Katawa Shoujo Forums

Shizune's bad ending really stuck with me, and I can see quite well why.

[When I feel like I'm finished, I wish I could just wipe the slate clean.]

I've done this to my friends. Thrice.
Not on purpose. Each followed changing schools, or moving; leaving the geographical area. Not being in the same school does wonders to how easily you can forget people.
Hiaso does this too, at the very beginning, leaving his school and friends behind, not even bothering to contact them. He can feel miffed, though, since none of his friends came to visit him, so he knows that his friends didn't care for him that much (although he should have still tried to get in contact). And it shows that leaving for a different school can make friends fall apart. Although if you were never close with your friends in the first place, the easier it is for you to fall apart.

I wish I kept in touch with them better. I should have tried harder.

I tried, but no matter how much, they keep sliding away. Maybe it's because I wasn't that good friends with them in the first place. I can still talk with them, IM, but there's no real feeling of friendship. Pleasantries, procedure. Nothing of substantial friendship value. The slate keeps trying to wipe itself, and it always become clean. Not even memories, because my brain doesn't work that way. I don't remember events, I remember facts, so I even lose out on the memories of the good times.

Trust issues to blame, probably, for the lack of strong friendships. But apart from a social life, it hasn't been all that bad. Abandoning everyone you know gives you a chance to reform yourself, be someone different. It releases you of obligations and allows you to start over. You can focus on academics, athletics. Shizune's advice isn't all bad; although it might be selfish to throw out connections others still want, you get a chance to change yourself (hopefully for the better), and if nobody wants to connect with you, you're hurting no one.

I was content with my situation before playing this game. Afterward, I have this feeling of malcontent. I've had it before; it will fade quickly. I can just stay the same, stay away from emotionally loaded media, and I will be perfectly fine. But I'm going to college this September, and I'm wondering if anything could be different. Forge stronger friendships that last even after I leave.

Any advice?

[Also angry at myself for getting behind a week behind on self-imposed online courses to get 100%. See? This is what I do without friends. I'm fine with it. Most of the time.]

I don't think long-term relationships, whether friendly, romantic, or familial, really work well.

When I moved out of the town I'd lived in for nine years, I gradually fell out of contact with most of my friends there. If they'd had vehicles of their own and been able to visit me, it might have been different, but, well. There was one of them who frequently had enough free time to be picked up (or could take the bus) to spend weekends or whatever at my new place (only two, two and a half, hours away), and at a couple times he lived here for a couple months. That friendship went... ah, fairly strong, until last year. For a time I had to cancel my car insurance due to other debts to pay and the fact that the insurance was ridiculously high anyway (my mother had set it up for me since it was the first time I'd bought a brand new car; she decided to pick the $500 a month option for FUCKING EVERYTHING POSSIBLE); I didn't get that fixed until late in the year. Right about that time is when the latest spiral deeper into the mild depression that was building since the move happened, and it was a deep spiral. At that critical moment, he betrayed my trust in more ways than one, and hard. I don't mean "oops, I let something slip to the wrong person" or whatever, I mean that I'd rate it equal to him saying "haha, I'm fucking your ex right now, loser" to my face. His later excuse, when making a half-ass apology that someone else (the primary cause of the spiral in the first place) guilted him into, was "well, I was quitting smoking, so it's tough".
I will admit to having fantasies of hitting him with my goddamn car, yes.

Anyway, I am so not the person to offer sympathy on this sort of thing, but I can offer my biased experience. If you're able to spend a fair chunk of time with the person, you can still preserve the relationship, especially if there's a chance that the two of you will be able to live closer together at some point in the (near enough) future. If you can't, it probably will fade over time. The good news for that, at least, is that the experiences are still there. If you can reconnect with a relationship you've lost, you can probably rebuild it, you know?

A much brighter tale is one from my last year of high school - a girl I'd known in a different city, about four hours away, back when I was about six or so, had moved to the city I lived in at the time. Neither of us remembered each other right off the bat, but our parents did, and reminded us... We ended up being fairly good friends by the end of that year.

Well I never was really the social king most of the time, but my advice would be to put your studies ahead of you until you finished them.

I learned that the hard way.

But if you don't want to follow that advice ( I highly recommend doing so as I am in collage and still have 2 years left)and you want to be a socialite, then my advice for that is to try your best to make some good friends. And whatever you do don't hang out with the wrong crowd.

For friends it is always better to have a small amount of friends, but make sure that you are good friends with them.

It's okay to have acquaintances but if you have too many friends than more than likely one of them are going to bite you in the ass.
Guys don't do it as much as girls, but they still spread rumors.

I feel really old giving advice like this.

I grew up as a Navy brat. Got into a rhythm of moving every two years. I never really bothered keeping up with or maintaining friends. With two years, I reasoned, you're just setting yourself up to get hurt.

With the internet, I was able to meet people and keep[ in touch for longer, because the internet is everywhere. Was still in the habit of not maintaining friends, so I allowed most of them to drift away. Still kinda miss a few of them.

So, aside from a few people on the internet and my family (as you can imagine, you tend to be close to the only people you know are going to be around), I hadn't had any long-term relationships before college. I interacted with people, but always with the sense that I'll be leaving before I know it.

Had a close group of friends in college. Still good friends with some of the group, as others drifted, but that's natural. Now we're pretty solidly in the Adult concept of friendship, where you don't talk for months, but remember how good friends you are when you get back together. Still left to wonder if they'd be closer if I were in the habit of investing more in the relationship. For what it's worth, I'm married now, so there is the possibility of commitment.

When it comes down to it, value the time you have with people. Even if you do everything right, there's no guarantee they'll be there tomorrow. Treat every encounter as if you'll never see them again, and you want to leave them with fond memories, and have fond memories of your own. Try to be someone people want to know, someone people want to spend time with. College can be a concentrated experience, especially if you live on campus. There's a lot of growing going on, and a lot of life experience to share with others, if you let yourself. As with any relationship, it's the bonds of shared experience that tie people together. You just need to be able to convince yourself and others that you want the time you do have together to last. The better the time shared, the more likely both of you will want to share more experiences.

You will mess up, you will make mistakes, and there will be people with whom you have irreconcilable differences. These things happen. But, if you want a relationship, it all comes back to that old saw: You will only get out of it what you put into it.

You want some advice on making friends?

First off, get off your computer. Next, gain some self confidence. Nobody wants to be friends with someone with low self-esteem or think poorly of themseves. THe rest is up to you.