Echo's Estate

it gives you a chance to learn to budget in hard times,

Yup, well I'm off to bed have some errands in the morning

Mkay gnite.

I swear its like everyone wants to talk when im not here

Is that Erza in your avi?

It is, she is lovely isn't she?

Welcome to another edition of Echo Rants!

I had been doing some thinking today. Some are not to be said here, but there is one branch of thought I wanted to share as I feel like it wishes to be heard.

I... have been lead to a true realization of what makes a story worthwhile, of what makes a story good. I will explain since simply saying a single word like "everything" doesn't really cover it.

For a long time now I have been very upset with stories that purposefully avoid certain things. This is especially true of sexuality. Characters that walk around as if they are pure innocent children that haven't hit puberty. That is only one example but even that doesn't fully describe the distaste I have for such stories.

It feels like stories that avoid topics they find "difficult" or some other god awful term like "family friendly" that would make me want to vomit. These stories have litterally torn the soul from their creations reaping any semblance of true humanity they would have.

That is a good word for this, for what I want to see. I want to see true humanity. Humans bearing the full force of all that they are thrown into a life that emphasizes and takes advantage of that humanity.

Humans are so many many things. Happiness, sadness, joy, despair, kindness, cruelty, fear, hope, greed, generosity, anger, tranquility, love and lust. There are so many many things that make a human a human. I want to see this, all of this, I want to see humans being human. Humans that are, for a lack of a better phrase, uncut and uncensored.

To continue using the most obvious example, sexuality is a key part of the human condition . It is in our basest genes to seek out the opposite sex to reproduce. The overwhelming pleasure that can come from the act is something that is, safe to say , legendary. To see a story that has not a shred of this, of this all consuming human desire, that is not a story worth reading.

The same goes for anything of course. A world where all men are complete scum of the earth who have not a shred of decency in them is just as nauseating as its opposite. I want to see people. Real, complete, people. You take these complete people and put them in a life that challenges their humanity. From that you get all the important things like drama, comedy, suspense and whatever other word you could think of using. This is how you make a story worth telling and this is not something I see enough of.

A interesting addition to this topic is how I was lead to this chain of thought. You see I finally got to undertaking a full play through of the English patched Taimanin Asagi 3. If anyone is familiar with the Taimanin series and with Lilith eroge in general then you know that they are pretty much all about the sex. Amazing artwork, astounding ahegao, intense and hard core sex scenes, these are well known to be the core of what makes a Lilith production a Lilith production.

Something like storyline is typically seen as mostly pointless and only useful for setting up even sex scenes to be more sexy. However, as I was getting farther into the game I realized that I was actually not simply waiting for the next sex scene but honestly wanting to know how the plot was going to turn out. Since I had never really looked at what was basically a nukige in this light before I decided to rank it in terms of stories with other visual novels I have played.

In someways the results aren't surprising, but in other ways they are very surprising. What I mean by that is that Asagi 3 falls far behind such giants of story telling like Muv Luv. Which is not surprising since its likely near impossible to overcome what I see as the greatest story ever told. But what is surprising is that it stands out as having a better plot then many other visual novels. Ive played between 20 to 25 of what I would call story focused visual novels. If I counted series and things like trilogies, such as Muv Luv, as only one entry in the ranking then I would put Taimanin Asagi 3, a nukige, at number 7.

So that means that at least 13 supposedly story focused visual novels don't have a plot as engaging as a series that has often been about things like how many grotesque tentacles can you fit in Asagi's ass. Think about that for a second.

Next I want to mention something I think played a big role in helping the story be as good as it was. I think far far too many people underestimate how potent this is for a story. Length, too often I hear people complain about how long a series is and that it should be shorter. What they don't understand is that being longer gives more time for more development. You can create you characters to be even more human with more time and not only that but give them more interesting situations to test their humanity.

Taimanin Asagi 3 is as the name says, the third in a trilogy, although to be completely honest it should really be looked at as the 4th. Taimanin Murasaki is a must play before playing Asagi 3. So these characters and thier continuing stories have been crafted over 4 games. Looking at all the top ranked visual novels they are all extremely long and/or have multiple entries (with the exception of just one).

It feels like Asagi 3 was finally able to fully take all its built up lore and back story and bring it into a major climactic conflict. Since the game really does play out like a final end to their tales. Yes I know there is Zero coming out but if you played TA3 you would know what I mean.

I am deeply, deeply impressed by the path Lilith has taken with this game. It really felt like they were trying to be so much more then just a porn. Now I know this has kind of turned into my review of Asagi 3. But here is where im going to at last make a connection.

This might sound like im being extremely biased or just stupid and maybe I am but the characters in the Taimanin series feel like more complete people then any story that tries to make everything G rated and family friendly. This humanity is what I had been talking about originally.

Now before you jump to conclusions Im not about to say that you have to have over the top hardcore sex scenes to show a story full of humanity. But what I am saying is showing a cast of characters that are turned into sex crazed pig slaves by villains at every opportunity IS more human then a bunch of people that are supposedly humans show absolutely zero sense of sexuality or desire. Basically one extreme is for sure better then the other extreme. Of course you probably shouldn't be shooting for extremes anyway

Well I guess thats enough of a rant for this time. Be sure to tune in again.

PS: Play the Taimanin games

Boy that was a lot to read...

wouldn't be a Echo Rant if it wasn't. Was it at least interesting?

tl;dr man.

Your loss

If it's just you ranting then I haven't missed much.

but you'll never know unless you read it now will you?

I suppose but story don't matter to me when it comes to fapping.

For some people. But either way that doesn't mean you can't have something that has a good story and be fappable

But you said it was a rant lol

Also I had just read Enos lengthy post right before I discovered you.

I know it's just not a big deal for me.

I have returned!

I love Echo as a friend!
Where's part 4?!?!?

You were away?