#literally all of my notes from the 2nd to last day are about fuckboy getting laid

[ilaiyayaya]

;-;

So like, I'd been planning to read VA-11 Hall-A for like, years, I used to have a really close friend who it was their favorite visual novel, and I've had a lot of other friends who have recommended it too, plus it's like one of the highest rated visual novels ever made, and I like visual novels! and I like things that are generally highly rated! and I like highly rated visual novels! (except steins gate) so like, I kinda expected I would end up enjoying it to some degree but like, yea it's really good. Like with a lot of things the biggest reason why I hadn't read it before now was just because it'd become to overhyped in my head, like the expectations I had of it had gotten so unrealistically high that it would never be able to meet them, and I didn't want to be disappointed so I just kept pushing it off, until I decided to start it at the very beginning of this year. My expectations weren't high enough, like I expected this to be like, maybe a personal top 10 vns at best, like I've read a lot of vns, and while not a lot of those are actually super amazing, I love dumb, bad visual novels, and I have a lot of nostalgia for a lot of those garbage vns and it's really hard to beat that. It's probably like top 5 vns for me now, maybe top 3, maybe top 2, like I just finished it so there's obviously recency bias, but like, it was really good, it beat the garbo vn nostalgia with nothing but pure quality and also really nice looking pixel art, especially with the crt filter, it really does wonders for the aesthetic. It didn't beat Umineko, Umineko is still #1, nothing will ever beat Umineko it's just impossible, Umineko literally has Super Paper in it, unbeatable by definition, Umineko is like that one boss in FFXI, Absolute Virtue, that was literally unbeatable without cheating, and if you beat it by cheating you got banned, Umineko is like that one minion in FFXIV, Conditional Virtue, that's literally impossible to get without cheating, even if you do Baldesion Arsenal like 10 times, it's just impossible it won't drop, um, I like Umineko :).

Ok actual thoughts time! VA-11 Hall-A is genuinely one of my favorite things I have ever read now, I was originally gonna say it takes a lot for a story to make me as emotional as I was by the end, but that's just not true, nonetheless I cried for like over an hour when I was done reading. At the start, it didn't really click for me right away, don't get me wrong I enjoyed the casual conversations with each character at the beginning, and Dana getting her head stuck in everything was really funny (she was easily my favorite character for the first half).

But around the midway point I started getting really invested, a lot of the earlier parts in retrospect felt like they were giving disconnected little bits and pieces of each character's lives and situations, stuff that could be interesting on it's own, just learning things about the characters, but nothing too compelling. But once those bits and pieces started to fit together, and there was actually a story forming around that character to get invested in, and they did that for every character all at the same time I started really loving the game's way of storytelling. I think the prime example of this is Sei, the first few times she showed up I kinda just thought she existed, like, she's relatively nice I guess, she's a cop, uhhh that's all I remember about her from the first few days. I liked her interactions with Dorothy! giving her advice on how to better conceal her illegal fingertip weapons was very based, but like beyond that I thought she was pretty forgettable. Then she goes to the bank and FUCKING DIEdoesn't die but almost dies, and then she goes missing for several days and Stella is searching for her, and then she reappears with severe PTSD and it's really sad. And then later you learn that both Sei and Stella died together as kids and you get a really haunting description of Stella as a child having her eye ripped out and Sei getting her ribs crushed AND that Virgilio was actually the one that saved them and that he's not some insane FREAK who doesn't know what halogens are, but is actually an ex-cop which is far worse (unfortunately I got spoiled to that little plot detail before getting to it, despite that it still hit really hard I wanted to vomit and cry reading about Stella's eye getting gouged out, but like, that's a good thing wanting to vomit is a positive). And this is just like one set of characters, and it is the most in-depth set of side characters, but all of them have some kind of really interesting or funny side story going on that you hear more and more about as the story goes on, like Ingram hiring Dorothy to roleplay as his daughter.

Another one of my favorites was Alma's storyline with her shitty sister. Like, god why are shitty parents such a common thing, in both real life and in fiction, and like, why does this game do such a good job at like showing how harmful that can be, not only to the children themselves but also just to like, people around them that end up being dragged into the situation that really shouldn't be, and how it can potentially ruin their lives too. Also based trans brother! this game came out in 2016 and it's like, really well handled, like it's barely brought up but like, in a good way, like it's not dwelled upon much but it's also not just like, brushed aside and that's cool. Really Alma in general is easily one of my favorite characters, she's such a good friend to Jill :)

Really Big Sandwich (tm) Break!

She's the best character, she's not my favorite character, but she's the best character.

I'm sorry you can't argue with undeniable facts.

It's just true. She's also just like actually a nice and good person that actually helps people and is cool on top of being wacky :)

Ok so like the side-characters are all really good, and cool, and well-written, and I really like them a lot but like, Jill herself is also like, probably one of my favorite protagonists in anything ever now. THE FUCKING DEAD KINDA-EX GIRLFRIEND STUFF AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA ;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-; AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Genuinely one of the saddest things I've ever read, and outside of a couple of days where she's completely broken, she still just kinda lives on despite how horrible of a situation it is, but it still affects her so much. LIKE NO HER DEATH OBVIOUSLY ISN'T YOUR FAULT BUT I 100% GET FEELING LIKE IT WAS AND FEELING COMPLETELY CRUSHED BY ALL OF THE REGRETS OF NEVER RECONCILING OUT OF FEAR AND NOW SHE'S JUST COMPLETELY GONE SO YOU NEVER CAN AAAAAAAAAAAAAA

SHE EVEN LASHED OUT AT HER LITTLE SISTER AND THEN FELT IMMEDIATE REGRET OVER THAT BUT THEN WORKED UP TO COURAGE TO APOLOGIZE TO HER ON THE FINAL DAY AND RESTORE THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO HONOR HER DEAD GIRLFRIEND AND IT'S SO NICE AND CUTE AND I'M SO PROUD OF HER AND AND THEY DO EACH OTHER'S HAIR IN ALMA'S ENDING AND ;-;

Sorry I'm very normal and not at all still crying off and on 5 hours after I finished the game. So anyways this game handles it's themes and messages really well and it does a fantastic job at storytelling in general and I'm gonna go not cry myself to sleep and be a normal girl with a normal not fucked up emotional state ok byeeee!