___________________________________________________________________________________________________
It's hard to have a compelling blackmail route. In any type of game. I haven't seen a realistic one. Most of the ones in porn movies are also unrealistic. You have to have some sort of suspension of disbelief to make it work. With that in mind, I would say that Aiden's path is on the better side of blackmail stuff.
It is clear that his end game is fucking Sofia, maybe even sharing her with his gang, like he did with Jennifer and Andre. But jumping straight to that kind of request would easily be denied. True...can't argue that. Sophia would turn him down. However, this is Sophia. Her character wasn't as well developed in the beginning. Had she been more interested in getting attention, liking the praise of others, and generally more interested in sex, like looking at other men and finding them attractive but not willing to act on the attraction to build up her character profile it would be easier for half the things she finds herself in. Sophia to be able to cross that line with Dylan, he is going to have to see him more of a male then her son. The attention she gets from the other "boys," like Sam is plausible by itself.
With Aiden, it would be a slow burn, like with everything else in the story. Sophia would have to be built up to eventually give herself to Aiden. But the tasks she has to do isn't going to work.
This is why I find the Bennet route the weakest. His blackmail is so thin, there's no way Sofia would fuck him.
Agreed with Bennet, though he does have his use. Dylann could see Bennet hitting on his mother and flip a Cheeto and curb stomp him. Win more points with Sophia, see Dylann more a man than her son, and give us the players a nice scene.
Coming back to Aiden's route. Even his 4th tasks would have been refused by Sofia if it was his first request. And things are escalating. This would be similar in mentality with the sunken cost fallacy. The more you invest in something, the less you are likely to give it up. What you invest can be anything, time, money, whatever, the psychology behind it is the same.
I mean if she had the options, fuck Aiden or send Dylan to school, she would definitely not have chosen the first one. But dress sexier doesn't sound like that much. And the "cost" of keeping Dylan safe is increasing bit by bit. That's why he keeps giving her his tasks as late as possible. First part of the task, second part. To be just one more small step to complete it. The more she invests in this route, to keep Dylan safe, the harder it is to say no to the next small step.
Now I don't know if L&P thought of all that when he implemented it into the game, it is also kind of unrealistic for a kid like Aiden to be able to think of this strategy on his own and on the fly. But if you can get over that part, I think his path is not so crazy compared to the most of other ones (like Ellie, Dylan, Sam, teaching sex ed to the kids..., Bennet). Actually at that age I was a clever kid. Aiden is the leader of a gang. So he has to have a higher IQ to manipulate his underlings. But the tasks themselves are rather unsatisfying. A huge win for Aiden would be to have slow but building corruption of Sophia. Sociopaths though lacking moral control over themselves usually have an inner sense of to manipulate others. From the lesser tasks, it would easily appear the affect they are having on Sophia and exploit it more and more. All the while Sophia would slowly become more and more turned on.
The way Sam, or Dylann are likely going to get Sophia is when they dominate her in a way that turns her on. Dominate is a bit too strong a word, but more like take charge.
What do you think?