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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.

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!!!

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!

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.

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.

This is slightly beside the point, but I consider any OELVN published before 2014 as pretty much "prehistoric". It was around that year, with Sekai going official and games such as Sunrider and Sakura Spirit coming out that the western VN scene become something more than just a small circle of fan-producers. With VN in general, I guess I always thought of stuff from before 2010 as "old stuff". After all, it was Key in early 2000s that cemented the formula with Kanon and Air, so everything from before 1999/2000 would be basically a proto-VN, and I think those games from the 90s are often heavily dated, while those made between 2000 and 2010 just have different feel to them.

HIIIIIIIIGH FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE

Well, at least this has original art, unlike Purino Party, which was quite literally just CGs ripped from other Frontwing games. (Pure Girl and Innocent Girl.) Talk about a cash grab, lol. I'm not really interested in this at all. (Especially if all you get in terms of H is one scene per heroine that's 100 lines... That's pretty darn short.) If it had like 4-5 scenes per heroine, I might have considered it, but... Yeah.

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.

So uh and welcome to Fuwa, I hope you have a fabulous time! It's always good to have another Fate/Stay Night fan around and hopefully you enjoy Tsukihime when you get to it But yeah I heard that Innsmouth is just full of Fishmen, just wall to wall Fishmen.

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.

Have you seen Strawberry Panic yet? That's a yuri classic. Oh and have you ever read any yuri manga? So what's this vn you are making? What's it about? Are you doing the illustrations yourself?

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)

That's because incest is wincest! (I couldn't resist myself.) But think about it, the first hentai, cream lemon starts off with a sister coming along to her brother. I mean if you were going to make the world's first hardcore porn anime, why would you start with incest unless that's their version of "vanilla" porn.

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?

High school in India was horrible. The worst. THere was not much social interactions at all. We have no elective choices, and each subject had multiple textbooks (of a few thousand pages) each. To do well, in the final year (12th, the grades you get here determine your college), students are expected to start preparing 1-1.5 years before that. In my final year, I remember putting in 12-15 hour days. Most of the studying was simply memorisation, and during my masters (I'm in my first year now), I use barely 30% of what I studied. It was a period where I had no time for enjoyment or fun, but simply sat in front of my textbook, day-in and day-out. I had less friends, but more people I grew close too because they suffered with me. We often formed study groups to make it more bearable. We did go out occasionally, but there was no time to commit to anything other than studies. No romance or any real form of social life. It was at this point, anime became an escape for me, and I would watch it in the little free time I had. It was a horrible period in my life, and I'm glad its over.