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VileFable
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Queer is a reclaimed slur! Some people are still uncomfortable with the word even in the West, but many of us have adopted it as an umbrella term that isn't as much of a mouthful as LGBTIA+ (endless new letters to include every identity gets tiring to type out). Queer is a nice catch-all category that doesn't leave anyone out.
It's also helpful if you're part of more than one subcategory– as in, instead of saying "I'm pansexual and transgender", I can just quickly say "I'm queer". (Some people also use "gay" the same way, but "gay" has more specific implications that might feel limiting. Queer as a term is basically limitless.)
Reanimated Heart is Paranormal Romance at its finest, elevated to high art, witty and decadent and tragic with a strong touch of coming-of-age but for the aimless post-college crowd instead of the freshly-morose teenager.
It's relatable, it's snappy, it's beautiful and it's unnerving. It is both comfort food and something that drags you kicking and screaming out of your comfort zone, if you're curious enough to brave that. Visceral and real. It is dark without being truly hopeless. It is cathartically strange. It takes characters seriously enough to treat them like people instead of archetypes. These are not cardboard cutouts, you will believe that they exist beyond the scope of this story, that they live their own life between your scenes with them. Not only the main love interests, but the supporting cast. This is not a dating sim, this is a Gothic Romance novel playfully masquerading as a regular game, drawing you in with visuals and keeping you with the writing.
It's a love letter to freaks that don't know if they deserve or can feel love, and a love letter to itself. Reanimated Heart is uniquely infatuated with its own premise, approaching itself with wide open eyes, without ironic detachment, without the need to take itself down a notch or fill every silence with jokes or make you feel silly for getting emotionally involved in it. It refuses to talk down to the audience, instead inviting you to take full part in exploring and influencing its narrative. It carries itself with both the intricacy of a slowburn and the urgency of something being gobbled up, page after page, in the rush to see it continue blooming. Reanimated Heart is endlessly gentle when it needs to be, and then it twists the knife deep into your guts in ways you will be thinking of long after leaving it.
Play Reanimated Heart, which is already longer and denser as a demo than many finished games end up being. If you pour your love into it, it will pour its love into you.
For those of you looking not for a snack, but a meal.