Damn, now that I read on how you all felt from "If my heart had wings", so I'm high-key super curious about this game. I'll give it a shot guys, thank you!
Please play Fashioning Little Miss Lonesome. Sorry for the thread derailment, but those posts pretty much make you the perfect person for recommending this.
I know it may sound stupid but I got really emotionally attached with Higurashi since early age, I remember playing the VN back when I was in 5th grade. I was a loner and got bullied cause I was a fat kid (I was about to grow 10 cm tall in one summer) so I was super lonely. I still remember how warm it made me feel when I was watching the kids playing and having fun with their everyday life on Hinamizawa. So, I imagined myself and would draw all over my books about me hanging out with the gang. I was about Satoko's and Rika's age and I was looking up to Mion, Rena and Keiichi. It feels so weird being older than them now..I wonder, would they be proud of me on how I grew up? I'm more outgoing and I'm on a lot of groups now..but it may sound pathetic but the warmth I felt when reading higurashi, I never got it from anyone. I wish I would relive my childhood so I could feel this pure warmth somehow.
Ahahahahahaha, you're not wrong about that.
I recently graduated college, so I've began thinking that without classes and stuff, it feels really weird reading the stories of people who are supposedly "in the height of their youth" and stuff being in high school and stuff. Consuming stories like these makes me think back to my time in high school and makes me ask myself, "Why are their experiences so colorful and stuff when I just toiled over my 12 hour schedule and bulky assignments?" I sorta realized the answer to that at some point, but I find myself still wondering about that every now and then.
In a way, it makes me feel lonely and sorta sad that I didn't make as much of my time back then like what these people are doing in these stories. But the feelings don't stop there. If anything, loneliness that comes up from memories of high school almost always comes up with vague nostalgia for me, regardless of being able to directly relate with the events in the story or not. I guess it's because more than 'making use of my experiences to the highest extent', I've began to realize that at some point in time I've worked as hard as they have for a certain goal, bantered with my friends so much that it made my stomach hurt, and grieved over something that I deem trivial these days. And that makes me feel good even if just a little, knowing that at some point, I was also living my own kind of story to the utmost extent that I can manage to. The loneliness ceases to come from not being able to live life to the fullest, instead coming from a sort of yearning for those times that have passed.
But hey, I also use it as leverage to launch myself forward! If I haven't managed to do my best for the days that have already passed, then I'll do it for the coming days in the future! If I did live my days to the fullest ever since those times, then I'll continue doing so, even if the days currently feel stagnant! If it happened in the past, then I'm sure I can make it happen again. HS settings do make you yearn for those colorful experiences, but they also remind you that you can have those experiences, even as early as high school! Better late than never, you know!
I hope you find these stories to be ones that remind you of good memories as you gain more years on you.
Heya, I'm new to this forum but I have played a lot of Visual Novels and I'd love to find people with interests similar to mine. My favorite one is Umineko no Naku koro ni.