The Perfect Narrative Evaluation System
In my Flesh and Pressure Post-Mortem blogpost I already talked a bit about the rating I gave my own game according to a self-conceived rating system. By this point this has been dubbed P-NES (The Perfect Narrative Evaluation System).
As all great things this wasn't a one-person job, my dear rat friend was an invaluable colleague and confidant. Together we went on a journey of Very Serious Iterative Analytical Model-Making to answer an age old question; what things do we value in stories?
To set the stage I was just about wrapping up with my entry for the Toxic Yuri VN Jam (which was the most enjoyable game-making experience I've had in about a decade of game-making) and I started playing some of the entries here and there. What I found were some running themes, both thematically and narratively, which kept jumping out to me. SUNSHINE BACKWARDS ripped my skull open, Julie and December tore my ribs out one by one, and LONER_DOG://Snuff Puppy Carnage Society kicked me in the liver with rusty screw-studded Demonias.
So many feelings, but... How do I express them? Is there a way? Can I somehow make these thoughts and feelings known to the world at large or at the very least to myself and my friends?
And so the Toxic Yuri Trifecta was born.
The Toxic Yuri Trifecta. 'Rated' games have been anonymized and groupings highlighted.
To provide some explanation:
High in W Faps means that the story contains content that is horny in a way that resonates, that makes one feel seen and touched (not necessarily literally).
High in Throwing Up Crying In The Shower With The Lights Off means that the story is painfully relatable, punching you in the gut at full force while calling you babygirl.
High in Mom Would Be Sad was a bit confusing to me at first. I initially misunderstood this as 'mom would look at me with sad eyes if she caught me reading/playing this', but it is in fact simply for stories that make you want to kill yourself. Surprisingly, this can be a positive thing! Just think about it.
This version was nice for observing trends and groupings. The "She's Literally Me-"sery cluster was especially potent in making me want to blow a hole through my skull while feeling incredibly seen AND heard AND loved.
The more I used it -- and the more VNs I read -- the more I started to find this rating system lacking in depth. The three distinctions weren't mutually exclusive enough to warrant a system like this, so I had to pivot to a more individualized system that took a story for what it is; a complex multifaceted reflection of the authors perversions, predelictions, and beliefs.
The Toxic Yuri Pentafecta.
That's right motherfucker, 2 more categories.
The additions of :yeah: and Merging Without Looking should not be understated, these categories fill extremely valuable roles in the rating process.
The former is for when a story is clearly born from the author's direct real-life lived experience and/or fetish. Life is a rich source of inspiration, as I can attest to in my own writing *wink*, and this is a worthy thing to point out and appreciate. You might say this already belongs in Throwing Up Crying In The Shower With The Lights Off but that cannot be further from the truth! That category is for the -reader's- direct real-life lived experience and/or fetish.
The latter is for when something is quite simply really fucking funny. Uranium Gays was the first entry that made me realize this dire shortcoming, as it is not really horny, or sad, or relatable, but still really good and REALLY funny.
By this point I was -mostly- satisfied. The system worked, I didn't notice any grating shortcomings in appreciatable features of any given story. I'm pretty sure this rating system could be used for Homer's Odyssey as well. Yet it wasn't really whole yet, it was naked and barebones. It needs some meat and a nice outfit to put a bow on it. How about...
That's right, we were building towards a Jojo's stand rating system all this time. And what's this? Another category called Okay ❤︎ Yay ❤︎? It sure is buddy.
This final (I promise) category is for stories that touch on real, horrible, painful, fucked up realities (climate change, transphobia, fascism) and grapple with them through whichever lens they feel like using. Sometimes fantastical, other times nihilistic, each manner of dealing with heavy shit has something to offer and appreciate. I simply love when stories take reality and run with it, instead of running from it (woaaa see what I did there).
Irregardless this was mostly a blogpost to gush about some of the games I really enjoyed from the TYVNJAM, it was a really good and inspiring time for me. I had been meaning to delve into visual novel development for ages and this simply proved to be the perfect catalyst for that to take place.
I still have a lot of stories in me that I want to share, some of them even still featuring Itske, and I can't wait to get the time and space to commit to those.