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KangaRube here: Theatre is probably a bigger direct influence than any VNs were. Starting in earnest around Covid lockdown era, I mostly was thinking of this kind of like a little play. Putting on a show with my friends. So I thought about Chekhov plays I had read or been to as a kind of reference on how to write, and thinking about what sort of actions could be added to dialogue to deepen subtext, and how blocking could affect it all.  Even the design process for sprites can be a fair bit like directing actors. 

So the writing of Chekhov, Shakespeare, and obviously also Aeschylus and Sophocles--- their handling of structure and character interactions had a lot of influence.

And from cinema, there is a lot to get from "mise-en-scene" directors and slow-cinema. Directors like Andrei Tarkovsky or Kenji Mizoguchi, who often stick to a single take for most of a scene, have an obvious connection to how most of a VN looks/acts. Those two above-mentioned directors have been a big inspiration and influence on what I try to bring to our paper doll play. Not to mention Cassavetes--- I have always thought there needed to be more of that kind of scruffy intensity in VNs, and still would like to aim to have that.

What other Visual Novels that inspired you guys writing style and /or passion in making your own VN? 

Phoenix Writing was my first visual novel, so there's that. I'd also count Star Fox Command as a VN, but I'm a weirdo like that.

Nowadays I think bringing up Morenatsu is a bit gauche, and I have a number of criticisms towards it, but it opened my eyes to the power that a visual novel could have -- to grab and hold one's attention, to tell a compelling story with limited resources. Later on I stumbled on Killigan's Treasure, which was more robust on the mechanics, and that one really opened my eyes a lot.

That said, all those influences pale in comparison to Italo Calvino, who is unquestionably the man who set me down the path towards interactive fiction. Motherfucker was writing 5 steps ahead of his reader at all times, I swear to God. He could write branching narratives with linear paragraphs on a printed book.

Calvino would have loved visual novels, had he lived long enough to sink his teeth on them.

Now, in response to your second question...

Hi Wattson here. There is a lot to unpack in your questions and could probably fill a good essay on the topics, so apologies if I cannot get to all of it. I'll try to start with the most useful advice first.

To learn python and more general programming, I always like to suggest w3schools.com. It has a great Try It Yourself feature that allows you to play with the language and teaches you the basics very well. I will often even refer to it to refresh myself on basic methods of strings and lists and stuff.

That said, in my view, computer science can be both easier and harder than other types of "art". Easier in that, a lot of computer science books and tutorials you can find online for free. When I was in school, even teachers were suggesting to just pirate textbooks than actually recommending them. Turns out the people who built the web don't care much for gatekeeping their craft. 

The hard part is that it is a particular kind of mindset. Unlike art or music, it requires more of a puzzle solving mindset than creative. There is creativity to be found, but the tools boil down ifs, whiles, math and functions, and some things do have an objectively correct answer. 

I could get into speculation on why some people are more hostile about teaching the craft, but I do know there are people who are likely to be happy to help you. The Renpy discord/lemmasoft forums have been very supportive in my experiences and most FVN creators are happy to talk about how they did things. I learned from school, so if you're looking for a more "self-taught" or apprecenticeship path, I can't offer much help. 

I also wish I could comment more on the managment sim side of things, but a lot of that was alread in place when I joined the team, so I don't have much to say on that directly. However, I did build up a lot of the backend of Killigan's Treasure, which was quite complicated. The best way to go about doing these bigger additions to renpy, or any game really, is to try defining what it needs to do from the outset. Design docs will always change as you go along, but the more you know in advance, the more robust you can plan things out. 

If you don't know what you want, try prototyping with something smaller until you can make a demo of it. The attempt will teach you a lot about what works or doesn't with the systems you want to build. Eventually, that prototype will become a confusing mess of spaghetti that you can't stand working with anymore, and at that point you should start from scratch. Its heart wrenching, but your second attempt will come together much faster and be a lot better than the first. Depending on your scope, you may even have to do this multiple times, but refactoring is almost always for the best to save on headache long-term.