The
issue of what the optimal degree is of letting a fictional character be
defined by a so-called "mental illness" is one that is obviously of
great relevance to our work and that by extension has already been
discussed at length several times already by several different persons
on this very blog, some of which are probably smarter than me or more
knowledgeable on the subject matter and all of them undoubtedly more
capable of expressing their opinions in less than a thousand words.
I
still haven't done so, though, or at least not to any degree that I
would consider satisfactory and thus I have decided to take a short
break from the job I've signed on to do and that is by all means
expected of me to once again bother the lot of you with my pointless
verbosity and meaningless rhetorical cyclicity. My desire to spew forth
purple prose must, after all, be satisfied if I am to further postpone
the inevitability of me one day snapping and going on a destructive
rampage of poetic weather descriptions.
I should start by
pointing out that much like anything else pertaining to the matter at
hand the issue of the degree to which people are defined by their mental
conditions is a dark abyss of political correctness the bottom of which
the naked eye cannot see and the innocent mind cannot fathom, so
writing of it is often as (if not more) problematic than writing about
mental illness in the first place. In fact, the very term "mental
illness" is considered by some politically incorrect these days, and
perhaps not without reason, as "mental" implies a disconnection from the
physical which is scientifically questionable in today's age of
advanced neurology and far more direly, "illness" implies the existence
of an ideal, "healthy" mental state any deviation from which is
essentially negative.
That, of course, is a whole Pandora's Box by
itself (where should the line be drawn? Can a person with unusual sexual
preferences said to be "ill"? What about one with unpopular hobbies?),
and thus in an exhibition of uncharacteristic efficiency I will avoid
further elaborating upon it.
As many before me have pointed out, one
of the greatest achievements of Katawa Shoujo, Missing Star's spiritual
predecessor by admission, was the accurate yet thought-provoking
representation of the physically disabled as ultimately people first and
foremost. The writers have managed to walk the thin, golden line
between the wasteland of "She's technically disabled but that doesn't
really ever impact anything she does" and the mire of "She's disabled,
what more is there to her?" The character's personalities and
backgrounds are (as they should be) obviously influenced by their
particular disabilities and the fact of their being disabled, but far
less so than by things such as their family situation, their hobbies, or
even their closest friends. Even if you could argue that Lilly's
docility might have something to do with her having to live her life
slowly and carefully due to her blindness (a common theory), that would
have only been a tiny part of the explanation, and that personality
trait by itself would have only been one of a great many that form the
very specific whole that is the character.
But if Alice the Attention
Deficit is always late for class, is easily distracted by the most
insignificant of stimuli and seems to never be able to find her earrings,
would you say that this is an expression of her personality, or of her
"condition"? A theoretical scientist might be tempted to give an answer
along the lines of "Well, all you need to do is observe her behavior
sans ADD" but therein lies the root of the problem: how can you separate
her behavior from her personality, and how can you separate either of
them from ADD itself? In this particular case, one could presumably
argue that giving her a measured dose of Ritalin might be helpful (as is
indeed common practice regarding kids suspected of having such
disorders in real-life), but unfortunately for us (not to mention poor
Alice, who is still looking for those earrings) doing so wouldn't solve
the actual question at hand – even if her symptoms at the moment are
subdues, Alice still has ADD, and perhaps far more importantly regarding
her character, has always had. Isolating any one aspect of a person's
(especially a fictional character, which is obviously far less complex
than a real person) mental being from any other can only be done
artificially and crudely at best – not at all at worst. Alice The
Character sans ADD will not be the same character. There's a finite
amount of definitions for her and it's the interactions between them
that ultimately determine her "behavior" whatever we see of her in the
story.
A "personality" is not something that can stand by itself
– it is a factor of the sum of its parts, and they themselves can only
stand if they are expressed in some way, preferably through action
within the story.
Far more so than is the case regarding characters
with physical disabilities, if a character's mental condition does not
become apparent during the story, it might as well not exist. We are
always striving to keep our characters as realistic as possible while
still keeping them interesting and fun to interact with but we would be
foolish to forget that we are dealing with, essentially, story elements.
By necessity, it could be said that in many ways our characters will
come off as being more strongly influenced by their conditions overall
than a "real-person" might be. In real life, in order to truly
appreciate the extent to which a certain mental condition influences a
person's existence it is necessary to observe them over a long period of
time, as they are exposed to a variety of different situations and
conditions. Unlike a missing eye or a burn scar, one cannot simply "see"
a phobia or a personality disorder unless something happens that causes
the phobic person to react in a significantly different way than a
person who doesn't suffer from a phobia probably would.
But it is the
nature of stories of this sort to deal with exceptional circumstances –
even if they are only exceptional by "day-to-day" standards. As
writers, we are limited in the scope of the stories we can tell, if only
by the fact that we want to finish writing them one day and would like
not to make it to a billion pages – detailing every moment of a
character's life (especially from an observer's point of view) over any
non-negligible period of time is simply not doable. Even if it was,
let's face it: it probably would have been boring, because the vast
majority of any person's life (whether that person has or doesn't have a
mental condition) is rather unremarkable – and by dedicating 99.98% of a
character's story to them contently going through their life we'd be
doing our subject matter as much injustice as we would be making it seem
as if their lives are one long series of freak-outs and hilarious
autistic blunders.
As we write our story, we deliberately and
inevitably choose to focus on those moments that help us drive it
forward in an interesting and entertaining fashion. Since our particular
story is character driven that usually means telling something of a
character through their actions, and as mental illness is one of the
main themes of the game that means that we are going to purposefully
focus on those extremely unusual moments in people's lives in which
their mental conditions influence their behavior in a very dramatic
manner. Not every scene will be like this, of course - but many will.
Some might feel that this makes the characters seem like caricatures of
themselves, or worse: caricatures of people with the character's
conditions. But between that and treating them realistically – to the
point of very likely never exposing their conditions to the player, or
of doing so in a painfully slow and subtle way, we decided to lean
towards using the first method.
This article's title, by the way,
comes from the "trope" of the same name, referring to the fact that in
fiction, a character who mentions (even if only offhandedly) a phobia of
theirs is extremely likely to be confronted by it by the end of the
story. If they weren't, after all, why mention it in the first place?
All
of the above, of course, is bound to be all the more prevalent during
the Act 1 demo. Using a very limited number of scenes, even less of
which would be fully dedicated to interaction with and exploration of
each individual character, we writers must acquaint the reader with as many
characters as possible to as large a degree as possible while still
keeping all of them interesting in the long and short terms. If it
seems like all too many scenes focus on characters acting funny (some would say, unrealistically so) because of their conditions, that isn't because that's
all there is to them – it's because otherwise, it wouldn't matter at all
to the story that they even have any.
We took upon ourselves a
great challenge, knowingly, when we chose to write a story about
(arguably) "mental conditions", or the people inflicted with them.
Trying to remain politically correct is important to us, to a certain degree – we are not slaves to PR but we do like to maintain at least a modicum of tastefulness. But so it is
important to us to keep the story believable on the one hand, and fun to read on the other.
As I too often say, at this point, there is little we can do but hope that we can manage.
-Gloom
