amitakartok wrote:No darkness.... except for the Asuka-goes-crazy-stabs-Misato-and-hangs-Shinji omake he wrote just for the hell of it. Don't forget that one.
I love that, it was hilarious. I think of all Kadmon's work,
Subtrahend is the best example. Some of the tendencies in the early works like
The Second Other are more refined there, into proper horror that has more to offer than simple shock value. Kadmon's work rather brutally satirizes Evan fanfic.
The only one I strongly dislike is
I Knew Him When, which is just excessive.
Anyway, re-reading
The Second Other just now, it's simply not some eye-melting offense against God. I think it's biggest problem is that it goes on too long and sort of wallows on the concept; it'd be a more effective short story if it ended on "My name is Ikari Yui".
I also hate gratuitous use of Japanese name orders and honorifics but it isn't egregious here.
It's definitely a journeyman work. It's far too linear, for one, and the prose is clipped and some of the said tags are oddly stilted. Edited and rewritten it could work. AK should have saved the concept to write it with more practice at wordsmithing and a better structure.
It would be more effective without the injuries and sexual element, which overshadow the horror inherent in losing one's mind to an invasive other.
I re-read a few of Kadmon's other shorter pieces today and they suffer from what my creative writing professor called the Harry Chapin effect, referencing the song
Cat's in the Cradle, which ends with:
And as I hung up the phone it occurred to me
He'd grown up just like me
My boy was just like me
It's the equivalent to explaining the joke. Kadmon does the same thing in
Subtrahend with lines such as:
"This was nice," she said. "If you ever want to eat with me again, just ask, okay?"
He never asked.
The second line there is what people mean when they say "show, don't tell" and it shows that AK doesn't trust the prose to tell the story and feels the need to explain it, which is a common problem among amateur writers and something editors heavily discourage.
Short, punchy lines are often an attempt at the Jesus Wept Effect, a concentration of the maximum power in the shortest, tersest possible line, but it's easy to fall into the trap. AK is hit and miss with it- the stories often have excellent taglines and actually prompted me to use short taglines myself.
To look at another example from
SubtrahendAsuka looked surprised. Not angry or scared, just surprised. She still looked surprised when the railing gave out behind her and she tumbled backwards into the sixty feet of open air above the drainage ditch.
Hikari watched her fall faster than she thought possible and burst apart with a dull crack on the cement. The walls became an abstract mess of thick red chaos. One of her eyes shot out of her skull, bouncing on a tether of fibrous nerve tissue. Her left arm was bent at an unnatural angle. Her long hair became matted and heavy with blood. She did not move.
The blood seeped down into the water of the drainage ditch, and soon a long crooked red finger pointed away from the body, twisting into the oblivion of the setting sun.
Becomes much more effective as...
Asuka looked surprised. Not angry or scared, just surprised. She still looked surprised when the railing gave out behind her and she tumbled backwards into the sixty feet of open air above the drainage ditch. Hikari watched her fall faster than she thought possible and burst apart with a dull crack on the cement, and soon a long crooked red finger pointed away from the body, twisting into the oblivion of the setting sun.
I have to continue to defend
The Second Other because it's a 15,000 word horror novellette that has a very good 3,500-5000 word horror short buried in it, if it were edited, rewritten, and reorganized into a less linear format to move the emphasis away from the cheap shock to the real horror element that gets lost in the muddle of overwriting and unsure prose.
I think I have a soft spot for it since it was the first Eva fic I read that wasn't Mari Peggy Sue Kissy Face Superheroes, Part 27: This Time Shinji Bags Maya. That doesn't make it good, but I'm always on the lookout for Eva fics that break the mold and aren't just the same idea recycled again and again and again.
Of course, mere originality isn't the standard for good fiction, fan- or otherwise; any idea, properly executed, can be good while any great idea can be terrible if it's not written right.
I can't believe someone mentioned
American Psycho in this thread. If you fed Kadmon's entire catalog into a markov chain generator the end result wouldn't touch the Rat Scene.
