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Mix. posted:
 Congrats on an excellent LP, Falconier. 
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Feb 26, 2022 08:49
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EclecticTastes posted:Prior to the game's release (when Hideaki's age was unknown), a lot of the game's fans made the same assumption. But, like with everything else in KS, the devs avoided the obvious route. They did, eventually. This... was unfortunately the triggering Hideaki subplot I mentioned earlier was in the early story drafts that got leaked.  The Satous and Hakamichis were unrelated in that version but the massive age gap was still present, alongside another scene involving Akira thinking Emi was much, much younger than she really is but still making suggestive comments about her. That version of Lilly's route did specifically name Hideaki as the person leaving with Akira. Beta!Akira was a lovely person but treated like a joke because of the double standard regarding female predators.Thankfully that is not the Akira or Hideaki we got in the end! I'm trying to focus on the positives here, being that at some point the writers apparently got their heads out of their asses regarding this and several other issues present in the early story drafts. (A confession: As a teenager I spent a lot of time around 4chan and sites with similar cultures. This was not good at all for an adolescent brain and influenced me to the point where I reflexively blamed myself for my trauma because it "wasn't that bad" and I "deserved it", and it took me until my early 20s to dig back up out of that pit. So, I try to hope people in a similar position also improved themselves, unless/until they show that they haven't. I don't know any of the authors or artists of KS personally, though, so all I can do is guess. That KS avoided being the disaster its concept and origins could have made it be is a good sign, maybe.) (Confession 2: Actually, I was briefly acquainted with one of the artists for Emi's route - we had mutual friends but never interacted one-on-one, so I can't say I truly knew them. Maybe it's high time I checked in on how my old friends are doing, though. I'm trying to make this the year I get my mental health back in order and some of that's already involved trying to reconnect with people. If that artist ever sees this... uhhh hello there, I was in that one particularly huge Smash Bros. community! I was one of the players with a special love for Mario RPGs! Sorry for never speaking to you, and also sorry that I was an ignorant, bratty teen at the time. I said a lot of things that at the time I thought were harmless jokes, but looking back was just hurtful.) TooMuchAbstraction posted:Keep in mind that this wasn't an "opportunity" from Lilly's perspective; she was summoned back by parents she barely knows and that are maybe implied to not really give a poo poo about her. Last time she was in Scotland, by her own admission, she was moping about how she wasn't back with Hisao in Japan. The main thrust of Hisao's revelation at the end is, hey, you're allowed to go for what you want. Lilly wants to stay, but she doesn't feel that she can, not because going to Scotland is actually important to anyone, but because someone else expects her to do what they told her to. I remember there being a popular fanfic that explored this idea by covering how the writer thought her parents would react; at one point her father accuses Hisao of faking his disability just to manipulate Lilly, before later admitting that he's the one who's been trying to guilt her by hoping she was miserable living with Hisao and Hanako and that the only reason he visited Lilly was to try again to convince her to come to Scotland. There's still the concerning implications in Hisao doing something so reckless it caused harm to himself, and the narrative treating it as a romantic gesture that solves his immediate problems. That aside, the impression I get is that Hisao/Lilly/Hanako became a found family, and that Lilly is happier being with this family than she is with the distant relatives who arguably abandoned her once already. And I'm a big sucker for found family tales. - - - So, here we are at the end. Lilly was my final route too, because I'd gotten spoiled and someone suggested hers should be played last because of the feel-good epilogue. Seeing all the stories again was a fun bit of nostalgia, as silly as it might sound being nostalgic for something that was released when I was an adult. And it's good to be able to revisit media with more life experience and be able to see what held up, and what didn't. Even with the flaws that stand out through a critical lens, there's a lot about the game that ended up leaving a positive impact on people. I'm not good with sappy speeches so I'll leave it at, thanks for all your hard work, Falconier111. MiracleFlare fucked around with this message at 01:21 on Mar 6, 2022 |
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Feb 26, 2022 11:16
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Nidoking posted:Well, you can show me all the romance stories you want, but I still can't imagine being in a situation with mutual affection with someone who has an opportunity that involves needing to be away from me and me saying "Please stay with me instead of taking the opportunity." That’s the thing though. It’s not an opportunity for Lilly. It’s a (perceived) obligation.
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Feb 26, 2022 11:55
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Captain Oblivious posted:That’s the thing though. It’s not an opportunity for Lilly. It’s a (perceived) obligation. I'm well aware of that. But in my mind, anything that takes someone farther away from me is definitely an opportunity, and one that they will regret not taking.
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Feb 26, 2022 14:23
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Nidoking posted:I'm well aware of that. But in my mind, anything that takes someone farther away from me is definitely an opportunity, and one that they will regret not taking. Please tell this sentiment in more or less these words to a therapist. This is not an e/n thread and I'm just an internet stranger but this is a rather alarming statement to hear somebody say. MiracleFlare posted:They did, eventually. This... was unfortunately the triggering Hideaki subplot I mentioned earlier was in the early story drafts that got leaked. Score one for editing processes. This is actually rather interesting - when somebody says "4chan inspired dating sim," incredibly insensitive jokes about predation, boringly ~whacky~ plots, and misogyny would be the main things I'd expect, and as you say that stuff is present in the earliest drafts, but not present in the published version. To me that's just "the process works." I do some writing and editing and it's pretty typical to just spill out some absolute garbage that you edit out later because it's clogging up your brain and you won't be able to think about the good stuff until you've actually thought through and eliminated the bad stuff.
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Feb 26, 2022 16:28
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Tulip posted:Please tell this sentiment in more or less these words to a therapist. This is not an e/n thread and I'm just an internet stranger but this is a rather alarming statement to hear somebody say. Ah, good. I was worried some people might not take my word for it when I said that everyone assumes I must never have seen a therapist if I display any signs of mental health problems. It's unfortunate for you that exchanging words with a person who has a certificate to hang on their wall has not magically reconfigured my entire mental state into one that makes you comfortable. Meanwhile, I plan to continue my current mental health treatment plan, and I don't plan on telling an internet stranger what that is.
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Feb 26, 2022 17:04
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Nidoking posted:Ah, good. I was worried some people might not take my word for it when I said that everyone assumes I must never have seen a therapist if I display any signs of mental health problems. It's unfortunate for you that exchanging words with a person who has a certificate to hang on their wall has not magically reconfigured my entire mental state into one that makes you comfortable. Meanwhile, I plan to continue my current mental health treatment plan, and I don't plan on telling an internet stranger what that is. No one here expects a therapist to be the magical cure for anything the moment you schedule an appointment. Tulip is simply concerned for your well being and is trying to give helpful suggestions based on the limited information in that particular post you made. It should be taken merely as an expression of well-intended concern.
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Feb 26, 2022 17:25
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Nidoking posted:Ah, good. I was worried some people might not take my word for it when I said that everyone assumes I must never have seen a therapist if I display any signs of mental health problems. It's unfortunate for you that exchanging words with a person who has a certificate to hang on their wall has not magically reconfigured my entire mental state into one that makes you comfortable. Meanwhile, I plan to continue my current mental health treatment plan, and I don't plan on telling an internet stranger what that is. You're the one posting about your issues
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Feb 26, 2022 17:50
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Arguing about a specific user’s mental state is not a good idea and we should probably divert to a different topic. Like, Cobalt, that’s actually a really point about what Lilly’s thread teaches us and I’m kind of  that I missed that aspect. Can I quote you in that post?
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Feb 26, 2022 17:55
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Cobalt-60 posted:In the end, it's about grace. A strange thing to see, but appropriate. I've been thinking about this more and more as I get older. Not just grace but also dignity. Lilly holds herself in a dignified and graceful manner, which our cultural shorthands so often associate with coldness, condescension, incuriosity, snobbishness, parochialism, pretension, and a number of other negative traits. Relevantly even traits that our culture will have blindness metaphors for - a person being blind to the classes beneath them for example. Americans often treat the contrasting aesthetics as being automatically more authentic, sincere, and pro-social. Lilly however is open minded, accepting, generous, warm, adventurous, and expressive. The other students don't seem to be particularly hostile to Hanako, but they aren't the ones who provide the right kind of warmth and comfort to make Hanako comfortable. And it's not that Hanako is the same kind of formal person as Lilly, it's that Lilly is a soothing enough presence for Hanako. Emi isn't a bad person or a person who dislikes Hanako, she's just too bouncy for Hanako. Tulip fucked around with this message at 20:33 on Feb 26, 2022 |
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Feb 26, 2022 18:57
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Update 128: The Future Katawa Shoujo OST - Wiosna I was in high school and regularly frequented 4chan (yeah, I know) when the full version of Katawa Shoujo dropped a little bit over 10 years ago. I had my ADHD diagnosis then but didn’t consider myself disabled yet; the positive reception intrigued for the game intrigued me, but I didn’t have any real connection to the topic and took a year or so to get around to playing it. I downloaded KS to my clunky old MacBook, booted it up, and blazed through Act 1 until I realized I hit Emi’s route – I’d already decided to start with Lilly, you see. A quick restart later, I reached the first choice in her route, then saved and quit for the night. Thus began a pattern: I’d think about the choice on and off all day, open the game, make the choice, play until the next choice, and stop for the night, every day for over a week until I was done (Lilly’s good ending, first try). Then I closed KS and didn’t play it again for several years. As far as I was concerned, I’d beaten the game. While both Emi and Misha have made solid pushes over the years to dethrone Lilly as Best Girl, I still remember how invested I was in getting it right with her back then. In the end, I settled on simple rubric: being a good boyfriend. I modeled my behavior on every healthy relationship I knew and any advice I got from the people in those relationships: if your partner has a concern, address it if you can or at least acknowledge it if you can’t; be supportive and help your partner when asked but respect their boundaries if they don’t want or need it; assume your partner is as competent as you are and don’t hide your problems when they come up. Lo and behold, I breezed through the route picking what I thought were the obvious answers and remember being shocked when I found people complaining how hard the route was. I was like, “did you try being a good person?” Four years later I came back to KS, tried that, and got Hanako’s Bad Ending for coddling her too much, but that’s beside the point; at the time, I was almost giddy at having so successfully navigated some very tense (simulated) social interactions at a time I knew I was failing at that in the real world every day. The lessons it taught me to teach myself never really went away, but for many people KS had an even larger impact. Go to any YouTube video of the OST – it’s been uploaded several times – and go find somebody in the comments talking about how the game stopped them from committing suicide, or helped them repair their relationship with her sister, or made them choose this song to propose to (all of these are real, by the way). Even at the time people immediately understood there was something special here. I remember people joking about “Katawa Dick Syndrome”, coming to masturbate to something weird and ending up too overwhelmed with emotion to get it up (Rin’s name showed up a lot there, with a lot of people implying their horny impatience accidentally helped them relate with her frustration; I doubt that was intentional, but if it was, holy poo poo, dude). The devs helped by being accessible and charismatic, right down to releasing April Fools announcements for everything from voice acting to an anime by Studio DEEN to what looked like an announcement of two new, genuinely compelling routes before the post dissolved into letting you hit on Kenji and buy branded body pillows.  They even released a physical copy. In French, unfortunately. But nothing lasts forever, and the team decided to part ways after specifically denouncing the idea of a Katawa Shoujo 2. By 2018, 4 Leaf Studios had gone dormant. The initial flood of fanwork, enough to fill entire subforums with routes for other characters, elaborate hand-animated music videos, and attempts to dub the whole game, slowed to a trickle. The devs scattered and started working on their own visual novels (a few made that their careers) or just vanished into the Internet. News articles discussing KS dried up and other projects (ones that came out later) would later be dubbed the earliest successful non-Japanese visual novels. The project was over. It wasn’t forgotten, though. Over eight years after KS’s full release, a mod called Doki Doki Blue Skies hit the Doki Doki Literature Club community, its stated goal turning the original game into a psychological drama with a strong focus on realistic mental health issues. It, of course, named Katawa Shoujo as its biggest inspiration. It really isn’t surprising that the people putting together a visual novel in English would be familiar with it, though. Visual novels were already a thing in the West by 2007 – Phoenix Wright already had two sequels out in English – but at that point all the quality ones were still just translated Japanese titles. The KS demo in 2009 didn’t just blow minds because they’d managed to take such a god-awful concept and turn it into something interesting and complex: it may have been the first time someone actually released an original English visual novel of any real length. Certainly the first to get recognition outside visual novel circles. One year later, Digital: A Love Story came out, netting awards on the indie circuit. The full version of Katawa Shoujo dropped in 2012, months before the release of Analogue: A Hate Story and Long Live the Queen, both of which tend to show up early in the histories of the medium. 2014 saw We Know The Devil, 2016 saw VA-11 Hall-A (no LP in the archive, sorry), and 2017 saw Doki Doki Literature Club, a work made specifically to criticize visual novels by somebody who hated visual novels – which, like many good deconstructions, became a breakout hit (in this case the genre’s first). The years since have seen a slew of visual novels ranging from instant classics to garbage clogging up your Steam page – it’s a whole industry now. And yet, five years after release, when asked how they got into visual novels, English-speaking VN fans more often than not named KS. 10 years after release, someone could assert Katawa Shoujo was the only worthwhile Western visual novel and get grudging universal agreement from other fans (DDLC got No True Scotsman’d into a VN non-VN fans read). I’ve noticed, as a historian, there’s a certain level of notoriety a work or person can achieve where the public at large forgets they exist, but scholars and enthusiasts keep talking about them forever. Katawa Shoujo sits comfortably at that point. It’s the Metropolis of original English-language visual novels, which is one of the most specific metaphors I’ve broken out the last few months.  They still have all the downloadable material available, ranging from wallpapers (like this one) to the soundtrack to artbooks. Meanwhile, a couple weeks ago I was chatting with a neurodivergent coworker about the state of acceptance in the world when she brought up she never would’ve dreamed of talking about neurodiversity at work six years ago. A lot has changed in the last few years. Had I tried to run this LP 10 years ago as it is now, it would have either melted down into toxicity or been killed by trolls long before it finished. As time goes on, attitudes towards disability really are softening; I’ve watched it happen. But progress is piecemeal and so frequently reversed that it’s heartbreaking; people constantly slip through the cracks to the complete apathy of the people around them and we face challenges all the time, everything from diversity hiring initiatives offering “competitive” salaries they won’t define to stripping away our ability to vote in the rush to strip other people’s ability to vote. How do we stop this? The answer, I think, lies in relationships. My uncle and his now husband came out in the 70s, and my parents (who met in the community theater) were the first members of our family to support him. My godparents are my Aunt Rae and Uncle Bob; my sister’s godparents are my Uncle Nathan and Uncle John. I don’t really remember my first introduction to the idea of queer people being people because that’s been a part of my life from the beginning. I do remember my first introduction to the other side, though, because it happened when my Scout troup found out my uncles were gay and demanded I renounce them in front of an assembly. To them, they must’ve been testing my faith or trying to save me from something, I don’t know. To me, it was baffling and inhuman, people I didn’t know demanding I denounce my uncles who had a model train set in the basement and kept small-to-medium dogs and expecting me to act like they were doing your favor. And that, I think, is the key: they tried to leverage prejudice against personal relationships, then got smacked when I pulled out and told my now-furious parents exactly what happened. People have a knee-jerk “this is corny” reaction whenever someone brings up the Power of Friendship and/or Love, but that cliché is a cross-culture moneymaker for a reason. If you try to tell people someone they care about is a hosed-up stereotype when they clearly aren’t, it makes them a lot more likely to just give you the middle finger and shift their worldview to fit their reality instead. That’s a big part of why queer rights seemed to accomplish as much in decades as other civil rights movements accomplish in centuries. I think the way forward for us, too. Trouble is, a lot of people see us as, well, baffling and inhuman. We are seen as Other, separate from them in both place and lifestyle. Except, we’re not. Something like 15% of the world’s population is disabled, and that number isn’t falling anytime soon. In fact, it’s increasing, with a pandemic-driven rise in disabilities both mental and physical in populations that previously thought themselves perfectly healthy. This isn’t the first time a pandemic caused severe long-term health issues – polio and AIDS come to mind – but this time we have a densely-networked disability rights movement in place to start spreading the word and recruiting allies on the Internet. As ghoulish as this is to say, we’re looking at an opportunity to change a lot of people’s lives for the better here. But it won’t happen unless we can get people to listen to what we have to say. And that’s where Katawa Shoujo comes in. KS isn’t just special because of its unlikely origins, or because it turned out so well, or because of its content or its community or its legacy. It’s special because for over a decade Katawa Shoujo has been quietly saying that for us. 4LS didn’t make it as some kind of grand sweeping ideological statement, but that doesn’t really matter; to a huge swath of the population, disabled people being treated as full people IS an ideological statement, one they’ve never had to seriously consider before. And KS forces them to consider it not by browbeating them or guilting them or presenting statistics or sob stories, but by making them connect with characters as people who are also disabled. It uses that connection punch through bias just to tell a good story. Now, over the years KS hasn’t exactly escaped criticism, some of it valid. A lot of people dismissed it out of hand because they thought it sounded gross, accused it of being disrespectful because it included sexual content (I wrote a disability corner in part on what’s wrong with that), or hit it with genre-driven double standards: either they leant too far away from visual novels and accused it of being too dialogue-heavy and uninteractive, or they leant too far in, slavishly compared it to Japanese visual novels, and dinged it points because it wasn’t Japanese. The ones that stick are that it’s overwritten and its characters are ultimately clichés. But then… That’s kinda why it works, isn’t it? The game’s gimmick, the psychological hook that sets it apart from other games, is how it builds expectations, hides information disputing them in the text, and punishes you if you don’t pick up on it. KS isn’t just a digitized novel, it’s a video game, one that uses mechanics to enhance the experience by offering challenge. The game doesn’t explore character archetypes in ways other media hasn’t before, but the presence of disability is enough of a psychological baffle for many that the game subverting those archetypes can still come across as a surprise. The game drags on and on at times, but that provides players with enough time to pick through the text and assemble the information they need to really understand the characters in question while burying it in enough noise to make the process challenging. Whether you enjoy the process or not is very much a matter of personal taste, but it is a major reason why it keeps hooking people years later. Every route keys off those two elements. The bright and cheerful girl has a dark past that torments her. But she can actually get by on her own well enough, and trying to sweep in and fix all her problems like she’s helpless will just get you shut down. The shy, traumatized wallflower needs your help to come out of her shell. But she’s a lot stronger than she looks, and if you don’t pick up on that she’ll progress right past you without stopping. The tsundere is rude and domineering to you even though she really wants you around. But that blunt assertiveness isn’t a mask, it’s her actual personality, and her inability to reign it in can hurt the people around her. The spacey art student has trouble connecting with other people. But her problems aren’t the ones you’d identify just looking at her, and trying to pin her down enough to bridge the gap is exactly the wrong thing to do. The proper rich girl is kind, welcoming, and willing to listen. But that doesn’t mean she’s at all submissive, and she’s the one in the leading role, not you. Each route uses game mechanics to further its message in various ways, with varying levels of success; Shizune’s route is only barely interactive and that doesn’t help its many issues, but Rin’s is a shining example of how video game mechanics can be used to tell a story in a more emotionally engaging way then pure text, the kind of game design that on a larger scale wins awards. Katawa Shoujo, whatever its faults, is a Good Game.  A full cast shot, for breaking up the text’s sake. It is also an old game. 4LS stopped updating and patching it in 2015 and had disbanded entirely by 2018; before they wrapped it up, the devs formally renounced the idea of a Katawa Shoujo 2. The subreddit may be active, people may still be rediscovering it, but it isn’t the kind of thing that still puts people in seats. And so we come to this thread. In all honesty, I was expecting Our Stories to fill up quite nicely, especially given how broad I was planning to set my criteria. I was not, however, expecting it to grow until it displaced the other content I included because otherwise it would’ve broken the post character limit. The response, abled and disabled, old fan and newcomer, has been overwhelming, as has the level of trust and openness so many posters have displayed by sharing some very personal stories. I called it Our Stories because even when talking about disability, our stories are usually drowned out by other voices with wider impact; when we remain, it’s usually as a dissenting voice listed in one paragraph of the article or a couple quotes (usually taken out of context) to support somebody else’s conclusion. There are abled people whose posts were included there, but that was by design; partly because a lot of disabled people either haven’t realized they’re disabled or don’t want to admit it to a potentially hostile world, but partially because the whole point of a civil rights movement is getting the majority to treat us as equals – and cutting them out of the conversation is a great way to keep us separate and alien. I would say “I’ve taken great pains to make sure every abled voice included wasn’t also excluding a disabled voice”, but except for one time when the thread was melting down anyway, that really hasn’t been a problem. The abled posters who offered insight into these issues and how they look from their end have mostly been both receptive to what we say and straightforward in expressing what they think. That’s vital: we can’t have parity without people both knowing enough to treat us appropriately and being confident enough in their knowledge that they don’t pussyfoot around issues and let them fester. It hasn’t been perfect, at all, but I never expected it to be. And as for our disabled posters? You guys have been extremely brave and extremely well spoken, sharing stories I doubt many people would’ve even considered with such vividness I know a few people in this thread actually realized they were disabled because of it, and facilitating this kind of self-discovery is the sort of thing many activists can only dream of. I’ve also been surprised (with, again, one exception during Shizune’s route) how both open and confident the thread has been in debate. I’ve only needed to step in a few times, in a subject where the debates ruin relationships. Disability activism can be a vicious, self-destructive world sometimes; there’s so much at stake, there’s so much against us, so many of us have fallen victim to aspects of internalized ableism in ways subtle or overt, and we have so many different needs that we tend to dissolve into infighting. But for the most part this thread has balanced general respect and a determination to stand your ground without holding too many grudges. We need that kind of approach to actually change things. I think that, in spite of my best efforts, some people HAVE felt the need to leave the thread, or decided not to out of discomfort or general lack of spoons. I also know several people said they doubted their contributions were worthwhile, and I bet there were readers who decided against posting for that reason. And while I understand why you said that, I do have something to say: that’s the ableism talking. It doesn’t matter if your story’s similar to one someone else is told, it doesn’t matter how much or how little it’s affected your life, it doesn’t matter if you think other people have it worse than you (and that one’s a particularly insidiously misleading idea); your experiences with disability, to use a cliché, are valid by the fact that you experienced your disability. Some of the hardest-hitting posts in this thread came from people who said just that. Either way, even if this thread wasn’t enough, I hope one day you can find somewhere you feel safe enough to share, if you haven’t already. I wish that could’ve been this thread, but… The thread is over, and I think it’s time for us to look forward. Well, the thread is almost over. I’ll be leaving it up for a week after this post to give people a chance to react, comment, and wrap things up on their end. If you need more time than that to get your thoughts in order, PM me or leave it in the thread and I’ll do so. At the end of that time, I’ll send the thread along to Baldurk for entry into the LPArchive. I’ll include some final instructions in a post after this, but I do want to add that everyone reading this is now invited to participate in the discord I set up for us. The invitation goes for you whatever you identify as, or whether you’re reading this post in the thread or the archive. I encourage everyone to swing by and keep our relationships growing. Falconier111 fucked around with this message at 18:30 on Feb 27, 2022 |
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Feb 27, 2022 17:19
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It’s that time again, folks, one last time. We have a final round of  posts to work into the OP, and I’d like to lay out exactly what happens next. I believe this is a list of all users who’ve given me permission so far:Antistar BurningBeard Captain Oblivious Chloe Jessica Citybeatnik Cobalt-60 Danakir Dance Officer Dareon Dire Lemming Dirk the Average Disposablewords EclecticTastes Evil Kit Explopyro gegi Ghost Car GrayGriffin Karia LXP MadDogMike Marluxia megane Mikl MiracleFlare Mix. mycelia Nidoking Notahippie Nothingtoseehere Psycho Lawnmower Quackles SerthVarnee SimplyUnknown1 SSJ_naruto_2003 StrangeAeon Taberquol Thunk Tulip VictualSquid Violet_Sky YaketySass ZevGun Zurai First of all, drat, thanks to all of you. Second the LP is officially (mostly) over, I’m going to upload it to the LP Archive in about a week. At that time,  every post linked in the OP will be uploaded to the site, so this is your last chance. to check over your posts, request I edit the descriptions, or request I remove them . In the future, I hope people who need to see they aren’t alone can read parts of Our Stories and discover there are people like them out there.Until next Sunday, I’ll be adding further commentary in the thread to the OP. If your name is on the permissions list, let me know in any new posts if you specifically don’t want that post included. If your name isn’t on that list and you’d like your post included, say so at the end - this goes double for Haifisch, Renessia, Poll, SpruceZeus, Dire Lemming, and Omniphile, since you guys have pending posts I’d like to add and don’t have your permission to do so. In a little while (maybe a month), I plan on going back into disability LPing with Doki Doki Blue Skies. But I need a break, I need to do something very different for a bit before I get back to work: The Game of LIFE: Star Wars edition. I hope to see you there.
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Feb 27, 2022 17:24
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Thank you for the LP, and thank you everyone who shared their own stories!Falconier111 posted:I’ll include some final instructions in a post after this, but I do want to add that everyone reading this is now invited to participate in the discord I set up for us. Just a quick note -- this isn't an invite link, so people can't use it to join the server.
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Feb 27, 2022 18:14
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Thanks for making this LP, it has taught me a lot. It has inspired me to bundle up all that I have learned about epilepsy through life experience and present it to my psychiatrist at our next appointment. Maybe she will find it interesting, maybe she won't. But thanks to this thread, she will get the chance to decide that for herself.
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Feb 27, 2022 18:24
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I don't have the time or the bandwidth to write up a big thing right now, but thank you very much for making this thread and taking us through this. It, no joke, is something that I have found very helpful to help me recontextualize my views on a lot of things both personal and otherwise.
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Feb 27, 2022 19:20
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Thanks for doing this LP, it was a real nostalgia trip for me!
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Feb 27, 2022 23:38
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First off, thanks for putting this all together. It's been both a nostalgic ride and a bit of an eye opener on some subjects I hadn't previously given much thought to. Second, you included a lot more of my posts than I felt warranted inclusion, but I trust your judgment on that one. I know I stepped back from oversharing a few times, but I feel like there's enough personal details in my posts that someone that knew me back in the day could read those posts and go "This guy sounds just like this weirdo I went to school with."* I don't, however, have any ideas to remove the identifying details, given how entwined with the ability issues they are. And honestly, anyone capable of doxxing me has much better means at their disposal than some 30-year-old anecdotes, and nothing I've said here could hurt my political career. *I self-identify as a weirdo, I'm owning that language.
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Feb 28, 2022 00:09
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I came at this from more or less the opposite side: I knew nothing about this game going in, and suffice it to say I was pretty apprehensive about it. If it weren't for having seen enough of Falconier's prior LP work to trust his judgment, I wouldn't have come anywhere near this. I don't know what I expected, but I certainly didn't expect this LP would become what it did, nor how much it would affect me (among other things, being triggered by some things here is what led directly to my PTSD diagnosis, I'm not sure if I said that here). What a journey.
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Feb 28, 2022 02:03
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If I haven't already, I give blanket permission for my posts to be included. I seem to remember you saying there was a second post from me you were going to add to the OP, but I only see one, and don't know which one you were referring to.
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Feb 28, 2022 02:11
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Cheers for the thread, was a great read.
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Feb 28, 2022 03:07
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Thanks for the LP, Falconier - it must have been a massive amount of work to do, but for what it's worth, I think it was worth it, for tackling such an important topic. It almost feels secondary at this point after all the supplementary material, but it's cool to finally see Katawa Shoujo done justice in an LP. Thanks to all who posted about their experiences, too! I know I had to fight back the feeling that I was being an over-sharing weirdo every time I posted something about my own problems in here, so I appreciate the effort everyone went to in sharing their stories. I know it's not easy - but I learned a lot from what people said here. Kind of like Falconier said above, it's amazing how things have changed lately; I couldn't imagine talking so openly about suffering from social anxiety disorder even just a few years ago. It's... weird to get used to maybe not having to be quite so guarded about it now. Seeya, worst girl. 
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Feb 28, 2022 06:03
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I'm actually a little humbled that my handful of experiences with neurodivergence made it into the stuff being brought forward. But then I've had years of dealing with what was considered simple character flaws before being metaphorically slapped aside the head and given help.
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Feb 28, 2022 07:12
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This was an outstanding LP, Falconier. I've been following since the beginning, but couldn't think of anything to add while it was going. Now I at least want to drop another expression of thanks on the pile here. I happened to be following Hanako's artist when KS came out, so I found out about it that way. Without counting Phoenix Wright, I'd never played any VNs before, so I was wary, but the concept was intriguing enough for me to bite. A decade later, it still stands out to me as something special, and yet I didn't actually know that it was widely respected until I read this LP. That's heartening to hear. This LP was also an opportunity for me to retread KS and understand it in many ways that I couldn't a decade ago. Thank you for that gift in particular, Falconier. I don't have anything else to say that hasn't been heard already, with just one exception: It would be remiss of me to not link the "sequel" in this thread. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6rhYiCfjoU
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Feb 28, 2022 08:23
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This has been an incredibly insightful read from start to finish. I've just been keeping up with this silently the whole time, but I have to give thanks for the LP, Falconier! Would've been real nice to have this insight half a decade ago.
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Feb 28, 2022 16:13
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Thanks for the LP! I never would have touched the game in a million years because of the 4chan + VN taint, glad to see that I was wrong to have that impression.
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Feb 28, 2022 16:50
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Congratulations on the great LP and also to everyone who made this an interesting, thoughtful, and informative thread. I'm glad to have contributed some little bit with some half-remembered details of the original release, plus whatever else got deemed worthy of inclusion. I know I gained at least a bit to chew on going forward with my nephew who is neurodivergent, refining my approach to our differences. I don't even recall how I picked up on KS back when it first came out. I wasn't a 4chan person so I definitely missed any discussion or hype leading up to release there, so it must've leaked into my awareness from people I was hanging out with on IRC or something. I only really got through two routes before falling off, though, and chasing down something else shiny. This was a great look back on what I'd missed, especially since I was unlikely to ever go back to it on my own, either. Something about the VN format bores the poo poo out of me normally and this was briefly one of the few exceptions.
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Feb 28, 2022 16:54
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Just wanted to throw in yet another "was reading silently & never felt like I had enough to add" post, and of course another big congratulations & thank you for doing this LP! I vaguely recall playing KS way back in the day (I think only Emi, Rin, and Lilly's routes) but have no clue how I picked it up considering I had no connection to 4chan at the time. Reading this thread has been a highlight of my weeks and definitely given me a lot to think about, not just about others' viewpoints, but also some things about myself. To be honest, I'm still struggling with tons of impostor syndrome and "I'm handling day-to-day anxieties and social disconnects just fine Anyway, thanks again for all the food for thought, and for directing this thread so well! Seriously, I've started noticing other threads taking some pointers from this one -- writing out text from screenshots is one I've noticed in particular, and something I really appreciate both from an accessibility standpoint and from a selfish 'that's way easier for me to read on mobile' standpoint. I look forward to your future LP endeavors!
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Feb 28, 2022 18:12
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HomestarCanter posted:If I haven't already, I give blanket permission for my posts to be included. I seem to remember you saying there was a second post from me you were going to add to the OP, but I only see one, and don't know which one you were referring to. Looks like you didn't make it into the list for some reason? I'll check that out and get it sorted when I can. ChaceRider posted:Just wanted to throw in yet another "was reading silently & never felt like I had enough to add" post, and of course another big congratulations & thank you for doing this LP! I vaguely recall playing KS way back in the day (I think only Emi, Rin, and Lilly's routes) but have no clue how I picked it up considering I had no connection to 4chan at the time. Reading this thread has been a highlight of my weeks and definitely given me a lot to think about, not just about others' viewpoints, but also some things about myself. To be honest, I'm still struggling with tons of impostor syndrome and "I'm handling day-to-day anxieties and social disconnects just fine ...They have? Well, goddamn. And hey, that isn't selfish, that's the point of universal accessibility 
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Feb 28, 2022 22:41
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Echoing all the sentiments that have been expressed. Even just Falconier's writing would have been a drat good LP, but the threat contributions have taken it to another level. This has been a fascinating and thought-provoking thread. Thank you all.
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Mar 1, 2022 05:51
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Thanks for the fantastic LP Falconier111. Between the breakdown of themes in the game (I had never considered Lilly the protagonist in her route but it does make sense) and all of the disability corners, this has been a great read. Also a thank you to everyone who shared their personal experiences; disability is a difficult subject for me to talk about so it was very inspiring to see everything that was being shared and how people responded to their stories.
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Mar 1, 2022 06:09
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I don't normally follow LPs, so I'm glad I happened to bump into this one. Even happier it had good discussion and no drive-by trolls/moralizers to call us all perverts for liking the naughty anime game. Hard to believe it's over. And me without either of the effortposts I've been drafting/daydreaming since we began even written. And that's if I don't do one on disability and marriage (has anything been said about that?). Realized a few more things about Lilly. First, why I was drawn to her; she's a Church Girl. (I haven't been to church in years, but some aesthetic preferences die hard.) While it isn't explicitly Christian, she has a very holy vibe; even your first meeting is straight from a zen story. And she checks a lot of the boxes of a Good Christian Woman, either via a traditional family or her schooling. (Although, I wonder how religious her catholic school was, if it didn't even manage to properly implant SEX IS BAD AND YOU WILL DIE or other such religious delightfulness) The first time I played through, I felt whiplash as she went from (apparently) distant as Diana in her orb to intemperate as Venus, savage (and hot) in her sensuality. (A more cynical commentor would joke she speed-ran the virgin/whore dichotomy. But that would be wrong; there's no sex guilt here.) On a second go-through, I find myself actually trying to understand things from her point of view. There's a lot of turmoil beneath the surface, and it barely breaks through. To complete the story, Hisao has to break through the image to reach the girl beneath...like the others. There's a joke about falling off a horse, here... Second, I was thinking that Lilly requires the fewest accommodations of any of the girls, when I realized that's completely wrong; she requires the most accommodations - she's just good at adjusting/covering. Need assistance on a store run? Ask someone politely, then compliment them on their gentlemanly conduct. Class rep duties? Share the eyeballs around. Need something done? Have a constant group of juniors around to run errands for you. Lilly knows how to manage people - including herself. Lilly's design also doesn't have any obvious visual indicators that she's blind, unlike the others (Shizune's disability is invisible, but her accommodation is NOT). Third, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ovmtKSQTVU (This has nothing to do with the above, but it's hilarious. There's translated versions of the original around, but you can grasp the song without any Japanese.)
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Mar 1, 2022 07:45
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This was an excellent LP and it was very useful to me, the abled dipshit who works in social services, to get these testimonies. I often feel like I'm the only person in my workplace that cares to do any more than the absolute bare minimum of ADA compliance (just today my coworkers were fawning over a training course that requires both audio and visual to be comprehensible at all, argh), but I am mostly kind of flailing and projecting, and my framework remains nevertheless legalistic so the broader cultural and emotional perspectives were extremely helpful. An odd effect that this LP has had on me - I took up running. I ran in HS quite a bit (with more enthusiasm if not discipline than I studied), and as soon as I finished my last season of hurdles I never touched it again. This LP was in the Emi route over the summer when I was Going Through It and had way, way too much anxious energy to burn. I needed something to slow my mind down and burn off the excessive bounciness, and in the past this would probably have gone into weights or art or something, I figured "gently caress it, my workplace is a bit over 5km from my apartment, that's a reasonable running distance, and it'd be faster than taking the train." While I wouldn't say this LP was the ultimate cause of me getting moving, it did push me in that particular direction (there's also a a specific strip from late Octopus Pie that has bounced around my head for years). I went from "can barely run 60s at a time" to "can casually run for 30-60 minutes at a 6mph or better pace," which has surprised the gently caress out of me. So, that's one oblique and weird positive effect this LP had that I figure you weren't aiming for but hey it's there.
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Mar 1, 2022 19:45
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Cobalt-60 posted:Third, If we're sharing fanvids of Katawa Shoujo, I have to recommend rtil's channel for some pretty funny ones. Think my personal favorites are probably these two.
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Mar 2, 2022 03:21
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Belatedly, I'd also like to say thank you for doing this LP, Falconier. For about the last half of the LP, I was reading really slowly due to health/energy issues (ironic, I guess) and so I stopped making effortposts in part because of, well, the effort, but also because I was consistently about three updates behind. But I have been reading this whole time, and I've appreciated the LP, your posts on related disability issues, and a lot of the discussion that's come out of it. I initially clicked on this thread expecting it to be one of those "let's rubberneck at this trainwreck of a game" things, and I'm glad it turned out to be something else entirely.
Ghost Car fucked around with this message at 17:18 on Mar 9, 2022 |
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Mar 4, 2022 17:13
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With the LP complete I'll also throw my thanks in to Falconier for showing off KS, a game that kinda does blow out any expectations of it you might have once you finally see it. The thread itself has been extremely educational and thought provoking as well, so thanks to the folks who have contributed.
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Mar 5, 2022 22:10
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I made an edit to Confession 2 of my third archived post, the one I wrote most recently, because I realized if it's going to be archived then there is a slim but non-zero chance that person might one day see it... I feel very uncomfortable outright identifying my old username because of the baggage attached to it (imagine what kind of terrible posting comes from a teen who's marinated their brain in garbage websites and fandom discourse for eight years straight), but at the same time I figured it'd be a little weird if I was completely unidentifiable while still claiming I'd known someone. But everything is good now on my end, in terms of posts. Thank you again for all the work you've done, Falconier. And thanks for the encouragement you wrote earlier about my burnout. I still don't really know what to believe about myself, but I'm going to keep what you said in mind and see if maybe I can get a clear answer. If I can get my living situation stabilized, I think the first thing I wanna do is go back to community college: It gives me something I can work towards, and as a bonus they apparently offer free mental health services, as long as I'm willing to deal with potential wait times! Anyway, I just wanted to add onto the voices saying how this thread was unexpected influence, in a good way.
MiracleFlare fucked around with this message at 01:44 on Mar 6, 2022 |
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Mar 6, 2022 01:40
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Well, so much for my effortposting. One last thing, if the thread closes before I post. This song isn't directly related to KS, but I always think of the two of them together. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEwxguHUi_U Some of us have been told we were broken; others realized it themselves. In some cases, it was a judgement; in others, a sentence. (I know it's impolite, but I do like the "katawa" metaphor; some days, I imagine my officially--messed-up brain wobbling along, like a broken shopping cart, trying to avoid crashing while everyone else effortlessly goes straight.)  [Illustration: the six female characters of Katawa Shoujo walking along, happy. Text: So it's actually not about seducing and nailing disabled girls. The girls happen to have disabilities, but the more you get to know them, the more you come to realize they are girls just like any other. They are humans with hopes and dreams, and messy, hosed up insecurities about being alive and happy. They are not strange people - they are regular ordinary human beings who feel the way they feel not because they are disabled, but because they are ordinary. They are the universal allegory for humanity; the archetypal human; the mess you become when you feel sad and alone and unworthy. They are the girl next door, the prom queen, the bookworm, the tomboy, and all the baggage that comes with that - nothing more or less. They resonate with you because you recognize your flaws and needs and desires and triumphs and victories, and those of the loved ones you know and care about. You want to make them happy, because you want them to be happy, because you know them and are them, and in some way you believe everyone you love deserves to be happy. You are not alone, and you are not strange. You are you, and everyone has damage. Be the better person. Enjoy Katawa Shoujo!] And thanks for the thread. And the contributions. And the link to the excellent fanfic, which I am considering canon. Cobalt-60 fucked around with this message at 16:36 on Mar 8, 2022 |
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Mar 7, 2022 23:27
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For anyone still following this thread: I ended up having to cut the Star Wars Life LP short for life reasons. I do, however, have enough time and energy to run another LP, this one of something much closer to Katawa Shoujo in themes and content: Doki Doki Blue Skies. And by much closer, I mean “the devs namedrop KS as their primary inspiration everywhere you can download the mod and Emi shows up in the second update.”
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Mar 11, 2022 21:18
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I realize it's been two months, but aside from saying congrats on finishing the LP (must have been a crapload of work) I also wanted to say thank you for the little fanfic plug at the end. It's great to see that a decade after the first 18 chapters were posted and nearly 8 years after I finally finished the expansion to that monster, people still enjoy reading it and are recommending it to others.
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May 14, 2022 08:32
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