Pactio / (“Kara 2.0”)

I’m taking a page from Hollywood and doing a “reimage” of their fratello. Some things will remain the same, other things will see minor changes, but in general I’m starting fresh from the ground up with new background and histories for both of them.

I admit to being surprised at actually liking Gunslinger Girl. I generally don’t like tragedies and this story is tragic. Since it’s not a premise I would normally be interested in and I don’t travel in anime circles, if not for my father finding it on The Action Channel and recommending it, I would never have heard of the show.

I certainly never planned to get involved in creating Original Characters or writing GSG fan fiction, but when I found the scanlations that led me to Cyborg Central I decided to create Kara and Michele and do a “throwaway” story – Stellar Cartography. It of course snowballed from there, and dozens of chapters and hundreds of thousands of words later…

And yet, even with all that work, I’ve always felt that Michele and Kara were just two characters residing in the GSG universe and not actually being part of it. I don’t have the…insights…into the canon characters that some writers on this forum and fanfiction.net do. I read them writing Triela or Claes or Henrietta and marvel at how they just seem to “nail” them while I flounder around.

I expect part of that is I don’t like the situation they’re in, so I write them in happy situations. Which is effectively writing them out of character and it’s clearly obvious. So they come across as, if not “false”, not “true”, either. I latched onto Claes because she was a “blank slate” and I felt I could write her any way I wanted, to the point that I eventually decided to abandon trying to keeping her within the “canon” and turning her into a new character molded on what I wanted her to be.

And Michele and Kara clearly don’t fit as your standard fratello, in no small part because I don’t like to think of her as a cold-blooded killer running around assassinating people. I never wanted to write a little girl. I have no interest in doing so. So Kara started at 16, then moved to 17, and finally 18. Yet even then, that limited her role. Being Japanese, she could look older, but she couldn’t be older. She was less than half Michele’s age and that played a major defining influence on their relationship and held them back.

In the end, I just couldn’t do it anymore. Hence my original idea to kill Kara, to have Michele and Claes fly off into the sunset together, and call it a fiction series. I needed a reason for Michele to just leave and I thought killing Kara would work. Fortunately, saner heads prevailed and a few people helped show me that Kara didn’t have to die. But that story and fratello needed to retire.


So I’m thinking it’s time to see if I can start fresh. New ideas. New villains. New places. New missions. I intend to have as little interaction as possible with the compound in Rome and the canon staff and fratelli to allow me the freedom I didn’t have the first time around because I tried to anchor myself to Rome and the events and people of the manga and anime. Instead, I can expand and explore the universe without messing up the canon side of it.

I’m heading to Japan this evening for a week to get a bit of work done and take in the Formula One Grand Prix of Japan in Suzuka. So I’ll have time to bounce ideas off the wall and see what happens.

Good luck and take care. Personally, I like the idea.

Any progress to tell us about Kara 2.0?

I've generally completed the character's back-story and am now working on their introductory story.

I tend to only have time to work on it at night, by which time I am too tired to think.

Haha, interesting to hear that others here came into the GSG fandom firmly in the "dubious" camp

Well, I guess we've already discussed this a little before and it still sounds cool. I hear you on not disturbing Canon as well, far easier to keep everyone out of the country ;P

Shall be interested to see what you come up with.

I think the biggest...problem...I had was that I didn't intend to write OC fiction. The only reason I came up with Michele and Kara were because most everyone else at the time I joined had an OC and I thought it would be an interesting "thought experiment" to see if I could create two people who could fit into the Gunslinger Girl universe. So I created very in-depth dossiers and histories for both of them because I never planned to actually develop them through fiction. They just "existed".

Which is why the original draft of Stellar Cartography was written as if Michele and Kara had been a fratello for a few months and already bonded and were integrated into the Agency and the other fratelli. It was just a "slice of life" story that reflected two characters already firmly defined and I posted it in this forum only since people reading it would have also read their biographies so they already knew these character's backstories and how they came together at the Agency.

So when I decided to keep writing, and publishing to ff.net, I then had to go back and "build them out" because people would be reading them who didn't know their backstories or their motivations. And yet, that back story and motivation were already defined by their huge dossiers and effectively "boxed me in". And over time, this sapped my desire to write them, which is why I came up with a finale to close them out.

And I'm just as much "pre-defined" and "boxed-in" if I just moved the current story forward a bit in time and sent them out into the world. So I realized that really wasn't going to be an option, and instead I'd need to start fresh with a reboot.

And yet even there, I had a problem. I was falling into the same trap I had before - researching and developing this deep and involved back story and set of motivations for them. And I was stalling just as hard on the reboot because of it.

Another problem for me is that Yu Aida changes his mind. It's his work, so it's his prerogative, but it does make it impossible to create a cohesive timeline and history because he changes that timeline and history as he publishes later chapters. So even though I wanted to stay away from the canon characters and locations for the most part, I still wanted the story to take place in the same timeline. So trying to create the world's timeline proved difficult.

But then I realized that every canon character did not have a deep and well-defined history (some had none at all) and the Agency's history itself is very nebulous and undefined. So if Yu doesn't care, why the heck should I?

And that broke the mental logjam. I scrapped what I'd written about the reason the Agency came into being and how Michele tied into it and just started writing a chapter that plops Michele and Kara down in front of you. And that went much smoother.

I will need to write some back story and history, but I'm going to keep it as open-ended as Yu does. That way, I have the liberty of going back and touching on it again without worrying about ret-conning what I had written - something I had to do with a not-insignifcant portion of my already published body of work when writing Giuoco Pianissimo.

For what its worth, Kisk, You did a great job with the stories you have written. I started to write my stories just for the hell of it, you know- you got an itch, scratch it. I never knew that my OCs would develop into what they are today. But that is the power of developing characters for writing stories.

Crikey, I'm starting to see bunch of parrallells in how you started with Kara and Michele and how I am starting with Jethro and Monty...

On the subject of the backstory and background info on each character... I dunno. It's like, I often wonder how much a particular creator knows vs. what they're actually showing. I mean, for example, Yu might not show character background... but does that actually mean he hasn't developed it? Or is it just sitting there, helping him guide his decisions?

I mean, I have epic amounts of trouble explaining Jesse (on of my non GSG OCs) to other people because I know her inside out, but being able to put that into words for people is incredibly difficult. However, all that background knowledge I used to show her reactions to different circumstances. By the same token, because her mind works on two different levels I'm always worried that the whole character isn't coming across.

So yeah, while I guess big dossiers can inform opinions they can box you in as well.... sort of a catch22 in a way.

I fully agree you need to have at least some background and motivations in order to have a foundation work work from.

I suppose the real problem was I created the backgrounds and motivations in the belief that they would be static, whereas when I wrote fiction, it needed to become dynamic.

ElfenMagix wrote:For what its worth, Kisk, You did a great job with the stories you have written. I started to write my stories just for the hell of it, you know- you got an itch, scratch it. I never knew that my OCs would develop into what they are today. But that is the power of developing characters for writing stories.

Back when I first wrote B&B’s dossier, if someone had told me it would one day become a full blow story, I would have thought they had lost their minds.

Professor Voodoo wrote:

Kiskaloo wrote:Well do remember that Kara came from a middle class background. So while she has quickly become "accustomed to a certain level of comfort" with Michele, it's not like she started out as a heiress.

That was all pre-conditioning though. While a girl's former life may leave an impression on a cyborg I believe her surroundings, handler & training have a greater effect on her post-conditioning personality. Example; if Marisa had been assigned a handler like Michele or Giuse I think she would have turned out quite differently from the psychotic tomboy she is. Conversely, if Kara had been assigned an Elio or a Jean her tastes would be signifigantly less refined.

This is all open to debate of course...

Certainly with my original story, Kara essentially took it for granted Michele was loaded. In The Cyborg Wears Prada her first outfit of Christian Louboutin boots and Gucci dress ran about €1000 and €1500, respectively. And he dropped another €10.000 on outfits from Burberry, Dolce & Gabbana and Gucci when they went shopping along the Via die Condotti. Even when he bought the Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder in Fraternizing with the Enemy because she liked it, she was surprised, but she quickly accepted it because she knows that even a €250.000 car is not a serious expenditure for him.

So would Kara really just "roll with it", or would she be surprised at such flagrant displays of wealth? I tried to have Claes shocked at the money Michele spent on her outfits when she joined his fratello, but even she eventually just capitulated and rolled with it.

With Pactio, I have the opportunity to re-visit this. In Chapter 7, Alessandro and Petrushka accompany Michele and Kara to Bologna for the meeting with Matteo Amati and Capo Barese. They check into the Grand Hotel Baglioni and are whisked by private elevator to the Art Deco Terrace on the top floor.

“If I had known we were able to choose our own roles when we joined Section Two, I would have asked to be the rich playboy,” Alessandro joked as he stepped into the large living room, admiring the marble floors, silk-sheathed couches, fireplace and bar corner. “How did you convince Croce to spring for this?”

“He isn’t. I’m picking up the tab,” Michele noted.

Alessandro looked to Petra. “From now on, we make sure we’re always teamed with these two.”

So I am wondering, would "Kara 2.0" be slack-jawed at the amount of money Michele has? I have not yet decided whether or not to instill in her the love of Formula One "Kara 1.0" had and she probably doesn't understand just how expensive a Lamborghini Murciélago or Ferrari 612 Scaglietti is, though I can address that by having other people comment (Jose with the Lambo at the MOUT site or Priscilla in the 612 on the drive to Geneva).

Or would she just quote Jimmy Durante and go "These are the conditions that prevail"?

And how might the other cyborgs react?

In Stellar Cartography, Henrietta is impressed at the larger telescope Kara has, but values the one she received from Jose more because it's from Jose.

To character, I expect Claes would care less. So would Rico and Beatrice.

But what of Triela? Hillshire notes that she is "attuned to a man's desires" or something to that effect. How is she going to respond to an attractive older girl like Petrushka? Or compare her strict, formal business attire to the figure-enhancing outfits Kara wears?

Maybe Triela's secure in the knowledge that Hillshire has a thang for both blondes and suits.

Nachtsider wrote:Maybe Triela's secure in the knowledge that Hillshire has a thang for both blondes and suits.

Could be.

Then again, she upped her game in Naples (Chapter 50-57)...

Kiskaloo wrote:

Nachtsider wrote:Maybe Triela's secure in the knowledge that Hillshire has a thang for both blondes and suits.

Could be.

Then again, she upped her game in Naples (Chapter 50-57)...

That she did, though by the same token the first outfit she's ever shown with involves a black minskirt

Personally I don't think Triela's going to have too many issues with seeing other girls get more expensive things. Hilshire's offered to buy her more stuff in the past and she's turned it down. Add to that that she knows enough of her own past to also know why Hilshire acts the way he does... and that he's not going to go chasing after other cyborgs

In all honesty, most of the Gen1 cyborgs don't seem to be the sort to get particularly hung up on material possessions, clothes or money. From what we've seen of the Gen2s however, I'd say they're the ones more likely to give in to jelousy (ref Petra's conversations in the Gen2 dorm about her "special" relationship with her handler).

Yeah, I imagine the Gen 1's don't much care. They certainly value the gifts their handlers give them, but don't seem to pay much attention to what other gifts the other girls get.

So with a new story universe it's time for a new dossier...

PERSONAL DATA:

LEGAL NAME: Kara Michelle Deleroux
GIVEN NAME: Kumari Rosier
NATIONALITY: Italian
RACE: French / Japanese
BIRTHPLACE: Paris, France
MODEL: Second Generation Cyborg
HANDLER: Michele Pagani
DATE OF BIRTH: 01/25/1988
DATE OF ACTIVATION: 11/05/2005
APPEARANCE: The product of a French father and Japanese mother, in physical stature appearance she appears far more Japanese then French, though she is tall for a Japanese girl. She has her mother’s black hair with brown highlights and her father’s brown eyes.
HEIGHT: 168cm
WEIGHT: 50kg (after conversion)
DIMENSIONS: B82 W56 H84
BRA SIZE: C
BLOOD TYPE: O
SHOE SIZE: 26 cm
HANDEDNESS: Right
WEAPONS:
Pistol: Fabrique Nationale Five-seveN
Instrument Case Weapon: Fabrique Nationale P90 PDW
Assault Rifle: Fabrique Nationale F2000
Sniper Rifle: Fabrique Nationale Special Police Rifle A5 M Shooting System

PERSONAL HISTORY:
Kumari was the daughter of Alain Rosier and Emiko Fushida. Alain was a senior astronomer with the Institut National des Sciences de l'Univers (INSU). Emiko was a computer scientist working on a joint Franco-Japanese IT project at the Department of Information and Engineering Sciences and Technologies. Both worked under the auspices of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS).

She was exposed to both French and Japanese at home, as well as English (as it was the language of Science) and is conversationally and literately fluent in all three. She loved astronomy and stargazing and was a member of the Association ANDROMEDE with her father. Her father took her on trips to the European Southern Observatory in Chile during summer vacation where she learned passable Spanish (her reading and writing comprehension is superior to her conversational ability).

Kumari chose to become an astronomer and cosmologist and when it came time to enter lycée, she worked hard and followed her father into the prestigious and demanding Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris. She followed the série scientifique (S) course and specialized in the natural sciences. At 18 she took and passed her baccalauréat general and planned to continue at Louis-le-Grand for her classes préparatoires aux grandes écoles with the goal of admittance to École Normale Supérieure, considered the finest higher-education institution in Continental Europe and the alma mater of her father.

While on school holiday with her family in London, England, they were caught in the 2005 bombing of the Edgware Road Underground station. Her father died in the explosion and her mother was critically injured. She would die three months later, never regaining consciousness.

AGENCY HISTORY:

Michele was present at the bombing that injured Kumari and took the lives of her parents. He rescued her and handed her off to medical responders, but he did check on her status from time to time. Without his knowledge, the SWA medical staff flew to London and tested her, finding her suitability to be converted to a cyborg as excellent. With no family, it was not difficult for the Agency to secure her person and send her to Italy where she underwent conversion into a Generation 2 cyborg.

The decision was made to keep her physical form as unchanged as the surgery and prosthetics would allow. Kumari could not keep her original name (both to prevent her suppressed memories from coming back and to prevent her from responding if someone should ever recognize her). In keeping with both her Japanese and French roots, her handler chose the name Kara (pronounced CAR-Ah) Michelle Deleroux. She answers to either Kara or Kara Michelle, but most people just shorten it to Kara. Her handler refers to her as Kara except when exasperated, at which point he often adds her middle name with emphasis.
While Kara underwent the standard training in weapons and tactics that all cyborg operatives did, she also received additional training in computer detection and both intrusion and counter-intrusion as well as physical and electronic surveillance and basic training in liaison operations and interpersonal relationship management.

Her handler prefers weapons from Fabrique Nationale de Herstal and he selected for her a Five-seveN pistol, P90 personal defense weapon, F2000 assault riddle and the A5 M Shooting System for long-distance sniping. Her accuracy is average for a cyborg, so while that translates into pretty darn good overall, her name is seldom in the Top 10 List at the range.

CHARACTER:

Kara is naturally curious, a trait her handler nurtures whenever possible. While she holds to the motto “I prefer to be educated to entertained”, she does have some guilty pleasures, especially the British automobile show Top Gear and the Japanese cooking show Iron Chef.

Kara loves the stars and her handler purchased her an advanced telescope, which they often take with them out stargazing. Kara joined the Association ANDROMEDE as well as the Unione Astrofili Italiani and is a regular contributor to their forums.

New cyborgs are often given an instrument or sport to play to help them adapt to their new bodies. In Kara’s case, she knew the piano and played soccer, but when she learned her handler knew kenjutsu - Japanese sword arts – she asked to learn them, as well, though she is still a novice.

Between her own experiences as Kumari and her continuing tutelage under Michele, Kara Michelle is an accomplished chef. Her own knowledge of French and Japanese cuisine, combined with Michele’s of Italian and German, often result in long lines at the cantina when they choose to assist the kitchen staff.

So I suppose I should give an update on this project...

The Muse has made it pretty clear to me that I've written all that I want to write about Gunslinger Girl and the Pagani fratello. My attempt to reboot them with "Kara 2.0" floundered something fierce as did my attempt to move "Kara 1.0" forward to 2011 with a story titled "Graduation Day".

At that point, I re-trenched and decided to re-tell all the stories I had written in a new, single story called Pactio. My hope was - and remains - that this would allow me to make a cohesive storyline out of the chaos my fictional universe now is. I decided to recycle the new origin story and backgrounds for "Kara and Michele 2.0" to replace the original ones in stories like I Know Saint Peter Won't Call My Name and Intersections of Vertices. Another goal is to try and pull the Pagani fratelli out of the manga universe, while still keeping them within what I believe the timeline is.

Frankly, I don't know how successful this project will be. On the one hand, one would think it would be easy since it's mostly taking stuff I have already written and "refresh" it. On the other hand, that "refresh" needs to be more than just lightly cosmetic, otherwise there is no real reason to go forward because there would be no reason for someone who has already read my body of fiction to read it again.

The Muse has been a bit more cooperative in this new angle and I'm up to Chapter 11. So hopefully it will succeed, but as with Giuoco Pianissimo, I want to be sure it's actually done before I post it, because I don't want to just drop it nor do I want to feel compelled to finish it to just finish it and just churning out whatever comes to mind to "get it done".

I have decided to use another of the Second Generation girls in this story, so in addition to Kara 1.0's roommate Ilaria Sandrelli, I am going to christen "Giada De Luca" to my OC universe:

Finally finished it.

23 Chapters. 325 Pages. 110,000 Words.

Does it really represent "how I should have done it"? I'm not sure. It's tighter, I feel. And a bit less sappy. I approached it kind of like how the first anime season did - draws from the manga, but also tells it's own story independent of the manga. So this story draws from much of my work, but tells it differently as well as adding some changes to make it more unique.

I really like the new "origin story" I created for Kara and Michele. I think it better makes a case for why Michele joined and allows Michele and Kara's relationship to grow better than the original one in Intersections of Vertices. So if you read anything, I recommend the first five chapters.

From Chapter Six on, it's based heavily on my pre-existing work. I've changed the timeline (it now runs from late 2005 to late 2006 as opposed to the "Kara 1.0" timeline of mid-2005 to mid-2006) and also mixed up where the stories fall in the timeline, as well. It also does not include anything from Giuoco Pianissimo. If you've read all my fiction or are currently slogging your way though it, I'm not sure there is any great value in reading this unless you really liked it all. In which case, I am flattered.

I am not going to publish it to ff.net, so here is a link to PDF

Presenting it as a download, available in its entirety, makes things a lot easier than copy/pasting (to .rtf's) from FF.net. Thanks.

Wow - an entire novel. Kiskaloo, I salute your commitment to your characters and your story! It looks as though I won't have to head to the bookshop this fortnight.

Professor Voodoo wrote:Presenting it as a download, available in its entirety, makes things a lot easier than copy/pasting (to .rtf's) from FF.net. Thanks.

I had originally just intended to stitch all my "main sequence" stories together into a single volume and publish it as a single PDF or Word Document, but as I thought about it, the idea for re-sequencing and editing it as a new telling took hold.

Going off on a bit of a tangent here, Kiskaloo, but might I ask:

Is this one of a series? Did Yu produce portraits for the other Gen-2 girls as well?

Robert Frazer wrote:Going off on a bit of a tangent here, Kiskaloo, but might I ask:

Is this one of a series? Did Yu produce portraits for the other Gen-2 girls as well?

So far I think she is the only Series Two other than Petrushka he's done separate artwork for (that I have found).

Kiskaloo wrote:I have decided to use another of the Second Generation girls in this story, so in addition to Kara 1.0's roommate Ilaria Sandrelli, I am going to christen "Giada De Luca" to my OC universe:

So thats 2 I'm going to have to ad to the OC Wiki...

Kiskaloo wrote:

Robert Frazer wrote:Going off on a bit of a tangent here, Kiskaloo, but might I ask:

Did Yu produce portraits for the other Gen-2 girls as well?

So far I think she is the only Series Two other than Petrushka he's done separate artwork for (that I have found).

It looks like he did do a pencil sketch of them:

Kiskaloo wrote: I am going to christen "Giada De Luca" to my OC universe:

That's useful...I need a 3rd girl to break up a shoving match between Ilaria & Petrushka...Giada it is.

Having named two of the three "unknown" Generation Two girls, I have decided to name the third one, as well.

I present Alba, cyborg to Gervasio Bentivegna. She has straight red hair and freckles, which gave her the nickname "lentiggini".