Katawa Shoujo Forums

ogorhan wrote:She got over it eventually.

Frankly, the entirety of Shizune's route seems to imply otherwise.

Mahorfeus wrote:

ogorhan wrote:She got over it eventually.

Frankly, the entirety of Shizune's route seems to imply otherwise.

We just couldn't end that tangent on a happy note, could we? *sigh*
Explain, please.

Mahorfeus wrote:

ogorhan wrote:She got over it eventually.

Frankly, the entirety of Shizune's route seems to imply otherwise.

"The entirety of Shizune's route" is irrelevant. The ending is what counts and in the (good) ending, she does appear to move on. And given that it is the good end, there's no reason to believe it's still fake.

ogorhan wrote:And tbh the facade thing came from the forum...

Pretty sure the 'facade thing' came from Misha acting super cheerful all the time while actually being horribly depressed and troubled all the time...

Valjean Lafitte wrote:

Mahorfeus wrote:

ogorhan wrote:She got over it eventually.

Frankly, the entirety of Shizune's route seems to imply otherwise.

We just couldn't end that tangent on a happy note, could we? *sigh*
Explain, please.

The context was unclear. I had assumed that ogorhan meant that Misha was already over the rejection before Shizune's route. If "eventually" refers to the end of the route or some unspecified point of time afterward, then yes, I am sure she came to terms with it.

What an interesting thread, I've spent the last hour and a half or so reading through it all and thinking up my own responses. Just my 2 cents here...

The vibe I get from Misha from reading through Shizune's route twice so far, is that she could be leaning mostly toward homosexuality. For one, you have to consider that it's a Shizune route, there are many aspects of Misha's personality that aren't thoroughly explored, and two, after reading fan fiction such as Blame, For Want of a Nail, and Closure, I feel that Misha has been served justice. As for her attractions, who knows? She's not real, that you could walk up and ask her. It could be a 60/40 split, or 70/30, or 90/10 for all we know. My point is it feels like she prefers women, but the possibility, even if small, to be attracted to a man she clicks well with, exists. The issue with the word "bisexual" is that it assumes that she would be attracted to both genders equally, which is untrue. It could be a waning interest, it could be almost none at all, but through the different words and interactions, that's just the feeling I get from the ideas of the writers.

Who knows, from complicated and confusing things come even more well developed answers later in adulthood. In the wonderful work of the VN, we never get to see what might have happened had Hisao shown interest primarily in Misha, rather than Shizune. And so, we can only speculate, or write. Personally, if I were Hisao in the Shizune route, I would be for Misha all the way, I find her overly energetic personality endearing. She has a childlike quality that many women lose as they age, it's a treasure that too few people ever hold on to.

And at the end of the day, Misha is Misha. You either love or hate her. I have two cats named Emi and Misha, so it's easy to see the impact KS has had on my family.

So yeah, just my 2 cents.

Hisao&Hanako<3 wrote:I have two cats named Emi and Misha, so it's easy to see the impact KS has had on my family.

That kind of Misha is probably not as noisy as the real Misha.

Also, I agree that Misha's energy, combined with her pink drills, is cute.
about her sexuality, I should have re-read Shiz's route before entering this thread.but ain't nobody got time fo' dat.

I've read Shizune's route twice and I still remember enough of it to reiterate some key points that brought me to my conclusion. For one, why would Misha have asked Hisao which girl he likes more, if she only planned on turning him down had he shown more interest in her instead? It just strikes me as odd, and Misha doesn't strike me as a person who would play with someone's feelings, even with "harmless" flirting. Her being "confused" at one point only furthers the possibility of her being "confused" again at some point later. And all the people saying that sexuality is a complex matter are only adding to my point further. If it's so not black and white, then that opens up the possibility even further. I'm not shooting down people that disagree, I'm just expressing how I think about it based on my reaction to the choice of dialogue that was used. There's just too many little key points where it's hinted at.

Mahorfeus wrote:The context was unclear. I had assumed that ogorhan meant that Misha was already over the rejection before Shizune's route. If "eventually" refers to the end of the route or some unspecified point of time afterward, then yes, I am sure she came to terms with it.

That's reasonably implicit in the two changes of hairstyle we know about. A drastic change of hairstyle is a cultural cue that often denotes a change in affections, in Japan.

Change #1: long brown hair to pink drills, possibly after Shizune's rejection of Misha, attempt to get over it.
Change #2: pink drills to short hair, possible realisation that Hisao x Shizune and that it's really all over.

brythain wrote: Perhaps she has a genuinely bubbly side, a tendency to want to see things positively, but she might also have a dark side (e.g. teased by friends, had an abusive father). So when she wahaha!~s, sometimes it's genuine and spontaneous, whereas sometimes it's a cover-up for grief or uncertainty. Behaviours aren't necessarily personality.

Sorry to re-quote you, but I'm in the middle of reading Misha's Arc in your "After the Dream" story, and the sad parts made me think back to this thread which had steered away from the original topic (my fault entirely, and I seem to have a bad habit of not letting this thread die).

In your fic Misha is portrayed as someone who was very good at faking a smile, and may in fact be perpetually sad:

Misha is not Misha, never was. Misha is broken, always has been.

No, I won’t scream. I am already crying. It’s not happiness, not relief from fear. Misha doesn’t deserve anything as strong as that. It’s simply being not sad, and not having regrets. For one short night.

She's always trying to cheer people up, and trying to fix people. I'll admit that even before I first played Shizune's route, I suspected as much; not because the game gave me any reason to think she wore a mask made of "Wahahah~!"s, but because some cynical part of me recognized the "sad clown" as a common story trope, and wondered if that's how it really was with her. But ever since I completed Shizune's path I've been afraid that that's exactly what A22 wanted to convey to readers: that Misha really is sad and lonely, and, as you show in your fic, even after Yamaku she is secretly depressed. At risk at sounding like a broken record (because I already posted about this earlier in the thread), I want to say exactly why it is that I think that a Misha who is hiding her depression has awful ramifications for the rest of Katawa Shoujo, at least for me:

Misha is sort of a comic relief character. That isn't to say she doesn't have depth, far from it. But she's used throughout Katawa Shoujo to bring levity to otherwise monotonous classroom scenes, and to occasionally provide Hisao with cheerful moral support (such as in Act 4 of Emi's route). In my opinion theres really nothing wrong or shallow about a good-natured character who laughs a lot, much less one that is concealing a few hurts and regrets. Even if she had no secret inner turmoil, I wouldn't think of her as a two-dimensional character. But it's this interpretation of that character that says that those behaviors aren't really a part of her personality that disturbs me as a player. If her bubbliness is a facade it effectively ruins the lighthearted feeling of nearly every scene she's in, rendering them depressing if you read them armed with that knowledge. That would an acceptable if not tragic story development if Misha mainly appeared in Shizune's route and almost nowhere else, but she and Shizune have appearances sprinkled throughout the entire game. You couldn't avoid funny, bubbly Misha encounters if you tried! So if Shizune's line about the real Misha not being the girl that Hisao sees is taken literally, how can it not affect my reading of every scene she is ever in?

I'm probably not the first to voice these concerns about this character, and I won't be the last. I'm not sure what I even intend to get out of posting about it again; it's not like Anonymous22 will magically appear out of nowhere and declare that Misha really is happy in the other routes and she's happy post-Shizune route, too. I guess I just needed to get this off my chest, and your Misha story gave me a good springboard to do it from.

As an aside, brythain, I want to say that I'm bowled over by the quality of your writing. The timeline jumping is a little confusing, but you write the characters so well that I don't mind a few unanswered questions (that I'm probably going to ask about anyway in the AtD thread). I'm trying half-assedly to get some sort of KS fanfic of my own off the ground, and you've given me something to aspire to when I'm staring at my monitor trying to think of a way to say something without using the same word I used to describe it two sentences ago.

Valjean Lafitte wrote:Sorry to re-quote you, but I'm in the middle of reading Misha's Arc in your "After the Dream" story, and the sad parts made me think back to this thread which had steered away from the original topic (my fault entirely, and I seem to have a bad habit of not letting this thread die).

In your fic Misha is portrayed as someone who was very good at faking a smile, and may in fact be perpetually sad:

brythain wrote:Misha is not Misha, never was. Misha is broken, always has been.

No, I won’t scream. I am already crying. It’s not happiness, not relief from fear. Misha doesn’t deserve anything as strong as that. It’s simply being not sad, and not having regrets. For one short night.

She's always trying to cheer people up, and trying to fix people.
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*snip more interesting comments*

I must say that your thoughts have made me think a lot about what I was trying to do, and whether I succeeded.

I think my analysis prior to writing this arc was that Misha's basic personality is sanguine, with an overlay of melancholic infused with a history of undescribed trauma. So Misha is able to summon up the positive energy to try to live through her trauma and her sadness, and when she's safe from trauma later on, she's herself again, the real happy person. However, recalling those traumas (indeed, quite a few, including her initial failed relationship with Shizune) can still trigger the resigned, fatalistic and melancholy layer. If I've failed to get that across, it is entirely my own failing...

Valjean Lafitte wrote:As an aside, brythain, I want to say that I'm bowled over the quality of your writing. The timeline jumping is a little confusing, but you write the characters so well that I don't mind a few unanswered questions (that I'm probably going to ask about anyway in the AtD thread). I'm trying half-assedly to get some sort of KS fanfic of my own off the ground, and you've given me something to aspire to when I'm staring at my monitor trying to think of a way to say something without using the same word I used to describe it two sentences ago.

I thank you very much, really, for those kind words. I trust that when you finally get to the end of Misha's arc, you'll be satisfied. Also, there are little interludes scattered around where Shizune's or even Rin's memories of Misha say a little bit more. Enjoy, and may your own writing also be blessed by wise counsel, as mine has, in these forums!

brythain wrote: *snip more interesting comments*

I must say that your thoughts have made me think a lot about what I was trying to do, and whether I succeeded.

I think my analysis prior to writing this arc was that Misha's basic personality is sanguine, with an overlay of melancholic infused with a history of undescribed trauma. So Misha is able to summon up the positive energy to try to live through her trauma and her sadness, and when she's safe from trauma later on, she's herself again, the real happy person. However, recalling those traumas (indeed, quite a few, including her initial failed relationship with Shizune) can still trigger the resigned, fatalistic and melancholy layer. If I've failed to get that across, it is entirely my own failing...

Oh no, no, please don't question your success in conveying that! I'm not finished the arc after all, but I am far enough to know that Misha is happy again by 2012. But on the other hand, she's dictating this to author-san in the present, correct? That Misha seemed to me be as sad as ever. So given her overall sad tone with which she speaks to author-san, and the self-deprecating style of narration:

Poor Misha! Always backing the wrong horse, me.

I was good at laughing, though. I could make almost anyone believe I was pink and bubbly, like some kind of alcohol!

I got the impression that maybe Misha is rarely ever happy, even after starting a new life in America. But I should've finished the story before coming to any conclusions anyway; it will all make more sense to me in the end, so no worries. If I failed to pick up on any nuances you were trying to convey, that's probably a result of trying to reading it too fast while on my lunch break. I'll probably re-read the first few parts before continuing.

Enjoy, and may your own writing also be blessed by wise counsel, as mine has, in these forums!

Thank you!

You are a bit harsh about her.

Valjean Lafitte wrote:I'm not finished the arc after all, but I am far enough to know that Misha is happy again by 2012. But on the other hand, she's dictating this to author-san in the present, correct? That Misha seemed to me be as sad as ever. So given her overall sad tone with which she speaks to author-san, and the self-deprecating style of narration...

Heh, Misha has enough sense of humour to be able to mimic her past moods in a sad but humorous way, as well as sit on my table or bed and laugh at me... a complex lady, this one, more complex than people give her credit for!

brythain wrote: That's reasonably implicit in the two changes of hairstyle we know about. A drastic change of hairstyle is a cultural cue that often denotes a change in affections, in Japan.

Change #1: long brown hair to pink drills, possibly after Shizune's rejection of Misha, attempt to get over it.

Or possibly before. The game doesn't clarify. We know that Shizune used to tease her about her long hair, and she's constantly putting up a front so people will notice them both. Maybe she was going out of her way to try to be MORE attractive to Shizune rather than just trying to get over it.

Oddball wrote: We know that Shizune used to tease her about her long hair, and she's constantly putting up a front so people will notice them both. Maybe she was going out of her way to try to be MORE attractive to Shizune rather than just trying to get over it.

That's actually a very good point. Sidestepping the 'I'll make enough noise for the both of us!' joke that's lurking in there, maybe she thinks that by being impossible to ignore, she'll raise awareness of the student council (or at least ensure people don't forget about it) maybe eventually leading to its resurgence, and Shizune will have her to thank? Sort of like how obnoxious ad campaigns unfortunately do make you remember the product or service.