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The Current Fuwa


Kaguya

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I mean, in your first post in this thread you completely closed off any discussion about piracy bringing people in. Positions, eh? I suppose it -has- been debated ad nauseum, and I can understand not wanting to get into it again, but there are more... polite ways to put it.

 

Oh definitely not, I love a good argument. Unfortunately I've had the same one plenty of times with people on here, and nobody's come up with a logical argument to back their position. That was my exasperation. If you have, then hit me with it. Do keep in mind that to make VNs popular you need a product to begin with, so if your goal is to spread VNs you need to ensure the health of the industry WHILE spreading the fanbase. And I'm saying this as a hard-core supporter of a game genre which was dead for 10 years or more. Trust me when I say that being a supporter of a dead industry sucked balls. We did keep spreading games though, they were just very old ones. Mostly. It only revived when tens of thousands of fans chucked fistfuls of money at developers, which is the sort of thing you need to encourage to keep an industry alive.

 

So in short, popularity means big fanbase + industry, and while piracy increases the fanbase I can't see any evidence that there's much more money going into the industry than 10 years ago. Maybe with Steam things are changing, but that's hardly Fuwa's doing.

 

Well, enough of that. Let's get constructive and try projects, since that's what you want. You interested in writing news posts for the blog, Rooke? I'm going to be back on the vnaer job soon enough (just got home yestoday), but I get lazy at times and don't cover, say, an OELVN I really should have (see: icebound, sunrider etc.)

 

I can cover OELVNs, but I can't do Japanese news. I don't speak Japanese and most news comes from Japanese news sites.

 

Also, Tay has a plan to revamp the blog. And he's scouting people from lemma, and from other places. I may have thrown a certain person's name at him over and over and over... I should apologise for nagging btw. But don't worry, Tay's got some plans for it.

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The obvious problem in why visual novels can't gain that much traction is the language barrier. I joined this website due to Tay's post about learning Japanese since I figured that would be a pretty cool thing to do. I think if another thing like that happened, in which we had people working together to learn Japanese, that would open up a lot more possibilities for the future. 

 

There actually is a basically fuwanovel skype chat related to learning japanese (we started out as a group to all play the same game so we could talk about it, but that didn't end up so well. Worked for a few weeks, but real life commitments and different reading speeds kind of made things weird. Also motivation about the game in question too I guess. There has been quite some success in talking about games we've mutually played/encourages each other to play though) 

 

Obviously we talk about the language as well and work together to answer each other's questions, which is the true benefit. We're not so experienced to be able to know everything, but we're pretty damn good at figuring things out. 

 

tl;dr: fuwanovel japanese learning stuffs, maybe english learning stuffs too? 

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To turn Fuwa into "a cool place to talk about our hobbies" would make no sense at all, I came here mostly because I wanted to talk about VNs, but what really caught my interest in this place was it's goal. Piracy aside, Fuwa contribution is basically existing to host discussions and talks, it's great and all but it doesn't seem to accomplish much. Basically, I believe that there's a lack of content to actually make visual novels popular.

This is probably why the western touhou community has reached out to more people (especially online) while they both started out at the same place. It just enjoys a wider stream of incoming content across multiple mediums. That and everyone is on the same page. There can't be flagship VN (maybe Katawa Shoujo is the scout frigate), there isn't even a group of 10 flagship vns.

 

Putting that aside, what content should fans make or come together to make, and share? The precedent is all there in other fanbases such as touhou, anime, and MLP. Art, Music remixes, Card/Board games, Youtube MAD's, Cosplay, Fanfiction,  etc. (particularly the bold ones)

There's a definite lack of the above content, and a place to share it on this forum. To be honest, I had a vague feeling that something was different (their being oddly nothing to do), but only did I put my finger on it. In any case, content which is creatable by individuals is going to see a lot more creation than content that needs an entire group's dedicated effort.

 

I think there's a bit of a disconnect between being a fan of VN's and wanting to make VNs. It's not the most natural "fan content" to make, and yet people point to it like it almost is. To put it another way, it's like urging people who want to celebrate Harry Potter to work on writing their own fantasy book with wizards.

 

I can cover OELVNs, but I can't do Japanese news. I don't speak Japanese and most news comes from Japanese news sites.

I didn't know you were up to date in that circle. Neat. I've been thinking about taking a dip into what OELVN has: it's always interesting familiarizing oneself with a community that revolves around creative production has to offer.

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 In fact, I remember some great members leaving because "this place is too serious now".

 

Bwhahahahaahhahahahahahahahaha ... ... BAHAWAHAHAHAHAA

 

Thanks for the good laugh man ^^

 

This place is a friendly place. It would be a friendlier place if you got rid of all the disrespectful people.

 

What I expect from fuwa is to "Make visual Novels popular in the west".

Things were already discussed and things are going to happen according to Tay.

 

So I wait patiently until september since I was promised some changes.

 

And it's not easy making ourselves heard anyway.

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I personally have been lurking for a while before i joined, just to get a feel for the comunnity.

I like the friendelijk atmosfere here and hope it stays but we definitly need a goal or we will not be able to survive when winter comes.

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Putting that aside, what content should fans make or come together to make, and share? The precedent is all there in other fanbases such as touhou, anime, and MLP. Art, Music remixes, Card/Board games, Youtube MAD's, Cosplay, Fanfiction,  etc. (particularly the bold ones)

There's a definite lack of the above content, and a place to share it on this forum. To be honest, I had a vague feeling that something was different (their being oddly nothing to do), but only did I put my finger on it. In any case, content which is creatable by individuals is going to see a lot more creation than content that needs an entire group's dedicated effort.

I second this. The amount of people who got into the brony community through all that incredibly popular youtube music despite the whole thing looking weird is just huge. I myself was a fan back in the day and still listen to it from time to time.

In the case of VNs no one has even heard of them, and when I looked for remixes on youtube I found practically nothing, only remember one good remix for Air, one for Rewrite and one for Little Busters - and only the third one has a sizeable amount of views, being a bit over 20.000. Well, there were a few more but many of them just seem like your typical nightcore remixes made in 10 minutes. Do I even need to explain that pretty much the only people who see these things are the ones looking for them in the first place?

 

Unfortunately, it's the kind of thing that requires you to be popular in the first place and risk losing a part of your fanbase unless it was anime-based to begin with and you only reference non-ero VNs.

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I just joined because I couldn't find anything else to do during a boring lecture. :P

 

Certainly the most important aspect of the forums is to try and make VNs more popular in the West (however we decide is the right way to do it) and discussing VNs since those kind of seem like the main reasons anyone joins. However if there weren't people here that I enjoy talking to and if the forums in general weren't as friendly, I would probably have left long ago.

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Suddenly posed with the question of why I joined the forums... It wasn't even that long ago, but I no longer remember why.

Perhaps I had no reason...

 

I will share my opinion on how the staff does things, though.

2599854.png

Is the best approach for everything in the world, and my preferred method. Keeping the status quo and hoping for the best is what I prefer to do. Even though I'm normally a logical person, in these situations I prefer to hope that everything will just better itself.

 

In the end, I enjoy being a part of these forums thoroughly. And I enjoy watching a bunch of drama, that pops up every now and then, from the sidelines, since it's my belief not to ever take anything seriously on the internet. :P

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I'm here for the drama.

7nTnr.png

Jokes aside, I was propably one of the first users around these forums, back when Aaeru had great plans and everything looked quite different; I don't know why I even registered back then; I propably felt it was some sort of a personal obligation towards community, Aaeru and to keep an eye on everything. Sadly, the forums had some issues later on and my previous account got wiped; not like it really matters, since I hanged out mostly on related IRC channels and only lurked around Fuwa.

To be honest, it might be a nice place to hang out (ie waste time), but it does not prove that much of an actual purpose. A lot of things Aaeru wanted to do in time got overshadowed by the overall friendliness, where people grew complacent and forgot about everything that was truly important to the scene. I don't care that much about the actual community, since fans of my kind actually don't need people around - we focus solely on work and pull the strings from behind the scenes. What we do is irrelevant to whether community cares, or not. Our work is what truly keeps everything together and as long as we will continue working on vn's and translations, our world will continue to spin as it always used to.

I think Tay will have to give people around something meaningful to do, so they won't just sit around in here wasting their time on useless discussions and arguments whether logo X is better than Y. There's a bunch of nice projects around, but it doesn't seem they get enough attention, even from the community itself. Perhaps this should change? There's quite a lot of things to work on; it should prove to occupy people, at least for a while.

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People who have ideas should act instead of saying : "we should do that".

 

Do it as much as you can ! If it's not something you can't do because it's the staff's job then suggest it.

 

If you can make it a personnal project then make it ! If you think you can make it a community project then work on building a team.

 

Even though some ideas are interesting, it's just wind, air, nothing else.

If you can make it real, then do it.

 

Some posts make me laugh ...

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It baffles me how some people have ludicrous expectations from Fuwa.

 

People expect us to become some sort of army that'll lead a revolution, that visual novels will become super popular and everyone in the world/internet will know about them, that we're here to build an empire and be the number 1 site ever.

I swear this is the vibe I get from some people.

 

While Fuwa's goal, or at least motto, is to make visual novels popular, you should be painfully aware that visual novels, no matter how hard you try, are, and will always be niche, at least for the next century (and probably more). The otaku culture itself is niche, visual novels are just a smaller niche within that.

 

And another important thing, Fuwanovel is non profit, I'd like to point out that every user, staff or not, is here part time, as a hobby, to try and put some of their available time into Fuwa, wether it is for a project or simply to hang out. Fuwanovel is not some full time job where everyone must be 100% commited and strive for an ultimate goal and sacrifice their daily life for it, we never tried to be that. Everything we do here we do out of goodwill and in our available time and we're not getting any real life benefits for it. That's why stuff takes time, that's why things don't happen instantly, because we don't have all the time in the world to be here, because this is not a full time job. I feel like some people expect too much from some users for no reason and just want more and more stuff to happen all the time and don't even realize how chaotic things get behind the scenes due to it.

 

Certainly some people here put more effort than others and that is very much recognized and appreciated. But I'd like some people to calm down on the "everything here must and should be for making visual novels popular in the west and everything else is just pointless and silly and every person that's not putting their utmost effort all the time is lazy", because some people seem to think like that and i find it really disrespectful.

 

The staff gets bashed constantly no matter what they do, I won't even bother answering this part because i'd just get bashed as well and I don't feel like it, but i'd really like to call out to the fact that we're not here to be some sort of hardcore army, we're a community to discuss visual novels and make visual novels more accessible through piracy, that's really the jist of things and how Fuwa came to be.

 

The staff's job is and was always to moderate the forum, that's it, we never had any obligation to make projects, but guess what? We do, we do because we like the community and want to come up with new ideas, but we're human just like all of you, we're not a brainstorm of ideas all the time, we can't come up with anyting and everything because we're only normal people just like you, that's why we like community involvement, that's why, as suggested before, you should always post any ideas you have if you want to make them come true, because we're willing to work with you.

 

What we try to work on is ways to make visual novels even more accessible and as a consequence more popular, and right now there are plans for that, but I'd like to call out the fact that none of these plans were obligations, they came out of effort and goodwill and people who expect plans like these to come out of us all the time and at the speed of light really should settle down a bit because we're not anyone's pets, we're people that are here of our own volition to try and be somewhat helpful, but we have no obligation to.

 

So I'd really appreciate it if some people took into consideration that Fuwa is not meant to be a slavery site where we have to work 24/7 nonstop for "making visual novels popular in the west" because that was never the goal. This is a place where people who have the same likes come togehter and discuss the stuff they like and sometimes form new projects, that's always been it and it will keep being it. No one is forced to do anything.

 

Visual novels will keep being niche, our site will slowly grow and as it grows stuff changes, the rules changed recently due to that for example, we'll still keep trying to come up with new plans from time to time to make the site and visual novels more interesting, because our goal is directly related to making the site grow, and while some changes may not be the ones you like, while the site may not be what you envisioned, just keep a reminder that it's impossible to please everyone, no matter what.

 

And if you feel like things have become stricter now it's because it was the only solution to keep the forums in check, because when it wasn't strict we'd get complaints that it was too loose, but now that it's stricter we get complaints on that too, and the staff has to deal with these clashes of opinions all the time, yep pretty hard to please everyone isn't it. But I still am for a stricter enforcement of the rules and i experienced the hard way what letting people do whatever they want leads to.

 

Well that's my rant on fuwa.

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"You're damned if you do, and you're damned if you don't."
Oh, yes, working for the forums sounds like a fantastic way to spend my free time.
And yet people still do it. I'd wager that's because of the other side of the coin, the people that actually appreciate the work, and the effort.
 
Currently, I'd say that the nicer side of the coin is the majority of the community. Not the minority. And that's how it should be kept.
(Unless the bad guys are actually all in hiding and harassing people from the shadows. :o I shouldn't surf through the forums unnamed anymore.)

10133261_jpg_is_500_500.jpg

 

I don't know what's the general opinion, (and neither do I care) I like the forums how they are now. If you want my opinion (for some reason), 

Keep doing whatever you've been doing! (or whatever you haven't)

 

​(And some more parenthesis) 

(just for good measure. :D)

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Certainly some people here put more effort than others and that is very much recognized and appreciated. LOL But I'd like some people to calm down on the "everything here must and should be for making visual novels popular in the west and everything else is just pointless and silly and every person that's not putting their utmost effort all the time is lazy", because some people seem to think like that and i find it really disrespectful. Did anybody ever say that ? I didn't see anybody say that ?

 

What we try to work on is ways to make visual novels even more accessible and as a consequence more popular, and right now there are plans for that, but I'd like to call out the fact that none of these plans were obligations, they came out of effort and goodwill and people who expect plans like these to come out of us all the time and at the speed of light really should settle down a bit because we're not anyone's pets, we're people that are here of our own volition to try and be somewhat helpful, but we have no obligation to. I agree with this but i'll still say that accepting to be a moderator also means accepting the job that comes with it and its restrictions.

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This isn't supposed to be a love/hate discussion, people. I will mention that I think it's funny how a few of the people who are basically asking us to turn fuwa into dictatorship are also complaining about how strict we are. The logics~

 

The thing is- and it was a main point of mine- all of the drama currently going on shouldn't be taken too seriously.

 

I'll still say that accepting to be a moderator also means accepting the job that comes with it and its restrictions.

 

This is kind of hilarious. The job that comes with it is dealing with reports and following the forum rules. Hell, we're even allowed to ignore and pass a report to someone else if we don't feel like dealing with it.

Being a moderator is not some super serious business. We're members, just like the lot of you. We're here to enjoy fuwa as well.

 

When I got a pm asking if I wanted to be part of the staff, it was exactly like this:

 

"So... Whaddaya say? Wanna be a moderator?"

 

Just that. There are no super amazing obligations, secret rituals or any demands besides following the usual forum rules. We're just people the admin team found to enforce the forum rules, and we do it because we want to.

 

Let's all just relax. You guys already mentioned about our september plans here on this thread- just remember that all of the drama going on is silly, sit back and try to enjoy the forums some more :P

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Let's all just relax. You guys already mentioned about our september plans here on this thread- just remember that all of the drama going on is silly, sit back and try to enjoy the forums some more :P

:P  -> This is a truly wonderful emoticon. And should be used in all discussions. It has the amazing power of draining seriousness out of posts.

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This is kind of hilarious. The job that comes with it is dealing with reports and following the forum rules. Hell, we're even allowed to ignore and pass a report to someone else if we don't feel like dealing with it.

Being a moderator is not some super serious business. We're members, just like the lot of you. We're here to enjoy fuwa as well.

 

When I got a pm asking if I wanted to be part of the staff, it was exactly like this:

 

"So... Whaddaya say? Wanna be a moderator?"

 

Just that. There are no super amazing obligations, secret rituals or any demands besides following the usual forum rules. We're just people the admin team found to enforce the forum rules, and we do it because we want to.

 

Oh, so moderator is some kind of honorific title then ?

You guys are lucky.

 

I'm not saying stop having fun and be 100% serious 24/7. No, please don't.

 

But doing - even a tiny little - more than just validating post reports is what I'd expect from a mod. Once again,  You guys are doing it, but saying "we are doing that out of goodwill so please don't ask for too much" is a strange statement in my opinion.

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A moderator is supposed to moderate the community. That's just it. It basically means enforcing forum rules and dealing with reports. When something big happens, we also try our best to help with what's going on, but it's not an obligation or anything. Otherwise the inactive mods would have been excomungated or something, lol. 

 

This is a negative profit website. We're all volunteers. There's a limit to how much time each of us is willing to spend with the community- internet is not serious business when there's no money involved, despite what a lot of people may think.

 

So, well- if there's anything that bothers you in the community, you may talk to a mod about it. If it's a specific post, you can report it. We are members just like you. I'll say that from 10 minutes to one hour is spent daily by me on the serious stuff. No more than that.

 

So, yes- besides enforcing the rules, we are just ordinary members. We were never supposed to be this special amazing group that works without stop to better the community and make visual novels popular in the west in the first place.

 

Inb4 someone purposefully misinterprets what I said to say that we only care about the money and are currently debating how to get some cash out of fuwa :P

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