Hi all. This is the first of hopefully many interviews with other smaller FVN devs, as I want to help highlight newer names and smaller names that don't tend to get as much attention. We're starting things off with shiroooo_dev. 

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We'll start off with something simple: Tell me about yourself.

I'm Shiro. I'm a college student studying computer science, I guess, in the real world., I write and I write some music. I'm from Kentucky in the real world, but, uh, I'm trying to think of things that I... I'm sorry, I'm bad at this kind of thing.

That's fair. It's just a quick primer for who you are and I think it's not unfair to say you're a college student and what you do, because  that's what people really boil down to really.

So the next one is, I think, more directed. So I know that your fursona is a bear. What does having a fursona mean to you?

I guess it's, at least for me, on one hand, it's like a representation of myself, I guess, or of myself that I would like to be, I guess, or to show outwardly, if that makes sense. So that's, I think a big part of it, I guess for me, but I think... It's just like a nice tool for expression.

I think that when people create their own, they kind of intuitively bring in a bunch of different aspects of themselves. And I think that at least that was the case for me. I mean, I chose a bear just because I like bears. So that was a pretty easy choice. But, you know, in terms of the way he looks and the way that he dresses and stuff like that. That's, both, I guess, reflective of me, but I think also aspirational.

 I think that at least for me, it kind of walks that line a little bit. Um, but it's also, I think it's different for every person.

I agree. That's what I wanted to ask, because I find that curious. I hear what you're saying in terms of the picture of the aspirational version of the self. It's a sort of, I guess, for you, a fictionalized, idealized self. We're not in the years of cyberpunk, etc. where we're having those furry body modifications. 

All right, we're going to get a little more spicy. What's your "hear me out?" This is no judgment zone. Okay, maybe a little judgment, but no meaningful judgment.

I think it's a fun way to get to know someone. Like where does your eye go? What are the connections you're making?

I guess this is probably a common one. The cat from Split the Room, if you're familiar with that one, I can't remember his name. I think grumpy guys are kinda cute. 

I'm seeing my mind's eye, but I'm pulling it open to look. [A beat]. Yeah, that little grumpy curmudgeon. 

Would you say you're an active member of the furry community? And if so, what do you get from your engagement with them, and how do you engage?

I suppose I am, at least in the online space. My engagement, I think, in the real world is almost nothing. Part of that is, just because I'm not...Uh, that's not something that I portray outwardly, I guess, in real life.

But online, I would say, yeah. But honestly, my interactions are mostly limited to my friends and the people that are in my social circle. So… I suppose I'm kind of active in it, but not...I don't know.

So, not to be prescriptive, but it sounds more like you have a furry friend group rather than you engage in the greater furry fandom.

Yeah. I mean, I would definitely consider myself a part of it, but I don't, you know… If you look on my Twitter, I just mostly, I like my, I just retweet like stupid stuff for the most part.

That's fair. It's some of my bias coming off in "how do people consider themselves [furry]?" The most simplified definition is anthropomorphic animal appreciator. How does that get defined person to person? 

I think it is highly personal. 

And then finally, in the sphere of yourself, what's your furry hot take?

I guess this is something that is within, I guess, the VN sphere. It really annoys me when people say someone should make this, or someone should make something where "insert thing" happens.

At least to me, that is annoying because I'm just like... make it. I just, to me, it's just, you know, if you want to see something, you should, you should try and make it yourself. Not to be rude, and I don't mean to be like an ass, but it's–

I hear that 100%. Ideas are cheap.. Creation is the part that's the effort. The idea in your mind's eye, it's a fully-fledged thing. The only way to get what you want is to make it yourself.

Yeah, and one of the things I think is really good about the medium of VNs is that it's very, I think, accessible to create content.

Thanks, Renpy Tom.

I guess that's a hot take. I don't know if that's actually hot or not, but that's something that annoys me, I guess.

So I think that should give the theoretical readers a good sense of you as much as they can gather from these sort of bite-sized portions of your life and thoughts. So then let's get more into you and your FVNs. 

So for those who somehow don't know you by reading this, you currently have at least two standalone pieces. One is a coming of age tale, "What a Day That Was!" and the other a zombie piece with some romance, "A Handful of Dust".

They've been released within the last three months. And of course, you have also done some other work as a proofreader and song composer on a handful of other works, which you are welcome to speak about more.

I work on "Fields of Spring "with Eamon, which is a wonderful project and then I did some work for "Psychic Connections". Those are the main two. I don't really write music for other projects. Part of that is I, I kind of don't trust myself to write the music well. You know what I mean? 

I understand. I mean, it's good for you. It can feel different outside of your hands.

 I also don't know. I have no clue how I would price music commissions. I have no idea how I would do that. So I kind of just don't want to deal with it.

Not unreasonable. Pricing is a very strange and nebulous thing. Are you getting paid for your proofreading?

No, but I am more than happy to read and edit my friend's work. Part of that is I just enjoy it. So, I don't mind.

 I was just gonna be like, I feel like the back of the furry visual novel industry is that there's a lot of volunteering behind the scenes for just as much as there are obvious areas of art that get money. I think a lot that are built on the back of  volunteer [work] like proofreading and editing.

Yeah. And for that stuff, like… Part of it is for me, it depends on who it is, I guess. For my friends, I'm happy to read whatever, you know what I mean? I don't know if that's technically unfair or not, but, you know.

You've already theoretically vetted your friends and be like, "I know what you're going to send me." Like, it's not going to be poison to read.

What are some of your inspirations for your works?

So, I watch a lot of movies.  I think that's something that I like in my writing. I like my dialogue and I like everything to feel kind of naturalistic. 

One of my favorite movies is Dazed and Confused from Iwant to say 1990? 1993? or six somewhere in that range, and that actually that was a kind of an inspiration for "What a Day That Was!" The movie just follows  a group of high school students in 1976 on their last day of school. So it  just takes place over the course of one day.

That's one of my favorite movies. So I guess that's a kind of a good little microcosm of some of the things that inspire me. Um, I play a lot of video games, obviously. I like to. get a variety of things.

With all the movies, would you say that this is a more accessible way of making a movie of sorts? Because there are obvious differences, but they're both at least in their formatting more similar than conventional novel scripts. Scripts parallel to scripts. 

I think in a way it kind of is. When I sit down and write, my scripts are pretty much always just in prose format. And then I just kind of shove them into the structure of RenPy, which is partially why when you read some of my stuff, there are kind of long paragraphs. But that's because it's just a remnant of the original format of the script.

Long paragraphs gang unite!

I like my dialogue to be fairly snappy, but I can get going on a little paragraph.

What do you hope that people get from your works?

One, I hope people enjoy them. That's always good.

I'll speak partially to "What a Day That Was!" because that one, I had more of an idea of what I wanted to communicate. For example, part of my goal was to kind of communicate how it is to know that you might be gay or something like that, but not necessarily know it. at that point in your life. I know for me, this is something that I dealt with. [My sexuality] is a discovery that I made pretty recently. It was in 2020, 2021.

In Cade's narration, there are these sections where, I mean, you know, he's describing masculine bodies in detail and, you know… And there's the fight scene, which is kind of intentionally supposed to evoke–-I mean, frankly, the language of sex, the way that they're grappling each other. And so I guess in that story, my goal was to just kind of tell a story that I think is not as common. I guess. I think that I was a kind of a late bloomer a little bit so I kind of brought that into Cade as a character.

I just hope people enjoy the things that I write. If people are engaged with these characters and if it makes them feel something, that's enough for me.

I hear that. 

So then finally, at least in terms of your creator self, what's next for you? 

I'm working on a larger project. I cannot give you an estimated day as to when the first build will be out. I have no clue. 

This one is going more in a mystery… somewhat horror, kind of direction. That's mainly what's next. That's where most of my attention has been held. But in the future, I'll definitely want to return to Cade and the events of "What a Day That Was!". And I'll definitely want to do a continuation for Handful of Dust. When that will happen, I have no idea. So we'll just kind of see but yeah there's more there's more on the way definitely.

We're going to turn the lens. Let's look at the rest of the community, your colleagues, so to speak. What is something you wish there was more of in FVNs?

Not necessarily in the same way as your hot take earlier. 

It's hard for me to say what I want other VNs to be like, I guess. Because I don't want people's– The things that I enjoy and that I'm into are not… They're definitely not what everyone's into.

I think that's good to speak up for the people who are like," I have my idea, but no one else wants to read it". There's at least someone who might be interested. It's not that you're saying that it's a lot better or less, you're saying you want more of this.

Here's something that is a general statement and something that I'm trying to do. I wish that people and their writing treated. plus size characters a little better. I think that sometimes I think that we kind of pigeonhole ourselves into "this is a skinny person and this is a strong dude". And this is a strong dude but maybe he has a gut. I don't know. You know what I mean?

I don't just want to be like, "I want more body type diversity" but that is kind of what I'm saying, I guess. And part of this is what I enjoy, which I like things that feel real to me. Characters that seem like they could be real, even though they're animal people.

I feel that. I also try and aim for realness in my work.

People are so diverse and, and there are all kinds of shapes and sizes. It hurts my heart a little bit when narrators and VNs are mean to their plus-sized characters. I think some people make them the butt of jokes, and that's their whole character. It makes me kind of sad. Again, this is a me problem, 

I don't think it's unfair. If it's enough that it feels like it's a trend, then perhaps there is some measure of a trend. Or maybe the characters need to feel less like archetypes at times, and it's easy to bully an archetype that is like a more fleshed-out character. 

Yeah, I just, again, I don't want to just be like "more body diversity", even though I do think that that's good. But I think that it's informed by my preferences and what I enjoy seeing in stories. And one of the things that I enjoy seeing in stories is [realism].

It's a different kind of realism.

I enjoy realism. And that's not to say that things that are fantastical are bad. Cause I'm absolutely not saying that. And some of my favorite VNs are fantastical things, you know?,

Well, that I think leads into a good segue, which is what makes you want to read an FVN?

I think that's something that's really wonderful about FVNs is that they're one person's story. a lot of FVNs are not made by one person, obviously. It kind of takes a village. And one person development crews are , that's incredibly taxing. There is an amount of connection that you can have with the creators of FVNs, I think that is not really true, I think, with a lot of other mediums. 

FVNs are so, I don't want to say easy to produce because that's not true, but because it's so accessible. I think that people bring in aspects of themselves in the art and in the writing and in the music. And of course, that's true of any writing. There's a personal aspect of it, I guess, that when I'm reading–I'll use "Fields of Spring" as an example. When I'm reading "Fields of Spring", this is a work by a friend of mine that is motivated by maybe not directly his experience, but, this is something that's coming from him. When I read something like "Burrows" this is something that's coming from my friend. And there's a connection there that I guess is not, I feel like it's not the same in something like movies or something like books where it's like,

You know, I do not have a personal connection, unfortunately, with, you know, "insert director here or insert actor here or insert author here". But I think that because of how interconnected the community is. I guess a TL'DR is what brings me to reading them is I just like seeing people's works and I like reading good stuff. I think there's a lot of really good stuff in this community.

What's something you hate seeing in FVNs?  

I don't think the community is all sunshine and rainbows, definitely. And I think that there are definitely plenty of issues, obviously, as we've seen.

Yeah, what a week that was.

Gosh. Um… I don't know. I think I'm not super... I don't want to say I'm not engaged with the community, but..., I definitely don't put my views out there super often just because I kind of just don't want to deal with it.

I guess this is a blanket thing. And I mean, I guess this is going against a little bit against what I said earlier, but I still think these two things can coexist. I think that it makes me sad to see people changing their stories for what people in the community say, I think that's one of the bad things about having such an interconnected community.

I would urge people to–obviously I think it's important to take criticism into account, because you have to. And you know, someone else needs to read your work before you put it out there because they will catch things, obviously. But...I think that It's important to take critique, but also,

I think it's important to remember, though, that this is your story. This is your work that you're putting out there.

And your work should not be, I think, beholden to... other people.

They wanna own their creative decisions.

I probably need to take my own advice a little bit because I think I can, at least internally, I can internalize critique sometimes, which is not great for me. I think it's something that all creators, whether they're writers or artists or musicians, have to try and do. There's a balance between taking criticism and then making a story by committee and–

 I guess you should write the story that you want to write. That's I guess that's a good summary. If you want to write, you know, absurd sex scenes, that's your bag. You should do it. And if you don't, that's great.

Only one more question in the more negative space. What are some of your thoughts on some of the common gripes of the community? 

I think it's important to remember that these creators are people and it's not a big company making some of these works. It's individual people, you know.

Now, I'm not using Patreon because I kind of don't want to deal with that whole model. And that's not saying you know, "you've not turned off Patreon charging for a year and nothing's come out" isn't valid. Like that's, I suppose a valid complaint, but yeah.

I think that in terms of being like, you know, this stuff hasn't updated and like this project has died and all of this stuff. I think it's important to remember that there are people behind these screens.

There's a difference, I guess, at least to me, between you know, getting mad at like Rockstar or Sony  and getting mad at this person on the internet. And of course, it's not me saying all of those complaints are not valid because that's not true. I think they're totally valid complaints. I think it's totally valid again to be like," you know, I'm paying monthly for X and X is not being given to me". That's, you know, that's valid. But…

I just think the community can be kind of mean sometimes. And...

I don't know. I, I just wish, I wish it was a little bit nicer. I don't know. That feels like a silly thing to say.

I don't know if that's unfair. I mean, as we noted, what a week it is. And people are very invested in that public discourse.

All right, we're going to move on. We're done with the negativity bracket. We're going back to positive values. Just say, everyone knows all the big popular names in the FAN sphere. Who are your favorite underground/niche faves? 

So I will bully you if you're like, "oh, have you ever heard of 'Echo'?" And I'll be like, "I'm not going to say you can't enjoy 'Echo', but everyone knows 'Echo'".

I'm biased about "Fields of Spring" because I work on it, but I think "Fields of Spring" is an excellent VN. "Trainwreck"  just came out. "Trainwreck" is an exceptional VN that I'm very excited to see where it goes. I'm trying to think of ones that are not as well known, which which can be kind of hard.

Ironic of sorts is that they are less known that makes them harder to conjure to memory.

I'm a really big fan of "Fuzzy Donuts". Um, it is hilarious to me. Um, I think more people should read it. It's great. I love "One Thousand Acts of Decency" so much.

It's, I think, very inventive and very creative and also hilarious. That's another one that I urge people to check out if you haven't. It's absolutely worth it.

"Spirit" obviously… "Alones" is also very good.  I guess, an incomplete list for you.

I'm a very busy person, and I don't – I mean, I'm not the best about reading smaller things and things that are less known. It can be hard, and with a space that I guess feels so – So, um, really, I guess, packed full of different things. It can be hard for smaller voices to kind of

make themselves heard. I'm guilty of overlooking things and not reading them. So I'm not the best about it. So I'll totally admit fault there and say that I do need to read way more, but yeah, you know–

It's fine. We only have so much time. We only do what we can.

So that's the end of our FVN bracket. We're coming near the close. Because I watched too much VIP when writing this: What is the meaning of life? 

Oh, well, this is a tough one, isn't it? You know… You should just try and do the things that make you happy, I guess. Sure. I guess that's a good answer.

I think that's good. Not expecting a book-long philosophical treatise. I think that's a great answer. I think everyone could stand to do more of what makes them happy. And then there's only one more thing, which is...

Is there anything else you'd like to plug and where can we find you?

I'm most active on Twitter. So that's probably the best way to find me and contact me. I kind of float around there and post about things. Lately it's been a lot of football because football is starting back up. But...

Fucked up. No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding.

That's probably the best place to find me, I suppose, and get updates about stuff that I'm doing. I'll post every now and then, some music, sometimes covers of stuff from other VNs, because I like doing that kind of thing.

 My Twitter handle is https://x.com/shiroooo_dev.

My Bluesky is https://bsky.app/profile/shiroooo.bsky.social.

My itch page is  the exact same username. https://shiroooo-dev.itch.io/

If it's not Shiro(ooo)_dev, just Shiro. Those are the two things I oscillate between. The four O's is kind of my thing now, so I can't put any more. So if the four O's have been taken, I do underscore dev. And generally that has not been taken.

My carrd is on my Twitter. So if someone navigates there, they can find me pretty much anywhere else from there.

Great. Thanks for agreeing to do this.

Of course, thanks for having me.