Discussion Creator / VoltageInc

I split the example list into folders — Both, Voltage Inc, and Voltage USA.

I wonder if it might not be time to reorganize into articles for the two portal apps, Love 365 and Lovestruck. It seems that all of the Voltage and Voltage USA titles are being either folded into the respective portal apps or removed from publication completely, and they have definitely diverged significantly in themes and tropes since the days when Voltage USA just put out Westernized adaptations of the Japanese Voltage games.

It would be a bit of a project, but the portal apps have a defined sense of branding that was not there at the time this article was originally set up, and I think it would make sense to shift the focus to them rather than collecting everything under the parent company.

Thoughts?

It would make for easier troping of things such as the Pride and Halloween specials and the April Fools story.

I've drafted preliminary Lovestruck and Love 365 articles in the sandbox namespace. If these seem OK, I can launch them and revise the main company article appropriately.

Looks good. I turned off indexing on them for now, though.

Could Arc Villain apply as a common Lovestruck trope? I haven't played enough of the titles to get a sense of that.

Hmm. Havenfall definitely seems to feature a lot of one- or two-season arc villains, and I think there are a decent amount of Starship Promise villains who also qualify.

The antagonists in L&L and Villainous Nights are all part of a larger long-term threat, and in what I have played of Castaway there's rarely an actual villain character at all; the conflict in that one seems to be much more man vs nature.

I haven't really explored enough of Astoria, Speakeasy, or Gangsters to be sure of those. I think there are at least some examples in each, but I couldn't really name specifics.

So basically I'm in the same boat as you, and not much help.

I'm not sure about the namespaces, so I just asked on the forum.

As I probably should have done before I launched them, aheh. My decision was based mostly on the fact that all of Voltage USA's interaction with the fanbase now occurs using the Lovestruck name rather than the company name, but it's true that the apps are more properly product than creator. We'll see what the forum response is, and adjust accordingly if need be.

I'm unconvinced, I have to say. I think that insofar as "plain" ever comes up, it's mostly to make the character more approachable as a self-insert, rather than any actual comment on her appearance.

Also, Hollywood Homely feels like a very visual trope to me. The audience has to see that the actor is nowhere near as unremarkable as the narrative makes them out to be. Since the protagonist is featureless by definition (see: self-insert character) I can't make a case for it applying.

Also, it's an Audience Reaction. We don't list these on a per-creator basis.

I'm voting swapping for consistency. The translations tend to make it very clear that the characters in question are Japanese, but they try to localize what they can (sometimes).

Regarding spoilers: I'd say putting a spoiler warning at the top seems reasonable. Aside from their archetypes (Voltage loves some archetypes) any other information revealed about some of the love interests ( Ren comes to mind) could certainly count for major spoilers for the storylines in questions.

Sorry for lateness of reply. Discussion pages. Watchlists. Grumblemumble. Also, I am sleep deprived. If this becomes a rambly mess, please kick me and I'll clarify.

Anywho! Yeah, the difference can get a bit jarring, but as Joie so reasonably pointed out when I noted the discrepancies in Metro PD: It'd be difficult to prove Depending on the Writer one way or the other. Interpretative Character feels like it refers to a character as interpreted by several different creators, though I could have misread the trope description.

Anyway, there's some wiggle room in how the cast behaves depending on whose route you're on, as damn near every main route in every game will have the protagonist squeeing internally about how she gets to see a side of her guy that no one else does. I submit that characters will have traits of their personality emphasised or downplayed depending on what's needed to drive the plot forward.

I think Koichi has the thankless task of being the "bad guy" in a story about infidelity/divorce. It's to the writers' credit that he never gets outright demonised (indeed, the "cheating" routes usually eventually show him as screwed up but human), but he has to be a dick so the protagonist is justified in leaving him. Villainy-Free Villain?

Tl;dr - I agree with your points for the most part, but without actual confirmation of Depending on the Writer, we can't make statements one way or the other.

It's ok, there was also the nice big holiday recently. I think everyone was on break.

I feel like there should be a trope for this somewhere, maybe in the recesses of Choose Your Own Adventure style games, or maybe the Visual Novels related things. I'll have to dig. I'm not familiar with the wider visual novels genre (particularly from Japan), so I'm also not sure if this is something specific to Voltage, or whether it can be found more widely in different mediums as well. If it's the later case, I'm not sure how to present it. Will have to think on this. New Personality as the Plot Demands?

I second that motion for Koichi, although his level of screwed-upness, how he displays it, and how actively he antagonized the MC varies pretty widely. (See claiming he never found her attractive vs largely ignoring her and not protesting when she leaves him vs having a Love Epiphany followed by I Want My Beloved to Be Happy and releasing the protagonist to run off with the guy she wants to be with vs getting his act together in his own route, for a given value of 'getting his act together').

I think there's sufficient content available across the games for a Nightmare Fuel page for Voltage. Honestly, if some of these games didn't run so much on Fetish Fuel and Romanticised Abuse, they'd be the stuff of horror stories and would require serious Trigger Warning Disclaimers before playing. A lot of it from just the premise/prologue, never mind the individual routes....

Love Letter from Thief X The place you've worked at quietly for years gets robbed during your shift, with the robbers getting up close and personal with you before saying you'll see them again. Under normal circumstances that's bad enough. But the robbers have left a calling card in your mail, they took note of who you are and where you live, and when they show up they kidnap you at gunpoint. They definitely have an idea of 'moral' that differs from your own (heck, they had no qualms kidnapping you and threatening you), play fast and loose with the law, and have no problem taking you along into life threatening situations that will get you into definite legal trouble if caught, even though you're being coerced.

The fantasticness of the setting aside, there's some Nightmare Fuel of the more mundane variety sprinkled throughout the game as well. Kenshi's route is made of Adult Fear, with facing the death of your parents and a spouse who handles a dangerous job (both Kenshi's father, and Kenshi himself). Riki has an Ill Girl sister whose surgery may save her life, or kill her, and an abusive father. Takuto has some serious Parental Abandonment issues, to the point where the one thing that terrifies him more than the protagonist dying is the protagonist leaving him; a lot of his 'funny' antics and possessiveness are one hair shy of If I Can't Have You… and I'm not entirely unconvinced that Takuto isn't mentally ill in some fashion. Atsumu's wife was Stuffed in the Fridge. Hiro's family is just... messed up.

With some additional Fridge Horror: In some of the storylines, the things your Grandfather made are legitimately dangerous (one is a potential nuclear weapon), and you're the only key keeping these things out of the hands of some morally bankrupt people. One wonders why he'd set up his five year old granddaughter to be the key, instead of his own children, but your parents are never mentioned (aside from some implications that you had an otherwise normal childhood, they seem to play no role in your adult life), nor are any aunts or uncles or extended family mentioned. Possibly because as disruptive/abusive as the Black Foxes can be, the people after your grandfather's inventions may have already offed the rest of your family trying to get to said inventions. Your family tree was slowly pruned over the years from improbable accidents or health problems. The reason the Black Foxes go so far to keep tabs on you is You're The Last One Left.

Enchanted in the Moonlight You're going about your business when one day you narrowly escape/are rescued from a series of deadly accidents, these guys show up in your back yard, someone's trying to kill you, and the only way to save your life is to become a brood mare to one of these strange men. You don't know any of them, you don't have the time or the option to get to know any of them before picking. And someone you thought of as a friend (Samon) for possibly years has really been sent to spy on you. Any choices you make are essentially a privilege allowed to you to keep you complacent, and it's no secret that they could kidnap you if so inclined, and there's nothing anyone would be able to do to stop it. Miyabi's route in particular felt very rapey.

Kissed by the Baddest Bidder Highly illegal - and dangerous - activities are a lot closer to you than you would think, and all it takes is an accident to wind up in the crossfire of gangsters, thieves, cults, and immoral business practices. Human trafficking is alive and well in Japan, and you're hardly the last person to be sold at the secret auctions. You were only the first. While you're saved from being raped by a member of the audience, the man you end up with is complicit in what happened to you, and what happens to the people who aren't saved. Furthermore, these people are well off enough, or are indifferent enough to the money, that the auctions don't make a significant difference in their finances (possible exception: Soryu). The auctions, the betting, and the lives ruined by it, are for fun.

These are your love interests, ladies.

10 Days with My Devil You skipped out on being burned alive when you were supposed to. No, you weren't supposed to be dead when your body was set torch to, you were supposed to literally Die In A Fire. And the entities that set it up aren't particularly concerned by how much that would've hurt.

Metro PD: Close to You Doesn't have Nightmare Fuel as part of the premise, but Metro PD doesn't play as fantastically with the life threatening situations as most of the other games. The protagonist deals with a lot of Real Life dangers: terrorism, police corruption, germ warfare... it's a good thing she has a strong stomach.

I personally found Kirisawa's sequel to be chilling.

So, yeah, I think we have enough content for that.

I would recommend to put the Nightmare Fuel entries into the subpages for their works, not in a general one - we don't really do NF pages for creators.

Thanks for that. My first impression of the game was an overwhelming "...meh", but I'll give it another go and see if I can't find something to add.

Yeah, I was a bit dubious about that one myself, and it really shouldn't have been linked to The Rival at all, because you're right, it's definitely not that trope.

I'm cutting it for now - aside from the trope misuse, which is easy enough to fix, I'm a bit at a loss for how to strengthen the description, and there's noticeably fewer examples than any of the others. I'm not even sure it applies to Leonardo at all (I haven't played his route) I just kind of figured since he's Navy.

I'm sure there are appropriate tropes to use to add the specific cases to their game's page.

...in fact, it's just occurred to me that Tatsuro might count as an inversion of Dating Catwoman. Hm!

I like it. Block of text or not, it's a good writeup. Let's face it, the games do run on Strictly Formula. You end up trying to predict which roles will be represented, and who will fill them. May as well cheerfully acknowledge the fact, aye?

I was contemplating something similar myself, and god knows you're the better writer. If someone else feels otherwise, they can tweak/axe to their heart's content.

(as a tangent, re: my edit on the Voltage CMOA page: Feel free to correct my grammar whenever. I'm reasonably fluent in English, but my sentence structure makes even me cringe at times)

Okay, cool! Tropes Are Not Bad, after all, I just wanted to make sure I wasn't applying a shoehorn unnecessarily.

(also good to know - I started thinking after I made that edit that I was probably stepping on your toes a bit. Grammar's just something I'm reasonably confident about. Goodness knows I hope you and anyone else who sees a need will continue to fix my errors when I make them and otherwise tweak/polish/axe as they see fit; I'm not trying to be proprietary about any of these pages or anything, but apparently sometimes I have come off that way unintentionally?)