Hello everyone!
As you have often heard, the Nasuverse is not the easiest fandom to explore for new and even older fans. There are absolute tons of Type-Moon media out there beyond the well-known VNs, light novels and video games, and a wealth of information about TM works, the lore of the setting, as well as insights from the creators which are spread far and wide in interviews and magazines, difficult for fans looking to dive deeper into Nasu Kinoko’s universe to find. Given that Type-Moon has had over twenty years’ worth of releases, that has amounted to a large share of content that has simply remained unavailable, or even unknown, to most fans.
While some fandoms are blessed with comprehensively curated and definitive wikis, the situation with TM fansites is more complex. While the Type-Moon Wiki has made admirable efforts over the years in terms of raising its editorial standards, it remains susceptible to the issues endemic to freely editable resources. A number of sites have also been created with the purpose of compiling translations of works and secondary materials into user-friendly, easily accessible libraries, with TMdict being an example of one such site that has demonstrably made obscure setting information available with a couple of clicks. Although these sites are not comprehensive, they are an inspiration to us as proof of the perennial demand for a centralised resource of TM minutiae only nerds care about, and also as guideposts on what we can do to further contribute to this editorial effort.
By “we” I am referring to myself and Petrikow in a narrow sense, but in reality to Beast’s Lair as a whole. This site has been a primary source of translations for everything from mainline TM works to Nasu’s most inane 4 AM scribblings, and yet not too much effort has been exerted in all this time to centralise this accumulated wealth of materials and make it available to everyone who might be interested in finding it, leaving it instead to outside contributors to trawl BL’s many threads and find the translations that could be distributed as PDFs or archived in external repositories. Given the important role our site still plays in bringing new material to the English-speaking public, the difficulty people have in finding information and resources on BL can be described as negligence born from complacency. “If regular posters can find their way around, new visitors should figure that out too.” Never mind that the death of forums and the rise of certain social platforms have made forums an outdated format that is a hassle for many people to navigate in the first place.
With all this in mind, Petri and I have decided to revive a project almost as old as the forum itself, and left to languish for just as long - this time for real: the Beast's Lair wiki.
Still in a proof-of-concept state, for now. In the old days when men were boys and everything seemed possible, the idea was to create a true replacement for the TM wiki, then plagued by a multitude of issues and much maligned as a result. Given that we are now old and the aforementioned wiki has put its house in order, we have scaled down the scope of the project considerably, focusing on the goals we can realistically achieve.
Simply put, we have a lot of original sources and translated material strewn all across BL, and we believe it can organised in a way that is useful both to TM fans interested in learning more about the setting and the most hardcore of lore warriors looking for a quote in a Drama CD from 2005 that will win them their internet argument. As Petri’s involvement may indicate, we are in a position of Japanese literacy which will prove essential in verifying sources, cross-checking translations when necessary, and rectifying cases where material has slipped through the cracks and may only exist in fragmentary form or summaries buried in ancient threads (the recent Apocrypha-related debacle comes to mind). We also intend to follow specific editorial standards in curating the wiki so as to work towards a clear vision and avoid the issues that come with open editing.
In summary, we plan to go over BL with a fine-tooth comb and finally bring it all together in one well-organised and easily accessible repository. In doing so, we aim to supplement the already established Type-Moon resource sites with a compilation of the translations that constitute BL’s contribution to the fandom, in a form that can actually be useful to the TM fans of today. As this forum began its life as the discussion board for the Moonlit World, a site whose purpose was to make the Nasuverse accessible to new readers, it feels appropriate to come full circle with a site that does the same for a new audience.
To that end, this announcement also doubles as a call for any people interested in helping to sort out some of the technical aspects of the wiki, so that it can be fully set up for quick and efficient text contributions from members of the community. Specifically:
We are looking for someone experienced with Mediawiki and webdev in general, ideally also able to work with scripts and VN files.
Even more precisely, we would like help with wiki templates and formatting, as well as methods of script extraction and conversion into formats that are easy to import into the wiki.
If you are interested, you can respond in this thread or send a private message to either me or Petrikow. If we happen to share a Discord, feel free to shoot us a DM there too. We will also promptly answer any questions about this project in this thread.
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Originally Posted by Leftovers
