Katawa Shoujo Act 1 Preview feedback thread

[Csihar]

Home Field Advantage: Well, I'll let the screenshot speak for itself. I'm just baffled by the choice of words. Maybe there's a joke that's over my head, or it's just supposed to be funny, but it's just jarring at the moment.
(krawlz in mah bawlz)

I've definitely heard that expression before, but maybe it's one of the more obscure Americanisms or something. Good eye on the others though.

[DovK]

I was going through the game last night and suddenly realized that there were some tortured semicolons scattered around. The more I played, the more I picked up on some stylistic and grammatical errors. There are plenty but here are the ones I went back to write down:

An Aesthetics:
"She looks like she hasn't slept since last night: a vacant, glazed..."
The colon is not the right punctuation mark to use here; a better way to phrase this would be
"She looks like she hasn't slept since last night, with a vacant, glazed..."

Creative Pain:
"It still feels like I'm an outsider, though; like I don't belong."
Drop the semicolon, replace it with that comma.
"Rin gives me a look, the laconic kind that looks like it doesn't mean anything but it does."
Rewrite to something like "the deceptively empty kind". Laconic typically never refers to expressions (though it could, I suppose) and you can change the second 'look' to something else to avoid the awkward 'same-word-twice' feeling.
"I am not sure if that's a compliment or not. It's probably neither; with Rin being the overtly neutral person she is."
ARRRGH. If I rewrote this, it'd be "I'm not sure if that's a compliment or not; it's probably neither, with Rin being the overly-neutral person she is." Overtly is not the right word here; it means she's obviously or clearly neutral, which is true but not what you want to express here. Rin is netural to excess. And the semicolon use, well, that was glaring.

Clouds in my Head:
"It's not that I'm particularly thrilled about the festival, either; just a bit curious..."
The comma should be moved to where the semicolon is, and the semicolon dropped entirely.
"Opening my eyes, I see Rin studying me with her eyes."
Awkward, you can drop the last three words entirely and the meaning stays.


I avoided correcting any speech grammar or style, because these ARE the Rin acts after all; and for the record, I only checked the Rin acts because I was at the end when I realized how much the writers must hate semicolons, and the Rin ending was what I was on.

[EternalLurker]

An Aesthetics:
"She looks like she hasn't slept since last night: a vacant, glazed..."
The colon is not the right punctuation mark to use here; a better way to phrase this would be
"She looks like she hasn't slept since last night, with a vacant, glazed..."

The colon works fine there; it precedes a two-item list of the evidence that Rin is low on sleep. Due to the fact that it is a two-item list, using "with" would be grammatically incorrect.

Creative Pain:
"Rin gives me a look, the laconic kind that looks like it doesn't mean anything but it does."
Rewrite to something like "the deceptively empty kind". Laconic typically never refers to expressions (though it could, I suppose) and you can change the second 'look' to something else to avoid the awkward 'same-word-twice' feeling.

I like that kinda-misusage of "laconic"; the meaning of the word is correct in context even though its subject is usually not a facial expression. But yeah, "seems" instead of "looks" would be better for the verb given that the noun "look" was already used in that sentence. I tried not to point out stylistic issues in my earlier typo-catching, only grammatical ones, but if the devs don't mind I guess I can go back and find those, too.

"I am not sure if that's a compliment or not. It's probably neither; with Rin being the overtly neutral person she is."
ARRRGH. If I rewrote this, it'd be "I'm not sure if that's a compliment or not; it's probably neither, with Rin being the overly-neutral person she is." Overtly is not the right word here; it means she's obviously or clearly neutral, which is true but not what you want to express here. Rin is netural to excess. And the semicolon use, well, that was glaring.

Yeah, the semicolon thing is wrong as usual, and I believe "overtly" just has an unnecessary "t". Most people tend to misuse that punctuation mark, so I kinda tune out semicolon errors on the Internet; I'm not sure if I listed any in my earlier typo-checks.

I avoided correcting any speech grammar or style, because these ARE the Rin acts after all

On that note, you should acknowledge that the text which is supposedly not part of a dialogue is still Hisao's internal monologue and thus doesn't necessarily have to be grammatically perfect. Punctuation errors aren't excusable in that manner, but with regard to minor run-ons and the like, exceptions can be made for his manner of speech.

[Csihar]

Ahh, it's like English class all over again.

[EternalLurker]

v3 feedback, as much as I could bother to play of it:

So the sprites for Emi and Yuuko are even worse in-game than I'd expected them to be. There is nothing improved about either and there are several things wrong with each, as I've pointed out multiple times, only in-game they also have the terrible quality of being so horribly flat as to blend invisibly into the background. Also what the fuck is wrong with Yuuko's mouth.

I assume you guys had already started on Emi CGs. Wouldn't it be much more convenient to go back to the good Emi rather than throwing out that work and replacing it with what appear to be half-done sketches?

Concord was good before, too; please stop ruining good things. The new instrumentation and the volume variances are just bad, and they make the B-C bridge feel way too abrupt.

At least Kenji's theme is kinda improved. It's not a better piece on its own but I guess it matches him a lil' more.

[Warwick]

Some more, now that I've gone through Rin's route.

These are from Mind Your Step

bull-elephant-grade sedatives

screenshot0018.png (459.25 KiB) Viewed 6385 times

You're using the hyphen to join several words into one adjective. Since you're describing a sedative that can knock out a bull elephant, "bull" should be included in the hyphenated conglomerate (as I understand hyphen usage, anyway [Reference]).

comma

screenshot0019.png (457.85 KiB) Viewed 6387 times

Comma should come before unbased.


And minor usage quibble, again.

arrhythmic?

screenshot0020.png (292.14 KiB) Viewed 6383 times

Odd choice of words, ne? I would assume Hisao would be slightly sensitive to it's usage, or maybe it's just him trying to be wry.


Also, somewhere in An Aesthetics or Creative Pain, where Rin says, "I once spent a week trying to think of something meaningful to say about boredness." I believe that the more appropriate word is boredom.

[EternalLurker]

You're using the hyphen to join several words into one adjective. Since you're describing a sedative that can knock out a bull elephant, "bull" should be included in the hyphenated conglomerate (as I understand hyphen usage, anyway [Reference]).

That reference says nothing about this type of usage, and I've usually seen it the way it is in the screenshot.

Comma should come before unbased.

No, the idea is that the assurances are baseless as far as Hisao can tell. (Baseless is the proper word, by the way, not "unbased"; the latter, if it's even acceptable as a word, would require a specific object on which the assurances are not based, which is awkward.)

Also, somewhere in An Aesthetics or Creative Pain, where Rin says, "I once spent a week trying to think of something meaningful to say about boredness." I believe that the more appropriate word is boredom.

'Course it is, but I think that's just Rin being Rin.

[Warwick]

You're using the hyphen to join several words into one adjective. Since you're describing a sedative that can knock out a bull elephant, "bull" should be included in the hyphenated conglomerate (as I understand hyphen usage, anyway [Reference]).

That reference says nothing about this type of usage, and I've usually seen it the way it is in the screenshot.

Not the greatest reference, I admit, but I vaguely remember that being the rule somewhere. I'll keep looking. I know that you aught to do it to avoid ambiguities. Since you're joining together adjectives, then the non-joined ones should each be valid. In the current usage, "bull" and "elephant-grade" are two separate adjectives describing sedatives. "Elephant-grade" works fine in describing sedative, but "bull" doesn't really, as it's modifying elephant. That's my (non-English major) reasoning for adding the hyphen, so that it's clear that bull's modifying elephant and the sedative is capable of knocking out a bull elephant, not just capable of knocking out an elephant and being bull, too.

Comma should come before unbased.

No, the idea is that the assurances are baseless as far as Hisao can tell. (Baseless is the proper word, by the way, not "unbased"; the latter, if it's even acceptable as a word, would require a specific object on which the assurances are not based, which is awkward.)

Oh I see what you're getting at. It's modifying Hisao's understanding of Rin's assurances. I thought "unbased" was in reference to the assurances. But if that's the case, shouldn't "baseless" be "baselessly," as it's an adverb modifying "tell?" Even then it's awkward and clunky. No real suggestion until we can have writer input.

Also, somewhere in An Aesthetics or Creative Pain, where Rin says, "I once spent a week trying to think of something meaningful to say about boredness." I believe that the more appropriate word is boredom.

'Course it is, but I think that's just Rin being Rin.

I suspected as much, but I threw it out there just in case.

[EternalLurker]

What no. You're still not getting that "assurances" part. Okay lemme try again.

This is how I'd write it if I wanted to avoid ambiguities entirely, although I don't think it's ambiguous as written either.

"Ignoring Rin's assurances (which are, as far as I can tell, baseless)...what should be done?"

See what I mean now? It's supposed to be able to read "Rin's assurances aside", with Hisao's interjection being "as far as I can tell, said assurances are baseless".

The main reason it's not quite grammatically correct as-written is that setting apart a phrase with commas like that disconnects it from the rest of the sentence, so "baseless" (instead of "unbased" as I said) can't be an adjective for "assurances" as it's intended to be. But that's easily fixed by making the commas into parentheses instead, parentheses being the magic cure-all for interjections...and the thing is, for informal writing like Hisao's internal monologue, I think commas are just fine even if they're a bit iffy grammatically.



As for the first part, I agree that "bull-elephant-grade" might be somewhat less ambiguous; I'm just saying I have seen adjectivized compound words written as in the screenshot, so I'm pretty sure it's more grammatically correct the way it currently is. Clarity is more of an issue than grammatical correctness, so if you genuinely believe "bull elephant-grade" to be ambiguous, then it should probably be edited, grammar rules notwithstanding.

[DovK]

Just to add another perspective on hyphens, when used with modifiers, it's standard to join the modifiers; that would give us 'bull-elephant-grade sedatives', because the modifier "grade" is itself modified by "bull elephant" which gets its own hyphenation. The grammatical justification, for those still not quite grasping it, comes from the confusion possibly stemming from "bull elephant-grade sedatives" which means, in its current state, elephant-grade sedatives which are bull. You must hyphenate all modifiers.

On the other topic, why even keep 'baseless'? "Rin's questionable assurances" works well, cuts out unnecessary wording, and doesn't get pointlessly flowery with parentheses or dashes.

[Warwick]

On the other topic, why even keep 'baseless'? "Rin's questionable assurances" works well, cuts out unnecessary wording, and doesn't get pointlessly flowery with parentheses or dashes.

This. What I learned was that, as a punctuation mark, commas are used to separate the dependent clause in the middle of a sentence (see what I did thar?). Since unbased is modifying assurances, it shouldn't be in the dependent clause. Either way, I'm willing to drop it, as DovK puts up a particularly elegant fix.

[U.T. Raptor]

NewEmi's hookchin is bugging the crap out of me, and for some reason some of her sprites look like her mouth is pointing the opposite direction from the rest of her face or something. Otherwise she's way better, and actually looks petite instead of like a loli now.

NewYuuko is an massive improvement, too.

[Guest]

On the other topic, why even keep 'baseless'? "Rin's questionable assurances" works well, cuts out unnecessary wording, and doesn't get pointlessly flowery with parentheses or dashes.

This. What I learned was that, as a punctuation mark, commas are used to separate the dependent clause in the middle of a sentence (see what I did thar?). Since unbased is modifying assurances, it shouldn't be in the dependent clause. Either way, I'm willing to drop it, as DovK puts up a particularly elegant fix.

Also, I would say the existing verbiage is awkward no matter how you punctuate it.

[Bara]

On the other topic, why even keep 'baseless'? "Rin's questionable assurances" works well, cuts out unnecessary wording, and doesn't get pointlessly flowery with parentheses or dashes.

This. What I learned was that, as a punctuation mark, commas are used to separate the dependent clause in the middle of a sentence (see what I did thar?). Since unbased is modifying assurances, it shouldn't be in the dependent clause. Either way, I'm willing to drop it, as DovK puts up a particularly elegant fix.

Also, I would say the existing verbiage is awkward no matter how you punctuate it.

Yep, but frankly, some of the everyday speech we all use is nowhere near grammatical or elegant. So it makes sense that some of the dialogue Hisao and the girls use is also like that. If anything they use very little slang for high school kids.

[DovK]

Yep, but frankly, some of the everyday speech we all use is nowhere near grammatical or elegant. So it makes sense that some of the dialogue Hisao and the girls use is also like that. If anything they use very little slang for high school kids.

Understood, but there's a certain point when you're writing slang where you have to trim it back lest readers get confused or it just looks too silly to put down, and the parenthetical mess of that narration was god-awful. Besides, narration tends to fall very high on Joos's formality scale; it's unusual for a character not intended to come off as lower-class or boorish to provide slang narration.

Ultimately, though, that is a guide, not an absolute rule, and it's up to the writing staff to decide whether slang and informal speech should hold a significant place in narration, so you are right in that sense.