babiker

Last time I talked about trade-offs in editing and high-level motifs; macro-scale stuff. This time, I want to talk about a micro-scale topic: how to make an individual line better. As before, I'll be demonstrating this with examples drawn from recent editing experience. Before writing this post, I went around looking for other people talking about similar things, and I found this reference: http://kristensguide.com/Writing/powerful_sentences.asp. Frankly, it's great; probably better than what I have, especially in terms of breadth of topics. Give it a read and get your editing learning on. For this post, I'm going to deep dive into one single topic mentioned there, though, for which I've been saving up examples: putting the first and last words of your sentence to good use.
The first and last words of a sentence are powerful. They're memorable. Forgetting the middle of a sentence is natural, so put a word at the end of a sentence when you really, really want that one word to be remembered.
Okay, so what did you get from that last paragraph. I hope it was "first", "powerful", "memorable", "forgetting", and "remembered", because that's the point of this blog post.
Anyway, let's look at some examples from my recent edits to Majo Koi Nikki, some to the prologue patch we're about to release, and some later. I'll point out other things that I changed as well and why, but this one point is going to be the running theme.
 
Original:
  Looking in the mirror, she pondered for a second and answered with a shy smile on her face.
Potential problems:
- "on her face" is extraneous
- that extraneous phrase is squatting on valuable real estate at the end of the sentence.
Mine:
  Looking in the mirror, she pondered for a second, and then she answered with a shy smile.
Changes:
- drop "on her face" (for both reasons above - it's less verbose, and now I get "smile" as the last word in the sentence, which is great)
- the comma after "she ponders for a second" is intended to give the reader that same mental pause as "she" has, to better set up the last part
- "then she" somehow pushes you out of that mental pause and into the most important part: that shy smile, lingering at the end of the sentence.
 
Original:
  Tokeizaka-san irritatedly flips through the book, but her hand stops suddenly.
Potential problems:
- With the benefit of spell-check, "irritatedly" => irritably
- "suddenly" is often overused
I actually really like the original; if you left it alone, aside from the spell-check correction, I wouldn't fault you for it. The verbs are great, "irritably" is a good use of a modifier, and the sentence communicates multiple events very concisely. But there's always room for improvement.
Mine:
  Irritated, Tokeizaka-san flips through the book, until her hand suddenly stops.
Changes:
- Drop "suddenly." "Stops" is strong enough to carry that feeling of suddenness on its own, so "suddenly" is only making things weaker. I've also noticed a tendency for raw JP translations to overuse "suddenly", which makes me especially biased to remove it. It's the typical problem of overuse: if everything is happening suddenly, it might as well all be happening normally.
- Move those good words, "irritably" and "stops" to the memorable points of the sentence. "Stops" we got for free, "irritably" requires a small bit of juggling. Unfortunately, Tokeizaka-san's family name is a bit unwieldy at best; better to bury it in the middle of the sentence and let the nice, emotive words take pride of place.
- Swapping "but" for "until" made for a clearer plot to the sentence, I thought.
 
Original:
- The colorful beauty article are displayed neatly.
Potential problems:
- Engrish
- Passive voice
- Not flashy enough
Mine:
- Iridescent beauty products dot the shelves, arranged with flawless precision.

On that last potential problem: normally my style is pretty spare. My typical goal is to drop adjectives and adverbs, and make verbs and nouns stronger to carry the weight of description, without going overboard on vocabulary. More often than not, I'm trying to make long sentences shorter and punchier.
I didn't do that here.
For context on why, it would help for you to hear the ridiculously high-brow BGM accompanying this scene and see the gorgeous background art. So, here:
Background:


BGM:
 
Equally important for context, you need to know about the surrounding narration: basically, the narrator is currently marveling at just how amazing this beauty parlor is.
One of the benefits of generally being spare with your adjectives and adverbs is that they then work a lot better when you actually do pull them out. A good mental model is that you have a budget: don't spend your nice words if you don't need to. Only pull them out when you're going for the razzle dazzle. The analogy breaks down fast, but basically, if you're constantly using flowery language and overdecorating the ordinary scenes, nobody's going to be impressed when something extraordinary happens, just like the overuse of "suddenly" I mentioned earlier. Since this actually is an extraordinary moment for our narrator, I'm spending a few nice words now.
And again, I want to call attention to the first and last words of the sentence. Those are strong places in a sentence (or, especially in the case of a VN, a line). Previously there were pretty weak words there ("The colorful" and "neatly"); now we've got "iridescent" and "precision". Good words in good places.
 
One last thing to mention. I wrote each of these up in the middle of editing, and then later edited that up into a blog post. I made changes to the edited line itself in the process of writing all this stuff up, which made it better. In fact, I even noticed a problem while writing up this blog post and further refined the line. You'll never know what it was (probably). The point being, simply spending time reflecting on an edit, and especially writing down your observations and motivations for certain choices, will help you do better work. You don't have to be this thorough all the time (I certainly am not), but every time you do an exercise like that, you'll learn from it, and then you can write up your own blog post and teach me something.
 

I remember the not-insane guy from the documentary about The Pirate Bay talking about why he rather used AFK in place of IRL when denoting anything he did which was not in front of his computer. Recalling the exact quote proves difficult but it doesn't matter as my point isn't necessarily what he meant but how I perceived it. I seem to recall his reasoning being something along the lines of online and digital presence also, technically, being part of real life.
 
It makes sense to me that reality is not exclusive but in fact the opposite; inclusive. Anything that can be at all I would consider part of reality and thus also, if I am involved in it, a part of my own real life. Which leads me to virtual reality. Not VR but the idea of virtuality. As far as I know, European philosophers back in the day (and maybe even now?) sometimes divided reality into the material reality (is actual, has form) and virtuality. Keep in mind that I'm using the term very liberally. Something virtual can be a thing, such as a character in a visual novel, which is not material but according to some people very much real since it obviously exists. If the character did not exist, there would be no way to see or interact with it, even through the UI of the game. There may be moral values connected to the importance of something virtual vs. something material but that is another discussion. However, I don't really buy the fact that distinctions between forms of realities are necessary nor representative of the way it works. This is why I'm just going to say that everything is real, real to the extent that we don't even need the word real as nothing can not be real. Truth be told, I am making a conscious effort not to get trapped in a spiral of semantics, arguing the duality of language, thoughts and symbols such as the word 'reality'. So, in conclusion to this paragraph, let me say that since I consider reality inclusive and non-specific, I also consider reality all-encompassing and so it includes anything that follows henceforth.
 
Since smooth segue is smooth and If I haven't already lost everyone at this point, what I wanted to get to was this: animu and vidya are for realz! In fact, it makes me very satisfied that I can fool myself into believing the equal reality of MMORPG worlds enjoy compared to the one my shrink wants me to be functional in.
 
Ever since I was a wee lad I have enjoyed escapism a lot. Like many of my generation I was at a point completely absorbed in the World of Warcraft, Azeroth. Because, while I love the worlds of my favourite movies, anime, fighting games, visual novels and so on, they are a bit lacking in the world department. With world I mean a traversable landscape which preferably differs enough from Earth to make it interesting. So, for me, what an MMORPG needs to be is a system which makes an as large of a virtual landscape as interesting and exciting as possible, ideally to the point that you start to forget that it is not indeed virtual.
 
My interest in these kinds of games has dwindled significantly for the past several years. I feel they have become more about being virtual landscapes supporting a gameplay system than the other way around. Specifically I'm talking about convenience features which make the gameplay systems quicker and easier to understand. I didn't get into them for that, though. There are plenty of games I enjoy primarily for their gameplay features, such as Street Fighter and Starcraft, but none of them are MMORPGs.
 
Recently I have regained hope, though. On March 11th this year, Visionary Realms streamed over an hour of gameplay from the pre-alpha version of their game Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen. I've been skeptical, thinking the game was most likely vapourware until I saw the stream but now, seeing how far along they've gotten, I think it will most likely see the light of day after all. Basically, the game is like any other game in the genre only stripped of what I consider bloat features. It will also be significantly slower paced and focus more on group efforts as opposed to solo play. There will be limited fast-travel, instancing and enemies which can be killed by a lone player. They are promising that there won't be exclamation marks over the heads of NPCs giving quests and combat as well as regeneration of health will take longer than in modern MMORPGs. The graphics aren't exactly state of the art but to me they look serviceable, although I'm fine with playing Dragon Quest (1986) on my Famicom so my standards aren't exactly sky high.
 
Maybe this pitch sounds like a snorefest to you and I completely understand why someone might think so but I do hope that there are enough people interested in this kind of niche to let the game stay afloat. Perhaps you are like me and love to escape to a world of fantasy, be it in a visual novel or otherwise. Perhaps you are like me and happen to have 12-20 hours to kill in front of your computer before you sleep again. Just thought I'd put the word out there in my own construed and needy way.
 
That's all, thanks.
 

How to Archery
2-Are donuts really Haram?
An interesting tweet.
3-Be careful with fireworks
4-What happens when a cat jumps into the refrigerator?
5-Happy new years (?)
Or at least, happier than this poor guy
Hope ya'll had a fun time last year. And I hope I do better this new year ... o/

How to Archery
2-Are donuts really Haram?
An interesting tweet.
3-Be careful with fireworks
4-What happens when a cat jumps into the refrigerator?
5-Happy new years (?)
Or at least, happier than this poor guy
Hope ya'll had a fun time last year. And I hope I do better this new year ... o/

A few days after Christmas and the site has been infested with either selfies and star wars spoilers, or posts complaining about selfies and star wars spoilers, so it's refreshing to see something new for a change.
1-Crazy Post of the day
This one is a bit NSFW, so I'll just post the link. I can't really give you a description as I'm not sure what to say, but if you're bored out of your mind, this might slightly amuse you http://imgur.com/gallery/bUpNgCe
2-Animals
Oddly enough, this doesn't concern cats. I know, a post on the internet about animals that doesn't have cats?! I couldn't believe my eyes either! But hey, it's heartwarming sometimes to see animals do their unexpected things, so here ya go
3-What Happens When You Lose to a Mud Monster in Monster Girl Quest
My title is probably more appropriate than the original
4-Meme of za day
Took quite a while finding this one. We all know memes on the internet are serious business. I chose this one because well... It's kinda funny no?
5-What iz Racism?
A bit more serious, and it's also a repost, but the message here is as true as it is important. 
And that's that for today. Not much words and critique, but that's mainly because it's the end of the day and I can't really give each picture it's fair share of criticism and consideration. You can look forward to more of that in the future. Hope you had fun for now, any suggestions/complaints/praises are appreciated

A few days after Christmas and the site has been infested with either selfies and star wars spoilers, or posts complaining about selfies and star wars spoilers, so it's refreshing to see something new for a change.
1-Crazy Post of the day
This one is a bit NSFW, so I'll just post the link. I can't really give you a description as I'm not sure what to say, but if you're bored out of your mind, this might slightly amuse you http://imgur.com/gallery/bUpNgCe
2-Animals
Oddly enough, this doesn't concern cats. I know, a post on the internet about animals that doesn't have cats?! I couldn't believe my eyes either! But hey, it's heartwarming sometimes to see animals do their unexpected things, so here ya go
3-What Happens When You Lose to a Mud Monster in Monster Girl Quest
My title is probably more appropriate than the original
4-Meme of za day
Took quite a while finding this one. We all know memes on the internet are serious business. I chose this one because well... It's kinda funny no?
5-What iz Racism?
A bit more serious, and it's also a repost, but the message here is as true as it is important. 
And that's that for today. Not much words and critique, but that's mainly because it's the end of the day and I can't really give each picture it's fair share of criticism and consideration. You can look forward to more of that in the future. Hope you had fun for now, any suggestions/complaints/praises are appreciated

Alright, here's number two! Note that these aren't put in any particular order. Enjoy
1-Understanding Nyanyans
I made a conscious effort to stay from cats last time, but screw it:They are everywhere for a reason. If you're looking to understand cat behavior and language more, or just want cute kittie pics, this should satisfy you:
 2-TFW you start out strong, but then things go downhill...
... Literally
3- Reasons why you shouldn't post your pictures on the internet.
Sure, this particular position is kinda asking for it... But anyone with enough photoshop skillz can turn even the most innocent picture of you into a sex tape. Beware
4-Why Women Can't Drive in Saudi Arabia
title
 5-When you're trying to take down the boss your team be like
I guess you can say this about any team in a co-op game.
And that is that. I didn't type the paragraphs I thought I would, but "The best of speeches are the clear and short" (let's see if you can find the source of that. Note that it's translated from Arabic :P) . Lemme know whachya think buddeh, I'll be sure to... Consider your words  

Alright, here's number two! Note that these aren't put in any particular order. Enjoy
1-Understanding Nyanyans
I made a conscious effort to stay from cats last time, but screw it:They are everywhere for a reason. If you're looking to understand cat behavior and language more, or just want cute kittie pics, this should satisfy you:
 2-TFW you start out strong, but then things go downhill...
... Literally
3- Reasons why you shouldn't post your pictures on the internet.
Sure, this particular position is kinda asking for it... But anyone with enough photoshop skillz can turn even the most innocent picture of you into a sex tape. Beware
4-Why Women Can't Drive in Saudi Arabia
title
 5-When you're trying to take down the boss your team be like
I guess you can say this about any team in a co-op game.
And that is that. I didn't type the paragraphs I thought I would, but "The best of speeches are the clear and short" (let's see if you can find the source of that. Note that it's translated from Arabic :P) . Lemme know whachya think buddeh, I'll be sure to... Consider your words  

A few days after Christmas and the site has been infested with either selfies and star wars spoilers, or posts complaining about selfies and star wars spoilers, so it's refreshing to see something new for a change.
1-Crazy Post of the day
This one is a bit NSFW, so I'll just post the link. I can't really give you a description as I'm not sure what to say, but if you're bored out of your mind, this might slightly amuse you http://imgur.com/gallery/bUpNgCe
2-Animals
Oddly enough, this doesn't concern cats. I know, a post on the internet about animals that doesn't have cats?! I couldn't believe my eyes either! But hey, it's heartwarming sometimes to see animals do their unexpected things, so here ya go
3-What Happens When You Lose to a Mud Monster in Monster Girl Quest
My title is probably more appropriate than the original
4-Meme of za day
Took quite a while finding this one. We all know memes on the internet are serious business. I chose this one because well... It's kinda funny no?
5-What iz Racism?
A bit more serious, and it's also a repost, but the message here is as true as it is important. 
And that's that for today. Not much words and critique, but that's mainly because it's the end of the day and I can't really give each picture it's fair share of criticism and consideration. You can look forward to more of that in the future. Hope you had fun for now, any suggestions/complaints/praises are appreciated

A few days after Christmas and the site has been infested with either selfies and star wars spoilers, or posts complaining about selfies and star wars spoilers, so it's refreshing to see something new for a change.
1-Crazy Post of the day
This one is a bit NSFW, so I'll just post the link. I can't really give you a description as I'm not sure what to say, but if you're bored out of your mind, this might slightly amuse you http://imgur.com/gallery/bUpNgCe
2-Animals
Oddly enough, this doesn't concern cats. I know, a post on the internet about animals that doesn't have cats?! I couldn't believe my eyes either! But hey, it's heartwarming sometimes to see animals do their unexpected things, so here ya go
3-What Happens When You Lose to a Mud Monster in Monster Girl Quest
My title is probably more appropriate than the original
4-Meme of za day
Took quite a while finding this one. We all know memes on the internet are serious business. I chose this one because well... It's kinda funny no?
5-What iz Racism?
A bit more serious, and it's also a repost, but the message here is as true as it is important. 
And that's that for today. Not much words and critique, but that's mainly because it's the end of the day and I can't really give each picture it's fair share of criticism and consideration. You can look forward to more of that in the future. Hope you had fun for now, any suggestions/complaints/praises are appreciated

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I wrote previously about a display bug in Dual Tail's strategy eroge Venus Blood -Hypno- that prevented interface text from displaying correctly in non-Japanese Windows. Fan hacker binaryfail generously donated a patch that fixes the issue. I sent this patch to Ninetail (parent company of Dual Tail) via Twitter, requesting that they include the fix on their official support page. Project manager and game designer Keimaru responded to me in broken English. His response, edited by me, is as follows.

Original:




I thanked him and went my way. A commentator on Reddit later informed me that Keimaru had posted a much longer comment in Japanese. This comment showed such sincere and thoughtful consideration of the issue, from a Japanese developer's standpoint, that I decided it needed to be relayed to the English audience.

Japanese eroge developers are well known for their reluctance to get involved with the Western market. Packaging and splash screens prominently declare "For sale in Japan only". Westerners tend to dismiss this policy as apathy for foreign fans, even regarding the practice with contempt as just another manifestation of Japanese isolationism and xenophobia. When eroge companies block foreign IPs, they automatically assume that the company has closed its doors to Western release (despite abundant evidence to the contrary). "The companies are just being xenophobic," they say with bitter contempt. "Might as well just fan translate their titles, since they'll never officially release their games in English. They don't want dirty gaijin playing their games."

It's about time that we get the other side of this story. And who better to deliver it than a prominent and well-loved Japanese developer--one puzzling over how to respond to a bug that prevents foreign fans from playing his games? I provide my translation of Keimaru's Twitter comments below. I regret that my translation skills could not fully convey the honest simplicity of the original message, but I did my best to at least get across the ideas and intent.
I don't know about you, but Ninetail just earned one new (very loud) fan. For an example of one of Ninetail's outstanding games, see my Venus Blood -Gaia- review! (NSFW version, SFW mirror)

Special thanks to those of the Fuwanovel community who provided feedback on the translation, especially Majikoi fan translator dowolf.

Introduction


This is probably a fucking terrible idea but I felt like making a blog to talk/rant/cry/be dumb about stuff. I'll try to be serious about mostly everything I say here, but I doubt I'll manage to not end up lightly flaming or saying bullshit sometimes, sorry in advance about that. T_T

I'll use this post to talk about my trip to Japan as well since blogging two lines would be hella lame.





Japan


Alright, where should I start? Well, my nationality might be Brazilian but my ethnicity is Japanese, so I always had a bit of interest on Japan. I lived there when I was a baby but that doesn't counts anyway. I went there with my grandparents, younger brother and fucking four cousins - two of them stayed with their parents there though -, just imagine the disaster the whole thing was. Getting everyone ready on the airport was hell, the airplane was hell, getting our luggage was hell, bathroom breaks were hell, the whole thing was basically hell if you didn't got it yet. I don't really talk to any of them aside from one of the cousins, which is the closest to a regular family interaction that I have. I call him Mini-Bitch because of reasons and that's how I'll be referring to him through the post.

When we actually landed in Japan and got out of the plane, holy moly what a cold place. We went straight for my aunt's house where we all would stay for the whole trip and got received with a really nice dinner, assorted traditional foods on the table and some fucking delicious apple juice on the fridge. No, seriously, that juice is worse than drugs, Mini-Bitch and I bought it wherever we found it, that shit is fucking dangerous lmfao.

Food was delicious, seriously, the meals felt solid but never really too much that you'd feel heavy, unless you're dumb like me and orders a goddamn three plates large curry dish and eat it all, then you're probably going to die for around an hour just like I did. Not gonna lie though, the lack of meat was hard to deal with after a while. Even when there was meat on the dishes it wasn't the same thing, mostly due to how they prefer to prepare it which is not exactly to my tastes, but still a bit above decent. Fucking drink machines every fucking corner sucked my coins dry on my first week, took me a while to notice where the fuck they were all going. Keep that in mind if you ever visit Japan, 100~130 yen for a good drink basically anywhere might not look like a lot but it'll consume your whole wallet before you notice.

I visit a shit ton of places but I'll only talk about a few of those, either because it was really cool or because it left a great impression for whatever reason. First of all, Osu Kanon had a shopping district that was pretty legit when compared to the other places I visited, maybe it's just because it was the first place I visited when I got there but I'll definitely try to go there again someday. During christmas I went to somewhere-whose-name-I-never-got-to-know and had my first white christmas in my whole life, such magic (Christmas happens during Summer here). I had my first snowball fight, there's something simply unique to feeling your body slowly hardening due to cold after being hit a thousand times by dumb-shits who don't know how to aim when you team up, and I also built a failure of a snowman that I love a lot, I'll never forget you Pedrito. (´._.`)

New Year was w/e, we just had a kinda fancy dinner with crab (which is not exactly that good anyway) and some booze - best part right here. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that Japan has some delicious alcoholic drinks and I'd love to have tried more of them but I couldn't buy anything since I'm not old enough, so all I got my hands on was whatever my aunt had lying around on her fridge and occasionally something I managed to convince her to buy me. ヽ(͡◕ ͜ʖ ͡◕)ﾉ

Talking about booze, I'll leave my rant here that I couldn't find a single decent vodka there! End of rant, so let's get back to cool places. I really liked the planetarium and the aquarium since I had never been to any of those before. I saw the stars Yumemi, I saw them ;------------;. Went to Disney again and that place is seriously overrated. It's a good park and all that but you can't compare it to other Japanese parks or stuff like Universal Studios, Disney is all about making dreams come true and believing in magic. While I look like I'm flaming it, I spent my whole fucking day singing "Do you believe in magic?" so ヽ(◉◡◔)ﾉヽ(◉◡◔)ﾉヽ(◉◡◔)ﾉヽ(◉◡◔)ﾉ. I won't talk about the other parks because I'm not really into amusement parks, they were really fun though, I just don't get all crazy over it.

Alright, let's move to Tokyo now. I visited some cool places that once again I never got to know the name, had some good food, slept on a good hotel and managed to get some booze once again woooooo. I visited Akiba twice and God what a crazy place. First time there was when I met Ren, who I'll talk more about in the end. It's an amazing place that is really fun to just hang around and look at the showcases, specially the figures. I'm not a collector but I got myself some just cuz I tilted and felt like spending money that I could have saved for more VNs, food or clothes. Honestly, I never thought I'd ever see that much porn on the shelters of a store that wasn't specifically a porn store lmfao, gotta love sofmap. I'll try to post pictures later or maybe just make a video about the shit I bought, dunno about it yet. Oh yeah, idols are fucking everywhere, love live is like cancer jesus macaroni penis what a joy it was to listen to u's songs everywhere.

Hm... I think that's enough to define that my trip was amazing and I'd love to visit the country again, fuck, I'm actually going to try and become a teacher there. Talking about teachers, let's talk about Ren now. Oh boy, how do I start this? Ren is a fucking giant and I'm a dwarf, that was basically how people saw us there probably. I came out of the subway station, first thing I see is a tall foreigner with a red-beanie, just like the one Ren said that he'd be wearing, I just wasn't expecting him to be like, 20~30 cm+ taller than me (ﾟーﾟ). He showed me around the place, taught me the good places to get some cheap stuff and explained about a lot of things, such as sofmap's green/blue warnings on used games and how pre-orders work. We had some quality-time you know? Talking about weeb shit and eating McDonald's with no french fries, btw McDonalds became a thing that I always have to mention when I just wanna drop a random comment to some thread of his or a reply to him, I don't remember how it started but it was probably me being retarded. There's not much to talk about our meeting really, we went around the stores hunting for porn games to talk about, had some laughs looking at how broken their english was on game covers, had some McDonald's, quality-time, more laughs as he would hit his head on signs placed on the ceiling of the stores (LMFAOJA8FHEAFHA) and we shared life philosophies that can't even be expressed in digital letters, fuck binary. Great times, buddy, great times. Until he started showing me Love Live hentai, that fucker ruined my idols forever (ಠ_ಠ). I said it before though I can't recall the context, but I'm definitely going to kill you.

I think that's it. I did no edits and I don't think I'll do any just for the fun factor that is reading something written literally straight from my mind, as in I thought about something and wrote it down immediately without thinking about how I'd order things (Akiba was before Christmas). I just thought about it and I actually only mentioned Mini-Bitch once here even though I made it look like he was going to be present everywhere lol. He's a piece of shit but he made this trip a lot funnier than I expected so shout-out to him though he'll never read this nor know about the existence of this blog . Okay, I think that's it, I'll add an @edit below if I remember something relevant to add. Thanks for reading everyone.