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Also; Hisao your perspective girlfriend needs hugs and reassurance, not the 3rd degree. I don't think 'she got crushed by the pressure and hit her break point' is that hard to figure out.
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Jan 3, 2022 19:22
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ChrisBTY posted:Also; Hisao your perspective girlfriend needs hugs and reassurance, not the 3rd degree. This exact argument is why I'm definitely a lot more agitated at Nomiya at this point.
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Jan 3, 2022 20:07
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ChrisBTY posted:Also; Hisao your perspective girlfriend needs hugs and reassurance, not the 3rd degree. Is it though? I'm not trying to be sarcastic, but look back at all the recent posts about gifted-child syndrome. So many of us here have been affected by it in some form so that makes it easier for us to see the signs in Rin. Hisao, however, doesn't appear to have that experience. Considering that a lot of us didn't end up getting the help and support we needed because the people around us didn't see this as an issue, is it really fair to say that Hisao is acting any different than them? I'm not saying that he's right, but I do think that it's understandable that he's acting the way that he is. Also, points for Mutou for trying to give Hisao an out from talking with Nomiya. He's treating Rin more like some clay he can mold into this ideal in his mind instead of the person she actually is, and that can't have improved things for her.
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Jan 3, 2022 20:24
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Maybe I'm projecting, but isn't it common knowledge that teens aren't good at empathy? I'm certainly not surprised Hisao doesn't understand Rin. He does keep hitting the same rock an awful lot, though.
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Jan 3, 2022 21:33
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Well do keep in mind every route is a different Hisao, it's not as if this Hisao has the experience from any other Hisao, and he's experiencing different people every time. I think that fact makes Hisao a lot more excusable than some of the other characters we've seen up to this point for missing what seems to many of us as "obvious cues".
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Jan 3, 2022 21:40
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Falconier111 posted:Update 103: Desperate Glory (Act 4, Scenes 3-5) Oh hey, this is basically a "soft lock" except emotionally/socially triggered instead of visually triggered. crossposting this from the epilepsy thread: When it first hits you its like watching a trainwreck. You know its bad, you know its going to get worse and yet you don't look away. If you are ready for it, its kinda like pressing a youtube link that you know is going to show you some nasty stuff you don't want to think about. So once you confirm it is indeed nasty stuff, you can quickly close the tab and go "nopenopenopenope". But if you weren't ready, you miss that window of being able to look away. And the longer you look, the more your mind gets locked away inside your head. You can sit there going "oh this poo poo is real bad, I need to look the gently caress away.....how the gently caress does looking away work again?". Eventually you get to the point where you certainly know that you need to breathe and your body is absolutely dropping less than subtle hints about the current state of your oxygen supply, but you don't remember HOW to breathe anymore. That poo poo is loving terrifying and you won't be able to shake it off without some sort of outside stimuli. Doesn't need to be much though, a light touch on your arm by a roommate or a puff of cold air hitting you from the front door that was just opened is usually enough to get you to shift your focus without thinking about it, breaking the hypnosis. - Okay so lets remove the visual stimuli parts and replace them with the social aspect of being in the central spotlight having a barrage of questions thrown at you that all force you to try to answer them much more deeply than the person asking the question ever expected you to. They think they are having in-depth small talk. Rin thinks she is in the exam that will determine her very existence and she has not managed to take a single note on any of the curriculum. With every question that gets piled up, she comes closer to falling off the cliff that stretches across her mind. Every answer she fails to give increases the momentum towards the edge. When she collapses physically, she is in some seriously big trouble. Maybe she'd be able to shake herself out of it enough to run screaming (and I do mean literally screaming) out of the building. Maybe people get the hint and start helping her (not bloody likely, their natural response is to clump up in a circle around her and stare dumbfounded at her, maybe they'll even physically try to snap her out it by grabbing her/ shaking her/ patting her on the head or shoulders). If this goes on long enough, she will end up unable to conduct the subconscious life sustaining things like breathing. And she will go into an actual seizure. Or just go completely catatonic. Space Kablooey I know you just laughed at the silly tonal shift in the narrative, but as someone who has been through several seizures like that? I felt so utterly alienated when you wrote that. No hard feelings or anything, it just washed over me in a wave of sadness and rage for a moment.
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Jan 3, 2022 21:43
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Apologies for that.
Space Kablooey fucked around with this message at 21:53 on Jan 3, 2022 |
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Jan 3, 2022 21:48
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No worries, you had no way of knowing it would hit me like that. You had a laugh at the writer's intentional tonal shift that was meant to break up the tension. Working as intended.
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Jan 3, 2022 21:50
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Okay so can we all agree that Nomiya should 100% not be a teacher at this school? I did not honestly think we'd see another adult as bad as Jigoro, and at least Jigoro could only affect his own kids for the most part. Seriously, what the actual gently caress Nomiya.
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Jan 3, 2022 22:04
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Nomiya is heading into territory that could easily be described as "enabling suicide" in the completely pigheaded way he steers a student towards a path that he knows can kill people. A path he himself looked at and decided was too dangerous to take himself.
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Jan 3, 2022 22:08
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That part is just particularly awful to me.
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Jan 3, 2022 22:14
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Isn't he idolizing his old "friend" who dedicated himself so much to art it broke him and he killed himself? It's like he is utterly determined to make the same happen to Rin. At this point I'm not sure whether he is trying to live out his art dreams through Rin because he couldn't or if he's just an rear end who was responsible for driving the other artist over the edge by relentless "support".
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Jan 3, 2022 22:24
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I just want to give a shout-out to Mutou again here. We don't know how much he's aware of the goings-on with Rin/the exhibition/etc, so I can't specifically credit him for stepping in because of that, but good on him for recognizing a weird situation and offering Hisao an out. The dude's kinda unreliable most of the time, but when push comes to shove he knows how to handle a crisis situation.
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Jan 4, 2022 00:05
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Mutou is a teacher who I would've been able to connect with for certain. He recognizes awkward situations even if he's not fully aware of everything behind the scenes,, and I knew at least one teacher (maybe I knew multiple I'm not certain) that was similar.
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Jan 4, 2022 00:33
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 A Special Announcement: Today, January 4th 2022, is the 10th anniversary of Katawa Shoujo’s official release. It’s been a whole decade, kids.
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Jan 4, 2022 06:10
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The first time I played this, I thought Nomiya was well-intentioned but dumb. Now, I outright hate him. I don't know much about mentor-mentee relationships, but actually understanding one's protegee (not just applying the first template you come up with and interpreting everything they do through that is not how it's supposed to go). I will grant him some slack, since it's not like Rin tries to be understood...or understands herself. I suppose that's part of her tragedy; she has a hard time conveying herself, so it's easier to sit in the corner and let others draw their own conclusions. (Been there, done that...) I interpreted her response as a (potential) panic attack, but maybe that's just because I'm more familiar with those. Found the painting I was thinking of for Rin:  "The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters," by Goya
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Jan 4, 2022 10:49
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Karia posted:Agency and self-determination are huge persistent themes throughout both the game and this LP, and for good reason. However, there's one place where it really becomes much more complex, and it seems like everybody's been dancing around it: mental illness. I mentioned earlier in the thread that Rin's route gave me a rough case of existential dread when I read it, and I have to wonder if this particular mental health stuff is part of why. Two people trying to negotiate a new romantic relationship - when both are struggling with serious mental health issues - hit pretty close to home for me. It stirred up a lot of memories of a previous relationship where we were both obviously attracted to each other, but at the time were also both completely in the toilet in terms of self-esteem, depression, anxiety, struggling with past trauma, etc. This horrible doubt that either of you could ever be any good for the other because you're so hosed up, or that you could ever understand each other because neither of you can articulate your thoughts well enough, or manage to overcome your anxieties enough to really open up to the other. "Why am I even doing this? Do we really even like each other? Can I trust my own thoughts/emotions enough to be able to tell?" Thoughts like that. It seemed like Hisao was thinking like that in Rin's route, so it reminded me of all that. Anyway, yeah... wow Nomiya is a dickhead. The scary thing (which also points to this route being well-written) is that he's a dickhead in a believable way. I'm sure a lot of people have known high-school teachers who weren't great in the empathy department... and who perhaps tended to assume that they always knew the thoughts and motivations of their students, in all cases without fail.
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Jan 4, 2022 11:48
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I wonder how much Nomiya's bullshit is pushed by the school. Mutou was certainly encouraging Hisao in some other routes but his approach is much more reasonable and empathetic. Even with Rin's limited skills with communication and people's lack of interest in what really makes her tick you should still see that something's going wrong and that she isn't fully ready yet.Falconier111 posted:
Welp. 
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Jan 4, 2022 13:18
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Falconier111 posted:
Oh hey, so it is! I've got a lot of feelings for this game that have shifted over time - for one thing, ten years ago I was close in age to the main characters and had no questions at all about a cast of high schoolers (18-year-olds, but still high schoolers) having sex, something that's a lot harder to watch the older I get*. And for all that I latched onto Misha because I was figuring out my own orientation for the first time, looking back at her from today's standards she does fill a cliche as a tragic, hopeless gay suitor, even worse in her beta depiction (which I might talk a bit about later since there's a scene in her POV that has some interesting insight on her backstory and feelings, even if it isn't canon). * I get that it's a complex topic, especially since it intersects with the depiction of disability and sexuality (or lack thereof) in fiction, and its reflection on real life discrimination. Without getting very deep in the weeds I've spent time around fandoms that have had and continue to have exhausting, ugly, violent arguments about how explicitly-shown teenage sexuality is handled in canon or fanon, so by now my immediate instinct is to just avoid it as much as I can because I'm too old for this anyway. I dunno. My feelings are complicated and contradictory, and mostly I just wish Emi didn't look five years younger than she is. And I'm saying that as someone whose favorite route by far is Emi's, and like her is also baby-faced and very short to the point where I've been mistaken for a teen many times! Just feels different between a real person who happens to look that way, and a character who was designed that way, if that makes sense? But for the most part I'd say KS avoids the skeeviness I've seen in other fiction, and to erase the cast's sexuality entirely would be to risk running the message that it's because of their disabilities. Hanako's route in particular uses it as a facet of her character motivation of not wanting her own peers to treat her like a fragile child. And in the grand picture of it all there is so much more to Katawa Shoujo that can be discussed, like the emphasis on healthy communication between people and especially partners, or seeing the signs that someone might be heading for a breakdown and to know how to give them a support network without completely smothering them. --- Which brings us to Rin's route! Rereading things with a critical eye, it's a bit off-putting that Sae hadn't done more to support (genuinely support) Rin before and during the exhibition. I feel like she was written to be the foil to Nomiya, a capital-c Cool teacher who wants to nurture artists instead of just molding them under pressure, and who recognizes that it's Rin's decision to leave and argues on her behalf when Nomiya starts causing a scene. But it also feels like her letting it get to this point to begin with is iffy, especially given all the parallels drawn between Rin and Sae's husband - I feel like she'd have ruminated a lot on what she could and couldn't have done for him, and actively watched for warning signs in Rin instead of just staying hands-off or giving her smokes. Even after all of that I still feel sympathetic to Sae, maybe because of her backstory, maybe because Nomiya is a lightning rod for all my hate, or maybe just because I really liked her when I first read Katawa Shoujo and I'm too stubborn to change my opinion this quickly. I suppose it could be argued that Hisao's only seen a small fraction of the goings-on in the art gallery and that during his time away Sae could've been talking to Rin, but at that point you're entered the territory of fanfiction; there's value in that but Sae can still only be judged on canon. As it stands, she's a bad mentor but not the worst person in the room. gently caress you, Nomiya. As for Hisao, yeah, he's definitely overstepped a few times, but it's more understandable for him because he's a teen trying to help his peer, and not an adult with years of experience seeing this sort of thing happen. Unrelated to this, I remember someone theorizing that the reason Hisao seems to act differently on routes is because the player's decisions in Act 1 retroactively fill in details about the kind of person he is, and thus the kind of company he keeps. A boisterous competitive Hisao fits in easily with Shizune or Emi, a quiet and calmer one gets along with Hanako, and one who seems kind of outcast (based on his final Act 1 choice) and thinks a lot about the nature of the mind would be drawn to Rin. Of course... that was just a theory from a fan trying to make sense of it all after the fact, and it's entirely possible the sole reason is that there were multiple writers and each one has their own subtle difference in style. --- I do relate a lot to all the talk about gifted kid burnout, but I don't know if it is something I can claim for myself because I do genuinely believe me falling from the gifted pedestal was a result of laziness and being easily distracted by The Internet. Am I completely right on the money, or was/is there a mental reason for it all that can be treated? Well hell if I know, I can't afford therapy and tests. I've got contradictory feelings here too - if it was another person with the exact same history and feelings I have, I'd tell them that that yeah it's possible they have something undiagnosed going on, and it might be worth looking at various (good) mental health articles to see if there's any advice that particularly resonates with them and could help them. I can think of all that for another person, but as soon I think of myself I immediately start wondering if I'm the faker who just wants attention and an excuse? And it makes it harder for me to justify seeking help, because if I am a capital-f Faker then I've just wasted everyone's time and money. There's no ending to this story. I'm still trying to figure this stuff out.  --- But all that aside. Thanks for the re-visit to this story, Falconier111. For all the things about it that bug me it was still a really fun and important read back when it came out, and even today there's a lot about KS that still resonates and is important to learn from. MiracleFlare fucked around with this message at 18:54 on Jan 4, 2022 |
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Jan 4, 2022 18:44
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For what it’s worth, I’m noticing a serious overlap in this thread between neurodivergence, gifted child status, a pervasive sense of personal failure, and struggling to reconcile yout emotions with how you conceive of emotions in others. I think there’s more going on here than just gifted child syndrome; that emotional alienation is a trademark result of authorities failing neurodivergents and I might be able to tease a disability corner out of mismatched expectations unintentionally traumatizing disabled kids. I’d say, based on those similarities, there’s a very good chance you do qualify. Laziness isn’t actually real, after all.
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Jan 5, 2022 06:30
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Tbh I thought my life problems was just gifted child syndrome and me being lazy until a counselor in college mentioned she thought I had adhd and asked if I was autistic lmao
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Jan 5, 2022 07:11
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Update 104: Raison d'ętre (Act 4, Scenes 5-7) Katawa Shoujo OST - Moment of Decision  HISAO: "No thanks. But still, the times when I feel that I am on the same page as you are pretty rare. It feels like... there is this huge gap and sometimes you just go to the other side, and I don't... have any way to reach to you from where I am. It's like you are in some completely different place at times. Even though you are right here." That's right. There is an insurmountable discontinuity, an imaginary glass wall that blocks comprehension from happening. There might be such a gap between any two people, but with Rin, it feels more tangible. Rin does not react to my thoughts, not to the ones I uttered aloud nor the ones I did not. HISAO: "It's even worse with art. I'm not very good at art, I admit it. I joined the art club 'cause I thought it could be interesting. And I guess it is. I like art, I like your art too, but just like with you, I can't comprehend it. And I'm pretty sure nobody really can." This seems to worry her slightly.  RIN: "Do you think so?" HISAO: "Yeah. I guess that art is meant to be interpreted, not understood. That's how I'd put it." RIN: "That's a sad thought." HISAO: "I guess it might feel like one. Does it make you feel sad for yourself?" Rin thinks about this for a while, and then shakes her head surprisingly vehemently. .png) The first thing she focuses her eyes on afterward is me. Both of these things make me glad, and relieved. HISAO: "That's good, isn't it? Anyway, you should go see the teacher and apologize properly. I think he is worried about you. Can you do that?" This time, she nods her head. Only, it's not as vehement. (Silence) The hallway is empty, almost intimidating. Nomiya's “office” is the art classroom at the other end of the third floor hallway. Our steps echo disturbingly. The atmosphere is unlike on a normal afternoon. It feels like the school knows that nobody will be coming back for a month, too. "The door is open, but not very inviting. HISAO: "I'll... um, wait outside." Nodding barely noticeably, Rin strides in without stopping, and naturally, without knocking. Maybe that's why it takes a few seconds before I hear the teacher's voice from inside. .png)  NOMIYA: "There you are!" RIN: "Hello." A conflict arises: should I stay here or go somewhere else? I'm not sure if I even want to eavesdrop on them. ... Manners lose to curiosity, and so I stay close enough to listen in. Their voices echo in the hallway, but no matter. There is nobody around, save for me. Katawa Shoujo OST - Cold Iron NOMIYA: "Dear girl, what on Earth were you thinking, leaving like that on the big night?" RIN: "I couldn't say anything." Compared to Nomiya's scolding tone, Rin sounds awfully quiet and withdrawn. Her words seem to drown under his. NOMIYA: "I have to say, I am very disappointed in you, Tezuka." RIN: "It was no good at all." NOMIYA: "Never mind all the things I did for you, but what about Sae? What about all the guests who wanted to meet you?" RIN: "There was nobody. Even Hisao..." NOMIYA: "You have embarrassed us very badly, Tezuka. Reputation is what counts, surely you know that?" RIN: "It's all right. I don't need it." NOMIYA: "“Don't need!” What do you think you know?" Rin's replies only seem to agitate the teacher more, his voice rising with every sentence. NOMIYA: "The path of an artist is a thorny one, I'll tell you that! Thorny! You have to see the big picture! There will be bad times and good times!" RIN: "Things are like they are. It'll be all right even—" NOMIYA: "You might now think that it's oh so wonderful and easy, but how far would you have gotten without me? I won't always be there for you! When you lie on the floor of your minuscule room, your rent three weeks late, your mind blank for the fourth week straight, then you will wish that you had listened to old Nomiya a bit more. When you keep measuring how the shadow of your chair becomes longer over the spring because that's all your lethargy allows, maybe that's when you will start caring about your career!" RIN: "That doesn't matter." NOMIYA: "Your resolve is not enough." RIN: "I am not a resolved person." NOMIYA: "You are not a resolved person... Then tell me, why... why... WHY DID WE GO THROUGH ALL THIS TROUBLE IF IT AMOUNTS TO A MOSQUITO'S poo poo?" Oh dear, the teacher blew a fuse. Him yelling at Rin makes me feel bystander's guilt. If I had gone with her, maybe he wouldn't have gotten so angry. If I had not let her run away, he wouldn't have gotten angry in the first place. I still could go and save her... I don't think I can. I was the same. I yelled at Rin too, and I'm feeling all the more embarrassed about it now. I felt justified to vent my anger at her face just because... just because I felt it was her fault that I was so frustrated. I was no more justified than the teacher is. … A terrible silence sets upon the hallway. Rin does not have anything to say to Nomiya. Whether she has run out of answers or she knows that arguing would only make him angrier is anyone's guess. The teacher has nothing more to say either, it seems, or maybe he just ran out of breath. For a moment, I imagine the two of them just staring at each other, one full of red-hot anger, the other full of... yes, what? I can't tell how Rin feels, not before, not now. Teacher seems to expect Rin to say something too, but since she doesn't he finally continues in a quieter, but not less angry voice. NOMIYA: "What worth is there in doing so much work if the outcome is... nothing?" Still, Rin will not say anything. NOMIYA: "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have gotten so excited." He does not sound sorry at all. Rather, his tone is cold and sharp, like he was spitting the words out of his mouth. NOMIYA: "It seems that I was expecting too much. You are not an artist after all." Yeah, not sorry at all.  Nomiya’s snarling sprite briefly flashes across the screen. (Silence) He storms out of the club room and down the stairs without noticing me. After he is gone, I peek carefully inside the classroom. .png) Rin is left standing there, in front of the teacher's desk. RIN: "I couldn't say I am sorry." She says it into the humid air of the classroom, not to me. But since the room won't answer her, I will have to. HISAO: "That was unfair of him... He was angry, but still..." I can't decide how to end my sentence. Disdaining the teacher feels like disdaining my own behavior from two days ago. Stupid, but correct in hindsight. Rin won't answer, staying petrified where she stands, so I walk up to her. She stood up for herself. In a way. I didn't expect that. I can't determine whether it's unbecoming or not, but either way, she did it. Against me, she never did. I sort of wish she had, maybe I would not feel this bad then. Lately, it really seems that I've been wishing for all kinds of things. HISAO: "Rin?" .png) RIN: "Go away." Katawa Shoujo OST - Shadow of the Truth HISAO: "Why... what are you saying?" RIN: "You're angry with me too, right? I thought you were my friend. I thought he was, too." Her voice is unlike I've ever heard it, it's bitter, sharp like needles, and she keeps staring pointedly at her toes. HISAO: "I don't think it's about that. He wanted you to be something you are not. And..." I take a deep breath and finally catch her eyes in my own, locking our gazes. HISAO: "...I'm sorry. I wanted us to be something else too... more than friends. Maybe that's why I couldn't contain myself and became so frustrated, just like the teacher did." RIN: "What more? There is nothing more to me than me, that's all I am. I don't understand that." Well... the answer should be obvious, right? I remember myself, thinking of the purpose of friendship. To put up with everything and anything, to be there for your friend. Did I fail as a friend, thinking it could be a stepping stone for something else? Maybe because of those thoughts, I didn't manage to put up with things, to keep it together. As outrageous as Rin is and was, I shouldn't have let myself get caught into that, especially when I started feeling the way I did towards her. So, did I fail? That's what her eyes seem to ask. HISAO: "I'm sorry, Rin. I might not be able to be your friend. I don't think I could ever be a good friend to you." I say these things because they are true, not because one of us would like to hear them. But they are something that must be said. The finality of my words creates a shaking silence, for what could either of us add to that? RIN: "Why? Why does all this happen? People are doing things I don't ask for and don't want and everyone keeps getting angry at me, I have no idea what is going on any more and can't stop feeling like I want to run away from everything..." She shuts her eyes tight and breathes out deeply, calmly. When the eyelids open, all I can see is dark green desperation. .png) RIN: "I have no idea what's wrong with me!" Her frenetic outburst stupefies me for a moment, and for a heartbeat we just gaze into each other's face. Seeing her confused eyes desperately looking for answers from mine only makes me sad, because I know I have none. HISAO: "I don't know either. But you know, you yourself said that things are not right nor wrong. They just are. You either accept them, work to change them or give up. It's not that I hate you, or that teacher Nomiya does. I just... think that I am the kind of person who gives up when he feels he can't go on. And even if you hate it, this... this is... how things are." I'm saying pretty cruel things but I can't stop myself, the words keep rolling off my tongue with slow, hard certainty. I can see them hitting Rin almost like physical blows. As the wetness gathers into the corners of her eyes, they are still wide with the shock of rejection. .png) As the tears start rolling down her pale cheeks, she does nothing to stop them. As they fall down on the floor one by one, she stands still, staring at me with a gaze full of hollow disbelief. RIN: "..." But reality catches up. .png) Rin slumps forward as if she was deflating, and buries her face as deep in my shirt as she can. Rin is heavy and featherlight when I support her weight. She doesn't really sob or bawl, just leans against me, letting her tears burn through my shirt into the skin underneath. And I let her, bringing my hand around her shoulders in a clumsy hug that does no good to comfort her. I can feel Rin's vertebrae against my fingertips, like hard and jagged reminders of how messed up things are. Her slim shoulder quivering against my palm is a pitiable sight, and the hopelessness of being part of the cause for Rin's sadness keeps shredding my heart. To make a girl cry is the most despicable thing to do. Even Rin. Especially Rin. Behind that veil of aloofness, Rin is just a human being too. Just as confused, scared and lost as any of us is. Most of the time it seems that there is no rhyme or reason for what Rin does and says, but for once, I think I really understand how she feels. But no words can express it, and no words can make it better. (Silence) So wordless we stay, quietly waiting for her tears to run out. Time passes agonizingly slowly, even the lazy specks of dust floating in the air seem to pause into a standstill. The obligatory wall clock is ticking distractingly from above the door. I decide against counting the seconds, because it would make them feel longer. ... Eventually Rin stirs a little and still smothering herself against my chest, mutters into my shirt. Katawa Shoujo OST - Lullaby of Open Eyes RIN: "Let me be here for a while. Please, Hisao. Just give me a little while." A soothing deluge spreads into my consciousness, the knowledge that while being here for Rin is all I can do for her, that's all she wants right now, even after all we've gone through. HISAO: "Sure." So she stays there. But I still can't bring myself to draw her closer so I could embrace her properly. It's because doing it would just make me so sad that I don't know if I could bear it. The realization that we might never really be able to become what we want to be for the other crystallizes into my mind as a diamond-hard enlightenment. A pang surges through my heart like an electric shock. It's painful. This clarity... hurts. What can we be for each other? What meaning is there for us to desperately cling to each other even though it seems so futile? What should I say to Rin? How to make her feel better? I do not know any of those things, and I fear knowing them would only hurt more. Forcefully, I push all of that out of my mind because I don't want to be thinking of hurtful truths. My thoughts calm down soon enough, the sadness disperses until all that is left is me and Rin and the tender feeling of her warmth and softness against my chest. When did I fall in love with her? I can't remember, but I'm certain it was way before the warm touch of her lips on my own, on that orange-colored afternoon when she was sick with cold and I went to see her because of unclear reasons. Her carefree attitude, the air of otherness around her, all the things that make Rin herself... those things captured me with irresistible force. The way she could take in anything and everything giving it only the value she herself placed, weighing all things fairly and without prejudice, seeing the world as she wanted. This is something I could never do, and Rin was probably more of a muse to me than anything ever was to her. She seemed so free to me, truly a free spirit. While I, constantly worrying about everything, seemed so inhibited that it was almost embarrassing. Maybe that's why I latched so tightly on to Rin, trying to get inside her world that was so different from my own bleak life Before I noticed it, that irresistible force had pulled me dangerously close to her, but it turned out to be way too alien for me. And I had forgotten Newton, of all things. The gravitational force is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the objects... So if two people feel something for each other... Heh. Even though feelings are not governed by the constants of the universe, I can't help thinking that for some time now I've been a satellite to Rin's brightly shining planet. Planet Rin. The thought makes me almost laugh, she really does seem to be from another planet at times, minus green skin and possibly some tentacles. .png) Perhaps because of my stifled laughter, Rin pulls away and I let her go, feeling the cold when her warmth goes away, and slight embarrassment for letting my thoughts run wild like that. I credit that as Rin being a bad influence on me, while being glad at the same time that she can't read thoughts for real. Rin's bitter tears have dried up, and she looks a little more like herself again. The lost look in her eyes is still there though. Her gaze wanders around restlessly before stopping at me. RIN: "What happened just now? Can you tell me?" HISAO: "What? What do you mean?" RIN: "I cried." She says that hesitantly, as if not believing it herself. HISAO: "Yes..." She keeps staring at me, as if pleading guidance so that she wouldn't have to feel so lost. ... RIN: "Why?" HISAO: "You were sad. Is that what you want me to say? But isn't that obvious?" RIN: "I don't know. It feels weird to cry." HISAO: "What? I don't believe it. I mean, everyone does that. It's nor—" I bite my tongue before I finish my argument about normality. Norms do not apply to the person I'm talking to. .png) RIN: "It always felt so wrong, different from what is in me. Like I couldn't really tell what I felt. So I started thinking that maybe I don't know what I'm feeling. Maybe it's me who is wrong— I thought those kinds of things. I thought... that painting was enough because it felt that I did at least that right. That all that is inside me could become a picture if I tried really hard. And it could. But it doesn't feel like it's enough any more. Because if nobody else can see that, I will still be alone. Was it wrong to try? Everyone got really angry at me for that." I've rarely heard Rin say this much at once before. Once she finishes, she simply shuts up, looking so neutral that it's hard to believe she just said what she did. I don't know what to think. ... Rin was desperate for someone to look at her paintings, and somehow see right through them into her soul, to understand her feelings... Because... she felt she could not express them in any other way? How can one say whether that is right or wrong? Could it be that all this time she's been trying to reach out to me like I've tried to reach out to her? (Silence) ... I sit down on a desk to think, and to rest my legs that kept us both standing for a long while. Katawa Shoujo OST - Innocence HISAO: "You know, when I read a good book or look at a starry sky or whatever, sometimes I too feel something... profound, like a... shoot, I don't know how to describe it. But the instant I try to put it into words I feel that I lose something, it doesn't feel as real, as true as it did inside my head. It feels a bit phony. drat, even what I just said felt phony. I offer a smile that is meant to be between funny and self-deprecating, but Rin doesn't react. HISAO: "Anyway... It might be that nobody can ever express their true feelings so that others understand. Reality has no chance of living up to what someone has inside their head. Nothing can match that. Not even your paintings, except maybe for you. But I suppose you can't keep everything inside, you'd explode for real then. What I'm trying to say is... I don't think it's wrong to express your feelings, even if you use painting as your conduit. You just can't expect people to understand you any better than they would if you did it any other way. In fact, you can't expect people to understand you at all. It's because everything is so subjective. You see the world the way you do, but it's different from everyone else." RIN: "But isn't that terrible?" HISAO: "I guess it is, in a way." … She frowns, looking probably as stricken as she can. Which is not much, but it's enough for me to understand that Rin is not particularly happy. RIN: "I think it might make me sad after all." HISAO: "Yeah. I know. I wish I could do something to help it." I don't think I sound bitter, even though I am, a little. This is my problem. I cannot be what Rin wants for her. And for the same reason, she can't do the same for me either. ... She makes a difficult face, carefully trying to pick the words she wants to say. So Rin has times when it's hard to say anything, too. RIN: "It can't be helped, I think. ...but... if you say that... It makes me feel a little better." …It's funny how some seemingly irrelevant things are the most significant ones at times like this. Like how Rin's voice is very very small, barely audible when she says that. And how even her short bangs can cover her eyes when she looks downwards. .png) And how they can't cover the deep red color rising on her cheeks and all the way to the tips of her ears. They turn into a very interesting shade of red. A deafening silence follows. It's very awkward, as if I saw something that wasn't meant to be seen, even if it wasn't on purpose. I don't know what to say to that, but I keep feeling like I should know. She doesn't either. Still, it feels like there is no momentum to lose even if we keep silent. Like we have some weird, wordless connection that would hold even so. Rin keeps shifting her weight from one foot to the other restlessly, looking everywhere around the room except at me. She is the one who finally breaks the spell. .png) RIN: "Can we go? I don't want to stay here." HISAO: "Oh, yeah, of course. Where?" My reply is covering my nervousness as badly as her question is covering hers. RIN: "You can go wherever you like. I want to sleep. I haven't really slept for a few weeks. It feels like there is a flock of light blue butterflies inside my head. It makes it hard to think properly. The kind that you think is too blue to really exist, like Emi's panties this morning." She shakes her head, and I almost expect a couple of ultramarine-colored Morphos to pop out of her ears. A small smile tugs upwards the corners of her mouth. .png) RIN: "That reminds me. The blue, not the panties. The word for a flock of butterflies is a swarm. I looked it up." That makes my eyebrow rise into a questioning arch. HISAO: "Why don't you use it then?" RIN: "I like the other word better." Why look it up in the first place, then? HISAO: "Then you should use it, right?" She nods and falls silent, her gaze escaping mine to the side, attracted by the dark orange sunlight refracting from the windows. We stay like that for a little while: me silently looking at her silently looking out of the window. HISAO: "Hey... you all right now?" She glances at me from the corner of her eye, looking wistful again. The sunlight's reflection doesn't betray any more of her inner feelings. RIN: "I'll need to think about that." I want to continue this conversation, grasping at those straws that she finally revealed to even exist. But Rin is looking out of the window so absentmindedly that I know she won't be responsive in any way that would make sense. It's like some kind of defense mechanism of hers, to avoid being sensible. Her mind is like a butterfly in itself, always fluttering somewhere away whenever it's stirred. Just when I thought I could see behind her veil, she jumps out of my reach again. Maybe that's just how Rin is. Maybe that's something I should just accept to get some peace of mind. HISAO: "Okay. I'll walk you back to the dorms then." RIN: "Thanks. Really." (Silence) The empty hallways of the school devoid of its students feel very lonely. Less than one hour after the summer vacation began, the building seems to be deserted, and all that intrudes on the stillness of the hallways are our footsteps. The change is sudden, but it shows how the building is just an empty shell, dead without its students and teachers. It's as though the school has become a private world for only the two of us, a desolate place filled with silence and chalk dust. .png) RIN: "I think I have to change." She says it out of the blue while we walk down the staircase from the third floor, still managing to feel like she is mirroring what I was thinking just before. HISAO: "That's what people must do, sometimes." That's the last thing we say to each other that day, even though there would be so much to talk about. And even those words drown in the all-encompassing silence, disappearing into the stagnant air as if they were never said. Falconier111 fucked around with this message at 15:55 on Jan 5, 2022 |
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Jan 5, 2022 15:48
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Falconier111 posted:
I like that they avoided giving Nomiya a shallow motivation like just wanting the glory of nurturing a young artist, and instead made it clear through this line that he truly thinks what he's doing will help Rin avoid the abovementioned fate, a fate Nomiya himself almost certainly experienced firsthand before becoming a teacher. As someone who has thus far struggled to achieve any of my ambitions in large part due to the compounding of mistakes made in the past, I can understand the desire to urge others away from that path. Because he's not wrong, per se, that networking and locking down opportunities while you're still young is vitally important to one's career, perhaps even moreso than one's actual skill at the career path they're seeking. It's just that that's not Rin's goal, and unfortunately that makes his bitterness and self-loathing rise to the surface and he lashes out like an rear end in a top hat.
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Jan 5, 2022 16:22
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TitanG posted:It's possible to get out of the mindset, at least partially - team sports were the most important for me, while we managed to rehab a couple of people by just being good friends. It's not a quick or easy fix, and as most things it's an ongoing process. It depends a lot on what other kinds of issues you have, too - but having a safe space to be fallible is the most important thing in the end. Now that you mention that, I think Dungeons & Dragons helped me get out of the gifted child perfectionist spiral, too. You work as a team, everyone has different strengths, and most of your failures are from the dice, not your actions themselves. It's entirely possible to remain in toxic mindsets while playing D&D, but somehow I managed to get most if not all the right messages out of the hobby. Falconier111 posted:Update 104: Raison d'ętre (Act 4, Scenes 5-7) Yup, there's the big Rin feels. Oh boy. And they're not gonna be getting much lighter until the end of the route, if memory serves. And this is for the good ending.
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Jan 5, 2022 21:17
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Did someone say big feels? I wrote a big post about my neurodivergence and mental illness. (C/W: Suicide, Mental illness) Ever since I could remember, I’ve always felt big emotions. My thoughts go round and round in my head, zipping along with no end in sight. It’s nearly impossible to pin my emotions. Am I happy? What is happy? Am I sad? What is sad? While I know the meaning of these words, trying to spin them into Social Norms is daunting. I don’t just feel happy, I also feel sad, angry, and afraid all at various degrees. Nowadays I’ve learned to give a socially acceptable answer, but I want to tell people how I really feel. Which 90% of the time is “I don’t know, I guess my major emotion is…” Such answers only confuse Neurotypicals. It didn’t help that back when I was a kid, it seemed that you could only feel one emotion at a time. Even back in the 90s and early 2000s, deviating from the norm was invisibly shunned. If you felt any negative emotion, well, there was always somebody worse than you, so deal with it. As a kid, I often complained about the noise levels at school assemblies. My EA’s response was to always tell the story about a time a big drumming performance came to the school. It got so loud that ten kids had to leave. What could be as bad as that? Even as a kid, I got the message. Your neurodivergent feelings don’t actually matter. My mom tried. She really did. But she is very Neurotypical. She didn’t have the patience to put up with my antics a lot of the time. If I cried too much as a kid, she would separate us for a while. Admittedly, most of it was kid whining. But she didn’t seem to know how to deal with someone like me. When I was thirteen, depression first hit me. Not knowing what to do, I told my mom. Her response was, “You are not depressed. If you really were depressed, you would stay in bed the whole day and show no emotion.” (My mom has since apologized despite not remembering this comment.) The above mentioned incidents led me down a rather weird path online. In the mid-to-late 2000’s, picking on emo kids was the Thing to Do around the weird edgelord circles I ended up in online. These kids usually came from “good homes” so what was there to be sad about? I laughed at the emo kids, but deep down, this would affect me. “You should find a better group of people.” The adults in my life would retort. Adult me understands that advice. But to thirteen year old me, laughing at people “faking sadness and cutting” was how I understood the world. It was funny to make jokes about how “the emo kids were too pussy to kill themselves.” Those jokes sound rightfully horrific now, but they made sense at the time. You had to be a Darfur war orphan to have your pain taken seriously. For many years, I wanted to be twenty because that was when my mental illness would be taken seriously somehow. My parents took me to many counselors. But I didn’t dare say anything about depression because I didn’t have it. Plus what could a kid from a good home have to be sad about? I wish I could tell you that there’s a happy ending to this story. And there is, for the most part. I grew up and most of the Internet did too. But I still struggle with seeing mental illness as something I’m too privileged to experience. The various jokes about emo kids still cycle through my anxiety filled mind. All I want for someone to rescue me from my mind. For a handsome prince to wake me up from my waking nightmare and say, “I’m here. I won’t let anything bad happen to you.” I still haven’t found my savior.
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Jan 6, 2022 04:57
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quote:RIN: "I have no idea what's wrong with me!" i just wanted to play the anime game see what the fuss was about meet some cute girls be amused why are you making me like this (This was the first route I completed. Not what I'd expected...for better or worse. Although, on a meta level, knowing the Bad End was past, I kept going. can't imagine what it would be like, trying to work through this without any guarantee of success.) Still hard to work through; half the time I'm imagining what I'd say, the other half I'm thinking Hisao is doing just fine. Ultimately, it's Hisao's listening that wins him through; not his speech.
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Jan 7, 2022 01:11
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Jesus, Nomiya.  Speaking of teachers being dickheads... Falconier111 posted:For what it’s worth, I’m noticing a serious overlap in this thread between neurodivergence, gifted child status, a pervasive sense of personal failure, and struggling to reconcile yout emotions with how you conceive of emotions in others. I think there’s more going on here than just gifted child syndrome; that emotional alienation is a trademark result of authorities failing neurodivergents and I might be able to tease a disability corner out of mismatched expectations unintentionally traumatizing disabled kids. I’d say, based on those similarities, there’s a very good chance you do qualify. Laziness isn’t actually real, after all. This part of that article stuck out to me: quote:Students with barriers were not always treated with such kindness by my fellow psychology professors. One colleague, in particular, was infamous for providing no make-up exams and allowing no late arrivals. No matter a student’s situation, she was unflinchingly rigid in her requirements. No barrier was insurmountable, in her mind; no limitation was acceptable. People floundered in her class. They felt shame about their sexual assault histories, their anxiety symptoms, their depressive episodes. When a student who did poorly in her classes performed well in mine, she was suspicious. It reminded me a lot of an especially awful English teacher I had at high school. (And this is another story about living with social anxiety disorder. Undiagnosed, at the time.) I was good at English. Along with anything to do with computers, it was my best subject. Any time we were given a speech as an assignment though (or "class presentation" or whatever euphemism they used), it would ruin my life from the moment we were told about it to whenever it was finally over. Weeks or months of not being able to get it out of my mind; just constant, crushing dread. I was fourteen or fifteen when I had this particular teacher. She was widely despised by the students; she was harsh and heavy-handed with everyone. It didn't matter if they deserved it or not. So when she gave us a speech assignment, my anxiety about it was worse than ever before. (And even without her, I found that it got more difficult every time I went through it.) It became too much: there was no way I could go through with it. I decided that I'd do the assignment but ask if I could submit it in written form. The problem was... I was too afraid to ask this teacher if I could do that. Instead, my fear over it grew worse and worse, up until it was too late and it was the day we were to give the speeches in class. By then there was no choice: I went up to her at the start of the class when everyone was still coming in, assignment in hand, and said that I couldn't do it as a speech: could I instead just hand it in that way? I remember she just stared at me for a while (in her usual, nakedly hostile way), and she had to have seen that I was absolutely terrified. I was barely holding it together. But she just said - and I remember this verbatim: "So let me get this straight. You're refusing to do this assignment." Never mind that I was literally holding the finished assignment in my hands and offering it to her. By that stage though, I just had to get out of there, so all I could say was "yes". Who knows what she would have done had I tried to push the issue. So I guess I failed that assignment? I don't really remember. I mostly just remember her cruelty, unsurprisingly! In contrast, the English teacher I was lucky enough to have for the final three years of high school was wonderful. She was my favourite teacher at high school; the one I've mentioned before as being the only one to both notice that I wasn't okay and to try to help. When she gave us a speech assignment, I was able to actually ask ahead of time if I could do it as a written assignment instead. She didn't let me do that, but she did try to meet me halfway, instead letting me deliver the speech just in front of her and one of my friends, rather than the whole class. So I still had those agonising weeks/months leading up to it, and it was still absolutely brutal and traumatic, but I was able to do it.
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Jan 7, 2022 03:34
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By the way, regarding Rin's route, let's talk about The Beginner's Guide. The Beginner's Guide is a game (or "walking simulator" if you're annoying) by Davey Wreden, most famous for The Stanley Parable. In it, he serves as the narrator, portraying "himself", though everything in the game (and thus everything in the forthcoming description) is decidedly fictional. In it, he discusses his friend Coda, a fellow indie dev he once met at a game jam, who made a lot of weird game prototypes, but never finished them. The Beginner's Guide is essentially a playthrough of Coda's body of work, with "Davey" providing commentary and interpretation for each prototype, discussing the themes of imprisonment, isolation, and difficulty with communication that are apparent in each work, and mentioning that Coda had seemingly stopped making games and gone entirely off the grid (for courtesy, the remainder will be in spoiler tags). However, in the final prototype shown, which had been sent to "Davey" directly rather than downloaded from whatever repository Coda had previously used, the player finds a message directed to "Davey", in which Coda asks him to stop talking to him or showing off his work. Coda reveals in the message that not only had "Davey" been showing these prototypes off without permission long before the timeframe of The Beginner's Guide, but that he had also modified them, adding additional symbolism in order to reinforce "Davey"'s imagined narrative. Coda also reveals that he still made his games, but he no longer distributed them, because they were never really meant for anyone other than himself to begin with. "Davey" admits that The Beginner's Guide was an attempt to apologize to and reconnect with Coda after first finding that message himself, the irony of doing the exact opposite of what Coda asked not being lost on him. "Davey" ends up just kind of leaving the player to reflect on the rest of the game at the end, consumed with self-loathing over his need for validation through his "discovery" and "curation" of an "unknown genius" like Coda and how it ultimately cost him Coda's friendship. This is all very reminiscent of Rin's route, where her artwork is bizarre and surreal, but it doesn't really mean anything, at least not to anyone but Rin herself, because it's not supposed to. It's not for other people, it's for Rin. The notion of art that's not meant to be shared or viewed by others is one I imagine many find strange. Art is understood as self-expression, and expression as a form of communication with others. But there are some people for whom art is a form of self-realization, a way of communicating with oneself. Anyway, my point is, The Beginner's Guide has some similarities with Rin's route and also it's really good and everyone should go play it for a more firsthand sort of Rin experience.
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Jan 7, 2022 05:02
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EclecticTastes posted:By the way, regarding Rin's route, let's talk about The Beginner's Guide. Look, The Beginner's Guide is a very personal thing that Davey Wreden made, and it's very rude of you to share it with other people and attach all this symbolism and meaning to it without his permission. I'm so sorry
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Jan 7, 2022 05:47
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Update 105: Proof of Existence (Act 4, Scenes 8-9) True sex scene this time. Katawa Shoujo OST ~ Passing of Time  Katawa Shoujo OST - Raindrops and Puddles (Rain Sounds) The first day of summer vacation is a disappointment. I woke up. Water came down from the leaden sky in Biblical proportions. I was optimistic at the time. A quick summer shower, I thought. Torrents of rain for a few minutes, then it's gone. No such luck. .png) Rainwater is relentlessly pouring down from the blue-gray sky outside, streaming down the glass of my window in small brooks and rivers and gathering together to form miniature ponds on the walkways. Just like it has done for the past two and a half hours. So I've been half-assedly cleaning up in between half-assedly reading a book, packing my stuff on the side when I get bored of the first two. The weather drags my spirits pretty down too, making it harder to do anything properly. Something bumping quite loudly against my door rouses me from my apathy. I hope it's not Kenji and his crazy indoors bowling alley. ... I hear no more sounds from the corridor until I walk to the door and open it. (Silence, Rain Sounds Continue) .png) Rin. I wish seeing her would evoke some more emotion in me, but for one, I'm too surprised that she came to see me and for two, she is soaking wet. Her uniform shirt is drenched and she is standing in a self-created puddle. Droplets of rainwater are dripping from her short bangs and sliding down her nose until they fall down from the tip. One. By. One. HISAO: "Umm... hi. How are you feeling?" RIN: "Medium normal." Katawa Shoujo OST - Parity (Rin’s Theme) (Rain Sounds Continue) The relative questionability of her statement aside, she sure doesn't look too good. HISAO: "You're all wet." RIN: "It's because I come from the outside. Do you know it?" HISAO: "Why'd you be outside? It's raining buckets out there, if you haven't noticed." RIN: "I haven't. It's raining pretty hard though. I was on a walk." HISAO: "Is this what you call “wallowing in self-pity?”" RIN: "Do you think I'm pitiful?" HISAO: "No, I implied that you think you are." RIN: "I'm not, and rain is not a sad thing. Don't you ever walk in the rain?" HISAO: "I do, but only with proper equipment, like an umbrella." RIN: "You just need to imagine you have a blue umbrella with white stripes." HISAO: "It might be tough when rain is falling on my head." RIN: "Just imagine harder." … Yeah, she definitely is back to normal. Those half-sarcastic, inconsiderate remarks that really push my buttons even though she doesn't mean it, that vacant, spaced-out stare that always expects more than it gives. It's so... very much like her. RIN: "I may need to come in. I need some help with this water and clothes I'm wearing." My brain quickly solves this equation, and I stumble with my words, a stark display of contrast against Rin's easygoing self-invitation. HISAO: "But, Emi..." Rin shakes her head vehemently, causing water to sprinkle everywhere. RIN: "She left. Besides she would just worry and fuss until she could not worry or fuss any more, which always takes a troublesomely long time. It's in fact longer than I want to hear her fussing, and I thought you probably are not the fussing kind." (Silence, Rain Sounds Continue) She slumps down on my desk with a squishy sound. Her soaked clothes are making the desk and everything on it wet but she doesn't care. ... HISAO: "Okay. Fine. I'll help you out. I have a towel somewhere. Do you want dry clothes? Is a uniform fine? I'm taller than you, but..." RIN: "Everything is fine." With a little searching I find a fresh uniform and a fluffy towel from the depths of my closet. The towel in one hand and the uniform in the other, I turn to face Rin again, uncertain of the next step. There is something wrong with me, a normal guy would just— RIN: "Stop worrying. It is not a problem." She probably could see right through my hesitant demeanor. As if I was completely transparent to her. I push my anxiety away and concentrate on the eight buttons lined on her shirt, just like mine has. Only the first button is an obstacle, and after getting it over I undo the others with slightly less shaking hands. Katawa Shoujo OST - Letting My Heart Speak (Rain Sounds Continue) Throwing the soaked shirt aside, I reveal Rin's pale upper body, shrouded only in her light blue brassiere which instantly reminds me of her saying it's her favorite color. I try not to think too much about... stuff, but it's hard not to look at her body with what I can only think of as mixed feelings. I don't know what to think of this, so I just watch her. Rin looks... brittle. She is like a shell, a fragile thing just barely holding together. Her ribs, each of them visible under her pale skin, are moving up and down in the rhythm of her breaths. Rin always struck me as quite thin, but I realize now that the manic creative period before the exhibition opening might've caused her to lose weight. Did she eat properly and enough? Definitely not and probably not. This ugly, yet beautiful bare minimum of a human body that belongs to someone I care about is a contradiction of aesthetics in itself, oddly becoming of her. My eyes follow her collarbone to her shoulder and down her arm until the abrupt end. No, it's less than the bare minimum, I think with a passing pang of sadness and some guilt for thinking like that. Her arms, degenerated into almost nothing but bone and skin due to lack of use, look very short now that the long sleeves of her uniform are not covering them: My lack of any negative reaction makes me think that I've actually grown pretty accustomed of the various physical abnormalities of my schoolmates. I always wondered why Rin keeps her shirt sleeves long, only tying them in a simple knot at where the elbow would be. It seems a bit impractical, but then again she is not exactly the pinnacle of practicality. Maybe she likes it, maybe it is somehow important to her. Maybe there is no deeper meaning to it. I feel like asking, and almost do, but Rin's miserable state requires a higher priority of my attention. She's stopped talking too, after we ran out of spiky greetings. I guess there is no need for chitchat then. .png) I pick up the towel from the bed and wrap it around her head, rumpling it all over her hair until most of the rainwater is hopefully soaked into the fabric. She peeks from below the towel at me, looking up with impassive eyes. It looks like she wants to say something without saying it. It's that kind of a look. But I can't read what she is thinking about from her face, so I just keep on fussing with the towel around her shoulders and hair. The silence is oppressive, terrifying. Communication between us has suddenly been reduced to the movements of my hands and the towel, and Rin swaying her body to and fro. My jagged breathing and her quiet breaths, trying to find a common rhythm that just is not there. I think I can hear her heartbeats, or maybe they are just mine redoubled. As I brush a rogue strand of hair aside from her ear, Rin suddenly presses her cheek against the back of my hand. The contact is electric, a jolt of current surging through me. .png) Whether she seeks comfort, warmth or just my touch I wouldn't know, but I can't help touching her back, caressing her soft cheek with my hand. And with closed eyes, she kisses me, on the fingers, counting the joints with her lips... I am saddened beyond my expressive capability. Here we are, a boy and girl, both in love or something like that with each other, or maybe not... and yet... Something is broken, I can feel it in me and in Rin; in the way our gazes merely brush against each other, shying away from contact; in her closed, timid posture and in my way of touching her like a china doll, afraid of shattering her delicate form. In how we are closer than we have ever been, yet I'm not feeling happy. It's like yesterday. When did tenderness and forlornness become one and the same word, acts of affection start invoking only longing? ...How, why did we end up like this? “No, don't answer that,” I'd like to say to myself, but fighting against the omniscience of self-awareness is a lost cause. Still, I am here, and Rin is here, and it feels like she might be able to solve whatever problems she has. And if she can, why couldn't I? Why couldn't we? It feels like taking that step is too much, too difficult, too uncertain. So for now, all I can do is dry her up so she won't get a cold again. I pet her head, trying to sort out the hair that refuses to be sorted out even when wet. A pair of dark, glazed eyes follows my every movement. HISAO: "Pants too?" She nods an answer, leans back and spreads her legs, with a grotesquely inviting gesture that makes a nasty feeling crawl up and down my spine like a bad premonition. It's not enough to sober me though, as the silence is starting to make me feel detached from myself. I move automatically, without thinking even though I should; I should talk to her about this, or at least about something. The silence is a spell, a pact that has bound us to this private world made of the dull sound of rainfall and the soft feel of her skin against my fingers. The button of her trousers is fastened tight, but it opens surprisingly easily. Slipping them off is hard, mostly because she is sitting on them, with no intention of standing up to ease my task. I kneel down uncomfortably and titillatingly between her legs so I can quickly dry her bare feet, remembering that they are as important to her as hands are to me. As I work the towel up from her ankles, Rin brushes her thigh against my cheek and nudges the small of my back with her heel to make me come closer. I look up to meet her silent stare that was waiting for me to look up. That unassuming, expectant stare seems to say that the ball is in my court. Katawa Shoujo OST - Romance in Andante II .png) You know how a lot of the sex scenes we’ve seen so far have been extraneous, or at least not crazy important to the plot? That isn’t the case here. They get closer, he goes down in her, and then he pauses to think about what’s happening. HISAO: "You know, this really is not what friends should be doing." I whisper, once again noticing how such a simple matter as talking can be overbearingly difficult at times. RIN: "Will you stop being my friend?" That wasn't what I meant, but her serious tone and the layers of connotations behind Rin's question give me pause. HISAO: "Nah." RIN: "I... think it might be all right. Even if you did." I hug her and smile into her hair, understanding Rin perfectly for once. RIN: "You are wet." The remnants of water on her skin have drained into my shirt. Somehow, even her statements of the obvious make me glad right now. HISAO: "You're right. I am. But that's your fault." RIN: "I want to see you."  I comply, standing back to open the buttons of my shirt, much more quickly than when I undid Rin's buttons. A sudden sense of haste strikes me, spurring me to rush forward. Every second I'm not touching Rin is a second wasted, a chance lost. My belt buckle proves an obstacle despite my ability to open it in an eyeblink under normal circumstances. While I fumble with it, I don't notice Rin bringing her foot up between us until she starts tracing my chest with her toe. I look down to see what she's looking at... HISAO: "My heart..." I reflexively flinch back, covering the scar tissue in the middle of my chest. The shallow mark that the surgery following my heart attack left on my body has healed already but... well, it's not a particularly pretty sight if not overly repulsive either. It's barely noticeable, but she does have an eye for detail. Is this why she said she wanted to see me? I had sorta forgotten about this because of all this mess with Rin, but now all the unpleasant things connected to my condition surface at once, rushing through my mind like a flash flood. And oh God all the stories about old guys getting heart attacks when having sex, what if... RIN: "Hisao." ... Realizing that I might just have spoiled the mood, I stumble to explain myself. HISAO: "Ah... sorry, it's just that..." RIN: "Let me touch you." Her eyes are sultry, inviting as she sits there bare naked without an inkling of shame. I never thought Rin could look like that. Yeah, I know this is not how it should go. Even though Rin is right here, even though there should be no more questions, no obstacles, not this maddening feeling that something is constantly wrong... The same feeling that clutched my heart yesterday makes its appearance. We are together. In a way that is difficult to define, it eludes description as stubbornly as it evades change. Would a relationship like this be all right? Could we ever change to become closer? Even though we would stay together for all of eternity, we might never find our mutual understanding. But there is no such thing as eternity. This may mean that we will not be together forever. If not our differences, then the flow of time will pull us apart with irresistible force. Rin is a creature of the moment, of whim and of impulse. I am nothing of the sort. This is a fact that I can understand very clearly. If for no other reason, for this reason I should grasp this moment. Even if it's the only moment we will ever have, I should not let myself spoil it. Even if I can't escape myself. Rin can't either, I know it now. We both have things we can't let go, things we can't not think. Feelings we can't not feel. But she allows herself to want me without any restraint. Here and now. HISAO: "I'm sorry, you know..." RIN: "Hisao, you really have to stop worrying." Rin interrupts me before I get further, which is good because I don't know what I could have said. Her voice, void of its usual spaciness, scolds me softly, without an edge. RIN: "You really have to learn to let go." She scans me calmly, almost calculatingly. I wonder what I look like through her eyes. drat. They are so green it almost hurts. I always was so enchanted by her eyes, those mysterious, captivating eyes that always were too restless for their own good. But I was also always intimidated by them. Yeah. Rin is intimidating, on more than one level and especially right now. She is frighteningly lucid, the goosebumps on her skin giving away that she is cold, or scared too. Either way, I steel myself and step back to Rin, embracing her to feel her in my arms again and to banish my doubts. The sight of her gentle, loving eyes seems to melt those doubts away like the last snow of winter. She presses her head against my shoulder, seeking a place to rest herself in, leaning against me like I lean against her. RIN: "Let go." They begin, only for Rin to stop this time. RIN: "Wait..." I stop moving, slightly alarmed. Maybe it hurts, or... She looks at me in a way that I can't really begin to interpret. RIN: "Is this it?" HISAO: "...Huh?" RIN: "You said I don't have to be alone." Her eyes are full of an innocent, fuzzyheaded confusion that makes me chuckle a little and pet the back of her head. HISAO: "Yeah. This is what I meant. That you have someone you can come to when you get soaked in a rain. It means you are not alone. If there is such a person for you." She answers with a kiss… They have their moment and the camera fades to white as they finish. Katawa Shoujo OST ~ Passing of Time (Rain Sounds Continue) Passing of Time is played in full here, instead of the eight second clip that normally plays during scene transitions – the only time that happens in the game..png) The next section consists of text displayed center screen, without text boxes. Present. “Present” is a fleeting and vague concept at best. The moment between the past and the future? That doesn't really mean anything. Thinking too much about things that don't make sense is a waste of time. That's why living through the present is always the best option. Besides, for us who can't foresee the future and who forget the past too easily, present is really the only proof of our existence. Even though existence will go on even if you forget about it for a while, it's good to seize the day at least every once in a while. That way... you can confirm that you are, in fact... alive. Katawa Shoujo OST - Raindrops and Puddles (Rain Sounds Continue) I am pretty sure that the girl who is standing there half-naked, staring out of the window of my room, has a much better grasp of “present” than I do. As for me... well, right now I'm somewhat confused by my present state, since I should try to locate my shirt and not stare at Rin's butt. But I just can't stop looking at her. She is so close to the glass that her nose is probably going to leave a mark. At least her breathing does, when it condenses on the rain-cooled window glass before quickly disappearing again. My shuffling around to get dressed doesn't rouse Rin from her contemplation, which is fine, really. I don't mind the silences as much as I used to. Only after I'm almost finished with buttoning up my shirt does Rin say something, still without turning to look at me. RIN: "Let's go somewhere." HISAO: "Where?" I can only assume she is inviting me and not the windowsill, but it's a fair guess. RIN: "I know." HISAO: "What?" RIN: "Help me get dressed. I think today is the day. Come on, clothes." Clothes, clothes... what an impatient tone. I crouch down to pick up her bra from the floor where it had fallen, discarded in the haste of undressing and forgotten there. Hanging it from between my fingers like a dead fish, the same hesitation that grasped me when I was undressing Rin is creeping inside my head again. Is intimacy really something this difficult for me to handle? RIN: "Come on, you got it off just fine. This is the same but the other way around. It's like talking backwards. Ysae s'ti tub, drah smees." Perplexed by her sudden and prodigious display of mental processing capacity, I forget to attempt reversing her gibberish back. I'm pretty sure I couldn't switch to talking backwards that fluidly even with some practice. HISAO: "Umm, could you repeat that?" RIN: "Ysae s'ti tub, drah smees." … HISAO: "Got it. Fine, I'll give it a try." Rin was right, the locking mechanism is simple enough, and I get the little plastic hooks right on the third attempt. HISAO: "There." RIN: "Ti tsujda ot evah uoy won." HISAO: "What? Please stop that, I don't speak backwardese." She shakes her head as if needing to banish the backwards way of thinking with a physical gesture. I know a few people who could benefit from that kind of ability. RIN: "I got stuck. Now you have to adjust it." HISAO: "Adjust?" RIN: "That's what I said." HISAO: "No, I asked what you meant." RIN: "You know, so that they are... fine." Oh. Fine, you say? ... As I have no idea when her breasts are supposed to be “fine,” I end up fumbling around her chest for a good while without really getting anywhere. Not that I would complain, but Rin does. RIN: "Emi is better than you at this." Her impatient tone ticks me off, even though I can't really disagree. Rin suddenly seems to be in an awful hurry. HISAO: "Yeah well excuse me, could that be because she is a girl and can actually relate?" RIN: "I don't think so, she has just about as much chest as you do." (Silence, Rain Sounds Continue) .png) With her bra and breasts eventually “fine” as they should, the rest of her clothes are considerably easier to put on. Rin launches towards the door even though her shirt is not even buttoned up all the way yet. Left with little choice, I run after her. Katawa Shoujo OST - Air Guitar (Rain Sounds Stop, Nature Sounds) As soon as I realize that we are heading for the side entrance leading to the forest, I think I know where Rin wanted to go, although I couldn't say why she'd want to go there. Then again, I can't really assume my guesses to be anywhere near correct when Rin is concerned, not even for a quite generous definition of “correct.” The forest behind the walls smells of rain, the last raindrops are still dripping from the wet undergrowth into the earth despite the rain being gone for a while already. We stroll along with an unhurried pace that Rin sets, giving me time to take in the calming atmosphere. I think I can hear Rin saying hello to at least three different trees while she walks past them, but I ignore it, just like the trees do. She leads me to the narrow side path leading up to the hilltops, as I guessed. I peek through the canopy trying to find a rainbow, but there doesn't seem to be one. It's perfect weather for rainbows. The sun is shining low, and rain has passed not too long ago. Well, whatever. I lower my eyes from the treetops to see the gaunt back of the girl who is climbing up the hill slowly, without losing her balance. A few steps ahead of me on the path, but still within my reach. I don't think I ever could reach a rainbow, but reaching Rin... it seems less impossible than it used to seem. .png) The clear sky greeting us from above the meadow clearing seems vast and beautiful. A strong wind is herding the rainclouds away from the town, to the other side of the mountains in the distance. The sight is pretty, but... … (Silence, Nature sounds) .png) A speck of white flies past the edge my peripheral vision, but when I turn to look, it's already gone. Another follows, then a third. Before I realize it, dozens of almost invisible small tufts of white are flying all around us. .png) RIN: "Look, the flowers." Ah. I see it now. Katawa Shoujo OST - Comfort (Nature Sounds) .png) The sea of dandelions that covered the hilltop on our last visit has changed over the days. Where there was bright yellow before, there is now fluffy white. Some of the flowers have already shed their seeds, but many are still waiting for a suitable gust of wind. Today those gusts are not in short demand, every now and then they shake the grass thoroughly, and suddenly the air is thick with dandelion seeds. One by one, the seeds separate from the flower heads and are lifted away. A commonplace event, but one that seems to fascinate Rin for some reason. She's turning her head from side to side, marveling at the change happening all around her as the seeds fly away. I watch them too, following the white tufts floating with the wind towards the horizon, and imagine that I can see them even after they disappear from my sight. … RIN: "Hisao." HISAO: "What is it?" RIN: "Do you love me?" I snap to attention, to meet her suddenly very serious face that is not looking only at the flowers any more. What a tough question, asked just like that, out of the blue. Still, her bluntness compels me to answer rapidly. HISAO: "I don't know. Maybe I do." Maybe too rapidly. RIN: "What does that mean?" HISAO: "...I don't know." Rin sighs, perhaps unhappy with my wishy-washy answer. I would be too. RIN: "Me neither. I don't think I know much about love." HISAO: "... ...It's fine, isn't it?" “How should I know?”, the shrug of her shoulders seems to say, hesitating to give a firmer answer. She stays silent for only a second too long, but even that second isn't long enough for me to think ahead... .png) RIN: "I love you." Those three words freeze me in place like a rabbit staring into headlights, but I'm not a rabbit and I'm just staring into Rin's eyes that seem far, far too impassive for what she just let out of her mouth. Rin looks pretty serious though, until she sticks out her tongue, frowns a little and confuses me even more than her words did. Why does she look mildly unhappy? Was it a confession of her deepest feelings, a test to see how I would react, a test to see how she would react? RIN: "It tastes weird." HISAO: "...Tastes?" RIN: "Yeah. So weird." She laughs, maybe nervously or so I want to think, but stops midway when she notices how strange it sounds. RIN: "Like... I don't know what, I... don't think there is a word for this." Rin keeps on talking as though there was no meaning behind her words, steady and careless words dropping from the same tongue that formed the more important ones. RIN: "A word for... ummm..." Except. RIN: "...it's like..." She can't. RIN: "..." Find the words. RIN: "..." Rin just keeps staring at me, stumbling with her words as if her brain suddenly ground to a halt. She looks awfully confused, much like how I feel right now as I wait for her to explain. But she doesn't, she just blinks a few times, the flutter of her long lashes catching my fancy because she looks like she is petrified otherwise. Until I realize what they were fighting against. .png) It's those weird tears again, not associated with sadness or happiness, not pitiable sobbing nor laughter of joy. Just tears, spontaneously and without a warning, like that one time in her classroom. RIN: "Ah." Just a few of them, not enough to make a fuss about, so Rin doesn't make a move to hide them even after noticing. Rin cries, looking like she has no idea why, and somehow a great uneasiness grows in my chest when I look into her watery eyes that stare right back at me. It petrifies me too, the shock of the incomprehensibility of this situation. I just don't know what is happening any more. HISAO: "Rin? What's wrong?" RIN: "I..." She shakes her head in confusion, stumbling to get the words out of her mouth. RIN: "Sorry... I might be a little afraid of you." The words are muttered slowly, with a small voice that is as disbelieving of what it's saying as I am. HISAO: "What? Why?" RIN: "I don't know. Saying that just made me feel like that. People cry when they are afraid, right? See? I can do it too." She's averting her gaze now, deliberately not looking at me. It bewilders me, at least as much as what she is saying. RIN: "I... I sometimes, with you, want to run away so badly but I can't move it's like my legs turn into lemon panna cotta pudding and my heart feels like it's going to explode and..." She slumps her shoulders melancholically. RIN: "Has a thing like this ever happened to you?" …I remember the leaden sky above the frozen forest and the sound of the leafless branches clacking against each other. It's like a memory from another life. HISAO: "Yeah. Once. My heart hurt a lot back then, too." RIN: "But I thought your thing was not contagious." I shake my head and a tiny, slightly forced smile rises on my lips. The other ailment of my heart could very well be contagious and I wouldn't care a bit. HISAO: "What are you afraid of? I never thought I was scary." Rin shakes her head desperately, as if knowing that the tangle inside her mind won't be undone with just that. RIN: "You make me feel that I should be someone else than me. It's a scary thing. It happens when you are being nice to me. Like yesterday. I never know what to do at times like that. It's hard." Her voice is barely audible, a whispered admission of something that is too embarrassing to even think, not to mention to say aloud. Rin has never been one to be embarrassed so she does utter it aloud, only timidly as if by instinct. RIN: "But I want to do something. But I don't know if this me can." For a moment, we just stare at each other as if waiting for the other to say something. ... HISAO: "You are so stupid." Rin's lips taste salty and scared against mine. As I grasp her into an embrace, I feel my heart thumping in my chest painfully. Even though I am glad that she can say things like that, they make me sad after all. Rin's spirit, her passion, her strength. All those things that I hold dear are the ones I don't want to change. How should I treat them? Where are they headed to? Is that future irrevocably different from mine? That anxiety will never loose its grip on my heart, but I think I could learn to live with it. Slowly, the pain in my heart dies out, and it settles into the same rhythm as Rin's. We listen to that for some time. ... After our lips break apart, it takes a while for either of us to realize that we can say something now. ... (Silence) RIN: "See? You are a really kind person, even when you are not. It's the most scariest thing ever. I think... that all I was ever afraid of is your kindness." … HISAO: "Is it bad? Even if you are afraid?" She thinks about this for a while, furrowing her brow as though this was some kind of hard math problem. RIN: "No. I'm all right with it. It's fine, if it's you." Like a weight lifted from my chest, her words elate my heart, filling it with... I don't know, happiness? What else could it be? This time my smile is genuine. Rin steps back, still smiling gently at me like I do at her. .png) While she wipes her face on her shoulder, I pick up a round, plump dandelion clock and bring it to my pursed lips. Pfff... They spread out into the wind that picks them up to carry them to a new home. To think, only a few short weeks ago they were so different. This is change. … HISAO: "Hey, so the flowers became what they were meant to become, like you said the last time. What about you? Did you become a true artist? Or did you not, because you ran away?" She pauses for a while to ponder my question... ...and shrugs her shoulders. It almost makes me laugh. The carefree easiness of her gesture is a lovely thing, a sign of how Rin can, truly and really, without any restraints whatsoever, shed the entire weight of the world from her shoulders, should she will so. She is, in every possible and probably a few impossible ways... free. And I think I might love her for that. RIN: "I don't think it matters. Let's just watch the clouds for today." Katawa Shoujo OST - Aria De l’Etoile .png) She takes five steps to climb on a large rock so she can rise as high as it's possible here, and stands on tiptoes. When you reach for the clouds, every inch counts. HISAO: "Sure, let's watch the clouds. It's good to do something you really want to do, every now and then." RIN: "Yeah. You are probably right." I glance upwards at the blue sky opening high above us. It's a deep, cerulean vastness that spreads to fill my entire field of vision and beyond. Yet Rin stays on her rock, peering at the distant horizon where the rainclouds are drifting further away from us. RIN: "I have decided something." That dreaming voice of hers, spoken to the wind that carries it to my ears, is lacking resolve in tone but is full of it in meaning. RIN: "It's all right to be me after all." It's all right? Her decisions always seem to be pretty... far out. Well, I suppose that is an important realization. Coming to terms with oneself, accepting yourself, being fine with what you are. A simple resolution of heart that for some people is overbearingly hard to do, if not impossible. I do realize well enough that I might also be one of those people. Rin too... Maybe we are not that different after all. Maybe to accept someone else, you must first accept yourself. Maybe that is a necessary step, which we didn't take until now. Looking at her standing on that rock, I believe that she can find whatever she is looking for. And so can I. .png) The wind catches her hair and clothes, and Rin spreads her short arms into an embrace that is so very very tiny, but as wide as she can ever do. For a moment it looks like she herself might take flight, and I have to hold myself back to not reach for her shoulder, to not drag her back to me. But this picture is something I can only watch, it is something for me to remember. Rin's sleeves are flapping freely in the wind, her hair wildly tousled by it, her skin touched by the setting sun. Her sleek form that I've come to adore is quivering in the cool wind that carries the small white specks past her, each a beginning of a new flower. All that is engraved inside my heart. Like those tiny seeds scattered into the wind, I'm sure that Rin too can take her place in this world without the need to create her own inside of it. Maybe she believes it too, and standing as close to heaven as possible, she is giving the world a big hug. To me it seems like the entire world really could fit there, between those small arms of hers, inside of her all-encompassing embrace. .png) RIN: "Hisao?" She looks at me in the same way she calls my name, carelessly over her shoulder with a strange happiness in her voice and in her eyes. I gaze into those mysterious, dark eyes that are curiously twinkling from below her auburn hair. Although I'm too far from her to see it, I'm sure they are reflecting my image. HISAO: "What is it?" RIN: "What's the word for when it feels inside your heart that everything in the world is all right?" THE END
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Jan 7, 2022 16:49
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Falconier111 posted:
Clearly Hisao is not a practitioner of Absurdism. When life or a random thought presents with a situation that makes no sense, the only meaningful option is to lean into it, and out-absurd the situation. Rin gets it.
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Jan 7, 2022 17:08
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So, yeah, this whole route was utterly ruinous for me when I first played KS. Like, it was delivered piecemeal and in a somewhat altered format here, so for those who haven't played for yourselves, imagine getting the whole thing all in one go, with the appropriate musical cues throughout. I was glad I did Rin's route last (I may have played the whole game in a single sitting) because I felt so raw and hollowed-out that I literally could do nothing else that evening and just went to bed. It's hard to convey just how harrowing it is when experienced like that. And the bad ending, which is far easier to get accidentally than in any other route (and which I wound up getting when I first played), just completely tears your heart out. Whoever wrote Rin's route was simply merciless.
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Jan 7, 2022 17:37
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e^^ ha! I found it just so relatable that it was the least harrowing to me, it felt like I understood what the gently caress somebody was talking about. Rin loving rules an definitely the easiest character for me to relate to, despite me not being any sort of artist at all.
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Jan 7, 2022 17:41
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This route was the hardest for me to get really immersed in. I simple could not wrap my head around Rin's personality, so I only ever got a really shallow understanding of each scene. Very well written though.
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Jan 7, 2022 17:48
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I apologize, but— "I'm flying,
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Jan 7, 2022 18:10
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Yeah. The writer (Aura) could have taken the easy way out and written a straightforward Manic Pixie Dream Girl story. Instead the story is unambiguously about her struggle to be understood, and Hisao's perspective serves this purpose (even Nomiya's relatively simple characterization is a mean to the same end). At every step of the way the character feels authentic enough that she ends up being one of the best portrayal of neurodivergence I've ever seen. The writing's also generally punchier, more atmospheric. I'm not sure I fully buy how quickly Hisao's internal monologue evolves in this route when comparing it to the other ones, but it makes for a good escalation in getting the reader to get a bit closer to Rin's headspace without being too didactic about it.
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Jan 7, 2022 18:27
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YaketySass posted:Yeah. I think Aura was a gifted kid in their childhood. This route has Former Gifted Kid energy.
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Jan 7, 2022 19:05
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So, uh, when I was writing the wrap-up update I completely forgot to talk about Rin's role in the beta, and since already hideously long I'd rather not expand it even more. So feel free to discuss that now! Also, Aura left this as a note in the game's source code at the start of act 2: Aura posted:"I've been playing around with different styles for her to somehow communicate her state of mind through dialogue style. Currently (and this seems to be the final solution), there are two distinct "modes". Whenever she's in free-form stream-of-consciousness blabbering mode, she uses awkward grammar badly and has extreme trouble with idioms, sayings and figurative speech. And she talks in short sentences. Many of them in sequence. otoh when she pulls herself together and becomes overtly lucid, she starts talking without contractions and uses way more words per sentence than necessary to communicate whatever might currently be swirling inside of her mind. these are not hard and fast rules, more like general guidelines thus legibility and smooth flow of text always overrides them. Edit as you see fit really."
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Jan 7, 2022 19:49
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I missed the chance to comment on the last update so I'm doing it now. Falconier111 posted:HISAO: "That's good, isn't it? Anyway, you should go see the teacher and apologize properly (Wrong) . I think he is worried about you (WRONG!). Can you do that?" Fixed that for you Hisao Falconier111 posted:
Continued to fix that for you Hisao. You could show a drive-in triple feature on Nomiya's projection. He's a glorified death cultist who thinks sacrificing Rin to the art gods is doing her a favor and will absolve him of his own cowardice at the same time. He is broken in the worst way. And Hisao...Hisao has dropped the ball on this route. A lot. Mostly in the form of judging when he should been comforting. But for a lot of it...Rin is a 70lb iron ball covered in spikes. I can't diagnose her but 'neurodivergent' does not begin to describe it. This route was the only route I completed before giving in my own issues. It was both crushing and vexing. I never quite understood how Hisao could fall in love with Rin because Rin is so absolutely unknowable and arcane.
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Jan 7, 2022 20:36
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I don’t really get the impression Rin is unknowable. Kind of tedious to deal with but I never felt like the underlying mindset was super hard to understand? This route was interesting in a very detached academic kind of way but did not connect with me in any way.
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Jan 7, 2022 20:53
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