Chronopolis

Oh hey, I've playing Evolimit as well :D. Almost done first route (Kazuna). Evolimit has so much comedy everywhere the tone of the VN is really confusing. The fights are alright, visually impressive, but some of them not personal enough for my taste. The best part are the character bonds, there are also some pretty damn impactful scenes and sequences of scenes.

Yes, swan song seems like something you wouldn't want to miss. Kami no Ue no Mahoutsukai Edit: Well it's kinda shame to so see you go, but 300 VN's is a lot (wonder if I'll ever get to even 100 ) Do you have any plans in particular after stopping playing VN's?

Saya no Uta. Didn't know what a visual novel at the time, or that it had ero until I saw it O.o. After being depressed for 3 weeks, second was Katawa Shoujo <3

The feature adds a cute and different flavor, but if you leave out story/character details it becomes an excuse for another mindless archetype, which is bleh. The pictures in the OP are hnnng cute though. Nekomimi wasn't really a big part of the VN, but tails and ears showed up in Gurenka. The ears just fit Kuon, didn't really react much there. But the tail for Elsrise was cute addition. It also had the effect of gently emphasizing her non-humanness.

Haven't heard of the term, but anyone who didn't and googled the term like me would be suitably mortified.

Soshite Ashita no Sekai Yori Non-muted link (niconico): http://polsy.org.uk/play/nico/?vidid=&vurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nicovideo.jp%2Fwatch%2Fsm5539284 Man the PV makes the VN look cool.

There's nothing wrong with playing VN's or the escapist activity, it's nothing to be ashamed of. The thing is, problems won't be any worse to confront now than if you sit and wait. The two differences between enjoying and escaping is: 1: You're working on the problem you have 2. You're not letting playing VN's make you look away from the problem. Usually despair (or a weaker form, procrastination) is what leads to escapism. Your thinking should be "The problem exists. There's nothing wrong with that fact. I'm working on it. It's going to take time to solve. I'm going to look for ways to solve it, and not beat my self up or lose hope if I don't see immediately work out. Most of these problems that lead to escapism don' just "solve", but they can progressively get a step or two better." The approach I used was to try to be as realistic as possible. A problem is just a problem. It needs to be addressed. If you don't have the skills or habit to address the problem, then it's time to attempt self-improvement. Regardless, there's no place in there for despair, faulty expectations, low self-esteem, etc. Just make sure you consistently are giving good shot at doing what need to be doing. Make sure to find some time to relax and kick back, though, while you're working on the problem. If VN's are too promotive of escapism for you atm, then find something else. It may be the case that VN's are filling a void for you such that it will be very crushing if you stop completely. In that case, use your best discretion. --- First of all, if you catch yourself despairing over the problem since there seems to be no obvious solution, make yourself stop. When you're playing: If you spot yourself going "If I keep playing, the problem's not going to appear in my vision.", make yourself stop. If you find yourself too worried by the problem to enjoy a leisure activity, or you feel that during the time you are relaxing all the problems are going to pile up and overwhelm you, make yourself stop. If you aren't ignoring the problem, but still find yourself spending too much time on VN's, etc, then just cut back. Once you get rid of the "escapism", two hours is just as fulfilling as four. It's pretty hard making the initial shift. You probably do want to cut back to a minimum on your escapist activities, at least for the first week or two. But, actively working on a problem can actually be fulfilling. And you'll usually take something out of the process. --- Edit: please overlook my over-forwardness in the above. The topic hits close to home for me, but I didn't expect that it would be so difficult to talk about dispassionately.

Proper manners without being a push-over always make me smile. There are interesting traits to explore reservedness, pride, leadership. For the purposes of playing around inside the "mold", the ojyousama archtype is like new-game plus, perhaps?

It was a hypothetical, general, "you", the subject being fans of JAST.

Oh, I see, you're right. I didn't consider that meaning. For Furious vs Outraged, iuuno. Who are you furious towards? JAST. What are you furious about? In direct response to them delaying the game. It's not a far jump in this context. The envisioned fury's cause is trivial to pindown: the notion that there shouldn't be a reason JAST should be delaying the game. Which fits snugly a state which to use the word outraged. Denotically they may be somewhat different, but here words are applicable and seem to point to the more or less the same state.

Fair enough about the shifted memory. But both statements are ambiguous in the same way. If I use ambiguous statements and people take them the wrong way (without conspiring to or extreme bias), I don't think it's correct to blame the people for taking it not the way it was intended. It seems like you are surprised that people don't react positively to you. My intention was just to lay out reasons I think why you are getting bad rep. IMO What seperates a community leader (in my image) from an activist is that a people value the goals the community leader is trying to reach, agree with or at least respect their stance, and trust the leader to lead/implement actions on their behalf to reach those goals. It's not an easy position to reach, or even carry out. A key part is convincing people. ---- I can sympathize with your reasons for wanting to post on a single site, they are good reasons. I also agree with Decay's sentiments. Purely speaking on the topic, While external linking doesn't mean bad there might be prudent grounds to disallow because it is a slippery slope.

I think it depends whether the goal is to give a similar experience, or give the reader all the information to understand the work. The elegant solution is elegant in that you can appreciate the editor/TL coming up with it, but it might not be inherently better than the footnote. It's just that more often than not you are trying for seamlessness.

It doesn't matter what you were trying to do, it matter that you used a title like that. It rubs myself (and probably a fair amount of other people) when you say "visual novel fans" are "outraged", when, most of the community doesn't even have an opinion on the matter. Since everyone in the community falls under that label it feels like you're either implying that they are outraged too, or that they should be. One of the things it boils down to is that, not that there's anything wrong with that, unlike most people (who just have an opinion), you have an opinion and an agenda. In general, content with an agenda stick out like a sore thumb anywhere. Some people will resent being told what to think, as opposed to being just given. I don't have a problem with you trying to promote upcoming titles, I see what you are trying to address. How you present your ideas though, makes a difference: "If you are interested in seeing an un-cut version, make sure to show you support here." compared to something to the effect of: "un-cut is the biggest issue since sliced bread! Show your support, because that's the only natural things to do!"* If you posting with an agenda makes me frown a bit, using that kind of prescriptive language makes me roll my eyes, hard, and think you're one of those people who have no respect for other people's intelligence.

To summarize, there doesn't seem to be a way too get TA working with a J-J dictionary You can use Daijirin with VNR, but VNR's parsing and interface isn't great. For text in browsers you can use rikai-sama or (rikai-kun for chrome?), linking it to any EPWING J-J dictionary. I just use TA to do quick look ups (don't read off it anymore though), and http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/ for more detailed ones. It's slower to copy paste or type words out rather than a mouse-over, but not that much...since reading a J-J definition requires more time and thought in itself. It's also helpful to be able to use TA to look up words in the definition.

Was nice

Never have I read such a serious article seriously and laughed so hard. You sir, are a poet and a scholar.

Introduction: When it comes to reading VN's in Japanese, required skills can be grouped into four areas: Vocab, grammar, basic parsing skill, and kanji skill. In this post, for each area I'm going to explain: -what knowing skills in the area are good for -how you might study them -how much you'll need to start reading. I'll also give some related tips. The requirements mentioned below are a conservative estimate. I've known people who've jumped in to playing VN's with less or much less, but I'm giving a safe estimate. A level which at most people, without any special knack for learning languages through immersion, should be able to gain traction. If you learn this much before starting an easyish VN, the amount you are completely lost should be significantly less than the percentage you are able to pick up and improve from. This is not a comprehensive how-to guide by any means. Just an informative post. ------------------ 1. Vocab Knowing enough vocab to study your grammar resource without being bogged down by vocab: -About 30 verbs and 50 other words for Genki 1/ Tae kim Basic. -By the time you get to Genki 2/Tae Kim Essential you'll want a good set of verbs (about 100), and maybe about 300 total vocabulary. -~600 words about how much you'll want to be able to study N3 grammar without getting bogged down in vocab. Having enough vocab to start your first VN: -I recommend over 1000, but anywhere from 800-1300 is good. I remember trying Clannad with only 800, and I felt like ramming my head into a wall. It's also important to pick an easy title. It will still feel hard no matter what, but an easy title will be much more helpful and rewarding to play. You also must just translation aggregator and ITH. They are the reason why Visual Novels are the best medium for learning Japanese out of anime/books/movies/drama/etc. Vocab Lists: There's a dedicated verb list here: http://nihongoichiban.com/2012/08/13/list-of-all-verbs-for-the-jlpt-n4/ Verbs are helpful to learn, because they are often the most important part of the sentence AND you need to to have stuff to conjugate. In general JLPT-based vocab list is here: http://www.tanos.co.uk/jlpt/jlpt5/vocab/ Regarding English definitions: Be mentally open and flexible. If the english definition doesn't quite add up, don't try and think about it too hard. Focus instead on associating the word with the situations where you see it. For example, you might be confused by the word 都合 and it's unhelpful definition J-E definition, but if you seen 都合がいい used in a situation where you know it means "is convenient for me" from context then remember that occurence. There might be (there are, in fact), other usages of the word 都合, but that doesn't hurt you in anyway. The next time you see 都合 you can pair it against this meaning and see if that makes any sense. 2. Grammar Skills With N5+N4 grammar you will be barely able to start making your way through a VN. Without N4, you will have quite limited gains in the long term from reading visual novels. (Equivalent to Genki 1+2.) -Required to be able to play VN's With N3 grammar, everything will feel a lot clearer, the amount of grammar you'll understand will exceed 60%. (Equiv. to Intermediate approach to Integrated Japanese). Highly recommended to study this before or soon after you start your first VN. N2 grammar further cuts the amount of unknown grammar you face in three. N1 is kind of like a bonus that gives you a lot of uncommon or formal expressions. It's NOT comprehensive at all, in terms of covered all Japanese phrases. From my experience, some of the phrases you learn in here show up often in novels (ばかり、んばかり), others quite less. Good to know, though Expressions not covered in JLPT There are a lot of patterns and phrases not covered in JLPT that you will see in typical native reading material. Examples (社長に議長, phrases like なんだと！？ Xってなんだ？　ですって！？　～てくれないかな。 オレって、なんてバカなんだ ) Not to worry, many of them can be picked up as you go. For the rest, once you get settled into reading, you can start noting down those phrases you don't get and google them or ask other people. Imabi for grammar You can also try studying from http://www.imabi.net/. It's a phenomenal reference, it's just goes into tons of depth, too much. I think there's 2 or 3 times as much information there is covered by JLPT up to JLPT 1. As such it's going to be overwhelming for a beginner and is much better suited as a reference for intermediate or advanced learners. 3. Basic Parsing Skill Knowing the different types of words (Covered by doing a vocab list of about 100 verbs, and then the JLPT 5 list. You also have to have done or be doing Tae Kim's Basic Guide, since he explains what na-adj's, i-adj's, and other word types are, etc.). -(nouns, suru-verbs/nouns, verbs, na-adj's, i-adj's, adverbs, temporal adverbs) -Required to be able to play VN's. Knowing the basic sentence structure and how words can modify each other and fit in a sentence.: (adjectives modifying nouns, verbs). The knowledge is covered by Tae Kim Basic + a mix of Essential Grammar and Genki 1/2. I personally find Tae Kim's explanation good even though the learning curve is steep and his lessons aren't good for review like Genki books are. He tries to convey to you the big picture. -Required to be able to play VN's. Being able to breakdown sentences and spot the different types of words based on their position. -you can practice this by reading bits of text in your genki textbook, but more likely, the first time you really gain this skill is going to be the first month in which you read a visual novel with TA. Heavily practiced during your first month or two of reading VN's. 4. Kanji Skill: Learning to spots radicals in kanji (could be covered by doing the 214 radicals, about 1 month. You could also do this ongoing basis, learning how to spot the radicals that make up a kanji, for the words you learn.) -not needed to read VN's with TL aggregator, but extremely helpful for learning new words which have new kanji. Learning to remember kanji, ie. start recognizing when words share the same kanji. (it is a long ongoing gradual process. You can start doing this with the vocab you learn once you are comfortable learning vocab. You can also pick out words you see in vn's and check whether they use the same kanji by typing them out (example 朝（あさ）　and　朝食（ちょうしょく）　use the same kanji.). Oh course, to be able to easily produce the kanji you want to compare you need to remember how to spell a word that contains it (in this case 朝). So, as your vocab expands, you'll be able to compare more kanji. Note that to be able to do this comparing you must be able to spot radicals in kanji (previous level skill). -moderately helpful for learning vocabs. The same way remembering radicals helps learning with kanji: if you know the kanji clearly, you can remember a word just by the two kanji it uses, which is very precise and doesn't take a lot of mental bandwidth. It also means that you will much more rarely confuse words which have similiar looking kanji. The following two skills are for more advanced, they won't be particularly useful until much later. You might not notice the problems they solve until later as well. I include them mainly for completeness. Learning on-yomi for many of the Jyouyou kanji (start when you are intermediate-advanced, a medium-long process) -helpful for exactly what it is, reading kanji words and compounds correctly. -don't need to worry about this. From learning vocab you might pick up some of the common ones, but there's no need to pursue this actively for a while. Learning kanji meaning: (start when you are advanced, and can use a J-J dictionary) -suffixes like 府、省、性、症, as well normal kanji whose different meanings apply to clusters of words. -helpful for kanji compounds which won't directly show up in dictionaries -helpful for developing a native level understanding of vocabulary (not everything can be learned by exposure). A lot of literary words are fairly influenced by their kanji meanings, though sometimes consulting the word differentiation explanations can be more helpful. One last topic... On learning enough grammar and jumping into works too difficult for you. Reading a VN isn't the best way to learn basic sentence structure. However, it's a great way to reinforce grammar points you've learned. It's also a great way to get an understanding of conversational patterns you won't find in textbooks or JLPT. But you won't have the presence of mind to pay attention to that if you are bogged down by not knowing basic grammar. There are benefits for venturing early into native material or difficult vn's, but you wouldn't give a grade two student Tolkien, or even Harry Potter to improve their English. All the fancy prose and unusual concept would distract you from the more immediately useful things like, say: basic sentence structure. There are works which are the right level, and there are VN's which you really want to read. For the best experience, it's best to find some combination of the two. ------------------ Ok that's all for now. Feel free to ask any questions: I didn't really go into the details of how to study, instead focusing on the, well, skills involved. But it's also hard to remember what it's like for someone just starting out. I remember parts of studying very clearly, but I forget the thousands of things I used to be puzzled through varying stages of understanding but now take for granted. The process was all I could think about for the longest time. Now I don't give it much thought, it's just a regular part of my life, reading and a bit of studying. It's not bad idea, to just find a type of study that you know is helpful, stop thinking about all the right ways and wrong ways and magic tricks which don't exist, and just do it, for a while. Regularly. For a month or three.

Those are good points. I disagree with point 3, I didn't find the wrong furigana helped. It did become very reflex to spot obvious highlighting mistakes and read over them. Though it has been a while since I've read straight from the TA box though. Point 5 is very important after you get accustomed to reading in Japanese. At that point, if you don't already, you will want to practice reading Japanese in terms of words, not individual characters. Be assured that that is possible, it's how you read english as well (if not in larger chunks). If I had time to gather it up, there's different advice I would give to complete beginners, novice readers, intermediate readers, and upper intermediate/advanced readers.

I've been wanting to get into this for a long time, count me in. I know a thing or two about D&D but still mostly newbie. It's great that you're doing RP focused. I think most people who read will be used to approaching RP in terms of story/characters, rather than as a game.

i reckon its like saying "why don't you just have fries" to someone eating poutine.

I think in talking about vn's (and other media), there is a wide spectrum of possible posts from methodical point-by-point critique to very personal discussion about what a work or element meant to you. The second is valid too, it's just so personal it's hard to bring it up anywhere. Other people might not be interested or know how to react. So I think a blog's a good place to put those thoughts. My little piece of advice would be to decide what to present and what to filter out (you can't write every single impression something gives you), and make sure things are reasonably organized and coherent. I think the people who view a work with a singular perspective, probably wouldn't bother hearing about someone else's viewpoint. It's the people who have a provisional understanding of the work but are unsure and open to suggestion, those are who will appreciate hearing another viewpoint. There's an angle looking at a work for it's craft, how well it's constructed. How interesting is the story, how vivid are the characters, how effective the text and presentation is. But like you said, a work doesn't have to be objectively fabulous to inspire a reaction, to be a memorable, special experience for someone. Some cases of why we love a work is because of a viewpoint -- that can be shared and understood --, but sometimes it's just result of who we are and the work reflecting off our set of notions (different people find different things cute, and wonderful). The latter can be shared...but is hardly a topic to discuss unless the opponent is interested by the fact that that is how you are, or that somebody is like that. Or, in mourning of the underdiscussedness of such topics, you can write it all anyways. Just because next to no-one else will. Good luck on your blog!

It might take a while It took a while to find them in my case. There were very memorable moments, but not all of the them were because of the cg. Oh heck, I added some of those anyways. All spoilers are marked. Soshite Ashita no Sekai Yori Kizuato (minor-spoiler) Kami no Ue no Mahoutsukai x3 (pictures themselves are non-spoiler) Houkago no Futekikusha (spoilers) Gurenka Warning: Spoiler Sousei Kitan Aerial Muramasa 2 variation of the same cg, second one is potentially a roundabout minor spoiler. For lols:

See how much activity this thread is getting? Have threads (discussion/sharing, etc.) which topics people feel interest towards reading or adding their genuine or candid thought to. I'm happy to interact with members of the community, the opportunity just needs to be made more enticing/available/convenient.

What would the front page look like? I'm not up-to-date on the proposed changes. On increasing community forum activity: I think why there hasn't been that much participation in your forum games or livestreams, is the forum games requires commitment/learning, while livestream events require interest in what's being shown + showing up at a specific time). We could hold a big ideas + vote thread about what events / "do/make things together" people would want. The global forum activity dropping is a result of people percieving that there's not much interesting outside the cliche they hang out in (nothing inherently bad with that, from an individual perspective). In the VN sub-forum, groups such as the visual novel group or "what are you reading" are good for mantaining a group of community. Discussion threads like /visualsnovels/ has would further liven up the place. In general, give things for people to check out (stuff where interest > reluctance to commit). If there's a project that fuwa members have done, people will check that out because we are curious. Give places for people to say their opinion and let us get to know each other. Maybe there are lots of interesting/broad discussion topics we could have (e.g Favourite place in japan / what's your plan on going to japan / thoughts on japan, how much anime/ln/vn have you played in the last year and comments). Notice the barrier to entry is low, but interest garnered can be high.