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[Doomish]

Hahah what's the "3:01 PM - Doomish:" for?

Whoops. Sometimes those slip in there. I write chapters for most of my stories live in my favorite steam group chat, both so that I can entertain the people there with the story and also receive live feedback. I've been good about cutting those out when I copy the stories over but I guess I missed one. My bad!

Thank you all for the responses, by the way! I heartily enjoy them because I am a shameless attention whore!

[Helbereth]

Whoops. Sometimes those slip in there. I write chapters for most of my stories live in my favorite steam group chat, both so that I can entertain the people there with the story and also receive live feedback. I've been good about cutting those out when I copy the stories over but I guess I missed one. My bad!

Y'know, to be honest, I always thought you were writing it in wordpad, or something, and pasting it into chat as you went. Now the illusion is dispelled! The crystalline tower must fall! Chaos and bad dental hygiene will reign as the cloister of darkness casts its terrible gaze upon the ruined world, and all shall fall to poverty and despair, left rotting in the streets like so many dead hookers...

[Hoitash]

because I am a shameless attention whore!

I prefer to think of it as "the life of the party" myself.

Helps me sleep at night when I run out of cough medicine.

This post not an endoresement of drug abuse. Please abuse responsabily.

[Po1ntBlank]

This post not an endoresement of drug abuse. Please abuse responsabily.

Oh god I almost fell out of my chair

[Mirage_GSM]

She gives me a wink. "Shicchan says I'd be more aero-dy-namic if my hair were in a ponytail, so now it is~!" She pronounces 'aerodynamic' like the word has never left her lips before. I wonder if she knows what it means.

This is what I LOVE about your writing. The little nitty-gritty things that you do that really make you feel like this text is directly pulled from the game. It's as if you read and reread every single line about Misha in the game there is, and incorporated it into your story.

You know, I always interpreted Mishas halting translation of complicated words not as Misha not knowing the word itself but as Misha not knowing the word in sign language (or maybe there being no word for it in sign language), so Shizune has to spell it out alphabetically.
So in my stories I only used this when she was actually translating and not when she is speaking normally.
This makes me wonder what A22's intention was...

[Po1ntBlank]

She gives me a wink. "Shicchan says I'd be more aero-dy-namic if my hair were in a ponytail, so now it is~!" She pronounces 'aerodynamic' like the word has never left her lips before. I wonder if she knows what it means.

This is what I LOVE about your writing. The little nitty-gritty things that you do that really make you feel like this text is directly pulled from the game. It's as if you read and reread every single line about Misha in the game there is, and incorporated it into your story.

You know, I always interpreted Mishas halting translation of complicated words not as Misha not knowing the word itself but as Misha not knowing the word in sign language (or maybe there being no word for it in sign language), so Shizune has to spell it out alphabetically.
So in my stories I only used this when she was actually translating and not when she is speaking normally.
This makes me wonder what A22's intention was...

It's definitely open to intention, as there is a lot we don't know about Misha. Probably because she doesn't have a route

[Helbereth]

She gives me a wink. "Shicchan says I'd be more aero-dy-namic if my hair were in a ponytail, so now it is~!" She pronounces 'aerodynamic' like the word has never left her lips before. I wonder if she knows what it means.

This is what I LOVE about your writing. The little nitty-gritty things that you do that really make you feel like this text is directly pulled from the game. It's as if you read and reread every single line about Misha in the game there is, and incorporated it into your story.

You know, I always interpreted Mishas halting translation of complicated words not as Misha not knowing the word itself but as Misha not knowing the word in sign language (or maybe there being no word for it in sign language), so Shizune has to spell it out alphabetically.
So in my stories I only used this when she was actually translating and not when she is speaking normally.
This makes me wonder what A22's intention was...

I always thought it was a little of both. Sometimes it's the word being translated that's complicated, causing her translation to come out broken, and other times it's a word Misha just doesn't know, so she sounds it out phonetically. Then if you add the fact that they're supposed to be speaking Japanese while we read it in English, it adds a whole other layer of complications.

Really, it's best not to think about it too much.

[Scissorlips]

Again, it's late, and my weak excuse for arts will have to wait until tomorrow. I enjoyed this update and it's interesting to see the plot moving in noticeably different directions from before, and it's also neat to speculate about what might remain unchanged in either version. Here's a few thoughts that I had.

"Okay, Hicchan~! It's decided!" Misha puts her hands on her hips as best as she can without leaving her desk. "You suck at sign language, so I'm going to teach you!"

This seems like kind of a... lackluster reason for it to occur, even if he acknowledged that it would probably happen sooner or later. In Shizune's route, he of course learns sign because he wants to talk to Shizune. But here, in fact, Hisao doesn't seem to even particularly get along with Shizune, so it seems a little strange that he has no qualms with the idea of eventually having to learn an entire language just to help with student council activities, when he seems to have no real motivation to do either.

"But won't that mean we'll miss our run with Emi?"

I'm a little confused here, seeing as this scene could logically take place right after the previous one. And even if it is the next day, didn't they just run with Emi in the morning before class, not after it? By the end, you mention them running twice in one day, was that mentioned in one of the previous scenes? Why would they do that?

I don't think I've seen a pink-haired person in my life outside of an anime or two.

Fffff, we went too deep, we went too deep. I mean, I know it's anime, so you don't have to explain, well, anything, but Misha's hair striking him as unnatural--when Hanako's purple or Suzu's bluish-green-thing don't--is kind of hard to rationally accept. Really, if Misha's hair was never specifically said to be dyed, I don't think anyone playing would have thought twice about it--and does anyone in the game really act like it's strange? The only time I can think of is when Akira mentioned she liked the brown better, or something to that effect. Anyway. Talking about anime when writing for an anime-inspired-ish setting is murky territory, though not impossible.

One other thing I noticed is that it felt like there was a little bit of a lack of romance in the second two scenes, at least compared to the way Hisao and Misha were acting when they were last at her thinking spot, and how he almost kissed her at the track. I know that going from "we're in a relationship now" mode to "sitting in class together being students" mode can be awkward, but that's something that should come into play, at least in his thoughts, I think. The last scene addressed this a bit, with his thoughts during the staring contest, and I particularly enjoyed the coin toss--Hisao's choice to lie, and Misha's subdued reaction were both intriguing. Still, I feel like the romance--or lack thereof--should have been a little more on the front of his mind, but maybe that's just me.

Edit: Well that took longer than expected.

[Doomish]

All valid criticisms! The thing about Misha's pink hair being straight out of an anime is more a jab at how the game goes totally out of its own way to show that Misha's hair isn't just normally pink... whereas Shizune's is just naturally blue for some reason. They explain away one weird hair color while leaving the rest totally intact, which I always thought was funny.

I'm a little confused here, seeing as this scene could logically take place right after the previous one. And even if it is the next day, didn't they just run with Emi in the morning before class, not after it? By the end, you mention them running twice in one day, was that mentioned in one of the previous scenes? Why would they do that?

They're talking about the one AFTER class, not before. So far I've implied that they see her twice, once before class and once after. Maybe I haven't made that clear enough, sorry. I personally have not given much thought to why they're doing it twice a day, but for now it's safe to assume Emi just really really wants to whip them into shape.

[Helbereth]

They explain away one weird hair color while leaving the rest totally intact, which I always thought was funny.

I never really thought about it, but, in my fic, Aiko wonders at the style Misha keeps her hair in -referring to them as 'ridiculous drills'- but never really wonders about the color. Otherwise, in the VN, the reason behind her dying it pink is used as a story point to indicate her willful effort to appear happy while actually feeling dead inside - I don't think it was meant as a jab against anime.

[Hoitash]

...but never really wonders about the color...

Then again, one of your characters is stated to have green hair, and its never commented on whether or not its dyed, either

Actually, the only person ever stated outright to have dyed hair is Naomi, and that's just bleached...

We're overthinking this, methinks.

[Helbereth]

Then again, one of your characters is stated to have green hair, and its never commented on whether or not its dyed, either

Indeed. Though I think I did that simply because I was writing it into an anime world; I'm not sure I'd do that if I weren't basing the characters on that kind of universe. Naoko's the only one who got an odd hair color unless you count Miyoto's platinum, which I believe I mentioned is bleached (it might just be in my notes). Everyone else got shades of brown, black and red; like normal people.

We're overthinking this, methinks.

I think, as writers, we're supposed to over-think the little details. That way, when we actually write about these people, we have a wealth of references for their little incongruities. My story notes are kind of ridiculous to that effect; I wrote stuff about them that will positively never get mentioned directly in the story. It's there so I know why they are the way they are, and act how they act.

[Mader Levap]

I do not know what problem it is. You can have natural blondes and people bleaching their hairs to this color. Fact that Misha dyed hairs pink is not in contradiction with fact that anime world can have natural blue/pink/green/whatever hairs.

[thyrokio]

I noticed an inconsistency (pretty major), and I registered to point it out.

Here's a quote from scene 8.

Maybe I should ask Misha to train me in the art of dramatic hand-waving that is sign language; not being able to understand them is getting to be a hassle. I know that in the end, I'll eventually learn one way or another, but the sooner I get around to it the better. As of right now I plan on joining the sign language class itself, but I've been poring over it trying to find an alternative to tacking another class onto the end of my quickly growing schedule.

It seemed as if he'd been learning it from Misha though, in scene 1.

From what sign language Misha’s been teaching me, I’ve learned that she can be a nice person if she wants. She just chooses not to most of the time to keep up appearances. Shizune is hard to keep up with.

Here's another one from scene 2.

Shizune signs something, but as I'm still kind of a novice, I only catch part of it. If only I could completely understand them, then it'd be easier to talk back and forth. For now, though, what I say to Shizune has to go through Misha first and vice versa. It won't be that way for long now that I'm on the council though, I'm sure.

[Doomish]

Whoops. In the original route Hisao was already learning sign language by the time Act 2 started, but I changed that and forgot to correct it in the parts I'd already written! It's fixed now, my bad! :V