Katawa Shoujo Forums

stalk wrote:

As far as singing while being touched, I don't expect it would be that difficult once I got used to it. Sure it would be distracting at first, but it would mostly depend on how familiar I am with the piece and the person I'm singing it to. I certainly wouldn't be able to do it while practicing something new, but I wouldn't want to have an audience for that anyway. Whereas, while I'm in the middle of a piece I really enjoy I can be so focused on the presentation that you could almost burn the theater down around me without my noticing.

That begs for testing. Let's see if we really can burn a theater down with you in it, shall we?! Haha.

I'm only exaggerating a little, and I even said "almost" too! No really, I am completely oblivious to the world at large when I get involved in something. For instance, I charred my dinner into charcoal yesterday while working on the KS walkthrough I posted in the support forum. For three whole hours the alarm I set was blaring at full volume right next to my keyboard and flashing in my face, but I didn't notice it until I was finished. I don't even know if anyone tried to talk to me in that time. Flow can be a dangerous thing.

Thinking about it some more, I don't know if you'd particularly care for standing in a choir Stalk. Sure, it is like being bathed lightly from head to toe in a feeling both like and unlike that of a singer such that you feel it in your very bones, almost like it is coming from within you, but there is no face to it. The individuals of a choir are too involved in blending their voices together into one voice to be able to express much with it, and they aren't normally expected to do so with their faces, so there isn't much room for individuality. (...does that thought seem horrific to anyone else, or is it just me? I think I'm going to ask a few conductors I know what they feel about it.) There's emotion to it, but it is mostly in the words.

All I could think was... We are borg. You will be assimilated. Resistance is Futile. The thought of Choir-Borgs was actually quite terrifying. I'm not sure if I can sleep at night. I wonder if Priscilla can defend me against those.....

Hahaha! The explanation is dead Jim. You get his wallet, I'll get his tricorder.

I meant that there is no individuality displayed in the performance. So for a short while yes, Choir-Borg. Sheesh, I can't get that out of my head now. People are going to wonder why I keep giggling to myself tomorrow.

I keep forgetting to ask; how exactly did you go deaf?

stalk wrote: Hahahaha touche.

I don't know why this did not occur to me earlier, but your comment about performances brought these memories back for me. Did you know there are deaf sign language singers? Even I, having been deaf 10 some years at the time, was shocked to learn of it. In fact, during my 8th grade graduation, I put on a performance on stage of sign language singing, and did so again in 11th grade on stage where we had a open fair for hearing people to learn about deaf culture.

It is quite different from sign langauge. I'm trying to define it best as I can. Hmm. It's more like miming, but not. You do not sign any words at all, but show a scenery using your hands. There's pitches and tempos, melodies, and so on that we express with our body language, the speed of our motion, the power in our movement or in the flow. I wonder if I have a video of it still around here, maybe I could upload it if I find it. It's probably in the garage in one of the million boxes so I don't know if I could find it.

But it's actually quite pretty when done well, and the body language is so amazingly clear that even the hearing people in the audience understood what I was portraying completely. It's really cool, I really should find something to show this...

---EDIT----

This is not the kind of sign langauge singing I did... but I found it while trying to find examples... its sooooooooooooooooooo cute!

Wow, no I was not at all aware that there were people who did that. I followed the link and watched. Impressive what they put into their motions. I think your right to describe it as bit ASL and mime with a bit of dance moves thrown in. It seemed these boys were also shaping the words to be lip read simultaneously also? Wasn't sure because I was trying to absorb it all at once. The performance you describe doing in the 8th and 11th grades sounds as if it was more experimental with stronger elements of interpretive dance thrown into the mix and getting farther away from any formal signed or spoken langage? Maybe akin to Jazz scat singing? The free form vocal expression of musical tones without resort to words.
Ehhh, my wind is wandering and its too small to cross the street on its own...

vermithrx wrote: As far as singing while being touched, I don't expect it would be that difficult once I got used to it. Sure it would be distracting at first, but it would mostly depend on how familiar I am with the piece and the person I'm singing it to. I certainly wouldn't be able to do it while practicing something new, but I wouldn't want to have an audience for that anyway. Whereas, while I'm in the middle of a piece I really enjoy I can be so focused on the presentation that you could almost burn the theater down around me without my noticing.

Thinking about it some more, I don't know if you'd particularly care for standing in a choir Stalk. Sure, it is like being bathed lightly from head to toe in a feeling both like and unlike that of a singer such that you feel it in your very bones, almost like it is coming from within you, but there is no face to it. The individuals of a choir are too involved in blending their voices together into one voice to be able to express much with it, and they aren't normally expected to do so with their faces, so there isn't much room for individuality. (...does that thought seem horrific to anyone else, or is it just me? I think I'm going to ask a few conductors I know what they feel about it.) There's emotion to it, but it is mostly in the words.

Vermithrix, I guess this goes to show you the variations amongst people. I suppose I protect my personnal space to a greater degree than most do and have been told I always look angry; possibly to keep people away. (Possibly it is the "opposites attract" therory that explains my preference towards the character of Emi. Meh.. )
I think that most conductors are trying to get the entire choir or orchestra to create the conductors vision of the piece they are performing. I have trouble imaging them working so hard to get the results they want and then being pleased with "individual expression" or "ad libbing" by the members. But then, wasn't the movie director Robert Altman notorious for not giving actors direction and making them add lib primarily? Probably every conductor or director has their own answer.
Hell, thats a real definitive paragraph . I should shug and say, "I dunno..."

Oh you guys, turn this into /v/ why don't you.

stalk wrote:So my expectations in consideration, this was a pleasant surprise. I'm more than happy to have an intelligent conversation with anyone, especially on a subject that I'm close to. If my expectations were met I would probably have left long ago.

Half the reason I'm interested in this project is for these kinds of discussions. I mean, you just don't get to have these kinds of frank conversations with disabled people in the real world. I knew that eventually this thread would happen on the forums one way or anything but of course, this is only the start. A few people have pointed out they have this and this but there aren't many extended discussions on life experience related to any one major disablity

Caesius wrote:

Final Fantasy Tatics!!!!!! I love it.

I never finished FFTA, but I intend to play it again eventually.

FFFFFFFF-

FFT =/= FFTA. One is shit the other is awesome.

Caesius wrote:
I love to show off my military's power projection capabilities by building a ton of carriers (with four-jet-fighter CAGs), transports, missile cruisers, marines, modern armor, and mobile artillery. Then I go halfway around the world to kill some dick AI who pissed me off.

If I end up finishing the game, it usually takes me... I don't know... 40 hours? My favorite civilization is the Dutch by the way; in the Fall from Heaven II mod I like the Lanun, which are a seafaring civilization.

Wow, the way you play is pretty much identical to mine. Call me boring, but I like to just build up a massive army and steamroll everyone too. It's fun doing that.

No, I do like the racing aspects, just not when I'm spinning out every goddamn corner. GRID and Forza do start out difficult, but not "realistically" so, and it's a real sense of accomplishment to master the faster cars on the longer and more difficult tracks. I love to do the Le Mans in GRID (24 minutes) and the endurance races in Forza (50 minutes).

I never finished FFTA, but I intend to play it again eventually. I was thinking more like Tactics Ogre, Zone of the Enders: The Fist of Mars, Advance Wars, and... well... maybe some others I forgot.

FFTA is way different than FFT! FFT is for the original playstation. I was sooooo peeved. I bought the game for $80 online used. The game was rare. Then not a week later I find it at the store as greatest hits for $20. I'm such a sucker....

I'm only exaggerating a little, and I even said "almost" too! No really, I am completely oblivious to the world at large when I get involved in something. For instance, I charred my dinner into charcoal yesterday while working on the KS walkthrough I posted in the support forum. For three whole hours the alarm I set was blaring at full volume right next to my keyboard and flashing in my face, but I didn't notice it until I was finished. I don't even know if anyone tried to talk to me in that time. Flow can be a dangerous thing.

That is pretty scary. I mean, I've been known to totally get into a book and become oblivious to my surroundings, but not nearly to that extent!

I keep forgetting to ask; how exactly did you go deaf?

When I was 4 years old I suddenly turned sick. I went pale, my lips were blue. I had a extremely high fever. My parents rushed me to the hospital, and it turned out I had Spinal Meningitis. At the time, there was a treatment for it. Nowdays the cases of Spinal Meningitis is not common anymore. I was supposed to have gone blind, lose my nerves, sense of balance, become deaf, and paralyzed. However the doctors messed up the treatment, and as a result I remained deaf.

I also had a lot of problems with balance. Like for instance, if you put my head underwater I wouldn't know which way was up or down. I wouldnt be able to walk on a 4x4 block of wood and keep my balance. Stuff like that. But I was forced to practice it every day and now I have as good balance as anyone else and was #1 on the swim team in high school.

Wow, no I was not at all aware that there were people who did that. I followed the link and watched. Impressive what they put into their motions. I think your right to describe it as bit ASL and mime with a bit of dance moves thrown in. It seemed these boys were also shaping the words to be lip read simultaneously also? Wasn't sure because I was trying to absorb it all at once. The performance you describe doing in the 8th and 11th grades sounds as if it was more experimental with stronger elements of interpretive dance thrown into the mix and getting farther away from any formal signed or spoken langage? Maybe akin to Jazz scat singing? The free form vocal expression of musical tones without resort to words.

I mostly found the video cute, it's not really a demostration of sign language singing. I mean they are kids LOL. I don't think anyone expected much. I think he boys are able to speak as well. In general you can tell a deaf person that can and can not speak based on their lip movement during signing. A mute person would have her mouth closed while signing. A speaking person, like me, would be moving my mouth like I'm talking, but with no voice on it. It's not intentional, just happens that way.

And yeah your idea is pretty much spot on. It's not total interpretative dance, because there's a heavy ASL influence on it. In general, the better you are at ASL, the less words you use while speaking. You don't tell people words, you show them using your hands. Not always possible of course, but that's the ideal state of ASL. So what I did was basically a song in the perfectly ideal state of ASL, so I was singing in a language, but not the kind that has words. So that separates it from interpretive dance. A hearing person might have to interpret my dance, but someone who knew ASL would understand what I was saying immediately.

That's different from those boys who, unless you knew sign language, would have no idea what they were saying.

Oh you guys, turn this into /v/ why don't you.

Half the reason I'm interested in this project is for these kinds of discussions. I mean, you just don't get to have these kinds of frank conversations with disabled people in the real world. I knew that eventually this thread would happen on the forums one way or anything but of course, this is only the start. A few people have pointed out they have this and this but there aren't many extended discussions on life experience related to any one major disablity

While I can't say for certain. I mean, I've pretty much grown up and lived surrounding by people with many disabilities.... but I am not them so I can't speak for anyone except deaf people. I can give a slightly better insight, probably, into other disabilities but that's about it. That said, I don't think there will be such detailed threads on most of the other disabilities. The only one I think of that could turn into a thread like this would be if it was a blind user. Which would be rather interesting. I had many blind-deaf friends but I never got to be friends enough for them to tell me what its like or how they feel.

(PS to communicate with a blind deaf person, you fingerspell at them while they feel your hands.) For someone like me who likes personal space, it was so weird having people I barely know feeling up my hands constantly. But I would love to see this kind of thread on other disabilities.

stalk wrote:FFTA is way different than FFT! FFT is for the original playstation. I was sooooo peeved. I bought the game for $80 online used. The game was rare. Then not a week later I find it at the store as greatest hits for $20. I'm such a sucker....

I've still got my original disk from back in the day but the PSP version is worth getting. It's makes for a pretty good port and irons out those fantastic mistranslations.

In fact, I can turn this into a question. If you're listening to digital music what kind of output do you need to be able to feel the music? It's kind of hard for me to imagine since I can't seperate the vibrations and sound itself considering they're the same thing to me. I take it bud earphones can't really cut it but what about larger headphones and speakers?

While I can't say for certain. I mean, I've pretty much grown up and lived surrounding by people with many disabilities.... but I am not them so I can't speak for anyone except deaf people. I can give a slightly better insight, probably, into other disabilities but that's about it. That said, I don't think there will be such detailed threads on most of the other disabilities. The only one I think of that could turn into a thread like this would be if it was a blind user. Which would be rather interesting. I had many blind-deaf friends but I never got to be friends enough for them to tell me what its like or how they feel.

(PS to communicate with a blind deaf person, you fingerspell at them while they feel your hands.) For someone like me who likes personal space, it was so weird having people I barely know feeling up my hands constantly. But I would love to see this kind of thread on other disabilities.

Reading about the experiences of a blind user would interest me the most as well but yeah, that's difficult to obtain for obvious reasons. It can only really occur by proxy; a blind person relating their experiences to a non-blind person who they can be totally honest with who will then communicate with the internet.

I'm especially intrigued by ideas such as fingerspell and other methods and systems that arise to cope and compensate for a disability. The ability to adapt.

However, there's much to be said for the personal experiences of other disabled people. Personally I'd find a frank telling of what it's like to lose a limb and experiences of physical rehabilitation etc. fascinating. And of course, many other personal accounts by people with various disabilities.

Envy wrote: FFT =/= FFTA. One is shit the other is awesome.

Hey, I liked FFTA. I don't have a PSP (and finding the original is nigh impossible) so I can't play FFT to compare, unfortunately.

Reading about the experiences of a blind user would interest me the most as well but yeah, that's difficult to obtain for obvious reasons. It can only really occur by proxy; a blind person relating their experiences to a non-blind person who they can be totally honest with who will then communicate with the internet.

There was actually a thread on the Something Awful forums way back when that was "Ask me about being blind". The answer to "how do you use the computer" is JAWS, which is this ultra-fancy text-to-speech program that can read everything under the sun. I think he may also have had a program the makes a *boop* when he moused over window boundaries and buttons. I forget what he said about typing, but if touch-typists can do it, why can't he?

Linear B wrote:

Envy wrote: FFT =/= FFTA. One is shit the other is awesome.

Hey, I liked FFTA. I don't have a PSP (and finding the original is nigh impossible) so I can't play FFT to compare, unfortunately.

FFTA is rather inferior in a lot of ways, it's a shame that most people aren't even aware it exists. It's one of the better FF games out there too.

Reading about the experiences of a blind user would interest me the most as well but yeah, that's difficult to obtain for obvious reasons. It can only really occur by proxy; a blind person relating their experiences to a non-blind person who they can be totally honest with who will then communicate with the internet.

There was actually a thread on the Something Awful forums way back when that was "Ask me about being blind". The answer to "how do you use the computer" is JAWS, which is this ultra-fancy text-to-speech program that can read everything under the sun. I think he may also have had a program the makes a *boop* when he moused over window boundaries and buttons. I forget what he said about typing, but if touch-typists can do it, why can't he?

I'm somewhat skeptical about that considering that websites interfaces are non-standardized and there's so much that can go wrong with a computer: it can crash, it can freeze, you might lack a plugin for something or a new browser update could foil you in some way. I'm sure some level of interaction is possible but it would require a good level of support.

Not that I've really researched this.

Envy wrote:I'm somewhat skeptical about that considering that websites interfaces are non-standardized and there's so much that can go wrong with a computer: it can crash, it can freeze, you might lack a plugin for something or a new browser update could foil you in some way. I'm sure some level of interaction is possible but it would require a good level of support.

Not that I've really researched this.

I have; I'm a university web developer in the States and therefore the Americans with Disabilities Act informs how I do my job. JAWS is a kludge which wedges the Windows OS to intercept whatever Internet Explorer renders as a result of how the page is coded. The consensus among disability resources on campus is that "it's better than nothing," and those who use it are grateful for its existence. Nevertheless it's most useful for products Microsoft made themselves, like Office.

Likewise, OS X's accessibility features just happen to work best with Safari and applications which follow Apple's Human Interface Guidelines.

Some third parties have developed a screen reader plugin for Firefox which works across OS X/Win/Linux.

One promising trend is that the type of coding that makes a website accessible to mobile devices is also the type of coding that makes it accessible to those with disabilities. Kill two birds with one stone, as it were.

What really made sites inaccessible in the recent past was the overuse of tables to lay out pages; as CSS replaced table-based formatting, sites became a lot more accessible.

Envy wrote: In fact, I can turn this into a question. If you're listening to digital music what kind of output do you need to be able to feel the music? It's kind of hard for me to imagine since I can't seperate the vibrations and sound itself considering they're the same thing to me. I take it bud earphones can't really cut it but what about larger headphones and speakers?

I guess I've never really compared all of them side by side. But the bud type earphones I can feel through pretty well, although the vibrations are more.. contained, so to speak. I feel it over less surface. I don't know if that makes sense?

Reading about the experiences of a blind user would interest me the most as well but yeah, that's difficult to obtain for obvious reasons. It can only really occur by proxy; a blind person relating their experiences to a non-blind person who they can be totally honest with who will then communicate with the internet.

I'm especially intrigued by ideas such as fingerspell and other methods and systems that arise to cope and compensate for a disability. The ability to adapt.

However, there's much to be said for the personal experiences of other disabled people. Personally I'd find a frank telling of what it's like to lose a limb and experiences of physical rehabilitation etc. fascinating. And of course, many other personal accounts by people with various disabilities.

Blind people have a program that converts things to sound so they could theoretically tell us their experiences. However I really doubt, anime and VN's being so heavily visually based, they would ever make it to this place. Although I have seen blind people playing video games - it was rather amusing actually. Obviously a game for the blind would rely on sound, so I once walked past a guy I knew was blind and saw him playing a video game. And winning. Being deaf, I did not know he was playing by sound. So imagine my astonishment. It was one of those reality-bending things. Pretty sure smoke came out of my ears while my brain tried to process it.

One Piece 401 came out!! Time to watch!!

Bara wrote:

vermithrx wrote:Thinking about it some more, I don't know if you'd particularly care for standing in a choir Stalk. Sure, it is like being bathed lightly from head to toe in a feeling both like and unlike that of a singer such that you feel it in your very bones, almost like it is coming from within you, but there is no face to it. The individuals of a choir are too involved in blending their voices together into one voice to be able to express much with it, and they aren't normally expected to do so with their faces, so there isn't much room for individuality. (...does that thought seem horrific to anyone else, or is it just me? I think I'm going to ask a few conductors I know what they feel about it.) There's emotion to it, but it is mostly in the words.

I think that most conductors are trying to get the entire choir or orchestra to create the conductors vision of the piece they are performing. I have trouble imaging them working so hard to get the results they want and then being pleased with "individual expression" or "ad libbing" by the members. But then, wasn't the movie director Robert Altman notorious for not giving actors direction and making them add lib primarily? Probably every conductor or director has their own answer.
Hell, thats a real definitive paragraph . I should shug and say, "I dunno..."

Eh, I wasn't specific enough I suppose. Chorus, and orchestra for that matter, are collaborative efforts, so "ad libbing" during a performance is naturally proscribed. I was thinking more along the lines that most conductors (in my experience) don't get the individual performers involved in expressing the emotional content of the piece. They focus on execution to the exclusion of that and as a result their vision is only portrayed throught sound and there is nothing to watch...wait, there is a face!

The emotion is conveyed throught the conductor's motions as he directs his vision. I'm usually too focused on his movements and my own efforts to notice his face. What irony! In order to hear the piece properly you need to be behind the conductor, but in order to see the emotional content of it on his face you need to be before him. That would make it like a solo performance for a deaf person, watching the conductor's face and movements and feeling the vibrations in the floor and air that result from his actions. I don't know how well you can feel the music from there, but it may make the performance more accessible than when it is, "out of a box." That's what I've been trying to figure out how to do.

DuaneMoody wrote:What really made sites inaccessible in the recent past was the overuse of tables to lay out pages; as CSS replaced table-based formatting, sites became a lot more accessible.

It's astonishing how many sites out there that still make heavy use of HTML and tables.

stalk wrote:I guess I've never really compared all of them side by side. But the bud type earphones I can feel through pretty well, although the vibrations are more.. contained, so to speak. I feel it over less surface. I don't know if that makes sense?

It makes sense. Buds only have a small surface area and are throwing sound down your ear canal as opposed to throwing it at your whole ear or your entire body.

However I really doubt, anime and VN's being so heavily visually based, they would ever make it to this place.

Yes, that's sort of what I wanted to get at. The chances of such an encounter her are slim at best, despite the nature of the project.

Although I have seen blind people playing video games - it was rather amusing actually. Obviously a game for the blind would rely on sound, so I once walked past a guy I knew was blind and saw him playing a video game. And winning. Being deaf, I did not know he was playing by sound. So imagine my astonishment. It was one of those reality-bending things. Pretty sure smoke came out of my ears while my brain tried to process it.

Blind gamers are actually something I've heard about before. Brice Mellen for example.

vermithrx wrote:Eh, I wasn't specific enough I suppose. Chorus, and orchestra for that matter, are collaborative efforts, so "ad libbing" during a performance is naturally proscribed. I was thinking more along the lines that most conductors (in my experience) don't get the individual performers involved in expressing the emotional content of the piece. They focus on execution to the exclusion of that and as a result their vision is only portrayed throught sound and there is nothing to watch...wait, there is a face!

The emotion is conveyed throught the conductor's motions as he directs his vision. I'm usually too focused on his movements and my own efforts to notice his face. What irony! In order to hear the piece properly you need to be behind the conductor, but in order to see the emotional content of it on his face you need to be before him. That would make it like a solo performance for a deaf person, watching the conductor's face and movements and feeling the vibrations in the floor and air that result from his actions. I don't know how well you can feel the music from there, but it may make the performance more accessible than when it is, "out of a box." That's what I've been trying to figure out how to do.

Well, at a pure guess, the best position I could imagine for deaf person who wanted to experience a live choral piece would be to have them sit to the sides but in between the conductor and the singers. Of course this would be easier in a rehersal atmosphere than an actual performance.

Aside from soloists, yes that matches my experience. Even when they want motion or expression to accompany the performance they want uniformity in them. Which DOES give valid basis to the "Borg" jokes. The idea of the odd folks I used to sing with being uniform in anything; well miraculous intervention would be required for that to occur; either that, or a performance. It was amazing how the grab-assing disapeared for a performance.

I replied this to another thread, but thought it would be applicable here for those not following other threads since it fits the theme of this thread well.

SnowSong wrote:

vermithrx wrote:The discussion here appears to have evolved, and I no longer feel out of place in contributing.

My Aunt is in the process of adopting a deaf child from a foreign country and our entire family plans to learn ASL together over the summer in support of that endeavor. We can't wait to meet and welcome her once the process is complete.

I am curious, but do you happen to know how long it usually takes to learn/master sign language at a level where conversation with a deaf individual is possible? I know it depends on commitment and the environment one grows up in, as well as the age (infants versus below 12 versus all other). However, I am thinking about whether those one session learn sign langauge courses is worth taking or not.

A hearing person would tell you "just a few months! I can totally talk to them now!"

A deaf person would open their eyes in horror and say don't even bother me until you have two years under your belt.

I can't count the number of times someone would hear that I'm deaf, and stop me while I am doing something, and say "I know sign language!" then proceed to fingerspell at me really. really. really. really. slowly. If looks could kill....

In an addition, it's not that I despise the person for it. It's just... well, if you see someone speaking french, how often do we go up to them and try to speak the few words we know to them?

But deaf people and sign language are just enough of a mythical beast that there are days were I would get stopped at least four times in a single mall trip. It gets old, fast. So I'm not trying to be mean spirited, but... well, it's just old. LOL.