Katawa Shoujo Forums

Hoitash wrote:

No one deserves to die by being nailed in the chest by a t-shirt cannon at a convention.

Is this a Simpsons reference, or are you just that sadistic?

Give that man a No-Prize!

Hoitash wrote:Either way nicely done. It was quite a concept you had, and a lovely ride to experience.

Thanks, Hoitash. Glad you enjoyed it!

Holy shit Monomyth's done.

I feel so empty right now

Yukarin wrote:Holy shit Monomyth's done.

I feel so empty right now

Don't be sad, Yukarin! I've got something that will fix that!

Sharp-O wrote: Akira, Natsuki and Hikari: Degrassi: The Next Generation, anyone?

You know, I was all for the idea until you mentioned Degrassi. Now I don't even want it. :\

I've never actually watched the show, I just know it's akin to Saved By The Bell.

At least people loved Saved By The Bell. Degrassi, on the other hand, is like "Oh God, please make it stop, make it stop..."

As soon as Drake (the singer) was a regular on the show, it was time to commit seppuku.

Super late to this party, but gotta congratulate Sharp, since I loooved Monomyth. I even gave up Fallout 4 to read this. Fell in love with Suzu and Miki, and was left wanting more even with the epilogue - you know that's a sign of a good story. Thanks for all your work and dedication to finishing this off.

Texaboose wrote:Super late to this party, but gotta congratulate Sharp, since I loooved Monomyth. I even gave up Fallout 4 to read this. Fell in love with Suzu and Miki, and was left wanting more even with the epilogue - you know that's a sign of a good story. Thanks for all your work and dedication to finishing this off.

Hi Tex! Thanks for reading (I know how tough it is to pry yourself away from Fallout 4 so I really do appreciate it)

I do have one last Monomyth story in the works which should go up around Christmas but I do have the Miraimyth miniseries to tide you over if you'd like.

Again, thank you so much for reading and I'm glad you enjoyed the ride!

I sat down and read this whole story over the course of two days.

It became pretty obvious that wasn't the way it should have been read. I think the flaws became more apparent when read in bulk rather than when read one chapter at a time as they were meant to be.

It's not to say I didn't like the story. I did. You did a fairly good job building up the cast and fleshing out what were only background characters, it moved along as a fast pace, and there always seemed to be something happening. The humor worked well for the most part too.

There's just a lot of areas where it feels like it falls flat.

Now at first I liked the idea of having a story told from the point of a view of a guy that was already used to his disability and didn't have any major hangups, but as the story went on Taro actually began to annoy me slightly. The guy had no flaws. At all. There wasn't any time he was inconvenienced by his disability, he didn't have any bad habbits, he always knew how to do and say the right thing, the guy was just too damn perfect.

Sure you said he had a temper, but it never actually got the best of him or seemed to inconvenience him at any time. The only times we saw him lose it, it felt completely justified and he didn't have any real negative repercussions from it.

It actually became obvious that you didn't like having anything bad happen to your characters, which I feel weaked the story overall. If characters don't struggle, they don't grow.

I think that's what bothered me most about your epilogue at the end. Chapters like that are always about seeing how the characters have continued to grown and move on, but we never actually see the characters growing during the course of the story. At the same time, we find out that they didn't move on. An awful lot of them came back to Yamaku.

Back to not having real conflicts...

Akio's alcoholism came out of nowhere to a quick shock followed by his unrequited gay love, and then the next chapter, they were resolved for good.

Taro's relationship issues with his father were even resolved before we knew they existed.

Hanako also really felt odd here. The others you can kind of justify since they're your characters, but with Hanako, we KNOW she's got major major issues and yet after a quick time skip of a few weeks, she's as social, flirtatious, and outgoing as anybody else. I think you really did a disservice to her character there.

Ritsou, she worked a bit better for me. Once we actually established her jealously, she felt more like a real person than the majority of your cast. She had character flaws. I think she was a bit too open and too self aware of what they were and how she got them, but they were there. The fact that Taro surrounding himself with women and was openly flirtatious with them actually makes me feel bad for her. I can see why she would feel justified there, yet at the same time, she was the one made to look like she was in the wrong in your story.

Also, a big drama failure when it came to Rin and Emi. They weren't part of the cast at all, yet they shanghaied a few chapters so you could make Nomiya look like an even bigger villain than the game made him and then have Taro come to the rescue again.

You have good potential, but your work feels really episodic. You need to work on building things up over time as well as actually being able to cause your characters a bit of pain here and there.

Oh, and you get some major points for not giving Taro some kind of part time job at a restaurant or diner.

Thanks for taking the time to read and leave your thoughts, Oddball!

I can totally see where you're coming from with your critique because it's stuff that I've noticed myself in hindsight. For my first fic especially, I just wanted a light fluff piece that ended up becoming this huge thing. I'll admit that certain story elements were thought up on the fly and, as a big fan of the writing styles of Joss Whedon and James Roberts, I may have gone too far at points with trying to mix in a little bit of emotional whiplash. I'm a big fan of "it's all fun and games until someone loses an X".

Ritsu is... my greatest failure in this story and all the criticism I've gotten regarding her portrayal is well-earned. As the cast expanded and I started having fun with all my interpretations of these characters, she fell by the wayside and never managed to redeem (for lack of a better term) herself. I wish I could have written her better, to be honest and I hope someone does something amazing with her one day.

Taro's development could have been handled better also. Looking back, it would have been so much better if all these issues kept mounting and he was crushed under the weight of them, becoming a little bitter or darker so he had to climb his way back to being the "good guy" again. There's plenty of opportunity for that in the story but I didn't see it at the time.

Hanako's small change-up is one of the more devisive elements I introduced but c'mon, Sad!Hanako stories are a dime a dozen and I wanted to give that girl a win. Is it contrived and dumb? Yes but it was an absolute blast to write and the fact that Hanako/Akio have made the jump to other fics is great.

I hope my fics since then; the cancelled Fixers, the stand-alone one-shots and now Flutter show some improvement in my story-telling but even if they haven't improved much, I hope they're still entertaining. That's always what I wanted to do with this.

Thanks again, Oddball!

He opened a fresh Word document and set the window to the side of his screen so he could partly see the YouTube page he had open. The text cursor flickered every second in the top corner of the blank page.

He knew he should do something. It was kind of a big deal, after all. Anniversaries shouldn’t really be missed but he figured he could whip something together in a couple days in-between reviews.

He felt confident that could do it, even with the burning sensation in his wrists and the mild overdose of painkillers he’d become accustomed to for dealing with it, but the real problem he had was what he would write. He had stories; half-ideas and musings and clips of dialogue he intended to use at some point or another. Too many stories. None of them would fit.

The sleeper and the late-comer’s first time? That’s something he didn’t add first time round but that — ironically — didn’t have enough ‘oomph’ to it on it’s own.

“I’m not entirely comfortable knowing people will be reading that…” Suzu quietly muttered in his head and he smiled.

“I’m a little curious at what he’d do.” Molly chuckled in response to her. “There’d be some bloody funny gags in there, I can tell. Besides we’ll have fun no matter what, right, Suzy?”



The joker and the writer’s discovery that they were going to become parents? That’d be a sweet story but they’d already had a lot of focus…

“I’m f-fine with someone else taking the l-limelight. I’m th-thankful for all you’ve done for me and Akio already… Whatever you d-decide will be fine.” Hanako smiled sweetly from behind her shroud of hair.

“Yeah, man. I think you’ve got someone else who needs your focus more than us. Not that a story on how we made a baby wouldn’t be fun… We’re not spoilsports like Suzuuuu~” Akio smirked slyly, wrapping his arms around his wife.

“Fuck off, filth-monger! We’re not all exhibitionists!”

“Bite me, sleeping beauty!” He shouted at the cerulean-haired narcoleptic before turning to his wife and nuzzling her nose, whispering excitedly. “I’m really going to be a dad?”



The musician deserved something too. Out of everyone, he’d neglected her and she really deserved something but he’d been wracking his brain for months on how to do it. He just wanted to do something nice for her but he just didn’t know what…

“You’ll think of something.” Ritsu sighed wistfully before smiling sympathetically. “Considering all the wacky bullshit you’ve written before… I’m sure you’ll think of something, you big dummy.”



He’d have hugged her if he could have but, instead, he silently promised that he’d be back for her soon. All that was left was the loud-mouth…

“OI!”

… The scrapper…

“That’s better!”

He smirked and shook his head. The scrapper and the hero still had a little way to go before their story was fully rounded out but they’d be all right, he’d already made sure of that.

“I think you’re making too big of a fuss, honestly.” Taro scratched his beard sheepishly, his head in Miki’s lap.

“And Taro’s rounded enough!” Miki sniped at her portly partner, patting his belly. “But yeah, I think me and tons-of-fun are good. We can occupy ourselves for a while…”



He pinched the bridge of his nose as he looked at the words on the page. It was a silly idea he had and the voices came naturally to him earlier in the day after a rather pained trip to the hospital. He’d been thinking about the anniversary and all his ideas and the characters just started offering opinions in his head. The curse of an over-active imagination.

He flexed each of his hands in turn before rolling a cigarette and lighting it, spinning side-to-side in his desk chair. Maybe a story wasn’t the answer. There’d be time to tell all the little stories he had in his head later and it’s not like there wasn’t another who should be taking priority.

“Are you done yet? Geez! I want to see how this whole thunder thing works out and how it’ll lead to make-outs with Hisao!” The impatient gamer whined and he laughed. He was almost done but there was one thing he had to do first.

He wanted to make sure to thank everyone who read his first story and encouraged him to finish it. He appreciated all the kind words and the criticism and, in one case, the fan art. He wanted to mark the occasion in style but all he really wanted to say, with equal parts pride and astonishment in what he’d managed to create, was:

“Happy Anniversary, Monomyth.”

That's very sweet. Thanks!

A whole year already? Man, time flies fast.

Awwh, that's so cute~

Happy anniversary, Monomyth!

(And the part with Rika made me laugh out loud inside this computer shop. Everyone looked at me like I was some crazy person laughing for no particular reason :v)

Questions!

Who drew that Suzu x Molly picture? It doesn't look like a photoshop thing anymore. It looks so good!

Does this accurately represent how you think of ideas when it comes to writing stories and stuff? You know, the "my characters all talk in their head and give me ideas" sort of thing.

Would you be writing a Lilly fic in the near future? I've always wondered where Lilly would be in your universe.

Yukarin wrote:Who drew that Suzu x Molly picture? It doesn't look like a photoshop thing anymore. It looks so good!

Unfortunately, it's another VN edit with a ton of filters and layers. Had it for ages so I couldn't begin to tell you where I found it.

Yukarin wrote:Does this accurately represent how you think of ideas when it comes to writing stories and stuff? You know, the "my characters all talk in their head and give me ideas" sort of thing.

A little bit, yeah! Sometimes I'll think of an idea and kind of move the characters around in the scenario and let the dialogue form naturally and try to keep it in mind for when I write it down. A lot of my favourite lines where formed away from the screen. The infamous 'sad vagina' line came out of a conversation with an ex-girlfriend

Yukarin wrote:Would you be writing a Lilly fic in the near future? I've always wondered where Lilly would be in your universe.

I do have some ideas for her place in the Mythology but nothing concrete. Writing from her perspective would be an interesting challenge since she would have no visual input so setting up scenes like I do would be difficult. I had some ideas for some visuals on how Lilly would 'see' the world, all abstract and weird but that would require me actually drawing and the way my hands are now would be quite difficult.

Thanks again, guys! Glad you enjoyed this little novelty.