Fred the Barber

This is because I confronted you with the hard truth that you only exist on the internet, isn't it? You shouldn't take it so personally. I mean, Funya only exists on the internet too, and you don't see him all bent out of shape about it.

Well, apparently every 1.5 months I boot up the PSVita to buy a game, thinking "I'll totally play this!" TitS, Ar Nosurge, and Shinovi Versus all fell under that category previously. Now it's Atelier Escha and Logy's turn. Although this time I'm not even kidding myself - I'm frankly more likely to play any of those other three in the near future than I am to play this one.

An email just went out to Kickstarter backers that the game will be released on Steam in somewhere around 24 hours and that backer keys will be sent out "real soon". The short notice is kind of weird, but hey, it looks like they're going to make that revised target of April, if just barely, so I'm not complaining.

Confession: The only thing I've used on my PS Vita for the last ~6 months is the Store app, where I nonetheless keep buying games I'm not going to play. I'm reminded of this because, thanks to @Eclipsed, I'm using the Store once again. Atelier Escha and Logy is on sale! It couldn't be helped. But before that I really need to play Legend of Heroes TitS, and Ar Nosurge, and Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus, and ... ugh. Eclipsed, why did you do this to me?

I'm 6 episodes into JoJo. Man, do I regret not picking this up sooner. This shit is absolutely crazy, in the best possible way. You know, a long time ago I promised myself that I wouldn't enjoy things ironically, or because they were campy or cheesy. But this show blends both awesome things and ludicrously cheesy things so well that I've had to step back from that ledge, at least for this one exceptional case.

To be honest, this thread got me pumped up about picking up my juggling again, so I was flipping through a bunch of pages at the Library of Juggling, looking at tricks I could learn like this one. I haven't had a proper set of juggling balls around in years, so I just ordered some off the internet too. There's a ton of amazing stuff on that site. Once I get comfortable with it again, I want to try to learn Factory.

I'm almost afraid to say this since it always takes so much flak, but didn't KonoSora actually have decent drama and story? Maybe it's just because of my personal tastes, but when someone says they liked KonoSora and want more of that, I tend to point them in the nakige direction, not the moege direction. Still, I guess the mention of KoiRizo probably trumps that, so less drama, more moe, maybe is a better way to go. Well, I guess the OP can decide: Little Busters! if you want substantial drama as well as cute girls doing cute things, KoiChoco or Noble Works if it's all about the grills.

True, Australia is for people who want to die at the hands of a poisonous animal. Next person is easily entertained.

True. We don't get them enough out here. I miss proper thunder that you can really feel in your ribcage. Next person has had a somewhat unusual pet, like a bird.

Cute, and the fussing-with-glasses pose is a winner. Looks a little bit grainy, though. 8/10

False, mustard is the bomb, though I definitely disliked it when I was younger. Next person has a collection of some non-otaku thing.

Welcome to the forums! It's a pleasure seeing someone serious about writing joining in. Do you have a VNDB page? You have my condolences. Kidding, kidding, I went to school there for four years and actually rather liked ... some parts of NJ. It's not as bad as people make it out to be, depending on where you live.

Umm. True, kind of. I rather like the taste of it actually (especially Dr. Pepper - yet another reason why Okabe is my bro), but I avoid soda pretty hard ever since the day I realized I was having substantial physical withdrawal symptoms when going without caffeine for a day, way back in high school. Next person is a stripe-lover. My favorite pun is the phrase "wok the dog".

False. As long as burger places consider raw onion a condiment, it's going to stay #1 on my Condiment Shitlist. But coleslaw isn't winning any awards, that's for sure. Next person always asks for a receipt.

I can like all of these, with the right setup, but I'll elaborate a bit on the one Palas mentioned since that might be my favorite. Totally incomprehensible evil can be oddly fascinating, if done well. The best example I know of for this is any villain designed after Lovecraft - Elder Gods, Others, and so forth. When done well, this kind of horror theme can lead you down some paths you otherwise won't see. I don't think this kind of villain necessarily suffers from the problem @Clephas just mentioned in his point 3 there, because the fact that they don't have a character or an explanation are part and parcel with their nature. If you really drive it home that they are alien and Other, you can get the reader pretty pumped up about making sure that villain doesn't get its way. That said, you need a pretty strong commitment to darkness in the story to pull this kind of villain off - if you're not willing to have this incomprehensible evil, for example, kill or rape a main character just to prove how incomprehensibly evil it is, then you're probably not going to sell it hard enough, and it's just going to come off as boring. But when the stakes are raised high enough, I at least find it to be very effective. Deus Machina Demonbane was far from my favorite VN, but its villains fell firmly in this bucket. Some of them were kind of lame and more like the third grouping, but some of them were top-notch, especially the ones who were least comprehensible, most Other.

True, many times, most recently just a couple weeks ago. Next person doesn't care for salad.

Mills Mess is definitely out of my league, even back when I was practicing even somewhat regularly - reverse cascade was as complicated as I ever got. It looks like there are some other tricks between reverse and regular cascade (half-shower, juggler's tennis), which I could probably pull off as well but never thought to try. I think I used to be able to switch back and forth between regular and reverse cascade, though. I was working on four balls back before I fell out of the habit, but that's really just independently juggling two balls in each hand, and I wasn't nearly as stable with two balls (even in my dominant hand) as I was with three balls, so I never made much progress. And every time I tried five (which is easier than four, for some people), it was an utter disaster. My college roommates could do five balls, though. I remember in the spring, they'd be outside working on trading clubs, which they could actually pull off sometimes - it was pretty fun to watch. Edit, remembered one more thing: I also used to throw in claw grabs from time to time. I probably can still do that, since I never found it very difficult to mix in. Honestly, just reading about this stuff is pretty fun - I didn't even know until now that there was a name for that little trick.

It seems something has changed in me over the past decade or so, and I am now able to appreciate poetry a great deal more than I once could. I picked up a Yeats collection and have been reading some of his lyric poetry. It's really dense going, but haunting.

Little Busters! might be a good fit.

True, but it's a close thing. Next person doesn't usually eat breakfast. Edit: I got ninjaed, that reply above was to pancakes v. waffles. @littleshogun True, kinda? I did indeed already have a girlfriend by the time I was in university, but it's been a long time since then.

Welcome! You should make a VNDB page and add it to your profile so we can "Hmm..." and "Ahh!" over it

False, this is how I poison myself: False. It's a habit I can't seem to build. False, though when I'm working you can almost say so, since a solid ~10-hour chunk is accounted for every weekday. Next person is a ninja.

Hmm. That's an interesting claim, and I don't think I agree with it. In my book, VN translations are almost universally pretty bad. There are a handful of good ones out there (notably koestl's work on Grisaia and Gahkthun, and apparently Gare and Conjueror's Tokyo Babel though I haven't played that yet), but they're very rare. There are probably more very good translations of Tales games alone than there are of... well... all VN translations, ever. And even if you look at things proportionally, I think in general more mainstream Japanese game translations (like translations of most JRPGs, for instance) get overall substantially better translations than VNs do. Outright mistakes are more rare, and they generally seem to put a sight more effort into capturing the spirit and tone of the original, especially around paying attention to individual character quirks. From what I read, most VN translators seem to be borderline unaware of such things. Now, don't get me wrong. I think it was koestl who I saw complaining about inaccuracies in the Disgaea 5 translation on Twitter, a couple months back. His complaints were totally valid - one such example, some inaccuracies in skill descriptions, were even a real problem for me in playing the game at times. So I know it's not all sunshine and roses in JRPG translations, either. But I do think, on the average, quality there is higher than it is for VNs, and I kind of bet the pay reflects that. And overall, Disgaea 5 was actually a pretty enjoyable experience because the translators still did a good job of capturing the unique character quirks and tone. Incidentally, if you want to see a quality translation of a mainstream JRPG, I think Tales of Zestiria's looks pretty great. I flipped over to Japanese voices recently (some of the English voice acting was really bad...) and was astounded at how different the dialogue was. I love that they have the liberty to make the sweeping changes they need to, since they have an English dub track - the Japanese voices and English subtitles are really far apart at times, and the English script benefits a lot from that. It's a tough sell to do that in a VN translation, since so many of the readers are listening closely to the voices and understanding a fair bit of it, and that can really tie your hands.

Sweet video. Yo-yo is one of those things I never understood, so I'm dazzled by pretty much anything there, but you are clearly a cut above at it. I've been doing novice-level "regular" juggling (three balls, or 3-N clubs and N balls, though I could never get down to N = 0) since college. I had a four-person roommate situation, and coincidentally two of them were pretty good at juggling, so the other two of us felt obligated to learn. Nowadays, I mostly use it to show off to friends and co-workers. I need to get my reverse cascade back, but at least my regular three-ball juggling is very stable, so I don't drop the fruit I grab off peoples' desks on the floor. At least, not often.

False. If anything, the opposite. Gimme dat central AC. Next person is excited to see this thread be revived.