In these final moments [...] KRZ makes one final reversal, enlisting shame as a revolutionary weapon instead of a reactionary one: Look at this! it says. Look what we could have! And looking at it, I could see another world, one where we take care of each other, where clean water, and dental care, and free gender expression, and economic stability, and everything else would be possible. And I felt in my skin and in my bones and in my teeth that not fighting for that better world would make me a fucking coward.

When I play Kentucky Route Zero and see a world of people just trying to secure their own homes with dignity, I see my own experiences expressed in a more poetic way than I could ever say. I see my found family and the found families around me huddling together to fight and make homes for each other. There may never be any escape from the forces that actively work to ruin what we love. There is no going back to the world we knew.

Anyone who knows me personally knows this has been a common whine for me every time a new “ironic”/ “critical” / parody VN becomes a primary object of discussion for a short window: Despite the long history, popularity, and measurable influence of the visual novel genre, when one emerges it is often framed as a novelty, and this framing is usually accepted by the press. They’re just so wacky! Even outlets who are typically more oriented towards, y’know, videogamey-games try to critique or provide context to this tendency, they tend to focus on narrative content and comparison to non-VNs.

see also: the repeating cycle of westerners “discovering” the visual novel genre and being lauded for making it worthwhile via their touch, or y’know basically any other thing the west decries and then gets into the heart of what I’m saying is is “it is racist to treat foreign cultures as needing to prove themselves as living up to standards your own has not remotely reached and in many ways is responsible for enforcing on the rest of the world.”

collection of high-quality scans of minidiscs