Thanks for the feedback everyone.
trooper6 wrote: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!
YossarianIII wrote: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.
Kailoto wrote: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...
Juno wrote: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 wrote: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!"