Visual Novels Now 2011 Best Ofs and TCAST Sequel Status

Good news first!
Carosene (that's me 8D) won the category "Rookie of 2011" for Visual Novels Now! Woo! (Though I would like to shout out to Super63, who was in that category and, despite being a rookie or whatever, put out a freakin' commercial dating sim and drew all her own stuff. I was rooting for you, Super63!) Thank you so much! TCAST also got nominated both for "Visual Novel of the Year" and Autumn got nominated for "Best Character." Thanks so much to JP and the readers of Visual Novels Now for considering TCAST, it's an honor.

Oh, and there's a sweet review of TCAST at Visual Novel Reviews 4.

And while we're talking about sweet TCAST things other people have done, AmaraInsevi made a gorgeous fanart called Never Forget!

And my homie Kura wrote up a couple of awesome TCAST fanfic kink drabbles in hir blog. X3 "Ageplay" "Punishment" There's some other drabbles in there too, some of which are NSFW, so tread carefully.

Of course, the question is, what the hell am I going to do this upcoming year? And that takes us to mildly depressing news about the TCAST sequel.

"Gynoid" vs "Android"?

Oh, semantics. Why you so lovely and so pain-inducing.

I like sci-fi, but sci-fi is not one of my fields of expertise. (Fields of expertise: Dissociative Identity Disorder, Adam Lambert, the works of John Green, Batwoman.) So after TCAST came out, I talked to quite a few sci-fi devotees about how TCAST fit into the awesome universe of sci-fi tropes.

One thing I started noticing was the term "gynoid." Gynoid means a robot that is built to resemble a female. You're supposed to use it instead of "android," since the "andr" root of the word refers to men. The word is supposed to be less sexist.

But somehow it kind of rubs me the wrong way.

White Writing Black?

Totally about to kiss.

Finally, my sequel post to my African American Vernacular English post that may actually have to do with visual novels! Or at least writing.


So, when white writers sit down and want to write a black characters, they'll often... do it wrong.

For example, they might write something like "Only wif my magic recipe can you turn out dese tender, 'licious, jiffy-quick pancakes dat makes yo' family happy."

This writer is being pretty condescending to black people. While you can see they're imitating certain parts of AAVE, it sounds more like they're trying to be slangy for the sake of being slangy. Like "'licious"? "jiffy-quick?" Does anyone really say "jiffy" besides my very white father? Fortunately, stuff like that never gets published.

Wait, what? That was in a national ad campaign?

Leaving Darlings Lost

Depressing post ahead! >.<

As I've written in a couple of places, Darlings Lost is entering a hiatus that will probably be permanent.

African American Vernacular English: A Language History Lesson

Controversial statement: African American Vernacular English (also known as "Ebonics") is grammatically correct.

Sentences like "She be at home," "He been married," and "Ain't nobody there" are all grammatically correct.

Here's another example of a grammatically correct English sentence: "Gewát ðá néosian syþðan niht becóm héän húses· hú hit Hring-Dene æfter béorþege gebún hæfdon·"

What the hell does that mean, right?

WE WON THE FESTIVAL!!

OMG WE WON THE FESTIVAAAAAAL!!!!!!!!

Proof.

Total surprise. Some people said we had a shot, but I thought one of the judges had it out for TCAST, which is fine, but I suppose my impression of him was more negative than he actually was. (Thank you, secretly nice guy!)
Congratulations to my amazing team and all of the hardwork they put into this!

I know this happened like, a week ago, but I've been in a shitty mood so that kind of distracted me.

Yeah. Sorry this post is random and short. Need to stop blogging and get writing!!

Still battling it out with Darlings Lost... I have such a love/hate relationship with that game... and I think everyone who plays it will too. ^-^;; Yeah. MUST MAKE IT AWESOME. *runs away*

Writing Shit



My sister recently wandered through craigslist looking for people starting bands. She found that overwhelmingly, the people posting were singers looking for people to play instruments.

The first day you pick up a guitar, you know you can't play Slash's solos in "Sweet Child O' Mine." But it's not hard to sing along with Axl's voice. "Woaaaaaaaaohoh, sweet child o' mine!" And we all know how pristine Axl's voice is. It's not hard to out sing him on anything. Check it for reference.

My point is, it's easy to convince yourself that you're a good singer even though you know nothing about singing. A lot of people can't hear the difference between Axl's million dollar howl and their own voice.

There's a similar problem with writing. Basic grammar was beaten into your head by like, fifth grade. At any point afterwards any person can have an idea for a cool story, boot up a computer and write something down, assuring themselves that they are "writing properly."

But what they don't know is they are piece of shit writer.

I'm also a piece of shit writer, by the way.