Zalor

I don't read them. Never really tried reading one. I may at some point, but, on the other hand, I switched to VN's from story-based games exactly because I hated when the story was interrupted by gameplay.

It's a place where people who like a somewhat foreign fandom can conglomerate and mingle in with each other. Like Minitokyo was to anime/manga and a host of other sites before/after that. I wish I had known about this site when me and my escapist brethren were hiding away on our little user group.
Things need a baseline in order to grow. What was the baseline before videogames achieved mainstream popularity? This site is serving the same purpose.

I was referring mostly to the Japanese literate foreign fans. They are a small, but very vocal minority. And precisely because the previous translations were so bad, I don't see harm in Moenovel giving it a chance. I don't think they could do worse than what was done before.

From what I've seen and from what other says, after all the people that were on Fuwa because of the torrents left, the Forums at least offered pretty steady levels of activity. The frontpage got stagnant because of the admin team having no time and main contributors giving up, but the community as whole isn't dying out yet - it might in the future, but there's not so many VN communities after all, not many places to migrate to and I'm not sure if it's that probable that everyone around here will just lose interest. I'm not sure where I would go if Fuwa wasn't there anymore - other options are few and not that appealing.
When it goes to purpose, as much as I understand, Tay's vision was to turn Fuwa into a major VN news/review hub. Obviously it would always be smaller than the visual novel subreddit, but that's not the point - Reddit is just aggregating news, not producing them. Fan sites like this are important pieces of every community's life and can contribute a lot to the community. Producing news and commentary is a very different thing than cataloguing media or sharing and ranking external articles. Add to this at least some token effort of promoting VNs among western gamers and we would have just as much of a mission as any site needs - the fact there's no leadership is the real problem.
Well, that's pretty obvious at this point, but it's also the most demanding thing to do. Not sure if it's doable at all in current situation, even if we try to overcome the clear limitations (Tay and Nayleen not having the ability to work on it), for example making a crowdfunding campaign and hiring someone to rebuild the site, we would still need more involvement from Tay than he's able to give at the moment. I'm afraid we're not escaping that limbo anytime soon.

Honestly, after torrents got taken down I think the website as a whole kind of lost its purpose. The forums are nice, and the blog gets decent amount of attention I think. But back when we hosted torrents, we had a very clear purpose. Make VNs more popular in the west, and piracy is our method for doing that. Now don't get me wrong, I think the move to get rid of torrents was required so we could pursue a more legitimate cause. But 3 years after that, I still don't think we have found a new purpose. The forums and blogs really are the only main attraction to the website at this point. But honestly, who cares. Most VN related news you could learn if you hang out at /r/visualnovels/. That sub-reddit also has a much larger community. VNDB, has the purpose of cataloging every VN. But Fuwa? I don't really know what we do. We have a nice communal blog feature. We used to (maybe still do) have VN reviews on the main blog. Other than that though, no purpose. If it weren't for the fact that we got famous for hosting torrents back in 2012, 2013, and 2014, I don't think we would still be around. We are still living off of the momentum we got from our pirating days.  
Couple in the fact that the community is much smaller than it used to be. I wouldn't be surprised if Fuwanovel is dead in 5 years. I really don't want that to be the case, but I remember having this discussion with Clephas via pm a few years ago. He's been involved in multiple VN communities, and he said that once a community no longer has a purpose, it is on the road to death. So I think it is really important to find a new purpose soon. Hell at this pace, Fuwanovel might be dead in 2 years.

5 years worth of shitposts

I did a thread on the History of my experience in Fuwa and what the community was like from 2013 - 2016. I didn't hang around that much in 2016, and in 2017 I was virtually absent. But If you are interested in the early days of the forums, then check this out: 
Edit: This thread is a real goldmine for Fuwa history because it doesn't just feature my experiences, but other members posted their experiences as well. Particularly Sanahtlig. Other members also dug through and found old threads that they liked and shared those as well (check out zhurai's post).   

Man, I've finally reached 1,000 post counts. It only took me 3 years, lol. My activity on this site has always been pretty volatile and spontaneous. Often I would be really active for a couple of months, then disappear for around half a year, and then return like nothing happened. It's for this reason that I don't feel like I know a lot of users very well. Especially newer ones. So I'm mostly going to dedicate this post as a retrospective of both my time here, and how much fuwa has changed. So hopefully even people who don't really recognize me, can at least take interest in some fuwahistory from this dinosaur ;P. 
 
The Fuwanovel community has changed significantly since I first joined in March 2013. Back then Fuwanovel was still a fairly new site, and the community was quite small. I really miss those days during the spring of 2013, which was my first round of activity on this forum. Back then, you ran into the same people all the time on the forums. There were few active users, but the ones that were active were fairly involved. A lot of the time it was the same people having conversations about different topics across the forums, and it felt like the community was a lot more unified. Whereas now, it seems to me at least, that users tend to stick to their favorite sub-forum or even thread (I feel like the people active on the fuwanovel confessions thread are their own sub-community, lol). I'm not criticizing this, and in a sense I feel like that is the natural progression of when online-communities get bigger. But back then, people would often post across all the boards; and you would see the same person’s views on different subjects. It allowed a chance to really get to know other users. Which is why even though the forums were fairly slow in activity back then, people remained; because of vibrant discussion and a comfortable small community. 
 
Regarding vibrant discussions, that was the reason I loved fuwanovel so much when I first joined. Before Fuwanovel, there wasn't really a good place to discuss VNs casually. The few other places where VN discussion did exist (notably vndb and JP), were fairly elitist and not welcoming to new comers and casual VN readers. Fuwanovel had a completely different vibe, everyone was outwardly friendly. Fuwanovel's goal since its inception was to make "VNs more popular in the west", and having a friendly community that welcomes the less initiated is crucial for such a cause. While admittedly most people that were active back then already had some experience with VNs, the friendly environment promoted discussion without fear of being judged. And I remember Aaeru (the founder of Fuwanovel) made it quite clear that fostering an anti-elitist vibe was a very important goal to her. But combined with being friendly, debate and intellectual exchanges were a huge aspect of many discussions back then.
 
It was quite frequent that different sides would get into huge debates with each other, but would always have respect for the other. They were not flame wars because people were listening to the other side, and respected their views. I remember one of the first acquaintances I made on this site (I believe it was Sieg), was a guy I got into a long argument about G-Senjou no Maou with, and afterwards we became friends. Precisely because it was a small community, people usually posted meaningful replies and would then start a conversation with each other in the thread. If you are ever bored, I highly recommend looking at the really old threads on VN talk, as many of them are quite interesting. Aaeru would also very frequently get in huge debates with people (especially with Sanahtlig).
 
Another aspect I miss about the old Fuwa, was the activity of the old staff, notably Ryoji, Tay and Aaeru. Ryoji has hardly been active since the summer of 2013 but was one of the first users to break 1000 post counts, back when merely having 100 was impressive. I will forever remember him as the Sage of Anime. He had been collecting and following anime since the 80's, and knew a lot about the topic. The only person who was his match was another user name Eldin, and when they conversed with each other we referred to it as "Ryoji vs Eldin". Both of them would talk about the most obscure anime that most people have never heard of, and get into intense debates about said long forgotten shows. It was quite entertaining, and fascinating to watch. Ryoji's wife, Kotomi, was also occasionally active on the site. It was always cool to see when the two of them posted in the same threads. Well, those were my thoughts on Ryoji, onto Tay from 2013.
 
These days I feel like few people actually know Tay. I think for especially newer users he is the guy who runs the site, and is often too busy. But back in 2013 (and 2014 as well), Tay was really active. He would participate in many conversations, and he was a strong reason why many people felt that the community was so nice. He recognized users and got to know them. I remember after my first long absence from the forums when I returned, he sent me a pm greeting me back. That gesture deeply touched me, as already then, I felt like a lot of users that I once knew had left. This was back in late 2013, at that point Aaeru disappeared, and Ryoji was also no longer active, not to mention a lot of other formerly active people left. I didn't really know the new community (lol, this was back when Nosebleed was actually new) and I didn’t feel at home. But then with that one Pm from Tay, I knew that I wasn't forgotten. Tay really knew the community back then, and it was obvious he cared a lot about its users. This is still true about him, but now I feel he is too busy to be as engaged as he used to be, which I completely understand. I just want people to know that Tay really does care a lot about this community, and I am glad he runs this site.
 
The last staff member I remember being active from 2013 was Aaeru. Unlike with both Ryoji and Tay, I never really interacted with Aaeru that much. She posted on my Introduction thread, and that’s about all I remember interacting with her. But what I do remember was her crusade against licensing and her vehement pro-piracy views. She believed two things very strongly about Priracy. 1) Was that Piracy was the most efficient means to spread word about VNs, and 2) That fan translators could do a faster job than official licensors and translators. To be honest with you, I agree with both these views still. I respect licensors, but Fan translators can translate any VN they want (they don’t need a license to do so), and I’ve noticed that they have usually been faster. Furthermore, of English translated VNs, I feel like more good ones have either been fan translated, or picked up from fan translators. They are still the backbone of the Western VN community in my view.
 
Furthermore about Aaeru, it was her “Learn How to Read Japanese in 2 Years” thread that first motivated me to learn Japanese. I always assumed that it was an impossible task before that. But her thread convinced me that I could learn the language, and that motivated me to study. If it were not for that blog post, I probably would not know any Japanese right now. So I really must thank her for that. Even though Aaeru has long disappeared, I hope people don’t forget about her. While a lot of drama and controversy was started by her, we wouldn’t have Fuwanovel at all if it were not for her, and so we should pay our respects to her for at least that reason.
 
The spring and the summer of 2013 were the golden age of the site for me. I’m glad that Fuwanovel has grown (and is continuing to grow). It makes me happy because it serves as evidence that Fuwanovel is succeeding in its mission statement to “Make Visual Novels popular in the west”. I have had plenty of great interactions with people during 2014 and 2015 (I have not been very active during 2016 thus far though). I’m constantly adapting to the community’s evolution and support where the site is going. But I don’t want the early days of Fuwanovel, the days that really first shaped the site, to be forgotten.
 
I hope you guys didn’t mind my huge nostagiafest. In the title I mentioned that this was a "3 year retrospective". So if you are curious about my thoughts on 2014 and 2015 I would gladly share them. Every year of this site has been distinctly different, so I definitely have a lot to share. And if others have perspectives of old Fuwa to share, I would love to hear them.
 

I did a thread on the History of my experience in Fuwa and what the community was like from 2013 - 2016. I didn't hang around that much in 2016, and in 2017 I was virtually absent. But If you are interested in the early days of the forums, then check this out: 
Edit: This thread is a real goldmine for Fuwa history because it doesn't just feature my experiences, but other members posted their experiences as well. Particularly Sanahtlig. Other members also dug through and found old threads that they liked and shared those as well (check out zhurai's post).   

I did a thread on the History of my experience in Fuwa and what the community was like from 2013 - 2016. I didn't hang around that much in 2016, and in 2017 I was virtually absent. But If you are interested in the early days of the forums, then check this out: 
Edit: This thread is a real goldmine for Fuwa history because it doesn't just feature my experiences, but other members posted their experiences as well. Particularly Sanahtlig. Other members also dug through and found old threads that they liked and shared those as well (check out zhurai's post).   

Building on top of Zalor's post, I can give a quick and dirty version of my time here. Granted, I don't remember dates all that much. 
 
I joined early on in Fuwanovel's history because i needed help fixing sound in Never7. I never fixed it. I think early on, I didn't care about Aaeru hosting pre-patched torrents because for me, it was easily the best way to get a VN. I didn't trust purchasing through Mangagamer or Jast USA and this was well before steam VNs, aside from random ones like Analogue: A Hate Story, were a thing. Anyway, I read Ever17 and loved it a lot so I began to pick up other VNs and take part in more discussions on the forums. I never delved heavily into VNs though and mostly stuck to anime and gaming discussions. Early on, though, I remember clashing with sanahtlig. I don't know what the hell I was fighting with him over but thats hardly unique to me. 
Someone then made, likely tay or ryoji, a terrible mistake and promoted me to a moderator with some others, like Down and Steve. At once, I got into a big fight with aaeru over hosting licensed content. I don't recall what the it was though, possibly Steins;Gate? Or something related to it This went directly against a rule that had been set up, that Fuwanovel would not host licensed games. Anyway, I was kind of a dickwaffle and wasn't very nice. The staff ended up splitting into two camps over the issue. I do recall Ryoji and myself were on one side with Aaeru and Steve on the other. Then Tay stepped in like the mighty God he is, and somehow solved the situation. I think we ended up making it a rule that no licensed content would be hosted by Fuwanovel, that it was to be strictly fan TLs. This would come back to haunt the site when Clannad and Grisaia got licensed.
Things chugged along for a bit, and I was quite active in doing nothing really. I do recall a spam war where suddenly everyone began posting AMA threads over and over. Your boi zakamutt was part of this if memory serves. By this point, aaeru's activity had begun falling off so Tay and Ryoji were left to deal with this situation. Ryoji favored the nuclear option of banning those involved. Tay wasn't too terribly eager to do so. I vaguely recall diving into the irc channel with him and talking the situation out. This marked the beginnings of the Coliseum of Chatter. Originally I think it was a single thread, and then a subforum, before it got split off into its own thing. Once again, Tay had achieved a middle ground. I think maybe one temp ban was handed out during all of this? 
Ryoji left the site, I don't remember the date but I remember it happening pretty vividly. Wasn't great. To try and bridge the gap, I volunteered to take the spot, never intending to actually keep it for a long amount of time. I admit, it was nice to finally be a higher rank than Steve, who was my nemesis on the site. I really didn't do much different than what I had been doing as a mod. I didn't feel it was my place to make any structural changes to the website so I tried to avoid doing anything major like that. The only thing I remember doing as an admin was spending 3 hours talking to steve in his cursed teamspeak channel to convince him that posting pictures of naked lolis wasn't great, and even posting p. risque ones could get people in trouble. Finally, after much talking, I finally convinced him to put them in spoiler tags and not post naked lolis. As the compromise, I went in and placed many of his pictures in spoiler tags to save him the effort. It was a dark, loli filled day for me, one I never want to repeat. 
Then the website blew up, thanks to aaeru pirating the software for the site. It was down for quite some time, nayleen stepped in and helped Tay get things back up. aaeru was long gone by this point, which complicated matters quite a bit. Regardless, Nay and Tay got things back up and running. I stepped down from the staff since I felt rather out of place, not knowing how to really help anymore. My activity declined somewhat around this time too, until Tay had a situation arise and had to leave for a while. As a result, Cybersteel took over the show and Steve was promoted to admin. Yeah... that was something. He asked me to come back as a moderator, thus beginning the meme of solidbatman joining and quitting the staff daily. 
I don't remember when it was exactly, that Clannad and Grisaia got licensed. Tay may have still been hanging around at this time? There was a huge debate over whether or not Fuwanovel should continue hosting those two VNs. I argued that they ought to be taken down as they were no longer fanTLs and a legitimate way of purchasing them was now available. Steve, and many others argued that because the official releases had a different translation, they technically were not the same and should be left up. The second part of their argument dealt with purchasing them from other countries (which as steam releases made little sense to me but not much about the VN community and culture does).  

They ended up being removed which marked the beginning of the end of hosting torrents of fanTLs on the website. Back to Steve's adminship. I ended up leaving the staff again shortly after when I realized I was only placed on the staff for optics. Steve, if memory serves which it may not as I am biased, really didn't listen to anyone and did whatever he really wanted to do. Admirable maybe, but I was not really in the mood to work under that knowing nothing I said or did would matter. In true Steve fashion, he argued with me for a couple hours trying to get me to stay on. Didn't work. 
Then Tay showed back up. What he managed to do still amazes me. He took down the torrents and kept Fuwanovel alive. I honestly have no idea how he managed to do this. Some members did leave over this and begin their own new fuwanovel thingy that does the same thing the old fuwanovel did. But the core of this site stayed intact. VNTS was revived by Zakamutt and Tay, and later Decay, who brought it into their current format. With the removal of torrents, Fuwanovel gained some legitimacy within the commercial VN industry. I've no doubt some fan translators still hate fuwanovel for hosting the pre-patched torrents but companies were willing to interact with Fuwanovel after the removal. 
FuwaReviews became a thing, and to be honest, thats all I cared about once we got it going. Ryechu did good work building some contacts within the industry to gain reviewers some review copies. I got into a twitter tiff with the Lupiesoft guy because I gave his shitty VN a low score after he gave us a review copy (the god damn game barely ran). I wrote the infamous Little Busters! review. The reaction was amazing. Doing FuwaReviews stuff was some of the most fun I think I had on this website. Regardless, with FuwaReviews, my interest in other parts of the site died off, and I no longer followed the happenings closely as they didn't concern me. Then I left all together for about 2 years before coming back in the past week due to boredom. 

So there is my 150% self-centered history of Fuwanovel. I admit its self-centered because all I really can remember is stuff I was involved with. Like I said before, I typically stayed out of VN discussions unless it was in regards to their distribution. 

Relevent comment from nay the bae about Steve: 
 

I did a thread on the History of my experience in Fuwa and what the community was like from 2013 - 2016. I didn't hang around that much in 2016, and in 2017 I was virtually absent. But If you are interested in the early days of the forums, then check this out: 
Edit: This thread is a real goldmine for Fuwa history because it doesn't just feature my experiences, but other members posted their experiences as well. Particularly Sanahtlig. Other members also dug through and found old threads that they liked and shared those as well (check out zhurai's post).   

I did a thread on the History of my experience in Fuwa and what the community was like from 2013 - 2016. I didn't hang around that much in 2016, and in 2017 I was virtually absent. But If you are interested in the early days of the forums, then check this out: 
Edit: This thread is a real goldmine for Fuwa history because it doesn't just feature my experiences, but other members posted their experiences as well. Particularly Sanahtlig. Other members also dug through and found old threads that they liked and shared those as well (check out zhurai's post).   

Announcement explaining the FuwaFabulous blog here.
Today I'd like to announce the 4 new people joining the FuwaRecognition team! 
First of all, an old beloved member. VNTS commentator, blogger and general fuwa oldtimer, @Zakamutt!
As a second member, we have @Arcadeotic. Old fuwachat moderator (hey do you remember that?) and general Gahkthun lover (bleh) he's sure to give us wonderfully unique highlight options as expected of his wonderfully unique taste. 
Our third member is a dark horse. Converted from the evil spammer forces, the kyonyuu loving anti-moe knight, @VirginSmasher!
As another new addition we have fuwa's latest and greatest artist @EastCoastDrifter. His angle, speed and style aren't something a normal car can match! 
Of course, last but not least is good ol' me. But you knew that already, didn't you?
And together we are the Power Ran- ahem the FuwaRecognition Team, bringing you new highlights from our Fabulous Fuwa community every month! 
 
As secondary announcements, voting for the fuwa discord VN reading club has ended, and we'll be reading and discussing symphonic rain this month. We're also going to launch a JP-learning group soon, for complete newcomers and beginners. If you want to give a shot to learning japanese while real-time chatting with our fuwacommunity or just hang out and relax, now's the chance! We'll be starting this weekend! https://discord.gg/F79q4dp

Anything before 2000 is old for me. I actually prefer the art style from back then and I don't know why. I get warm fuzzies every time I see art like this:

Are you interested in this ever-growing drive to get more people to read this fantastic but niche visual novel?
Then join the Symphonic Rain discord:
https://discord.gg/nBKSwkx
No need to worry about spoilers for people interested for reading it in the future. We have a channel specifically for people who finished the VN to talk about spoilers discussing the VN freely.
Outside that channel we require usage of rot13 to talk about spoilers so newer readers don't have to worry about being spoiled. That way they can discuss their reading progress freely.
We also have a fun community in there that talks about other VN (and non-VN related things) as well as someone working on translating the side stories of Symphonic Rain.
 

Long post alert!
So, I learned how to code from college and online.
If you are broke I recommend and wanna learn web
https://www.freecodecamp.org
If you have money, I recommend you do this udemy tutorial for web
https://www.udemy.com/the-complete-web-developer-course-2/learn/v4/overview
Also this is the homework I had to do. I had to make a blog for advanced web authoring class this semester.
https://ilovephp.jondh.me.uk/en/tutorial/make-your-own-blog
For web, I used to recommend Notepadd++, but then I found VS Code and never looked back.
Every good coder needs a good editor.
It's like an IDE, minus the fact that's quick. I am looking at you Netbeans and Android Studio!!!
Now things get interesting for mobile.
If you plan on building android apps, I highly recommend this tutorial from Udemy.
https://www.udemy.com/complete-android-developer-course/
BEST 5$ I HAVE EVER SPENT.
But if you are broke again,
this was my first android tutorial
https://www.udacity.com/course/new-android-fundamentals--ud851
if you want to get into iOS, try
https://www.udemy.com/ios-11-app-development-bootcamp/
Best $10 I have ever spent.
If you plan on making VNs like me, learn python. My first tutorial was
https://www.udacity.com/course/programming-foundations-with-python--ud036
It's the language of the Ren'Py engine. Of course, Ren'Py takes in it's own syntax. Arguments. etc, but some of the best VNs are coded very well.
They are pretty damn eloquent, and then you look at mine from 2016. People will say
"Did this bitch forget how to encapsulate?"
But remember, I took the course after I fell off from my VN back in early 2017.
Now, if you wanna see an A+ site. A website that kept me at 98% percent have a look here.
https://thai-morris.github.io/CSC-223/
Jokes aside, if you wanna see a professional website I built for my normie friends. I used bootstrap. 
genzcapitalgroup.com
Quick facts: HTML is just the structure and layout of the website.
CSS is what makes the website look sexy.
Javascript is what makes the website do sexy things, from animation, rearranging items, lightboxes, (you know when you click on an image and the surrounding the area gets dark. I have that example on my github from class.)
Bootstrap is a framework that makes building websites easier, it's a combination of HTML, CSS, and JS. It was developed by Twitter.
Now what I described was one-half of web dev. The client side.
If you wanna make static websites that just look pretty then that's that.
The other half is server-side. Which is when you have code like PHP that runs on a server and reacts dynamically on the website itself.
For example, as I post this long ass post. My device sends a message to the Fuwanovel server.
my device: "Yo, Happiness+ posted something!"
Fuwanovel forum server: "I see. Hold on lemma add this."
It gets added to the database which is usually in a SQL language. Every post has an ID associated with the user, and every time it's added it automatically updates. PHP is the langauge that most people use for stuff like this, but some smart kid found out that JavaScript can run a server. Hence NodeJS was born. However these days web design is more of a art than a science, trends rise. Others fall into obscurity. Most people getting into development learn Node and forget PHP because it's not hip and cool anymore. 
I could go more into detail about the different types of servers like SQLlite, MySQL, and PostgreSQL.
But, it depends on what kind of project you are making, if it's a VN.
Just go ren'py.org and go the Lemmasoft Forums. Most of the time, they will just redirect you to the documentation.
Any more questions?
 
 

My waifu is whoever this is:

now give admin, loser

This is honestly why I hate Reddit as a whole so much. It's so god damn authoritarian. This doesn't relate to the vn sub-reddit, but once I had a few questions about something really niche. And the only active community I could find to ask these questions was a reddit community. But the mods wouldn't allow me to post my own topic until I had a certain post count and "like" ratio. I mean, wtf!? I just wanted to ask a simple question, get an answer, and leave. That kind of authoritarian structure really bothers me and makes it a pain in the ass for new users. 
The regular forum style like fuwa is way better. Fuwa has good mods that do their job, and they aren't authoritarian. They pretty much never try to control the discourse that happens on the site. Fuwa users are free to talk about what we want with only a few reasonable exceptions. 

Actually I don't think it's a good choice for a first VN as it is quite harsh to read. I'm not sure I would have read it to the end if I had no experience with VNs. Also I view it as mainly for a very mature audience, like 25+. If you read it too close to your own school years, you might have a mindset where you are still part of "the game" and not fully grasp what's written here. I suspect that's part of the reason for a lot of the dislike for YMK: it's from readers too young and inexperience to fully understand what they are reading.
 
At first I thought it would be best to recommend everybody to read YMK because if everybody gets this insight into bullying, it would help alot towards stopping it. However today I know that some people read it and fail to understand what they read. In fact I fear more than half of the readers get absolutely nothing, or can't relate it to anything outside the VN. The biggest problem seems to be confirmation bias. If people believe bullying to be justified due to the victim's actions and that it's harmless fun, that's what they will keep thinking and intentionally not notice any evidence to contradict their point of view. Now I have no idea what to do or say regarding this topic.
 
I still highly recommend YMK, but I no longer expect it to be the eye opener I once thought it would be.
 
It's amazing how researchers can spend ages studying a problem and then end up telling what we already knew. They did however find a bunch of signs the schools should look for, which is then given to the schools. I know of at least one school which has every single sign on the checklist, which after being informed said "we have no bullying here" and then did nothing.
Some of the signs of a person being a clinical psychopath
Charms a lot of people to gather a crowd with him/her in the center Charms followers to be against his/her enemies without the followers fully understanding what goes on Charms followers to idolize himself/herself Always have at least one enemy Switching people between friend and enemy seemingly completely at random Changes the rules of accepted behavior in the group completely at random Has no bad feelings for bad treatment of others, regardless of how bad it is Have no sense of justice or right or wrong, only personal benefits Sounds familiar?
It can be shockingly easy to bully others even if you do not want to do so. In my early school years, two names covered 5 boys in the class. To avoid the confusion with name clashes, each one got a nickname, often based on last name. It seemed obvious to me and like everybody else I used those nicknames. In 3rd grade (I think), one of them legally changed his last name to get rid of the nickname, which he apparently didn't like. At the time I didn't get why it would be a problem, but didn't think much of it. It wasn't until much later I realized his nickname wasn't only a word sounding like a nickname for his last name, but it was also slang for feces. I have no idea who started it, but the entire class called one kid feces for more than two years and most likely nobody but the kid in question and whoever started it realized what was going on. Well the teachers knew, but the school had complains from parents that those teachers ordered kids to bully other kids, yet the school did nothing. Actually at some point the school had to remove one of those teachers instantly, but that wasn't because of bullying. He had physically beat up a 10 year old for no apparent reason.
 
Teacher bullying is an overlooked topic, which is not touched by YMK. Around one out of three bully victims in school claim the teacher to be one of the bullies. Not only that, if the teacher is a bully, half the time the teacher is the leader or the only bully.

I'm really glad you mentioned YMK, and thanks for sharing your experiences. Its been so long that I often under appreciate YMK because it was essentially my first serious VN, or at least my gateway into this medium. These days I think it is a bit of an under appreciated classic, but I really do think people would be better off reading it. Especially if you felt kind of lost in High School (or are currently a lost High School student).
To address the part I quoted, I can tell you that it 100% the experience of bullying I witnessed in middle school was just like that. There is such a random element as to who becomes the victim, that it kind of scarred my ability to make genuine friends with people for years. It wasn't until Senior year of High School that I finally became comfortable enough with people to trust them. In 5th grade I was the new kid, and I was kind of shy. I became the victim pretty soon, and for the whole Autumn and Winter quarters I was the kid that the "leader" chose to victimize. Some kids seemed to feel sorry for me, and eventually developed a kind of friendship with me. But of course, they had to hide it. But do you know what really horrified me? When I stopped being the victim.
After winter break, for god knows what reason. The leader turned on one of his henchmen. And not just a henchmen on the sidelines either, but someone who seemed like one of his good friends. All of a sudden I was accepted into the group as though nothing had happened. From 5th to 8th grade this continued. At some point in 7th grade I think the bullying got too much for that kid so he transferred, but the "leader" just found some other kids to replace the victim role. Throughout those years, for no discernible reason, my rank in the group increased. And I can tell you this, my one goal throughout that whole time, was simply not to fall back down to the victim role. I was never explicitly mean to the victims, but I did stand in the sidelines as the "leader" tormented them with people that were lower in the foodchain. I always felt kind of guilty for the passive role I played. And how I passively just accepted these promotions in that group. But I went to a really small school. If you were ostracized by that group, there wasn't another group you could join. 
By 8th grade though, enough of the leaders followers (including myself) all recognized that none of us liked him. And simply ran along with his antics for the same fear. So we split off and did out own thing. His group shrinked dramatically, to the point that he started befriending the people he was bullying before. To this day this is why I hate kids, because I still very vividly remember how shitty they are. And the fake masks they put in front of adults.  

Yume Miru Kusuri came to mind instantly. While it may not have downright changed me, it made me realize what happened at some events when I went to school. At age 17 (I think) one of the guys in my class turned into Nekoko. Sure some details differs, but overall it was pretty much the same thing, complete with even the crazy hat. Some days he was high and some days he kept falling asleep. He was a bit of a character even before this, but turning this weird ensured nobody wanted to have anything to do with him at all. One day after he had fallen asleep during class (again), I walked up to him and said "you know, this just can't keep up. You end up dropping out and throwing away your life". We then had a conversation about him not caring about his parents' expectations and I started talking about that it's his life, not his parents' life, which is at stake. It only lasted about 10 minutes, but within a week he was back to normal and he managed to not drop out. The answers he gave me were weird, but I didn't think much of it at the time. While reading YMK much later I realized what he said was sort of code to admit his abuse. In other words it was YMK, which made me realize what I had done. It's also a reminder how we can influence other people with what seems like minor actions. I just "wasted" a 10 minute break where my alternative was to just waste time. I never really had anything to do with that guy other than this, not before or after, though when I had a chance encounter with him a few years later, he was doing well and he clearly had a very positive impression of me.
 
Another lesson YMK told me is that some people have decided a certain world view and rejects anything conflicting with that point of view. Specifically in the case of YMK, it's bullying. A lot of people have written online that the bullying in YMK is way too extreme to be believable. I wish that to be the case, but in fact it doesn't seem farfetched to me. During my schooltime, stuff happened, like adding gravel to food, hoping the tiny rocks would break teeth (didn't work, but each attempt caused a no lunch day). Also pouring water into a schoolbag to ruin all the books, which caused the school to demand the bag's owner to pay for new books. Overhead a similar plan being abandoned because one person chickened out and had discarded the collected urine. Then there are physical attacks, sending people to hospital and in one case somebody was arrested at school for attempted murder. My parents decided to move just to get me out of the school district and shortly after some government task force took over the school because everything had gone crazy and the school leadership did nothing. I really can't say YMK is any worse than this. Just because it didn't happen at your school doesn't mean it doesn't happen at any school at all.
 
Just for the record, the Nekoko event and the bullying were two different schools.
 
Speaking of bullying, research has indicated that it has nothing to do with not being friendly towards bullies. What happens is a lack of leadership. This power vacuum will make one person decide to be leader and collect a group of henchmen. The leader then orders the henchmen to bully a victim. The goal is to make the henchmen not want to be the victim. With this setup, the leader will gain complete power over the henchmen because if a henchman refuse to follow an order, he/she will be the next victim. The victim is often picked semi or completely random and can't do anything about it. The whole "let's talk it over and be friends" will never work because somebody has the goal of power rather than friendship. I didn't actually learn this part from YMK. It's just an important fact regarding the topic from YMK.

Not that I disagree with you much, but somehow I knew when I saw that you responded to this thread it would be filled with .
 
As for me, Suba Hibi was one of those VNs where for nearly half a year it changed my perspective and outlook on life in a really positive direction. I couldn't describe it in any sort of comprehensible way, but Minakami's philosophy of "幸福に生きよ" (Live towards Happiness) really manifested in my attitude towards life for a while. However eventually it began to fade. But for a legit half a year I listened to the full OP of Suba Hibi at least once a day. It always put me into a positive mentality. 

Well, I think every piece of media can do that. It can confront you with situations you never though about or make you empathize with people in positions you would never find yourself in. Present you with an idea you never encountered before or make it more persuasive than when you've seen it in other places. It very much depends on your personal experience and how much that specific VN/book/etc. resonates with you.
Reading Analogue had a bit of that for me, as it made me think about discrimination and despair of being put in a drastically subordinate position in society. Made me slightly more sensitive to minority issues, because I understood a bit better what it means to be oppressed. Not really a life-changing experience, but one that pushed me even further in a direction I was already leaning towards. I'm absolutely sure that a VN, just like a book, can have even bigger influence - there's just not one that will bring "spiritual change" to everyone who reads it, because we're too different from each other.