This review addresses some very major events of the game that you should not spoil yourself on. please play loner dog before reading this, i give it as full of an endorsement as i possibly can.
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This was one of the most painful and beautiful works of art i have ever had the joy of reading. the music, both the cgs and character portarits, the aesthetic of this game is seared into my mind. the dithering is really fucking cool too. but enough about the beauty, on to the pain.
These are some of the most painfully real characters i have ever witnessed. every girl in this story is a real person, i've witnessed the patterns and archetypes of them many times before in my life. i know almost all of these girls without having met them. almost all of them are good people (fuck leah), and yet they continue to hurt each other. you can't blame anyone here for being like this, for being ruined girlthings with destructive habits. yet that only makes seeing things fall apart all the more painful. no one deserves any of this.
On a lighter note about the character writing, its really fucking funny too. i love these idiots so much.
Haley was both one of the most cathartic and wounding characters i have ever encountered. seeing her felt liberating. for so long i had felt like what was wrong with me was a unique failing, it was something i had never witnessed in other people, it felt like the act of exposing the fact i was like this to anyone else would destroy me, would actualise the fear of abandonment. they would revile me for this and be completely justified. getting to witness someone else that was like this changed that. there are so many thoughts i have had that she expressed nearly verbatim.
But god, seeing her was also so agonising. getting to witness her tearing apart her life, be abandoned by the vileness of the world and the apathy of those who claimed to love her, watching her realise her lack of a purpose or drive. all of this felt like watching it happen to me. the version of my self that lived in a worse life, that didn't have someone to love it, would have ended up like this, i can see it so clearly.
Deciding to read this with my wife was a great descision, because i think witnessing haley's suicide alone would have broken me for days. both of us agreed that it felt like watching me die. the same was true for the funeral service and the burial. seeing this happen to her is the strongest deterrant i could ever find for letting myself get worse.
Much like she was swallowed by the sun, this made me way weirder. that game helped begin the process of de-repressing my sexuality, of letting me realise that i am in fact this weird. loner dog sped up that process, make me realise that i am undeniably this much of a freak and i love it.
please never stop making art for fucked up girlthings like us <3