Leaderboard

Since I get asked questions constantly on this subject, I'll go ahead and list a few pieces of advice I felt apply to most beginners. 1) Use translation aggregator and a text hooker, even if you feel like you should be getting out your kanji dictionary, out of a sense of self-reliance. I'll be blunt, it is hard to enjoy something if you have to refer to a kanji dictionary for every other non-particle word. I am sometimes stunned at people bragging about spending 100 hours on an 8 hour moege because they chose not to use a text hooker. That is not an efficient way of using your time, even if you want to learn kanji. It is actually more efficient time-wise to do kanji exercises separately and read your VNs with a text hooker (you'll still be done with both in half the time it would have taken for you to read it using a kanji dictionary). 2) There are two methods you can choose to start your untranslated career... you can start off easy and work your way up, or you can smash your head into the walls of text of the harder VNs out there. I chose the latter, and most people choose the former. The walls of text method has the advantage of jump-starting your learning... but in exchange, you'll probably end up sleeping more to let you process all the new information you've gathered and you'll get frustrated more often. If you want to use the former method, I made a list here sometime ago ( http://forums.fuwanovel.net/topic/3493-for-love-of-vns-for-beginners/ ). 3) jparser in Translation aggregator isn't perfect, nor is Mecab. They are tools to give you a chance to parse the kanji faster, rather than a translation tool. However, there is a good side-benefit to the frequently weird choices of furigana they make... and that is that you'll naturally learn the path to understanding kanji puns without having to look them up later, and it will become ever more easy to dissect more difficult words even without the tools later on. 4) In the end, mastering reading untranslated VNs is an uphill battle for most people. Don't expect yourself or everything you use to be perfect from the beginning, as the very idea is absurd. You'll run into stumbling blocks constantly, and you'll worry endlessly about whether you really understood that last line for most of your first hundred VNs or so. 5) If you read slowly in your native language, you will also read slowly in Japanese. Reading is reading, and it is a skill honed by a simple process of practice, practice, practice that never ends. Yes, learning to read fast in your own language will help you learn to read fast in Japanese once you've gotten to a certain level. If you are barely competent in your own language, I'll be frank in saying that this isn't for you, not to be mean but because it is the same skill, regardless of the details. 6) Last of all, I'd suggest hitting a wide variety of genres early on, not just your favorite ones. Why? Because that sense of wonder and love for VNs is only going to last through your first twenty-five to forty VNs, and once you've gotten past that point, it is going to be harder and harder to grow beyond your limits on your own.

It's true, it's true, I must confess. I feel an inexplicable yearning every time I see them. Hi, I'm ara and I'm mostly dumb, but hang in there with me, okay? I've been on fuwa for well over a year and now over 1000 posts. It's been pretty great and I've met a good number of people I very much enjoyed talking to. I made a lot of friends and stopped talking to just about as many, sadly. But the reason I post is because I actually want to talk about myself and my hopes and ambitions. I'd really appreciate it if you read my post with an open mind. One of my greatest passions is understanding and appreciating stories (and characters). These things that people write, draw, animate, or film. And I'm sure there are a number of other ways of storytelling, but for me, the stories I read about in books, manga, and anime seem to hold a special place in my heart. And the thing is that I don't think anyone really sees things the way I do a lot of the time. I won't get ahead of myself and tell you guys about how special I am and how I have this great vision or whatever, but there's definitely something different in the way everyone experiences stories, right? I believe a lot of that comes from contexts and from the reader's willingness to open their heart to the story. I care about many stories and I care about them in ways that I don't see people talking about. I care about facets of them that are often left undiscussed and it pains me every time I see someone bash something I love when it seems to me that they misunderstood "the really interesting part" or failed to appreciate the enjoyable uniqueness of the story. What I want to do is try to share my feelings with other people. I want other people to understand the way I feel and look at things with the same caring eyes that I do. I want to share with people the stories that I love and the things I love about them. Whether or not you may disagree, I think something wonderful can come from trying to transcend the singular context with which you read a story and see it in a new light. Or maybe it's just not very quality, but good in very specific and unique respects. That's cool too, right!? People, appreciate these things!! So I've been musing for a while. "I spend too much time talking to people online about nothing" "But you like talking to people, you like connecting and fangirling over things with people and sharing your passions" and thoughts like these, although recently they've been tainted with this general cynicism about online relationships. Yea, yea. Normal stuff. Sorry I'm not a hilarious breath of fresh air. But what occurred to me is that I should try to write. Actually write for other people as much as for myself, to try to build a bridge between their understanding of stories and my own, and hopefully get people to love some of the things I do for the reasons I do. So I want to take my 1000th-ish post time in the spotlight to say two things. 1. If you're looking for someone to talk to or feel lonely or want a friend or someone to bash ur fookin' 'ead in, I'll try to be a mate for ya. You can message me on fuwa or add me on skype or whatever you want and we can spend all the day chatting idly about why $0$ is a hilarious nickname for s0s or whatever garbage comes up. 2. I'm planning on writing something that may be called postviews or something... Thoughts on stories I've read and things that I think other people might have something to gain in thinking about. I think I'll do this as a blog function or something but I'm not entirely sure. The process might end up being too formal for my fool-ass self, but I want to at least bring it up in the hopes that someone cares and maybe we can talk about stories. Because I don't like sitting around thinking about why I love this and that so much without having anyone to share it with. Life is better spent with a friend. So, I hope you've enjoyed a glimpse into my mind as I post this awkward post with a fittingly awkward title that only makes sense if you really really think about it. I swear I'm only a little crazy! But I hope that I can share some of my craziness with you guys in the future. It's been a pleasure being on fuwa, but I seriously need an outlet for all of my thoughts and I think people are getting tired of my incomprehensible explanations. (Shoutout to HMN who won't read this but who is super amazing) Also this thread will function as an AMA for anyone that wants to ask pretty much anything or just talk about things. Idk! I didn't think that hard about this post, okay? gosh. Though I expect I scared most of you off with the text above.

Wait, they still make books in 2015?

I felt a need to at least reply to this thread. I will spare everyone the agony of my usual pages of text for shorter points. Normally, I would stay out of these sorts of discussions based on my personality, but in this case, I think that might give this reply more weight. I am without a doubt not comfortable talking to people. Fuwa was (is) a community that I have actively joined despite my shyness crippling fear of people because this community is easy to be a part of. This was mainly related to the mentor program (you can read my post there if interested). I can honestly say I have only attended 1 of Ren's podcasts. The one I did was awesome. I did it during work and almost got busted . I've listened to a few others from the recordings and they were enjoyable. At least for me, participating in something like that is a bit tricky as I work very unstable hours. As a community member, I'm probably a horrible example. I have, without a doubt, the least amount of posts of anyone replying to this thread (until someone makes a new account to prove me wrong). However, I will say I enjoy being here. It is great source of information such as the VN status posts every Saturday (It gives me hope that someday White Album 2 will be TLed). It let me know that Muv Luv was getting a kickstarter (so I could throw money at it). I got to join the VN club (Thanks for working so hard on it everyone, and thanks for your post here on it Nimbus). I've got to play games that took me places I never imagined (Grisaia made me cry so much, thanks Astro). Am I a good example of what a community member should be? Probably not. However, I will say that the community that is here I still like. It may not be "as good as the old days" but from what I experienced, I like it. There are so many posters I can name offhand. When I see a topic or reply from them I open it immediately because of their knowledge or humor. Maybe I'm foolish, but to me that is a community. I see the point in a topic like this and I see a good community. The OP was pretty upfront. Most communities would blow up at something like that. Instead, I've seen constructive ideas and people keeping level heads and talking it over. I don't think there are many places like that. The only real parting thoughts I can provide are that if this community has changed and you think for the worse, find out what new ideas can be brought about to bring people in and how the newbies out there, like myself, can more easy integrate into Fuwa. Edit: Ugh tons of embarassing typos. All remaining ones take backseat to my 日本ごのしゅくだい。 Edit Edit: Mispelled someones name. A fate worse than death itself!

Contents of this Update: 1. Introduction 2. Site analytics 3. Abbreviated financial report 4. Loligeddon feedback survey 5. Commentary from Tay ----------------------------------- 1. Introduction I hope the information in this community update is both useful and interesting to those of you who want to keep a finger on Fuwa’s pulse. This report may not look like a lot, but it took a lot of time to compile (especially trying to compensate for an analytics bug which I’m incapable of fixing myself). Now that it’s done, I’m already noticing things I should have included but forgot. Just remind me of questions you have in the thread below, and I’ll try to reply to everything. - Tay ----------------------------------- 2. Site analytics A few weeks ago we started paying for a second, small server to host our analytics software. There’s a bug in the software which makes it difficult to get hard numbers for the past few weeks, but I think I found a clever work-around. Here are the numbers as best as I'm able to find: Front site: 4-5k unique visitors a day and something like 7-8k daily hits Fuwazette Blog: Weekdays: 1.7k unique visitors (average); Weekends: 2-4k unique visitors per day following VNTS posts Forums: 6-10k unique visitors a day, 11-15k hits per day Reviews Hub: 40-60 unique visitors a day; each time a FuwaReviews review goes up, it spikes to several hundred uniques per day for several days VNTL-Moon: ~60 unique visitors a day, ~100 hits ----------------------------------- 3. Abbreviated Financial report Many members have been extremely generous with their donations, and from the bottom of my heart I want to say THANK YOU. All donated site funds have been put directly towards site costs: I’ve saved up a 3 month rainy day fund (split between donations and my personal funds) We’ve had one full round of software license fees We paid $100 past site debts Put aside funds for new Reviews Hub theme $70 spent on developing an articles hub site which ended up being extremely unsecure and ex’d by Nayleen (Maef and I were SO CLOSE). $40 of the $70 came from saved-up donation funds. Free: The feeling you get flirting with Flutterz or getting clever ideas in a PM from Eclipsed Free: #Renenvy ----------------------------------- 4. Feedback Survey: Loli Policy I promised Sanah a follow-up survey about Loligeddon, and haven’t been able to follow-up until now (well, technically, a bit later in October). If you’d like to give feedback on the Loli policies, have suggestions for changing them, or have something you want to tell me, here’s the link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Yp2ADO3AROV7LvQ3mS47g0sINkFn-OEaPRPf6ZHzsqE/viewform?usp=send_form Any proposed changes will be considered with our law maester when I next talk to him. There’s an option to include your forums username and be added to a follow-up roundatable discussion (space is limited) once that occurs. ----------------------------------- 5. Commentary from Tay Commentary on Analytics: It may come as a surprise to some that this quarterly update is the first time I’ve officially opened our analytics numbers to the public (Nay’s done it in the past, but always on his own impetus). This coincides with a decision to make the front site open-source and seek help from a much larger coding pool than before. These may be small steps, but they’re meaningful and I hope they’ll represent the seeds for yet more transparency in the future. So. Let’s talk about these numbers. The big-picture take-home message is that Fuwa has continued to grow in the four(ish) months since our last analytics report. I’m a big data nerd who likes to try to use big-boy statistics (and, inevitably, breaks something and needs a math genius friend’s help), so here are a few other trends: Users are spending a lot more time, on average, in the Visual Novel and Dev/Translation boards. Almost twice as much time as they were in March 2015 Walkthroughs are still a huge draw New members are, literally, about nine times more likely to go to the dev boards than they were in March 2015 (within their first week on the boards). They’re about six times more likely to regularly go there afterwards. The amount of VN-centric sites linking to Fuwanovel has increased a tremendous amount. Like, a seriously crazy amount. Several times more links to us from other VN communities than in March 2015 (I didn’t do any hard numbers for this, though, since I only thought to check it right before posting this. Apologies.) Tay’s daily hatemail has decreased by several hundred percent since March 2015 The blog’s popularity on VNTS days has increased by about 45% since July. The front site’s traffic has decreased somewhere between 20-40% since pre-torrents, but the other sites have maintained solid, steady growth Daily user registrations on all the various sites are still a horrible approximation for traffic and engagement Autoposting is the bomb Our Google+ page is a lonely, lonely place, but I met a few really nice people on there who have since become friends. So… yay. Google+ did something good. The reviews hub traffic has continued to steadily grow. It’s not a steep growth, but it’s steady. The traffic spikes for FuwaReviews official reviews are higher than ever and they last for longer than the used to, as well. Our new anti-spam-user software is doing fairly well, which is great Commentary on Site Finances: I just wanted to thank everyone who has generously donated to the site. As soon as I can get Nay’s help with an authentication library (or something like that), I’ve got a slick new donations app which will automate the donation process and make sure you get your goodies instantly. Commentary on Site Leadership: Fuwanovel is an important part of my life. I’ve learned a lot over the years from building and running this place, and many of the most important lessons I’ve learned came from making mistakes or falling short of goals and deadlines. I’d like to open up a bit and share a bit of vulnerability on two such shortcomings. I’d like to publicly apologize for my inconsistent presence in the community. I have not been able to give the site everything it’s needed, and I want everyone to know that I recognize it. Beyond being busy in general, I’ve had a truly bizarre amount of freak accidents or tropical storms or RL craziness mess up my genuinely well-meaning plans time and time again. I’m not trying to make excuses, I’m more or less just trying to express that I’m likely as frustrated as you with the lack of progress in certain site projects. I have plans burning in my brain for where we need to go and what we need to do in order to get there, and at times I, too, get a little burned out and discouraged when I see the discrepancy between where we are and where we need to be. Secondly, I’d like to apologize to the dozens of friends who have spent hundreds of hours participating and working on the site who don't feel adequately appreciated. In the real world I make a real effort to reach out to and thank the people I work with for their good work. It’s an important part of being a leader, and it’s an important part of being a friend. I am disappointed when I review my track record for tracking and recognizing all the work done by so many great people on this site. When I get "Fuwa time", I tend to jump in and do work on the site without taking time to check in with everybody. I want to improve in this department, and I hope you'll help me as I try to do better. As far as site leadership goes, only one other thing to discuss: adding another (/more) admin(s). This is something I feel like I’ve discussed so many times I worry that you all think I’m a broken record. I’ll be the first to agree that we need to spread the autonomy around. The way this works at the moment is that all the different parts of Fuwanovel have a dedicated leader who has the autonomy to run their project within a pre-agreed upon framework that she/he and I set at the beginning of the quarter (or year, depending on the project). It’s not a perfect system – in many ways because this is a hobby site, not a paying job, and I’m fairly adamant that people keep Fuwa in a healthy balance and not burn out – but it’s also not too bad. Judging from recent posts as well as more than a few a hellaton PMs and emails, many people disagree with me on two fronts: the forums and the front site. I’ll tackle each of those below. Commentary on the Forums: I’m quite happy with the trends I’m seeing in the analytics. I like to think that the improved engagement of new members with the VN and Dev boards heralds the wider change of userbase from torrent-seekers to VN-community-seekers. Even if that’s not true, VN engagement is higher than it was earlier this year, and traffic is still robust. I’m still embarrassed and frustrated about the forums’ sidebar formatting. I spent an hour last week trying to figure out what I needed to do to fix it, but I can’t find my old notes anywhere. I’ve reached out to Nay about this and other things, of course, and I really hope I can get this fixed for you soon. Earlier this quarter Sanah and I had some great discussions about the limitations of the current blog app and how we might provide a better blogging platform for users. At the moment I’m still waiting to see how the upcoming IPB 4 forums’ software upgrade feels for our bloggers. Sanah eventually opted to start his own blog and use the Fuwa app to drive readers to his new location. That’s, obviously, fantastic, since my goal with the blogs app has always been to give people a platform and help drive VN fans to them. So, what I’m getting at here is that if the IPB 4 upgrade is poorly received, I’m up to the challenge of finding a way to host a blogging platform if need be. Hopefully it won’t come to that, but the blog authors need to know, at the very least, that we’ll do our best to take care of them. Not going to write any more about Loligeddon. Go take the survey if you want to share your views and/or propose policy changes. I will personally review all the entries. Quite a few people have asked me to add a forums admin who would be in charge of both moderation and engagement. I’m skeptical of the idea due to past experience, but it’s brought up enough that I’m willing to open the door to feedback. Would you like me to make a survey about the forums experience and include a field for you to write desired forums organizational/leadership changes? Commentary on the Front Site: Here’s the situation: we’ve committed to the open-source plan, but I’m not technical enough to make sure that’s set up or manage the various software forks that will result. Nayleen, our webmaster, has been traveling and working and dealing with craziness and thus hasn’t been around lately, but as far as I’m aware he’s sticking with us. Which is a good thing: the man’s a genius. Back in August Nay and I realized that the plans we had for the front site were too ambitious to try and bite off all at once, so we decided to scale-back the initial launch plans and simply try and get a basic redesign up and running (using a lot of the old code under the hood) which would then be improved bit-by-bit over the next few months. This was poorly communicated to the design team, and Emi and Beato deserve an apology. Furthermore, that scaled-back version is still not up and running. Which is frustrating. It isn’t something I or a novice coder can address, however, since the front site is written with multiple coding languages. The critical bottlenecks are currently: open development onto git (or wherever) (which Nay has already done to some extent), finalize the database structure so the other coders can know how it’s structured, roll out the design update with or without an underlying total code revamp, tackle each module one at a time thereafter. (Maef and I have been working on the articles and team builder concepts, and I think they’re going to be pretty great.) After the bottlenecks are addressed and the rest of the design timeline is sorted out, Nay, maef and I will be posting some more information on the rest of the evil plans. Conclusion Thank you for reading this post and for being a part of this community. I’m dedicated to keeping the site alive and improving it (even if by uneven pacing), and having friends and fellow fans like you makes the effort worth it. Tay

Hey everyone. I'm glad to announce that we're reviving the Mentorship Program after reworking it a bit. The thread will be divided into two main parts, one talking about the overall changes and one talking about the recruitment process. Feel free to share your thoughts once you're done reading this wall of text. Rework Introduction to the Mentorship Program: New VN players will be able to easily request a player mentor who has some experience playing VNs and is willing to be a friend and contact as they begin this great adventure. The mentor will email/PM an introduction to the new player, talk about the VN player's first game (and, ideally, nerd out with them), suggest follow-up games based on the new player's preferences, and be willing to answer quick questions such as "How do I make my computer Japanese?" or "What is a senpai-sama?". What was changed with the rework: How is this different from the original experiment? Well, we tweaked a few stuff here and there. I don't know exactly how many Mentors we had, but I believe starting with too many was a mistake, so we're going to start low and add more with time if needed. For starters, me and Tay thought about going with 5. I'm now the Mentorship Coordinator, meaning I'll be responsible for gathering feedback, redirecting the mentees to their mentors and all that. I'm basically going to be the one doing what Tay would have had to do, giving him some more space to focus on other aspects of the website that need a bit more of his attention. This also ensures a more efficient communication route for everyone, as we all know Tay is a really busy man. You could say that I'm a quality of life bridge. We don't have anything set yet, but I'd like to post an update regarding the project status every now and then, maybe monthly. This would contain feedback from all the involved parties. What the mentors think about how we're doing, what the mentees think about the usefulness of the project, my very own thoughts about the efficiency and progress we achieved compared to the previous update. I highly value communication, not only between the involved, but with the community as well, it's a way to show that we are, in fact, doing what we volunteered to do, and that we're a reliable way to introduce someone to the genre. Recruitment Now that I explained what was changed, let's go for the fun part, the recruitment. Requirements: Played at least 4 of the Starter VNs listed below, and find it enjoyable to talk about them. Capacity to open-mindedly nerd out about visual novels. You need to be nice. Have some Fuwa exposure: Been a member of Fuwanovel for at least six months and have at least 100 posts. Starter VNs: Katawa Shoujo Planetarian Narcissu Fate/Stay Night Clannad G-Senjou Steins;Gate Eden* Higurashi Saya no Uta Sharin no Kuni, Himawari no Shoujo What you'll do as a mentor: You'll get an email/PM with a new mentee's contact information. With that in hands, you'll send that person a PM/email (based on their preferences) introducing yourself, telling a little about your history with VNs, and whatever else you feel fit for a first message. After that, essentially, just be nice and be a friend. Answer their questions, talk about the game they're playing, nerd out with them (Sakura = best girl), offer game suggestions, show them around Fuwa, help them find the next game to try, etc. Make friends! What changed from before? I added a few VNs to the Starter list, and with that, I felt that increasing the minimum amount of read VNs from the list was needed. While some might find some of the additions questionable, I believe lots of people are being introduced to the genre through steam, which makes games available there a bit more valuable. The same goes for short and popular ones such as SnU and for ones with great anime adaptations such as Steins;Gate. I'll probably add more eventually, but that should be a good list for now. I removed the part that said "Not a big time commitment", as that's something entirely up to how your interaction goes and to how many mentees you choose to take. Just keep in mind that as we're trying to have just a few mentors for now, we might have to set a minimum of newcomers each will have to take care of, just not sure how many. I didn't mentioned the Handbook because I'm still to work on it, some small changes will be made and some will be updated, don't worry, you'll have it once it's ready. Final words I find the Mentorship Program to be a really great thing we have here, and simply letting it die would be a shame, that's why I decided to talk with Tay and revive it. Interested in being a Mentor? Send me a PM with the following form filled and we'll talk more there. This thread is an announcement and the changes should be discussed here, please don't post your form here nor PM me with your thoughts about the rework, unless you, for whatever reason, really don't want to make them public.

Well, I guess I absolutely have to play it now, lol. That way I can bash it or praise it properly.

Well, Satsuki is saying that this might be more story-focused so there might be some substance if they cut out the sex? Honestly I don't care what they do to make a Steam version, if there's also going to be an 18+ one. edit: Just so people are clear, THESE are the people who want to translate this: https://mikandi.com/ (warning, NWS AS ALL HELL) I don't think you have to worry about there being no 18+ version.

So, I'm in a DND mood again, hoping us fellow NEET-folk might be able to figure something out. Hopefully we'll get a few. Prefer 5th Edition myself, as it's the one I know best and seems to be the most refined/easiest to understand design-wise. Personally I'd prefer not to DM since I'm in a roleplaying mood these days but I can if need be. Prefer roleplay-heavy stuff personally. Technically this tends to work best with smaller groups but if enough people are interested we could get more than one game going. Here are some starter rulesets from the player-perspective 5e-wise. https://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/basicrules Anyone interested? Should I set up a Skype group? What are all our users?

Have you ever considered the possiblity, that Princess Evangile is a simple moege without too much focus on tight plots and dramatic twists? It is for people who want to date the cover girls, while being led along by an easy to follow script and some tropes for humor and light tension. Some folks like breakfast simple, corny and cheesy. Sure, there are plenty of things worth adressing in Princess Evangile. But it seems like you're expecting it to be something that it isn't even trying to be in the first place. You ain't gonna find Clannad or Grisaia in here, you know?

Loli vampires are a weakness of mine. Definitely interested if there's going to be an uncut version. I don't think an uncut version is a foregone conclusion at this point.

I hope this was on purpose

Good... ? Yeah, it's good. They also want to raise the funds to do what would presumably be a proper english translation. I don't know how they plan on doing it, I'll have reservations if they don't plan on working with any of the established players in the game because even if your intent is to hire native speakers to do the translation, there's a lot in this business that can go wrong if you have no experience and managing a team of foreigners as a small company will probably lead to issues. Or hey, maybe this will work out and will lead into an era of Japanese companies being more proactive. edit: Seems like they're using some international consulting firm who might be suited for international business management so maybe they know what they're doing:; https://mikandi.jp/ MiKandi Japan seems to be owned by an indiivdual named Aaron Jenkins and it their sort of reminds me of the JAST approach. MiKandi might be trying to become another player in the eroge localization market. So no, my initial impression of this being handled by onomatope seems be have been off-base.

I just thought I'd add on with a tip of my own. This isn't about reading untranslated Japanese per se, but learning the Japanese required to get to that point: People who are learning new challenging skills generally have the habit of spending most of their time asking experts for 'secrets' or 'tips' to getting good instead of actually practicing - this includes questions such as "how did you get good at Japanese?" and "what's the fastest way to learn?" This may be because they are unconfident, unsure of themselves, don't know where to start, or just hoping that an easier method will just magically appear (I'm also guilty of this). First off, there is no 'secret' to learning a language, solely due to the fact that everyone learns differently. Some people learn better with mnemonics, and some people learn better with pure grinding. It's entirely up to you to find what clicks for you. If you're unsure of which route may be optimal for you, then maybe try a bit of everything. Alternatively, you can stick with one thing and switch if you decide that it's not working for you. Learning a skill takes time, and perfecting it takes a lot of trial and error. If you're someone like me and you're always uncertain of where to start, then just do it (cue Shia Labeouf voice). There is no 'bad' starting point as long as you start. I know that many of you don't have access to Japanese lessons or tutors. While it's true that it's faster to learn something if you have someone to teach you, there is nothing in this world that's impossible to learn on your own if you really put your mind to it - especially with the internet at your fingertips. With regards to motivation, I know all too well how fast it can drain, even if deep down you're really eager to learn. It's easier at first because you see a lot of progress when you're first starting out, but there will be a time where results will not be as apparent. For me, this was when I first got around to learning kanji. The grammar just flew by and sort of clicked, but I'm the type of person who hates really grindy things (this is also why I hate most RPGs), so it went by really slowly for me. That is when I adapted from grinding to simply reading visual novels (easy ones at first), though admittedly I only grinded for about a week before quitting lol. Anyway, I suppose that there are some people who are just better at learning languages, but a lot of it is just getting into the right mindset.

I'm not entirely sure what would happen next, but I'm pretty sure a swift punch to the throat would be involved.

I'm not too shocked. Every big group discriminates the next group in the pecking order. People used to make fun of whoever read books. Those make fun of people who watch anime. Those make fun of the VN world. And the VN world hates itself and everyone. It's a vicious circle.

SUP. I'm going to leave the OP untouched to show people just how rough and terrible this project was when it started. SC2VN was in a bad spot in 2013 and even 2014. What saved it from being a jokey, mediocre waifu sim was a realization that there was something interesting under all the fluff we had stacked on top of our game. All of 2015 was a brutal crunch considering I worked on SC2VN literally every single day. In the summer, this meant multiple hours staring at my script. Like, seriously, I edited the FUCK out of the script. Threw out like 20k words just to get this thing lean and have it read well. I absolutely hate filler in my VNs so I kept it to an absolute minimum, or at least tried to. Drafting is crucial to a decent VN's script. Straight up, my rough drafts are utter shit, so don't feel like you can't write anything worthwhile if you aren't happy with your story on the first pass. Biggest influences on the story were Welcome to the NHK, Persona 4, Ping Pong the Animation, and the experiences my roommate had as a pro-gamer. While the script wasn't influenced by other VNs, I learned a lot about shot composition and visual humor from Steins;Gate and... Fate/Hollow Ataraxia (yes really). Since I was the only writer and we had basically no budget, we had to keep our word count low to deliver a quality product. I recognize that people wanted it to be longer (it's criticism I can take as a compliment!) but it simply wasn't in scope for something we were ever going to be able to release. This was done by a very small team of people who were already employed or students full-time. Shoutouts to the team. If y'all have any other questions, fire away.

Oppai dragon

It has jelly beans inside

Confession: I've been having a cold for about a few days now. I'd hope this masturbation analogy isn't true because it would be quite awkward explaining how I masturbated while at a birthday dinner with my parents.

You know, I performed the dance of joy when the birthdays were finally removed from the sidebar. Unfortunately the nature of that dance led to me being locked up for something rhyming with ‘thin-recent composer’, otherwise it would have been a perfect day :3

Yeat, it's almost -- almost -- as if you were travelling halfway across the world and back, and working overtime on projects, and dealing with new responsibilities at work, and balancing unexpected RL challenges, and planning Fuwa technical things on the side... ... or something.

Didn't even notice that shit broke because I've been way too busy lately.

Yeah, the sidebar idea is probably a bad approach. It's just... y'know... I have a legal obligation to try and make the sidebar as packed and complicated and miserable to navigate as possible.

Common cold = Masturbation confirmed. Which means I have been masturbating for like five days straight. (´・ω・`)

And now a little something for all you image editors out there. (If you don't speak Photoshop, just keep walking; there's nothing for you here.) Some visual novels make image edits simple — the UI is mostly flat colors, 90º angles, and 1-bit transparencies. Easy peasy. Meanwhile, some more recent VNs like to store all their UI elements as semi-transparent overlays with full 8-bit alpha channels. If you've ever tried editing these, you know what a pain they can be. And so, I came to love a command I've never had to use before in all my years with Photoshop — namely because if there's a transparency on something, I'm usually the one who put it there in the first place. Ready? Tattoo this on your arm: Layer > Layer Mask > From Transparency Let's look at one possible scenario where it might come into play: Text on paper. At first glance, doesn't seem like it would be too hard, right? Then you get it into Photoshop and realize it's a mix of transparent elements and fully opaque type. If you just grabbed the rubber stamp tool and tried cloning out the text right now, you'd end up with something like this. That's because your cloning source is semi-transparent. The trick here is to separate out the 8-bit alpha channel from the source image so you have an entirely opaque image. So with the source layer selected, choose Layer > Layer Mask > From Transparency, temporarily disable the resulting layer mask, and you get something like this. From there, it's just a standard retouching job. Once you clone out the type as best you can, you're ready to add new text from your TL team. (In this case, since the type and paper are at two different levels of transparency, you'd also need to do a quick cleanup on the layer mask. If you look closely at the mask thumbnail, you can see the type as pure white on a 60% gray. Just paint over that part of the mask with more 60% gray and you'll be good to go.) Enable the layer mask again, export as a file with 8-bit alpha support (a PNG, most likely) and you're done. This was a fairly straightforward example, of course, but the basics remain the same no matter how complex the retouching job. Now rinse and repeat 500 more times with all the rest of the game files. Aren't you glad you decided to take up image editing?

In term of harem-ge, their stuff are pretty good, at least for me

I can neither confirm nor deny that I wrote the original list. I can also neither confirm nor deny that the list was originally tied to a series of articles in the "FuwAcademy" site which wasn't. I can neither confirm nor deny that I agree that the original list is anemic. What I can confirm, however, would be two things: The original program was very highly lauded by the early batches of mentees The VN list was essentially meant to demonstrate that you've played some big name VNs and know the medium. It was pretty much arbitrary. I gave Rose the handbook I was revising and he's taken it in some brilliant directions. Whatever he sees fit to change is fair game. We shall all fall behind our fearless leader. All hail Rose.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQuMwVbGgxg

At this point I'm more of a shadow member, but let's throw out some thoughts. I've been around Fuwa for a while now. (I also shadow post/edit on Fuwazette?) Long enough to go through a bunch of different changes and FuwaPocalypse's. Let's just say the more things change, the more they stay the same. Sure, people change, the site may change, even policies change, but at the end of the day a lot of the things that make Fuwa what it is really hasn't. Are people posting less in some of the boards? Sure. However, a lot of the discussion seems to have been moved from just one board to another. Do people lose interest in things after a while? Of course, it's only natural. It's possible to run all the activies in the world and still not have as much 'participation' as you like. It's just something you have to live with. Anyway, I guess all I'm trying to say is that things here are still going. Maybe not the most optimal way to get things done or move foward, but at least it's moving. I can't tell you the number of times where I thought Fuwa was actually done for. I'm not sure if you've all been around long enough to experience them, but there were certainly a lot of close calls. If you ever want to know about some of these events, talk to Ryechu.

regarding topic - you exotic fetishist

I'd either a) quietly stew for a bit and then drop a hella sore burn next time I see them reading (probably about the book they've got, the very practice of reading, their mum etc.) OR b) Hastily defend my reading of it, before making the point that I read actual books as well, all the while making an awful job of eye contact and speaking because it's some kind of confrontation (which is the way more likely response, if I'm honest).

Yah arguing about who's the strongest fictional shounen anime/manga characters sounds like what 5 year olds discuss at school. Don't worry, when I was a little girl, I had similar arguments with boys and Cardcaptor Sakura. lol No teenage person or older should even bother since there's no way to prove who's the strongest when you and the author can cosmically expand their strengths in great proportions in "what if" settings....

Down's assistance has been invaluable, and his dedication to the Days series really shows. He deserves a free copy of the game for all the work he's done.

I think in talking about vn's (and other media), there is a wide spectrum of possible posts from methodical point-by-point critique to very personal discussion about what a work or element meant to you. The second is valid too, it's just so personal it's hard to bring it up anywhere. Other people might not be interested or know how to react. So I think a blog's a good place to put those thoughts. My little piece of advice would be to decide what to present and what to filter out (you can't write every single impression something gives you), and make sure things are reasonably organized and coherent. I think the people who view a work with a singular perspective, probably wouldn't bother hearing about someone else's viewpoint. It's the people who have a provisional understanding of the work but are unsure and open to suggestion, those are who will appreciate hearing another viewpoint. There's an angle looking at a work for it's craft, how well it's constructed. How interesting is the story, how vivid are the characters, how effective the text and presentation is. But like you said, a work doesn't have to be objectively fabulous to inspire a reaction, to be a memorable, special experience for someone. Some cases of why we love a work is because of a viewpoint -- that can be shared and understood --, but sometimes it's just result of who we are and the work reflecting off our set of notions (different people find different things cute, and wonderful). The latter can be shared...but is hardly a topic to discuss unless the opponent is interested by the fact that that is how you are, or that somebody is like that. Or, in mourning of the underdiscussedness of such topics, you can write it all anyways. Just because next to no-one else will. Good luck on your blog!

Don't underestimate the power of weeb.

I tried to read School Days, but I couldn't get into it. It was setup as some really terrible romantic drama. Like just awful, yet everywhere it gets love, I feel like I'm missing something.

I'm being forced to upgrade, against my will, under extreme duress Telstra are no longer supporting the 2G network, and it's being shut down in December. I suppose it's a good time to upgrade, the screen on my flip-top is being held on by sticky tape, and the batter is being held IN with sticky tape, but it's been soldiering on and doing a job for ... it must be at least 6 years now. It'll be sad to let the old thing go. Now, what's this Android thingy everybody's talking about and more importantly, can you eat it?

I got a tip from a person (un)affiliated with JAST. Expect a restoration patch to crop up shortly after the game ships.

That is really good, i have noticed a lot of new users lately. You received hatemail? That's weird. Sweet. Good luck with that. People Use Google+? Damn.. If you need help with anything, just send me a PM with the task and i'll take a look at it. Been wanting to help out for a long time now.

I played it, it was good, but I don't have a desire to play it again, because it doesn't really stand out except for the disabled theme. ... I'm not good at dealing with half-assed crap. Let me into the 2D world and I'll be happy, but dakis are a waste of time. I got over buying figures during my D&D addiction. I read books constantly, though for fiction I prefer fantasy or sci-fi, with an occasional protagonist-as-assassin-or-spy thriller. For military sci-fi, I recommend the Honor Harrington series (by David Weber) or Theirs is Not to Reason Why (by Jean Johnson), for cultural sci-fi the Foreigner series, and for blood-and-guts science fantasy, I recommend the good old Deathstalker series (simply because Green is so good at doing the screwy stuff with a side of explosions and bursting entrails). For fantasy, I generally recommend David Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen or Glen Cook's Black Company for the darker stuff (no, I don't like Martin, because he doesn't have a sense of humor in Game of Thrones). For general tongue-in-cheek hilarity in fantasy that surpasses generations, David Eddings is fairly awesome, though you can tell he is from the WWII generation. The Second Sons Trilogy by Fallon is pretty good if you like a political-religious focused fantasy with a strong anti-superstition theme. For urban fantasy, give me the Dresden Files any day. Edit: Incidentally, I cried like a small child for about seven hours when I heard about David Eddings's death only two years after his wife and co-writer, Leigh's death... He was the guy who broke me out of my serial fantasy addiction and widened my fantasy addiction to encompass something other than Tolkien and variations on D&D novels. Edit2: Also, something to keep in mind about the FuwaReviews issue... I just don't have the energy to always follow the same pattern. In most cases, I'm basically putting my thoughts down as they come to me in the blog, with a consideration toward overcoming (or at least warning about) my own bias. I never offered or was offered a chance to join FuwaReviews, and considering its primary focus on translated VNs, it was never really an option anyway.

Well, it's mostly me being burnt after many years of seeing the same thing. Studios pick the less satisfying resolution (doesn't deserve to be called resolution) to get an easy open-ended final episode, in case they get to adapt more stuff. That, in turn, means they need to make the heroines face their feelings but, unlike in the original material, the plot does not truly advance. So we get the same sort of ending in every single anime of this genre. Not only it's repetitive, it also feels insanely unsatisfying to watch a final episode that denies the progression of the whole season.

It won't always be 9C though. You'll also find 01 for no compression and DA for best.

Aaaaaand… who else wants that school metaphor to be swiftly kicked in the vulnerables? Anyone? Anyone at all? It can’t just be me.

Here are some of my most recent drawings in full resolution; [EDITED: Apparently the post's images were lost after the site update so I reuploaded some new ones] Hitokiri Battousai (Rurouni Kenshin): Tohsaka Rin and Archer (Unlimited Blade Works): Eren Jaeger (Shingeki no Kyojin): Heiwajima Shizuo (Durarara!!) This random anime girl I found on the internet... I forgot what I wrote here last time... ^^;; I'd been exposed to drawing since I was very little and it's become an undying hobby ever since. Half of these were drawn back when I was in highschool, usually for a friend's birthday. I haven't been drawing anything lately since uni though, I never really had the time. Hopefully I will sometime soon, it's a hobby I love to much to let go. Please visit my DeviantArt to see more of what I've drawn~. Thank you! http://dimdito.deviantart.com/

Corpse Party: Book of Shadows Summary "I'm going to save you! I swear!" This sequel tells a series of short stories that help develop many of the characters introduced in the first game and even explores some hypothetical scenarios, answering those “What if they survived?” questions. Players will be given an opportunity to change the fates of the game’s characters – for better, or, in classic Corpse Party fashion, for worse. Despite the apparent benefit of knowing the first game’s events, players should not expect to have all the answers, and at times will find themselves asking if the destiny of these unfortunate souls can truly be altered. Ending Guideline / Suggested Route Order In order to move onto the next chapter, you must obtain the current chapter's True End. To unlock the final chapter Blood Drive, you must obtain all True & Wrong Endings OR import a Corpse Party: Blood Covered save file. Chapter Guideline Chapter 1: Seal True End Wrong End(s) Chapter 2: Demise True End Wrong End(s) Chapter 3: Encounter True End Wrong End(s) Chapter 4: Purgatory True End Wrong End(s) Chapter 5: Shangri-La True End Wrong End(s) Chapter 6: Mire True End Wrong End(s) Chapter 7: Tooth True End Wrong End(s) Chapter 8: Blood Drive True End Attribution This walkthrough is based on info attained on Gamefaqs.com (Ajogamer's walkthrough) with some adjustments made by me. Good, now go check the next least popular walkthrough by 'him'. Starts with a K. v .01: basic walkthrough template created. (9-19) v .02: Wrong Ends added. (9-20) v 1.0: True Ends added. (9-20)

Here's some recent stuff.

Do we know when the side-bars showing the latest blog posts will be back up? Looking at my posts dominating is one of my private evil pleasures.