Ironic Dating Sims - "I-I'm not REALLY into romance! It's a hecking epic subversion! Now give me upvotes!!"

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Valstrax

Valstrax

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kiwifarms.net
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Apr 12, 2018
Made this thread for people who want to post or rant about ironic dating sims, namely ones like the KFC dating sim and whatever. Are there any you like? Any you dislike?
 
Would DDLC count? It's subversive, only it's "le spooky 4th wall breaking" subversive and not le ironic 4th wall breaking. It was fine for what it set out to do, but it was 100% overrated as hell and not worth the last 4 months of obsession and praise when it first came out and afterwards.
 
Colon capital V said:
Would DDLC count? It's subversive, only it's "le spooky 4th wall breaking" subversive and not le ironic 4th wall breaking. It was fine for what it set out to do, but it was 100% overrated as hell and not worth the last 4 months of obsession and praise when it first came out and afterwards.
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i wouldn't really count it as an actual dating sim since that element goes out of the window pretty fast
 
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I was quite sad that DDLC turned into le ebin meme horror bullshit. Imagine a real dating sim where one character simply can't be saved. Out of absolutely nowhere, suicide. Best case you could sorta lean into her and learn the absolute bare minimum about her mental health, but never 'fix' or even sex her up. Or like a catastrophe event during a normal dating sim that sidetracks the entire thing and now it becomes a semi-therapeutic dating sim where you have to both rizz up ladies but also navigate very real trauma responses.
 
⋖ cørdion ⋗ said:
I was quite sad that DDLC turned into le ebin meme horror bullshit. Imagine a real dating sim where one character simply can't be saved. Out of absolutely nowhere, suicide. Best case you could sorta lean into her and learn the absolute bare minimum about her mental health, but never 'fix' or even sex her up. Or like a catastrophe event during a normal dating sim that sidetracks the entire thing and now it becomes a semi-therapeutic dating sim where you have to both rizz up ladies but also navigate very real trauma responses.
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wouldn't that just be a normal vn?
 
Doktor Grimm said:
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Now look at this, I was just coming in here to mention that Hatoful Boyfriend one where the player dates pigeons and then this nigger had to bring it up first and now I have nothing useful to say and have to kill myself.

There was also one about dating either a slab of beef or a can of tuna.

Inside your walls said:
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Well maybe people wouldn't make fun of it all the time if the genre wasn't dumb and for dumb people.
 
I remember some years ago seeing a "printer dating sim". It seems to have been scrubbed, I can never find it on steam anymore, and even the official site is down. Didn't play it, I can't stand visual novels, but I'm certain I saw it on steam at some point (for whatever reason it recommends them to me all the time).

Did manage to find a couple of pages talking about it after a cursory search:

Archive of homepage
Article on some troony-looking review site (Archive)
Neogaf Thread (Archive)
Visual Novel Database page
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Oh, and while I was finding these links, I chanced upon this: Phone dating sim on Steam
 

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Oh yeah we can't talk about dating sims without bringing up the Date Everything featuring a troon VA or whatever game.
 
I fucking hate the trend of ironic VN's. It probably got popularized by Hatoful Boyfriend but what most of these ironic devs don't understand, is that while comedic it was also very sincere. It had many emotional moments and good character development. It had it's memey moments (some of which didn't age well and come across as kinda cringy imo) but it actually made you care about a bunch of pigeon PNG's as characters and humanized them. So yeah, I'll defend Hatoful Boyfriend to my dying breath because it was genuinely something special.
I think the biggest problem with ironic devs is that lack of sincerity and an inability to actually write satire. They think pointing out tropes or following a trope exactly but with an ironic twist is good satire. Funny thing is that quite a few of these devs view themselves a counter culture to regular VN's while having the most shallow, safe edgy comedic content imaginable. Like the fact that you can date your existential dread in that Date Everything game. Like dude, my 50 year old aunt posts memes about her existential dread on facebook, this is not novel in any way. Maybe make the lamp call me a nigger or something, then you'll stand out from the plebian non-ironic VN's and I might consider buying your game. Trust me I'll be a hit, especially on the nintendo switch E-shop!
 
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It's freeware but there's that NEET Girl dating sim, many of the fanbase are degens and speculate that the girl is "akshully le ebbin troon"
 
This is just another manifestation of a more widespread phenomenon that is rotting away every fictional genre and medium.

It's same kind of dogshit narrative framework that is employed in Marvel of Star Wars movies/shows, where every emotional scene or tense moment is completely destroyed by the characters making fun of the situation, being interrupted by the comic relief or trading quips. The writers are basically telling the audience they shouldn't give a shit because they, or the characters sure as fuck don't.

I have no idea why a writer would go out of their way to self-sabotage their own story, nuking audience emotional engagement in the process, but I assume it has something to do with the liberal inability to take things at face value - there always must be some sort of "subversion" or "deconstruction" going on, nothing can ever be genuine, nothing can have gravitas, otherwise the leftist manchild might get upset.

It's why the demons in Frieren being unambiguously evil, with no redeeming qualities, made them lose their minds.

Another theory I have is that this is an attempt by the left to "take over" the VN market to deny it to the straight, male audience. If they can normalize "ironic" visual novels as the norm, then it becomes easier to pressure other content creators to pervert their own creations to fit the mold.
 
regalterry said:
Another theory I have is that this is an attempt by the left to "take over" the VN market to deny it to the straight, male audience.
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I kinda agree but this issue also applies to straight women. Most western otome games have weird pronoun options so that TIF's and gay men (who don't even play otome games because they would rather jerk off to furry bara porn) feel included. I'd say it's an even bigger problem in otome because most galge don't pander to lesbos in the same way.
God forbid a piece of media is made with a specific audience in mind, like straight men or women. Pandering is only allowed when you pander to genderspecials, obviously.
 
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