The Piano on the Floor (Shizune vs. Emi, New post 5-4-12)

[WorldlyWiseman]

"The Piano on the Floor" is a mash-up of the Emi and Shizune paths.

This is part of my Ass in Chair, Hands on Keyboard project (3 weeks out of 52 completed)

I have a rough outline that keeps shifting toward the end and I've imposed a deadline of at least one segment per week, so things might be rough and I reserve the right to retcon anything problematic. Compliments are great, critical feedback is critical. I'm a bit paranoid about the character voices, feel free to point out flaws.

Table of contents:

1: Less Than Tactful (Scroll down)
2: Bechdel Test, Failed
3: More to come soon...


---
1: Less Than Tactful
---

To one side of a pile of attendance reports are several notebook sheets covered in writing in two different hands. The first is in blue and swoops carelessly.

Break? Please?

The second is in black, tiny and evenly spaced from a lifetime of practiced efficiency and clarity.

Fine then. I won't let you leave, however, so don't ask.

The blue pen has left some doodles, as though it couldn't stop moving. A swirl, a circle, a cartoon cat with a beret and no paws. It holds a scribbled brush in its tail. Then;

Can I bring a stereo tomorrow?

Of course not.

Why not?

That isn't how detention works. (Hastily added) Stop pouting.

The doodles return here and float through the margin of the page. Then;

But you called this 'community service'! (and then a space pirate rocket ship.)

Is that what Misha wound up saying to the track captain? My words were, exactly, that you are required to perform services for the Student Council and student body until the boy you harmed with your reckless actions recovers from his injuries. Sit still and let me get back to work. (and then a blue star with uneven points)

You didn't call this detention so it's not detention. And music wouldn't bother you anyway. (Saturn with a pirate flag planted)

The vibrations can be annoying. Besides, punishment is punishment, regardless of terminology. I am declaring your break over. Back to sorting.

Then a new page;

Vibrations? From what?

Apparently some music thumps a lot and it can make things shake. It's annoying because it is meaningless. You are getting off topic. You are not bringing a stereo in here.

So you could have a dance club for deaf people by using a lot of bass?

Nothing would stop one from going to a hearing club besides being bored. That doesn't mean you can bring a stereo in here. It has nothing to do with that.

The blue ink has begun to run dry here, some of the words are rewritten over themselves.

What if I use headphones? Or if I put it on a chair?

Absolutely not. Misha or Hisao might need to talk to you. We might also need the chair for something

They can get my attention the same way they get yours! And we totally have a ton of chairs. And you don't want me talking to Hisao anyway.

That is because you distract my valuable workforce from their duties with your inane prattle. You are not bringing any sort of music playing device here, because you are here to be punished, and that is final. I am trying to work.

Bitch please, you're not working. Have you ever tried dancing? Or music? Someone's had to have tried making a really cool song out of just bass.

I wouldn't know. I do not care to know.

Beethoven! He was deaf. He played a piano with his head up against it or something. Did he make any deaf people music?

The anecdote is that he sawed the legs off of his piano and listened to his playing through the floor. I have been told this many times by people who assume that my not hearing is somehow due to tragedy. The story is dumb because pianos that size have legs that can be removed normally, and because Beethoven lost his hearing gradually over the course of his life. It does not apply to me in any way. I do not wish to continue this vein of conversation any further.

Against all reason, the page has been flipped and the conversation continued.

Ok. Sorry. You want to play go-moku?

Fine. Ten by ten only. And get a new pen.

---

This conversation, as well as any record of these stunning go-moku matches, will be obliterated from the cultural record, because Hisao has managed to spill his entire canned coffee across the table.

Ibarazaki is shouting and waving her arms at Hisao. Hisao is apologizing and being useless.

Misha is inadvertently signing, as she always does. [Hisao, if you wanted to have a wet shirt contest, I could have gotten water.]

All of them are wasting time, as others are wont to do in a crisis.

This is Shizune's lot. The paper towels are inside the desk all the way at the front, of course, so she grabs the nearest superfluous papers and hastily dams in the liquid. The conversation with Ibarazaki and the rounds of go-moku are washed away beneath a small lake of coffee. It takes a glare at Misha to get her to stop laughing and go for the towels.

For all of Shizune's daydreams of having a fourth person help out with the workload, it's only been a day and Ibarazaki is simply not that useful. The girl is easily distracted and demands regular breaks. Shizune dreads the idea of her asking for a restroom break. Will an escort be necessary? It will have to be Misha, for practical reasons, but that would leave Shizune with Hisao, who is apparently fine with the stiffness of paper communication. Misha has let on that he has learned a few signs, but is progressing slowly. His energy is apparently spent on morning runs, and he has the nerve to complain about these self-imposed goals.

She watches Ibarazaki for a moment. The girl is pacing and trying to sponge the coffee out of her shirt with a towel. She frets, she pouts, she moves in circles with those curved blade legs of hers. She looks this way and that, barely a rational thought passing between those tails of hair. Is she aware of how much she resembles a rabbit? Is this something she does on purpose?

Shizune's hopes have been fading rapidly ever since the festival had been wrapped up and put away. Hisao's good cheer had been maintained, but his attention has been divided. Even after Ibarazaki's estimated two weeks were up, the rabbit had snared the boy. This would not do.

---

Okay, it took me longer than a week, but this one probably has a few parts to it and it actually has an outline and stuff. 2/52 pieces of fiction for the year!

[DaGarver]

So it looks like this is a retelling of Emi's and Shizune's routes to incorporate each other, no? Love triangle action is always interesting. Shizune definitely seems like she would be the jealous type (I'm actually thinking about exploring this a bit).

I'm not sure what I think of the differing text sizes/random boldness in the "dialogue." It's a bit distracting. I think the defacto standard for representing Shizune's sign language has been square brackets in place of quotes, like this:

[Break? Please?]

It would probably work just as well for written messages. I know themocaw used it for Shizune's written notes in his Saki route a time or two.

I'm looking forward to seeing where you go with this. Emi and Shizune are two of my favorites, though I highly doubt they'd get along at all. Emi's just a bit too eccentric for Shizune's taste.

[Mirage_GSM]

It is quite obvious that one kind is supposed to be Emi's written text and the other is supposed to be Shizune's.

[WorldlyWiseman]

Actually, would color-coding be entirely inappropriate? I know it's discouraged around here for spoken dialogue, but Emi is using a blue pen.

I need to establish a correct procedure here, as it's going to come up again...

[Brogurt]

I know I heard someone on /vg/ talking of writing a scene where Emi and Shizune compete to give Hisao a blowjob

Is this related in some way?

[BlackRockHanako]

I know I heard someone on /vg/ talking of writing a scene where Emi and Shizune compete to give Hisao a blowjob

Is this related in some way?

The Big Blowjob Bonanza? I hope so.

[WorldlyWiseman]

I know I heard someone on /vg/ talking of writing a scene where Emi and Shizune compete to give Hisao a blowjob

Is this related in some way?

What would you do if I just winked mysteriously?

[Scissorlips]

That was a cute story, I didn't find the changes in text or style distracting, it made the scene on the paper easier to visualize. I don't know how well color-coding would work in this format, but there's no harm in trying it and seeing in the preview if you like it. I think this is a very interesting idea, I don't know if there's very much Shizune/Emi interaction out there at all, and combining two routes seems like pretty unexplored territory. I'm really interested to see what comes out of this, and how you play off the girls' personalities. You also have the potential for even more shenanigans when you account for Misha.
That was an enjoyable read, I'll be looking forward to more. (:

[Mirage_GSM]

Personally, I don't like colour-codng, thoug I have been known to do it myself in one noteworthy incident...
In this case I do not think it is necessary. The different font sizes make it abundantly clear who is writing what.

[Silentcook]

Okay to use italics and plain text. Not so okay to use italics, plain text and different font sizes. Definitely not okay to use italics, plain text, different font sizes and bold. Tie a weight to color-coding and sink it in the ocean. Think of a printed book: how often do you see such things on the same page of narrative?

You'll notice, if you try to remove the "frills" in reverse order, that the piece is perfectly legible even if you remove them ALL, italics included. If you absolutely positively feel that you can't live without the variations, play around with capitalization.

[nemz]

I believe the bold was there not to show emphasis but because her pen was inconsistently sputtering out ink in it's final lines before death. Hence "get a new pen". It's a minor detail and possibly more trouble than it's worth, but i like it all the same.

If this was typset for printing I imagine they'd be writting in different fonts from the rest of the book, Shizune in a simple freehand-ish script and Emi probably in something obnoxious like Comic Sans.

[Doomish]

Okay to use italics and plain text. Not so okay to use italics, plain text and different font sizes. Definitely not okay to use italics, plain text, different font sizes and bold. Tie a weight to color-coding and sink it in the ocean. Think of a printed book: how often do you see such things on the same page of narrative?

You'll notice, if you try to remove the "frills" in reverse order, that the piece is perfectly legible even if you remove them ALL, italics included. If you absolutely positively feel that you can't live without the variations, play around with capitalization.

But that's in the same boat as Shizune and Misha's sign language. In terms of actual literature, you could do something like the following:

"You think you're funny, but that's really kind of annoying," Shizune signed angrily. The then furrowed her brow and tried once again to return to her work.

and it would work fine. The reason people do this:

[You think you're funny, but that's really kind of annoying.] Shizune furrowed her brow and tried once again to her work.

instead is because we as readers have already had it established that brackets mean sign language. You could very well do the first example and get away with it, especially if it were an actual novel where something like that wouldn't be passable because it couldn't be noted without going full-on meta. In this work, we've established that the big and bubbly writing is Emi's, and thus the need to differentiate between who is currently speaking is ousted. It shortens things for the better because the stylistic change in writing adds personality where it is needed and makes room for development where it's not. If he went

"What if I use headphones? Or if I put it on a chair?" Emi wrote, scribbling over her lines again as the pen began to die out.

this route instead, it would be unnecessary and the narration wouldn't flow anymore. If he removed the formatting as you said he could do, it just wouldn't read well. In a printed book, the change would likely be less obvious, by way of font choices or the like. He may very well have gone with the above option, but because he established beforehand whose writing was whose, the extra description becomes unnecessary. In the end, their styles of writing add flavor to the story while remaining perfectly legible. The bottom line is that everyone has their own style of conveying things, and this is a unique one that you don't see very often. It gets the point across that this isn't people talking, it's people writing, and that's why I enjoyed it so much. Subtle though it may not be, I feel that it works perfectly fine.

[WorldlyWiseman]

Okay to use italics and plain text. Not so okay to use italics, plain text and different font sizes. Definitely not okay to use italics, plain text, different font sizes and bold. Tie a weight to color-coding and sink it in the ocean. Think of a printed book: how often do you see such things on the same page of narrative?

You'll notice, if you try to remove the "frills" in reverse order, that the piece is perfectly legible even if you remove them ALL, italics included. If you absolutely positively feel that you can't live without the variations, play around with capitalization.

I would prefer to have as few frills as possible unless there are interesting things I can do with them. I tried a few of Emi's line with all caps, and it really doesn't feel right, and there isn't much beyond allcaps/nocaps that doesn't begin to sink into Homestuck Parody. The italics began as a way to differentiate between the written text and the descriptions of the page itself. There were a lot of other tidbits like coffee stains at first, so the split was more common. The size change actually came about when I decided to do the random bolding as a joke (the italic bold isn't very visible).

Without the italics on Emi's text, I can shrink the size from 125 to 115, enough for there to be a discernible difference, but you guys may find it less ugly. I do feel a need to make their written text visibly different. Long stretches of dialogue without physical narration is something that has always irked me in other fiction, and I don't have the benefit of their real-time actions in this part. Playing with the physical paper just grows from that pretty naturally. I wouldn't be doing this with signed dialogue, and obviously if I shifted to another perspective I wouldn't do this with speech.

There's two ways I can go with this - the all out 'playing with paper' approach, or just having Shizune's text be italicized while hoping that the differences in grammar and mannerisms carry the day. Playing with the paper has the potential for a lot of novel humor (random maintenance guy only has a green felt marker, resulting in hilarious giant hulk-scrawl), but that novelty may wear thin. Just going with plain and tasteful means that it'll be, well, tasteful, but plain.

I'll try removing the italics from Emi's text and shrinking it as mentioned, see how that works out. 1/3 done on the next part.

[nemz]

You could always try actually writing the lines out on paper and just posting pics instead. Probably not worth the trouble though.

[Silentcook]

I do feel a need to make their written text visibly different. Long stretches of dialogue without physical narration is something that has always irked me in other fiction, and I don't have the benefit of their real-time actions in this part. Playing with the physical paper just grows from that pretty naturally. I wouldn't be doing this with signed dialogue, and obviously if I shifted to another perspective I wouldn't do this with speech.

A major point to consider is that doing those long stretches is hard, and requires skill to do it at all without confusing the reader. The decision of what and how you want to write is your own, of course, but using a carnival of fonts and sizes is the equivalent of sticking character nametags in front of the lines in this case - easy and clear but lazy, and ultimately only having worth as novelty value.