I feel a bit bad about this I don't know if it was intentional but I found a lot of the early parts of this novel to be darkly comedic. Like a toxic yuri vn jam entry about "problematic" media is kinda funny. But it turned suitably gut wrenching by the end.
I have friends with whom I can be fairly open about the fucked up things I like but I also have close friends who I'm terrified of finding out. So that hit close to home.
Also getting flashbanged by Spop as someone who used to be active in that fandom was wild.
and, no — that's absolutely a normal reaction to have to the earlier parts LOL... i def got a few cackles out of the game from other people but i guess it makes the later stuff all the more upsetting ;_;
the flashbanging was 100% intentional on my part. there's a nasu interview i think about where he says (about Mawaru Penguindrum and its subject matter):
When I learned that Ikuhara-san himself strongly felt “There’s no point if we don’t do it before the memory fades. The scars have to remain as scars,” I had to concede defeat twice over.
so that's why i kept the direct references in versus using substitutes (like i normally would.)
Absolutely upsetting in the ways it reminded me of how I used to behave like Sunny, and cathartic in the ways that I hope that I am not that person anymore. But I know I still have a ways to go in improving myself and trying to be a kinder person, which I think is very much needed in fandom spaces and the internet in general with all the hostility.
I think it's so easy to be a Sunny, especially since behavior like hers feeds on the hyper-vigilance in online spaces where if u say one wrong thing or support the wrong artist or like the wrong movie/book/game, your reputation and your relationships would be in jeopardy. Anita's line about "I don't want to be unsafe to love" contrasted with Sunny's repeated promises that she'll make Anita a 'normal' person who doesn't "support such nasty things" was so so good. It's so easy to fall into the type of mindset Sunny has where its more important to defend the 'sanctity and morals' of fiction over caring about real people. Its harder to learn how to leave that mindset behind.
I couldn't fault Anita for not wanting to release the game at the end, because Sunny and her abuse (both the literal and online mistreatment) always lingered. This was an amazing read, thank you so much for sharing this with us!
i was a beta reader on this one, but somehow reading through this in-engine made me feel sick to my stomach all over again. the visuals and audio really elevated just how uncomfortable sunny's closeness was and made real the conversations between anita and her inner self.
there are parts of this that mirror both my own experiences and those of people i know too closely to talk about in a public space. i have known many anitas, and too many sunny's.
anyways without talking about spoilers, i'm glad this vn takes a stand against the most annoying people on earth /hj: people who exclusively consume cartoons made for children and hold every single other piece of media up to that moral standard
thank you for the kind words on everything FB!! (and for beta reading, as always...)
i'm glad the audiovisual elements could add to the overall experience of uncomfortable closeness. visual novels (as we know them) were originally "sound novels", after all.
That was definitely a powerful visual novel, very thought-provoking and with excellent presentation! I really loved the art and the overall direction! Everything looked great, even the frame of the GUI (oh how I love those!) was amazing! The visual choices made throughout the game to represent various situations were also very well done!
For the story, I was hooked. I won't get into details to avoid spoilers, but I was on the edge of my seat, and I passed through a lot of different emotions: laugh, disgust (especially since the game used one of my personal triggers loooool), fear, apprehension, but ngl, I mostly thought, I was wondering! I never truly got into any fandoms, but I have seen debates about problematic content on the web (and I guess we all were confronted to it with last year's itch censorship...). And personally, I know I'm someone who loves works that handle them with care — not saying that they should avoir violent or horrible scenes, for example, my favourite part of Nabokov's Lolita is the scene in the hotel room, as it is very creepy in an almost oniric way, and I think this approach, this horrible onirism, allows Nabokov to portray the twisted mind of his narrator in a way he couldn't have otherwise. But I guess, for me to enjoy a work tackling such themes, I need to think there is a point, and to feel like it's not feti*********. And yet, for some people, I know it's still a way to gain agency over their trauma etc. to portray in a way that is somehow positive to them, even in a twisted way. So I guess my lukewarm take would be that I don't mind as long as it's confined to specific spaces????????????
But that's not commenting on the story loool, but I guess this tangent proves the game is thought-provoking! For the actual writing, I really enjoy the prose and the fact the two characters had different voices. I enjoyed the portrayal of their dynamics and of the progressive shift, and I think the two characters were handled masterfully — Annie, of course, who really moved me, and Sunny, who was just perfect in her role! I also appreciated the fact the game took time before going into the more horrific stuff, as it allowed to see the characters through more "neutral" lenses before things go south! I also was pleasanty surprised with the fact that we, as players, indeed understand quite quickly the nature of the two characters' relationship (the co-dependency, in particular, was VERY GOOD), and that the game somehow... acknowledges it and doesn't make it a plot twist?? In the end, the moment I thought I was so clever for anticipating a twist was actually just the game letting me know the info without even me realising, which was very impressive writing-wise, I've rarely seen this done!
Long story short, that was an EXCELLENT VN, the kind that makes me happy this jam exists if it allows to explore such themes and dynamics that way! Thanks for making it!!
thank you so much for the kind words on ckofntac! \o/ reading through your commentary was awesome. also, thank you for mentioning nabokov's works here — i love horrible, unreliable narrators and i've heard lolita is a masterclass in that. (i also want to read pale fire.)
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SPOILERS BELOW
stories (and fiction as a whole) are a complicated sandbox. what might be comforting for one person might be violating/upsetting for another. on the whole, though, how you behave towards real people and their boundaries will speak louder about the type of person you are.
coming back to ckofntac though, im glad you noticed the transition from neutral to horrifying. i think horrifying situations only come across that way if there's an established normal prior to it.
and i'm glad you noticed the Big Twist with sunny and how she relates to anita. the info was always there. you just had to piece it together.
fucking phenomenal. required reading for anyone who has ever been in fandom.
i have been a sunny, and i have been an anita. this brought me back to anxious teenage skype chats in the 2010s, interrogating freshly-graduated friends if they're aware that the anime boys that they're calling sexy are actually still high schoolers. i remember the childish terror of finding a friend is Into something they Shouldn't Be Into, the sense of betrayal, the sickening feeling that you have to cut them off or risk contaminating yourself. christ alive, what a gut-punch. "sunny... um... it's been seven years" made me laugh out loud.
(spoilers)
it speaks to the quality of the writing that the abuse in this game is less extreme than most TYVNJ entries I've read - and yet - it's easily the most uncomfortable i've been playing any of these games so far. that wet fucking kiss sound effect. ugh. UGH!!!! as an ex girl with a waaaaay-too-friendly girl bestie i felt very seen.
i love that anita's realization of who sunny actually is happens completely offscreen. really smart, effective decision. *everything* in this title is incredibly well-edited and directed. i adored it!
also, rare extremely effective use of renpy bubbles W??!? crazy flex.
thank you!!!!!! (BIG fan of my friend snowy and especially orangepeel, onionskin btw. very happy to see you here)
SPOILERS
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i have also been a sunny and an anita. i'm glad i could capture the anxiety that comes with being in these communities... also im glad you found the "its been seven years" line funny. i've felt that so many times.
also massive honor to hear that the abuse writing was as uncomfortable and upsetting as i intended for it to be. as someone who was on the receiving end of it (though nowhere near as extreme as anita's case), it really feels like you can't escape.
i LOVE using ren'py's bubbles too LOL. i've used them for quite a few of my projects (protoViolence, etc.) and while they're a little fiddly, they're great for creating 3rd person conversation scenes. i find this tool helpful for them too.
this game really reached into my soul and gripped me from start to finish. thank you so much for making it, i can imagine how hard it must've been (as someone with a drive to make similarly heavy art nowadays... oof!!!)
truly amazing game, i feel like this is your best work and i'm gonna be thinking about it for a long time.
This was fucking fantastic, Mado. I felt ill the entire time I was reading - to be clear, that's a positive thing. My experiences are VERY different from Anita's and yours, but I live in constant fear of people like Sunny all the same. I don't feel comfortable being the truest version of myself in public facing places - and hell, even on my private accounts there's still that fear. You captured that feeling of anxiety and unease brilliantly - the sketchiness of the artwork/UI really worked to sell it just as much as the writing did. I think you have a real talent for using the medium of VNs to heighten the strength of your writing, the pieces all work in concert to create something extremely powerful. (The sound design as well, oogh...the nausea was palpable.)
I can imagine this was difficult to work on - thank you for making it. I think work like this is extremely important and I'm glad that there are artists like you making it. Brilliant, horrific work.
this had me squirming in my seat and fearing for the protagonist's life like nothing else has before. sunny represents such a specific and gut-wrenching kind of abuse—it's hard to go very far in the modern internet without seeing someone saying the exact things she does, exploiting people in the exact same way she does. it's a truly generational sort of trauma that I'm surprised I haven't seen more works remarking on
the story speaking to that while also speaking to the unique pressures and sense of helplessness inherent to being an online creator, with a dash of suburban isolationism in both physical and social capacities, make this into something really, really special!! and the presentation of it, the cinematic pauses and attentiveness to the continuity of physical space, did a lot to immerse me in this lonely house in the middle of the woods.
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I feel a bit bad about this I don't know if it was intentional but I found a lot of the early parts of this novel to be darkly comedic. Like a toxic yuri vn jam entry about "problematic" media is kinda funny. But it turned suitably gut wrenching by the end.
I have friends with whom I can be fairly open about the fucked up things I like but I also have close friends who I'm terrified of finding out. So that hit close to home.
Also getting flashbanged by Spop as someone who used to be active in that fandom was wild.
thank you for playing!
and, no — that's absolutely a normal reaction to have to the earlier parts LOL... i def got a few cackles out of the game from other people but i guess it makes the later stuff all the more upsetting ;_;
the flashbanging was 100% intentional on my part. there's a nasu interview i think about where he says (about Mawaru Penguindrum and its subject matter):
When I learned that Ikuhara-san himself strongly felt “There’s no point if we don’t do it before the memory fades. The scars have to remain as scars,” I had to concede defeat twice over.
so that's why i kept the direct references in versus using substitutes (like i normally would.)
Absolutely upsetting in the ways it reminded me of how I used to behave like Sunny, and cathartic in the ways that I hope that I am not that person anymore. But I know I still have a ways to go in improving myself and trying to be a kinder person, which I think is very much needed in fandom spaces and the internet in general with all the hostility.
I think it's so easy to be a Sunny, especially since behavior like hers feeds on the hyper-vigilance in online spaces where if u say one wrong thing or support the wrong artist or like the wrong movie/book/game, your reputation and your relationships would be in jeopardy. Anita's line about "I don't want to be unsafe to love" contrasted with Sunny's repeated promises that she'll make Anita a 'normal' person who doesn't "support such nasty things" was so so good. It's so easy to fall into the type of mindset Sunny has where its more important to defend the 'sanctity and morals' of fiction over caring about real people. Its harder to learn how to leave that mindset behind.
I couldn't fault Anita for not wanting to release the game at the end, because Sunny and her abuse (both the literal and online mistreatment) always lingered. This was an amazing read, thank you so much for sharing this with us!
Finished this in one night. Jesus fucking christ.
I think sometimes about the quote "I want to make the world’s best hamburger, and I want it to give you the world’s best food poisoning, and it’s not a hamburger, it’s your arm."
And goddamn, you sure did cook exactly thatthank you for playing!! i'm glad you liked my amputated arm burger of a game...
the porpentine interview you quoted was great too. love reading about artists' thoughts on their own work. very excited about money for girls
i was a beta reader on this one, but somehow reading through this in-engine made me feel sick to my stomach all over again. the visuals and audio really elevated just how uncomfortable sunny's closeness was and made real the conversations between anita and her inner self.
there are parts of this that mirror both my own experiences and those of people i know too closely to talk about in a public space. i have known many anitas, and too many sunny's.
anyways without talking about spoilers, i'm glad this vn takes a stand against the most annoying people on earth /hj: people who exclusively consume cartoons made for children and hold every single other piece of media up to that moral standard
thank you for the kind words on everything FB!! (and for beta reading, as always...)
i'm glad the audiovisual elements could add to the overall experience of uncomfortable closeness. visual novels (as we know them) were originally "sound novels", after all.
thank you for making this - it's so real & it reminds me of my experiences with fandom & people online.
playing this reminded me i hadn't taken my beta blockers yet today that's how anxious it made me.
thank you for playing (and commenting)!
i hope you took your beta blockers... anxiety is no joke ;_;
That was definitely a powerful visual novel, very thought-provoking and with excellent presentation! I really loved the art and the overall direction! Everything looked great, even the frame of the GUI (oh how I love those!) was amazing! The visual choices made throughout the game to represent various situations were also very well done!
For the story, I was hooked. I won't get into details to avoid spoilers, but I was on the edge of my seat, and I passed through a lot of different emotions: laugh, disgust (especially since the game used one of my personal triggers loooool), fear, apprehension, but ngl, I mostly thought, I was wondering! I never truly got into any fandoms, but I have seen debates about problematic content on the web (and I guess we all were confronted to it with last year's itch censorship...). And personally, I know I'm someone who loves works that handle them with care — not saying that they should avoir violent or horrible scenes, for example, my favourite part of Nabokov's Lolita is the scene in the hotel room, as it is very creepy in an almost oniric way, and I think this approach, this horrible onirism, allows Nabokov to portray the twisted mind of his narrator in a way he couldn't have otherwise. But I guess, for me to enjoy a work tackling such themes, I need to think there is a point, and to feel like it's not feti*********. And yet, for some people, I know it's still a way to gain agency over their trauma etc. to portray in a way that is somehow positive to them, even in a twisted way. So I guess my lukewarm take would be that I don't mind as long as it's confined to specific spaces????????????
But that's not commenting on the story loool, but I guess this tangent proves the game is thought-provoking! For the actual writing, I really enjoy the prose and the fact the two characters had different voices. I enjoyed the portrayal of their dynamics and of the progressive shift, and I think the two characters were handled masterfully — Annie, of course, who really moved me, and Sunny, who was just perfect in her role! I also appreciated the fact the game took time before going into the more horrific stuff, as it allowed to see the characters through more "neutral" lenses before things go south! I also was pleasanty surprised with the fact that we, as players, indeed understand quite quickly the nature of the two characters' relationship (the co-dependency, in particular, was VERY GOOD), and that the game somehow... acknowledges it and doesn't make it a plot twist?? In the end, the moment I thought I was so clever for anticipating a twist was actually just the game letting me know the info without even me realising, which was very impressive writing-wise, I've rarely seen this done!
Long story short, that was an EXCELLENT VN, the kind that makes me happy this jam exists if it allows to explore such themes and dynamics that way! Thanks for making it!!
thank you so much for the kind words on ckofntac! \o/ reading through your commentary was awesome. also, thank you for mentioning nabokov's works here — i love horrible, unreliable narrators and i've heard lolita is a masterclass in that. (i also want to read pale fire.)
.
.
.
.
.
.
SPOILERS BELOW
stories (and fiction as a whole) are a complicated sandbox. what might be comforting for one person might be violating/upsetting for another. on the whole, though, how you behave towards real people and their boundaries will speak louder about the type of person you are.
case in point: i cite harlan ellison a lot throughout this visual novel. his commentary in xenogenesis towards fan/creator relationships is spot-on for the thesis of ckofntac... but he was also one of the most vocal supporters of ed kramer (founder of dragoncon) when he was convicted of heinous acts of child abuse. i don't see a lot of people talk about this when they mention him (most people remember him for being cantankerous.)
coming back to ckofntac though, im glad you noticed the transition from neutral to horrifying. i think horrifying situations only come across that way if there's an established normal prior to it.
and i'm glad you noticed the Big Twist with sunny and how she relates to anita. the info was always there. you just had to piece it together.
once again, thank you for playing my game!!
"I don't want to be unsafe to love."
fucking phenomenal. required reading for anyone who has ever been in fandom.
i have been a sunny, and i have been an anita. this brought me back to anxious teenage skype chats in the 2010s, interrogating freshly-graduated friends if they're aware that the anime boys that they're calling sexy are actually still high schoolers. i remember the childish terror of finding a friend is Into something they Shouldn't Be Into, the sense of betrayal, the sickening feeling that you have to cut them off or risk contaminating yourself. christ alive, what a gut-punch. "sunny... um... it's been seven years" made me laugh out loud.
(spoilers)
it speaks to the quality of the writing that the abuse in this game is less extreme than most TYVNJ entries I've read - and yet - it's easily the most uncomfortable i've been playing any of these games so far. that wet fucking kiss sound effect. ugh. UGH!!!! as an ex girl with a waaaaay-too-friendly girl bestie i felt very seen.
i love that anita's realization of who sunny actually is happens completely offscreen. really smart, effective decision. *everything* in this title is incredibly well-edited and directed. i adored it!
also, rare extremely effective use of renpy bubbles W??!? crazy flex.
i hope anita gets on testosterone.
thank you!!!!!! (BIG fan of my friend snowy and especially orangepeel, onionskin btw. very happy to see you here)
SPOILERS
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i have also been a sunny and an anita. i'm glad i could capture the anxiety that comes with being in these communities... also im glad you found the "its been seven years" line funny. i've felt that so many times.
also massive honor to hear that the abuse writing was as uncomfortable and upsetting as i intended for it to be. as someone who was on the receiving end of it (though nowhere near as extreme as anita's case), it really feels like you can't escape.
i LOVE using ren'py's bubbles too LOL. i've used them for quite a few of my projects (protoViolence, etc.) and while they're a little fiddly, they're great for creating 3rd person conversation scenes. i find this tool helpful for them too.
thank you once again for playing my game!!
this game really reached into my soul and gripped me from start to finish. thank you so much for making it, i can imagine how hard it must've been (as someone with a drive to make similarly heavy art nowadays... oof!!!)
truly amazing game, i feel like this is your best work and i'm gonna be thinking about it for a long time.
thank you!! i'm glad this game could speak to you (and that you think it's my best work. it feels like bad faith on steroids LOL)
this game was terrifying for me to make, but i'm glad people are resonating with it so far. i feel like i can breathe a little.
i love a girl who's here for the yaoi
yeah 🤝
This was fucking fantastic, Mado. I felt ill the entire time I was reading - to be clear, that's a positive thing. My experiences are VERY different from Anita's and yours, but I live in constant fear of people like Sunny all the same. I don't feel comfortable being the truest version of myself in public facing places - and hell, even on my private accounts there's still that fear. You captured that feeling of anxiety and unease brilliantly - the sketchiness of the artwork/UI really worked to sell it just as much as the writing did. I think you have a real talent for using the medium of VNs to heighten the strength of your writing, the pieces all work in concert to create something extremely powerful. (The sound design as well, oogh...the nausea was palpable.)
I can imagine this was difficult to work on - thank you for making it. I think work like this is extremely important and I'm glad that there are artists like you making it. Brilliant, horrific work.
thank you!!! i'm glad my work could speak to you. (and thank you for the kind words as always, i appreciate it.)
indeed, this was a difficult work for me to make — but i'm glad i did.
made me sick to my stomach. 10/10
i'm bringing you ginger ale and saltines as we speak (thank you!!!!!!)
this had me squirming in my seat and fearing for the protagonist's life like nothing else has before. sunny represents such a specific and gut-wrenching kind of abuse—it's hard to go very far in the modern internet without seeing someone saying the exact things she does, exploiting people in the exact same way she does. it's a truly generational sort of trauma that I'm surprised I haven't seen more works remarking on
the story speaking to that while also speaking to the unique pressures and sense of helplessness inherent to being an online creator, with a dash of suburban isolationism in both physical and social capacities, make this into something really, really special!! and the presentation of it, the cinematic pauses and attentiveness to the continuity of physical space, did a lot to immerse me in this lonely house in the middle of the woods.
bug girls forever <3
thank you!!! (for betaing my game too!!)
i'm glad this work could immerse you and speak to you deeply. i hope to see more people talking about this in the future...