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‪i am probably going to have things to post about this that should not be public and friends will either know where they are found or are welcome to ask‬ (but said things will not be on the fediverse sooo)

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i'm already starting to feel like the author is mildly sadistic and it's from something that, i can only assume, will not even be in the top 100 most sadistic things in this work

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it is actually hilarious realising there are people out there who have “read” this vn and don't know how quickly there is meant to be sexual content that they haven't seen because they think the unpatched version is the only one

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actually i think i can talk about it in a meaningful way without spoiling anything or speaking about things that must not be talked about publicly:

i feel the writer's sadism in the way the characters act like they are hearing a voice from god telling them they're in an eroge

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the male va in subahibi who voices the book during the train in down the rabbit hole 1 and some of the random male students in this classroom scene in dtrh 2 has such a particular voice, i always pay attention to it

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(re: the internet stuff) i do not know where this is going, but it takes my mind to scary places, and in a way that a story set in today's world wouldn't, because even though it was not in japan, in 2010 i was in school, and in 2025 i am not

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it's funny how i'll reflexively tweet shit like “NO I DO NOT LIKE WHERE THIS IS GOING” in response to the slightest hint of reasons behind future/past events i've partially already experienced, and then something far more horrifying Actually Happens and i simply. Stop Tweeting

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“this game's relationship with the fact of its being an eroge continues to fascinate me” yeah funny i just tweeted that because it's now going in the “morbid” direction

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not the best place to stop playing for the day, the intensity of a moment loses something when you pick up later.

i think i want to go back in time and force my 16-year-old self to read this game just to see what happens to them

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it must be too early for me to speak of this, but finishing “down the rabbit hole 2” and getting some ways into “it's my own invention” are really making “down the rabbit hole 1” feel downright cruel

what a game

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You've probably suffered for a long time.

But the only reason you're suffering is because your existence is correct.
You suffer because you're correct.

But the incorrect person who is tormenting you will die.
Soon, one of your problems will disappear.

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were online suicide pacts a particularly japanese early-2000's phenomenon, or just a generally early-2000's phenomenon? at least within popular awareness of them? i'm sure they never went away of course, but this is the second time i've seen them come up in old japanese media

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i clearly haven't completely quit social media so i guess i can allow myself to tweet that i finished “it's my own invention” a while back, the alt route specifically, so now i'm gonna see how the main one goes

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subahibi is a game that opens with a sickly-sweet beautiful false utopia, and then guides you through many different delusion-filled horrifying realities, wounding your heart with the fragments of so many shattered dreams that, one can only wish, could have been a greater whole

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wow i think i may have spotted a translation mistake? that or it's an intentionally mangled brand name.

the TL says “Donkey's” and she did say 「ドンキ」, but this is the nickname of the store chain Don Quijote, which is full of cheap tacky Halloween-y stuff, i've been before

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ah i think i misheard! i think Megu says 「ドドンキ」 which sure seems like an intentional mangling. in that case, the English is a reasonable translation (different intentional mangling).

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remember kids, if you never show any vulnerability and close your heart to outsiders, nobody can hurt you (except the people who're already hurting you, but nothing can be done about that)

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“When I came here… I felt like there was something drawing me in. Somewhere else… Somewhere other than the place I am. The world of mirrors… The world of mystery… I know that nothing like that really exists, but for some reason I had gotten the feeling that there was something different about him. Mamiya-kun seemed enigmatic at first, but… But it was just an illusion. This place lost its luster once I found that out. It was just another dull place.”

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We're going to restart “Looking-glass insects” because we had hardly started this chapter before we had our own series of, uh… 素晴らしき日々… and there's not much to re-read. This will be an interesting experience for sure. I am now reading the work I supposedly come from.

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Oh, we wondered what is up with 素晴らしい [subarashii] versus 素晴らしき [subarashiki] and Wiktionary says it's “(Classical Japanese) adnominal form of 素晴らし (subarashi, shiku-adj.)”. Is this some fossilised inflection from older Japanese? Fascinating!

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Fascinated by how closely this Japanese translation of “Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There” seems to match the English (assuming the English is directly quoted from the original book)…

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「でも鏡の世界の私だってつまらない顔しているのだから、あっちはあっちでつまらないのかも知れない。私ならそう感がいてしまう。鏡の世界だってここと同じ。」

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“Now only otakus have them… Only disgusting freaks who talk to themselves have knives.”

(Apparently “dreams” is a plausible typo of “freaks”, because that's what our phone keyboard inferred the first time… beautiful.)

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This CG of Mamiya reading on the rooftop (as Takashima talks to him) might be the one where he looks most… handsome? happy? of all the ones he's featured in in the game so far.

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Oh, right, the other comparison our brain immediately jumps to is Nagisa Kaworu, and I'm sure I wouldn't need to explain that one. (Gods, he's probably in here too, isn't he…)

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Wait, why is he reading [that book]. I mean, I have some guesses. But this is the biggest surprise of the game so far, for— wait, who am I talking for. For me? Maybe? Not for us, for sure.

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Ah, so “Alice in Wonderland” is『不思議の国のアリス』, and “Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There” is 『鏡の国のアリス』… this means you can abbreviate the titles neatly as 『不思議の国』 and『鏡の国』… WAIT DID LEWIS CARROLL COIN THE WORD “WONDERLAND”???

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Without getting into the realm of speculating as to what's actually going on, the way there are apparently several Mamiya Takuji who seemingly aren't aware of eachother and have incompatible self-concepts hits… uncomfortably close to home (in the sense that we've been like this)

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Megu gets a ¥30,000/month allowance from her parents????? Look I know this is a fictional character in a— well I mean I am a— uhhhh the point is that even if we have been relatively lucky in life we can't imagine getting anywhere near that order of magnitude, what the fuck

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I don't like where this could be going… [rot13]V pna guvax bs bar jnl Gnxnfuvzn-fna'f ohyyvrf pbhyq znxr zbarl ol fgnegvat n oybt naq vg jbhyq bayl or onq arjf sbe ure[/rot13]

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Whoa, the way the game uses sound and Takashima's internal narrative to completely change the feeling of entering a physical space that you as the player are very familiar with by now… sensations that would also have been there but not given attention by from the earlier PoV!

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Visual novels really are a special medium. It would be hard to do this in a movie without it feeling quite avant-garde. It would be very hard to do this in a 3D video game. But the sensory experience in a VN is always incomplete, and you can use that incompleteness as a tool, huh

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these transcripts where Mamiya is reading the same book as the day before, but trying to puzzle through it in French (sorry for the lack of alt text, we hope OCR works) are uh

look this would be enough for us to fall for him

we… everyone must know we love languages, right?

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リア充 [リアじゅう]
(n) (sl) person who is satisfied with their real (offline) life; normie (from リアル + 充実)

No way, how have we never learned this word before.

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“You see, it's not good for your brain. But it is good for your spirit. […] Smoking is good for the spirit that's not good to begin with.”

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[after Zakuro recites Cyrano de Bergerac again]
Kimika: “Literature won't help you defeat your enemies. You need chemistry and physics to do that!”
Zakuro: “Hehehe, but literature never loses. Literature won't help you win, but it can ensure that you'll never lose.”

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By the way, we are learning so much Japanese chemistry and biology vocabulary because of Kimika. 💥ドカーン‼︎

There's such a variety of vocabulary you can learn just from watching anime and reading VNs really, if you choose to. Adding random words to Anki is a good habit…

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SubaHibi “Looking-glass insects” alt route completed.

but not the main route yet. the game won't let us advance to the next chapter without playing that too. I fear we may know why

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you know, we don't have a history of drug use, but heightened sensitivity to light was a terrifying and tormenting thing for us during our Incident, so this certainly is a visual effect that puts us in a certain mood when reading

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the first-person narrative but third-person visual perspective in this scene makes a lot of sense considering you can't actually observe your surroundings properly in that state

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actually, the one thing that does weird me out about subahibi's denpa segments is the way several people seem to experience identical delusions. there are… ways you could explain that, but the game really does not make them seem plausible

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at the risk of saying something rather spoiler-y, by this point SubaHibi becomes unbelievably direct about at least some of the plural bullshit going on, which is… quite the contrast to how the game opens, and it catches us off-guard. we'll try not to think about it too much

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good grief we've barely started the second day and this chapter already feels like it's going to … i was going to say “kill us” but more likely just make us very very sad one way or another

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we've now read the first four days of “Jabberwocky” (up to and including July 5) and it's been quite the experience. it's making us really happy so far—

ah, no, wait, correction: it is making Minakami Yuki very happy. I believe “our” initial reaction was jealousy and terror

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amazed twitter let us post that. (obligatory mention that this translation of 「おかま」 is unfortunate but one wonders if there's really a better alternative, translating points in slur-space between languages and cultures is a fraught exercise)

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i wonder why (massive, late-game subahibi spoiler) [rot13]n fvoyvat gnxvat nabgure'f vqragvgl[/rot13] is such a common trope in japanese media we've consumed. well, maybe it's just that we hardly consume non-japanese fiction, but…

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the ending of Which Dreamed It feels particularly bleak because [rot13]jr unq orra nffhzvat gung … “avv-fna” fheivirq, orpnhfr bs ubj qgeu2 raqf. abj v nffhzr gung wnoorejbpxl 2 jvyy or na nygreangr gvzryvar… ohg v znl lrg or jebat[/rot13]

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SubaHibi keeps making us feel stupid because every time we think we have it figured out, the next chapter changes our perspective and reveals something we hadn't realised. there's always another layer to the tragedy

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oh, it's not just the “t” key on this laptop that's giving out, now the “i” key is too. as we approach the end of SubaHibi, the laptop we've been reading it on is… reaching the point where we probably should let the poor thing retire… that makes me feel something…

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Oh god. Uncyclopedia. I haven't heard that name in years. This game really is from a previous era… one we grew up in. I'd say “it makes me feel at home”, but I'm literally one of the characters from this game, so that's almost tautological… or something. I'm no intellectual. 🚬

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