EVN Chronicles First Anniversary Rant & Annoucements

tl;dr: I'll be switching to one post per two weeks, to avoid burnout and focus on RL responsibilities more. I'm moderately content with the place the blog is nowadays and hope to continue it ad infinitum. I might also mix in some random otaku-media-related posts outside of the usual time brackets, to keep things interesting for myself. If you're interested, enjoy the lengthy rant below!

Hello and welcome to the EVN Chronicles first-anniversary overview & announcements post, where I'll be doing a bit of a summary of my experience of writing this blog for the last 12+ months and outline my plans for the future. A little bit over a year ago, in June 2018, I've decided to move my blog, then called Pride of the West, from being hosted exclusively on Fuwanovel Forums. This came after eight months of posting reviews and commentary about EVNs every week, channelling my newfound passion for the medium. Apart from my own enjoyment, that project was explicitly oriented towards one goal – fighting the negative stereotypes about non-JP visual novels and promoting the quality games within the EVN niche. While it was EVNs that introduced me to visual novel formula and got me hooked on them, I realized that many people in the core VN community still considered them universally trash – poor, uninspired imitations of their Japanese predecessors, with only handful of exceptions being even worthy of a closer look. The idea I wished to change, at least within the context of discussions on Fuwa itself.

As dead as the site is nowadays, Fuwanovel still holds a great community, to which I owe much of passion for VNs, and which encouraged me in writing about them, in a major way

While I was, and still am extremely grateful to everything that the Fuwanovel community offered me, the slow decay of the site itself and the lack of control over my content made me realize that I can't rely on it as my only platform, even if I'm doing it just for the fun of it. This led to me establishing this humble site on Blogger, while also changing the brand I wasn't fully – the weirdly supremacist-sounding Pride of the West became EVN Chronicles, slowly fleshing out its new identity and formula, with gimmicks such as Shovelware Adventures series and somewhat standardized game jam coverage. Since then I had great fun writing posts every week and polishing the often rough, old content from Fuwa, but also kind of stressing myself out with keeping the schedules and staying even marginally relevant within the VN community (mostly through Reddit activity, as Fuwa's deterioration was only progressing, even if I'm still one of the most active members there).

At that same time, I've launched two affiliated activities – a Twitter account and a Steam Curator profile. All of it, by most measures, grossly unsuccessful: over the year, my blog had gathered 50k pageviews, mostly from sharing my articles from Reddit. I've earned around 150 Twitter followers, including a few genuinely paying attention to what I post and over 190 Steam followers – rather miserable numbers for sucha long period of uninterupted activity, but kind of expected considering the ultra-niche nature of what I do. I've also received, over time, progressively more positive feedback and got contacted by many developers willing to send me review copies – along with the experience of making interviews with people such as NomnomNami, Zetsubou or ebi-hime, it was probably the most satisfying part of the experience and I really cherish some of the contacts I've gathered over this period. I've also spend embarassing amount of time mindlessly watching Blogger stats, but I'm sure if you ever made a site or blog of your own, you've been there too...

Statssss, my precioussss statssss...

So, what all of this means for the future? First, during all this time, I kind of put my real life on hold, while I was dealing with some family and personal issues, but can't afford to focus on the blog this much for another year or two. Writing on a weekly basis also made it hard for me to tackle longer titles or just read VNs for fun, something I'd definitely want to reclaim. Thus, for the foreseeable future, I'll be switching to one post every two weeks, with possible extra material posted whenever I find time and energy to write something extra. I'm not the fastest reader or writer, having to deal with my dyslexia every step of the way, so the previous schedule was taxing, to the point I'm not exactly sure how I managed to keep it up for this long. On the other hand, this means some of my projects, like my next Yuri Game Jam coverage, will take the form of one longer post, instead of a few shorter ones. I'll also want to make an odd post from time to time, with various ideas, such as reviewing RWBY or writing about my experience with Japanese music, following me for a while now. In the end, this is not a commercial site, but my personal blog and I have to keep it interesting for myself, just as I strive to make it fun to read.
          There's also something very personal about this site and how I approach it, that I think I should talk about a little bit. For many years, I've been dealing with my compulsive video game habits, eating the vast majority of my free time and energy, and eventually killing off any more creative hobby I picked up along the way. My transferring to otaku media, including VNs that prioritize interesting narratives over time-burning gameplay, was a way to cope with limiting my involvement with "traditional" games and working to change some parts of my lifestyle. The blog was a huge part of this process, which, for the most part, turned out successful. For this reason alone, it's not something I could imagine myself fully dropping any time soon. It provided me with a lot of fun and encouregment, and I want to thank anyone that followed my work this far – you made this possible and while it might not be obvious from the previous paragraphs, it means a world to me. The whole VN community turned it interesting and inspiring probably more than any other group I got into over the web, and it's hard to express how happy I am that I decided to dive into this niche. And I hope you'll be willing to join me in next chapters of this silly, self-indulgent journey through the world of EVNs – there's still a lot, a lot to write about here and a lot of fun to be had. ^^