unorganized thoughts on specific works made expecting death

2023-08-08

i havent really encountered swan songs that comment on their existence as a swan song until starting 2 weeks ago. the swan songs are foxbride, which is a vn from this year's vncup, and ben barres' autobiography. the main example of swan song ive always had is long season (live), but for obvious reasons it doesnt comment on itself and is just meant to be a good performance. foxbride technically isnt a swan song - they have made 3d models since, but the author frames the vn in that way, expecting less than a year to live, a dedication to their bible (night on the galactic railroad, a movie, its book, and adaptations of it). they basically wrote the vn's postmortem within the vn.

ive never heard of any of the creators of these before encountering these works and didnt know their status as the creator's last work coming into it (learned during/immediately after them though, from postmortem/introduction/chat message). but that status is still very affective.

i keep coming back to foxbride's last words, thinking about it randomly:

It's mediocre and lacks substance, but I sealed my love and dreams in this.

it's not mediocre at all. from "lacks substance" i think they might mean the way it grazes topics instead of being focused or its floaty, abstruse story that doesnt yield much surface meaning or connection some of the time. but that greatly contributes to the dreamy quality. it's a good style.

some earlier words in that section:

Being diagnosed on the lower functioning end of the autism, brain damage and what have you spectrums makes my creativity especially stunted.

Even more so when I primarily avoid talking to or reading of what others say or do, it's difficult to think or weigh most things out in a regular way, the only option is to keep on going though.

We're both rather simple in thinking, I think, I just like being regular, but I still don't have a lot of coherent thoughts; So it's difficult to come up with the words to put down.

i really enjoy the linguistic features in their writing. the amount of expression and method of expressing ideas into the words they chose is very memorable and charming.

semi-related, there's a post somewhere about certain western vn authors, like more on the side of ryukishi07 fan than monster prom, writing the way they do to (un)consciously mimic machine-translated japanese, highlighted in a disparaging way. but i respect that stylistic choice.

barres in his autobio doesnt mention negative thoughts towards his autobio, opposed to foxbride, (in fact he said he had no regrets in life) but reviews across the board keep mentioning "damn the lack of detail on his life experience blows but..."/"his section devoted to describing science without their practical applications is boring and hard to parse but..." "he was dying so i cant really blame him". seeing this clause irks me. we all know he was dying. grahhh stop hedging. let the flaws of the work stand for themselves!