Rin's Path discussion *spoilers*

[urishima]

To those who are still dealing with the emotions this Path sah stirred up: Go and listen to Z-Star. She's a Blues/Soul musician who sings a lot about love and faith and related stuff. She's awesome and listening to her right now feels incredibly good

[Kaiio]

Neutral end: So Hisao can be that easily forgotten by Rin? Pfft, everything meant nothing after all. She goes in Tokyo to be the student her teacher dreamed of and not be herself and Hisao is heartbroken. How exactly is this neutral?

[Rinbro]

Not sure if this has already been posted, but I am watching this for hours on no end:

[Guest]

Neutral end: So Hisao can be that easily forgotten by Rin? Pfft, everything meant nothing after all. She goes in Tokyo to be the student her teacher dreamed of and not be herself and Hisao is heartbroken. How exactly is this neutral?

Actually, I'm not sure ANY end could be considered good, bad or neutral. No matter what end you get, you have to be prepared that the next day she leaves or comes back anyway, and when Hisao would ask her about it, he'd get something like "Oh, did I say that? *shrug* Well, it probably was what I felt like yesterday. Or maybe not. I don't remember."
Her mental issues leave any future wide open, any sense of closure or achievement is impossible considering her personality.

[Rinbro]

Neutral end: So Hisao can be that easily forgotten by Rin? Pfft, everything meant nothing after all. She goes in Tokyo to be the student her teacher dreamed of and not be herself and Hisao is heartbroken. How exactly is this neutral?

Actually, I'm not sure ANY end could be considered good, bad or neutral. No matter what end you get, you have to be prepared that the next day she leaves or comes back anyway, and when Hisao would ask her about it, he'd get something like "Oh, did I say that? *shrug* Well, it probably was what I felt like yesterday. Or maybe not. I don't remember."
Her mental issues leave any future wide open, any sense of closure or achievement is impossible considering her personality.

Sorry but I have to strongly disagree - I think that the ending on dandelion hill is all about Hisao and Rin pledging their love to each other and also working out a means of communication. Rin is trying to contain her feelings in words while trying to be as simple and honest as possible while Hisao is doing the only thing she would understand perfectly: kissing her. Both have worked out a way to understand each other: body contact.

Rin is by no means a character with a random personality and she also says that she will change (even though she is afraid of it). I really loved that ending and it was my favourite storyling / ending so far.

[Carnificus]

Neutral end: So Hisao can be that easily forgotten by Rin? Pfft, everything meant nothing after all. She goes in Tokyo to be the student her teacher dreamed of and not be herself and Hisao is heartbroken. How exactly is this neutral?

Actually, I'm not sure ANY end could be considered good, bad or neutral. No matter what end you get, you have to be prepared that the next day she leaves or comes back anyway, and when Hisao would ask her about it, he'd get something like "Oh, did I say that? *shrug* Well, it probably was what I felt like yesterday. Or maybe not. I don't remember."
Her mental issues leave any future wide open, any sense of closure or achievement is impossible considering her personality.

Sorry but I have to strongly disagree - I think that the ending on dandelion hill is all about Hisao and Rin pledging their love to each other and also working out a means of communication. Rin is trying to contain her feelings in words while trying to be as simple and honest as possible while Hisao is doing the only thing she would understand perfectly: kissing her. Both have worked out a way to understand each other: body contact.

Rin is by no means a character with a random personality and she also says that she will change (even though she is afraid of it). I really loved that ending and it was my favourite storyling / ending so far.

Yeah, I've gotta agree. The fact that they had sex could have possibly been shrugged off if not for what happened the following day. But the end scene between Rin and Hisao leaves little doubt in my mind that they would have some future together and Rin wouldn't simply ignore it the next day.

[alabaster]

Neutral end: So Hisao can be that easily forgotten by Rin? Pfft, everything meant nothing after all. She goes in Tokyo to be the student her teacher dreamed of and not be herself and Hisao is heartbroken. How exactly is this neutral?

That's pure Rin, though. I'm sure she feels connected to Hisao, but at the same time, she doesn't know what she wants or what will make her happy.

Actually, I'm not sure ANY end could be considered good, bad or neutral. No matter what end you get, you have to be prepared that the next day she leaves or comes back anyway, and when Hisao would ask her about it, he'd get something like "Oh, did I say that? *shrug* Well, it probably was what I felt like yesterday. Or maybe not. I don't remember."
Her mental issues leave any future wide open, any sense of closure or achievement is impossible considering her personality.

Isn't that the beauty of it? I disagree that after the good end she would just leave at the drop of a hat, but I do think Hisao comes to terms with how uncertain the future is. The closure is that Hisao and RIn finally understand that they can't fully understand each other, and they're okay with that.

[Rinbro]

Neutral end: So Hisao can be that easily forgotten by Rin? Pfft, everything meant nothing after all. She goes in Tokyo to be the student her teacher dreamed of and not be herself and Hisao is heartbroken. How exactly is this neutral?

That's pure Rin, though. I'm sure she feels connected to Hisao, but at the same time, she doesn't know what she wants or what will make her happy.

I think she is pretty much lying there, using that line to shield herself from the pain and the art school simply as a way of escape. She is also pretty much heartbroken in that scene, even more so than Hisao who comes off pretty much cold. When Rin says "Why do you say that when you made me feel otherwise?" it really broke my heart.

Kudos to Aura really for writing two such great and emotional ending scenes.

[Rubytyr]

She was the last choice - very interesting character, but the boyish look from the dialouge poses just didn't sit with me at first impression, but as I delved into it - the "unique" scenes (like walking in the rain, the kiss, etc) made her much more feminine and appealing for me. Setting aside asthetics - I enjoyed her randomness; and found myself very frustrated with Hisao very early on, becuase I was able to at least grasp her feelings and situation long before he did.

personally Hisao was an ass in this arc; but then again, maybe a woman's indifference towards me would sting just a sharply (hell thats a lie right there, i've already been stung like that at points and reacted just like he did - hindsight is 20/20 i guess huh? lol)

Very intelligent and complex arx, both emotionally and mentally; the writer of this one must be very sharp to be able to think of BOTH Hisao's and Rin's perspective and thoughts.

[Guest]

But the end scene between Rin and Hisao leaves little doubt in my mind that they would have some future together and Rin wouldn't simply ignore it the next day.

Well, considering that she was striving to be understood all the time, I hardly believe she was actively ignoring anything along the way. It's not as if she had a choice to be confusing for other people.
But I don't want to spoil the good feelings for anybody. Maybe it's best to see it that way: In the moment of the good end, both were happy. And it's all about quality, not quantity. If the happiness lasts a second or a lifetime doesn't matter.

[Rinbro]

[Gaah...I didn't realize I got logged out while typing this. Please excuse the double post and delete one if possible D: ]

They have discovered a means to communicate with each other in the end and they need each other dearly - Rin says so herself and judging by Hisao's mental state in this route he can't think of anything but her really.

I think the beauty of Rin's storyline is that it's deep down a very simple story - all the time Hisao tries to communicate with her through words, fails and is frustrated while she tries to communicate with him through her painting and fails and is frustrated in turn. All the time Hisao comes to visit her in the studio she is constantly trying to communicate with him, every second of every day, through her painting. As she sees that he still doesn't understand her she feels the need to try even harder, until she feels the need to destroy her completely and has her breakdown.

Then by accident they discover that they can communicate: through body contact and sex. I think Rin is the first who realizes that this works much better for the both of them than anything they tried before, while (poor) Hisao thinks that she is finally returning his feelings and gets naturally upset at her "mixed signals". I could understand him really well when he finally couldn't take it anymore.

The saddest part for me was really realizing how desperately she tried to communicate to Hisao, all the time, and that she was feeling deeply for him too. It was so sad to see her so upset at all the questions at her exhibition and when she says to her art teacher that the exhibition didn't matter, that not even Hisao understood her.

Well, gladly he (and the reader!) gets it in the end and it works out fine. I don't want to say Rin would be any less quirky and unique in the future, and I wouldn't really like to see that happen, but I think they found a way to understand each other and it's okay if they don't entirely all the time.

[Guest]

(This'll probably get a tad rambly, because it's a bit of a hard discussion to isolate into specific points)

I ended up completing Rin's route third, and I have to say, I still find it my favorite.
Partly because in retrospect, I find myself in a fairly similar situation to Hisao, just... "further along" may be a decent way of putting it.

Regardless of how advanced their relationship feels(or as far as Hisao thinks it is/should be), objectively, they haven't known each other for a particularly long time. This is true in all the paths, technically, but Rins is by far the most complex in terms of emotional involvement, and hurtles to overcome.
Hisao approached their relationship at a steady pace intially, but as he developed proper feelings over it, he began to push for a "normal" relationship pretty hard, as well as other issues of assumption on his part(such as what she really wanted). Which is where most of their relationship's turmoil spawns. Communication. It's obvious Rin isn't capable of a 'normal' relationship. They wouldn't really ever just snuggle up for a movie, (pardon the expression) hold hands, or arbitrarily start making out if they got into the mood. It's not at all about the throes of romance, and entirely about the pleasure of just simply being around one another. Hisao spent a LOT of time finally coming to terms with that, which, as far as we can tell at the end of the good path, he finally does.

This is similar to how I find myself. Obviously not to quite an extreme, but it's pretty close on a core basis.
I've known her for 7, going on 8 years now. Due to her personality, it was hard to relate to her because we tended to have clashes, and for a while, I wanted to romance her. As time went on, it became more and more apparent that it wasn't a matter of romance. She doesn't ascribe to overly emotive/expressive things like snuggling up, hugging, kissing, or the like. Not to family or anyone. She understands the idea of it(she watches a lot of porn, as it happens), but the best way to put it is "it doesn't work for her". This ended up confusing the ever-loving-crap out of me for quite a while, and it screwed with my head for quite a long time. She obviously was very familiar with me, and let me well past 'normal' boundaries of friendships, but it never flirted with a traditional romantic relationship.

This is where it starts paralleling Hisao's predicament pretty soundly(though not quite as extreme, as said). I, as Hisao, was looking for a romantic relationship with the person of interest, and that's just simply not how their personality or brains worked. And it drove me(and him) crazy until it hit a sort of epiphany. It wasn't about kissing, or hand holding or all that sappy romantic garbage. It was about connecting and being together.
You see elements of that in the path, which you can note as being 'high points' for Rin. Such as the cigarette scene. It was just simply being together. I mentioned the idea of being 'further along' in the same sort of relationship than where the path in the game ends simply because the progression of things like this is eventually you just learn the other person to a degree no one else can.
Eventually, you don't need verbal communication. If something is happening, very little discussion is needed for us to understand each other(finishing each others thoughts/sentences happening rather frequently).
A comparison I make decently often, and others have jokingly as well is that we're an 'old married couple'. We're together because we enjoy each others company, and we're really the only ones that can understand one another.

Hisao and Rin's relationship is very obviously headed that way, but it's not quite there yet. It just only recently took the first steps towards that. In the end, I see it as a definitively happy ending, as I know that going forward; months, and eventually years later, it will be to the point that they just know what isn't being said, and thus don't need to hang up on so many words. Given that this is all Rin really wanted, and Hisao being able to provide that naturally, without guessing or pulling hair out, means that later down the line, they'll be legitimately happy.
It's not there yet, but it's started.

I guess a succinct way of explaining the difference, would be 'romance will fade, but love lasts' or something equally overly sappy. And holy crap that was ramble-tastic. Not sure if the point was articulated as well as I wanted, but I think it should get the idea across in any case.

[sazaland]

This is the second one I completed, after Shizune, and I actually liked Shizune's better, in spite of what seems to be the general opinion of the routes.

I liked the "Present" bit and the smoking scene, and really all of Rin's bits in Act 1. They were pretty novel in their sparseness. The problem for me was, somehow I totally failed to get what was going on, to such a degree that I didn't understand what had happened when I got the good end. I couldn't really get emotionally involved in the story because I still didn't understand what Rin's problem really was even as I read the very last line. I didn't get it until I started reading impressions in this thread: that she had been trying to communicate with Hisao through her painting, and later through physical contact, which Hisao misinterpreted as their secondary communication role, rather than a primary one which Rin was trying to leverage in lieu of the previous ineffective primary communication types.

I now feel better about judging the quality of the story since I would be capable of summarizing it, but I feel kind of lame overall that I managed to read the whole way through to the Good End, without getting a bad end accidentally on the way(some of those choices were hard!), and yet still totally missed the story. I may reread it later to try again, but it seems like it's just going to sit as something I acknowledge as good, but which totally flew over my head at the time and failed to get me emotionally stirred, unless you count intellectual frustration, which is something I felt profoundly from Act 3 onward.

Actually, on the flip side I think I may have grasped Hisao better than most being that I was literally making the same interpretation mistakes he was, I just never got them dispelled like he did in the end of Act 4. I understood totally when he got angry at Rin because it seemed like Rin was just continuing to ignore him/spout nonsense in the face of pure seriousness. To that end I don't think you were supposed to be entirely in the head of Hisao to really appreciate the gravity of the story, it was supposed to be watching a tragedy you couldn't stop, to ultimately have it work out in the end, rather than being in the head of a really really confused and frustrated young man.

[ultrarare]

This is the second one I completed, after Shizune, and I actually liked Shizune's better, in spite of what seems to be the general opinion of the routes.

I liked the "Present" bit and the smoking scene, and really all of Rin's bits in Act 1. They were pretty novel in their sparseness. The problem for me was, somehow I totally failed to get what was going on, to such a degree that I didn't understand what had happened when I got the good end. I couldn't really get emotionally involved in the story because I still didn't understand what Rin's problem really was even as I read the very last line. I didn't get it until I started reading impressions in this thread: that she had been trying to communicate with Hisao through her painting, and later through physical contact, which Hisao misinterpreted as their secondary communication role, rather than a primary one which Rin was trying to leverage in lieu of the previous ineffective primary communication types.

I now feel better about judging the quality of the story since I would be capable of summarizing it, but I feel kind of lame overall that I managed to read the whole way through to the Good End, without getting a bad end accidentally on the way(some of those choices were hard!), and yet still totally missed the story. I may reread it later to try again, but it seems like it's just going to sit as something I acknowledge as good, but which totally flew over my head at the time and failed to get me emotionally stirred, unless you count intellectual frustration, which is something I felt profoundly from Act 3 onward.

Actually, on the flip side I think I may have grasped Hisao better than most being that I was literally making the same interpretation mistakes he was, I just never got them dispelled like he did in the end of Act 4. I understood totally when he got angry at Rin because it seemed like Rin was just continuing to ignore him/spout nonsense in the face of pure seriousness. To that end I don't think you were supposed to be entirely in the head of Hisao to really appreciate the gravity of the story, it was supposed to be watching a tragedy you couldn't stop, to ultimately have it work out in the end, rather than being in the head of a really really confused and frustrated young man.

Rin's path was definitely the hardest to understand. Rin had multiple problems are buried under an unnatural amount of symbolism, allegory, and metaphor. You should play it again and focus on everything that Rin says, even when it sounds like gibberish. Or you can what until someone comes around and explains it all, but I'm too lazy. =P

[Harco]

I'm at the beginning of Act 3 now. Act 2 surprised me, it was actually kind of nice/interesting. The scene in Rin's bedroom was sweet and hilarious at the same time. Hisao is right: she should smile more often, although I don't think she will do it much in Act 3. It somehow feels like the beginning of the end...

The art teacher is not as bad as I expected. He still gives off a bad vibe in a way I can't really explain, but I admire his enthusiasm. The way he explained "What is art?" was quite compelling.