TheHiveMind Interview

Shintai: Hey everyone, this is Shintai.  Once again, I finagled one of the writers of Katawa Shoujo to talk to me today. Here with me, I have TheHiveMind. How ya doin', man?

TheHiveMind: I'm doin' great.

Shintai: Let's get everyone acquainted. Why don't you just say who you are, what you are to the project, and get everyone acquainted.

TheHiveMind: As you already said, I'm TheHiveMind. I wrote the path to Emi...Pretty much all I did.

Shintai: Hey, that's good enough for me. My first question is, why Emi? Was it that you were kinda just saddled with her and you're like 'Oh well, I'm just stuck with Emi.' or were you like 'Yeah, I wanna do Emi. That's the one I want.'?

TheHiveMind: Actually, I really wanted to do Rin and I didn't get her and I was like 'Alright, I'll just be the editor then.' Whoever we had writing Emi dropped. We had just switched to the new forums, I think, things were still shaky and it was a lot of people showing up and dropping out all the time. So whoever initially volunteered to do Emi dropped out ot decided to focus on something else or whatever, I don't even remember who it was. So it became this problem for us where nobody was writing the path. I don't actually remember who asked me to do it. I think it was the second project lead we had? He ended up leaving before we released Act One.

Shintai: It seemed to me the project started on shaky ground, there was no real focus. Would you say that that's the case?

TheHiveMind: Yeah, I think that we managed to survive that first year of people popping in and out, comical power struggles I did my best to stay out of...

Shintai: That's usually the best way, stay out of drama.

TheHiveMind: I just wanted the thing to get made. I didn't really give a shit who was involved in making it. I never really took sides so I never really got any backlash. Nobody noticed I was just like 'Sure, whatever.' So anyway, one of the early project heads was like 'Oh, well, you've written sample scenes and stuff. We need somebody to do Emi, would you do Emi?' And I had written path outlines for Emi and Rin, I think that was the two I had done. The idea was I had written the outlines and someone else was gonna write 'em so like, Aura wrote Rin and took it in a completely different direction and did a great job [kudos to Aura]. I abandoned whatever I'd originally come up with for Emi and he's like 'Nobody's doing this, would you do it?' and I'm like 'Eh, alright.' 'cause I had nothing going on at the time. I was bored. That's how I ended up doing it in the first place, I was bored.

Shintai: You said initially you were gonna be the editor. Did you actually do any editing? And when you became the Emi writer, were you worried how the editing would turn out and do you think it turned out okay?

TheHiveMind: I was never really worried about editing. I don't mean to say it's not an important job. I edited a few scenes, none of which are in the final game because they're all very early things. I think some of the stuff in grid one, the mythical grid one, I actually edited but I really don't remember.

Shintai: I'm actually unfamiliar with grid one, what is that?

TheHiveMind: We made a thing called grid one. A completely different, well, not a complet- It was structured differently. It was random which girl you encountered first. The only thing you had to do was you had to encounter all the girls once and it was...Really shitty.

Shintai: *laughter* I'm gonna be honest, that does sound pretty shitty. [It really does. There's a good concept for some sort of game there but...Katawa Shoujo: Roguelike Edition? Ouch. :P]

TheHiveMind: It's pretty bad 'cause there was this idea we'd, like, Act One was going to be completely randomized then depending on your choices during the randomized scenes, you would get locked into one girl's festival or wind up on the roof, although I don't think we had a rooftop scenario. I don't remember, I never played grid one [I kind of want to...], we kind of discarded it pretty early on. And it showed up somewhere, someone dug it up...[I'll search Google when I'm done here.]

Shintai: Much to your chagrin?

TheHiveMind: Ah, I don't really give a shit.

Shintai: *laugh* Yeah, you don't seem like that kinda guy.

TheHiveMind: But it was like 'Argh, guys...Alright, fine fine, you can look at this...Incredibly bad early build'. The art was completely different, it was with our first artist.

Shintai: Is that the one where the girls were all wearing green sweaters? [Green Sleeeeves!~]

TheHiveMind: All that stuff is grid one material. Shortly after, the artist is like 'Ya know what? I don't like my drawing enough to wanna draw this whole game.' and he left.

Shintai: Fair enough. [Yeah, and thank goodness he did. xD]

TheHiveMind: I view the whole artistic process as some sort of dark voodoo [So Dr. Facilier drew KS? Badass.] so if somebody thinks they suck and don't wanna draw anymore, I'm like 'Alright.'

Shintai: Speaking of Act One though, a question I have regarding that is the current Act One. Was that a combined effort or was there someone that wrote the majority of it and got cues from the other writers?

TheHiveMind: I wanna say that most of Act One was written by Aura and A22, so Rin's writer and Shizune's writer.

Shintai: That makes sense. Shizune plays a big part in Act One, I feel, so yeah.

TheHiveMind: I wrote a couple of the Emi scenes so some of the Emi scenes and if not the scenes, I'd come in and tweak the dialog. And everybody did that so everybody came in and fiddled with their path's dialogue. But the majority , all the walking around and the 'cripple wonderland' line is Aura's, I think. All the early encounters with Kenji are all A22. All his fault.

Shintai: Turned that dude into a legend.

TheHiveMind: That was one of the unexpected things. I hate him, I think he's just a rubbish character. [Feminist.]

Shintai: That's interesting.

TheHiveMind: He's just so shrill. Sounds like Gilbert Gottfried, looks like Harry Potter.

Shintai: I always had the Harry Potter thing but I didn't think of Gilbert Gottfried, that's pretty good.

TheHiveMind: Like, I just imagined he'd have that kind of a voice.

Shintai: That just makes me think of Iago.

TheHiveMind: Even when the time came for me to write scenes with him, I found him hard to write 'cause I didn't like him. [Feminist.]

Shintai: So since you didn't like his character, you felt it was difficult to write for him 'cause you didn't feel you had a good grasp of him.

TheHiveMind: It's not that I didn't have an- It was such a chore, like, okay, what can he rant about now? Like, how do we get him to go on a long-ass rant about feminists AGAIN? He's a very one-note character. [Feminist.]

Shintai: Now something I found that was very interesting about the Emi route was, this was something I thought would be much more focused on in Hanako's route and it is touched upon in that route to a certain extent and is frowned upon, but I was actually really surprised in the Emi route how Emi was so adamant against white-knighting. What made you think to bring that element into the route?

TheHiveMind: I think it was, when we got to writing the scenes where she was really pissed off, I was kinda just...White Knights are the most annoying goddamn people.

Shintai: *laughter* Yeah, I can definitely agree with that.

TheHiveMind: Especially because it doesn't work that way. There's this underlying motivation to the whole white-knighting thing that if I show up and defend this girl, she will have sex with me. There's this unsavory motive. I had grown, by that time, I just really...I didn't like the whole concept of white-knighting, just rubbed me the wrong way and still does.

Shintai: Yeah, I don't like it either because I feel that there's a certain sneakiness to it, very deceitful. At face value, it seems 'Oh, he's  being nice' but deep down he's just trying to get his own way.

TheHiveMind: Exactly.

Shintai: How about the Emi and Rin friendship? What made you think or whose idea was it to make Emi and Rin friends?

TheHiveMind: I couldn't tell you whose idea it was 'cause it was one of those super early things.

Shintai: So it's always kinda been there?

TheHiveMind: It's always kinda been there. They were like, well, 'cause she doesn't have arms and she doesn't have legs so you put 'em together, they're a complete person. I think Rin even points it out at some point.

Shintai: You're probably not as appropriate to ask this but was it the same for Shizune and Lilly to not like each other?

TheHiveMind: I wanna say it came up fairly early but it was a little later on. It wasn't like, from the get-go. From the get-go, it was well, obviously Emi and Rin are going to be a pair and then I think because the initial page that Raita did has that Lilly is a very mothering character and Hanako is a very shy character, they were always linked too. That was one of the first things, well, these two are definitely a pair. Then you had Shizune with nobody so we had to make someone up for her. I think it was a little later, probably by the time we started to try to come up with scenarios where the whole rivalry started, it probably didn't become a focal point until later on. And then it became like a big deal.

Shintai: How do you feel about how Emi has been received compared to the other characters or the routes in general? Do you feel that she's gotten the amount of praise that you expected, was it a little less, or were you really surprised about how many people enjoyed the Emi route?

TheHiveMind: That's a really good question. [Quit hitting on him, Hive! Bad! :P] When I finished the path and I made the final edits, we'd been critiquing each other's paths for so long. We were so vicious to one another in our critiques, I mean we were really really hard on ourselves. I mean, it worked, it worked that we were that hard on ourselves because a lot of people seem to have liked it but we were so- I mean, we'd get into some pretty vicious conversations [So, you were all Shizune?] and I at least at one point walked away from the project for like a year, not a whole year. I think there was at least once a point for everyone where they'd walk away for like a month or so just because things would get so heated.

Shintai: cpl_crud just flat out left. [Yet he still hung around to answer our nagging questions on the forum. Kudos, cripple crud! (Yes, it's supposed to be 'Corporal' but mine is funnier.)]

TheHiveMind: Well, he left for other reasons too, he had other things going on that were more important to take care of than writing a VN.

Shintai: Okay, that's cool.

TheHiveMind: But I'm sure there was probably an element of 'God, I'm just tired of this.' Like it's...We all got real tired of it so by the time I finally finished it, I had taken into account all the criticism and everything, I might've gone back and done another path, tweaked some scenes, and the one thing I always got flak for was the sex scenes were always too short [Really? xD Come on, guys. Seriously.] I remember they were all like 'You gotta describe more, get more in depth' [Oh, Hisao certainly got into some depths... <.<] and I'm like, I don't fuckin' want to...

Shintai: Yeah, that's uncomfortable to wanna write about.

TheHiveMind: I couldn't figure out a way to make it not awkward so at least in one case, I just deliberately made it awkward.

Shintai: I'm sure you're referring to the anal scene.

TheHiveMind: Yeah. I was just 'Fine, this is gonna be awkward as hell' 'cause I just cannot make this sexy. I couldn't write it with a straight face, could not do it.

Shintai: Actually, you just answered another question of mine which was why did you make the anal scene so humorous and not more serious. [Answer: LEMONS!] Don't get me wrong, I'm glad you did it that way 'cause I loved it but I just wanna kinda get in your head about why you did it.

TheHiveMind: There's a cartoonist, Erica [something], who posts these little online comics and she posted a thing about anal sex where similar to the end of the track shed scene, she pushed back too hard and it hurt. And I'm like 'Well, that's how it's ending, she's gonna hurt her ass'. And obviously it's the first time either of them have done this so it's gonna be awkward anyway, wouldn't it? That was what I was thinking. I couldn't write it erotic if I wanted to and I kinda drew the short straw on Emi's path because nobody else volunteered to write it and we decided 'We need to change up the sex scenes. Somebody's gotta do an anal scene.'

Shintai: I'm sorry, just thinking of guys sitting around 'Okay, gotta have an anal scene.' is just funny to me.

TheHiveMind: One of the more bizarre days. We were just 'Is it too bland? They can't just do it missionary every time, can they?' As much as we didn't want to focus the game around sex, I think we overthought a lot of it too. [So you were really anal about it, huh? *shot*] That's why there's so much variety, we were like 'Well, shit, we need to work this in.'

Shintai: I'm gonna have to put you on the spot, man. Other than the Emi route, what was your favorite route?

TheHiveMind: Probably Rin's path. The only reason is 'cause it is the least normal path.

Shintai: Well, she is the least normal girl so that would make sense.

TheHiveMind: I feel like Aura did the best at creating a scenario that was uncomfortable. Going into it expecting a traditional thing would catch you off guard. And part of the goal of Emi's path was to catch you off guard [Maybe if Emi had been the pitcher...] but Aura did a way better job of it.

Shintai: Yeah, honestly, I regret reading Rin's first. It's one you should leave last or do later.

TheHiveMind: Yeah, she was supposed to be the hardest to get. I don't think it wound up that way.

Shintai: Yeah, I think that was written on RAITA's thing that she was the hardest to get.

TheHiveMind: And it used to be super hard to get on her path but we changed it.

Shintai: Getting off the path, let's get into your personal tastes. Do you like anime, are you into video games, what do you like to do?

TheHiveMind: Play a lotta games 'cause I'm lazy. Used to watch a ton of anime, I was really into it up until about five years ago. Just kinda stopped keeping track, disappointed with the offering. 'Man, these all suck', nothing caught my interest. Every once in a while, I'll throw on Cowboy Bebop or Samurai Champloo. Was super into FLCL when the project started. Rin's personality was from that show, she was very Haruko-esque.

Shintai: That'd be awesome. Rin as Haruko...

TheHiveMind: She wasn't running around hitting people with guitars or whatever.

Shintai: That'd be a very different game.

TheHiveMind: There was sort of that aggressive streak, a lot of the early stuff I wrote, she was very into wordplay and arguments. She kept a point system...[No wonder you got stuck with Emi. You were writing Rin as Shizune, ya loon! XD]

Shintai: *laugh* Pretty cool.

TheHiveMind: I watch Breaking Bad. I was into Mad Men for a while, got kinda bored.

Shintai: I think my last question is are you content with the project? Are you satisfied with Katawa Shoujo as a whole, particularly the Emi route? Are there things you'd go back to fix?

TheHiveMind: I'm fine with it. There was a while where I thought it sucked and there was a huge response, people loved Emi's path. And I'm like 'I should play my own path, see how it turned out'. I sat down and played through it about a month ago, no real regrets. If I changed anything, I might've had a different conflict than what it ended up being. Probably set it somewhere else and changed everything else too, written a whole different story.

Shintai: I really liked the Emi route. If you ever do another VN, I'd like to read it. Your writing's really good.

TheHiveMind: Well, might as well self-promote a little. I have a Tumblr. I announced a new project but I need an artist. It's thehivemindwrites.tumblr.com/. There's only like two posts. One's called The New Thing and details the new project, a comic I wanna do but I don't have an artist.

Shintai: Very cool, I'll put it in the description. Any aspiring artists, might be your chance. Thank you very much for this interview.

TheHiveMind: Always fun to have someone listen to me ramble for a bit.

Shintai: Be sure to check out Katawa Shoujo and his tumblr. It's all awesome and...That's pretty much it. Take care, everyone.

TheHiveMind: See ya.