Katawa Shoujo Forums

It's kinda funny that I just remembered this, so I thought I'd bring it up for anyone who doesn't know about the story. Nurse-kun was a poster on 4chan who worked as, well, a nurse at a.. Well it's been a while since I read it, but a home for people who were disabled or unable to take care of themselves, I believe. One day a 7-ish year old girl was admitted who was missing both her legs, an arm, an eye, and had lost her parents in a car accident. He ended up getting close to her and adopting her, the story goes. I'd suggest googling it if you're interested, as I don't know the policy for links on this site. It's a very touching story and incredibly relevant to Katawa Shoujo I think. =)

By the way, it's quite a long read.. So bring tissues.

It's most relevant indeed, given the fact the inspiration for Emi's route came from this story. Sure, Nurse-kun is one of the most beautiful and endearing non-fictional stories of our time and should be read by all, not only by KS fans.

Palas wrote:Nurse-kun is one of the most beautiful and endearing non-fictional stories of our time and should be read by all, not only by KS fans.

Palas wrote:non-fictional

I don't know about that.

It's a coincidence that the little girl was Japanese/Swedish and he was posting to a weeaboo board?

If one were to remove all the /b/ humor there and stick only to the relevant parts, then yes, Nurse-kun's story is one of the more touching stories I've seen in a while. Kinda sad that there have been no updates for a long while, but then as long as they're doing well then there's no problem.

Learning that both Nurse-kun and Amp-tan like 40K gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling though. FOR THE EMPEROR!

On the non-fiction matter:

I can make no claims as to the authenticity of the story, but I always felt that the story was way too nuanced to be fake. The fact that even with the lovely way the story is written that Nurse-kun makes no attempts at sugarcoating the truth lends to the believability of it all. Non-fiction or otherwise, it's still a touching tale.

I shrug to this matter.

I believe it's non-fiction not because I have evidences and arguments to support my point of view. I simply want to believe. It makes it all more interesting.

Did anyone ever fact-check that story?
Injuries like that should stand out and make the news, and thus should be verifyable.

I haven't even read the story itself and already I think that its incredibly naive to believe the story to be true. And there seems to be more than enough reason to challenge it's authenticity.

From my point of view, trying to verify it's authencity is to completely miss the point.

Say you have a story, a really cool story capable of make manly tears stroll on everyone's faces. Say it is made up. Should you share to your peers introducing it by "now this is a story all about how my life got flipped-turned upside down", you'll already have set up some kind of expectancy on your... audience. When you tell them the story, they'll be attentive to aspects inherent to "made up" stories. They'll analyze your flow and your timing, evaluating not only your story but also your skills in telling it.

Fiction is always a level above those who read. That's why readers need to be embraced by and immersed in its universe. However, non-fiction or said non-fiction is just at the same level and they can't ever analyze... technical aspects of it, sort of. I mean, serious shit happened, you can't simply try to analyze how spacetime, God or whatnot tells a story. So there we have Nurse-kun's story and Emi's background. They are kind of alike for obvious reasons and you can get emotionally involved with the two of them, but the mechanism and the type of emotional attachment will be different. Emi's story may make you cry, but somewhere deep inside of your heart you'll know that it's an unattainable, intangible. So what matters in Nurse-kun's story is not if it effectively happened, but the fact that it's... "happenable", since the guy(s) never said otherwise. Not that it doesn't have its incongruences, but what really matters here is the aura of empathy that revolving it and that would never exist if it were fiction.

Being non-fiction, at least in my vocabulary, doesn't mean it's true. It just means one's senses and empathy can directly reach it without having to cross some kind of barrier.

EDIT: To a MUCH lesser extent, Jadusable's story all about how his life got flipped-turned upside down in the hands of Ben started out as something with this kind of concept. His videos made his story not believable, but "happenable". That's kind of how myths and legends are created, you know.

Palas wrote:Being non-fiction, at least in my vocabulary, doesn't mean it's true. It just means one's senses and empathy can directly reach it without having to cross some kind of barrier.

Your vocabulary is screwed up, then.

Presuming that it is all fiction, presenting it in this manner which defies authentication one way or the other (the lack of your "barrier") functions as a trick to easily slip into people's mind because "it might be true". The author may not intentionally be doing this or even be aware of it, but it's there.

Good fiction doesn't need to masquerade as reality to be worth reading.

I'm afraid it's not a question of being worth reading or not. Both fiction and non-fiction can move people, just not in the same way.

It's something like the Bible. Jesus' story would still be awesome even if people somehow proved he never existed at all, but it's appeal would be completely different.

Nobody mentioned yet, there was a similar try to put the nurse-kun's story into a VN game.
http://abstractnonsense.info/scarred/index.html

Beta was released some time ago, with placeholder graphics, as far as info goes. Hadn't chance to play it yet, though.

Site seems dead for as long at least, as KS was into production, maybe some of the dev's there are in 4LS?

Edit: Now that I think about it, wasn't it mentioned on KS blog some time ago?

Palas wrote:[...] you can't simply try to analyze how spacetime, God or whatnot tells a story. [...]

You can. It would be a strange mix of cosmology (both philosophical and physical), quantum gravitation and metaphysics. :p