Gibberish

Mangagamer, Fakku Games and other adult sites that hosts VNs are doing the same. I mean, it makes sense. VNs with adult content on Steam are being nuked, and not all the companies releasing eroge in the west have their own storefront, so it's nice for them to have other sites to rely on for that. Hopefully we'll see more developers who before only relied on steam move over to sites such as Mangagamer, JAST etc, so that there are more options for both the developers and the fans.
 
Oh and guys, let's try to keep our views on politics out of this. Whenever that gets brought up in a discussion on a forum, things tend to go way off topic....

I have not played it myself but on vndb it says it is all ages, also most characters seems to engage in off screen sex. I would assume they they just want to remove it for crude jokes or something else, it does have LGBTQ tag so maybe some anti gay people mass flagged it.

This is the essence of what I would say. Writing on the computer is no good and while pen and paper is better for something like this, you need to go big and make an overview, something like this:
Place a pin to mark where the story starts. Next place one for each branching point and each ending. Next you put strings on the pins to indicate the flow of the story and to visualize how the branching points are connected. Next you take a small piece of paper, write the title of an event and then you pin it on/next to a string. Repeat with all the events. You will end up with a visual overview of distribution of events and order of events. As you write each scene in more detail, you will likely figure out some events needs to happen in a different order and you swap them as needed. Events can be a scene or just some information like "protagonist remembers having met heroine years ago". Basically you add a piece of paper for anything where order will affect how other events are written.
Back to the future had the script and hence the timeline made this way. Naturally without the branching points, but the order of events were planned like this. Some scenes required Marty to have experience with something and then that something was written on another paper and it had to go into the story earlier. A proper overview for planning is required for something like that to work well.
 
As for programming, I would say make a file for each event and give them proper names. This will help if you want to swap something at some point or insert a new scene between two existing scenes. Since the story has to match the plan, the files/programming should too or you will lose the overview.

I've been analysing the sexual content of VNs, what's become more common, what gets the best ratings, and what content tends to come together; and thought I'd present some of my results in a slightly different way: in a quiz! Using the extensive character database on vndb, I tracked which appearance and personality traits were more or less likely to engage in types of sexual activity, and put the results in a quiz format so you can enter the tropes and it'll tell you how the percentages diverge from the average.
This is a slightly silly way to present the results, but I thought you guys might enjoy it.
You can try the quiz here.

I was thinking about writers that i like the most and when i thought about Jun Maeda, i realized that i don't like him that much as a writer and the main reason Key VNs are some of my favorite was because of Baba Takahiro's directing. That was just me being dumb and not knowing what a executive producer does.
Have you ever thought about a VN where you praised a writer and realized the greatness of his product really came from the directors or executive producers? Do you think i'm getting confused and directors aren't that big of a deal?

The Western VN fandom has long idolised the Japanese VN market. Before the recent growth of the EVN scene and official localisations, Western VN fans had to subsist only on the occasional fan-translations of Japanese VNs while being told how much better the untranslated VNs were. However this faith in untranslated VNs rested on an unspoken assumption: that Western and Japanese VN fans enjoy the same content. But is it true? Through comparing the largest VN fandom site in Japan (erogamescape) against the largest VN fandom site in the West (VNDB), we sought to find out.
Do we love the same VNs?
While the ability of a numerical rating to summarise a subjective experience (like reading a VN) is debatable, the average score a community assigns a VN provides a useful approximation of how highly esteemed that VN is within the community. Both EGS and VNDB allow users to rate VNs they’ve read, so comparing how the same VN scores on both sites gives us an impression of how much the communities agree on which VNs are best.
 


We can see there’s a strong correlation between the score a VN gets on each site, especially for higher rated VNs, showing that both communities tend to agree on which VNs are considered “the best” (despite the ferocious arguments within each fandom over that same question). But as the score drops, so does the agreement over the VN score. So while both communities tend to agree on what’s good, we disagree on what’s bad.
There’s also another trend that’s a little less noticeable, but becomes more apparent if we remove the untranslated VNs...
 


While the untranslated VNs in the last graph seemed to fairly evenly straddle the equal score line, the translated VNs are frequently below it (meaning these VNs score higher on EGS than VNDB). But is the translation a cause or an effect of the lower score on VNDB (i.e. does the release of a translation lower the score on VNDB, or are only low-scoring VNs being translated)? To answer this, we tracked how the VNDB score of a VN changes immediately after a translation is released.
 


We tracked 117 of the most popular Japanese VNs that had an English translation released in the past 5 years. In the first 60 days after their translation was released, their score dropped an average of 0.146 on VNDB, with Fata Morgana being the blip on the far right that significantly bucked the trend and increased in score. There also seems to be slight correlation with lower-rated VNs on EGS dropping more than higher-rated ones.
So it seems confirmed that the translations are the cause rather than an effect. But why does this happen? This remains the subject of fierce debate among my friends, but we came up with a few theories:
Japanese VNs are made for Japanese tastes, so Western fans might not enjoy them to the same extent. Western fans who learn Japanese and use VNDB might align more with the taste of Japanese fans rather than with their fellow Western fans. Japanese VNs are made for Japanese tastes, so Western fans might not enjoy them to the same extent. Western fans who learn Japanese and use VNDB might align more with the taste of Japanese fans rather than with their fellow Western fans. The high barrier of entry for a Westerner to read an untranslated VN (they have to know Japanese) filters out those who have only a casual interest in the VN. So the pre-translation score is dominated by hard-core fans who are more likely to rate it higher.
The experience of reading a translation can be inferior to reading prose in its original language, so VNDB users rating a VN based on that translation might assign lower scores than those reading the original text.
The larger drop in score for lower-rated VNs might be because they don’t attract the same care and attention by their translators, with any official localisation likely done on a lower-budget.
VN popularity
It isn’t just through scores that we can measure a communities’ tastes, we can also estimate a VN’s popularity through the number of votes it gets. In comparing the number of votes the same VN gets on EGS and VNDB, we can see whether the same VNs are popular in both Japan and the West.
 

Note that this chart is using a log scale.

The most obvious trend is the clear split between translated and untranslated VNs. Unsurprisingly, translated VNs and EVNs do significantly better on VNDB than untranslated VNs. But we Western fans aren’t especially choosey, even fairly unpopular VNs on EGS can attract large fanbases on VNDB if they’re translated.
Given that translations aren’t random, they require either dedicated fan-translators or a localiser willing to invest in them, it’s surprising that the translated VNs span the entire width of popularity on EGS. So we might have expected it to skew more to the right, with unpopular EGS VNs being much less likely to get a translation. While the ratio of translated-untranslated VNs is higher for more popular EGS VNs, no VN seems to be beyond the prospect of being translated, no matter how unpopular it is.
Overall, while there remains a correlation in popularity between EGS and VNDB, it’s far weaker than the score correlation. This mismatch might partially be down to the age of the communities. VNs have been a popular niche of the Japanese market for decades, but were virtually unknown in the West before the 2010s. So there’s quite a number of 80s-00s era JVNs that have hundreds of votes on EGS, but are practically unheard of on VNDB.
Differences in taste
So far we’ve been looking at each VN as a whole, but can we delve deeper? A VN can be seen as a package of tropes: childhood-friend heroine, tsundere heroine, dumb male protagonist that’s inexplicably beloved by all (these 3 criteria should narrow us down to approximately 90% of all VNs ever made /s). Through comparing the scores of VNs that have a trope against those who don’t, we can get an impression of how popular that trope is.
Fortunately we don’t have to determine these tropes ourselves, both EGS and VNDB allow users to apply tags to a VN which denote the type of content it has. So let’s start simple and see which tags are correlated with a higher average score on EGS.
This world cloud ranks the EGS tags by the average score of the VNs they appear in, with higher scores being placed higher on the chart, so we can see what type of content is most lauded on EGS. The text size is proportional to the number of VNs that tag appears in, so we can see what’s a common trope and what’s rare.
 

A full size version of this image is available here, and a spreadsheet version is available here.  Note that this is mostly using google translate for the EGS tags, so the labels are… imaginative.

Generally, it seems like complex VNs (with tags such as “intelligent,” “to solve a mystery” and “difficult to get”) are the most highly rated, while more sexual oriented tags seem to be linked with lower average scores (which is probably due to nukige/porn VNs). It also seems Japanese fans value the *novel* over the *visual* element in their VNs, with “CG is beautiful” being rated quite poorly. Towards the bottom are tags mostly related to being old or low-budget (with tags such as “Low price” and “XP supported”).
This has only shown us what Japanese fans like, but we’re more focused on how Japanese and Western fans compare. So instead, let’s try comparing which VNDB tags are correlated with a VN scoring higher on VNDB or EGS.
 

A full size version of this image is available here, and a spreadsheet version is available here.

It seems like Western fans value romance and slice of life type stories more than Japanese fans do, whereas Japanese fans are more generous with their nukige/porn ratings. Perhaps we’re more judgemental in our view of sexual content here in the West? Japanese settings also seem to be more favoured among the Western fandom than the Japanese, the weeabooism is real /s. Slightly disappointing is how poorly female protagonists do in the Western fandom. While otomes are widespread in the EVN market, they remain a relatively unpopular niche on VNDB.
Differences in the marketplace
We’ve compared the taste between the Japanese and Western fandoms, but we haven’t looked at the differing availability of VNs in the markets. Are certain types of content more likely to be translated than others? How does the the home-grown Western VN industry differ from the Japanese one?
 

A full size version of this image is available here, and a spreadsheet version is available here.

It seems that action/violent type content -whether in the form of police investigations or wars- are especially popular subjects for translated VNs. Female protagonists are also surprisingly high, especially since otomes don’t seem to be translated that often, but that might be because an even smaller proportion of nukige/porn type VNs are translated, and they overwhelmingly have male protagonists.
Lastly, let’s look at the EVNs. With a negligible presence in Japan (there were only 4 EVNs on EGS with at least 4 votes), we can’t really compare what the fans prefer, but we can see how the markets differ in the kind of content they produce. This next chart tracks which VNDB tags are more common in EVNs vs JVNs.
 

A full size version of this image is available here, and a spreadsheet version that includes more tags is available here. The sexual content tags were removed because there’s so little sexual content in EVNs that it seemed a waste of space, and it gave room to include rarer content type tags.

The clearest difference between the markets is in the amount of porn, there’s exceedingly little in EVNs. This is likely due to the smaller budget for EVNs which would preclude h-scene artwork, and restrictions on adult content on Steam discouraging such content.
EVNs encompass a broader range of protagonists than JVNs with LGBTQ+ related content being much more common, and female protagonists being as common as males (unlike JVNs where female protagonists make up only a small proportion of VNs). But JVNs can be inclusive in other ways, like being the sole representation of protagonists who can turn into panties.
Stories relating to personal difficulties, especially regarding depression, seem much more common in EVNs too. They also seem more willing to break from the usual high-school settings of JVNs, having more university aged and above characters.
Criticisms
Before we get carried away with forming any stereotypes of Japanese and Western fanbases from this data, let’s consider a few issues with the data.
The VNDB and EGS userbase might not be representative of the wider Western/Japanese fandom. As per some of our earlier analysis posts, VNDB significantly undercounts the popularity of EVNs for example. So some caution should be taken in extrapolating what the wider fanbase likes based on this data. The VNDB and EGS userbase might not be representative of the wider Western/Japanese fandom. As per some of our earlier analysis posts, VNDB significantly undercounts the popularity of EVNs for example. So some caution should be taken in extrapolating what the wider fanbase likes based on this data. It’s easy to mix up cause and effect. Are sci-fi stories better than other stories and that’s why they’re associated with higher scores? Or is it that VNs that care about their story are just more likely to have a sci-fi setting?
Some trends, like what type of content is more likely to be translated, might just be tracking the changing tastes of the era. With older VNs being less likely to be translated than newer VNs, the charts might just be picking up on what kind of content has become more popular in recent years.
The dataset has some errors. EGS and VNDB catalogue VNs differently and that can cause some mismatches in the data. We’ve done our best to account for that, but with the dataset being so large, some mistakes will have slipped through.
Acknowledgements
A big thank you to /u/8cccc9, Part-Time Storier, and Cibelle for helping with this analysis.
I hope you enjoyed reading through this, and if so, you should check out my tumblr and twitter for more VN analysis posts. If you have any feedback, questions, or suggestions for further analyses then you can reply here, on twitter, or DM me on Discord (Sunleaf_Willow ／(^ n ^=)＼#1616).
Our next analysis post is likely to be on h-scenes. What type of content is most highly regarded by the fandom? How has the popularity in the fandom of certain sexual acts risen erect and fallen limp over time? How is the EVN market handling sexual content in contrast to Japan? Hopefully we’ll have lots of answers (and some painful puns) next time~

Being consistently good is way harder than begin low and then peak higher, the inability to be at least digestible in all the sections is like a plague that infects most of story driven vns and make them crap.

It should be noted that to have a slow build up, the story needs to be consistently ... well, built up. Stories that dick around for 30 hours can be fun, but it's hard to describe that as "building the story".
Usually I do enjoy a slow build up, where the world is gradually peeled back or new facets and skills of the characters slowly revealed that sort of thing. But only if the scenes had purpose and weren't just "hijinks".

https://www.jastusa.com/blue/
And Sweet Pool will be the first one of this new BL brand!!!! 
Okay, it's JAST we're talking about here, but maybe we can be hopeful? I mean, there's a fan translation going on and they were very close to finishing the patch when this happened. Maybe they bought it, like they did with other Nitroplus titles?
Anyway, at least now it'll be way easier to acquire the actual game. And I hope they make some no porn version, so I can convince more people to play it!!!! Sweet Pool is a pretty nice dark plotge. I mean, it's possible. N+C themselves will release a PSVita version of the game in the future.

Online anime discussions seem obsessed with individual anime: there can only be one best anime (and it’s Rakugo, fite me irl). But rather than focusing on specific anime, could we look at what binds them together? I’m talking about anime fans. No anime fan watches only one anime, they watch lots, so if we chart the fandom overlap between anime we could how different anime series group together. Do they group together based on source material? The type of genre? The release date? Let’s find out!
I also posted this here where I can embed images in the post and I think it's a little easier to read.
The Analysis Process (skip this section if uninterested)
First, we need some data on anime fans. Fortunately, we don’t need to conduct an extensive survey, anime fans are happy to publicly catalog their tastes on sites like MyAnimeList.net. To get a random sampling of the active anime fandom, I downloaded the completed anime and profile data of anyone logging into MAL on a couple of days in January. I got data for 7883 users who had watched 1,417,329 anime series in total (enough for 4 lifetimes of constant anime watching).
I filtered out anything that wasn’t a TV series or movie, and any anime with fewer than 1,000 fans in our dataset, leaving us with 380 anime. I then merged anime entries of the same series together, leaving 268 anime to chart.
To map out the fandom’s tastes, I modeled each anime like it was a beachball floating in a swimming pool. Each beachball had several elastic strings tied to it of varying strength. The strongest string was connected to the anime/beachball that it shared the most fans with. The next strongest string went to the anime/beachball it had the second most fans with, and so on. This way anime with lots of overlapping fans would be drawn together. But to prevent the confused mess of a squeaky beachball bondage orgy, each beachball also bobbed up and down in the pool of water, causing waves that pushed away anything that got too close.
I let this simulation run until it reached an equilibrium point where the pull of the strings balanced against the push of the waves. The result would hopefully be an anime/beachball web where groups of anime with large fandom overlaps formed clusters.
The Fandom Map
After warming myself on my overheating computer processors, the simulation finally ended with the result below. The font size of each anime name is proportional to how popular it is, and the red lines represent the fandom overlap/elastic strings between beachballs.

A higher resolution version is available here: here
Eek, that’s a lot to take in! At first glance there are a few obvious clusters like the Ghibli movies in the bottom right, but it can be hard to identify what common themes are linking these anime. So what do we do? MAL tags to the rescue! (Surely this is the only time those tags have ever been useful). We can use the MAL genre tags the highlight different genres and see if they group together.

The green dots show which anime have the genre tag in the title.
What had once seemed a single unified blob is shown to be split into multiple clusters, but what does it tell us? Each cluster should be judged on two metrics: self-cohesion and its proximity/overlap to other clusters.
Self-cohesion is how tightly grouped a cluster is. The more tightly grouped it is, the more fans tend to stay within that genre and pick anime based on it. So for example, the ecchi cluster is quite tightly grouped in the top left area, telling us that the inclusion (or lack of) ecchi content is important to those fans in choosing what to watch. Alternatively the lack of cohesion can tell us something too, drama anime are spread out all over the place, suggesting there isn’t a unified group of fans specifically seeking out drama content like there is for romance, slice of life, or action anime.
The proximity to other clusters tells us where fandoms overlap. For example, the thriller and ecchi clusters are at opposite ends, suggesting that generally, the fandoms don’t overlap much. However psychological, mystery, and thriller anime all seem to overlap quite well.
It seems the most prominent split in the fandom is between romance and action anime, with the two of them taking up significant portions of the medium, but overlapping only in ecchi anime.
Recency Bias
As well as plotting genres, we can also see if the release date of an anime influences its position. If fans tend to pick anime based on what’s currently airing, that’d show up with anime of the same year grouping together.

While the middle area is quite mixed, the latest anime series from 2017 cluster significantly on the left side, suggesting anime aired in the same season do tend to clump together with a lot of fan overlap, but only while the anime is less than a year old. After that, the rest of the anime fandom who are pickier about the anime they try outnumber those who watch all the latest series.
Fandom age
Using the publicly listed birthdays of our MAL users, we can see which anime tends to attract the oldest users.

The age map is almost a mirror image of the recency bias map, with the unsurprising result that older anime tends to have older fans, and the most recent anime have the youngest fandom.
Gender differences
The number of women on MAL is likely undercounted as only 17% of those listing their gender state they’re female, but we can still analyse how the gender ratio changes between anime clusters.

Note that green nodes don’t mean a female majority (only 3 anime had a female majority fandom: Yuri on Ice, Free, and Ouran Koukou Host Club), it just means the ratio is higher than average.
There is clearly a gender divide in the anime each gender is watching. The female fans seem to gravitate more towards psychological stories and the Ghibli movies. Unsurprisingly, ecchi stuff is watched almost entirely by males. What’s more surprising is how few female fans there are among the recent releases cluster, suggesting female fans are less likely to follow the latest anime season.
MAL also offers a non-binary gender option. Only 1% of those displaying their gender picked non-binary, totaling just 61 users in my dataset, so I wouldn’t put too much stock in this result, but I was curious about the result...

It’s generally more mixed than the stark male-female divide, although the non-binary fan hotspots align much more with females than males, peaking on Yuri on Ice, Free, and Ouran Koukou Host Club.
Age ratings
Just for fun, we also tried plotting the age ratings of anime.

As would be expected, the R+ nudity ratings are clustered in the harem area, the younger ratings are mostly from the Ghibli films, and the R-17 violence ratings align with the action and psychological/thriller cluster.
Unrated anime
I have an obsession with rating anime, I must rate them all! But some users mark anime as “completed” without ever entering a score (what’s wrong with you?). I tried plotting the ratio of such unrated anime to see if they formed a pattern.

Turns out there’s a bit of a pattern here… ( ͡º ͜ʖ ͡º) The more ecchi it is, the less likely fans are to rate it. I guess they must scratch their rating compulsion itch through other means.
-----------------------------------------
I hope you liked our little analysis. It wouldn’t be possible without the help of Part-time Storier (https://parttimestorier.tumblr.com/), /u/8cccc9, and /u/Crabspite. Thank you all~
I always love discussing this stuff, so feel free to contact me here on Fuwanovel, tumblr, and twitter.
My next post (in a week or two) is going to focus on female fans and see how the female fandom’s tastes cluster.

Also I think one possible reason for the frequency of bland MC's in VNs could be to leave the path open for multiple choices. If your MC doesn't have a really well defined personality then no choice feels particularly weird. 
That I can understand, but I would still want the MC's personality to develop according to the choices you've made up to that point, and while there are very well crafted VNs that actually do this, most just don't bother since it's a lot of work. 

idk know who is Others is and what kind of VN is (Please specify) but i vote him because the main protag of gakhturn isnt there in the poll

Modern western writing is built a lot on conflict, and writers are constantly told to add conflict into novels. Act 2 of the 3 act structure many writers use is literally called confrontation. In comparison the Asian 4 act story structure of Kishotenketsu is built without conflict. That isn't to say there's no conflict in these stories, but it's not built into the actual structure for one. It's a very different style:
Act 1 - introduction
Act 2 - development
Act 3 - twist (might be poorly translated)
Act 4 - conclusion
I'll quote from an external source here:
The basics of the story–characters, setting, etc.–are established in the first act and developed in the second. No major changes occur until the third act, in which a new, often surprising element is introduced. The third act is the core of the plot, and it may be thought of as a kind of structural non sequitur. The fourth act draws a conclusion from the contrast between the first two “straight” acts and the disconnected third, thereby reconciling them into a coherent whole. Kishōtenketsu is probably best known to Westerners as the structure of Japanese yonkoma (four-panel) manga; and, with this in mind, our artist has kindly provided a simple comic to illustrate the concept.

Each panel represents one of the four acts. The resulting plot–and it is a plot–contains no conflict. No problem impedes the protagonist; nothing is pitted against anything else. Despite this, the twist in panel three imparts a dynamism–a chaos, perhaps–that keeps the comic from depicting merely a series of events. Panel four reinstates order by showing us how the first two panels connect to the third, which allows for a satisfactory ending without the need for a quasi-gladiatorial victory. It could be said that the last panel unifies the first three. The Western structure, on the other hand, is a face-off–involving character, theme, setting–in which one element must prevail over another. Our artist refitted the above comic into the three-act structure to show this difference.

The first panel gives the reader a “default position” with which to compare later events; and the second panel depicts a conflict-generating problem with the vending machine. The third panel represents the climax of the story: the dramatic high point in which the heroine's second attempt "defeats" the machine and allows the can to drop. The story concludes by depicting the aftermath, wherein we find that something from the first act has changed as a result of the climax. In this case, our heroine sansbeverage has become a heroine avec beverage.
http://stilleatingoranges.tumblr.com/post/25153960313/the-significance-of-plot-without-conflict

Lesiak and Mr Poltroon said most of what I wanted to say, but I think I can add a bit more.
Mostly... since when we can only enjoy a VN if it have stellar writing? I really enjoyed playing DDLC, the meta aspect was done really well, you can see how much care was put in the making of that game, there's some good messages buried there even too, it was a super fun read for me! It was not a masterpiece, but I don't regret one bit the time I spent with it.
I also gave good ratings for VNs in VNDB because the h-scenes were good, the bad endings were fun, above all the experience were good! And I'm sorry, I doubt I would ever want to read Narcissu because terminal illness isn't my cup of tea, it's really is a heavy topic, and other people surely agree.
Of course, I'm all in for more serious story driven VNs, they are my favorite, but those others have their place too. Except shovelware stuff, those can burn.

I have to fully agree with Thyndd. There's a good rule saying that "90% of every medium/genre is shit" and I'm pretty sure it also applies to stuff created by people active on 4chan's literary board. I also don't have any confidence that someone who's able to write a decent novel will automatically be able to write a good VN script. It's a different medium, requiring different skills and approach. What that first post represents is simply an elitist delusion of an "actual writer" frustrated that mass audience does what mass audience always did, rather than appreciate his awesome craftsmanship.
And there's a lot of niches within VN audience, I don't think I've seen many "greatly written, but completely unappreciated titles". Especially with the still small westers market, if something is really good, it will find its way to the consumers, regardless of the masses of people consuming cheap, trashy porn VNs. Also, DDLC is not an empty meme vessel. It's a well-crafted and well-though-out VN, made by an author with a lot of talent and passion for the medium. Feel free to hate it, if you have to, but don't try to put it in one row with Sakura games, it's just distasteful. 
EDIT: And just as a sidenote, Narcissu was downloaded by close to 400k people on Steam. That's just 70k less than Sakura Spirit and it's a game about dying of terminal illness (which is the reason I'm postponing reading it for years and years now). How exactly is it ignored?

Yeah, sure, let's talk about the current state of literature, where 50 shades of grey and Twilight are best-sellers among youngsters... fuck off.
Honestly, that guy COULD have a point, but he doesn't. For one, because he comes across as despective and rude, thus not willing to attend to reasons. I can't stand snobism.
There are badly written VNs and they appeal to part of the public, duh. The same could be said about any other medium.

I dunno why but I find this photo and everything about it beautiful
I wish the best

Dats me and nee-chan

Fur-lined, weather-beaten jacket screams "I work hard for a living" contrasting with the friendly goatee and vintage reading glasses that shout "I'm a tech support expert, how can I help you today?". Turtleneck sweater underneath the jacket for that Bear Grylls "I'm literally prepared to leave this concrete jungle and survive in the real woods at any time" rough and tumble feel. Slight smile that says "I want to kill myself, but don't really feel like it tbh". Somewhat unkempt but fitting hair that says "I care about my hair enough to not look like a fool, but I'm not metrosexual". Finally, the Apple earbuds show that despite all of this, you are modern and forward-thinking.
9/10.
u srs handsome tbh

So as some people know, I co-host about visual novels podcast monthly-ish. We have a segment towards the end where a user can "shill" a VN you like for 2-3 minutes. Basically at the bare minimum you just briefly talk about what the visual novel is and why you like it. We're interested in getting some more shills lined up and ready. Other things to take note off if you want to contribute your own shill:
* Leave a 3-5 seconds of silence at the beginning and/or the end of the recording
* Please have the recording be a .wav file
* Make sure there's no background noise as you record
* It doesn't have to have an English Translation. But if it doesn't make sure you note that one doesn't exist (yet).
* You can't shill a VN that's already been done before which includes: 
-The House in Fata Morgana
-MajiKoi
-Yumina the Ethereal
-Princess Evangile
-Root Double
-Tomoyo After
-Little Busters
-Sunrider
-Umineko series
If you're interested PM me a 2-3 minute-ish .wav file and we can work with it.
If you want an idea of how previous shill segments work you can go to our YouTube channel. Each video has one shill each and I put a timestamp in the description.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsAcGboxM5tSyYcU6Fu4nDw/videos

Planetarian by miles.

There is one big difference between VNDB ratings and this poll: on VNDB people cast votes on multiple VNs. And it's a big difference when it comes to statistics. You can also see it that way: between 24 people who voted on this poll so far, 21 didn't vote for Grisaia. VNDB would show what these people think about it. This poll doesn't.
Also, recalling some conversations on this forum from a while ago, there are a lot of people here who don't like Grisaia.

I voted for Fate/Stay Night because it was my favorite of the choices
That's like my second favorite though
My real favorite has always been Galaxy Angel (I just need to review that damn game already)

So, your thoughts?
My choice may seem slightly weird, but I'm going to say Planetarian. Compared to the other works, it's reasonably short, but at the same time it manages to have an interesting and thought-provoking story about the future of humanity, and still gets the "feels" moments right.
My second choice would go to Rewrite, even though it's not really a Key VN, in a classical sense.

A warm welcome to our three new additions to the staff team. They have been very active members of our community through the years, always jumping in and helping newcomers with their questions and to find their next VNs to read, as well as already having some experience being part of the fuwa staff, in the case of the notorious knight of Varela. Glad to have you on board, @Mr Poltroon, @Clephas and @Dergonu.
 
I'd also like to announce we have upgraded @Zenophilious to a global moderator, making it the first addition to our team since forever now. His nonstop work in moderating the forums with me these past few years have more than earned him the spot, and with this lineup, I'm sure we'll have no moderation problems for a long time to come.