monkeywitha6pack wrote:That came out incredibly the wrong way what I meant was just to tae a dig at leaty like he did to me, I take all advice, just what he said wasn't advice it was just mean
I know I said I was getting out of this thread, but I'm not going to hang back while you continue to malign me. I'll accept whatever punishment is deemed necessary for going back on my word.
First of all, mind your pronouns, please. I'm not a man.
Second of all, everything I said was advice. No matter how much you now try to deny it,
you asked for my advice. I gave you advice
you didn't like, so now you're trying to bullshit together a narrative in which you're just a victim of the big bad forums bully, and it's painfully obvious to everybody here. I understand that you're very young, and your reading comprehension still needs a little work, so let's take a moment to unpack the paragraph that you insist was just me wantonly harassing you.
I said your writing wasn't ready for primetime—you know this, because you deleted it yourself. I'd argue your posts aren't, either; people are giving you paragraphs' worth of feedback and you reply with pithy, badly punctuated, one-sentence responses. I'm not being mean in saying this, any more than I'd be mean in taking you aside and telling you your fly was open. That's just the way it is; if you want something done about it, that's well within your ability.
I said your use of language was more amateurish than amateurish—that is true, because we're all amateurs here, and your use of language is clumsier than most of the posters in this thread. Again, this is not me being mean, this is me pointing out where you need work. I also said your utilities were abysmal—by which I mean your use of punctuation, which is extremely lacking. You misspell words constantly and often cannot be bothered to use line breaks, commas or periods. Lastly, I said your pacing was clumsy—something that you agree with, so again you're being hypocritical if you insist I'm mean for saying it. All of these things are problems you can work on. You just need to be motivated to do so, and
work hard. But I'm not going to lie to you and tell you you don't have any problems at all.
I think that you only want to write an Iwanako fic for the extra attention it would bring you over writing an OC fic—something you basically admitted to. I also suggested you had not considered the problems inherent in doing so, which I think is something you've made implicit. Feel free to stop me at any time and tell me where I've stopped arguing and begun simply trying to hurt your feelings, because I don't see it yet.
I said I couldn't see anybody with distinguished tastes enjoying your writing in its current state: again, I would be very surprised if this wasn't a statement you
agreed with! Undoubtedly you can see the difference in quality and effort between your own writing and
Sisterhood. If you want your thread to constantly be pushed to the top of the page by readers gushing about how great it is, the way people do for Guest Poster, you have got to work as hard as Guest Poster did. You also have to
think things through before recklessly charging into an ill-conceived undertaking.
Then again, I said, if your only objective is to improve your writing ability, if this whole undertaking is simply an exercise through which you want to flex your creative muscles and hone your craft, you should not expect to have an audience of any appreciable size the way
Sisterhood does. This is not me being "mean", this is me
telling the truth. If this thread just amounts to you horsing around with a word processor and practicing your writing ability (I used the word "noodling" here: if you'd bothered to look it up rather than immediately taking it as an insult, you'd see that the word means "improvisation," thus "literary noodling" simply means "improvised writing") then you're not going to receive a huge audience. Fics with a lot of readers tend to be written by people who care about presentation, and frankly I am not convinced that you do.
Oh, and I
never told you to stop writing. I
advised you, at your
own request, to write something
else. I even gave you suggestions as to what you could write, so stop characterizing me as some mean girl who enjoys tormenting you.
You want to talk mean? I've had my writing compared to Valium in the past, by some old lady who gleefully took pleasure in harassing amateur writers. I assure you, there is no glee here. I'm greatly annoyed.
I think your idea is bad. I have had bad ideas, too—I've mentioned them in my own thread. I almost put an autistic girl with argyria in the fic. Has an Iwanako Pseudo-route been done? No, but using sliced salami as toilet paper hasn't been done either, and neither of those ideas are good. You can do better than this.
Mirage_GSM wrote:Why not? There are tons of stories here where Hisao hooks up with one of the girls years after a bad end. Granted, most of them aren't great, but there are
notable exceptions. Why shouldn't the same be possible for Iwanako?
Because it is nothing but a
pointless stunt. Iwanako has almost
zero characterization, and her relationship with Hisao collapsing is the fulcrum upon which
the entire storyline pivots. Why Iwanako, and not just some random OC that happens to not be disabled? Because this author wants more attention for their story and is honing in on the only character who they haven't seen a pseudo-route for, completely overlooking the fact that there are
very good reasons this hasn't been done (or I would have done it a year ago.)
Mirage_GSM wrote:So Hisao is only allowed to start a relationship with a disabled character? Again why?
Because the series is literally called
Katawa Shoujo? Because finding love with a disabled person is the whole point of the entire game? As forgetmenot and Helbereth have mentioned in other threads, Hisao is practically a cipher in his own right. Why would you write him into a situation so divorced from the context of the original VN that it could be an original story, when you could
just write an original story, unless you were trying to deceive an audience into being interested in your work?
Now, a caveat—I'm obviously not inherently opposed to pseudo-routes for non-disabled characters
in the setting. If somebody wants to write a pseudo-route for Nurse, Meiko, Akira, Misha, et al—that's okay because those characters are very
clearly and cogently characterized, and have distinct personalities and backstories. Iwanako is not. What we know about her is that she's shy, girly, and guilty, and unlike characters like Suzu she doesn't even have a cool gimmick like narcolepsy to float her characterization on. There is no point to using her, other than to get attention—and it would actually be
exceedingly difficult to pull off compared to a normal route, something beyond the level of a first-time writer uncomfortable working in the
Katawa Shoujo setting.
Mirage_GSM wrote:I don't believe that KS has only one single message, but even if it did - isn't the author of a story - even if it is only fanfiction - free to decide what kind of message they want to convey with their story?
Nope. Seriously, nope. I couldn't disagree with you more about what the point of fanfiction is.
By all means, people are free to explore, distort, contort, deconstruct, reconstruct, and otherwise meddle in the themes, characters, and settings of the work for which they are writing fanfiction. I will
absolutely be the first to encourage writers to do exactly that. However, there is a threshold of ideas, beyond which the connection to the original story becomes so flimsy and tenuous that you're essentially writing original fiction of your own. After that point, the only reason to continue to portray your original writing as fanfiction would be so that fans of the work one is claiming their piece derives from will be deceived into giving your writing a look when they otherwise wouldn't.
Let me give you an example. Suppose I want to write a fic where Hisao doesn't have a heart attack, and accepts Iwanako's confession, and the rest of the story is about their happy relationship. If one was to tell me this story concept was "interesting," they would be completely out of their mind. This story idea is not compelling. The author's idea is only one contrivance removed from that idea. Hisao has a heart attack and gets back together with Iwanako despite that. Change the setting and the names and you could pass this off as a
Clone High fanfic.
Some ideas are certainly good concepts for
stories, but not all ideas are good concepts for
fanfic. This idea might be okay as a (particularly dry) story, but it is abysmal as a fanfic. A story about a guy on the run from the FBI could be interesting; a fanfic about
Hisao on the run from the FBI is just stupid. That idea crosses the threshold of acceptable fanfic. (It might be okay if it was farcical, but a farce is just intentional, controlled stupidity.)
Mirage wrote:Yes, it would be a long-distance relationship for most of the time - so what? That too can be interesting to write or read.
The problem is deeper than that; there is
no avenue through which Hisao and Iwanako could meet to want to rekindle their relationship. You
have to mess with the source material to make it work.
Mirage wrote:Most stories here have a point where they deviate from canon. In fact all fics that begin before one of the canon endings do.
Not sure I agree.
Mirage wrote:That point of deviation could be something as little as a sightly differently worded letter or as big as Iwanako making an unannounced visit. Heck, Leaty's story deviates in the prologue by having Iwanako have a heart attack instead of Hisao. That's not canon either and it still is a great story. The important thing is letting the reader know where exactly the story deviates from canon, so they know which bits of information they know from the VN still apply to this story and which don't.
My story isn't a pseudo-route, it's a nail fic. I've been fairly vocal in correcting readers who presume otherwise. The point of deviation solely exists to enable the genre in the first place. If I were to add contrivances at any other point in the fic, it would undermine my whole concept.
Pseudo-routes, as well, have (or should have) a single contrivance; the addition of (or the implication of the addition of) a single new option in the course of the normal narrative that leads to a whole new storyline. That's why they're called pseudo-routes. If you're not writing the story that way, you're simply writing a ship fic. (One of my major qualms with the Rika pseudo-route is that it didn't handle this very well, leading to a shaky start. I would have preferred to see the point of divergence.)
Writing a pseudo-route with
multiple contrivances, as this Iwanako pseudo-route is apparently going to do, is like writing a Bildungsroman where the protagonist somehow decides
not to come of age at the end. If we're going to add
both the "pseudo-route" and "AU" qualifiers to a fic, we're already shutting out the potential audience that hates either one or the other, so why even stop there? Why not make it a Curtain fic and a Death fic and a Hurt/Comfort fic and move Yamaku Academy to Middle Earth?
An Iwanako Pseudo-route is too complicated to exist. It fails Occam's Razor. The amount of ass-pulling required to make it believable would be ridiculous.
Mirage_GSM wrote:And why exactly doe Hisao have to pursue one of the girls before the letter arrives? Writing a fanfiction you are not limited as if you were reading a Visual Novel. You can add choice points wherever you want, and that's what ALL the routes here on the forums did, or they wouldn't be routes, they'd b retellings of the original. (okay, except for "Hanako's story" probably)
That isn't how a pseudo-route works. If you're going to call your story a pseudo-route, the sequence of events leading up to it has to be familiar. Reading the first chapter of a pseudo-route should, ideally, make me think that if I booted up the game, I'd know how to get there. If you're unwilling to do that, you can't call it a pseudo-route, just like if your
mother is not a royal virgin, you aren't a Raglanian hero.
Undoubtedly people will disagree with me on this, but that's where I stand.
I personally do not agree that a Hisao x Iwanako route is Implausible. But you should at least understand why Leaty is saying what he is saying and not be offended. 
<3