VN Criticism

[Tempus]

I started a blog a while back called Visual Novel Criticism. In short, its goal is to offer critical thought regarding visual novels and related things. By 'critical' I don't mean fault-finding—I simply mean thorough and researched (or at least informed).

Here's some posts I've already made:

• Terminology
  Having a sensible discussion about what to call things is hard. I try to have a sensible discussion about what to call things.
• How to Advertise Your Services
  What it says on the tin. There's a lot of really bad recruitment threads all over the internet. I try to offer tips to minimise the offensiveness of your posts.
• On Generalists & Specialists
  There's some under-discussed merits to being a generalist. I over-discuss them. Also this is an off-the-cuff post, something I might do occasionally while working on other pieces.

Well, that's it. Feedback etc. etc. is welcome. There's also a Twitter account, @vncriticism

[trooper6]

Your stuff is interesting. Though, since terminology is important to you, I feel the need to posit that you are not offering Criticism. Rather, you are offering Opinion pieces or perhaps Editorials. But...I wouldn't call your works Critism--which tends to be more academically informed and less polemic.

[Tempus]

@trooper6: I agree, though I chose the name based on the types of pieces I want to (and am) writing, rather than the selection I have here. They will be the focus for me, while this other stuff will be interspersed between.

Here's an excerpt an upcoming piece about the function of art in visual novels as an example:

• "When we see an environment on-screen in a visual novel operating in the dominant paradigm it's safe to assume that the location actually exists as it is being presented to us. That is to say, we're looking at a literal representation of the place depicted; e.g., the door we see is a door, the street sign a street sign, and so on. However, it is fairly common for an environment to also be a symbol for other locations. In those cases images representing the environment are both literal and stand-ins—they are both themselves as well as a symbol of contiguous locations that are close enough in proximity and appearance for the image to give an impression of them. As a result, the location depicted is not necessarily where the characters are at that moment, nor is it necessarily what they see.
  
  The environment art the audience is provided with is a starting point for their imagination. The audience creates what is out-of-view; the spatial layout, the number of (and decorum for) adjoining rooms, and so on, guided by the image in addition to hints from the text. In the dominant paradigm, each piece of environment art is the epitome of the location it represents, the photo you would take if you could only take one."

Another piece is about visual metaphor + diegetic & non-diegetic elements, with reference to a specific visual novel. Part of the reason these pieces are taking so long is that I have a lot of reading to do. Part-way through the last piece I mentioned I was reading an essay about skeuomorphism and realised I'd been misusing the term. (Skeuomorphism apparently describes vestigial things that have evolved from functional to ornamental, a concept distinct from visual [or sonic, etc.] metaphor; e.g., fake wood panelling in a car isn't skeuomorphic since cars were never made of wood—it's a visual metaphor.)

Aside from that, there's also just the fact that naming a blog is hard.

[trooper6]

Based on the excerpts you provided, I'm very excited to read your actual criticism. I really enjoy criticism, both reading and writing it. Sadly, there is so very little of it out there. Please let us know when you've published one of your critical pieces!

[Mad Harlequin]

Oh, cool! I'll definitely be reading this!

[YossarianIII]

Yep, count me in for the criticism, too.

I had been wondering if there was anyone in the VN community who did this type of stuff, so I'm glad to see you're filling the niche!

[noctos]

This sounds like a great read. I'll be following your posts!

[trooper6]

Yep, count me in for the criticism, too.

I had been wondering if there was anyone in the VN community who did this type of stuff, so I'm glad to see you're filling the niche!

Right now, I don't have time to do this sort of work outside of an academic context...but once I get tenure then I'll have more time to do this sort of thing in non-academic journals. I can't wait for that moment!

[Kailoto]

Use desaturated dark text on a light background (or light text on dark background) and left-align paragraphs. No exceptions.

Justified text works too. :P

Seriously though, you seem to have a pretty clear idea of what you're doing. The archive's a bit bland, but eh, it's tumblr. Maybe add some images? A title card per post can do wonders to break up the walls of text. Anyways, keep up the good work!

[Juno]

I really like your articles. Especially these two from "How to Advertise Your Services":

List information, don’t make people ask for it. “PM me for details” — No. You post the details or I close the browser tab.

and

Present yourself confidently, but modestly. Don’t say “I think I’m a pretty good artist” or “I’m not very good but …” — the former sounds narcissistic and the latter makes it sound like you have no faith in your abilities. Instead list what you can do without qualifying it. Omit things you’re not confident about.

[truefaiterman]

Justified text works too.

Funnily enough, as far as I've seen justified text, unless it's very carefully organised, looks way worse than the standard left-to-right format (I specially blame some absurdly huge spaces justification makes in the middle of certain phrases).

I've read the text and followed the VNCriticism Twitter, it really was interesting, with pretty good insight. I hope to see more of this (as others said, the part about advertising yourself is my favourite).

[Kailoto]

Justified text works too.

Funnily enough, as far as I've seen justified text, unless it's very carefully organised, looks way worse than the standard left-to-right format (I specially blame some absurdly huge spaces justification makes in the middle of certain phrases).

I've read the text and followed the VNCriticism Twitter, it really was interesting, with pretty good insight. I hope to see more of this (as others said, the part about advertising yourself is my favourite).

The key with justified text lies in hyphens. And if things really get bad, you can always reword. XD

Justified text tends to work better for text with longer paragraphs, though, so if you're just doing short lists and sentences it's not really needed. Otherwise it's much preferable to left-aligned - there's a reason why nearly every book, newspaper, and magazine you've read is formatted that way.

[Tempus]

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

Based on the excerpts you provided, I'm very excited to read your actual criticism. I really enjoy criticism, both reading and writing it. Sadly, there is so very little of it out there. Please let us know when you've published one of your critical pieces! [. . .] Right now, I don't have time to do this sort of work outside of an academic context...but once I get tenure then I'll have more time to do this sort of thing in non-academic journals. I can't wait for that moment!

Yep, count me in for the criticism, too. I had been wondering if there was anyone in the VN community who did this type of stuff, so I'm glad to see you're filling the niche!

Yeah, I've had trouble finding any analytical stuff on visual novels for a while now. The best I found were isolated posts on places like Reddit and Kuiper's blog, Kinetic Literature. There's obviously already a lot of thought on writing, branching narratives, text parsing, puzzles, art, audio, etc. etc. but not the visual novel considered as a whole and what the aforementioned subjects mean in that context.

Use desaturated dark text on a light background (or light text on dark background) and left-align paragraphs. No exceptions.

Justified text works too.

Seriously though, you seem to have a pretty clear idea of what you're doing. The archive's a bit bland, but eh, it's tumblr. Maybe add some images? A title card per post can do wonders to break up the walls of text. Anyways, keep up the good work!

I plan on eventually making the blog its own site. I despise editing tumblr, Wordpress, etc themes. Once I have something custom I'll style it better than this. That being said I'm not really fond of dressing up posts with unnecessary images and so on. Which leads me to...

I really like your articles. Especially these two from "How to Advertise Your Services":

List information, don’t make people ask for it. “PM me for details” — No. You post the details or I close the browser tab.

and

Present yourself confidently, but modestly. Don’t say “I think I’m a pretty good artist” or “I’m not very good but …” — the former sounds narcissistic and the latter makes it sound like you have no faith in your abilities. Instead list what you can do without qualifying it. Omit things you’re not confident about.

I've read the text and followed the VNCriticism Twitter, it really was interesting, with pretty good insight. I hope to see more of this (as others said, the part about advertising yourself is my favourite).

Thanks! While I'll probably occasionally write stuff like that I don't consider it very important. There's a lot of bite-size posts like that out there meant for quick, easy consumption but that's not really my goal. I want to write longer pieces on subjects which haven't been covered yet. Reviews are another thing I won't be doing though that isn't to say I won't talk about specific VNs, it just won't be in the context of "I totally recommend this 10/10!"

[Kailoto]

I plan on eventually making the blog its own site. I despise editing tumblr, Wordpress, etc themes. Once I have something custom I'll style it better than this. That being said I'm not really fond of dressing up posts with unnecessary images and so on.

That's good - I detest tumblr as well, although mostly for my own personally selfish reasons. (I'm an old-school BBS and forum junkie.) I've been learning HTML and CSS for my portfolio, but I'm currently using Wordpress just so I can get started uploading stuff. Which I still haven't. >.>

Thanks! While I'll probably occasionally write stuff like that I don't consider it very important. There's a lot of bite-size posts like that out there meant for quick, easy consumption but that's not really my goal. I want to write longer pieces on subjects which haven't been covered yet. Reviews are another thing I won't be doing though that isn't to say I won't talk about specific VNs, it just won't be in the context of "I totally recommend this 10/10!"

I've wanted to do a blog like this for a while, but I'm still working on my site. Maybe when I finally get off my ass you'll have some competition :P

[SHiNKiROU]

The "On Generalists & Specialists" relates to me very well. I'm a programmer who knows nothing about audio and I'm unable to further improve my drawing skills. Because I learned functional programming, I'm thinking of property-testing visual novels so dead characters are never accidentally resurrected.

Speaking of blog software, have you considered Jekyll?