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This rant stemmed from a conversation on Twitter. I'm posting this here purely because posting this line by line on Twitter seemed retarded, and I'd disable the forum notifications for this post if I could. You can dig through my recent Twitter replies if you want to see the context. Have fun. *** The problem is a bit more complicated than "some people don't like what I have to say". Sure, there's that, but the majority of detractors don't like how I raise my voice to be heard through the din. The majority of eroge fans are content to stay within their walled communities and gossip amongst each other. A few bloggers have appeared, but again they keep to themselves and expect their audience to come to them. I've challenged this status quo. I've decided to be the black sheep that actually promotes his content: after all, why would anyone devote any amount of effort to writing for the smallest audience possible? I write to make a difference. I write to be recognized as a community leader. I'm not content with just being heard by a single insular community of hardcore fans. I can't accomplish anything like that. I consider myself an industry activist. I do what the industry refuses to do: market and promote itself. In a community where freeloading is the norm, active promotion is very much frowned upon. Yet spurring people to buy stuff is incredibly important if eroge fans want to have a say in English localization. I want to be the facilitator that bridges the gap between eroge companies and the VN community. I want to be the voice for eroge fans when companies cross the line, thinking that sales are more important than the wishes of the fanbase. I can't do all of this by just whining in threads on Fuwanovel about the success of the Sakura series while games like Seinarukana remain in obscurity. Mainstream activists make a living off what they do. I do what I do almost entirely for free, with the simple request that people click my affiliate links when they buy a game because of the content I provide. I would say that criticism of me is hypocritical, yet I realize that only a year ago I'd probably have said that what I do is distasteful. If things would get done without me, I'd be willing to pass the baton and go back to an online life of obscurity. If good content promoted itself, I wouldn't need to try to so hard to get the word out. But well, life isn't fair, honest effort isn't necessarily rewarded, and mediocrity is the formula for success. If I don't promote my content, no one else will. That's just how it is. Long rant. I'm not going to post this on Twitter line by line. Note: This is meant to be a conversation between me and my followers. If you say something unconstructive or just piss me off, I'll start deleting comments without warning. You have been warned.

I thought facebook already existed tho.

There is a secret language spoken in the darkest corners of the visual novel world, a cant so ancient and intricate that none know its origins. To be initiated in its ways, one must drink from the Dread Chalice and be reborn in fire. Only then will the caul be drawn from your eyes. You shall know onomatopoeia. And you shall know fear. Sploosh 101: What is onomatopoeia? Before we jump in with both feet — *splash!* — let’s do a quick primer on terminology. An onomatopoeia is a word that imitates, resembles, or suggests the source of the sound it describes — i.e, it sounds like what it is. Like clink, yip, kaboom, swish, meow, oink. (That’s the verbatim transcript of my bachelor party, in case anyone’s wondering.) This is different from a word that describes a sound or action, but doesn’t actually imitate it — e.g., sneeze vs. achoo, punch vs. kapow, close vs. slam. The latter are onomatopoeia; the former, I call ononotopoeia. For the sake of brevity, let’s refer to these O and not-O. The Japanese language is rich in O. There’s a sound effect for everything. There’s probably a sound effect for there being a sound effect for everything. (If there isn’t, I’d like to propose one now: darubu.) There are even sound effects for things that don’t actually make sound — e.g., “jii” for staring. While it’s woven into the fabric of the modern Japanese language, O is especially prevalent in manga and, to a somewhat lesser extent, anime. Since visual novels draw heavily from these two worlds, they too feature lots and lots of these words. English is relatively impoverished in O by comparison, and therein lies the challenge for VN translators and editors. Do you leave these essentially untranslatable sound effects as they are? Or do you try to translate them, losing some of their immediacy and, for lack of a better word, oomph? Across the great divide The VN community seems to be fairly split on that question. In one camp, we have the purists. By and large, these are readers who are already comfortable with Japanese O through manga and anime. They consider it part and parcel of the VN experience. Learning and appreciating such terms is simply part of becoming an accomplished reader. It’d be like going to a fine dining restaurant and, instead of the chef presenting you with “the amuse-bouche,” he just came out and said, “Here’s this small appetizer thingy I made. Hope you like it.” The vocabulary is part of the experience. In the other camp, we have the reformists. To them, leaving O untouched isn’t translation; it’s mere transliteration. It denies meaningful content to the uninitiated English reader — e.g., if you don’t know "munyu" means to grope someone, you’ll be clueless when the best girl hauls off and smacks the protagonist in the very next line. To extend the fine dining metaphor, it’d be like going to the same restaurant, being handed a menu that was all in French, and having the waitstaff snootily refuse to tell you what anything meant. Hope you like thymus glands, mon ami, because that’s what you just ordered. When it came to KoiRizo, I was a reformist editor on a purist project. I joined the team after the translation had been completed and a lot of the big up-front decisions had already been made: Will this be a literal translation or liberal? (Literal.) Will we keep all the honorifics? (Yes.) Will we keep all the onomatopoeia? (Yes.) MDZ, the KoiRizo project lead, was very up-front about all this. And that was fine. The job of a VN editor is to facilitate and execute on the project lead’s vision. It’s great if you’re involved early enough to shape that vision, but it’s ultimately his/her show, not yours. (If you’re not okay with that, go start your own TL project.) So with that in mind, I did the best purist editing job I could. But what if I had carte blanche in how I approached O? What would I do differently? As luck would have it, I’ve given that some thought. Onomatopoeia in standard scripts For the majority of scripts, it helps to separate O-words into two groups: content-light ad content-heavy. The content-light group tends to consist of interjections, exclamations, grunts, groans, laughs, etc. These are mostly self-explanatory terms, communicating very little other than the fact that they’re a familiar sound. Some examples include: HoEAHehUuuAt most, I’ll clean these up to make them friendlier to Western eyes — “A! A sea cucumber!” becomes “Ah! A sea cucumber!” (In this case, it’d be too easy to mistake the “A” sound for a stammering repetition of the indefinite article “a.”) Otherwise, I’m happy to leave them be. On the other side, we have the content-heavy O-words. These are either (1) terms that have a very specific meaning you’d never be able to guess at without prior knowledge, or (2) common sounds that are rendered much differently in English than Japanese. These are the words that, if you ignore them, will result in meaningful content being lost in translation. Some examples include: Kakkun = the “sound” of hitting someone in the back of the knees. Based on a kids’ game.Su = the sound of something suddenly appearing (among other meanings)Gusu = the sound of a whimpering sobHakushon = the sound of sneezingChikutaku = the sound a clock makesOur first line of attack is to see if there’s any suitable English onomatopoeia we can swap in. It’s rare that it works out so neatly, but it does happen. So "hakushon" becomes “achoo,” "chikutaku" becomes “tick tock,” etc. If this doesn’t work, we fall back on another common approach: turning not-O English words into O by enclosing them in asterisks. So: “Gusu. Why won’t you return any of my calls?" becomes: *whimper* “Why won’t you return any of my calls?” As your final line of defense, you might consider abandoning O altogether, instead relying on some explanatory text to flesh out the intended meaning. So: Su. “Where do you think you’re going, jerk?” becomes: She appeared out of nowhere. “Where do you think you’re going, jerk?” I’d recommend turning to this as a last resort, however, since you can see a certain staccato elegance gets lost in translation. As for where you can find out what all these untranslated O-words mean, there are all sorts of online resources to be had out there. I tend to use the Japanese > English SFX dictionary over at The JADED Network, but I’m sure there are plenty of others just as good. Onomatopoeia in H-scenes Sex scenes are something of a special case. You’ll find there are large blocks of text that are nothing but wall-to-wall O. (I see what you did there, you sly dog you ...) Here are some sample lines from KoiRizo: Sango: “Nafufu. Fumu, Juru, Zuzuzu." Sango: "Rero, Chu, Chuu ..." Sango: "Hamu, Chuu, Chuu ... Rero, Juupu, Zuzu." Sango: "Jupo, Gupo, Zu." Sango: "Juzuzuzuzu." Sango: "Fumu? Fua ..." During editing, I liked to call these sections “word salad.” They’re an unholy mishmash of content-heavy O, content-light O, and nonsensical fuck-grunts. It’s a tangled mess of syllables that can make even the bravest editor or translator turn tail and run. In my earlier post on editing H-scenes, one of the commenters — smile for the camera, Ittaku! — suggested it might just be better to replace these sections with ellipses and let the VO do all the heavy lifting. It’s a tempting thought. But despite all appearances, there’s content to be had there — content the Japanese reader would have understood, and which the English reader will miss out on ... unless you take action. Let’s see what happens if we (somewhat liberally) run it through the techniques we’ve discussed so far. Sango: "Ummph. Umm." *slurp* *sluuurp* Sango: “Mmm.” *suuuck* Sango: *nibble* *suck* “Mmmm ...” *bob* *sluuurp* Sango: *sucksuck* *slurp* Sango: *slurpslurpslurpsluuurp* Sango: "Mmmph? Ahhh ..." Okay, it ain’t poetry, but at least we’ve transformed our tossed salad it into something with actual meaning. Even without having read the rest of the scene, you can guess that Sango is vigorously polishing the protagonist’s knob. Or is trapped in a vat of ramen and eating her way to freedom. It can be improved upon, of course; all those asterisks start getting visually distracting, so if the VN engine supports it, italics might be a better choice here. But I’d argue it’s much better than what we started with. Feeling more confident? Good. Go forth and sploosh.

Laziness, and a reluctance to think for themselves.

Introduction: When it comes to reading VN's in Japanese, required skills can be grouped into four areas: Vocab, grammar, basic parsing skill, and kanji skill. In this post, for each area I'm going to explain: -what knowing skills in the area are good for -how you might study them -how much you'll need to start reading. I'll also give some related tips. The requirements mentioned below are a conservative estimate. I've known people who've jumped in to playing VN's with less or much less, but I'm giving a safe estimate. A level which at most people, without any special knack for learning languages through immersion, should be able to gain traction. If you learn this much before starting an easyish VN, the amount you are completely lost should be significantly less than the percentage you are able to pick up and improve from. This is not a comprehensive how-to guide by any means. Just an informative post. ------------------ 1. Vocab Knowing enough vocab to study your grammar resource without being bogged down by vocab: -About 30 verbs and 50 other words for Genki 1/ Tae kim Basic. -By the time you get to Genki 2/Tae Kim Essential you'll want a good set of verbs (about 100), and maybe about 300 total vocabulary. -~600 words about how much you'll want to be able to study N3 grammar without getting bogged down in vocab. Having enough vocab to start your first VN: -I recommend over 1000, but anywhere from 800-1300 is good. I remember trying Clannad with only 800, and I felt like ramming my head into a wall. It's also important to pick an easy title. It will still feel hard no matter what, but an easy title will be much more helpful and rewarding to play. You also must just translation aggregator and ITH. They are the reason why Visual Novels are the best medium for learning Japanese out of anime/books/movies/drama/etc. Vocab Lists: There's a dedicated verb list here: http://nihongoichiban.com/2012/08/13/list-of-all-verbs-for-the-jlpt-n4/ Verbs are helpful to learn, because they are often the most important part of the sentence AND you need to to have stuff to conjugate. In general JLPT-based vocab list is here: http://www.tanos.co.uk/jlpt/jlpt5/vocab/ Regarding English definitions: Be mentally open and flexible. If the english definition doesn't quite add up, don't try and think about it too hard. Focus instead on associating the word with the situations where you see it. For example, you might be confused by the word 都合 and it's unhelpful definition J-E definition, but if you seen 都合がいい used in a situation where you know it means "is convenient for me" from context then remember that occurence. There might be (there are, in fact), other usages of the word 都合, but that doesn't hurt you in anyway. The next time you see 都合 you can pair it against this meaning and see if that makes any sense. 2. Grammar Skills With N5+N4 grammar you will be barely able to start making your way through a VN. Without N4, you will have quite limited gains in the long term from reading visual novels. (Equivalent to Genki 1+2.) -Required to be able to play VN's With N3 grammar, everything will feel a lot clearer, the amount of grammar you'll understand will exceed 60%. (Equiv. to Intermediate approach to Integrated Japanese). Highly recommended to study this before or soon after you start your first VN. N2 grammar further cuts the amount of unknown grammar you face in three. N1 is kind of like a bonus that gives you a lot of uncommon or formal expressions. It's NOT comprehensive at all, in terms of covered all Japanese phrases. From my experience, some of the phrases you learn in here show up often in novels (ばかり、んばかり), others quite less. Good to know, though Expressions not covered in JLPT There are a lot of patterns and phrases not covered in JLPT that you will see in typical native reading material. Examples (社長に議長, phrases like なんだと！？ Xってなんだ？　ですって！？　～てくれないかな。 オレって、なんてバカなんだ ) Not to worry, many of them can be picked up as you go. For the rest, once you get settled into reading, you can start noting down those phrases you don't get and google them or ask other people. Imabi for grammar You can also try studying from http://www.imabi.net/. It's a phenomenal reference, it's just goes into tons of depth, too much. I think there's 2 or 3 times as much information there is covered by JLPT up to JLPT 1. As such it's going to be overwhelming for a beginner and is much better suited as a reference for intermediate or advanced learners. 3. Basic Parsing Skill Knowing the different types of words (Covered by doing a vocab list of about 100 verbs, and then the JLPT 5 list. You also have to have done or be doing Tae Kim's Basic Guide, since he explains what na-adj's, i-adj's, and other word types are, etc.). -(nouns, suru-verbs/nouns, verbs, na-adj's, i-adj's, adverbs, temporal adverbs) -Required to be able to play VN's. Knowing the basic sentence structure and how words can modify each other and fit in a sentence.: (adjectives modifying nouns, verbs). The knowledge is covered by Tae Kim Basic + a mix of Essential Grammar and Genki 1/2. I personally find Tae Kim's explanation good even though the learning curve is steep and his lessons aren't good for review like Genki books are. He tries to convey to you the big picture. -Required to be able to play VN's. Being able to breakdown sentences and spot the different types of words based on their position. -you can practice this by reading bits of text in your genki textbook, but more likely, the first time you really gain this skill is going to be the first month in which you read a visual novel with TA. Heavily practiced during your first month or two of reading VN's. 4. Kanji Skill: Learning to spots radicals in kanji (could be covered by doing the 214 radicals, about 1 month. You could also do this ongoing basis, learning how to spot the radicals that make up a kanji, for the words you learn.) -not needed to read VN's with TL aggregator, but extremely helpful for learning new words which have new kanji. Learning to remember kanji, ie. start recognizing when words share the same kanji. (it is a long ongoing gradual process. You can start doing this with the vocab you learn once you are comfortable learning vocab. You can also pick out words you see in vn's and check whether they use the same kanji by typing them out (example 朝（あさ）　and　朝食（ちょうしょく）　use the same kanji.). Oh course, to be able to easily produce the kanji you want to compare you need to remember how to spell a word that contains it (in this case 朝). So, as your vocab expands, you'll be able to compare more kanji. Note that to be able to do this comparing you must be able to spot radicals in kanji (previous level skill). -moderately helpful for learning vocabs. The same way remembering radicals helps learning with kanji: if you know the kanji clearly, you can remember a word just by the two kanji it uses, which is very precise and doesn't take a lot of mental bandwidth. It also means that you will much more rarely confuse words which have similiar looking kanji. The following two skills are for more advanced, they won't be particularly useful until much later. You might not notice the problems they solve until later as well. I include them mainly for completeness. Learning on-yomi for many of the Jyouyou kanji (start when you are intermediate-advanced, a medium-long process) -helpful for exactly what it is, reading kanji words and compounds correctly. -don't need to worry about this. From learning vocab you might pick up some of the common ones, but there's no need to pursue this actively for a while. Learning kanji meaning: (start when you are advanced, and can use a J-J dictionary) -suffixes like 府、省、性、症, as well normal kanji whose different meanings apply to clusters of words. -helpful for kanji compounds which won't directly show up in dictionaries -helpful for developing a native level understanding of vocabulary (not everything can be learned by exposure). A lot of literary words are fairly influenced by their kanji meanings, though sometimes consulting the word differentiation explanations can be more helpful. One last topic... On learning enough grammar and jumping into works too difficult for you. Reading a VN isn't the best way to learn basic sentence structure. However, it's a great way to reinforce grammar points you've learned. It's also a great way to get an understanding of conversational patterns you won't find in textbooks or JLPT. But you won't have the presence of mind to pay attention to that if you are bogged down by not knowing basic grammar. There are benefits for venturing early into native material or difficult vn's, but you wouldn't give a grade two student Tolkien, or even Harry Potter to improve their English. All the fancy prose and unusual concept would distract you from the more immediately useful things like, say: basic sentence structure. There are works which are the right level, and there are VN's which you really want to read. For the best experience, it's best to find some combination of the two. ------------------ Ok that's all for now. Feel free to ask any questions: I didn't really go into the details of how to study, instead focusing on the, well, skills involved. But it's also hard to remember what it's like for someone just starting out. I remember parts of studying very clearly, but I forget the thousands of things I used to be puzzled through varying stages of understanding but now take for granted. The process was all I could think about for the longest time. Now I don't give it much thought, it's just a regular part of my life, reading and a bit of studying. It's not bad idea, to just find a type of study that you know is helpful, stop thinking about all the right ways and wrong ways and magic tricks which don't exist, and just do it, for a while. Regularly. For a month or three.

Hey there, Firstly I'm not associated with any of the other groups that have been translating this game, but I'd like to say that I have posted a preliminary English patch of Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient here: http://www.mediafire.com/download/lzema5cz6ogh51y It is by no means supposed to replace the work that the other groups have been doing, and I strongly urge you to get their's when it comes out, they worked with a team so it is very likely to be less rough around the edges, and also they have some cool bonus material. But if you know that you can't wait for their version to be uploaded, there is already a version at the above link See the README for installation instructions. *NOTE: THIS IS A PATCH, IT REQUIRES A JAPANESE COPY OF THE GAME TO WORK [Edit]: Kinda just realised that I mistranslated some of the character's names. I uploaded an update to the same link as above in which the names are fixed. [Double-edit]: Sorry for the shameless self-promo, but I edited the third Japanese trailer for corpse party with my English version which can be found on Youtube here: https://youtu.be/c62M1AEFQT0 with some subtitles edited in real quick. But it's not like I want you to watch it or anything...Baka! [Triple-edit]: People'll still be able to post here, and I'll still read it, but I finally got a website set up, so I'll be posting my progress on what I'm doing next with this translation over there, seeing how the patch needs more than a little ironing out. I didn't want to be a click-baitor or misleading, but I'm also going to change the name of the thread to be more google-friendly... My website, which will be updated with explanations on what is happening with the project can be found here: http://gumiislife.wix.com/hikikomorihonyaku

Which version would you play? MiKandi Japan wants to know! Check out the poll (it's only 2 questions!). (Poll) Which version of Libra of the Vampire Princess would you play? Game info available here: Sanahtlig's Corner: Steam Greenlight for eroge Libra of the Vampire Princess

skynet some people shouldnt be allowed to drive or do anything dangerous, they are a hazard for themself and the rest of the population...

Mate, I have no idea why you even pay attention to people complaining. People don't like that you advertise? Tough. People don't like what you have to say? Tough. People don't like the way you say things? Tough. A significant number of people on the internet need to learn how to ignore shit they don't like without a piece of software to do it for them. It used to be a valuable skill back in the day. On the other hand they are also free to complain, and whine, and bitch, just as you're free to ignore them. Do as you wish within the rules, you're lucky enough to live in a free country. and let people react how they react *shrugs*

7 cute to beautiful 2d grills anybody who chooses non-adult is cray

You don't know laziness and stupidity until you've read the Darwin Award books.

Just got some AliceSoft stuff in and thought I could share it here. I needed stuff to tide me over until the next Rance game/OVA drops. C82 AliceSoft set:

Lol, dat source code tho "No, you can't see it today."

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

Despite the title, this isn't a horrible VN. It is basically a rehash of Himesama Gentei which was a near-nukige all-moege about a protagonist 'romancing' (I have to wonder if you would really call a bunch of princesses falling in love with one idiot and him deciding on one or a harem route 'romancing') princesses. I can actually enjoy some of the heroines' routes... but the premise is so ridiculous and so unrealistically presented that it goes beyond suspension of disbelief, even for a moege. Understand, ridiculousness in moege settings is par for the course... but the classic 'the heroines are all my sisters because my dad really got around' premise is one of the more annoying ones. That isn't to say there isn't some good stuff... Maika, for instance, is one of those rare tsundere who becomes supremely adorable after you enter her route and never goes back to being tsun, and Io's 'boke-boke' statements made in absolute seriousness are fairly funny. However, I've played so many other VNs in a similar vein that are so much better... it makes me wonder why I stole an hour here and an hour there over the past five days in between my work schedule to push through with finishing this game. The routes really don't escape the templates for their 'princess' types, so I honestly can't say that I was surprised by anything I found in this VN. There is also too much H early in this VN... so much that I would have been tempted to call this a nukige, if it weren't for the fact that the writing and character development are fairly solid, at least for a VN of the type. Overall, this VN isn't something to get excited about, but if you like 'princess' heroines it is a decent choice... Why is this month so bad so far? It isn't that it is bad... it is just that there is a disproportionate amount of second-rate VNs being released for September. So far, there is nothing that I would have called VN of the Month material, though if Seikishi had toned down the H and worked harder on solidifying the story in general, it might have been one. Most of the good stuff that was supposed to get released for September got delayed, so I suppose it is only natural... but still, I don't like having all the good stuff concentrated in one or two months of the year. That tends to cause kusoge-exhaustion after a while, lol.

This is especially fitting considering I'm in the middle of a computer ethics lecture right now

/me smiles Nice article again. For the most part I usually translate onomatopoeia to their equivalents or explain them out, exactly as you've said... apart from H scenes. While your "translated" sounds are great for the H scene in that example, the problem I encounter is simply running out of equivalents. So I translate the obvious ones (slurp, suck, etc) and transliterate the rest. Good thing there are great editors out there like yourself to "fix" this problem

I think it depends whether the goal is to give a similar experience, or give the reader all the information to understand the work. The elegant solution is elegant in that you can appreciate the editor/TL coming up with it, but it might not be inherently better than the footnote. It's just that more often than not you are trying for seamlessness.

You know, the best way to treat this app is to just pretend you never heard about it, don't talk about it, and thus hope that nobody around you will even use it.

social media is cancer

All I could find: 1 - Tasogare Sora by Chata (Ending song from Hoshiuta ~Starlight Serenade~) 2 - Kazemachi Jet by Maaya Sakamoto (Ending song from Tsubasa Chronicle 2nd Season) 3 - Rengoku Scarlett by Madoka Yonezawa 4 - Signal Graph by Annabel (Opening song from Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate) 5 - 101 Kaime no Noroi by Golden Bomber 7 - Life by Mika Nakashima 8 - Kyou ni Koiiro by May'n (3rd opening song from Inari, Konkon, Koi Iroha) 12 - Piece of Love by Ryouko Shintani 13 - Infinite Crisis by Faylan (Last chapter song from Tantei Opera Milky Holmes) 14 - Tonica by PMMK

Ah, a competitor? ; ) Actually, I'm Iarumas, the head of the translation project you're talking about. Talk about irony, but I just finished replying to another thread about our patch and this one here mentions it, too. Thank you for placing your faith in our translation, we are doing our best to deliver the best possible final product that we can. I'll try to keep you guys more up to date now that I am aware of the existence of these threads.

I think the problem isn't just with marketing, but how you market it. Your post on reddit some time ago illustrates this: first of all, you used a clickbait title, which is frowned upon. Second, you more or less threw three links out there, without much context. A more carefully written post which eased readers into the subject and gave more context to each link would probably have been received somewhat better. The commenters were still a bit too faggoty though, rip. tl;dr the way you present your content is important

Keep doing what you do Sanah. Don't care about what others think. You are more appreciated than you think. The opposing side is always louder than the side which agrees.

Random info from onomatope*'s producer: If anyone interested, this is the one from 8 years ago that they mentioned.

Volcanoes, tsunamis and earthquakes have never prevented people from living in risky zones. Much in the same way massive solar flares are something that can happen, although the probability isn't that high, and we can't do much about it - actually we can, there are ways to mitigate its effects. The consequences wouldn't be THAT bad on the scale of "shit that could happen". I don't think it justifies a less heavy reliance on technology. If you're thinking about nuclear bombs as I assume you are, E = mc^2 has little to do with it. Most of the energy of a nuclear fission comes from the binding energy of nuclei, not from rest energy, and the sheer power of it relies on chain reaction. Einstein probably had more of a role to play in the invention of the nuclear bomb by explaining to Roosevelt how dangerous it could be and that the germans were trying to develop it - something which, iirc, he did regret later in his life, but he certainly didn't regret for his work in physics.

You know, there's nothing wrong with literal translations provided they are accompanied by a shitload of translator notes. If no translation notes (or explanations) are forthcoming, then leaving Japanese words in the script is poor translation philosophy. In fact I'll go one step further, leaving unexplained Japanese words in the script is an incomplete translation. It's why literally translated literature come with 400 odd translator notes in the back, and it's part of the reason why official anime is localised (because it's not a medium that can support such TL notes well.)

I think the plan was to release Shiny Days in August, Seinarukana in September and probably one or two additional games during Fall. But they messed up and got delayed when the new site took way too much time and resources. Hopefully we could see an update in a week or two about the game when everything about Shiny Days is cooling down with all the shipping and patches. A November release of Seinarukana is maybe a bit optimistic but that's my guess.

Margit is awesome but her routeeee.. I'unno. Kokoro's is better, you'll probably like it. Get hype for more Maru in A-5. Calculus says it should be out already but alas, not even an ETA. Looking forward to Takae here.

Oh god, not these two again. We all know that this isn't to protect people from harassment but to silence critics right? Disregarding the fact that men sometimes suffer harassment more than women, this is simply a ridiculous argument they are making. Worse for them it's a double-edged sword. In Anita's videos she takes a Marxists approach, stating that people (people meaning men) are so blind and stupid that they can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality and that by playing and enjoying video games that depict sexism (not represent, depict. Big difference Anita) we are endorsing real-world sexism. I've also seen people such as Sargon of Akaad, Thunderf00t, Mr Repzion and AlphaOmegaSin level honest and fair criticisms at her only to brushed off by her fans and herself as sexism and trolling. Well guess what Anita, that's slanderous, and by extension, harassment. So those "trolls" and myself could just as easily silence you. Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lXq353lay4 Really, really diggin' this.

i played nagisa route, after confession then love scene? that escalated more quickly than in umi route

I'd say 0/10 for clickbait but I seem to have some sort of mental disorder which makes me find most of your posts humorous.

The patriarchy must have done this.

My feelings on this are very complicated.

~Darbury, 2015

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?

I dont go reading visual novels in public because we got righteous transient a******* everywhere who believe there is only 1 way to do things. At least my VN novels are a better love story than your Twilight and have better sex scenes than your 50 Shades of Grey.

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.

After several days of headache I'm happy to present you new AE VN Tools build, now with full YU-RIS v4.90 archives and read-only YCG images support (they're named as .png, although the structure has nothing in common with normal PNGs, apart data compression (zlib)). I'll add creation of YCG images only if there will be a need for this. Although it's not that hard (split image in half, compress each part separately), but I don't want to do extra work without a purpose. P.S. The tool is only able to generate YU-RIS archives of certain versions, yet can open any version from v1.00 to v4.00 with no code changes thanks to my heuristics algorithm. If you need support for a particular version, please let me know (supplying the version number and encryption flag (0xFF or alike, see "Format" line in the GUI) will be enough).

My most hated character is no doubt Sakaki Chizuru from Muv Luv. (Rage censored in spoiler)