First off, it has never been mentioned anywhere what the reason is that Shizune doesn't have hearing aids nor Cochlear Implants. It's not necessarily by choice that she doesn't have or use them, because there are medical conditions/issues possible that prevents the usage of those (and other) options. Yet you state that you refuse those options. Is that because you are afraid of being seen as a "hearing" person despite your partial deafness? Acknowledging you're deaf and it being part of you? Disliking the notion of using or relying on technology sitting on your ears? Afraid of losing sign language proficiency (if you have any)? Or is there a different reason behind it? It is your choice to wear them or not, but personally I prefer being able to be a bit more self sufficient rather than being just Deaf and not lip reading or so and thus not being able to converse with other people a bit easier.PyroOgre wrote:To get back on topic, I'm in my second playthrough of Shizune's route, and something git me big time. I didn't like her route at all the first time through, and I figured out why. She's almost a female copy of myself.
I've always been someone who's struggled to make friends, and by the end of high school I stopped trying. Heck I actually started up an organization to try to bring in like-minded people so I could actually converse with others. It did not go all that well but I kept trying to push involvement nonetheless, didn't hit me until many years later that I probably overdid things on the club end and should have just tried to find people to talk with regularly instead.
and I'm partially deaf also so it's tough for me to talk to others if I'm in any sort or crowd or large area, which is frustrating, more for me than the other person who keeps having to repeat themselves because I'm trying to tune literally everything else out (also like Shizune, I have no intention of getting any aids or impants).
Maybe that's why I hated the good ending so much, since nothing really came of it, yet the bad ending stuck in me so much. She's closing herself off like I did after a while. She's not a bad character, just misunderstood for lack of a better term.
Now that being in school is a fairly distant memory, good lord meeting other people is borderline impossible, especially since 95% of the areas one would do that don't work for me because I wouldn't be able to converse. I don't have Jigoro as a father, that's something at least.
And yeah, as a Deaf person it's indeed hard to make hearing friends. You're not the first nor the last person to encounter this issue. It was the same for me in high school. However at university it was a different story altogether, because most people I meet at uni are like minded people with similar interests. Still I don't go clubbing or so, precisely because of the difficult communication with others in noisy environments while clubbing etc are mostly social events. Instead I do other things, organize other things. I mostly keep in contact with them through various IM services. But really, it is up to you to meet other people and in my experience, bitching online about not being able to meet people doesn't solve anything. If you got sign language proficiency then you should consider going to Deaf activities and meet people that way.