this review is a bit spoilery, please take the hour or so to play through the VN first.
took me a little bit to figure out why the endings sat so wrong with me, but I came to realize that I have been bao to many janises, if not to the same sickish degree of infatuation or abuse, just old friends who have spurned me for being who I am, folks I admired who were tired of things I did and said and would never ever change if it weren't for my hand on their stove. I think a lot about those instances, what I could do differently, how I could convince them that they mean too much for me to lose, but this posits the question, what if it's inevitable? what if they rightfully decided long ago that they didn't like me? what if I had zero say in the fate of our relationships, no different choices, no turning back time, no save states could change anything? all bao can do, as I have, is swallow the pain, learn and move on.
thank you for this. I am now wiser to this piece of the human condition, and it only took a VN I expected a good ending from. The design book is a masterpiece too, but I've left my comment there already.