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I'm guessing some of those that follow my blog are wondering why I haven't started up any random VNs this month... there are a number of reasons. 1) I'm busy. I have my work, with an addition of university, which takes up about 80% of my time, save for a few days like today when I have time to rest and relax. 2) I simply don't have an appreciation for anything in my backlog right now. I cleared out most of the most interesting stuff over the last two years, and I'm keeping what little is left for a truly rainy day, when I'm not busy and I don't have anything better to do. 3) This has been a very dry quarter. July, August, and September were mostly dry of interesting releases, and I'm saving up energy for Kenseiki Alpha Ride, which I promised certain people I would play early on, rather than waiting until a later date as I commonly do with most gameplay-VNs. 4) This has been a particularly bad month irl. I've been helping my brother get ready to move his family into our place for a few months while their old place is on the market and they are closing on their new place, I've been applying for a graduate program, and I got several major commissions that have kept me locked down a lot more than I would have liked. 5) I promised myself I wouldn't play any more moege/charage until I've played Kenseiki or the new Fortissimo. Now for my thoughts... Today's post is going to be focused on what makes a good chuunige. I should probably define the origins of chuuni as opposed to what a chuunige is. First of all, if any of you have seen Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai, you have at least a vague idea of what chuunibyou is like. Basically, take your average D&D nut or cosplayer and add some delusions of glory to him, and you have a chuunibyou patient. That's simplifying matters somewhat, but it is also fairly accurate for a good portion of them, though. Chuuni, on the other hand, is literature, games, anime, etc. that feels like it comes out of the mind of a chuunibyou patient. Drama on a large scale, often in somewhat familiar settings, is probably the easiest and most obvious way to tell if something is chuuni. In addition, in a good chuuni-anything, the protagonist is never a self-insert carbon copy of your average harem-building protagonist. I say this because it is the easiest way to tell when something isn't a chuunige, as chuuni protagonists are supposed to experience and/or be something that is beyond what you can experience in your life, whether it is psychologically or physically. Most chuunige have action of some sort, but not all of them do. A famous chuunige that isn't mostly action - that a lot of you will have played - is G-senjou no Maou. In a way, Sharin no Kuni can also be considered a chuunige, for a similar reason. The more 'standard' type of chuunige is the 'gakuen battle' type. The most obvious translated examples of this are Tsukihime, FSN, and Comyu. In this type, a schoolkid somehow gets mixed up in a horrible situation that should kill him right off the bat, but he somehow survives to become central to 'the conflict'. A rarer type is the 'mature protagonist taking on the world' type. This is easily my favorite type, as protagonists in these VNs tend to have more solid philosophies and are less... idiotic. I think most people will agree that Shirou from FSN is a bit immature, though he had mature aspects. However, protagonists in these are adults, whether they are grown up fully or not. An example of this type that is translated would be Sharin no Kuni's protagonist. For untranslated, Hello, Lady and Vermillion Bind of Blood (Toshiro from Vermillion reminds me of Auron from FF X, hahaha) come to mind. Generally speaking, the themes of these VNs will be a lot larger in scale than you usually see in the gakuen battle types. This is because the themes are generally written to keep pace with the protagonists, lol. The last type is the 'poetic' type, where a writer is obviously masturbating with his keyboard. Masada's works are the most obvious examples of this (Dies Irae, Paradise Lost, Kajiri Kamui Kagura), though Light's 'other' chuuni-crew also writes similar VNs, and Devils Devel Concept and Bradyon Veda by Akatsuki Works both fall into this category. In this type of chuunige, the action, the story, and the visuals all exist as an excuse for the writer to try to blow you away. Currently, the only one of this type in translation is Tokyo Babel, whose release is sometime off... though I'm tempted to include Sekien no Inganock in this crew. For someone who loves complex, deep prose, these VNs are pure crack... but in exchange, they are also incredibly difficult to read for someone not native to the language. Overall, reading chuunige is all about having fun. It isn't about being moe-ed to death or being awed by the pretty pastel colors... it is about enjoying the part of you that never quite gave up that desire to be or see something more...

Why am I writing this? I don’t know, I just felt like sharing. Where to start… Well, as all of you I am a fan of Visual Novels. I’ve read a few, but due to personal problems I had to stop for my own good. However, I found out that reading violent VNs with no romance was OK, so two weeks ago I read Kikokugai – The Cyber Slayer and Hanachirasu. After that I wanted to read more, but sadly most are not translated so I went and tried to read I/O… until I found Togainu no Chi… Now, during random searches on VNDB this one had come across me a few times, and despite liking Yaoi anime, the screenshots of the H-scenes just made me say “Ew, I’m not touching that.” A week ago I noticed it was translated, and whilst I was preparing to read I/O, I thought: “To hell with it, it’s Nitro+ so it’s good.” So I began reading TnC. Finished it just now and I am proud to say… I don’t regret my choice, as I loved every moment of it. The action, the characters, the music (first VN I ever found besides Blazblue with Metal), the CGs… and even the H-scenes. Yes, I enjoyed the sex scenes, the muscled bishounens raping and loving each other. Granted, not in a sexual way, but that’s not what this is about. I guess the point of this is that I just wanted to say: Don’t let prejudice and a narrow mind hinder you. I thought this would be somewhat disgusting and I found myself enraptured by Togainu no Chi. Do I think I’m special because I’m a straight guy who reads and enjoys Yaoi? I’d be lying if I said I didn’t, and I guess we all require something to make us feel unique. Despite this foolishness of mine, in the end we’re all equal and bound by the same thing, the love for the medium and I… am just another Visual Novels reader. That is all and I thank you for taking the time to read this. Here: a nice,albeit sad music:

Now that I'm not on a mobile device, here's a little rant on this stupidity. This also goes for 99% of "simulator games" out there. The whole "simulator" trend was started by one game, and that game is Surgeon Simulator. The point of Surgeon Simulator was to be a joke, a parody of its title, by throwing you into a ridiculous situation where you're suppose to operate on a patient using really wonky controls and dealing with crazy physics. So you weren't really simulating what being a real surgeon was like, and that was the whole gag. Why was Surgeon Simulator a success though? While there are different opinions, I personally think we can attribute the success to a few factors. First off, Surgeon Simulator had a beginning and an end. You knew what you were supposed to do, you were rewarded for doing things, and that made you feel like you were making your time investment worthy. Secondly, while the controls were pretty crazy, they still managed to let you do things as long as you got the hang of it. It was a learning experience for sure, but one that was made fun by all the different situations you had to adapt to. Lastly, Surgeon Simulator actually felt like it had effort put into it. You see, while Surgeon Simulator did come off as a whacky physics game, the fact of the matter is this was very much intentional and the game was made to function correctly with these crazy physics. Yes, things might end up all over the place and you might break some stuff, but the game's core was built around making you work around these scenarios, and that's why it worked so damn well. Fast forward a bit and you do have games that managed to grasp this working concept and mold it into something unique. Known examples would be "Goat Simulator" and "I Am Bread". Both these titles managed to create controlled chaos that was fun to play and gave its fanbase something to work towards. So why am I saying all this? Basically to illustrate everything these recent simulator games are not doing. What most developers of simulator games don't realise is that, what makes the good simulator games is their content, not lack thereof. We don't play goat simulator just because the physics are broken, we play Goat Simulator because on top of having weird physics, these broken physics are put in there to allow you to achieve things. Why is this Yohjo Simulator stupid? Because all it does is letting you play with the environment and then that's it, you've discovered everything the game has to offer. There's nothing to earn, nothing to work towards, nothing to gain, there's just broken physics in a sandbox environment. But if I had to point out what I most hate about developers who make these kinds of games, its their sheer lack of self awareness, or rather, the way they pretend to be dumb and write off their poorly done game as "satire". From the Greenlight page: You see this shit right here? This is the kind of horse hockey ideals that need to disappear from developing. Writing off "there's no goal" does not automatically mean it will make your game a fun and creative experience. Minecraft has no explicit goal either, but you know all the content it provides allows you to do something fun. Yohjo Simulator though? Well you can kick walls around. Ain't that fucking fun? "You can decide the goal for yourself". Well, sure, but what goal? There's absolutely nothing to do! "It's the same as in life". Bruh, that's so deep, you should post that on /r/ShowerThoughts And then the cherry on top, "this is an amazingly realistic simulator". Trying to pretend you're dumb, that you yourself understand your game is a joke and laughing it off in the description, shamelessly not caring about the fact you're attempting to sell people an empty box. But Yohjo Simulator is just one of thousands of "simulator" games that haunt Steam Greenlight. Countless shameless "developers" attempt to patch together some assets in some random game engine to create some sandbox environment where you move around and interact with pointless shit. It never seems to end. For every good simulator game there's 10000 crappy ones. And why? Because people upvote it if you just sugarcoat it enough. Because if it's "memey" enough, it's probably going to get through, and it's a darn shame. I beg of you, if you care about any form of quality control on games, please don't upvote this kind of crap.

"- Spelling and grammatical errors are comon" Batman...

Thank god for Jim fucking Sterling, son.

Like others have said, what you read doesn't dictate what you are as a person. There's nothing wrong with enjoying a yaoi game. I've read a couple yaoi romances that were actually pretty fun and I'm not gay either. As for the sex scenes, male rape is actually the only kind of rape I can deal with when it comes to hentai. I can't really explain why though, but I guess what's interesting for me is seeing the typically strong male characters made powerless whereas when it's female rape it's typically always someone who was already powerless being taken advantage of. So I don't blame you for enjoying a different side to sex scenes, I myself have come to find many things I didn't think I would enjoy by exploring around. I opened this thread expecting your comments on anal fissures. Was not disappointed.

I don't play smite or any other MOBA game but that video was actually really funny in spanish xD

To expand on what Storyteller's said: For lines 2& 3: consider: "But I can't... " / "It's less that you can't drink and more that you won't, right?" Here, consider what would be the first word in the English translation, were Caprese's line stated in full. In Japanese, it's 酒が飲めない; in English, "I can't drink alcohol." I would really, really recommend translating the 辛いことがあった bit as "Something bad happened, right" in this context. "What is it about alcohol that troubles you" (using liquor in this context sounds weird to my (American) ears; is that standard in British English?) feels like you're asking why you don't like e.g. the feeling of being buzzed. For the last line, perhaps "[...]moping about is the same as asking everyone to pity you"?

Lizards, dicks, vaginas, oh my! I took on a strange, almost interesting fetish VN. The Menagerie, the most recent VN from Lupiesoft (The Demon Reject Toko) tells of a sex slave, Rao-Ji, and her sudden growth as a character into something that almost resembles character development. Give the review a read here

Appreciate it

Confession: I didn't really need six people to like my handsome face, but I guess it can't hurt.

read this as "I have the urge to cut huge things" was quite confused

I saw that all the other relevant MOBA's had a topic, so I thought I might as well make one for Smite. I haven't played in a while, since most of the people I played with stopped playing long ago, but I think the game is a ton of fun (aside from there being some server problems right now, apparently) and was curious if anyone else here plays it. It'd be cool to get a group going, we could do some dank custom matches Anyways, if you haven't heard of it/checked it out yet, it's a 3rd person MOBA where you play as gods and dieties from different pantheons, a relatively interesting concept, and I really like how they designed most of them. Even if you aren't really into MOBA's i'd say check it out, since it's vastly different from your typical MOBA experience, that 3rd person perspective makes a huge difference. Forgot to mention that Smite is available on Steam, as well as being on their website if you would rather have a separate client. Also i'm just going to leave this here

Fixed the text so it is not inherently wrong. Now, I'm not sure how useful that thread is, or how much more it needs to be updated. But for now it should be functional.

This makes all the waiting worth it. If the routes are long, it usually means that it has a proper story and not just a big f**kfest. Who cares about the H right? *wink* Hopefully that's what happens. That was my main problem with the after story routes in Majikoi S. They were just for h scenes alone with no development of the relationship. It was pretty disappointing once I figured that out.

Let us not confuse animation and artistic direction. Shinkai's movie stand out because of their gorgeous computer graphics art, with complex and detailed backgrounds and incredible use of color. This is not animation. Animation is movement. Shinkai's movies are very static (well, especially the early ones since he was doing everything himself), they don't stand out for their animation but rather for their visuals. This aside, Hoshi wo Ou Kodomo is often said to be the "least Shinkai of the Shinkais" and "Shinkai doing Miyazaki", so I don't think it'll be his usual themes (it's his only film I haven't seen yet >.>).

Updates: Made chat bigger for all themesEDIT: Also fixed chat on phones/tablets so it's larger without a blank spaceFixed some theme bugsFixed missing GM, Admin and BM badgesAlmost done with donations systemThe "Temporal" theme dropped its background images. I restored the "Shattered" option, but I improvised with the other 3. If you want different images for it, just send me links to options. I figured a nice tree-and-lake, swirlies, and castle option set would appeal to the massesIncreased the size of cover photos on profile pagesYou CAN upload gifs to cover photos (*cough* @Emi *cough*). If you're not seeing them, it's because you need to re-position the image after you upload it (just click the cover image button and select "re-position") RE: Outdated Dev Boards Thread (@Jason_OCE) - You're right, that's something we'll need to re-write. Good catch.

Stop! I'm in a fetal position crying so much over here already! :(

You called it. Now you got it. I feel sorry for the poor bastard. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jHNs6mkG7I

For a game that's supposedly fetishistic, all the sex scenes were pretty mild with nothing new or interesting going on outside of the characters not being human. And no, just having a futanari character doesn't make it any more interesting if you don't make any non-typical use out of said character. This game falls squarely in the "We only want cute girls in our game but we need to have dicks in it somehow" category. This is one of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to the futa genre. There's nothing new or unique going on here. You could replace the protag with a guy basically. I had some hopes for this being a good quality monster girl sex game, but those hopes sorta went down the drain

I'm currently procrastinating to ever-living fuck in the midst of chain reading and essay writing so this would probably be the worst thing right now, but I'll admit even though I generally don't like MOBA's it looks pretty interesting. Might give it a go in a few days.

I could try robbing you if you'd like. Though I should warn you I tend to get a little carried away with my mischief.

Day One Dear Fuwa, today was somewhat uneventful. I didn't get robbed, and I didn't get my kidney stolen in my sleep. I have to wonder..maybe i'm not good enough to be robbed? Maybe I have bad kidneys that those black market organ stealer's wouldn't want? Probably something not worth dwelling on. Anyhow, I basically spent the whole day on Youtube and in several Skype groups, I was watching a ton of these super disturbing videos of creepy real (supposedly) 911 calls and other disturbing stories of attempted kidnappings, strangers living in someones basement, etc. Which (who would have guessed) spiked my paranoia through the roof and I found myself hearing every little sound in my house, and cautiously looking out the window whenever my dogs barked Oh, I've also been playing Million Arthur 2 and Soccer Spirits on the side all day. I tried messaging a few friends to see if they wanted to play something, but like usual they are either playing with other people or just don't want to play anything with me. I also drank a Red Bull and at a crap ton of candy from this huge bag of candy I got before they left on their trip, so my heartbeat is probably a bit faster than it should be, but if I don't think about it it probably won't bother me. Welp, i'm going to go feed my dogs and either sleep, lurk on Fuwa, watch some anime (random recommendations would be great), and freeze to death because it's ridiculously cold right now and my room only has two temperature settings, Antarctica and Hell. Hope this isn't too boring, thanks for listening

If you get bored while you home alone better to watch some movies to relax, like The Ring i heard it is very relaxing

Also on old Fuwabulous (still don't get why that's not the official name) the red discoloration issue persists

Since I've been meaning to put together a post on this for a while, given my own personal flailings in this direction, here's an attempt to answer the question. My post gives the benefit of the doubt and assumes you actually want to buy VNs, ideally supporting the developer that originally published it. Here's a list of all the options for that which I know of and have personally used: - Many VNs are officially licensed by western publishers for release in the US, and often other English-speaking countries as well. MangaGamer, JAST USA, and SekaiProject (all ages)/DenpaSoft (18+) are the big-name publishers currently officially licensing and translating VNs. If you can find what you want in one of these places, this is the easiest, probably cheapest (short of pirating - see bottom paragraph), and certainly most legal way of obtaining a VN. Assuming the VN you are interested in is not officially licensed for release outside Japan by one of the above, there are a variety of services for importing stuff from Japan. There are restrictions around exporting of 18+ materials from Japan, including most VNs, which is why importing is a bit sketchy, and why most VN materials are labeled "only for sale in Japan". However, there are still a variety of import services available: - You can use a "re-shipper" like tenso (I have personally used their service a few times, no issues with them). A re-shipper gives you a Japanese address. Then can buy anything (including 18+ material that would otherwise only ship in-country) from retailers like amazon.co.jp, which very likely has whatever VN you're looking for, but won't ship it out-of-country. When your purchase arrives at the re-shipper address, they have you approve the package, charge you a fee, and ship it on to you. This combination is the cheapest importing option I know of, usually, because amazon.co.jp prices are pretty competitive. Naturally, you need to be careful of both the original seller and the re-shipper when using this strategy, so there's a little more risk associated than most other options. - Mandarake, from what I understand, is a service that does online listing and sales of items which are for sale in a bunch of physical stores in Tokyo. I've ordered a couple things from them, never had any difficulties aside from problems using their search, and sometimes having trouble understanding what I was actually buying . This option is a mixed bag on cost, because sometimes you can get used items at a good deal, and sometimes you buy new items at a moderate or high price. It's a guarantee with this one that you will have to pay a pretty decent shipping price. - J-List has a rather small catalog of importable games, notably including pretty much any all-ages release by Key (and also some others). Cost is very high, substantially more so than the above two, but in my opinion this is the lowest-risk purchase. Also, it has the easiest-to-use search for an English speaker. A general tip for searching on any natively Japanese site, including both Mandarake and amazon.co.jp: you need to search on the Japanese title, or you won't find anything useful, and you should try various parts of the title if you're still having trouble. As an example, searching for "Comyu" on amazon.co.jp is going to yield nothing useful - if you instead search the Japanese sub-title, "黒い竜と優しい王国 -", you'll easily find what you're looking for. Rule of thumb: just look the game up on VNDB, copy the Japanese title below the English title, and paste that for searches on amazon.co.jp and Mandarake, or any other Japanese site you may find for purchasing VNs. Finally: if you want to pirate a VN that you can somehow legally pay for, well, good luck, and it's probably going to turn out fine. But I won't help you, and I hope you get a virus along with your torrent

Just because you read yaoi doesnt mean youre gay. I read yuris all the time but Im not a lesbian. Dont assume and question your sexuality with your vn preferences. The human mind is may be fickle but you shouldnt forcibly dislike something because society dictates you to.

Only reason I asked is because it sounds more like you are looking for a 2deep4me type show that is pretentious. But I didn't want to sound like a douche bag, until you informed me that google exists for a reason. Now I'm totally cool with being a douche. Anyway, some pointlessly edgy shows for you might be Rebuild of Evangelion, Mirai Nikki, and Madoka Magica. These will be fun, and make you feel like you saw something deep, which seems perfect For actual deeper psychological shows, JinRoh: The Wolf Brigade (a movie), Paprika (also a movie), Serial Experiments Lain, RahXephon, Neon Genesis Evangelion. These will be boring, but have actual depth to them.

Well, half a decade ago.... when I still had a soul and went to church on a weekly basis, I would have considered 95% of the otaku culture (I find myself neck deep in now) to be wholly disgusting and evil. I've crossed soo many boundaries since then, but yaoi still remains one of the few borders I dare not cross. I can't shake my indomitable phobia of anal fissures.

Bring home grill and play twister

Doge in the streets, dakimakura in the sheets?

You're a doge so it must be when you're in heat Yes, I feel good when banging random bitches in the streets.

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Surprised how on paper that team was a strong contender for the finals.... China is just a whole let down this year

Instead of reading this I could be learning Japanese... But in all honesty, learning to read Japanese is easier than you would think (mostly thanks to ITH and translation aggregator). I've been self studying for a bit over a year and I can finally read untranslated VNs decently well so long as I have those tools aiding me. Now speaking the language is where I truly struggle. Just like how you learn to read by reading, you learn to speak by speaking (and my speaking practice is comparatively much lower). I am convinced that within 1 - 2 years of self studying with an emphasize on reading, you will be able to read untranslated VNs. But if you want to speak and communicate in the language, that's where classes come in handy (and why I'm in a class now). Also, vice-versa. Classes won't really help much with reading, you're better off self studying if you want to read Japanese stuff.

Litania: I spend my nights shaking my butt (dancing) in front of drunkards, you know? Is something on your mind? Seeing as the first sentence and second have little to do with each other, I'm guessing it has something to do with the line previous. Caprese: Why is it you barmaids (? women working at bars? Woman in bars? Not sure what the correct equivalent here is.) are so unreserved/frank/blunt talking about these things? Litania: Are we? You might feel a little better just by talking about it, and besides, don't you know that acting despondent in front of others is like sending a sign that you want them to care?

Psychology is the study of mind and behavior. It is an academic discipline and an applied science which seeks to understand individuals and groups by establishing general principles and researching specific cases. Google exists for a reason. That's why I was trying to narrow it down to anime that features things like PTSD, schizophrenia, OCD, sociopathy... Or in a broader way examples of actual psychology as a science, used in fiction. For example, Death Note for me is nothing but a straightforward Shônen Jump manga that transposes to a "battle of wits" kind of story what is usually done in "battle of fists" kind of story in this magazine. I haven't watched One Outs but it seems like a regular sports manga. Serial Experiment Lain's themes have more to do with philosophy and sociology, the introspection done on the character of Lain and on which the anime centers, which is done in a very Evangelion-like way, is more akin to a narrative tool than an example of "psychology". Mawaru Penguindrum is a character drama with underlying themes as various as family and terrorism, going through many others in the process (it's a bit messy in this aspect). There's nothing very "psychological" about it. If we were to count as psychology any fiction that describes the mental processes of its characters or can be assimilated to a character study, we end up with the majority of all fiction ever done in our category, which is usually a symptom of an ill-defined category.

S was March to... July? So about four months of total work. My goal was to have the first draft of Benkei done by the end of the month; I'm not 100% confident that's happening at this point, but it shouldn't take too much more. Granted, that's a far cry from "done," but still. I will be shocked if things take till mid-2016. As for Sayaka's... I mean, there's no more quote-unquote "need" to redo it than there was for the S routes Wairu did, but there's a big part of me that regrets not redoing those routes so >_>

Representing the 10% of Fuwanovel, according to some dude whose name I forgot. Here's me, your typical petite nerdy Filipino girl. Can't remember when we took this, but it was still back when I was in college, when Bleach and Naruto were still very popular. I'm 26 now. I have the urge to hug cute things....

Best persona OST

"Hit it with your crossbow, Steve!"

Guess I can reveal myself as well.

"If you can't win what's gambled, you'll go crazy." - Mad Tex