Thyndd

Oh boy, my best regards to you See you at the end of Alternative.

Back in my high school days I used to write quite a bit (mostly short stories), it was very relaxing and rewarding for me. I was never that great, but I did manage to qualify for some contests in my region, ocassionally winning some awards. Somehow it's something I slowly drifted apart from after entering college, but I really miss it and I'm thinking about taking it up again, if only as a therapeutical device for me. Man, I actually dropped so many things during these last years. I'm kind of ashamed of myself. Actually now that I think about it, after reading everything in English for years I don't even know if I'll remember how to write in my native language anymore And my English is nowhere near literary level

Oh yeah, the post-key depression syndrome, a classic. Good luck dealing with that. I remember when I first watched Clannad (the anime, this was way before I got into VNs) and for a week I felt like a zombie

Hmm, I finished Moon. Don't do drugs, kids.

As others have already said, I don't read something if I don't feel like it. This isn't your job (I think? ) so you bear no responsability towards it and you should never feel forced to read something you are fed up with. If you feel like dropping a VN to start another one, just do it, you'll be happier and that's what it all comes down to

Every time I read a VN's description that I'm convinced it's just right for me, only to find out that it's not translated into English seconds later, it feels like a punch in the guts that rubs in my face the fact that I've been too lazy to keep up my japanese learning process

Slutty maid is bae. Have fun with Grisaia Ok, so I finished Akane's route (Rewrite spoilers ahead) and even though it's already 3 am here I really need to comment on it or else I'll explode. This route really is fodder for thought. This is gonna be long, let me warn you. Welp, this route was very different from the rest, but I liked it a lot. Now it's time for Moon and Terra to wrap up Rewrite

So meat pot yes, defenseless anus nah huh Good work, focusing on the important aspects of life. I approve.

Hmm now I'm interested. Even though I loved Grisaia, I couldn't be bothered to read the sequels because I considered that there couldn't be much more that is actually worth to tell, now that everyone's past was revealed and the problems "solved". I was still considering reading Meikyuu after Rewrite though, as it's been a while since Kajitsu for me and I'm beginning to miss the characters Also I hope Rakuen takes a turn for the better!

If I keep on listening to this I'm gonna die, but I don't care:

I've read Chihaya's and Shizuru's route from Rewrite. Now I only have Akane left and then I'll move onto Moon and Terra, which I assume are like the true routes of the game (?). Welp, I'll share my opinion on these two routes. Chihaya: Shizuru: My current rating on the routes, without considering my personal fondness for the heroines, goes like this: Kotori > Lucia=Shizuru >> Chihaya.

Something we take for granted when reading a VN (unless it's a kinetic novel) is that it'll have several routes. The way the story splits and branches depends on the particular VN in question, so for example I've come across this recent thread about a "ladder structure" where at some points on the common route you decide whether to go for that heroine route or to stay in the common route until other chance presents itself for another heroine. When someone asks (or if someone asked you, if someone actually cared ) what is a VN and how is it different from reading a novel, you'd probably list some key features like: it has pictures and soundtrack, and sometimes voice acting; it's more focused on dialogue than prose... and most importantly, it has some interaction with the reader in that it allows you to pick some choices along the way that can dramatically change the outcome of the story, giving some videogame vibes to them. Is this last part really true though? I don't think so. Not in all the cases at least. It's undeniably true that picking one option or another does take you through a different story, but what I've noticed with the little experience I have with VNs is that those differences are usually not a natural consequence of the options you chose, and therefore I don't think calling those multiple stories "routes" branching off a main story is the correct term to use. A visual novel that has "true" routes would be one for which the differences between routes are fully explained by the choices the MC/s make/s, so that every other event that is not affected by the choices would still happen in the same way, even if only behind the scenes. This gives the VN a puzzle feeling to it, because different routes can share events which are seen form different perspectives or not seen at all, and it's the reader who must make sense of what's going on. Therefore it's no surprise that mistery VNs make the biggest use of this labyrinth-like structure, such as Higurashi. For other kinds of VNs however, this wouldn't even be practical. If every difference must logically follow from a choice, it'd leave very little room for big divergence, making all the routes very similar. That issue could be patched by having a huge number of possible choices, but that's not feasible from a production standpoint, not even for the big and mighty companies. For mistery VNs this isn't a problem at all though, since for the most part each route will be shrouded in mistery, being all the similarities among them the stepping stone to reconstruct the story, and the differences are either natural consequences of the different choices or a consequence of a change in perspective. It's just so perfect Obviously even if most VNs don't really have routes in the truest sense, the outcomes that don't logically follow from the choices are subtle enough that the reader won't even notice or even if they do, that it still feels like branches of the same story, rather than a collection of different stories that just happen to have the same setting and characters. How subtle they do this varies a lot though, and in some cases I've seen people complaining, like in g-senjou no maou's case for example. So let me open the discussion. Does it bother you whether there are or are not random changes among routes? Can you provide some examples of VNs that you believe have true routes and some that don't but do it well enough so it's almost imperceptible?

Since I've only started playing VNs from about 1.5 years ago and I still have so much new stuff to read, I haven't. But I do plan to reread some VNs in the future, especially those that rely more on the atmosphere than the actual plot, so knowing what will succeed is not actually that important.

I'm done with Lucia's route. Moving onto Chihaya now

I second ef~ and I'll add "eden* They were only two, on the planet". OP, if you want feels, you have to read those two minori VNs. Plus eden*'s MC kinda resembles Yuuji from Grisaia in a way, so there's also that. And speaking of Grisaia, when I finished it people on this forum suggested that I read "Sharin no kuni, himawari no shoujo" because it was really similar, and it is indeed. It's arguably less focused on the romance and more on solving the girls' problems, but the romance is still there nonetheless. Aside from that you can try reading other Key VNs, if you enjoyed Clannad. For romance, Kanon and especially Air comes to mind.

Yep, that's the video. Nah, I don't think it's fake, but as the author admits himself in a later video, the experiment had two big flaws: after the first ad about dog toys popped up, he clicked on it, thus altering all the following results, and most importantly, he was streaming live on youtube, which means that he essentially agreed on sharing his voice audio publicly. I still find it unsettling nonetheless. I seriously doubt that the first ad was just a coincidence, which means that Google is able to process voice in real time and update the information it shows to the user. And, let's be honest, even if Google or Facebook are not constantly listening and sending information (which could be detected using a sniffer), most likely your OS is (which could actually hide that fact so that the only way to know what it's doing would be reverse eng). Meh, in the end, if you are not a terrorist you probably shouldn't even care, but it's still creepy

Extremely over the top dark VNs or stories in general are usually not my cup of tea, but I can definitely appreciate and often find myself enjoying more moderate VNs that happen to have some very dark or gruesome scenes. If those scenes are the norm however, it'd take away most of the impact from them. I believe that how shocking a scene ends up being depends more on the context and atmosphere it'd previously set up as well as the relative strength of the scene inside the work. The reason being the initial approach and mental predisposition of the reader. As for my personal experience on the subject, I can stomach pretty much anything as long as it doesn't take me by surprise so I'm not deeply involved. It's just a matter of keeping the appropiate emotional distance from what I'm reading. Then there are asshole writers who know exactly how this works and intentionally write the story so that when all the shit happens it's both unexpected and impossible to cut off the emotional link, but oh well, that's not that common

I'm halfway through Lucia's route in Rewrite. I feel the urge to comment on some things:

This is the quality content I'm here for

Yeah, I thought so as well. I'm no lawyer but 8 years seems more like a sentence you'd get for drug trafficking or something like that. Then again, he served for 8 years, but do they ever mention what his actual original sentence was? I can't remember. Congrats on finishing this VN, OP. It's not perfect by any means, the writing has some serious flaws and everything outside the true route is mediocre at best, but man, the good parts are so good (like that freaking epilogue) that for me they definitely make up for everything it didn't get right. Sometimes it's not the objectively best VNs the ones we enjoy the most, or at least that's the case for me.

Orxata

That makes me think... Now this is considered weird because it's unusual for a man his age to have a taste for anime or to be into the Internet meme culture, but when the youth of today become the elders of tomorrow, this will be just par for the course. A world worth living in, no doubt.