I am a pussy. I can't handle giant spiders very well. Sue me for that, okay?
Anyway, since I had nothing better to do I thought about all kinds of weird things("Rinnin' out"?) and one of them was basically this: I know that Katawa Shoujo is a realistic game, with realistic characters. It's one of the game's greatest strengths, that the characters often act like real people would instead of doing what is "dramatically appropriate" for a fictional character. Yet I have the feeling that some unrealistic, game-like "rules" are still in place. In order to make all path equally interesting, one of the things I sort of assumed was that all girls are going to be crippled to basically the same "degree". Four of them have disabilities that can be described very easily: one cannot hear, one cannot see, one has no arms, on has no legs. The disability is ultimate, at least in one aspect. You don't get a girl with glasses, you get a girl who is completely, utterly blind. As blind as another one is deaf, or armless.
The problem is with Hanako, our resident moe. I'd really like to say that her disability is "disfigured", but I don't think I can honestly do that. Just look at her for a moment! To call a person this beautiful "disfigured" is an insult to disfigured people anywhere
When I first met her, I was sure that under that long hair of her half her body looks like a hamburger and that she is at least partially blind in that eye. But then I see more and more pictures of her and read more and more information and it turns out that the extent of her disability is actually more like "mildly unattractive, barely noticeable scarring on about thirty percents of her face and most of her right arm.
I hope you understand what I mean when I say that, in a way, it sounds a bit "cheap". Like, I don't know, like she is "getting away" with a lot less then what all the other characters have to deal with(even the protagonist. Hisao could basically drop dead at any moment right now). This is offset, you can say, by the fact that she clearly has far more emotional issues then the other girls(At least on the surface. The other four seem to have basically overcome their "real" disabilities, and she is making such a big deal of what seems, for now, like a problem that is small even cosmetically). I am not saying that being burned like this is an easy experience nor that going around with a scarred face is a lot of fun, but come on, she is constantly surrounded by people missing half their limbs. Compared to most other Yamaku students she basically has no problem at all.
She is fragile. She is weak and vulnerable. She is a shrinking violet, and we have no idea what happened to her in life that made her so miserable(a fire was involved, but that's pretty much all we know). But I think her disability is less... Well, less of a disability then the other ones. To put it in Tabletop RPG terms, I would have given her far, far less "Bonus Character Points" or whatever for that drawback. You can't even say that she is "ugly", because let's face it, she is not. With or without the scars she is freaking beautiful.
A part of the theme of the game, in my mind, is a test of your shallowness(you, the player's): are you capable of feeling love for a theoretical, imaginary person despite them being disabled? What do you think you would have done in real life? But it's difficult to apply that theme to Hanako. What's exactly the difficulty in loving her? She has virtually no disability at all.
................
Hmmm. I have a feeling that I was awfully confusing there. I hope you managed to understand what I am trying to say.
I love the character, but this aspect of her is troubling me(Or at least that cruel, perverted part of my mind that demands that all of my cripple girls to be equally damaged O_O)
What do you think? Do I have a point or am I just mumbling at this point? Anyone had a similar thought in the past? Solutions to this so called "problem"?
Thank you very much for your time.
), due to the fact that this is a bishoujo game, it seems like the concept of 
