Katawa Shoujo Forums

"There can only be one, like in that foreign movie where there could only be one, and in the end there is only one dude left, because that was the point."

Do your parents or loved ones know about KS?

I had a lot of questions, but two years and 233 pages of Q&A have answered most of them. Except…

1. Did any of you have specific 'voices' in your head when scripting the various main characters? This includes Shizune, because while she's mute, I'd guess it might be hard to think of things for her to say without any 'mental voice', so to speak. What did they sound like to you?

2. Did you ever wind up with a script 'bible' — a set of canonical material for each character, perhaps? From what I can tell so far, path writers acted as custodians of some main characters, but 'planning, documentation and communication should be more meticulous' and need for 'internal consistency' were mentioned. What form (if any) did such 'master' documents take?

3. Aura, you mentioned Rin's keywords as 'artistic' and 'hard to understand'. You also said that her persona was 'complete fabrication' and scripting her thoughts 'never really became natural to [you]'. What artificial process did you use to make Rin's thinking so… consistent? She's very literal-minded, for a start.

4. Why are Akira and Hideaki such good friends? The family dynamics are awkward in some ways, but those two appear mirror-images just as Shizune and Lilly also seem to be.

Thanks very much, all of you, for KS and being good-natured enough to answer questions!

Rikabro wrote:Do your parents or loved ones know about KS?

See this post for the amazing answer!

Yeah I answer shit on Tumblr sometimes. NOW YOU HAVE TO CHECK SEVERAL PLACES FOR ENLIGHTENMENT.

brythain wrote:I had a lot of questions, but two years and 233 pages of Q&A have answered most of them. Except…

1. Did any of you have specific 'voices' in your head when scripting the various main characters? This includes Shizune, because while she's mute, I'd guess it might be hard to think of things for her to say without any 'mental voice', so to speak. What did they sound like to you?

I never really had any specific voices, really. Or at least, the voices I had do not have any easy celebrity analogue for me to point to as a way of explanation.

2. Did you ever wind up with a script 'bible' — a set of canonical material for each character, perhaps? From what I can tell so far, path writers acted as custodians of some main characters, but 'planning, documentation and communication should be more meticulous' and need for 'internal consistency' were mentioned. What form (if any) did such 'master' documents take?

Somewhere, there's a map of Yamaku, which I failed to pay attention to. Every path started, in theory, with an outline (I wrote summaries for Emi and Rin, crud and Suriko I think worked together on Lily and Hanako(?), and A22 (I think) did Shizune's all on his own). There was never a big 'bible,' which really we should have done, because that may have helped with the game's internal consistency. Essentially we counted on each path writer to have figured all that stuff out on their own, and to read other paths to ensure 'their' girl was written somewhat consistently.

4. Why are Akira and Hideaki such good friends? The family dynamics are awkward in some ways, but those two appear mirror-images just as Shizune and Lilly also seem to be.

As I recall, we stuck them together because they both dressed like the opposite gender, and that was about the long and short of it for a while. If you want a better answer you'll have to wait for someone who actually used them.

Thank you, TheHivemind!

And since you dropped by, a question for you:

Emi is both the oldest and the shortest of the main characters; did you ever see her as a motherly type or a 'Yoda' type personality? *grin*

brythain wrote:Thank you, TheHivemind!

And since you dropped by, a question for you:

Emi is both the oldest and the shortest of the main characters; did you ever see her as a motherly type or a 'Yoda' type personality? *grin*

A motherly sort of Emi never really crossed my mind. She'll take care of Rin, because they're friends, but that's as far as it really goes. Certainly she's not likely to have a desire for children any time soon.

Ironically enough she's a bigger nanny towards the end of Act 1 than even Lilly, though that changes as Hisao gets his health in order.

TheHivemind wrote:

Rikabro wrote:Do your parents or loved ones know about KS?

See this post for the amazing answer!

Now I'm wondering this:
What was your brother's opinion on your *cough* foray into writing plot with porn?

Steinherz wrote:

TheHivemind wrote:

Rikabro wrote:Do your parents or loved ones know about KS?

See this post for the amazing answer!

Now I'm wondering this:
What was your brother's opinion on your *cough* foray into writing plot with porn?

Already answered

Quick question for the masses as much as the devs:

In Lilly's route when Hisao tells Shizune and Misha of his new relationship with Lilly, Shiz goes to sign something and then changes her mind and tells Misha not to translate. She then walks out with a casual wave at Hisao.

What was she going to say? Something derogatory about Lilly? Something about Lilly leaving for Scotland? Maybe that Hisao had his chance to be part of Yamaku's power couple and that she would've rocked his world?

Liminaut wrote: If one wanted to be painfully PoPoMo, one could suggest producing a VN about producing VNs, but serious contemplation of that project would likely drive Cthulhu into therapy.

It's funny you should say that, Anonymous22, NicolArmarfi, delta and climatic actually did make a visual novel about making a visual novel called "The Answer", which, if I'm not mistaken, was "officially" released under the 4LS name.
http://vndb.org/r2222

Crashmaster wrote:

Liminaut wrote: If one wanted to be painfully PoPoMo, one could suggest producing a VN about producing VNs, but serious contemplation of that project would likely drive Cthulhu into therapy.

It's funny you should say that, Anonymous22, NicolArmarfi, delta and climatic actually did make a visual novel about making a visual novel called "The Answer", which, if I'm not mistaken, was "officially" released under the 4LS name.
http://vndb.org/r2222

Thanks a lot! Although looking at the web page art, I stand by my contention of "drive Cthulhu into therapy."

To Nicol.
Thank you so much for creating this music. The songs you all did really touched me. I am a pianist and currently learning "innocence". Thank you so much for creating such beautiful works of art. I fall asleep every night to some songs on the box. How long have you been playing piano? I was just wondering because your composition is pretty advanced.

I finished reading "A Study in Scarlet" (for real, I finished it like 10 minutes ago), and since I started reading I felt that mr. Sherlock Holmes was familiar, but I couldn't place how. Just as I finished I remembered that he is very similar to Kenji. His sudden mood change and his 'logical' way of thinking. Was that intentional, or am I just nuts?

sanduba wrote:I finished reading "A Study in Scarlet" (for real, I finished it like 10 minutes ago), and since I started reading I felt that mr. Sherlock Holmes was familiar, but I couldn't place how. Just as I finished I remembered that he is very similar to Kenji. His sudden mood change and his 'logical' way of thinking. Was that intentional, or am I just nuts?

I've been coming to this forum for two years, read tons of fan fiction, written a fair amount of my own, and in all that time I have never seen the words 'Kenji' and 'logical' in the same sentence.

Thus I must ask... what?

EDIT: More in the spirit of the thread, I just realized something that I probably should have a long time ago. Hisao's room number is well-known to be 119. Just today I put together that, in Japan, if you're calling for an emergency, you dial 1-1-9 (whereas in the US it's 911). That's intentional, right?