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An Unauthorised History of /r/visualnovels


BunnyAdvocate

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11 hours ago, Zalor said:

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. 

I was quite surprised how widespread that authoritarian attitude was. My philosophy back then was that we mods were stewards of the community, trying to make it nice for everyone, rather than overseers on a powertrip. I was always happy to discuss why we'd done a mod action, and not just with an evasive "it's the rules," but to explain *why* that rule existed. Anyone who modmailed us got a prompt response within 24 hours, and I was always happy to give someone another chance if they apologised for whatever they'd done. I thought my fellow mods felt the same, so imagine my surprise when I was suddenly on the outside of that process and all my modmails, apologies, and pleas for help went unanswered. They wouldn't even tell me I was banned, they just had automod remove my comments covertly.

As for the regular forum style, while it certainly has its merits, the problem I have is with it having just one chain of messages it's awfully easy to get derailed or have 2 people arguing and drown out the chance for anyone else to chat. Fuwa helps with that though as it has notifications for if someone replied to you etc, so it's easier to continue a conversation in between other messages, but still, I prefer reddit's tree structure personally. 

 

11 hours ago, Darklord Rooke said:

I hate its structure because it's upvote, downvote thing promotes a circle jerk community. When people have the ability to downvote an opinion out of sight I immediately become suspicious xD

Ah yeah that's a major problem on bigger subreddits with more comments, so much stuff gets hidden. I think generally /r/visualnovels was small enough that comments being hidden was fairly rare, plus we discouraged downvoting except if someone was being rude, but yeah there can be problems with circlejerks.

 

9 hours ago, Kiriririri said:

Are VNs not shit? Honest question.

Haha. There was an even older shitpost that used to be famous, one guy posted an AMA (ask me anything) as he'd read 500 VNs (back in the days when the average on /r/visualnovels was 17). The guy went on about how he judged VNs by the quality of their "lighting" in the CGs. I still can't tell if the guy was just trolling, or just really weird (as much as I love the VN fandom, we do tend to attract an eccentric bunch - me included). 

 

9 hours ago, DarkZedge said:

I can't imagine what it must be like to be betrayed by your "best friend" in such a way :amane:

Thanks Zedge, it was a pretty soul destroying experience to go through. I don't think she intended any harm, it's just that she was hurt and couldn't deal with it, and with all those around her wanting to protect her, an unhealthy atmosphere built up where no compromise could be considered.

 

11 hours ago, cibelle said:

I don't think a split would help. The japanese reading community will never grow to a significant percentage of the readers...

Yeah I doubt it'll ever grow significantly, it's a huge investment to learn Japanese. My respect to those who manage it, I don't have that willpower.

 

2 hours ago, Plk_Lesiak said:

Man, this is so harsh, I don't know how people can do something like that and still be able to look in the mirror. I'm glad you're better though - and that all this didn't drive you away from the VN fandom in general. You're a rare gem among the fan commentators/analysts around here, your posts are priceless especially for someone like me, interested in the trends and history of the fandom. Please keep being awesome for us all :hug:. 

It's made it kind of hard to trust people again, as I thought I could trust insanityy, I thought she was my best friend. Did I just imagine it? Did I just project what I hoped she felt too onto her? I hope not, but those kinds of fears are hard to shake after your world crumbles and those you thought were life-long friends just abruptly cut contact when you most needed help. I'm glad you enjoy the trend posts, I have a lot of fun researching it. The posts are only so intermittent because it's such a pain writing it up in a long post, but it's always worth it when someone says they enjoyed it. 

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It's always fascinating reading these little histories of sites and all the drama that went down. This definitely makes me glad though that I never sought out Reddit. I was mostly content to frequent a small vn group on the Escapist back when I was seriously playing vn's. There were only a few of us and I don't remember any drama going down except when some loudmouth would post something disparaging about vn's on the site proper. It's a shame you had to go through that and I'm glad that you are doing better.

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Sorry to hear about that you had to go through. :mellow: Really, I don't really know what to say about that, to be honest. It's great to hear that you're doing much better nowadays, but still, good luck!

Also, thank you for another interesting post! I don't follow the subreddit, because, like some commenters above, I prefer the traditional forum structure for various reasons, but it was really interesting to read.

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16 hours ago, VirginSmasher said:

Yes I was. Ren may be a giant asshole because of this, but people acting all entitled and saying that they deserved a TL release just didn't sit well with me.

 

16 hours ago, Darklord Rooke said:

Nah, Ren loved doing stuff for the community but I think he just bit off more than he could chew with that project and didn't want to disappoint people. Community response was a bit over the top though, I agree 

 

16 hours ago, VirginSmasher said:

I didn't know Ren too well to be fair, but he didn't come across as looking good from this. The community came off looking worse to me than Ren did though.

I'm glad Ren dropped the project. Those people deserve nothing after the way they acted during that fiasco. The shit they sent to him was just indicative of the disgusting nature of the VN community.

As for the post, my experience with /r/visualnovels was nothing but unpleasant but that could be said for almost every VN community I've seen save my time on Fuwanovel generally. Unfortunate that it dragged you through hell and back, but I'm glad you came out of it and that you are better today. 

 

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I'm so sorry about that, BunnyAdvocate.

As for the community itself, I've posted there a few times, true, but I never really felt I belonged there. It felt kind of hostile/distant, and I didn't really agree with the opinions of many people there.

Fuwanovel is more precious than I've thought in that regard. The atmosphere here's so friendly that (unless I'm missing something) there isn't almost any drama between members at all, here. And that's a priceless thing.

(Hey, Ren, if you're reading this, shout out to you. You were amazing, and I still see you as one of the best members of this community. I hope you're having a really good time.)

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3 hours ago, Ranzo said:

It's always fascinating reading these little histories of sites and all the drama that went down. This definitely makes me glad though that I never sought out Reddit. I was mostly content to frequent a small vn group on the Escapist back when I was seriously playing vn's. There were only a few of us and I don't remember any drama going down except when some loudmouth would post something disparaging about vn's on the site proper. It's a shame you had to go through that and I'm glad that you are doing better.

That's good. R/vns is only really good to get news as they tend to post it faster than Fuwa users do.

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I remember that thread on r/vns.  Really shitty thing you had to go through, bunny, and I'm sorry you lost your pillar of support in the process.  I've lost a best friend I loved and trusted before, and it hurt like hell, so I can empathize with that.  Hope you're doing much better now.

I've always liked reading your posts here, by the way.  They're really interesting, and there's a lot of effort put into research that I think we all appreciate.

5 hours ago, Funyarinpa said:

As for the community itself, I've posted there a few times, true, but I never really felt I belonged there. It felt kind of hostile/distant, and I didn't really agree with the opinions of many people there.

Pretty much the same reason I don't really post there.  I don't agree with the sub's dominant circlejerks, and I dislike just how hostile the place can get if you go against the grain.  I just use it to check the news.

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20 hours ago, Ranzo said:

It's always fascinating reading these little histories of sites and all the drama that went down. This definitely makes me glad though that I never sought out Reddit. I was mostly content to frequent a small vn group on the Escapist back when I was seriously playing vn's. There were only a few of us and I don't remember any drama going down except when some loudmouth would post something disparaging about vn's on the site proper. It's a shame you had to go through that and I'm glad that you are doing better.

By any chance do you know who Neutral Drow is? He is probably my favorite VN reviewer and I know he posted a lot of his stuff on the Escapist website. So if you were involved with the same community maybe you know him? I've been wondering why he hasn't uploaded any reviews in the past couple of years. I always liked his stuff.

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1 minute ago, Zalor said:

By any chance do you know who Neutral Drow is? He is probably my favorite VN reviewer and I know he posted a lot of his stuff on the Escapist website. So if you were involved with the same community maybe you know him? I've been wondering why he hasn't uploaded any reviews in the past couple of years. I always liked his stuff.

Oh yeah I knew him very well! He did write really good reviews back in the day, it's what made me interested in trying my hand at it. I think he left the site a couple of years ago with a lot of other people in the group. I thought about trying to get him to join this forum but I have no idea if he'd be up to it.

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2 minutes ago, Ranzo said:

Oh yeah I knew him very well! He did write really good reviews back in the day, it's what made me interested in trying my hand at it. I think he left the site a couple of years ago with a lot of other people in the group. I thought about trying to get him to join this forum but I have no idea if he'd be up to it.

Damn, if he joined here it would be a great addition to the Fuwa community. But if he's done with the VN scene than I understand. But I just would like to thank him personally for convincing me to read certain VNs. 

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Reddit feels like it suffers from a lot of the same problems as 4chan.

It seems like a hostile ennvironment, and I've never enjoyed it.

I'm willing to engage people there, and I've met some pretty good people, but it's not a fun place for me to spend time. I'm also not that big on Discord servers once they get very large/active either.

Fuwa is my favorite place on the internet right now.

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I see, and in that case I'm sorry to hear about your situation here BunnyAdvocate. Especially so after you get banned by your friend after doing many hours of work to contribute Reddit VN community, and I understand how painful could it be to you. I'm happy that you managed to move on from your bad situation.

As for Aokana incident, while I agree that fan may be unreasonable I believe that it's still (Sorry) Ren's fault for bad communication. Had he just silent or just announced that he didn't have any passion to continue it any longer after his script was deleted, I think it'll be ended better because people would slowly forget about that project. Instead he did said that he have another announcement at July 1st 2016 before his outburst, and as expected many people angry that there's nothing delivered at that announcement date. The rest is history. Personally I was the one who back then hope that Aokana patch will be out, but in the end it's not like I want it the most anyway in case Ren want to stop the translation. Sorry for my very subjective comment here.

For Reddit, yeah I rarely post there and beside I'm already getting used at Fuwanovel anyway. Another reason was Reddit was blocked in Indonesia, and I'm too lazy to readjust the VPN lol. Not that I'm gonna visit it anyway, considering that it was could be pretty wild back when I tried to visited Reddit.

PS - As gor Cornettoman, he did came as UnlimitedMoeWorks a year ago but he didn't active anymore since June last year. Never mind, I was wrong about this here. I'm apologized for the mistake.

Edited by littleshogun
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16 minutes ago, littleshogun said:

I see, and in that case I'm sorry to hear about your situation here BunnyAdvocate. Especially so after you get banned by your friend after doing many hours of work to contribute Reddit VN community, and I understand how painful could it be to you. I'm happy that you managed to move on from your bad situation.

As for Aokana incident, while I agree that fan may be unreasonable I believe that it's still (Sorry) Ren's fault for bad communication. Had he just silent or just announced that he didn't have any passion to continue it any longer after his script was deleted, I think it'll be ended better because people would slowly forget about that project. Instead he did said that he have another announcement at July 1st 2016 before his outburst, and as expected many people angry that there's nothing delivered at that announcement date. The rest is history. Personally I was the one who back then hope that Aokana patch will be out, but in the end it's not like I want it the most anyway in case Ren want to stop the translation. Sorry for my very subjective comment here.

For Reddit, yeah I rarely post there and beside I'm already getting used at Fuwanovel anyway. Another reason was Reddit was blocked in Indonesia, and I'm too lazy to readjust the VPN lol. Not that I'm gonna visit it anyway, considering that it was could be pretty wild back when I tried to visited Reddit.

PS - As dor Cornettoman, he did came as UnlimitedMoeWorks a year ago but he didn't active anymore since June last year.

Still, people acting all entitled over not getting a free translation was stupid. It would've been like if people actually got pissed at that Little Busters EX TL not getting finished in 2014.

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Thank you to everyone for being so supportive. I really didn't expect such a warm reaction to my post.

I'm sorry to those who didn't find /r/visualnovels a welcoming place, I should have done a better job when I was a mod there in setting a more tolerant tone.

11 hours ago, arosia said:

I'm also not that big on Discord servers once they get very large/active either.

Ah yeah I find that too, once they get a certain size it's so hard to engage in a conversation as it eats up all your time, you need to reply so fast and need the window open constantly. It's also harder to recognise people as there's a constant stream of new faces on busier servers, so it's hard to grow closer.

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13 hours ago, BunnyAdvocate said:

Thank you to everyone for being so supportive. I really didn't expect such a warm reaction to my post.

I'm sorry to those who didn't find /r/visualnovels a welcoming place, I should have done a better job when I was a mod there in setting a more tolerant tone.

From my limited knowledge (and this thread), I think you did just fine.

There are obviously many people who do like the Reddit; communities almost always split in that way based on preferences.

Fuwa has a different sort of crowd; and it serves a different function.

The big problem happens when people who prefer something like 4chan or Reddit come to a place like Fuwa; they usually try to pull the decorum closer to what they prefer. They want access to new (and often softer/kinder) people, but they don't want to respect the etiquette here. Often their behavior comes across as mean/abrasive/trollish. It's probably fine for 4chan or Reddit, but it ends up being called out as bad behavior in this setting.

It's not unique to a board like Fuwa; it happens everywhere, with almost every community.

Thank you for the initial read; was extremely interesting! <3

Edited by arosia
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7 hours ago, arosia said:

The big problem happens when people who prefer something like 4chan or Reddit come to a place like Fuwa; they usually try to pull the decorum closer to what they prefer. They want access to new (and often softer/kinder) people, but they don't want to respect the etiquette here. Often their behavior comes across as mean/abrasive/trollish. It's probably fine for 4chan or Reddit, but it ends up being called out as bad behavior in this setting.

That's a good point, standards for what is and isn't an insult, what counts as a greeting, whether people should reply or just upvote/like something, they all vary per community. Like on twitter, whenever I see a friend talking about feeling a bit down, I'm never sure whether I should "like" it as a sign of support, or whether "liking" that they're down is insulting? I haven't really participated too much here on Fuwa as I'm kind of anxious about getting too attached to any community anymore, but so far it seems really nice. I love the alerts for when someone quotes you etc, as it makes it much easier to follow things if you don't have time to check all the threads.

7 hours ago, NowItsAngeTime said:

After learning that there were 2 other mods before you I couldn't help but make this picture

Hahaha, that's amazing. Even automod-chan got her route. My bet is on her and gambs being the last ones standing.

In other news, I've been informed by one of the /r/visualnovels mods that this post counts as harassing insanityy and they'll react accordingly, even when the post is meant to be about how great a mod she was. It seems I can't do anything right.

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13 minutes ago, NowItsAngeTime said:

Can the way they react get this post deleted or something?

We'll see I suppose. My bet would be another wave of rumours about how I'm harassing insanityy. They won't mention what that harassment is (because if people knew harassment=this post, their claim might be dulled a bit), they'll just let imaginations run riot and not deny anything when people throw out wild theories about me mailing her the severed head of automod-chan or something.

Edited by BunnyAdvocate
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1 hour ago, BunnyAdvocate said:

...

I haven't really participated too much here on Fuwa as I'm kind of anxious about getting too attached to any community anymore, but so far it seems really nice.

...

I don't know the people on /r/visualnovels that well; I'm sure they're not terrible.

But Fuwa is an absolute gem. It has just the right amount of activity and traffic and good-natured people who are here to enjoy one another.

This is a really good place to call home if you just want calm happiness.

Edited by arosia
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