Please blur/hide any major events in the current week’s pages (however early they occur), like so:
(that’s [spoiler]text here[/spoiler]).
If you have a question about grammar, vocab, the story, cultural things or anything else related to the book — ask! There’s no need to be shy. If it’s something you are wondering about, chances are someone else will be thankful you asked first, lots of people enjoy answering questions, you learn something new, and the thread gets more lively. It’s a win-win on all fronts!
We’re 8 weeks through the club now! How is the pacing? Too many pages per week? Not enough pages per week? If this is your first novel, how is it going for you?
If everyone is happy with the pace, I will make the schedule for the rest of the book. If we want to speed up, I can do that too, but I don’t want to leave anyone behind, so please speak up about what pace you would prefer!
The pacing is fine for me. I could potentially read more per week, but with all my other book clubs and other readings, I feel the amount we read fits just right with my schedule.
I’m in agreement that the pace is fine, though I could potentially do more. I may or may not end up reading ahead over the holidays, since I’ll have time off work, but that shouldn’t have any bearing on the pacing for the rest of the club.
The current pace is fine for me, too, as I am reading スリ with the intermediate book club in parallel. I could read a bit more per week, but not too much …
So, this week’s chapter was very exciting, to the point that I stopped doing lookups because I didn’t want to have to slow down! I now have questions as to what actually happened, though, and I’m not sure if it’s because I missed stuff going too fast, or if the story just left out some details I want to have…
Questions about the plot (definite spoilers for this weeks reading!)…
Were キョーちゃん and ゼッくん possessed by that nurse-like spirit from the first video, or were they ‘replaced’ by a creature(s) that took their faces?
Whether they were possessed or replaced, when did it happen? Right before the cliff jump, or earlier? (If it wasn’t until the cliff jump…what the heck were they thinking to not stop making videos when all their staff members were getting picked off one by one!?)
Why were the freaky arms only going after Akari? There were a lot of other people who were commenting on the videos and asking for more ‘extreme’ stuff, right? Shouldn’t they have gotten attacked too?
When Akari had the miraculous luck of landing in a flowerbed and surviving a three story fall, what happened to the creature(s) that pushed her? Did they just disappear? Even if she never touched another phone again, like she apparently tried to do, wasn’t there something already out and wearing her face?
Was this particular creature something known from Japanese folklore? The arms coming out of the phone was creepy, but made some sense given that the whole story was about following online videos. But the arms turning into copies of Akari just seemed to come out of nowhere…
Comment about the final scene
I’m not sure what it says about me that I was genuinely disappointed we didn’t get a ‘real world’ scene of arms bursting out of someone’s phone in the middle of class… Maybe next chapter, I hope?
Enjoyed this week’s story a lot, it was darker than I expected! Kind of reminded me of a Black Mirror episode or something, there was one where a bunch of people get killed after taking part in a hashtag telling someone to die. This story reminded me of that with the comments encouraging the cliff jump, and then the spirits coming after them.
I think this story was less about a logical possession incident and more just like ‘phones are scary’ haha. When it started out it seemed to be a ‘don’t anger the spirits’ story, but then it switched to ‘phones are scary’ and I’m not sure the progression is entirely logical
I’m going to guess that the arms went after Akari because she was the narrator of the story I think I would have liked to see everyone else also get punished for posting the comments, would have been more logical.
I don’t think it was a literal creature walking around with her face, it was just a freaky ghost incident. If the moral of the story is ‘phones are scary and be careful,’ then of course if Akari never touches a phone again she’ll be fine (she’s following the moral).
I doubt it. The spirits crawling out of the screen is basically リング
Maybe I’m just not used to horror/ghost story genre trends. As primarily a fantasy reader, creatures that pop out of phones and steal a person’s identity is ‘perfectly logical’…provided it follows whatever rules for magic the author has established. So I’m always hunting for clues as to what those ‘rules’ are and ‘missing’ details bother me. Is it different in horror/ghost type stories, with less need for structured world-building and more emphasis on whatever will scare people the most or best impart the moral message the author is trying to make? I guess it would make sense that not being able to determine the ‘rules’ might make things scarier…
Hmmmmm, as a horror movie watcher yeah I would say on balance whether or not the story makes perfect logical sense is not the focus of the genre. It’s kind of up to you whether you find the random leaps/plot holes to be frustrating or not- sometimes the plot will be very logical and the ghost/being will operate according to rules that make sense, but then a lot of times the scary aspect is that the ghost does not appear to be following logical rules! I think it also depends on if we’re dealing with a “ghost” or a “being.” A ghost tends to be the spirit of the departed and ghost stories tend to have an internal logic (something like, fulfill the dead person’s wishes and the ghost will go away). Now, something that’s not just a logical ghost but is instead a ‘being’ like a demon, poltergeist, etc, may do any kind of things- it may appear logical at first and then break all of those rules to scare the people it’s haunting, and then all bets are off.
Whether the plot holes are irritating or not is sometimes up to whether the story is well written or not. Sometimes there’s a bunch of unexplained stuff but it’s ok because the vibes were immaculate, but sometimes there’s a bunch of unexplained stuff and I just get annoyed
Home thread
So I’m always hunting for clues as to what those ‘rules’ are and ‘missing’ details bother me. 
Is it different in horror/ghost type stories, with less need for structured world-building and more emphasis on whatever will scare people the most or best impart the moral message the author is trying to make? I guess it would make sense that not being able to determine the ‘rules’ might make things scarier…
