I know this is supposed (?) to be mainly a game review blog, but it takes more brainpower to describe my opinions on games in legible sentences than to just squee over cute plushies, so I’m going to list the plushies I’ve made over the last year in this post and the resources I used to make them. I don’t want to make this post too long, just going to make some general comments on my journey. If you want to read more details, I have a group ofthreads on twitter where I talked about the steps of making each plushie.

Ser bites-a-lot fur5mm minky #71 アイスブル ー patterncholyknight starter pack level 3	Eiden hair 5mm minky #65 ブラウン skin 1mm minky ソフトボア ホワイトピーチ patternMiNi盒子 10 cm	Yakumo hair 5mm minky 37 ダークブラウン skin 1mm minky pink skin patternMiNi盒子 10 cm
Tamamori hair 5mm minky Black 50 skin 1mm minky White skin pattern Jinlan 20 cm	Kawase (for friend 1) hair 3mm minky Black 220 skin 1mm minky White skin pattern Jinlan 20 cm	Kawase (for friend 2) hair 3mm minky Black 220 skin 1mm minky White skin pattern Jinlan 20 cm
Vash hair 5mm minky Blonde 03 skin1mm minky スキンパフ pattern from MiNi盒子 (10 cm starfish ver)	Wolfwood hair 5mm minky Black 50 skin1mm minky テラコッタベージュ pattern from MiNi盒子 (10 cm starfish ver)	Beniyuri hair 5mm minky Red 18 skin 1mm minky ソフトボア ホワイトピーチ patternMiNi盒子 20 cm
Kuyaball fur5mm faux rabbit fur 雪青 pattern self made, based oncholyknight Eeveelution Blob	Blobkumo skinmochi minky black 35, orange 26 pattern self made, based on orange part fromcholyknight	Kuya hair1mm minky color 88 skinnuilex ライトフレッシュ N-1475 patternIto10 cm simple version (パーツ簡略版) reduced 80%
Yakumo hair (had to stock twice)shop one brown 2 orange 4,shop two brown 14 orange 19 skin1mm minky 泛粉皮肤布 patternpiyopicco book 20 cm	Eiden hair 5mm minky #65 ブラウン skin 1mm minky A340 Ear and tail1cm faux rabbit fur color 04 patternpiyopicco book 20 cm

In the last couple of months I’ve gotten into plush making, rebelling against the injustice of my favorite characters not getting official nuigurumis. I had to scour the internet and pick up a lot of info from here and there, so I decided to list all the steps to make a plush for the sake of fellow fans who want to make their little blorbos. So here goes!  ٩(^ᗜ^ )و ´-

1. Choose your skin fabric and hair fabric(s). Usually the fabrics used to make the skin of the dolls have1-1.5mm long hair, while the fabrics for hair can be anything from 3-5mm to super long 8+ mm. In the below pic, the rightmost 2 are for skin and the rest are for hair.
   
   As for material, there are many choices: minky, velboa, fleece, faux fur etc. and it’s easy to get a little confused because of language barriers.
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Today’s post is about “Locolocca -da capo-“, a dark, free doujin otome game (though in my personal opinion it’s just a horror story with a female protagonist and a single romantic interest, hardly any tropes you find in “romance”) by Japanese doujin otome game creator Kirue. Most games by Kirue are dark, and many of them have at least one yandere hero in the story. Despite being a free game made with minimal resources, the story of this game really punched me in the guts and I want to share that feeling with others~ So I’m going to narrate the whole story of the game in this post, making it less a review and more a complete summary. As usual, expect raging and memes in the middle of story description.

For anyone curious, you can download the gamehere on freem! and enjoy it along with me. Before you start reading: this game is all about craziness and psychological horror, the “romance” isn’t fluffy in any way and there areno happy endings. 💣😱🔪You have been warned 👍

(Note: Our protagonist’s name is Vega by default so I left it at that.)

The game begins with Vega waking up and immediately being greeted by this weird teddy bear which claims to be her guide and seems to know her name. We get choice right from the get go about whether to go back to sleep or to say that I’m not sleepy. During my first playthrough I plan to pick all the stupid choices, so I’m just going to saying that I’m going back to sleep. But as soon as I do so, Vega is assaulted by a sudden headache which reminds me of Alice from the heart no kuni series.

She hears this disembodied voice saying“You cannot sleep, there’s something you must do right?”, whereas the teddy bear seems to be encouraging her to stay asleep. It mocks for trying to go out even though she does not know what she wants to go, but quickly changes gears and says it’s going to teach her where she needs to go.

“There’s something you must do,that’s why you must go. Isn’t that so?”

I’ve been writing on this blog for quite a long time, but haven’t really shared much about my thoughts outside of game specific opinions. So I decided to write a bit about my preferences regarding plot (mostly otome, occasional BL mention) and characterization quality of visual novels(though I ended up mostly bitching about things that annoy me lol)

Warning: bitching, hating on sexism, mentions of nsfw, strong opinions and politically incorrect vibes, vague shittalking to avoid spoilers

Twilight is a Japanese free otome I played last year (you can get it fromfreem) and liveblogged on discord, but never got to making a full-fledged review. It was fully voiced (only mc partially voiced) with pretty nice art and a somewhat crazy yandere plot (no vampires here though, just only lolicon herbalists), so I figured I could edit my crazy comments into a somewhat readable form in this post.

Finally, the trip down the memory lane ends :’) This last tweet compilation covers mostly Megane Katsuya x Midou route from the fandisc, with a few comments about Honda x Normal Katsuya. (also some links to me crying on tumblr and makingpie charts for personality analysis lmaooooo)

Catching up! This part will cover mostly Taichi’s route, next part should be the last (from 2016 at least, maybe I’ll play again)!

After several years, I’m putting together the tweets up to Midou’s ending with Megane Katsuya XD. Better late than never yeah?

February 2022 has been a pretty blessed month for BL game enthusiasts with Slow Damage preview, UuultraC release date announcement and Tokyo Onmyoji release, but the one that has given the greatest shock (the pleasant kind) so far has been NU: carnival, an NSFW Husbando Collector BL gacha game! It’s made by a pretty new Taiwanese developer and available for mobile platforms only (I’m playing it using Bluestacks emulator though, it’s running perfectly smooth) with some browser access (only Safari). The game opened for preregistration in December 2021 and was simultaneously released in English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean language with Japanese voice acting on February 24, 2022. While the game isn’t 100% voiced (sex scenes are fully voiced with animated movements and uncensored xxxx which I’ve never seen in a BL game), the voice cast is surprisingly professional and one of the big reasons I was drawn to the game.

The mc is voiced by my favorite voice actor Netoru whom you probably have heard in my Paradise posts as Azuma, the man is so freaking talented <333 As soon as I saw him in the cast, I was really hoping that we’d get a reversible protagonist but trying not to be too hopeful because Japanese games always seem to prefer fixed roles, but BASED TAIWAN DEVS WENT AND DID IT! Eiden (fixed protagonist name in English, the in-game characters call him “Eito” which I suppose is his name in jp) is a gay man who is very flexible and open-minded in regards to sex, you will experience zero “no homo” situations in this game from his side 🥰🥰🥰

The full cast (voice preview vidhere)

Hello friends! I have been having lots of hashihime feels lately, so here is the translation of a Minakami/Tamamori short story from BL visual novel Hashihime of the Old Book Town, developed by ADELTA and localized to English by Mangagamer. This particular story set 2 years after the ending of Minakami’s route was published in the artbook of the game and is described from Minakami’s POV. I love how he’s letting himself be more cheeky~

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~After the Storm~
______________________________________

The nightingales were already chirping by the time I woke up.
When I open my eyelids slightly, a shining spring garden greets my vision.
The rain seems to have stopped during the night.

With both the sliding doors to the living room and the glass doors to the garden left open, the cool outside air enters the room directly.
My hands that are lying beside me no longer have Tamamori’s warmth in them.
He definitely was in my arms during the night though.

I wonder where he went.
When I raise my upper body and look around, I find my change of clothes messily folded by the pillow.

The nightingales are still chirping.
Standing on the eaves, I can see the footprints continuing from the garden to the outside.

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This is a small update on the translation project of a free short otome game I previously mentioned inthis post and some more sneak peeks. (The game seems to removed now, probably because the creator seems to be moving to a different website, but they gave me permission to translate beforehand.)

(EDIT: Will update video Later)

The common route is finished, now moving on to the route stories. Although the system text are all still Japanese in this video, I have a graphic designer friend working on them 😉

Other than the system image translation, I’m doing this by myself and the game is pretty short (<30 min), but if anyone who has played and enjoyed this game wants to join me in translating you’re most welcome to comment here or email me at aurora6290@gmail.com! The game also got aremake with a new protagonist, I will try to contact the author after this project is finished to see if I can translate that as well.

Last year Hashihime of Old Book Town (Koshotengai no Hashihime) got a manga adaption that is still being released on the Cool-B magazines. At the time of this post, I believe there have been chapters on issues 93, 94, 95, 98, and 99. I joined some of my fellow peeps at thehashihime discord to translate these chapters, and we just released the first chapter 😉 You can check it out online or download from mediafire if that’s more your thing.

Title: Hashihime of Old Book Town
Chapter title: The start of a strange book
Pairing: None
Artist: itonoco
Download: ZIP 
Read Online:bato.to, Imgur

~~Credits~~

Raws: no_aiz
Cleaner: Ayuuka
Translator:  no_aiz
Typesetter:  Vocaotome
Quality checker: Rhys, Casey, Vocaotome

The comic does not try to cover the whole plot of the visual novel. Each chapter is an oneshot, featuring both gen and pairing stories that are mostly original scenes with occasional retelling of scenes in the VN. I think this is a great approach, much better than the SUPER short summary the Paradise comic went for (despite my grumbling I’m hoping to translate that too eventually because Mitsugi uwu).

Information pulled from the supplementary materials book, the homepage Q/A, and also Twitter Q/As.

General:

• On the game cover/main menu, Tamamori is reading Minakami’s notebook and trying to hold back tears of bitterness and jealousy over Kyuusaku.
• At first the kanji for “saving” Minakami was normal「救う」, then it changed to 「掬う」 that supposedly comes from 「金魚掬い」 , the game of catching goldfish. Combine that with how Tamamori’s pet goldfish seems to mirror Minakami’s death and the fact that Minakami was a goldfish during his first life …. Minakami, forever the fishy in our hearts ❤
• Kawase did NOT want to kill Tamamori to cover up his father’s murder like many believe. According to the databook, the sequence of events was like this:

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I finished this free Japanese indie game called Last Request (download it atfreem!) over the weekend and it looked really pro with beautiful CGs and fully voiced (!!) characters, so I decided to review it (•̀ᴗ•́)و ̑̑

The story was short but pretty well-constructed with logical worldbuilding which was enough to reel me in. It wasn’tsuper deep but still had good writing that flowed naturally and made me and my friends emotional, so I think it definitely was worth the time (~1 hour without any break or more if you take frequent breaks like me to scream at friends)

The main character Amane is seen returning home in the first scene, when he feels the presence of someone and wonders if it’s a stalker. This dark haired guy appears and claims to be a demon who’d fulfill a wish in exchange for his soul.

Amane is like “wow this idiot” lol.

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I decided to start up a translation project for a shortfree game named 純正優男  (”Genuine Gentlemen” ??) because of its funny and proactive MC. The creator has already accepted my request to translate, so there’s nothing to stop me! (except RL responsibilities orz)

I already added a couple of English lines and tested out it in game, the preview can be seen here!

I’m doing all of this by myself and the game is pretty short, but if anyone who has played and enjoyed this game wants to join me in translating you’re most welcome to comment here or email me at aurora6290@gmail.com! 

Hello everyone, today I bring you a translation of the Kawase/Tamamori short story (R18) from the BL visual novel Hashihime of the Old Book Town, developed by ADELTA and localized to English by Mangagamer. The story was published onADELTA’s official website, so there shouldn’t be any problem to share it with the English fandom.

This is the first half to the story that is described from Tamamori’s POV, the same events are also explained from Kawase’s POV in the second half (that I hope I can translate soon). This story was also included in “Koshotengai no Hashihime NOMA”, the PlayStation Vita release of Hashihime, but the Vita release is not translated yet and the R18 content content of the short story was not included there.

Okay, let’s get started without further ado!

______________________________
“Your eyes are so lovely” First Half
​(Tamamori POV)
______________________________

Imperial Theatre.
It was the name of the first stage where “Tokyo-bushi” was performed.[T/N: Tokyobushi Marching Through Georgia Enka – This popular song was composed in 1919 and was a big hit.]
It’s a song that’s full of nothing but “lively” descriptions of the imperial capital, covering everything from the daily activities of people to things like the Juunikai and the public flower garden.[T/N: Asakusa juunikai 浅草十二回, also called Ryōunkaku tower, Japan’s first western-style skyscraper.]
So, to have its name mentioned in that song, and to even have the first showing hosted here, it goes without saying that the Imperial Theater was very “lively”.

And here I am, inside this renaissance theater, sitting down in the smack-middle of the first class seats.

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I frequently yell about my gaming experiences in difference social media and have to dig them up later to write game reviews in my blogs, so I use a bunch of free open source programs to export my conversations along with any pictures/videos I had shared.  I sometimes forget the names myself and I also want to help others who need these functions, so I decided to write a post listing them all. If there is interest, I might even make some tutorials in the future.

All of the following programs except DiscordChatExporterand DMarchiver do not require you to have an account in that platform.

Note:CLImeans Command Line Interface, so you have to open a command line prompt and type in parameters manually.GUI means Graphical User Interface, most software have GUIs where you have a regular graphical interface to click and select options instead of typing.

• DownloadDiscord chats/media (from servers or DMs):DiscordChatExporter
• DownloadTwitter Photos:Twitter Media DownloaderExtension removed from chrome store
• DownloadTwittermessages (CLI):DMarchiver Broken due to Twitter Update (23 Sep 2020)
• DownloadTwitter tweets (CLI):Optimized fork of GetOldTweets 
  Another option can be to use the latest development version ofsnscrape instead. Python 3.8 or higher must be installed for this. Refer to the instructions at the end of this post if needed.
  (In addition to Twitter, snscrape also supportsFacebook, Reddit, Telegram, VKontakte and Weibo, so if you use those platforms (I don’t) you can check it out as well!)
• DownloadTumblr Images, Videos, Posts, Ask answers (GUI):TumblThree
• Bonus: DownloadPixiv artwork by member id, artwork id or hashtag usingPixivUtil2. It’s pretty easy to use, but make sure you setup the config.ini file properly first according to the FAQ part of readme. I recommend using the “Get cookies.txt locally” extension to easily get PHPSESSID.

Both TumblThree and GetOldTweets (also snscrape) allow you to specify tags, date range and the option to include or exclude reblogs/retweets, which makes them much better than the other similar options available on github. Also for DiscordChatExporter you need a token which sometimes can be hard to copy, so make sure you read the FAQ.

Alright, let’s keep this post nice and short. I hope some people are helped by this list 🙂

23/09/2020 edit:

For anyone who’s having trouble with snscrape:

1. Download python 3.8 (I use miniconda)
2. Open command prompt and enter:

   pip install --upgrade git+https://github.com/JustAnotherArchivist/snscrape@master
   

3. Make sure you aren’t in C:\Windows or some other sensitive location, changing location with the cd command if necessary.
   cd PATHTODESKTOP
Here PATHTODESKTOP is something like “C:\Users\YOURACCOUNTNAME\Desktop”.
4. Then enter the following , where USERTODLFROM is the twitter handle you want without the @ sign. The –max-results 10 part is purely optional, you can just not include it or change the number to something else. 
   snscrape --max-results 10 --jsonl twitter-user USERTODLFROM > mytweets.json

   Instead of users, you can also search hashtags.
   snscrape --since "2020-09-10 12:00:00" -jsonl twitter-hashtag HASHTAGTODLFROM > mytweets.json

   There’s no proper documentation on how to include multiple parameters and stuff, but this is what I figured out. You can check outthis article to change the parameters between the quotes.
   snscrape --jsonl twitter-search "@USERTODLFROM #HASHTAGTODLFROM since:2020-09-01 until:2020-09-25"> mytweets.json

5. You’ll get a .json file, which can be converted to easily viewable .csvhere.

I don’t know why I played Megane Katsuya version of Midou route and Taichi route (only Normal Katsuya can date Taichi) at the same time back then lol. 2016 voca was indecisive. This part will cover all of Midou’s route except the ending (too many tweets, continued in the next part).

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Extracting JP text from PSP games running on PPSSPP emulator was considered to be only a pipedream until the amazing Jiichi added PPSSPP support to his text hooker program Visual Novel Reader (VNR) back in July 2014. Until a few years back ,a lot of people including myself used VNR for this purpose, but after some time VNR support for PPSSPP came to a halt, and eventually the its server died (the offline program was partially dependent on it). Eventually there was anew server, but the software is still outdated and buggy, and windows 10 updates broke the program for me and many others. There is still the option to download

I have been looking for VNR alternativesfor a long time even when VNR was alive because of how resource intensive it was. Back in 2014 the closest thing I had found was thisawseome person’s blogwhere they made a custom text hooker exclusively for Daiya no Kuni no Alice and a more general workaround using Cheat Engine. Now I have found 2 possible options that still work in 2020 and would like to share them with you all 🙂

EDIT: After I published this post, I found that there have been improvements to the Cheat Engine workaround and it can be considered a valid alternative to ITHVNR/Textractor for tricky games. Feel free to check out thestep by step manual here. I’ll cover my experiences with it in a future post.

Starting the JP screenshots from this part!

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