my god what a work
the writing style took a while to really grip me, but what first made it work for me was the swing over fence. Didi being so graceful, claire being a mess, that's reflected in the writing style of their respective descriptions of the actions. flowy vs scrappy.
The turns all of this had were amazing. Claire stumbling into Didi and describing her like a man. Nina. Nina getting off on it. The pain and resentment between Claire and Nina. They're so toxic towards each other in ways I have seen and experienced, such as Nina doing the really fucking annoying "lolololol" thing to deliberately do whatever the fuck this ever actually does irl. we all know and hate to be on the receiving end of it.
and then nina ceases being an active participant in the story in the most relatable and upsetting way imaginable. by blocking claire on fucking discord.
To highlight more of these moments: especially as the story progressed towards claire showing up at didi's apartment, there were so many short moments and lines that felt like nothing but a brick to the ribcage
- "I was afraid of her"
- the change of portraits in the chatlog
- typing out the discord blocked message suddenly hit like
- "do something thatll make you feel better" into "hey didi"
the way this writing lulls you into drifting in your allegiance to these characters is insane. in my own notes, I describe didi as this fucking monster. things from my notepad; "didi also having no self control and going along with claire after barely pretending to care about an apology" "the pure unadulterated disdain and hatred from didi in the spanking scene"
"these are all horrible characters"
And finally, I of course have to mention the OBVIOUS FUCKING THEMES OF TRANSFEMININITY, CHASERISM AND TRANSMISOGYNY!
This is so fetishistic, in the marxist sense of the word. ths fucking visual novel puts the fear of god into you when you see and experience its shape and know this to be nothing more than a mundane retelling of everyday fucking occurrences in this fascist hellscape we're slipping into and then it leaves you do return back to that world because there is no fucking god
i fuck heavy with claire having so many chaser-y thoughts. she's straight up disgusting and horrible and part of me likes that. im just ill in the head. especially in the first half, the very violent transfem superiority part of me wants this vn burn even brighter.
the ending. claire is horrible. as the scene progresses and moves into the bathroom, you realize just how incongruent these 2 are. didi, rightfully and understandable, views this as nothing more than a bdsm scene. because that's all claire ever communicated to her. whereas for claire, her mindless and aimless self-flagellation exposes her to real consequences of nonconsent, and it serves fucking no one. didi just feels horrible. nina doesn't know and probably wouldn't approve. claire is traumatized. and then claire runs away.
didi just doing bdsm shit
I literally capslocked to take notes as I got to this part. and it simply reads nothing more than.
CLAIRE YOU FUCKING
DONT CALL YOUR COP DAD
the fucking degendering
her becoming a woman when brutalized
dad misgendering her bc ofc
I don't even know if I should bother cleaning up those notes for this review. we all know what the fuck this is. it's fucking reality.
to summarize my review of FAITHLESS//FLAGELLANT: F//F is a poignant commentary on v coding and transmisogynist violence as it exists in society right now. this visual novel dances with the topic of transfemininity in ways barely any work of art I have ever read have. its decriptions of bodies. its twists and turns that yank you to the ground and then drag you across it. its control over its own narrative styles. it knows what it is. it knows what we are. In my opinion, it is so rare that a work in our space is as sobering as this one. no pretense. no bullshit. the end is just horrible and it happens every fucking day. out there. in the real world we live in when we peel away from our screens.