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This was my first visual novel too! I'd always dismissed them as being a waste of time, but after hearing about the concept behind Katawa Shoujo only a few years ago, I had to try it out. It coming out of 4chan really does make it sound like it should be an absolute train-wreck, but somehow it's amazing instead. (Though if you've read any of the very different earlier drafts, it seems like there were... some narrow misses along the way.)Ibblebibble posted:Funnily enough I knew someone who worked on KS and she said that 4chan didn't actually play as big a role as everyone thought it did. It did start on 4chan thus the name of the studio, but most of the 4channiest people dropped out quick and those who were left only checked in on 4chan once in a while or they were people who were brought in from outside. They just never bothered to change the name of the studio. Well I guess that explains it. On the strength of Katawa Shoujo I tried out some other visual novels, and... to be honest I still think they're mostly a waste of time. The only other one I can think of that I liked was Butterfly Soup, which is very sweet and also goddamn hilarious. Anyway; Katawa Shoujo. I agree with what everyone's saying about the quality of the writing. Every route was surprising and compelling in different ways (with the possible exception of Shizune's, which I found kind of flat), though I did find it heavy going. I've got my own lifelong struggles, and high-school in particular was a very rough time for me (the "my hair started going grey when I was seventeen" kind of rough), so every route in Katawa Shoujo stirred up some difficult memories. Not sure I'll be able to read along with the LP too much. My first time through kind of naturally fell into the Hanako route - and the last route was Lilly's - which felt like the perfect way to book-end the whole thing considering the relationship between those two, but you said you wanted to leave Hanako until later, so... Emi does seem like a good intro. Her route also has what I think is the funniest scene in the whole thing, but it is a sex scene so maybe it won't come up here.
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May 13, 2021 06:02
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Antistar01 posted:On the strength of Katawa Shoujo I tried out some other visual novels, and... to be honest I still think they're mostly a waste of time. The only other one I can think of that I liked was Butterfly Soup, which is very sweet and also goddamn hilarious. EclecticTastes posted:This kind of depends on how one defines a visual novel, as a lot of games that you might not immediately think of are, in fact, at least partly visual novels, such as the Ace Attorney franchise, Dangan Ronpa, Hotel Dusk, The Silver Case, and the Zero Escape trilogy (Kotaro Uchikoshi's previous temporal mechanics-based works, such as Ever17, were all fully VNs, in fact). There's also been some great visual novels made by western developers, such as Analog: A Hate Story and Hate Plus, We Know the Devil, etc. Yeah, I should be more careful with what I consider to be a visual novel. It's probably fair to say that the spectre of the "dating sim" style of visual novel was hanging over my opinion. The kind that often depict romantic relationships as accruing "basic human kindness" points until *ding!* - sex pops out. Katawa Shoujo does kind of fit into that style of dating sim, but fortunately it's not too bad on that front, and has a lot of other things going for it. I wasn't really including games like Dangan Ronpa in there since (personally) I do consider those games since they have relatively complex game mechanics - while I think of more classic visual novels like Katawa Shoujo as being basically novels - just closer to the choose-your-own-adventure style, plus with added sound/music and obviously visuals. Falconier111 posted:I think Emi managed to pull in more votes than everyone else combined. Looks like the thread is just really into jocks. Well I voted for Emi since Hanako was off the table, and beyond that Emi's route just seems like a good intro to Katawa Shoujo as a whole. It was also the second route I came across, myself. From memory I was a bit more intentional after that, next going for Rin (oof), then Shizune and finally Lilly since I wanted to leave her route until last, as a counterpart to Hanako's.
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May 15, 2021 04:30
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Hey, it's my favourite character (Hanako) and my least favourite character (Kenji) in the same update! Hanako I identify with a lot, and Kenji... Kenji is annoying.
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May 27, 2021 09:58
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Yeah, I didn't like Rin. Or... I guess it's not as simple as disliking her. It's more that her route kicked up some killer existential dread for me. It ended up being pretty rough to get through, and I didn't get a sense of catharsis afterwards; just continued feeling bad for a while.
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Jun 1, 2021 10:01
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I think I have to join the "boo Shizune" chorus. I mentioned earlier that I identify a lot with Hanako - and that's because I suffer from pretty severe social anxiety disorder myself. Hisao describes Hanako and Shizune as being extreme opposites of each other, and so it's kind of the same for me; Shizune's personality is more or less diametrically opposed to mine. I said earlier too that I didn't like Shizune's route that much, finding it kind of flat - but it probably didn't help that I just don't like Shizune.
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Jun 9, 2021 13:35
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I'd go for Clear - those scenes are part of the story/characterisation/etc - or Limited if Clear isn't possible for whatever reason. Also, thanks for the various  write-ups. They're interesting, and as much as I'd like to think that I'm not a jerk to disabled people... if subconsciously or unintentionally I am a jerk, hopefully this kind of extra detail/perspective will prompt me to think more about it.
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Jun 19, 2021 06:47
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Gah!  (I think it's the twin pigtails. They kind of weird me out on anyone over pre-school age.)
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Jun 22, 2021 05:54
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Cobalt-60 posted:DeviantArt search "twintails": 24k results Haha, of course, yeah. I still find it weird, though. As for why it's popular, well... maybe it's cynical, but I've always assumed that it's down to the infantilisation of women in media - which is a particular problem in anime/manga, obviously. It's something I don't like about Emi's design, but from memory they do subvert expectations a bit with her there, so that's something. ChrisBTY posted:Alright I guess it's time to share my story and my perspective. I don't know how much it will illuminate anything but I guess it can't hurt. Oof, a lot of this sounds familiar. I have arthritis too - Psoriatic Arthritis, in my case - which I developed when I was nineteen. So I've spent my adult life having to say, whenever it comes up, "no, arthritis isn't just for old people". Fortunately it's been controlled by medication for most of that time, but the time between developing it and finding medication that worked was agonising. It mostly affects my knees, and for a while there I could barely walk. It felt like someone had taken a hammer to my knees - constantly. Bending my knees was nearly impossible, making things like getting dressed pretty difficult. Early on I also developed uveitis, I think it was - and it was much worse for me than in the picture at that link. There was no white left in my eyes; they were fully red - just a chaotic mat of angry-looking blood vessels. With my hands near my face, I could feel the heat coming off my eyes. Pretty scary at the time. I'm glad that's never happened again. But yeah; fortunately controlled by medication, though I have a list of jobs/activities I'm not supposed to do - doctor's orders. Also the main medication is methotrexate, which means I sunburn in like ten minutes, and am immunosuppressed, which has been kind of concerning in plague times. On the other hand that did mean that I qualified for earlier COVID-19 vaccination than most people my age here in Australia, so at least there's that. And struggling with social interaction, yep. That's been my whole life. For me it's social anxiety disorder. (And depression, because of course. Depression's basically comorbid with everything, right?) Maybe I'll do an effort post about my experience with social anxiety disorder at some point... Maybe when we get to Hanako - for obvious reasons. I also wasn't diagnosed until my twenties - late twenties, for me - and until then, I'd never even heard the term "social anxiety disorder". Once I did, and looked it up, it was like a bolt out of the blue; the most massive epiphany I've ever had. All those symptoms listed down the page - they may as well have been describing me specifically. It was like "This is it! This is what's been making my entire life so hellish!" I don't think I'm on the spectrum, so that's different. The second psychiatrist I was sent to sure thought so, though! He made a snap judgement within literally five minutes of meeting me that I had Asperger's, saying right to my face "I don't think you really understand what's going on". He certainly treated me that way, too; it was obvious that he felt he could get away with being generally condescending all the time, thinking that I wouldn't notice. He was the only one to ever think that I'm on the spectrum. He wasn't very good at his job, I don't think. Not as bad as the first psychiatrist I was sent to though, drat. He was basically actively hostile. He said straight-up that there was no such thing as social anxiety disorder (because the diagnosis didn't exist fifteen years prior - nevermind that now it did), and that even if it did exist, I couldn't possibly have it, because I had shown up to the appointment. Hell of a thing to say to someone trying to get help. Someone who has social anxiety disorder and so is terrified of confrontations like that. I didn't go back to that guy again - and just as well. A few years later I would learn that he was allegedly linked to at least six separate suicides. Yeesh. Anyway; Impostor syndrome though, yes; definitely. (Though again, I'd never heard of that term until very recently.) On bad days I'll be struggling to get from moment to moment without having a panic attack, and on "good" days I'll wonder if I'm just weak, or lazy, or etc. "I'm missing out on so much! Social interaction isn't that hard, is it? I'm just making a mountain out of a molehill. What if I can handle it and I'm just wasting my life?" And yeah, all this being basically invisible to others is brutal, in its own way. If you look fine, and people expect you to be able to do everything "normal" people do, but it's traumatic to even explain why you can't do a particular thing because it's essentially a form of torture for you... oof. Also - just want to echo that I appreciate everyone telling their stories here; it does help.
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Jun 24, 2021 09:58
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Yep, if you can find something useful in my rambling posts, linking them is fine. 
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Jun 28, 2021 01:34
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Oh right, the AO3 thing. I don't really know anything about AO3, but I guess if I post something you want to link to, it's fine to go there too. Whatever I post along those lines is probably going to be about social anxiety disorder, and even now I think it's something that needs way more visibility. If I had just known it even existed as a diagnosis at some point before my late twenties - ideally in my teens - my life could have been very different. Cobalt-60 posted:"Her lips taste faintly of strawberries." There's some good romantic writing in Katawa Shoujo. Maybe in some routes more than others? I seem to remember something about some or all of the routes being written by different people... not sure if that's been mentioned in the thread?
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Jul 9, 2021 11:38
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renessia posted:Each route was helmed by one writer, though there ended up being a couple exceptions by the end. However, everyone had a hand in everybody else's routes, particularly through their characters; if Lilly were to show up in a scene, for example, Suriko would be pinged to get his eyes on things. Lots of back-and-forths in the IRC channel. Oh yeah, that makes sense. Maybe it's also why some routes didn't click for me as much as others. I certainly didn't think any of them were bad (like, at all) - just a personal thing, I think.
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Jul 12, 2021 04:35
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I would have voted for Hanako's route first had it been on the table, so yes; Hanako sounds good. (My own preference would be for Shizune/Rin after that, in either order, and then Lilly last - just so we don't have to end on Shizune or Rin's routes.) gegi posted:I would disagree but only because of the "usually" part. It's a whole medium. There are hundreds upon hundreds of games that have absolutely nothing to do with dating or sexual content. Kids stories, fairytales, mysteries, etc. Of course there is formulaic stuff, and stuff that is wall-to-wall porn, but they're their own things. I have very little experience with visual novels, but on the strength of Katawa Shoujo, I tried out a few others - and that last line made me think immediately of another free one: Everlasting Summer. For better or for worse, its sex scenes are each literally a single "AndThenTheyFucked.jpg" with no accompanying text. They can definitely be cut with nothing lost. Looking past that though... and the often mediocre writing... and the unlikeable protagonist... Everlasting Summer is actually pretty interesting. It's Russian, and centres around its modern-day protagonist mysteriously travelling back in time to a Soviet Young Pioneer camp in the 1980s(?). Not knowing anything about them, I found the details about those camps to be interesting - and the story goes to some absolutely wild places, especially as you unlock more routes. It's like an interesting story was hidden under a tropey dating sim visual novel. Chicken Thumbs posted:Also, for people who haven't seen it: I was going to say that this scene is even funnier with Emi's expressions, and yep... that sure is one of them. But yeah, this is the funniest scene in Katawa Shoujo. I don't think it's extraneous. It further establishes their personalities and relationship, and provides contrast for the incoming pathos. (Since again, it's very funny.)
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Jul 17, 2021 02:25
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Speaking of the Disability Corners, this is kind of related to the recent one on leg prosthetics: For some reason, The Algorithm decided to show me a video yesterday about a practical consideration when it comes to leg prosthetics that had never occurred to me: apparently you can't shave your legs if you want to use them. (Or at least, the leg with the prosthetic.)
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Jul 19, 2021 03:24
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theamazingchris posted:Yeah, one of the great things about this game is how accurately teenagery Hisao is. His emotions are powerful and he struggles to get a grip on them. He certainly struggles to understand them. And him figuring out himself is just as important as figuring out his romantic partner. Like, these scenes, where he's absolutely screaming mad, are great. Man, when I was a teenager, I could only wish to have the clarity, self-awareness, emotional maturity and ability to actually articulate what I was feeling that Hisao and other characters in Katawa Shoujo have. I had the emotional maturity of a traumatised potato. Not that it came up (in a romantic sense) in high school anyway - for me that would have to wait until university. In high school, all the crippling, undiagnosed mental health issues (and earlier on, the bullying) kicked the crap out of me to the point that I couldn't trust that the girls asking me out were serious and not just teasing. It's hard to ask someone out! I feel bad for them; it wasn't their fault! drat what a miserable time.
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Jul 23, 2021 06:40
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It's good that they make it (extremely) clear here that Hisao isn't trying to "save" Emi like she's some kind of damsel in distress, but is more trying to save their relationship. More of a mutual kind of thing.
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Jul 26, 2021 08:47
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Falconier111 posted:Wait, hold on a sec. So they’re at a table with four seats by a window. Hisao’s sitting next to the window, Hanako’s sitting next to him, and Lilly’s sitting across from her. Though he may have just moved past Hanako to sit down, Hisao’s position implies he got there first and moved in. Lilly sat diagonally across from him. Hanako had a choice: she could either sit next to Lilly, the only person she feels comfortable around, or Hisao, the boy she just met. So did she deliberately choose to sit next to him instead of Lilly? Sitting across from someone requires you to make more eye contact with them - or to spend more time awkwardly avoiding making eye contact with them. It also means you're more in their line of sight, so they'll be looking at you more. All of these things are bad if you suffer from social anxiety disorder - and trust me, you do think about stuff like this if you suffer from it. (I mean really it was probably just a scene composition thing, but still; it makes sense to me, and I am basically gender-swapped Hanako, sans-scarring. )Hellioning posted:If she did, I think the choice made sense. This is just fan speculation, but sitting in the chair she did allows her to look at Lilly, her friend, without having to turn her head, instead of looking at a relative stranger. Plus, it allows her to hide her scars behind her hair without worrying too much about Hisao seeing when she turns her head or whatever. Yep, that too.
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Aug 3, 2021 06:53
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Psycho Lawnmower posted:You say we're now operating in our best interest, but as I recall, saying to "Go for It." nearly brought Hisao down. Taking it easy might be way better, as long as he maintains it. Yeah, my thinking when I first came to this choice was literally "let's try to not give Hisao another heart attack". It seemed like the obvious smartest choice to me! I naturally fell into the Hanako route my first time through, and I guess that choice contributed to it.
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Aug 5, 2021 08:23
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I'm not a big fan of either offices or chess, and I don't know or remember what this is referring to, so, uh... Chess, I guess? Edit: Oh, I think I remember now. ... Not changing my vote. Antistar01 fucked around with this message at 09:12 on Aug 6, 2021 |
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Aug 6, 2021 03:56
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SSJ_naruto_2003 posted:this scene made me sad were going down Hanako's route instead of Lilly's. My first route was Lilly years ago and I had forgotten how chill she is. It's safe to say that Hanako and Lilly's routes are my favourites. I think Lilly's route works especially well as the final route you go through though, for reasons I obviously can't talk about at this stage! I was happy that I had Hanako and Lilly's routes book-ending the whole thing - I will say that.
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Aug 7, 2021 05:58
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Falconier111 posted:Which is where you guys come in. As always, I could use suggestions on boosting accessibility. If anyone here uses screen readers and would like me to do something to make this experience better, please let me know and I’ll get it done. I also invite screenreader users to point out what I got wrong; this is ultimately just a really high level survey of a complicated subject done by somebody with very little experience with it. I’d love to be proven wrong. Funnily enough I was just reading the most recent update and thinking that I should suggest that for the parts where you say "go back to Update 14 (or whatever) and read from here to here before continuing", it would be handy if you could link directly to those updates. It'd save the reader having to go back to the OP and locate the link there. Maybe not immediately useful for Hanako's route if we're past Act 1 with all its parts that are common to all routes, but going forward? I don't have any experience with screen readers, but for formatting your commentary in the updates so that it gets called out by them somehow, maybe if you put it in [code] tags? If they'd pick that up? Or maybe if you prefaced (or book-ended) it with a particular emoticon, since they have alt-text now? And if/when images in general get alt-text, you could use your avatar or some other portrait image instead, maybe. I don't know, this is just off the top of my head. The main time I've been conscious of alt-text was when I was at Uni in the very early 2000s. (  ) They were so out of touch (even for the time) and/or money-grubbing with the on-campus Internet access that it cost 20c AUD per megabyte. I would set my browser to not display images so that it wouldn't cost a fortune. That gave me a healthy appreciation for alt-text. I haven't thought about it much, but vaguely assumed that using alt-text in web design had fallen by the wayside in the decades (oof) since.
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Aug 10, 2021 02:52
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"I wasn't asleep and welcome to the Shanghai!" is one of my favourite lines in Katawa Shoujo. Poor Yuuko.
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Aug 12, 2021 04:06
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I've been using dark mode. So far it seems fine. Some smilies look a bit weird, or have a rogue white pixel somewhere, but that's about all I've noticed.
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Aug 13, 2021 06:28
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Falconier111 posted:>"What do you think, Hanako?" My first time through I went with "What do you think, Hanako?", because this kind of seemed like a choice between asking Hanako what she wanted to do and deciding things for her. I was annoyed by this choice; I think the wording of it is a bit too vague. If it had been clearer what they'd result in Hisao saying - what the intention behind them was - I would have gone with the other option. Vague dialogue options in games is a bit of a bugbear for me. I absolutely can't stand the Mass Effect approach where the dialogue options are presented as short phrases at best, and you don't know what they'll result in your character actually saying. I am still Angry At Video Games that Bethesda went with that approach in Fallout 4. Anyway... this choice (at least initially) seeming to be about giving more agency to Hanako or not seemed notable to me after the stuff earlier with helping Hanako with her groceries. If you picked up on how much she was relying on Hisao to... well. Imagine this is an MMO or whatever, and social interaction is incoming damage. She was heavily relying on Hisao to tank for her. If you suffer from social anxiety disorder it's very easy to fall into that kind of role; relying on people you're close to to do things involving social interaction on your behalf. A mild example would be going to a restaurant with a group of friends (... maybe in pre-plague days), and when you're asked by staff for booking details, or "table for how many people?", or whatever - if they're looking at you for an answer, you might turn and look at a friend, to subtly deflect attention onto them. It can become second nature - and obviously can become more of a problem when it comes to more significant things. There are some things involving social interaction you have to do yourself, and they'll become even more difficult if you've been relying on others to do it for you. Of course having someone literally speak for you all the time can also make it feel like you don't have much control over your own life - so a choice that appeared to offer the chance to give Hanako more agency after that earlier scene seemed significant. Falconier111 posted:Another false choice, we decided this in the vote last week. Also, let me know how this new format works so I can decide whether to implement it retroactively. This approach that Storm One suggested with the portrait, name of the character and then the line seems pretty good to me.
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Aug 14, 2021 09:10
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gegi posted:As someone with social anxiety issues, among other things, I feel like for me it's important to make a distinction between someone speaking for me who I know and trust and have in fact asked to serve this role for me, and someone who I've barely met talking over me. Haha yeah, as nice as personal agency is, often it's more like "please just leave me alone actually". And in Katawa Shoujo's defence, of course Hanako isn't going to want to have anything to do with Shizune of all people.I think at the time I thought that this choice would result in Hisao spending time with Hanako (and not Shizune/Misha) either way, and that it was more a choice between "get bent, Shizune" and yeah... giving Hanako more agency. It was just a little vague to me! Anyway, I agree with everything you're saying there. I know exactly what you mean. That mirrors my experiences pretty closely. Nidoking posted:Treating every interaction like a puzzle that I need to solve, where there's a clear correct answer that someone will point out to me days or months later while writing me up for some social offense, is what I want from a video game, not real life. In contrast, I don't want this in games either. I get enough agonising over saying/doing the right thing in conversation in the real world; for me, games are meant to be an escape from that kind of thing.I hate it when games go "Hey, remember that seemingly innocuous forced binary dialogue choice you made based on intentionally limited information a few hours ago? Well now the puppy orphanage has burnt down and it's all your fault! How does it feel, fucker?"
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Aug 15, 2021 01:39
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Oh, I think I remember reading that - after being so taken with Katawa Shoujo itself. Like it says there, it's about Miki - who has character art and lines and shows up briefly in a few of the routes (I'm surprised she wasn't in Emi's route actually, since she's shown in the background as being in race/s with Emi) - and Suzu, who I think only shows up in the background and doesn't have lines. Miki is missing a hand, and Suzu... I think has narcolepsy? Anyway, I liked Katawa Shoujo enough that it was cool to have more of it, in this form.
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Aug 16, 2021 06:20
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So... social anxiety disorder. (Also known as social phobia.) Here's a wall-of-text effort post about my experience suffering from it. Usual disclaimer: just my personal experiences, I'm not a doctor, etc. Trying to summarise Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) The first psychologist I saw said something once that always stuck with me: "You're so afraid of rejection that you effectively reject people before they have a chance to reject you." If you had to summarise SAD in a short sentence, that'd be a pretty good attempt, I think. It usually is described as a persistent, strong fear of being perceived negatively in social situations. What my psychologist said to me there was in the context of me avoiding as much social interaction as I could - which touches on that very similar diagnosis; Avoidant Personality Disorder. It is the most common coping mechanism employed by SAD sufferers - and it's obviously similar across phobias generally: avoid the thing that terrifies you. That's kind of a problem in a society/culture/world where social interaction is just assumed across... almost everything, it feels like! So many systems. Hell, it's in the word "society" itself. There are inevitably things that you can't avoid, and for those, you put up with it to the extent that you can - but usually at the cost of a lot of distress. Sometimes people might say something like "you made it through school" or "you've worked in a job like this before", implying (probably even in a well-meaning way) that you should be able to cope with it since you've done it before. They perhaps don't understand that it's a bit like saying "you've survived torture before - so some more torture should be fine, right?". Often it just gets worse with repeated exposure, if you're not coping with it; piling up the anxiety and trauma. More and more things become issues. Even just the sound of someone knocking on a door - or a phone ringing - can be a triggering event. It certainly is for me. I hate hearing those sounds in media - and obviously the real thing is worse. I have no idea if many people actually confuse SAD with anti-social behaviours or disorders, but to be clear: they're very different things. With SAD, it's not a case of not liking people, or not wanting the usual range of relationships that people have. Kind of the opposite, really; again, you're afraid of rejection. It's actually one of the cruellest aspects of SAD: even though you're afraid of social interaction and therefore avoid being around people, you still get lonely. Social contact is described as one of our basic needs - alongside food, shelter, etc. Well, imagine if you were allergic to food. Just... all food. It can be absolutely crushing. Keeping up appearances Since the driving motive of someone with SAD is usually to avoid attracting attention - at virtually all costs - it means you become very practised at acting as if you're fine, even when you're not. With that in mind, I can't help but think of Hanako's body language in Katawa Shoujo as being kind of atypical for someone with SAD, since it makes her anxiety very obvious to anyone looking at her. Obviously it's a stylistic element of her character design, to some extent - like the other anime-style aspects of her design are - but still. Having said that, I do still sometimes think back to this guy I would see around Uni. His body language just screamed "social anxiety". He was pale and very skinny - his head looked too big for his body - and he always had this hunted expression. He would walk around cradling his elbows in his hands, arms held close to his body - all the time. When I remember him, I think "he looked like how I feel a lot of the time". Anyway, this kind of "acting" can lead to some very nasty situations, like suffering a panic attack that lasts for months while appearing basically normal to observers. I'm not pulling that example out of nowhere: that was my life at high school! Panic attacks that lasted for months. (If you've ever had one, you'll know that they're terrifying and that they can make a minute feel like an eternity. Imagine then what that's like if it goes on for months.) Maybe unsurprisingly after that, my hair started going grey when I was seventeen. It strikes me as maybe being similar to the concept of "masking" for people on the spectrum - at least in terms of having to put up a front and act a certain way to get by (or just survive) in social situations, and in terms of how exhausting it is to do that. Like, even though I do enjoy catching up with my friends, even a low-key thing like lunch and a board games afternoon - in a small group at a friend's place - gets to really wear on me after only a few hours. I'll be absolutely drained for the rest of the day, or even the following day/s. And that's with friends. Many of whom I've known for decades at this point. Causes It's not known for sure what causes SAD. I wasn't diagnosed until my late twenties - I just didn't know that "social anxiety disorder" existed as a diagnosis until then - but in hindsight it's always been there for me. Like, always. A little while ago, my mother showed me a series of back-and-forth letters with a friend of hers that she discovered in some box somewhere, dating back to when I was barely a toddler. In them, she was talking about how she hoped I would grow out of being so shy. Similarly, school reports from when I was seven or whatever would talk about how I was "quiet" and "preferred doing things on my own". So, always there - but unsurprisingly it became a big problem during high school. Darkest time of my life. High school's a bad place to be for most people, right? Kind of like prison, it seems to me. Somewhere you're legally required to be, packed in with people you normally would not choose to be around - people who mean to harm you, and are given plenty of opportunities to do so given the environment. I don't know, maybe it's better these days. It was a very bad environment for someone with SAD, though. Another thing that first psychologist said once that I always remember is that she thought it was a miracle I made it through high school. Employment Employment is difficult with SAD. Obviously, applying and interviewing for jobs is difficult enough for the average person. No surprise that it's much, much worse if you have SAD. And then actually working with people is usually excruciating. Even if you're not directly interacting with people all the time as part of your job, it's rare to have a job that doesn't require it at least some of the time. Reporting to your boss, or your client - or your work being delivered/evaluated - whatever. You're anxious about the current interaction and/or the upcoming interaction. Obviously it's worse if you're around people all the time as part of your job though. (Say, in an open-plan office.) Imagine trying to do your job while sitting in the middle of a war-zone, or busy freeway, or surrounded by long grass full of hungry apex predators... Sub-consciously, your brain is telling you that you're in danger all the time. Unsurprisingly it has a detrimental impact on your work. You worry that your work isn't going to be good enough - that you're going to let everyone down - and then that worry comes true because your work suffers since you can't concentrate thanks to your fight/flight/freeze response going off all the time, and then you get passed over for promotions, are the first to be made redundant if the company is struggling, etc, etc. So now you've lost your job. This is the point where all that networking pays off, surely? After all it's (unfortunately) not what you know, but who you know, right? Well too bad! You probably don't have any of that because you have SAD! It's apparently very common for social anxiety sufferers to work in jobs well below their ability level, simply in order to avoid social interaction - or perhaps because they find they can't handle the added pressure (perceived or otherwise) from the responsibilities associated with jobs that meet their ability level, when it's on top of their already very high social anxiety. Romance and relationships Romance... oof. It's hard with SAD! Obviously it's hard. If you avoid being around people, if you don't get out much, if you're anxious talking to people you don't know well, etc, etc - then it's hard to meet new people, let alone get into romantic relationships. Staying in relationships can be hard too. E.g. if you lack experience with social interaction generally - and more intimate relationships especially - due to all the avoidance, it can make navigating relationships more difficult. The crushingly-low self-esteem that often comes with SAD and depression doesn't help. My last girlfriend... the night we got together, I remember she was already asleep but I was lying there having a massive panic attack, wondering if I could actually manage being emotionally available enough with her, or even just be around her enough without my anxiety flaring up to the point where I couldn't function, torpedoing everything. I dunno... don't want to talk about this stuff too much, I think; it's painful. It has to be said, though: break-ups can be brutal. Remember that one of the core parts of SAD is a fear of rejection - and rejection doesn't get much more severe and personal than a romantic partner leaving you. Relationships more generally are challenging with SAD too. Staying in touch can be rough if it's hard for you to make the first move and contact someone. Getting back in touch is even more difficult - just the thought of trying to answer the dreaded "so what have you been up to?" question is traumatic when an honest answer may be along the lines of "my life has more or less stalled due to crippling mental health issues, so I've mostly been just trying to cope". As a side note, this seems (to me, at least?) similar to the concept of "queer time". Society expects you to do certain things at certain ages - dating, marriage, having kids, climbing some kind of employment ladder - but these intensely social things are much more challenging for people with SAD. It's easy to fall outside of time, so to speak. Treatment - Therapy The usual treatments for SAD are therapy and medication. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is the most common I think, and is what the first psychologist I saw was using. Unfortunately it didn't work for me. I learned a lot about my disorder, but could never get anywhere with actually... suffering from it less. Went around and around in circles for a few years until she eventually gave up on me or forgot that she had said she would get back to me about a time for the next session. The second psychologist - who I'm still seeing (theoretically; plague times and some health issues she's been suffering have made this difficult) - is using positive psychology, I think she said it was. It's certainly worked better for me than CBT did. My anxiety and depression are still an obstacle to functioning "normally", but they're a lot better than they were. There's a lot less abject misery, at least. Treatment - Medication With medication, the first thing prescribed to try to treat SAD is usually the anti-depressant paroxetine, since it's apparently been found to have some success treating it. People with SAD are like three times more likely to also suffer from depression (who would have thought), so hey... there's often some synergy there, too. I thought the paroxetine was going to work. I expected it to work. If ever there was a time for the placebo effect, that was it. I thought the combination of CBT and the paroxetine would - if not fix me, at least reduce my anxiety/depression/etc to the point where I could function in "normal" everyday society. Unfortunately it didn't work. Nothing worked: over several years I was tried on all sorts of anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medications - typical and atypical. It was extremely unfortunate; I really needed it to work. Instead of the benefits of these medications, I just got the side effects - and some of them can be pretty nasty. If that wasn't enough, a lot of anti-depressants have severe discontinuation syndromes associated with them. Paroxetine is especially bad for that. I always followed the doctors' instructions re: tapering off slowly, but always suffered discontinuation syndrome anyway. Nausea, dizziness, constant electric shock sensations, and... well, they call it "rebound depression/anxiety", but that implies that it was improved while on the medication, which was not the case for me. Instead, it was more like: feel bad, go on the medication and feel the same (or worse due to the side effects and the slow, crushing realisation that this one wasn't going to work either), then taper off the medication and feel like the world is ending. Even if you know it's just the medication messing with your brain chemistry, you still feel like the world's ending. It sends your anxiety through the drat roof. I'd never argue that medication shouldn't ever be used to treat depression/anxiety; I think it's literally a life-saver for some people - but in my own experience, it's like trying to swat a fly with a sledgehammer. Maybe it'll work for you - and maybe you'll be lucky and not even suffer too much collateral damage - but if you're like me, you'll just end up with smashed furniture, walls full of holes, and an agitated fly buzzing around your head. The last straw was accidentally overdosing on benzodiazepines and losing ~6 hours to amnesia. At least I think it was an overdose: I kind of can't remember! It happened on a Sunday morning when I was having an extremely rough time due to my girlfriend breaking up with me the previous day, suffering general "the world is ending" levels of anxiety due to discontinuation syndrome from coming off an anti-depressant I had been on for quite a while, my grandfather being on his death-bed, and the psychiatrist I had been seeing having given up on me a few days earlier, saying that there was no point seeing him anymore since he didn't think I could be helped. (In hindsight I think I was better off without him.) The last thing I remember thinking was "if there was ever a time for this stuff to actually do something, this is it." The next thing I knew, it was 3pm, I had at some point had a shower and a perfect clean shave, had eaten breakfast twice for some reason, and (I think) gone back to bed. Kind of foggy on that last part. The rest of the day is kind of foggy too, but I called a friend and he and his girlfriend (now wife) took me to the after-hours doctors, then back to their place to make sure I was alright for the rest of the day. We watched The Cabin in the Woods, but I don't really remember it, except that it probably wasn't really a good choice considering my mental state at the time. I'll never know exactly how it happened, but the thing with benzodiazepines is that you (generally?) don't take them like anti-depressants or something: a regular dose at a regular time - due to problems with developing a tolerance, dependence, withdrawal, etc. Instead, that psychiatrist had prescribed two different benzodiazepines (one stronger than the other), with the vague instructions to take some when my anxiety was high, with a higher dose if my anxiety was higher. So maybe I mixed up the doses and took as much of the stronger one as I should have taken of the weaker one? Maybe I took some of each and mixing them was the problem? Notably, that psychiatrist did not warn me about any of that. I didn't know that that could happen. He was not very good at his job. But yeah, that was it. That was the last straw. I've never touched anti-depressants or anti-anxiety medication since. Treatment - Desperation Out of desperation, I even tried hypnosis and neurofeedback (respectively) at one point. Hypnosis seemed similar to guided imagery therapy; mainly aimed at getting you to relax. You know what isn't relaxing for someone with SAD, though? Having someone you don't know just talk at you for a while. Especially when you're sitting in an unfamiliar place with your eyes closed. I only did that once (I think it was at the suggestion of that first psychologist I saw); seemed like a waste of time and money. Neurofeedback involved having brain-wave sensors stuck to my head while I watched a video (I think I went with one of the Shrek movies) for twenty minutes or so at a time. From memory, it would dim the image and lower the volume if it detected brain-waves associated with anxiety. It's supposed to reinforce "relaxed" brain-waves via the video being more comfortable to watch when it detects them. My experience was that the brightness and volume would fluctuate annoyingly - and this didn't change, even after a number of sessions. The guy running it seemed surprised that it wasn't working for me, and offered to keep doing sessions at no charge until I saw a benefit from it. I had had enough by that point though, and declined. Conclusion Sorry about the length; it's just that SAD has had a massive negative impact on my life, so there's a lot to talk about - and much more I could say. I don't think SAD gets talked about nearly enough (as evidenced by my not having even heard of it until my late twenties), despite so many people suffering from it. I think it's important.
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Aug 17, 2021 06:41
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Kind of vaguely related to the topic of screen-readers and other accessibility tools for blind people: I was just contacted by someone asking permission to use some art assets from one of my (very) old Oblivion mods in their own mod - and the thing is, they mention there that they're blind. (Maybe even completely blind?) The tools for modding these games are very complicated even when you can see what you're doing, so wow, I don't know how they managed it. They do mention using some "tweaked adaptive tech programs" to play the game. gegi posted:I don't have an example handy, but one thing I've seen on a lot of really basic intro-level social anxiety websites is an attempt to be "helpful and reassuring" by telling sufferers that no one really notices their symptoms and they aren't nearly as embarrassing as they think they are. You feel like you're blushing a lot, but no one notices, really! Oof - even without something like this, it's hard to make yourself really believe that no-one's noticing your anxiety. That you look like  and not  .I think I remember reading somewhere that that's what makes it an anxiety disorder and not a delusion; you realise intellectually that your fears are at least partially irrational... but probably can't help freaking out anyway. Dareon posted:I'm also unmedicated for any of these. We tried medication, for a while I was on Ritalin. I lost an unhealthy amount of weight and most of my memories of that time are now locked behind that chemical barrier (state-based memory, it's a lot easier to recall memories when you're in the same neurochemical state they were formed in). Huh. I haven't heard of that before. It kind of makes me wonder if I'd get some memories back from that 6-hour blackout if I took a benzodiazepine again. ... Probably not - and there's no way I'd try, anyway.
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Aug 19, 2021 09:15
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Antistar01 posted:I think I remember reading somewhere that that's what makes it an anxiety disorder and not a delusion; you realise intellectually that your fears are at least partially irrational... but probably can't help freaking out anyway. MadDogMike posted:Dunno, I've got some definite social anxiety issues alongside depression (which has a bunch of likely sources including genetic), and I pretty much tie that to hyper-aggressive bullying through most of my childhood. Kind of hard to call fear of rejection irrational when "everybody hates and wants to hurt you or doesn't care enough to do anything to stop the people attacking you" was literal fact for my development. Hard to say how much social anxiety I actually have vs just plain depression though; I certainly have issues with picking up the phone to call a stranger and don't have a lot of deep relationships outside family, but my job involves quite a bit of interaction with strangers in a customer service setting, including lots of "fix problem" scenarios where the customer is very angry and quite happy to take it out on me, and while I can be frustrated and tired after doing it I can't call it an absolute horror to deal with. My best guess was likening it to jumping into cold water, deeply unpleasant but if I do it enough I kind of numb up to the discomfort eventually. Treatment-wise I've done cognitive behavioral therapy which had some definite benefits thankfully, and some meds which helped for a while but it seems like my body kept building up a tolerance for them (going off didn't cause much issue besides sleep disruption for a bit, which I swear almost any drat thing does anyway), but not doing any specific treatment at moment. Also I'm wondering now that I recently got a sleep apnea diagnosis how much that might be tying into things. Not having restful sleep (I had a power failure a few days ago in the night so no CPAP that evening, the sudden reversion to "normal" sleep was jarring in how tired I felt after) and the symptoms of apnea being pretty similar to being hyper-anxious every night (adrenaline surge, racing heart, restlessness, etc.) make me wonder if the physical symptoms were feeding into the mental troubles. My worst mental moments have often been right before trying to sleep when bad thoughts hit, I wonder if I was primed for that with my body being stressed out every night? I can imagine (but obviously can't say with authority) that the psychiatrist/psychologist-style response to that would be to say that the fact you can identify something like bullying as a probable cause or exacerbating factor for your anxiety suggests that you understand that it's irrational - as opposed to thinking that everyone is always out to get you all the time, just as a matter of course. It's tempting to call that a smart-arse response, though. Basically I'm right there with you on that; it's hard to untangle these things.I wouldn't know about the sleep apnoea thing, but the feedback loop of anxiety prompting physical symptoms which then increase anxiety, and so on - is something I've had psychologists mention a number of times. So maybe? I know that most of my life has been underscored by low-key chest pain because (I'm told) I'm technically hyperventilating all the time due to anxiety. Decoy Badger posted:If someone told me that this game isn't about fetishizing disabled people then showed me this route, I probably wouldn't believe them. The constant descriptions of how timid, jumpy etc. is Hanako read 100% like weird fetish copy except with anxiety replacing feet. It was really bad in the first act. I feel like I have a hard time being objective when it comes to Hanako since I identify with her so hard, but I think EclecticTastes has a good point there about what's going on with the writing so far in Hanako's route. Maybe social anxiety is difficult to write, especially when it's being described from the outside - from an observer's point of view? I mean... I made a mod for Skyrim called Clockwork, which on the surface is a ghost story, but I actually wrote to "secretly" be about social anxiety disorder. One of the things I was interested in doing with it was - beyond all the symbolism and themes and whatnot pointing to it - trying to write characters that suffer from social anxiety and/or depression without coming right out and saying "they're like this because they have the depression". Or saying "the theme is social anxiety". And then I wanted to see if anyone playing the mod would notice what it's about. (What it's about from my point of view, at least. I know; death of the author, and all that.) The thing is, I was worried I was being really on the nose with it, but hundreds of thousands of people have played Clockwork, and no-one ever noticed. Or at least they never mentioned it, if they did. A number of people have said "oh, it's about loneliness" - which is true, but not the whole story. This was kind of a meta thing for me; I actually resolved to not reveal all this until/unless someone noticed it - this is the first time I've mentioned it publicly - but whatever, it's been years now. So maybe it helps to be kind of blatant to ensure that people even notice that "oh, it's not that this character is being rude and abrupt; it's social anxiety". Maybe?
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Aug 22, 2021 07:48
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HomestarCanter posted:What an interesting coincidence! I've played partway through this mod in my Skyrim VR setup, and I'll tell you the lead-in dungeon freaked me out and unsettled me more than I've been in a long time. I'm only as far as restoring the steam system, so I haven't seen the whole story. I connected the themes more to dementia, myself, but that's likely because I've taken care of a relative who suffered from that, whereas I don't have social anxiety. Oh yeah, the dementia thing makes a lot of sense. That side of things kind of had to be in there for... Elder Scrolls lore reasons - don't want to get too off-topic - but for me I think it was more general existential dread about mental illness impacting identity, rather than "I'll make this an allegory about dementia". (And thanks; I was also trying to see if I could pull off horror in Skyrim. It was hard!) Well that's pretty cursed.  Falconier111 posted:
Huh - could have sworn Miki had lines in other routes too. I must have just been thinking of her showing up in background images.
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Aug 24, 2021 07:12
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KS has several Yamanaku students who never show up in the narrative but have names and disabilities; for instance, if you go back to the image where Hisao first meets Mutou’s class, the big kid drooling in the corner is Taro Arai (
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On the topic of portraying social anxiety from the inside or outside; I was thinking about this earlier and suddenly remembered WataMote. Can't believe I didn't think to mention it before; it seems pretty relevant while we're on Hanako's route. It definitely focusses on portraying it from the inside. It's all about the rich internal world of Tomoko, who then can barely manage to stutter out a few words when it comes to talking to people. She's also kind of a little poo poo, though. Basically the Japanese teenage girl version of the worst 4chan troglodyte you can imagine. Her repeatedly running afoul of her incredible lack of self-awareness can be hard to watch. Very hard. I remember seeing someone say something like "how much you can laugh at WataMote reveals how much you can laugh at yourself." I still can't help but sympathise with her though, due to just how much she suffers from her social anxiety. She does have actual character development too - especially in the manga, which (last I checked) is still going, and which continues on far beyond the anime. It's remained funny and become a substantially less brutal experience. Oh, also: the opening theme is great. Far from the typical ear-bleeding J-Pop, it goes with a somewhat more atypical metalcore approach. I think it's what first introduced me to Kiba of Akiba, a band I quite like.
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Aug 25, 2021 09:09
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Yep... "oof" sums it up. This would have to be the most effective depiction of a panic attack I've ever seen. As for how well (or not) Hisao, Misha and Shizune handled it... I don't know. I think they did alright, considering they were distracted by work, and there's the thing I mentioned in my earlier wall-of-text about how Standard Operating Procedure for people with social anxiety disorder is specifically to avoid drawing attention to yourself - even in the middle of having a panic attack. Makes it hard for others to pick up on it. But they did eventually notice, and did their best to help her, even when they were pretty shaken themselves. That's more than I ever got when I was at high school! Or... well, it wasn't in direct response to a panic attack, but there was my English teacher (my favourite teacher, actually), who was the only one to both notice that something was wrong and ask if I was okay. Unfortunately I didn't know that "panic attacks" or "social anxiety disorder" existed back then, so there was no way I could articulate what was wrong. I didn't even know what was wrong myself. It would have been really helpful if they had taught that sort of thing at school. It would have been an actually useful thing for them to cover in "Personal Development" class. Instead of "here are cross-section diagrams of male and female reproductive organs, here's a list of STDs, here's a list of contraceptive methods, and here's a list of the drugs that are bad and which you should not do." "Didn't we cover all this last year?" "Yes and shut up." EclecticTastes posted:I can't say I fully care for the (likely unintentional) characterization of anxiety disorders as purely psychological. As someone who has anxiety (fortunately, I've only had a few full-on panic attacks over the years), I can say that it's often less to do with one's thoughts and feelings and more to do with one's endocrine system going completely rogue and flooding you with fear response hormones while you do your best to remain rational in the face of your entire nervous system chemically screaming, "YOU ARE GOING TO loving DIE!" into every brain cell. Well, in my case it's sometimes "everyone secretly hates you, especially the people you like and/or respect, and they're all talking poo poo about you behind your back", but that one feels more specific to me. Well no, I can certainly understand that one - for what it's worth. Falconier111 posted:I open my mouth to protest, but I can't find a fault in his argument. While her condition does at first seem to be wholly physiological, its worst effects have been on her psyche. It still puts me off, though. Isn't he just passing on the responsibility for her problem? Surely she can't go like this for her entire life. She might not get much choice there, Hisao. Something I've had to say to people a few times re: my social anxiety is "I can't just switch it off when it becomes inconvenient. That's kind of the problem."
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Aug 28, 2021 04:03
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EclecticTastes posted:Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to imply that social worries were unique to me so much as that such thoughts are more specific to an individual, whereas a general "oh poo poo I am in mortal peril" theme seems to be fairly ubiquitous among those who've suffered panic attacks, by my understanding. Which makes sense, as a nameless certainty that one is in danger (often resolving to "heart attack" due to the rush of adrenaline causing a spike in one's heart rate) would be the "default" for one's fear center, absent any other insecurities or concerns a panic attack might exploit. Oh, nothing to be sorry for there; I was just saying that I empathise. SpruceZeus posted:ive had ones that i thought were just carsickness at first Now that you mention it, I do remember my first panic attack (even if I had no idea what was happening at the time): it was right at the start of my second year of high school - so I was 13, nearly 14 - and in class, I suddenly started feeling really nauseous. I thought I'd caught a stomach bug or something. (Because that's school, right? There's always something going around.) I couldn't connect it to any specific cause; it was just "suddenly I feel sick".
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Aug 30, 2021 06:52
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Cobalt-60 posted:I don't think it's a confession, more like a drunken "I LOVE YOU GUYS." Hanako doesn't have many happy evenings; she doesn't want this one to end. And she's not used to drinking. Her hugging Hisao does seem significant though... From Hisao's point of view, I guess the question is whether it means she sees him as a rare close friend like Lilly, or if she sees him in a romantic light. Falconier111 posted:Hanako hugging her doll competes. She has a LOT of cute pictures in her route, even more than most of the girls. I was about to say the same thing; there are a lot of  and  pictures in this update especially.
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Sep 3, 2021 04:19
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Falconier111 posted:
Substance abuse problems are apparently more common in people who suffer from social anxiety disorder - which makes sense if you think about it. Fortunately it's not something I've had a problem with myself. (Not saying I think that's what's going on with Hanako - it just came to mind.)
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Sep 4, 2021 02:37
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I vote preferred order because it's also my preferred order. Well, the main thing I'd like is to end on Lilly's route rather than Rin or Shizune, so swapping the latter two would also be fine by me. Like I said earlier in the thread somewhere, I don't dislike Rin or Shizune's routes exactly, but I remember Shizune's route as having some odd characterisation and feeling kind of flat, while Rin's route... oof. I found Rin's route to be pretty difficult, in more ways than one. Felt like crap after that one. It's also the only route in which I actually hit a "bad end" - and I think it was intentionally written to make it easy to do that... but hey, we'll get there when we get there. I forgot about Hanako's silly hat. Though I guess that's certainly a convincingly weird Japanese outfit. I intentionally buy plain and nondescript clothes as a form of social camouflage though, so what would I know about fashion?
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Sep 7, 2021 04:17
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I'm kind of impressed that Hanako is even still answering the door when she's having as bad a time as she is here. I've had periods (fortunately not for a number of years now) when I just couldn't do that.
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Sep 13, 2021 10:48
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Falconier111 posted:Before I can object, she grabs my mathematics book with her hand. She scans the page I was on, holding it open with the one hand she has, her left arm sitting uselessly on her lap. In my time here at Yamaku, I've noticed that the other students have a wide range of adjustment to their disabilities, on a purely practical level. Miki is one of those that seem to have some trouble. The stump of her left arm tends to be either hanging by her side, slipped into a pocket, or otherwise put out of the way. Sometimes she has a difficult time doing common tasks, which makes her visibly quite frustrated. I feel a little bad for thinking this way, but I'm thankful that Hanako and I don't have disabilities affecting our freedom of movement to that extent. Then again... if Miki's problem worsened, at least she wouldn't have a real possibility of dying. You know what, this reminds me of when I was Uni; there was a woman in my course who was also missing a hand - half her arm, really - up to the elbow. I especially remember her having trouble with Photoshop, when we were learning to use that. Photoshop relies relatively heavily on modifier keys: having to hold down ctrl/shift/alt while also doing something with the mouse - in other words, it relies on the user having the use of both hands. I remember she would try to hit those modifier keys with her stump, but it wasn't really working. She could hit single modifier keys like that sometimes, but some operations in Photoshop require hitting multiple modifier keys simultaneously in different combinations and in a certain order, and those were right out. I helped her with some of those sometimes in class, but obviously that wasn't sustainable: I had my own work to do. I guess this is what sticky keys is for, but I don't know that any of us knew about that at the time. (This was in the early 2000s because I guess I'm getting old.) I would have suggested it, if I'd known. If I'd had any exposure to sticky keys back then, it would have been as "that annoying thing that Windows pops up (likely crashing my game) when I press shift too many times while playing some FPS or other". Then I would have set it to "always off" and forgotten about it until I next upgraded Windows.
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Sep 15, 2021 11:43
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They used a grilled shrimp for the SFW image? Oof. It's just... I've heard that some people call Hanako "bacon girl", which is... hmm. 
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Sep 18, 2021 04:20
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The ending of Hanako's route has always felt a little abrupt. I think it was mainly that I wanted to see a bit more of Hanako and Hisao together after having worked out their feelings for each other. Fiction usually has a bit of a tail after the big climax, and it's kind of chopped off here. It's still my favourite route though - I think. Like I've said before, I have a hard time being objective when it comes to anything related to Hanako because I relate to her far and away the most out of all the characters in Katawa Shoujo.
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Sep 22, 2021 07:07
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| # ¿ May 19, 2024 20:54 |
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Falconier111 posted:At some point in early development, somebody leaked a beta version of KS now lost in the bowels of the Internet. Apparently, this early version of the game deviated wildly from the finished product. I didn’t mention it last time because Emi’s route didn’t change much, but apparently every other route underwent major revisions – Hanako’s most of all. Sometimes, those differences were relatively minor: Hanako, for instance, went to a foster home instead of an orphanage and had a previous love interest who died in a car accident immediately after confessing. But instead of the standard Good/Neutral/Bad Ending structure, by default her route had three Bad Endings in a row, some of which killed you or her. The players had to go through Lilly’s route and take a hidden off-ramp to get to her Good Ending. And honestly, thank gently caress they changed that: unless the devs found a way to warn you beforehand, most players would probably just assume she couldn’t be saved and give up on the route entirely. Yeah, I've read the beta (maybe it was kind of a reconstruction/restoration of it - can't remember), and Hanako's route was awful compared to the final thing. Just miserable. To give an idea of where it goes, it contains a scene with Hanako in a straight jacket in a padded cell. And like you said, it was structured like a trap: once you were in it, it was all bad ends, including characters actually dying. I found it pretty upsetting at the time, considering my own struggles with social anxiety disorder and depression. Falconier111 posted:Instead, they changed the route in the finished product, keeping its structure meta in in the way I covered above. Instead of punishing players for not exploring the rest of the game, it compels them to go back and replay the route while looking at it from a different perspective, deepening their investment in and appreciation of the storyline. It's a great way to get players hooked, and if you ever need an example of whether videogame mechanics can enhance a narrative experience, you can just point to how this route forces readers to engage with Hanako’s character. Of course, that doesn’t mean every player got the memo, and I bet plenty of people just tried things at random and made it through the route that way or approach it some other way: I’d be interested in hearing how the thread experienced Hanako’s route and if I missed something. It also doesn’t fix the awkward writing necessary to accomplish all of these goals at once, among other things kind of burying the lede on the romantic side. But it still manages to hook readers and drive them along, leaving it immortal in a lot of players’ minds. For my part, on my first time through Katawa Shoujo I naturally fell into Hanako's route, and arrived at the good end just as naturally. Maybe I was just lucky! It's tempting though to think that again, since I relate to Hanako so much, the right choices were obvious to me. (Except for that one I complained about where you ask if she wants to help out with student council stuff, I guess: I still think the wording of the choices there was too vague.) Like, the "call it a day?"/"do you want to go into the city?" choice; there I thought that if she was anxious about Lilly leaving, she might appreciate going and doing something, rather than immediately also being left alone by Hisao. I am kind of surprised that it's a binary bad end/good end choice, though; that does seem a bit harsh. Looking forward to the discussion around Shizune's route. It's... certainly something.
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Sep 23, 2021 09:14
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