I want to be happy: let's talk about Gore Screaming Show

One bright afternoon, I was trying (and failing) to get a DaCapo download to work, and then, instead of doing something sensible like restarting my computer and trying again, I decided to get Gore Screaming Show instead... not really sure why. I didn't know what it was about, but that name was quite…evocative, so I could make some guesses as to the general content. I thought about this VN like it was some very bitter medicine: I'll have to read it anyways, so better to get over with it as soon as possible.

I do like me some guro, but horror VNs have a tendency to drive me a bit crazy, and this was no exception. Awful vibes, often accompanied by the musical equivalent of bugs crawling on your skin. Something horrible will happen. Something horrible has happened already. It will happen again

In the end, though, it wasn't as scary as I expected. Sure, the little girl has a weird monster pet that eats people and bends reality to its will, but I can stomach that. Or maybe I can't. Eating lunch while playing this was not a good idea. Sometimes it's like I can still taste Akane's intestines in my mouth…blegh

I think what actually drove me crazy were the tons of long, and I mean long-winded h-scenes with that constantly repeating moan overlaid on a BGM that sounded like you were being chased by a murderous clown in a funhouse. I had to fucking mute the sound to be able to even let my eyes glaze over the screen.

I never got over the silliness of the red, blue and yellow heroines being essentially named, well, red, blue and yellow, but this VN felt very Fate/Stay Night in its structure (in the sense of having both a Fuji-nee and an Illya route, plus an Archer-type guy)—and yes, I know this isn't the first time I've said a VN is kind of FSN, but come on, it literally is…!

When Yuka first appeared, saying her little piece about humans being made of excrement and hate, I just felt so sorry for her. For someone to start thinking things like that, they'd have to be very lonely. Even then, the sympathy shown for her in the good endings almost surprised me—so the game really wants me to consider what would someone have to go through to think things like that…

I can't say I was enjoying myself for most of the run, but it's a genuinely good story. In Yuka’s route, I found myself surprised that a game like this was making me cry with a warm feeling in my chest. Mi-tsu-ami-ne-ko-san…look, I'm almost crying again.

Like a weird meat-bunny thing with a title-drop name opening the stomach of some unsuspecting girl, this VN makes you face lots of things you'd like to keep hidden. Humans reduced to their basest form. Sexual desire (and its repression). Unsightly, unkind feelings I'd rather pretend don't exist. A physical manifestation of trauma. You can leave that place, but you're always a child, always filthy, always bleeding. That's really what it feels like, isn't it? It's nightmarish. Hell, when I'm doing particularly badly, I do see it in my nightmares. Not the organs rotting out of people's bodies, not the monster from an eyeball-filled dimension, just the words, “I want to be happy”.

It's a brilliant VN that will stay with me forever. You could not pay me to read it again.