The Spirit Of Disaster (Competition 2012)

[Funnyguts]

Oh, I got tripped up by seeing the huge text for a different game at the start of the post. Well, I guess that's everything mentioned at least once, so yay!

[Carassaurat]

Fragile

Which one was that again: the one in which Tom asks Alice out on a date.

Fragile is an peculiar entry, in my opinion, and it's hard to judge. Here's the thing: I liked its writing quite a bit, but the story isn't, in my opinion, very good.
I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with Anarchy's dislike of the emotional writing in this visual novel. Tom is a sleep-deprived, lovesick young adult — exactly the kind of person who would overreact in such situations. Maybe not everyone would respond quite as unreasonably as Tom, but the feelings appeared to me more to be genuine ones blown up to size than ludicrous ones to begin with. In the sphere of pure writing, I think the sentences are pleasant, with a good range between long and short ones, which keeps it going nicely without becoming monotonous. On the larger scale, too, I think that the scenes are about as long as they should be, never too short, never too long.

On to the story, then, which I think is the entry's weaker component. A first thing to take notice of might be that it doesn't really do much with the given theme of the competition. Kat could easily be written out while still maintaining the same story. She simply doesn't have much purpose, and that makes her falling out of the sky perhaps a bit of a jarring shift of tone and logic from the rest of the visual novel; it's spectacular, but completely insignificant. I'm also not quite sure how she works, since on the one hand she warns Tom that he should calm down lest any disaster happens, but she also appears to be the one carrying out the disasters... so I don't know how that's supposed to be consistent, unless the disaster she refers to is something other than the murders. Which would be confusing at best.
Fragile doesn't start off with the greatest of plot hooks. I suppose that that is the point of it — everything seems ordinary, but turns out not to be — and the lightheartedness of the first minutes kept me playing through it easily, but it's still a weakness, though not one that I think can be 'fixed' within this story framework.
The twist where Kat is simply imagined by Tom is the only plot twist I didn't see coming, and you can blame that, perhaps, one how accustomed we've all become to spirits falling from the sky being real after a dozen entries. A movie of which Tom doesn't know the contents — you know it's going to be bad. Scott and Alice talking — you know Tom misinterprets that when he thinks they're being together. People disappearing — you know it's permanently. Tom doesn't bother checking his phone — you know that everything would have been different if he had.
Finally, the endings. I think it's a shame they didn't all get equal attention. 1 And 2 (leaving and sharp objects) are really short and appear rushed. The longer ones, 3 and 4 (the hating everything and reveal endings), are much better because they get time to develop... although I've got to agree with previous posters that the twist ending is a bit ridiculous, and it's a different tone from the rest of the VN. My notes say that it's “a bit too horrory for my tastes, just when it was so... dramatic? Human?” I noticed that Fragile is somewhere at the 10k word count, so that probably explains the disparity in ending length.

I fear the above sounds more negative than it should. Fragile was enjoyable, but it's not an entry without problems. I'd speculate the author is a pretty good writer, but felt confined more than inspired by the prompt provided for the competition.

[Anarchy]

Fragile

Which one was that again: the one in which Tom asks Alice out on a date.

Fragile is an peculiar entry, in my opinion, and it's hard to judge. Here's the thing: I liked its writing quite a bit, but the story isn't, in my opinion, very good.
I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with Anarchy's dislike of the emotional writing in this visual novel. Tom is a sleep-deprived, lovesick young adult — exactly the kind of person who would overreact in such situations. Maybe not everyone would respond quite as unreasonably as Tom, but the feelings appeared to me more to be genuine ones blown up to size than ludicrous ones to begin with.

Yeah, I can see how you would think that. Perhaps I was being a little too harsh. It's probably more of a personal taste thing - I find the high school drama in Glee absolutely repulsive, for example. The way he overreacted to all those misunderstandings and little things that happened to him - it might be realistic, because I'm sure that there are real teenagers who do act like immature little brats - but it's still a pain to read about, and is IMHO a lazy, unimaginative way of creating interpersonal conflict.

The way Tom was characterized just didn't draw me in - the way he thought and his voice felt somewhat generic, generalized and vague, like so many other bland protagonists in the world. In contrast, It's All Your Fault had its protagonist overreacting and worrying about petty stuff too, but because his voice was distinctive and strong and he had very specific, detailed characterization, I bought into the idea that he was his own unique individual, a real person that I could identify with, whereas Tom very much felt like a fictional character made out of cardboard.

On to the story, then, which I think is the entry's weaker component. A first thing to take notice of might be that it doesn't really do much with the given theme of the competition. Kat could easily be written out while still maintaining the same story. She simply doesn't have much purpose, and that makes her falling out of the sky perhaps a bit of a jarring shift of tone and logic from the rest of the visual novel; it's spectacular, but completely insignificant. I'm also not quite sure how she works, since on the one hand she warns Tom that he should calm down lest any disaster happens, but she also appears to be the one carrying out the disasters... so I don't know how that's supposed to be consistent, unless the disaster she refers to is something other than the murders. Which would be confusing at best.

The twist where Kat is simply imagined by Tom is the only plot twist I didn't see coming, and you can blame that, perhaps, one how accustomed we've all become to spirits falling from the sky being real after a dozen entries.

the twist ending is a bit ridiculous, and it's a different tone from the rest of the VN. My notes say that it's “a bit too horrory for my tastes, just when it was so... dramatic? Human?”

I think all these problems could be fixed by just giving the Kat = delusion storyline (a great concept IMHO) much more focus, foreshadowing, and development. It would give her relevance and make the twist ending an "aha!" moment instead of a "what the? durr? bluh?" moment.

Just as a creative exercise, it might be nice for the author to try and make a coherent linear story out of this VN, and focus on making the best linear story they can, before moving onto branches. As you mentioned, the routes seemed unbalanced and inconsistent with each other, and I think that having a single storyline to focus on would help the author clear up some of the plot problems. Once you've got a solid story down, then maybe you can start thinking about branching. If branching doesn't help the story, you shouldn't forcibly include it IMHO.

[lordshadowisle]

Sacrifice

What It Is:
Sacrifice is a kinetic novel. A spiteful remark by the retrenched protagonist is taken by a malicious being as a wish, resulting in a series of disasters befalling the town. Mr Protagonist must give up his life for the wish to be stopped.

What Is Good:
The MC's reactions during the first meeting with the girl in the forest is actually plausible. Sure, the MC is extremely condescending in tone, but it fits.

What Is Bad:
The writing doesn't have much emotional impact. Several examples: The opening 'retrenchment' scene seems overplayed and sounds like TV dialogue; The 'wife dies from disease' scene was too abruptly executed and instead has a comical effect (ok, I lol-ed due to the sudden transition). I think the problem is that several scenes are created for the singular purpose of conveying X story information to the reader. It's somewhat better than infodumping and direct telling, but more work needs to be done with the story structure and writing to make it less obvious and artificial.
Plot-wise, the story was predictable. The story could have taken several other interesting turns. For instance, Mr MC could have stood in the way of disaster, thereby forcing the catgirl to kill him or negate the disaster. Or the protagonist could have used his knowledge of disasters to save lives or profit (I can see why he was retrenched, though, since he did NOTHING ).

Nitpicks:
Music use isn't perfect, and at times creates the wrong mood. For instance, the first forest meeting, 'Desillusion' was used, but (in my entirely subjective opinion) that BGM conveys a sense of poignancy, which is a mismatch. One of the horror BGMs may have been more suitable.
Usage of resources isn't the best. Too many blank screens and missing people. I don't really mind due to the competition limits, but then again a part of the competition is how to make do.
Writing needs to be tighter. Unnecessary details can be excluded. Example: "Half an hour to prepare and make your 40-minute commute to work"; this is unnatural (unless spoken somewhat in playful jest) and conveys relatively unimportant info.
One last (minor) oddity: At several times the screen of text was bracketed eg, '(it was a week ago… of course she won’t be here anymore)' [sic]. I get that he's speaking to himself, but it sort of breaks the flow of writing.

Final Thoughts:
Sacrifice wasn't a bad story, but the writing wasn't strong enough to make it work well, or to let it stand out.

[Funnyguts]

Dhumaketu:
Summary: Sarah holds a crummy job in the future because she's not a member of the Industrialist Party. She's not happy with her micromanaged life, and despite being told that life is better after the Wars she still wonders about a better world. She takes a walk through the woods after work, when she sees a falling star... that talks to her! Sarah talks to the girl (cautiously if you prefer), who says her name is Dhumaketu and she's been on vacation for a while. Ket asks Sarah to do something for her: Show her around the world as it is, and then tell Ket if the world needs changing or not. Ket points out that the world now is constricting, and demonstrates it by destroying some of the cages put around trees with her mere touch. Kat says that it's up to Sarah if the world will change, and Sarah is free to say no. After some more questioning, Kat asks where Sarah will take her. Sara decides...

Nowhere: Sarah decides that despite all the problems of the world the change isn't worth it, and refuses to let Ket bring her disaster. Sarah does think that the world needs to change, but she can do it herself in her own way even if it's slower than Ket's method. Ket says she'll be back eventually, and leaves. Sarah heads home, resolved to do her best. (You can get this same ending by choosing not to make a change in any of the other three routes.)

To Sarah's office: The two arrive at Sarah's workplace after everyone's gone home. Sarah shows off her ability to manipulate the data flowing in the air, and explains that her job is to flag problematic data streams, but not to fix them herself. Ket suggests giving everyone access to these streams to play with them (and hints that she may have messed around at the Tower of Babel.) Sarah decides to let it happen. She starts playing with data streams, and Ket uses her powers to let her access things beyond her clearance. Then she gives it all to the world, and in an instant everything that had been kept in order for centuries is destroyed.

To downtown: Sarah shows Ket how modern people interact: by not talking but exchanging data as they pass. Ket is unimpressed and thinks people should actually talk with voices and everything. Sarah lets Ket remove the data exchanges so people are forced to speak, and Ket forces Sarah to talk to someone. More and more people are forced to talk and learn what's going on. Ket slips away in the confusion.

Somewhere already broken: If Ket is going to cause a disaster, it might as well be somewhere that's broken down, so Sarah takes Ket to an old town that hasn't been torn down yet. Inside one of the abandoned buildings there's a wild human hiding after escaping from the zoo! Ket thinks humans shouldn't be in zoos, and suggests letting them free. Sarah points out that this will lead to the Wars again, but decides to free the humans. Ket levels the playing field by giving all the humans high-tech weapons and armor, and the nearby human takes a shot at the building. Sarah and Ket run away and see the destruction caused by Ket's interference. Sarah decides to atone for this by founding the Diplomatic Corps so that everything will go right by the end.

Characters: Sarah and Ket have decent chemistry together, but neither are too interesting on their own. The world manages to be its own character, in a way most of the other entries don't manage to do. Things are revealed and changed depending on your actions, and Sarah and Ket are just the vehicles needed to get the setting going.

Things that stuck: The setting, definitely. It was just fleshed out enough to keep things interesting without overloading the reader with information, and made me want to read more of it.

Technical aspects: Ket's sudden jumping around the screen is a bit awkward. otherwise nothing stood out here.

Limitations: It didn't seem to push the boundaries of anything.

Themes: Is radical change better than gradual change?

Uniqueness: It's nice to see a story where disaster can be viewed as a good thing by the protagonist, not just the disaster spirit.

Overall: Definitely one of my favorite entries. Yeah, there's some problems with it, like the one Tom pointed out about the last route being much more revealing than any of the others. But I still felt like the choices made sense, even the non-important ones, and gave me a sense of agency over Sarah. I would retract one of my statements that Dhumaketu broke a rule about having things change between routes that aren't directly affected by choices, but this doesn't actually happen. On my second playthrough I realized everything was pretty consistent overall.

[OokamiKasumi]

For Stellie

I liked the professor -- despite the fact that he started out as extremely pessimistic, more than a little petty; clearly he didn't like his students much, but enjoyed having power over them, and rather cowardly; utterly terrified for his reputation and job. They were excuses, clearly, but they were realistic in the sense that I have actually met people who used exactly those reasons to excuse the same sort of bad behavior.

I particularly liked the descriptive writing. I could see what was happening through their words so clearly, the backgrounds were barely even needed.

I also liked the way the sprite was shoved over to the side, and blocked in with a black overlay and used as a border, so to speak, for the text. It was clearly visible, but not Distracting.

However, I found the breaks in the middle of the sentences (having to hit the space-bar to finish a sentence,) annoying. (A test-player of mine calls that Space-bar Hell.) Then again, my annoyance could simply be due to the fact that I read very fast and hate to be interrupted while I'm reading -- especially if it's interesting.

What I wasn't so keen on was that despite the fact that the sprite character; Stellie, was almost immediately established as being not-so-bright, she had difficulty with the word 'streaked,' and seemed to be a little simplistic in her views,) this was Not carried over.

Only a few pages after the character of Stellie was established, she had no difficulty what so ever using the same level of vocabulary as the Professor.

Note the use of: proper past tense, appropriate, and murderously. Those are not something someone simplistic would use. Shortly after this, she says, "Then how to convey them properly, that is that question." That is something a literary student; one with an educated vocabulary, would say -- not someone not-so-bright.

In short, the author Broke Character.

And it gets worse.

The good news is that this is an easy fix:
-- Dumb down HER vocabulary.
or
-- Kill the entire 'streaked' bit and give her an educated vocabulary from the very beginning.

Other than that, I found the story and its theme very enjoyable.

[OokamiKasumi]

Outlook of Spirit Commission

My first knee-jerk reaction to this was:
-- The Creator really needs to cut down on the Sugar in their diet, and absolutely needs to avoid Energy drinks of any kind.

They made use of a ton of cultural, manga, anime, and visual novel insider jokes to create something clearly meant to be utter crack. I'm sure a lot of people found this entertaining. However, I didn't -- at all. Don't get me wrong, I did get all the references and jokes. I just didn't find the way they were so heavily exploited...entertaining. There didn't seem to be a point to them other than to possibly make the player laugh, which I didn't.

In fact, there didn't seem to be a point to the entire story other than entertainment. While this may have worked for some players, it did NOT work for me. At all.

What this did reveal though, was that the creator:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-- 1 -- Has excellent coding skills.
-- 2 -- Has a brilliant imagination, though I don't get the impression that the creator quite knows what to do with it.
-- 3 -- Could use a lesson or two on the basics of story creation.

To say that the plot wandered all over the map would be an understatement. While they did attempt to tie all the plot-threads together, the story would have benefited from simply cutting much of it out. An awful lot of it was pointless --many of the jokes in particular-- and merely ate up word-count that would have seen better use elsewhere, for example, to flesh out the characters and actually make me care about them -- which I didn't.

My advice? Get these books:
-- Story Structure Architect by Shmidt, it's one of the Writer's Digest books. This will help familiarize them with basic plotting forms.
-- Invisible Ink by Brian McDonald. This will help with how to USE basic plot forms and how to apply a Theme to a story.

[Sapphi]

Oh boy... this thread is growing too fast... I won't be able to keep up, lol
Endless Night
This story began abruptly, with the introduction of the character of Eliane in the very first line. It could have been executed better than it was. The next line tells us that she was speaking in English and that she had a normal voice. Good so far... the author is pointing out normal, obvious traits as if they are something noteworthy, which implies that the character is not normal in some other respect. But then we get this:

What is that telling us that we don't already know? We can see Eliane. We already know that she is a young woman, and so does the narrator, because she's already spoken to him. The only thing worthy of telling in this sentence is the fact that she is out of place from her surroundings, but we are left to guess at precisely why she is out of place and what those surroundings are (more specifically than a forest BG).

Why does the narrator seem so calm about the fact that an alien spirit just crawled out of a meteor and is speaking to him? Why the waffling dialogue about nothing in particular in the context of this fact... especially given the fact that this story has a doomsday ending? If the author was trying to establish a "mundane" life before the twist, it didn't work, because the story didn't start out in a mundane way. It started out doomy and mysterious, whiplashed into kooky anime territory (dat music), and suddenly went back to doom and gloom. This gave me the impression that most of the dialogue was pointless and was just waffling around for awhile before the doomsday punch could be delivered. I didn't learn much about Eliane in terms of personality and even less about the protagonist.

By this I don't mean to say that Endless Night was all bad. There were some interesting ideas presented, but they were presented rather vaguely and dismissively when they could have been fleshed out more. I got all three endings, but I'm left wondering: what was the point of this exercise? A spirit comes to tell of impending doom. Instead of telling the protagonist right away, she asks him lots of seemingly insignificant questions, including his taste in women. Okay, I'll bite... but where is this leading to? Apparently nowhere, because doomsday either way you slice it!

If I had written this story, I would have dispensed with the vagueries and the kooky anime stuff and gotten to the point, which seems to be: A messenger has come to you and told you that your physical world is going to be destroyed. Would you rather be saved, separated from your home forever, or perish with your home? (And do you actually have a choice in the matter, or is this exercise simply meant to point you towards a certain realization before you die?) I think this was the general direction the story was leaning towards, it just never really got there because it kept getting distracted with cat ears and other things of relatively little relevance.

[papillon]

I don't know if there are any plans for another release of the collection - but if there is, it might make sense to use _window_subtitle to put the name of the game that's being played in the window titlebar.

Good idea. (There are so many commands I'm not familiar with! Doesn't sound like it should be too complicated, though, so I'll poke at it.)

[Sapphi]

The Day I Died

The creator's first mistake was giving away the punchline to the whole story in the Title.
-- Bad Move. That actually ruined the whole story for me before I even began.

I'm gonna echo Kasumi's complaints with this one. In her post, I think she nailed just about everything I was wondering about (Who was banging on the door? What purpose does that serve in the story? Why should I care?), but there's one thing she didn't mention and that was the severe mood whiplash.

Not only did everything seem very vague (and rushed), the mood whiplash caused mostly by the music but also from the complete lack of narrative transition was really, really bad. The vagueness of what was happening combined with the quickly switching moods caused me to feel like I was not reading, but being thrown mercilessly around by, the story.

Also unfortunately, the pervasive anime cliches pervaded this, especially places like this:

The "Don't look back. Don't think about her. Dammit." are just so typical of manga narration. We've seen them so many times that they're a given by now. In real life, does anyone really think in terms of short, convenient sentences that can be fit in a thought bubble? There have to be a million ways you could formulate the idea of leaving reluctantly without resorting to this. The "It's not like I can bring her home" is also suffering from anime syndrome. You find a strange girl in the woods. Are the options so binary that you only have a choice between leaving her there and bringing her back to your house? You can't give her directions to the police station or take her to a homeless shelter?

Overall I felt this story relied too much on cliches and delivered just about nothing besides cliches. So the story is about the last day of a person's life, but he doesn't realize it until the end. He freaks out until he realizes it was actually a wonderful day and can die happily. So flesh out that last day so that we can be just as happy and satisfied as he is with his ending! Let him overcome his mysterious problems instead of leaving them unsolved. This plot has the potential to be very emotional and cathartic if you tell it right.

And to preserve the important twist at the end, don't call it The Day I Died, *especially* if it's written in first person!

[OokamiKasumi]

Umbra's Calling

This is written in 2nd person POV which I really don't enjoy reading. I find 2nd person POV jarring and unnatural. I also didn't like that the protagonist's name was "me", especially when the protagonist character already has an established personality that Isn't Mine. The name issue was fixed rather quickly with the chance to rename the character, however the 2nd person POV...

I found the story a little short, however I suspect that this had a lot to do with the multiple endings verses the word-count limit. Even so, the plotting was fairly tight for such a small story. Almost everything dealt with spirits, or the concept of free-will.

The theme of Free-Will was a little heavy-handed, but not obnoxiously so. Once I realized the game's theme, I understood why the creator used 2nd person POV, however, that didn't make it any less jarring to read.

What stood out was that the creator is clearly damned good at at coding. The spirit was Transparent -- which a spirit really should be. Also, the ending came with a whole separate page that showed what endings were achieved and those one hadn't found, plus an explanation. I was very impressed.

The only thing I found odd was:
-- Why would someone invite a total stranger into their house? Compound that with: Why would anyone invite a spirit into their house?

From my personal experience, most people freak out badly around things they don't understand, but especially ghosts and spirits.

However, this...oddity of the protagonist inviting a total stranger / spirit into their home without a viable explanation as to why the protagonist wasn't freaked out by this, happens in most of the games in this collection. I understand that it was needed in several of the plots, but still, it would have been nice to have even a vague excuse for their lack of surprise --or fear.
-- "I've always like ghost stories."
-- "I've always been interested in spirits."
-- "Someone in my family swears they saw a ghost when they were a kid, now I get to see one!"
-- "Wow! Now I get to live out my favorite anime fantasy! Sort of..."

[LieselSolo]

Gah, I'm off the internet for two days and this happens. Anyway, downloaded and should have reviews posted soon!

[papillon]

For unknown reasons subtitle wouldn't work within the function I was using, but the same end result can be faked with window title anyway. So there's another new upload which should make it clearer which story you are playing at a time.

[Carassaurat]

Fragile

The way Tom was characterized just didn't draw me in - the way he thought and his voice felt somewhat generic, generalized and vague, like so many other bland protagonists in the world. In contrast, It's All Your Fault had its protagonist overreacting and worrying about petty stuff too, but because his voice was distinctive and strong and he had very specific, detailed characterization, I bought into the idea that he was his own unique individual, a real person that I could identify with, whereas Tom very much felt like a fictional character made out of cardboard.
I think all these problems could be fixed by just giving the Kat = delusion storyline (a great concept IMHO) much more focus, foreshadowing, and development. It would give her relevance and make the twist ending an "aha!" moment instead of a "what the? durr? bluh?" moment.
Just as a creative exercise, it might be nice for the author to try and make a coherent linear story out of this VN, and focus on making the best linear story they can, before moving onto branches. As you mentioned, the routes seemed unbalanced and inconsistent with each other, and I think that having a single storyline to focus on would help the author clear up some of the plot problems. Once you've got a solid story down, then maybe you can start thinking about branching. If branching doesn't help the story, you shouldn't forcibly include it IMHO.

I don't think you're being entirely fair in directly comparing it to It's All Your Fault, but you doing so might be a symptom of Fragile's problem. Fault has all the room in the world to explore its character — there's just one or two characters (depending on who the narrator is), it doesn't really have to get a substantial story going, and it's kinetic. It's an exploration of a personality, but that's all it is. Fragile isn't so clear in its genre or in what it's trying to do. It has parts personality exploration, but it's too light hearted and not specific enough to really go for it (for example, we aren't aware of any quirks or peculiarities of Tom, other than his excessive intake of coffee). It sometimes almost hints to be a romantic comedy, but it obviously isn't. And then there's the endings: 3 is drama, 4 is a thriller or something. That's an inconsistent tone with the coffee jokes we were just hearing minutes ago. That is, of course, incredibly difficult, because Tom's character has to develop in different directions for every ending, and I think it's laudable that Fragile tries to explore character growth (or shrinking?) in different directions through its choices, but partially as result of that it never gets to find a consistent tone throughout its story. You might even say that Kat and Alice don't belong in the same genre.


Outlook of Spirit Commission

Which one was that again: the one that's just a barrage of jokes

I wouldn't know how to write much about Outlook of Spirit Commission. The idea that I get is that the author is very confident in his or her sense of humour, and can cram out a ton of these jokes. For me, about half of the gags fell flat, and the other half were genuinely funny, which, considering the sheer amount of them, still makes Outlook one of the funnier VNs I've ever played. There isn't much to criticise, though; it all depends on how well you appreciate the author's sense of humour. OokamiKasumi is absolutely correct in identifying a lack of meaningful or even coherent story, but, whether to your taste or not, this was never meant to be one. Its story isn't trying to be anything more than a coat rack to hang jokes on, and as long as it can bear the weight, that's good enough.

Something I liked about this entry was that the result of the first choice, to observe or to steal panties, would come up again during the final boss battle. That the author could take a choice made minutes ago and apply it as a joke to a completely different situation is pretty clever.

And kudos for the technical execution — it's second to none among the entries I've played so far.

[Anarchy]

Outlook of Spirit Commission

They made use of a ton of cultural, manga, anime, and visual novel insider jokes to create something clearly meant to be utter crack. I'm sure a lot of people found this entertaining. However, I didn't -- at all. Don't get me wrong, I did get all the references and jokes. I just didn't find the way they were so heavily exploited...entertaining. There didn't seem to be a point to them other than to possibly make the player laugh, which I didn't.

In fact, there didn't seem to be a point to the entire story other than entertainment. While this may have worked for some players, it did NOT work for me. At all.

I have to disagree with you there. I think that Outlook of Spirit Commission is a brilliant parody that provides cynical, funny commentary on the amateur VN development scene as well as the anime and video game culture that surrounds it and in fact, modern life in general. I wasn't LOL'ing all the way through, but I did appreciate the jokes and references because the author used a range of different humor techniques, such as witty or sarcastic remarks or clever comebacks or OTT random humor or just observations that are funny just because they are so true. The variety of the jokes helped to keep me engaged throughout even though there were less joke-dense parts that should've been trimmed. I'll elaborate further on this later, but first there's something I want to address.

-- 3 -- Could use a lesson or two on the basics of story creation.

To say that the plot wandered all over the map would be an understatement. While they did attempt to tie all the plot-threads together, the story would have benefited from simply cutting much of it out. An awful lot of it was pointless --many of the jokes in particular-- and merely ate up word-count that would have seen better use elsewhere, for example, to flesh out the characters and actually make me care about them -- which I didn't.

My advice? Get these books:
-- Story Structure Architect by Shmidt, it's one of the Writer's Digest books. This will help familiarize them with basic plotting forms.
-- Invisible Ink by Brian McDonald. This will help with how to USE basic plot forms and how to apply a Theme to a story.

I completely disagree with you on this. The entire point of this VN is to parody the horribly-written plots of amateur visual novels. Making a conventionally good plot would completely undermine the core of the critique. This VN's plot is atrocious - so atrocious, in fact, that it's obviously an over-the-top exaggeration of the usual horrible plot you see in amateur works (fanfiction, VN, or otherwise). That's one way you comment on a trend in the thing you're parodying - take an element and exaggerate it until it becomes absolutely ridiculous. The goal is to make the reader laugh - whether at the sheer ridiculousness of the parody or a knowing laugh because how familiar that element is - but also to comment on the shortcomings of that particular medium, which is the amateur VN in this case.

This VN doesn't stop at mere exaggeration to create this parodic effect; it explicitly points out that this is the critique that it's trying to do. In the moon segment, the boy directly says:

"Man, this plot. Can't we just sweep this under the carpet for now?"

"Anything is possible in amateur visual novels as long as it moves the plot forward."

I think that's solid evidence that it's trying to mock the kind of horrible plot in amateur VNs by exaggerating them to humorous effect. I was greatly amused by this line because the kind of bad plotting it's deliberately mocking is present in many of the other entries I read for this contest. I had many, many complaints about the realism of certain storylines. Why does the protag take a random stranger back to their house? Why does the story make it so that the protag is special to the spirit? Those are all lazy ways to move the plot forward without taking into consideration logic, internal coherence, or character motivation. And that is precisely what this VN is commenting on.

There are many other examples of this throughout the VN. The opening itself mocks a ton of common tropes present in anime and VNs.

For example, the random rambling of the protagonist, flitting abruptly from moon to cheese to fireflies, is a pitch perfect exaggeration of the badly-written inner monologues amateur VN protagonists tend to have. Let's do a comparison, shall we?

This is a particularly memorable sequence from Is She a Spirit of Disaster?









The protagonist is going on a long-winded monologue that seems to be meant to develop his personality and create atmosphere. Unfortunately, the metaphor the author uses here is incredibly heavy-handed and cliched, yet presented in way that seems like they expect the reader to take it completely seriously. Worst of all, the author gets carried away and goes off on a whole other tangent about werewolves and devil lords, which is worded in such a way that makes it seem like the protagonist really believes in werewolves. The whole thing reads like an infodump. It's random, but in a really awkward, boring way. There are other entries that do this monologue-ing at the moon thing, and I really don't think ANY of them work too well. Competently-written internal monologue has been quite rare in this contest.

Now, let's look at a very similar scene from Outlook of Spirit Commission.











The protagonist is monologue-ing at the moon as well. He's jumping between random subjects with little to no connection between them. It's like an extreme version of the Is She a Spirit of Disaster? scene, and the exaggeration is what makes it a parody. The humorous effect is enhanced by the fact that he's literally talking out loud to himself, and even comments on the fact, which sends the entire scene into the realms of ridiculousness.

Is it funny? I found it entertaining, not just because it was random and ridiculous, but it was random and ridiculous in a very specific way. It was a pitch perfect parody of a very specific trend I keep seeing in visual novels as well as in my own work. There's a disturbing trend for VN authors to keep padding and padding their works with boring, poorly-written internal monologue just because for some stupid reason, longer is better, and this was a funny, yet surprisingly gentle critique of that particular trend. The entire VN is full of examples like this.

Gentle. That's the word that sums up this VN for me. It feels like a exasperated yet loving big brother. It's like it's saying "Oh you silly amateur VN creator/anime fan/convention-goer, why do you do all these silly things?", blowing me a raspberry, and then patting me on the head because it wuvs me anyway.

In short, I think this is a good parody VN for young, budding VN writers to read. It's a funny look at the common pitfalls in amateur VNs, so you know what to avoid without feeling like you're being scolded. For the rest of us in the community, the safety blanket of humor allows us to step back, take a look at ourselves and have a knowing laugh at all the random, familiar things that make up our subculture, whether they be good or bad or just the slightest bit creepy. And of course, it's an entertaining work in its own right as well.

I'll stop here because this response is getting way too long, but there are quite a few other things that I liked about this work that I'd like to elaborate on. Maybe after I do some of the other entries first. :3