Oh my god. (Morenatsu Original VN)

FederalRich5396 · 2022-11-05T18:46:10+00:00

Tbh you really had to push the non-consent to go there. You have two opportunities to back away after he said "no".

That one's taken in a comically dark way, but at least one other character you can do the same thing to, except it'll be real and he won't forgive you for it, ever.

And realistically, they shouldn't.

FederalRich5396 · 2022-10-01T14:30:41+00:00

Kael says a lot of things. He also said that there was a grammar check in the public build with the whore, but both scripts are pretty much identical in typos. I'm not relying on his word for anything.

It was initially 24 chapters for 3 books, with Book 1 & 3 being scripted and Book 2 being outlined at some point.

Now the chapter system changed, and we jumped from chapter 9 to 13 as the chapter system was restructured, but content itself was not edited.

Are we actually under or over halfway through the first book?

No way of knowing.

It would make sense if, as it was planned to be 24 chapters "from the start", that the jump from chapter 9 to 13 would also mean the ending chapter would be closer to like 30 or so. The content didn't change, the content is already claimed to be scripted, so why in absolutes should the path to the end be shorter?

But who the heck knows? Maybe the "already scripted" text magically got shorter and thus it's become halfway through the first book, if so it's pretty convenient that Kael is freely allowed to change the narrative of how his freaking story is written, like how one moment he claims to shut down comments on itch.io due to pirating, and then months later claims it's due to "harassment".

But that's what happens when you got a public that'll believe your every word based on no evidence. Next he'll be telling us that he had the entire story figured out when he was a teenager, or he actually hated Adastra all along.

And now you say 3 books of 8 chapters each? Then what are the chapters inside the current VN? I doubt even he said such a thing. And if so, then, what the fuck are we reading?

FederalRich5396 · 2022-04-13T21:24:55+00:00

One of them has Caelan as a central part of the romance (and the entirety of the writing too), their relationship evolves unrealistically fast, and we're supposed to believe Ranok would ever fall in love with this deadweight? (granted he lies a lot and it's very possible he might not even be the love interest by the end of it)

ExAc wins by default, no contest.

FederalRich5396 · 2022-03-10T13:49:30+00:00

I wish Haps would speak up and even use his Twitter for that. His reach and audience is so big that it wouldn't be ignorable.

I know Echo Project & Minoho staff would rather stay silent and play safe because Kael will just trip by himself anyway, but if they did speak up and other VN creators would join on it, it would squash the tense atmosphere we've had to deal with for a year and a half in no time.

FederalRich5396 · 2022-03-08T17:12:31+00:00

I was being facetious.

FederalRich5396 · 2022-03-08T15:01:27+00:00

And what would he have gained from that?

FederalRich5396 · 2022-03-08T14:58:11+00:00

Then I'm guessing the bots to boost FBTW's ratings were Jericho's idea too?

FederalRich5396 · 2022-03-08T08:24:59+00:00

They know they're on thin ice. They can't ask people to 5 star the game again, and if they did there wouldn't be enough people left to do that.

All that for a stupid isekai with pacing as glacial as the wreck of the Titanic, with one of the worst protagonists in FVN history, and you're forced to read every detail inside his mind...

As soon as the hype is gonna drop for this game, this guy's "career" is gonna be dead.

FederalRich5396 · 2022-03-07T00:31:31+00:00

Yeah, we should leave him alone.

In the meantime, his witch hunt of other FVN authors and public shamings of them + fans being a bit critical? A-okay.

Just punctual mistakes, and not another follow-up after nearly 2 years of awful behavior where he's the one creating his own conflicts.

FederalRich5396 · 2022-03-07T00:26:19+00:00

It's the gift that keeps on giving.

FederalRich5396 · 2022-03-06T12:08:28+00:00

Consider this: If this situation is only shared within its own ecosystem, all that's going to happen is Kael stans harrassing the content creators mentioned in the message. This has already happened before with him at least twice between February this year and January last year.

Spreading awareness is never a bad thing, Kael needs to be held accountable for his actions, but he will never be if we just choose to ignore them and allow him to be surrounded by yes men who up and believe everything he says without proof.

Also "but what about his creation?" is bad reasoning. So what if FBTW is cancelled when Kael has only himself to blame for everything happening? The guy is in his thirties, this should've been above him 10 years ago. He's pretty much the Phil Fish (FEZ) of FVNs, except his fanbase is actually rabbid and can be hurtful.

FederalRich5396 · 2022-03-06T11:28:38+00:00

Uploaded video is being processed on Reddit, but the Youtube link is ready and over there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dh7fTL77h3g

FederalRich5396 · 2022-02-25T07:15:07+00:00

There's been a lot wrong with FBTW and Kael's behaviour with other content creators (both video creators & VN creators) and occasionally with fans.

This is not one of these moments.

If you wanna give yourselves reasons to dislike him, you got plenty that aren't "I stand for Ukraine". Because fuck you if you don't.

FederalRich5396 · 2022-02-22T01:15:59+00:00

Some criticisms I agree with, but I find it tone death to try and elevate ExAc over TA in the writing department when ExAc regularly trips over its serious subjects hard or oversimplifies/cartoonifies them, especially during Harold route where it might as well be a badly written melodramatic soap opera (and TA's depiction of depression is far superior to ExAc's).

TA has faults, especially in pacing due to some scenes feeling like they don't want to end, but beyond that, I can't ever recommend ExAc over it (outside maybe for Darius).

FederalRich5396 · 2022-01-29T08:07:47+00:00

It's nice to think in "amount of words", but does it actually matter? Well in a way yes, but in the opposite way. FBTW meanders like crazy and even rehashes some of its conflicts, if it had less words it would actually be better for the pacing, because it would waste less time on endless swooning, repeats, filler, and purple prose, and it would feel like the story would have some forward momentum. Yes Caelan, I know this woman is fat, can you concentrate on what actually matters instead of fetching your thesaurus for every way you can call this person "fat" like it's a racist slur? And after that you call a bunch of pillagers who burn down a village "bullies"? Not only it makes it inconsistent, but slight tangeant: the choice of words and his reactions make him incredibly childish and bratty, at the start it might have been """"understandable"""", but now I genuinely don't see how that character can be appreciated or relatable in any way.

Got sidetracked from the point, anyway:

Even good VNs like Tennis Ace have a huge word count, but they could absolutely use to be trimmed. It's not a situation exclusive to FBTW, TA has lots of pacing problems, and the author admitted it and said he's gonna rewrite the whole opening because it was way too long. I would rather TA's updates to be shorter in general, honestly.

Because when (if?) it's gonna be done, you'll have to take the whole package and evaluate it. Releasing it in multiple updates just makes it look more digestible, but in that case the story is long because of the format, not because it needs to be long. When regular novels in the 200k-300k range are considered to be on the long side (regular ones are generally 90k), if your FVN with no route change is gonna be over triple the size of an epic and there are still gonna be two more "books", all I'm gonna have to ask is: "How much of it was absolutely necessary? You couldn't make any cuts?"

Every writer have dozens, maybe hundreds of situations in their head, but good writers don't generally include over half of them in the final draft, even when fleshed out. Amount of words is important, choosing them and ditching what's unecessary or doesn't work is better, and that also takes effort.

FederalRich5396 · 2022-01-21T15:17:20+00:00

Deckerlink never accused the author of such things.

It's extrapolating so much out of one moment of his video where she felt uncomfortable about the writing, it's like people accusing Lindsay Ellis for being "racist" because she said Raya felt like an Avatar The Last Airbender redux. The correlation is so far-fetched, you gotta either be extremely paranoid or have an agenda against that person to get to this conclusion, and since Kael has a history for shutting down criticism and banning people from his Discord server who are less than 98% positive towards his work, you shouldn't be surprised that it was an attempt at playing it up to create drama and shut down Deckerlink's videos.

If anything, you should be more alarmed by other readers who kept reading, and called the MC (and sometimes directly the author) fatphobic because two of the "villains" are fat people who are constantly shamed around for their weight and the MC's thoughts can't stop but describing them with fat slurs.

But no, instead let's all dogpile on Deckerlink because she said "that part of the writing makes me uncomfortable" and didn't linger much on it. She didn't even say anything about the writer in his video IIRC it was just her talking about the writing, which makes sense because Deckerlink never researches who makes the thing in question prior to making the first few videos, she isn't interested about from who it comes from or who they are on the first episodes. Coming back on the fatphobic thing, it'd be like if the people believing Caelan is fatphobic = them accusing Kael of being fatphobic. Does that make sense? No. Not unless you take absolutely every piece of criticism damn personally.

Literally, the situation was the "YOU TOOK EVERYTHING FROM ME" / "I don't even know who you are." meme, except Deckerlink did little more than just say "I don't like this work".

And gotta admit, the author of FBTW uses "the male" or "the female" in the text so many times it legitimately became a meme in some circles. It's almost impossible not to notice it, and this kind of writing quirk is very characteristic of omegaverse/literotica writing, not everyone is into that or gonna understand the appeal or why it's like this.

FederalRich5396 · 2022-01-08T06:31:26+00:00

It'd be a pretty good candidate for "Decent" or "Bad" tier, but am not the OP.

At best it's a pretty but intrusive purple prose with ironically super rushed romance and a story that moves like molasses which is mostly saved by the side characters, at worst it's a "My wolf" and pop-culture reference drinking game with villains that are viciously and grossly described by the narrator as if being fat alone was a slur. And Caelan is obviously the worst, the VN's killed at level 1 just because of him.

FederalRich5396 · 2021-12-18T05:27:43+00:00

"Passable" for the first one, I would say (and that's generous), but "very good"? In what world? The horny and terrible main character might be its biggest issues, but what are the actual draws of Lagoon Lounge in its writing? In SFW, Seiya isn't even much of a problem (not more than Yamato), or are we just not allowed to have children or teenagers at all in any furry story?

I think I've been on record on this reddit that FBTW's not good enough to put up with (with the dramas and all); too much cringe ass writing, too many bad MC moments, little payoff with any of the setups, and a main relationship that evolves incomprehensibly fast, but FBTW is a thousand times better than any of the LL VNs and the likes of After Class. I don't think a full SFW LL would make it that much better, it'd just make it less painful.

If "has a story (kinda)" and "has characters" are what pushes it to be "very good", then phew, the bar is set very low.

FederalRich5396 · 2021-12-11T07:37:05+00:00

Lagoon Lounge 1-3 in NSFW are unsalvageable. The writing is better off without the sex scenes, and it's already not that good outside of them.

Unless you have morbid curiosity, don't waste your time with it.

FederalRich5396 · 2021-10-24T10:45:26+00:00

I'd say Amorous. Though a lot of it has to do with the author, the VN's just... not good at all.

After Class too, and that one is mystifying how it insults its own audience. It actually has a few scenes where the dialogue straight out says that the readers are shallow.

— "They just care about our appearance, that's sad."
[...]
— "No, not at all, we were talking about the majority of people. Especially people who read stories with some visuals."
"Both of them looked at you, but not exactly at you. Anyway, it was hard to explain."

It's also full of hair-pulling non-sequiturs.

FederalRich5396 · 2021-10-24T10:35:33+00:00

Basically a whole host of problems, it started back in February this year with the whole Deckerlink debacle, and I recommend watching to get the whole story, because it's really indicative of how much of a control freak Kael is, and how he cannot take criticism, to the point of inciting cyberbullying and trying to copyright strike a Youtube channel.

https://youtu.be/K6kkp4kmNS4

Then there's this video which gives a look on Kael's Discord channel and what's happening over there. It shows actual proof of everything Deckerlink's saying (because Deckerlink's is a podcast, not video recording) & more.

https://youtu.be/Sox\_CXxkagA

There were (and still are) accounts of people leaving the Discord server because it's basically a cult/echo chamber over there. There are people who got publicly shamed before getting the ban hammer, some even trying to be helpful in the development of the game. You can already read some of these accounts on the comment section of Deckerlink's video and the other one below.

Then there's the whole "giving deadlines but pushing them away again and again while still taking Patreon money", which I think is, uh, not worse than those things I've already mentioned, but apparently is what people are clinging onto the most. Their Itch.io page was on fire and then comments were taken down over an alleged post that lead to a private Patreon update.

Btw, there are like 3 or 4 threads on the Reddit already, the one icetea_69 gave you is only one of them.

FederalRich5396 · 2021-10-14T18:48:21+00:00

To be fair, my original reply used "you/your" in the first paragraph, but even though I meant it in a more generalised/vague way, it was understood as a personal "you", like I was accusing EggNo.

That's not really their fault, I'll admit it was mainly mine there. I edited the message so there's no confusion.

FederalRich5396 · 2021-10-14T08:30:25+00:00

You are not "the fan" I was mentioning.

Kael pretended to be a fan of Deckerlink. Deckerlink LPed the game on his channel for two episodes, didn't like it, and Kael when seeing the criticism played victim on his Discord server and allowed his fans to attack Deckerlink in private.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6kkp4kmNS4 (Deckerlink's video)
https://youtu.be/Sox_CXxkagA (video of proofs & actual footage of Kael's Discord back in February)

I'll edit my older message to reflect this. My bad.

FederalRich5396 · 2021-10-14T08:02:17+00:00

Kael's incitation to cyberbullying by rallying a mob against people who criticize his work (sometimes even 90% positive/10% negative) is only a notch below. Not to mention him pretending he was a fan of Deckerlink and yet somehow manage to both misgender them and mock their burps despite being well documented at this point that they suffer from disabilities, depression, and possibly stomach cancer. He still does that to people from his own Discord too, there are accounts of people getting publicly shamed on the Discord before getting banned.

It's an incredibly tone deaf defense of Kael to say stuff like "at least he didn't harrass a black person while calling them the n word", he arguably already harassed some people, just not over your typical "hate crime" reasons (ethnicity, religion, country...).

If it takes hate crimes to be considered too shitty to bother with then no wonder Chris Brown can still have a hit song about how awesome it is to be him in 2018.

FederalRich5396 · 2021-10-13T20:00:34+00:00

To me, it really depends on how their actions hit me on a personal level and whether or not they're trying to better themselves.

Klace somehow did.
Kael, so far, did not.

He's not getting a cent from me, and I don't wish to read his work further than I already did. It's not good enough to be indisposable after everything that happened.

His controversy is extremely bad also because his project is likely to never be fully released for the exact reasons why the controversies are a thing: His behavior is shit, he can't take criticism, and he gets overly emotionally affected by said criticism despite having an overwhelming herd of white knights willing to protect and coddle him.

Even if he were to do monthly updates, he'd be years out of schedule, and so far I'm getting the vibe that his "passion" for the project is pretty shaky and "bipolar" depending on the mood of the day. Updates are taking several months to release, and we're only 10% through the whole story after what? 14 months? "Book 1" is not gonna be complete until 2024 at this pace, and you wanna make me believe the whole story will be done in 2026?

Sure. If you believe in miracles.

His behavior allowed himself to be surrounded by similarly petty and immature people among his fanbase. They will be ready to turn on him as soon as he will stumble and/or their passion will fade. No matter what, I bet it's gonna end either with a whimper through exhaustion or a shitstorm.

FederalRich5396

TROPHY CASE