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There's something about Fuwanovel that makes me want to blog. Often, while browsing the forums or playing Clannad for the first time, I feel like chronicling the games I'm playing and my thoughts about the site and community. This post is something of a personal journal entry, and exists to share some of my thoughts about fuwanovel. What is Fuwanovel (to me)? Fuwanovel is a website which celebrates the medium, culture, quirkiness and depth of Visual Novels. The mission of Fuwanovel is to make Visual Novels accessible to everybody, and to ultimately foster their production and distribution. It's also an attempt to create a new community and gathering place for VN fans where enthusiasm and respect replaces the toxic and despotic cultures of some other VN communities. Why did I choose Fuwanovel? There are several VN communities whhich I respect and actively follow, but the majority of my VN time is dedicated to Fuwanovel. I chose Fuwanovel for four reasons: The Fuwanovel forums and community were respectful, friendly, and helpful. People were actually nice to each other on the forums;Aaeru wasn't/isn't doing this for her own ego;Making VN games as accessible as possible is, in my view, the right path to making them popular;Fuwanovel was changing and becoming something new. In what way has Fuwanovel changed? For those who have belonged to the VN community for a long time, Fuwanovel was often associated with Aaeru's research on copyright reform (see her Sharing is Liberty blog). Today, those that speak ill of fuwanovel never fail to obsess over that fact. After spending dozens of hours on the forum, working behind the scenes on the site, and spending a lot of time talking with/coming to understand Aaeru a little better, I'm prepared to declare the sum of my experience: Fuwanovel is bigger than any one person now. Fuwanovel is bigger than Aaeru, it's bigger than a single game, and it's bigger than the sum of its forum posts. Fuwanovel is about Visual Novels and their distribution (see my first point). I joined Fuwanovel because I saw the start of this shift, and have now seen it through to near-completion. It's a great thing, and it's allowed a unique and positive community to grow. My reaction to Fuwanovel's biggest criticism: Distributing Pre-patched Games, And My Ultimate Goal for VNs (Aaeru has written her own perspective on this topic, and it's found on this FAQ page) If you look through the game torrents on this site, you'll see that several English patches specifically request that they not be bundled with the corresponding Japanese games, or be distributed as a complete unit. Fuwanovel has clearly chosen to disregard these requests. Our games come pre-patched and bundled into handy self-extracting RAR folders. While some will disagree with what follows, I think everybody can agree that pre-patched game distribution makes playing a VN *VERY* easy, and usually requires no installation or installation tutorials. Aaeru believes that it is hypocritical for a translator to determine rights of use when they themselves essentially pirated and/or hacked the original games. I also agree with Aaeru in that translators, by distributing patches, put their work out into the vast reaches of the public internet, and no longer have control over its use. Yet, the true reason I support Fuwanovel's distribution ideology has to do with my understanding of Fuwanovel's core: "The mission of Fuwanovel is to make Visual Novels accessible to everybody, and to ultimately foster their production and distribution." I want Visual Novels to catch on in the West. I want Western VNs to evolve into their own style. I want those future Western VNs to combine and hybridize with Japanese VNs and create new art and new dimensions for the medium. In short, I want this "Visual Novel Thing" to catch on. And because I want it to catch on, I want to make it as easy as possible for people to try out these games. After all, when you compare the process of finding a Japanese torrent, downloading and following (often-poorly-written) English Patch installation instructions, and then troubleshooting errors based on your system with Fuwanovel's download, unzip, play method... there really isn't a question that Fuwanovel makes VNs easier to try out. And that, friends, is where all of this has to start.

"Aaeru is a nut. A lunatic. She cannot possibly change her mind." So Fuwan actually went from piracy site (feb) to non-piracy site (after backlash) back to piracy site (april-ish). I replaced all of the torrents on the site (except umineko & katahane cause unzipping problems) and removed the John Perry Barlow video and the pdf. //because i realized it is more effective without// Also I replaced all of the torrents because I heard from Tinfoil & Moogy's podcast (via Tay) that the self-extracting rar's has a bad rap for viruses. Now why would I go back on my word? Why would I take advice from people who so obviously want this place to fail, who would go so far as to hack my site and delete all my files (happened). The reason why is, if someone has a better idea and they 1up my ideas, then lets use them! Im honestly not interested in using a bad idea if a better idea exists out there. That will be really screwed up. I actually consider this to be the natural thing to do: to use the best ideas. if I truly cared about spreading JP culture I would do this. If I was actually doing it for e-peen (for which I have none. physically none.) I wouldn't. The people who don't do this and who NEVER change their mind for fear of loss of e-peen (pride) are the ones who are bizarre to me. And that is why I think the anti-thesis of the previous community is humility. Humility is powerful. Because it silences those wicked people who get a turn on from seeing you fail. I think the most most valuable thing you have is your ideas. Give me your ideas! (and I will give you mine) thanx for the write up Tay~