Shizune's path

[Guest]

What she doesn't grasp here is that just interacting with another person is taxing Hanako's resources. Hanako is pushing herself just to be able to play a game with her. Playing games is one of the few things Hanako does that she can enjoy and almost feel like a normal person doing.

What happens here is that Hanako goes for it and then Shizune reaches out and changes the rules so she can crush her anyway.

Actually, she changed the rules because the one game they played took most of their lunch break, and because Shizune personally likes faster-paced games. She also says she doesn't like chess, normally, because there's no luck at all. "Luck in games is good because it gives everyone a chance." And the bell does ring about one minute after they finish the speed game, too.

Also, Shizune had won the first game anyway - and she was more than a graceful winner.

[Oddball]

She could have said no.

I'm not entirely sure she could have. She's not good at refusing people.

And if it was so obvious what was going to happen, why did Shizune suggest it to begin with?

[Guest]

I'm not entirely sure she could have. She's not good at refusing people.

And if it was so obvious what was going to happen, why did Shizune suggest it to begin with?

"This is a fun game, but it took too long. Almost the whole period! Chess is too formulaic, especially at this level. How about some advanced rules?"

[nemz]

I'm not entirely sure she could have. She's not good at refusing people.

So what's the alternative, never suggest anything for fear Hanako might feel pressured into accepting? If that's not treating her like a broken little mess I don't know what is.

[Oddball]

I'm not entirely sure she could have. She's not good at refusing people.

So what's the alternative, never suggest anything for fear Hanako might feel pressured into accepting? If that's not treating her like a broken little mess I don't know what is.

The alternative is knowing when to back down and stop trying to push people, which is exactly Shizune's problem. If she could tell when to push issues and when to back off, there would still be a student council that's not just her and two people that are just following along because they're in love with her.

[Guest]

The alternative is knowing when to back down and stop trying to push people, which is exactly Shizune's problem. If she could tell when to push issues and when to back off, there would still be a student council that's not just her and two people that are just following along because they're in love with her.

... That's basically what the resolution to her story is, in one way or another. It doesn't stick quite so strongly as it does in the bad ending, but she's at least somewhat aware that she's been treating people the wrong way by the end of the good one.

[Megumeru]

Saying you win an argument by being faster to reply or being able to post more lengthy posts on the subject is the forum equivalent to saying you won an argument by talking louder than everyone else and not allowing them to respond, pundit style. Sadly in the court of public opinion this tactic works, but only because people are, by and large, painfully stupid. None of these tactics actually means you are correct, any more than a vote can make a popular but incorrect statement true.

Wait-wait-wait...me?

I don't mean it like that. It's not about replying faster or post something with great lengths--that doesn't equal to win. I treat it like a debate with one side shooting down the other side's ideas point-by-point.

Did I word something wrong in my last post? Ah well, nvm.

on-topic

So what's the alternative, never suggest anything for fear Hanako might feel pressured into accepting? If that's not treating her like a broken little mess I don't know what is.

Take it like a yukkuri-reimu.

'Take it easy~'

I don't know, but Hanako slightly strikes me as someone who likes to try something new but is often afraid of it. I'd say just shove the stuff in slow, simple, and steady

[Oddball]

The alternative is knowing when to back down and stop trying to push people, which is exactly Shizune's problem. If she could tell when to push issues and when to back off, there would still be a student council that's not just her and two people that are just following along because they're in love with her.

... That's basically what the resolution to her story is, in one way or another. It doesn't stick quite so strongly as it does in the bad ending, but she's at least somewhat aware that she's been treating people the wrong way by the end of the good one.

We agree on this. I think we're just dancing around either others points here.

[Guest]

We agree on this. I think we're just dancing around either others points here.

Yeah, I think so. I can agree that she doesn't have a lot of empathy for others at first, though it doesn't really help that her approach isn't completely wrong. (As others have said, taking Misha as an example, her decision to still remain friends with Misha after the latter's confession was probably the best choice she could have made, all things considered. Misha doesn't really get depressed about it again until after "Hicchan" and "Shicchan" hook up, after all - it's a bit hard to believe that either of them would really have been better off if they'd went their own ways after the confession.)

But it's not that she's pressuring Hanako in order to be rude, she's doing it because she thinks that putting pressure on people like that will have good results for them. Will even be fun for them. With Hisao, it's completely true, and with Misha, it's almost completely true. Even Hanako responded favorably into being pressured into playing the first game.

I dunno, I guess from the way you word it, it sounds like she comes across to you as having no sympathy or empathy at all, which is very different from how I interpret it. She does empathize a fair bit, she just isn't able to imagine anything from anyone else's perspective.

[ravenlord]

She does empathize a fair bit, she just isn't able to imagine anything from anyone else's perspective.

Sorry, but that's a contradiction of terms. The very definition of empathy is "the capacity to recognize feelings that are being experienced by another sentient or semi-sentient being". Not everyone can empathize, and certain medical conditions and disorders (like autism, asperger's, psychopathy, etc) can contribute to that inability. Some of it can be social as well, such as being raised isolated and/or mistreated as a child.

Shizune finally comes to recognize the fact that she has little or no empathy at the end of both endings. It doesn't make her evil, but it is a tragic handicap, worse than her deafness. But the fact that she finally recognizes it gives her (and maybe Hisao and Misha) hope that she can work it out and try to mitigate it or develop positive coping strategies to deal with it.

[WorldlyWiseman]

Because of their personal connection. Shizune herself would find out that Misha is being considered for employment in her company and immediately send out an email saying "I got this."

Eh, I can't see Shizune telling HR to keep an eye out for particular people that she knows simply because it smacks of nepotism. There's also the underlying implication that said person isn't good enough to make it through the interview on their own merits, and I don't think she'd want her friends or acquiantances to join the company on those terms.

Okay, maybe shift the timing of their meeting to her first day after her interview or something. You know, Shizune gets coffee with her HR head and he mentions, "You know that last girl we hired? Head like cotton candy! It's crazy, we'd have never hired someone with that kind of taste in my younger days, but I we're changing the times now, I suppose?" She starts signing so fast to find out who it is that her coffee goes flying.

I just like to imagine them reconnecting after getting some more emotional maturity under their belts.

Might come as a surprise to WorldlyWiseman and Oddball, but my forum persona here is the least combative among all the ones I frequent.

You are still a tiny hedgehog in my mind

[Synthus]

Heh. Shizune = Courage Wolf

Been saying that for a while.

As the discussion here amply demonstrates, the comfort zone is named precisely that for a damned good reason.

[nemz]

I dunno, I guess from the way you word it, it sounds like she comes across to you as having no sympathy or empathy at all, which is very different from how I interpret it. She does empathize a fair bit, she just isn't able to imagine anything from anyone else's perspective.

I'd say she has quite a bit of care for others, but struggles to understand their feelings... especially when those feelings seem to be at odds with what they want or what she thinks would be best for them.

[Guest]

The very definition of empathy is "the capacity to recognize feelings that are being experienced by another sentient or semi-sentient being".

She seems to recognize how people are feeling to a pretty good degree, but she can't predict how they are going to react to her attempts to cheer them up, get them to open up, or distract them.

She persuades Misha to stay her friend after her confession, most probably because Misha ends up upset after it doesn't pan out. She and Misha work hard to recruit Hisao because they notice he seems depressed when he arrives at the school (and his arriving mid-semester probably wouldn't help, either). She manages to cheer Hisao up on the night of the festival, after he feels down from his heart acting up earlier. She pushes to have Hanako join their chess game because she caught Hanako's interested look at the chess board. And in Hanako's route, just before the break down, she notices Hanako is withdrawing and tries to get her talking again.

[ravenlord]

The very definition of empathy is "the capacity to recognize feelings that are being experienced by another sentient or semi-sentient being".

She seems to recognize how people are feeling to a pretty good degree, but she can't predict how they are going to react to her attempts to cheer them up, get them to open up, or distract them.

Exactly, and that is a common trait in people who lack empathy, especially when psychopathy is involved.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy#Psychopathy

"Some are able to detect the emotions of others with such a theory of mind and can mimic caring and friendship in a convincing manner. While some can detect what others are feeling, they do not experience any reciprocal emotion or sympathy."

Lack of empathy is a sliding scale. Some are extreme empaths and can read you like a book, and experience exactly what you do. Others are totally deaf and blind to it. And the rest fit somewhere in between. Shizune seems to have just enough to finally figure out that something has gone wrong, but not nearly enough to figure out what exactly it is nor how to fix it. Hasio may be the one to help her in figuring out a work around for her lack of empathy, and new coping strategies for dealing with people. There is no real cure for lacking empathy, but there are ways to compensate for it, like there are with most disabilities.