itch.io

thank you!

the incredibly cutesy artwork and chara designs contrasted w/ the subject matter was honestly very fun, i also enjoyed how hateable the mc is, it's really nice to read a story with a protag who is just The Worst

really liked the ending, it feels like a punchline and ties the story together perfectly. i had a good time with it!

the prose is so ornate and leans so heavy on imagery i found the story hard to follow, but the character dialogue is pretty casual by contrast which cut through it nicely. i think the very elaborate prose also helps to capture the feeling of confusion and general disorientation algie must be feeling for most of the story.

really loved the presentation, especially the chess match. the ending had a nice sense of catharsis too. one of the most visually interesting ren'py vns i've read, the art is lovely too!

a really atmospheric story with some lovely art, great use of sound effects too. i liked it a lot, it feels so tense and unsettling.

aurghghgh i found this story pretty upsetting ngl hahaha

it has a pretty goofy premise but it handles it so earnestly and so poignantly, sarah feels like an incredibly realistic character, her thought processes are laid out in such a stark and intimate way (that you know she would hate herself since she prefers to keep her thoughts hidden) feels quite painful

i also really like that her parents are also characters with sprites in this story: i feel like so many vns will just never show parent characters at all because they're not ~interesting~ and they ~get in the way of the narrative~, but imo it's more realistic to give thems ome focus. having sarah feel so conscious of living under her parents' roof and her mixture of gratitude(?) to them that they provide for her and the discomfort of knowing that she'll basically always have to follow their rules and do what they want her to also feels very lifelike... i imagine a lot of people would be able to relate to these emotions, the passive aggressive comments from her mother and the flippancy of her father add further layers of Pain to the story

as for the main relationship... well, it feels like there was no other way to end it, but i'm sad that graye's shounen pluck was not able to get through to sarah. the ending was genuinely very sad, seeing her turn her back on everything she once took solace in while not having anything to replace the void? she still isn't comfortable in her own skin, still doesn't know what she wants in the future, and is still pushing people away.

i hope she will be happy in the future, even without graye. also while bun was quite grating in her "oh well i only care about my yaoi"s stuff masquerading as some sort of progressivisom, it was sad to see sarah block her without a word when she was her best friend. i also feel bad for bun and she wasn't in the story that much haha, i feel like sarah at least should have had a talk with her but... i suppose she's running away again.

i feel like it's a story about a character stuck in her ways, constantly concerned about what other people think. her only solace is her own fantasy world derived from what seems like a fairly shlocky boys manga whose fanbase is actively hostile to its female readers by a mangaka who treats its female characters like props (is this why sarah takes an interest in it? the female characters are pretty shallow and pale in comparison to the male leads, so it's easier to ignore them and The Presence Of Womanhood: it's easier to erase herself from the narrative), and then even that is sullied in the end when the potentially poignant reveal is clumsily fumbled and it reveals to her how empty it all was. she wants to change, but in the end, she still can't, and she loses her main coping mechanism.

it's hard not to find it very sad, but i do hope she will find something else to fill the void and she can some day become more comfortable in own skin and more confident in her own abilities. i'd like to imagine she will find something to replace graye, but i suppose that exists beyond the boundaries of this story........


anyway i liked this a lot, it feels so real and sincere and i am sure there's a lot of girls in fandom out there who can relate to this. thank you for making it, i really enjoyed it (even if it made me very sad lol)

this one was sad orz

i rly like the music choices and the ui, the presentation looks so nice for it being quite simple. i wonder if it was inspired by shikkoku no sharnoth at all? the world setting, pulling from historical events, the music choices and ui feel very sharnoth to me

rly like lily's narration too, she feels very distinct as a character with how clipped her thoughts are and how light a lot of her narration is even in some of the more grisly scenes. the story manages to say a lot in a relatively short amount of time, i liked it a lot.

i love yuri thank u shino

got every single ending, i rly enjoyed it! i love the dour mood and the very cold narrator, kazuki was a very fun mc to follow. i also liked her blunt narration, there was a lot of personality to it.

my fav chara is homura, i love how she's both evil and pathetic at once. her true end is probably my fav, rly liked how many twists her route had too. 

this was a rly nice vn, i enjoyed it a lot! i love toxic yuri...
oh, and yuuko's ending segments were a lot of fun, too. i like how they were also quite gloomy and poetic, i think they added to the story and made yuuko's presence seem even more palpable even outside of the main narrative!

loved the presentation, the use of sound effects, the animations, and how evocative and beautiful the prose is. this is a beautiful vn, it was definitely an experience.

loved this vn, the presentation is a lot of fun and i like how dream-like and eerie the story is. it feels very unique! i also love the credits song, the vocals are very nice!

also while i think the error thrown at the end is probably unintentional i feel like it adds to the game in a strange way, it makes it feel even more unsettling haha

really interesting, i love the presentation. the writing is very evocative and i enjoyed trying to piece together what was happening!

if you're interested in how the content of the story is handled you are welcome to read it for yourself to come to your own conclusions. i don't understand the purpose of writing a long comment like this fussing about how the content might have been presented though, as you yourself admit you have no idea.

if you find the very concept of the story upsetting then that's fine, you're free to pass up on it. i'm not going to make anybody read anything they find triggering. i'm sure there are many more visual novels out there for you to enjoy that will appeal to you more than this one.

this is such a good idea thank you for sharing it meiri!

thank you, i'm glad you liked it!

It's a yuri visual novel, so yes.

Thank you! 🙏

Thank you, I'm glad you liked it! ❤️

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_elf

the art and music for this are great, i love the atmosphere. i really like lydia's design and how many variants her sprite has, what with all the poses and expressions, it makes the vn feel very polished given it's a relatively short experience!

i commissioned this artist.

he's just so charming haha
thank you, i'm glad you liked it!

absolutely love the aesthetics (esp that one cg of galia in the bathroom brushig her teeth, stylised anime art overlaid over photographic bgs always look so nice to me, esp when they get integrated into a scene w/ angles accounted for) and the writing is lovely, i love girls who are also mushrooms and mushrooms who become girls

the scene of the mushroom being plucked was also effectively visceral. loved the imagery with the monitor surrounded by ivy too.

thank you for making this it was a lovely experience! the music is also very pretty!

lots of indie games get incorrectly flagged as viruses, it's a false positive

Finished reading this last night and I have some Thoughts about it haha...
First off, this VN actually took me quite a while to read despite being rather short. Usually I click through VNs very quickly, even ones with the prettiest art and the most high quality of presentations, because I'm impatient and I prioritise reading the story above all else. There was something about the presentation of this VN, though, which really made me slow down and appreciate all of it: 'Narcisse' recording his thoughts to the camera, the segments where he's texting his friends, the inserts with the fanfiction he's been writing and his interactions with Gabriel's fan community, his inner monologue... There's a lot going on here in such a short wordcount, but it all manages to feel cohesive. I liked how 'scattered' the narration is, actually: it fits with how fragmented 'Narcisse's' sense of self becomes, and kind of seems to echo his mental state in a way.

This story is pretty dark, obviously (it actually ended on a much grimmer note than I expected, though I didn't read the content warnings LOL so maybe this was warned for), but I mostly appreciated how funny it was when it wasn't being Really Grim. I think my favourite part of this VN was 'Narcisse's' rant in the fandom community about how people prefer Gabriel over Seiji, it feels so ridiculous but it's perfectly believable that somebody would write something like that... In fact, I'm sure I *have* seen people write things like that in fandom spaces. I love how reasonable 'Narcisse' is trying to sound, all while he's basically calling other people morons for not agreeing with him ("though of course, everybody's entitled to their own opinions " lol).

I also unexpectedly really liked Josh's character. I think it's interesting how 'Narcisse' boils his friends down to tropes when they interact ('The jock', 'the weeb', etc) and he's very dismissive of Josh in his inner monologue as being 'some bicurious guy who's going to use me and then cast me aside', but the reader can see pretty clearly in that one scene of Josh he is a decent guy (he is too good for 'Narcisse' haha). It makes it more apparent 'Narcisse' is a pretty unreliable narrator who isn't really trying to engage with his friends, all the while wallowing in his own self-pity about how nobody understands him. You did a great job showing how his POV is skewed in a subtle way, it's also quite sad to read somebody being so negative towards a person who clearly has his best interests at heart.

It was entertaining in its own way to see 'Narcisse' spiral throughout the story to being The Absolute Worst version of himself, and I did like how deranged his thought processes become (he also has some pretty suitably deranged facial expressions too LOL). The 2nd time he interacts with Gabriel was also pretty funny, even if it was uncomfortable: it was fun seeing 'Narcisse' trying to rationalise that EVERYTHING WOULD HAVE WORKED OUT FINE IF THAT JERK SEIJI WASN'T THERE...

So it's also quite interesting to see, at the very end of the story, that Seiji is actually far more sympathetic about what happened to 'Narcisse' than Gabriel, even though 'Narcisse' was overtly rude to him and Gabriel was the object of his affection. I wonder if this is another dig at 'Narcisse' not being the best judge of character a la Josh, or maybe it's another indication that he was so wrapped up in his own delusions he wasn't perceiving reality clearly (well, the story is full of those at the end).

This is honestly a pretty bizarre story which is told in a myriad of different ways, with some of the most ??? sound effects I've heard in a VN and an incredibly insane MC (also 'Narcisse's' emotions were giving me big Inside Out vibes lol), but I really liked it. I think it manages to come together to form a cohesive whole even if the individual elements seem kind of disparate, and while 'Narcisse' is uh not the best guy I did feel a lot of sympathy for him. Though there are some very funny parts of this story, it is sad to see a character who had potential pushing everybody who cares about him away and wallowing in his own delusions because he's too ashamed? Prideful? Fearful? to open up to others who are actually in a position to help him.

I suppose it's also telling the only person 'Narcisse' wants to 'open up to' is Gabriel, who is an idol and is basically unattainable. He doesn't have to worry about how his beloved will regard him if he and his beloved literally can't interact (for the most part) and it's all one-sided, AI generated photos of you and your beloved kissing can't tell you to go to therapy or get out of bed or eat some food...

(I also think it's interesting Lewis calls himself Narcisse even though he treats himself so terribly, but it's clear he does have quite the ego despite his rapidly deteriorating mental health and that is probably a big reason why he doesn't get outside help...)


In any case, I really enjoyed it. It packs so much into a relatively short wordcount and there's a lot to dwell on. The characters feel complex and multi-faceted, even characters who don't get much screentime like Josh, and I really love how you write terrible men. I hope you write more insane yaoi like this in the future (er, if you want to, of course!), you're very good at digging into the mindsets of mentally ill characters and showing what makes them tick!

Aaa thank you very much! It was very nice of you to check the VN out and to leave such a lovely comment, reading this made my day 🙏
It makes leaving the comments on worthwhile despite some of the unsavoury things people have been saying 💦💦

I get a little overwhelmed with longer comments like this and I'm not sure if I'm the best at replying to them, but I am glad that you liked it even if the story strays into some pretty uncomfortable territory.


About Connor: my proofreader was pretty upset about the scene where Arthur details what happened to Connor, and they found that much more upsetting than Arthur and Mason's relationship. I think they had to take a break from the story at this point, and I think they were a little peeved I didn't give them a content warning for it in advance haha 💦💦
Calling this story wholesome or relaxing feels a bit deceptive given it does deal with a pretty dark topic like this, but it makes up a pretty core part of Arthur's character so I hope it was handled sensitively!

When I was writing this, I decided the conflict with Connor would be the main reason why Arthur is the way he is... Spoilers, but Arthur blames himself for what happened to Connor (even if it was not directly his fault) and he's been internally considering himself as a Bad Person for years already, which has eroded a lot of his self-worth. I imagine he was a lot more 'together' when he was still working with a teacher, and also pretty principled. I don't think he would ever have considered having a relationship with a student while on the job: he would have found the idea repellent. After the Connor incident his mental health collapses and his self image falls apart, hence he's more receptive to Mason's advances than he would have been in the past because "well I already hate myself, it can't get much worse". The fact Mason is an adult is a pretty important factor too: if he was younger I still don't think Arthur would have gone along with this.

I did want Arthur and Mason's relationship to be (mostly) wholesome despite the taboo elements, and I didn't want the story to feel like Arthur is taking advantage, so making Arthur emotionally vulnerable and Damaged felt important. He's really going through it, even if he's mostly able to mask it, which means I can write some fun hurt/comfort and it kind of undercuts some of the authority Arthur might still have over Mason by being his former teacher and being a fair bit older than him. Having a five year gap between the pair's last interaction and making a point out of the fact Arthur initially doesn't even remember Mason when they see one another again also makes the relationship feel a lil less creepy I think haha

I wanted to have a bit of fun with the character dynamic though, so the teacher/student thing does crop up in a kink context... A lot of it is Mason trying to get under Arthur's skin by being as audacious as possible, partially because he's a little salty Arthur obviously wasn't paying him any especial attention back in school, but largely because he thinks it's fun to fluster his former teacher... Also he is very clearly getting off on it lol he's kind of a bully...
But yes most of the times when Mason calls Arthur 'sir' he's being annoying on purpose because he knows it flusters Arthur. Arthur isn't super into it (or so he says) but he still winds up going along with it in part, so I think he appreciates the attention haha

If Arthur was less damaged he probably wouldn't let Mason take so many liberties, but he's been dealing with self-hatred for three years and part of him probably just wants somebody to be nice to him (or at least to take an interest in him), so things pan out as they do... Even if Arthur doesn't believe Mason will stick around, so he's surprised when he was being serious about his confession haha


I've read a few other VNs which do the teacher/student romance thing (it's cropped up in some yuri VNs like Lilycle Rainbow Stage, Kindred Spirits, and Sono Hanabira, to name a few), and they all handle the relationship by making the younger character more pushy and the teacher the shy uwu one so it doesn't feel as discomforting. Also, in the case of Kindred Spirits, the character designer decided to give the teacher pigtails and make her look younger than literally every other member of the cast, I guess to make her seem extra non-threatening lol
This is a common trope in this sort of story (not just in BL) to the extent where it feels like a cliche, so I was kind of rolling my eyes at myself for relying on the same story beat (hence why I said I was being 'cheap' in my author's notes lol), but it does work pretty effectively. I hope this story did touch at least a little on the ethics of the situation and Arthur feels a suitable degree of unease about it as opposed to handwaving any uncomfortable elements of the relationship completely, though.

And thank you for sharing the song, the lyrics are pretty tragic. It does feel quite fitting for the end of the story (or, at least, the part of the story before the credits). I had to give these boys a happy ending since I felt like Arthur had suffered enough already...
That being said, I did decide to make a sequel where I will inflict Arthur with even more guilt about his illict relationship and some fun new anxieties about what the general public will think of him, so he's not getting off the hook that easy. I am not done with him yet.....


Thank you once again for the king comment, it's appreciated! And yeah this story has a pretty different tone from your teacher/student romance haha but I'm glad you wanted to root for them... I want to root for them too I think they're cute 🙏

This VN does have some spicy content but there's no explicit artwork, so I'm not sure if I'd class this as erotica personally. I wouldn't even call this r18: I think it's more like nc-17.
Steam is pretty strict about tagging games with adult content appropriately and I wasn't asked to tag this as AO on Steam at least, so I didn't tag it as AO on Itchio either. I do have other BL VNs which are more explicit than this though 🙏

All Scars and Starlight does but the context is kind of grim (also you need to buy the DLC to get that).
Unluckily in Love: Fragments of Love has some switching but only in episode five.
Beneath the Bleeding Moon does too, but only in a bonus r18 scene that's disconnected from the main story.

It's not something I write a lot but it crops up on occasions!

thank you i'm glad you liked it!

i probably could put some more explicit content warnings on here, buuut itchio has been known to delete games based on certain 'problematic words' in the content warnings, so i would rather not warn for anything too specific. i apologise if this caused any upset 🙏

the last time i checked 21 year olds were considered adults, but maybe you live in a country with different laws

i hope you enjoy it if you do check it out!

thank you very much for the comment, i'm glad you liked it! i do enjoy traumatised slightly pathetic men, i must write more of them... 🙏

Like I said, the story is meant to be a little scandalous. The story is told from Arthur's POV and he had a lot of guilt and neuroses about getting so close to a former student which makes up the emotional core of the story. The age gap being as substantial as it is was a deliberate writing decision, and I would like to think I handled the subject with a degree of nuance and tact. Of course, you are free to disagree 🙏 

i didn't want to the characters to be closer in age, the story is meant to be a little scandalous
fortunately i am very nice and i was very upfront about the age gap present in the story so people who find such themes uncomfortable can choose to not engage with this work. isn't that kind of me? 😊

Do you feel compelled to say this on all lgbt games you come across or am I special?

i'm ascending

please your honour they're in love 🙏

edinburgh mentioned 🙏

You just download the apk on your Android device and then launch the apk, that's all.

Thank you very much! I'm glad you enjoyed it! <3

I spent more time here trying to flesh out the side characters than I did BH. The side characters there are pretty one note and they mostly exist for comedic purposes, and while the same can be said here, I wanted to give them some more screentime and show off some sides to them to make the universe feel more alive.

And I'm very fond of Constance, she's one of my favourite characters I've written so I wanted to give her some more screentime. Thank you once again!

thank you! i am not sure i will write more of these boys, i'll have to see how i feel...