Plus 1.1 million reservists, another half a million in the National Guard, and another 17.4 million veterans. (We don't just forget everything once we've been discharged, unfortunately.) Then there are family members of active duty and veterans who are familiar with how rank works, because you tend to learn that kind of thing when your spouse is in the military.
So your numbers there are way undershooting the amount of people who will notice discrepancies like this (and the others I mentioned in my edit).
Fair enough, I should've dug a little deeper in that regard. But it still doesn't change my overarching point at all. The people knowledgeable in this type of stuff are still an overwhelming minority. So, including the family members/spouses (approx. 3.5/4 million), you can round it to somewhere around 24 million. So, what, 8-ish percent?
In the scope of adult visual novels/porn, you could realistically cut it in half and that would still probably be generous. There's five million members here (and seeing as you have to sign up for an account to download, it's at least somewhat accurate.). We don't have access to the site's stats, as far as I'm aware, but in 2016 someone showed a chart showing the surge in the sites popularity, with China dominating at 50% and Czech coming in 9.5%, with Europe at 8.9%. While the China could be VPNs, we have nothing to show otherwise. Even ignoring all of those, we can realistically assume that half of those 24 million are either too young, heavily religious, don't know these games exist, too busy, or just outright don't care about them/have a woman to fuck. Even some mix of all of them. So, I'll be generous and cut off 3 percent of that 8. What is five percent of 24 million? 1.2 million. Realistically, it's probably much lower. 600,000-800,000-ish. That's not even including the sites stats or member count.
Granted, there's all kind of variances here. So, the numbers are probably pretty far off, but just going off the numbers we have.
Regardless, no one should write about something they are entirely unfamiliar with. Research is absolutely necessary for those of us who want to write about things with which we don't have firsthand experience. It's fine if you make minor changes to how something works in reality for the sake of the narrative, but there are limits to that once you've pushed far beyond the realm of what's believable. And at the very least, the characters involved should sound like the kind of people you're writing them to be. Jargon is important, and lends authenticity.
I don't disagree with you really, at all, even. And I do agree that jargon/terminology are important, but that authenticity only sticks out to those who know it. Which, back to my main point, is largely going over many people's heads in a case like this. Even using this game thread as an example, 61 posts (I think), 3 or 4 people calling it out. If you include that foreign audience and those who are simply ignorant of the terminology, most people simply aren't going to care. Again, except for the minority who are aware and care enough to point it out. Take a gander through this thread and see for yourself.
Music theory and even writing, as I pointed out earlier, is something I would think is similar in its nicheness to the common person. Sure, maybe I could appease the few musicians play my VN by going into tonal systems, intervals, durational proportions and dissonance, but who actually cares about it? My point is, he's not dogging on the military or veterans, so who cares if he got some titles and timelines wrong? How many, beyond the said groups who already know, are really going to go out and fact check what is, so far, a small part of the story? Like I said, I agree with you, specifically on storylines that revolve around a said industry/field/etc., I just feel that something like this is far too niche to shit on a product about (especially seeing how much Hollywood itself praises movies/series that almost always wrong/inaccurate.). The grammar I agree with, though.
Just to be clear, I mean no disrespect toward those in the military or veterans if I came across that way. This is just purely in reference to VNs and nothing more.
But, the moment an actual military veteran calls out for realism in a game, he's called out over it. What kind of bullshit is that? Fucking stupid.
I didn't call anyone out. All I was saying was there's a difference between realism and niche knowledge that most aren't going to know or care to understand. Realism, to most, is nearly always going to be about realistic characters, believable settings, occurrences, dialects, ebonics, etc. Not if someone's an E-9 or how long it took them to get there, just as nobody's going to care if I write about hammer-ons, double stops, and vibrato or how to cohesively mix them all together. That's all I meant by it, take it however you want.
