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Are you interested in this ever-growing drive to get more people to read this fantastic but niche visual novel? Then join the Symphonic Rain discord: https://discord.gg/nBKSwkx No need to worry about spoilers for people interested for reading it in the future. We have a channel specifically for people who finished the VN to talk about spoilers discussing the VN freely. Outside that channel we require usage of rot13 to talk about spoilers so newer readers don't have to worry about being spoiled. That way they can discuss their reading progress freely. We also have a fun community in there that talks about other VN (and non-VN related things) as well as someone working on translating the side stories of Symphonic Rain.

Shadow of The Colossus for the PS4 is a remake of the PS2 game released back in 1876. The graphics hasn't been lightly touched here and there to make another profit from idiots like me who buy a game they already played and beaten. The graphics have been worked from the ground up to appear like modern day graphics. The game supports 4k resolution, and the environment has been reworked to include more textures, such as grass and rocks. You may be asking yourself "Mitch, the hell are you doing writing anything? Your grammar and sentence structure is so bad that I've contemplated blocking your illiterate ass several times." and you would be write. You may also be asking yourself why these details matter at all. Who cares about a little grass and some added rocks here and there? Well, you see with most remastered's they simply just up the engines lighting and maybe a few fixes on textures and character models, but to have a complete remake? That's something to be praised for. How many times has a game been just essentially re-released as a "remastered" and hardly anything was added? I mean, just look at the major differences from ps2, ps3 and the ps4. There is an obvious difference between each version outside of just simple furthering the render distance and upping textures. The PS4 version is the version you must have. It brings to life a level of definition that honors the original creators art. What else the remake adds is a photo mode with filters that can be accessible at any point by pressing down on the d-pad. New collectibles, the game keeps tracks of your statistics, and changes the controls a bit while still keeping the old school feel. Speaking of the old school feel, all you do is still kill colossi still. No new enemies, no hidden collectibles to gather except for some gold coins which no one is sure what they do if anything, no new colossi, just the same old giant, albeit pretty empty world. Of course, this emptiness could've been intentional and not simple a limitation of what the ps2 can handle. Now, there are bigger worlds from the ps2 era with more going on, such as GTA San Andreas, but you have to keep in mind that structurally, these are two different games. Now, I know its hard to wrap your head around the fact that this is not the same as this, but please bear with me here. GTA San Andreas focused on the feel of a large, living, breathing city. With citizens going about their day, gyms, fast food joints and a plethora of side activities. But the character models for GTA SA was very plain as far as animation is concerned. Sure there were unique ones with characters having arms stuck to their side, some people who slouch as they walk, etc, etc. While Shadow of The Colossus's character animations were complex. The main character flailed his arms around like he was constantly trying to shake something off, but it was detailed nonetheless. And of course there's the massive colossi's animations as well. Each was unique in design and in animation. This of course took up space on the memory and it worked. But enough of that, lets go back a little. Lets just take a step back from our monitors and look at the decision to keep the world practically bare to maybe give the player and the character you control a sense of mystery and forbiddeness in the land. The character is already doing something that is seems atrocious to his kind and even the gods as he is slowly punished for slaying these ancient creatures for a selfish reason, that is, to bring back a woman who has died. Apparently sacrificed for some ritual as well. The sense of loneliness is exactly what the character is. Alone. He acts on his own decision to bring a life that has already gone frolm the world and apparently for a pre-established reason. But dammit, he's gonna do it! He will climb that forbidden mountain, even if it means his life! He is being selfish but he must see it through for the one he loves! Of course, take that as you will. Still doesn't change the fact that it is quite empty aside from lizard tails and fruits to eat. Something carried over from the ps2 that back then wasn't as big an issue as it would've been today if it was first released today. A trip down memory lane except better than you remembered. With all the high resolution textures and character models your eyes can barely handle. And, for those who have been curios about this games hype back in the day but never got around to it, now's your chance... assuming it goes on sale, because 40 bucks is a bit much, despite my weak will caving into the idea of owning this game.

I'm just about done with the first chapter, but I won't have time tonight to edit it and get it formatted for my blog, so I'll post the chapter tomorrow instead. The future chapters will be posted every Sunday, though, so look forward to that. To build up some hype, the users who were chosen by the almighty RNG-sama to be in the first chapter are: @Kiriririri@Thatcomicguy@SeniorBlitz@Sayaka@Norleas@Arcadeotic@Ranzo@Shikomizue Who will live, and who will die? And who bribed me 1 nickel to win the whole thing? I'll give you a hint, his name starts with Fiddl, and he wears a dashing hat.

I loooove old games aesthetics, but I play more games emulating those old 8bit stuff than actual old games, since compatibility problems...... But then again, what I usually consider old is "released before I was born" meaning before '93. Soooo yeah. And I hate the "it didn't age well" argument with a passion. A good game is a good game, regardless of graphics. Blame the art style or the plot if you didn't find the game appealing, not how old it is!!!

The Chuuni and Chuunibyou FAQ (自称) Because I wanted to settle the basics first. Q. What is chuunibyou? A. "Chuunibyou" (中二病) is a Japanese word that literally means middle [school] second [year] syndrome. But it's not an actual medical syndrome. It refers to certain behavior. So what exactly does it mean? That depends on who you ask. The person to coin it, radio host Ijuuin Hikaru, defined it more or less as the foolish behavior of second year middle school students, in the context of school life. But the term quickly spread and took on a life of its own. Pixiv's wiki has one popular definition: "a colloquial term intended to poke fun at the behavioral tendencies of pubescent kids stemming from their self-absorption and psychological complexes". ...Personally, I don't like Pixiv's definition. It's too condescending, focusing on psychoanalyzing behavior rather than accurately cataloging what it consists of. I realize that it's hard to pin down what exactly chuunibyou is, so it's tempting to take a step back, vaguely reference a few psychological terms, and declare that sufficient. But that's NOT sufficient, and here's why. This term has long since passed the point when it was just a casual way to talk about how silly kids can be. It's been fully embraced by otaku culture. In other words, "chuunibyou" behavior--in terms of what it stems from, how it's expressed, how others should react to it, what its appeals are, what tropes it connects to, and so on--has been deconstructed and re-evaluated a thousand times over. Here's my personal definition, that I believe to be more modern: chuunibyou is a personality trait that refers to behavior supposedly commonly seen in many second year middle school students. That behavior consists of a person acting or speaking so as to emulate what they consider the cool or admirable demeanor of characters within stories. Furthermore, that behavior is starkly mismatched with what a layman would perceive to be a rational behavioral foundation for that person, resulting in others viewing their behavior as peculiar. The person in question either doesn't notice or doesn't care about the mismatch. Let's run through a couple of quick examples and break them down in terms of character, emulated demeanor, and perception of mismatch. Person considers a character in a light novel who speaks mysteriously to be cool. Adopts mysterious phrasings, even when talking about mundane things. This is viewed as pointless by others, because there is no benefit to speaking cryptically about mundane things. Person considers a character in a manga who has a dragon sealed in his right arm to be cool. Inks a dragon tattoo onto their arm, and covertly shows it off to others, as an approximation of that character's demeanor. This is viewed as silly by others, because the ink on their arm does not actually materially benefit them or affect their life in any way. Person considers a character in an anime who possesses a cursed katana that unleashes it power when an incantation is recited to be cool. Buys a katana prop, occasionally carrying it around, and muttering a personally written incantation occasionally, as a way to mimic the feeling of being that character. This is viewed as silly by others, because the katana prop has no supernatural properties that would respond to an incantation. Person considers a super-strong delinquent or a heroic vigilante in a story to be cool. Begins to dress like and use the slang of a delinquent, act like a tough fighter despite have no real knowledge of martial arts beyond a few tidbits, and occasionally spout rhetoric about justice or strength, out of a desire to emulate those characters. This is viewed as silly or awkward by others, mostly because the person in question can't actually fight and because the lines they spoke about justice and strength just came off as pretentious. Note that I narrowed my definition of chuunibyou in order to make it better match otaku culture. The broader and popular definition of chuunibyou includes people who aren't inspired by stories, such as hipsters. Lastly, I'll note that chuunibyou can be shortened to just chuuni. Q. Aren't people like Hiei from Yuu Yuu Hakusho and Gilgamesh from Fate/stay night also called "chuunibyou"? But they're not delusional middle school students--they actually have special powers. A. Yes, and no. This ties back to what I said about how the term chuunibyou has expanded. You can call them chuunibyou if you want, but for clarity, it may be better to call them "chuuni". I'll explain why in the next section. Q. What is chuuni? A. Remember how I said that otaku culture has changed the term chuunibyou? I already went over the fact that Ijuuin Hikaru's initial meaning was essentially abandoned, and gave my personal definition for chuunibyou in the context of otaku culture. Well, to put it simply, the word chuunibyou ended up having ANOTHER meaning, on top of the more traditional one that describes a behavior. Also, in order to make that other type of chuunibyou distinct from the traditional one, people ended up typically shortening it to just "chuuni". The heart of "chuunibyou" is its source, the "coolness" that makes people behave in a chuunibyou way. And as discerning otaku, people quickly wanted a way to refer to that "coolness". THAT is "chuuni". The "byou" (syndrome) part is cut off the end, so the shortened version of the word fits this meaning well. Stated more formally, the broadest possible definition of chuuni is any story or story element (whether a character or trope) that inspires, or could inspire, a person to behave in a chuunibyou way. In other words, it's whatever a second year middle school student would view as cool or enviable. HOWEVER, people haven't been content with such a broad definition of chuuni. There are many informal, narrower trope-oriented definitions. I say "informal" because few people try to provide any exact list of what tropes are "sufficiently" chuuni. But you can be sure that different people have different perceptions of the word chuuni. More on that in later posts, potentially. Finally, I'll note that as I said earlier, the traditional definition of chuunibyou is also occasionally shortened to chuuni. As a matter of fact, neither "chuuni" nor "chuunibyou" is exclusive to any specific meaning, which can admittedly make things confusing. That's all the questions I can think to pose to myself currently. Maybe I'll come up with more later and add them.

hi, i’m Jean D’Arc, also known as lostarc38 in a few other places. Nice to meet everyone! i’m a really big type-moon fan, although that means the only major visual novels i’ve read are fate stay night and mahoutsukai, ehehe i’ve been learning japanese for a few years now, and i think i’ve gotten good enough to translate something sooner or later! anyways, nice to meet you all!

Little did he know, he had already died by the time regret caught up to him.

This is actually really beautiful and poetic. "I just want to think that something great is in there, in those... voids...and I'm real."

Well, I usually just run VN's from before 2002 on Windows XP virtual machine. It's much simpler than trying to make them work on newer OS's.

@MaggieROBOT Yas girl sing it! I have no problem with old vn's in any particular way I think they are still worth checking out if you are a fan of the medium. Tsukihime and Ever 17 are both what you might called old (2000 and 2002) and I would say they are definitely two of my most favorite Visual Novels. Of course, the main problem with a lot of older Visual Novels is that they are hard to run on new computers but that is true of video games as well. As far as the aging art style goes would you be reluctant to check out a highly praised anime just because it was made in the late 80's early 90's? The oldest I ever went was when I played True Romance which was a dating sim that came out in 95. Even though it was bare bones in every respect it still had a stupid charm about it that I liked.

The gameplay is absolutely terrible, and the loc is pretty bad. It's got more of a story and more of characters than Purino Party (which is saying almost nothing), and maybe marginally more of those than Huniepop, but abysmal gameplay where Huniepop had fantastic gameplay. Yes, the art is nice. Especially the date CGs Still, I'd strongly recommend against picking this one up. I certainly regret it, more for the waste of time with joyless gameplay than for the waste of money.

Not only is incest sacred, as it keeps the bloodline pure and your children won't receive any terrible genes such as the dreaded triple-chin syndrome, but it is also an important political move that ensures the titles stay within the family. The Habsburgs are an inspiration to us all. Praise Xwedodah!

Dir Lifyna is the name of the world in which Eushully's Ikusa Megami games, Kamidori Alchemy Meister, and most of the rest of their games are based. I love Dir Lifyna. I don't think I'm alone in this, since it was the unexpected popularity of the setting in the original Ikusa Megami that resulted in the ridiculous number of follow up games that culminated in Ikusa Megami Zero (which most fanboys consider the best game Eushully has ever made). The setting is deep, based in a world built in the aftermath of a pure fantasy world (with no humans) being linked then melded accidentally with a future Earth that was apparently far beyond even our current technological level (think matter-of-course genetic modification and cybernetics, as well as artificial lifeforms of more than human complexity). At the end of the war that resulted from the initial contact, humanity's deities (artificial and otherwise) lost to the 'Living Gods', and humanity's history and most of its technology was systematically erased from the world. Most of humanity's original gods either died or went into hiding, and the remaining humans mostly worship the Living Gods. Other races that were 'hidden' before the initial contact (Nagas, for example) retained a faith and service to some of them, but that has just resulted in them being ever more marginalized in the world as it has become. Humanity, ironically, has become the most numerous intelligent race, providing most of the faith (which provides power to deities) to sustain the Living Gods, causing even those Living Gods' own creations to often be as marginalized as the servants of the Old Gods. Demihumans often find themselves forced to coexist with humans or pushed out of the better lands, leading to conflicts in which the churches of various deities often take sides, even if the deities themselves don't (most deities that aren't a devoted patron of a certain race tend to prioritize the power gained from worship over all things, it seems like). Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the various games set in this world is that they rarely provide a purely human-centric viewpoint on things. Serika, the protagonist of the IM series, can't be considered to be human in any wise (either in perspective or body), Meishoku no Reiki's protagonist is practically a demon lord, Madou Koukaku's protagonist is the ruler of a mixed-race country, Kami no Rhapsody is all about people competing for the right to rule over a multi-race federation, and the Genrin series focuses on a half-demon protagonist who tries to conquer a mostly-human region for the sake of survival (at least at first). 'Chosen Heroes' (usually half-immortal paladins called 'shinkakusha' granted a portion of a deity's essence) are often monsters wearing human skin, priests are mostly political animals or dogmatists, and the conflict between Darkness and Light rarely falls into a 'good vs evil' formula, regardless of perspective. That's when the games are trying to be serious from beginning to end, such as with Genrin, IM, or Madou Koukaku. However, some of the more 'frivolous' games (such as Sankai Ou no Yubiwa, Kamidori, or Kamiyui) are often lighter affairs, though the essential nature of the setting usually bleeds through at odd moments, usually near the end. Unfortunately, Eushully has a bad habit of switching writers frequently, and this results in huge dips and rises in quality between releases, story-wise. As a result, while the company manages to produce kamige like IMZ on occasion, it more often hits a more moderate note like with Verita or Kami no Rhapsody... or strays into outright kusoge territory like with Sankai Ou or Himegari. Gameplay wise, the company's works in this universe are a mixed bag... Ikusa Megami's battle system is essentially a variant on the ATB system, combined with a 'use it and it grows' approach to skill trees. On the other hand, Genrin was essentially a crappier version of Fire Emblem, Madou Koukaku was conquest strategy, and Kami no Rhapsody was a fairly horrible take on standard Japanese-style srpgs (seriously, obsessing over gimmicks like touch screen adaptation with an ero VN gameplay hybrid is just idiotic). It seems at times like Eushully wants to try every popular Japanese single player game genre at one point or another... Anyway, if you are still reading, thanks for paying attention to this random ramble.

That's so cute. A lot of girls are attracted to other girls (even if they're mostly straight), so I'm sure she doesn't mind at all. It's really healthy when you can share that kind of stuff with your partners. <3 It takes serious courage to go full Brony. You have my admiration and respect! --- To answer the question, it's extremely rare that something makes me feel shy. I have had so many life experiences; sex, pornography and VNs definitely aren't on my list of things to hide. I proudly share that I like anime and VNs with anyone who's interested. <3

There’s my aunt. My grandparents. My ex #1 My ex #2 My philsophy teacher. My academic advisor. And many more. Seriously though, one of the things that I inevitably talk about with closer companions is my shite taste in anime games.

What do you consider an amazing VN? What do amazing VNs have a common?

interesting characters and arcs, heavy on a central plot, some twist, maybe, and high school kids. always high school kids. what? dont blame me, blame the industry.

Luckily i have a monster reborn on my pocket.

Quite sad that Sayori is focusing on these kinds of VN hybrids with short scenes, really like her art so it would be nice if she released more full lenght VNs.

I remember when I saw the first trailer for this remake. I was kinda let down because, since the resolution was more detailed, it lost that "misty" appearance the original had Misty sounded more somber and just right for this game. But damn, I was convinced enough with the MC's new look! Sadly, I don't own a PS4, but I have good memories of this game back in the PS2. And bad memories too, since my disc was damaged so it took half an hour to the final cutscene to kick in for me to clear it on Hard. Oh, and I heard that the new golden coins gives you a new weapon, much like the time trials did.

A good story is a good story, so I really don't understand why a good VN should age badly. It's like saying a novel from 1800 is bad just because it's old. Nonsense. If we're talking moege, then things are different of course. Increased graphic quality can definitely help there, along with other general improvements. Same should work for nukige. But those are title that most likely weren't really good to begin with, and you'd read them only for entertainment value, and then obviously if faced with a choice you'd pick a more modern title of the same kind.

Well, most of the time they want to design a cute character. What constitutes "cute" shifts over time, and each era has its own ideas about it. What's true is that a given time, most designers abide by that time's rules.

HIIIIIIIIGH FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE

There are actual h-scenes (far as I can tell 1 per heroine), though they're not long (maybe 100 lines, two CGs?).

I pretty much agree with fred. It also has loading times upwards of 10 seconds for some screens, for some weird reason - sometimes the game is basically click, wait 10 seconds, click, wait 10 seconds, click..., and it really ruins any flow it could have had (something huniepop did a million times better). You also can't advance text using the keyboard bar using the skip buttons, there's no option to continue playing voice until next voiced line, no hotkey to pull up the backlog, no way I could see while in a sex scene to turn off the offputting sex sfx, and it just goes on. This is absurdly unpolished. All in all, not recommended.

Howdy, since you read FS/N what do you think about the Heaven’s Feel route? My favorite was Unlimited Blade Works.

Of course Metroid should be the most obvious choice. Other than Metroid, both of Dino Crisis and Parasite Eve series should be good recommendations. You can also try Resident Evil 3 when Jill fought alone, and as the bonus her costume was pretty iconic (And sexy lol). For RPG, I think you can try Magical Starsign (You can chose your character gender as female) and Luminous Arc for DS RPG. I guess that's what I can remember for now.

Lotsa strange things happening where you live yeah?

Or they didn't yet bother to delete it.

Tenchu and Tenchu 2 for the PS1. Edit: I dunno if you have a Saturn, but Dragon Force and Rayearth both have female protagonists (two of the eight in Dragon Force, all three in Rayearth). I believe there was a Phantasy Star Collection for either the GBA or the DS containing the original Phantasy Star, which had a female protagonist. Final Fantasy 3 (or VI, in Japan) for SNES has Terra, who is female. There is a fantranslation (not a patch) lying around for the original Growlanser for PS1 and the remake for the psp... and while the protagonist isn't female, most of the cast of the party is. Valkyrie Profile for the PS1 is probably my biggest recommendation, though the Lenneth edition for the PSP is the definitive one.

It was utilized the best in Madou Koukaku, Meishoku no Reiki, Genrin 2, IMZ, and IMV... most of the others just used it to attract buyers for their gimmicky game experiments. I really hope that IMII's remake comes out this year or the next... the original has aged so badly as to be almost unplayable.

As communities age, a mythology tends to build up around their origins, with past eras vaguely alluded to as “golden ages.” I’ve seen this happen with reddit’s /r/visualnovels, a place I moderated during its most transformative stage, so I thought I’d offer my insider’s take on its history: what we’d hoped to achieve as moderators, the unintended side-effects of our policies, and why I think /r/visualnovels is stagnating these days. Fuwanovel isn't /r/visualnovels, but there's a lot of overlap in the fandom and I thought that given Ange's recent "state of the fandom" post, you guys might find it interesting. Given my acrimonious departure from the subreddit, you should take this with a grain of salt, but hopefully you'll get something from it~ The Birth of /r/visualnovels The very first posts on /r/visualnovels. /r/visualnovels was founded in late 2009 by /u/Hpdarkman525 (the former account of /u/gambs), who made one post about the upcoming Umineko ep5 fan translation and then promptly forgot about the sub. At this time, the VN fandom consisted primarily of those who had learned Japanese to read VNs, and those who wished they had. Official localisations were almost non-existent, and the fandom hung off the words of the few fan translators. Knowing about VNs felt like knowing a secret, like a secret handshake to be acknowledged as a fellow western otaku. This didn’t really change until early 2012 with the release of Katawa Shoujo. We now had a Western VN that was free, easy to install (no fiddling with system locale), pretty well written (no cliche cries of “baka” or “onii-chan”), and handled a delicate subject (disability and self-identity) with a sensitivity that really spoke to a lot of gamers. The optional nature of the adult content helped attract horny teenagers while still retaining an air of respectability. KS managed something no other VN had: attention from the mainstream gaming crowd. It drew a huge wave of new fans to the medium, among which were /u/coldacid and /u/Kuiper who became mods on /r/visualnovels and began to promote it. While the influx of new members gave birth to the community, with newbies becoming veterans, the continued dominance of KS in the VN scene began to wear thin (it wasn’t until 2016 that the number of /r/visualnovels subscribers outnumbered /r/katawashoujo). Especially grating for veterans was the cry of KS as “the best VN ever written” from those who had only ever read that one VN. The constant stream of “what do I read after KS” and rudimentary technical questions on getting Japanese VNs working drowned out the rare news posts or broader discussion threads. The mod team had a hands-off attitude to it, they’d only remove spam or blatant trolling. This only changed in early 2014 when a relatively unknown user, /u/insanityissexy, requested a mod position... The Rise of Insanity Insanityy was a member of the old-guard, being drawn to the medium for Japanese VNs and caring little for what she saw as a pale-imitation in Western VNs. With no regard for the old mods, she singlehandedly brought order to a community that had been lawless. She began with a ban on posts for technical support questions and VN recommendation requests. Instead, they should be asked in the new weekly questions thread so as to clear up the front page for news posts and more substantial discussion threads. While this move was broadly welcomed by most of the subreddit regulars, it caused some disruption as activity on the sub plummeted. With the western VN scene so small, news was rare and the number of daily posts dropped from 2-4 to just 1. While some grumbled, others were enthused in having an active moderator who cared about the sub. /u/kowzz started a discussion thread on what we could do to improve activity on the sub, and from that discussion he started the weekly Sunday discussion posts and I started the weekly “what are you reading” posts. Unlike the questions sticky, the intention wasn’t to curtail activity outside of these weekly posts, but to provide a supplement to the usual discussions and encourage users to comment more. With such regular discussion posts, users started to bump into each other more often and a sense of community began to build. On a personal level, I also grew to know insanityy better as we exchanged dozens of increasingly lengthy PMs (so much so that each reply wouldn’t fit within the 10k character limit, we had to send our replies in 3 parts), with us quickly becoming close friends. Later that year, I proposed an overhaul of the user flairs. The subreddit only offered a basic vndb icon. I wanted to expand that to hundreds of options with a larger profile picture offset to the side of a user’s post as a way to personalise each user. With enough options, I hoped it’d be easier to identify users at a glance and it’d add some character to the subreddit. I was admitted to the mod team to oversee the flair changes, but was soon upgraded to full mod status after a few months on insanityy’s urging. The two of us fed off each other’s passion as we sought to build a more active, mature, and compassionate community. We never paid any heed to the old mods, mod policy was discussed between us on google hangouts and implemented immediately. To foster a sense of community, we aimed to have a community event once a month: best X contests, census surveys, recommendation charts, fanart contests, halloween/april fool themes being among just some of the activities we organised. We even got Mangagamer to sponsor some contests with free VNs. To foster a sense of community, we aimed to have a community event once a month: best X contests, census surveys, recommendation charts, fanart contests, halloween/april fool themes being among just some of the activities we organised. We even got Mangagamer to sponsor some contests with free VNs. We downplayed the seedier parts of the medium, nukige news was banned and discussions on “fapping” were frowned upon. Neither of us were against porn, we’re both fans, but we feared it’d attract a more neckbeard-type audience. We aggressively went after trolls, but not by banning them. We had automod automatically remove comments from users prone to cause drama, then we’d manually approve non-trollish comments. That way everyone was able to participate in our community, but bad behaviour wasn’t rewarded with lots of attention. In the following year, insanityy asked the inactive older mods to resign. Kuiper recognised that he was no longer needed and respectfully stepped down. Coldacid said his inactivity was only temporary and he’d be back, but later left reddit for voat as part of an anti-censorship protest. Gambs asked us to drop the subject as he didn’t want to step down, so we carried on ignoring him. We also added new members to the mod team: /u/FunwithGravity for his knowledge of Japanese, /u/Cornetto_Man because he got along with everyone, and /u/Avebone because he was active at times when the rest of us were asleep. They were added primarily to approve posts mistakenly removed by automod when me and insanityy were afk and had little input on mod policy. Everything seemed to be going great, we had a growing community that we got along with, trolls were few and far between, and our moderation seemed popular. Then we got a modmail suggesting we try out a new chat program called Discord... Discord on Discord When /u/Kowzz and /u/Arcanus44 suggested creating a Discord server, we were initially skeptical. It sounded just like irc, and the /r/visualnovels irc channel had been comatose for years. However Kowz and Arc promised to take care of it for us, Kowz would create the server and Arc would drum up interest. So in Sept 2015, Arc hosted a “meet n’ greet” in voice chat on Discord. While it was by most accounts a success and quite popular, we got some complaints about inappropriate conduct by a couple of users and decided that if this Discord server was going to be linked with /r/visualnovels, we’d need to take an active hand in making sure it maintained our standards. Kowz was happy to have us onboard, making us admins on Discord. It all seemed smooth, but underneath the surface, the seed of turmoil had been planted in our differing beliefs on who owned the server. Kowz and Arc considered themselves the owners and we were partners, while we considered them to have created the server on our behalf and that it’d run on our principles. Up until then, we’d not had any disagreements on mod policy. Me and insanityy would talk an issue out, if we agreed, we’d propose it to the rest of the mod team and vote on it. We’d picked mods who generally thought the same as us, so votes were normally unanimous. That wasn’t the case with Discord. Kowz and Arc had different ideals on how to run a community, and our usual resolution process of voting felt unfair to them as we outnumbered them 5 to 2. The problem only got worse with time as insanityy hated arguments so she avoided the staff discussions on Discord and popped in only to vote. Arc and Kowz felt increasingly marginalised by this and that their opinion wasn’t being heard. This led to a standoff where Kowz and Arc demanded their 2 votes should count for as much as the rest of us combined, while we /r/visualnovels mods threatened to create a new server unless we kept one vote each. Discussions got heated until Kowz and Arc eventually backed down. In protest, they chose to stop participating as mods. While Discord helped bring friends together, it also brought those that disliked each other together. It’s easy to ignore someone on reddit as its tree structure allows for parallel conversations, but the format of Discord makes that harder. This started to become a problem on the server, especially as Discord attracted a different type of user to the subreddit, those who had little patience for the more verbose and patient discussions of the subreddit. We got complaints from the subreddit veterans about some of the newbies but we weren’t sure what to do. Being disliked isn’t a bannable offense, but it was driving away some valued community members. We didn’t want to create a separate server that split the community, so our misguided solution was the creation of a hidden channel: #sub_regs (a.k.a. the fanclub) that was invite only and accessed via the tableflipper role. The hope was that it’d serve as a backup channel for when #general was annoying and that it’d keep the community veterans on the server. However it ended up encouraging an elitist attitude that divided the community further. The Fall of /r/visualnovels With many of the friendly conversations and community atmosphere moving to Discord, the subreddit began to suffer. Inside jokes that were incomprehensible to those not on Discord were frequent, and the community split between those using Discord and those not. There was also a degree of burnout among the mods. It’s inevitable for all mods, you spend long enough dealing with the worst of the community, the trolls and the spammers, and you begin to develop an us-vs-them mentality. You retreat from the community and draw closer to your fellow mods, looking down upon the normal users. We mods gradually stopped being members of the community and instead became overseers. Then there was my messy departure from the sub in April 2016. Due to a range of factors: financial difficulties, gender dysphoria, and some toxic “friends,” I became deeply depressed and tried to commit suicide. My fellow subreddit mods (and best friend insanityy) decided the best response was to out me as transgender, block me on social media, and ban me from the subreddit I’d loved so deeply. Insanityy never spoke to me again. The rest of this is speculation, I was no longer an insider, but from my perspective it looked like this event accelerated the emotional distance insanityy felt from the subreddit as she stopped caring about the community. She tried to carry on as normal at first, running a few contests, maintaining the animated banners I’d once made, but her heart wasn’t in it. She resigned later that year. With her went the desire to innovate, to improve the community. The remaining mods were followers, not leaders. They could maintain some cosmetic updates and copy the old contests, but they were unable to do anything new. They enlarged the mod team with an additional four members, but it only increased the sense of inertia and made it even harder to get anything done. The subreddit began to feel stale. The mod team had also become unbalanced, where once me and insanityy spoke up for minority tastes in EVNs and otomes, now the mod team was dominated by Japanese VN fans just as the VN scene was increasingly embracing EVNs. The subreddit felt more elitist than ever just as the medium had never been more diverse. Unintended Side Effects While our policies may have made sense at the time, some of the decisions me and insanityy had made began to have a detrimental impact on the subreddit: We’d brought on Automod to help remove posts when only me and insanityy had to manage everything. We found having a bot leave the removal comment sparked fewer arguments with OP than if one of us did it, and it was more effective at catching spam. But while we strived to reapprove mistakenly removed posts promptly, sometimes OP deleted their post before we could. Psychologically, it also made it dangerously easy to leave some content removed. As we mods burnt out over the years, our standards for what counted as a worthy post kept getting higher with fewer and fewer posts being approved. The end result has been a severe drop in discussion posts on the sub. We’d brought on Automod to help remove posts when only me and insanityy had to manage everything. We found having a bot leave the removal comment sparked fewer arguments with OP than if one of us did it, and it was more effective at catching spam. But while we strived to reapprove mistakenly removed posts promptly, sometimes OP deleted their post before we could. Psychologically, it also made it dangerously easy to leave some content removed. As we mods burnt out over the years, our standards for what counted as a worthy post kept getting higher with fewer and fewer posts being approved. The end result has been a severe drop in discussion posts on the sub. When recruiting new moderators, we sought people who thought as we did so mod decisions would be consistent and there wouldn’t be arguments in the mod chat. Modding is stressful enough without the stress coming from within the mod team. However, as you add more mods who agree with you, you can start to have an inflated view of how widespread your opinion is. A circlejerk mentality builds and outside opinion is increasingly easy to dismiss. This can leave users feeling like their opinions don’t matter to the mods and builds resentment. Insanityy was a kind soul and hated conflict, she avoided disagreements as much as possible. As a friend, this was fine, but as a mod it meant she avoided openly discussing mod policy on the subreddit as inevitably there would be some disagreement. This lack of discussion with the sub made it hard for users to object to the direction the sub took, allowing the mod team to grow out of touch with what the userbase wants. Hopes for the Future While I may have been quite critical of the current state of the subreddit, I think the community is a good one and there’s hope for improvement. A smaller, more motivated mod team would help, as well as scaling back some of the restrictions like the question and image-post ban. Let activity on the subreddit explode. Should low-quality content grow to become a problem, perhaps /r/visualnovels should split just as /r/gaming and /r/games have, or perhaps a split between Japanese and English VNs would help? Not every idea will work out, but what’s important is to be trying new ideas and be responsive to change rather than clinging to an outdated format. As I said at the start, please remember this isn’t an impartial view on the history of the sub and that this isn’t meant to downplay the hard work of the current mod team. Modding is exhausting, it’s a constant burden with little praise. Even if I consider them poor mods, it doesn’t make them bad people. I know she won’t ever read this, nor will she care what I think, but I still believe insanityy was an inspirational mod and a wonderful friend. It’s incredibly hard to go it alone like she did when she first took over /r/visualnovels. She stood up for what she thought /r/visualnovels could be and put in so much effort, every day, rain or shine, she never shirked from her responsibilities. I miss her every day. If anyone wants to know more or say hi, you can contact me here on Fuwanovel, tumblr,, twitter, or Discord (Sunleaf_Willow ／(^ n ^=)＼#1616)

2000 shitposts later.

Vote: Kotori Kanbe from Rewrite Kotori is one of the more memorable main heroines I've seen in fiction. She's cute, has an incredibly great sense of humor, but she also has a great amount of depth and character development. Her character design is pretty and simple. I like the mix of braids, the flower decs, and the long brown hair. It's probably a bitch to take care of though. While I think Akane has the best rack (which Oppai Route agrees with) Kotori's is also nice and once I would prefer in real life, not too big, not too small. I also really like her casual clothes a lot. She has a simple pink sweater and checkered red skirt which fits well with her personality and overall design. She has some of the best sprites and quotes in the game. There's a reason people still reference and screencap Shake It Now and the handy small butt quotes. It's heavily agreed Chiwa Saito did an amazing job voicing Kotori and shows her super good range. I can't imagine Kotori's goofiness and emotional scenes being so good if it wasn't Ms. Saito voicing them. She breaks the mold of the typical hyperactive girl by actually being really smart and perceptive and has interesting character depth related to her guilt complex and dealing with emotions that she tries to write off. As far as VN main heroines go there aren't many I can think of where they elaborate in great deal of how they were as a kid and how they showed how and why developed into the person they were besides just one simple flashback. She's definitely no Mary Sue. She has flaws related to avoiding people and hiding her emotions when under deep stress that could definitely use some improving which she can in time. She's great when you take her on the surface as a really fun and charming person. She's still great when you look past that and see what she's really like and has to go through. These combined makes an amazing character and I really wish more fictional characters had both of these traits without big flaws holding them back.

Thank you to everyone for being so supportive. I really didn't expect such a warm reaction to my post. I'm sorry to those who didn't find /r/visualnovels a welcoming place, I should have done a better job when I was a mod there in setting a more tolerant tone. Ah yeah I find that too, once they get a certain size it's so hard to engage in a conversation as it eats up all your time, you need to reply so fast and need the window open constantly. It's also harder to recognise people as there's a constant stream of new faces on busier servers, so it's hard to grow closer.

I'm so sorry about that, BunnyAdvocate. As for the community itself, I've posted there a few times, true, but I never really felt I belonged there. It felt kind of hostile/distant, and I didn't really agree with the opinions of many people there. Fuwanovel is more precious than I've thought in that regard. The atmosphere here's so friendly that (unless I'm missing something) there isn't almost any drama between members at all, here. And that's a priceless thing. (Hey, Ren, if you're reading this, shout out to you. You were amazing, and I still see you as one of the best members of this community. I hope you're having a really good time.)

Then you'll more than fine to watch Brotherhood. Once again have fun.

+1 I'm also way past the point of being embarrased for the things I enjoy. I wasn't always like that though, and there was a period in my life when I felt insecure telling people about my hobbies or tastes, as I've always been also into very rare, obscure and uncommon stuff and was concerned about how people would react to that, whether it would cause them aprehension and make me less likeable. But, you know what, I've come to understand that the only people you have to care about are those who like you for who you are, and accept your quirks as part of your personality. Those are the people you can hope to get in a long term relationship with, the rest doesn't matter as there will always be people who dislike you no matter how hard you try. Might as well be yourself then. My passions and tastes are a big part of who I am, and I'd rather be disliked for who I am than be loved for who I am not. EDIT: Gosh I forgot to reply to the original topic Many friends and/or acquaintances know I'm into anime, though they're not interested enough to ask me what I personally like. My big brother (10 years older) is actually an anime fan as well. That's a funny story. We were actually raised apart, and never got to see each other very often up until a few years ago. Then we discovered we were both big weebs (maybe it's in our genes? lol). He doesn't read VNs though. I've recommended him a few, but since he now has a pretty busy life I doubt he'll find time to get into this hobby. My parents also know about my anime and VNs fixation. I got my mother to watch a few animes together, and I think she kinda came to appreciate them at least a tiny bit, considering her first thoughts were "those are cartoons for kids". I never managed to show my father any though. VNs are out of reach not only for them but also for many of my friends and relatives, since they don't understand English well enough to read them, let alone japanese lol.

My gf knows more about it than she probably wanted to, but she even somewhat accepts my fixation on yuri and other weird stuff I show her from time to time. At least we're fully honest with each other. I share my Steam account with my brother so he has full access to my VN library, embarrassing userpage and all the reviews I've written, but I don't think he ever cared enough to check these things out/read them. My closest friend knows about it but he more or less hates everything anime so there's not much to talk about there. Also he's a bit of a homophobe so my liking for yuri weirds him out. My mother knows I'm into "anime" becuase she saw it dozens of time on my computer, but she's clueless about the topic and I'm far too old for her to question my tastes. Basically as I don't read VNs for porn I'm very transparent about my hobbies, I'm way past being embarrassed about watching/reading something after all those years of brony activity and using my fan knowledge for university projects. I don't really care if someone finds it weird - I know well enough myself that I'm a weirdo, if someone can't accept that it's their problem.

I deflowered a wide array of girls with balloon-shaped oppai, so it was pretty ordinary as far as high school goes.

Mhmm. High School was "whatevers" for me. Got straight A's with rather minimal effort, did the awkward "Hi's or complete silence" when passing acquaintances in the hallway, ran to the cafeteria to get the best foods, only went to the library to read Cirque du Freak because for some reason i was into that stupid vampire novel, peeked a few glances at my crush whenever i saw her The only thing i miss about my HS days was how laidback that part of life was. Everything was easy, no responsibilities... i think that's what makes High School SoL VNs appealing. The easygoing and relaxing atmosphere~

What?! How did I not know of this before now? show me!

For the past few years I've actualy tried comic writing (mostly comedic one-shots based on My Little Pony, with some pretty dark humour - my RL friend is a hugely successful brony fan artist and brought me into that community), had a lot of fun doing that and working with various fanartists in turning my ideas into proper comic strips. But I've realized I don't have the imagination necessary to be really good at it, so I pretty much abandoned it lately, journalistic and academic writing works much better for me. The things I do on my studies are also a hobby of mine in some ways, some projects I've definitely done just for the fun of it. I'm nominally a sociologist, but mostly deal with fan studies and porn studies, both are evolving into pretty serious disciplines lately.

Well, I said I was gonna post my image if they made an actual thread... Thinking you guys never would... (why Nayleen, why?!?!?!) But anyways, this is me when I'm in my sexy graduation outfit: Who looks like his avatar now, eh?