Chronopolis

Certain things are glamourized in this world. Saying we should include fat characters in our generally idealized stories is basically saying we as a society should shift the set of things we glamorize so that it makes a minority feel better.
Atm, what we as a society glamorize is mostly depends on what the masses like, and what companies try to propagate to forward their brands and ventures.
IMO, ideally, you should train people to recognize these societal glorifications for what they are, which is just things to be enjoyed, not reflections of the truth. You shouldn't advocate for a different set of glorifications in order to lull fat people to thinking the reality is some how kinder for it. The reality is what it is.
I think there was a line of criticism against LN's for glorifying being living an otaku lifestyle. If there was a parallel universe where such otaku-glorifiying LN's didn't exist (that was like 15 years ago), that would be fine, too. I'm sure there were and are a lot of otaku who felt pressure (both external, from people's opinions, and internal, from lack of validation) from the type of lifestyle they chose/fell into.
The main issue with fat people is not the difference of preference (that should very much be allowed), but existing prejudice. Fat people shouldn't be bullied in school, or insulted anywhere. But those are difficult challenges that revolve around human nature. If your fat and some asshole insults you based on that, that's because they are an asshole, and not particularly because you are fat. Or they have a prejudice. The prejudice, and more importantly, how people act on that prejudice, is the more productive and realistic issue to tackle.
 

Body;
Hmmm. So you're saying a producer should run the risk of being shat on by consumers or making losses because you want him to push a minor agenda? 
Now, everyone possesses an individual opinion about something. That is "Subjective". When majority of the individuals possess a similar opinion, it becomes "Objective". It becomes fact. 
Average individual: Killing is bad.
Murderer: Killing is good/necessary. 
Two opinions. Yet one has transcended to become fact due to an overwhelming majority. This is non debatable. Why? Because what i'm saying is FACT.
Unfortunately those who share your opinion are a vast minority. Fat people are humans, they deserve human rights. They deserve the same benefits every human gets not including media coverage. That is a privilege that is determined by society.
"Bald head and thick beards."
"6'0 foot tall"
"Slim waist big ass"
"Plot/Tits"
These are various "trends" or preferences of society of the now. So in various media, they get most of the attention. Those are the demands of society because they are Visually appealing.
Conclusion;

Being fat is optional. Those who are fat should not suffer socially because of it. They deserve to be treated like everyone else.
On the same vein, those who are fat should be treated like everybody else. They should not be given any unnecessary praise or recognition separate from what society wants.
They made their choice. They chose to eat. Whether it benefits the individual or not is not something that should capture attention. They deserve neither positive nor negative appraisals. Like Snailmusk said in the previous post, there are much, much bigger problems than positively approving the obese.
TL;DR:
Society decides what it wants at the end of the day. If it ain't the obese, you gotta wait till their time comes. There/this was/is a time were anorexia (or extremely slim to be more precise) was/is a thing. There was a time where chubby/meaty was a thing. Given the fickle nature of humanity, obesity will become a thing. Push it's agenda then, not now.
 
P.S read this passively/superficially. Do not read tones or meanings into it, or it will ruin the simplicity of my message. While i was typing i possessed nothing but a poker face and a calm demeanor. Please do not visualize anything else while reading. Thank you.

Oh shit, I'm sorry for hurting your feelings, rock!!!
Wait a minute...

You. I like your opinion.

You have to the count of 3 to quadruple check your privilege. 

Unless of course you can't count, I'm not trying to trigger you.

Okay, I'm listening. I warn you that, having stated that you are open-minded (a surprisingly hard thing to be, additionally so when you have a mission), if that turns out not to be the case, I'm going leave the discussion immediately. I personally, can't stand people who do that.
Also welcome to the Fuwanovel.

That's something difficult to achieve, in all honesty. The only thing when it happens, is when a team is based either on a circle of friends - each of them skilled in one or more particular aspects of game development, or when people you hire take the project seriously and wholeheartedly and aren't just doing it to "get the job done" and receive the payment (as in, treating it purely as work), but want to get involved in it as much as possible, because they fucking like it.
Part of the trick is finding people who share your dreams an passions, assesing who's readily able to put actual effort into the development and leave something behind, instead of only doing their part. It's eaier said, than done, unfortunately. A lot of people contributing to various projects are - in fact - not skilled, nor mature enough, nor have the required patience to tackle whatever they are tasked with. A lot of people think only about money. A lot of people only want to get the job done and move on; they aren't really interested, they don't share the lead developer's vision, they are in only to gain the experience or start their own careers, treat projects as personal milestones. This is why a lot of the games on the market actually lack that something special, which makes them unique. The kind of a game you take and say "Wow, the team that worked on it really put everything into it, it's so incredibly distinct and you can litally sense the devteam's passion burning throughout it". Such games rarely feel just like a bunch of different elements and assests hastily cobbled together, but a consistent production, where every single of it's part complements the rest.

Haha...writing natural Japanese is hard. Life is about as hard too.
At least poop is soft.

One saving grace, I think, is that your TL will last forever.
The person who comes along 5 years later could still potentially appreciate your work the same as someone who read your patch the day it came out. Also, 95%+(?) of the people who read the game won't ever comment. You're gotta remember those people as well, amidst the tomfoolery.

One saving grace, I think, is that your TL will last forever.
The person who comes along 5 years later could still potentially appreciate your work the same as someone who read your patch the day it came out. Also, 95%+(?) of the people who read the game won't ever comment. You're gotta remember those people as well, amidst the tomfoolery.

This. With regards to anime, subs are just all there, like magic. Thus, if one's accustomed to that, without much thinking, it's not too farfetched to imagine that you could just request for some vn titles to be translated. They wouldn't know anything about anime-sub groups, let alone VN translation projects. IMO it's less egregious than say, asking an artist to draw for free.
As for everything else... is shit, dutifully ignore.

Surely too many VNs have lead many fans into a form of weird masochism.

I wish the community would be a bit more tolerant about translation quality of fan translations, or at least offer criticism in a more constructive manner instead of just bashing it. While I never worked on a fan translation, I worked with a few team members on a mod for a computer game for years. So I do know what it's like to work on a huge project in your spare time. And there are times when just hate it and want to pack it all in. And when you then just get some bashing comments instead of encouragement, you really want to scream out...
 

TLDR
Dear Aizen-sama
Some people are not very smart and you can't blame them for not knowing everything.

Really nice review. Glad you enjoyed the VN lots.
I tried the VN but got turned off in the prologue by Cabbit's charage style character speech patterns, but I might give it a run someday. Sometimes it's easier to stay reading when you have a reference for what to appreciate.
 

While my tastes are completely irreconcilable with yours, I like to read your blog posts for insight and general info on titles. I read a lot of things myself, but have neither the ability nor the will to write reviews or even simple comments intended for other people. One can also be sure that these posts are spoiler-free (at least that's how it appears to be) and don't show CGs which most "spoiler-free" blogs love to slap all over the posts, which is the main reason I avoid them in most cases.

Another thing is that most people in the community will never even try to experience fantl from the other side of things... they don't realize how much time it eats up, that emptiness you feel when you realize you've used dozens of hours of your personal time only to put out a patch that people bash left and right for 'errors' and other shit.   If you make a fantl patch good enough to attract a company's interest in a localization, please do cash in.  I'll cheer for you with all my heart (this statement is a generalized one directed to all fantl groups). 

Most new VN addicts when I first started were definitely the type to feel 'entitled'.  Actually, this applies to some extent to all people who want an excuse to pirate video games...  The only way to get past that stage is to realize that you aren't the center of the world and people don't move to your convenience.  I guess I can be at ease because I just buy the Japanese versions and play them, but I remember it being harder before I started doing that... a lot harder.  Nonetheless, most people who start whining about 'selling out' are morons.  Selling fantranslations to localization companies is practically an established tradition in the community now, after all.
Edit: I guess it is because I actually had a good understanding of economics combined with having experienced the tug of war between Minori and NNL at a distance over Ef, but I honestly cheer whenever a fantranslation group 'sells out' that way.  The jackasses who want their free content can whine all they want, but they, quite frankly, cease to have any moral ground to stand on the second they decide not to pay for the official versions when they come out.   I'm not a hard-to-the-bone capitalist, but I still think that if you are going to play a game, you should pay the money if you have money.
Edit2: And, what official localizations do, in my mind, is provide a much easier way to purchase Japanese games... especially since a lot of the Steam versions have the Japanese text selectable, lol. 

Dude, I will say I disagree with you, but Im very very glad to find someone like you. In my opinion, all elements of a work of fiction must be treated equally. Writing can be just as powerful as art or cause the same amount of damage, if bad, imo. I also watched that video but what opened my mind about the subject was this post. Before reading that, I also thought that story and characters> everything else. But then, I started searching and studying more and I finally realize art, soundtrack, animation, voice acting, etc. can all bring emotions and be intelectually stimulating just like story and characters.
It makes me sick seeing people saying stuff like: "I dont care about art" because that is not an opinion, that is a lie. People 'think' they dont care about art because they never studied how it is used and thus do not realize its impact. Those people tend to think good art is just being pretty and therefore it is easier to make than a good story. Now even if I disagree that writing is inferior to art or soundtrack, it makes me really glad to see people like you, at least to balance the amount of overrate writing gets from the community.

I'm saying that the tilde ~ is an english term that's used in pretty similiar ways as the japanese 'wave-dash' ～. And the tilde isn't the only context-sensitive lexical unit in the English language by far. The reader can tell something like this:
 
AFAIK, the tilde can be used in all of those situations.
I can understand if you don't think it should be used in story text because it's a colloquial slang punctuation, but it is an actually used in English, for some time now.
Random Source: https://forum.blockland.us/index.php?topic=165572.0
The OP doesn't know what's going on, but the other members seem to be aware of the term. I've also used it as far back as high school in msg'ing (don't know how I picked it up though...), before I even started learning Japanese. Yes, fight me.

You haven't convinced me yet. I'll see what I think in a few months~
The tilde is actually used in English in casual textual conversation. https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/19moay/eli5_what_is_a_tilde_used_for_and_why_have_people/c8pewhq
It's not an otaku-stemming punctuation, I think a lot of younger people would recognize it, the people who are familiar with msging/posting on the internet.
You wouldn't put it in a literary novel, but in a light-hearted visual novel, sure.

The problem is the 'genre meta' reviews are all you really need for most charage...  lol

Good question. And yeah, “senpai” is one of those gray areas where I’d end up judging each VN on its own merits.
If the use of “senpai” isn’t a plot point, I’d probably drop it, opting to use deferential language in character dialogue instead. If the use of “senpai” is an essential plot point, I’d probably keep it in the script exclusive of the other honorifics. That is to say, in the world of our VN, there is a rule that younger students must refer to older students as “senpai.” Simple as that, and fairly intuitive. (Much more so than dumping the entire rats’ nest of Japanese honorifics on peoples' heads, at any rate.) If overall use of honorifics (or lack thereof) is an essential plot point, I’d retain all honorifics. Within reason, of course.

I agreed with the definition, every point. Such nuance!
I had this idea of a NVL-format VN, but with no graphics, just voice acting and a character icon sprite beside each line of dialogue.
This would fail point 4. I wonder what you'd call it. Kinetic novel sounds silly, since from the name you'd picture graphical effects. Probably the term Japanese people used to use: "Sound Novel"

I think when you get into the MMOVN thing, the 'VN' part is just the fact that the information given to the player is provided in text form, in a controlled manner. However, once the player is aware that there are players on the other side, it becomes more like a game, practically speaking. But you can play a VN like a game (giving yourself objectives) if you want to.
The difference is whether the author pre-created what's going to play out, or if the players themselves are going to create the emergent story. The latter would be a text-etc-interface multiplayer roleplaying. It could certainly feel like a VN because of the narrative and how each player sees the information, but I wouldn't call the whole thing a VN.  For prose generated from an underlying game system, what would matter is how much of what happens determined by the author. If it's just the order switching around a bit, then it'd still be author conceived. Otherwise it would be emergent.
(If you call that type of presentation VN-style, then yes, the game would be a VN-style game, you might even think to call it a VN. But that would overlap with the current notion which has that VN's are something which authors conceive of).
I suppose an examples of that would be a game where all you do is explore this big manuscript that you view within the game, and when you go to different places you hear different sounds and stuff.
I have no idea what to call this. It's not quite the same as a set of real letters because you can incorporate sound and visual effects into it. Does controlling the order the player reads parts of the story make the work a VN or not? If you had a series of episodes viewable in any order, that would still seem like a VN. What about if you interacted in a point and click fashion to access the episodes? What about if you walked around a 3-d environment to access those episodes?
It's just a categorization problem. You wouldn't be able to make a classification for every conceivable thing without being very minute and detailed. You can pick a relatively easy way to categorize works, or you could end up aiming for a categorization that's actually impossible, because our notion of what makes a VN would turn out to be contradictory once you explore the array of things which are possible using text and interaction.