But you can also start with the Crossbell arc, which starts with Trails from Zero. KeA is here and you can follow it, but some cameos and details will lose impact.
The Erebonian arc is also meant as an on ramp for new players (Cold Steel) but imho lose some of the appeal since it's set in a school.

They're interconnected and broken into arcs, so there are three good places to start. Personally, I think it's best to start at the beginning, with Trails in the Sky (the first just got a remake!). The series rewards playing it from the start. Also, Estelle is incredible.

You were on haitus? 😛
I'm welcoming back your yappy version

I think one thing that helps is having a large number of influences. I think you can tell when an artist is primarily influenced by one artist/fandom/property. The more stories and art and experiences you have, the more "blocks" you can use to build new things

I love the trails series, but if you play from the beginning, you won't even meet KeA until 300 hours in. The series is kind of a commitment

Welcome back~!

Rabbit here~
Working on a new short VN for the Robot Romance Jam right now.
I've also got a WIP that I'm working on that I posted yesterday. Really hope I can get both things done before the deadline.
I've learned I need to draw more couple scenes for practice

Oof, my latency is too dang high

Gretchen Felker-Martin's sex scenes are kind of grotesque are probably more about shock than titillation
Yasutaka Tsutsui's Salmonella Men on Planet Porno is pretty sex centric, but usually more humorous than erotic.
(I mentioned VNs and then prattled on about novelists)

Muv-Luv's sex scenes are the culmination of the whole plot, so they're extremely emotional, but also meant to be erotic (very graphic, but still focused on emotions). Genres like Harlequin have frequent scenes meant to be erotic, but are largely self-inserts (lots of "throbbing")

Well, it varies pretty extensively depending on the goals of the scene and the genre. For example, I think most Murakami novels have a sex scene, but they're usually kind of dreamlike and part of the plot rather than something titillating. (emotional and dreamy language)

If you play indie visual novels, your sex scene to read time ratio would be better than novels, although they do short some description by using visuals (you don’t need to describe what a character looks like for example)
What kind of sex are you looking for?

Buy things? In this economy?

I’ve actually seen awful arguments in rpg subreddits that proofread machine translation is preferable to human localization because it avoids “bias and editorialization” since localization is “too woke”

I'm just saying, is there enough demand for me to exclusively draw erotic fanart of the director from now on?

hate it when that happens

It's all totally normal stuff