Post
by Tsundere Lightning » Thu Sep 03, 2009 12:23 pm
Katawa Shoujo
Katawa. It's a harsh word. Four Leaf found out, to their horror, that it's not a relatively neutral term like 'disabled' but something more akin to "Mutant, Retard, Gimp." They didn't change the name after that, and I respect their decision - it seems to me that they're trying to bleed the term of it's venom. Queer used to be an epithet, too. Then people - like my parents - started using it as a badge of honor. See also the gradual defusing of the N-word.
I can entirely see Shizune signing with her >:3 face and Misha going "There's no one here but us Katawa!" and laughing. (Also, my memetically infested brain immediately went OH SHIT IT'S A DEAF >:3 GET IN THE WHEELCHAIR!)
Tigerbunny said that he avoided the game because it felt like "a Reductio Ad Absurdium" take on moe - a word, that for the sake of this rant, I'm going to use to mean "the affection you feel for someone you want to protect." It's a fair impression, I'll grant him. He isn't wrong in how the game presents itself. It was born off of the cancer that is /b/ (well, actually the /a/ board on 4-Chan, but a lot of /b/tards were involved in it's conception) from some random doujinshi pages about an H-game, never made, starring young, beautiful women with disabilites, and the forums exploded with fanart about "Deaf-tan, Blind-tan, Legless-tan, Armless-tan," and "Burn-tan." I can see his point about the connotations.
But Four Leaf, in it's wisdom, hired a core team of very professional artists and writers, and forced people to register on a forum to offer ideas, and were not at all shy to, as they say around 4-chan, make sure that the malicious and the prejudiced got "B&" big-time. And as a result...
I didn't hear a word about Deaf-Tan. Instead, I met the mischevious, beautiful, eloquent Shizuka, the leader of the student council, responsible to a fault, competitive and playful and just a bit tsundere. Blind-Tan was nowhere to be found, but Lilly was a kind, sensitive, eloquent woman, who had befriended the shy young Hanako (Burn-tan? Who's Burn-tan?), who regrets leaving her home and her sister Akira, who is just Yamato Nadeshiko enough to make perfect tea from green tea powder. I met the mercurial Rin, an artist who weilded a brush between her toes to make bold strokes, who was deep and wise and bluntly honest - and I didn't miss Armless-tan in the slightest. I could go on.
There is really only one object of our pity, only one character who very much is his disability, and it's not the main character with his coronary arrythmia (as much as he thinks he is in moments of despair), or any of the girls. It's Kenji, who is a paranoid scizophrenic with mysogynistic delusions. And even he is somewhat functional, but... sad. I pity him, but more because he hasn't come to terms with his limitations and focused on his strengths, like the others.
TL:DR - this game is a lot more thoughtful than a lot of people give it credit for. Give it a chance - I was lucky enough to find it on TV-Tropes, not on the -Chans.
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Please distribute this to spread the love. There are a lot of people who won't try it because of misconceptions (specifically, that this is either brazenly offensive or ludicrously moe), and, well, this is a work of literature worth giving a chance.
Edited to fix the stupid, stupid Shizune typo. Will you let me go now, Misha?
Shizune apologist, Rin fan, semipro visual novelist, noted attention whore
I write KS fanfic. I preread KS fanfic. PM me with requests for either.
delta wrote: I've been caustic and mean since before 4chan even existed.
