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(+5)

(full spoilers)

ACHE_VERMIN was really fun, in the sense of it containing such a cornucopia of stuff I would love to see expanded into their own games. I adored the action of Aliska being an ex-military badass, I loved her as a struggling foster mother, I enjoyed the superpower bullshit The Spider and Sasha had going on, I would've loved to see more of Sasha struggling with said clairvoyance and also his own gender identity.

The writing especially felt like a gut punch in those moments of delayed consequences, of things setting in as they were already happened or had already happened. Mishka's death and Sasha getting bullied at school (and the consequences for that one shitbag dad) come to mind here. Those scenes did well at communicating the weight of everything within the story and Aliska as a character.

I need to spend some time to actually learn how to do literary analysis I feel, because I super fuck with the red flower themes across your games, and I want to know what they mean, what they represent. This shade of red you keep using, with multichromatic rainbow hues shining through occasionally also stuck with me in PxP and it gives your body of work an intriguing sense of cohesion, in addition to the character art being hella evocative. Similarly, while I don't really aim for nullification myself, seeing it continuously dissected across your work is really nice as a form of conversation!

It would also be a massive omission to not highlight the genius play of very overtly planting the seeds in the audience to see Sasha as a girl / pre-transition / still figuring herself out, and then subverting that with Sasha *knowing about that* and being fucked up about it. That is so cool and funny and evil >:3

If there's one thing I am a bit divided on, is that the entire script felt very episodic. I felt like many characters only needed to exist for a single scene (or minor series of scenes), and are then kinda forgotten about. I think that it left a lot of closure and plot complexity on the table, but that could also be intended! It also helps to reinforce the feeling that the final scenes are happening in the vacuum of the entire world having receded and only Aliska and Sasha remaining, leading them to further spiral inwards. I've also played with the idea of having minor characters be as defined from a production standpoint as others (I would've bet the Boy On The Floor at the beginning would come back because look at his portrait!) and seeing different takes on this formula feels like we're exploring the tools of our trade together, which is a w!

Overall I really enjoyed the script and Aliska especially, and I did lean forward in a gamer pose at several points of the VN and I would love to see more of the world you built here hehehehe

(+2)

WAHHGGFhgdghdfsghjdfs thank you so much Snek, really appreciate getting this sort of analysis. >.<

Wahh I'm super glad the action/supernatural stuff worked. It was my first time writing anything close to that and I've really been wanting to for a while. I'm a big fan of stories that mix that kind of thing with the everyday happenings of characters in the world. It's very Dorohedoro / HxH inspired in that way (also the power stuff is directly from Malcatras Maiden after talking with Nadia about it heheheheheee). 

I see what you mean about the episodic nature of it. I think one thing I was definitely going for here was a feeling of life going by; important or unimportant, intense or mundane. I guess that's part of why it might feel episodic. It was challenging to write that way for something I just didn't have the scope to make very long really. I can see it making things abrupt. I wanna get better at writing sort of... slice of life type stories with some grit to them I guess. This is also why a lot of characters show up and don't reappear, it's very much intentional. Wanted to convey things continuing to happen in the world regardless of what's going on with Aliska and Sasha. Though I'm not sure if I need to work this in better in future. There was also a few things I wanted to write but didn't have time for.

Also happy the loaded gun that is Sasha and everything going on with that thing landed for you hehehhehee. It's fun to make a hyper-competent killing machine like Aliska and have a weak little thing that presses at all her vulnerabilities hehhheheheee.

Thank you again for your kind words.