First of all, just to dispel any doubts:
Second of all, while I’m not sure if I agree with taking what Nao/The Xoanon says to Akira in “Mother’s Milk” completely at face value, because there is a lot of additional (and not yet understood) meta-context to their statements that severely muddles the water, your point about how “you're already deep into reading LiL and didn't get filtered by how LiL it is, you're already relating in some way with the game” is undoubtedly correct. However, the question of whether or not there is a “right” and “wrong” way to experience Lessons in Love *is* very much a complicated one, since it directly ties into the greater argument of authorial intent vs “Death of The Author” – and, specific to this thread in particular, the whole “Green Path Chads vs Red Path Virgins” (or vice versa, depending on who you ask) endless debate that still keeps happening to this very day (though not as of late, admittedly).
So while, yes, a theoretical person who, for the sake of my extra-specific example, played the entire game on mute (following the guide mod or looking up answers to the puzzles they couldn’t solve on their own), skipped every single event that could be skipped, changed every instance of Akira’s name to “Marty” in the game files and also hated his guts whenever he was on screen did *technically* have an “authentic” experience with LiL of some kind, I can’t wholeheartedly agree with the notion that their experience is in *any* way comparable (not even talking about “good vs bad” comparable – just comparable, period) with what *I* experienced during my own original playthrough of Lessons in Love, neither emotionally nor thematically. At that point we just have to concede that we’re both pretty much reading through two entirely different visual novels with only passing surface-level similarities, so, like, what could the two of us – me and that theoretical weird person –even talk about in relation to LiL? The name of the VN? Koikatsu visuals? Kumon-mi as the setting?
Once again, to reiterate: I am *not* pushing for the idea that “my way is the correct one, and everyone else just didn’t get it”. The point I was trying to make was more about our ability to discuss and connect over our shared experiences as readers, since if there *are* no shared experiences (due to us having viewed every single scene/character in the game through diametrically opposed lenses), then none of our arguments would mean anything to the other side and we would, effectively, just be talking past each other. Hence me wondering whether this divide in perspectives was in any way intentional, and which outlook – “moral” or “immoral” – is closer to the one personally shared by Selebus.
And finally, if it wasn’t already super-obvious,
