I never understood why it ever got framed as irrational or coming out of nowhere. Logically you understand that any dude given the opportunity and circumstance would want to fuck a girl if she was conventionally attractive, unless he already was satisfied with whatever situation he was currently in. Even if you know your girl is loyal the threat and presence of someone else ofc you'll have a primal response. Especially if you got a strong attraction to someone and think you've found someone not so common for whatever reason, even if it's that's just how you love someone. I would argue it's more strange for someone not to feel that, it means something inside them has been numbed like animal instinct. I've also seen dudes who didn't ever have that sense at all and they lived to regret it. Maybe some guys just luck out on good faith but statistically that's just time down the drain for a lot of people. Can't even get justice because there's no laws against emotionally damaging someone through a betrayal. Same deal in reverse if a girl is getting jealous or possessive it means she cares, at least early on. Obviously there's a point where she's just being an insane control freak, especially if it's been 10 years and they still don't feel secure. It's a security thing, new things feel insecure. New experiences etc.
Ethan feeling some way over a new occurrence makes perfect sense. He decided to do carl a solid cuz he wanted to be a nice guy, but he's already going far out of his way basically lending his wife, and she did give her number even on the vanilla path while ethan was off in the bathroom so he never even met the kid just saw him once through a picture in a phone. Honestly that was just some weird shit to let her get involved even in the vanilla route, it only makes sense in one of the swinger routes. If it was real life and I met a dude like that, which I have more than once, my instinct is to help them out myself cuz a woman can't really give them what they need I don't think. It's always been from what I've seen guys without healthy male figures in their lives either no father or abusive father or some other shit. They just need a bit of structure and discipline and to have a fire fanned a bit in their belly. It never even occurred to me to get them a pity fuck lmao. Something tells me if you hire them an escort to show them the ropes they're just gonna say it doesn't count and see it as even further reinforcement that they're undesirable cuz they needed to pay for it. Nat going out with carl the way she did was a total male fantasy from that perspective.
I've never participated in the swinging lifestyle don't think it's something I would ever engage in outside of pure fantasy so I'm curious your own thoughts on the matter. I'm guessing your threshold for jealousy is just different like an elastic band that's been stretched, but if it's stretched too much or in a particular angle at the wrong time there's gonna be a small tear since it's already being constantly stretched so maybe that's where "random jealousy" comes in as opposed to someone who is more rigid their responses are gonna be much more consistent and predictable. Or I guess maybe a muscle that can get built up since some people seem like they get into more and more extreme stuff with expanding limits over time standard bdsm. I'd guess in his case, he said it himself that he wished he met a girl like nat when he was in carls shoes or whatever, I forgot how he said it. Watching her be with some bull performer whose existance and participation in their lives is based on his ability to gracefully perform for them sexually is one thing but watching her be all sweet on a dude weaker than himself, definitely sounds like it would strike up some jealous feelings possibly even inadequacy, since he didn't get to experience it when he was exactly in those shoes. It's not like he could ever build up to be a 6 foot 4 black bodybuilder with a 2 liter bottle for a cock so it doesn't really matter. Like hell if I was darryl I would be jealous of ethan because he doesn't have to be anything like darryl to get a wife like nat, and isn't looking like he's going to find anyone like her anytime soon because of how hungry he seems for nat the moment he meets her, like the moment he sees her he's all over her despite him able to find multiple women on demand to bust nuts in for 0 effort, he still puts in all that time and effort serenading both the husband and the wife to get his shot at nat, and is essentially at her beck and call to the point where she can call him in to show up in the middle of the night on a weekday, one day in advance, to show up ready to tape a porn video. Even if he's a jacked rich dude with perfect plot armor level game, until he met nat and got the go ahead from ethan and even his help in warming her up to the idea(which he could have redacted by just pussying out last minute after getting her ready for the first time which is great writing), he was eating slop ala jenna and other trashy wives who get posted on his instagram. Jenna even says darryls her favorite but she's obviously box mac and cheese for him. There's definitely reason to be envious of carl if she suddenly gets a soft spot for him to the point of being his giga hot cougar who wants to builds up his self esteem from below rock bottom since he just got cucked himself. At least that's how I see it. My own experience with a cougar was a complete shit show lmao I'd sure as hell be envious myself to meet a nat. The closest ethan in the game could come to being built up like a carl would be to become a jobless cuck and have him somehow end up in a dominant route because riya found him and build him up, and that's farfetched sounding. That would be a funny angle tbh, maybe there's some hints of it since he meets her even if he kicks nat out. Just lot of route splits in this game and it's gonna be a lot of time before any of them get any amount of proper fleshing out.
Honestly where king b has been dropping the ball in my opinion that he's done early on is having nat's communication with ethan and particularly with choice. Early on she's like "is this ok", "are you sure you want this", etc. Maybe it's just me but I'd rather someone ask permission than forgiveness. It's why her interaction with matt came so out of left field and for me at least would be grounds for divorce. It's just bad that there's no consequence for it because ethan having a choice wasn't written in, unless a next update she talks about it like how it ended and he has the option to be like oh fuck no. Don't even think about talking to people like that, no matter what reason you think is valid, even if it's friendly casual, because you've demonstrated your ability to think clear headedly, while sober, is compromised. Idk it was just so badly written it made me mad when I saw it. Maybe she's written as growing more comfortable as a hotwife to want to fish for dick solo idk, I don't see any appeal in that at all. Then again based on what I seen and read I approach the fantasy from a completely selfish perspective as opposed to it usually being from a selfless one for the dudes who seem to get into it, idk. Her ignoring his calls and fucking around with some psychopath and then asking permission retroactively hoping he's a big enough cuck to not have to have any rules or respect for him be perfectly fine just doesn't sound appealing at all, or healthy, and it piss me off he just bottlenecked what happens that way for both nat and ethan to not have any choice in the matter. Maybe he slaps on more choices in the future idk when he added choices to all the scenes since I only recently discovered it. Last 3 updates have felt very limited in choice though.
Honestly because there's so much frankenstein design in the game. Ethan would have needed 5 different sets of writing based on route. I get the feeling king b felt rushed since he released it like 3 weeks late and had whatever issues he said he had I forget. I kind of knew the release would have issues because that tends to happen when you can't do things on your terms. He practically had the fans wait until the following month and I think he said he got sick or something so who knows when he was actually able to start producing something. Just the pressure of it on top you're not gonna do as good. creativity comes from a relaxed state so it makes sense being under pressure something's gonna give. But a recurring theme in this game is you have one physical scene, and having to fit that into 3 routes with pieces of other scenes taped together, with 5 sets of writing taped here and there depending on which choice was taken + white route. It's not elegant design. The game is great and it's very high effort, but it's extremely inelegant from a pure design perspective. Once it gets long enough it starts to leak because you can't make every route fit into a square peg, which forces you to write hard reset points for the plot like when nat loses her job, almost everything up to that point becomes irrelevant except for 3 things, red green pink.
I figure that it should be another clear route split that decides the rest of the series. Either she becomes a selfish hotwife or a selfless one, or she never went to the party because she went full qos path lmao. Honestly that's a pretty good way to cause a distinct route split, and you can make very different scenes for each one without the stuff coming before mattering all that much. Still think there should be an option for ethan to say fuck no though.
