Yeah, I've looked everywhere for detailed synopsis by book, and they just don't exist. So, what we would need from members is the following:

1. Claim a chapter (lots are very short!)

2. Write a detailed synopsis of the chapter. Basically, hit all the major facts a writer would want to know, or write enough for someone to remember that a detail she is looking for is in that chapter. When we put the books together, we can edit individual chapter synopsis for flow.

3. Make a list of the characters that appear in the chapter - note if there's any physical description of them and their major action(s) in the chapter. Later, a comprehensive character list can be made with their major actions and a list of their appearances by chapter.

(do we also want to note all the "names" a character is called in a chapter? Using the correct honourifics is going to be a headache for writers. For my own writing, I'm seriously considering dropping them and just writing in my horribly disrespectful Western way)

4. Setting - Where are Iwaki and Katou in any given chapter and why? It would be good to have a list of the places they've been and their significance to the main characters.

Can anyone think of anything else they'd like to see gleaned from chapters? I don't know that we should get *too* detailed or no one is going to want to pitch in on this. Am I suggesting too much already?


And let me be plain while we're getting started: If you're in this community, please consider taking a chapter or two when the time comes. Lots of hands make a big job much smaller. Snapelike and I both have other fandom pursuits, and we'd like to see the members take some real ownership in the work of building this community - not just in this project, but in every project we take on. If the community counts on the mods to do all the organizational work, I'm afraid we'll all be disappointed (many of you know that I need to spend the bulk of my energy at lupin_snape).

I hope that's not too much of a downer, but I also think it helps for people to know the reality of a situation right up front.

Thanks, everyone, for being here! I'm so excited to be moving forward into another obsessionfocus with people I consider long-time fandom friends. *warm hugs for the group!*

love, lore

This is right up my alley, and I'm so up for it.

Names would be a big stopping point for me, so I'm glad you suggested that.

Another I can think of is relations - both family and also working, so that those sorts of things are better kept track of, because there are a lot in these books.

Nothing else immediately comes to mind.

How long will we have to do this?

As long as it takes, and as quick as possible. I am going to put up a post to keep things in order and to be sure we don't do double work.

I think we need to make a specific family tree and a list of characters in alphabetic order, with their names in both English and Japanese plus Kana.

Maybe it would save time to begin the character list at the same time, because we could all c/p whatever info we have about each character into a doc, then later edit all of it.

Good idea--both, really. I like the idea of having the Kana avaliable if we want to use them. Does she tend to use sound effects in her pieces much? I can't remember and I'm not at home. That might be something else to keep track of, though not as vital as character stuff...

I have a book of manga sound effects, I can upload some of it, I suppose, but that's a secondary project to this.

Also, I agree very much with Lore: we can't do this alone, but if all nine of us take two volumes each or some of the additional canon things, it'll go fast! (Wheee, already more members than we thought we'd ever get!)

We can do this. Easy Peasy.

How many chapters are there? I know a few different sections I'd love to do. But my time is pretty much limited to weekends at the moment.

49. And some one-shots and art books too. I don't care which chapters I take, I am probably taking a volume and the art book and some of the Balalaika doujinshi.

(do we also want to note all the "names" a character is called in a chapter? Using the correct honourifics is going to be a headache for writers.

While I agree it'll be a headache, and it doesn't help that the scanlations/translations aren't consistent... I would suggest that it's important to at least note/document them for this reason: There is a key moment where Iwaki calls Katou just "Kato" instead of "Kato-san" (I believe in v2 ch1) and it signifies a transition in their relationship. There is also another moment later on where a big deal is made about them calling each other by their first names as potential silver anniversary presents to each other. (Now that this issue's come up, I admit I've started paying more attention to who calls Katou "Yo(u)ji" besides his family (such as his acting school classmates).)

So... my two yen is that I would find it helpful to have names noted (particularly who calls whom what), and I think potential RPers would as well. That said, I agree it's more important to make this do-able than comprehensive at this starting-out stage; you can always encourage some obsessive-compulsive psycho like me one who wants to annotate the master synopsis thingie to do so later as time permits.

I am working on a post about honorifics, it is quite complicated because it depends so much whether we're speaking inner circle, or outsiders, and who are speaking to whom and where. It is not easy at all. I am currently recording things when I see them in Japanese, trying to establish how it fits.

So, family, rank, context, inner/outer group... it all matters when a honorific is chosen or left out.

I don't have any of the scanalations or original Japanese manga, but I do have the five volumes and the art book that were published in English. I'd be happy to work on any of those.

Oh, wow. I'm almost not late, replying to this. I blame two weeks in London and two more weeks in bed with a boring flu.

It'd be great if you could take one of those! Otherwise, the scanlations are downloadable from the LJ comm, the list of manga is in their memories.

No problem; I've been busy with various fic challenges anyway. I'll take vol. 5 if that's okay--I was just recently re-reading it, so it's fresh in my mind. And if necessary, I can work on any of the other volumes I have, as time permits, if we don't have enough volunteers to cover them all.

So we're adding Family Relationships and Various names of the characters to the list? I don't know what Kana means....

Ideally, the next post on this would be a simple list of what is needed with detailed instructions under each part of the list, and a list of the chapters. We can add usernames next to the chapters as they are claimed.

Anyone with access to all the scanlations, or who can read Japanese or French, would be asked to try to take volumes OTHER than 1 - 5 so that the people who only speak English, or only have access to their books, could help, too (using Geri's example above for this).

I'd say two weeks per chapter is plenty, maybe even too much, but after two weeks for sure, we'd let you know we're moving ahead with someone else to do it if there's interest. And you can still volunteer for more if that happens, we know Real Life gets in the way.

One last question - Will we run into issues of timelines when it comes to the DJs and one-shot stories? The Synopsis should serve as a timeline as it is, but we might have to slot the side stories into them...?

love, lore