The opening is a bit rough and abrupt, but sometimes it may make more sense later or smoothed/more detailed.
I think I see the initiate theme/idea, but I myself have a hard time putting it into proper words to describe it, what I want to say is close, but I think misses the point. I think this proves this is dealing with something I do not understand well enough of.
Dwat!? Oh that is sort of new... I knew I was missing something... *facepaw*
While my life isn't this hell, sometimes I can't help imagining it... While in life I am resilient and to bounce back from things eventually, I can't help but keep thinking at times a part of me is really just alone... flailing in the darkness, to await a lonely end... makes me wonder what life or existence it might be an echo of...
Confusion... not knowing meaning or intent or purpose... but sometimes things are beyond our grasp to ever understand, when words fail to describe the blur of something with no discernable form...
Uncanny that at time of trying this, my own dreams feel no different... fleeting and incomprehensible, nothing to discern, devoid of meaning, a blur unable to be remembered other than that is all it was..., even a dream journal could not help even if I were to be using one...
A place where life seems dull and fleeting... surrounded by a souless and timeless ever present gray... where the past, present, and future might as well be considered one... an existence without meaning... a trek that feels like a march of the damned... and then the one place left where some hope may shine, even as its only a dull flicker...
If I were not alive, I feel like my heart stopped working for a moment..., this is also part where a CG would be perfect... since I do not expect these young uns to ever have sprites..., in this moment to have the heart ache but also feel numb to the pain... a vague sense of deja vu for me without any reason for it..., I have never felt such sorrows for real..., so why do I feel like I've seen something similar???
Am I looking into it too much? Perhaps..., but to me all I can do is read and listen and respond with how it makes me feel. Even when there lacks a point, that may be the point.
Also making me think..., what if we lived in a world that was beyond saving, nearly destroyed and inhospitable, yet still just short of that infitismal %age of being permeant... where life is barely even living, yet there is just enough to be able to press on... that very thin line, as if the last strand, yet the strongest one...
I'm not sure if I am anywhere close...,but I don't feel I am anywhere far...
Even "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" (Greenday) isn't somber enough to be fitting this atmosphere, the song while about being broken and alone, still feels of life... this though, feels like all light has been short of snuffed out, yet still shimmers for all it is worth...
There must be a reason for this world created to exist as it does..., yet I find myself more afraid for once of knowing the answer...
One piercing thought does comes to mind though this gloom, what if this world is but a joint fabrication of those mentioned of NULL??? Though even then that only explains so much... the world by all means does not stand to be fake, but it could be thought as an existence far removed from even the laws (if they could even be defined) of (sub) consciousness? Something higher than even gods of gods of gods...
Gosh this making me think so abstractly, but at night, its what/when I am able to do it best.
On the subject of gender/etc. its more opposite, rather it seems based on perception, and perception of the characters themselves at that too, as opposed as it being that of the viewer/player towards the characters. I appreciate being able to see an example of this reversal. To see what is like to be on the other end.
Even if there is lack of proper reason for it, having some purpose to take pride in is important, especially if it something basic designed to improve one's life. For that I can understand Ertbo.
In the absence of higher technology, books are perfect... until I came upon the stories shown in games, let alone VNs, they were perfect and treasured... their value to me may have been lost, but heir worth in whole remains the same. A reason sometimes to yearn for simpler times and years gone past... II think the spark for me in general stands to fade when I feel like I am the only one doing something amongst those I can come into real contact with that I can deem as my peers. A sense of community or belonging, a sense of someplace where I could to help others as much as they could help me. Its crushing to realize just how muted my life really is, that all I've really done is exist rather than live. I must press on though, its all I can do.
This also goes with that despite being "luckier" (relative term here) than many that are out there, I can't help feeling like they are the ones who are truly luckier... it perhaps goes with the saying that less is more...
Another sentiment, this time one that I feel like is something that really embodies a lot of how I feel and think, the waves and fluxuations, the crests and crashes, and the ripples and spray... though also too the illusions it can bring... that when you feel like you are rising you are actually falling, and when you feel like you are falling you are actually rising... sometimes its hard to tell, but it can be all relative to ones viewpoint. It is something that stands to make one question their onw judgement on matters.
And with that it comes to end, with it I feel tired, sad, empty, yet at the same time a sense of happiness, to see something that expresses some of my darkest/existential thoughts. Where do you go from here with this VN? I cannot be sure, but asking questions related to what has been portrayed, and then finding some answer, that is my belief in being able to finding proper answers to many things. It is always about looking deeper. I can only thank you for what you have made thus far, and how much it has made me think about things I have not even thought of thinking about for some time.