yea sure u did yea sure u did.
u come to f95 and decided "oh look that game with predator mc might have really good story" and downloaded it.
If I may allow myself an uncharacteristic moment of conceitedness, I would like to echo that I had no prurient motives when electing to pick up Lessons in Love. In fact I am not even a native of F95; I used the site only a handful of times to monitor uploads of games I had worked on (though this is a matter of distant history). Allow me to regale the tale of how I discovered LiL -- it was a grim night, the kind in which the dim glow of your computer monitor is all but consumed by the screaming black abyss surrounding it, the feeble distractions it attempts to provide no longer enough to drown out the thrumming, incessant voice that this really is the end of line, that your latest fuckup damaged things beyond feasible repair, and that they without a doubt are never going to get better for the rest of your life. It was as I wearily held my head in my hands and attempted to stoke dead embers with the soothing notes of "Hidetake Takayama - Forever Yours (Featuring Stacy Epps & Toby from Inverse)" that I noticed the general channel of an exclusive cabal of Visual Novel enthusiastic light up. One mechanical click later and I see a clueless regular linking the VNDB review page of Lessons in Love with the following comments (quote): "what a wild review section [...] people on the boards are calling it pretentious."
Now, I took a look and immediately sensed the lumbering of a behemoth. That's phrasing I like - I picked it up from a friend of mine more enraptured by human society than most are by their reflection, who uses it to describe obscure monoliths of culture hidden within plain sight. Humans grow on even the harshest rocks like fungus and infect their surrounding with their spores; turn over a rock and you will always find such wondrous inventions of ours, like - to use a generic example - a community 70,000 strong dedicated to dragons fucking cars, or to use a less generic example, an autist in their basement devoting 14 years of their seething youth to develop a maximally realistic space simulator game. Many such communities are mere pastiches of true beauty, but when there's a real behemoth, one with long, slippery tendrils that bind the lives of thousands, you can always hear the rumbling.
I confess, the VNDB screenshots themselves were atrocious. I maintain Selebus chose intentionally bad ones as some kind of sick joke only he gets. Electing to highlight Uta dabbing, for instance, is so banal and unfunny I can only imagine it being done to purposefully filter those who would be judgmental of it so that they never both picking up the game at all. God forbid it was chosen sincerely for either humor purposes or to accurately reflect the game. Had my mind been only of average inquisitiveness, that would have been the end of my investigation then and there, with nary a hint of a rumble sensed.
However, I am what many would call a 'kino hunter' - discovering original works of immense quality and recommending them to my inner circle of elite media consumers is perhaps one of the only meaningful causes in this humble life of mine, and so with grim determination I found myself clicking to the itch page to investigate this lead further, and lo and behold, the itch page screenshots are the opposite of garbage. The stark contrast between the VNDB screenshots and Itch's screenshots are one reason among many that I cannot believe the VNDB ones were selected in good faith or a good state of mind; you could not try to pick less flattering shots if you tried. But I digress.
The itch.io page has many intriguing shots, and I will list how the prime examples attract those with active minds:
-The initial screenshot of Maya is posed at an intriguing angle, making full use of the game's widescreen to show both her and the assortment of picnic treats nearby, which allows an astuter observer to note four key elements of contrast: the girl seems unamused despite the picnic setting, she is wearing winter clothing despite attending a picnic, there appears to be a brick structure behind her which is far from an ideal setting for a picnic, and finally, it is all coated with the green light of a closely orbiting moon. The intrigue spills from every pixel.
-The second screenshot with Ayane is more bland, I'll admit, but the texture used to show stars in LiL is rather fetching, and the resident celestial orb punctuates the shot nicely. Her look of timid anxiety and defensively lifted hands also intrigues one as to what may be occurring.
-There's one with Uta having fallen on top of Sensei but WHO THE FUCK CARES????? Ew, girls, gross, get the fuck outta here we're looking for cinema not this gay shit.
-The shot of Maya in 'Scary Room' is of course iconic within the game and out. There are simply too many intriguing elements in this screenshot to describe, but anyone with eyes will be immediately drawn to the poorly drawn smiley face covering a clock with nihilist text scrawled across it. I would say it is no wonder that insane!Selebus is so drawn to the concept of smiley faces on clocks and draws them incessantly. It is an incredibly powerful symbol, not unlike the melting clocks of Salvador Dali's iconic painting "
The Persistence of Memory." Any thoughtful mind will immediate be drawn to contemplate and consider its meaning, its thematic depth, its relevance... to be honest, I have devoted to date approximately 18.6 hours to thinking about the smiley face clocks alone and still find myself stumbling upon hidden depth. This is truly a primal symbol and should lock any possible player in immediately, to say nothing of the uncanny cat, or oddly placed watermelons which use the same shelves as the dorm rooms.
-The upside down smiley face with a mess of text and hex code is a bold choice even if I find the image somewhat unremarkable itself: when you have like 10 chances to catch the eyes of a potential reader, and you choose this weird-ass thing instead of like a shot of boobs or bare leg, that indicates confidence and determination. It tells you this is going to be a real deal game. It tells you it's not just for show - probably. A false auteur could try to pull a bold maneuver like this too. But sometimes, we need to believe.
-And finally, the ABSOLUTELY legendary shot of Ami's teeth melting as her eyes blotch and the text "WHAT IF I TOLD YOU THERE WAS NOTHING" filled the screen. This screenshot leaves absolutely NO doubt that there is immense artistry at work here. You don't make shots like this by accident - the bold reds clashing with the blues, the hunched figure, the uncanny pixelation that forms a grotesque maw... But even that aside, the quote itself is of great interest to me. It's almost a sentence fragment but so where near. "What if I told you there was nothing" begs one to consider what comes next: "What if I told you there was nothing here?" "What if I told you there was nothing to believe in?" Etc. I find myself muttering this phrase to myself sometimes, thankfully to an empty house with no echos and only a cold breeze for company. WHAT IF I TOLD YOU THERE WAS NOTHING? What if indeed? What if there was nothing? Like, just nothing? G. E. Moore once boldly proclaimed, "Here is one hand! And here is another! There are at least two external objects in the world - therefore, an external world exists!" But what if - stay with me here - what if you told him there was nothing? What if? He'd be stuck staring at his hands in disbelief. There was another man - Samuel Johnson, who when presented the idea of subjective idealism denying the material world's independence, famously struck a stone with his foot and declared "I REFUTE IT
THUS!" What if we took Dr. Samuel Johnson and told him there was nothing? There was no stone? He kicked nothing? What if we told him there was nothing? Now, the interesting part is, I think I know the full quote. I think what it actually means is: What if I told you there was nothing to be afraid of?
Anyway, with such a fine selection of screenshots there was no way I couldn't play immediately. All the grimness and darkness and readied toasters were cast aside as I raced to download Lessons in Love as soon as possible. I had to experience this game's story and embrace the behemoth unto my bosom. Honestly, though I have studied it intensely in the time since, I am not sure if I even read the description to the game before starting. Although Selebus would have my head for this, a picture's worth a thousand words and the visuals of Lessons in Love contribute an immense share to its intrigue and quality. (Let us file this subject down for anther post another day, so that I can let Selebus down gently as to why his grand plan to hire an artist for future games will likely see less success than he may be inclined to believe, although I would say this without presumptuousness and more with the good heart of a Samaritan wanting to ensure that decisions are made with a solid grasp on reality.)
In retrospect, it was almost certainly with some malice that Selebus changed the first H-scene with Ami into the Niece Breeding Simulator; whether that malice was towards the abstract concept of gooning itself, or specifically towards the audience, I cannot say, but it had the opposite effect for me. My enraptured reading reached its euphoric climax upon experiencing this minigame - my quest for kino had gone completely rewarded. I was head over heels with excitement. With shaking hands I recorded the scene with ShareX and swiftly posted it to the aforementioned elite cabal of visual novel fans. As I did so I suddenly felt as if I had been coated in some kind of film; a patina of psychosis that had drenched me and challenged me to breach the chrysalis to face rebirth or else die where I sat. It was a bit transcendental, which is why I must use abstract language - what I mean is that I felt an odd sensation of being unsettled, and that my skin was becoming more leathery, more the suit of someone else that I was just wearing. The psychic waves from Niece Breeding simulator were just that powerful.
And, suffice to say, my fellows agreed. Chat lit up for hours - swear to god, hours upon hours - about the chaos of the scene. The beauty of it (which remains beautiful to this day) is that people really can't judge the game's sincerity levels. Some thought the stiff language ("I am winner") reflected shoddy craftsmanship; others were locked into the vibes immediately and concluded it was a parody. Of course, both of these angles are wrong - it's neither sincere or insincere. To be sincere you need a heart, and to be insincere you need to lack a heart, neither of which are possible for a being in which 'heart' has never made sense to begin with. But that's speculation for another time. The point is that the shifting chameleon colors of a post-ironic ejaculation can delight an audience as well as any posh jester, and THAT'S what hooked me.
There's an oft-overlooked aspect of the opening narration which continues to make me think to this day. The narrator says: "
Trapped in the dark, suspended somewhere between life and death... with eyes swollen shut so dramatically that you can't even see the dust I've taken the liberty of illuminating for you." How novel is that? They have 'taken the liberty' of illuminating the dust. That's a small phrase that completely morphs how one interprets the scene, no? They don't illuminate the dust naturally. The dust doesn't just happen to be lit up. We aren't just happening upon it. Rather, they are TAKING THE LIBERTY of illuminating it FOR US. How novel is that?
At no point, basically, was I excited to actually breed my niece, and at every point was I engaged with the narrative delivery of the story in general. A key aspect to all of this tale is that I would never fancy the notion of being aroused by content so vanilla as schoolgirl rape and all that. I require a highly specific set of circumstances to feel any rush of salacious excitement - namely, that of a pony from MLP: friendship is magic tying someone up and raping them against their will (it has to be a pony) (P.S. the pony is the one raping not the person) (I dub it 'pony rape') - and there is hardly any hint of that in Lessons in Love now is there? It is thus we can say with certainty that everything I wrote here today was wholly sincere and from the heart. Expecting me - and some others here, I expect - to play the game for lustful intentions is as ridiculous as expecting a eunuch to walk into a whorehouse for pleasure rather than business.
This fact has, relatedly, made me feel conflicted regarding the meta fourth wall breaks about the player being a bad person (chief among them the horrendous developer commentary where Selebus posits that the player is responsible for Akira kissing Yumi against her will because 'they have the option to stop watching but don't'). Honestly, my man, it's like cursing a chameleon sunbathing on a rock for not rescuing a deer from a lion or something. Lambasting little Timmy for watching a nature documentary and getting sick, sick kicks from lions eating deers. Man, it's just on the telly. I'm hear for David Attenborough's soothing voice. I didn't ask the lion to suddenly leap on a deer. I'm here because the itch.io page for the documentary had a cool looking schizo clock on it. What the fuck do you want from me?
But yeah, basically, I read for the story not the porn and can definitely not be typecast into ye old f95 goer searching games by the 'harem' and 'morally questionable schoolgirl rape' tags. It's for this reason I pray there is deeper meaning to all of this stuff than actual calls of action against the player, and why I am inclined to interpretations where the player themselves are of minimal or only coincidental relevance.
