The Catcher in the Rye · A Good Librarian Like a Good Shepherd

Today a female reader roasted me for my blog being all romance and feelings (you sure about that?), said I look like a tech nerd but barely write anything technical, that at this rate people would think I’m some sentimental woman.

First off, I’m not a tech nerd, just a liberal-arts kid stuck in a science crowd. Second, I really don’t like writing about tech. Partly because my level is low — I can’t produce original technical content; even when I build something it’s just Wiki here, Google there, stitch it together, okay done. Partly because I think a blog is more about presenting yourself to others or letting out what’s in your head, not some technical notebook. Life’s already hard enough — better to put down all that tedious technician material and sit down and talk about life, on equal footing. I’d also suggest friends who write to write more about their lives; that way it looks more like a “human” and less like a “machine” enslaved by various things. Besides, the fact that most of what I write has nothing to do with so-called core content is exactly what makes it easier to connect with others, no?

That doesn’t mean I never write that stuff. Usually the only things that survive are experiences with value for others, things that save them from detours. So the Wiki-type or inexplicable code-showing-off posts you see everywhere on the Chinese internet — you won’t find those on my blog. What you’ll find is more feelings, positive and negative.

After getting through last week’s godawful exams I was at a loss, so I started wandering around the internet again, and I was kind of irritable. Next exam is end of May, but I’m in zero state to study. The leg injury keeping me from running makes me more restless, so all I can do is lean against the bed playing Gal or reading.

I did read a few books — those need time to digest — so let’s talk about the Gal I played. This time it’s A Good Librarian Like a Good Shepherd.

After finishing Eustia of the Tarnished Wings I went straight on to A Good Librarian Like a Good Shepherd. I’d seen the prologue before and it was boring, a thick stench of cliché school harem setup, but the visuals were pretty so I kept going. Of course I didn’t expect August to be this insane — in terms of story they gave basically every female character who shows up a branch ending, and the four main heroines each have two branch endings, plus bonus short-play routes and other side content. Finishing the whole game took me a full two weeks. Tarnished Wings also took two weeks but the density was nothing like this…

First, one sentence to sum it up: a cheerful game best played in a relaxed mood.

Plot is school daily life, the typical student council / club / protagonist / bro / a gaggle of girls throwing themselves at him setup. I admit it’s cliché, but strong direction and effects make up for a lot — it’s genuinely fun, almost like watching a comedy anime. On that point it even trounces that mindless moe-bait flag-breaking show from April. The story is entirely lightweight, occasional love triangles but kept in check, even the dark past is never expanded on, as if afraid of bringing the player down — which annoyed me a bit. My taste in story is like Suzuki Kana in the game: I like suspense and elaborate logic used to explain the suspense. A Good Librarian has zero suspense — the only mystery, “who is the shepherd,” is told to you in the first playthrough, the choices aren’t complicated, and some side characters get their own routes. Playing it relaxed and laughing at the story is fine.

Even so, the True End does describe something with a slightly dark bent — I mean Kotachi’s attitude toward the shepherd’s job.

The shepherd in the story is set up as a being forgotten by time and space, guarding the goodness of human life. How exactly that’s carried out gets a very thorny description. Every person has countless possibilities; if he has a possibility of becoming a success someday, then when he moves toward that possibility, you give him a push from behind — that’s the shepherd’s job.

I don’t know if the writer ever read The Catcher in the Rye, or whether the title A Good Librarian Like a Good Shepherd is some nod to it. The former is a novel, a very dark one, nothing like the sunny plot of the latter. I want to pair the two because I feel the scenario writer, when writing A Good Librarian, wasn’t being all that sunny either.

The dark entry point is Koutachi Nagi. She’s an apprentice shepherd; she understands that the shepherd’s job is to make humans better, but in practice she runs counter to the essence of it. Worth noting here: like Holden in The Catcher in the Rye, Koutachi Nagi has a very dark past.

Sold by her parents, beaten, even sold for her body — the game mentions this much. Later the protagonist saves her, then the shepherd takes her in, and she escapes the pain. But the trauma leaves her unable to trust or merge with the people around her, and the shepherd’s identity makes her feel she’s above ordinary people. Koutachi Nagi has no friends left, which is why she’s so obsessed with becoming a shepherd.

I’m going to be a catcher in the rye. There’s a bunch of kids playing in a big field of rye. Thousands and thousands of kids, and nobody around — no grown-ups, I mean — except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. My job is to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff — I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going, I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all.

Koutachi Nagi’s view of the shepherd is like Holden’s view of the catcher. In their pasts they both lost trust in the people around them; what they want is to be a catcher, to guide the ones who misbehave or stray off life’s track back onto the right one.

Of course, a shepherd shouldn’t be like that.

The shepherd in the game, by nature, acts with respect for the person’s will. Meaning: if a kid really is running in the rye and about to fall off the cliff, and that’s his own will, then the catcher should give his blessing and watch him fall, because that was his own choice. Another commandment of the shepherd is not to guide another’s path on your own, even if you know their current life trajectory is wrong.

Koutachi Nagi naturally can’t understand this, because such a shepherd is meaningless. Sure, everyone’s life belongs to them, but if the shepherd doesn’t guide, only respects each person’s will, and just gives a push when the guy is willing to walk toward goodness himself — then what use is the shepherd? The crux of the divergence is the choice, not the push after someone chooses. The shepherd in Koutachi Nagi’s mind should be above humans, a godlike being. That’s not allowed, of course. All a shepherd can do is pray that each person chooses right when they choose… and if they choose wrong, well, nothing to be done — you chose it yourself.

I’m going to be a catcher in the rye. There’s a bunch of kids playing in a big field of rye. Thousands and thousands of kids, and nobody around — no grown-ups, I mean — except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. My job is to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff — I mean, the kids are all running, and if the one coming this way is running because he wants to, then falling off the cliff is his own choice, and I should support it. That’s all I do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all.

That’s how the shepherd is. Worth noting, the protagonist’s father is also a shepherd, and it was during the dark period of the protagonist’s life that he chose to run away and become a shepherd. He watches over the protagonist in silence, but the protagonist never felt his presence or his meaning — just that his father was a weak bastard, nothing more.

No route in the game ends with the protagonist becoming a shepherd. Every ending has him refuse the profession. He’s talented and capable, but compared to a shepherd who escapes society, he’d rather face a life of flesh and blood.

Put bluntly, in describing the shepherd’s nature I felt something: the scenario writer is deliberately or not, more or less, skewering the “Mary Sue complex.”

People aren’t gods, so of course they have worries and biases. But since you’re not a god and can’t guide others, yet you think with the mind of a god, you end up a mess that’s neither one thing nor the other. Kyaim in Eustia of the Tarnished Wings is like this, and so are the ones who want to become shepherds in A Good Librarian. Akaneiro ni Somaru Saka I don’t know, but Lunar琉璃色 — The Moonlight Shines on the Window — had a similar description in the bit about the moon princess returning home to register.

I firmly believe Koutachi Nagi’s True End is the game’s only True End. When Nagi smiles brightly at the protagonist and says “you are my shepherd,” it’s basically settled: protecting someone, supporting someone, the best way is to stay by their side, not become a god and play the Mary Sue. Same as before — if the person who matters is gone, what’s the point of being a Mary Sue guarding the whole world?