Ask!

[Aura]

I'm visiting here from KSG at 4chan. What songs do you think would fit best as good end themes for each of the characters?

Themes, as in music that'd thematically fit the ending scene or a credit roll after the good end? It's pretty much impossible to give a totally serious answer to this, so I recruited a committee to suggest songs. Here's the final five:

Hanako: Eels - Flower
Shizune: Cinnamon Chasers - The World Is Yours
Rin: U2 - Beautiful Day
Lilly: The Turtles - Happy Together
Emi: Shanks & Bigfoot - Sweet Like Chocolate

[Aura]

Would members of 4LS consider doing an AMA thread on reddit? Just something I wanted to ask since the KS phenom was on par with skyrim at it's peak there at one point. References to KS still pop up time to time, and reddit loves indie devs anyway.
Combined with the fact that the 4 leaf story is pretty inspiring to a lot of people, I think it'd really be enjoyed by alot of your fans.

You understand you are posting in a thread that functionally is a persistent AMA thread, and literally anyone can pop in and ask us whatever? That said, sure we can consider it, maybe even do it. I don't know if that kind of thing would take of outside of r/ks though.

[Aura]

How did the idea of feminist conspiracy agenda come around in the making?

It was just something A22 came up with when he was writing, and took off from there.

[Aura]

Would members of 4LS consider doing an AMA thread on reddit? Just something I wanted to ask since the KS phenom was on par with skyrim at it's peak there at one point. References to KS still pop up time to time, and reddit loves indie devs anyway.
Combined with the fact that the 4 leaf story is pretty inspiring to a lot of people, I think it'd really be enjoyed by alot of your fans.

You understand you are posting in a thread that functionally is a persistent AMA thread, and literally anyone can pop in and ask us whatever? That said, sure we can consider it, maybe even do it. I don't know if that kind of thing would take of outside of r/ks though.

And bam, we did it:

[Suedars]

I've got a question for Hivemind:

I know you ended up writing Emi's path because nobody else wanted to and someone had to. Did Emi grow on you as a character over the course of writing her story? Now that the project is done, if you were to time travel back into the past when you all were choosing characters to write, would Emi be your first choice, or would you still want to write for a different character (ignoring any factor of not wanting to write the same story twice)?

[Pseudogenesis]

Any particular rationale to the way you named the characters? Lilly's name seems more romanized than the others, although I'm unsure if it's intentional.

[Aura]

Any particular rationale to the way you named the characters? Lilly's name seems more romanized than the others, although I'm unsure if it's intentional.

Lilly's name is not Japanese because of her parents, one is Japanese and the other is not. They gave one daughter a Japanese name and the other a Western one.

As for the rest, while most of the names don't carry any meaning, there's some interesting stuff here and there, both with the names themselves and their writings. Let's see:
Hideaki is named after A22's favourite anime director, Hideaki Anno
Shizune's name kanji are read "silent sound". Contrary to popular belief, Hisao's name kanji reading is not an intentional pun.
Rin's first name kanji is very unusual to reflect her persona, and her last name is the same as the "godfather of anime", Osamu Tezuka's.
Misha is named after a character in the novel Red Dragon.
Akira is named after a character from one of Suriko's favourite manga, Aria

[Suedars]

Any particular rationale to the way you named the characters? Lilly's name seems more romanized than the others, although I'm unsure if it's intentional.

Contrary to popular belief, Hisao's name kanji reading is not an intentional pun.

Could you clarify this for those of us not familiar with Japanese?

[LeHarlz]

What are the favorite food and drink of the 5 girls? [Seemingly trivial question that means surprisingly a lot.]

[TheHivemind]

I've got a question for Hivemind:

I know you ended up writing Emi's path because nobody else wanted to and someone had to. Did Emi grow on you as a character over the course of writing her story? Now that the project is done, if you were to time travel back into the past when you all were choosing characters to write, would Emi be your first choice, or would you still want to write for a different character (ignoring any factor of not wanting to write the same story twice)?

Oh no, Emi definitely grew on me as things progressed. Once I'd agreed to do the path, I basically took a lot of elements that I would have given to Rin (because that's the path I initially was going to write) and gave them to Emi instead--which is why Emi's probably a little smarter than she was originally supposed to be (I did have to take out a bunch of references to stuff that Emi definitely never would have read from her dialog early on). So if I were to go back I'd probably still wind up with Emi, if only because Rin turned out so much better than she would have otherwise.

Plus I'm super lazy and apart from adding a little more interaction with other characters I'd probably write the exact same path, but probably a little better because I at least pretend that I grew as a better writer over the last five years.

[cpl_crud]

Misha is named after a character in the novel Red Dragon.

It's actually "Hannibal Rising".

Misha (I actually think it is spelt differently in the novel, but I don't have it on hand) is Hannibal's sister. Things don't end well for her. I think I had just finished reading it when we needed names, and it seemed "Japanese" enough to slip in. Someone, I think it was Aura, then Retconned "Mikado Shiina" in to give her a real name

[Josh_Mac]

On the announcement for the soundtrack release, it says it's made by Nicol, Blue, and "Special Guests." Who are the guests and which tracks were they on?

[Kyvos]

During Lilly's route, in the scene "Out and About" I believe, she says that she's recieved several confessions in her previous school and this one. She also says that her previous school was a strict, catholic, all-girls school, which would make it unlikely that there were a large number of homosexuals. Was this accidental, or did I miss something?

[TheHivemind]

During Lilly's route, in the scene "Out and About" I believe, she says that she's recieved several confessions in her previous school and this one. She also says that her previous school was a strict, catholic, all-girls school, which would make it unlikely that there were a large number of homosexuals. Was this accidental, or did I miss something?

Wow... yeah, that seems like a pretty odd mistake. I even looked up the scene and read it for myself... and I recall her talking about getting confessions. I suppose they could have come from... but...

Yeah, now I'm curious. That just seems so off-kilter.

If I'm not mistaken, this is a Marimite reference. No big deal.

[Ascended Flutist]

Actually asking a question (well, several, but one, really) this time :

Regarding the bathrooms in the dorms : Are they situated

1) Between two adjacent rooms?

2) In a room accessible from the corridor?

3) Both of the above?

Or is this particular layout left hanging, and can be shaped to suit the whims of fanfictions writers?

Yeah I know, but all the good questions were already answered, so this is what I got.