Through Primary and Secondary School, my best friend was someone who had the same name as me, was born the day after me, and seemed to be better at literally everything than I was. They were smarter, more athletic, more popular, their parents had more money – and weren’t scary like mine were – and they were just BETTER. Being a day older was the only thing I had over them – and of course, when you’re a highly competitive kid who gets jealous easily, you cling to any perceived advantage you have like it’s the most important thing about your existence – and god, I was so bitter sometimes. It took me years to get over my inferiority complex and stop comparing myself to this person.

Lynne dredged up some very old, very painful memories.

I seem to have developed this awful habit of identifying personally with characters in ebihime’s VNs, even when I would prefer not to. It’s a testament to how well that they’re written that this happens I think, because I am generally very detached from media. But with a few subtle differences, Lynn is basically me when I was a teenager. It’s very difficult not to empathise with her internalised self-loathing, even though she’s not a particularly likeable character. “Pitiable” would the best way to describe her, I think.

Even though this was only a couple of hours long – again making me reassess whether I should even count it as a completed full game on my blog, even though VNs are video games and honestly nobody gives a damn about how I record things, me included – I got a very strong sense of Lynn as a character. That the game was named “Lynne” and not “Lynn” only made her more pitiable, really. That was a nice touch.

One thing I did quite like and would love to see used elsewhere was the stress meter in the top corner. It was quite effective as a visual storytelling device, as it helped illustrate things without directly influencing them, and made Lynn’s breakdown at the end all the more believable. Because stress is all the little things that build up over time. When people say insensitive things. When bad thoughts run away from you. Whilst it was utterly cringe in how it was portrayed – which was perfectly fitting for Lynn’s character – that her stress meter only dropped when she masturbated, then immediately shot up again when her sister walked in on her, was both amusing and painful.

Visuals and audio were both very low quality, but this WAS free, and it’s also rather old, so I’m guessing that’d be why. I’d be interested to see how The Sad Story of Emmeline Burns (which I also need to read somewhen and is also free) compares to this, though. I’ve not been religiously following ebihime for their entire career, so I’m not sure about the backstory behind this one, and there were no author’s notes. It was serviceable, but it did feel quite retro, and the sprites could have been a bit cleaner. The backgrounds reminded me uncomfortably of my old schools.

What I actually wanted to do was read Nothing and Nowhere, as I needed a break between about a month of Digimon and what will probably be a month of Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity. The store page told me to read this first. I low-key regret it, yet at the same time I am now very curious as to where Nothing and Nowhere takes Lynn’s story…if, indeed, she is the girl in the cover art, and it’s not Lynne. Should be interesting.