Fred the Barber

Confession: jetlag crushed my plans and i am so tired right now but i must not sleep, i must not sleep, i must not sleep

I voted for that timeless classic, ImoPara. I already spent way too much time on BBH a month ago. It was really just the gameplay that kept me at it. If it does get voted in, I'll join the discussion, but I don't intend to play it anymore. Regarding the theme: somehow I didn't see this coming, but I guess I'm not mad about it. I'll just keep reading plot-heavy stuff on my own time. But I do have to admit being a little bit worried about the discussion thread...

So the past day has been pretty good. I spent the first evening mostly walking around the city centre, since I didn't really get situated until pretty late in the day so I couldn't go see any attractions or whatnot. There's an unbelievable amount of things to see in a tiny little radius in the London city centre. I walked away from my hotel in the direction of the National Gallery, and found myself in Piccadilly Circus. Cool. So then I thought, oh, guess I'll walk over to Hyde Park, because who hasn't heard of that place? But I got distracted on the way there by Green Park, which looked like a nice place to walk through, so I did that, and then at the other end of it I found myself directly in front of Buckingham Palace. Their gardens are beautiful. There's too much stuff worth seeing here. I hit up the aforementioned Botticelli exhibit at the Victoria and Albert Museum today. It was pretty sweet. They had it broken down into modern stuff influenced by Botticelli, some historical context on his rediscovery in the 19th century, and then a decent collection of work by him and/or his workshop. The stuff in that first category was by and large stuff I hated, but there were a few interesting points. The first was a clip of Honey Rider coming up out of the ocean, from the first Bond movie, Dr. No - I never thought about it before, but that scene really is a pretty clear nod to Botticelli's Birth of Venus. The most fascinating thing was a very recent and lovely painting by a Chinese artist, which reimagines that same Venus with Asian features and some Asian influences to the style. Gorgeous in person. The stuff I hated included a couple of Warhols, and a newly-discovered performance artist for my "modern art is shit" list, ORLAN. The second one, the history lesson, was surprisingly interesting - I had no idea that Botticelli was basically unknown (even in Italy) from around the time of his death until the mid-19th century. Nor did I know that it was the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood that brought him back into the spotlight. Might've been good to know these things back when I did quizbowl and maybe could have put them to use... And the last one, a bunch of stuff by Botticelli, was also pretty good. Botticelli's two biggest and most famous pieces, The Birth of Venus and Primavera, are both never going to leave the Uffizi (unless they forget who he is again, I suppose), so they didn't have those, but they did have Pallas and the Centaur, which is super-famous and interesting, and which I hadn't seen in person before. There were also a couple of paintings of his I had never heard of before that were awesome: an idealized portrait of Simonetta Vespucci, and one called Madonna and Child with Angel: I found a couple of cool things at that museum aside from the Botticelli exhibition. Most notably, there was a large collection of massive biblical history paintings by Raphael, collectively called The Raphael Cartoons. Apparently "cartoons" in this sense is a technical term for templates which weavers would use as the basis for making tapestries (there was also a sample tapestry in the room); so there's another thing I learned today. They were, of course, excellent; Raphael's genius for composition is really something else, and he really flaunts it in these big paintings. In addition, I also just happened across a rather small Bernini statue, looking rather unloved in the middle of some random "16th - 18th century Europe" room with a bunch of lesser-known artists. It wasn't in great shape (apparently it was some Italian noblemen's fountain for a couple hundred years - that'll really take it outta ya), but it was still a Bernini; pretty great. It turned out I didn't have the energy for two museums, so that was it for today. Food is decent, in spite of the British reputation, but that may be just because I've been sticking to ethnic cuisine - I hit up an Indian restaurant last night, and today was ramen and then Thai. Indian and ramen were fine but unremarkable, but the Thai was really quite good. It was also a bit cheaper than the other two, so if you find yourself around Trafalgar Square and like Thai food, try out Thai Square. Incidentally, when I say that Thai place was relatively cheaper, I mean it was merely very expensive, instead of crazily expensive. Seattle downtown has a pretty high cost-of-living (not Manhattan or San Fran, but pretty high), and the USD is incredibly strong right now, but stuff was nonetheless 2x what I'm used to spending, for comparable quality. I knew beforehand that London has the highest cost-of-living in the world, but it didn't register until now. Tomorrow: Shakespeare. Aww yeah.

Cool, thanks for answering my implicit question. That sounds more my speed, actually - the way PE's choices were presented was actually really off-putting. Apparently I have some mental minimum bar for how immersive choices need to be, which PE didn't meet, but Noble☆Works apparently would.

Assuming it's up for debate (or at least up for salt), we should probably have a thread elsewhere to talk about the merits of putting numbers on Fuwa Reviews. I would certainly have things to say about that. But I don't want to hijack Valmore's review's thread. Good review, thanks, Valmore. One additional thing that I would find useful is info about the mechanics of routes. That's one thing that's always a mystery for me going into a new VN, since it seems like every game does it at least a little bit differently, and sometimes the departure is radical. Sometimes things are straightforward (Princess Evangile; Majikoi), and sometimes things are not (Katawa Shoujo; Steins;Gate; Clannad). Sometimes the straightforwardness is off-putting (PE), and sometimes it is not (Majikoi). Sometimes the confusion is annoying as hell and mandates a guide (Katawa Shoujo; Clannad), and sometimes it is only somewhat annoying (Steins;Gate is mostly fine). And sometimes the structure and choices are not overly obvious, but work very naturally anyway (G-Senjou). These days, after getting burned enough times by the confusing ones (so many times seeing the Dead End in Katawa Shoujo, and so much salt about the true end in Steins;Gate...), I kind of like to know up-front. Anyway, other than that one little thing, the review told me everything I needed to know.

Symphonic Rain's sprites grew on me a lot back when I was playing it, even though I was very unsure of them at first, and now they're probably my favorites. I do love the Inganock sprites as well, though, particularly Gii. My favorites from Symphonic Rain would be pretty much any Fal sprite, and also IIRC Torta's blushing sprite was great. I think that last one is just a general rule for me, though: blushing is best. Random SR screenshots from the internet, because I'm not at home and it's not installed here, and even if I were at home I probably wouldn't feel like going through the effort of installing, patching, and getting to a good screenshot anyway... Edit: Also, Nashetania's got a great point with KonoSora. It's not a unique style, like the two I mentioned, but KonoSora is probably the pinnacle of that very common style. Ageha

I knew you and I had different tastes, but damn. The Grisaia common route was approximately the funniest thing ever. Different strokes for different folks, though.

Well, that's a matter for debate (and it actually was debated somewhere on the forums here a little while back, because of the pun in the route name). There's another unlockable route, and none of the five routes is really anointed a true route by the game. But I think Al Fine is my head canon anyway, so I don't actually disagree too strongly with you calling it that

Having finished Steins;Gate, I'm back on Fruit of Grisaia, resuming Sachi's route (my first route). It's enjoyable so far (I'm in the middle of a very long flashback sequence), but there's a small part of me that agrees with this: For me, Makina and Michiru are the spices that make everything else in Grisaia better.

Confession: I didn't think there was an actual topic for the confessions thread.

Alright, I am here. And tired. Long plane flights suck. I have so far only noticed one thing that I forgot to pack (toothpaste... I put it away out of habit, instead of into my luggage), and that was quickly remedied, so I'm fairly comfortably ensconced in my hotel now. I haven't really started planning out a schedule, but one thing caught my eye and one thing I had in mind before I came here, so I have plans for the next couple days already: I randomly saw an advertisement for a Botticelli exhibition at a museum walking distance from my hotel. Botticelli is the man; I am visiting the shit out of that exhibition tomorrow. That'll probably take about half the day, so I'll probably hit up the National Gallery for the remainder of the day tomorrow. The Royal Shakespeare Company is putting on a production of Hamlet over at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon; hell yes. Opening night is tonight, actually, so there weren't a lot of tickets available in general, but I got a pretty good box seat for Thursday's matinee. This will be my fifth time seeing an RSC production; they're always indescribably good. I am very excited. Also, I get to figure out how to use trains to get there; yay?

Maybe I just don't get the term, but I didn't find either eden* or Sekien no Inganock (which even bears the "utsuge" tag on vndb) to be depressing in the slightest. Neither of them is all sunshine and roses, by any means - I'll be the first to admit that neither is a game where nothing bad actually lasts and everything is wrapped up into a neat little gift of happiness at the end. But for me, a slightly bittersweet ending is even more rewarding than a purely sweet one. If you've never played either of those games, maybe give one a try and see if it works for you; you may be surprised.

Literally the only thing I quote from Lethal Weapon 4. Well... that and "chicken flied lice", because racism is always good for a laugh.

I'm a fan of the humor in Demonbane, which is as chuuni as it gets. Humor isn't a necessity for every story, of course, and it may not be appropriate for yours if that's how you feel about it; but it's definitely not out of bounds for a chuunige. I really like Clephas's characterization of the chuuni protagonist as a hedge philosopher, and I think Zalor is right about it applying to the antagonist as well. To put t another way, in general, the main players usually have a very obvious and central motive for what they do, the motive is very ideological, and it's usually at least a little bit crazy: I want to destroy the world because people are irredeemable I want to save people even though I don't really get along with anybody, because doing otherwise would leave a bad taste in my mouth Something along these lines.

Have to agree there, I actually do rather like traveling by driving, and I usually handle the driving myself (which I usually do "in exchange" for getting to pick the music; a win-win for me!). I've done a couple day trips up to Vancouver, once with friends and once for business. It's a pleasant drive, especially when the weather is good. Frankly, given the beautiful weather in Seattle right now, that's probably what I ought to be doing instead of going to London, where it's looking to be a rather rainy week. But I don't know that I'd want to do a really long road trip. A nice 3-4 hour drive is about right. Reminds me that I also need to hit up Portland one of these days, since it's well within that range...

Ahh, let me clarify: I'm only going to be there for about a week. The remainder of my three months off has been or will be spent catching up on reading and gaming, as desired. I probably won't have anything intelligent to say about it, really. I definitely have more than your average person's knowledge of art history, but nothing to compare to an actual artist, or even to anybody with, say, an art history minor. This is a valid point - it's probably the fact that I'm traveling alone that makes me the most nervous about it. But I've done it before and gotten by. I should really work on getting one of those relationship things one of these days, though... I'm leaving for the airport in about an hour and pretty much just trying to kill time to avoid getting even more wound up, at the moment.

Nah, joking aside, I actually agree - and I blame Ronald Reagan. There was a Federal commission formed back in 1975 with a goal to get the US onto the metric system in roughly 10 years (though they didn't actually have a time limit and apparently weren't really getting much done, in fairness), but Reagan cut 100% of their funding in 1981. Probably to give tax breaks to extremely wealthy people, so they could more easily funnel their money to Panamanian shell companies or something. And so here we are, still failing at life.

I'm in the middle of a glorious three months off, but I decided I had to travel somewhere, so that when I start my new job and everybody asks, "Oh, where did you go," I won't have to answer, "nowhere...". Note that they definitely won't ask, "did you go anywhere" - the phrasing will imply that of course I went somewhere, because who in their right mind would take off 3 months just to enjoy catching up on reading and gaming? Well, me, but that's beside the point. Anyway, thought I'd start a thread to see if: people commiserate with my general dislike for travel (though it's really just the stress and uncertainty - I usually enjoy myself well enough once I'm settled in) anybody is interested in regular reports on what I see and do while I'm in London (arbitrary destination where I won't be nervous about a language barrier, go!) If the latter holds, I may log on periodically here to post about whatever happens. But beware that it'll probably just be me gushing about art museums most of the time, since art museum visits make up the bulk of my plans right now (but fuck the Tate Modern, I'm not going there - modern art can do light itself on fire for all I care; actually it probably already did that, and people probably talked about how great it was while I rolled my eyes).

I'm not letting a French person get away with making fun of our units of measurement after what they did to the meter.

It will be called The Fuwa Papers.

They're obviously all true, especially the ones about Eustia. Also, the "more than just Harvest Festa" that Ixrec is working on is, in fact, a fan translation of Eustia. And when it says "the secret project is a console game", it's referring to the PSVita port of Eustia, of course. Eustia from everybody, for everybody.

@Nashetania's questions are rapidly getting more personal. Next up: "(long list of people) I need to know your full legal name, date of birth, and mother's maiden name. It's for ... ummm ... that OELVN I've been working on. You know the one, right?"

Welcome! I'll second Symphonic Rain - if you're like me, you'll get used to the art style while you're playing it (I also found it pretty weird for the first few hours). @Nimbus is just salty about good games, don't listen to him If you fill out a VNDB page and link it, it'll make it easier for people to recommend games you haven't read yet. And to give a recommendation that hasn't been put out there yet... how about Little Busters!.

Finished High School DxD. Final ranking for the seasons: 2 > 3 > 1. Overall the show was always fun, sometimes good, and never great. Fight scenes were probably far better than your average show with fight scenes, in retrospect, but unfortunately that's approximately the least important part of a show for me (to tell the truth, I'd simply rather be watching something that didn't have fight scenes in the first place). The world is pretty interesting, and I'm always up for a mythology mashup, but for me personally, there are definitely better things in this seemingly narrow but nonetheless very common genre of fanservicey mythology mashup club warfare anime: Mondaiji comes to mind immediately as one that I very much enjoyed. I don't know how the DanMachi anime compares, but based on the LNs, I'd expect High School DxD probably has the edge on it. Also, I can't go without adding this. Much as I would like to claim I didn't enjoy it, I honestly can't complain about the fanservice. It's probably the main selling point of the show, and it's certainly not bad.

Your post had nothing to do with the translation group or the project - it was an off-topic flame directed at a person who happened to be related to an earlier post. Good riddance to childish troll posts.