Hyouka

[Buffalobiian]

I guess Irisu was typing to Hongou and Oreki's sister right?

Anyways, did we establish anything about the Empress? Did she really just reject her script and didn't want to hurt her feelings? I guess she did when she typed in response "I was in a position to not let the movie fail."

In episode eight, Irisu texted to Hongou, chatted with a Senpai (Oreki's sister? Last we heard she was in India? Or Ukraine?), then chatted with Chitanda "L".

This episode as you sa, she talked with Hongou, then Oreki's sister.

While I do feel sorry for Oreki this time (it'll make it quite hard for him to believe he can really make a difference again), I sympathise with the Empress more after the final scene. Like a true empress, she has to keep her little empire from failing - and if it requires her to step on people, so be it. People expect her to do her job, but she gets bad press for it.

[Kraco]

While I do feel sorry for Oreki this time (it'll make it quite hard for him to believe he can really make a difference again), I sympathise with the Empress more after the final scene. Like a true empress, she has to keep her little empire from failing - and if it requires her to step on people, so be it. People expect her to do her job, but she gets bad press for it.

Is that what you tell yourself (since you reckoned you'd be like her in a similar position)? This all was more due to her personality than the needs of the job. Why exactly did she calculate Oreki would create a better plot this way rather than after having sufficiently details not to feel betrayed and used after it all? Besides, this way is no way to use people in an organization, unless it really is an empire and you are a despot. You figure Oreki would ever want to deal with her again (he even seems to lazy for a revenge)? She knew well she's using him as a disposable tool. It was all the worse with the manipulation, even if it was necessary to get the energy saver moving at all.

Still, that seems to be her personality, just like Oreki's is energy saving plus problem solving and Chitanda's is curiosity.

[Buffalobiian]

Is that what you tell yourself (since you reckoned you'd be like her in a similar position)? This all was more due to her personality than the needs of the job. Why exactly did she calculate Oreki would create a better plot this way rather than after having sufficiently details not to feel betrayed and used after it all? Besides, this way is no way to use people in an organization, unless it really is an empire and you are a despot. You figure Oreki would ever want to deal with her again (he even seems to lazy for a revenge)? She knew well she's using him as a disposable tool. It was all the worse with the manipulation, even if it was necessary to get the energy saver moving at all.

Still, that seems to be her personality, just like Oreki's is energy saving plus problem solving and Chitanda's is curiosity.

It wouldn't work to tell Oreki everything because the whole thing about Hongou being sick was a lie anyway. He needed to keep the story consistent and make it so the Film Club was in a bind, instead of hiring a writer because that would be viewed as being incompetent.

As for whether I'd act like her, it depends on how important the project is (how much more I value the result vs people having fun and a good relationship), how well I get along with the rest of the group (value of said relationship) and how desparate I am for the results (affects which methods and how much time I have to try various methods in order to achieve the result I need).

A club to me is pretty trivial, but if I was managing a company with "real" consequences, my approach could very well be different, and similar to what she pulled here.

[Kraco]

A club to me is pretty trivial, but if I was managing a company with "real" consequences, my approach could very well be different, and similar to what she pulled here.

In a company people are paid for their work (or rather, the results), so technically they only need to know the essentials. That's natural, even if in practice they oft get more details one way or another. So, she wouldn't need to "pull" anything in a company (or in fact any place where hired or contracted people work for money). So, contrary to that, what makes this so nasty is that Oreki worked for no compensation under a guileful pretext carefully crafted by Irisu. In the end all he got were those disappointed looks from his peers, like Shinta mentioned, and his own personal disappoinment from failing the job (as far as he's concerned, even if the film was a success). The fact he was fooled by Irisu was additional salt to the wounds. It doesn't make you feel much of a detective if the person praising you in fact was deceiving you successfully.

Aside from that, you said nothing that would make me believe Oreki wouldn't have been able to come up with a story even if he had known more. Nobody but Oreki would have needed to know she was hiring a writer.