Katawa Shoujo Forums

[getting it out since I just finished KS and Rin's path, which I did the last]

I find it very fitting that Rin's issues have a lot to do with accepting her "weirdness".

Its even funny, nowadays you can't really be weird. If you are, you cannot word it, because if you do, people will think you mean "special". Maybe it is because being "special" has become so fancy, and everyone wants to be an unique snowflake. I once knew a girl who based her whole personality in firmly believing she was special, the ironic thing is she was extremely conventional and I believe she played the "special" role because deep inside herself she knew and even saw herself as vulgar.

Yet there is strange people, odd people, weird people. Not special. Maybe just weird. When weirdness is real, its not some cool thing that makes you feel "special". On the opposite, it alienates you and makes you feel at ease only when you are alone. Its difficult to accept yourself when people react to your weirdness. Its even more difficult when you are supposed to do things that you really can't do or that you would do otherwise, and society's sense of "normalcy" thinks there is something wrong with the way you're doing stuff. Socializing is at least for me very tiring, and after a long period of socialization I need to "recharge" by being alone, as if I had been depleted from some necessary resources.

I had this friend for a lot of years. A long time ago he was my best friend, we've known each other for about 15 years, and we've grown apart in the last two years. I feel totally disconnected from him, we've taken different paths, and to make things worse I've noticed he's never understood really basic stuff about me (well, that's not uncommon, yet its a bit depressing). The point is, I don't care at all the friendship is dissapearing, I don't hurt, I don't even think about it. I know he does, he misses me, and people I know wonder how is it that I can react like this. I mean, it is this sort of weirdness that 'society normalcy' frowns upon. It makes you feel bad when you go against it, as if you'd have to be other thing rather than yourself, which of course would be totally the wrong thing to do.

I found it very interesting when Rin breaks down in the art exhibition. She's been forced to do things she doesn't want to, because she's supposed to do them, everybody expects her to do them. She says its like people want to change her into another person she doesn't want to be. Hisao doesn't understand shit (sigh) and pushes her towards that path, even destroying amazingly beautiful moments such as the walk under the umbrella when Emi leaves them alone and runs to the school. Nomiya is even worse, because he is directly trying to cage Rin into society. Somebody said once that "An adult is a person who's completed the journey from child to imbecile". When he shouts to Rin, he is saying that she'll understand the importance of the exhibition and contacts and all that merchant-bullshit when she's alone and unable to pay the rent. I wonder how can you try cut somebody's wings like that, as if it was some bird you put into a cage then make it sing and you dare call that caged-singing "art". I totally think she does the right thing when running away from the exhibition. Who cares about all that merchant bullshit? Who cares if she is an artist or not by somebody's standards?

I like a lot one part of the path in which Hisao falls asleep in class and Mutou notices and scolds him, telling he that school is not only for learning this and that, but for learning the rules of society and adapting to them, even quoting Locke. I'd quote another philosopher and historian I find very interesting that is Michel Foucault, who shows how institutions such as the school, the factory, the hospital, developed into the disciplinary mechanisms we are currently subject to. How even time was manipulated so that an innocent tool would turn into a mechanism of control and organization, and thus, of power. If school is about learning the rules and ethics and whatnot of society, I like Rin's path because its about unlearning all that crap.

All in all, I'm happy Rin is Rin in the end, I'm happy she runs away from the art exhibition, and that the future is uncertain. I wish I can ever find a way to live the way I want, fully. I need to lie on a big stone by the river and spend the whole day looking at the sky until I’m able to think about nothing at all. To become asleep and then to improvise if I go back home, or not, without pressure of any sort, knowing that the next day, and the next, if it is my will, I can go back to lie on that stone or any other, and lose myself in the sky forever if that’s what I really want. I need this freedom more than anything else in the world. I know it is not possible because there's a rent to pay and people around me and all that stuff, but still, there must be some way I can find.

I saved Rin's for last too, guessing that I was saving the "best" path for last. While it did end up being my favorite, I don't know how my expectations affected my enjoyment for better or worse. Certainly, it didn't disappoint. I was completely unprepared for what was in store after what I'd seen in the other paths.

Being the "loner" girl in the bunch, the character Rin in her isolation as a person had me completely captivated for days. I couldn't place my finger on whether it was her craving to connect with others on a meaningful level, being a total psychological mess, the shit that happens to her, on top of everything else being an artist without arms ..., or whatever events or characters in the o so cruel story being unkind to Rin, but I was left feeling miserable for her despite getting the good ending.

Even momentarily, what a comfort it was to see Rin embrace everything about herself. Or was it only Hisao accepting Rin as she was? In any case, what I remember was a "coming to terms with what cannot be changed, then striving to grow in ways that change=possible" thing. So, I really want to think that Good Ending Rin was able to find what she was looking for, while still allowing for her artistic talents to blossom into something that she could be happy with, still being free and at the Rin-est or "most Rin" at she can be. Same for Neutral Ending Rin, I suppose; with or without Hisao, you must live fortuitously, Rin, or shit will be just too depressing. (Man—Hisao in this route, and dat bad ending—Rin's personality trait really rubbed off on Hisao almost too much that I could handle. In this case, what was grating was sucking at expressing oneself, though I liked reading his observing and thinking about things more like Rin.)

Sorry if this was all sorta unrelated to your thoughts. I think what I originally wanted to say was that being "weird" in ways like you described might not be such a big deal. As long as you yourself can own up to everything about who you are, because you are the best, most actualized version of yourself, or have started on your way, and being immutably different will be something that even the best you is, it's fine. If members of society reject even the self-confident me that has decided this, then I will just have to accept that, too.

I was made a little unhappy thinking about your friend, but I guess how a person feels can't be helped unless one wants to be helped. If not, then so it is.

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Rins story arc was such a mindfuck for me, you dont even know! Im a really fast reader, so I went through Rins arc in about 4 or 5 hours. NOW that Ive let it all sunk in I need to do it again A LOT slower. It just made such little sense to me (unless thats just how its supposed to be).

Also, Hisao is a dumbass in Rins story. He expects her to change and be different just for him, and its frustrating to know that his dialogue is basically your's.

On your note, You do HAVE freedom. But then again there are limits to your freedom. Yeah, you can lay around on a rock all day by the river, whats stopping you? Its the way society will judge you, that is what is stopping you. Modern Day society is really strange when you think about it. We are told we have all these freedoms, yet we are scolded when we take advantage of them. I wish the world was a lot simpler too, I think we all do. But alas, it seems at this rate it may not happen. I dont think society will ever fully embrace people that dont think the same way as everyone else, people who wont be part of the hive mind.

Amerigu wrote:I saved Rin's for last too, guessing that I was saving the "best" path for last. While it did end up being my favorite, I don't know how my expectations affected my enjoyment for better or worse. Certainly, it didn't disappoint. I was completely unprepared for what was in store after what I'd seen in the other paths.

I totally agree. The other paths were like emotional bombs, Rin was like a nuclear mushroom inside my heart.

Amerigu wrote:Even momentarily, what a comfort it was to see Rin embrace everything about herself.

It surely was.

Amerigu wrote:Sorry if this was all sorta unrelated to your thoughts.

No, not at all, it was an interesting read, thank you.

DrSkulk wrote:That's totally normal man, and I don't mean normal as in "the societal majority", but that it is acceptable. I believe the word is introversion in this case; it is perfectly normal for you to be introverted.

Well, sometimes its hard to make people understand that the reason you don't want to stay close is because you are very introvert, not because you don't like them. Even though I don't have many social abilities I'm not really shy, so it makes things even more difficult to understand

DrSkulk wrote:Uhhh... That's debatable. Depending on your prior choices, one of the choices you can get when encouraging Rin to have an exhibition is "You should aim high." (The one closest to what I would say had I been in Hisao's shoes.) That's not really forcing her to do anything, just giving an honest friendly advice. It probably is what ultimately made Rin to try for an exhibition, but in the end, the choice was entirely hers. She was the one who made the decision to go for an exhibition. Hisao showed her the door; Rin decided to step through it. Subterfuge? I think not: if you seriously believe that Hisao led Rin to make a bad choice and Hisao is to blame, you are being slack to Rin for thinking that she is unable to judge for herself what is good and bad.

Hmmm yes, its true in the end she should have judged by herself. Though she might have felt like... well, when she says its like she has to be another person when she's with other people. This would mean it is she who forces herself, so you're right, it wouldn't be fair to blame Hisao. I guess my thing with Hisao is that he seemed to fuck up the beautiful walk under the rain with the umbrella insisting on the topic.

DrSkulk wrote:Art is subjective. Much like you arguing that weirdness is subjective. If some sadistic person thinks a bird with cut wings singing in a cage is art, that's fair enough by them. Who are you to judge on someone else's aesthetic sense? The problem is not one of an aesthetic sense, but an ethics-related one in that one would find harming an animal artistic.

Now that I re-read myself that is quite a specific perspective from myself I didn't really explain. I quite agree with the idea written in Rin's path that art is in some sense a forgery of the divine (I think this idea doesn't come from KS and it predates the game, but nevertheless its very well put in its context). In that sense I do not think art is completely subjective, even though this forgery of the divine, this creation of the dimension of the sublime, is like you say in some sense subject to the individual perceiving it.

The aesthetic experience is, just like the experience of the divine, able to destroy you, to stir everything inside you, to crush your ego so that you have to rebuild it from the pieces afterwards. I consider "real art" that which is able to produce this sort of experience, and it is in this sense that I consider KS as "real art". It is in this sense that I stablish the relationship between art and freedom as necessary (thus my caged bird argument), as ego-death and catharsis are basically acts that grant you freedom through destruction. This is the reason I cannot really separate conceptually art from freedom, and the reason I cannot picture Rin doing real art if she isn't "free enough" to create a convincing forgery of the cathartic divine.

DrSkulk wrote: Rules and ethics of society exist because they work.

The problem is, they hardly work nowadays . Now of course, the rebel is also a necessary piece of the society puzzle. If it wasn't for such a role, things wouldn't change and adapt to new situations and would rot. Even if the rebel believes himself against such order/society, he could be considered a cog in the machine as well. Yet I still find the role of the rebel as an interesting one to play.

DrSkulk wrote:If you really, truly, whole-heartedly want to have such a freedom, then seek out a buddhist monastery and live your life out there. You will give up all your possesions, and then maybe you could learn true freedom in the end without having any ties to the secular world.

But we all know that is a wee bit extreme. Most human beings have a fair few ties to the world one way or another, and it would be difficult to live without such ties. Just know this: you have the freedom to do whatever you want. You can go to a river and lie on a big rock all day. You seriously can! However, It does not necessarily mean that it is the best thing you could possibly do in your immediate situation. Seek out the best choices, considering every element concerned with your immediate situation. Then you will know when you're growing old and looking back at your life that you have lived the best possible life you could have lived, and that you were free to choose that life - that you have lived a free life.[/quote]

Thank you, this sounds good. And actually, that's the point; just lying on that rock would lead to dire consequences (so dire!) in the medium term (uh-oh the rent, posessions, etc).

Not that I haven't seriously thought on the "buddhist monastery" solution, and I've been near that a couple of times, but in the end I don't like isolating myself from the world. I'm quite an activist, and all in all it feels like it'd even be unfair to reach such freedom if I couldn't share it with everyone else. I just can't close a door and forget about the world, and my personal ethics tell me I shouldn't. In that sense I guess my "spirituality" is more western-like, in that I'd feel isolating myself in a temple like escapism and I feel like the correct answer is the transformation of the existing. Fortunately in those few brief moments in which I've had my reality truly crumble, the only solid thing in the world seems to be love. KS and the catharsis it has brought is no exception. This is probably too hard to explain, since its more a personal experience than something to be stated trying to attach any sort of truth to it, but in this experience of mine I've found such solidity to be consistent.

camoufrage wrote: Yeah, you can lay around on a rock all day by the river, whats stopping you? Its the way society will judge you.

To be honest, to me its more like "how to decently survive in the long term".

camoufrage wrote:. We are told we have all these freedoms, yet we are scolded when we take advantage of them. I wish the world was a lot simpler too, I think we all do. But alas, it seems at this rate it may not happen. I dont think society will ever fully embrace people that dont think the same way as everyone else, people who wont be part of the hive mind.

You know, this reminds me of something I red a few years ago. It was about some ancient tribe in Africa (I have forgotten any specific data to check things out), where they killed children who made too many questions or were too intelligent or just too strange. When questioned, they said that they killed them because such people would grow up and end up questioning things and making things unstable, and that was bad for the tribe.

After finishing Rin's path, I became more observant and accepting of my own weirdness.
When people begin a conversation with me, I sometimes do not respond immediately. If it is a simple greeting, like "Hi.", I do respond right away; I mirror it back: "Hi.", or "Hello." If it is something that can be interpreted as a question, rather than a simple greeting, I take a few moments to think about it. For example: "How are you doing?", or "What is up?". After a pause, I begin to talk about my state of mind: how I feel, or what I'm thinking about. The normal thing to do would be to interpret it as a greeting instead of the literal question, and respond with something like "I'm fine, how are you?". That is not something "[My first name here]-like"; I usually would not say something like that. Well, I would say it if I was coincidentally thinking about that person at the time, and I was wondering what they were doing. Even then, I wouldn't ask "How are you?; I would say "What have you been doing?"
Related to that, I don't do the "social smile" that people do when they're talking. When people are in a conversation, they do things that try to get the other person to like them more; that is to be expected. I don't do many of those things, probably there are enough of those things that I don't do, so it is noticable as weird to some people. I know a teacher who is an example of the polar opposite: everything she says are like safe, professional nothings, she smiles at lot. In one word: diplomatic.

I enjoyed reading this thread, and from the OP, I liked the second and third real paragraphs and the last three paragraphs especially. The whole is is really "Rin-like".

amentoraz wrote:

DrSkulk wrote:Art is subjective. Much like you arguing that weirdness is subjective. If some sadistic person thinks a bird with cut wings singing in a cage is art, that's fair enough by them. Who are you to judge on someone else's aesthetic sense? The problem is not one of an aesthetic sense, but an ethics-related one in that one would find harming an animal artistic.

Now that I re-read myself that is quite a specific perspective from myself I didn't really explain. I quite agree with the idea written in Rin's path that art is in some sense a forgery of the divine (I think this idea doesn't come from KS and it predates the game, but nevertheless its very well put in its context). In that sense I do not think art is completely subjective, even though this forgery of the divine, this creation of the dimension of the sublime, is like you say in some sense subject to the individual perceiving it.

The aesthetic experience is, just like the experience of the divine, able to destroy you, to stir everything inside you, to crush your ego so that you have to rebuild it from the pieces afterwards. I consider "real art" that which is able to produce this sort of experience, and it is in this sense that I consider KS as "real art". It is in this sense that I stablish the relationship between art and freedom as necessary (thus my caged bird argument), as ego-death and catharsis are basically acts that grant you freedom through destruction. This is the reason I cannot really separate conceptually art from freedom, and the reason I cannot picture Rin doing real art if she isn't "free enough" to create a convincing forgery of the cathartic divine.

I don't think that there is some "divine", or some ideal that art can be closer or farther from. I think there are only the ideas and thoughts that certain artists have, and that different artists have different thoughts. They have similar thoughts only as far as the environment and culture that they live in are similar.
There is also the idea that what was new becomes old. Classical music, at the time it as created, was new and exciting to people. It was rare and made their heart beat fast. We don't see it the same way today. What is new and exciting today will be seen as old in the future.

For the relationship between art and freedom, there is a reason why freedom is necessary without using a theory of art. If an artist has to do things that other people ask of him or her, or the artist's freedom is restricted by another person's will, then the artist's life is being filled with other people's ideas and motives. We usually think of art as the result of the artist's will and ideas, so it makes sense why we need for the artist to have freedom to call it art.

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