fic - Johnny's & Associates - The Question of Nobuta - Post Completion Meta
Title: The Question of Nobuta; Post-Completion Meta
Author: virdant
Length: 7207 words
Rating: PG-13 / R
Genre: Meta of AU, Dystopia, sci-fi.
Pairing: implied Pikame, Implied Shuji/Akira
Summary: Story Summary: NOBUTA; the program's name is NOBUTA. In a world where people spend the majority of their time online playing roles, a rogue program named NOBUTA tries to be happy. But what is NOBUTA, and why does it exist?
Warning: Spoilers for all of The Question of Nobuta.
Notes: This meta is intended for educational purposes. The opinions expressed here are mine. You may agree or disagree with me, and you may express your opinion as loudly as you want; as long as you are polite about it, we can have a discussion. If you are flaming without actually reading the post-completion meta, I'll just be excessively amused. This meta is sharper than my fiction writing, and is more reminiscent of my real life journal than my fic journal.
The Question of Nobuta
Masterpost | Week 1: NOBUTA | Week 2: Kouji | Week 3: Mariko | Week 4: Nobuko | Week 5: Shuji to Akira | Post-Completion Meta
Post-Completion Meta
Introduction
I will begin this meta by saying: The Question of Nobuta wasn't supposed to have a plot. The plot came secondary to the world, and to the characters and the themes I wanted to explore. For the most part, this is how I write. I come up with an issue that I want to investigate, and then I write about it. I don't care so much about the plot as long as the ideas came through. This is primarily because there are about 7 plots in the world, and everything we write is just another remix of one of these 7 plots.
So what was The Question of Nobuta actually about? Well, for one, it's a dystopia. In fact, the word document that this was typed in is titled: “dystopia for muu-chan involving hallucinogens because I need biotech instead of hard electrotech.” For those of you who don't know, and don't feel inclined to type in 8 letters into a wikipedia search, a dystopia is a story that looks critically at the way the world around us is developing, and predicts a bleak future from it. 1984, Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451 are all excellent examples of dystopias, and are probably quintessential dystopia texts. A dystopia can also be defined as an Anti-Utopia, where a utopian society has one designated flaw. The entire story was supposed to be an exploration in developing a dystopia with an emphasis on drugs as opposed to technology. If you know anything about my history of writing (which you may know absolutely nothing about, because I've been writing for longer than I've been in J&A fandom), then you'll know that I've been writing stories with dystopic elements since November of 2006, and full on dystopias since October 2007. (If you're interested, the stories were my 2006 NaNoWriMo, Three Steps, that featured a political head who was not above killing innocents for the sake of maintaining hold on his heir-who was trying to run away from his domineering family-and Stained Glass, which was part of my Roads_Diverged on IJ challenge, a story about a society that had been fooled into seeing what the government wanted them to see thanks to visual implants that were connected to their personal computers.) It wasn't hard for me to write a dystopia; I do nothing but look at the world around and think: “oh my god, this world fucking sucks. How can we be stupid enough to let authority do this and infringe on our freedoms?” And then I go home and write a dystopia. So no, it was not hard for me to decide that I was going to write a dystopia.
The Worlds: Reality, the Network, and Drugs
What was hard for me to do was to try to focus on drugs. I actually approached this story from the wrong angle, trying to draw only on drugs, probably because I very quickly realized that if I wanted to finish it in time for my friend's birthday (this story was started over a year ago for the purpose of giving it to my friend for her birthday; it wasn't finished in time), I would have to fall back onto what I knew. I started building a technological world, but I still wanted to incorporate drugs into the story.
(A dystopia that features drugs is Brave New World. I probably should have used it as a resource while writing this, but well, with as a science major in a research university, it was a marvel that I even had time to write, let along read for fun; I have to pick and choose, really.)
But the issue I had was, I was clearly going to be using drugs as a metaphor for escapism. So what would my technological world be? Usually, when I write dystopias, I feature two worlds and contrast them. I feature a technological world that represents freedom from societal pressures, or a technological world that is an example of political and social pressure on the individual. Generally, which type of world I choose depends on my mood.
So what did I choose this time? I choose to write about the internet, and how people are slowly becoming more and more obsessed with their online lives. Just think about how much time we spend connected to the world wide web (network). Considering that I am friends with Rei, who spends more time on twitter than any sane person should (yes, that was an insult. It was in love), I am aware of how much time people spend on the internet. Considering that I read her twitter posts, I am far too aware of how much time people spend on the internet. Then you have the fact that there are games like Second Life, that I have friends who I have never met irl... and you stretch it. You take this idea, of spending too much time on the internet, of having a second life on the internet, and you develop it. You write about it, but you write it as a warning. This is what will happen if you are not careful. You will have no life in Reality, and everything that matters will be on the Network.
I don't think anybody can honestly face me and tell me that they want to live in the world that The Question of Nobuta is set in. Who wants to live in a world that is so strictly controlled? There is no money, only credit lines-which sounds good, until you realize that this is a form of credit that is completely different from our current credit system. This is a system where you are paid in ration tabs, so you may eat (In Week 1: NOBUTA, Yamashita mentions that he is paying for Kamenashi's meals with his ration tabs, not with money or a credit card or anything like that). You are given specific amounts of specific things for your work. Essentially, the government has controlled every aspect of your life in Reality.
Because the government is controlling every aspect of your life in Reality, you choose to escape to the Network. But the Network is controlled too. You just don't realize it... or maybe you do, but you don't care. That is the premise of Reality and the Network in The Question of Nobuta, and that's what I set out to create, that fragile connection between what is real, and what isn't.
So how does NOBUTA fit into the Network? The story is about NOBUTA, despite the fact it seems to focus on everybody but NOBUTA. Though it wasn't explicitly stated outright (though the ending really was more of a sledgehammer than I had preferred for it to be originally), NOBUTA was a program created to create a perfect world. How do you create a perfect world, where everybody gets along? Look at fandom; we can't even get along with people who we share a common interest of [insert boyband here], how are we going to get along with people who we don't have common interests? NOBUTA creates understanding between individuals. In the same way that Nobuta showed Shuji that she and Akira would always be there for him, the program NOBUTA was meant to represent the ability for understanding. Essentially, NOBUTA was the utopic element in this story. In a dystopic world where a false understanding is created through segregation (different network servers), and censorship (Network Maintainers tagging and banning certain identity handles from certain locations, as Kame does in Week 2: Kouji), NOBUTA the AI program was designed to meet people, get to know them, and show them that they could get along with people. If everybody understood each other, then isn't that our perfect world? This isn't saying that NOBUTA makes everybody the same-look at Shuji and Akira, they're hardly the same type of person-but NOBUTA allows for people to understand and tolerate their differences.
(Note that despite NOBUTA's influence on their lives, Kamenashi and Yamashita still lived under Maintenance's thumb. This was to show Maintenance's pervading influence on the world, and to reflect the fact that change was not, and would never be instantaneous. Probably the most hopeful element of the story was the fact that NOBUTA was not eradicated at the end of it (Week 5: Shuji to Akira, Ueda and Taguchi declare NOBUTA neutralized, but they never truly delete the program, considering the fact that 'she isn't doing anything' a justifiable excuse), leaving the potential for understanding in the story. I actually consider The Question of Nobuta to have a very happy ending for one of my dystopias, which usually end in the eradication of hope-this is common for most dystopias, because the point is to illustrate the darkness of the future in the path we are treading towards.)
But the Network is only one of the three worlds that this story was about. There are two whole other worlds: Reality and the dream world that Kamenashi and Yamashita share as Shuji and Akira. What is Reality?
Reality is the world that we're living in now. It's the world where we do nothing but work for five days a week on our 9-5 jobs, or if we're students, do nothing but school from 8-3. It's the world where the most exciting time of our lives is the weekend. It's a downright boring world, and we live in it. We live in this world where our time is regulated by large corporations, where we are forced to do what society expects us to do. We live in this boring world, and we do anything we can to escape onto the internet (don't bother trying to deny it, the mere fact that you're in fandom proves my point; the fact that you're reading this meta confirms it).
So the story was written taking place only on the weekends. If you read the first scene of each chapter (titled Week for a reason), you realize that in the beginning of each chapter, it's Friday. Again. It's always Friday. Everything that happens in this story takes place on the weekends. (Yes, that is why the posting schedule is every Friday. Because the story takes place on the weekends, so the point is that you read the story over the weekend, as it happens, go back to your boring monotonous life for another 5 days, and then experience another weekend).
But what defines Reality? Why did I insist on having it there? I could have written the story without Reality; it would have been just as strong if I hadn't spent so much time emphasizing this other world. Why did I find it necessary to emphasize it?
Because it was used to contrast the Network. Because the fact that you shouldn't remember much about Reality beyond the fact that there's an underground bar, and that people are doing work in Reality. Reality was designed to be bland and boring. People don't do much in Reality. All the interesting things happen in relation to the Network. (Note that the fact that Taguchi and Ueda do work while connected to the Network was to explore the fact that even though technology was supposed to help us have less work, it's made it so that we're doing more.)
That's two out of the three worlds. So what is the third world, the drug world that Kamenashi and Yamashita find themselves in as Shuji and Akira?
The third world, the drug world that Kamenashi and Yamashita occupy, is the world of escape. It's the world that Management doesn't have under their thumb. It's pure escape. It's the metaphorical representation of happiness, a perfect world where everybody understands everybody else.
So why did I write it? Well, for one thing, I didn't really write it. There are very few scenes that actually take place in that dream-like world. In fact, there is only one pure scene that takes place exclusively in that world, and that's the very last scene. The fact that it's so elusive represents the idea that happiness is elusive (not that complicated to realize), but also, because happiness is obtained through artificial means, it's a representation of how happiness is artificial in this world. Remember, this is a world that our current world will be leading too. Everything in The Question of Nobuta is intended to be a reflection of our current world, which means the fact that nobody is happy is a reflection of our current world and our search for happiness. Just look at all the people taking anti-depressants (and I know quite a lot of them). Just look at all the people who aren't taking anti-depressants but probably should be on them. Yes, happiness is fleeting. Yes, nobody in this story is actually happy. This is a dystopia I'm writing. This is the world we're living in. Deal with it, or fix the problems in the world so I no longer have anything to write a dystopia about.
Characters
The story was supposed to be centered around Kamenashi and Yamashita. And it was. Except as I was writing it, I realized that Kamenashi and Yamashita couldn't pull the story through on their own, and I needed somebody as a foil to them. Kamenashi and Yamashita are foils of each other, but I needed another pair of characters, or another group of characters, who would serve to contrast Kamenashi and Yamashita with the rest of the world.
Cue KAT-TUN.
(Note: I don't actually care for NewS. That might have been the wrong thing to say for any popularity contests, but I don't. The only thing I like about them is their Happy Birthday PV, because I can spam that at all of my guy friends when it's their birthday, and they give me upset faces as a result. It makes me cackle that NewS can make a group of adults so sad.)
In the same way that all of us online go by a username, when people are in the Network, they are using a Network handle. When I was in DBSK fandom, I played with their stage names versus their real names, and it was actually a theme I explored a lot. Transferring that experience to J&A was interesting, because while in DBSK fandom, people tend to refer to their idols with their first names-it's not that often that you see somebody writing a fanfiction with Junsu constantly referred to as Xiah-but J&A fandom uses nicknames just as commonly, if not more commonly, than real names. Case in point, the many fanfiction that refer to Kamenashi as Kame in not only dialogue but narrative. Instead of shying away from the fact that people would probably be confused between Kame and Kamenashi, and not realize that I was trying to distinguish between them, I decided to use that confusion to my advantage. The further you get in the story, the more people start to blur between their actual identities and their network identities, bleeding into each other.
So what was Kamenashi's character about? Usually, main characters in a dystopia have a development that involves them learning more and more about the world, seeing the horrible problems that have been caused, learning to look beyond the blatant propaganda, finding love in a structured world, and finally falling prey to the government's subversive presence.
Kamenashi isn't that main character.
When I first started writing this story, the only image I had of Kamenashi was of a parallel between him and Shuji-Kiritani Shuji who considered life a game. Kamenashi hated his life, in the same way Shuji hated his-they were both tired of the monotony of doing the same things over and over. I choose to bring Shuji's characteristics into Kamenashi's life-Kamenashi became tired of playing the perfect Network Maintainer, and he chose to act out through taking illegal hallucinogenics. In a way, Kamenashi was rebelling against authority the way the main character of a dystopia tends to do. But Kamenashi never confronts authority. In fact, he's running away from authority, but that's all he does in the entire story. He avoids his responsibilities, he refuses to talk to KAT-TUN who are worried about him, and he runs away from NOBUTA, pretending to not recognize Nakajima Yuto as Kouji.
So the question is, how do I make a character like Kamenashi even acceptable to the reader? Who wants to read a story about a man who does nothing but run away from his problems? You don't. Kamenashi had a justification for everything: he didn't recognize Kouji, he had everything under control. He believed it was for the best for people to not know about NOBUTA, and to continue living in ignorance.
When you look at Kamenashi's character carefully, when you look at his character without the lens of his narration covering it, you realize that Kamenashi is a horrible person, especially in the frame of a dystopia. He is actually the type of character that most main characters fight against, the character who knows what's going on in the world, and wants to let it happen. He justifies it.
(Never justify things that shouldn't be justified. Always ask yourself: why am I required to do this; what is the reason for that.)
Yamashita is Kamenashi's foil; the character who serves as a contrast to Kamenashi. Yamashita sees what the government (Maintenance, in this story), is doing, and he doesn't like it. In fact, he wants it to change. Yamashita is the one in this story who acts more like a main character, but even then he doesn't truly try to seek change. He's preoccupied with finding Nobuta, with finding Shuji in Kamenashi. He's not interested so much in changing society as he is trying to be happy.
So who are the main characters of this story from the dystopic genre's point of view? Well, it's actually Ueda and Taguchi. They're the ones who discover the rogue program that's the seed for rebellion against the government, the ones who realize that NOBUTA is doing no harm, and then choose to let NOBUTA live. In a nutshell, Ueda and Taguchi are the people you should emulate. They are the people who question authority, who try to change things. And even though they are hunted down, and eventually they are forced to return to Maintenance’s embrace at the end of Week 5, they've protected the only hope for change that the community has.
Why did I pick Taguchi and Ueda? As I have always stated, The Question of Nobuta was originally written for muu-chan. That means that it was written to her tastes at that time, and in January of 2010, she thought Ueda was interesting. I decided that I wanted Taguchi in there because Taguchi had a beautiful smile and played games. I would like to point out, just for the record, that I have adored Taguchi since before GIRLS came out, and people should really stop liking him just because of GIRLS, because Taguchi has an absolutely beautiful smile.
Taguchi wasn't supposed to be a major character in this story. He decided he was going to be, and while I was hating myself for not being able to pun at all, he was explaining what it was like to be a gamer in this world. Taguchi is what we are; he's the person who loves the Network, who loves the depth it gives to his life. But he's also aware of Maintenance. Taguchi is the person who best represents the common person in fandom, except he's more aware than fandom.
(I loved writing Taguchi, even though every time I was writing him, I was struggling to come up with puns and failing. Even though Kamenashi is the main character of the world, the person who everything revolves around, Taguchi was the main character of the story. It was Taguchi who kept things alive, Taguchi who was always watching through cameras.)
The story was built around these four characters. Kamenashi, who's running away; Yamashita, who's struggling to find happiness; Ueda, who's determined to keep NOBUTA alive; and Taguchi, who's almost content with his lot in life except he's too aware.
But who are the side characters? There's Nakamaru, Tanaka, and Akanishi, the rest of KAT-TUN (at least at the time I started the story). But their roles are almost minimal. Akanishi has a larger role, but that's mostly because he decided that it would be a good idea to leave KAT-TUN and thus completely ruin what little plot I had originally. Akanishi's leaving though... we can talk about in plot. (Yes, there are still about a thousand more categories to go in this meta. This is what happens when I write a 25k word dystopia. And then write meta about it; please note that this is probably why I no longer actually write meta for my stories).
Something that some people may be confused about is why so many completely meaningless side characters? Koyama appears for about 2 lines. Nishikido Ryo appears only to allude to Virtual Reality (and I would like to point out that The Question of Nobuta was written before Virtual Reality, and Virtual Reality was inspired entirely by Nishikido and Akanishi's scene online). Nakajima Yuto plays a more important role, but even then, he's mostly there for that tentative connection between NOBUTA and Kamenashi. So why? The answer is because the story is about world-building. How do you build a world, and what are people like in this world? That's the most important thing in world-building. One thing that I never managed to incorporate into QoN was how people who didn't work so intimately with Maintenance, all the laymen in this world, lived. There was actually a short story I started about how these people lived, which helped me understand the world better, but it was something I wish I could have actually incorporated into the story beyond a few brief sentences.
There are a lot of things that I could have done better with the characters. Taguchi could have had better puns than that lame one about the sea and seeing. Minor characters could have actually shown up and been important. Yamashita could have done more with his life (but then that would have ruined my character parallels). Akanishi could have been more useful than just a time-designator. In a nutshell, if I had actually written this fic as a story before a world-building exercise, I might have had better character development. Which is a pity, because I really don't care for plots half as much as I care for world-building dystopias.
Plot
So the world-building is done, and the characters are done (to a certain extent), but I still needed some form of plot even if I don't care much for them. And considering that it's hard to motivate anybody to read 25000 words without a plot to drive the words forward, that meant that I had to at least come up with a semblance of one.
So I used what I had; I had a program who just wanted to be happy-choosing NOBUTA's motivations wasn't hard because I could draw from Nobuta wo Produce as a source-characters who were deeply unhappy and wanted to be happy, and a world that was out to get them. In a nutshell, all the archetypes of Nobuta wo Produce. And since Nobuta wo Produce is about all of these people learning to understand each other, that would be what the story was about, a driving force to understanding. To make this even more clear, nobody was supposed to understand anything in Nobuta wo Produce until the very end, so the reader themselves is a part of the plot, struggling for understanding.
I never really enjoy plotting stories out beyond rough ideas. For me, writing comes through more in character interactions, in the grad themes of the story. I can focus on imagery, and I'm always thinking about society vs. the individual, and on characterization, but plot? Beyond a few thoughts of: “I need to reveal what NOBUTA is in the end” (and keep in mind that when I first started, I didn't know what NOBUTA was. I had absolutely no clue, so I had to decide what its original purpose was, give it a name that showed that it was actually an acronym-and yes, I know it's a pretty crap acronym, I have never been any good at acronyms) and essentially, plot the story after I had written 10K and 2 chapters.
Not fun at all.
How do you do that? You draw on the characters. I didn't know what NOBUTA was, when I first started, so my characters' confusion was genuine. They honestly had no fucking clue what NOBUTA was. Neither did I. It made for some sloppy writing, but it worked out-you can feel the confusion in the story.
(I don't recommend not knowing what your plot is before you write something like this. It rarely works out so nicely. Just look at Hand in Hand, where I started out with the simple desire to write epidemic fic, and ended up with a dystopia, chapters that didn't flow right, and general sloppy writing. You should always at least have a vague idea of what you want to write.)
The Craft
When writing an AU like this, the trick is to somehow blend canon with the AU. I’ll be the first to admit that I cannot keep up with canon, trying to go through the backlog of interviews, magazine or TV shows, is quite literally impossible. What I focused on, therefore, was on two major time periods: Nobuta-era, and current-era. As I started writing this in 2010 (this was one of the first stories I wrote, starting it in January last year right after I started to like KAT-TUN), the current-era features mostly 2010 events. Jin’s leaving quite nicely ruined my plans starting in Chapter 4, in case it isn’t clear that that happens to be when things get a little more muddled, but instead of ignoring his quite aggravating decision, I thought it would be better to somehow integrate this into the story. It worked too. Jin's departure helped me actually tie up the story. I actually had no idea how the story was supposed to start to conclude until Jin left and everybody started going absolutely crazy because Jin left (see the parallels to fandom I made? It wasn't particularly obvious, but I was quite aggravated at fandom's reaction. Really, it was not necessary to act like the world was ending just because one member decided to leave).
This story truly hinges upon two aspects: the world, and it's relation to jdrama Nobuta wo Produce. The story was designed first and foremost as a world, and the plot came secondary. In case that wasn't completely obvious to the average reader, the story had little to no plot until Week 4: Nobuko. I had to go back and make sure that the story seemed to actually have coherent escalation, because in its original iteration, it went straight from about 15000 words in happy world-building fun into a plot.
Yet how does it work? It works because the entire story is a parallel of Nobuta wo Produce. It takes the themes and overarching plot of Nobuta wo Produce, mixes them up, and then slides the concepts onto the framework of the dystopia in The Question of Nobuta. (Note: the original title of this story wasn't The Question of Nobuta, but was actually Producing Nobuta. I changed it because NOBUTA wasn't actually being produced in the story. If I ever write the prequel, I may just title it Producing NOBUTA. Also an interesting fact is that when writing this, I deliberately avoided any mention of the title to the friend I was writing it for, because I didn't want her to pick up on the parallels too quickly, I was worried that that would make the story less enjoyable.)
I deliberately tried to use scenes or dialogue from the source text, in this case, the jdrama Nobuta wo Produce. Beyond the fact that there's a scene in italics (from NOBUTA's point of view, actually), at the end of each chapter, each chapter is liberally sprinkled with bits and pieces of dialogue actually in the dramas. “Don't call her Nobuta,” in Week 4 is probably my favorite reference, because in the jdrama it reflected Kame's attachment to Nobuta and Akira, the growing bond between the three of them, and in this case, it was reflecting on the bond that they shared: NOBUTA and its connection between Kamenashi and Akira.
I also tried to make sure that the AU dystopia world reflected the events of January and February 2010 accurately. It was hard to keep up with everything that was happening, but I tried to allude to several major events in KAT-TUN's history: formation, Gokusen, Shuji to Akira, debut (that was very briefly touched upon), Jin's 6 month hiatus in LA, and then Jin's departure from the band.
So how do you write a story that brings all of that together, but puts it into a dystopic world? Well, the first thing is to remember the distinction between them. The Question of Nobuta is different from most other science fiction stories because instead of putting the members of J&A into a different role, I kept them in their role. All of them maintain their acting roles. All of them were in their respective groups. All of them are even called Johnnies. (This was actually a reference from British slang, where Johnnies is a word for policeman. Yes, I looked up the all the possible slang for policeman to see what I should call KAT-TUN.)
But, that means that even the other characters, the ones who aren't Johnny's, have to also reflect their relation to the real world. Well, that meant that they had to also have many roles, because they were all actors. So I created Network Actors and Actresses, people who give the general population to experience what amounts to a movie by allowing for them to be what amounts to an extra. Since you have so many servers, it's perfectly legitimate for this to occur. Want to meet a celebrity in a bar? Just op to a server where actors and actresses hang out in bars. They might not be Toda Erika, but Misa Misa (Toda Erika's role in Death Note), is damn good too.
Why couldn't Toda Erika be a Network Maintainer? Because she wasn't a Johnny's. It was that simple. If she wasn't in J&A, then she wasn't a Johnny's, and then the policeman slang would not apply. That simple.
You always have to keep in mind what the rules for your world are. It was tempting to actually just put everybody as a Network Maintainer, but that wouldn't work. It wouldn't fit in the world that I had made. So I didn't. The only actual godmodding I did for the sake of plot was to make Horikita Maki a programmer, because of her relaiton to NOBUTA. This fit in the world because she was a programmer who was making artificial people who resembled her. Essentially, even though Horikita Maki in the world we reside in is an actress, she became a programmer in the story because I had to for the sake of the plot. It makes sense, however, because Horikita Maki basically programs all of her roles.
In a nutshell, to write a dystopia like this, the trick is to hold the real world in your head even as you are trying to create a new world. It means that you can't just change things as you wish. It means that you have to always go back to the source text. And that, I believe is what fanfiction should always be about, AU or not, the constant return to the canon.
This is what a dystopia is about. You always go back to the world you're occupying, looking around you, and then taking the world and drawing it into the future.
Imagery
Oh god, the imagery in the story. First off, my favorite piece of imagery is the invisible wall. What inspired the invisible wall? Video games. Anybody who's played any video game probably has experienced the invisible wall, where a wall blocks you from advancing further; this is usually due to plot or gameplay reasons. It's also frustrating as hell.
The appearance of the invisible wall is actually one of the most ominous events; the government actively seeks to prevent Taguchi from going into the ocean. It's also important to note that the invisible wall occurs at the beach, which is arguably the point where Shuji and Akira were happiest. (Yes, I did pay attention to Kamenashi and Yamashita's happy “frolicking in the waves” scene.) The fact that the oceans are blocked off in the Network is in part because oceans have always been a barrier historically (sea travel across the Atlantic and in general only really became viable during the 1700's), but also because oceans are happiness, as evidenced in Nobuta wo Produce. The fact that oceans and beaches have been completely destroyed in Reality is used to reflect the idea that happiness is impossible in Reality.
(The Invisible wall appeared in Virtual Reality. This was actually a tribute to The Question on Nobuta, and not the other way around despite the time of posting.)
That makes the invisible wall so effective? For one, all of us can relate to feeling trapped in; this isn't anything particularly unique to any of us. Additionally, all of us know that beaches are polluted now, because have you seen some of the beaches lately?
What else? Well, beyond the invisible wall and ocean imagery, you'll notice that everything seems to take place in a city. This is to reflect the technological development of the world, but also to show the way that technology begins to trap us. Keep in mind that technology isn't actually trapping people, but it's the government authority, using the technology, and censoring and controlling the common man. So note that technology is never quite controlling people, but technology is a tool where people observe you.
Where does the camera, the spy lenses, come from? Panopticism. The UK has set up cameras after cameras to prevent crime for happening. It's also a bit of an invasion of privacy. But the constant imagery of a camera in the corner, a red light flickering, and Taguchi watching from his portable computer? What does that remind you of? It probably doesn't remind you of anything. In fact, you probably think it's merely a plot method or characterization trick to show that Taguchi cares so much about his friends that he's constantly observing them. I suppose you also think that Taguchi should write on their walls and see their “friendships” with each other, and that Taguchi should poke them and they should poke back.
Yes, this is facebook in a dystopic setting. Taguchi is watching them from his computer, hacking their inboxes to read their messages to each other (because he has a backdoor, he's friends with them, of course he's allowed to see their messages to each other).
That else? Well, the porternals-portable terminals, in case you haven't realized what the word comes from yet-is essentially a personal computer the size of a cell phone. This was inspired mostly by the development of technology; everybody and their pet dogs has a smartphone now. And we're more and more attached to them. We've grown obsessed with our phones; we can be in the middle of a conversation with somebody else, and we'll stop to pick up a text. I know for a fact, because I was at dinner with friends, and I stopped to text a friend, and then I paused to make my move in a backgammon game, and all the while, I was talking to people. So we've grown more and more attached to our computers, more and more attached to our phones. We've started to immerse our entire lives into technology; just look at Taguchi, always plugged in to the point that he's immersed his senses into the internet.
Process
How did I write this story? I started with the first scene, the first line. Kamenashi was sick of life. And then that's what the story was about. Kamenashi was sick of life. And then Ueda was also sick of life, but he wasn't taking drugs. He wasn't Kamenashi after all. And then NOBUTA wanted to find Shuji and Akira.
That's how the story started, with this horrifying dissatisfaction towards the world. And then it developed. The Government started watching, staring through a spycam. NOBUTA was trying to make people happy-because that was what Nobuta wanted in Nobuta wo Produce anyways.
There was no plot.
Despite the fact that I didn't plot this story out, I ended up writing this in what I learned as Shakespearean Tragedy format. (The format I learned was a pyramid, with a beginning that is depressing, a build up of tension and hope until the viewer reaches what almost seems like the overcoming of the fatal human flaw in Act 3, before it all degenerates into tragedy at the end of Act 5.) This wasn't entirely intentional, but the fact remains that Shakespearean Tragedy sufficiently manages to create a sufficiently tragic mood, while balancing the tension so it doesn't completely degenerate into wallowing in the agony of the dystopia. 1984 also has a similar plot construction, with Winston seeming to gain hope, and the world almost looking like a better place before he gets captured by the Ministry of Love and is forced to face his greatest fear. I tend towards this format; it's such an effective story structure, and while it seems formulaic, it's such a broad idea that it can be modified for almost any story, and all that really happens is that tension builds, just as a story is supposed to have tension building, and then like the nursery rhyme: “they all fall down.”
So, there was no actual plot.
There was just a horrible unhappiness.
And I think we all have that. I just understood how the world was making us dissatisfied better than you.
So I wrote about it. And that was it. That was all.
Fun Misc. Facts
1. Week 5's title came both from the name of their group, Shuji to Akira, and as a reference to the actual text of the ending scene of Week 4: Nobuko. To quote: Nobuta, I decided, would belong to us. To me, to Shuji, to Akira. In this instance, I was taking advantage of the fact that "to" is a word in both Japanese and English, and making a rather lame pun off of it.
2. There's a file titled: "dystopia scraps." This file includes notes like: Outside, nakajima yuto meets yamashita tomohisa. Yamashita goes “wtf, nakajima. Why are you all panicky” and then goes “wait, why are you sneaking out of porn server wang kah, and yuto goes “ho shit” and yamashita goes “you hacker, imma pwn you and hey say 7's ass” and yuto goes “ho shit ho shit ho sit” and yamapi goes “even if arashi is not here right now, imma still pwning your ass you little shits” and yuto goes “but kame said I could have an hour!” and yamapi goes “well, if kame said so. Wait. no. imma pwning your ass anyways. Even if I love kame and want to have fun tiems with him with nercotic hallucinogenic drugs.” This isn't a joke. This is actually a scene scrap that kind of mutated and was thus cut. (It's from Chapter 2, the scene where Yamashita runs into Nakajima Yuto outside what amounts to a netsex cafe.)
3. Kusano and Uchi were going to be mentioned, originally. Yamashita wouldn't compromise their group, not when he had lost two members of his own group once. Kamenashi wasn't supposed to know about Uchi-san and Kusano-san, but he had taken classes with Kusano before Kusano had entered the Yamapi's group and Kamenashi had started working with the others of KAT-TUN. They hadn't kept in touch much after Kusano had left the mass of trainees to work under Yamashita, but Kamenashi actually followed the news feeds in addition to Johnny gossip, and it hadn't been too hard to realize-once he had heard Yamashita murmur a quiet “I'm sorry, Kusano,” one night when he was high on drugs-that the Yamapi that Kusano had briefly mentioned was actually Yamashita.
4. The final version of this story had a file title of "dystopia for muu-chan involving hallucinogens because i need biotech instead of hard electrotech_4"
5. Taguchi was almost a mole for management before I realized that continuing down that path did absolutely nothing for my plot, and just made it ridiculously complicated at Week 4. Akanishi also had been mind-controlled at first. It was actually pretty exciting. See excerpt below:
“Your job is to find Kamenashi, isn’t it?” Tanaka could hear Jin’s lazy smile, could hear somebody from Management reaching through Jin.
“Maybe.” Tanaka closed his eyes. How did this happen? Taguchi should have had the cameras permanently hacked, and they were always careful not to leave any clues when they went off and did their own thing. Management knew them, and almost sanctioned independent actions outside of their control, and damn it, they had been careful.
“What does maybe mean?” Jin was gone, and only Management was left.
The metal of the implant was cold against his fingers, and the wires dug into the soft flesh of his palm. All it would take was a second, and he could plug himself in. The porternal was far enough away that anything Management tried to do through the hardware of that would take a while to get to him. Hopefully all of his upgrades would keep him from getting a backlash.
“Tanaka Koki, what do you mean by ‘Maybe?’” Management’s voice was cold. “Are you questioning our authority?”
Tanaka grinned. “Maybe,” he said, and shoved the wires into his implant. He closed his eyes, hoping that the chair hadn’t reset his server codes, hoping that Taguchi was still watching and would cover him, hoping that whatever it was that Kamenashi had gotten himself involved in, it would keep him from getting screwed over. He clenched his teeth, and he wondered if the wind on his face was from cooling fans or from sensory feedback down his spine. He needed to immerse. Management wouldn’t be able to find him if he managed to get himself into the Network and to the place that they had made for themselves when they had first met each other. He needed to immerse.
His porternal rattled on the floor. “Tanaka Koki!” Management shouted, the voice harsh and raspy in his ears.
Not full immersion yet then. He forced his mouth open, forced his throat to work. “Fuck,” he snarled, and then his voice left him.
6. The final page count, including the meta, was 70 pages.
7. I actually have no idea about how to program an AI. The extent of my programming knowledge is a 10 week course in C programming (I got an A in it!), rudimentary html, and knowing far too many programmers for a healthy and joyful life. I did my best to completely gloss over all programing aspects, and I think I succeeded too.
8. I finished this story in time for muu-chan's birthday. It just wasn't necessarily the right one.
9. This was all coded in Notepad++ before posting. I had 8 tabs in Notepad++ consistantly open. It was stressful, but I think I now know how to use Notepad++ so much better. Next goal, a website!
10. This wasn't the first story I wrote in fandom, but it comes close. This is probably the fourth story I wrote when I first entered J&A fandom. The first three, we shall not talk about.
Thank you for reading.
Masterpost of Chapters here
Masterlist of fandoms here
Masterlist of Jpop fanfiction here
Author: virdant
Length: 7207 words
Rating: PG-13 / R
Genre: Meta of AU, Dystopia, sci-fi.
Pairing: implied Pikame, Implied Shuji/Akira
Summary: Story Summary: NOBUTA; the program's name is NOBUTA. In a world where people spend the majority of their time online playing roles, a rogue program named NOBUTA tries to be happy. But what is NOBUTA, and why does it exist?
Warning: Spoilers for all of The Question of Nobuta.
Notes: This meta is intended for educational purposes. The opinions expressed here are mine. You may agree or disagree with me, and you may express your opinion as loudly as you want; as long as you are polite about it, we can have a discussion. If you are flaming without actually reading the post-completion meta, I'll just be excessively amused. This meta is sharper than my fiction writing, and is more reminiscent of my real life journal than my fic journal.
The Question of Nobuta
Masterpost | Week 1: NOBUTA | Week 2: Kouji | Week 3: Mariko | Week 4: Nobuko | Week 5: Shuji to Akira | Post-Completion Meta
Post-Completion Meta
Introduction
I will begin this meta by saying: The Question of Nobuta wasn't supposed to have a plot. The plot came secondary to the world, and to the characters and the themes I wanted to explore. For the most part, this is how I write. I come up with an issue that I want to investigate, and then I write about it. I don't care so much about the plot as long as the ideas came through. This is primarily because there are about 7 plots in the world, and everything we write is just another remix of one of these 7 plots.
So what was The Question of Nobuta actually about? Well, for one, it's a dystopia. In fact, the word document that this was typed in is titled: “dystopia for muu-chan involving hallucinogens because I need biotech instead of hard electrotech.” For those of you who don't know, and don't feel inclined to type in 8 letters into a wikipedia search, a dystopia is a story that looks critically at the way the world around us is developing, and predicts a bleak future from it. 1984, Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451 are all excellent examples of dystopias, and are probably quintessential dystopia texts. A dystopia can also be defined as an Anti-Utopia, where a utopian society has one designated flaw. The entire story was supposed to be an exploration in developing a dystopia with an emphasis on drugs as opposed to technology. If you know anything about my history of writing (which you may know absolutely nothing about, because I've been writing for longer than I've been in J&A fandom), then you'll know that I've been writing stories with dystopic elements since November of 2006, and full on dystopias since October 2007. (If you're interested, the stories were my 2006 NaNoWriMo, Three Steps, that featured a political head who was not above killing innocents for the sake of maintaining hold on his heir-who was trying to run away from his domineering family-and Stained Glass, which was part of my Roads_Diverged on IJ challenge, a story about a society that had been fooled into seeing what the government wanted them to see thanks to visual implants that were connected to their personal computers.) It wasn't hard for me to write a dystopia; I do nothing but look at the world around and think: “oh my god, this world fucking sucks. How can we be stupid enough to let authority do this and infringe on our freedoms?” And then I go home and write a dystopia. So no, it was not hard for me to decide that I was going to write a dystopia.
The Worlds: Reality, the Network, and Drugs
What was hard for me to do was to try to focus on drugs. I actually approached this story from the wrong angle, trying to draw only on drugs, probably because I very quickly realized that if I wanted to finish it in time for my friend's birthday (this story was started over a year ago for the purpose of giving it to my friend for her birthday; it wasn't finished in time), I would have to fall back onto what I knew. I started building a technological world, but I still wanted to incorporate drugs into the story.
(A dystopia that features drugs is Brave New World. I probably should have used it as a resource while writing this, but well, with as a science major in a research university, it was a marvel that I even had time to write, let along read for fun; I have to pick and choose, really.)
But the issue I had was, I was clearly going to be using drugs as a metaphor for escapism. So what would my technological world be? Usually, when I write dystopias, I feature two worlds and contrast them. I feature a technological world that represents freedom from societal pressures, or a technological world that is an example of political and social pressure on the individual. Generally, which type of world I choose depends on my mood.
So what did I choose this time? I choose to write about the internet, and how people are slowly becoming more and more obsessed with their online lives. Just think about how much time we spend connected to the world wide web (network). Considering that I am friends with Rei, who spends more time on twitter than any sane person should (yes, that was an insult. It was in love), I am aware of how much time people spend on the internet. Considering that I read her twitter posts, I am far too aware of how much time people spend on the internet. Then you have the fact that there are games like Second Life, that I have friends who I have never met irl... and you stretch it. You take this idea, of spending too much time on the internet, of having a second life on the internet, and you develop it. You write about it, but you write it as a warning. This is what will happen if you are not careful. You will have no life in Reality, and everything that matters will be on the Network.
I don't think anybody can honestly face me and tell me that they want to live in the world that The Question of Nobuta is set in. Who wants to live in a world that is so strictly controlled? There is no money, only credit lines-which sounds good, until you realize that this is a form of credit that is completely different from our current credit system. This is a system where you are paid in ration tabs, so you may eat (In Week 1: NOBUTA, Yamashita mentions that he is paying for Kamenashi's meals with his ration tabs, not with money or a credit card or anything like that). You are given specific amounts of specific things for your work. Essentially, the government has controlled every aspect of your life in Reality.
Because the government is controlling every aspect of your life in Reality, you choose to escape to the Network. But the Network is controlled too. You just don't realize it... or maybe you do, but you don't care. That is the premise of Reality and the Network in The Question of Nobuta, and that's what I set out to create, that fragile connection between what is real, and what isn't.
So how does NOBUTA fit into the Network? The story is about NOBUTA, despite the fact it seems to focus on everybody but NOBUTA. Though it wasn't explicitly stated outright (though the ending really was more of a sledgehammer than I had preferred for it to be originally), NOBUTA was a program created to create a perfect world. How do you create a perfect world, where everybody gets along? Look at fandom; we can't even get along with people who we share a common interest of [insert boyband here], how are we going to get along with people who we don't have common interests? NOBUTA creates understanding between individuals. In the same way that Nobuta showed Shuji that she and Akira would always be there for him, the program NOBUTA was meant to represent the ability for understanding. Essentially, NOBUTA was the utopic element in this story. In a dystopic world where a false understanding is created through segregation (different network servers), and censorship (Network Maintainers tagging and banning certain identity handles from certain locations, as Kame does in Week 2: Kouji), NOBUTA the AI program was designed to meet people, get to know them, and show them that they could get along with people. If everybody understood each other, then isn't that our perfect world? This isn't saying that NOBUTA makes everybody the same-look at Shuji and Akira, they're hardly the same type of person-but NOBUTA allows for people to understand and tolerate their differences.
(Note that despite NOBUTA's influence on their lives, Kamenashi and Yamashita still lived under Maintenance's thumb. This was to show Maintenance's pervading influence on the world, and to reflect the fact that change was not, and would never be instantaneous. Probably the most hopeful element of the story was the fact that NOBUTA was not eradicated at the end of it (Week 5: Shuji to Akira, Ueda and Taguchi declare NOBUTA neutralized, but they never truly delete the program, considering the fact that 'she isn't doing anything' a justifiable excuse), leaving the potential for understanding in the story. I actually consider The Question of Nobuta to have a very happy ending for one of my dystopias, which usually end in the eradication of hope-this is common for most dystopias, because the point is to illustrate the darkness of the future in the path we are treading towards.)
But the Network is only one of the three worlds that this story was about. There are two whole other worlds: Reality and the dream world that Kamenashi and Yamashita share as Shuji and Akira. What is Reality?
Reality is the world that we're living in now. It's the world where we do nothing but work for five days a week on our 9-5 jobs, or if we're students, do nothing but school from 8-3. It's the world where the most exciting time of our lives is the weekend. It's a downright boring world, and we live in it. We live in this world where our time is regulated by large corporations, where we are forced to do what society expects us to do. We live in this boring world, and we do anything we can to escape onto the internet (don't bother trying to deny it, the mere fact that you're in fandom proves my point; the fact that you're reading this meta confirms it).
So the story was written taking place only on the weekends. If you read the first scene of each chapter (titled Week for a reason), you realize that in the beginning of each chapter, it's Friday. Again. It's always Friday. Everything that happens in this story takes place on the weekends. (Yes, that is why the posting schedule is every Friday. Because the story takes place on the weekends, so the point is that you read the story over the weekend, as it happens, go back to your boring monotonous life for another 5 days, and then experience another weekend).
But what defines Reality? Why did I insist on having it there? I could have written the story without Reality; it would have been just as strong if I hadn't spent so much time emphasizing this other world. Why did I find it necessary to emphasize it?
Because it was used to contrast the Network. Because the fact that you shouldn't remember much about Reality beyond the fact that there's an underground bar, and that people are doing work in Reality. Reality was designed to be bland and boring. People don't do much in Reality. All the interesting things happen in relation to the Network. (Note that the fact that Taguchi and Ueda do work while connected to the Network was to explore the fact that even though technology was supposed to help us have less work, it's made it so that we're doing more.)
That's two out of the three worlds. So what is the third world, the drug world that Kamenashi and Yamashita find themselves in as Shuji and Akira?
The third world, the drug world that Kamenashi and Yamashita occupy, is the world of escape. It's the world that Management doesn't have under their thumb. It's pure escape. It's the metaphorical representation of happiness, a perfect world where everybody understands everybody else.
So why did I write it? Well, for one thing, I didn't really write it. There are very few scenes that actually take place in that dream-like world. In fact, there is only one pure scene that takes place exclusively in that world, and that's the very last scene. The fact that it's so elusive represents the idea that happiness is elusive (not that complicated to realize), but also, because happiness is obtained through artificial means, it's a representation of how happiness is artificial in this world. Remember, this is a world that our current world will be leading too. Everything in The Question of Nobuta is intended to be a reflection of our current world, which means the fact that nobody is happy is a reflection of our current world and our search for happiness. Just look at all the people taking anti-depressants (and I know quite a lot of them). Just look at all the people who aren't taking anti-depressants but probably should be on them. Yes, happiness is fleeting. Yes, nobody in this story is actually happy. This is a dystopia I'm writing. This is the world we're living in. Deal with it, or fix the problems in the world so I no longer have anything to write a dystopia about.
Characters
The story was supposed to be centered around Kamenashi and Yamashita. And it was. Except as I was writing it, I realized that Kamenashi and Yamashita couldn't pull the story through on their own, and I needed somebody as a foil to them. Kamenashi and Yamashita are foils of each other, but I needed another pair of characters, or another group of characters, who would serve to contrast Kamenashi and Yamashita with the rest of the world.
Cue KAT-TUN.
(Note: I don't actually care for NewS. That might have been the wrong thing to say for any popularity contests, but I don't. The only thing I like about them is their Happy Birthday PV, because I can spam that at all of my guy friends when it's their birthday, and they give me upset faces as a result. It makes me cackle that NewS can make a group of adults so sad.)
In the same way that all of us online go by a username, when people are in the Network, they are using a Network handle. When I was in DBSK fandom, I played with their stage names versus their real names, and it was actually a theme I explored a lot. Transferring that experience to J&A was interesting, because while in DBSK fandom, people tend to refer to their idols with their first names-it's not that often that you see somebody writing a fanfiction with Junsu constantly referred to as Xiah-but J&A fandom uses nicknames just as commonly, if not more commonly, than real names. Case in point, the many fanfiction that refer to Kamenashi as Kame in not only dialogue but narrative. Instead of shying away from the fact that people would probably be confused between Kame and Kamenashi, and not realize that I was trying to distinguish between them, I decided to use that confusion to my advantage. The further you get in the story, the more people start to blur between their actual identities and their network identities, bleeding into each other.
So what was Kamenashi's character about? Usually, main characters in a dystopia have a development that involves them learning more and more about the world, seeing the horrible problems that have been caused, learning to look beyond the blatant propaganda, finding love in a structured world, and finally falling prey to the government's subversive presence.
Kamenashi isn't that main character.
When I first started writing this story, the only image I had of Kamenashi was of a parallel between him and Shuji-Kiritani Shuji who considered life a game. Kamenashi hated his life, in the same way Shuji hated his-they were both tired of the monotony of doing the same things over and over. I choose to bring Shuji's characteristics into Kamenashi's life-Kamenashi became tired of playing the perfect Network Maintainer, and he chose to act out through taking illegal hallucinogenics. In a way, Kamenashi was rebelling against authority the way the main character of a dystopia tends to do. But Kamenashi never confronts authority. In fact, he's running away from authority, but that's all he does in the entire story. He avoids his responsibilities, he refuses to talk to KAT-TUN who are worried about him, and he runs away from NOBUTA, pretending to not recognize Nakajima Yuto as Kouji.
So the question is, how do I make a character like Kamenashi even acceptable to the reader? Who wants to read a story about a man who does nothing but run away from his problems? You don't. Kamenashi had a justification for everything: he didn't recognize Kouji, he had everything under control. He believed it was for the best for people to not know about NOBUTA, and to continue living in ignorance.
When you look at Kamenashi's character carefully, when you look at his character without the lens of his narration covering it, you realize that Kamenashi is a horrible person, especially in the frame of a dystopia. He is actually the type of character that most main characters fight against, the character who knows what's going on in the world, and wants to let it happen. He justifies it.
(Never justify things that shouldn't be justified. Always ask yourself: why am I required to do this; what is the reason for that.)
Yamashita is Kamenashi's foil; the character who serves as a contrast to Kamenashi. Yamashita sees what the government (Maintenance, in this story), is doing, and he doesn't like it. In fact, he wants it to change. Yamashita is the one in this story who acts more like a main character, but even then he doesn't truly try to seek change. He's preoccupied with finding Nobuta, with finding Shuji in Kamenashi. He's not interested so much in changing society as he is trying to be happy.
So who are the main characters of this story from the dystopic genre's point of view? Well, it's actually Ueda and Taguchi. They're the ones who discover the rogue program that's the seed for rebellion against the government, the ones who realize that NOBUTA is doing no harm, and then choose to let NOBUTA live. In a nutshell, Ueda and Taguchi are the people you should emulate. They are the people who question authority, who try to change things. And even though they are hunted down, and eventually they are forced to return to Maintenance’s embrace at the end of Week 5, they've protected the only hope for change that the community has.
Why did I pick Taguchi and Ueda? As I have always stated, The Question of Nobuta was originally written for muu-chan. That means that it was written to her tastes at that time, and in January of 2010, she thought Ueda was interesting. I decided that I wanted Taguchi in there because Taguchi had a beautiful smile and played games. I would like to point out, just for the record, that I have adored Taguchi since before GIRLS came out, and people should really stop liking him just because of GIRLS, because Taguchi has an absolutely beautiful smile.
Taguchi wasn't supposed to be a major character in this story. He decided he was going to be, and while I was hating myself for not being able to pun at all, he was explaining what it was like to be a gamer in this world. Taguchi is what we are; he's the person who loves the Network, who loves the depth it gives to his life. But he's also aware of Maintenance. Taguchi is the person who best represents the common person in fandom, except he's more aware than fandom.
(I loved writing Taguchi, even though every time I was writing him, I was struggling to come up with puns and failing. Even though Kamenashi is the main character of the world, the person who everything revolves around, Taguchi was the main character of the story. It was Taguchi who kept things alive, Taguchi who was always watching through cameras.)
The story was built around these four characters. Kamenashi, who's running away; Yamashita, who's struggling to find happiness; Ueda, who's determined to keep NOBUTA alive; and Taguchi, who's almost content with his lot in life except he's too aware.
But who are the side characters? There's Nakamaru, Tanaka, and Akanishi, the rest of KAT-TUN (at least at the time I started the story). But their roles are almost minimal. Akanishi has a larger role, but that's mostly because he decided that it would be a good idea to leave KAT-TUN and thus completely ruin what little plot I had originally. Akanishi's leaving though... we can talk about in plot. (Yes, there are still about a thousand more categories to go in this meta. This is what happens when I write a 25k word dystopia. And then write meta about it; please note that this is probably why I no longer actually write meta for my stories).
Something that some people may be confused about is why so many completely meaningless side characters? Koyama appears for about 2 lines. Nishikido Ryo appears only to allude to Virtual Reality (and I would like to point out that The Question of Nobuta was written before Virtual Reality, and Virtual Reality was inspired entirely by Nishikido and Akanishi's scene online). Nakajima Yuto plays a more important role, but even then, he's mostly there for that tentative connection between NOBUTA and Kamenashi. So why? The answer is because the story is about world-building. How do you build a world, and what are people like in this world? That's the most important thing in world-building. One thing that I never managed to incorporate into QoN was how people who didn't work so intimately with Maintenance, all the laymen in this world, lived. There was actually a short story I started about how these people lived, which helped me understand the world better, but it was something I wish I could have actually incorporated into the story beyond a few brief sentences.
There are a lot of things that I could have done better with the characters. Taguchi could have had better puns than that lame one about the sea and seeing. Minor characters could have actually shown up and been important. Yamashita could have done more with his life (but then that would have ruined my character parallels). Akanishi could have been more useful than just a time-designator. In a nutshell, if I had actually written this fic as a story before a world-building exercise, I might have had better character development. Which is a pity, because I really don't care for plots half as much as I care for world-building dystopias.
Plot
So the world-building is done, and the characters are done (to a certain extent), but I still needed some form of plot even if I don't care much for them. And considering that it's hard to motivate anybody to read 25000 words without a plot to drive the words forward, that meant that I had to at least come up with a semblance of one.
So I used what I had; I had a program who just wanted to be happy-choosing NOBUTA's motivations wasn't hard because I could draw from Nobuta wo Produce as a source-characters who were deeply unhappy and wanted to be happy, and a world that was out to get them. In a nutshell, all the archetypes of Nobuta wo Produce. And since Nobuta wo Produce is about all of these people learning to understand each other, that would be what the story was about, a driving force to understanding. To make this even more clear, nobody was supposed to understand anything in Nobuta wo Produce until the very end, so the reader themselves is a part of the plot, struggling for understanding.
I never really enjoy plotting stories out beyond rough ideas. For me, writing comes through more in character interactions, in the grad themes of the story. I can focus on imagery, and I'm always thinking about society vs. the individual, and on characterization, but plot? Beyond a few thoughts of: “I need to reveal what NOBUTA is in the end” (and keep in mind that when I first started, I didn't know what NOBUTA was. I had absolutely no clue, so I had to decide what its original purpose was, give it a name that showed that it was actually an acronym-and yes, I know it's a pretty crap acronym, I have never been any good at acronyms) and essentially, plot the story after I had written 10K and 2 chapters.
Not fun at all.
How do you do that? You draw on the characters. I didn't know what NOBUTA was, when I first started, so my characters' confusion was genuine. They honestly had no fucking clue what NOBUTA was. Neither did I. It made for some sloppy writing, but it worked out-you can feel the confusion in the story.
(I don't recommend not knowing what your plot is before you write something like this. It rarely works out so nicely. Just look at Hand in Hand, where I started out with the simple desire to write epidemic fic, and ended up with a dystopia, chapters that didn't flow right, and general sloppy writing. You should always at least have a vague idea of what you want to write.)
The Craft
When writing an AU like this, the trick is to somehow blend canon with the AU. I’ll be the first to admit that I cannot keep up with canon, trying to go through the backlog of interviews, magazine or TV shows, is quite literally impossible. What I focused on, therefore, was on two major time periods: Nobuta-era, and current-era. As I started writing this in 2010 (this was one of the first stories I wrote, starting it in January last year right after I started to like KAT-TUN), the current-era features mostly 2010 events. Jin’s leaving quite nicely ruined my plans starting in Chapter 4, in case it isn’t clear that that happens to be when things get a little more muddled, but instead of ignoring his quite aggravating decision, I thought it would be better to somehow integrate this into the story. It worked too. Jin's departure helped me actually tie up the story. I actually had no idea how the story was supposed to start to conclude until Jin left and everybody started going absolutely crazy because Jin left (see the parallels to fandom I made? It wasn't particularly obvious, but I was quite aggravated at fandom's reaction. Really, it was not necessary to act like the world was ending just because one member decided to leave).
This story truly hinges upon two aspects: the world, and it's relation to jdrama Nobuta wo Produce. The story was designed first and foremost as a world, and the plot came secondary. In case that wasn't completely obvious to the average reader, the story had little to no plot until Week 4: Nobuko. I had to go back and make sure that the story seemed to actually have coherent escalation, because in its original iteration, it went straight from about 15000 words in happy world-building fun into a plot.
Yet how does it work? It works because the entire story is a parallel of Nobuta wo Produce. It takes the themes and overarching plot of Nobuta wo Produce, mixes them up, and then slides the concepts onto the framework of the dystopia in The Question of Nobuta. (Note: the original title of this story wasn't The Question of Nobuta, but was actually Producing Nobuta. I changed it because NOBUTA wasn't actually being produced in the story. If I ever write the prequel, I may just title it Producing NOBUTA. Also an interesting fact is that when writing this, I deliberately avoided any mention of the title to the friend I was writing it for, because I didn't want her to pick up on the parallels too quickly, I was worried that that would make the story less enjoyable.)
I deliberately tried to use scenes or dialogue from the source text, in this case, the jdrama Nobuta wo Produce. Beyond the fact that there's a scene in italics (from NOBUTA's point of view, actually), at the end of each chapter, each chapter is liberally sprinkled with bits and pieces of dialogue actually in the dramas. “Don't call her Nobuta,” in Week 4 is probably my favorite reference, because in the jdrama it reflected Kame's attachment to Nobuta and Akira, the growing bond between the three of them, and in this case, it was reflecting on the bond that they shared: NOBUTA and its connection between Kamenashi and Akira.
I also tried to make sure that the AU dystopia world reflected the events of January and February 2010 accurately. It was hard to keep up with everything that was happening, but I tried to allude to several major events in KAT-TUN's history: formation, Gokusen, Shuji to Akira, debut (that was very briefly touched upon), Jin's 6 month hiatus in LA, and then Jin's departure from the band.
So how do you write a story that brings all of that together, but puts it into a dystopic world? Well, the first thing is to remember the distinction between them. The Question of Nobuta is different from most other science fiction stories because instead of putting the members of J&A into a different role, I kept them in their role. All of them maintain their acting roles. All of them were in their respective groups. All of them are even called Johnnies. (This was actually a reference from British slang, where Johnnies is a word for policeman. Yes, I looked up the all the possible slang for policeman to see what I should call KAT-TUN.)
But, that means that even the other characters, the ones who aren't Johnny's, have to also reflect their relation to the real world. Well, that meant that they had to also have many roles, because they were all actors. So I created Network Actors and Actresses, people who give the general population to experience what amounts to a movie by allowing for them to be what amounts to an extra. Since you have so many servers, it's perfectly legitimate for this to occur. Want to meet a celebrity in a bar? Just op to a server where actors and actresses hang out in bars. They might not be Toda Erika, but Misa Misa (Toda Erika's role in Death Note), is damn good too.
Why couldn't Toda Erika be a Network Maintainer? Because she wasn't a Johnny's. It was that simple. If she wasn't in J&A, then she wasn't a Johnny's, and then the policeman slang would not apply. That simple.
You always have to keep in mind what the rules for your world are. It was tempting to actually just put everybody as a Network Maintainer, but that wouldn't work. It wouldn't fit in the world that I had made. So I didn't. The only actual godmodding I did for the sake of plot was to make Horikita Maki a programmer, because of her relaiton to NOBUTA. This fit in the world because she was a programmer who was making artificial people who resembled her. Essentially, even though Horikita Maki in the world we reside in is an actress, she became a programmer in the story because I had to for the sake of the plot. It makes sense, however, because Horikita Maki basically programs all of her roles.
In a nutshell, to write a dystopia like this, the trick is to hold the real world in your head even as you are trying to create a new world. It means that you can't just change things as you wish. It means that you have to always go back to the source text. And that, I believe is what fanfiction should always be about, AU or not, the constant return to the canon.
This is what a dystopia is about. You always go back to the world you're occupying, looking around you, and then taking the world and drawing it into the future.
Imagery
Oh god, the imagery in the story. First off, my favorite piece of imagery is the invisible wall. What inspired the invisible wall? Video games. Anybody who's played any video game probably has experienced the invisible wall, where a wall blocks you from advancing further; this is usually due to plot or gameplay reasons. It's also frustrating as hell.
The appearance of the invisible wall is actually one of the most ominous events; the government actively seeks to prevent Taguchi from going into the ocean. It's also important to note that the invisible wall occurs at the beach, which is arguably the point where Shuji and Akira were happiest. (Yes, I did pay attention to Kamenashi and Yamashita's happy “frolicking in the waves” scene.) The fact that the oceans are blocked off in the Network is in part because oceans have always been a barrier historically (sea travel across the Atlantic and in general only really became viable during the 1700's), but also because oceans are happiness, as evidenced in Nobuta wo Produce. The fact that oceans and beaches have been completely destroyed in Reality is used to reflect the idea that happiness is impossible in Reality.
(The Invisible wall appeared in Virtual Reality. This was actually a tribute to The Question on Nobuta, and not the other way around despite the time of posting.)
That makes the invisible wall so effective? For one, all of us can relate to feeling trapped in; this isn't anything particularly unique to any of us. Additionally, all of us know that beaches are polluted now, because have you seen some of the beaches lately?
What else? Well, beyond the invisible wall and ocean imagery, you'll notice that everything seems to take place in a city. This is to reflect the technological development of the world, but also to show the way that technology begins to trap us. Keep in mind that technology isn't actually trapping people, but it's the government authority, using the technology, and censoring and controlling the common man. So note that technology is never quite controlling people, but technology is a tool where people observe you.
Where does the camera, the spy lenses, come from? Panopticism. The UK has set up cameras after cameras to prevent crime for happening. It's also a bit of an invasion of privacy. But the constant imagery of a camera in the corner, a red light flickering, and Taguchi watching from his portable computer? What does that remind you of? It probably doesn't remind you of anything. In fact, you probably think it's merely a plot method or characterization trick to show that Taguchi cares so much about his friends that he's constantly observing them. I suppose you also think that Taguchi should write on their walls and see their “friendships” with each other, and that Taguchi should poke them and they should poke back.
Yes, this is facebook in a dystopic setting. Taguchi is watching them from his computer, hacking their inboxes to read their messages to each other (because he has a backdoor, he's friends with them, of course he's allowed to see their messages to each other).
That else? Well, the porternals-portable terminals, in case you haven't realized what the word comes from yet-is essentially a personal computer the size of a cell phone. This was inspired mostly by the development of technology; everybody and their pet dogs has a smartphone now. And we're more and more attached to them. We've grown obsessed with our phones; we can be in the middle of a conversation with somebody else, and we'll stop to pick up a text. I know for a fact, because I was at dinner with friends, and I stopped to text a friend, and then I paused to make my move in a backgammon game, and all the while, I was talking to people. So we've grown more and more attached to our computers, more and more attached to our phones. We've started to immerse our entire lives into technology; just look at Taguchi, always plugged in to the point that he's immersed his senses into the internet.
Process
How did I write this story? I started with the first scene, the first line. Kamenashi was sick of life. And then that's what the story was about. Kamenashi was sick of life. And then Ueda was also sick of life, but he wasn't taking drugs. He wasn't Kamenashi after all. And then NOBUTA wanted to find Shuji and Akira.
That's how the story started, with this horrifying dissatisfaction towards the world. And then it developed. The Government started watching, staring through a spycam. NOBUTA was trying to make people happy-because that was what Nobuta wanted in Nobuta wo Produce anyways.
There was no plot.
Despite the fact that I didn't plot this story out, I ended up writing this in what I learned as Shakespearean Tragedy format. (The format I learned was a pyramid, with a beginning that is depressing, a build up of tension and hope until the viewer reaches what almost seems like the overcoming of the fatal human flaw in Act 3, before it all degenerates into tragedy at the end of Act 5.) This wasn't entirely intentional, but the fact remains that Shakespearean Tragedy sufficiently manages to create a sufficiently tragic mood, while balancing the tension so it doesn't completely degenerate into wallowing in the agony of the dystopia. 1984 also has a similar plot construction, with Winston seeming to gain hope, and the world almost looking like a better place before he gets captured by the Ministry of Love and is forced to face his greatest fear. I tend towards this format; it's such an effective story structure, and while it seems formulaic, it's such a broad idea that it can be modified for almost any story, and all that really happens is that tension builds, just as a story is supposed to have tension building, and then like the nursery rhyme: “they all fall down.”
So, there was no actual plot.
There was just a horrible unhappiness.
And I think we all have that. I just understood how the world was making us dissatisfied better than you.
So I wrote about it. And that was it. That was all.
Fun Misc. Facts
1. Week 5's title came both from the name of their group, Shuji to Akira, and as a reference to the actual text of the ending scene of Week 4: Nobuko. To quote: Nobuta, I decided, would belong to us. To me, to Shuji, to Akira. In this instance, I was taking advantage of the fact that "to" is a word in both Japanese and English, and making a rather lame pun off of it.
2. There's a file titled: "dystopia scraps." This file includes notes like: Outside, nakajima yuto meets yamashita tomohisa. Yamashita goes “wtf, nakajima. Why are you all panicky” and then goes “wait, why are you sneaking out of porn server wang kah, and yuto goes “ho shit” and yamashita goes “you hacker, imma pwn you and hey say 7's ass” and yuto goes “ho shit ho shit ho sit” and yamapi goes “even if arashi is not here right now, imma still pwning your ass you little shits” and yuto goes “but kame said I could have an hour!” and yamapi goes “well, if kame said so. Wait. no. imma pwning your ass anyways. Even if I love kame and want to have fun tiems with him with nercotic hallucinogenic drugs.” This isn't a joke. This is actually a scene scrap that kind of mutated and was thus cut. (It's from Chapter 2, the scene where Yamashita runs into Nakajima Yuto outside what amounts to a netsex cafe.)
3. Kusano and Uchi were going to be mentioned, originally. Yamashita wouldn't compromise their group, not when he had lost two members of his own group once. Kamenashi wasn't supposed to know about Uchi-san and Kusano-san, but he had taken classes with Kusano before Kusano had entered the Yamapi's group and Kamenashi had started working with the others of KAT-TUN. They hadn't kept in touch much after Kusano had left the mass of trainees to work under Yamashita, but Kamenashi actually followed the news feeds in addition to Johnny gossip, and it hadn't been too hard to realize-once he had heard Yamashita murmur a quiet “I'm sorry, Kusano,” one night when he was high on drugs-that the Yamapi that Kusano had briefly mentioned was actually Yamashita.
4. The final version of this story had a file title of "dystopia for muu-chan involving hallucinogens because i need biotech instead of hard electrotech_4"
5. Taguchi was almost a mole for management before I realized that continuing down that path did absolutely nothing for my plot, and just made it ridiculously complicated at Week 4. Akanishi also had been mind-controlled at first. It was actually pretty exciting. See excerpt below:
“Your job is to find Kamenashi, isn’t it?” Tanaka could hear Jin’s lazy smile, could hear somebody from Management reaching through Jin.
“Maybe.” Tanaka closed his eyes. How did this happen? Taguchi should have had the cameras permanently hacked, and they were always careful not to leave any clues when they went off and did their own thing. Management knew them, and almost sanctioned independent actions outside of their control, and damn it, they had been careful.
“What does maybe mean?” Jin was gone, and only Management was left.
The metal of the implant was cold against his fingers, and the wires dug into the soft flesh of his palm. All it would take was a second, and he could plug himself in. The porternal was far enough away that anything Management tried to do through the hardware of that would take a while to get to him. Hopefully all of his upgrades would keep him from getting a backlash.
“Tanaka Koki, what do you mean by ‘Maybe?’” Management’s voice was cold. “Are you questioning our authority?”
Tanaka grinned. “Maybe,” he said, and shoved the wires into his implant. He closed his eyes, hoping that the chair hadn’t reset his server codes, hoping that Taguchi was still watching and would cover him, hoping that whatever it was that Kamenashi had gotten himself involved in, it would keep him from getting screwed over. He clenched his teeth, and he wondered if the wind on his face was from cooling fans or from sensory feedback down his spine. He needed to immerse. Management wouldn’t be able to find him if he managed to get himself into the Network and to the place that they had made for themselves when they had first met each other. He needed to immerse.
His porternal rattled on the floor. “Tanaka Koki!” Management shouted, the voice harsh and raspy in his ears.
Not full immersion yet then. He forced his mouth open, forced his throat to work. “Fuck,” he snarled, and then his voice left him.
6. The final page count, including the meta, was 70 pages.
7. I actually have no idea about how to program an AI. The extent of my programming knowledge is a 10 week course in C programming (I got an A in it!), rudimentary html, and knowing far too many programmers for a healthy and joyful life. I did my best to completely gloss over all programing aspects, and I think I succeeded too.
8. I finished this story in time for muu-chan's birthday. It just wasn't necessarily the right one.
9. This was all coded in Notepad++ before posting. I had 8 tabs in Notepad++ consistantly open. It was stressful, but I think I now know how to use Notepad++ so much better. Next goal, a website!
10. This wasn't the first story I wrote in fandom, but it comes close. This is probably the fourth story I wrote when I first entered J&A fandom. The first three, we shall not talk about.
Thank you for reading.
Masterpost of Chapters here
Masterlist of fandoms here
Masterlist of Jpop fanfiction here