Get that thing off your chest... Now...

[Hijiri]

I've spent the few weeks feeling sick, and the last week or so very anxious. So anxious in fact that I got 2 panic attacks this week. I'm also waiting for a test, which is making me anxious as well. Fortunately, I have anti-anxiety medication, but still....

[Blane Doyle]

Sometimes I forget my father is more than a little bit racist. But that's ok. He makes that VERY clear whenever he deems necessary. Like every single time we mention any other culture. EVER.

I wish I could call him out or attempt to explain to him why what he says can be insulting (and, for that matter, plain untrue), but I know that it's just going to go in one ear and out the other for MULTIPLE reasons. The key one being "I'm your dad, lol, what u gun do bout it?" He's never listened to me in the past so I know he's not going to now.

I am really glad he decided to text me instead of continue to tweet me but most of the conversation was extremely racist jokes that jumped from country to country on a whim without much response from me. For half an hour. So that was pleasant. #sarcasm

[LateWhiteRabbit]

Sometimes I forget my father is more than a little bit racist. But that's ok. He makes that VERY clear whenever he deems necessary. Like every single time we mention any other culture. EVER.

I wish I could call him out or attempt to explain to him why what he says can be insulting (and, for that matter, plain untrue), but I know that it's just going to go in one ear and out the other for MULTIPLE reasons. The key one being "I'm your dad, lol, what u gun do bout it?" He's never listened to me in the past so I know he's not going to now.

I am really glad he decided to text me instead of continue to tweet me but most of the conversation was extremely racist jokes that jumped from country to country on a whim without much response from me. For half an hour. So that was pleasant. #sarcasm

My step-father is casually racist, and gets offended when I don't laugh at his "jokes". So I know exactly where you're coming from. I'm often horribly surprised when (being in the South) I am alone with old white men and they reveal all their racist views and thoughts with me now that we are "behind closed doors". It is infuriatingly insulting to me, like they assume I'm a racist, and I've just been hiding it in while in public.

I'm part of an old and prestigious institution, and at one event there were several of us young men sitting with one of the leadership, a very old and respected man in the organization. He said appalling and disgusting racist things. I've got a thick skin, and even my skin crawled. The old man left, and it was just us young men, staring across at each other with pursed lips. Finally someone spoke.
"So...do we take action against him?"
"He's too powerful. It wouldn't go well."
More silence.
"He's old. He's going to die soon. Death and time are going to cure us of his kind."

In the South there are a lot of organizations with racist old men in charge. Thankfully the young men replacing them are not. We really should speak up more often though. One of the leadership did recently tell us to stop trying to purposely tick off the old racists by making sure their meetings were always filled with our minority members. We just figure the old bastards should see the brighter future of their beloved organization. Sorry, Gramps. The future is being screened in Technicolor.

[Sapphi]

One of the leadership did recently tell us to stop trying to purposely tick off the old racists by making sure their meetings were always filled with our minority members.

Sounds like a challenge to me...

I've met my share of racists, and it has always bothered me, but having gained a little bit more experience I understand some of it. We have bad areas around here that are stereotypically non-white, and many of the white folks here had bad experiences growing up with people from those areas. In context it makes sense that they would have a negative prejudice of the non-whites around here... but to extrapolate that as a general mistrust of anyone who looks like those people is quite a mistake. Unfortunately it's a common one.

One of the less forgivable forms of racism to me is the making fun of people who look different or speak a different language simply because they are different. This one time I was over at my cousin's house and we were watching a show in Japanese. From the other room my uncle starts mocking it loudly with psuedo-Chinese gibberish (too ignorant even to know the difference). I gritted my teeth and ignored it... apparently he thought it was just the funniest joke in the world because he kept doing it off-and-on for like the whole time. If he wasn't my senior I would have chewed him out...

[ofdawnandtwilight]

Not something sad to rant nor something that's really happy for me, it's more of an..... interesting thing? I don't know, I just have to say this somehow xD (I did debate on whether to post this in the opposite thread but it'll seem more out of place, you'll see why-)

LOL I've been following that weeaboo.nl blog without knowing who they are really (if they're a user here then I must admit that I respect them in every weird way I could ever be capable of :'D *salutes) and they did reviews of almost all of the NaNoRenO's completed games, including the one I was involved in.

The sprites are generally pretty nice although the artist doesn’t really seem to be able to draw old people. Or men’s collars, abs (see nipple-less caterpillar golem), or men in general. It has a bunch of event CG, pretty good ones even...

First of all, I'm honoured that the sprites appeared passable to them.
Second, I just laughed so hard. So. Hard. And I'm not even sure if I should be, really xD
Almost all of their reviews are pretty direct and blunt so I don't really take anything to heart. I'm just curious on that 'men in general' part, wish they could elaborate more on that. Hmm, do the men I draw always come out as nipple-less golems? (And to actually put an effort of defending myself, if I wanted to anyway, I was going to fix that but the game was already arranged and I couldn't get in contact with the writer that time)

Anyway, sorry if this doesn't fit the thread, I don't know where to put this in elsewhere.

[LateWhiteRabbit]

Almost all of their reviews are pretty direct and blunt so I don't really take anything to heart.

That could be a mistake. I'm not saying this guy is correct or knows what he's talking about (or that he is any kind of professional), but most professionals in a field tend to be very direct and blunt when giving critiques. They don't sugar coat things or beat around the bush, partly because they don't have much time to do that (they have deadlines or a dozen more amateurs asking for critique and don't have time to stroke your feelings), and partly because they've learned it is the best way to deliver advice after years of doing so. By being direct and blunt, you make sure the intended recipient doesn't miss your advice, and by not crouching the blunt critique in a "compliment sandwich", you avoid the problem a lot of amateurs have with taking advice. Namely, a lot of amateurs will latch on to the compliment part of the sandwich and ignore the blunt "real" critique.

I've been on both ends - giving and receiving advice from professionals - and blunt critiques are the best. This blog guy may be wrong as a compass pointing south, but don't ever dismiss a critique just because it is blunt or harsh.

EDIT: Your compliment from a professional is that they even CRITIQUED your work at all. That means they saw talent and potential in you. If they truly were disgusted with your work, they wouldn't deign to comment at all.

[DaFool]

weeaboo.nl blog without knowing who they are really

It's the creator of NVList, another VN engine (used by Circle Pegasi and not sure anyone else).

It's the equivalent of PyTom playing every single EVN released and giving honest feedback. Not a bad approach, I should say.

[Deji]

I think the guy rather than make honest and blunt critique, gives his personal opinion and feelings on the subject. Saying "I hate X" (As they said in another NaNo game review) is not honest blunt critique meant for the artist to improve, it's just personal preference expressed in a rather passionate manner

[arachni42]

I think the guy rather than make honest and blunt critique, gives his personal opinion and feelings on the subject. Saying "I hate X" (As they said in another NaNo game review) is not honest blunt critique meant for the artist to improve, it's just personal preference expressed in a rather passionate manner

Yeah, I read some of the reviews for the NaNo's I played. It's honest and blunt, but I wouldn't exactly call them "critique." Plus their opinions differ soooo much from my own. Yeah, in couple cases they pointed out a real flaw, but others seemed like, "oh, I can sum up the plot in one sentence, which obviously means it's simple and boring." Clearly they do not enjoy the same games as I do, or for any of the reasons I do. Which is totally fine! But I wouldn't fault any game makers for, uh, getting a second opinion if they actually want to make a better game.

[Kuroneko_rg]

You may have had a malfunctioning HD with a few corrupt sectors. During reformat, these sectors are automatically detected and excluded from ever being written on, so the problem should be now fixed. If it is not, the BSOD can come from other hardware problems - software usually doesn't cause it (except for a few relatively harmless viruses most anti-virus software should easily catch).

I feared the HD to be damaged, but since you mentioned small viruses I have to say that my antivirus was heavily outdated
and I was browsing the internet when the blue screens started. I'm using Avast! now and seems to be very good.
Hopefully I won't have any more problems for a while in that matter.
Thank you for commenting ^^.

[Taleweaver]

I think the guy rather than make honest and blunt critique, gives his personal opinion and feelings on the subject. Saying "I hate X" (As they said in another NaNo game review) is not honest blunt critique meant for the artist to improve, it's just personal preference expressed in a rather passionate manner

Plus, it's hard to take him seriously when the Best VN for 2012 in his book is Katawa Shoujo, a VN he describes as:

Katawa Shoujo is a good VN, but with boring parts — especially the Shizune and Emi routes. The central conflicts of each route have a tendency to resolve themselves without much interference from Hisao, leaving the reader feeling like a passive observer.

I think the weeaboo.nl guy is one of those people who religiously believes that VNs suck if they're not from Japan, like most of the guys from the megatokyo forums. At the same time, he is absolutely ignorant about the Japanese game market and differentiates VNs from "Japanese adventure games" whereas the Japanese would not make that distinction, just as most Westerners would call both Myst and Monkey Island "point-and-click adventure games" for the similarities they share.

Also, I have yet to read a single of his reviews where he thinks the story is something else than either "trite and cliché" or "messed-up and illogical". You don't surprise him - you're cliché. You do surprise him - you're making no sense.

People lacking the intelligence to understand complex plots should not review them.

[jack_norton]

I was joking with Tom of Moacube about that site, everyone can have their own opinions and in general I prefer constructive criticism, however is rather funny that he reviewed like 500000 VNs and in the end they all suck for a reason or another
He's still way more polite than most Greenlight commentators though!

[ebi brain]

I like weeaboo.nl's reviews >_>

Yeah it can be harsh at times... but at times, there's sooooo much I agree with.
Like that Shira Oka review lol.




-----------------------------------
I just found out that I didn't name my programming assignments correctly. Though I did hand them in on time.
So, because of this I have a chance of being excluded from the oral exam. [ insert a lot of swearing and the face of a woman on the verge of breakdown]. I did send my teacher an email with an apology and files with correct names, but... now I have to wait and see if she accepts it.

I worked SO hard on these programs. Like 20-30 hours a week!
It was supposed to be a group effort, but I'm the one who did everything. EVERYTHING. And the other two just took my programs, without even saying THANK YOU.

My arms are completely shot now (RSI), so I haven't been able to do any active studying for chemistry, physics, math (so I will fail these exams this week)...

So if they are allowed to go to the exam, just because they named the files correctly and I'm not allowed eventhough I did all the hard work... well **** her. And *** them T_T

[DaFool]

Interestingly, his review will probably be the only thing going for my future games, or any games in a genre that are not popular in this forum. That is, if he even wants to be bothered to download them. That's usually not a problem, but it's subconsciously affecting my capacity to create. For example, I'm changing the nuances of dialogues ever so slightly, so they'll appear to be more entertaining for Let's Plays. (probably the most common way for people to come into contact with random Ren'Py games that don't have a following).

I don't know what one can say when your measure of success boils down to if you can entertain drunk guys playing your game only for shits and giggles. I have improved a lot in many ways since I came into the scene, but now even after hundreds (sometimes thousands) of dollars of investment, weeks, months, years of work, and it's no longer fun... and then you discover you have no audience. I don't have a presence on deviantart since I'm not really an artist.... and Twitter scares me because it has ended quite a few people's careers (most recently that Microsoft guy who divulged the Xbox 720's always onlineness). It's ironic that the best target audience for my future work will be 4chan... and I am an LSF dev, and have been for many years, so my work (and automatically my person as well) automatically sucks.

I am starting to understand why mugenjohncel is not making any "serious" work (if everything is for shits and giggles, then why bother, right?). I also feel like I've stepped into Fleet's shoes and can't remove them now... I understand completely how he's feeling.

In any case, I'm only going to be doing this to entertain myself. Whether I'm entertained will be the only judgement that matters.

[Auro-Cyanide]

I'm just curious on that 'men in general' part, wish they could elaborate more on that. Hmm, do the men I draw always come out as nipple-less golems?

The best way of figuring that out is to start a thread in the art section and give people leave to critique, and then take that critique and show them what you are taking on board. It's worked before