Thyndd

3kyu furendo. Here's one for you. Happy Halloween.
 

I'll just put this here.

Welcome to our den! 
Admitting or denying your loliconness is a lose or lose situation, damned if you do and damned if you don't. In the end, the cops will judge 

Hajimemashite!  I've started getting into visual novels lately and I'm currently reading Fate/stay night right now.  I recently came across this forum and figured I might as well sign up to share my visual novel experience with all of you.  Dozo yoroshiku onegaishimasu!
(Ah, forgive my awkward Japanese.  I had a little bit of self-study.)
Anyway, a little bit about myself.  I'm a writer, artist, and an obvious weeb.  I've been reading light novels for a while now and the most recent one I'm reading is Clockwork Planet, hence the inspiration for my username and icon.
Though contrary to my username and icon, I'm not actually a lolicon, but I'll leave that up to you to judge. 

Am I the only one that finds Halloween obnoxious, similarly to Christmas? Not as a concept, I mean, but through the fact it jumps at you from every corner for a full month or more until you're completely sick of it? 
...
Did I tell you guys how I'm very fun at parties?

Where exactly? I need to move there asap. 
I remember saying this earlier in some other topic... As much as I like bashing religion and finding things to blame it for, I honesty don't think the sexual taboo originates within the Christian dogma. Sure, Christianity strongly  incorporates this repudiation against sexuality, but so do other unrelated religions and cultures throughout the globe, each in their own degree. After all, most peoples exhibit at the very least the shyness to cover up their bodies. Something must be going on in our psyches that's just deeper than "it's just a culturally adquired custom". Of course it still doesn't make any sense, so we should know better than blindly following our instincts. 

Where exactly? I need to move there asap. 
I remember saying this earlier in some other topic... As much as I like bashing religion and finding things to blame it for, I honesty don't think the sexual taboo originates within the Christian dogma. Sure, Christianity strongly  incorporates this repudiation against sexuality, but so do other unrelated religions and cultures throughout the globe, each in their own degree. After all, most peoples exhibit at the very least the shyness to cover up their bodies. Something must be going on in our psyches that's just deeper than "it's just a culturally adquired custom". Of course it still doesn't make any sense, so we should know better than blindly following our instincts. 

This whole backing campaign was clearly just a way to raise the sales of the existing two chapters without having to release anything after that. Everybody knows that an incomplete episodic story will never sale if there isn't any hope for it to be completed at some point.

Well, I wasn't really sure what subsection to put this in but anyway it's still relevant to visual novel talk. This software uses a neural network to recreate censored images. There have been previous similar posts from early versions of this software but it's now actually quite usable. See my post here on reddit:
https://new.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/comments/9sjlut/deepcreampy_decensoring_hentai_with_deep_neural/
The long and the short of it is that considering it takes about 10 seconds, it can be used as a starting point for graphic editors to then make a more reasonable decensored image, while still preserving the bulk of the original artist's "impression." No it doesn't look great, but in the absence of original work from the companies, it can be used as the basis for another graphic artist to polish up a decensored version for a localised release.
Here's the only sample I've tried it on, NSFW of course:
 
Here're some that others have uploaded:
 

I started watching this new series that is currently airing, "Seishun Buta Yarou wa Bunny Girl senpai no yume wo minai". I've watched the first 2 episodes and damn, this shit is good. I love the dynamics of the main couple so much. 
Two more episodes to go until I catch up, and then I'll be sad waiting till next week.

On their panel they just announced Irotoridori no Sekai. Really interesting seeing it getting an official localization would have expected it from Nekonyan or SP instead though. Other than that they also announced Hitotsu Yane no, Tsubasa no Shita de and Mirai Radio to Jinkou-bato

I used to believe VN's power to change a person, that it encourages bravery, fosters temperance, develops optimism. But after some unfavourable circumstances in life I realised VN has not made me a better person, neither mentally nor culturally. I can enjoy a great story but my life is still boring. I can appreciate interesting characters but I am still abhorred. I started to ask myself if VN cannot change life, is there still a reason to read them? The question haunts me everytime. Keep in mind I had faith in VN and it is no mere entertainment.
At times I think this is all a useless sentiment, that I was naive to believe things are more than what they are. Just as the bible is just a book to non-christian, no more no less (don't take this comparison too serious, I am in no mood to debate). As a final judgement, I have to ask if anyone believe in the power of VN to change life. It is afterall futile in believing what no one else believes.
 

I should have given the full Muv Luv disclaimer/explanation.

When you download Muv Luv, you get a game with two games inside it. Muy Luv Extra and Muv Luv Unlimited. They're both 7/10's you have to play through to get to the 10/10 that is Muv Luv Alternative (which is the sequel, a separate game). They may not seem like it at first but you HAVE to play Extra and Unlimited because they set up Muv Luv Alternative.

You only have to play 2 routes in Extra and 1 route in Unlimited and can safely ignore the rest (side routes). You may start off thinking "I'll just play the whole game why not" but after you play 2 or 3 routes you'll start to see why they're kinda repetitive and maybe not worth your time. The routes you have to play at a minimum:

Extra: Sumika, Meiya
Unlimited: Meiya
Alternative: There are no routes, just enjoy
Also, some of the after content of MLA is phenomenal. Specifically "The Day After" series...potentially better than the actual game itself. 

Please do. You should not skip Extra and Unlimited. Having played those is the difference Between MLA being good and being absolutely phenomenal 
You didn't mention any genre preference or content to avoid beyond too much H, so I'm gonna suggest Saya no Uta. It's short and good, and was one of my entry points to the medium. It's dark and pretty disturbing though, so keep that in mind. 

I guess, this might be a good opportunity to finally buy it.

I thought about just staying a guest and lurking through some topics every now and then, but I really like the atmosphere of this place... everyone's nice and chill... I think 
I named myself dwaif a long time ago. I'm a pretty old user from the blockland forums (the only other forums I use nowadays), if you don't know what that is... well... it's like playing with legos on the internet.
 
I found this website completely by chance. I'm really new to visual novels, and I'm sorta picky... I went through dozens of reddit recommendations and wound up reading through recommendations here too. My first ever VN (or dating sim) was Heartache 101 …like years ago, and I still play it sometimes! I didn't touch any more vns until one day out of the blue I wanted to give the genre a shot, and played Chrono Clock earlier this year. I really enjoyed it, and started Grisaia no Kajitsu. I played through Yumiko's and Michiru's route so far, and loved every minute with them. Grisaia really exceeded my expectations, and actually made me tear up lmao
ChiruChiru is the best girl in my book B^)

that's pretty much it though... there's not much else to know about me I guess, but feel free to ask me anything!
thanks for having me here, and I hope we all get along!

I'm a simple man. Someone praises ef or ef's soundtrack, I like. 
 

I'm a simple man. Someone praises ef or ef's soundtrack, I like. 
 

And now, allow me to mention an ending song to certain untranslated charage, whose main selling point is a big spoiler to its ending.
 

I guess, I'll continue to praise Umineko soundtrack.
And a few vocal songs:
 

Summer Pockets has some nice background music:
 

I love the music in Ef: A Fairy Tale of the Two. I'm not really sure how to describe it. It feels peaceful but also filled with a underlying sadness or longing. Regardless, I really couldn't imagine it without the music. (Tenmon who did most of music, also worked with Makoto Shinkai on many of his films and The Place Promised in our Early Days and 5 Centimeters Per Second and have excellent soundtracks too.)

Finished Muv-Luv Alternative yesterday.
Yeah, that was a ride and a half!! I was even more emotionally invested in it then Clannad. I'm just glad I don't currently live in a cosmic horror timeline like that.....
 
Welp! Next up is ....... Steins;Gate. Another VN with parallel timelines eh?
...... is it just me, or is the music, REALLY intense?? Holy shit.....

I would assume you are an English monolingual speaker? Correct me if I'm wrong, and I don't mean it as an offense, at all, if anything, I can perfectly relate. Unfortunately my Japanese is still not good enough to comfortably read VNs (nor it'll be any time soon if I don't get my shit together and start to take it seriously ), but I had a similar enough experience given that English is not my first language and there was a time when I couldn't read it fluently. My native languages would be Spanish and French, and for a very long time everything I consumed would be in one of those languages, especially Spanish. The thing is, the few translated VNs available would most of the time be a machine translation from English, which at the same time would usually be a pretty bad translation from Japanese. Just imagine how terrible that is. Needless to say, since I got my English up to par I completely stopped consuming this shitty translations, and I'm now a happier individual and the world is a better place.
And still, sometimes I replay VNs along with friends that can't speak English, so we download a Spanish patch... and I'm constantly thinking how much better those scenes were just by the way they were worded in English. The style and prose can definitely make or break a good scene. And before you retort that it's just because I've read the English translation first, nope, this goes both ways. I've checked the English translation of stuff I've originally read in Spanish/French and I still think it's way better. 
Either because you truly don't care or you are not yet aware that you do, I obviously won't try to force my view on you. I just wanted to let you know that I'm the farthest from a 'VN elitist' that you could get, and I still very much care for translation quality, as many others do.