n' nurse. So I had to redo everything after this post. But seriously, the voice in this story is a problem. Take a look at how absolutely threadbare this opening paragraph is:

By 2007 I had already been a member of the nursing staff at Yamaku for over three years. An old friend of mine was the head nurse at the school and when he offered me a position on his staff I accepted. In the time I had spent there I had seen waves of young men and women triumph over their disabilities and set out to conquer the world in the way they saw fit. I also saw those less fortunate squeeze the most out of what little time they had left.

Like is it just me or is this paragraph drowning in platitudes and clichés? It's so stiff. "Waves of young men and women." Really? Couldn't this person have said that a bit more casually? Like "swarms of kids" or something? "Triumph over their disabilities." He sounds like he's submitting a graduation speech to his middle school principal. Part of the problem is, of course, that this author seems to have no idea when to drop a comma—they're so stingy, like the author is Dalton Trumbo writing Johnny Got His Gun. And that paragraph is so dry, so expositive. "An old friend of mine was the head nurse at the school and when he offered me a position on his staff I accepted." Really? Like, you're just going to say it so flatly? How do you know Nurse? Why did he give you the position? Actually, fuck it. I'm rewriting this paragraph. I'm going into the breach.

One ugly morning a couple years back, I'd been sucking down a sports drink, a vain attempt at overcoming my hangover before my shift started, when my cell, buried in my purse all the way across the room, tragically began ringing. My husband, ever the gentleman, spared me the discomfort of having to lurch painfully out of my chair to retrieve it and took the call for me, which made things more than a little awkward when it turned out the caller was my ex from college. I could feel Tetsuo glaring at me throughout the whole phone call, and even after I got off the phone and explained my ex just wanted to offer me a job, he spent the whole day brooding. Fucking typical.

When I saw Goro later that week, at a posh-looking high school not far from the university, it was admittedly tense—but once I (quite pointedly) directed his attention to the sparkle on my finger, we were actually able to catch up pretty amiably (and platonically). It turned out he was the Head Nurse there; though our breakup had been bittersweet (and completely his fault,) I actually found myself happy to see he'd done so well for himself. He told me that his department had an opening, and he'd been looking for a nurse he could put his faith in to fill the position. It came as quite a shock when she offered me the position, then, because last I'd checked, getting Goro to trust me with anything was like trying to find a pink dolphin in the Hudson Bay.

I've been working at Yamaku Academy ever since, other than the year I took off after I gave birth to Ai. Though I hadn't been working there as long as some of the other nurses, I'd already seen a lot of disabled teenagers coming and going through the school—really motivated kids who seldom let their limitations slow them down—and when they graduated, it always seemed like they'd be pretty well on top of that whole 'adulthood' thing. (Compared to me, anyway. I was a mess back then.) Of course, some of those students wouldn't be having much of an adulthood, but those were generally the pluckiest ones. Even staring down the rising darkness, they lived out their shortened lives with bright, almost preternatural cheer.

Does that sound maybe a little more natural? Does that seem like a slightly more interesting and organic way to begin a story? Like, hopefully nobody thinks my writing this was pretension—I couldn't think of a clearer way to illustrate why this story drives me bananas. When other people see a story, I see a bunch of lines that say "[INSERT FLAVOR HERE]".

And, okay, you'll notice I had to turn one paragraph into three—maybe I'm just a wordy motherfucker, but I think this is a problem that's kind of endemic to people writing one-shots. "One-shot" means "a story that can be told in one installment", not "a story that feels like every single sentence was abbreviated." If a one-shot is a microwaveable pizza, this story is more like a hot pocket. And I find hot pockets kind of disappointing. This story was small enough to be a one-shot, but too big for its 1,500 words. It's more like the outline of a story than a story itself—and even the outline needed work.

[dewelar]

Like, the plot, conceptually—it's kind of ridiculous. Not "lol I dropped your toaster in my koi pond" ridiculous, but, like, "none of this is reasonable at all" ridiculous. Gonna have to echo Mahorfeus, here: fully-grown adults should not be nearly so excitably invested in the lives of teenagers. That really is kind of, like, unacceptable, or something. It's weird. None of the adults in this story sound anything like adults, which is a problem for the story, because these characters are not merely adults but the kind of adults dignified and professional enough to get hired in an educational setting.

Sadly, this is one part of the story I find all too believable, having witnessed similar scenarios play out often enough in such settings. Perhaps it's different in Japan, but I wouldn't be surprised if it isn't.

[Leaty]

I wasn't saying those kinds of transgressions are unbelievable, I think the implied benevolence is. I also don't think those sorts of preoccupations would be quite so formal as they are presented here.

Basically, you can portray the kind of perverse behavior to which you're referring accurately, but it doesn't look like it does in this story, and I don't know that such a story begs to be written.