My Hole Is Burning

I may be obsessed with this meme template

YouTube’s AI generated reply suggestions are trying to end my life

Fic idea where Glinda pays trism like 20 bucks to fondle the time dragon so she can pull a homura to stop Elphaba from melting

It feels like such a weird vn. I feel like if it wasn't for the extremely weird and disturbing nsfw content, this would've been an extremely compelling VN.

A look at: Moon.

Writing reviews is always a learning experience for me, and one of the important things I’ve learned is that, sometimes, it’s pretty hard to write about certain individual games, visual novels, or such considering the kind of detail I like to go into. Therefore, this will be the first in a new series of mini reviews, or as mini as they get with me. Maybe there’s just not enough to a game to really give me details to dig into, or maybe it’s difficult to talk about without giving away more than I wish, or maybe there’s just something related to it that I’m more interested in talking about than the actual product; whatever the reason, these will hopefully be less rambly and excessive than my usual reviews, while still giving enough of an overview that they stand as proper reviews on their own. Either way, the subject of this post is an old, obscure visual novel from 1997 with a bit of history to it, called Moon.

Moon was developed by Tactics, a humble developer of adult visual novels, and was the second one developed by them, with the first, Dōsei, seemingly just being, well, a plain H-game, and the third, One ~To the Radiant Season~, while still obscure, is actually fairly notable for being a prototype to Kanon in a lot of ways, as many key staff at Tactics would later break off to form Key afterwards, with them having also worked on Moon beforehand. Thus, Moon is in a very interesting spot when it comes to the progression of the developers that would change VNs as a genre with the release of Kanon, and that’s really the only reason I checked it out.

Moon follows Ikumi Amasawa, a girl who joins a mysterious organization called Fargo, which recruits others with the promise of acquiring an alleged “invisible strength” that can put one far ahead of ordinary humans, in order to investigate their possible connections to the murder of her mother, and if possible, take revenge on the ones responsible. Upon arriving at the Fargo facility, Ikumi quickly befriends two other initiates with ulterior motives of their own for joining: Haruka Mima, a determined girl with a cool attitude who keeps her goal to herself, and Yui Nakura, a cheerful, but naive girl who’s seeking to bring home her older sister, who joined Fargo several months prior. Though the three agree to become allies and help each other achieve their goals, they are quickly separated in different “classes” housed in different buildings, with Ikumi being assigned to Class A, the most prestigious of them all. Settling into her new life as a Fargo initiate, which mostly consists of “training” with the Minmes and Elpod, machines that confront her with various parts of her very troubled past for the purpose of “mental reinforcement” in the form of a vengeful doppelganger of herself, Ikumi gradually discovers many strange things about her situation, such as there only being one other member of Class A, that being Youko Kanuma, a quiet, cold woman who has been part of Fargo for many years. Additionally, Ikumi is forced to share her room with a strange boy who doesn’t volunteer his name, who, though part of Fargo itself, is quite low ranking, and more than a bit dim witted at times. Worst of all, upon finding a passage that allows her to access the buildings where her allies are kept, Ikumi finds that the other classes are subjected to horrific abuses by Fargo’s personnel in order to further their mental reinforcement. As Ikumi struggles to aid her allies however she can, the confrontations with her past begin to put a heavy strain on her mind, and the existence of the invisible strength Fargo claims to have starts to become more and more plausible.

Needless to say, Moon isn’t exactly Clannad. I did not know much about this VN before I got into it, and finding it to be a psychological horror VN was a bit of a shock. Even more of a shock was just what form the majority of the horror came in. You see, even though One ~To the Radiant Season~, Kanon, and Air were all released as adult games, the h-scenes are very disconnected from the plot, most of the time, to the point of losing nothing from skipping them or even removing them from the game, and were pretty much just obligatory inclusions to help them sell better. From Clannad onward, most Key VNs have been clean to start. With Moon, on the other hand, you can’t go 5 minutes without running into some explicit scene, the main source being the Elpod sequences and the abuses the Fargo personnel inflict, and it wastes no time getting to them, at that. This is the biggest thing that drives off many of the few who go out of their way to experience Moon, and even with me having just watched an understandably censored playthrough of this on Youtube due to its shorter length, I almost quit very early into it, and definitely would have if I had actually played it. The Elpod is one thing, as the sequences are used for the purpose of developing Ikumi, but even then, most of them are just excessively disgusting more than disturbing, and that goes doubly for the sequences outside of it. Instead of really changing things up, they’re just content to get gradually more and more depraved, and outside of disgusting, the main thing I can even call them is repetitive. This is one of my biggest problems with Moon, and it was pretty hard for me to get into it because of it.

Another major problem I have with Moon is how it handles its cast. Moon is pretty short for a VN, only around 10 or 11 hours if you go straight for the true ending, and even though there are 7 endings in total, they don’t add much more time onto that, with two being worse variants on the true ending, and the rest being bad endings gotten through making bad choices. Having as small a cast as it does should naturally work fine with that, but they really aren’t balanced well. While Ikumi gets developed across the whole game, and Yui gets a good arc pretty early on, Haruka only gets a short arc that ends as quickly as it starts and doesn’t do a lot for her, Youko barely has any screentime despite establishing a good dynamic with Ikumi, and the boy doesn’t have much presence or relevance until late in the story. The pacing is just bizarre and rushed feeling.

That’s not to say there aren’t a number of good points to Moon’s story. Ikumi is very well developed throughout the story, with the Minmes in particular leading to many melancholic scenes that make her quite sympathetic, and were definitely the high points of the normally rigid daily schedule much of the story takes place during for me. Despite the story’s flawed handling of some of them, the cast is still decent on a whole, with Youko’s gradually developing friendship with Ikumi and Yui’s development during her arc being some of the more memorable parts for me. The atmosphere is very well done, with the cramped, depressing corridors of the facility always feeling like they’re hiding something awful just around the corner, especially since you need to manually navigate the place using a map screen, and once the plot really kicks into high gear things become much more compelling, with the final days containing many high points in characterization and an infamous mindscrew of a sequence that, once looked back on with a more understanding eye, is actually quite fascinating in its own right.

Visually, Moon’s art was done by Itaru Hinoue, the same artist as the majority of Key’s VNs, and it’s a lot rougher than the art of, say, Kanon. It’s not outright bad, but it looks very dated, with the designs and sprites not really sticking out. The CGs vary in quality, as some look pretty ridiculous, but others are quite good. Most impressive, though, is two animated intro sequences included in the DVD version, which happens to be the only version with an English patch anyway. They’re fairly brief, but do a great job of setting up the atmosphere and premise despite that.

On the sound side, the soundtrack is great. It’s not a very big one, with only about 16 tracks, and the use of them can get a bit repetitive, but most of them are just a joy to listen to. From the electronic and tense Closed Space, to the wistful, yet peaceful The Place Where the Sun Shines, to Youko’s ethereal theme, to the credits theme, Sorrow, and especially the nostalgic music box theme, Memory, it’s worth looking up even if you hold no interest in the VN itself. There’s also voice acting, also added in the DVD version, and most of it is just average, with not many performances standing out, with the exception of Kahoru Sasajima as Ikumi, who delivers a very solid performance, especially during the more intense moments.

Overall, Moon can be a pretty hard sell. While I thought it was a decent experience by the end, its very offputting content, lack of similarity to any other Key works, and bleak atmosphere can make it pretty hard to go through even if you’re prepared for what’s to come. Even if you wanted a horror VN, there’s plenty others out there, like Chaos;Head and Chaos;Child, Higurashi: When They Cry, Wonderful Everyday, Raging Loop, or just about anything from nitro+. That said, if you can stick to the end, I definitely feel it becomes fairly satisfying, and when I got to thinking, I realized something that actually boosted my opinion quite a bit just by itself. As much as Moon is a story about cults and psychic powers with a somewhat unclear point to it all, it’s even more so just a story about a very troubled youth struggling with her grief, irrationally falling in with a bad crowd, and being forced to face her past and actions if she wishes to accomplish anything. Looking at the story that way, it’s actually quite well done, and going in with that in mind may even make it a bit more palatable. Still, I wouldn’t especially go out of my way to recommend it, and ultimately it’s still very far from being one of my favorite visual novels out there. Either way, that concludes my first mini review, which still turned out longer than I thought it would. My next post will be something unusual for me as well, but that’ll take a bit to come. Till next time. -Scout

This is literally all my friends who ship buckrich

Sometimes tweeter people know their stuff- this is the right kind of toxic angst I want to read.

I genuinely have so bad of brain-rot about Satsuhiko (Haruhiko Kobashikawa x Satsuki Iranami). I saw some random girl with blue hair and some random blond guy at a restaurant and my brain went “holy shit, it’s them” it’s so bad 😭

😭 im dying this is the best confession I've read in a while

Okay I saw ur rant earlier on ur Instagram and lowkey this book sounds like trash, but it gave me a stupid idea that I might reflect on later and view as trash. Just hear me out on this AU.

So Henry Higgins is obviously a proud bachelor (and certified virgin), but one day he answers the door to see a random woman at his doorstep and she drops off this young boy at his house who she claims is his son. Apparently she says that had a one night stand 13 years back and he is the product of that hookup. Whether or not this is true, it doesn’t really matter cuz this boy apparently is headstrong in this belief that Henry is his father and he’s been eagerly awaiting the day he could meet him. He’s clearly not been raised in an affluent household but he’s also claimed to have studied his father’s work whenever he can and is clearly trying to put his best (albeit imperfect) posh accent possible.

Henry thinks this is stupid and doesn’t want to raise this boy, so he plans on shipping him off to boarding school, but Pickering convinces him to instead take the boy under his wing since he’s seems to have taught himself a thing or two about Linguistics, so he has potential. Also like, come on now, they can’t just abandon him like a dick. This boy holds and innocent and unconditional love for his supposed father and seems willing to learn whatever from him.

Henry reluctantly keeps the boy, and the rest of the story would follow Henry essentially taking on a new apprentice while also learning how to be an actually good parent and treat his son well. Pickering of course is the more level-headed guardian who naturally dares well with kids while he teaches Henry to eventually come around and show some appreciation to his son, even if his attempts at doing are awkward and prudish at first.

first of all, just to clarify, i am naturally a massive hater so my opinion’s 100% not god! the book is quite good in some respects. besides Henry Higgins’ Illegitimate Fucking Baby, i mostly DNFed it over its questionable handling of its trans character, and also the weird classist undertones and stereotypes that seemed to litter every other page. i’m sure it’s plenty of peoples’ cup of tea, just not mine!

second off, somehow i didn’t clock that we were insta moots until now... you’ve seen and heard WAY TOO MUCH. spray bottle /j

ASIDE FROM ALL THAT, THAT’S AN ADORABLE CONCEPT. it reminds me of @/freddy-eynsford-hills-cuck-chair‘s (i don’t wanna bug em with a tag lol, but if you’re reading this, hi!!!!) au about henry, eliza, and pick all raising a child together,,, i feel like it’d be so interesting for henry to have to deal with someone less mature than himself for once in his life. eliza was one thing but a preteen is, like, another kettle of fish… i think he would suck in objectively the funniest ways possible. i actually had an au in my brain where he and pickering were highschool teachers/uni lecturers because i love that trope to death, but i fear i can’t start talking about that because i Will Not Shut Up <\3

i know you put the kid at like 12ish, but the concept of Henry The Bad Dad dealing with a CHILD-child gripped me so fucking suddenly after reading this ask, so apologies that none of these shitty little doodles technically apply to the specific headcanon you mentioned. they were funny in my head </3 i hope you like em anyway. uno reverse, now you gotta hear ME out… see MY vision…!

I want to eat a parfait rn

taking this out of the reblogs of my last post @deez-no-relation because I think it's important and its own thought.

There isn't any place similar to Tumblr on the internet. Here and now is the last shreds of an internet that was, an internet that could exist without monetization. An internet that lasted through so many ~pivots to video~, an internet that is text and gif and photo first. An internet that is driven by serendipity and the impetus of the user to do the searching, the digging, the work that is just handed to you by algorithms on other sites for the purpose of better advertising to you.

The best part about Tumblr is the reason why it can't monetize and I have been hitting up against this wall for literal years. There's magic here because it's one of the places that hasn't been overrun by ads. Every social site's business model relies on those midrolls, prerolls, in between story slides, because the money is what keeps them running.

Someone joked about making Tumblr a UNESCO World Heritage site and honestly? That's where my brain goes, too. Tumblr is a library. Tumblr is a museum. Tumblr is a third place. Tumblr is where people can go to be inspired and go feral over shit they love and indulge in passion and process their shit. How do you monetize that safely?

@taylorswift honestly this is your moment to bankroll Tumblr and save the internet (just kidding....) (unless.....)