To Be True, I thought I had something against My Melody But I realised it was  most likely the shift from  her Darling red hood in her vintage design To the  disturbing Putrid Americanised Hot Pink  that disgusts me so terribly. The baby pinks are okay But too Reminiscent of  twitter edtwt trauma edits.  the red  my melody is By far superior with All of her sweetness , elegance, and twee all at once.

RULE OF ROSE: MY THOUGHTS

upon finishing Rule of Rose, it almost instantly cemented itself as a part of who I am forever. it is a hauntingly beautiful game, telling its grotesque story of a twisted, psychosexual hierarchy through flowery language, fairytale symbolism, and classical music. opening with a cutscene of jennifer and wendy sitting in a rose garden and being affectionate, “i will serve you, princess. just kiss me, please.” 

(do not watch any male-made youtube essays about this or theyll try to tell you some dumb shit like wendy and jennifer are just really close friends or that wendy thought jennifer was a boy. i saw people complaining about this but i truly did not believe anyone could genuinely be this dense until i saw it myself.)

next to nothing is presented in a direct text, instead through analogy and vague symbolism, forcing you to depend on your intellect to piece together the story and come up with your own interpretations in doing so. right off the bat, you are instantly very aware of how vulnerable and isolated jennifer is while you’re playing as her. 

almost none of the weapons you obtain deal any real damage, you’re almost completely reliant on brown to find you items, such as various healing (rations) and necessary items to get through the game. despite this, jennifer is still helpless, rations don’t heal much and are very limited, weapons have a very short range and the enemy’s attack window is even shorter. one hit on you and you lose over half of your healthbar + are stunlocked for 20 seconds while enemies keep hitting. you can easily be strategic about it and avoid getting hit, but actually finishing each boss takes about 15-30 minutes if not more lol. keep in mind that you’re quite literally playing as a young orphan girl—not the terminator. it would kill the immersion and it would also be borderline ridiculous if she could easily take on enemies 20 times her size, strength and speed. it’s a crucial part of connecting to jennifer’s character and understanding how eerie and terrifying this is in her perspective.

i enjoyed it thoroughly, and found every part of it beautiful. i was especially charmed by the ui design, which has the appearance of white chalk on a blackboard, unsteady lines and childish doodles.  as well as the transition screens at the start of each month and crayon doodles in all of the storybook pages you obtain. even the health items you obtain are cute; such as chocolate, white chocolate, candy, scones and biscuits. did you know you can even obtain a lolita outfit for both jennifer and brown?

i played an array of lesser grim games this month also. londonian gothics which is a lolita-style dungeon crawler/maze runner type game. there’s no english version but the dialogue was simple enough that i could easily comprehend it anyway lol. it’s kinda campy, the controls suck and being that it’s grid-based it lacks animation and there’s no turning animation and if you actually do want to turn there’s like a 5 second delay where you’re walking nonstop.. but you get to kill monsters and sew magical dresses that give you different abilities to fight monsters. eat your heart out infinity nikki.