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After reading some complaints about the school blackmailing event and this opening storyline, I thought about it a lot in the last few days, and now I want to take a stand on it in point 1), then describing an alternative way in point 2) and talking about my thoughts about the future of the game in point 3)
1) After hearing how “unrealistic” and “badly written” this blackmailing storyline is, I need to tell you (patrons and non-patrons) a few things about it and its background!
First of all, I’m studying myself to become a teacher for older classes in Germany, what has been also the reason of writing a story about a teacher. So, believe me I know a little bit about that stuff and about bullying, because it’s recently a very important topic in college! I read a lot about it and heard about it in courses. I also talked with parents and other people about it and also talked with education authorities. So, I didn’t just write anything down quickly without any knowledge plus everyone told me that such a case is quite possible, especially in the U.S.! I thought about the most realistic school blackmailing event (which is as desperate as possible for the MC) for over a year and played with a lot of ideas, but also had to adopt everything to Sophia’s character and background! What I can say is that bullying is a very, very, very difficult issue in schools, which is expanding like a virus all over the world, and teachers and parents are frequently just helpless. Police doesn’t give a damn about school bullying, never mind if it’s just some baiting or beating! That’s the problem of the schools for them! They got bigger problems to take care of and I know that from experience!!! That doesn’t mean they will just send you home. No, they will offer help, sure, but their help is for shit!!!
Of course blackmailing stories in the office are much easier to write. It’s just “do this or you won’t get a promotion etc.”, that’s it. Also blackmailing from the teacher's view is much easier "do this or you will fail the course!". And also 99% of the blackmailing stories are all the same pattern “some creep takes a cheating picture of some hot chick and blackmails her with that.” So, I wanted to try something different under a different aspect. Especially create the initially most desperate situation for the MC, and with success and it is everything but unrealistic. I think many people are confusing unrealistic with less likely! Of course, the case that a bully has not only a great lawyer (with good contacts to many judges) as uncle but also contacts to gangs is a circumstance which isn’t ordinary! But is it unrealistic in a story which takes place in the U.S. where practically everything is possible and where highly likely every third kid in big town high schools (in particular areas) has some things going on with gangs! This isn’t really something extraordinary there! And the school where Sophia’s teaching is right next to downtown, as you know, and isn’t some trendy high-class school!
So, the pedagogical measures for dealing with bullying in schools are exactly like I’m describing in my story! You need to talk with the students and with their parents by trying to find a solution and convince the bullying kids to rethink their attitude. The principal could suspend the bully from school what is actually the most the school can do. And now let’s look at the case in my story. How exactly would it help to suspend Aiden from school? Would it keep him from bullying Dylan and other students? No. Plus there’s a risk that Aiden’s uncle will sue the school and with his connections this will be not even a big problem for him! And principal Johnson also said, that he’ll try to talk with Aiden’s uncle, if he can reach him at all, but a mother already did it before and it didn’t help much. Also the police promised Sophia to help and even gave her a hint with the voice recording as a proof, but Aiden seen through it because like you learned at the police station, this wasn’t the first time the cops were investigating his case. And what exactly should the police do? Starting a large-scale operation with helicopters and armored vehicles to arrest a high school teen? And for what? For bullying? For some ordinary school fights in their eyes? And then? Locking him up in jail without any trial??? The hell they will and can! Even if they’d arrest him, Aiden doesn’t need to talk a word with them, without a lawyer! And a lawyer who already saved murders from prison can’t get an ordinary school bully out of that situation? The police officer just told Sophia the truth about her chances of an arrest and a lawsuit against such a lawyer! He didn’t forbid her to sue him but he just told her her real chances and that she will lose a lot of money with highly likely less success at the end! He offered her other ways. And that Aiden has contacts to gangs you need to prove firstly and they definitely don’t have any gang membership cards and also no facebook community!!! That’s far away from unrealistic and it’s exactly how it would be in such a case with such a bully! And you learned from the principal that Aiden’s uncle promised his sister (Aiden’s mom) before she died to take care of her son, no matter what! And this is what he’s doing! What you also learned is that Aiden isn’t an idiot and tries to keep his delicts in a “moderate range”. Nowhere is written that he’s just beating up every student criss-cross. This is what Sophia says because of Dylan and Zac. Even the principal says, that they have sometimes quiet of him for some time! Actually, Aiden mostly just mocking “nerds” and blackmails them for money. And he doesn’t beat anyone up that those loses an eye or some limbs! Here you can’t do legally much against him than that what Sophia tried! She also tried to threaten him with letting him fail through all her courses. But she’ll need to prove why and go to court against a lawyer with the best connections, who never lost a case! Have fun!
So the only chance would be here to fight fire with fire! Sophia also thought that her first task wasn’t really a big deal and she just play along until she’ll find another solution. So there will be opportunities to get rid of Aiden. But Sophia can also solve it herself the immoral way by doing what Aiden demands her of and looks where it leads her. And Aiden has a girlfriend, Jennifer, who’s also in the class. Just think of that before you assume the tasks to be what they can’t be of that fact! Aiden actually just wants to see how far Sophia would go for her son. Just for fun.
But maybe you have better ideas how this school blackmailing would be more “realistic”! I'm open to suggestions.
2) An alternative school blackmailing could look like this: Aiden doesn’t have a great lawyer uncle but has still connections to gangs plus knows some hackers who found for him in the deep web some pics and a video of Sophia’s bachelorette party 20 years ago, where she had wild drunken sex with other men only a few days before her wedding with Liam, of which Sophia hardly can remember. Aiden threatens her to publish this material if Sophia tries to go to the police and sue him. He shows her some screenshots from the video as a proof. This material of course could destroy Sophia’s marriage plus her perfect reputation as a teacher, if it goes viral on the web! He offers her a deal of the same 12 tasks and if she fulfills them all, he’ll destroy the video and all proofs. Sophia says OK at first but only if he doesn’t harass Dylan and Zac anymore as well. But of course she’ll think about other ways how to get those videos and pics and destroying them because she actually can't trust Aiden. Dylan is actually fit on the web and maybe could help her. But how can she show him those videos. Or can she? Etc.
That was just a rough example and I will start two polls very soon where you can vote for either keeping the blackmailing story as it is or changing it to something similar like I described above!
3) After noticing and observing how the interest for my project is stagnating the last months and even decreases now, I'm thinking seriously of dropping the project and either start something different (with a quicker build-up and less storylines) or dividing the entire game into episodes like “AWAW – Dylan’s story”, “AWAM-Ellie’s story”, “AWAM – Sam’s story” and so on. But there would be many issues with such kind of sudden method because most storylines are connected with each other and everything is build-up in a common world. Not to speak of how many hundreds and thousands of hours of work would be for shit!
But I don’t know how much sense it’ll make to keep creating it like this if people are losing interest never mind of what happens in the game, as long as it’s not cheap sex. Most people/supporters/fans in this branch are only interested in seeing nudity and cheap sex scenes, never mind how realistic and logical they are or how realistic they look. Never mind how elaborate and detailed the scenes in the game are, how natural the expressions, poses and everything else is. This also will never change! Although they can find nudity and sex in a billion porn videos on the internet right away! People who are supporting erotic or cheap porn devs are expecting that they get porn episode updates only, otherwise it’s a bad update (without content). That’s their entire rationale and mindset!
Anyway, I wanted to decide about the future of the game on Feb 2019 and I said back then that for focusing myself completely on the game, I’ll need to at least come anywhere near of my third goal! Working faster is also my wish but especially with a low motivation not feasible. And I also thought about getting help but I’m sure to 99,9% that in the case of my huge project with its detail level it won’t help anything but rather slow down the development even more! My project folder has a size of around 600 GB plus around 1 TB of additional files!!! Plus I know where all the files are and I understand the regime of them. And it's more than confusing for someone not involved! I’d need half a year to teach them where things are and how to work with them like I do! So maybe I’m in a trap if people aren’t patient enough for such a slow corruption story! They prefer 5 cheap, quick, undetailed and less complex porn games in 5 years than 1 elaborate, detailed, slow-corruption erotic VN with a much greater reward at the end!
That’s why the next poll will be either to continue the game as ambitious as it is or drop it and divide everything into “episodes” to speed up the different storylines to their end (which will be different because they are not connected to other storylines then). But I think I’d need to create other storylines like the side jobs with a different MC with another family, otherwise it’ll become boring.
