Katawa Shoujo Forums

I am currently brainstorming for possible fanfic. There is a scene where Shizune cries, a lot. Really bawling her eyes out. I have heard that mute people cry differently. I wonder, would she emit any sounds at all? If yes, how would it sound like? Would it sound like a non-mute person crying? Since she can't hear herself crying, how would it feel for her? It would help if you tell me of what you know

Thanks in advance.

I would think it would sound like ... someone crying? It's not learned or imitated behavior, it just kinda happens.

You can't control what kind of sounds you make when you cry, right? Well, same goes for Shizune. She is not physically mute, she just never learned to talk since she couldn't hear others talking. She obviously always tries to supress any sound through the game, but if something would make her laugh for real, like hysterical laugh, you would hear it. Same goes for crying.

Snorri wrote:How would it sound like if Shizune cried?

Shizune wrote:...

It depends how is she vocalising. Is deafness the only reason for her being mute, or is there some problem with her larynx as well (i think there are conditions in which child has defects of both voice-box and internal ear).
10.000 hours with google brought me this , and while I cannot claim it to be 100% scout-word truth it tend's to support what i thought so far.

She could sound like any other person. Just wouldn't hear it, but I don't think a crying girl (and crying boy/man as well) is in a position to control how she sounds, being deaf or not. Unless of course it's a part of an act...

Edit:

MoonShadow wrote: if something would make her laugh for real, like hysterical laugh, you would hear it. Same goes for crying.

I'm not sure how much laugh is a culture thing, but you might be right, since children laughs at very young age, when tickled for example. A cry of pain is definitely a non-taught reflex, and a distressfull sob, or crying might be as well.
Is there stated somewhere in Shizune's path, what is her specific medical condition?

Anyway, I've heard a deaf-mute person making an unarticulate sound, to focus his hearing parent attention, before they started signing to each other, and some deaf people learn to speak, even not hearing themselfs.

NoOne3 wrote: Anyway, I've heard a deaf-mute person making an unarticulate sound, to focus his hearing parent attention, before they started signing to each other, and some deaf people learn to speak, even not hearing themselfs.

Posted this clip before, but Laura the deaf girlfriend in Seinfeld. Sounds like the hard of hearing kids in my high school did, I'm not sure whether or not she's meant to be deaf from birth but I suspect so.

Like I said, I don't think she is physically mute. During a sex scene with Hisao, she let out a moan. If she can moan, I don't see why she couldn't laugh or cry soundly.

Also, it is said at some point that her father tried to make her talk with the help private tutors; it is possible for a deaf person to learn how to talk but it's hard, they have to work a lot with the vibrations and the tongue/lips positions. If she was physically unable to talk, said tutors or maybe doctors would have found out and Jirogo would have stopped to try to make her talk.

Side story : when I was in High School, I had a classmate who's mother was deaf from birth. She never learned to talk, but she was able to make sounds. When she gave birth to each of her two sons, her husband asked her to say aloud how she wanted them to be called. Each time, she made a sound, and her husband gave his sons the name closest to said sound. They ended up being called Carl and Maxime, and their mother could call them for afar by repeating the sound she made at their birth.

If Shizune were to cry it would probably make the most heart wrenching sound possible, her bad ending was sad enough already and she doesn't even cry there.

Shizune has a voice, but she takes pains not to use it (probably influenced in no small part by her father's staunch vocalist chance). This said, any person's control over their voice is limited when it comes to things like that. Shizune would almost certainly try very hard to cry silently, and she may even succeed for a time, but if the really broke down, she could very well fail eventually. This could be played for effect.

As to how voices tend to sound (at least to someone unused to hearing deaf people's voices): for something like sobbing, deaf people sound pretty much like hearing people do. Her voice might sound slightly off, but not very much. Speaking would be more noticeably different, but that doesn't really apply to this case since Shizune doesn't speak.

MoonShadow wrote:and Jirogo would have stopped to try to make her talk.

Your answer is wrong, and I want you to feel bad about it.

Plasma_Jesus wrote:her bad ending was sad enough already and she doesn't even cry there.

Well, Rhett Butler didn't cry, did he?

Shizune has no concept of sound, but she knows enough about her own voice to suppress it. She's made enough vocalisations in her route (usually during sex or when she lets out a laugh) for there to be enough of a voice there.

If she needed to cry and knew that there was a chance someone could overhear her, she'd probably intentionally suppress all of her voice, no matter how much it hurt or tired her out, so that her crying would be really raspy and heavy breathing, coughing, gasping and sniffling. Anything that wasn't a bawl. I mean, even though she's never heard a person crying, she's probably seen it happen, guessed that it's loud as people rush over and start fussing ... and that'd be Shizune's idea of hell, which is probably why she didn't completely let go and cry in her bad ending (although she looked damn close to doing it).

Thank you all for the information. It really helped. The scene I have in mind is meant to be very traumatic, emotional and heart breaking. She is alone in her room and something has happened which has caused her to have an emotional breakdown. She feels every pillar she has built to support her life is crashing down. You will understand a bit why after you have read my fanfic "Listen to your Heart", which will be up this week

Lemme guess - Hisao's run off with Misha, or it's a continuation of the bad ending and Shizune actually finds out that Hisao wasn't faithful to her, or both?

The clue is in your signature.

But yeah, if she's by herself I see no reason why she'd want to hold her voice back to the point of silence. There's always a worry that one of her flatmates might hear her, but she probably lives with other deaf people (and maybe Misha, although it would have been brought up in Shizune's route if they lived together given the circumstances).

Snorri wrote:Thank you all for the information. It really helped. The scene I have in mind is meant to be very traumatic, emotional and heart breaking. She is alone in her room and something has happened which has caused her to have an emotional breakdown. She feels every pillar she has built to support her life is crashing down. You will understand a bit why after you have read my fanfic "Listen to your Heart", which will be up this week

In that case, I'm not sure you really need much information on how it sounds: if she's alone, no one will be able to hear her anyway, and so there won't be much of a viewpoint to describe it from. I suspect that Shizune would still try to be silent, just on general principle, but she'd probably still fail eventually.

Ordinarily, she'd be able to feel that her voice was engaged. You can experiment with that yourself: consider how different it feels to speak (when you engage your voice) versus to whisper (when you don't). But in the middle of a breakdown she might not be paying enough attention to notice exactly when her voice kicks in, and once it does, she might not care. Again, that's something that could be played for effect: if Shizune of all people doesn't care that she's using her voice, she must be quite distressed indeed.

But unless you're using a third-person fully-omniscient viewpoint (not something that I recommend), there won't be any listener to describe the sound of her voice if she's alone. She might wonder later if she sounded different from hearing people -after twelve years of speech tutoring, successful or otherwise, she'd know that her speaking voice sounds different, but this isn't necessarily the same thing- but I don't think she'd do this except in retrospect. If she doesn't care that she's using her voice at that moment, then she probably doesn't care how it sounds either, at least not right then.

It's getting pretty philosophical: Does a sobbing deaf girl in the woods make a sound, if there's noone to hear it?

Nekken wrote:But unless you're using a third-person fully-omniscient viewpoint (not something that I recommend), there won't be any listener to describe the sound of her voice if she's alone.

It could have really emotional and symbolic effect in third-person narrative. A desperate cry of sorrow nobody hears. Even her.

And that really reminds me a quarrel I had once, in my highschool times, with my friend. We were playing a pen-and-paper RPG, namely Call of Cthulhu. He was a GM, and my character was a deaf-mute woman. We had then this many hours row, whether he was allowed to describe sounds and voices while picturing the world for me (it was one-on-one chapter). He claimed that sounds are part of scenery, and he should tell me about them, to better transcribe what he has in mind so i can imagine it fuller. My point was, she doesn't hear it, therefore he should describe other senses only, since objects detectable by sound only doesn't exist for her. We didn't establish the solution then.