Upsetting Day - Love Is... In Bloom (Patreon)

Love Is… already ruined my opening. I rocked a classic “pain is my only fetish” gag. But I’m covering nude toddlers today. Wingless, charmless cherubs trapped in eternal courtship. The optics were too presidential.

And that start sounds insane if you haven’t seen the comic. Or ejected it from the Eden of your memory. Today’s, Love Is… strip, at press time, looks like this:

Inspiring.

The clothes are a rare mercy. Don’t expect more. Yesterday, the cherubs looked more like this:

I know those bellybuttons of old. My brain can complete a Love Is… punchline before my hands start the fire. Because they aren’t punchlines. They’re not even greeting card copy. Love is… captions are lies Martian virgins tell about how Terrans fuck.

Of all the Sunday Morning newspaper couples, these two are the most naked and ten. That’s cute to some people, in the same way cilantro reminds some people of naked toddler courtship.

Still, that’s just my spin. You may be less familiar, or more forgiving.

After all, there’s lots of variation.

The bile changes thickness, color, and density. Sometimes a little blood joins in. No two strips inspire the same blend. Nostalgia fans might enjoy memories of food poisoning, or modeling.

It sucks bad. Your city paper pays money for it.

Quality idea. Amidst prestige webcomic nerds, this is known as “The Path of Suffering.” It’s dope. You should try the Path of Suffering.

Spellbinding! I buy it. May the author’s hands wilt to match his genitals. So mote it be.

Comics, as the perfect form, even fail harder than others. While rivals have their share of zombie franchises (Call of Duty’s around three semicolons deep), the formula often evolves by accident, sloth, or sheer entropy. Less true in the funny pages, where Kamino-grade clones are the norm. For each cartoonist without Bill Amends’s dignity, there’s a forger wasting God-given criminal talent.

Beetle Bailey’s in the second century of his court martial. Dagwood’s begged for a bullet for decades. I don’t know which Lockhorn will smother and eat the other first, but I’m rooting for a tie.

Love Is… may be the king of zombie comics, or at least a duke. It could’ve ended in 1997, over 27 years after the first cherub ruined an LA Times spread. Instead, creator Kim Casali handed the pen to Bill Asprey, who’s drawn Love Is… strips for another 29 years. Some people don’t even want to live that long, and he’s drawn child glurge longer than the creator.

Sure, that’s only ten minutes of work a day. But pounding nails into my skull for ten minutes still sounds hot. Unpleasant. I typed unpleasant. I hate nailplay.

It’s a fate asymptotically approaching death. At least Kim could tap her alleged love for her husband Robert Cavali, until his cancer diagnosis nearly gummed up the money printer. Asprey’s cursed with the imitation skills of a medieval monk. Only instead of loving tributes to God, he’s stuck copying three strips about limerence forever. Frankly, I’m baffled that he doesn’t kill people. I’d certainly respect it more. The day Asprey’s murder cellar hits the news, I’ll finally connect with his work.

Does Love Is… have more taste than The Lockhorns? Sure, but so does a family annihilator.

Then again, these naked babies have their own naked babies. I’m not an idiot, I know it's a style thing. The style still gives me hypertension. The Lockhorns don’t make me feel like I’m insane, or holding something illegal.

I could talk about the strip forever. Better comics have attracted dedicated hate blogs (whatever math major curved the Xkcdsucks guy, it must have been rough), so there’s precedent.

However, there’s a Nintendo DS game.

Mine is not to question, but to serve.

To be explicit: serving means recapping jigsaw shovelware. To be more explicit: this is a fucking insult, and this studio deserves the gaming industry. To be as explicit as possible: that’s a couple from Mobile Suit Gundam on the trackpads. Their romance goes great.

This must be why I went to Princeton.

“Who is this for?” asks my friend, Straw. For all we’ve been through, Straw still doesn’t understand the curse haunting this land. It doesn’t matter, old comrade. Someone saw a three-hundred dollar imagination machine, and added Love Is… jigsaw puzzles. Now we ride again.

After a small correction: there are two DS games.

Leaving me at a crossroads: do I take the path of suffering, or suffering? Like Al-Yisun, I have no real choice. Though suffering’s tempting, my future’s always been suffering.

And dread. Dread is…where regret meets foresight.

Like so.

While the DS wasn’t the God of shovelware—that honor goes to the GBA or modern laptops, depending on your Steam filters—it was a worthy contender. Searching franchise + DS reliably finds an insult to both. Or, in the case of Love is…, a loving tribute. Love is…In Bloom sucks the precise right way, across mediums. Fitting, when Love Is… was and is the shovelware of comics.

Finally, a game capturing the joy of preadolescent marriage.

Naturally, I played it. At length. Now baby midriff’s carved into my brain in two mediums.

Fun times, I think. My memory’s fuzzy. When I reach for specifics, I just get a sniper-grade headache and eject a new shade of bile. Nice image, but not too creatively useful.

But we’re in luck: I kept this journal.

Looks legit. Maybe I wrote one of those “How Star Wars: Battlefront Saved My Marriage”-type essays inside. Those were a click-bonanza, when web publishing existed.

Ready?

I treat myself before a big push. So I reread some Kill Six Billion Demons:

Good stuff, though perhaps hard to relate to. While fiction thrives on elective suffering, real actors have more sense. I close the tab, and return to work in paradise.

Paradise has left me off the course catalog again–it’ll be a lean summer. Nonetheless, the wi-fi and coffee remain free. From the catacombs, I pursue my true research, the only work that matters: The war between man and madman.

It’s tied. It looks like losing, but if we lost we’d be dead already.

Today, my true research needs a Steam Deck. Another adjunct slave side-eyes me, before returning to WhatsApp. I ponder what makes one screen fair play, and the other childish extravagance. Then I turn off Ninja Gaiden, and start proper work.

Namely, finding a better seat. The deeper and darker the library floor, the fewer witnesses. The only thing harder than explaining Gal Cleaning is meeting a fan. I fear today’s work is darker.

Love is…in Bloom doesn’t prove elusive. It’s all over auction websites and used game stores, after production in numbers worlds beyond any demand. Thus, I purchase the artifact legally. Meanwhile, a neer-do-well torrents the ROM, drops it onto a MicroSD card next to every Warhammer 40K game ever made, and sneaks the card into my Steam Deck. Such is life in Mamdani’s New York.

Hmm.

Love Is…in Bloom sputters to life.

A common phrase in sci-fi, alongside dilating doors and competent megacorps. It applies here. Twenty years of progress can’t beat sheer sloth. The developer’s heard of optimization, like I’ve heard of olympic weightlifting. But they’re a bit beyond us.

In time, the tutorial loads. It’s as robust as my adjunct healthcare.

Fascinating.

I learn the goal is to buy love. We earn money with flowers, trinkets with money, and love with trinkets. No dialogue. No bonding. Not even watching the same movie in fraught silence. Just capital. The direst vision of romance I’ve seen after a life of black comedy, video games, and swiping. With perfect gameplay, I’d still consign Love is…in Bloom to the flames.

Love doesn’t live here. Even flash porn made you lift, study, and click “Please touch it, Ayane.”

With most damned artifacts, I can divine a purpose. Profit. Ego. White panic. But a Love Is… punting simulator helps no one. Forget the fact that it’s broken, or stabbing my eyes before I’ve reached the main menu. The game’s existence is wrong.

Time to make a character.

Only two faces exist—just like the strip. Perhaps more options would chafe with the idea of predestined romance. Perhaps another baby would mean animating anything. Either way, I get the chance to name the cherub.

“Prisoner” won’t fit. Frustrating.

That’ll do.

Work’s taught me a few lessons. Never let your fairytale vision for a project get in the way of enjoying reality. Kind of like…something. A comparison might hit me later.

They’re cute, if you’re a Cenobyte. As a human, blindness sounds fun.

Granted, it’d betray the source material if they were cute. Or mammals. Hopefully the Love is… fandom enjoys the attention to detail before weeping to sleep.

Why did I retire my liver early? With Captain Morgan by my side, I’d smile through this whole experience. Instead, I’m on the path of…inconvenience. Watching these homunculi sober is inconvenient.

I haven’t hit the gameplay yet.

It flatly rejects being played. “Sputters” was too generous. Love is…in Bloom loads more often than I blink. It’s life in slow motion, waiting for responses to simple input. A bit like living with an idiot.

The game tries to bury load times beneath comics. Here, I want less effort.

Mother of fucking God. What’s it like not to care? To sign your name and feel nothing? If I was in these credits, I’d take a samurai exit. I still might.

After more loading, I try another look at my boyfriend/husband/freeloader. A droopy-eyed, blurry nudist.

Maybe love can grow with time.

Or a divorce minigame.

In fairness, I’m not the only one with doubts. He wants a dog.

Only a dog. Nothing else. I can’t talk, flex, buy, pray, or fuck my way past this point. It’s a dog or a baby lawyer.

I like dogs, in isolation. But knowing we’re nothing without this specific pastime poisons the entire…ah. Shit. Love is…in Bloom taught me something. Hopefully my rotting brain retains it.

Bastard.

I search for gameplay. Instead, I find credits.

Zoo Digital’s so proud, they can’t wait for me to beat the game. The words crawl, slowly. Somehow, with more than two adults involved, their game still looks like this. Without one Alan Smithee to be found.

Something in me cracks. Again. I’ve broken it over and over. Why? My best jokes gushed about puppet karate. There’s more puppet karate. Three movies, all insane. Why do I…pick the road of inconvenience? Bike the path of headaches? Jog into traffic? Dickpunch my brain? It’s on the tip of my tongue.

I am beneath hell.

I find the gameplay. This, like birth, was a mistake.

“You win,” says the daemon. Another lie. I have grown wise to Zoo Digital’s ways.

It’s almost a gardening minigame. Like something cut from WarioWare, before they decided to make money instead. At least it’s educational: I learn about game design from its absence.

I drag blue flowers from the tainted earth to my urn. Carefully, at first. But my input means nothing. The controls spasm at random, like a federal agency. The flowers have their own will, and most want to live.

In theory, I should avoid red flowers. There aren’t any consequences, but the tutorial insists. This is a blue flower town. Nothing’s romantic about red flowers.

After killing an entire grove, my inventory gets three flowers. Three, worth ten bucks each. A dog costs more than thirty. Just like a vase, and everything else I need to fill the hole in my partner’s heart.

The trail of irritation looks very, very long.

The music makes it longer. One mistake loops over staring at your flowers, waiting for fresh marks.

And picking them. And filler comics. This song’s part of my soul now, and that’s not a compliment.

Maybe it’s difficult territory. There aren’t many songs about love, and catchy chiptune hooks are a creative cliche. At least, that’s what my brain says after hours of this sonic stillbirth.

Love is…in Bloom has half a song. A midi loop that jumps past lazy to actively grate on my ears. The precision astounds. Four notes struck at random would top this every time. It’s music for CIA interrogators, repentant priests, or jazz flutists. It can’t be an accident.

Finally, someone on this team tries. Good on you, uncredited musician. I’ll remember you for the rest of this sentence.

Midnight. Five missed texts.

“I have to garden for my husband,” I explain.

“He wants a dog.”

No response. Probably fine.

Sure. I wouldn’t fucking know.

The parasite gets his dog. Hopefully the dynamic between unattended babies and dogs endures.

Sparky’s worth one heart. Of seven.

Something reeks. Who else is buying this piece of shit pets? After all this glurge about love, this worthless motherfucker hasn’t picked one tulip. Meanwhile, I’ve spent my life force on reskins of one shit minigame. But hey, at least my Literally Dickless husband gets his dog.

Despite checking out of the relationship, I earn three more hearts—his vase takes the longest. I’d try a vase before a whole fucking animal, but I’m nuts like that.

After that, the outline comes easy. This’ll be a good one, worth at least half a puppet karate. And more than worth riding the escalator of sorrow. As long as I don’t overwrite hours of footage, forcing a second run. That’d suck.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Pee Wee's Uncle, who was absolutely thrilled to have his name associated with weird ass naked toddler shovelware, again. At least it wasn't Hummel figurines.

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