#ZHEN PSYCHOLONIALS SAVE ME... SAVE ME ZHEN PSYCHOLONIALS

[montanamp3]

thinking about her again <3

(*zhen from psycholonials by andrew hussie)

[necrowyrm]

Psycholonials chapter 9 thoughts:

Oh fuck oh god Abby oh no I thought she was gonna be safe

Mizz standing watching Z have yet another breakdown and Abby tryin to fix it? I think this is about to turn real bad.

Huh, kinda thought Mizz was gonna shoot Z or Abby there

Ah, Mizzlebip says 😈. I am concerned, and also I knew I couldn't trust the lil shit.

Z is defecting exactly how she said others wouldn't in her speech.

She takes off her makeup! :D

Lotta representations of those choice boxes here. Flyin past them n them fading away? Maybe representing she's gone from the path of becoming a true successor? But then, there was that cosmic Z in the background. Maybe she already has.

Cute Zabblepie moments :)

I'm surprised they actually made it to Fiji but I keep expectin something bad to happen.

"As if it was something you always had the power to log off from" HMM SUBTLE METAPHORS HUSSIE

Oh shit Mizz died?

Professor Chucklefuck.... He looks dumb

Mizz faked the CIA thing I knew it! That shit!

Absolute shitton of internet metaphor stuff here

Psychic colonialism. Real colonialism. It's all quite a lot to deal with.

Z's dream about her parents being proud.. 😔😭

Ah no. The revenge smile is creepy Z

Zhen! Zhen! Zhen!

Zhen! Zhen! Zhen! Zhen!

When's the fucked bit, I don't trust this as being a nice thing that happens and it ends.

Sugarberry vii is kinda hot but yeah this Jubilite movement is burning down huh

What she coulda done differently huh. Like, perhaps, if she could have made different choices?

Abby still loves Zhen :'(

Zabblepie will sail when they stop being so deeply traumatised

The return of the spoonometre

Oh shit, the narrator is Cosmic Z.

Specifically Z, as opposed to Zhen. The text makes that clear, and that's cool.

The crown and the sword.

We get to choose huh. Time to save n see what happens with both!

Hmm. Zhen resists the sword, so far. Is there gonna be different text options for all possible combos of sword crown clicks?

I feel like Zhen is about to make her own choice, rather than us making it for her.

Goodbye, Z! Zhen is too powerful for your lowly psychic colonialism.

Classic bluh face and the phone goes INTO the ocean. Bye bitch! Zhen is freeeee nooooooow

Hugs :)

Kisses :0!!!!! That was faster than I expected.

We now get fun Zabblepie in Fiji funtimes huh?

New horse new horse new horse. Percy.......

Having their Clown photos printed on the wall of their place seems Kinda Dangerous but I guess it's fine.

They're fucking married!!!!!!!!

Sword in the sky, as they're older, and we pan off into the sky. The crown disappears.

Credits are gonna be a succession of dumb clown assholes huh.

Psycholonialism succeeded and spread anyway huh?

Doesn't matter to Zabblepie tho, they're just having a good time :D

Time to load my save n see what happens if I attempt to pick Crown.

Huh. Hello again Z, you have something to say about me reloading my save?

Oh it's real Zhen having a talk. She's calling me out for trying to get a different ending.

"I love her too much to even think about leaving her again" Fuck yeah Zhen, you tell me.

This is basically the epilogue I guess? Secret unlock for trying to be a gamer but also surely most people find this right?

First of all, super cool that this exists, second of all, cool that Zhen did destroy America in the end.

I love islands too! :D

Are you suggesting to me, Zhen, that Fucking Joculine wanted to be your Kismesis.

More internet metaphor except it's not really metaphor they're just sayin it outright

Love is the answer. Pretty sweet Zhen, pretty rad and true and downright poggers of a message for this game to end on.

But also the answer is different for everyone yes yes true true. (But also love is the answer)

She could actually see the sword, cool.

That general ending speech was like, actually pretty beautiful. I loved this lil visual novel. It was depressing as fuck at times but the ending being actually happy and good? And sweet???? Thanks Hussie. Thanks Zhen :)

[tentacleteapot]

I finished Psycholonials last night and I have to say, while I knew based on the pacing of the story vs the amount of chapters we had left that the story was never going to end with some big denouement, I don’t feel like the ending we got works well at all.

whether you were rooting for Z to fail because of all the damage she caused and the way she strung Abby along, or whether you were hoping for her to eventually get her shit together and try to fix things, the ending seems to dodge both of those things by, well, having her do neither: she realizes she messed up and just bounces, and we see her end up with someone who she hasn’t been very kind or considerate toward, without a clear indication that she worked to be less of a mess. it’s implied by the postscript ending that eventually, being with Abby motivated her to be less of a mess, but that’s the kind of thing I for one would really like to have been shown, not told.

the other thing that doesn’t really work is how the moral or message of the story seems to shift at the last minute. the story’s been building pretty obviously toward the idea that ‘cancel culture is toxic’ and ‘being unhealthily obsessed with a public figure or a social cause can damage your life, especially if you use that obsession as a smokescreen to keep you from acknowledging any issues you may have’, and it definitely got to that point, but what the story DIDN’T earn is the monologue from Zhen toward the reader which accuses us of having ruined her life by controlling her since the story started. the narrative makes it clear multiple times that we don’t get to make choices that affect the narrative and don’t have control over the characters in the story — so much so that we spend the entire story having the ‘choose how the story progresses’ moments turned against us — but she still rips into the reader at the end like we had anything to do with her choices or decisions, which just doesn’t line up with the way the comic is constantly telling us we have no control or influence on what happens. it makes the ending monologue feel super out of left field and really robs it of a lot of dramatic weight, because it feels more like Zhen lecturing us for no reason or using us as a way to escape blame for her actions. it just doesn’t work within the larger context of the story, or make any real sense to me.

the art was good and the music was fantastic, and I liked a lot of what the story was trying to do, but ultimately I feel like the ending really dropped all the narrative threads that I found most interesting. the ending was more focused on creating a happy ending that I think many people will see as unearned or undeserved, and then wagging a finger at the reader for trying to take that away when we didn’t and couldn’t have, given the state of our save files when it’s done.