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misscammiedawn · 7 months

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Penlight - A Quick Review

Download Penlight (Pay what you like) from Itch.io here

My detailed Penlight route reviews: Nozomi Routes - Sayori (Part 1 - Doll) - Sayori (Part 2 - Alter)

Turq's reviews: Hiroko Robot - Hiroko Tickling - Nozomi Zo

So I have spent the past week going through every route I possibly could of Penlight.

On Sleepyhead's Discord we ran a session of it on stream and a group of us were watching as two characters shyly open up about their hypnokink and the chat was alive with nostalgia over our own awkward starts into this kink and it was evident that the game knew our experiences well.

If you want my tl;dr review it is this: Penlight is a story written with love for hypnokink as a whole and a wariness of the toxic elements of the culture that it intends to subvert at every turn. It's a game about ethics, responsibility, trust and exploration from the perspective of someone who very clearly understands the ins and outs of this kink.

Download it for free on Itch. Support the Patreon. Play the game and enjoy it.

Now for the full ramble:

Penlight is a visual novel coded in Ren'py, a platform I have some experience with from my brief time as a member of a game developer circle.

The basic storyline is that you play Kyou Koyama, an 18 year old student about to take his college entrance exams. His entire secondary school career he has had his eyes on a classmate, Nozomi Akemi and after witnessing her volunteer for a stage hypnosis session during the prior year's cultural festival he has gone all in on learning hypnosis and has developed a tool that will help him win the affections of his crush...

So far this sounds like any old H-Game with a protagonist getting his hands on a brainwashing device, ready to go on a rampage... that's intentional. The tropes are set to make this seem like one of those games.

But have some faith and patience.

See, Kyou is viewed by the school as a creeper. He's been friendless for 3 years of his secondary school life and has spent much of that time longing for Nozomi's attention. He's not quite subtle about this, either.

Some routes have Kyou in a very self-defeating and angry state of mind where he feels victimized by the world and hated on. I admit it's not fun to have a perspective character being a shithead but I suppose that incentivizes the audience to improve him as soon as possible...

Part of Kyou's resentment comes from the fact that the hostility he faces is not all in his head. Just mostly.

Nozomi has two close friends, Hiroko the spunky tennis star who will routinely tell Kyou to go fuck himself and Sayori the smartest girl in class who harbors her own resentment for Kyou's devil-may-care approach to life. They both work overtime running interference for Nozomi to ensure her stalker will not get an opportunity to approach.

But Kyou is eventually given some time alone with Nozomi during an after school cleaning session and the game's thesis statement is made clear with the very first option in the game:

From here the game will branch off into a number of branching stories where Kyou and his classmates discover that he actually does possess a brainwashing device, even as he attempts to utilize mundane hypnosis skills. Anyone who looks at the penlight is helpless to resist and it will rewrite their brains to comply with the suggestions.

In my view the Penlight represents years and years of toxic approaches in a relationship with hypnosis all condensed down into a week. My thread on ethical personality play was entirely inspired by playing the Personality Play route and despite the lack of malice, Kyou makes severe mistakes which reflect mistakes that I have experienced in my life.

The penlight is simply a narrative device that takes years of conditioning and condenses the consequences, regrets and repercussions into a single week.

Fantastic storytelling for fables on how important safety and consent are.

At time of writing there are over 180 CG images, 33 endings with 14 unique routes. More being added every month via Patreon.

The themes of the game explore communication in exploring kink, trust within hypnosis play and safety. The terminology is really good and the understanding of how real life hypnokink is mostly good, spare for a few moments like "thousands" of people tuning in to a hypnosis livestream. Even our biggest and best content creators and streamers cap at 400 or so viewers.

Phrases like "hypnotee" and "hidden observer" which are used entirely within hypnosis circles get thrown around accurately and organically and many routes involve characters describing real world applications from hypnotherapy, anesthetic aid during surgery and even the ins and outs of how a stage hypnosis routine is performed behind the scenes and in-front of an audience.

Angela DeMille knows her stuff.

Nozomi Akemi also knows her stuff.

I'll go into spoilers and my more in-depth thoughts in the coming weeks/months but I wanted to at least break down the core three paths that you can pick and why they appeal.

Nozomi: In this route a repressed woman on the aroace spectrum meets someone who shares her kink and dives in too fast and too deep into her hobby. The route explores compartmentalizing kink and personal life, internalized shame for having sexual interests, "the slope" of chasing new peaks of a thrilling kink and losing regard to safeties and themes of "using" people for access to kink.

Sayori: In this route Kyou offers to help an overworked classmate with her sleep schedule. Regardless of your branching choices (Personality Play route or Doll Play route) it begins with a lack of security. Sayori starts the route feeling unsafe and afraid and your choices will lead to either damage being mitigated or becoming more than can be handled. Consequences, respect and honoring someone's wishes are all explored to their full.

Hiroko: In this route Kyou and his nemesis, Nozomi's best friend, craft an uneasy alliance where they explore hypnosis as a tool for focus in sport. Trust is at the core of this route with the two intensely disliking one another and constantly attempting to even their power dynamics via prank based hostility. This route is about crafting rapport, about belief in one another (which can even be hijacked for a "Gullible" route) and can lead to a beautiful friendship.

The game is amazing and I highly recommend you check it out.

...anyway. I'm gonna write about each route in a little more detail sometime in the future. I have so much to say about all the different little things like the consistencies between routes, the dramatic ironies of knowing things to be true in some routes and experiencing things that build upon that in others, the specific warnings and cautions at play and of course answer the question "who is best girl?"

But for now I just wanted people to have my whole-hearted recommendation.

Go download Penlight. It's hosted on Itch.io and is being updated monthly.

#camden posting #hypnosis #hypnokink #hypno art #Penlight #sayori is best girl

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misscammiedawn · 7 months

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Penlight Spoiler Reviews (Sayori Part 1)

Alright... Welcome to the Sayori segment of my spoiler reviews for Penlight. Sayori route was originally going to be one post but I had to split it in half due to Tumblr limitations.

Download Penlight (Pay what you like) from Itch.io here

My other Penlight reviews: Quick Review - Nozomi Routes - Sayori (Part 2 - Alter)

Turq's reviews: Hiroko Robot - Hiroko Tickling - Nozomi Zombie

So if I've learned anything about these posts it's that you gotta lead with a hook, so... Doll Route and "Alter" Route or Personality Play if you prefer.

I make no secret of the fact that these are my favorite paths in the game.

@spiralturquoise and I are still going back and forth on the route reviews and at present he has done reviews for Hiroko Tickle - Hiroko Robot and Nozomi Zombie and I know Sayori Doll is on his shortlist, so I'll yield a bit more space for him and be brief in my thoughts so I may devote more words to Alter path.

Because of course I have opinions on Alter path. They're glowing opinions, by the way. I mean playing through that route inspired me to write my recent blog entry on ethical personality play.

So-- let's begin.

The first choice in the game, as noted by my original short review, is essentially "are you going to be an ethical hypnotist" will you speak to the girl or just try to brainwash her. Villain and redemption paths are there for if you try to brainwash. Ethical hypnosis paths open if you try to speak.

From there you can either engage Nozomi in her hypnosis obsession or be a coward and miss your opportunity. With a missed opportunity you are given the option to go to other parts of the school.

In other words "go bug Sayori" or "go bug Hiroko"

We'll visit the pink haired gremlin on the next review.

Let's go see why my Penlight tag is "Sayori is best girl" instead...

Sayori is the smartest girl in school. She runs the study club and she gets about 3-5 hours of sleep per night.

In many of the routes she will appear as an observer of the shenanigans that are going on. She knows everyone's characters remarkably well (with one observation I find she is completely blind to, which I may mention during my Hiroko review) and her resentment for Kyou comes from the fact that she sees a focused and attentive person inside of Kyou but he is so self-pitying and uninterested in his future that he does not tap into his ability to succeed at things with focused effort.

For someone who is under pressure from two successful parents to get into medical school, she resents that someone close to her has the makings of brilliance and no drive to attain it.

But she also admires Kyou's potential for brilliance. She wants to coax it out of him. She just cannot reconcile the man she knows he can be with the person he actively chooses to be.

This is what makes the route work in my opinion. Sayori likes Kyou in theory but is so aggravated by him. Their connection is the most organic of any in the game because it would work without hypnosis. They actually have innate chemistry before the events of the game and this is highlighted by some of her actions in routes such as Redemption where she is one of only two people in the entire school (neither of whom had seen the penlight) who remain friends with Kyou after a significant incident.

But in the Doll/Alter pre-routes, Kyou goes to Study Club and meets with Sayori there. There he sees her knowledge and passion at play and recognizes that she is there purely to tutor other students.

She also falls asleep midway through the study session. She's that exhausted. After everyone else in the club has left Kyou sticks around and Sayori...

...sees right through him.

But he notes that he's worried about her lack of sleep (she admits she cannot get on a good sleep schedule because she will just sit up in bed stressing out and has trained herself to "make use" of time she'd be awake anyway) and, after hearing she intends to spend an hour before cram school napping in the study room, offers to help.

He mentions his hypnosis interest and Sayori does a number of things which amp her to the top of my Best Girl list.

1: She identifies why Kyou learned it instantly but decides that giving him shit about it would dissuade him.

2: She notes that helping her with sleep is not hobby hypnosis but therapy and should be performed by qualified professionals.

3: She refuses to engage with this until she has done some research on the topic and can provide informed consent that doesn't rely on being educated by someone who has an unknown motive.

The main three girls of the game come from different levels of trust and knowledge and I find it remarkable how the routes explore that. Nozomi knows the most about hypnosis and is wary enough of Kyou that she calls the shots for most of her routes. Sayori is learning about hypnosis as we go but is inclined to trust Kyou when his statements match her research. Hiroko knows nothing about hypnosis and all her information comes from Kyou, a person she actively hates.

I had described it to Turq as this "Sayori is the only route where it feels like two people on even footing explore hypnosis together". The foundation feels more stable in this scenario.

The next day after school Sayori has lost a couple further hours of sleep in study for hypnosis and agrees that it is safe and can be a good aid for her and so she is willing to give it a try.

Kyou pulls out his trusty penlight and...

Sayori reacts instantly to it.

Intensely.

Kyou gives her a suggestion that the moment her head hits the pillow at night she would fall into a deep and restful sleep.

And it works.

So well that Sayori doesn't wake up in the morning and is several hours late for school. Her perfect attendance record ruined forever.

She explains to Kyou that the moment she hit the pillow she just fell asleep. She didn't even think to set an alarm. It just happened and there was nothing that she could do to prevent it.

Kyou brushes her concerns aside. It was clear that her sleep schedule had been ruinous to her mental health and so her body was just taking the toll. But Sayori is freaked out because she is an over-controlled individual who is striving for medical school and with a single hypnosis session Kyou has invoked a change within her that undid years of self-conditioning.

And with that note we are left to choose between Doll route and Alter route.

I'll start with Doll for two reasons. One, Turquoise is going to say things a lot more eloquently than I could.

Two... this is the route map for Doll

THIS is the route map for Alter:

Even if personality play wasn't a huge topic of personal interest for me, there's just so much more to talk about with Alter.

With that having been said, here's my "I promise I'm trying to be swift" analysis of Doll.

DOLL ROUTE:

This route leans heavily on Sayori's self-advocacy. Kyou wants to start training for the culture festival and Sayori is coming at a base of mistrust from having been freaked out by the sleep suggestion. When Kyou asks to do the doll suggestion Sayori is very firm about what levels of touch she is willing to engage in (she also notes that the concept of "doll" is a malleable term and shouldn't be treated as a universal, something Zombie Route Kyou could have stood to consider).

Not that her mind going straight here could be foreshadowing or anything...

I have resisted labeling routes by their aesop. I think there's so much more to every route than the focus topic. But if NozoZombie is the Abreaction story then Doll is Boundaries and Alter is Lingering Programming.

With boundaries as a theme this route begins with Sayori refusing to let Kyou hypnotize her until she has enough information to consent and her being firm about what Kyou is and isn't able to do. Kyou says that hypnosis cannot make you do anything you don't agree to, but Sayori knows herself and knows her body and...

...she is terrified of the level of control she is surrendering to Kyou. So she refuses to allow him to have any more, even to deprogram her, until she has had time to think things through entirely. Her boundaries are firm and unlike the Nozomi Trance route where Kyou is being shut out by someone who treats him like a trance dispenser, Sayori and Kyou have an open conversation about consent and respect and Kyou has to live with the fact that this is Sayori's mind and he cannot subvert her will without breaking her clearly defined boundaries.

Which is why I like that this route boils down to "pick a good ending or a bad ending". We aren't given options to break Sayori's boundaries or consent because to do so would subvert the story being told. Even the bad/good ending choice is a matter of whether Kyou believes Sayori is being honest or projecting her insecurities. He never betrays her. Not in this route.

Note this isn't a case of "more story has not been written yet" there are many paths on the route tree which are grayed out as a manner of "wait until future updates" but there is only one option in this route and it is fully written.

Though Sayori is skeptical about the penlight and Kyou's hypnosis she is remarkably friendly towards him in this route in a way which she never appears to be with her friends. Sure she is snarky and has a dry wit but consider this CG from early in the doll route.

There is nothing hypnotic happening here. Sayori is just having fun. She enjoys being with Kyou. She's making fun of him for staying up too late in this scene, joking that Kyou is grumpy when he lacks sleep and that maybe he should consider turning in early.

See... as we will learn in the Alter route... Sayori actually does have a light and soft personality. She just doesn't have time for being frivolous and wasting time on friendship nor fun and games.

I'll talk about it in more depth in the Alter half but Sayori's personality shift in that route is treated so well because all the attributes that would make up her alter persona do exist within her, she just has different priorities and perspectives in her unaltered headspace.

I am spending a lot of this Doll route write-up talking about the other path, aren't I?

In parallel to the Nozo-Trance route, Kyou complains about how he is not getting what he wants from this deal (practice for the culture festival) and he accuses Sayori of being unfair in her boundaries. Unlike the Nozo-Trance route, however, Kyou is being unreasonable here. Sayori notes that she wishes to know more about the penlight and firmly refuses to commit to anything until she has reached a level of comfort.

I love her.

Kyou, falling into his worst habits of only caring about a thing while he can maintain his temporary fascination, starts to think of quitting hypnosis and focusing on tech but his (im)patience is rewarded when Sayori calls him after Hiroko's Sunday Tennis Tournament and tells him that she has no wish to go to karaoke and instead summons him to her home.

In which we get a little more on the level of boundaries, power difference and control that this route has to talk about.

Kyou offers to have Sayori at her home but she summons him to her house. She says she will help with the culture festival and put in the application but on her terms. She wants to create the script and she wants to ensure the application is prepared in accordance to her comfort.

...see, Nozomi is the class rep and must handle all applications for the culture festival and thus would learn there is a hypnosis event that will happen.

And Sayori knows Nozomi has a hypnosis fetish. And Sayori knows Kyou is interested in Nozomi.

So she manipulates the situation to lock Nozomi out of the proceedings because she does not trust either of them enough to do otherwise.

A lot of the trust and boundaries of this route isn't just Kyou having to earn Sayori's, it's about Sayori being able to trust herself and her situation enough to lower her guard. She is a rigid woman who believes she can control all the variables. She does not trust herself and that is explored in both routes.

Kyou and Sayori's time together is not so much about Sayori learning to trust Kyou but about Sayori trusting herself to let go and fall into another's hands.

At this point of the story she is not able to do that and she hurts people because of it.

What's worse is... well. I have to stop talking about the Alter route... but suffice to say it serves her purposes to exclude Nozomi in this path.

I wonder how much she will treat Nozomi in another timeline...

And so, at Sayori's house, she agrees to amp up the doll play from just being a arm catalepsy suggestion to feet and invites Kyou to touch her body to test it.

This isn't important but I should note this is one of the only Penlight induction sequences without a dedicated CG.

Turq once said he enjoyed how Angela DeMille treated sitting down as rising action within the context of a hypnosis scene and I feel the absence of a CG is notable, albeit I cannot quite say why.

The leg catalepsy suggestion, brought about by the trigger "booksmart"

As with all penlight suggestions the trigger is so binding that she cannot stand up after Kyou activates it.

They have such fun rapport.

But this route is not a straight line. It's rising and falling in terms of the pairs exploration into hypnosis and with mock exams coming up Sayori wants to get back to study and is frustrated she's allowing herself to be distracted.

Another reason to highlight the choice not to give the player choices here. Kyou's frustration with waiting is never met with an option to force Sayori into further play. He will always yield to her requests.

He is once again rewarded for his patience by Sayori dragging him to the student council office where Student Council President Akiko, a former friend of Sayori's, takes the application for the cultural festival herself.

Akiko is an oddity within the game. I look forward to discussing her route.

Sayori bombs the mock exams and freaks out, returning to Kyou's house and explaining that she was so distracted by how wonderful hypnosis feels and how she wants to stop what they are doing, deprogram. She wants to stop falling asleep the moment she hits a pillow, she wants to stop exploring this frivolity.

The pair fight. Leaving nothing held back. Kyou accusing Sayori of being terrified that she may have fun for once in her life and Sayori stripping down Kyou's character from years of watching him.

My headcanon is that Sayori has a crush on Kyou and I treat this headcanon as fact.

It is at the height of the argument with Sayori and Kyou both having said things that they regret that you can select your ending:

So my praise to the endings of Doll Route is that they inform one another.

Kyou's hypnotic patter has been programming anyone who he aims the penlight at. Including innate suggestions that hypnosis feels wonderful.

She has become addicted to that wonderful feeling and Kyou can realize that if they have a conversation or he could say "Book smart" and remove her ability to argue with him. Because no matter how careful and well planned Sayori was, her lack of trust in having Kyou go in and remove programming such as the sleep and "book smart" suggestions did leave her vulnerable to lingering programming.

Lingering programming... we should talk more about that later...

In the bad ending if Kyou bullies her into admitting how much she desires hypnosis she will cry and talk about how much she enjoys the wonderful feeling. Kyou is the only one who can make her feel wonderful.

Where in the good ending he realizes that the penlight is actually reprogramming her and maybe they should remove the programming and start again.

And so... they make a trade.

Sayori offers to perform Kyou's original doll suggestion, no caveats, no limitations beyond what is appropriate for the pair. She is willing to trust him to be a good man... and in exchange, Kyou can perform the hypnosis with her full trust.

Kyou even tailors the session, knowing how her mind works.

In the NozoDom "Reversal" route, I had mentioned how the deprogramming scene was the longest in the game and how it treated the trust and intimacy of Nozomi (arguably a better hypnotist than Kyou) taking her time and really earning the scene that we the audience got to experience from a first person perspective.

This is the most emotionally intimate scene because it's the payoff to an entire route of rapport building. This is the initial suggestion. This is what Kyou wanted at the start... and it's being given now and it's SO much more valuable for the journey between the request and the honoring of it.

Sayori's trust in Kyou is desperately intimate.

This is just romantic.

One of my girlfriends is not just into doll play. She's famous for doll play.

Treating someone as a treasured toy, brushing their hair, putting them in poses, treating them as pretty and letting them lean all their trust into the intimacy of your touch, letting themselves be posed and used and cared for...

Sayori is a being who needs to feel in control of her life. Even in matters such as the culture festival (we'll get there) she couldn't bare the flexible variable of Nozomi's involvement.

Her trusting Kyou like this is such a big deal and Kyou respecting her and treating her trust as a gift?

I don't have to imagine that as a romantic action. I feel it every single day with one of the humans on this planet I love the most. THIS is what hypnokink is. Power exchange, scene play, shenanigans. It's all fun and games but at the end of it hypnosis is built on a foundation of trust and a big part of that trust is learning to turn off and let someone else lead.

There's a difference between putting your body in the hands of someone else and putting your mind in them. Your identity. It's a malleable thing after all and not everyone on the planet is willing to be vulnerable, open or allow themselves to be altered by the effects of it.

So to find a person you can give and take that trust? It's romantic beyond my ability to define.

The culture festival is a one woman display of full body catalepsy spreading Sayori between two chairs. Nozomi and Akiko are invited to help run the show and it goes remarkably well.

Unfortunately after the event Nozomi is hurt that Sayori locked her out. Hurt and confused because she cannot even explain why it hurts without revealing her fetish and when explaining she cuts Sayori off and excuses herself.

This ending reveals a side to Sayori's behavior. She tries to control variables and is rigid in how she treats people. She refuses to be involved in any social engagement out of school hours (though she shows up to help Hiroko at her tennis tournament and any route that requires her assistance such as NozoZombie. She shows up for her friends but she does not hang out with anyone) and views all connections as temporary. She knows she'll move on from school and never see these people again, she considers her time valuable.

In talking to Akiko, a person she abandoned when student council became more time than reward, and Nozomi in the ending it is revealed how much this cost her in the end.

Sayori's kind of a bad friend.

The doll ending concludes in the study room with some mundane hypnosis.

The bad ending is where Kyou takes responsibility for a toy and makes all decisions for her. Both students crash and burn and Kyou finds himself burned out taking care of another human being, but she is just too reliant upon him and his penlight hypnosis and so he'll just have to do the thinking for both of them.

Another interesting thing about the bad ending is besides the "wonderful" note that you need context for the good ending for, the hypnosis show is stiff and not quite as successful in the bad ending route. Kyou's display of Sayori as a toy is met with more confusion and mild hostility than the display in the good ending.

...and so... let's switch rails and go back to that original choice.

What if Kyou said Make You Think You're Someone Else.

To be continued in Alter Route... (click for the second half)

#dawn posting #sayori is best girl #penlight #visual novel review #itch.io #hypnokink #hypnosis #media essays

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