Katawa Shoujo Forums

I haven’t read the pastebin chapters yet but so far I am enjoying the writing, not really the story itself or the characterizations, but the style is slower and comfy. Kinda dramatic in my opinion right up front, where other stories build a little slower to bigger moments. It would be nice to take the fic as a finished whole, but that’s obvious.

I like Rika as a more direct foil to Hisao, there’s a lot of potential difference in someone very used to living with the same condition as our newcomer. I appreciate it more when Rika’s more abrupt or even abrasive about her disability. This fic wasn’t that, but it’s still worth the read IMO

The Night Doctor by Kirbo

I don't want to explain this one. It looses impact if you're not walking into it blind.



... With that said, it's not my taste. Actually that's a lie. This would totally be my taste OUTSIDE of KS. It just doesn't work as a KS story.

I don't even remember reading that one, but I'm sure that back then I didn't know any more what to think about it than I do now.
It's probably some kind of crossover with some vampire story, but frankly I don't care enough to look it up.
I don't even think this deserves to be called a "story". It's a few jumbled scenes with no coherence at all and hardly any connection to Katawa Shoujo.
And now I've wasted the three minutes to read it a second time.

Cup & Saucer - A Cute Act 1 for a Pseudo-Pseudo Route (i.e., Hisao x Girl from Girl's perspective). It's serviceable for what it is. It gets Rika's condition pretty wrong, but still (mostly) matches the thematic basis of the Rika concept. By virtue of being an Act 1, though, the best it can be is a good beginning. Which it achieves, admitted.

The Night Doctor - Like Mirage, I feel I want those 3 minutes back. For context as to WTF it is for those who don't know: Ron Paul is a US Politician who is also a doctor. For whatever reason, memes swarm to him. In this case, it likely references some joke meme about him being some sort of skinwalker, feeding on human flesh. Aside from the eye-rolling premise, my issue is that it was just so disjointed, with no clear sense of causality or happening. Just a few snippets that felt "kinda cool" shoved into a text box and called a story.

Oddball wrote: ↑Wed Dec 12, 2018 10:23 am With that said, it's not my taste. Actually that's a lie. This would totally be my taste OUTSIDE of KS. It just doesn't work as a KS story.

Then don't do this!!!

Cup and Saucer was sweet - I have to say I'm developing a soft spot for Rika fics lately. Shame it never got finished though.

The Night Doctor on the other hand I feel was a disjointed mess of memeing and oddness. The writing itself was fine and with a bit of editing to give it some coherency and flow might have been an interesting tale. Sadly that wasn't the case. I'm not even sure what happened to Shizune in it. I'd re-read it to try and work it out but frankly I don't want to.

Literally, the day after I get done reading Cup and Saucer, but before I get to post about it, Oddball throws up a new fic. Then S9 gets into full swing, and, well... anyways.

Cup and Saucer
Every story starts out with a few unknowns. Not all exposition can be given up front. However, it's possible to leave it too late, as well - if you try to milk a particular looming unknown for too many chapters in a row, the reader becomes fed up, and immersion is broken. This is a problem that I thought CaS had, once I got to chapter 5 or 6. I wasn't alone in thinking this, either, as some of the responses at the time mention the same issue. However, what I realized as I continued was that the author wasn't trying to hint at an unknown; rather, they were trying to capture the unknown. This story is about a girl who has no idea what the hell she's doing, or how she feels about any of it. The reader isn't in the dark, but completely aware of how terribly clueless the protagonist is. That said, is this a good thing? On one hand, it's a great way of conveying emotion, but on the other, the fact that so many people misunderstood it points to it being somewhat confusing. Regardless, it dies down in the last chapter or two (on pastebin), as Rika comes to terms with how she feels about Hisao.

One thing I really loved about this fic was its portrayal of a normal person who's rather introverted. While not perfectly accurate (it went overboard once or twice), I think the author overall did an excellent job with it. I found the base game to be somewhat averse to that style - you either make friends or you die - so to see a character in this setting who really would just rather not interact with people most of the time is refreshing. As a whole, I quite liked this story. It wasn't perfect, but it had interesting elements to it.

The Night Doctor
"Wait a minute," I thought when I clicked that link, "Oddball said that this story was meant to be surprising. But it literally gives away that it's a Ron Paul fic before the title! What could possibly be more surprising than that?" Of course, I wasn't expecting it to also be a skinwalker PoV fic. I was ready for Ron Paul x Hanako smut, but I wasn't ready for this.

To be honest, it's not the worst. Could it have been better? Absolutely. At first I thought it was a vampire fic ("smells like O-type" and all), which would at least have had some interesting possibilities: who better to work as the school phlebotomist? Someone with such an acute sense of smell would also be great at picking up on illnesses (as evidenced by some of those lines with Shizune)! I was ready for it to be so interesting, but instead, it was just kind of "Yeah my name's Ron and I eat kids." Definitely some lost potential. That said, I think it's worth more than others may have given it credit for. It's easy to look at it and be disgusted and leave it at that, but I think it's a lot better composed and written than some of the other stinkers this club has looked into.

The saddest part, though, is that nobody ever replied with its_happening.gif.

With all the Secret Santa and various other Christmas stuff that was going on, I decided to put the Book Club on hold for a little while. In hindsight, I probably should have told people I was doing that.

Anyway... It's BACK!

and with a New Year, I've thought about maybe making a new banner for the club. I haven't came up with anything I like yet, but if anybody else wants to try, feel free to toss me a PM.




(This is the old banner. Nothing is wrong with the old banner, but new can be good too.)

For the first story of the New Year, let's start with something simple.

Revenge and Ice Cream by Oscar Wildecat

It's a cute story. It's got Rin in it. There's also ice cream. You'll like it.

Yup. Still cute.

Thankfully this time I wasn't eating any cereals...

D'awww. Rin and Misha are cute together.

Extremist and Kosher's Lilly/Shizune goodness by Extremist_Line and Kosher Bacon in case the title didn't give it away.

Ahhh... pre-release fanfic. Once the game was actually out, there was some of it that you really had to look at in a different light.

Like this one, a Lilly/Shizune pairing. ... yeah.

Granted this is Kosher Bacon so that might not have stopped him even if he did know. This one is sometimes sweet, sometimes funny, sometimes pure smut.

Enjoy

(I hope it's not too soon to dive back into the Kosher Bacon well, but that's just how the random number generator falls.)

Cute.

What I find most interesting about pre-release fics is noting the details that were already in place—Lilly is prim and proper, Shizune is dictatorial, Misha is loud, etc—and the ones that weren't, such as their sexual orientations, Misha not being joined at the hip to Shizune, Misha & Hisao hooking up, etc.

21 January will be the anniversary of Oddball assuming the leadership of the Yamaku Book Club! Congratulations!

It's never too soon to dive into more smut!

Beyond The Impossible

I notice that Misha keeps saying "Sicchan" instead of "Shicchan," and the other characters call her "Shiina" even though the narration still uses Misha. Wonder if these oddities are due to differences between the demo and the end product... anyways. The story is too light on context regarding Shizune and Lilly's relationship, we don't get any details to suggest how or why they have always secretly loved each other, it just magically happens. That would be fine if it were a flimsy excuse to set up smut, but we don't get that, either! Still a fun little read though.

The Untouchable

I like this one! It does a better job building up Shizune's infatuation with Lilly. It's also highly amusing to see Misha teasing Shizune for being gay, with Shizune begging Misha to kiss her. I also like how it tried to actually tackle the question of how a date between a deaf person and a blind person might go. Now I want more Shizune + Lilly!

We, the Council by Megumeru

We, the council is a Shizune story. When I say that, I mean it's not just a story with or starring Shizune, it's very much a Shizune Story. So if you like Shizune, you're probably going to like the story, and if you don't care for her you probably won't.

This seems alsot the idealized Shizune story, where she actually has a Student Council to lead. One that works hard and appreciates her despite her keeping them at arms length.

Personally, I feel this story works to make her sympathetic as it's made clear she doesn't realize how people around her actually feel about her. It doesn't do anything to make her more likable though. She comes across as even more of a strict taskmaster here than she does in most of the game.

It's a decent read, but I don't really think it's a great one. Then again, I'm not much of a Shizune fan. Maybe people who are will like it more.