stezie

Thanks for the tips, mate. Yeah, I've already been caught once accidentally rewriting a character, way early in the project, because I misinterpreted the translation Still, there are plenty of times when we do have to break a couple of your golden rules, and either add material or otherwise change the meaning of a passage. Mostly for puns, but there have been an odd few passages that revolved around untranslatable concepts, so we had to rewrite them from scratch (though always keeping the intent of the original passage, even if the strict, literal meanings must be compromised). I just hope we've exercised enough discretion that people won't get too cranky at us.

Hi again everyone! Thanks for the warm welcome On our end, we managed to get things sorted out pretty quickly and get our demo finalised. I'm really, really excited since we've been working extremely hard on this, so I'll just drop the download link right here while I go mock up a project page thread, with all the information and whatnot, on the TL forum.

I feel that the strength of these lyrics is how the verses compound their metaphors. To describe yourself as mud is one thing, but then this mud, this sense of self, is what ruins something else - water. I get the feeling that the water is the woman you've broken up with. In which case, shallow takes on its double meaning, and I really like double meanings. Next, we have the line about blood. Instantly, I started to think: how much blood? Whose blood? Insignificant drips from the tips of your finger. That's the sense I get of this woman. However, when we move into the chorus, if I am to be critical, I feel it starts to become quite lacklustre. I don't think cliche is the right word, but the chorus is more along the lines of just being trite. It just feels like it lacks personality, and I don't know how else to put it. If you read it by meaning alone, yes, there are unmistakable emotions. Yet even if the misery is outwardly stated, all I truly feel is the sense of apathy carried from the first verse. Even in the second iteration of the chorus, when you say 'that's what this song suggests', I don't feel the misery at all - just the insignificance. And then to carry the feeling of insigificance into the verse about the pills forces a double take. All of a sudden, it's clear this woman wasn't insignificant. She was an addiction, a focal point in a life. I like that in break up songs, where there's at least a solemn admission of how important that person once was, rather than just barking down at them for an entire song. I don't really know what to make of the last verse, but the line that hits me the most is 'I'd smile and she'd smile cause we were happy'. I read this in a purely cynical tone. A sort of, "happy people smile right? We're happy, right? We better be smiling then." Well, I'm not sure how my interpretation files up to how you intended to write the song, but that's what I get from it. In my own songwriting, I can't always practice what I preach, and often I'm not even aware I'm breaking my own rules. Not to mention, it's a lot easier to criticise than be criticised, but I know that I can't ever develop unless someone points out what's wrong. So I'd also really appreciate it if anyone were to pick apart some lyrics that I wrote. And even if my writing style is extremely vague (ironically by virtue of being so specific in content), I've never really had the chance to show these lyrics to anyone who didn't already know the true meaning. I'm curious to see what kinds of interpretations can be made. This song is called 'Ephemera Kept'

Hi everyone! I'm stezie. I got into visual novels only about half a year ago, and I've been lurking Fuwa for about the same time, so it feels good to finally post. Long story short, a friend and I had been mulling over a bunch of stories and ideas for a while without any way to really cement them into something tangible, so when he introduced me to these, I got really, really excited, since this was the kind of storytelling medium I feel like I've been looking for. Then we just decided cobble together our group, Kuoee, and start having a shot at making one. We hit a bit of a snag when I felt like my writing style didn't transfer well to VNs, and when I realised that neither of us had any real programming experience, so Renpy was a bit daunting (shoutout to Helvetica's guide, thanks a bunch!). Eventually my friend suggested that until I was completely confident in both my writing style, and in the technical side of things, we could just go and translate one of the visual novels he considers one of his hidden gems. He picked this one VN called Blue*, since he felt I'd be able to really connect with the story and characters, and since he remembered it would have some really tough nuts to crack when it came to translating it. Not to mention, it wasn't way too long - roughly under ten hours we think. We started off by just asking the original devs if we could work on it, and they were cool with it, and have been helping us along the way as well. So far, we're about a couple of months in, and I've got the full stats somewhere else, but at our current pace, we might be done in just another month. Since we were heading into the home stretch, we felt that we should be getting some feedback, so that if we messed something up early in the process, it wouldn't carry on for the whole game. Better late than never, hey. The devs gave us the green light to release a demo, and we're just wrapping up a couple of tidbits, so I'll have it up and ready in the next couple of days, but right now, I'm more keen to just wrap this introduction up, say hey, and maybe hang out down in the creative forum. If people are interested, I'll try to get more news up sooner rather than later. We've also got a blog up here, and I'm hopeless with social media, but apparently, our twitter's good for quick updates and stuff.