the atemporality of zhuge liang
one huge component of the way i'm currently designing my zhuge liang x zhou yu visual novel is emulating the insularity and repetition of obsession.
it opens with a sequence of the two characters talking to each other with no specific time or setting markers with changing portraits upon a black background with paper lanterns. they banter about "which one" of them they are from which time, until it reaches a branching point where zhuge liang ruminates with slight variations in wording about his relationship with zhou yu.
and it's just like. the perseverance of thought looping and disrupting chronology and creating the interiority of an asynchronous time and atemporal existence and mind
and the deja vu of being destabilized and unable to position yourself temporally in any specific time/place to the point you can't quite remember where you started and you can't tell where you're going
only that you need to find your way out of this thought but it keeps repeating like being lost in a looping memory
but it's just a Little different every time
and it being just a Little different gives you the urge to see it through "to completion" / the end, but the thought is infinitely generative, and there IS no end
but the end of the game is like. also an argument against the visual novel form itself as something that purports that it 'can' be completed, and the methodical goal-oriented completion is the aim. like, this game only feeds you information with complete nonlinearity in its "routes" where they branch and rejoin in unknown combinations, requiring extreme attention to detail to achieve a "perfect" run with no repetitions
like, there's no Steam Achievement for 100% completing the game
the achievement is what you come to understand about the experiences of the traumatic perseverance of memory, obsession, repetition, preservation, violence, and something too intense to be captured with the term "love" or "liking"
the game is designed to emulate the interiority of a traumatized genius's psyche caught in its own steel trap mind of a nonlinear memory time loop