Dejection: An Ode [KN, one-sided GxG, historical]

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ebi-hime
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Dejection: An Ode [KN, one-sided GxG, historical]

#1 Post by ebi-hime »

I could never dislike you. Not even if you were to strike me, or spit on me. I would love you all the same.
Dejection: An Ode is a historical, one-sided shoujo ai romance, set in late 1790s England, and it is 19,000 words long. Because of the setting, I chose to write it in a deliberately overwrought, vaguely 18th/19th century style, so it might read a little differently from my other VNs.

Dejection deals with two young, female poets, Samantha and Lillian, as they struggle with their not-so-successful careers, writer’s block, depression, and their own friendship, which is slowly starting to fall apart.
Both characters are based on real English poets who were alive in the 1790s, and the VN is reasonably accurate in following the lives of these two poets - though neither of them were cute girls in reality. If you want to know who they’re based on, you’ll have to read it for yourself (although maybe you can already guess…)

Image

Image

The game runs on windows, mac, and linx.
You can download it from mediafire here~
Or, alternatively, you can download it from itch.io here~
And the sprites were done by the talented chocojax~
Last edited by ebi-hime on Thu Jul 09, 2015 6:32 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Dejection: An Ode [KN, one-sided GxG, historical]

#2 Post by Caveat Lector »

I'm having trouble downloading it. First, I got an error message saying the WinZip file would not display, and then when I tried again it would not show up at all. :?
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Re: Dejection: An Ode [KN, one-sided GxG, historical]

#3 Post by ebi-hime »

Caveat Lector wrote:I'm having trouble downloading it. First, I got an error message saying the WinZip file would not display, and then when I tried again it would not show up at all. :?
It might be because, as soon as I finished making this thread, I realised I uploaded an older version of the VN instead of the finished one (oops) so I had to replace the original file with the new one XD I just tried to DL it myself and it seems to work now though?
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Re: Dejection: An Ode [KN, one-sided GxG, historical]

#4 Post by Caveat Lector »

Sorry, I got the same message. It said something about how something is an invalid file name? How is it packaged?
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Re: Dejection: An Ode [KN, one-sided GxG, historical]

#5 Post by ebi-hime »

Caveat Lector wrote:Sorry, I got the same message. It said something about how something is an invalid file name? How is it packaged?
Hmm. Maybe you can't extract it because I put a colon as part of the file name, and maybe your computer is unable to read it? I think I heard somewhere putting colons in filenames can sometimes make them unextractable in certain operating systems...
I renamed the file and got rid of the colon. Can you extract this version of the game, with the changed name? o:
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Re: Dejection: An Ode [KN, one-sided GxG, historical]

#6 Post by raistlintg »

I'm writing this reply with the main title music still playing, since I don't (or rather, "do not") really want to close the game's window (I'll eventually have to, though).

The writing is so touching !
The subject becomes deeper by the minute, and it is very delicately handled.
You also really managed to give a feeling of Romantism, I had understood which period was depicted before the characters began to talk about
the french revolution.
And I love stories
based on actual but not well-know events or characters, like Coleridge and Wordsworth. Now I have to read this "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" !
The illustrator and music composer made a splendid work too.
I'm just wondering about the text box decoration, don't they seem strangely ragged ?

A final question :
You don't seem to like Lillian very much in your notes, why would that be ? Sure she isn't the most kind-hearted character, but I think that makes her very palpable -even more than Samantha, in fact-.

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Re: Dejection: An Ode [KN, one-sided GxG, historical]

#7 Post by ebi-hime »

raistlintg wrote:I'm writing this reply with the main title music still playing, since I don't (or rather, "do not") really want to close the game's window (I'll eventually have to, though).

The writing is so touching !
The subject becomes deeper by the minute, and it is very delicately handled.
You also really managed to give a feeling of Romantism, I had understood which period was depicted before the characters began to talk about
the french revolution.
And I love stories
based on actual but not well-know events or characters, like Coleridge and Wordsworth. Now I have to read this "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" !
The illustrator and music composer made a splendid work too.
I'm just wondering about the text box decoration, don't they seem strangely ragged ?

A final question :
You don't seem to like Lillian very much in your notes, why would that be ? Sure she isn't the most kind-hearted character, but I think that makes her very palpable -even more than Samantha, in fact-.
Aaw, I'm glad you enjoyed it so much!
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a pretty good poem (I like it a lot more than anything Wordsworth ever wrote anyway haha) But it got a lot of very critical press when it was released, nobody seemed to like it at all. And yet now, it is often taught in secondary school and in university, so gj Coleridge! He still isn't as popular as Wordsworth though. But this is probably because he wrote a lot less poetry.

The text box decorations were actually decorations taken from a publication of Lyrical Ballads (at least, according to Wikimedia Commons) so I thought it would be somewhat fitting XD

Poor Lillian, haha. Well, the main reason I don't like her as much as Sam is because she's based on Wordsworth, and I don't really like any of Wordsworth's poetry all that much... He wrote a lot of poems about the amazing 'noble poor' and how wonderful it is to have no money and work in the fields and then die from tuberculosis, and how incredibly honest this lifestyle is!!! ...which seems very insincere and condescending to me, haha XD
And he did write The Prelude, which is an incredibly long, epic-length poem all about himself, and how he became the greatest author in the universe. It's incredibly self-absorbed, and very very tedious to have to study. I also think it's kind of amazing that The Prelude was addressed to Coleridge, and written partially as a present to him, to cheer him up when he was suffering from depression and writers block... but the whole of the Prelude is concerned with Wordsworth talking about what an amazing poet he himself is, and isn't it wonderful he can still write poetry even though Coleridge can't anymore? It seems like such a cruel thing to do to somebody you are supposed to be close friends with, hahaha XD

Although, to be fair, Coleridge was a pretty irritating and self-pitying person, and was really clingy and dependent. And took a lot of opium, couldn't meet any deadlines with his work, kept trying to set up extravagant projects that always fell through, and was really mean to his wife. But I find the really obvious anxiety and angst and self-loathing that's present in most of his poems, and in his non-fiction writing too, super sympathetic and relatable. I think his writing is a lot more interesting and genuine than Wordsworth's, anyway.

Sorry for such a long reply as well, haha. I just have an awful lot of love for Coleridge XD
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Re: Dejection: An Ode [KN, one-sided GxG, historical]

#8 Post by Shinoki »

I'm pretty bad at writing out what I feel, but I really really really enjoyed reading this visual novel. It felt so deep and touching and well, anyways, it was pretty awesome. I liked the way that the characters talked to reflect the setting and the pretty language and whatnot.
Sam was really depressing (not a bad thing because it was interesting). Lilly is pretty cold as a person, and wow...now I ship them together even though it's just gonna turn out badly, probably.
I also really like historical stories. (and ones with gender-swaps, I like even more)
I just had one problem, the Notes section... the text, while okay, got a little hard to read after a while. It might just be me though.

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Re: Dejection: An Ode [KN, one-sided GxG, historical]

#9 Post by ebi-hime »

Shinoki wrote:I'm pretty bad at writing out what I feel, but I really really really enjoyed reading this visual novel. It felt so deep and touching and well, anyways, it was pretty awesome. I liked the way that the characters talked to reflect the setting and the pretty language and whatnot.
Sam was really depressing (not a bad thing because it was interesting). Lilly is pretty cold as a person, and wow...now I ship them together even though it's just gonna turn out badly, probably.
I also really like historical stories. (and ones with gender-swaps, I like even more)
I just had one problem, the Notes section... the text, while okay, got a little hard to read after a while. It might just be me though.
Hehe, thank you. I'm glad you liked it - and that you thought the language is pretty XD I don't usually write in such an 'antiquated' way, so I rewrote quite a bit to get it to sound right.
Poor Sam, she's not the most functional of people haha XD I imagine suffering from something like depression must have been even harder 200 years ago, when mental illness didn't have as much awareness as it does now.
Lilly is just kind of... aloof, I guess. And doesn't take any nonsense from anyone XD
I really ship them together too... But I think they would be really badly suited to one another, they'd annoy and upset each other far too much...

And, I thought the font I used for that section might have been too hard to read. I'm sorry about that, haha...
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Re: Dejection: An Ode [KN, one-sided GxG, historical]

#10 Post by GreyWolfXx »

I haven't finished the novel yet but I'm really enjoying the atmosphere, writing, and just about everything in this game. I really want to read some Samantha and Liliians poems, but I don't know who they really are or where to find the poems themselves. Who are the characters in the novel based off of?

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Re: Dejection: An Ode [KN, one-sided GxG, historical]

#11 Post by ebi-hime »

GreyWolfXx wrote:I haven't finished the novel yet but I'm really enjoying the atmosphere, writing, and just about everything in this game. I really want to read some Samantha and Liliians poems, but I don't know who they really are or where to find the poems themselves. Who are the characters in the novel based off of?
Thank you, I'm glad you like it!
They're based off Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, respectively. Coleridge's best known poems are probably The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Christabel, and Kubla Khan, and Wordsworth's best known poems are probably The Prelude (whichis a really, really long poem all about himself and how he became the self-appointed best poet in the whole world), and maybe Tintern Abbey. And also the short one about the daffodils that everyone in the UK seems to know XD
Coleridge wrote more gothic, supernatural poems filled with lots of angst, and Wordsworth tended to focus more on nature and hills and flowers.
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Re: Dejection: An Ode [KN, one-sided GxG, historical]

#12 Post by GreyWolfXx »

Thank you! :)

"We have been to the moon, we have charted the depths of the ocean and the heart of the atom,
but we have a fear of looking inward to ourselves because we sense that is where
all the contradictions flow together." -- Terrence Mckenna

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Re: Dejection: An Ode [KN, one-sided GxG, historical]

#13 Post by greenace »

I enjoyed this VN a lot. The relationship between Samantha and Lilly is cute, yet sad. TwT

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Re: Dejection: An Ode [KN, one-sided GxG, historical]

#14 Post by ebi-hime »

greenace wrote:I enjoyed this VN a lot. The relationship between Samantha and Lilly is cute, yet sad. TwT
Poor Coleridge-chan could not make Wordsworth-chan notice her ;_;
I have a lot of free & commercial VNs available on Steam and itchio.io if you want to check them out! ☆

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Re: Dejection: An Ode [KN, one-sided GxG, historical]

#15 Post by greenace »

ebi-hime wrote:
greenace wrote:I enjoyed this VN a lot. The relationship between Samantha and Lilly is cute, yet sad. TwT
Poor Coleridge-chan could not make Wordsworth-chan notice her ;_;
Senpai noticed me! TTwTT
You're the person who inspired me to try and write my own VNs. So thanks a bunch!

It's weird to know that Coleridge and Wordsworth were once alive and friends in real life haha. Their relationship is very interesting so I can see why you wanted to write a VN about it. I never knew about them before I read this and Asphyxia, so thanks for educating me on the subject of cute romantic poets, hah. :P

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