Two Hallways - Hanako's Perspective (Updated 1/7)

[nemz]

"Indeed. It's a shame to be going back so soon, but we'll still have our memories of this place."

WOW. Looking back at that line (I had to boot up the game again just to insure it really was there) after knowing the full scope of things involved gives it a very different reading. Even in this moment she's already thinking of leaving him. Now adding in the implications this story brings regarding Hanako and Lilly unquestionably becomes a class-A bitch.

[Fiandra]

"Indeed. It's a shame to be going back so soon, but we'll still have our memories of this place."

WOW. Looking back at that line (I had to boot up the game again just to insure it really was there) after knowing the full scope of things involved gives it a very different reading. Even in this moment she's already thinking of leaving him. Now adding in the implications this story brings regarding Hanako and Lilly unquestionably becomes a class-A bitch.

This fic sure made me change my views of Lilly. >.>

[Kayo12]

Well, as a fan of Lilly, I can't say this is my favorite of scenarios.
Is there a reason why Lilly is coming off as so mean to Hanako? They're supposed to be best friends and in Hanako's route, Lilly tried to push Hisao and Hanako together a lot. I don't really see her doing this, just like I wouldn't see Hanako manipulating Hisao into feeling guilty after the h-scene in her route. I mean, knowing how Hanako feels, she not only steals Hisao away but then goes and has sex with him while Hanako is in the next room? That's just stupid.
I hope you clean this mess up before the end.

[Mirage_GSM]

Meaner things have been done for the sake of love...

I think it's quite the accomplishment to give the story and characters a completely different spin by just changing the perspective. Even the dialogue is taken verbatim from the original.
To "clean up this mess" at the end would cheapen that accomplishment imo.

[Kayo12]

Meaner things have been done for the sake of love...

I think it's quite the accomplishment to give the story and characters a completely different spin by just changing the perspective. Even the dialogue is taken verbatim from the original.
To "clean up this mess" at the end would cheapen that accomplishment imo.

But Lilly is not the type of person to do this. If she had any idea Hanako liked Hisao, she would have passed him over to her and just remained silent. She hates conflict and avoids it in any way she can. She never confessed to her english teacher because she knew it would be too complicated and a romance would be impossible between them. This is the same situation; Lilly knows she's leaving, so she would have let Hanako 'have' Hisao rather than betray her best friend needlessly and with no motivation other than 'it can't be helped'. That's a very weak justification for such a complicated character with equally complicated motivations. Just because he doesn't understand a character doesn't give an excuse to write it shallowly.

As for the 'spin', if you mean having all the characters change their personality, then you would be right. I played through the same route and it seems everyone has something not being said in this situation. Hisao may be a little dumb, but you shouldn't rely on Unreliable Narrator as an excuse for ooc actions.
Hanako, who breaks down in her class after learning she's getting a birthday gift, somehow manages to keep herself together enough to deceive the two people who know her best in the world, as well as many people who play Lilly's route? I have a hard time believing that. The game states she is happy for the two of them and 'excitedly' pulls Lilly aside to talk.
And you're right, it is pretty much taken verbatim from the game, so the parts that he wrote are the problem. It's practically copy/paste from the route with Hanako's unlikely narration replaced with canon.

And if the story is to be considered in line with the rest of Lilly's route, he'd need to clean up this mess before the end, otherwise, it's basically Another Universe type story, which is what I have to take this as. That would be fine, but this is being presented as honest interpretation and the interpretation is badly flawed.

[Mirage_GSM]

But Lilly is not the type of person to do this...

As much as you may want to protect your waifu from slander, in this story she is that type of person. Live with it.

...I really hope you never read the story "Madam Lillian's Specialty Service"...
Really. Don't. You might pop something.

[Antor]

hey mister Mirage_GSM me do want a link to that story! sounds promising in a particular way

[DanjaDoom]

But Lilly is not the type of person to do this...

As much as you may want to protect your waifu from slander, in this story she is that type of person. Live with it.

...I really hope you never read the story "Madam Lillian's Specialty Service"...
Really. Don't. You might pop something.

Isn't that the one where Lilly is big pimpin'?

[griffon8]

But Lilly is not the type of person to do this...

As much as you may want to protect your waifu from slander, in this story she is that type of person. Live with it.

...I really hope you never read the story "Madam Lillian's Specialty Service"...
Really. Don't. You might pop something.

Isn't that the one where Lilly is big pimpin'?

Why yes it is!

Don't say Mirage didn't warn you.

[nemz]

But Lilly is not the type of person to do this.

I think it's entirely possible, actually. Clearly they both like him, and despite Lilly's facade of perfection we should all know damn well she's quite flawed indeed. She wouldn't intentionally hurt Hanako, no, but it seemed more like she got caught up in the moment and that threw off all her plans. And hey, at least she's being upfront with Hanako about it, unlike the possible move.

She never confessed to her english teacher because she knew it would be too complicated and a romance would be impossible between them.

Oh sure, that's what she says... but it wouldn't overly surprise me if that's not how it actually happened.

Hanako, who breaks down in her class after learning she's getting a birthday gift, somehow manages to keep herself together enough to deceive the two people who know her best in the world, as well as many people who play Lilly's route? I have a hard time believing that.

Oh, I suspect she's had a lot of practice keeping her anger in. If anything a big part of her problem is that she's too good at bottling up such feelings... Lilly has no idea Hanako somewhat resents her mothering, for example.

[Fiandra]

As much as you may want to protect your waifu from slander, in this story she is that type of person. Live with it.

...I really hope you never read the story "Madam Lillian's Specialty Service"...
Really. Don't. You might pop something.

Isn't that the one where Lilly is big pimpin'?

Why yes it is!

Don't say Mirage didn't warn you.

Ohgodwhydidireadit... I can't stop smiling while reading the story

[Kayo12]

>I think it's entirely possible, actually. Clearly they both like him

Tell me why again? None of the scenes in Hanako's route where Hisao and her come together happened here; The pool hall, the birthday and chessboard, the city date, the games of chess and floor tiles, none of those took place in Lilly's route, so she and Hisao were never that close. Honestly, it comes off as Hanako having a puppy love crush on Hisao and being devastated out of proportion. And it says that Hanako told Lilly she liked Hisao. When did this take place? During the two or three weeks all three of them were together before Lilly left for Scotland the first time? Lilly and Hisao started dating a little too soon for believability, so Hanako being head over heels about him without any meaningful contact between them seems silly.

Perhaps as you say this is a situation where Lilly lost control and cannot take it back. That is plausible, and I see that happening, but her handling of the situation seems very unlike her as does Hanako's reaction during their private conversation. Again, 'it can't be helped' just does not fit with her personality. If anything, she would try to come to some compromise, like tell Hanako she would be leaving and that she could 'have' Hisao afterwards. Of curse, that in itself would be OOC as Lilly doesn't tell Hisao or Hanako until near route end and would contradict the route itself, but as can be seen, that is not an issue with this story.

And knowing what we do about the route, it again seems very strange for Lilly to take Hisao knowing full well that she will be leaving. That's a drastic departure for her attitude, one that can't really but be glaringly wrong.

>Oh sure, that's what she says... but it wouldn't overly surprise me if that's not how it actually happened.

Oh, I see. We're just going to ignore everything stated by the game now? I guess with that attitude, any story could be considered in character and canon. I guess Misha isn't a lesbian and Shizune could read lips all along, Emi lied to Hisao about having only one previous boyfriend and Hanako guilt tripped Hisao after they slept together into a relationship?
Down that road leads madness and unreliable narrative.

>Oh, I suspect she's had a lot of practice keeping her anger in. If anything a big part of her problem is that she's too good at bottling up such feelings... Lilly has no idea Hanako somewhat resents her mothering, for example.

Not going to argue with you there, but it seems still a little odd Hanako was so good at fooling both of her best friends when her emotional state pretty much is shattered. I would have expected her to start flipping out any moment rather than being so deceptive considering what happens in the Bad End of her route.

As for the Madam Lilly story, I was rather amused by it. I've read some pretty horrible things including Doomish's 'In Ruin' when it comes to Lilly and that never bothered me. There's a certain degree of parody to those tales that makes them distinctive, like an unspoken contract between writer and reader, a little wink and a nudge that we're both playing along for the story.

I'm not waving a waifu flag and accusing me of that doesn't add to the conversation and comes off as a weak retort, ignoring the points I made without refuting them and is the intellectual equivalent of 'NO U'. I would say these things if someone wrote a serious tale about Emi cheating on Hisao and tried to pass it off as legitimate or Shizune and Misha having a fight where both of them act differently than in the game. My comments would range between critical and suggestive.

As if I have to defend Lilly with every bad interpretation of her? If I did that I'd never get any sleep, no one would.

My biggest thing is that the story tries to take itself seriously and present a sequence of events legitimately that just do not fit with the established story. If you want to keep to the spirit of the route, go ahead, but do it properly, don't just throw stuff at a wall and see what sticks. This can be considered an alternate view of events, if so, it is a very well written one, but the people who start claiming head canon and touting this as 'WHAT TOTALLY HAPPENED DUDES' or allow it to change the way they see a character need to play the game again, since it seems they have a drastically flawed perception of who these characters are.

At this point, it's best just to reserve judgement until the story is finished. It could all wrap up perfectly fine or it could end up being a magic wand wave that fixes everything with no justification. Until the end of the story, where we could get some explanation for these strange actions, there's not much left I have to say.
Nice story with some big flaws, fairly pleasant, even given the subject matter.

[ProfAllister]

Kayo, no offense, but you seem to be taking this a bit closer to heart than would be prudent.

It has actually been a very huge fan theory that Hanako has a crush on Hisao through Lilly's route. Given her circumstances, she could be attracted to him simply because he's the first guy that looks at her without cringing. And the timing of Hanako telling Lilly is inconsequential. There's plenty of offscreen time where that could happen, and there's plenty of reasons why Hanako might consider it a big deal while Lilly doesn't give it much thought.

Not sure what makes Lilly's "It can't be helped" anything more OOC than her overall callousness. And you seem to be acting out of the assumption that girls can't act like everything's all fine and dandy until the guy turns his back, upon which the claws come out. Like it or not, it's canon that Lilly and Hanako both have a tendency toward duplicity. This story just makes that duplicity a particularly corrosive sort.

And then there's the whole point of alternate character interpretations. On one hand, it's fun to turn things around and take a different perspective, especially when it makes the good guys into the bad guys. On the other, some people legitimately complain that this is an intentional perversion of the good, just for kicks.

I guess Misha isn't a lesbian and Shizune could read lips all along, Emi lied to Hisao about having only one previous boyfriend and Hanako guilt tripped Hisao after they slept together into a relationship?

Sorry, but you're either 0 for 4 or 1 for 4 here.

The text only states that Misha is attracted to Shizune. Many people assume that means lesbian, and that is a very real possibility, but I'd imagine anyone living in modern society would be aware of the fact that sexuality isn't binary. (And yes, I know I'm probably a biased party on this one.)

You couldn't be any further off with Shizune and reading lips, though. It's explicitly entertained as a possibility in the bad end.

Emi only told Hisao he isn't her first, and that she had another. She never said it was her only boyfriend. She implied it, and there's little reason for her to deliberately conceal how many boyfriends she's had, but, strictly speaking, she never claimed to have only one other.

I'll give you the Hanako one. Not so much because you're right but because that theory actually has a lot of similarity to the approach of this story.

You're surprised Hanako can restrain herself, comparing this situation tot he bad end. Hanako isn't necessarily a delicate emotionally unstable flower. She has issues, and there are triggers, but she's stronger than she gets credit. Hisao isn't simply tripping a hair trigger in the bad end. He's forcing his will on a girl in her own room under the assumption that she doesn't know what's good for her. You don't need to be emotionally unstable to be pissed at that.

I agree that people may be acting a bit too shifted by this alternate interpretation, but you seriously shouldn't let yourself lose sleep over headcanon. After all, Hisao died when Emi ran into him, and the rest of the VN is a metaphor for the Russian revolution (Seriously! It's all there in the subtext!).

[Antor]

ProfAllister, I agree with most of what you said here, it's pretty reasonable.

BUT I will not accept your miss comprehensions of the true sense of the game, Hisao never woke up from the coma after the heart attack, all KS isn't anything else than coma-dreams reiterating themselves in the fading activity of a dying brain. And Hisao real name is Kenji, he's projecting himself in a better self in the dream world relegating his "real" self, reclusive and delusional, to a corner of his imagination.(if you want to read the spoiler I advice you to press this first for added impact HERE) Act1 "bad" ending when he falls from the roof is in fact the only "good" ending where kenji can wake up in the real world.





ok, ok, I'm joking, it was just to prove that with a little imagination a headcanon can turn into something really REALLY weird...

[Mirage_GSM]

I'm not waving a waifu flag and accusing me of that doesn't add to the conversation and comes off as a weak retort, ignoring the points I made without refuting them and is the intellectual equivalent of 'NO U'. I would say these things if someone wrote a serious tale about Emi cheating on Hisao and tried to pass it off as legitimate or Shizune and Misha having a fight where both of them act differently than in the game.

If that is the case, I apologize, but your posts so far definitely left that impression. Especially since you started your first post here with:

"Well, as a fan of Lilly, I can't say this is my favorite of scenarios."

My biggest thing is that the story tries to take itself seriously and present a sequence of events legitimately that just do not fit with the established story.

Well, I have no problems taking this story seriously and neither seem the majority of the other posters here. I also see no major discrepancies with the "established story," but admittedly I'm enjoying the story too much to do an in-depth analysis...

..., but the people who start claiming head canon and touting this as 'WHAT TOTALLY HAPPENED DUDES' or allow it to change the way they see a character need to play the game again, since it seems they have a drastically flawed perception of who these characters are.

Uh... Did anyone do that? All I said is that is a possible interpretation of the events in the VN. I also don't think Suriko intended for Lilly's character to be like that, but that's exactly what makes reading this story so intersting.
As for changing the way people see Lilly's character - I don't think there's most danger of that. Lilly's fanboys won't be swayed by a fanfiction, and there are already plenty of people who think Lilly is a bit of a bitch...