Full Fathom 500

This relationship truly felt like being trapped with the pressure of half a mile of water bearing down on you. The detail in depicting the character's mental states under the stress of sheer mundanity and the sea life metaphors were top-notch. I'll be thinking about that closing line for a while.

i'm about to spew some bullshit so please correct everything i say wrong LMAO

first off. wow. wow wow wow this is probably the vn i was able to most connect with in a weird fucked up way. took me almost two hours just because i had to keep stopping to go "OH MY GOD WAIT AND IT'S" or "wait so it's written like this because" just like. i don't even know how to describe this other than to just copy paste all the notes i took. 

wonderful use of music. wonderful use of art. the girls were so pretty i love them. wonderful themes of asian disapora and chosen names being pronounced wrong and the links between everything and it's just. masterful. everything about this was created so masterfully. so beautifully weaved in and out. so so so so beautiful.

OK SPOILERS AHEAD BE AWARE this is literally just a copy paste of every thought i had during the game. please feel free to ignore it as it is VERY lengthy.

ctc is SO CUTE OH MY GOODNESSSSS

i've never been so engaged from the first few lines

this is really really really well done. LOVE the atmosphere not only from the dialogue but from the visuals AND REFERENCES OF VISUALS, the ambience, the music from the earphones no longer in the ears. love this

CHARACTERS ARE SO CUTEESJDHGJKDFGK

FISH orgy

oohhghghgh piano girl i love you i gotta know what happened

PEAK CHOPIN NOCTURNE ACTUALLY LIKE THE BEST ONE i played this my third semester at community college it's SO nice

NOOOOOOO IT'S NOT BEETHOVEN IT'S CHOPIN IT'S CHOPIN

OH MY GOD VIETNAMESE!!!!!! YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

EEEEEHEHEHEHE I LOVE THEM

also i just adore the journal entry format of this it's so good

oh theres a sea monster there isn't there. oh there's a big sea monster getting foreshadowed huh.

ohhhhhhh the metaphorssssssss oh this one is so good

urgghhh headcanon aroace or just depressed ourgh i get you tay i get you

HOLY SHIT SECOND PEAK CHOPIN NOCTURNE I DROPPED THIS ONE BEFORE THE END BUT IT'S SO GOODDDDDDDD i think both are from the same opus? op. 9, same as the one everyone knows. i wonder if i can predict the next piece. i need to learn more poulenc.

THE BACKGROUNDSSSSSSSSSSSS ughhhh my dad used to own an aquarium and we'd often go to this fish shop aquarium type like this so it feels so much like being in first person for this. nostalgic. i need to go back. maybe this is my sign.

cum cloud

OUGHGHHH THE PARALLLS THE METAPHORS OGHH MY CLOWNFISH GIRL

NOOOOOO OH THE CATALYST FOR THE STORY HAPPENING and it's a month later oughh ohj boy this has perfect intentions for the story

oughhhhhhh the 3 a's autistic aro and asexual i love you tay

angela :(((( girl i love you

AWOOOOOOOOOOOOOGAAA HUMINA HUMINA jokes aside i LOVEEE these designs i love them so much

PISS MENTIONED how did it get on the sheets i must know. frankly if it's like a pissplay thing why WOULD you get it on the sheets, especially if you're trapped. seems like a b ad idea.

TWO VIETNAMESE OH MY GOODNESS i love vietnam!!!!!!!! :vietnam flag:

auhghh diaspora i'm slowly understanding this word more and more

ohhhh and this is why we didn't get her name either, just her last name

tay has a very nihilistic view of the world shaped by the way she grew up, it reminds me a bit of 2-4 '94 by kazehai and ppilotco if you've played that

ohhhh i think im starting to get it slowly? i'm a little slow on these things all considered but i see it as like, when you come out as trans you're often treated less as a person, less human, even if it's more aligned with who you are. tay is the type to realize this and play STRONG defense as a safety mechanism, and it's based in reality. it is really fucking scary to be trans!! especially when there's nobody else to support you!!! she's sorta grown up knowing that. so it's less about her being like "i know" and more like "it's not true based on the way i've grown." i think? please correct me if i'm wrong i absolutely want to hear the interpretation going into this

oh i didn't even think of race, yeah that's absolutely a huge aspect to this too. not only is it a connection to yourself, it's a connection to your family. there's nobody else quite like you in terms of heritage. it lives inside you yes, but when you cut out the people who are like you, that's a whole aspect of yourself you just. lose. it's so difficult. god damn.

i can't get over the excellence and brilliance of the language too like. just taking a second to look into the way things are written. wow. is tay the carcass? is that how she interprets the situation?

loss of memory. oh my god. tay the name not only as a loss of ethnicity ("easier" name so people can pronounce it), it's also a loss of everything she was. i don't know where angela stands on this. whether she's doing this to intentionally hurt her (tay? thanh? i don't know which to use anymore. i worry one is her deadname. i worry that's what this story is all about anyways) or in, as she mentions often, naivete. "maybe i really am just tay after all"

i wanna keep playing but im so stumped at the self-aggrandising masturabtory word vomit bit. i want to understand this in the way an english masters would study a piece of literature. but alas i will come back later

oh my god

angela?????? girl what are you saying i'm starting to get tay (?>>)'s position on this now better

auughhhh fuck oh myy god

and the music clarity

oo hk,my gdo oh my gdo i have to reread all of this like three times now to understand it

so tay doesn't want a cab home because she's just been seen as like. just been seen? observed? she's been stalked by this girl for a yearish now over just a party. and there's this confusing mix of "this girl who i've talked to ONCE knows so much about me?? what the fuck????" and "this girl who i've just talked to at a party was intrigued enough by me to want to know me. she wants me. she wants me." and the following scene is just this horrible mix of hatred for both of them, and love and adornment for being seen, and just wanting the moment to pass, and not wanting to think, and understanding that she loves her and she loves her and this is probably the only thing she'll ever get and oh my goddddd. i'm sure i got most of this wrong i am very bad at understanding meaning but that's what i got out of this.

also holy shit the backgrounds are so good i love the slow panning and zoom and the slugs(?)

aah but then what do the slugs mean? what ddes the annihilation mean? it's this mix of her own hatred for herself and her lack of ethnicity and connection in that sense, and lack of autonomy for being trans, fitting into the mold again, the hole to fill? this is so like. 30 minutes to an hour my ass i'm gonna study this for days to come i gotta read this multiple times

there's so much i just can't understand right now but oh my god it's so pretty and so clearly like. i can tell there's SO MUCH here

PRETTY ARTTTTT and also i think like half of the games with sex sounds has used this same bed squeak. me included.

oh my god. oh im startnig to get all the symbiosis and parasites and aromantic and becoming one. oh my god.

"i am whaever she needs" not only in the context of angela, but in the context of being trans, and in the context of being not in Vietnam and losing that culture, and in being what her family (just her dad now, jesus oh my god) wants because it's the only ties she has left. oh my godddddd

"my brain does not process the target as me"

oh my god and they're one and these are all reflections not only on angela, but also on herself because she is one

actually this is making me think of how similar pain and pleasure are, two sides of the same coin. is this why sex has so much play regarding death? loss of senses, pain, choking.

also the poulenc playing throughout this is just haunting. so haunting.

oh my god and the drooling is like the cotton mouth of the fish in the beginning.

this is recminiscent of how i was in my last relatinoship (WITHOUT THE VERY TOXIC BITS, JUST LIKE THE SERVING A PURPOSE ASPECT) and i turned out plural. so this is very much like. oh i get it.

just checked the f2. what do you MEAN i still have a third of the vn to go holy shit.

PISS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

oh my god the art

"this place must be hell"

oh my god i completely forgot about the whole monster thing. oh my god oh my god.

the claustrophobic fel of te ui and the 4:3 aspect ratio oh my god as im typing this the music is getting louder oh my god

angler fish angela fish angela's fish

oh my god the angler fish is angela (angela fish) and the smaller one is thanh

oh my god

no wait the angler fish is something else. and giving up joy was symbolic of changing the relationship. if joy is thanh, then it's thanh giving up her self of self for... gas? or in the relationship, normality maybe.

or maybe it's just death. things are looking that way rn.

WHAT.

my body has collapsed in on itself at this point oh my god

THE FULL NOCTURNE SET OH MY GOD I DID PREDICT IT!!!!!!!!

oh god and the final embrace is symbolic of so much more. it's an acceptance.

is the water a metaphor (?) for dissociation?

oh my god?????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Girl who puts saltwater fish and anmenome in a tank without filters + Girl who sells saltwater fish and anmenome to irresponsible fish owner yuri....

Love love love the aquarium symbolism weaved into the story - Thanh and a fish scooped out of the ocean and placed into a suffocating tank for humans to view; the parallel between the deterioration of the aquarium tank and the deterioration of the two girls, fish pooping in the water they live in; the co-dependency of the anglerfish... 

I usually don't like the way asian diaspora themes are treated in media (I say as someone who is asian diaspora), but I thought the way you did it was really well done. You've captured the part of the diaspora struggle that can't be solved with therapy. The parallel between deadnaming and having people pronounce your chosen (asian) name wrong. Being told to just cut off your transphobic dad and having your resistance flattened down to just asian cultural differences, ignoring the fact that your dad has alzheimer's and you're literally the only one left in the family who can take care of him. Good stuff, good stuff. 

It was very difficult for me to pull together the thoughts to make an appropriate comment. Your work always resonates with me (even if I lacked the self-awareness to "click" with No Mice in Heaven at first lol), and it feels like each of your games is even better than the last one. As someone with no true home, this one cuts particularly deep.

this game is something else. it's so fucking unnerving, i'm left feeling dazed. the theme of the ocean is so fucking sick and i love how it comes up over and over again, in their literal scenario, in thanh's job, in metaphors, i love taking as much advantage of that theme as possible. and god the ending, once i realized angela had lied about having her cellphone and being trapped i wondered is the ocean fake somehow can they go outside??? but no. they can go to the hospital, but it's still underwater, and then they just fucking go back home again. it's crazy that the physical situation somehow feels less suffocating than the emotional situation. brilliant work

oh god that was so good my stomach is like, still twisting into knots. Too real, too uncomfortable. Thanks for sharing! 

nauseatingly tangible, incredibly gross. felt like being trapped. played this with two friends in vc and we were like ough this is too real. that absolutely sucked so good. so miserable we started dissociating. "my eyes started glazing over the orange text". the sex was AWFUL. as i told you before while beta reading, it really felt like being slowly submerged underwater. seeing this in its completed form was really nice. the music worked so well with the writing and the visuals. just opening up the game i heard my friend say "oh we're at the dentist!" which really set the mood lol.

being asians that exists in trans and queer spaces that are overwhelming white due to location and language, and also living somewhere that's basically the middle of nowhere, thanh's struggles really hit with us. it really is such a shithole. and yet, we can't really leave, because it's our familiar shithole. the aggravating, infantalising, and disturbingly fetishistic dialogue from angela was all too familiar. equating androgyny to asianness frame one had me screaming. there is no big city to escape to. everywhere is like this. and even back 'home', where we 'came from', isn't a place that will accept us, either. 

as thanh woke up on the hospital bed, and the lid of the aquarium closed, we could only feel dread. maybe it would have been better if she hadn't woken up.

thanks for sharing! we'll be talking about your game for a while :)

How heartwrenching! Very complex stuff going on here, and I greatly enjoy the character design. Great job making it to the finish line!!

A brilliant work of expressionism. 23noko excellently depicts a tragic relationship which is, rather than explosive with drama, slowly grinding to dust. The themes of water and fish to communicate the rote nature of Thanh's everyday drowning is fluent and effective. It is a relationship as though one has so much arsenic in their body that just one more fish will kill them. Full Fathom 500 is a must read.