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With Halloween fast approaching, we thought it'd be fun to create a list of VNs that fit the season on the Fuwanovel VN rec site. We're creating a list of suggestions and we'd be interested in any ideas anyone has, but we're also interested in the communities' collective opinion and put up a VN poll asking which VNs you think are the spookiest~ The poll is going to be up until the end of the week, with the results posted this Friday evening.

Being a part of a fan-tl, I can tell you first hand what I have an issue with. I have no experience working in a VN company, so I cannot speak for them. To be honest, I welcome any criticism to our project. The problem is when people shit on your work and then going and say "well it's your work" and then proceed to tell you to work on English/Japanese. That effectively stalls a project for months and months, which is why you're seeing a lot of fan-tls stall. Unlike when fan-tls first time into play, criticism is much more prevalent because of a "set" of rules and expectations set by the industry and the individuals that work within it. So now do you not only have less fan-tls because of them being merged into companies, you have people becoming demoralized and trying to learn a language, which that in itself isn't bad. When you drill into somebody new that it needs to be "perfect", that's when problems come up. It can be very overwhelming to new people, causing them to write mistake after mistake or slow/stall their TLs/edits to a crawl in fear of looking bad. Logically, it's better to come back to it later when you know the language better to "save face", but people have lives and what might have been a completed TL with some mistakes is now an indefinitely stalled TL. I feel it would only be fair to have the same standards that were set in place when fan-TLs first started. Currently, the only people that are learning are those that have already learned from the mistakes years ago before people became more critical of people's work. New TLs/editors are actively being discouraged because of the hypocrisy that the community in general is showing. Expecting a good tl and then telling them to learn it themselves is a horrible message to give off, especially if most of the people in current projects learned by doing, rather than researching. In all honesty, *WE* are the reason fan TLs are dying. There's a major experience gap between people who have done this for years and those that are just starting out and people aren't willing to personally mentor or become more active in current projects to share what they've learned from the mistakes they've made in the past and instead say they're shit, writing stuff in Japanese to make fun of them so people who are just starting out can't read it and only a joke that "experienced" people would get or just putting people down, saying that they'll help them if they "get better" (which makes no sense and goes back to the perfection piece I mentioned earlier).

I don't think it's that toxic here on Fuwa compared to elsewhere. I have seen statements like "ïf you aren't able to read the VN the way you are intended to read it, you have no business reading VNs" (essentially banning all translations). "VNs should all be rewritten to adapt into American culture because people don't get Japanese culture. Also non-Americans shouldn't read VNs if they can't accept American culture everywhere". "Doki should be banned from releasing anime subs. They use British English, which is unacceptable". Fuwa bashing tend to be based closer to facts in the translations and generally more reasonable. If you release something, which breaks immersion and general readability, you essentially ruin the VN. People rightfully get upset when they pay for what should be a masterpiece and it's worse than just garbage: not only isn't it enjoyable, it spoils reading the VN in Japanese as well, meaning for a number of VN readers (the people who are most into VNs), reading the translation is much worse than not reading it. If you use a machine translation yourself, you know what you get (or should know). If you pay a human to do a proper job, you want a proper job. That is essentially what the translation bashing on Fuwa is all about.

I agree; toxic attitudes like yours that make people release shit translations definitely need to end.

I'd love to write to write a longer post, but it's already too late here, so I'll try to keep things short. Are we talking about fan translations here? Because, yeah, if some VN has literally zero chance to be translated officially, I would be fine even with a relatively bad fan translation, as long as it keeps things readable, as long as there's still something worrh reading in what we have in the end. In the other cases I mostly disagree. To add to what Lesiak said, I believe that if you start to lower the standards, then at some point you'll simply come to the point where even completely ureadable garbage produced by Google translate becomes acceptable, as it is currently in the LN fan translations. Which brings me back to this point: I'd personally love it if LN readers we're at least a bit more critical about what they read. 9 out of 10 LN translations are completely unreadable, and most others become unreadable at some point. Plus this:

My guess would be that it is mainly because VNs are more niche and as such have a higher concentration of hardcore otaku than anime, manga and light novels. That being said I do think that there are translations that really deserve ridicule whether it is MTL or something like Libra, but I do feel like some people might be overly critical towards decent translations wanting every translation to be amazing and done by someone who has both perfect fluency in japanese and english as well as the writing capabilities of professional writers.

Context: a guy I met on Fuwa’s discord was told to end the TL for “his own good” and the translation team did not like him for his one too many jokes. After talking about it with the guy, I realized something. In the anime, manga, Japanese video game worlds, there’s nobody arguing over the purity of a translation, even weirder this doesn’t happen in the Light Novel world either. Light Novels are 100% text, but when translations come, nobody gets into arguments about whose translation is better or whatever. It’s the weirdest thing. Why in the VN community do have such a purity spiral for translation? None of the other mediums of Japanese entertainment have this issue even though they all need to be translated. Even when there’s an official release of a VN, all the fan translaters loose their damn minds. Like... why? I doubt our brothers from the land of the rising sun have such fervor when they translate EVNs. I think this snobby attitude over translation needs to stop because we’re not going to ever make a “perfect” translation because translation itself is a art not a science. Personally, look I thought about this before: I am going to bite the bullet and say: I rather read a bad translation than to never get a translation at all. With a bad translation, people can see how it’s bad and someone could make it better. I understand that people really care about doing their best, but there’s so many kamiges out there that will remain untranslated. The VN fandom is growing, but we’re nowhere near anime levels of mainstream thought, and I think this stupid purity spiral regarding visual novel translations is one of the main reasons why.

I'm looking for hentai animation or game has a scenes for a girl get fucked in front of an audience exactly like this scene from Four Elements Trainer: NSFW https://imgur.com/MQbywxJ also it's ok if the animation or the game is 3d.

Now, it isn't entirely the companies and community's fault either. There's also those people with low self esteem who take constructive criticism as shit talking. NOBODY would spend an hour on a post unless they either hated somebody or genuinely want to help, regardless of why they would. Those that can't take constructive criticism have to accept that it's part of learning and if there's any help and knowledge to be gained. If anything will speed up learning more than looking at books, it's constructive criticism on your own work. Doesn't mean you have to go re-writing and re-translating the entire script or that it has to be perfect. That takes months and months and can kill projects. Yes, this makes it imperfect and puts the quality lower than an official TL. Here's the thing: does it still read well and get the meaning and characterization across? If so, you've done your job. People who know Japanese and English are the toughest critics, and it's understandable. But there's a fine line being being helpful and demoralizing the team. I've seen so much destructive criticism from outside our project not for translation errors, but because they prefer literal over liberal, or something that's related more to preference. I trust my TL to do what he needs to do, and that could be why our project is still alive. He's come back after 2 years and is re-TLing it and he's actually pretty good with idioms and English. I encourage him to write liberally as I correct him or use more appropriate words. It's pretty interesting tbh how far we've come since our starting point two years ago. Some people like it more, some people like it less. But there's no doubt in my mind he's gotten better, and I also feel that I can match his expectations as the editor. If other people feel differently, then that's understandable. But that's life, and if people want to help, I'll listen. If people don't, then there's no point in listening. It's why I'm usually not demoralized, yet continue to learn what I need to for the team. Also, it's a bit idiotic to use destructive criticism on a TL. Giving resources to help get better doesn't count as constructive either because of how overwhelming it can be learning English from textbooks, as well as some people learn more by doing rather than researching and studying. You lose TLs that way, and that's one of the ways projects can die.Take some time away from what you're doing and help out. They'll probably make the same mistakes over and over again, but that's learning and expecting people to pick up what others are saying right off the bat is ridiculous and unfair. Therefore, it's everyone's fault. Sure, there's some blame that should be placed more on others, but people also have to be able to take criticism, since there's people out there with patience who *are* actively trying to help and are pushed aside due to fear of destructive criticism from them. Some people are also truly stubborn and just don't want help, which can't really be helped by anyone. You gotta accept help in order to be helped, after all. It's just a big mess in general and there's so many ways you can look at it. My opinion is very unpopular though among certain individuals, but I consider it the reality we live in. There's so many other things I can say about this topic, but I'll save it for another day

It's horror because he considers it a horrible VN. Or is it someone else in these forums that hates Snow? I forgot. Also, should i recommend The Letter? It's more along the lines of current crappy american horror, but i guess it would be fine for Halloween.

These are the free VNs in the poll. Most of them don't have too many votes right now, so if you've got some time to kill, feel free to pick one or two of them and check them out! More votes are always appreciated Halloween Otome: itch.io Lake of Voices: itch.io, Steam Lynne: itch.io, Steam Phenomeno: game, English patch Soundless -A Modern Salem in Remote Area-: itch.io Us Lovely Corpses: itch.io

List is missing Snow tbh

Yeah Saya no Uta is deeply unsettling with how it makes horrendous acts seem so rational in their own way. SubaHibi seems a good suggestion, I'll make sure it's on our list~

While I'm far from the bravest person irl, I rarely find VNs I read really scary. Notable exceptions are Higurashi (that fingernail pulling scene... ugh) and Saya no Uta. I also recommend adding SubaHibi to the list. It definitely has some horror, especially in the early chapters.

If you want to feel disgusted with yourself and everyone around you, saya no uta is peerless

I don’t know, but I still think DDLC is the scariest VN I’ve read. Add that to the list lolz

As others have pointed out, the idea that anime, video games, or LNs don't have their share of translation arguments is... not correct, shall we say. I'm going to guess you're new to those communities. Back in the early fansub days, in the early 90s, when people had to mail VHS tapes around ($12 and SASE for 2 episodes!), there was vicious fighting. Anyone remember the Ranma Wars? Or the fights over the Shinsengumi subs of Ruroni Kenshin? Even in the 2000s, people used to mock most of the Inuyasha funsubbers, The joke in the community was that every new fanboy (and many a fangirl) would cut their teeth on Inuyasha, releasing many terrible subs in the process, before either giving up or growing up and moving on to real shows. Even now, you still get complaints. Remember this meme? Or sites like this one? The basic fact of the matter is that translation is an art, not a science. And as Clephas said, even good translators disagree over things. Honorifics, slang... I got into a fight with one translator over contractions, FFS. There will always be disagreement, and there will always be jerks who make a big deal out of it. Your bigger claim, that a bad translation is better than no translation, is very much a matter of opinion. To me, it's trivial to prove you wrong - just run a VN script through Babelfish, and try to read what comes out.

It's pretty a reasonable stance for people to demand only the best translation possible in a given Visual Novel, we should not allow and condone half ass, passionless translations projects see the light of day. We deserve only the best VNs translations available today and it is within our right to make such a request to publishers like Sekai Project, Jast USA, and Mangagamer etc... Perhaps this example might explain things better... I'll rather read/play all the tentacle rape VNs in Mangagamer than read this monstrosity... I understand where you are coming from dude however you must at least hold some sense of standard when it comes to VN translations, don't settle for anything less... Just listen to what the Old Guards here has to say in this regard. They possess... Unrivaled wisdom about VNs since playing/reading them is similar to their life's work...

TLDR u all dumb in this thread

Thank you, one and all.

It's okay if you want to eat crap, but don't go around preaching that it isn't unhealthy.

Addressing the topic author... ... translation purity is a load of shit. Good translators of any stripe basically argue over how far they go toward Americanization or retention of Japanese concepts. Honestly, speaking as a translator myself, I can say that there is no such thing as a perfect translation or localization. However, that is no excuse for poor work. Not everything is possible to translate. It is a miracle that games like Tokyo Babel and Dies Irae are readable and still relatively enjoyable in English, considering how much of a pain the butt it must have been for the translator to deal with the emotional aspects of his work (for one thing, Dies Irae's preexisting fanbase is full of jaded a-holes like me, so he was going to get bashed regardless of what he did). I will state this outright: Japanese translation is a pain in the ass as well as an oxymoron. Japanese doesn't translate, it just gets interpreted into another language with concepts that approximate the meaning while completely missing nuance and subtlety. Machine translation is annoying because it doesn't even meet the baseline of a Japanese translation... interpretation of the original material into comprehensible English that doesn't go off into the wilds and ignore all context (this is the baseline of an acceptable but not necessarily good translation/localization). First, I've yet to encounter a machine translator that consistently produces English sentences that makes sense. Second, I've yet to encounter a machine translator that succeeded in figuring out the correct kanji conjugations to produce words it needs to translate to another language (thus resulting in some seriously weird outputs). Furigana parsers just barely manage to pass muster, and even there you have to disregard the suggestions about anywhere from 30%-60% of of the time (meaning a high level of Japanese and English knowledge is necessary, in any case), based on the favored kanji of the writer and the parser's ability to handle unusual kanji choices (all parsers have their quirks).

I totally agree whit you

OK, there you are: * Mangagamer shop Eroge! (Clockup) * PS4 Chaos;Child * 3DS eshop Virtue's Last Reward Zero Time Dilemma * Steam Ame no Marginal (2017 Sekai's Humble Bundle) Clannad Clannad Side Stories fault milestone 1 (2017 Sekai's Humble Bundle) Hakuoki: Edo Blossoms Hakuoki: Kyoto Winds Harmonia If my heart had wings Karakara (2017 Sekai's Humble Bundle) A kiss for the petals, Remembering how we met Littlewitch Romanesque editio Regia Love at first sight Lucy, the eternity she wished for Nekopara vol. 0 (2017 Sekai's Humble Bundle) Root Double A sky full of stars (Miagete Goran...) Stay! stay! DPRK Steins;Gate Steins;Gate 0 Strawberry Vinegar Sweetest Monster Tomoyo After (Clannad) VA 11 HALL A Vision of Aurora Borealis The Way we All Go

Umm... Yes.

No lie, if i didn't see the amount of hype for Aqua's route, i would've dropped it after Aries just like you. That was like, 30 minutes of interesting stuff for 7 hours of boredom. Hell, hunting for bad endings was more fun than the route itself.

Keeping the cringe ball rolling:

Hoshizora no Memoria, I've heard so many good things about it and its rating is so high so I always thought I was missing something when I read it, but if I had to describe it the story and characters just feel like cotton candy: fluff with no real substance to it.