C•ko•fn•ta•C

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."

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 so 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 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. 

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!!

"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.

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.

i love a girl who's here for the yaoi

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. 

made me sick to my stomach. 10/10

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