Katawa Shoujo Forums

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Velitation wrote:Hey guys, decided to pop in here again. Been reading in reverse chronological order, so I have some catching up to do.

Fealow, keep motivated and chip away one task at a time. After finishing my biology degree, I felt that constant reminders and scheduling was the most effective way to get through it all. Do not limit your options and be open to suggestions and help. Ask questions even if you feel confident in your abilities so that you can reassure yourself that you understand the material.

As for me, I'm going back to school again (programmng this time around) after unsuccessfully finding suitable (related and actually use my skills) work for a year. At this time I feel that I cannot pursue much else until I get my life in order (whatever that means). I'm just glad I've saved up and can go certificate by certificate. I hope to get in my field again as a professor I worked with said it was a good idea to get into bioinformatics.

That being said, went through a fairly tough time, but I'm glad to be moving forward.

Good for you. Nothing more disheartening than getting a degree then discovering it's actually useless for finding work...Especially if you paid for it, because then you've incurred debt for nothing. Computer-related stuff is always useful though because technology will always be around, and often screwing up.

Talked to a lot of people at school, and I might actually be able to finish before summer. Apparently the whole class felt bad about the workload. ^^' Might also have a girlfriend soon.

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Velitation wrote:

Xanatos wrote:Good for you. Nothing more disheartening than getting a degree then discovering it's actually useless for finding work...Especially if you paid for it, because then you've incurred debt for nothing. Computer-related stuff is always useful though because technology will always be around, and often screwing up.

I guess. Opens up a lot of other doors, from the people to whom I've talked. Web development, databases, mobile development, etc. As much as I like video games though, I doubt I will go into that industry unless I take up some advanced calculus for the graphics applications involved. That, and I'm not much of an artist So much for VN engine development hahaha.

Heck, just saw this:

But I digress. Honestly, I need to make a living like everyone else, and "it is what it is." Can't be worked up about things not going the way you want. I guess KS reminds me of a bit more of a view that you need to be okay with yourself before you can go into deeper emotional situations, and that acceptance/love/whateveryouwanttocallit doesn't come easy, internally or externally.

Well, you wouldn't necessarily have to work on the graphical end. Though it's a fairly awful industry to get into (at least with major studios, indie places are still good) if you like games anyway, because the people running it are money people, not game people. Honestly, we're overdue for a 1983-style industry crash...

Apologies up front, this is going to be a wall of text so big that a TLDR would need a TLDR of it's own. As a result it is split over two posts. Also there will be spoilers from KS for anybody who hasn't played Shizune's path (with a brief mention of Emi/Rin).

THIS IS NOT SOME KIND OF FANFIC THIS IS REAL.

Like for many here KS was not only an emotional story to experience, it gave me a new way to look at my parts of my life in a way I had been too ignorant / oblivious to do so. A person's view of the world is subjective so without any other viewpoint to challenge it, it becomes the "accepted truth" whether or not it really is the truth.

Part 1 - I am an idiot

A number of years ago when I was 21, I met a 20 year girl through a friend at university. She was unsure of her sexuality and at the time had no real close friends, though like Emi she was full of life, pretty, outgoing, flirty, the sort of girl you would expect to be super popular with loads a friends.

I had no real close friends either and we began spending 6-7 days a week together (whenever I wasn't at Uni) with her mainly instigating all this time together. I fell in love with her and confessed to her but was rejected. She would still want to spend all her time with me and so I would suffer through the rejection and unrequited love, while trying to be the best friend I could.

Eventually she would meet her girlfriend (one of my work colleagues we bumped into in a gay club). It was always awkward with all 3 of us as the girlfriend knew how I had felt about my friend. So I spent time with my friend at the weekends when her girlfriend was at work and things were civil when we all had to be together for birthdays etc.

Eventually after 4 years I would hardly ever see my friend as she was always "too busy" even though she was now single. Afraid that I was losing my only real friend I acted poorly at a house party blaming her for our growing distance, she just told me to leave her alone and we did not speak for 3 months. We then met three more times, lastly on her birthday after which she just made excuses not to see me, finally culminating in ignoring my calls / texts.

I'd never been entirely sure what happened either believing that it was her fault and I'm better off without her (my work colleagues view) or that the returning girlfriend gave my friend a "it's me or him" ultimatum that I obviously lost (which I really wouldn't mind as long as my friend was happy).

After playing KS specifically Shizune and Misha's path with how the "pink" Misha is a front for how the "real" Misha feels about Shizune. I saw too many parallels with my life, except that the "real" me snuck past the "mask" far too often, with longing looks, inappropriate (for just friends) comments and sadness. However apart from the incident at the house party, my friend never said a thing against it. But I now realise it must have hurt her a little every time it happened, taking a tiny piece of our friendship with it. Death by a thousand cuts.

When I confronted her at the house party, there was no fight from her, no explosion ending our friendship, because in her view there was nothing left worth fighting for. She wasn't the cause of the growing distance between us, I was and I never realised it.
On our first meeting after the house party I tried to apologise but she said I didn't even know what I was apologising for. I thought she meant because I was drunk at the party I had said or done something that I didn't mention in my apology. I now think that she meant that I was only apologising for my actions so I could get back close to her, failing to acknowledge or fix the real problem which was that my feelings for her were ruining our friendship.

The last day that I saw her (her birthday) we had a wonderful time together, better than anytime in the previous year. I think she already knew this was the last time we would see each other and wanted it to end with a happy memory. No tears, no arguments, no goodbyes.

It's now 8 years later and I feel so stupid to not have noticed what affect I was having on our friendship. I know there is no chance of speaking to her again , but I feel I want her to know that I understand and that I am truly sorry. I had thought about writing to her with no return address / contact details she would have no obligation to reply.

But while debating about how I could even put such a thing in writing, I was also thinking back to Misha and her role in the game ( a lesbian that you can only befriend and can never romance) . Except there is the "comfort Misha" decision and I was trying to understand why she would do that. While reading opinions and analysis of the scene on reddit, a realisation formed in my head, causing my mind to come crashing down like a million chandeliers made of ice.

I 'm not just the stupid / ignorant person I thought I was , I am a monster. I can never apologise for something that I can never forgive myself for.

Part 2 - I am a monster

After I confessed to my friend and was rejected, we still spent all our time together as friends. A short time after this, she came out to her family as a lesbian (while still single) which resulted in her being thrown out of her house by her mother. She spent two weeks sleeping on a camp bed in my bedroom having only really met my family a couple of months before. She was eventually allowed back into her family home with the caveat that she never talks about being a lesbian in the house.

At the same time she was on the verge of bankruptcy having only a part time supermarket job, that she barely turned up to, against thousands of debt and interest. Her family lived in the middle of nowhere so her car was her lifeline which she could not bare to loose. Somehow I managed to buy her car from the loan company and put it in my name so she would not loose it. In hindsight a massive case of White Knight Syndrome but I never got more than 10% of my money back so I guess I've already paid for that.

Many nights were spent just being there for her while she cried. I really think I was the only good thing holding her life together at that point.

Then one night while out in a gay club she disappears off to the men's restroom with the fat ugly male DJ that is always perving over the girls in the club. (I'm definitely on the ugly side of average but he really was not attractive). I'm trying to just be her friend, but I still love her and jealously takes over souring the night and we head back to mine.

There is no argument, just me crying while trying to form questions. Apparently nothing went on with the DJ apart from maybe a little kissing / over the clothes fondling, this however does not make me feel better. The questions revolve around Why don't you like me like that? What can I do to show you how much I love you, Why can you kiss him but not me?

The next thing I remember is us kissing and undressing each other. I don't know who started it, but she is as active participant as I am. We "play" with each other for a while until she stops and says if I have a condom I can finish off inside her. I don't have a condom as my previous girlfriend always provided them and I never really attracted the attention to worry myself about being prepared. The night ends abruptly there with her going back to the campbed that she still uses when she stays over and me in my bed with the lingering scent of her.

In the morning the subject of the night before is buried under an uneasy silence and less body contact than before. Over the next few days I try to talk to her about it, the first reply is that she feels she owes me for the money I have loaned her so wanted to pay me back somehow. Then later when trying to push for how she really feels about me and that she wasn't the kind of girl to prostitute herself, the answer changes to "I was drunk, I don't remember what happened". This I did not believe for a second as I had been drunk with her so many times in the last few months. We had not been very drunk that night due to the early end and I remember her as very lucid that night.
Finally the answer turned from being drunk, to "I don't want to talk about it". Then after a few more months she found her girlfriend and it became a subject not brought up ever again. Though I always kind of regretted never having that condom.

Now I think about how blind I was, how selfish I was and how I don't think I could live with myself, had I actually had that condom. Though it matters not, I am still the monster and I can never forgive myself.

I wish I could place my mind directly onto this page, as I cannot find the words to describe how the realisation that formed in my head presented itself. It was the image of Misha's comfort scene with the two lines "Please do it quickly..." and "It is my first time with a man" along with the reddit analysis that Misha cracks under the pressure of her love of Shizune and not wanting to hate Shizune or Hisao. There is no consensus on why exactly she asks Hisao to comfort her or what she is looking to get out of it, the point is that she is in a situation that she can't cope with rationally and does something she wouldn't rationally do. Back to the image of Misha and the detached line "Please do it quickly" and then a flash of my friend saying "You can finish off inside me".

As mentioned before I really think that at that point in her life I was the only good thing holding her together. So when I'm upset asking her "Why can't she love me like I love her?" What can she possibly think, what can she possibly say? If she loses this argument, if she loses me, then what? It must have been terrifying and she did the only thing that she thought she could do to keep me in her life for a little bit longer. She gave herself to me.

And just the thought of this repulses me more than words can say. But I'm worse that that, so much worse.

Being such close friends nothing was taboo in our conversations and I very much know that while she has had boyfriends in the past, she has not slept with any of them as it never felt right. So when she casually offers to let me finish inside her, she is giving me her virginity, or rather I am taking it from her. There is no love in those words, only emptiness.

Did she really have a choice? Faced with the total destruction of her life as she knew it, what other choice did she have? Knowingly or not, I have forced my best friend, the girl I claimed to love to give me a part of herself that can never be replaced.

Just because I didn't have a condom and did not complete the act, does not change anything. I am a monster.

If anybody has taken the time to read this, thank you very much. If you hate me as well, thank you again, I deserve it.

If not, then it has at least been slightly cathartic for me a way to organise the thoughts in my head and the void in my heart.

There is no way I can ever apologise for this, no point writing that letter mentioned in part 1, this will be with me to my grave.

This is really trivial to some of you guys on here but here goes anyway

I liked this one chick I had for Theater class to make a long story short she didn't want a relationship in high school and also had a thing for her ex.
Sorry for it being short but I don't know how else to put it really

Punished Snake wrote:This is really trivial to some of you guys on here but here goes anyway

I liked this one chick I had for Theater class to make a long story short she didn't want a relationship in high school and also had a thing for her ex.
Sorry for it being short but I don't know how else to put it really

'Kay. Then what happened?

NoRedemption wrote: I am a monster.

Yes you are. Absolutely. Never mind rapists, murderers, wife beaters, child fuckers, sex traffickers, abductors. No, yeah, you're totally a monster for possessing the unbridled cruelty and sadism to *gasp* make perfectly human mistakes in life and feel regret over them later.

Good god, man, ease up. Unless that story ends somewhere down the line with "I tracked her down, removed her head, and used the mouth as a fleshlight", you've got a long way to go to become a monster.

And this is the age of the internet. Unless someone's gone off the grid, there's always a chance to speak again. It's just a matter of taking the chance. And you've apparently learned what you needed to now.

Xanatos wrote:

Punished Snake wrote:This is really trivial to some of you guys on here but here goes anyway

I liked this one chick I had for Theater class to make a long story short she didn't want a relationship in high school and also had a thing for her ex.
Sorry for it being short but I don't know how else to put it really

'Kay. Then what happened?

Nothing really we just stayed friends for the rest of my senior year, I still talk to her sometimes though but I'm not upset about it as much as I was so there's that I suppose

Thanks for reading and replying Xanatos.

Yeah I guess "monster" is a bit overly dramatic, I wrote the whole lot in one sitting before posting and I couldn't really put into words how I felt about myself, so I used the word monster almost as a placeholder so I didn't hold up the outpouring of feelings. When I got to the end I still couldn't think of a more accurate word so just left it in there, I'm fairly self-deprecating at the best of times so I didn't really care.

Honestly I'm a whole mix of emotions over it, guilty, ashamed, angry at myself,confused, plus others I can't even put into words.

I tried to contact her 4 years ago via facebook but never had any reply, though I was just asking for a fresh start, no apology or anything. Think I might just do the apology letter thing I was originally thinking of. I'm not looking to meet her again, just feel I need to apologise, well about me being an idiot anyway. There's no way to really approach the i am a monster issues so I think they are best left alone.

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So father has some form of cancer or tumors or something (apparently caused by vastly prolonged exposure to the sun in his youth) which may or may not be malignant in nature. He's gotta go see a specialist to determine that.

Yeah, go have it checked out.