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started playing Lessons in Love, still in chapter 1 but enjoying the weird, sometimes erotic horror of it so far.
starting chapter 2. winter outfits are the best.
i have no idea what’s going on in io’s head, but she is so far the most interesting character introduced in this early new batch of students.
finished the chapter two’s beach patch in Lessons in Love. utterly in awe over what just transpired.
i cannot wait to read more.
62 hours in, completed chapter 2.
if you happen to be my clone who also can handle flashing images, it’s hard to oversell the game: it’s the melodrama of Kuzu no Honkai and Riverdale written in the voice of David Lynch’s films and OreTsuba and packaged in SubaHibi and C+C.
this game is awesome.
the most surprising element to me is how much the game tackles the realities of lesbian coming-to-age and mental health.
you wouldn’t expect the game with this premise to care about them beyond shock horror, but it is passionate about how characters feel and suffer everyday.
can’t wait for more.
forgot to say this last night, but Lessons in Love has also made me interested in composing lyrical poetry.
i usually just read poetry in general, but the lyrical descriptions and monologues found in LiL made me more interested in being proactive about it.
it’s a writer’s game for writers lol.
started chapter 3, everything is happy and fun =D
ch3 lil thoughts: so this is what it means to have feelings...
LiL ch4 thoughts so far (a year of patches left): this game may be the best exploration on mental health and trauma.
the gut punches i feel come from how obvious the signs are, but i never realized it. i feel like a bad friend who should've intervened months ago, so all i can do is listen.
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8:52 PM · Apr 18, 2026
i won't deny the game is a tough sell for many, many people due to its premise. but i will also say that the game resonates with me because they mirror the kind of private conversations i have with people i know and care for.
i am reminded how difficult it is to bring things up until it's too late.
it requires a lot of faith from the reader, but once i realized the characters are survivors of their circumstances, a lot of things starts to click with me.
and the way the game acknowledges the limitations of the medical reality is impressive. it gets why mental health is so hard to talk about.
in many ways, i think Lessons in Love's chapter 4 is the ideal subculture work for me:
beneath the entertaining philosophical soliloquies, passion for poetry, soap opera antics, and theorycrafting exigencies, there's a strong core about what it means to recover in a world that has hurt you.
the game doesn't believe in redemption/salvation -- it excuses the evils done.
all it can offer is more complication, more trauma, more dialog: it is heavily invested in starting up a conversation about the path to recovery and moving toward a better self.
and this is what i want from fiction.
one of the reasons i feel so strongly about extreme titles like Subarashiki Hibi these days is their ability to open spaces to talk about these matters, even perhaps prepping people for these kinds of tough discussions.
it's what drew me into thinking about social justice issues like mental health.
i am not fooled by the belief that art trains empathy or whatever.
but i do think creating a game that is both critically sympathetic about how shit the medical reality is and entertaining is one of the greatest accomplishments.
i want to make something like it someday.
hashtag inspiring, hashtag writing quotes to live by