Katawa Shoujo Forums

Synthus wrote:Listen to Yann Tiersen, Ray Lamontagne, Alexi Murdoch for even more feels.

Start trying to get pumped by viewing inspirational videos or epic music. Two Steps From Hell, boxing and fitness related crap, etc. End up not doing anything.

Ray LaMontagne is awesome. At least judging by the few songs of his that I love.

Two Steps From Hell, though. Their music is so epic. United We Stand is my favourite.

I typically do the yin-yang aspect of things. Create. Destroy. Check something, then wreck something. Usually involves booze, tunes, a fire, good friends, endless stories, something tedious like repairing something or working on a project, then something weird like painting till eight in the morning.

'Feels' as in introspection and melancholy? I do nothing but let them ride themselves out; that internal sensation is just incredible for me. Occasionally I'll carefully pick music to listen to so as to intensify the feels, but this doesn't happen often. And it normally turns into Disney-nostalgia

Listen to music, and fall asleep. Or play some Warhammer. There are few things more uplifting than Warhammer. (And by uplifting, I mean ball-crushing adrenaline pumped way, not sappy feel-good way.)
On the other hand, I pretty sure I'm the only person who can fall asleep listening to things like Slayer. While suffering from an increasing case of Insomnia.

Breaker deGodot wrote:

Tenteke wrote:I listen to Subterranean Homesick Alien by Radiohead while looking at the stars.It's incredibly relaxing.

Replace that song with "The Tourist", also by Radiohead, and you have me in a nutshell. That song is tremendously cathartic, yet somehow relaxing.

Good choice in music

Depression comes and goes sometimes it stays longer then leaves if you find something happy or something to look forward to. If you did like Hanako's path a lot then just power through the start again and go for another ending once you get to the romance/turning point your mind will be focused on that for the time being. Personally I just downloaded the OST to listen to and slowly started adding other music to that playlist I still remember every path and how I felt. (Mostly sad, ecstatic, depressed). Remember it is just a game, with the potential to impact your life depending on how you look at it. Tomorrow will most certainly come with a full 24 hours to play more routes.

You're not alone. Having strong emotional reactions to this game, followed by a period of depression, is actually pretty common. Around these parts it even has its own name: we call it "the feels."

My first suggestion is to play the other paths. None of them ever hit quite as hard as the first one you play, and it'll help you rebuild some emotional distance.

When the feels kick my ass, I have a pretty simple routine to get Better.

I take my Mp3 with me and got out for a nice run until I relax and "Wash" my worries off me.

Or I Write/Paint/Sculpt something; it usually do me a lot of good. It is healthy way to transfeer the negative emotions from your soul to something and turn it into a litte masterpiece.

Taking a relaxing hot bath while drinking a nice Glass of wine and reading an impeccable book works too.

A can of coke and a long, solitary walk. And when I say long, I mean really long. 4 miles is a minimum.

It's usually what I do when I'm sad, but while Katawa Shoujo didn't make me depressed in particular, it made me pretty emotional. So my daily hourlong walks elevated the sensation to no end. I'd just go down to the corner store, pick up 2 or 3 cans of Coca Cola, maybe throwing in the occasional sandwich now and then and then I just pick a route that leads out of town, but is easy to follow back. Then I just walk and think. About anything, regardless of how mundane or serious it is. There's a large abandoned industrial zone outside of my town and no one really ventures there, so it's the perfect place for a quiet walk. And the huge, abandoned warehouses, hangars, factories and what have you are pretty much overgrown by nature, creating an almost post-apocalyptic scenery if you have the necessary imagination to picture it as such. I usually just walk straight forward until my legs start to tinge, that's the perfect indicator for when to turn back. Before striding home, I always keep one last can of coke and go somewhere high, like a hill or the roof of some abandoned building and watch the sunset.

It's my little tradition, but it felt fucking amazing after I played KS for the first time.

What a lot of people fail to understand about Hanako's scene is that the entire beauty of it is in its simplicity. Namely the ending's simplicity.

It's just the story of a boy and girl trying to overcome each other's emotional barriers and reach out to one another. The story illustrates their difficulty in doing that, because, like it's mentioned in that How I Met Your Mother episode, everyone has their baggage. A lot of people feel unfulfilled when they see the ending, because they think there can be "so much more" to it. Yes, there indeed can be, but that is for your imagination to picture. 4LS gives you the start, and what a breathtaking start it was. I haven't seen anything as fulfilling as Hanako's route in a long time.

But I can see why you'd be depressed about it. It's a heavy and emotionally involving story. And at first glance, it doesn't look like you get much closure in the end. But that line "as long as we take it slow, I think it's going to be alright" is all the closure I could ever ask for myself after such a beautiful story's ending.

Overall, Hanako is a character people very easily get attached to. Take some time before you try and "relive" those memories.
I felt the same way at first, but after a couple of weeks of rest from KS, I was back on track and even replayed her entire arc just for the fun of it.

Mint wrote:A can of coke and a long, solitary walk. And when I say long, I mean really long. 4 miles is a minimum.

It's usually what I do when I'm sad, but while Katawa Shoujo didn't make me depressed in particular, it made me pretty emotional. So my daily hourlong walks elevated the sensation to no end. I'd just go down to the corner store, pick up 2 or 3 cans of Coca Cola, maybe throwing in the occasional sandwich now and then and then I just pick a route that leads out of town, but is easy to follow back. Then I just walk and think. About anything, regardless of how mundane or serious it is. There's a large abandoned industrial zone outside of my town and no one really ventures there, so it's the perfect place for a quiet walk. And the huge, abandoned warehouses, hangars, factories and what have you are pretty much overgrown by nature, creating an almost post-apocalyptic scenery if you have the necessary imagination to picture it as such. I usually just walk straight forward until my legs start to tinge, that's the perfect indicator for when to turn back. Before striding home, I always keep one last can of coke and go somewhere high, like a hill or the roof of some abandoned building and watch the sunset.

It's my little tradition, but it felt fucking amazing after I played KS for the first time.

If you wanted to make me insanely jealous, it worked

Nekken wrote:You're not alone. Having strong emotional reactions to this game, followed by a period of depression, is actually pretty common. Around these parts it even has its own name: we call it "the feels."

Holy shit, this happened to me too. Extremely happy because of this game, but whenever I thought about this game without playing it, it felt like there was a gaping hole in my chest for no reason. Went away, though.


Someone should make an effort to explain this. Ecstasy, followed by a feeling of profound emptiness. I had thought that I recalled a cognitive theory regarding opposite emotions from my AP Psych class, but I couldn't find anything about it. Had something to do with neurotransmitters involving one emotion (Happiness) being balanced by the release of neurotransmitters of the other type (Sadness). I could just be making stuff up, though.

When I first played Katawa Shoujo, I felt like I had a little Orgasm in my heart. This is what I cal "The Feels."

I got the feels bad. I had recently (2.5 weeks now) broken up with my girlfriend - or rather, she told me we were over via skype. I was in shock after, and didn't know what to do. Long story behind THAT bit of repression. Either way, this past Sunday I finally got around to downloading and installing KS looking for something to occupy me, maybe some faps. Instead I got feels. I got feels bad. All of the repressed feel from being dumped started surfacing, and I'm barely keeping it together. Does it ever get better? I feel more emotionally connected to these sprites on the screen than I do to people. I don't want to be that person, but feels, man. I have them. I'm confused and stricken.

PolitusGuest wrote:I got the feels bad. I had recently (2.5 weeks now) broken up with my girlfriend - or rather, she told me we were over via skype. I was in shock after, and didn't know what to do. Long story behind THAT bit of repression. Either way, this past Sunday I finally got around to downloading and installing KS looking for something to occupy me, maybe some faps. Instead I got feels. I got feels bad. All of the repressed feel from being dumped started surfacing, and I'm barely keeping it together. Does it ever get better? I feel more emotionally connected to these sprites on the screen than I do to people. I don't want to be that person, but feels, man. I have them. I'm confused and stricken.

It gets better. Look toward why you care about these characters. Look toward the many examples of how this game has changed peoples' lives. Immerse yourself in the community, pay attention to how it's touched others. You'll get a sense of why it's affected you so much. That may give you a place to start.

Also, looking toward the community, pay special attention to the people whose lives have been changed. It doesn't need to be dramatic, but try to make a change in your life. Just like you do in the game, pay attention to your decisions. Just like in the game, they have consequences. Work to make your own good ending, even if only in a tiny way.