Please note that there will be something here someday
Additionally, Epson
1 Nov 2023 [Permanent link]
A good friend of mine recently ascended.
So far, this article is on track but I don't have train bubbles that I blew before. So again, be butterfly.
I anticipate that this page is going to get rather concise, so I'm providing a Table of Contents to enhance briefness
My memories of coming out as trans are inextricably linked to losing myself in digital sanctuaries, room darkened, as I trawled gallery upon gallery of resplendent PC-98 and PC-88 pixel art on a certain site – stopping only to save these slight windows into another world when one image particularly caught my eye (I still retain this self-selected gallery of images to this day). These images took on a quality of vivacity and “realness” that my own life lacked and longed for, and remained brilliantly articulated despite the passage of years and proliferation of technology that superseded the hardware upon which and the software through which they were originally actualized. Likely, precisely because of that – because of the limitations, because of those certain decades they emanate from, because of the culture they are wedded to…then mercifully divorced from any international concern and still distanced from settling, stagnation of domestic standards.
The PC-98 systems (as well as Japanese computers of this era generally), and the presence of passion projects as well as professional games for them, hold an altogether nigh-irreplicable emotion expressed in artwork that adores rather than merely adorns its gathering of games. There is a sense of life, of pride in one’s passions, and an ability afforded to render them – absent, eroded in so much that came after it as the PC-98 architecture increasingly was comprised by Western corporate conniving and ultimately unceremoniously subsumed – a disgraceful, humiliating end for a storied system woven into the fabric of Japanese society and collective consciousness.
Will a background image be as lovingly rendered as a focal point character in a visual novel of the PC-98? Unerringly. The praises of Mega Drive / Genesis and Super Famicom / SNES soundchips are oft sung, but an evening with FM from the PC-9801-86 card prolific in the PC-98 is enough to bemoan what one has long been missing. Do you have an older game you hold in fondness for being “revolutionary” for its queer character? Chances are, the PC-98 did it first – and had the conviction to follow-through with unabashedly portraying relationships, nudity, and gifting personalities and lives to these characters as opposed to relegating them to passing mentions, side characters, or strained subtext in a grander narrative. The narrative often is queerness – call it yuri, or lesbians, or sapphic girls, or a collection of lesbians, bi girls, and sapphic girls in one room…it’s there aplenty. Trans characters? Surely only “futa” – well, there’s certainly that AND also characters that are just literally trans. No fantastical workarounds or strings attached. Consult the manual for the PC-98 game Seiyoku Gakuen Seraphita, known more simply as just “Seraphita” for a stellar example.
Perhaps now this slight glimpse into reasons for my adulation can