Adrian Tymes wrote:
--- Nugar <nugar@tds.net> wrote:
"This is a series of similarly themed
vignettes with little
in the way of continuing plot and no unified title,"
Chiyo-chan
adds.
Much like the AD episodes themselves. I assume this
was deliberate. You did manage to capture their
flavor.
$If I could draw I'd be doing these as four frame dojinshi, keeping as
close to the original flavor as possible. But I can't. I love the
longer AD fanfics people, such as yourself, have been posting, but I
wanted to try something different, something a little more concise than
my usual. I guess the right word for these is vignettes, but somehow
even that seems too long to describe them.
Her jaw dropped as she saw Yukari undressing
the mannequin
and keeping an irate store clerk away with one foot.
Not sure why the clerk would object if, as it seems,
the display model really is the last of their
inventory.
$Shock maybe, just keeping the customers from destroying the displays.
Yukari didn't even buy it after all that.
"Twenty thousand yen?!" Yukari screeched as
she waved the
dress in front of the cashier's face. "No way!"
That's only about US$200. (A bit less at current
exchange rates, but 100/1 has been the approximate
ratio for a long time; think of yen as pennies.) Even
Yukari would seem able to afford that if she really
wanted to - though it might be a high enough price
that she'd object to paying that much for anything.
$That was kind of the idea. Certainly higher than most dresses she
would wear, but not so high that Nyamo, who likes the occasional really
nice thing, wouldn't go ahead and splurge.
Still, bumping it to thirty or even forty thousand
might be a little better.
$Yeah, that could work.
"Yeah," Yukari groused as she turned away from
the vacantly
smiling cashier, "but there's no way I can afford
that. Unless
you were to buy it and let me borrow it?" She gave
her very
bestest friend in the whole world a hopeful smile.
Buy, yes. Borrow? No. This is Nyamo we're talking
about.
$And she knows Yukari all to well.
A thought occurred to her as she stepped out
the exit into
the mall proper, and she stuck her head back in.
"Hey, Minamo,
where do you want to meet back- The dress!" she
cried as she saw
her friend rather guiltily paying for it at the cash
register.
This seems a bit OOC, somehow. Nyamo, guilty over
something like that? She wants it for herself. She
might even make a point of wearing it the next time
it's appropriate when she's with Yukari, just to rub
it in. (Unless she thinks Yukari might try to tear it
off her like she tried to remove it from the
mannequin, and I don't mean in the sense of getting at
what's inside.)
$Nyamo knows Yukari well enough to know that if she wants to get it and
keep it for some period of time without constant requests to 'borrow'
it, she has to buy it in secret. Yukari caught her, and everyone looks
guilty when caught doing something in secret by someone they didn't want
to know.
"So which is it?" Osaka asked intently.
"Let's say I'm
writin' in english and I accidentally spell angry
'a-g-r-y'.
Would I say I had accidentally left an 'N' out of
the word, or
would I say I accidentally left a 'N' out of the
word?"
Not that uncommon a question among those learning
English and trying to "do it right" (as opposed to
learning English just for the sake of using it to
communicate), actually.
(And not that it matters, but for the record, it's "an
N". It sounds wrong because it sounds like "enn", and
it would be "an enn" if that was what you were saying
$But you just said 'an N'? By the consonate logic, it would be 'a N'.
- but "enn" is not a word in and of itself. Neither
is "N", technically, though it's being used as a word
in this case, and the rule looks at the written form
of what you're saying. This comes up when one is
using acronyms, like "an F.F.M.L. post".)
$Yes, but F is a consonant, and therefore an 'a' word, and you just used
'an'. F has the same problem. Pronounced it's 'eff'. I went with
'an'. It sounds right.
Chiyo blinked. She'd never thought of that.
"I'm not sure,
I mean, maybe we should ask Miss Yukari."
"I did," Osaka replied. "But she hit me with
a book and
told me not to poke holes in that ridiculous
language."
Eh? Any English teacher competent in teaching said
language - and Yukari seems to be competent in that,
at least - would know about that situation. Yukari
might warn against poking holes, but she'd also know
that particular "hole" is covered, and would likely
point it out.
$Yukari isn't the most helpful person in the world either, and lazy to
boot. She might not have ever ran into that problem, and if she did she
might well have blown it off as just one of those things.
"Oh, well, I'm failing English anyway," Osaka
said sadly,
and walked away.
She knows enough to ask questions like that and she's
failing? Even for Osaka, that seems a bit of a
stretch. (Tomo, perhaps, since her low performance is
largely due to deliberate neglect. But Osaka's trying
to succeed.)
$Very true. Osaka deserves better than that. Now to figure out how to
change it and hopefully have a stronger final punch that that rather
weak cop out.
"Oooh," came the collective sigh from her
friends, except
Osaka, who pointed at Kaorin and said, "Kaorin's
did!"
>From the text later on, it seems as if Kaorin's had a
computer for quite some time - enough to become
proficient at editing images. Maybe she got a
replacement/upgrade computer?
$Good possibility. Maybe she had one of her father's old hand me
downs? We see nothing of their parents, or indeed their home life, so
I've got a pretty good bit of leeway. Kaorin always seemed level headed
and well versed in everyday life, except when it came to Sakaki.
"It came with a CD full of cute animal
pictures," Tomo
added smugly.
"!" said Sakaki.
Heh. Sakaki might just cuddle up with the CD and
pretend she could read the images directly. Or treat
the CD itself as cute, especially if in a jewel case.
$That's.... Heheh. That's actually something I could see easily.
Sakaki staring at the rainbow reflection from a cd, imagining seeing
cute things. There are lots of possibilities, hopefully some other
people will offer up some short funnies. Or not funnies. Could you
imagine a collection of vignettes like this where every one is a darkfic?
"Ah hah, I uh, I also got a copy of
Counterstrike last
night and I was so busy playing it I forgot to do my
homework,"
Tomo said sheepishly. "I got fragged so many times
by this guy
with a rocket launcher...."
For a moment, I thought Yomi was going to rib Tomo
about having a new boyfriend.
$Not yet.
"Oh, I get it now," Osaka said in awe. "So
that's why you
love spicy food."
Osaka sees all. Understand it all, maybe not, but she
sees it.
$The VCR is recording, but the tape is broken.
Tomo did a little happy dance. "It means she's
not a l33t
h4xx0r like me, and I wasted her like the n00b she
is last night
in Cstrike!" she exclaimed, shortly before Yomi
decked her.
Chiyo: Why isn't Tomo moving? What did you plug into
her?
Yomi: A cyberdeck with a wireless uplink. I kind of
disabled the internal off switch, so unless someone
unplugs her, she'll be *in* the game, all the time,
and it'll hurt every time she gets fragged.
Osaka: Ain't that crossing genres?
Yukari: Hey, if it gets that little discipline problem
out of my hair, I'm not going to complain. It's not
like her grades were that hot to begin with.
$Started to add something like 'decked her like a back porch' or
something, but that's just too pointless.
Yukari whistled a happy little song as she
entered the
school copy room, glad that it was finally payday
again. She
needed some folders to organize the tests she'd just
inflicted on
her class, and there they were, sitting in a box on
a shelf right
above one of the big copy machines.
Putting these two sentences in the same paragraph
makes it appear that these are linked, as if Yukari
would have to pay for the folders she took. That
would imply some kind of signing out procedure at
least, which would mean someone would be there to
witness (and guard against) her folly. I suspect
that's not what you meant to imply, though.
$True, that. And true, that's not what I was trying to imply. I was
just mentioning it, setting up a future scene. Will adjust.
Embossed.
Official memorandum.
It seems like these could be combined into one, given
the shortness of the first one (dramatically different
length than most of the scenes).
$Heh. I'd thought about the length discrepancy, too, but my solution
was to delete and/or shorten the long ones.
Hello
Kitty in coveralls, a pail and shovel at his feet
Isn't Hello Kitty a "her"?
$Really? Uh.... Okay. Will fix.
Tomo snatched the paper from his hand while he
spluttered,
walking away without a second glance as she studied
the paper.
Her jaw dropped in shock.
"Here you go... there's enough for
everyone...." said one
boy in a sing song voice as he breezed through and
dropped a
short stack of copies in front of Yomi.
It seems like quite a coincidence that Tomo would grab
one just before copies got distributed to the girls,
if copies were going to be distributed to them.
$Though that was the idea.
If
the girls got some because of Tomo's actions, it would
seem to flow a bit better if boy gave a brief
acknowledgement he did not know they were interested
while giving them their copies. (And for a bit extra
>from this scene, perhaps wonder about their
inclinations, with subsequent denials - or not from
some of them, with the others' reactions to said lack
of denial.)
$Tetsuo, the boy passing out the copies, had taken it upon himself to
give one to everyone. I'll give him an extra line or so to clarify that.
Chiyo blushed and turned hers over.
Chiyo would seem more likely to wonder what people
found so unusual about it. People pass right by
pictures of shirts, shoes, and other items of clothing
being worn; what's so different about panties?
$There's lots of things that she doesn't get yet, but some things you
learn early. She may not understand why she blushed, but I bet she would.
"I can't believe those boys were passing these
out!" Yomi
says, scandalized, looking at her copy as they all
walked down
the hall to their next class.
"as they all milled around the classroom while waiting
for their next teacher."
$D'oh! >_<
One difference between American and Japanese high
schools: in Japan, students stay in the same room and
the teachers go from class to class. (P.E. is an
exception, mainly due to physical necessity.)
$I remembered that as soon as I saw your line about milling about.
Originally they were going to lunch, but as it fell after the earlier
bit with the taiyaki, I figured people might think it was the same day
and wonder about them eating twice. I don't want to start throwing in
basically pointless info about what day it is, so I changed it to a new
class. Whoops. Will fix.
Likewise:
A few minutes later, when they were out of sight,
Kaorin scuttled
back and fished hers out, tucking it carefully in
her folder
before hurrying to keep up with the others.
"A few minutes later, when they were not looking,
Kaorin fished hers out, tucking it carefully in her
folder."
$Right. Thanks for pointing that out.
"Ah." Minamo digested this in silence for a
moment, then,
improbably, her eyebrow rose higher. "You were
looking at the
stationary?"
Boy: I read Playgirl for the articles, honest!
Other Boy: You mean Playboy.
Boy: Well, Miss Kurosawa showed me this picture of
what I might grow up to be if I did well in her class,
and I couldn't help but notice the name of the
magazine it was in...
$Like I noted to ELL, I don't know how that one became readable. The
last line just slipped out. I really expected it to be more like the
one with Kaorin scanning the pic. Man, that was boring. I should fix
or delete that one pronto.
"Who knew there was a teacher at this school
as crazy as I
am?" Tomo said with a chuckle.
"I did."
"I did."
"I did."
"I did."
There are five other girls with Tomo. One of them
could have stayed silent, but you seem to imply that
they all replied.
$Sakaki never says much.
"Who? No one could be as wild as I am!" Tomo
insisted.
"Yukari."
"Yukari."
"Yukari."
"Yukari."
"Yukari."
Yukari, Sakaki thought.
Same error, other way: Sakaki would have had to both
say and think it, unless someone said it twice.
$Ah, ctrl v, you have got me in trouble again.
"See you in the morning, Chiyo-chan," Sakaki
said as she
broke into a run, visions of cute kitties holding
days of the
week signs in her head.
"holding day of the week signs"
Each sign only indicates one day.
$Whoops. That's an easy one to miss.
A few more clicks later, Tomo went back to
Google to
redefine her search parameters.
And here I thought you were going to have Tomo
stumble across Kaorin's
not-as-protected-as-she-thought project, uploaded to
her personal Web space. (Kaorin's photo label
certainly seems to as if she intends to share it with
someone else. Perhaps she meant to share the PGP key
with her friends, but left it in a place where Tomo
could find it, or perhaps she had already shared it
with Tomo for something else? Or even, she used a
passphrase that Tomo could guess.)
$That key isn't going to be shared with anyone until after the collage
is finished. So while that scene was long and boring as hell, I felt it
was necessary to set up future ideas. Gotta do something to fix it, though.
Thanks for the detailed comments! I really appreciate it. Heh, I'm a
little embarrassed that I missed some of that stuff.
-Nugar
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