Hibiki - Shousetsuka ni Naru Houhou - Vol. 9 Ch. 73 - Novelist
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Man, there's really this poignant contrast in this manga. On one hand you have Hibiki being this monster genius smashing through everything and driving the establishment insane. It's not clear if she's having fun doing it, but if it was me I sure would be. And on the other hand you have the characters who have to live in the real world being just talented people trying to get by and seeing some ghost-written idol autobiography pap get nominated for top prizes while they slog through the trenches writing stuff that's actually good and not getting enough money to quit their day job.
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How to become a novelist?
My local Nobel laureate, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, was a huge figure around 1900. Once when he traveled around Germany giving speeches he was contacted by another Norwegian, a young man. He wanted advice on how to become a writer. Bjørnson asked him if he rented a room in a hotel while visiting the city, the man said yes. Bjørnson then asked him to describe the tapestry in his room, but the visitor couldn't remember anything about the tapestry, not even the colour. "I'm sorry" said Bjørnson, "but if you don't notice things like that, it's impossible for you to become a writer." Noticing the mans disappointment, he added: "But don't worry; a tall and handsome fellow like you can easily become an actor instead."
I have always seen this as good advice. You can to some extent learn transcription and composition, but good observation skills are extremely important for a writer, even if it isn't mentioned much in this story. This is more like magical girl Hibiki, who can write prizewinning works in different genres in a matter of hours without worrying about things like composition or style, and populate her works with believable characters seemingly without giving a shit about other peoples reasoning or behaviour.
Oh well, it's a manga, and it does amuse me. I'm not bothered by the shit art either. I really liked the early chapters, but I had expected to learn a bit more about Hibiki, how she can pull it off so easily. But no. We also meet other writers, and it seems like they don't have a clue either. One of their books were a success and the others not; it's a lottery. And to some extent it is, but not just that. It's a bit sad when all we are told is good or bad, selling or not selling. I'll still read the remaining chapters, but without any expectations.
P.S.: Another guy from where I grew up is a world famous crime writer. He had at least some advice: Plan out the whole story before you start writing, use your own observations and experiences (he's a lot older than Hibiki) and write a killer first page that makes the reader want to read more. He didn't even mention the tons of research I know he has to be doing, so maybe he was trying to make it sound easy as well.
My local Nobel laureate, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, was a huge figure around 1900. Once when he traveled around Germany giving speeches he was contacted by another Norwegian, a young man. He wanted advice on how to become a writer. Bjørnson asked him if he rented a room in a hotel while visiting the city, the man said yes. Bjørnson then asked him to describe the tapestry in his room, but the visitor couldn't remember anything about the tapestry, not even the colour. "I'm sorry" said Bjørnson, "but if you don't notice things like that, it's impossible for you to become a writer." Noticing the mans disappointment, he added: "But don't worry; a tall and handsome fellow like you can easily become an actor instead."
I have always seen this as good advice. You can to some extent learn transcription and composition, but good observation skills are extremely important for a writer, even if it isn't mentioned much in this story. This is more like magical girl Hibiki, who can write prizewinning works in different genres in a matter of hours without worrying about things like composition or style, and populate her works with believable characters seemingly without giving a shit about other peoples reasoning or behaviour.
Oh well, it's a manga, and it does amuse me. I'm not bothered by the shit art either. I really liked the early chapters, but I had expected to learn a bit more about Hibiki, how she can pull it off so easily. But no. We also meet other writers, and it seems like they don't have a clue either. One of their books were a success and the others not; it's a lottery. And to some extent it is, but not just that. It's a bit sad when all we are told is good or bad, selling or not selling. I'll still read the remaining chapters, but without any expectations.
P.S.: Another guy from where I grew up is a world famous crime writer. He had at least some advice: Plan out the whole story before you start writing, use your own observations and experiences (he's a lot older than Hibiki) and write a killer first page that makes the reader want to read more. He didn't even mention the tons of research I know he has to be doing, so maybe he was trying to make it sound easy as well.
But observation IS Hibiki's specialty. That's what the bear encounter story at the training camp is all about. The way Hibiki NORMALLY writes is that she just puts to words things she encounters in her life and turn them out into interesting stories. The way she writes her award-winning fantasy works is different but similar. In those cases she grasps the way the genre works by reading works written in the genre then writing lived-in details into the story. This was demonstrated when she wrote the vampire LN by coaching herself through the genre using Kayo's story.
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She met a bear in the woods. The encounter lasted maybe 10-15 seconds before the bear went away (probably felt way longer though). Something like that could easily be made into a short story, but not a novel as another club member thought. Many people could write a story about an occurrence that much out of the ordinary.
Observing people is not something you can do by just watching them, there must be some communication involved too. Hibiki barely communicate with anyone outside her club, and only then mostly with a few select members. And as I said, she doesn't seem to be interested in the reasons why people behave the way they do, not even her few friends.
As for identifying the tropes of the vampire genre by reading one amateur story, it does sound like following a simplishly scribbled map through a minefield. But I'll have to admit that the only vampire novels I have read are Christopher Moore's comedic vampire trilogy, a parody on the genre. The tropes are probably very easy to get down, I'll give you that. Still, I would at the very least read a published work before trying.
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and @sssr
My take is that Hibiki is fairly deep on the autism spectrum. In exchange, she was given a gift in the literary arts. Hence, as horrible as her interpersonal skills are, it is somewhat believable (in this universe) that she understands people well and can write good literature.
Notice that none of the story arcs are about her and another genius -- the manga isn't actually about her story, about her becoming or developing as a novelist, but about her genius vs the everyday man.
It's just unfortunately too true that, while most people can learn the arts (visual, literary, etc.) and become quite proficient, it takes real creative genius to excel in them. And most of the time, that is just something they seem born with. Hibiki is meant to be unable to be understood, to have unreasonable heaven-gifted talent, and someone to be eternally frustrated by.
I believe we are meant to relate, not with Hibiki, but with the other characters in the story -- we, the non-creatives, failed creatives, at the very least non-genius creatives -- what feelings do we have when faced with unparalleled, unreasonable, unearned genius? What do we do?
I'm looking forward to the thesis of the author: will the non-genius writers in this manga have their wins? Can they match Hibiki through hard-work and guts? Or does the author think that genius like Hibiki's will always win out in the end? In this chapter we are given both the heart-warming reward for perseverance, and the heart-wrenching realisation that, what was the achievement of a lifetime for Shunpei-san was just another everyday thing that Hibiki did on a whim. That HURTS man.
Hibiki wrote a short story about the bear. It's literally one page. Hibiki writes all the time but almost her entire work portfolio is composed of single-page short stories. This was already established in the beginning. Her first novel is literally that. It was her first attempt to write a novel, which she did simply because she's curious about whether she could do it BECAUSE all of her writing until that point had been simpler short stories.
Hibiki is also perfectly capable of understanding people through direct observation. You don't need to communicate to understand people. In fact, 99.9999% of the time, talking to someone creates a subjective bias because you're forced to respond to that person's attempts to impose their image of themselves on you. Communication breeds distortion. This is one of the first things psychology students learn. The right way to learn about people is through passive observation, which is what Hibiki is actually very good at. She can KNOW people at a glance and instantly judge how to push their buttons to make them do her bidding. This is most often shown in her outbursts of violence, but it was also shown in her successful prevention of the train suicide. Hibiki was the ONLY person who realized he was going to try to commit suicide, not all the people who actually talked to him. It's also how she perfectly read the media execs' response to her utterly insane assault on the TV station and bent them all to her will. To Hibiki communicating with others is just a means of control, except in the case of family and close friends like Rika and Kayo. The only two people we've seen Hibiki NOT try to smash into obedience or puppeteer immediately are her dad and Rika. Even her own mom and Kayo get the remote control treatment sometimes (Kayo even got the dog leash treatment at one point).
No, the mangaka already made it clear that we're supposed to identify with Hibiki, not the mooks. EVERYONE other than Hibiki is written as a pathetic mook in this story in one way or another. The way the mangaka writes Hibiki is as a very literal form of Nietzche's ubermensch. She is always morally superior through her own devising to force the world to twist into a form that acknowledges her moral superiority. Everyone else is just an untermensch wallowing in their own insecurities in life, to be used or forced to conform to the ideal worldview of the superior Hibiki, and THEY ALWAYS DO in the end. Now, we of course don't like identifying with an ubermensch because of the inherent inhuman arrogance that would entail, but that's exactly the point. Hibiki IS ALWAYS RIGHT. So the question the mangaka is posing to us is, if she is always perfect in her moral superiority, why are we not following her example? We say it's nuts to do so, but SHE IS ALWAYS RIGHT! So why don't we want to be always right and always achieve our goals? Why do we reject identifying with Hibiki when logically it's the only right thing to do? We're the crazy ones, not her. The moment we embrace Hibiki is when we become sane. That's the real thesis of this manga. HIBIKI is the ideal we should identify with, not the mooks. This manga is super-subversive in its messaging.
In the real world, of course, there are no ubermenschen who could force the world to bend to their will the way Hibiki does, and we sure as fuck aren't, so don't try this at home kids. It's doable in the manga world, not IRL.
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