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nihilloligasan

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  1. Like
    nihilloligasan reacted to Fiddle in Why is Trinoline so big?   
    Why is your mom so big lol
  2. Sad
    nihilloligasan got a reaction from Dreamysyu in Sliding Scale of Illusion of Choice.   
    It's annoying, but i think real life itself is just a collection of meaningless choices
  3. Like
    nihilloligasan reacted to Plk_Lesiak in Lack of academic recognition in VN   
    Not sure how academic scene works in your country, but my experience is that you can write a thesis about anything in humanities, if you are able to convince people there's something meaningful in the phenomenon - popcultural studies may be young, but they're only expanding and it would be absolutely doable to make a serious research project on VNs from the perspective of literary studies, game studies, fan studies etc. I even made a small project on VN fan translations for a conference, even though I never expanded it as far as I initially wanted.
    I also made my master's thesis on MLP fan porn, in no way a mainstream phenomenon, and it was in sociology, where the burden of showing what you write about is meaningful in the scale of the broader societal issues is a bit higher than in cultural studies. Even so, it's true that there's virtually no academic work on VN in the West - when doing research, I've been literally able to find one book about VNs and their anime adaptation, which wasn't very helpful or particularly interesting BTW. I imagine it's not much better in Japan, as popcultural studies are still very weak there. I'd say there are a few reasons for it:
    1. It's an extremely niche medium, that is seriously absent from most people's popcultural knowledge - I think there many very curious aspects of VNs for both cultural studies and marketing, but simply too few people know them well enough to write about them in a meaningful way. Even in the academic world, it's the fans that drive various types' of media presence in the discussion and there's simply too few of us.
    2. It's a medium connected to porn, which means it will very likely be picked up by porn studies or by no one. I don't think the stigma connected to porn is that bad in the humanities/social studies nowadays, but once more, you have to first learn about the medium in-depth and see its potential before you can write anything interesting about it. And the idea of VNs being "gross fanservice games for horny teenagers" definitely doesn't help with that.
    If I end my leave next year and go back to my academic work, I will surely try to publish something on VN fan translations in English. Maybe will refocus my PhD on it, because the current project surely isn't getting anywhere.
  4. Like
  5. Like
    nihilloligasan reacted to Plk_Lesiak in How open are you to the idea of playing a VN with a Black Protagonist ?   
    Smaller indie VNs sometimes already do that by letting you customize your MC in various ways, like giving them a darker skin tone or changing gender, but it comes with the cost of them not showing up in CGs and dialogue/story being generic enough to not clash with any possible configuration. I don't self-insert very much so for me the bland or invisible protagonists detract from my enjoyment. I'd indeed take a protagonist that is very much unlike myself, like a woman or a black person, over an empty shell any day.
    The curious part of your question is that I'm not sure how to interpret the framing. Are you trying to make a protagonist that is essentially a self-insert but black/have a background that will appeal to black readers? If the protagonist has as little presence as those in JP eroge (meaning it won't lean very heavily into any kind of identity or personality traits to not get in the way of the reader filling the blanks), I don't think that would matter that much to usual VN readers. They should still have enough in common with the MC to self-insert without much issue, like they do for Japanese protags. It you want a well-defined black protagonist and a plot that refers to their race in meaningful ways... Than I definitely wouldn't mind it, but that's because it'll be clearly someone's story, and not masturbatory waifu fantasy. Other people that look for stories over fap material will also likely be interested with the unusual setup, like Zaka already suggested. The main issue is to communicate clearly what you're aiming for/what your game has going for it and not overstating the identity stuff.
  6. Like
    nihilloligasan reacted to Plk_Lesiak in Why Don't More People Read Visual Novels? - A Short Video Analysis   
    You guys kind of underestimate the effort and resources necessary to make a decent VN. Art is really expensive, and voice acting even more expensive if it's meant to not sound like shit. VNs are a really good, cheap tool for people that want to create basic interactive stories for fun or are artists and want to apply their own skills in such a way... But when we get to levels of quality that could be attractive to a mainstream audience the difference between VNs and simple 3D game or other types of 2D games isn't that massive. And I'm not sure I have to remind anyone how huge 2D/retro gaming is right now, so we shouldn't really have to use AAA games as the point of reference...
    Anyway, I think most arguments people already listed are valid (massive amounts on text in aggressively pushed "kamige", questionable porn, anime aesthetic)... But an important point people forget about is how many, often high-quality VNs don't have mainstream appeal because they defy expectation/do not provide the kind of interactivity Western audience wants. Every time I see Steam users complaining about a VN they played not being a game or having too few choices, it reminds my how either bizarre or dull the idea of interactive literature is for an average gamer... And at the same time, people who are not into games in the first place have few incentives to get into this particular niche of otaku media. And the way the industry handle stuff hardly helps. One genuine perk of VNs over other otaku media is conclusive romance, but for example, we in the West never get the anime tie-in titles that let you pursue a non-canon romance from popular shows. We never see VNs coming to the West with a proper marketing budget either. The result is that you have things like Steins;Gate and Clannad, with legendary-status anime adaptations, being the only VNs with proper reach, alongside gameplay-heavy adventure games such as Danganronpa or Ace Attorney and occasional lowest-common-denominator moe crap like Nekopara...
    I don't know if I'm right about it, but the longer I look at it, the more botched the whole "bringing VNs into the Western market" feels. Mostly because it relies on the existing fan community nearly in 100% and its ideas of outreach stopped at MoeNovel's delusions of 12-years-old French girls playing Pulltop's waifu games. Either VNs truly have no appeal in the West outside of porn and the small crowd of people looking for romantic stories, or they are selected and marketed in an atrocious way. I would hope it's at least partially the latter, because that still can be remedied to some extent... Like not letting this category on VNDB to forever stay massively neglected.
  7. Like
    nihilloligasan reacted to Asonn in Rewrite's Writing   
  8. Like
    nihilloligasan reacted to Fiddle in Basically, how much can VNDB scores be trusted?   
    Grisaia no Kajitsu isn't rated a 2/10 or anything close to a 2/10. Ergo, the scores cannot be trusted.
  9. Like
    nihilloligasan got a reaction from Narcosis in Madosoft is one big joke.   
    the real question is, when the hell is madosoft going to produce a meta vn where it turns out all the heroines are the same people being reincarnated into different games
  10. Thanks
    nihilloligasan got a reaction from Dreamysyu in Madosoft is one big joke.   
    the real question is, when the hell is madosoft going to produce a meta vn where it turns out all the heroines are the same people being reincarnated into different games
  11. Like
    nihilloligasan got a reaction from alien51 in How to make a baby in Visual Novel ?   
    as it turns out, the girls have been taking plan b off screen
  12. Thanks
    nihilloligasan got a reaction from Zakamutt in A New Decade is About to Start. What Are You Looking Forward To?   
    i look forward to the fact that nothing will change. i will wake up on january 1 and look at myself in the mirror. i will observe my hideously lovecraftian form before i leave my house. i will disappoint everyone around me, ruin all my new friendships, and procrastinate my time away. i will look back and wonder why i cant make a change before repeating the cycle over and over again. i will become more and more at peace with the fact that i will never live a happy life. i look forward to the fact that nothing, absolutely nothing, will change
  13. Confused
    nihilloligasan got a reaction from mitchhamilton in A New Decade is About to Start. What Are You Looking Forward To?   
    i look forward to the fact that nothing will change. i will wake up on january 1 and look at myself in the mirror. i will observe my hideously lovecraftian form before i leave my house. i will disappoint everyone around me, ruin all my new friendships, and procrastinate my time away. i will look back and wonder why i cant make a change before repeating the cycle over and over again. i will become more and more at peace with the fact that i will never live a happy life. i look forward to the fact that nothing, absolutely nothing, will change
  14. Like
    nihilloligasan reacted to McDerpingheimer III in Being a Visual Novel Fan or in the Industry is Suffering   
    this is because vns are bad
    remove vns and everything goes well
  15. Like
    nihilloligasan reacted to GXOALMD in Maggot Baits to be released Oct 24th   
    It's a good thing they warned us of the bible verses, I'd probably go up in flames if I read one.
  16. Haha
    nihilloligasan got a reaction from GXOALMD in Maggot Baits to be released Oct 24th   
    some of these things sound absolutely wild. i can't believe there's bible verses and marijuana in this game, wtf, i might not be able to handle all this crazy shit...
     
  17. Haha
    nihilloligasan got a reaction from Seraphim in Maggot Baits to be released Oct 24th   
    some of these things sound absolutely wild. i can't believe there's bible verses and marijuana in this game, wtf, i might not be able to handle all this crazy shit...
     
  18. Haha
    nihilloligasan got a reaction from Plk_Lesiak in Maggot Baits to be released Oct 24th   
    some of these things sound absolutely wild. i can't believe there's bible verses and marijuana in this game, wtf, i might not be able to handle all this crazy shit...
     
  19. Haha
    nihilloligasan got a reaction from Dreamysyu in Maggot Baits to be released Oct 24th   
    wow, the opening perfectly captures how I feel about this. shield my eyes, emptiness inside...
    definitely checking this out when it's released
  20. Like
    nihilloligasan got a reaction from Happiness+ in First VN you ever played and what did you think?   
    My first was Saya no Uta. I thought it was pretty cool and interesting, but over time my positive opinions towards it gradually decreased.
  21. Like
    nihilloligasan got a reaction from Dreamysyu in Prettiest school uniforms in VNs?   
    Cool looking male uniforms are nearly impossible to find...I'll just stick with females.
    I really like the color palette of the Sono Hanabira uniforms, and the flowing designs in the Sakura no Uta and Subarashiki Hibi uniforms are also really appealing to me.
  22. Like
    nihilloligasan reacted to Nekopie in Visual Novels that you got emotionally attached to?   
    I know it’s a bit overrated, but when I played Katawa Shoujo, I got emotionally attached to it for several reasons.
    First, because I have a developmental disability which forced me to take medication every day. At first I was sad that this will destroy my already scarce interactions with people, but after I saw the protagonist managing to bond with the girls, I realized that this is by no means the worst thing that could happen to me, and I begun to have faith in humanity.
    Second, I wasn’t interested into mainstream media, and this gave me an escape to the norms I was supposed to follow.
    And I know this will sound weird, but even though this is an American VN, I was sick of most mainstream movies, since I found most of them are extremely violent (when I started the game), so KS showed that there is an alternative to the “American way of life” of becoming happy. As my mother said when we where in a cultural festival, “you see most American movies filled with death and violence, whereas you enjoy something that is more peaceful”.
    Sorry for not bringing anything else, university and a severe block stopped me from actualy enjoying another VN, let alone try an untranslated one.
  23. Like
    nihilloligasan got a reaction from mitchhamilton in YURI TITLES NEED MORE HEROINE ROUTES!   
    tbh i've always dreamed of a sonohana game where you're the new girl and you get to pick a new gf out of a wide selection of cuties. i think the biggest problem with this set up is that the idiot writers would probably just write a standard male protagonist with boobs
  24. Like
    nihilloligasan got a reaction from Silvz in Best Kiss Scene In A Visual Novel   
    jesus what happened to that girl's wrist
  25. Like
    nihilloligasan got a reaction from GXOALMD in What's your favourite Subahibi's chapter?   
    Invention and Insects for me (pretty basic answers at this point, though). The thing I find most interesting about these two chapters is that they use a similar framework to convey different ideas about suffering. They both feature lonely and mentally unstable protagonists that are thrust into increasingly more extreme situations that eventually lead to the "End Sky" (or, in a more literal sense, the "End Earth"). Takuji and Zakuro were ultimately trapped in their own worlds. Their perceptions of reality were twisted to the point where absurd conclusions seemed like the only sane ones. It sort of points back to Ayana's speech on how humans can't understand death and have to change it to a form they can relate to. They wanted to find the truth in the end sky, but they ended up returning to the earth instead.
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