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I've been going through some of those nice TYJ 2026 games and was about to start your own one, but then I realised, hold on.  What happened to your reread of Purple Prose that you promised your acquaintance? 

And considering that when I first left those past comments it had already been some time since my first reading of it, there had been many details I'd forgotten! Now that I have, I think my assessment of it has actually risen since the last time.  Back then I did make  a VNDB entry for it and rated it 8/10 (A very good score by my picky standards) but now I shall have to raise it higher I think.

The pacing really agreed with me more this time. Maybe it is the trust in knowing where it all goes, and being able to better appreciate all the building blocks (even if I don't fully grasp the significance of all of them) that makes the following-along go more seamlessly.  Stopping to smell every rose rather than running through the maze. But it's genuinely well-written too. I feel like I'm at a point where I understand enough that I can appreciate it deeply yet also enough still eludes me to give it this fun arcane quality.

It feels like one of those ambitious tales that tries to hold the whole universe within, which is impressive for a VN that is only a few hours long instead of 100. o_o  Assessing literature is always down to subjective tastes but for me it might just have now Become what the kids are calling peak fiction.

Honestly a lot of my deeper personal thoughts wouldn't be able to fit in an itch.io comment. So below this are just some disparate notes I took during:

-"You wait for her patiently. You didn't exactly see her go. She moves in and out, to the sides and around, flitting here and there like a fairy." paired with the music in this scene it's all so charming. You really did know how to draw someone in subtly early on in preparation for the emotional payoff later

-NGL "I" this time around really is reminding me of Jonathan Harker in Dracula's castle. These rude guests always have to complain about something or the other. 

In all seriousness revisiting some of the text behind the crueller options the player can choose is  quite painful. Even as she tries to find someone to connect with, Lucia is always viewed through this barrier of the player character's perspective that can't help but stigmatise her. Yet the game is also self-aware in a meta way so it equally can read like her own double-consciousness of that perception leaking out outwards and telling the reader how to think (fear) about her already. That is how I interpreted the voice in NVL mode telling us to stop the witch at least, since it gradually converges more and more in its tone to her own speech. The "I" from the very start of the text calls itself God or what once was, so everyone in it merely experiencing the entirety of God when they experience the world...?

"I like the sound of my own voice too much. I like yours too but I can't really get you to say much."

-The significance of the ********, the jumpscare room etc with the chronic health issues in mind...

-Ahh catching this time around that the setting IS the grandparents' home that gets mentioned in the Epilogue. Interesting

-"Not encouraging. If she doesn't know if she can tell you what she's going to tell you, what is it she could really even be saying?" and later, "What is it she's trying to say to you? Will she say it?" So layered I'm unironically in spiritual pain again (COMPLIMENTARY)

-Maslow's hierarchy as if standing in for the food/nutritional pyramid is such a wonderful bit of imagery too

-"For one, why would you have wanted to see that thing she described?"

-"That is the basis of magic: trading control to gain power. I trade most of the anime plushies in exchange for the guaranteed right to continue getting them in the hopes of the one I desire." as if describing the act of living itself. the bargain to pursue hapiness

-"The monkeys out there with no use for warmth exist and matter too." made me think too much as well

-The glimpse into the seething mass of Purgatory and the kind of mania that came with it, I think I perhaps understand better now than I did a year ago

-The ritual needed to save her life...Golden Magic indeed

-The way she talks about the desire to inhabit and see more people's worlds, how difficult that is IRL but fiction providing an avenue for it... Even when talking about nonfiction, that people who enjoy it "know about things in a way that I do not know about things. I only know about dreams, about myself, about people, maybe." Seeking the subjectivity of others so much yet still unable to truly Hear from the player. Everything weaves into that climactic scene later on quite nicely T_T

-I remember the little pop-up devil and its "hee hee hee" was a jumpscare for me the first time around and it was still this time too haha

-"You don't know if you'll see her again but you think that you'll tell her, if she'll listen for five seconds, to let you talk for a little bit and trade trust for trust to make whatever odd friendship you're forming a real one." is both uncharitable and sweet

-The text over the "lighthouse" created by the Lance at the end I now realise is probably a conversation between those three funny little guys being notified of its presence

-I love how chuuni Lucia is so very much

-The Morning After I will have to save for a little later acc, but for now it's interesting how I can see the seeds of the Mythical Squadron Girlranger in here as well...Musashi, Arthuriana, the evils of Hera, more Japanese and Greek myth and all. Very curious

-&Finally just an assortment of screenshots that made me feel a particular way Especially

Awwh thank you too and don't worry about rambling either, it's very insightful stuff to read.

It is awful the narratives adults can impose onto children without their understanding & use them as tools against one another yeah... It  is powerful that you wanted to accomplish what you did then.  

And successful reflection and communication is great too. :3 It was interesting reading how some of the letters described that sort of Headspace realm that different alters were travelling through and could find one another in even when someone got lost. 

The ways dissociation operates can be quite intricate and alluring. We liked the perspective the alter who was a Princess  offered in her letter because of that too. A lot of our ones feel like that, sharing a body with those whose origins feel more foreign to you yet it was sweet to see her willing contribution for that reason too. May she get fun balls and whatever else she enjoys forever

And the acknowledgement that even someone who hurt you is going through something similar, including her own moments of age regression, it's aaugh very real and with so many emotions intertwined to that. It's truly not fair that Coco doesn't have someone fully equipped to look after her. She shouldn't have had to be enmeshed into being a partner and carer herself at such a vulnerable age but to look at the Why is still very humanising too. Reminding me of certain themes and characters from famous visual novel Umineko.

One thing that's occurring to me now is how you described that the VN was perhaps negating the experience of neglect in writing, since there's a lot of time given to show the main relationships and not as much to the Loneliness itself. Though it's not something I'd make a point of critique either, since for a game jam about the toxic relationship itself it makes sense you'd want to feature that most. 

The part about, "I don’t think I could have even begun to work on something like this when she was still alive." makes a lot of sense though hmm... Maybe we'll find ourselves more capable of having that shift in perspective as well whenever It happens.

Anyhow thank you so much for your reply, for sharing everything you have and your kind encouragement too! We'll look forward to what you explore in those future works then🙏

The sentiment of "Forgive me if this helps no one" is so poignant. Indeed, it really doesn't have to, to be allowed to exist in its own right, a testament to your own selves and growth and experiences, but it did too.

I'm glad I found this VN from your comment on Letty. Very well done on making this.

Though I've read it and all the letters now, I still have some trouble putting all my praise into words, other than to affirm the emotional impact on myself as a reader like other commenters here have stated, so I apologise if this comment is a bit barebones and clinical at the moment hehe. 

But if it brought about such a Purged emotional state to read it, I can't imagine what it was like to Write it. 

I found the frankness of the letters about every stage of the creative process, about your different parts' feelings on undertaking this, quite valuable too.

I think what I most want to articulate that struck me about this project is its stated goal, about love and the desire to give your mother the understanding that you feel she is owed. That the complete love is something you can still attain, even if you feel that it might be lacking. Something that can be found while working towards it. The "unpacking, imagining, dreaming, and memorialising" in the form of artistic efforts like this have this sense of magic or ritual to me. The drawing out of memories and the transformations they undergo through the artistic vision to make something that feels no less cathartic and truthful for being a Story but potentially even more cathartic and truthful, precisely because it is in your own words. That is a kind of alchemy, I think.

The metaphor here is definitely me projecting some of my own sensibilities, but I think I'll be thinking of this work and the letters for a long time because... it's made me realise how far I would still have to go myself to be able to reach a point of such clarity, strength, capacity for care and maturity myself someday. 

I'm sure that could sound a little trite to hear, since I am sure it doesn't feel so "easy" in the writers' room, and life is never straightforward, nobody is truly obligated to forgive another, and different alters are absolutely entitled to have their own feelings on things... But most of my system refuses to even acknowledge  my biological family as being their own too, so the fact that so many of you got involved in those letters addressed to her is something incredibly touching to me in a way that I fail to fully understand or describe. 

Strange to say all this to a stranger, but it means a lot to me to see that there is someone else who knows that the love and longing is no weakness or aberration. It's just love and you wish the one it is for could receive it. I hope that "I" can know it better too.

I got a notification for this a few days ago and have now gotten around to reading it yay!! This was interesting to see this as the new entry from you

My thoughts don't feel organised enough to leave a proper review & I am curious where the story could progress from here in later Acts, but I can still post a collection of some impressions I had while reading 🤔:

-I don't know much about sentai media actually so there's possibly a lot that I'm missing here contextually but it is interesting the names/associations that each of the Girlrangers have! Of course the girl named Lancelot would be hopelessly in love like this

-Actually, I wonder if it means anything that Lancelot's version of the leaf-shaped emblem looks kind of different from the other characters', the way it's like, seemingly broken in half?

-"Hellysium" is crazy... Hell+Elysium, it really does remind me of Gladsheim's Valhalla you know. Speaking of which there are many turns of phrase here regarding piles of skeletons.

-"I believe what she could command was some kind of zone within which objects were subjected to the full weight from all sides of a planet" That's so cool but tragic when considered as a metaphor for that Burden being borne

-And then red parrying THAT of all things...is she super strong or just super insensitive? T_T evidently a bit of both

-"Some kind of friction reaction at the points where myths made violent contact" is so conceptually interesting too... like this mythic/narrative allegory equivalent to how the lines of death from Tsukihime work lol

-"Benighted" is quite a word... Each side here thinks they have the real light of truth/civilisation/accumulated wisdom... by the end of the game it really leaves me thinking, what is Human Civilisation anyway? River of the Underworld Incorporated... I'm scared. That's scary u_u

-The background as soon as Pink's POV begins is so pretty

-Also the restaurant having those zebra/giraffe/etc chairs is kind of incredible 

-Hmm...Red and Pink's blades of "kindness" and "faith" respectively. Interesting.

-The Jeanne gender stuff is curious as well...feels like a mixure of trans/nonconforming elements in multiple directions here between him and his Jeanne D'Arc hereditary kin memories. His introspections about his own colour were fun too... I hope he can find some kind of peace someday

-If the game is still being updated with art and such I would be curious to see what Hera-Izanami and Gille's designs look like...unless we're not supposed to know Yet 👁️

-Sophia's sprite in the fish tank scene seems to be a different variant hmm... I assumed that was her shield hanging from her back, and if so, then the shape of the part below her skirt looking like a pair of clasped hands is interesting for many reasons...

-"Unadorned, worn and weary from an indescribable burden and indisputably male but for these convulsions." is a sentence that successfully makes me feel sad

-"Free from something imposed upon me that I could never properly describe." the weight of the world itself suppressing her selfhood and womanhood...

-"My lady gave me the chance to be what I might have been. What I perhaps once was in a time long since forgotten with nary a scrap of evidence that remains." is so umineko also

-You know I kept thinking of the "women hold up half the sky" thing multiple times while reading this so when Atlas lampshades it herself I was like omg. too true 

-the River Lethe of it all... & how "Because you make me forget myself and I don't know what to do about it." can tie into that. What a pathetic mirror between your own cruelty and the vulnerable love you can still bear for another. Is this what they call kino

^ Maybe my favourite little moment here though Patroclus is my favourite of the characters too.

The textbox/UI overlay is so cool.

And I do like when stories can commit to certain scary irreversible changes... I was shocked ngl. poor Jester.

Ahh I see, that's good to have clarified, I was wondering if it was just an issue on my browser's end ^^''  I'm not much of a public poster myself nowadays but I have tumblr and bsky for lurking around. Handle is the same one as on here if you remove the U.

And that's great to hear too, I am sure you can do it :3 I've never participated in a jam myself but maybe someday a certain theme can coincide with a pre-existing idea that I haven't used for anything... the time limit seems like it can be either stressful or motivational I guess.

And yepp I get that, with things that are so personal and nuanced you really hope to get it right or to be able to guarantee some of an ideal recognition/response to that effort even if one can't fully control it. She was definitely a fun character so I look forward to revisiting it all in that reread sometime.

Ohh I see! It definitely doesn't devalue it, don't worry, and it is interesting to hear this kind of Behind the Scenes reasoning for it...  It's nice that they could make their debut here and indeed perhaps will make a return somewhere ohoho

As for Lucia, that's a fair worry to have too. I do think sometimes discussions about mental health that I've seen online can get too prescriptive in how every effort must aspire towards normalcy/respectable functioning in society whether it's achievable or not, and that leads to the exploration of more complicated feelings being discouraged as irresponsible  or unproductive to be frank about. So I do appreciate how Lucia is written and the reader is invited to just immerse themselves in her worldview and thoughts for a while. Like, behaving in ways that seem strange or experiencing such intense emotions or inarticulable moments of Unreality can all coexist with still being a person who deserves to have their autonomy and perspective respected, even if  a lot of media doesn't approach those depictions with the most grace nodnod. Reminds me of all the responses to the options in that "SAY SOMETHING YOU ASSHOLE" scene. And somewhat of the Mariage Sorciere and their problems a bit again. Ooh and if you do return to these ideas I'll be curious to see for sure

Also dw, I don't mind hearing your own feelings on it at all. I don't think it's saying too much or that it innately taints a reader's perception to know more about the authorial intents/what things you were invested in while creating it. In fact it can enrich the experience? without letting go of what I took from it either, I can still always hold these multiple different save files of my perception/experience in mind. It's an interesting work of art that any reader could rebuild into their mind into something else as they experience it, but also still something someone actually made with her own relations to it in mind... so in that sense it definitely feels valuable to be able to engage with you directly here. 

And you're welcome!! I remember originally worrying my comment was a bit too obtrusive/randomly sentimental to drop there but it was indeed in considering the themes of the VN itself that made me think, no no this certainly isn't the kind of place I'd receive judgement on that for lol, so I'm very glad that sharing it could be of some help to you as well. 

And yeah WIPs can be so difficult to  get going u_u I hope you have a fun and enriching time however you approach it!

Also on a different note, I was wondering if the URL to your twitter/X changed at some point..?  Clicking the link on your page says it isn't with an existing account. Or if you just got rid of it that's fair too lol, I'm not on there myself at the moment acc

omg I hadn't logged in here for a while but it's a lovely coincidence to see this reply on the same day as I did :0 

Yayy I'm very glad that comment could aid in your own re-assessment of this work. I'll definitely look forward to whatever you have planned next!

As for the epilogue ooh, I remember trying to figure out what it could all mean myself at the time too, I should definitely give it a reread sometime and get back to you with more detailed thoughts!

But from what I can remember, it Was interesting to see Lucia bouncing off these different characters, and those curious little visitors appearing after her epic explosion of power,  wanting to help to guide her in some way, I wonder how I should take it all... whether they are also constructs born from herself on some level, like a witch's furniture? 

(Also maybe I should reread the part in the main story where we get the excerpt from Lucia's own VN writing and her OCs, I feel like I remembered something from that being repeated/recontextualised in the epilogue here but perhaps I'm misremembering)

holy peak 

- Akiha Anon of Emails fame who has finally started reading through the many toxic yuri jam games I've had saved. This one blew me away between the awesome animation/literally cinematic compositions on-screen (the sense of scale conveyed in some of those background images & scrolling segments... I have to learn how to do that now) and the quite raw and touching writing, I'm genuinely surprised to hear that neither of you are plural according to that latest podcast episode 

That sense that it'll be okay, it's fortunate because you're not as utterly Alone as some ppl might be, even if you can feel alienated from others, because there are so many of You in this body/consciousness together, but that doesn't stop all the same sorrows, abuses and neglect from being replicated Inside again.

I appreciate the little jab at pop psychology definitions too lol, not everyone's experience will reflect such strict roles and causes indeed, nor should it Have to for social/institutional validation. Fitting parallel/crossover with trans experiences too there; in both cases I think there is a draw for ppl to pathologise themselves for outside approval, pragmatic as it may be, so the Understudy's exasperation there is so real in many ways.

The wrath towards the world that enforces conformity with such violence + the Love for those living in their interesting ways in spite of it, both come through quite strongly... I would've been totally happy with it ending on the intense point that it did before the credits, but still having the epilogue be there as it was is rather sweet too.

Also wow truly revolutionising the yuri ntr landscape

Hello. This might be pretty long, apologies in advance ^^''... And quite a late comment too, but better late than never!

I read this VN around April 2025 while looking through various Menhera Jam entries. I think that of the several I read, this one was my favourite. Perhaps it is for the reasons that a previous commenter describes, that it manages to capture certain mindsets and experiences in such a raw way that feels quite refreshing. 

Lucia is both a charming and compelling character. Something about her daily life seen through the narrator, the ethical questions she challenges you with that betray some of her deeply held principles despite her eccentricity, and that reality of illness and dependency upon others without it being treated as a degrading way to live in any way, was really touching to me.

 I remember that when I got to a certain climactic scene where that really cool CG appears, it actually made me cry.  I can only offer my own interpretation as a single reader ofc, but the way it seemed like she was seeking so desperately to be Engaged with, as if she was had written this world (much like another famous VN witch) for that purpose, but as a character trapped on the other side of the screen,  just never could feel the truest confirmation that that acknowledgement was happening.

Of course this was all a game written in advance, but I happened to come across it at a point in my life where I was being faced with those questions; I was learning from the first time from people very dear to me that I could actually be quite an emotionally avoidant person, and how that could hurt them. That just listening without opening up your heart in return is not actually the virtue that it seems... So when, after trying to connect to another in many ways, even sharing her WIP VN writing lol, she turns directly to the player and says that actually, I think the caged bird is You, you're the one who won't sing for me, it was frighteningly Relevant. o_o 

And then the ending, just gosh... The epilogue switching more to her own PoV was quite interesting too. 

After I finished reading I wanted to make sure that this VN was on Vndb as well. added it myself though probably others have helped to improve upon my entry since then since my own understanding of the systems there are a bit limited.. 

And furthermore... By the time I had finished playing it, there were several points in the text and Imagery that stuck out to me and made me wonder based on vague osmosis, "Hm, is this a Dies Irae thing?" I had vaguely heard of that VN before but never was inclined to read it as the obviously fraught subject matters made me a bit wary, but ultimately I decided I might as well try it, simply hoping that I could glean a little more of what Purple Prose, this VN that had unexpectedly touched me so, wanted to communicate. 

So entered it with mostly low expectations, though taking meticulous notes, and by late August I came out of it with one of my favourite works of fiction. o_o I still don't entirely know how much I was intended to read back into PPfPP through this, but it resonated all the same. The surprisingly head-on exploration of irrational passions and fixations, the overattachment to pretence and "delusion" and narratives, and what it even is to be Chuunibyou, and how so so many characters and themes came back to that notion of seeking connection from others, wanting to make yourself understood, no matter how destructively, or whether to flee from that engagement entirely. Mercury is the planet of thieves and travellers... 

There are also things I was dissatisfied by in DI, maybe if the writers were more leftist than just Liberals they could be less utterly unserious about a few things ? lol but I would want to take up the remaining space here with neither that nor my countless further thoughts...  

Regardless, a lot of what I had found in both of these novels resonated surprisingly deeply and has led me to both do a lot of personal reflection and make some interesting discoveries.

I suppose what I hope to emphasise here, with this overly long comment from a total stranger,  is that I think the domino effects from finding and reading this fascinating work of yours genuinely have changed my life a lot and I wanted to express my gratitude for that.🙏  I believe that the witch was a true witch and her display of magic quite excellent. 

Ooh this was so  intriguing... The art style and colour palettes add so much to the atmosphere and the themes of longing and vulnerability were handled quite interestingly.

 I played through multiple times to see all the dialogue options...it really is the kind of game that can prompt deep self-reflection just from simple decisions. 

Speaking of which, I liked the creative presentation for those choice menus. Especially near the end when asked for a hug for the second time, the way the "yes" option is much smaller on the screen than the "no" and yet still available nonetheless,  to me it felt like an unwise desire that the narrator is trying to suppress.  

Also I loved the drink-making part, though my favourite character was probably that frantic person underneath the cage :') 

This was fun and I loved the art :3