Yamaku Book Club (20220124 Dish Washing)

[brythain]

Dear fan-siblings in this particular fannery,

Let me introduce July before it is globally Julian, and say that this is somehow and arbitrarily the month of Iwanako, the First Lady of Katawa Shoujo. So far, you have read some preliminary and sadly limited pieces on Iwanako, and perhaps you have comments which you might want to make public.

I would also like to introduce Leaty, my partner in fannery for July. She'll be my co-chair (or at least, I'll be hers). Leaty is the author of Iwanako: Mean Time to Breakdown, clearly at least a key text with regard to Hisao's first romantic interest. Many of you have read her trenchant, mordant, and otherwise sharp-witted (and often extensive) comments before. I shall only say that it is hard to imagine not learning anything from such commentary.

Here are the other Iwanako pieces so far:
— The Past Catches Up by nimblesquirrel (17 Aug 2009)
— Challenge Accepted by atw_ah (14 Jun 2012)
— Finality by brythain (16 Oct 2014)
— Slightly Different by brythain (20 Jan 2015)

Note that atw_ah's 'Challenge Accepted' was written because of Leaty and Mirage_GSM.

And to kick off the month of July with 'Mean Time to Breakdown', please look at this beautiful title page and scroll down a little till you reach the link to Scenes One and Two — the Prologue. That's our reading material for the rest of this week. Subsequently, Leaty herself will take us through the rest of the work as it stands so far. She's already given out some guidance:

As far as the scenes go... Scenes Three through Six are a coherent narrative (Day One), as are Seven through Ten (Day Two and the morning of Day Three), Eleven through Fourteen (the Hospital Saga!) and Fifteen through Nineteen (Saturday evening). The word counts are probably dramatically unbalanced between those groupings, though—the Hospital Saga in particular is pretty fleshy.

Enjoy!

[Blank Mage]

Bry, did anyone ever tell you you'd make a great Dungeon Master?

I feel like this whole idea is already shaping up into something crazy-awesome, and we haven't even gotten to the main cast yet! I guess I'll go ahead and offer some light commentary on the four pieces so far.

The Past Catches Up: As a proofreader, I'm not really happy with this one. The VN format just doesn't hold up in traditional writing, as has been stated many times before. It's also a little bland. It's not bad, really, just sub-par. But let's put that aside, and focus on the concepts it introduced. As guilty as I feel, it's a concept I enjoy, even if it's a shameless tactic; the straw opponent. Iwanako (here, at least,) is just a bad person. She doesn't try to be, and that's worth mentioning, but she perfectly embodies that mentality... you know the one. It's a tactic that never fails to make you feel better about yourself, because you can point to her and say 'Whatever my flaws, at least I'm not her.' It's an easy trick to pull. Take King Joffery, or Shinji Matou. I hate to reference Harry Potter as often as I do, -but really, it's so convenient- but take Draco Malfoy. He's only there to cede the moral high ground to Harry. He's like a mini-villain for your exclusive use! We can agree, we can disagree, we might be Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw, but we can all hate Draco Malfoy.

The point is, Iwanako is only here to drive the point home, that Hisao (and by extension, the reader) is an awesome person. And it feels good. That's really all this offers. It is kind of an interesting idea, just for that. Looking back and seeing your old crowd in a new light and finding them fundamentally lacking.

Challenge Accepted: Now this is an interesting piece, and thanks for bringing it to my attention. It's a little basic, but I feel like atw does a great job with the Kenji perspective, how he kind of stumbles blindly into being an understanding and sympathetic person, completely by accident, like some kind of emotional Mr. Magoo. The idea that you can have a caring relationship based on paranoia, fear, confusion, luck, and blatant lies. If anyone can pull it off, it's Kenji. Iwanako herself is kind of bland, but it gives me an interesting idea... what if Iwanako is much like Hisao; bland by design, a template for people to project onto? This work certainly works that angle, presenting a pleasant, but completely vanilla character with no strong points in any direction.

Finality: Hmm. Not much to say. Sorry Bry. I can tell there's a moral to this story, and that I should have some kind of takeaway, but I can't for the life of me figure out what that might be. It's well written, though! Good.... good job.

Slightly Different: This is much more accessible! I again point out how often we see Lilly's Bad End these days. I see the allure, now. Lilly's End is probably the most realistic of the ends, because it's not one. Leaty mentioned something similar a little while ago, how the most painful stories are so often the ones that don't end. They don't anything. You certainly captured that feeling, that cold, hollow regret as the distance slowly increases, neither confident enough to act. As I get more experience reading and proofreading these stories, I begin picking up on these things. I love the short, brutal, factual delivery: "Lilly never returned to Japan." The finality, the bluntness of it.

Oh wait, we were supposed to be talking about Iwanako. Sorry. I like her here, what little we see of her. You can tell that it took her considerable effort to reunite with Hisao, especially under those conditions, to look at him at his worst and reaffirm her affections regardless. It's a bit Hanako-esque, but that parallel has been noted before.

[Puncyclopedia]

I'll start with Finality and Something Different, as they're the first two I read. xD

I thought Finality was excellent. You say a lot in very few words - it's an efficient piece that doesn't *feel* efficient because of the emotion the piece conveys. I liked the working in of the Fukushima disaster - it gives Iwanako a reason to know about Hisao's death thanks to all the publicity. It's just enough regret to feel both realistic and make the reader sympathize with her for the possibilities of love forever lost.

Something Different hit me like a baseball bat to the ribcage, primarily because Lilly Good End is my favorite in the game by a rather large margin, improbabilities and unrealism be damned. It's excellent for what it is - a teaser for a much larger fic that I'm sure you could easily write if you wanted to about Hisao and Iwanako's courtship in a world in which Hisao has come to grips (at least partly) with his disability and his new world.

[brythain]

I'll just clear the decks during this last bit of June and leave the way clear for Leaty.

Bry, did anyone ever tell you you'd make a great Dungeon Master?

That part of my life lasted from 1980 to 2005, I think.

The Past Catches Up: ... It is kind of an interesting idea, just for that. Looking back and seeing your old crowd in a new light and finding them fundamentally lacking.

Yes, it's sometimes good to compare where you are with where you were. Also, this one was pre-release, and we were all young then...

Challenge Accepted: ... I feel like atw does a great job with the Kenji perspective, how he kind of stumbles blindly into being an understanding and sympathetic person, completely by accident, like some kind of emotional Mr. Magoo.

I have a problem here. When Kenji's turn comes round (well, his is technically the earliest completable route), do I bring this one back again? Heh...

Finality: ... I can tell there's a moral to this story, and that I should have some kind of takeaway, but I can't for the life of me figure out what that might be.

Actually, there isn't a moral to this story, unless you count the problem of 'going home'/'never being able to really go home' as one. This one is AtD canonical, and Iwanako is a forever-side-character, so to speak. A bit like Misha, but worse off, because she sees even less of the story the reader sees.

Slightly Different:... Lilly's End is probably the most realistic of the ends, because it's not one. Leaty mentioned something similar a little while ago, how the most painful stories are so often the ones that don't end. They don't anything.

Leaty (incidentally, autocorrect keeps giving me 'Lefty' or 'Leary', so I'll apologise in advance if either of those escapes) did say I should have extended this one. I might yet. It's a sort of thumbnail sketch of an AU. Dewelar and I once had a conversation about the Lilly bad/neutral end and how useful it was for a fanfic writer.

I'll start with Finality and Something Different... (Re: Finality) ... It's just enough regret to feel both realistic and make the reader sympathize with her for the possibilities of love forever lost.

I was indeed trying for that. Iwanako is Hisao-sensitive in the sense that she's can recall stuff about him that she'd heard—she knows AtD-Hisao has a trophy wife (so to speak). And yet, at this point, she's the least affected by what's happened to him. Sad.

... (Re:Something Different) ... a much larger fic that I'm sure you could easily write if you wanted to about Hisao and Iwanako...

I could...

Thank you for all the comments. In a few hours time, Iwanako: Mean Time to Breakdown (Prologue—Scenes 1 and 2) will ascend to pre-eminence. But you can keep comments coming, they're all appreciated and welcome in this 'Book Club' of ours!

[Leaty]

I'm working on my own writing, so I don't think I'll be able to analyze the other Iwanako pieces at length--and I've already said my piece on Something Different. I'd like to keep the discussion going, though, so I'd like to briefly touch on the remaining three shorts.

Challenge Accepted has always been close to my heart, because it was written as a response to my fic--and honestly did Iwanako/Kenji more thoughtfully and concisely than I ever could have. I don't have any qualms with writing het romance (well, all my relationships with men have fizzled out early, but I see more than enough of them in the media to understand how to do one), and it's not that I ever thought a Kenji ship fic was a bad idea, per se--I definitely dislike Kenji/Yuuko, because I think it's lazy and trite, but I'm totally behind Kenji getting shipped with other people.

Sidenote on Kenji--it's kind of irksome to see in far-future fics that he's exactly the same as he was at the age of eighteen. I get that his gimmick is his paranoia and conspiracy theories and whatever, but imagine if Katawa Shoujo were a ten-season HBO drama instead of a visual novel--does anybody honestly think he wouldn't either grow past that or get written off the show entirely? That shtick would get really tired--even Steve Urkel eventually developed the Stefan Urquelle persona. (Did I just alienate you, Mirage?) It's just frustrating to me, when authors think that of all the characters in the VN, Kenji is the only one who doesn't get to grow as a person.

Anyway, I guess that's one reason why I like Challenge Accepted (along with the fact that the author used Daidouji as Iwanako's family name... that's my catnip). It's not far-future, but you can see the inklings of change, even in so few words. I wouldn't exactly say Kenji's a character I'm especially passionate about, but I am sad you don't see more content like this.

So moving on, as far as Finality and The Past Catches Up are concerned...I think these stories are totally across the ocean from each other in terms of raw ability--I've read Finality dozens of times and could barely get through The Past twice--but they both do one thing that I'm totally in harmony with: they give Iwanako some kind of darkness. In nimblesquirrel's piece it's bigotry and snobbery, and in Brythain's it's a biting coldness and cynicism, but both of these stories reinforce the idea that Iwanako is...well, if she's not outright a bad person, she's certainly not a nice one.

I mentioned moral inferiority in an earlier post--it's a subtle trait, so rarely consciously acknowledged, but Iwanako differs from the main five girls (and Miki*, but in the opposite direction) in that she's the one love interest whose moral standing relative to Hisao is completely ambiguous. Even though it's the scene of the VN readers are perhaps the most intimately familiar with, we know practically nothing about what actually went down during that six-week period where Iwanako continued to visit Hisao. It's Iwanako's inscrutability that makes her a compelling character--that Hisao's feelings about her vary widely across five different timelines is extremely meaningful (though from a Doylist perspective I suspect it's mostly because the same scene was written by many different writers with different styles, worldviews, and narrative objectives, rather than anything intentional.)

One of the reasons I get irrationally nervous (feel free to make fun of me for it) about the prospect of stories about Iwanako by other authors is that I really don't want to see her depicted as a pure-hearted, sinless person--to me, that would be completely throwing out one of the most interesting aspects about her threadbare portrayal in the VN, and, really, just kind of missing the point entirely. Like, yes, she's indeed enough of an enigma that it's totally possible she could be that kind of person, but why would her goodness be so unknowable to Hisao? An enigma is an obfuscation, and there's no need to obfuscate virtue. To my eyes, it seems overwhelmingly more likely that the enigma of Iwanako shrouds a deep reserve of inner darkness. She's not evil, but she's sure as hell fucking conflicted.

In using Iwanako as the POV protagonist of my story, I've had to partially spoil her mysteriousness--the reader is shown her feelings and her thoughts, so it's impossible to maintain the ambiguity, and I doubt I'd want to--but I've made it a trait she instinctively enforces. To the other characters in the story, she's still pretty damn mysterious--and when some of that mystery is stripped away after Scene Ten, she never feels quite as "clothed" as she does in the earlier chapters. That exposure, that violation, is extremely disturbing to her.

Since I'm drifting now, I want to make some final comments on Finality--I love the dead world it takes place in. That empty desolation reflects the mindset of Brythain's Iwanako so strongly--it's fantastic work. I love how dystopic this future Iwanako is--she's let her guilt, pain and acedia overwhelm her such that she's become completely closed off emotionally from the world, perhaps irrevocably. The world has passed her by, and the people who mattered to her are long gone, and she's hardened herself in response--she has no illusions that she can thrive. It's all she can do anymore just to survive. That's a fantastic snapshot.

...I'm going to be a weirdo here though and confess I hate Iwanako/Takumi and Mai/Shin, though. I mean, it doesn't matter for this story anyway but god do I hate those ships.

* If you haven't noticed yet, I treat Summer's Clover as canon. That's why you've never seen me post on any of the active Miki Pseudo-Routes--I'm not interested in any depiction of her other than Suriko's. Same goes for Suzu--I'm know I'm in the minority but I don't really like Scissorlips' piece at all, anyway.

[Mirage_GSM]

That shtick would get really tired--even Steve Urkel eventually developed the Stefan Urquelle persona. (Did I just alienate you, Mirage?)

Uh... No?
And I'm not quite sure why you think you might have...
Family Matters never ran on German TV even back when I was watching TV, so apart from the occasional meme I am entirely unexposed to the character of Steve Urkel.
Don't fret - even if we disagree on many things, we'll always have the Suzu route to agree on

I'm going to be a weirdo here though and confess I hate Iwanako/Takumi and Mai/Shin, though. I mean, it doesn't matter for this story anyway but god do I hate those ships.

I do agree that that seems weird. Those are hardly even characters, more like names why would you care who they are shipped with one way or the other?

[Leaty]

And I'm not quite sure why you think you might have...

My pop culture analogies are very hit-or-miss with you and I find that amusing.

I do agree that that seems weird. Those are hardly even characters, more like names why would you care who they are shipped with one way or the other?

I guess since we're talking about Iwanako anyway, I'll get into this.

We only know anything about Hisao's friends from this one line in the Lilly route:
[quote="Hisao, in "Out and About","]"No matter how much I played, though, I never did manage to beat Mai at any of those machines. Even Takumi and Shin lost to her whenever they tried. Then I'd be left to be the responsible adult when Shin and Mai fought. Again."[/quote]
This is it. This is all we get. One sentence. The fewer material you have available to analyze, the deeper you're forced to analyze whatever you have. So basically if you want to create fanfic based on this content you have to analyze the shit out of it. I think the dynamic here is worth exploring, so I don't mind doing so (and I've already done it in my head ages ago anyway soooooo...)

So we have four characters here, and we can break it down for each of them:

Hisao:
• Not great at video games—potentially the worst at them of the four. (Hisao seems to refer to Takumi and Shin as though their skill exceeded his.)
• Desired to beat Mai. Possibly even worked at it. Never succeeded.
• Possibly the mediator of the group. Hisao certainly seems to believe Shin and Mai were often subject to bouts of immaturity.
• The entire VN.

Shin:
• Probably male—but see below.
• Quarreled with Mai often enough for Hisao to remark upon it.
• Apparently immature, or often immature, or at least less so than Hisao (at least from Hisao's perspective).
• Seemingly a poor sport about getting their ass handed to them by Mai—this is apparently the catalyst for many of their arguments.
• Almost certainly did not visit Hisao in the hospital after Iwanako stopped visiting. Not mentioned to have visited at any previous time.
• Assuming 'Shin' isn't short for something like 'Shintaro', 'Shinobu', or 'Shinji', his name means "true" (真).
• If 'Shin' is short for 'Shinobu', Shin could potentially be female—that's a unisex name meaning "endurance". (忍)
• Potential candidate for Hisao's soccer friends. Presumably belonged to a club, if they went to Hisao's school.

Mai:
• Explicitly female. Most likely the token female in a predominantly male posse.
• Quarreled with Shin often enough for Hisao to remark upon it.
• Unstoppable at video games—or at least so good at them that her circle of friends never defeated her at anything.
• Apparently immature, or often immature, or at least less so than Hisao (at least from Hisao's perspective). Easily drawn into "fights" with Shin that the latter most likely started.
• Almost certainly did not visit Hisao in the hospital after Iwanako stopped visiting. Not mentioned to have visited at any previous time.
• Potential candidate for Hisao's soccer friends. Presumably belonged to a club, if she went to Hisao's school.
• Name either means 'dance' (舞), 'linen robe' (麻衣), or (apparently) 'true love'. (真愛).

Takumi:
• Almost certainly male based on the name—but it could be a surname, rather than a given name.
• Possibly better at video games than Hisao, but unable to defeat Mai. Less upset about losing to her than Shin, though.
• Conspicuous by the absence of any real defining traits. Possibly the quiet one, or the omega?
• Didn't get into quarrels with Mai or Shin, but was apparently content to leave the mediation to Hisao.
• Almost certainly did not visit Hisao in the hospital after Iwanako stopped visiting. Not mentioned to have visited at any previous time.
• Potential candidate for Hisao's soccer friends. Presumably belonged to a club, if he went to Hisao's school.
• Name either means 'artisan' (匠), 'skilled' (巧), or "open sea/expand truth." (拓海/拓実).

Now, none of this makes a character on its own—even teasing out the details and extrapolations as far as you can go, this is still pretty sallow land to farm on. But it's a start.

Accordingly, the reason I dislike the combination of the Mai/Shin and Iwanako/Takumi ships (completely besides the fact that they totally chafe against my headcanon) is because they're lazy and cliché. They've appeared enough in the fandom that I've cultivated a distaste for them. Because here's how the thought process behind that goes: Mai and Shin getting paired together is inductive, because they're described as fighting a lot—ergo they must be totally into each other, because fighting between a male and a female always means Unresoved Sexual Tension. (Also Mai and Shin are friends, so we can stamp her with the Tsundere cliché as well.)

From there you're left with Takumi on his lonesome—and he seems kind of quiet and unremarkable so you just match him up with the only other named character from Hisao's past—Iwanako, who is also kind of quiet and unremarkable. Huzzah! You've resolved the sexual tension and paired the spares like I could have done in my fucking sleep. It's just too easy.

And the thing is, looking at the characteristics and suppositions I laid out above, you can do other things with it—like, yes, by all appearances Mai is the token female, but textually there's not much to support that conclusively. You could easily say that Shin is actually a girl named Shinobu, and Takumi is actually named "Junko Takumi" or something, and twist it around so that Hisao was the token guy. (It's not like he's really known for hanging out with many dudes in the VN anyway...) Anyway, my point is that there are more directions you can take it in without relying on those tired tropes.

[Mirage_GSM]

Got to save this post somewhere for later reference if I ever get to write that Fic that's been in my head for some time now^^°

I'll make sure to think up some sufficiently unconventional pairings...
Hmm. Shin could be short for Shinigami, and Mai could be for "Maido", so she's Takumi's maid, who is the heir of a vast conglomerate of...chocolate manufacturers, who actually poisoned Hisao to cause his heart attack, so he could get together with Iwanako...NO! Mustn't pair Takumi and Iwanako, stupid Mirage... So, Shin the Shinigami saved Hisao who would otherwise have died...

[brythain]

Accordingly, the reason I dislike the combination of the Mai/Shin and Iwanako/Takumi ships (completely besides the fact that they totally chafe against my headcanon) is because they're lazy and cliché. They've appeared enough in the fandom that I've cultivated a distaste for them. Because here's how the thought process behind that goes: Mai and Shin getting paired together is inductive, because they're described as fighting a lot—ergo they must be totally into each other, because fighting between a male and a female always means Unresoved Sexual Tension. (Also Mai and Shin are friends, so we can stamp her with the Tsundere cliché as well.)

From there you're left with Takumi on his lonesome—and he seems kind of quiet and unremarkable so you just match him up with the only other named character from Hisao's past—Iwanako, who is also kind of quiet and unremarkable. Huzzah! You've resolved the sexual tension and paired the spares like I could have done in my fucking sleep. It's just too easy.

It was at this point that I thought I should share my thought processes on the matter, because these relationships—sadly or otherwise—are indeed a thing in After The Dream. I don't think I'm particularly lazy nor a fan of cliché. I might be too fond of odd pairings and convenient coincidences, I suppose.

1. I wondered about why Hisao mentioned only these friends, and not others. Clearly, they had some significance to him. But only Iwanako writes. Why? Answer: Hisao was peripheral to the clique, for such it was. However, they were his friends, of sorts. That being so, who was the clique's centre? Might have been Takumi because he's furthest away from Hisao, and Hisao subconsciously avoids talking about the alpha-male more than he has to. Remember, Hisao's account has his own bias, especially when he thinks about himself as central. Him? Ha...

2. Why does Hisao pair Mai and Shin up in his mind? They're a couple to him. It's not laziness, it's likeliness. There might have been others in the clique, but Hisao puts those together. Survivor guilt does the rest, and they're fortunate if they stay together.

3. So where was Iwanako in the clique, and why was she there? Headcanon: she was there because Takumi liked her. Then she did the unthinkable and reached out to the peripheral hanger-on, Hisao Nakai. Hisao gone, she drifted back to Takumi, whose character I shan't go into here, except that it's not a likeable one. He's only too happy to oblige, being the kind of person he is. What he doesn't understand, because he doesn't know exactly what happened in the wood, is why Iwanako kept going back to the hospital. He tacitly dissuades her from doing so, and finally wins. And that frees Hisao to become the protagonist in his own story.

4. Mai, on the other hand, knows why Iwanako did that. And because she knows, Shin also knows. They keep it a secret from Takumi, who never finds out. The tragedy is that he keeps thinking Iwanako loves him, but she never brings herself to do that. I'm not sure if she ever brings herself to love anyone in that way ever again. Shin/Mai is the positive outcome of survivor guilt, Iwanako/Takumi the negative. That separates them, and Mai/Iwanako, once best friends, drift apart.

In Finality, potentially the first part of her arc, the chickens have come home to Yokohama to roost. Or at least, Iwanako has done so. And the lonely girl who joined a clique has no more clique. The only person she has left is her widowed father, a circle that must logically diminish with time unless she does something about it. But what? Unless external forces operate, she's doomed by entropy. I guess that's where the rest of her arc could come from, if I ever finish writing it.

EDIT: oops, I read back further up and realised that you actually liked Finality, Leaty.

[Blank Mage]

I think the amount of time Leaty spends on character research is inversely proportional to their importance in the story.

[brythain]

I think the amount of time Leaty spends on character research is inversely proportional to their importance in the story.

I think it's directly proportional, actually, but most of the time you don't get to see it. The trick is to get her to mention it. Sometimes, a random provocation sets it off.

However, there are lots of other high-intensity researchers around here. Try googling some of the things authors put in their writing around here and you'll suddenly realise how much of it is researched. I remember ProfAllister's heroic attempts to construct a rational KS timeline, for example.

[Leaty]

EDIT: oops, I read back further up and realised that you actually liked Finality, Leaty.

The lack of a should have tipped you off. It's one of my favorite Brythain stories, actually.

And I should clarify my hatred of M/S::I/T originates with Themocaw's writing, not yours—Weekend at Hisao's is, I think, the first fic where I saw it, and I immediately loathed it. I think you've done good things with it; I just disapprove of the idea foundationally.

I think the amount of time Leaty spends on character research is inversely proportional to their importance in the story.

This is apparently so characteristic of me that it's literally been remarked upon repeatedly by IRL friends. Ask me sometime about the cyclopic monoliths of text I've written about Moaning Myrtle and Shireen Baratheon.

[brythain]

EDIT: oops, I read back further up and realised that you actually liked Finality, Leaty.

The lack of a should have tipped you off. It's one of my favorite Brythain stories, actually.

And I should clarify my hatred of M/S::I/T originates with Themocaw's writing, not yours—Weekend at Hisao's is, I think, the first fic where I saw it, and I immediately loathed it. I think you've done good things with it; I just disapprove of the idea foundationally.

That gives me a nice warm feeling, strangely good for an otherwise moody day with blistering heat.

I've been reading the Iwanako: Mean Time to Breakdown thread, as opposed to just your story. I came late to these forums and have only recently had the leisure to read the comments in between the scenes. Most entertaining. But before I comment on the Prologue, I'd just like to say that it was your claustrophobic description of the winter scene that made me decide to research the location of the place, and later write If On A Winter's Night A Traveller…, the first of my one-shot experiments. It isn't very good, but it echoes my memories of your prologue, which I'll now briefly comment on.

Iwanako never came across to me as dislikeable to begin with. It was only later that she showed some behaviours which might have been so. The thing is that her fears and anxieties, and the slow death of natural responses to her environment—all very believable. I was laid up for a situation that required full blood replacement once, and other nasty things. I didn't know if I'd ever go home. I remember all that. There was a horror of dying incomplete, unfinished, without chance to repair my own evils and make recompense for other things. Not exactly the same, but enough to feel some essential verisimilitude in it all.

Thanks, Leaty!

[Leaty]

Iwanako never came across to me as dislikeable to begin with. It was only later that she showed some behaviours which might have been so.

Particularly in these early chapters, getting that across was a less pressing objective—I wrote the prologue in a totally different mindset, which is why Iwanako sounds somewhat uncharacteristically poetic in the winter scene. It's not quite Early Installment Weirdness—Iwanako herself is in a different mindset in that scene—but the prologue is really its own self-contained thing and the rest of the story just kind of exists in spite of it.

I've pondered a lot whether I would have written those scenes differently if I'd known I was going to move forward on this—I'm not necessarily comfortable with how closely the prologue mirrors another writer's work so closely, though before the earliest revision of those scenes you might as well have called them plagiarism—but I kind of think the narrative needed to start out on familiar rails to ease the reader into complacency. It makes it, I think, all the more shocking and powerful when the train blasts off the tracks.

But anyway, "Salvage Operation" was more about showing how much more bleak Iwanako's outlook was than Hisao's, even very early on. Honestly, I don't even think about it anymore because I'm so familiar with those scenes now, but the stark difference in Hisao and Iwanako's reactions to the revelation that they're getting sent to Bel-Air Yamaku foreshadows everything we eventually learn about Iwanako as a character. Hisao ends that scene on a note of hope, while Iwanako ends it on a note of fear.

(Side note: I thank myself erry damn day that I didn't do the obvious lazy thing and make Hisao be the one to abandon Iwanako in a complete soulless xeroxing of OTL. If I had done that, it would have set the precedent that Iwanako was just Hisao with tits and just really made the fic seem shallow and puerile. I'm not totally in love with these old chapters, but I'm still very happy about the way I got rid of Hisao.)

BTW, I crossed the Google Docs revisions over to the corresponding forums posts and the AO3 mirror, so that you don't have to open the document to access the smoother read. I still have to do it for the later chapters, but it's done for the ones we're currently discussing in this thread.

Speaking of, I know that it's a holiday weekend for all the Americans on the board, but I'm honestly feeling a little sheepish about constantly barfing out these long walls of text. Am I bogarting the YBC too much right now and driving people off?

[brythain]

Speaking of, I know that it's a holiday weekend for all the Americans on the board, but I'm honestly feeling a little sheepish about constantly barfing out these long walls of text. Am I bogarting the YBC too much right now and driving people off?

No, not yet. I look forward to it later on...

As for this particular not-that-long wall, I'll come back to it when we go deeper into the text.