Yamaku Book Club (20220124 Dish Washing)

[Mahorfeus]

A Wedding With Lilly
I have to concur with the sentiment that this could pass for a Developments epilogue. I got the impression that it was a bait-and-switch piece (that title though), but it was still really nice. For as small as it is, it tells an awful lot, I think.

Emi's Winter Break
The whole 'Heartbreaker' thing just felt kind of odd to me. While I can see Iwanako irrationally blaming herself for what happened, I find it hard to believe that she would be bullied over it. We're talking the same people that all but ditched Hisao at the drop of a hat (I might be mixing up canon with pseudo/headcanon). Not that I doubt that teenagers can be vicious, hypocritical assholes, but still. The resolution at the dance felt like something out of a middle school slice-of-life drama, and just felt out of place.

No More Pirates
A bit too... whimsy(?) for me, I think. Never mind that the pirate thing has been run into the ground. I am hardly allergic to fluffy one-shots, but this one just kind of meandered a bit.

All in all, a big part of Emi stories seems to be the writer's ability to show her and Hisao quipping back and forth, and making it clear that they are having, well, fun. I think that word means more in regards to her than it does for any of the other girls.

[brythain]

A Wedding With Lilly
I have to concur with the sentiment that this could pass for a Developments epilogue. I got the impression that it was a bait-and-switch piece (that title though), but it was still really nice. For as small as it is, it tells an awful lot, I think.

That indeed seems to be the consensus. Now we'll have to wonder what dewelar would do if he epilogued his epilogue...

All in all, a big part of Emi stories seems to be the writer's ability to show her and Hisao quipping back and forth, and making it clear that they are having, well, fun. I think that word means more in regards to her than it does for any of the other girls.

Aha, that might be it. She's more into real fun and enthusiasm for life than any of the other girls. Hoitash mentioned 'Passion', and I think that's the sort of passion that comes out in a healthy Emi build, so to speak.

[Oddball]

Tripping doesn't line up with the game 100% but it's at least a 90% so there's nothing real jarring about it. I've read plenty of stories that came out after the game was released that didn't match up as well. All in all, he does a great job juggling the cast, and everyone feels like they've got a strong and distinct personality. Now, there were a few chapter that it took me a while to figure out who the protagonist was, but once I did they were enjoyable.
Hanako seems a tad off but I couldn't put my finger on why.

As for having Nomiya act nice, that really isn't a deviation at all. He can be a bit oblivious to others but he always had Rin's best interests at heart. Since nobody in this story is going out of their way to piss all over the hard work and expectations he has of them, I don't see any reason why he wouldn't behave himself.

Shame it never got finished




Crush was really … well, I don't want to say nice. It was a good story, but man, it started off dark. I also think that the double meaning of the title worked better than those things usually do. Perhaps it was because the vast differences in the things it referred to.

Still, it's weird seeing honorifics used in KS.


A Wedding with Lilly wasn't bad, but a bit too neat and the start felt a tad fairy tale-ish. One detail I did really like was that Emi wasn't running majorly anymore.

[brythain]

One thing I've observed so far is that Emi seems to dominate scenes where she is the focus. Other characters become caricatures that are more peripheral than usual. Perhaps it's her intensity and enthusiasm for life; perhaps it's just my wonky perception. Whether it's Dark Emi or Bright Emi, she just seems to be that way.

There are still a couple more days for anyone who wishes to add to the existing comments about Emi.

Meanwhile, I'll be preparing a serving of the very little literature there is (that we haven't already looked at) concerning her supporting cast: Emi's mother Meiko, and Nurse. After that, it'll be Rin! In June, we'll have a summer special of sorts coming up, and I hope to hook Hoitash into being our guest co-chair.

Thanks for all the comments so far!

[brythain]

The main problem of Nurse is that he's nameless (or by convention so); the main problem of Meiko is that most writers seem to want her as the focus of lust. When did all this begin?

Here's a quick list of readings, designed to get us through to the end of the month:

Lost Opportunities by Silentcook (23 Jun 2008)
Twice by The Hivemind (10 Sep 2008)
Adult Content by themocaw (18 Dec 2012)
Stop The Clock by Hotkey (26 May 2014)

It's not that there aren't any others, but we've either looked at them before, or they're not quite focussed on either character. Suggestions appreciated.

As usual, while you're reading these, feel free to comment on the Emi pieces before we close that discussion!

[brythain]

So, does anyone have anything to say about Nurse/Meiko fics?

Also, what kind of fic ideas have crossed your mind that are not the kinds in these?

[kaserkin]

I don't have much to say about these fics, sorry. They're all good, and Stop the Clock has a very interesting premise, but I don't know where to start. I'll talk about the subjects themselves instead if you don't mind.

Meiko and Nurse are interesting characters, and I really like them. I always found it interesting that Meiko is the only parent that's really present in the story. Hanako's are gone. Hisao's are non-entities. Rin's are even worse. Jigoro's mostly absent and kind of a dick when he's there. Akira is the only other parental figure that's both there and useful, but she is young and sometimes irresponsible. I wonder if it was a conscious choice by the writers or if it just happened. Nurse himself is a parental figure of sorts. Mostly for Emi, having followed and watched over her for a decade (and possibly being promoted to stepfather soon), but also for Hisao, providing him fatherly advice when dealing with girls and life in general. I also liked that the exact nature of their relationship was kept slightly ambiguous. I know that they're an item for almost everyone (myself sometimes included), but them being simply very good friends isn't completely out of the question.
They are easily the most down to earth adults in the story, and their presence was very refreshing.

[brythain]

I always found it interesting that Meiko is the only parent that's really present in the story. ... Nurse himself is a parental figure of sorts. ...
They are easily the most down to earth adults in the story, and their presence was very refreshing.

Well, both Jigoro and Meiko are parents who are really present. Jigoro is -too- present in some ways and absentee in others, but still (as you've pointed out) way above the average for our young ladies. Nurse is a sort of 'global' parent with greatest affinity for Emi (for historical reasons) and hence Meiko. Mutou is a so-so stand-in parent for Hisao's parents, and Nomiya/Sae act as terrible stand-in parents for Rin. Rin and Lilly actually do have parents out there, as the VN mentions, but only Lilly's mother gets any air-time.

I suppose one reason that writing fics from Meiko's or Nurse's POV is difficult is that it requires a very real-life approach, with implicit personal tragedy. Writing a Mutou arc was bad enough; writing a Nurse arc would be pretty painful.

[TubaMirum]

I suppose one reason that writing fics from Meiko's or Nurse's POV is difficult is that it requires a very real-life approach, with implicit personal tragedy. Writing a Mutou arc was bad enough; writing a Nurse arc would be pretty painful.

That puts into words rather well why taking on a project heavily involving both or either is so daunting; their personalities run so tangent to the tragedy thrust upon them that any characterization could easily come off as too stiff or too insensitive.

Still, I think that makes them some of the most interesting characters to consider writing for though, despite the apprehension of misrepresentation. I should be able to get at some of these readings now that I'm finally off of school for a bit, so maybe I can finally join these conversations hmm?

[Mirage_GSM]

Lost Opportunities:
Hmm. It's a well-written story, but I think it doesn't work that well as a standalone short story. It is just a scene from an ongoing narrative without a real beginning or end.

Twice:
Interesting to see that Meiko was originally supposed to be spelled Maiko
Also interesting to see Blackforest cake featuring in both those stories.
The term "removing the inappropriateness" also features in both stories, so I breifly thought one might be supposed to be a sequel to the other, but there are some inconsistencies, e.g. who first brought up the removal of inappropriateness.
Problem I had with this one was the narrative voice. Limited Omniscient narrator is fine, but in this piece it kept jumping from Nurse's mind to Meiko's and back again constantly, which made for a very disjointed reading experience...

Adult Content:
...is just that.

Stop the Clock:
Well, Hisao X Meiko is a paring that is probably the most unlikely of all the "girls" in the VN...
Nevertheless Hotkey wanted to write a story about that pairing - mostly to prove it could be done. There was a discussion in some other thread where some others - most prominently Leaty if I recall correctly - insisted it couldn't be done. Not sure where to find that thread... If anyone can find it, please post a link.
Anyway he contacted me and asked me for some advice on how to approach such a route and we bounced ideas back and forth for a while.
It was my suggestion to move the story a few years into the future and to drop the idea that Meiko and nurse are dating, as either would have meant that Hisao's chances of winning Meiko would be zero. I also suggested Hisao's previous relationship with either Rin or Hanako to give him at least a bit of experience to reduce the gap between them a little.
There was a LOT of discussion on how to handle Emi's and nurse's reactions - Hotkey had planned an entire subplot on how to win Emi over for the idea that I convinced him to scrap... I think once or twice he was close to giving up altogether - but then, after three months of silence he sent me the finished draft that is more or less what you can find on the forum now.
And it turned out WAY better than I'd expected it to - probably because he decided to skip the problem of Emi altogether
I think I never learned what Leaty thought about it - or if she even read it at all...

[TheHivemind]

Hm.

I hadn't read that SC story in ages - Twice was, in some senses, a response to that as I recall. Plus I had to hone my porn writing abilities somehow, and I liked the idea of these two people finding each other again at the time. It was also (obviously, at least to me) written at the same time as Once, which is maybe the worst (or at least one of the worst) things I've ever written. Emi and Misha were always a favorite pair of mine and jesus did they ever deserve a better outing than I gave them. Isn't it sad, Micchan? A later attempt to give them some kind of better narrative turned into that other thing I posted on here more recently, but even that could probably use some polish. At least I wasn't obsessed with the idea of aping Thomas Pynchon's style that time (Twice did not have that luxury, alas).

Where was I?

It doesn't matter, I suppose. There's something immensely narcissistic about reading through fanfic about a character I wrote, so I reckon trying to comment on it goes entirely beyond the pale.

[Mahorfeus]

The main sticking point for me with Twice was that it suggested that Nurse and Meiko had some prior history. To be honest, it was a plot point I did not particularly care for, though I can't quite put a finger on the exact reason for that. And then there is the ever-present plot point that they cannot be together (yet) for reasons. Well, Emi, to be exact. Adult Content is much the same way, except with well, the adult content. :p

Stop the Clock works, so to speak, but I just don't like the pairing.

[Leaty]

Stop the Clock: There was a discussion in some other thread where some others - most prominently Leaty if I recall correctly - insisted it couldn't be done.

That didn't sound like me, so I looked it up, and you are wrong!

As a totally unrelated side note, I predict a shining future, some day, where some brave visionary will have written a Meiko route. On that day, we will all be liberated.

Meiko is one of my favorite characters in KS, distantly behind Iwanako and slightly in front of Tsubasa (I regard Summer's Clover as canon, this isn't new). To the best of my knowledge, the only pairing I ever said couldn't be done is Hisao/Iwanako, and that was specifically in the context of a pseudo-route. I never said, nor did I ever think, that Hisao/Meiko was impossible—it's quite obviously not.

That said, I haven't read Stop the Clock—I remember seeing it the first time it was posted, but May 2014 was a very busy period of my life, and I just never got around to it. Maybe now that the semester's winding down, I'll find time to read and discuss it...

[Mirage_GSM]

Hmm, I don't think that was the discussion I was thinking of...
I was thinking of you because in the PMs I exchanged with Hotkey - and which I reread to remember what was going on back then - he was especially concerned about your criticism, but maybe that was because he didn't want to disappoint a fan

[Leaty]

Awww, I didn't know that. I'll try to find time to read it over soon.