Post by DetectiveH in Khenbish Discussion!

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So I just finished Khenbish's route. Before this build I went with Themba, and never tried out Khenbish at all, so it was good to see him with a fresh perspective. He's quickly become one of my favourite characters. He has a heart of gold, I wanted him to grow as a person and I guess you could say he's a real "protagonist". Having said that, I felt his route had a real melancholy to it, and was a little anticlimactic maybe? He begins the route feeling lonely, confused and carrying lots of weight on his shoulders, by the end he's less confused, less burdened, but still lonely. I felt sad for him during the drinking game because it's evident he really wants to drink to these questions. Even his scene with Tuan felt sad because, important as it was for his growth, it was still a fictional account of an intimacy he wishes he had. I wanted the end of his route to be a little more hopeful towards his relationship status, I really hope he can find someone to call his own, ~~I liked the idea that one guy had about shipping Khenbish with Storm.~~

Finally, I'm curious as to the kind of research that went into making this route. I read somewhere the devs had a friend from Mongolia whom they used as a point of reference for Khenbish and his story, is that true? I know very little about how homosexuality is perceived in Monoglia and this route had me curious to learn more.

One more thing, I still don't understand all the memes where Khenbish says "horny". He didn't say that when I played, did I miss some key dialogue?

Malachite Drake2 years ago(+3)

I feel the memes mostly refer to his reactions whenever anything sexual was mentioned, but mainly during the drinking game. People just exaggerate it a bit for comedic effect and, perhaps, because up untill now people didn't have much to go by about his character and why he acted like that.

Minoh Workshop2 years ago(+4)

Usually we prefer to either write about cultures we had contact with personally or about which we can consult with a native of said culture. Mongolia was the most challenging one because we didn't have any of these options. We have a friend who studied with a Mongolian exchange student (who's not a furry) and that was far from ideal.

To compensate we had to double down on the research. We read reports from NGOs and civil rights activists that outlined the issues LGBT Mongolians face in the job market, and that the population at large responds well to awareness raising campaigns because they just don't understand basic things like LGBT people being born this way. We mixed that with the mythological family history we came up for Khenbish. We also read a lot of Mongolian poetry to bake some of it's literary style into the narration, and watched movies about the country.

I don't know if our portrayal is fully accurate. Sadly I don't think accepting parents like Altan are as common as people would wish. But as you can see we weren't working in our ideal conditions and had to make do. Hopefully we were good enough and one day a young Mongolian LGBT will have a good time reading Khenbish's story.

Now, about the melancholy in Khenbish's route... It's worth keeping in mind the game's not over yet -- so who knows what's coming next? Regardless, Khenbish is a young man figuring himself out. He's doing it at his own time and speed. When you consider everything he's been through (including his self-discovery and helping his loving family) I'd say he's doing pretty great.

DetectiveH2 years ago (1 edit)

I did think Altan was something of an optimistic outcome of how a Mongolian father would react to having a gay son. Nothing wrong with a bit of optimism and hope in a dreary world though. And indeed, the game is not finished yet, hmm...

Nanoff2 years ago(+5)

Oh it definitely is not the most likely outcome, unfortunately. I think it's somewhat justified considering his particular family history of being fucked over really hard by divine mandates, he's in a position where he's a little more open-minded than usual about breaking with orthodoxy.

To address your original post, Khenbish acts a little differently in the drinking game if you don't complete his route, which is where a lot of the memes come from (since he didn't have a lot of scenes aside from that one, his intro and some R&D/exploration interactions). There's a funny story about this: I had originally written the scene with the dialogue you now get after his route is finished, where he's more open about his experiences (we didn't have all the kinks of the character straightened out yet); but Minoanon did a couple rewrites to make him more reserved and critical of the other guests (which was a good call and is the version everyone read before this update). For the latest build I dug up that old version and put it back in if the right conditions are met.

chapomon2 years ago

I thought the implication that Khenbish's mother may not be as accepting of homosexuality since she's more religious (likely because she doesn't have to personally deal with the curse) was a nice touch to balance Altan's tolerance of it. I imagine his mom would still love him and "accept" him but in that uncomfortable way where she thought he was going to hell regardless. Which is one of the reasons why Altan wanted Khenbish to find himself away for something that would weigh on him like that.

I noticed some of the changes in the drinking game when I played it following Khenbish' route though looking at the script, there seems to be one thing that was added in that doesn't seem possible which is in regard to a change in Khenbish's responds to Robert's drinking question. It doesn't seem possible to have Robert recruited and Khenbish' path fully completed before the drinking game, I seem to be two days short to be able to do it.

TrinexxSlayer2 years ago

That's correct. It's impossible to do both in the same playthrough. I posted somewhere in the forum a calendar for management days

chapomon2 years ago

Ok, so that bit of Khenbish dialogue is currently inaccessible in game. :(

chapomon2 years ago

Ah, this! This is very useful to look at available hang outs at a glance.
Post by TrinexxSlayer in More Manegement Days - itch.io

TrinexxSlayer2 years ago

yes, that's the one. i wasn't home, so looking it up was a little annoying

ali_ath722 years ago

Yall are truly a gift to the LGBT community. Nothing but representation in the game, even though you're drawing animals and not dark skinned humans, haha.