juss100

These look really good and it's nice to see someone digging into old VNs, since I'm a bit of a fan of them myself (Well, Eve:Burst Error and Yu-No particularly). i'm keen to play Kanon in the near future though so don't want to spoil it at this point...

I discovered that if you press "P" the girls (feline, pet variety) bounce up and down. I must have spent another 15 minutes just doing this. I'm not sure it synched up as well as it might have done with the "breast bounce" feature, though.

Nekopara: Volume 1 My light side has asked myself repeatedly why I might do this, but my dark side insists on repeatedly clicking the mouse button in the hope of more purrra purra purra purrrrrrr.

Another thing that occurred to me to mention – When we think of novels or movies we think of them as something that’s been around forever and we might pick up a novel from the 21st century and think “oh that’s a novel and I apply x standards of literariness to it”. Well, it’s worth noting that what those standards are have been debated for several hundred years at this point and whilst we’re still not close to getting an answer, we have a vague cultural sense of what they should be and we have umpteen different “movements” we can point to in the development of the novel from epic, to romantic, modernist, stream of consciousness, post-modern etc. Visual Novels, on the other hand, is the youngest form there is and there hasn’t even been the time or critical attention for different movements to develop – well, I suspect we are just at the beginning of a wave 2 of sorts, I don’t know. Moe obviously is going to dominate “wave 1” although it’s interesting because that clearly developed out of dating sims and hentai games. I’m personally trying to look at early examples of visual novels to get a better sense of context for this and already I can see a developing of the form from Eve: Burst Error to Yu:No and it’s really interesting how (and why) aspects of more basic hentai games have been taken and implemented into a larger, sprawling narrative, why that works, and why it was done that way for funding/production reasons. My thought is if playing with form is interesting to you, then I can think of absolutely nothing more interesting than Yu No – and I guess it depends on your perspective, but does one see this is “merely” a hentai game with substandard writing, or – and this is my view – a monumental work that pieces together aspects of various forms and uses them in incredibly playful and exciting ways. Again, why would we view this through a similar lens and ask of it the same questions we would of, say, a canonical literary classic. Yu No, or any other visual novel, hasn’t had the chance to be canonised yet… … and on that note, I think it’s really exciting to be able to see how this form develops and in what direction it goes. Technology, production or fanbases etc may change so that we do get more “literary” styled works. (But I don’t personally see it working. As an aside, in terms of pure prose stylings – translation issues aside – I don’t see VNs as being any worse than a popular novel on the fiction shelf. I’ve read some fucking shit in my time… the quirk, maybe, is that VNs are very dialogue driven and dialogue heavy, but again I don’t see that as a problem). An interesting parallel is anime, which definitely has gone through some phases and rapid changes over the last 40 years due to different fanbases and technologies. Personally I don’t like the phase that we’re in but I’d neither deny everything produced right now, or take 3 examples from “right now” to conclude that the form is blatantly not any good.

It seems to me to be a mistake to approach a new storytelling medium by asking yourself what you want from it, rather than what it has to deliver and how it delivers it. Visual Novels are not Novels, Short stories, poetry, film, TV or Opera and none of these things offer the same thing as each other and neither have they claim to. The way that Visual Novels are designed, written and created is not the same and not trying to be the same as Shakespeare, or Citizen Kane or Hemingway. It’s a different time, culture, form, experience – as has been mentioned already, choosing 3 VNs from now and deciding if you like the form based on that is as relevant as picking, say, 3 hollywood blockbusters and declaring film a terrible form because it doesn’t do provocative and thoughtful. It does, you’re just not appreciating either the intent or the constraints or the purpose of the particular cinema you just watched. Now, I happen to love Hollywood cinema, especially when it’s Star Wars or marvel superheroes … but it’s not literary in the Orson Welles sense. I’m ok with that because I like the things that are done well and I appreciate to some extent how they are done well. But the thing I keep reading is criticisms of how the text is “not-literary” and I guess this is frequently put alongside, say good prose of literary novelists or whatever and seen wanting. Now, as a big fan of Opera (as well as well written Victorian doorstep novels) I think I have a little sense in how different types of language can be used in different contexts and different forms. I think people too often go into VNs expecting them to be “Novelistic” (except for the people who expect choose-your-own-adventure books) and are maybe disappointed, instead of considering that VNs are a marriage of words, image and music as coincidentally is Opera. Now the two forms don’t share much in common culturally or in content or style but I want to point out that in Opera language is, whilst not subservient, it’s different and, on the surface, not as directly important as the music. You can happily put on an Opera CD and enjoy arias or incidental music etc but few people read Opera librettos without the music, for fun. Why? Because the language is tooled in such a way that it works in that musical context and only that context. Sometimes the symbolism can be heavy, such as in Wagner or Strauss, but even then the symbolism is expressed more directly through musical themes than by what the characters are saying, and in other great operas I find the dialogue to be quite trite at times even when a librettist is highly regarded. Except for where the composer is the librettist, the librettist rarely gets billed as anyone other than “that guy the composer collaborated with”. Mozart is well remembered as a name, his great librettist Da Ponte is not. My drawn out point is – neither the form or the culture surrounding VNs expects or demands dense and elaborate prose in order to tell the types of stories currently being told through the medium. That doesn’t mean it is not good writing, it means that the writing is being used to push the story content in a clear, direct and accessible way. It’s like schools of thought on how quick edits should be in movies – an artistic movie director may favour long takes, more establishing mood shots etc.whereas a Hollywood blockbuster will favour quick edits, more crosscutting and pithier dialogue. Neither is wrong or bad per se(except, y’know, Quantum of Solace), it’s just what is appropriate and correct for the story being told and the audience is designed for. One can and ought to debate greatness within the boundaries of what something is trying to achieve, but to call it out for not being something else entirely seems very wrong to me. I haven’t read many VNs yet, I’m still a noob, but I did read Planetarian and felt it a masterpiece – and what struck me about it was precisely the way that the simple prose and the simple images actually formed together to create a very large sense of the world and a strong connection to two characters. It was non-fussy and that’s partly where it draws its power as a story from. I think the VN form is powerful – as one previous poster hinted – because it takes a lot longer for connections to be formed with characters through smaller incidents it enables for smaller plot points to be imbued with heightened drama and meaning. I don’t think it’s the case that these stories can’t be told any other way, but I imagine that the experience of watching the Planetarian anime is markedly different from reading the VN. Hopefully, still good but the different mediums will bring out different qualities in the story, I’m sure.

I think that these are some of your best points. You're right, the publishing world is harsh and you'll face rejection if you don't follow the rules. To that end, if he wants to go down a traditional route, I'd suggest that the OP listen to what you say quite closely and it will serve him as well as anything. I should say that I have a personality that wanted to defy that a long time ago. I don't personally ever expect to publish or sell any writing self-publishing, but I do think that writing, if you're going to do it, should be something you have a passion for and something that rewards you and anyone who reads it. The world really doesn't need any more bog-standard genre authors and works pushed out by traditional publishers. Sure, I say that even though I'm inclined to read that kind of thing often ... but what I mean is that we shouldn't be pushing for that, we should want more from ourselves and others than saying "write this book, do it in an average way, make money.' That said, I suppose that everything has a formula and it wouldn't be a formula if 1,000 people didn't follow it. Also, btw, I think that literary fiction contains a lot of invisible prose. brilliantly written books are often not-so because every page has 20 stunning sentences, it's because the book has real vision and purpose. Ok, great authors write better prose without thinking about it, but it's not necessarily their best for 600 pages +

I’m not gonna respond quote by quote as I’m a little pressed for time.. I don’t really accept your arbitrary distinctions between literary and genre fiction, art and non-art and I certainly don’t think that’s some kind of excuse for lazy-style Pratchett writing. I mean, Terry Pratchett is just someone who … doesn’t write very well. That’s fine, people like his books anyway (not me!) so he’s doing something correctly, but that doesn’t mean there’s suddenly a chasm between those who write “literary” and those who write genre fiction. If your argument for genre fiction is “here’s a guy who doesn’t write good prose” then why are we critiquing the OP’s prose. We may as well encourage him to write badly if that’s what we think works – so again, what has show vs tell got to do with anything? All I’m saying is this obsession with one arbitrary rule doesn’t help get to the bottom of why the OP’'s writing isn’t as good as it could be and for the most part it’s actually because he’s so keen to write genre fiction correctly that it lacks a little imagination and he moves through the scene in a fairly formulaic mode. I like the opening about books, for instance, but then he sort of says “ok, I’ve mentioned the bookshelf thing, throws in a reference to Dr.Seuss for no-reason and then moves on to the characters as if to say “Ok, there’s your setup, let’s do the next bit writing school told me to do”. It’s absolutely fine but I’m not compelled to read further because I’ve read 1,000 books and I need convincing to read another one – I may be being unfair … if he has a running idea about books throughout the novel then it could be the perfect opening, but I’ll guess that he probably doesn’t. My point is – criticism of someone’s work, I think, should focus on how you really responded to it when you read it, and why. If I were to post some writing I’d get so bored if people picked apart my word choices and sentences piece by piece … because it doesn’t matter. One develops a style over time and when one writes – if one writes a lot – then you tinker with and fall in love with your word choices for very personal reasons that are almost critic proof anyway. Actually I’m more inclined to agree with the whole Pratchett thing again, because you’ll always find some people like your prise, some find it too purple, or too simplistic etc. But ultimately you have to ask yourself: "are the ideas there" … and that is as important if you are writing genre or literary fiction period. If the ideas are there, people will allow for a bit of show and tell. Or show or tell. Or Show not tell. Or whatever the fuck it is. Look at J K Rowling – biggest writer ever, but she can’t write a proper fucking sentence half the time.

I do see what you're saying, but I honestly don't like a lot of these arguments. Firstly, the "evolution" argument is very flawed for a lot of reasons. What do you mean by "evolved" Is writing better now than Conrad, Woolf, Proust or ever Shakespeare or Dickens. Evolution implies adapted in a positive way and so you'd be arguing that literature now is somehow fundamentally better and I don't think that it is. it *might* be more relevant on a cultural level ... but even so you'd be suggesting that one categorically shouldn't write in a stream of consciousness way or something like that. As for the French having different rules of writing ... well, I could easily have picked Virginia Woolf or Thomas Pynchon or 100 other writers to make my point, I just picked Proust because I was reading it recently and I wanted to make the point that good writing comes from not following bog-standard rules, not the other way around. The main crux of the argument seems to me, though, that writing literary fiction is fundamentally different from writing genre fiction. Oh, and also that beginners shouldn't try to write like pros so they should follow rules. This seems defeatist on both counts because, yes, I do think if you start out being a slave to rules you'll become a slave to rules and I think that you should be looking to develop your own style from the get-go. I think that Walter Scott or Charles Dickens are excellent examples because they are popular genre authors but they both have intriguing and brilliant styles of expression. Equally I think, say Asimov has an excellent writing style or Arthur C Clarke or Gene Wolfe. I'm not convinced that any of these authors don't break boundaries somewhere or other yet they are genre authors. it's not about being allowed or not-allowed, for me writing is about expressing - nay, exposing - oneself and I'm convinced that's as true for genre fiction as it is for "literary" fiction. I don't even know where the boundaries are between the two, all I can say is that genre fiction with "ideas" i.e. PK Dick) is a whole lot more entertaining than adventure fiction without them, such as Edgar Rice Burroughs. That said, I like a lot of pure action/adventure stories and obviously I'm on these boards because I love stuff that's called "genre fiction" at a pretty base level i.e it has a PLOT and it SURPRISES YOU! But when I talk about expressing yourself, I think ... I dunno, you can't want to write novels unless you've read a shit-ton of them. you must love them - if you don't that will shine through in your writing no-matter how many rules you follow. If you do love them, I strongly believe you'll pick up how to do it as much by osmosis as rule following, and even if you write some terrible sentences, the passion will show through. Don't get me wrong, I don't think "show don't tell" isn't a terrible rule, but I think underlining someone's paragraph and saying this is "tell, tell tell" I guess I find to be overkill when it comes to "rules"

Can we consider the following using "show, don't tell criteria"? " For a long time I used to go to bed early. Sometimes, when I had put out my candle, my eyes would close so quickly that I had not even time to say "I'm going to sleep." And half an hour later the thought that it was time to go to sleep would awaken me; I would try to put away the book which, I imagined, was still in my hands, and to blow out the light; I had been thinking all the time, while I was asleep, of what I had just been reading, but my thoughts had run into a channel of their own, until I myself seemed actually to have become the subject of my book: a church, a quartet, the rivalry between François I and Charles V. This impression would persist for some moments after I was awake; it did not disturb my mind, but it lay like scales upon my eyes and prevented them from registering the fact that the candle was no longer burning. Then it would begin to seem unintelligible, as the thoughts of a former existence must be to a reincarnate spirit; the subject of my book would separate itself from me, leaving me free to choose whether I would form part of it or no; and at the same time my sight would return and I would be astonished to find myself in a state of darkness, pleasant and restful enough for the eyes, and even more, perhaps, for my mind, to which it appeared incomprehensible, without a cause, a matter dark indeed. " It's certainly not showing much. What about "In that pleasant district of merry England which is watered by the river Don, there extended in ancient times a large forest, covering the greater part of the beautiful hills and valleys which lie between Sheffield and the pleasant town of Doncaster. The remains of this extensive wood are still to be seen at the noble seats of Wentworth, of Warncliffe Park, and around Rotherham. Here haunted of yore the fabulous Dragon of Wantley; here were fought many of the most desperate battles during the Civil Wars of the Roses; and here also flourished in ancient times those bands of gallant outlaws, whose deeds have been rendered so popular in English song. Such being our chief scene, the date of our story refers to a period towards the end of the reign of Richard I., when his return from his long captivity had become an event rather wished than hoped for by his despairing subjects, who were in the meantime subjected to every species of subordinate oppression. The nobles, whose power had become exorbitant during the reign of Stephen, and whom the prudence of Henry the Second had scarce reduced to some degree of subjection to the crown, had now resumed their ancient license in its utmost extent; despising the feeble interference of the English Council of State, fortifying their castles, increasing the number of their dependants, reducing all around them to a state of vassalage, and striving by every means in their power, to place themselves each at the head of such forces as might enable him to make a figure in the national convulsions which appeared to be impending. The situation of the inferior gentry, or Franklins, as they were called, who, by the law and spirit of the English constitution, were entitled to hold themselves independent of feudal tyranny, became now unusually precarious. If, as was most generally the case, they placed themselves under the protection of any of the petty kings in their vicinity, accepted of feudal offices in his household, or bound themselves by mutual treaties of alliance and protection, to support him in his enterprises, they might indeed purchase temporary repose; but it must be with the sacrifice of that independence which was so dear to every English bosom, and at the certain hazard of being involved as a party in whatever rash expedition the ambition of their protector might lead him to undertake. On the other hand, such and so multiplied were the means of vexation and oppression possessed by the great Barons, that they never wanted the pretext, and seldom the will, to harass and pursue, even to the very edge of destruction, any of their less powerful neighbours, who attempted to separate themselves from their authority, and to trust for their protection, during the dangers of the times, to their own inoffensive conduct, and to the laws of the land." The former, I'm not utterly convinced shows or tells. It reflects and thinks. Neither does it propel the story forward. The latter seems to do an awful lot of explaining and scene setting. In an awful lot of words. I think the entire passage would be excised on a modern writing course, yet it was written by a prestigious author and poet. I think that the show don't tell rule is an ok way of thinking, but like all rules in writing it's over-applied to the point of tedium, really and I don't find it a helpful way of analysing a passage - or at least, it's only really one way of approaching it . Is your writing interesting, evocative, thoughtful? There's no one way to open a novel (see above) but try and do something surprising or different (see Proust, above) unless you are Walter Scott - above - in which case you can afford to ramble on about detailing on men's tunics in the 16th century for 5 pages. NB he can afford to do it because it's somehow interesting to the reader.

One thing that interests me is that you have this medium that was used primarily for pumping out pornography and somehow some enterprising people have turned that around and made it about storytelling. The naysayers point to how much cheaply written, shitty hentai there is, but I'm impressed because a lot of it isn't, but due to the need to make money the long, complex novels had to include pornographic sex scenes anyway and it seems that VNs generally still do almost as a nod to the past. I'm in no doubt that a large amount of VNs are complete rubbish but that's true of books and movies too, we just have a lot more people out there doing their best to filter out the good stuff for us (and imposing their own tastes upon us in the process.) I don't agree entirely about the translation thing - I've read a lot of great fiction in translation and whilst a lot of nuances are always lost, and you never quite get to appreciate the finest qualities of the language, if a translation is good you'll still get good literature, just not something that is 100% the original author's vision . That sounds really interesting -I think one of the best games I ever played was Planescape Torment, which is another "does it work better as a game or just a story" one. The other Infinity engine games play better as games, for sure - and also have great stories - but maybe Planescape was a better game for having such brilliant writing?? Which game developer is this? Ahhhh I wanna play The Tales and Legend of the heroes games. If only I had stupid amounts of free time I guess I'll stick to FF XV when it comes out, and I only got about 20% through witcher 3 *sigh* I was actually thinking of taking another look at these. I got angry with Telltale after they dropped trad point and click because I really enjoyed their Monkey Island revival. But now I'm playing the new King's Quest game and, actually, I'm feeling that reviving old classics like this is a bit redundant anyway. I guess the question should be whether Telltale tell good stories? Hard to be interested in Minecraft though!!! And I'm a bit indifferent to the way they are mopping up popular franchises, but I played the first Borderlands episode and thought it very well told. I feel your pain. I'm torn between whether it's ingenious or just tedious to play, in a way. It's all certainly very innovative. I decided not to bother to play it though and am just watching youtube videos of it. It's depressing seeing how very LONG they all are, but I'm finding it quite gripping and love the way these games subtly screw over your expectations towards them at every possible turn The jury is out ... When the text is really bad in a hentai game I find it a bit of a turn off and often the images match in trying too hard to be explicit. But sometimes it works! I'm actually finding Yu No to be pretty sexy, it's biggest crime is trying to find too many opportunities to show off cleavage/panties.

Definitely any good piece of fiction will allude to the themes of the story in various ways and I guess it's the mark of a good vs a bad writer that they can do so in a way that entices you in rather than feels forced and obvious. From the few VNs I've read I think plot twists are quite fundamental to the way they are composed, possibly because they are very long and it's a good way of maintaining interest. Any plot twist does need to be signalled or it will feel arbitrary and stupid and there's nothing worse than when a character you think is a good guy turns out to be the bad guy without any hint that it should be so.

I wish I could actually turn something I loved into a career. I tried to do that when I became a librarian, but it didn't work out because you don't get to read books you love, just manage or run a service *sigh*. To turn reading visual novels into something profitable would be ...impressive

I posted on Rottentomatoes for years and years and years. Not sure why, it was bleedin' toxic. I like movies, I guess.

I love long posts and thank you for looking at my blog/responding. That's awesome! Not sure I always have the time to respond as fully as I like these days (I seem to be spending my free time glued to a ...novel! But why else am I here and writing up my thoughts on these things? My thoughts on Divi-Dead are coming from a place of naivete with the genre - that's partly why I wanted to write them, so I can look back in 5 years and completely reassess my initial impressions (and already I found my opinion of Divi-Dead shifting as I read it). You mention Bible Black a lot - I think I began to play Bible Black in 2011 when I first found out about the form properly. It wasn't a good choice of first visual novel and whilst I wouldn't say that it put me off them, it didn't do much to bolster my enthusiasm at the time. It was very long and kept leading me down routes that had me raping people. How do I feel about rape in video-games/novels that are semi-titillating? I don't know - it's not very titillating so I'm still unsure as to the actual sense behind it. It's not a mainstay in western pornography, although male-dominance often can be. I don't feel it should be removed entirely anymore than I think murder or other horror/gore should be, but I do think it should be used more cautiously and thoughtfully than I felt it to be in BB at the time. It's interesting and I think more people should be open to discuss it (this is coming from someone who has a close friend that has been through these kinds of experiences). I think I'd intended to spend a lot of time exploring JRPGs but switched to Visual Novels as I think, ultimately, it's a more interesting storytelling medium. I'm a fan enough of Final Fantasy to have dabbled and played some of a few titles (I, III, VI, VII), but only completed a few of them (IV and XII, XIII-2) and I still haven't got around to Chrono-Trigger.... it's something that's on the wishlist, unfortunately! I'm a big fan of the FF XIII games from a gameplay and narrative perspective ... possibly a controversial viewpoint, but there we go!! I'm tolerant of this. I've played tons of western adventure games (graphic and text), wandered around, got stuck, bored, bogged down with the story, left them, returned 2 years later and ended up using a walkthrough anyway. I suck at the gameplay aspect sometimes and it's not because I lack patience. I've played Monkey island games with groups of friends and we've still resorted to walkthroughs. I often get help defeating tough bosses in RPGs. I wouldn't begin Dark Souls without a walkthrough-crutch. I'm not sure what I'm saying, but I'm fairly comfortable that part of the game is failing the game - and whilst I agree that one could say "it's not much of a game then", I'm interested in VNs from a broader sense in that they work as something more than a game, because they are also a storytelling device.(true of western AGs as well, to a large extent, though they are less successful narratively.) I'm judging this from the standards of the day. I think it looks gorgeous in terms of colour and detail, but also the shots are thoughtful and well composed. I guess Divi-Dead is below the minimum of what we'd expect these days. I actually thought some of the H-scenes were pretty good whereas usually they bore me. Is it Saya no Uta that's meant to be really disturbing. I can't wait! - I'm a movie horror buff although I do draw the line at the Human Centipede or whatever it is. if something can successfully create an atmosphere of dread, I do find that more rewarding than gore gore gore. haha I meant Yu-No! I've started it and am about 10 hours in. It's rather brilliant, actually. Maybe that was an overly generous comment - I think the games sexual world is fairly consistent and alluring, including the darker aspects. Some of the sex is sweet and some quite raunchy. At the end of the day, if we want pure fap then I think pornsites have that covered these days anyway. For a game made in the late 90s it may have been appealing.

Thanks for the positive comments everyone - I guess I'm too concerned when I'm visiting my parents and they complain about my anime watching habits because cartoonz iz for kidz ... I also went to an anime group once and everyone was 20 yrs old to my 35. I have no problem socialising with any age group, don't get me wrong, but you can't help but notice that it's considered to be a hobby that attracts younger people generally... There seems to be quite afew 30 somethings + knocking about though, so hi!!! When it got to the point that he allowed the TV series to take precedence over the novel as main source material was when I jumped ship and started agreeing with this viewpoint. it may be that the final two novels are still very good, but as someone who had been enjoying the story unfolding in prose and, in part, the surprises that came with it, I feel a little kicked in the teeth. As you say, it's all about which medium will generate the most money. One thing that attracts me to VNs is that there isn't that kind of culture around them, it seems, and perhaps when someone produces one they have a little more artistic freedom. I don't know, I can't wait to explore some of the newer stuff!