Letty
A downloadable game
https://dimension11.neocities.org/lettygame
Kinetic Visual Novel // 18.5k Words
Blanche has never been a terribly good mother. She was never made for it, the way other women are; a frivolous sort of woman, they called her, composed of cigarettes and liquor and all manner of hedonistic, unmaidenly things. Not made for raising children.
Her daughter, not made for being anyone’s child.
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
This is so sweet, so graceful. Deeply loving and tragic. Immensely tender. Every element of Letty — the music, the art, the prose — converges on that: tenderness.
And heartbreak.
From a technical perspective, I really do think this comes together so well. I was honestly just amazed by many of the illustrations, which convey such detail and emotion through well-arranged composition and skillful leveraging of the limited color palette.
I appreciated how the relationship between Blanche and Scarlet is one of selflessness, of wishing to attend to one another despite one’s own needs and boundaries. And yet, neither can truly deny her own desire; both come to use one another despite the risk it poses to their already-troubled relationship. This unease, this cross-purpose… you see it in both of their hearts. Their bodies. The gradient between desire and fear.
And from the perspective of the erotic, I really like what was keyed in on: the desire to learn and teach intimacy safely, the tension resulting from the conflict between self-disgust and desire, the way that and other tensions can unpredictably spill one way, than the other.
Something I love about Letty, perhaps selfishly as I feel I failed at this in Bernadette, is that it seems the wall of resentment has largely been hurdled, and Scarlet demonstrates a serious empathy, care, and eventual forgiveness toward Blanche. Those are not born simply through Scarlet witnessing Blanche’s pain (and, that said, I think Blanche’s trauma was depicted with great care and dignity), but through Scarlet appreciating the ways in which her mother nurtured and cared for her.
I guess what I mean is that Letty to me is a very selfless work, while Bernadette feels very selfish. I don’t know that either is “the right way” to go about it, and maybe both are needed, but when next I write a story about mothering, I would like to write something more tender, more caring, more loving, something that addresses and nurtures the other little girl that was thrust unprepared into the role of mother. I would like to write something more like Letty.
I am grateful that y’all made and shared this. Thank you.
FWAAHHHHH THANK YOUUU This is such high praise.. Mother, You and I was so gutwrenching, so to have such kind and gentle praise of Letty from you is an honor, truly. This comment made our day!! In my writing I really tried to capture that uncertain unsteady feeling, what it was like to be a little girl and wrestling with big heavy miserable feelings, feelings you know are wrong and bad and gross, intuitively, and Plushie's music paired perfectly. Especially during the sex scenes: the 3/4 waltz timing makes everything sound like it's stumbling forward, unable to stop, catching itself before it hits the ground over and over. Describes them perfectly, I think
I love Scarlet. She's an embarrassing crybaby whose internal monologue runs like an 19th century poet. She's still so young, everything in her life is the most that anything has ever been, she greets everything with dreadful gravitas. And if Letty is a child who thinks like an adult, Blanche is an adult who thinks like a child. They both offer themselves up. In their heads, If they're useful, then they will be loved. Neither left childhood without scars.
Momfuckers of the world unite!!!!!!
~Pendulumgraph
wahhhh you played it!! it is one of the best feelings, i think, when someone experiences a piece of art you've worked on and writes so much about what it means to them, it's still new to me, haha. that is to say, thank you for writing so much!
a lot of emphasis was put into the mutual desire to take care of each other. i think this is a great aspect of mother x daughter, the daughter wanting to take care of the mother as much, if not more than the mother wants to take care of the daughter. there's sort of an energy of "i can do better than her husband" that went into the writing in Letty. the tenderness, and the intimacy is key to that.
it's really really cool reading that you would like to write something more like Letty, especially since i came out of Bernadette thinking i would like to write something more like it! i very much agree that there isn't a right way to write a story like this, the selflessness and selfishness of relationships like this are often two sides of the same coin, and a lot of insight can be gained by focusing on only one of those sides in a work. an obsession with your mother tends to be both loving and hateful, and you can often get lost picking out which is which. i found Letty a great experience in picking out specifically the pieces of the former, but i think i'd like to write something more resentful next.
~plushie
tender and sickening, all at once. beautiful prose and dialogue, where what isn't said screams loudest of all. the stark reds and whites of the art add to that intensity. will forever think about scarlet's observation of the two bathrooms in her school, or blanche being told she's too sensitive by her coworkers, or the split-second observation scarlet has of a mop of blonde hair rising from her bed. little reminders of the systemic failures that led to blanche's and scarlet's lonely, exhausted existences.
.
.
.
.
.
the way this vn presents rumination, and complex intrusive thoughts is fantastic, too. i genuinely felt ill during the final scene from scarlet's pov — her desire to comfort and support her mother as an equal, mixed with the nauseating realization that this wasn't what she wanted, that she was violated, even if it was gentle.
the final sequence, where blanche's pov is shown was also powerful in the short time we see it. watching everything get ripped under her feet in a split-second, and her own intrusive thoughts, her own violating experiences made the earlier scenes between her and scarlet even more painful.
i'm going to chew on this one a lot. thank you for making this.
YAAAYYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYYYYYYAYAYAYAYYAYYYYYY kissing you directly on the mouth. with teeth. this is such a thoughtful response i dont even have anything useful to say except thank you for playing. printing this comment out and eating it
~ Pendulumgraph
thank you for reading!!! i'm so glad you liked it! i'm happy you liked the scenes with blanche's pov, a lot of that section were my ideas and writing, hehe.
as i'm pretty sure i've said before i don't think letty would've been nearly as impactful without pendulumgraph's art and writing. this project wouldn't have been what it was without her.
much of the story is spent inside the heads of our protagonists so i thought it would be important to get their inner voices down, particularly their ruminations, anxieties and intrusive thoughts. it's reassuring knowing that came through in your reading!
~ plushie
My favorite entries of the jam this year are looking squarely at poverty, the impermanence of homes, othering, and how parents' ownership over their children under these systems compromises their mutual ability to connect. i put some other thoughts in the fluxer very flippantly earlier, before i had finished the game, and having finished, this story is quite painful. the violence aimed at: women, dark skin, fat bodies.
I'm thinking a lot about Blanche's self-flagellation toward the end and how it reframes the Scarlet section.
One element I wanna call out because it stands out to me, how real and painful it is to see the skinny white girl, the only girl who deigns to hang out with Letty at school, shrug her shoulders when Letty tries to open up. How she says "Go to therapy" and wipes her hands of the situation. Ostensibly, they're both bullied loners, but Friend is reproducing the same hierarchies with Scarlet that have them quarantined them from the rest of their classmates. It reinforces how many other invisible layers of social support (mostly offscreen) have failed by siloing these two off via any number of mundane violences.
I loved the art, I enjoyed the sound.
To writing craft: you have a very gentle and direct style that's both easy to read and full of emotion, especially during exposition. On the other hand your dialog and mental narration was less consistent in my opinion, especially in the second half when there were a handful of important moments where a character would say something that felt kind of canned to me and pulled me out of the story. I think another editing pass through the Blanche section could make the VN go absolutely haywire.
Thanks so much for making this game. I really enjoyed it.
Thank you so much for playing! Sorry we took so long to write back, haha... it makes us happy to know that Letty's themes resonated so clearly, so strongly. And I'm glad that scene with "Friend" stood out to you so much! It's one of the ones we're proud of, I think.
Blanche's POV was the most important thing for us to get right. The two of them are very "interior." Blanche had been hard for Scarlet to read throughout, and switching to her POV changes that for the reader. Meanwhile, Scarlet is easily understood, but becomes something strange the moment we can't read her mind...
I feel the same way about those messier parts near the end. For the Jam release, we're happy-enough with them, but it's one of the things at the front of our mind for a "1.1" definitive version.
~Pendulumgraph
thank you so much for playing letty! i'm glad you enjoyed it! the scene toward the end with letty's friend was very important, showing how disposable you are for your differences, how there is an invisible line in behavior that when crossed will have you thrown out like garbage. letty's friend holds a lot of power over her and i'm glad that was visible.
pendulumgraph wrote that scene and i am very grateful to it for that, i think it added a lot to the vn as a whole. their oppressions are an integral part in why the story happens the way that it does, and so i felt we had to do them justice.
another editing pass is planned once judging is concluded, currently we're working on other projects but expect a version 1.1 sometime then ^w^
~plushie
Great stuff. The diaspora element is pretty subtle, but is a rather important factor in how the story moves in time and place.
the striking scarlet red only makes the heavy weight of the world around them all the more suffocating. its so unfair how little it takes to be a permanent outsider, be it melanin or living through a divorce. the depiction of these two little women clashing was really sad and beautiful to follow. thank you for sharing your story
Bwaaahhh thank you! Their loneliness, or rather their alienation, is a really key part in why things end up coming apart the way they do; and their blackness is a really important part of that. Thank you for playing, and I'm glad you enjoyed!!
~Pendulumgraph
thank you!! a lot of thought was put into their loneliness and pendulumgraph's art played a huge part of conveying that, it really made the visual novel what it is. i'm glad you found it impactful! their oppressions is something i felt very important to depict and a lot of care was put into depicting it.
~plushprey
This has genuinely become one of my favorite entries. I'm such a sucker for stories like these, and the prose, art, and music all come together in such a poignant way. The "redness" of the color scheme perfectly reflects Scarlet's name, and the music enhances everything by inviting a feeling of "softness" or a feeling of dread throughout (I love the OST that plays when Scarlet is at school and how it represents the anxiety she has about being there). The story was beautifully-written, the way Letty and Blanche's monologues highlighted the very complicated and deep-seated feelings they have for one another was brilliant. I absolutely loved the line "Hot then frigid then hot again, fresh shame reigniting from the white-cold ash of Storge that I burnt into cardiac-crimson Eros". The later half of the story made me so tense but in a good way. This was wonderfully-written, thank you for sharing it!
thank you for all the kind words!! we're really happy you enjoyed it so much! We put our heart and soul into it so we're really happy it resonated! worked hard on the music, first time doing it in years so i'm glad you found it impactful ^w^
~plushprey
This comment is so so so lovely... I keep reading it and rereading it and kicking my feet sososo cutestyle like a little school girl. Thank you so much! I am so unbelievably proud of Plushie for its work on Letty. It wouldn't be a fraction of what it is without it and its music, I think it pairs really well with the high-contrast artstyle. In my other work, I tend to write in a way that isn't fitting for the inner thoughts of a little girl, but Plushie thought it really fit. It added a lot weight to Letty's thoughts, and so I'm glad that those sorts of lines stood out in a good way!
~Pendulumgraph