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!
23noko
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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.
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.
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 her 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 she 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.
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! 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!



