Katawa Shoujo Forums

Popo wrote:Act 4, Part 08 sees the light of day.

I'm glad the last release garnered some interesting reactions. As for this one, we like to switch up the pacing like this, outside of some story arcs to come, which center more on specific characters.

I always like to read your guys' stuff.

One quick thing though. I know Hanako has a stuttering problem, but I feel like she does it a little too much in her dialogue.

Dippeggs wrote:I always like to read your guys' stuff.

One quick thing though. I know Hanako has a stuttering problem, but I feel like she does it a little too much in her dialogue.

Just to be safe, I'll say that there will be spoilers for KS in this post, as well as for KA, for anyone who hasn't read to a4p8 yet.

Her amount of stuttering is almost always a conscious decision on my part, that a lot of factors go into. I'm aware that I've been doing it a little differently than in KS. I examined her dialogue with various characters in her route in KS, and the variances between them. Obviously, her speech is more fluid when she's talking to Lilly when no one else is around, for example, while it becomes more stilted around less familiar people. The exception being, of course, that Junichi is a boy that she's attracted to, and before that, she was getting to know him. The dynamic is different with Hisao, since their relationship was quite different. He treated her almost purely as a friend until the end, while Junichi has given her little hints of attraction, making her more self-conscious in trying to seek his approval. Stuttering once makes her feel even more nervous, which makes her stutter more, and then it just snowballs from there, especially with a feeling as unfamiliar to her as having a crush on a boy. She's formed many memories with Junichi, some of which make her heart pound more in general than what we saw of her in most of her KS route, and she finds herself in a lot of more embarrassing situations. (Hisao was generally more of a calm, kinda detached guy, so they didn't usually get into much trouble, aside from Hanako's birthday, the aftermath, and the days leading up to it.)

Foremost, though, is how she's been confronted with a unique situation where she sees that only she can help someone, even though she sorely lacks the means. She's been often pushed to her limits, and had to even surpass them, in order to inch closer to being who she wants to be. One of those ways is in speaking more often than she generally would in her KS route; sometimes much more. The KS routes skip a lot of days along their timeline, so I went with the assumption that she skipped more days of school in her route than in KA, as well as met with and talked to Hisao less than she tends to with Junichi. It's all extremely mentally draining, and in so relatively short a time (we haven't even begun her birthday arc yet), leading to her having significantly less energy to spend trying to make her speech proper, plus we usually see her with, or having recently been around Junichi, so she's often still all wound-up. They're all things that easily exacerbate a stuttering problem. I've personally dealt with people who are in mental states where they have limited social energy, so I tried to handle things realistically, with multiple facets to it.

Not that I'm trying to shut you down, or anything. It's good to notice the differences, and I like seeing people's opinions about every little thing about KA, pretty much. Half of the stuff I typed was subconscious thoughts until just now, and I clearly love talking about it. I've just thought about it a lot. I figured somebody might say something. Even if something is justifiable, I know not everything's gonna be perfectly in line with everybody's preferences. Still, it's too late to retcon something so ever-present, but I will try to remain consistent on the matter. I have had to edit out a fair number of stutters from my original writing, especially at calmer moments. I spoke earlier about emotional writing; I really try to get into the character's heads. I get very driven by that, and then it can be tricky to edit.

Act 4, Part 09 is here, and it carries an extra along with it. Another document accompanies it; simply read Act 4, Part 09 and when you get to the appropriate section, there will be instructions.

We got out a good amount of material this time, partly to hold you guys over; Kane is going to be attending to some business for the next few weeks, and he won't be able to do any writing/editing during that time, so we won't be releasing any new parts of KA in that time. It just wouldn't feel right if I went and extensively edited the stuff he wrote, after all, especially since I have no experience writing those characters. I'll still do some editing, so thing's will be pretty good to go after he returns. Additionally, I might require a fairly minor surgery to clear up my pesky sinus infection issue. If it doesn't clear up by then, my surgery's on July 18th. We'll try to do what we can in-between that stuff.

Popo wrote:Act 4, Part 09 is here, and it carries an extra along with it. Another document accompanies it; simply read Act 4, Part 09 and when you get to the appropriate section, there will be instructions.

We got out a good amount of material this time, partly to hold you guys over; Kane is going to be attending to some business for the next few weeks, and he won't be able to do any writing/editing during that time, so we won't be releasing any new parts of KA in that time. It just wouldn't feel right if I went and extensively edited the stuff he wrote, after all, especially since I have no experience writing those characters. I'll still do some editing, so thing's will be pretty good to go after he returns. Additionally, I might require a fairly minor surgery to clear up my pesky sinus infection issue. If it doesn't clear up by then, my surgery's on July 18th. We'll try to do what we can in-between that stuff.

Well that escalated quickly.

Dippeggs wrote:Well that escalated quickly.

Expect the unexpected.

Fittingly enough with that comment, Kane surprised me by being able to do a little editing here and there, so we did some partial work on the next part. However, I had to have another tooth pulled today, so we'll see about when we can make the next release. On the bright side, my blood pressure is slowly returning to normal, so far.

This is sounding more and more complicated. \=

When I had my wisdom teeth removed, they not only pulled all four but they also removed some of the mandible due to the strange impacted angle and... I didn't entirely follow it all, dentistry isn't my field. Regardless, I was knocked completely out. (Doubly so, due to inaccurate medical records.) When I woke up, I couldn't remember nor figure out why I was in a parent's house instead of my own. As I was slowly waking up, I noticed a plastic Ziploc baggie on the nightstand.

You see, I later found out that I was asked if I wanted to keep my teeth. They asked while I was going under the anesthetic. You can imagine the results.

Cue the discovery of that baggie. Open it up, unwrap an almost surreal amount of gauze, and then-- (Insert fanfiction forum em-dash debate here; I'm too lazy to charmap.exe it.) the revealed teeth, roots and all, were incredibly long. Two of them had shards of bone attached along the bottom. I may have thought I was in a Saw movie, and tried to scream. It didn't exactly work as planned; the swelling made it difficult. I hadn't yet noticed the swelling, so now touching my cheeks and jaw only made me panic more. Ugh, what a mess that day was.

I started to erase all this because, upon a second reading, I didn't really have a point other than 'I hope your dental adventures go better than mine did,' but I think I'll trust my impulsive nature afterall. Best wishes, and stay well. Or else.

Well, at least your story was interesting, lol. When weird things happen in my life, I try to look back at them and laugh. Even the worst stuff.

Anyway, I had the last of my wisdom teeth removed the time before this one. This time, they had to remove a regular tooth; I was just eating breakfast, something that wasn't even that hard, and one of my teeth just broke in half. Apparently, it was rotted. Fortunately, it wasn't painful. This is the second time that's happened. It's just the (bad) luck of the draw; I try to keep up on my oral hygiene, but my grandpa had to have dentures around the time he was 30 years old. Seems I might be heading down a similar road, but such is life. I am dedicated to keep on living and being happy with life, so I won't let it get me down, nor will I apologize for my genetics if I run into anyone who would judge me; a sentiment I imagine the KS community understands. We should never apologize or feel ashamed for merely existing. Meanwhile, though, I'm gonna keep trying to take care of my teeth. We'll see how it goes.

Yeah, once upon a time it was humor as a defense mechanism, but somewhere along the line it just became a more complete view of the world; all events have angles at which they are funny, grim, terrible, or amazing. Sometimes all at once. It's easier to look back and see them than always finding the best viewpoint in the heat of the moment, true, but I'm pretty happy with it as a window on the world. The Tao of Poo Happens, I suppose.

I'm known among my friends to laugh in the face of death, haha. We were cracking jokes about heart attacks even after I barely avoided having one.

Luckily, I really haven't been in much pain, despite the extraction being recent. I haven't even needed to take any painkillers on some days. The anesthetic they use stays in my system, though, so I'm very fatigued. I hadn't even fully gotten over the wisdom teeth extraction, so it really has left me barely able to think to write, at least without getting a headache. Been feeling a little better each day, though, and I've been trying to get even a tiny bit of editing in, per day. Hopefully, it shouldn't be too much longer until the next release.

Act 4, Part 10 finally arrives.

I did my best, but it took me a long time to recover. I'm not all the way there yet, but I'm starting to do better. Hopefully, that'll mean the coming releases will be in a more timely manner.

Regarding this release, it's not the first time where we've done scenes that follow KS' cues and structure heavily. (The tea party scene comes to mind.) We're starting a story arc integral to characterization, one that comes directly from KS. As such, there will be a whole lot of similarity in certain scenes, which are included for posterity; if you want a reminder of all that happens, you can read them. If not, I recommend at least skimming through them, because there are some new pieces of dialogue and such. Some events may end up happening differently, however, so it won't be wholly predictable, and other scenes in the meantime will bear more originality, of course. Any other way of doing things would've been too awkward.

That was quite the break you guys had. I was afraid you might have stopped.

Great work as usual. I'm not good with words so I'll just say I liked it. I was wondering though, what's your total word count thus far? It's not important or anything, I just wanted to know.

Dippeggs wrote:That was quite the break you guys had. I was afraid you might have stopped.

Great work as usual. I'm not good with words so I'll just say I liked it. I was wondering though, what's your total word count thus far? It's not important or anything, I just wanted to know.

Naw, it was just circumstances. He's had to work, and I have seriously been exhausted. It's felt like a walking coma, some days. @_@ But I'm starting to get some energy back. We still have a lot of plans for this series, and ideas for a next.

Thanks. Uh, it'd take a little while to check those numbers. It's easy to check words per document, but I'd have to add each of those numbers up. Might do it later. I do know that we typically do 8,000 to 12,000 words a doc, averaging at about 10,000, probably. That includes the dialogue tags, of course.

I found a small inconsistency in that Lilly requests a drink from the vending machine, with no way of knowing that it's even there.

I went back to the VN to check, Hisao goes to buy the drinks of his own volition, and Lilly is largely unfamiliar with the area. If you don't want Junichi to take the initiative, you could perhaps have her hear someone else use it.

I figured people would just assume Junichi told her the vending machine was there, since he was describing other sights to her, but I'll make that more clear. Thanks for the feedback.

I'm starting to finally get some of my energy back. We're making good progress on the next part.