games i liked (」＞＜)」

this is a vn about dolls. it is about a doll that was thrown away, & decides to do something about it despite what its inner voice tells it to do. its pretty short, took me an hour to read through. you can get it here. spoilers below.

i had heard of dolls before, because im a weird person who hangs out on weird corners of tumblr. this is my first true piece of writing that ive read from the community though, & i wasnt disappointed. its a heavy game, made for people who were often wronged, treated like a doll. garbage doll, the main character, is someone who went through just that. it was a suicidal human, turned into a doll by a witch, neon cat, who believed her & garbage could fix eachother.

she was wrong. she threw garbage away. you only learn this after you go back to neon cat's apartment, & it was certainly one of the stronger moments of the story. not in the brutal way, but in the way that you slowly have to realize neon cat is not an antagonist for no reason. before you meet her, she is built up to be an intimidating figure, and she is - but to realize she is just quite a sad person instead of a brooding antagonist feels eerily familiar.

the other 'antagonist' of the game feels a bit similar to me. after garbage doll escapes from the trash, it follows its senses & goes back to the house of a character we call 'mother' - who we later learn was garbages mother before it got turned into a doll. while mother patches it up, she assaults it, seemingly from the influence of a magical curse put on garbage, then sews its genitals shut. this initially comes as a shock to the player, as mother seemed like a kind & caring type. although, some people would already sense that something is wrong when seeing her house covered in live laugh love & fucking crucifixes. but i digress. mother is very much some sort of metaphor : she lost garbage, who was her 'son', & mourns 'his' absence. when 'he' eventually comes back, it has turned into garbage doll. mother does not recognize it. but, truth be told, in her heart of hearts, she does recognize it, her conscience simply refuses to admit it. her assault is told as some sort of magical draw from neon cat, but i dont think its meant to truly be the case, as later in the story, mother asks garbage if it would like to do this again. (garbage refuses. it hated it, for obvious reasons.) the curiosity for a body that has changed, that is out of the norm, that she then sewed shut out of guilt & disgust at this body, & the power that mother might subconsciously want to hold over her previous child that has left her. makes sense.

there is simply a lot to say about mother, since the relationship trans people have with their parents is often complicated. when garbage shows any hint it might want to leave mother, she goes into a breakdown, begging to not be left alone. mother is similar to neon cat in a way, they are both lonely people who fix up someone, & wait for them to do it back. they are immature, & do awful things to garbage doll out of some sense of projection, of need.

however, since being thrown away, garbage has not been someone to follow orders. its the premise of the game - dialogue boxes prompt 'you', the player, into ordering garbage doll around, having been implanted into its head by neon cat. garbage does not follow these orders. 'you' are as much of a character as garbage, going through 'your' own character development, realizing that garbage doll does not want to be a good doll anymore, it wants to be a bad doll. 'you' change up 'your' advice accordingly, & becomes more of an annoying companion to garbage. garbage doesnt always agree though, as after escaping mother for the first time, it goes back to neon cats apartment & steals her magic equipment, much to 'your' own horror, as 'you' have come to fear neon cat. i really like when vns do something funky like this with the player, keeping them involved while telling a linear story.

with this, garbage doll becomes a witch. it recruits another doll by its side, named beautiful, that it met in the dumpster at the beginning of the game, but had to be separated from. garbage & beautiful essentially convince mother to house them, exploiting her fear of being alone to make her relinquish her 'son's room to them. (beautiful addition to the metaphor by the way.) garbages character development consists of claiming ownership back on the people that have harmed it in the past, & in this vein, garbage craves to turn neon cat into a plush. it goes back to do that, but it partly fails, neon cat only having half of her body turned into plush. afterwards, neon car seduces garbage, & it caves in, realizing it missed the feeling of being a doll, of depending fully on someone & never having to make your own choices. i was afraid garbages development would be undone, although i would have probably been satisfied with that sadder ending.

however, the next morning, when neon cat suggests garbage should stay with her, garbage is not only worried that neon cat would just throw it away again, but it also has beautiful that depends on it. its worries are confirmed when neon cat expresses she wants excitement in her life, one that garbage doll could provide again, after becoming more sure of itself. neon cat didnt change, & despite how much garbage would like being a doll again, it does not let itself be used by someone who has hurt it before. the games ends on a bittersweet breakfast scene with garbage, neon cat & her new doll, showing that now that garbage is a witch, neon cat does somewhat treat it like an equal.

i really like that ending. garbage doll has grown, & its disobedience that has been shown throughout the story has not been tossed to the wayside, but despite this, it is still allowed a moment of weakness. it is a doll after all. garbage sits on the cusp inbetween doll & witch, not quite defined by either the terms. dolls or witches are not shown to be the ideal state of life, as beautiful does not want to be a witch, & instead prefers to be garbages doll, who seem to have an okay relationship. at least, better than the one between neon cat & garbage. garbage is not perfect though, it is a bad doll, & it sometimes does bad things. such as seeking revenge on neon cat. or beautiful saying that garbage only treats it wrong some of the time lmao. but being a bad doll also means it hashas carved its own path in life, despite neon cat, despite mother, despite 'you'. thats what it wanted, & thats more or less what it got. i like that.

this game just spoke to us in general, because often we have called ourself a 'broken doll boy' when feeling particularily miserable. we sometimes have fantasies of being a doll abandoned to the wayside, covered in dirt & mud, & having someone pick us up & fix us, becoming a beautiful doll boy. but we also know we must be our own person, our own doll. so, we relate a lot to garbage doll in a way. not really me specifically as an alter, but naz really liked this story. he told me, perhaps well write a story about a doll too one day.

theres also sexual content in the story as you could see obviously, & its not usually my thing so i wasnt a fan, but thats just me.

ive gone on a lot about the story, but ive found the art so beautiful as well. its so eerie, at times psychedelic. i loved neon cats design. the music is good too, using the same melody throughout the game with different variants to reflect the emotion happening. its droning enough to set the mood, but varied enough to not be distracting.

anyway cool doll game awesome bye