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(spoilers ahead)

hoo boy. i was vibing with the first ten vignettes, which felt like a more melancholic, if not oppressive take on slice-of-life works. but the last vignette was like a sudden car crash into the surreal and existential in the best way possible.

in the same way as parvin's soul leaves her body to watch the universe's destruction, the last vignette felt like a top-down view of reckoning with parvin and roshanak's relationship with their town and the systems at play (be it material or even cosmic) which caused their relationship to be as short-lived and doomed as we see. i'll probably be thinking about this one for a bit.

cute!

(spoilers ahead)

i had some expectations knowing this was 'misery, but with a fandom artist', but you knocked it out of the park with how in depth it went, holy shit. i know that this is talking about issues seemingly ongoing (and perhaps inherent) to fandom, but it really felt like i was transported back to 2015-era tumblr with the discourse. thank you for giving me bad flashbacks. 

i related quite a bit to anita's general malaise towards all-ages media and their fandoms. sunny herself reminded me a lot of the kinds of people i used to hang around in queer fandom spaces, where there was always a strange air of discomfort around them despite how seemingly wholesome they were. the additional victim-blamey 'well, it's what she would've wanted, knowing her' after the assault was also just. eughghghgh.

also, i remember seeing sunny's sharp teeth in progress screenshots on the tyvn jam fluxer and thinking it was cute at the time, but i was unaware there was a reason for that. i actually winced every time she kissed anita, so good job on that lol.

im not quite sure if i digested this work properly, but to me, this painted such a vivid picture in my mind of someone in the midst of processing the damage their groomer has done to them.

sweltering heat tends to make one reminisce on the past. it's strong imagery that very much left me feeling a hollow kind of nostalgia. given the reading, it feels fitting.

wow. i think with toxic yuri works, there is a tendency to explore the extreme/taboo to deliver its emotional hits, but this is a great example of a work that still hits hard even without that.

the internality of lilith, vivian and their little friend group feel so real and lived to me. the writing really hits at the core of the pain of being in a relationship/friend group that is falling apart, but knowing there is still some form of love. i love how the toxicity stems from lilith and vivian's insecurities regarding themselves, how they are perceived and how that affects how they treat the other person rather than anything outright malicious. wonderful stuff.

i enjoyed this a lot! i liked seeing the gradual shift in melora's tone of narration after the night at the bar, becoming less cool and collected and more desperate as the mounting pressure and trauma wear her down.

despite knowing this to be a toxic yuri work, i was successfully caught off guard from the first assault scene after the moment of warmth in the bar. the assault scenes felt uncomfortably real. the sound design really adds to those sections. 

thank you for reading, porksbun!! im glad you enjoyed!! ^^ i really enjoy writing very pessimistic and bitter characters and putting them in a situation. in contrast to the mundane aspects of their relationship, i wanted the main catalyst driving them to be together be something quite bizarre that is never directly addressed between them.

oh my god, this was great. it's rare that horror vns get to me on a level where i start actually feeling scared, but this did exactly that. such an effective slow buildup of tension and isolation that felt like peering out into deep fog knowing something is there, but not knowing what exactly it is. all the while, things at the farm and between willow and eve unravel and fall apart. (the clay sprite of the corpse was also pretty jarring and unsettling)

the moment of catharsis as willow opens up to the girl's corpse felt like taking a breath after holding it in for so long. i felt such a contrast between the coldness of the beginning and the warmth at the end. i like the detail of willow's sprite becoming fully rendered from after that point.

UOGH this means a lot considering ride home was an inspiration for the work. thank you so much! im glad it connected with you ^^

thank you so much for reading, kolulu!! i enjoyed putting a lot of fish parallels in this, and im glad the tone was sufficiently suffocating :)

thank you for reading!! the way that thanh dehumanises angela in response to her being weird about thanh's race was definitely intentional, and im glad someone caught that. a lot of thanh's vocabulary is used to justify her avoidant behavior as 'normal for a longterm relationship'.

'domestic hell' is also a good way to put it. im glad you enjoyed ^.^

this was so good. the level of realism in the setting and writing really sold the bleakness of the scenario. i also liked seeing the little bits of worldbuilding in the background, im a sucker for those in near future/alt timeline stories.

i also think its always fun seeing people write in the style of AI chatbots. the AI therapy-speak that snowy uses to describe isabela infuriated me, which is probably a good sign lol. great stuff!

thanks for reading! a lot of this (particularly in relation to when angela has her two cents on the matter) came from how my own anxieties about assimilation aren't often understood by even well-meaning white people. the unspoken attitude is that simply by virtue of not being white, there is intrinsically an otherness that somehow makes true cultural assimilation impossible (and therefore they dismiss the anxiety).

angela is blind to the fact that in a town where whiteness is default, insisting that she becomes thanh's new family also means stripping her of what little vietnamese identity she holds left.

thank you! ^^

thank you for reading! im glad the atmosphere i was going for seemed to translate well! its always very fun to write deeply flawed (to say the least) characters like thanh

kicking my feet and giggling, im always happy to see people get such strong emotions from my work! thank you for reading!

thank you for reading! the use of 4:3 in this case was to make everything feel a lot more claustrophobic :)

thank you!!! ^^ the exact feelings i wanted the vn to have was either being slowly crushed or slowly drowned. im glad you enjoyed!

wow! setting this up like one kind of story and veering it into an arguably more fucked direction was masterfully executed. thinking back, there are so many little details that foreshadow the big twist that went unnoticed in my first playthrough. the last scene with hellen and stephanie made my jaw drop.

ough. a very bleak work that is contrasted perfectly with its cutesy visuals. the graveyard scene hit especially hard. yui certainly is the girl of all time

holy shit. this was absolutely incredible. i loved seeing this cold, strange scenario being set up, and the context and humanity behind it slowly being drip fed to the reader. it has the same feeling as slowly waking up from a deep dream.

while each characters' dynamics were fascinating and unique, it's further elevated by the execution/what each scene chooses to focus on. the section from the pov of the apartment demonstrates this particularly well, and i think it might be my favorite part.

the prose was lovely too. so methodical and rich that it's almost hypnotic. the visuals and choice of music complimented it perfectly. thank you for making this.

this was great!! spoilers ahead!
 

first off, the art is super cute!! (ough, hair vents my beloved...) i really loved the realisation that each route was lydia essentially rebooting vi each time she gains sentience in a way that doesn't suit her needs. vi's transfem coding gives this an especially foul flavor, where she's essentially fetishised again and again but never given humanity.

the initial lighthearted atmosphere slowly giving way to more ominous and darker undertones until the final ending was also great. the final ending also took me so off guard, i actually jumped when the title screen changed. so unsettling.

also lydia is hot and i want her carnally

ow. ow ow ow ow. this was a fascinating, unique and haunting read. a lot of this hit really hard, especially the parts about asexuality and the mc's mother wanting to assimilate him into living as a white american as much as possible.

this hits on an anxiety on how even upon expressing one's own feelings/criticisms on systems of power from a place of trauma, that will inevitably end up swallowed up by the culture at large and nothing will be learned. the ending is difficult to talk about in this regard without making a spectacle out of the mc like he doesn't want. made me feel uncomfortable and nauseous.

quick update. didnt manage to test the game on sonoma 14.8.2 but did manage to on monterey 12.7.6 where it displayed the same error.

for whatever reason, the game seems to run fine from the renpy launcher, so im unable to pin down what the issue might be on the game's end. from what i've seen, this seems to be issue with a few renpy games on mac. im really sorry that i couldnt find any fixes aside from running from the renpy launcher.

thank you for bringing this to my attention. i unfortunately don't own an actual mac, but i'll try and see if i can fix the issue by troubleshooting on a vm.

this was great! i really loved reading and learning how much of a little freak this woman is! i feel like there's so much to read into with her. for example, how fixated hirosuke is on her highschool self, or her fantasies of roro-chan's purity despite being hurt by her. self-loathing just permeates every part of her thoughts. i want to study her like a bug.

i also really liked how it was evident hirosuke reads into everything roroko does, no matter how small, because it's the only thing she can latch onto as a complete stranger. on a sidenote, i was also just eyeing kasumi EXTREMELY worried for her in the entire work.

the presentation was also stellar! there's a surreal, dreamlike atmosphere over everything that i love in denpa works! ^^

also shindol reference lmao

kind of a half-formed ramble but god, seeing urara's true nature unfold with satsuki enabling (or maybe its more accurate to say revealing?) her worst thoughts felt so suffocating. it really felt like satsuki's 'solution' to pascal's wager was haunting over urara the entire game and that urara was unable to understand or come to terms with that line of thinking despite (or maybe because of) having a strange worship/hate relationship with her. 

TnS/subahibi references were also very fun. haven't read kierkegaard's either/or, so i cant say anything on that front. but in a way, i can see how TnS/subahibi's philosophy may have influenced the 'pascal's wager doesn't matter' philosophy satsuki has. the surreal denpa presentation coupled with the way she explains it makes a really disquieting atmosphere, like being pushed out into open space without any tether.

i enjoyed this a lot! ^^

thanks for reading! writing the two different sections felt very different, with the first half sort of trying to meditate between two different perspectives of ai, and the latter half sort of just being a stream of consciousness ramble. also yes, polyco is cute =w=

thanks for reading! the work definitely didn't start at as a horror piece but i think just... somehow ended up becoming one while i was writing, so i ended up trying to lean into that more ^^;

i was very happy to work with dumbslime, as she *really* specialises in that old 2000s anime aesthetic both in terms of art and character design!

thank you so much for reading!! ^^ it was very fun working with slime and i was honored that she was willing to contribute her art! >:3

the contrast between polyco and klei was sort of reflective of my own conflicted feelings with my affinity to robot/robot-adjacent characters in media and the reality of how i would actually be skeptical of an intelligent ai. it was interesting trying to reason between those two aspects and im glad it made for an interesting read!

thank you for reading! tbh i feel like i kind of jumpscared people by advertising the game with 2000s visuals and having it be about current trends in ai lol. im also very glad you enjoyed the second act! it was the most fun section to write! >:3

thanks for reading! im glad that the discussion in the first act wasn't too boring and complimented the visuals well

thank you for reading! im happy that it holds up as a scifi work as i'm someone who's read a lot of classic scifi, but admittedly not a lot of of contemporary scifi! scripting was by far what i spent most of my time doing too, so i'm glad the detail in that is apparent too ^^

this was a very cute read!

i've always been fascinated by the various ways scientists personally relate to their specific research interests, especially when they're interested in more microscopic aspects. 

at that scale, it very much feels like there has to be a strong love of the process.

god, this vn really hit me with this sense of finding a subculture where you feel most at home with but still feeling misunderstood and isolated anyway. at times comfy, at times lonely, at times overwhelming. i think i'll need to sit with this one for a bit

citron my beloved

this is SO cute... i love the way how nazrin's normal outfit is stylised, kinda reminds me of a magical girl outfit! the other outfits/references are really adorable too! i especially like the inclusion of ME-tan's outfit :3

aaaaaa!! thank you for your kind words!! i was a little worried that the focus on the details of the setting was going to be boring, but i'm glad that wasn't the case.

while most definitely not a one-to-one, april is a character i put a lot of myself into, so im glad she resonated with you! ^u^

thank you! i do have some plans to continue with this project, although it'll likely be a while before anything comes of that.

thank you so much! glad you enjoyed it ^-^