Vndb lists some websites, such as gungnir that you mentioned, but I don’t have any experience with them either.
Suggestions for the title: informal rather than offshot, and mention too that it’s a VN and not a book. Flowers 
Visual Novel Informal Club ?
Alright, I started the home thread! Here it is: Flowers 🌺 Visual Novel Informal Club
Can anyone help me with Textractor? I got a successful hook so it’s not Textractor itself the problem but not sure what to do with the text afterwards.
I tried setting up Clipboard Inserter + texthooker but nothing appears in texthooker.
Am I missing something in my setup? Do you guys use something else? How do you get your character count?
This is what I use. So it works by automatically copying and pasting each line as they appear. Sometimes I kinda wake it up to the first line by manually copying it in the texthooker and then it works as I advance after. If not that, I’m not sure really.
Character count will appear in the top right when you get it working properly.
Do you also use Firefox? I noticed a few months ago that the clipboard inserter just stopped working completely in Firefox. I don’t really use Firefox to begin with so its not an issue for me (I was using it keep text history for when I was reading two VNs at once but I found a second hook page to use in chrome instead). So I wonder if there is something wrong with Firefox or something that needs to be updated there for it to work. I tested it just now and Firefox still doesn’t work for me while its fine in Chrome.
Oh, interesting. No, I use Chrome, so can’t comment on that.
Thanks @Daisoujou and @AzusaChan . I started using Firefox instead of Chrome because Chrome crashes everytime I open it, even after uninstall and reinstall. So I am doomed now I see x_x
I looked around on discord and think I found the solution. It looks like the old clipboard inserter is just broken on Firefox but this one should fix it. I tested it and it was working for me. Lap Clipboard Inserter – Get this Extension for 🦊 Firefox (en-US)
Thanks!! That works! 
And I can see the character count, perfect 
Because it took me way too long to realize this – note that if you click the character count, you can get a breakdown by date, if you’d prefer to keep the total running rather than clear it frequently.
Thanks! Very neat feature, I love stats, it makes it easy to see the progress!
Btw, @Daisoujou… we’re gonna read マルコと銀河竜 (that you nominated here) over in the newly formed Natively VN Book Club in a few weeks starting with September 23th. I thought I’d let you know in case you (or anyone else here) wants to join us!
As a language learner I like especially that you can switch between Japanese and English at any time at the press of a key - so if I really struggle with meaning, I don’t have to put things into DeepL for once, but I can instantly check the official translation. (And text hooking works too, and it’s really short and apparently even easier than Loopers. All in all a very nice package for me.)
Oh cool, thanks, I haven’t really looked at the Natively forums much so I didn’t know that existed.
Personally, no way I can manage another club right now, but hope you all enjoy!
I’ve just taken a look at マルコと銀河竜. My immediate impression: “Wow, this visual novel seems to be of exceptionally high quality.” Thanks for bringing it up! I’m excited to join in and read it with you all.
Glad to have you. I’m really looking forward to it too! And yeah, it’s like what, ~1000 images/stills and 6 animated films for 8 hours of VN? The production value really seems to go through the roof with this one. And it has a 97% rating on Steam too.
So I honestly forget when exactly we aimed to do voting before – Fatal Twelve still has a while to go for sure, but I know we need to give people advance notice on the picks. Might not be terribly long before we get that started again? I’m excited to see what wins as well 
I’m not sure. I know book clubs aim for 6 weeks before the start of next club, but VNs generally don’t have the same shipping issue.
and I’ve very much not finished scheduling Fatal Twelve to try and give a proper estimate. I promise I’ll try and get that done soon. Just have had a lot going on lately
Last time we aimed to having our voting done 6 weeks ahead of time. It gives people some time to get the game if it goes on sale or shipping too if they prefer physical (not sure if we have people here buying the games physical? but doesn’t hurt to have the extra time either way). We can probably start voting in a month or two if we want to give people 6 weeks notice again
Yeah it looks like someone else cited 6 weeks prior as when they wanted voting done before, I see. So that’s a while little. Honestly couldn’t remember, just that it was a relatively significant amount of weeks before. Seems we’re still just above 10, roughly, on Fatal Twelve.
There are also sales to consider for us I guess, but for Steam for example, I can’t really think of a significant one that’d come up before like late November? I guess there’s a Halloween sale, and sometimes other games get mixed in, but that is largely horror adjacent stuff so probably not relevant? Hmm.
On Steam, many games are also periodically on sale outside of major sale periods (e.g. Marco & The Galaxy Dragon is on sale fairly often, and luckily for our VN club in the Natively forums even right now!), so “the sooner the better” is pretty much always a good idea with Steam.