Alt Dreams [One-Shots] (#73—'Stripping')

[Mirage_GSM]

That's not really plausible, since Hisao didn't seem to know Yuuko when he arrived at Yamaku. Even if he never met her in person, the name of a friend's sibling should have rung a bell.

[brythain]

That's not really plausible, since Hisao didn't seem to know Yuuko when he arrived at Yamaku. Even if he never met her in person, the name of a friend's sibling should have rung a bell.

I think this is how it works:

1. Yuuko is at least a year or two older than Hisao and was thus shipped off to Yamaku before Hisao met Shin in senior high.
2. Hisao has a vague idea that Shin has an elder sister named Yuuko, but that's a bit like X knowing Y has a sister named Carol, and then meeting some random person named Carol—without further info, it's just coincidence.
3. Throughout Hisao's time at Yamaku, he never learns Yuuko's surname.
4. He thus has no idea that Yuuko is his former good friend's sister.
5. Yuuko, however, knows who Hisao Nakai is. She spends a lot of time in some routes giving him good advice. But it's not her nature to say who she is, since she also knows that Hisao's feeling bitter about his old friends abandoning him.

[bhtooefr]

Mind you, Yuuko also explicitly says she didn't go to Yamaku, IIRC, so there is that. But, you're way too far into a storyline that requires that she did go to Yamaku to change that...

[brythain]

Mind you, Yuuko also explicitly says she didn't go to Yamaku, IIRC, so there is that. But, you're way too far into a storyline that requires that she did go to Yamaku to change that...

I thought of that! When she says, "I worried about the same thing when I graduated from high school. Um, I didn't go to school here, though…" — I think she's saying it with her fingers crossed. She's trying to give Hisao advice without letting on that she's Shin's sister!

(Not to mention, it's painful for her to talk about this topic, because… Kenji.)

[brythain]

Under Construction…

[AntonSlavik020]

That was rather strange. Also, I'm clearly missing something, but what released her? Shizune and Lilly being friends again? Only thing I can think of. Ultimately, despite the interesting premise, not something I was a big fan of. Until the end, which wasn't all that clear to me, it was mostly a downer story, what with Lilly leaving and Hisao apparently being dead. I'm also not really sure what Emi and Rin added to the story. Maybe it would make more sense if I had read AtD?

[brythain]

That was rather strange. Also, I'm clearly missing something, but what released her? Shizune and Lilly being friends again? Only thing I can think of. Ultimately, despite the interesting premise, not something I was a big fan of. Until the end, which wasn't all that clear to me, it was mostly a downer story, what with Lilly leaving and Hisao apparently being dead. I'm also not really sure what Emi and Rin added to the story. Maybe it would make more sense if I had read AtD?

Yeah. Terrible, really. These are bits I couldn't quite make sense of, but which I tried to anyway. Maybe a mistake.

Needs editing.

[Leaty]

Whoa. What is up with the subject lines of the last three posts? Did I miss something?

[AntonSlavik020]

Whoa. What is up with the subject lines of the last three posts? Did I miss something?

Yeah, brythain released a story, then after my response decided to pull it so he(?) can make more edits. You can read my initial post to see what I thought of it.

[brythain]

Whoa. What is up with the subject lines of the last three posts? Did I miss something?

Yeah, brythain released a story, then after my response decided to pull it so he(?) can make more edits. You can read my initial post to see what I thought of it.

Yeah, it was a bad release. Somewhat, a failed experiment that (unfortunately) you had to endure. If I can fix it, I will re-release it when done.

[brythain]

The rewrite is up! Just a one-shot, for the month of October ahead of us.
Three critics (for want of a better word) review Lilly's neutral ending.

=====

Scottish Play

“No respect,” I mumble to myself, gaptoothed, one-eyed, half-blind, half-deaf. I am Atropos, inevitable, formidable. I cut the thread. I am the answer to all questions. I am cold, and if my shadows were darker, there’d be no light at all. I take my task seriously, and I cannot be avoided forever.

“No respect?” she says, as always. If I am the answer, Lachesis is the question. Sunny and brown and fecund as summer, fertile and flirty, a shade over thirty. She is always in a mothering mood, always ready to support the imaginations of the feckless and reckless. And sometimes, ready also to egg on their desires.

“No respect!” the other one says. Clotho, this is, pale complexion aged eighteen, lithe of limb and hair of green. Always like a new shoot after the winter of my discontent. Damn girl, most powerful of us and most innocent—a combination that always leads to trouble. “I find it refreshing! Look how he describes us!”

This time, it’s Shakespeare. Next time, it’ll be that young Kurosawa. Again and again, these cycles of men. They craft and control, design us a role… I stop before I cast a spell by accidental pique and burn a hole in our tapestry again.

“Never any respect,” I say firmly. “There’ll be trouble, you know.”

“Never?” says Lachesis, primping and pimping. “Any respect there will be trouble? You, know?” Idiot woman.

“Never any respect there will be! Trouble you? No! Come on! Mortals must, till times be done, have a little bit of fun.”

I am old, and even if my power is sharp and narrow, I know when a spell is being made against our wishes. Damn it all. The rule of three is forcing our hands. All we can do is make it difficult.

Carefully, I say, “There’ll only be trouble if a lady of the two traditions makes friends with a lady of two faces and becomes a rival of a lady of two voices."

Clotho interrupts: "And all must fall in love with a man of two lives!"

Lachesis grins: "And even then, the first must bed him but leave him, and the second must love him but not bed him, and the third must speak to him without opening her mouth or her loins."

"As above, and on the heath, so below and unto death. There.”

It’s about as tight a conjuration we can make, to bind Shakespeare’s play against Kurosawa’s film. Thank the gods that their islands and traditions are all the world apart. I cannot imagine how this binding could ever fail; in the old days, we’d have used more rhymes, and sealed it with a baboon’s blood. Now, we are less messy.

*****

“Damn!” I say. I knew no good would come of this.

“Damn?” says Lachesis, from where she sits on Mount Aoba with her friend Meiko Ibarazaki.

“Damn,” agrees young Clotho a tad unhappily, from her tea with Yuuko Shirakawa. True to her nature, she perks up quickly. “But the whole thing turned out wonderfully! Look how many lives that Raita and his four-leaf-clover-whatever friends have changed for the better!”

I gnash my gums and grumble. Damn artists, writers, playwrights, musicians all. Time to bring out my scissors and prune some leaves. I look at Hisao Nakai and he looks unhappily back.

“You first,” I say.

But in my dark old heart, I know there’s no escaping from good art.

=====
alt index

[Leaty]

Wow. What.

I liked it, but I'm going to have to read it again tomorrow.

[forgetmenot]

Neat.

Must have been a hell of a revision if the first version just flat-out didn't work. This definitely does.

[brythain]

Wow. What.

I liked it, but I'm going to have to read it again tomorrow.

[I score myself a few points for triggering a 'Wow' and a second read from Leaty.]

Neat.

Must have been a hell of a revision if the first version just flat-out didn't work. This definitely does.

Thank you! Yes, I threw the whole long lumpy thing out and kept just the main points in. I'm glad only poor Anton had to read the other version.

[Mirage_GSM]

That was... interesting.
While I got the references to Shakespeare, I'm afraid I'm not sure about the one about Kurosawa, and his filmography is too lare to look up all of his works.
Also not 100% sure if the "lady of two voices" is supposed to be Shizune or someone else...