31/7
I promised myself id write smth about vncup today, so im going to.. didnt have the best of sleep, dont have the most of thought rn. going to try;
i die a lovely life
made by mel m. I don't know who this is; im only sort-of aware of their twitter persona since...at best,like,idk, 2 months ago. i /have/ since read 24 32 & mm preview though so im up to speed to some degree of measurement. amhyway. yeah. without pulling punches this is probably my #1 vncup entry[1].
i will also admit that im strongly swayed by music.
the things this vn does right are kinda abundantly obivious so i dont want to spend time on them: flashy, snappy pace; strong interface design (purposeful text colors, outlines, iconography etc.); narratively supportive art/auditory style switches; etcetera etcetera etecerta; you get the point. it's solid.
what for me has really been jumpin out in mels works, though; especially too in i die a lovely life; is how she flirts with the boundary between man-machine. (.....sort of.. the boundarys rather weak to begin with.) and, along with it, the boundary begtween an anxiety, and a strange mixture of hopeful wonder about technological future. being robot is decidedly different than having flesh limbs; bveing murdered is decidedly still morally fucked up.
It;s a bit funny too. unis and nun~as curiosities stay grounded: the issue is wanting to take a bath with your girlfriend. the issue is forfeiting the ability to cuddle. the issue is murder. the issue is not having sex before you die. Do I want to be technology? I don't know! Not really!!
the whole vn remin dsme of another vncup entry, rusting souls, by poyouli (I also don't know who that is). though, i think there is real difference in the "what-of?" of embracing technology. rusting souls is.........not..positive about technological assimilation. mel nears closer to a wait-and-see sort of attitude. uni has little concern, nun~a more so; neither fully comprehend. there is a constant narrative flipflop&push/pull between indifference, wonder, and anxieties.
24 32 and mm also feature - to some degree forefront, to some degree narrative by-product - looming corporate power-grabs n stuff. Dark Amazon (robot assimiliation is a cheap commodity!); or a city of for-profit robotics&corporate in strive with law. In i die a lovely life it's an incomprehensible scientific community and the promise of a fucktonnn of money.
it's a nice kind of frivolous framing. i think it does justice to current zeitgeist. to pull a current example that will probably be dated soon: natural-language-interpreting visual AI[2] is having artists scratch their heads in confusion; what the hell are we supposed to do anyway?
the other part that gets to me is thr ending. i saw yuma mention this vn feels like an animation rather than a vn. given no control, it's probably th emost obvious here. the lil trumpet motif in th final song is never gonnan leave my mind lol
yea I'm glad I got to read this one i really like it. like, a lot. love this one.
good morning is a social construct
by merilynn. I think good morning is prob one of mosr strcturally coherent #vncup entries (again, [1]). in that sense it shares a space with like, wormgrubber, zonnebloem, save me... unfortunately for me, iim not huge on narrative arc or narratology or just stories in general. fortunately for me(!) good morning is also thematically interesting&interesting characters&interesting prose&interesting art.. its an interesting vn...........
whats really, really impressive to me is robust prose n its stylizations/flairs. internet-prose that breaks its mould by taking form as crystal-clear direct speech. the vn reads incrriedbibly easily because of the concise, stylistically consistent (&funny) prose. essentially, its words that fill their proper mould in the story; a lil context fit. not breaking down into the bilions of streams of word-possibilities is a sign of good artistic direction for sure.
i think the way everything fits together so cleanly is admiradble to an nth degree. fears for an unkown future expressed in fishh, fireflies, cicadas,running tracks @school..in a claustrophobic tube that connects home and the nexus of events.... its a thematic puzzle that fits. not to mention the nuance of the comedic reimagination of what 'running away from your problems' actually means..
bgs are nice. clouds are nice. I like the character designs. everyone did well ont he music btw.
I will maybe add some more stuff to this later. play it another couple of times, let it simmer.. I havent said even close to what i want to say about this vn
not entirely related: merilynn mentioned somewhere (i think in wooxers discord, sorry, i was lurking.) that many of the good morning characters represent parts of her. /parts of her/ in the most stretchy kind of sense imaginable though, but.. it's something that passively, in the back of my mind, made me think about Tower. TBH i think ive started to dislike tower more and more. bird is unabashedly my standin. nina is unabashedly an idealization of. idfk, whatever in the actual fuck I was thinkin at the time. the style&sense of the development notes are an alien mess to me now. I don't really get it. What I feel when I think about Tower (as a singular object), is how a messy selfesteem fucked up all the narration and character by implicitly turning them against Bird. the whole vn is just a very mean piece of denigration n making fun of myself; awkward visual novel.
19/8
i said id write some more on good morning.
ive started reading clannad. or kanon. i havent decided yet. regardless: memories of jun maeda; memmories of his insistence on havng tear-jerker-and-recontextualizing endings.. it has beenmaking me think about goodmorning's thema&discussion of uncertain future. &to be specific: fiction imitates You. the horror of a maeda plot is the horror of your future.
"when you sit still you get time to think about things" // "things catch up to you" <--- saras philosophy. please keep it inmind.
i struggle..immensely with finishing stories&media. i will play two,three,four hours. finishing an act or a route. &then quitting. Althoug...i only quit playing; thinking about it continues on forever, no end. Victims of a Mindset: Little Busters; Tsukihime; every single long shonen ive started (dgrayman..!); Zetsubou sensei; Hidamari Sketch; Professor Layton; a lot more. This is fine;;; This isn't..always fine.
these stories hurt. they rly, rly hurt..in a way thats not consequential to anyhing. just in ways that make a body curl,twist,deform; writhe. in part guilt over not finishing media&berating yourself over it. in part the alienatio n of loving smth in a way that is, in larger context, wholly a different love,thanks to its incompleteness. I think though, when it stings most -- when it rly starts nearing mentally torturous -- is in th cases of story-design being antithetical to lack-of-movement. to a staticism. That story-design type, thatss a 'maeda plot'.
maeda writes in reverse: everything Not-An-Ending is only the unfurlment of an ending yet to come. story that funnels and contracts; becomes tiny; and finally folds back into its ending. under that lense, what remmains of those that dont find that ending>? every anxious hint-of-the-future in its writing&tone intermingles withh (self)hatred&isolationism--spite......for me it does, at least...
good morning. both hina and sara note something along the lines of "the future...it's not as complicated as you think." theyre right. know what alleviates this dumbass media-spite? giving up. its not as complicated as you think.
meri's fucking right. ruminating is the cause ofall your sorrows. run&never look back. sprint towards the future with full force; may you forget what yore even sprinting to;;where youre even sprinting at. beyond your head, there's only void; black mass.
run&run&run. run headfirst into a wall. try it.
I like static things. i like static music: noise, ambient, endless loops. i like static visually: tv; but also, the might of winter snow. static white assault. long held tones of ear-rupturing volume. rejection of an eb&flow to dialogue&a me that talks to you. i hate accidentally writing shitty archs into even my boring writeups. let's freeze our relationships. cryostatis.
i adore staticism. It's a poison. impressions, vignettes. you carry this weight. it seeps into everything, insidiously. maybe you'll wonder of fireflies, maybe you'll dream of fish, maybe you'll simply reject&be rejected. maybe you'll just subtly hate yourself. But: you'll really feel it when it all finally burns a hole through your Media-digestive system.
what if i just listen to all the whims of the world?
yeah? what if? finish the goddamn fuckingstory.... Jesus christ. finish your life.
3/8
thera
thera is kinda unique. unique in that it literally does not use the crrect game engnine. but also in its general aesthetic. I think kyous visual language; the menus, glitchart-eqsue bgs, crude character designs; makes me think of likee..indie game devs. the like, yume nikki, or off, or even lisa kind of stuff. of course kyous frivolous kind of performative writing contributes 2 communicate this affect. it's also literally not a yuri vn. shares no tropes either. but that's what's interesting about it! it is actually just a completely different vibe to everything else.
what vncup has been showing me is a new perspective on visual novels. because I think, vns are traditionally more like a collection of genres than a medium[3]. probably something to do with the professional output of only a handful of studios being put on a real pedestal; small-time creators are strangely absent in communities like r/visualnovels! &especially so if they dont consent to the established genres. so every little bit of new input helps, at least for me, reshape how to think abt visual novels. see a bit more of its capabilities as a /medium/ and /not/ just the collection of tropes of the. ahem. 'canon'.
actually, a bit more about the writing: wholly, i am unfamiliar with this style, but the ideas of these personifications of inner thoughts&feelings that can drift in and out of the concscious mind; repressed; unrepressed; but not crossing the threshold to the outside..it's a good concept. the idea of drifting to and from a mind's core.. it's cool; and I think this VOID-SPACE-dream-scape rly forcefully turns your eyeballs inside-out. not to look at your insides, but to look at a mess. the bg in the final scene reminds me of an inversed face.
i also like the bits of parallelism in ACs spiralling thought nd implied subconscious automatism. thinking of secluded thoughts. of a lil inner world. a bit of wonder about what the point of a talk show even is? who is watching this?
it's promising but so so short. in that sense it's like end of verse and mystery cat... more like a demo than anything else. actually, i havent looked at kyous other stuff so seriously yet but I think theres a lot of expounding on the same type of theming. (I /have/ been listening to a couple of kyou podcast episodes, enjoyable. i admire their mindset.) so, i'll check that out later. Im really curious about what kyou can put out further so yes i am keeping a watchful eye. idk if youl ever read this kyou but also thank you for the nice comment on tower ^^
[1] granted only roughyly half of the 36 entries are available to the public as of writing
[2] you know what im talking about. im not linking this shit
[3] with the big caveat thatt there are actually already more than a couple of communitiies around this sort of stuff. for example, smut&fetish visual novels are their own class. still, a lot of it is very means-to-an-end&good-enough production. nnot particularly intentionally exploratory.