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"Maggot Baits" Skiprun - "Welcome to the Monkey House" Ending Path

Watch it here: www.youtube.com/shorts/XpFoM...

#VN #Eroge #MaggotBaits #Shorts

This VN is my line in the sand. It is now the benchmark by which all PrObLeMaTiC fiction will be judged in the future. Because it doesn't matter how *awful* your work is perceived to be, I can almost guarantee you it will not be like #MaggotBaits, the game where a woman's penis is used as a onahole.

That probably summarizes the #MaggotBaits experience quite well: at its best, it's still a lesser version of "Euphoria." At its worst, it makes "SaDistic BlooD" seem restrained by comparison. An unending collection of H-scenes haphazardly sewn atop a rotting tapestry that smells of smegma.

There's a *true* route afterwards which is, somehow, even more miserable than everything it preceded.
Oh, and if you were curious, Shougo being gay didn't end up mattering in the slightest. Relatedly, CLOCKUP pulls the Fated Encounter trope AGAIN and it's, by far, the grossest one yet.
#MaggotBaits

Now, on paper, that sounds like a meaningful denouement. Not a loud, self-serving proclamation amidst unhinged porn but an actual story being told that organically reached a thematic throughline - wow, what a concept!
That only illustrates what we could have had here.
#MaggotBaits

There is no such a thing as Good Trauma. Surviving trauma does not make people stronger, does not better you as person, does not make you stronger... You are just a victim who had to suffer because someone else deemed it necessary! The witches, born from and to be raped, reflect that.
#MaggotBaits

That's because no society built atop so much horror and death, so much vileness can ever be acceptable, can ever be REAL. The *fairy tale* ending only emphasizes how much of a lie it all is. *Justified atrocities* are the self-righteous delusions of powerful egomaniacs.
#MaggotBaits

In the common route, she actually succeeds. She harvested all that pain, humiliation, unfiltered sufferance and creates a world without war, sickness, hatred - or so the oddly fabulistic narration at the end will have you believe. However, the remnant of that despair still curses it.
#MaggotBaits

She stands still, in the yawning abyss above her domain, in self-inflicted crucifixion, waiting for her servants to do her bidding. That is to say, capture the witches, have them broken and impregnated by maggots, give birth to THEMSELVES, and repeat the cycle. It's, frankly, insane.
#MaggotBaits

The end goal for this is for the main villain, a true immortal witch, to forcefully recreate the Suffering of Christ at a much larger scale, absorbing the despair of all those violated girls, over and over, with the intent of becoming the New Jesus and reshape the world in her image.
#MaggotBaits

The so-called witches trapped within it are the ghosts of those girls, the physical embodiments of their trauma, unwittingly reborn to endure the torment for the sake of someone's idea of Salvation. The maggots, their natural enemies, are the grotesque masses of their violators.
#MaggotBaits

The idea that through sorrow one can reach salvation is deeply rooted in Christianity. It's the concept that informs the unimaginable horrors at the base of the setting, a world erected atop the assailed, mutilated corpses of 26 girls at the hands of 5000 men.
I kid you not.
#MaggotBaits

Have Anime Girl Jesus with thorns over her eyes again.

The game makes a lot of statements over the course of its length, about Society, about Misogyny, about Women's Suffering and Men being like maggots driven by the desire to violate them - both literally and metaphorically. This game also passionately hates Christianity.
#MaggotBaits

It's time for me to round this entire thread up towards some manner of conclusion. As such, I want to briefly talk about a specific element, an Actual Theme, that managed to resonate in this gouged out, maggot-festering corpse of a story in spite of everything else.
Spoilers after this.
#MaggotBaits

"SaDistic BlooD" cover art.

Even "SaDistic BlooD", for all of its gratuitous, woman-dismembering nonsense, at least had the courtesy of a sufficiently neutral prose. It was also very short, not the ludicrous 30 hours H-scene gauntlet that #MaggotBaits ultimately turned out to be.
I can't believe I'm re-evaluating "SaDBlooD."

Understand that I am not mad about this being exactly what it is, I am dejected and irritated at the idea that it PRETENDED to be about something. Or, rather, that it almost is about something but all of it, ALL OF IT, is undercut by its own rampant sexism, racism and bad writing.
#MaggotBaits

When a character gets re-introduced in an elaborate rape + disembowelment sequence lasting a total of 30 minutes of Honest-to-God runtime only for her to casually shake it off afterwards and be on her merry way, what conclusions would you reach about #MaggotBaits' value as a work of fiction?

How could you take anything that this game might have to say about violence against women seriously when three thirds of the cast exist solely to be shown off in *creatively cruel* situations as the prose incessantly compares them to sows or cows?
#MaggotBaits

As weirdly moot of a criticism as this may appear, I shall keep banging on it because, once again, "Euphoria" had shown us it was possible to have your cake and eat it too. #MaggotBaits, by contrast, had too much cake, barfed all over the place and ruined the party for everyone!

You do not get anything even remotely satisfying by the end. The story does not earn its tragedies, its bittersweet resolutions, its thematic brownie points simply because the Selling Point took precedence on everything else.
#MaggotBaits

There were many times when it seemed the narrative and (whatever passed as) theming were on the verge of a compelling throughline. There were individual pieces, tassels, character arcs and dynamics that were primed for interesting developments.
#MaggotBaits

Yet, I still cannot properly make you understand how existentially miserable and rancid this chaotic, hot mess of a *story* felt. The initial shock and horror were eventually replaced by anger, annoyance and, finally, a quiet resignation.
#MaggotBaits

I have abundantly lamented how the sheer volume and quantity of the Selling Point off-scales and subsumes every other aspect of this diegesis unto itself until all semblance of substance is stamped out, only a decaying, thoroughly debased husk remaining.
#MaggotBaits

In place of a cohesive story and fully realized characters, it had basic beat-by-beat plot progression to fill in time before the next scene of ultra violence comes up, and *holes* to be filled by grody tentacles and random rapist NPC's dicks - sometimes, knives.
#MaggotBaits

So, yes, as I completed #MaggotBaits and looked back at everything it had to show for itself, the prevailing sentiment is just how fundamentally bleak, cynical and hollow it all was.
Instead of themes, it had blanket, sweeping statements delivered with the poise of a half-baked preacher.

I am exhausted, well and truly spent. I feel like my brain had to run a marathon but instead of the expected feeling of elation that comes with reaching the goal, all I have instead is profound ennui. I have truly gained nothing from this challenge. Nothing but tiredness.
#MaggotBaits

CG of Brian mac Cumhaill (spelt McCool), with his bayonetta pistols, flowing blonde hair and smug expression. Brian: "I'm dying to erase a man like you from existence... I want to force you to taste despair, rape your corpse after I murder you, spit and cum all over you, crushing every part of you underfoot."

CG of Brian and Shougo on the ground, covered in stab wounds, staring at each other longingly.

We've got something for the Boys too... I guess. I mean, not really. Intensely violent homoerotic overtones, sure, but in a game LIKE THIS they might as well count as cowardly subtext.
#MaggotBaits

Choice: Abhorrent or Queer

Where are we swinging today, chat?
#MaggotBaits

It has just occurred to me that the sub-scenario where That Scene happens is titled "Welcome to the Monkey House." All those aforementioned animal comparisons are looking worse and worse by the second.
Look, I'm rather open-minded about kinks... I will draw the line at racism.
#MaggotBaits

Her entire personality gets effectively reduced to her race and her being brown is just another fetish. Oh, by the way, did you know there's a Bestiality scene in this here videogame? It sure would be an INSANELY RACIST move to put a POC character in it, wouldn't it?
#MaggotBaits