Fred the Barber

Ok, slight fork on the topic of length - I kind of wonder whether this should be a bigger consideration for VNs, as it already is with traditional fiction literature. VNDB tries to provide a rough estimate for it, which is not perfect but is better than nothing (except for Clephas who reads everything literally 10x faster than I do, of course), but I'm actually suggesting that maybe, in critical discussion, we should start categorizing VNs more specifically based on their length before trying to assess them, and in recommendations take length into further consideration. Currently length is hardly considered in discussion at all, that I can see, whereas we do have lengthy fixated discussion on other VN categories, which are mostly classified based on mood (and sometimes topic) of a VN: nakige, utsuge, moege, chuunige, etc.,. For instance, Clannad takes a mental eternity to play, especially when considering all the skipping through (or, God forbid, actually reading through) replays of the common route. Eden* is rather short and requires no replay. Yet people will probably quite happily simultaneously recommend both of these to someone purely on the basis of the content of other games they've enjoyed, since both are highly-regarded nakige. But the actual experience of reading each is vastly different. Reading a short story and reading an epic novel are radically different experiences; the same is probably true of VNs, too.
Also, I kind of wrote this post just because I wanted to bring up The Dinosaur, because it's a rather good 7-word short story.

I realized halfway through the blog post that I was eating a hot dog while reading it (with mustard, of course). It rated somewhere around a 2 on the "surreal moment scale".
I have absolutely nothing of substance to add to the conversation, though.

I realized halfway through the blog post that I was eating a hot dog while reading it (with mustard, of course). It rated somewhere around a 2 on the "surreal moment scale".
I have absolutely nothing of substance to add to the conversation, though.

I realized halfway through the blog post that I was eating a hot dog while reading it (with mustard, of course). It rated somewhere around a 2 on the "surreal moment scale".
I have absolutely nothing of substance to add to the conversation, though.

I'll agree to disagree with you on that one.  Both sides have merit, but I tend to fall in the reader response camp — e.g., "death of the author" and all that. I consider extratextual info (such as authorial intent) to be interesting, yet ultimately irrelevant to a critical evaluation of the text. After all, intent frequently fails to align with results.
For instance, did you know that Atlas Shrugged wasn't originally intended to be a comedy?
For shame. You didn't read to the end of the post. No delicious hot dog sandwich for you. 
As I suggested, it's not a slippery slope. Being a story-heavy exploration/adventure game doesn't automatically qualify something as a visual novel. What makes Gone Home special is that it's built around an already existing literary form, and the whole point of the gameplay is carry the reader through it.
If nothing else, it’s worth taking time to consider what else visual novels can be, not just what they are. That’s how any art form grows. Otherwise, we’ll be locked in a perpetual ouroboros loop of big-chested high schoolers eating their own slice-of-life tails. (Oh god. That’s probably an actual thing in some VN. I just know it is. Euphoria, most likely.)

Thank you so much for doing this. I don't pirate VNs, and haven't spent the time figuring out any of the websites for buying downloadable copies, so I've been stuck importing physical releases of everything unlicensed that I want to play, which is less than ideal... This is really helpful to me personally, and probably to many others as well.

This is the most hurt I've felt in the last five minutes.

This is the most hurt I've felt in the last five minutes.

I guess you don't take your time to enjoy and miss the voice acting in the vns then, which in my opinion is a huge part along with the music. 

I'm quite sympathetic to the "eating cheese in public" point, but to such an extent that I find myself self-conscious about eating any cheese in public, not just the particularly pungent unpasteurized variety. Maybe I'm just self-conscious, but even pasteurized cheese (whether a traditionally pasteurized variety, or a variety that is pasteurized just to get broader appeal in the US) is still something I only really want to enjoy in privacy, for fear of being That Guy. Some other things are fine for consumption while on a bus or a plane or what have you, but I usually steer clear of any kind of imported cheese.

I can manage without the honorifics but when they change the names in subbed anime I just ASHFHASFSF. If someone calls a character by his/her last name please use it in subs. I don't want to see the first name there.

The blog post makes some great points that I hadn't considered before, especially the importance of setting for this decision. And the presence or lack of voice acting is also clearly important - when I can hear the honorifics, it's probably going to bother me a little bit if they're not there (though just a very little bit). If it's not voiced, I really won't care at all.
However, one thought: you can, in theory, avoid the choice altogether by providing both options and a configuration switch. If I recall correctly, the US MariMite DVD release subtitles actually have exactly this choice (subtitles with honorifics, or without). You're still left choosing a default, but there is an obvious answer there: optimize for the people who don't even understand the concept by stripping honorifics out, and to satisfy the people who will know and be upset if honorifics aren't there, tell them they can enable it.
That said, I'm well aware that this idea is likely to be laughed out of the room due to the high costs it incurs (I expect, to some extent, you'd end up editing and QAing two scripts, which would obviously suck), but nonetheless, you do have the option to make both sides happy by providing a choice. This is somewhat of a false dilemma.

One thing I didn't see addressed: with what you know now, what would you have done differently? The two choices I see are:
- accept that this is the character's catchphrase, and stick with always using a consistent translation, but maybe change that one word (and maybe in that universe we'd be looking at a blog post about your "unfair" translation)
- given that seeing any single word repeated to that extent is going to be too jarring for English readers (apparently more so than for Japanese readers), use contextually-appropriate word choices instead
From the perspective of an English reader with poor, but non-zero, Japanese comprehension, I'd probably favor the former approach, but I expect the preference is heavily audience-dependent. If you assume a completely non-Japanese-speaking audience, the latter makes much more sense, but the audience for a VN translation probably leans towards people with a modicum of Japanese comprehension, who will be listening to the Japanese voice acting and mentally judging you. Compounding the problem here, I expect, is the Japanese tendency to use adjectives as entire statements; this is going to lead to a strange experience for English readers, regardless of the translation choice for that one word, unless you take substantial liberties with the translation. I haven't read KoiRizo (yet), so maybe that angle is nicely addressed already, but it certainly seems problematic, given the more literal translation which is common with fan translations.
Anyway, given your newly-endowed benefit of hindsight, how would you approach this tricky dilemma if you were facing it now?

(You're welcome.)

No, no, you are entirely mistaken. My interest in male genitals increases threefold per giant, blurry pixel.
As for the translation choice, I'm not a native, tricky sounds as English as any other word to me. Same goes for useless. If anything, I found it curious how it had been translated as "tricky", which I hadn't seen before, but that's about it.