straightforwardly | 163| Yuletide fandoms! Playing Date Warp, her tears were my light, & reading Gokusen

► I’ve been checking out some canons based on the Yuletide tagset—mostly things that were already on my radar/that I already owned, but a few things have been new to me.

I started with her tears were my light. It’s a cute, short (as in, it probably took me about 10-15 minutes to complete it 100%, though I didn’t actually time it) f/f visual novel about anthropomorphic versions of Space and Time. It’s also completely free to download. It also happened to be one of the many unplayed visual novels sitting on my computer, which is why I started off with this one.

It’s a very sweet game (with bittersweet moments), but it was actually the mechanics that caught my attention with this one. I liked the story and characters fine (especially Nil), but had it not been for those mechanics, I probably would have just said “oh, okay, it’s cute”, marked it as played, and forgotten about it.

Basically, I thought it really clever how the game entwined Time’s time abilities and normal visual novel mechanics. Going back to a previous save was her going back to try something again, starting the game over new was her going back to the start to see if she can get things to work out better this time around, rewinding text was actually her rewinding herself back to that moment—and the game actually registered those changes, too! Nothing delighted me more than going back, and finding that a new dialogue option had appeared because of it. It just felt very interactive, in a way visual novels usually aren’t, and I was very charmed by it. So, yeah. I recommend it.

► After that, I started on Date Warp. Another visual novel, this one made by Hanako Games (the creators behind Long Live the Queen!, A Little Lily Princess, Magical Diary, The Royal Trap…). I actually played the demo quite a few years ago, but I didn’t actually buy it until a year or two ago during… either a Steam sale or a Humble Bundle, I don’t remember which anymore.

Anyways. I’m really enjoying this one! I’m not quite finished with it yet, but I’m close—the only route I haven’t gone through yet is Bradley’s.

I played the routes in this order:
Alben -> Rafael -> Nathaniel -> Linds

I was actually expecting the time travel reveal the first time I played through it (a mix of Nathaniel’s comment about Janet’s phone and the whole “house that doesn’t exist except every five years” thing tipped it off for me—though now that I’m typing it out, I’m wondering why my brain didn’t jump to ghost stories), but I was taken aback by the parallel universe reveal. It definitely works for me, though, especially considering the kind of experimentation that they turned out to be doing. Though it made me realize, Hanako Games really likes those double-meaning titles, don’t they.

I started with Alben because… well, I have a type, okay? At least in fiction, I’m soft for the whole jerk-with-a-heart-of-gold thing. And I did find his relationship with his sister to be pretty touching—also intriguing in how it wasn’t just a straightforward “siblings who care about each other, tralalalala” thing. And I’m glad that I started with him, because I think that the reveal in Rafael’s route that it is possible to bring Bianca back—if Janet or someone else dies for it—definitely would have flavored my reactions to Alben’s route.

I’m also pretty intrigued by the reveal that it is actually possible to get Bianca back—Alben’s route’s endings made me assume it was probably impossible. Though Linds’ reaction to Rafael’s death in Rafael’s bad ending broke my heart and completely sold me on that ship. Oof. When, in Linds’ route, Rafael seemed so certain that Linds only kept him around out of kindness, I couldn’t help but remember that and think IF ONLY YOU KNEW.

(Though, OT3 ending! Okay, it didn’t explicitly say that Linds/Janet/Rafael ended up in an OT3 in Linds’ good ending, but considering that the last scene has them walking out together, the ending description talks about all three of them together, and Janet and Rafael actually talk about their feelings for Linds and don’t seem jealou at all in-game, and Linds has actually been in poly relationships in the past… yeah, pretty much a canon OT3.)

Janet’s backstory was a bit Too Real for me. Not the family-related stuff, but the whole “relying on good grades, not having many/any social connections, and being screwed over by it” thing? Yeah, that definitely scored a hit.

Nathaniel’s route was...ugh. I hated it. I hated it enough that, even though I’d initially planned on only doing one route per day, I actually played Linds’ route immediately afterwards to get the bad taste out of my mouth. Ugh. I especially hated how weirdly judgey Janet got about Bianca after reading her diary, though honestly, pretty much everything about the romance fell flat for me too. I’m not sure how this route felt so much more annoyingly moralistic than Rafael’s, considering, you know, Rafael actually talks a lot about religion and is easily the most openly religious of the cast?, but it did.

I’m also not sure what to make of the whole Janet-in-Bianca’s-body thing in the bad ending. I feel like it should probably be connected to the whole “life for a life” thing, except that in Rafael’s bad ending, I thought it was pretty clear that it was actually Bianca who came back. Unless it’s that Janet’s consciousness was just trapped inside of Bianca’s mind, while the real Bianca was in control? But all the physical descriptions make me think that wasn’t the case, so ultimately I’m just confused.

I was delighted to hear about Bianca in her own words, though. And I especially appreciated learning how she resented being seen as a “perfect angel”, considering the conflicted feelings Alben had about her. She just… really came to life for me, in that moment, and I loved it.

Linds’ route, on the other hand, was a delight. Or, at least, the route for the good ending was. I loved learning about some of the differences between the two universes, and his relationship with Rafael. And Linds himself. But I’ve already talked about most of the things I liked best about it above. ♥

I wasn’t too crazy about the changed events in his bad ending’s route (especially how they’re triggered), but I did adore his bad ending, and it made my mind race with theories. Which is actually why I’m posting about this now, and not waiting until I play Bradley’s route (and so, presumably, find out the answers to all the remaining questions) to talk about this—I want to share my theories before I find out what the actual truth is.

Basically: I’m pretty sure it’s the experiment itself that drew Janet (and Bradley with her) across universes...but I think it might be that the experiment itself was what drew all the missing girls in. A life for a life, right? Especially since, in Rafael’s route, Janet realizes that the reason she keeps dreaming about being trapped / about Bianca in the basement is because she’s meant to be the replacement source for Bianca’s life.

So what if this isn’t the first time this has happened? I mean, they’re basically playing with the forces of the universe. And in Linds’ bad ending, Janet specifically feels her presence being erased from the timeline, and then sees the day that she and Bradley arrived on the doorstep—except she makes no mention of Bradley, and the girl she sees isn’t her. What if, every time the experiment fails, the universe rewinds to the beginning of the five days and tries again, and that’s the cause of the disappearances that happen every five years?

Even the time that elapses in-between makes sense—every five years, someone disappears, and lives in that universe for five days, before the experiment fails, their presence is erased, and the universe tries again, with one year elapsing in Janet’s universe for each day in the experiment’s universe.

And the reason why this timeline erasure didn’t happen in any of the other route endings, good or bad, is because the experiment was either canceled, or someone died to help it succeed. (Note that I didn’t say make it succeed, as Alben’s death didn’t bring Bianca back.) As far as I can recall, it’s only in Linds’ bad ending that they push on with the experiment without anyone explicitly dying for it.

Agh, this is really creeping me out to think about. I actually shuddered when typing some of this. But I do think it’s the likeliest answer to the remaining mysteries.

► I also read through all of the manga Gokusen, though I don’t have much to say about it specifically. (This was also one of the canons that was completely new to me—I first heard about it from a rec on coal.) It was really, really good—completely sucked me in, though I’d only started reading it on a whim. I also ended up shipping Shin/Yankumi really hard, which is weird, because I’m normally pretty squicked by teacher/student relationships. It probably helped that Yankumi didn’t even realize his feelings until he told her at his graduation, but I don’t think that’s the only reason why it worked for me. I’ll need to think about it some more.

There's apparently also an anime and a drama? But I'm not sure if I'll check out either, yet.

► I did get a little further on Ocarina of Time, but not much—mostly, I was too busy with the above. I’ll wait until I get further to talk more about it again.