I know I'm ace as hell because I'll look up smut expecting, wanting, to be aroused and end up feeling nothing much. I'll be reading about two guys (guys being used in a gender-neutral way here) really going at it, all the balls and holes and wet mess and at best I'll be like, huh that's a really creative way of describing that, huh that's a really nice turn of phrase. And at the end I'll be like, well that was enlightening!
I'm probably not aro because I'll read about how two people can care for each other, would sacrifice the world for each other, how they'd do anything to get close, not for the touch itself but for the feeling of being next to each other, the confirmation that the other is still with them, that their world is not devoid of meaning because the other is with them. Yeah! I love love stories! That's the good shit! I want this for myself...
Heaven Will Be Mine is so weird. Most of the time reading it I don't understand half of what's going on. There's this world torn between three factions: one who wants all to come home to earth, another who wants to break free of its gravity, and the one who rejects it in pursuit of being more than less than human. But mostly there are these three girls: Luna-Terra, Pluto, Saturn, all of whom I fail to find adjectives to fully describe. Luna-Terra is soft and fierce to herself and others, Pluto is overbearing and dramatic and caring, Saturn is jumpy and unpredictable in his predictability. Sure, but that doesn't quite describe them. Their actions are both consistent but difficult to follow, their feelings expressed both clearly but muddled at the same time. Their words blend into each other at the same time that I can always tell whose thoughts belong to whom.
It feels like the whole visual novel is just them having sex, even though there's not a single scene you can call explicit in it. Two bodies becoming one, or three. Thoughts finding, blending, bleeding into each other. Is this what sex is like? I feel like this is what sex is like. How do they manage this with only words and a smattering of abstract illustrations and the sound of metal scraping against metal?
The illustrations are vague and looks almost unfinished, deliberately, I think. There were a few that depicts them kissing, or in intimate positions, but they're just extra garnish to all the heavy? sensual? lifting? that the narration is doing, flitting between different point of views. I don't even know half of what's happening, I just feel it. I can tell these two are really going at it.
And the soundtrack, the sound design, it's actually insane. Little buildups as the scene also builds up. Beats in unexpected moments and also exactly the right moment. Simultaneously grating and comforting, all the perfect ethereal backup to the perfect ethereal What Is Even Going On that the prose has.
I like Luna-Terra a lot, she's the first route I played, and only, as of writing this. Maybe the other two would be less confusing. I have a decent grasp of the story, or like, what happened in the story, but whenever I try to read it again I keep getting lost. I'll finish a chapter and I can't tell you what it was about, other than, wow damn Luna-Terra really loves Pluto and Saturn, huh. What was all that. Gay sex, all of it?
Maybe this will be the story that will finally help me understand.
Oh, right. Context. Heaven Will Be Mine is a visual novel you can buy on Steam and on Itch and apparently iOS. Like, two hours to one ending. Probably 7 hours to get them all? I cannot recommend this if you're not looking forward to queer stories, space, and not understanding a damn thing. It's so weird, man. Playing it on the biggest screen you have, late at night when no one's looking, it feels amazing.
