Liminaut wrote:Did you ever have fantasies as a child of being abandoned by your parents? How did that make you feel?
I remember going through that as a child, and the fantasy was so strong it reduced me to tears. I couldn't tell my parents why I was crying -- I knew it was only a silly fantasy -- but I still couldn't stop crying.
Now, imagine going through that in real life.
Imagine being in Lily's position. Having your parents leave you and only your sister being willing to stay and look after you. Imagine that first night without your mother and father being there when you wake up in the middle of the night. How does that feel?
Yes, I'm using the word 'imagine' here. The nature of a VN is that we aren't even given a skeleton of a story, we are given just the ligaments. And we have to imagine the rest. And in Lily's I keep coming back to that 12-year old waking up in the middle of the night.
See, there's your problem. You imagined it and cried - But the vast majority of people are not you. In fact, only one person on this entire planet is you. What you did, how you reacted...Means nothing while discussing Lilly.
Me, my parents split before I can remember so I got no abandonment vibes from mother going away. After that, my stepmom was awful and her abandoning us was no great loss (hell, when she died of cancer later, all it got from me was "*shrug* Karma's a dick."). And my father was honestly kinda shit at being a parent to the point that I prefer not to refer to him as such so when I imagine him bailing, the biggest loss is less "My parent is gone." and more "The guy who pays for things is gone."...How does it feel? "Eh, I'll find someone else to provide stuff."
And what relevance does the question have anyway? You're not talking about me, you're talking about Lilly. And Lilly shows no signs of trouble so any abandonment issues are mere assumption on your part.
Seems to be my "She shows zero signs of issues so she doesn't have them." versus your "She shows zero signs of issues but I know for an absolute fact that it is 100% impossible for her to not have issues, so she has them!"...One of those looks at the evidence. The other looks at the evidence and completely ignores it in favor of projecting personal feelings onto the scenario.
There is nothing in the nature of a VN that forces a lack of or minimal story. Hell, I've seen some that might as well have been short books. That said, the nature of any fictional media is that anything unexplained is free for fan interpretation so you can imagine whatever you like...But in the end, any abandonment issues she has are only in your head and thus not canon which brings me back to "It's not touched upon because you just made it up."
And you really can't criticize a story for not touching upon things you just made up.
Though, you can still criticize it for not taking the direction you wanted (certainly a 'what if' to speculate about)...Though there's enough parental abandonment issues with Emi.
