Written 10/17/2025! Took a while to be trusted to comment...
I finished this game last night sometime past 4am. My Bluetooth earbuds I’d been using all day finally gave up partway through the credits, so I remember staring at the screen in silence but for a ceiling fan after their little cheery power-off tone. And then staring down the bed at my body, also in silence, colored in only by the fuzzy grays that are typical of freshly dark-adjusted eyes. I simultaneously hadn’t drunk anything in hours and really had to go piss. But I sat there for a little while, by measure of my who-knows-how-reliable mental clock, and just kinda became aware of how empty my brain was. I think Argo echoed a similar sentiment at some point - “I will have thoughts on this,” or something like that, but I didn’t have any thoughts just then. They weren’t eager to come either. Trying to will thoughts about the game into my head only held dim sentence fragments at the periphery of my consciousness, and even that required active effort to keep them from slipping away.
By the time I closed my laptop I was dehydrated enough to be nauseous even without the contents of the game on my mind so I kind of quietly crept up out of bed in the room I was sharing and out the door and into the bathroom to cup sink water into my hands and drink, since I didn’t want to rattle around in the kitchen for a cup and wake people up. I messaged the friend who suggested that I play the game (well, it was more of a “hey this game will fuck you up horribly and you probably shouldn’t play it if you’re squeamish and please do actually read all the content warnings but it’s also really good” but you get the idea) for them to see in the morning. With whatever I could muster to say.
And then I scrounged in the dark for my chargers in my backpack and crept back into the bedroom. And I got in bed and slept, doing my best to be quiet.
(𖦹﹏𖦹;)
Uh. It’s been more than 24 hours now and all that’s really come of my brain is some self reflection and a vague sense of nausea and grief whenever I think about the climax. (no, Roaches, not that kind) There’s probably more to come (...I'm not doing this on purpose) but I wanted to write a comment before I forget.
I kept seeing myself in the dialogue, or more precisely, seeing trains of thought I’ve had before. Sometimes with eerily similar phrasing. Just, like, thoughts on suicide. Yearning. The whole “what would happen if I cut my dick off oh I would bleed out; oh that’s a deeply unpleasant image to have in my head uururururughhh,,,” And more emotional words. Lots of emotions. I have a bunch of screenshots of dialogue that resonated with me, from multiple characters. That was disconcerting, just because it feels like… these aren’t ideal people to be relating to, but it also felt weirdly nice to see, well reflected in a piece of media, the nights I’ve spent spiraling down miscellaneous unhealthy thought patterns. I guess we’re all one big unhappy trans family.
There was also a bit of genuinely good relationship advice, I felt, and this was an unexpected place to find that.
It was also an unexpected place to find some of the people I know. Fuck. I have a bit of a Noni in my life right now, for one. The others I just see fragments of in the characters. But, yeah. It changed how I see some of those relationships, not for the worse, I don’t think.
This meant a lot to me. It also left me on the floor stim-shaking my leg in some manner I’d compare to a tail wag if it was for happy reasons, my throat tight with disgust, looking away from the screen because I’d been slowing down through reading that paragraph and oh my god needed to stop on that word before my body felt any stiffer or I would freak out. It also really makes me want to go write something. I fuck with the vibes heavily, and the aesthetic is sick, and the music is cool, and raaaaggghhhhh I love hurting myself with terribly painful pieces of media that are also really emotional and artistic and wonderful……
I'm gonna hopefully go make art now (belonging to the more general definition encompassing various creative media) because the pixies are tingling inside my blood. I'm also gonna keep thinking about this for ages. Maybe partially because oh my god who would I talk about this with besides like that one friend lmao
I was always bad at writing conclusion paragraphs.
I'm not looking at myself the same, nor talking to people the same… which means this shit was peak. Hell yeah. Trans rights and all that. Love you.
P.S. I bought the domain loner.dog to redirect here. I might even remember to renew it when it expires. That doesn't really affect you, but I think it's cool.