Chronopolis

Chrno Crusade seems to be the closest I could come up with.

Welcome, to the first of possibly many roundups for the VN community. Each month(?) I'll be taking a specific theme, giving some examples of where it's been done well, and get some discussion going about the theme itself.   Theme 1; Kemonomimi   Kemonomimi refers to humanoids, taking on animalistic traits. Traditionally, this comprises of cat ears, and tails. There are a lot more subsidies of this though, and we can even define them.   Nekomimi Taking on the appearance / traits of a Cat   Kitsunemimi Taking on the appearance / traits of a Fox   Inumimi Taking on the appearance / traits of a Dog   We've also got; ( Caution: Some NSFW )   Usagimimi: rabbit ears Ookamimi: wolf ears Hitsujimimi: sheep ears/horns Umamimi: horse ears Ushimimi: cow ears Toramimi: tiger ears Nezumimi: mouse ears Kumamimi: bear ears Kemonomimi: general, or ambiguous ( means beast )   The usual use of these tropes in Visual Novels is by having them as either a different race, a fantasy creature, or by having them as genetically modified pets. Thus, their personalities usually vary from that of traditional humans and such. There's very few Visual Novels that use this trait currently, however there's been a recent resurgence for the demand, so expect the tradition to rise a little more in the next year or so. As an example, Sekai Project has worked with the creators at NekoWorks to localise their visual novel Nekopara, and even releasing it through Steam ( censored of course ) as well as another translation for a renouned Japanese VN with a huge focus on Kemonomimi, "Pure-Pure!" due to release soon™.   Pros; Catgirls. HNNNGG! Plenty of community-made originals Psychologically different relationship Affectionate by nature Catgirls. Seriously. can anyone spare a towel? No gross human ears.... bleh Cons; Rare occurrence Traditionally played off as part animal High sexual focus, low story content Probably a recruiting tool of Furries Not seeing human ears is kinda strange Why Kemonomimi?   There's two major reasons that Kemonomimi is seen as a huge thing for a niche group of consumers. Firstly, catgirls are cute as hell. We can't really deny this. Secondly, is the psychological side of things with building a Kemonomimi relationship, based off an entirely new social construct. Whether you're falling in love with your family pet catgirl, you're helping spirits make peace with humans, or you've saved a stray from the cruel city streets, there's a lot of writing freedom when building relationships in a way that's not usually done. As another psychological point, there's a lot of erotic content in this genre ( at minimum, consistent fan service ). Having this come from a "person" who is psychologically conditioned different is a huge appeal to some people. Having the pack mentality of an animal, or the need to fornicate while on heat, these are different excuses for lewd content than the usual.   Where do I sign up?!   Here's a few examples of existing Visual Novels, with a Kemonomimi theme. ( censored, but still NSFW )   NSFW - http://imgur.com/a/lL8eQ - NSFW   Please tag anything that's NSFW, and link it externally.   Feel free to leave your suggestions on Kemonomimi Visual Novels.   As always, I'll also be taking suggestions for next month's theme! Suggest away

Interesting concept. Dealing frankly and effectively with depression, apathy and fear of loss is something that many stories attempt, while few succeed. If it's done well here, it could be a great read.
 
I'm having a little trouble reconciling the dark tone of the synopsis with how lighthearted the concept title screen is. Of course, a "concept" is just that, but it may be worth your while to take whichever representation more accurately represents the true tone of the story (the text or the visual) and align the other to it more closely. That should help ensure that any volunteer writers know what they're getting into and what you'll be expecting from them.
 
Good luck. Looking forward to how this turns out.

Edit October 4th, 2015: The writing positions have recently been filled. Thank you to all those who were interested in the project and applied.
 
 
Hello, everyone! My name is David, and I’m one of the writers for the visual novel A+ Switch. (You may have also seen me stalking around the Fuwa forums) Also, forgive me if this isn't the place for recruitment. I'm still unsure how the Creative Corner works, exactly.
 
What we're looking for:
A+ Switch is still in the very early stages of development, so we are in search of writers who are able to assist in creation of the characters’ backstories, routes, world lore, and overall plot—we are always open to new and interesting ideas that can help better the story. We believe that writing is the fundamental core that dictates all other aspects of visual novel creation. That being said, we are hoping to find individuals who are as passionate about storytelling as we are.
 
 
 
 

 
 
Synopsis:
A+ Switch tells the story of Kouhei and his struggle to cope with his younger sister Iori’s fatal illness. With Iori’s condition only worsening by the day, Kouhei wishes to do something special for her before the last autumn leaf falls. Obsessed with accomplishing his goal, he completely disregards his own deteriorating health; his nights are plagued by dread of his sister’s death, his appetite gradually wanes from the lack of sleep, and social interaction at school becomes a chore. Concerned about his state of mind, Kouhei’s school counselor advises—or rather, “forces”—that he visit her office regularly for psychological evaluations. It’s during one of these sessions that she recommends he be tutored by a selected group of upperclassmen to prevent him from falling behind in his studies while he deals with his issues. With not much room to argue, Kouhei halfheartedly agrees. He begins to realize, however, that the people around have their own fair share of problems, and that life may just be one big test to try and solve them. How will Kouhei fare?
 
 
Title Screen Concept by Piichimi

 
 
 
A+ Switch Opening Song (Produced by Outbreak, Sagisapon, and Geiky)
https://soundcloud.com/davidaacosta-1/outbreak-shuuren-autumn-love-ft-sagisapon-geiky/s-grMbH
 
 
Genre:
A+ Switch will be a mix of Comedy, Slice of Life, Drama, and Romance. The visual novel also contains some adult themes.
 
 
Some basic requirements of becoming a writer:
~ A good communicator who actively seeks participation in development or just random group chatter. (Communication is key with projects). It’s also encouraged to have Skype. You can find the program here: http://www.skype.com/en/download-skype/skype-for-computer/
~ Being open-minded to new ideas and concepts.  
~ Promptness and good time management to work on a regular basis.
~ An excerpt of previous work.  
~ Willing to volunteer for free, as our project is a non-commercial visual novel.
~ Has fun. (The most important, I say)
 
We do hope our project is able to interest you enough to apply for a writing position. If so, please feel free to send me a private message or leave a post down below. I’ll be sure to respond as soon as possible.
 
Thank you so much for reading our request! We look forward to having the chance to work with you.
 

I'm a towards strangers/acquaintances
 
a towards friends
 
a towards best friends
 
and a on Fuwa

I think the bones of this issue lie in your personal definition of "escapism."
 
Healthy escapism, in my opinion, is when you dive into fantasy to get away from troubling aspects of your life that you cannot control or change. It's perfectly reasonable to distract yourself from those issues by doing something that helps you forget.
 
Unhealthy escapism is when you are hiding from something that you really must deal with. Generally speaking, the longer you avoid handling these types of issues, the worse they get, so not only are you postponing the inevitable, it's likely that you are making your own future more difficult for the illusion of a simpler present.
 
If I was doing something that I loved, but it was making my situation worse, that would be a strong implication that the problem I was avoiding was that second kind of problem. Therefore, I shouldn't be avoiding it. Of course, knowing what you should do and being able to force yourself to do it are two different things. But if there's something you're running from and you know that running will hurt you, try to stop running.

SUP.
 
I'm going to leave the OP untouched to show people just how rough and terrible this project was when it started. SC2VN was in a bad spot in 2013 and even 2014. What saved it from being a jokey, mediocre waifu sim was a realization that there was something interesting under all the fluff we had stacked on top of our game. All of 2015 was a brutal crunch considering I worked on SC2VN literally every single day. In the summer, this meant multiple hours staring at my script. Like, seriously, I edited the FUCK out of the script. Threw out like 20k words just to get this thing lean and have it read well. I absolutely hate filler in my VNs so I kept it to an absolute minimum, or at least tried to. Drafting is crucial to a decent VN's script. Straight up, my rough drafts are utter shit, so don't feel like you can't write anything worthwhile if you aren't happy with your story on the first pass.
 
Biggest influences on the story were Welcome to the NHK, Persona 4, Ping Pong the Animation, and the experiences my roommate had as a pro-gamer. While the script wasn't influenced by other VNs, I learned a lot about shot composition and visual humor from Steins;Gate and... Fate/Hollow Ataraxia (yes really).
 
Since I was the only writer and we had basically no budget, we had to keep our word count low to deliver a quality product. I recognize that people wanted it to be longer (it's criticism I can take as a compliment!) but it simply wasn't in scope for something we were ever going to be able to release. This was done by a very small team of people who were already employed or students full-time.
 
Shoutouts to the team.
 
If y'all have any other questions, fire away.

Void & Nothingness
 

Void & Nothingness is a story where we explore people’s deepest fears, where we talk about their dreams and analyze nostalgia. It’s a visual novel for mature audiences.
It is set in Manhattan and the main character of the story is a young lady named Alice who’s doing anything she can to come by. It’s her dreams and fears that materialize into a world around her in which she gets immersed in.
The illustrations are done by Ludmila Sosa who’s great work can be found at https://www.behance.net/KamuiHand
The story is by Milan Kazarka who’s also the producer of the Invisible Apartment series. The umbrella is provided by Vysoko Anime Production.
-
Here is some more artwork from the upcoming visual novel
 
 



http://vysoko.com/voidandnothingness
 

Vysoko Anime Production
 

You know, the best way to treat this app is to just pretend you never heard about it, don't talk about it, and thus hope that nobody around you will even use it.

Well, I guess I absolutely have to play it now, lol.   That way I can bash it or praise it properly. 

I'd like to take a step back and appreciate the fact that modern stereotypes have evolved to such a point that one can say, generally without rebuke, "Go read a book, [bundle of sticks]."

I'm not too shocked. Every big group discriminates the next group in the pecking order.
People used to make fun of whoever read books. Those make fun of people who watch anime. Those make fun of the VN world. And the VN world hates itself and everyone.
 
It's a vicious circle.

I felt a need to at least reply to this thread. I will spare everyone the agony of my usual pages of text for shorter points.
 
Normally, I would stay out of these sorts of discussions based on my personality, but in this case, I think that might give this reply more weight. I am without a doubt not comfortable talking to people. Fuwa was (is) a community that I have actively joined despite my shyness crippling fear of people because this community is easy to be a part of. This was mainly related to the mentor program (you can read my post there if interested).
 
I can honestly say I have only attended 1 of Ren's podcasts. The one I did was awesome. I did it during work and almost got busted   . I've listened to a few others from the recordings and they were enjoyable. At least for me, participating in something like that is a bit tricky as I work very unstable hours.
 
As a community member, I'm probably a horrible example. I have, without a doubt, the least amount of posts of anyone replying to this thread (until someone makes a new account to prove me wrong). However, I will say I enjoy being here. It is great source of information such as the VN status posts every Saturday (It gives me hope that someday White Album 2 will be TLed). It let me know that Muv Luv was getting a kickstarter (so I could throw money at it). I got to join the VN club (Thanks for working so hard on it everyone, and thanks for your post here on it Nimbus). I've got to play games that took me places I never imagined (Grisaia made me cry so much, thanks Astro).
 
Am I a good example of what a community member should be? Probably not. However, I will say that the community that is here I still like. It may not be "as good as the old days" but from what I experienced, I like it. There are so many posters I can name offhand. When I see a topic or reply from them I open it immediately because of their knowledge or humor. Maybe I'm foolish, but to me that is a community. 
 
I see the point in a topic like this and I see a good community. The OP was pretty upfront. Most communities would blow up at something like that. Instead, I've seen constructive ideas and people keeping level heads and talking it over. I don't think there are many places like that. The only real parting thoughts I can provide are that if this community has changed and you think for the worse, find out what new ideas can be brought about to bring people in and how the newbies out there, like myself, can more easy integrate into Fuwa.
 
Edit: Ugh tons of embarassing typos. All remaining ones take backseat to my 日本ごのしゅくだい。
Edit Edit: Mispelled someones name. A fate worse than death itself!

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's true, it's true, I must confess. I feel an inexplicable yearning every time I see them.
 
Hi, I'm ara and I'm mostly dumb, but hang in there with me, okay? I've been on fuwa for well over a year and now over 1000 posts. It's been pretty great and I've met a good number of people I very much enjoyed talking to. I made a lot of friends and stopped talking to just about as many, sadly. But the reason I post is because I actually want to talk about myself and my hopes and ambitions. I'd really appreciate it if you read my post with an open mind.
 
One of my greatest passions is understanding and appreciating stories (and characters). These things that people write, draw, animate, or film. And I'm sure there are a number of other ways of storytelling, but for me, the stories I read about in books, manga, and anime seem to hold a special place in my heart. And the thing is that I don't think anyone really sees things the way I do a lot of the time. I won't get ahead of myself and tell you guys about how special I am and how I have this great vision or whatever, but there's definitely something different in the way everyone experiences stories, right? I believe a lot of that comes from contexts and from the reader's willingness to open their heart to the story.
 
I care about many stories and I care about them in ways that I don't see people talking about. I care about facets of them that are often left undiscussed and it pains me every time I see someone bash something I love when it seems to me that they misunderstood "the really interesting part" or failed to appreciate the enjoyable uniqueness of the story. What I want to do is try to share my feelings with other people. I want other people to understand the way I feel and look at things with the same caring eyes that I do. I want to share with people the stories that I love and the things I love about them. Whether or not you may disagree, I think something wonderful can come from trying to transcend the singular context with which you read a story and see it in a new light. Or maybe it's just not very quality, but good in very specific and unique respects. That's cool too, right!? People, appreciate these things!!
 
So I've been musing for a while.
"I spend too much time talking to people online about nothing"
"But you like talking to people, you like connecting and fangirling over things with people and sharing your passions"
and thoughts like these, although recently they've been tainted with this general cynicism about online relationships. Yea, yea. Normal stuff. Sorry I'm not a hilarious breath of fresh air.
 
But what occurred to me is that I should try to write. Actually write for other people as much as for myself, to try to build a bridge between their understanding of stories and my own, and hopefully get people to love some of the things I do for the reasons I do. So I want to take my 1000th-ish post time in the spotlight to say two things.
 
1. If you're looking for someone to talk to or feel lonely or want a friend or someone to bash ur fookin' 'ead in, I'll try to be a mate for ya. You can message me on fuwa or add me on skype or whatever you want and we can spend all the day chatting idly about why $0$ is a hilarious nickname for s0s or whatever garbage comes up.
2. I'm planning on writing something that may be called postviews or something... Thoughts on stories I've read and things that I think other people might have something to gain in thinking about. I think I'll do this as a blog function or something but I'm not entirely sure. The process might end up being too formal for my fool-ass self, but I want to at least bring it up in the hopes that someone cares and maybe we can talk about stories. Because I don't like sitting around thinking about why I love this and that so much without having anyone to share it with. Life is better spent with a friend.
 
So, I hope you've enjoyed a glimpse into my mind as I post this awkward post with a fittingly awkward title that only makes sense if you really really think about it. I swear I'm only a little crazy! But I hope that I can share some of my craziness with you guys in the future. It's been a pleasure being on fuwa, but I seriously need an outlet for all of my thoughts and I think people are getting tired of my incomprehensible explanations.
 
(Shoutout to HMN who won't read this but who is super amazing)
 
Also this thread will function as an AMA for anyone that wants to ask pretty much anything or just talk about things. Idk! I didn't think that  hard about this post, okay? gosh. Though I expect I scared most of you off with the text above.

Contents of this Update:
1. Introduction 2. Site analytics 3. Abbreviated financial report 4. Loligeddon feedback survey 5. Commentary from Tay       ----------------------------------- 1. Introduction   I hope the information in this community update is both useful and interesting to those of you who want to keep a finger on Fuwa’s pulse. This report may not look like a lot, but it took a lot of time to compile (especially trying to compensate for an analytics bug which I’m incapable of fixing myself). Now that it’s done, I’m already noticing things I should have included but forgot. Just remind me of questions you have in the thread below, and I’ll try to reply to everything.   - Tay     ----------------------------------- 2. Site analytics   A few weeks ago we started paying for a second, small server to host our analytics software. There’s a bug in the software which makes it difficult to get hard numbers for the past few weeks, but I think I found a clever work-around. Here are the numbers as best as I'm able to find:    Front site: 4-5k unique visitors a day and something like 7-8k daily hits
  Fuwazette Blog: Weekdays: 1.7k unique visitors (average); Weekends: 2-4k unique visitors per day following VNTS posts
  Forums: 6-10k unique visitors a day, 11-15k hits per day
  Reviews Hub: 40-60 unique visitors a day; each time a FuwaReviews review goes up, it spikes to several hundred uniques per day for several days
  VNTL-Moon: ~60 unique visitors a day, ~100 hits     ----------------------------------- 3. Abbreviated Financial report   Many members have been extremely generous with their donations, and from the bottom of my heart I want to say THANK YOU. All donated site funds have been put directly towards site costs: I’ve saved up a 3 month rainy day fund (split between donations and my personal funds) We’ve had one full round of software license fees We paid $100 past site debts Put aside funds for new Reviews Hub theme $70 spent on developing an articles hub site which ended up being extremely unsecure and ex’d by Nayleen (Maef and I were SO CLOSE). $40 of the $70 came from saved-up donation funds. Free: The feeling you get flirting with Flutterz or getting clever ideas in a PM from Eclipsed Free: #Renenvy   ----------------------------------- 4. Feedback Survey: Loli Policy   I promised Sanah a follow-up survey about Loligeddon, and haven’t been able to follow-up until now (well, technically, a bit later in October). If you’d like to give feedback on the Loli policies, have suggestions for changing them, or have something you want to tell me, here’s the link:   https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Yp2ADO3AROV7LvQ3mS47g0sINkFn-OEaPRPf6ZHzsqE/viewform?usp=send_form    Any proposed changes will be considered with our law maester when I next talk to him. There’s an option to include your forums username and be added to a follow-up roundatable discussion (space is limited) once that occurs.     ----------------------------------- 5. Commentary from Tay   Commentary on Analytics: It may come as a surprise to some that this quarterly update is the first time I’ve officially opened our analytics numbers to the public (Nay’s done it in the past, but always on his own impetus). This coincides with a decision to make the front site open-source and seek help from a much larger coding pool than before. These may be small steps, but they’re meaningful and I hope they’ll represent the seeds for yet more transparency in the future.   So. Let’s talk about these numbers. The big-picture take-home message is that Fuwa has continued to grow in the four(ish) months since our last analytics report. I’m a big data nerd who likes to try to use big-boy statistics (and, inevitably, breaks something and needs a math genius friend’s help), so here are a few other trends: Users are spending a lot more time, on average, in the Visual Novel and Dev/Translation boards. Almost twice as much time as they were in March 2015 Walkthroughs are still a huge draw New members are, literally, about nine times more likely to go to the dev boards than they were in March 2015 (within their first week on the boards). They’re about six times more likely to regularly go there afterwards. The amount of VN-centric sites linking to Fuwanovel has increased a tremendous amount. Like, a seriously crazy amount. Several times more links to us from other VN communities than in March 2015 (I didn’t do any hard numbers for this, though, since I only thought to check it right before posting this. Apologies.) Tay’s daily hatemail has decreased by several hundred percent since March 2015 The blog’s popularity on VNTS days has increased by about 45% since July. The front site’s traffic has decreased somewhere between 20-40% since pre-torrents, but the other sites have maintained solid, steady growth Daily user registrations on all the various sites are still a horrible approximation for traffic and engagement Autoposting is the bomb Our Google+ page is a lonely, lonely place, but I met a few really nice people on there who have since become friends. So… yay. Google+ did something good. The reviews hub traffic has continued to steadily grow. It’s not a steep growth, but it’s steady. The traffic spikes for FuwaReviews official reviews are higher than ever and they last for longer than the used to, as well. Our new anti-spam-user software is doing fairly well, which is great     Commentary on Site Finances: I just wanted to thank everyone who has generously donated to the site. As soon as I can get Nay’s help with an authentication library (or something like that), I’ve got a slick new donations app which will automate the donation process and make sure you get your goodies instantly.     Commentary on Site Leadership: Fuwanovel is an important part of my life. I’ve learned a lot over the years from building and running this place, and many of the most important lessons I’ve learned came from making mistakes or falling short of goals and deadlines. I’d like to open up a bit and share a bit of vulnerability on two such shortcomings.   I’d like to publicly apologize for my inconsistent presence in the community. I have not been able to give the site everything it’s needed, and I want everyone to know that I recognize it. Beyond being busy in general, I’ve had a truly bizarre amount of freak accidents or tropical storms or RL craziness mess up my genuinely well-meaning plans time and time again. I’m not trying to make excuses, I’m more or less just trying to express that I’m likely as frustrated as you with the lack of progress in certain site projects. I have plans burning in my brain for where we need to go and what we need to do in order to get there, and at times I, too, get a little burned out and discouraged when I see the discrepancy between where we are and where we need to be.   Secondly, I’d like to apologize to the dozens of friends who have spent hundreds of hours participating and working on the site who don't feel adequately appreciated. In the real world I make a real effort to reach out to and thank the people I work with for their good work. It’s an important part of being a leader, and it’s an important part of being a friend. I am disappointed when I review my track record for tracking and recognizing all the work done by so many great people on this site. When I get "Fuwa time", I tend to jump in and do work on the site without taking time to check in with everybody. I want to improve in this department, and I hope you'll help me as I try to do better.   As far as site leadership goes, only one other thing to discuss: adding another (/more) admin(s). This is something I feel like I’ve discussed so many times I worry that you all think I’m a broken record. I’ll be the first to agree that we need to spread the autonomy around. The way this works at the moment is that all the different parts of Fuwanovel have a dedicated leader who has the autonomy to run their project within a pre-agreed upon framework that she/he and I set at the beginning of the quarter (or year, depending on the project). It’s not a perfect system – in many ways because this is a hobby site, not a paying job, and I’m fairly adamant that people keep Fuwa in a healthy balance and not burn out – but it’s also not too bad.    Judging from recent posts as well as more than a few a hellaton PMs and emails, many people disagree with me on two fronts: the forums and the front site. I’ll tackle each of those below.       Commentary on the Forums: I’m quite happy with the trends I’m seeing in the analytics. I like to think that the improved engagement of new members with the VN and Dev boards heralds the wider change of userbase from torrent-seekers to VN-community-seekers. Even if that’s not true, VN engagement is higher than it was earlier this year, and traffic is still robust.   I’m still embarrassed and frustrated about the forums’ sidebar formatting. I spent an hour last week trying to figure out what I needed to do to fix it, but I can’t find my old notes anywhere. I’ve reached out to Nay about this and other things, of course, and I really hope I can get this fixed for you soon.   Earlier this quarter Sanah and I had some great discussions about the limitations of the current blog app and how we might provide a better blogging platform for users. At the moment I’m still waiting to see how the upcoming IPB 4 forums’ software upgrade feels for our bloggers. Sanah eventually opted to start his own blog and use the Fuwa app to drive readers to his new location. That’s, obviously, fantastic, since my goal with the blogs app has always been to give people a platform and help drive VN fans to them. So, what I’m getting at here is that if the IPB 4 upgrade is poorly received, I’m up to the challenge of finding a way to host a blogging platform if need be. Hopefully it won’t come to that, but the blog authors need to know, at the very least, that we’ll do our best to take care of them.   Not going to write any more about Loligeddon. Go take the survey if you want to share your views and/or propose policy changes. I will personally review all the entries.   Quite a few people have asked me to add a forums admin who would be in charge of both moderation and engagement. I’m skeptical of the idea due to past experience, but it’s brought up enough that I’m willing to open the door to feedback. Would you like me to make a survey about the forums experience and include a field for you to write desired forums organizational/leadership changes?       Commentary on the Front Site: Here’s the situation: we’ve committed to the open-source plan, but I’m not technical enough to make sure that’s set up or manage the various software forks that will result. Nayleen, our webmaster, has been traveling and working and dealing with craziness and thus hasn’t been around lately, but as far as I’m aware he’s sticking with us. Which is a good thing: the man’s a genius.    Back in August Nay and I realized that the plans we had for the front site were too ambitious to try and bite off all at once, so we decided to scale-back the initial launch plans and simply try and get a basic redesign up and running (using a lot of the old code under the hood) which would then be improved bit-by-bit over the next few months. This was poorly communicated to the design team, and Emi and Beato deserve an apology. Furthermore, that scaled-back version is still not up and running. Which is frustrating. It isn’t something I or a novice coder can address, however, since the front site is written with multiple coding languages.    The critical bottlenecks are currently: open development onto git (or wherever) (which Nay has already done to some extent), finalize the database structure so the other coders can know how it’s structured, roll out the design update with or without an underlying total code revamp, tackle each module one at a time thereafter. (Maef and I have been working on the articles and team builder concepts, and I think they’re going to be pretty great.)   After the bottlenecks are addressed and the rest of the design timeline is sorted out, Nay, maef and I will be posting some more information on the rest of the evil plans.       Conclusion Thank you for reading this post and for being a part of this community. I’m dedicated to keeping the site alive and improving it (even if by uneven pacing), and having friends and fellow fans like you makes the effort worth it.   Tay

Playing Dies Irae - Acta est Fabula

Finished Hatsuyuku Sakura. I wasn't expecting much from it, but I was pretty impressed in the end. What acts like a moege tries its best to push its way into the utsuge territory, and while it does fall back onto nakige (and its magical twists) in some parts, the majority of the endings actually end on a pleasantly bittersweet note. It actually tackles its darker themes more responsibly than I expected it to at first, and for that the writer has my respect. What I can't praise is the author's tendency to write twists just for the sake of having twists at places (there are a few random ones) and his habit of outright skipping fight scenes altogether (why even have them in, then?), but those are my only complaints about the writing. Not much to say about the art, but the OST is easily the highlight of this VN - it quickly made its spot amongst my favourites.
 
All in all, a very enjoyable 8/10 from me, definitely give it a read if you're looking for some feels with entertaining comedy and interesting plot.
 
Other than that, I've slowly resumed Sui (finally!), and I'm making my way through Meakashi. I think I'm around the last third, but damn this arc is long! More and more of dai's goodness is sneaking its way into the OST, and Ryukishi's hilarious writing is reaching a legendary status in my head. It feels hilarious and endearing in a different language, but I do have to wonder how I would feel about reading something like this in my native language. At the very least, I can definitely see why some people hate it.
 
Anyway, now that I'm done with HatsuSaku, I might get back to re-reading Kara no Shoujo and then finally jump on that sequel... or maybe go back and read Cartagra first.

Direct delivery of feels  o7



 
Swan Song (big spoilers)



 
Fate/stay night



 
Grisaia no Kajitsu



 
That's all that I can think of off the top of my head.
 
EDIT: Fixed the CGs that weren't showing up.

I'll post CGs from the Majikoi series since it's my favorite VN of all time. I love other VNs but nothing kept me engaged as much as Majikoi.
 
Nothing has ever made me cry so much after I saw this scene. (Original Majikoi)



 
Nothing is cuter than giving your wife a ride on your shoulder as she picks up berries. I think this was before they actually got married but still cute nonetheless. (Majikoi A-2)



 
No kiss scene from Hollywood can be more "ROCK" this. (Majikoi A-3)



 
How could you say "No" to that during a date!? (Majikoi A-1)



 
I can relate to this in real life. This is always what happens when I play with my boyfriend in competitive video games. He lets me win several rounds, then all of a sudden.... (Majikoi S)

Katawa Shoujo
 



 

This thread is for particular CGs that are very memorable.
 
Put them in spoiler tags and mention the VN outside the tag. Write why you like it too!
 
(Ever17)
 

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.