Katawa Haha

[Goldilurks]

I've had a weird idea; in KS we're seeing what these fascinating characters think and do in a high school setting, exploring the ramifications for their romantic relationships, etc. What if we took that into adulthood and parenthood? I tried to think about what the KS girls would be like as mothers, and, well, this series of fancomics came up.

...Or they would be fancomics if I could draw worth a damn. Instead they are fancomic scripts. I tried writing them down as short stories, but they didn't feel right without a visual component. Note: for this reason I was unsure if they should go in Fan Art (as instructions for drawings) or Fan Fiction (as written fanwork). So I went to Fan Works to play it safe. If I was mistaken, my bad; I'm sure the thread will get moved if this was a problem.

So far I have planned out a short fancomic chapter (about 6 pages) for each of the main ladies, with an extra 4koma omake at the end. I also have ideas for short omakes, about one or two pages long, for each of the other female characters who appear in Act I (Misha, Yuuko, and Akira). Each chapter will explore how the character is handling being a mother, and most of them will also explore how the child comes to terms with their mother's condition.

This is not any sort of organized fan project, much less "my" fan project. It's merely something creative I had to get off my chest, something that I was dissatisfied seeing only in written form. KS remains the impressive achievement of the dev team's ideas, and I consider Katawa Haha to be an extension of those ideas and no more. Hell, in the state they're in my scripts aren't even a proper tribute. So feel free to illustrate, or modify, or criticize, or parody anything I put up on this thread. I'd love to see someone turned the scripts into actual fancomics, but the KS fan community has better things to do than work on my meagre offerings.

I hope you enjoy Katawa Haha. Moreover, I hope you are inspired to do better than I. Chapters will be posted as they are completed and linked here on the OP.

Here's a listing of what I have planned, along with a preview quote I had in mind so far.

• Shizune's Chapter - “This is the fourth time tonight. You’ve been doing this ever since we moved her to the crib. What’s eating you?”
• Emi's Chapter - "Are you saying I'm t-too old to run like that?" *puppy eyes*
• Rin's Chapter - "This is the first classmate you've brought home, Ken-chan. A momentous occasion. You're not planning to marry her, are you?"
• Hanako's Chapter - "But Mommy, they were staring at you!"
• Lilly's Chapter - "So, my dear, tell me what you saw at school today."
• Misha's Omake - "...Toshi's mom is scary."
• Yuuko's Omake - "Is this clumsiness genetic? I worry for my son..."
• Akira's Omake - "MOM! GET OUT OF MY TUX! YOU PROMISED!"
• Kenji's Omake - "CLOSE YOUR CURTAINS TO THWART VOYEURS!"

[Goldilurks]

Shizune’s Chapter

• Page One
  First Panel: Shizune sits up suddenly in bed, mouth open in shock. She’s wearing what appears to be a baggy, sleeveless t-shirt. Shicchan’s clearly older, with her hair grown out a bit; probably early twenties. The darkness of the room makes it clear that it’s nighttime, but we can make out the outline of a crib behind her. (The perspective I had in mind was a profile shot of Shizune’s face from her right side.)
  Second Panel: We get a good look at the bed from behind the crib. A worried Shizune is sitting upright, looking in the direction of the reader at the crib. We’re looking at her over top of the crib rather than through the “bars”; it’s one of those archetypal wooden cribs. Moonlight enters the room from a window behind the bed. Behind Shizune, apparently sleeping peacefully on the other side of the bed, is the shape of a man. With the main source of lighting behind him, we shouldn’t be able to make out more from his silhouette than his outline under the sheets and maybe an arm.
  Third Panel: Much smaller panel, this is a close up on the infant in the crib, from the chest up. She’s a beautiful little girl; I hadn’t ironed out her age but anywhere between 4 and 9 months sounds about right. She’s out cold in the boneless sleep that babies are really good at, when they do sleep. Her chest rises slowly and regularly as she breathes. The lighting in this panel should be a little darker than the previous two.
• Page Two
  First Panel: Shizune gets her feet out of bed and stands up, heading for the crib. It doesn’t matter so much at what stage of this movement (throwing the sheets away, feet on the floor, standing up) the panel catches her, but I think it works better if we don’t see her face.
  Second Panel: Much smaller panel, we get a close-up of the man’s face. He’s grimacing; her movement has woken him up and from the look of it he’s lost more sleep to his wife than his daughter in the recent months. Don’t show his eyes and leave his hair as indistinct as possible; he needs to be as transparent a character as possible (Shizune married “Protagonist”, not Hisao, so to speak). This panel is a reaction to the previous panel more than anything, and they can be merged into a single panel if that view captures both her movement and his facial expression.
  Third Panel: Close-up on the bottom of a baby’s bottle in the dark, with a little white liquid spattering into the bottom. Very small panel.
  Fourth Panel: Zoom out, we see Shizune is standing over the crib. She’s milking herself using one of those little electric devices, attached to the bottle from the previous panel. While her left hand uses the device, her right hand is stroking the side of the baby’s face. The baby is still out cold. On her face is a look of concern, though not as panicked as before. The perspective I had in mind was a bird’s-eye view from somewhere behind Shizune. I’d like to minimize the fanservice in this panel simply because I think it would detract from the scene, but practically speaking this is Shizune after having a kid. Keeping those mammaries out of sight may not be possible.
• Page Three
  First Panel: We see Shizune sitting sideways on the bed but not lying down; she’s still watching the baby out of the corner of her eye. The perspective is from behind her husband. He’s sitting half-upright and looks two-thirds awake. We can see his hands move.
  Caption: “Please go to sleep.” (This is the husband’s sign language, of course. I was using captions to depict sign language; a way to distinguish his captions from Shizune’s would be useful.)
  Second Panel: We see Shizune turning towards him, hands moving and mouth open (Japanese Sign Language uses voicing, so an open mouth can be expected from her). Her facial expression is Tsundere Indignant Disapproval, somewhere between angry at his insensitivity and jealous of his calm.
  Caption: “Easy for you to say!”
  Third Panel: Shot of the husband from shoulders to knees; we see his body beneath the sheets and his signing hands, but little else in the darkness. Perhaps a close-up of Shizune’s hands or face is visible in the foreground.
  Caption: “This is the fourth time tonight. You’ve been doing this ever since we moved her to the crib. What’s eating you?”
• Page Four
  First Panel: Larger panel, probably half the page. We’re looking at Shizune from the husband’s perspective. She is sitting upright looking away from him. Her hands are in front of her body so we can see her sign, but only a sliver of her face is visible.
  Caption: “If she cries or stops breathing or something else…I can’t hear her.”
  Second Panel: Close-up on Shizune’s face, this time the facial expression is Tsundere Insecurity. It should clear from this panel alone that she’s been judging her fitness as a parent in light of her disability since before the baby was born.
  Caption: “You would be scared too. She-”
  Third Panel: Same close-up as the previous panel. She’s been interrupted by something, and she looks back in surprise at her husband.
• Page Five
  First Panel: Close up on their hands. He’s grabbed her hands in a gesture that is meant to both shut her up and comfort her. This can be a pretty small panel.
  Second Panel: A larger view of them both in bed; her sitting and him lying down. He’s smiling and still holding her hands. (Remember to use shadows to make his eyes and hair indistinct!) For the look on her face, I was using the same expression she had at the end of her path in Act I as reference, when she has her hands wide open to encompass the sky. Emotional vulnerability, yes, but also a deep sincerity there.
  Third Panel: And another close-up on the baby, from a different angle this time.
  Caption (his): “Don’t worry, my ears work fine. You just keep your eyes on her during the day. I’ll listen at night.”
• Page Six
  First Panel: Shizune is easing her way back under the covers. She believes him but still has that “I’m going to look displeased to hide how much I love you” look (I was thinking panel 2 for reference).
  Comment: “If you hear anything…promise me you’ll let me know.”
  Second Panel: Huge. Takes up the rest of the page. Bird’s-eye view of the room. We can see the daughter in her crib and the two in her bed. Shizune has settled into a tired if not perfectly peaceful sleep.
  Comment: “I promise.” (To illustrate that he signed this before passing out, this caption would go best at the top of the panel.)
• Omake Yonkoma
  First Panel: Shizune and her daughter, probably best illustrated as chibis, are gritting their teeth at eachother and signing furiously. Yes, she learned sign language. The daughter is just a little girl but she already looks like her mother. She’s wearing overalls while her mother is in a dress, and they are in what is clearly a child’s room.
  Caption: Age 7: Arguing over keeping the room clean.
  Second Panel: As above, but they are in a kitchen. The daughter is taller and now wearing an elementary school uniform.
  Caption: Age 10: Arguing over keeping the kitchen clean.
  Third Panel: As above, but they are on a front porch. Daughter is taller, showing the early signs of puberty, and dressed in casual wear indicating she has plans to hang with her friends this evening. She’s grown her hair long and tied it back in a ponytail, but still looks like her mother even without glasses.
  Caption: Age 13: Arguing over weekend curfews.
  Fourth Panel: The daughter is now a young woman in a high school uniform. She’s sitting on the roof of some high school next to her friend, who has much shorter hair. Hell with it, the daughter needs a name by now; let’s call her Yuu. The two girls are eating bentos. Yuu’s ponytail is long enough to be draped over her shoulder now.
  Caption: Age 16: Chatting with oblivious friends.
  Friend: “Your house is always so quiet, Yuu-chan! I bet you never argue with your mom.”
  Yuu: “UGH!” (For reference, she should be depicted with exactly the same “Are you kidding me?” look Shizune uses a few times throughout Act I. The apple don’t fall far from the tree.)

Author's Notes: The transition from tsundere with a competitive streak to protective mom who's hard on herself seemed very natural to me.
This is the most serious of the ideas I had for Katawa Haha; the other chapters, in whatever state they are so far, are a lot more light-hearted. This one also depended a lot more on the father figure than the other ones. The only other script I had in mind that even includes a father is Yuuko's omake. I apologize to the Hisao/Shizune shippers, but I wanted the focus to remain on Shizune; draw Hisao in as the husband if you want.
Next up is probably Emi's.

[Ozymil]

I support this endeavour. Here, have an internet to get things going. However, the huge blocks of theatre-scriptlike text are a bit mind numbing... And why exactly wouldn't the protagonist be Hisao? Even if you included him, it's not as if he's suddenly going to steal the spotlight the minute he's introduced. In fact, I'm even less drawn to Shizune now that I have this anonymous no-face borking her.

Title the project following Clannad's example, perhaps? Katawa After has a nice ring to it, however fetishistic.

[Goldilurks]

I only chose Haha because it is the pronunciation of the kanji for "mother" that you use when referring to your own mother when she's not present, giving the connotation that these are stories the children could be telling about their mothers. Not that imitating Clannad is a bad thing; I personally agree with not giving Misha her own route out of a desperate hope that she'll be given her own side story game after the full release, like Tomoko from Clannad got.

EDIT: Experimenting with the formatting to make it more readable. If you're going to offer an internets, I ought to damn well earn it.

EDIT THE SECOND: There, that looks much better. Now as regards Hisao, I leave it to the artist to decide whether he wants to draw Hisao in there (or anyone else; hell, Kenji if that's your OTP). Remember people, I'm not taking any sort of executive ownership over this.
And thanks for the prompt feedback, Ozymil.

[DuaneMoody]

Shizune milking herself

MUST...NOT...FAP

[SivakAurak]

Shizune milking herself

MUST...NOT...FAP

Ah, the magic and wonder of motherhood.

[Ozymil]

Shizune milking herself

MUST...NOT...FAP

Ah, the magic and wonder of motherhood.

Unless it's your mother.

Need some?

[U.T. Raptor]

1179622125014.jpg (105.94 KiB) Viewed 52520 times

[Duo2Cuo]

Keeping those mammaries out of sight may not be possible.

They better not be!

THIS COULD BE THE LARGEST MISTAKE EVER MADE

PUN INTENDED

[SivakAurak]

Your Mega Milk avatar lends another layer to my amusement.

[G3n0c1de]

I'd also like to see this made, though I am confused as to why Hisao isn't the father figure here. I don't see why not, and I think these stories would be 'what if's' out of each path if Hisao had gotten each girl. While the focus would remain on the mother. All in all, pretty good.

[Bara]

Interesting, if anyone chooses to illustrate this at least they have a solid point to start drawing from.

[Goldilurks]

MUST...NOT...FAP

At least wait until someone draws it.

Ah, the magic and wonder of motherhood.

Unless it's your mother.

Need some?

...why yes, in fact. Thanks. >__< Pass the whole jug.

I'd also like to see this made, though I am confused as to why Hisao isn't the father figure here. I don't see why not, and I think these stories would be 'what if's' out of each path if Hisao had gotten each girl. While the focus would remain on the mother. All in all, pretty good.

I've gotten a reaction on this point, it seems. Oddly enough, during the little brainstorm that led me to these stories, I never for a second thought about Hisao as a parent. Do people feel he deserves a chapter of his own?

Status update: Emi's chapter should be up by the weekend, I think.

[DuaneMoody]

Here's how I'd play a story like this: Each arc has the heroine married to Hisao with no explanation of what's going on. A central storyline gradually draws all of them together to a reunion, where the true faces of their husbands are revealed and we learn whether the last one was really married to Hisao or not.

[Ozymil]

I'd also like to see this made, though I am confused as to why Hisao isn't the father figure here. I don't see why not, and I think these stories would be 'what if's' out of each path if Hisao had gotten each girl. While the focus would remain on the mother. All in all, pretty good.

I've gotten a reaction on this point, it seems. Oddly enough, during the little brainstorm that led me to these stories, I never for a second thought about Hisao as a parent. Do people feel he deserves a chapter of his own?

Status update: Emi's chapter should be up by the weekend, I think.

Unless you plan on placing all these storylines within a universe as Duane described it, or if it drastically affects something you had planned, I really would like to see Hisao as the husband. He is, after all, the protagonist, hehe, and I've grown attached to the cynical bastard.