If there had to be suicide, it probably should have been linked to gender though, or the transgender experience a bit more. A very crude analogy is if you're friends with someone with cancer. You know they may not make it. You're doing everything you can to help them. Then you're late to pick them up from chemo one day through no fault of your own, so they start walking and get hit by a bus.
It's out of nowhere. Yes, you were prepared for them maybe dying, but they had been making progress, and this was only loosely related to the cancer. If done right, it can just be a statement that the world is a brutal place, or an attempt at irony. But I don't think that applies to this game. It's just that this is a way of describing the feeling the Nea's death gives me. It's not related to their entire backstory in a 100% direct manner. They end up dying because of something happening outside the player's control. It doesn't make sense not just if looked at within the game world, but also when looking outside from our perspective.
And I'll go back again to the idea that I don't think Nea would react well to the MC having other love interests. I hope to God we don't get a "I'm okay with sharing" scene with her. That's okay for some games, but not this one, at least for Nea. Nea's path has a different vibe than a harem game. She wants love, and not some submissive cult-like "we all submit to your cock" thing. Which is great fun in some other games. I can see it for the other love interests in this game. I just can't reconcile it with Nea. So when it does come up that the MC has other love interests, I see that being an even bigger issue than the scene in question here.
I think a few tweaks could make a world of difference. Add in a few more choices or just reword stuff. There's so many ways to do it where Nea doesn't have to die unless the player chooses an actual bad option. I don't think too many people would be upset, even Luxee unless Nea's suicide like that was his unshakable vision for the friendship path. But if players like me got their friendship path, or at least Nea exiting it in a less tragic way, there's be an awful lot of happy people.
Honestly, if the friendship path was about Nea getting out of her house, and maybe getting some therapy, as I mentioned long ago it would be interesting to introduce a romance path further down the line there. The more I get to know Nea, the more I may see beyond the body and to the girl inside. Maybe despite my aversion to penises that are not my own, my love at Nea at that time would make that seem silly. That was maybe Luxee's intention, but if so he's been trying to force it. Plus later in the game after she'd gotten some help I wouldn't feel like "I'm taking advantage of this girl desperate for love and acceptance and basically in a very fragile place right now."
As always, a good debate. I'm getting better at seeing your viewpoint, but there's also obviously some of the same going on for you. Maybe if we can continue to find common ground we can 1) help end the ongoing debates and 2) show Luxee that there is support for changing things, even if we realize that ultimately it's his call.
Indeed, it should have been linked more toward the other factors, this would not have necessarily prevented the backlash, but it would likely have put the reaction more on the game and less on Luxee himself. You're right, Nea does give the 'he's all mine, I won't accept other girls' vibe and that puts Nea in a VERY dangerous position of potentially committing suicide regardless of being on the romance path, you would literally have to be on a Nea and ONLY Nea run to get Nea to the end of the game alive. In a game that was originally portrayed as a harem game, that is not a good thing, it is literally punishing the player for playing the game for what it is.
There are, like the aforementioned friendship route, where all Luxee would have to do is put a simple block on sex scenes and reword some lines, much easier than a full path usually is and using some of the most basic skills in the Renpy toolbox. Literally the only people I can see getting upset at a route where Nea lives as a friend are the people that WANT Nea dead, the haters who brought this on in the first place, and those people I would think would be ones Luxee would WANT to upset because that means their hate lost.
My counterargument would be that trans people commit suicide due in large part to the bullying and other issues associated with not conforming to how some people want you to be, or perhaps your own body not conforming to who you think you are. The message the game gives is that the bullying is bad, but it's not what's going to drive a trans person to kill themselves, which in a way means it's not so bad. It's things like broken hearts or embarrassment or thinking you screwed up a relationship. So basically the entire teenage experience, and beyond. The transphobes are going to think whatever they want regardless of how the game is handled. I'd say move Nea's suicide to their route, except we've seen that they'd enjoy it.
On the other hand, Luxee could do a lot of good by better representing how suicide is so high among trans people. It's not like being trans is inextricably linked to mental health issues. Or they don't have to be if the trans person has the right support. Those issues arise as they realize they have to find a way to deal with a body that doesn't match them, and with people that resent them for being true to themselves. A cis person facing a similar amount of bullying and for one reason or another having the same level of feeling they're in the wrong body or that something is majorly wrong with it would encounter the same mental health issues.
I still think that if Nea commits suicide, it should be something truer to the trans experience. It should be through the inaction or negative actions of the player, and not just Luxee making the player do stupid stuff or have bad stuff happen to them.
I don't think there will be a Nea only path. I'm not sure if you can turn down some of the sex that's already happened in the game, but I can't remember. I'm kind of afraid to because you don't know if Luxee set that up to be a requirement for another love interest. The game seems to be heading for a harem of sorts, or rather a case where he plays the field for a while before apparently settling down by the time he starts to tell his story to that other person.
I suspect Luxee will go the "I'm okay with you having sex with everyone else. Even the girls who actively bullied me or didn't try to help. We're all best friends now because we love you." I still don't feel that Nea is that kind of character though. and shouldn't be made into it. I suspect she wouldn't react well to polyamory being compared directly to being trans either. I get where you're going with it, but it's hard to draw parallels that really capture the same feeling, as you've seen from my posts. Things like being trans require more delicacy then mere words can sometimes allow us, and most if not all of us here don't have direct experience as a trans person.
Harem endings are somewhat unrealistic male fantasies, which is fine is most cases for those that want it. I'm still not buying it for Nea. Nea seemed at first to be an attempt to accurately portray a trans character and their struggles. If Nea suddenly turns into generic submissive harem girl #3, I don't think that's a good move for Nea's character development or the realism of her story paths. It's another reason why I think Nea would be better suited for having her own game/VN to herself, but there's others as well. She needs the MC she's used to, and not the guy either screwing or seducing every other woman around him which feels like a different character. That's assuming a Nea romance route. Friendship route Nea could be the MC's wing-girl, telling him the way to the heart of every girl he wants and helping him build a harem if that's his thing. Then, maybe at the end of the game, Nea casually asks the MC if he's got room for one more girl in his harem, where it's her saying "I wouldn't mind joining the fun, if you'll have me" versus "I guess I'll choose being just one of your girls rather than be alone again."
That is exactly part of what causes real trans suicides, pressure from more...traditional society to not be themselves, some of which can get violently opposed and some of which refuse outright to accept who they are resulting in a terrible level of mental anguish and strain that eventually would break a person, if not causing them to commit suicide, then causing them to live with that agony and the mental illness that can result from such trauma for the rest of their lives. Also, yes, it CAN result in suicide, but any person regardless of cis or trans would need to be pushed to an extreme amount of anguish for that and I do not get that vibe just yet from Nea, I get the vibe that Nea is suffering, but not enough to go this far this fast.
Nea absolutely shouldn't be made to make up with anyone who took a role in the bullying, that's adding fuel to a raging inferno, that is the absolute worst torture you can put on a victim as tormented as Nea. In fact, that would be the single biggest move the MC could make in the direction of actively pushing Nea to suicide. That is an act of betrayal like no other, like the MC is suddenly revealing he was a hidden aggressor in league with the bullies the whole time. Those people deserve no quarter given. Also, no, polyamory and trans are definitely not comparable.
I agree, as usual, with the separate game thing. Nea is better off as written in a different game where the MC can focus on Nea alone and there is no threat of harem based suicide.
People will be educated regardless, as you said. People have already been educated. I think more people could be educated and in a better way though.
Everyone is so intertwined a harem route seems inevitable. Although out of all of the character Nea makes the most sense as a solo route.
You're probably right. I hated her character for multiple reasons and fast-forwarded most of her stuff. I can't see Nea liking having to share the MC with her though.
PL was all about the multiple paths and full harem or single girls or a few combinations I think. I'm not sure what Luxee has planned here. I think he has plans for the Nea romance route but maybe hasn't thought out other stuff yet.
And I'll fall back on my feeling that this is two games smushed together; a harem/sexfest game and an actual romance with Nea. The Nea story is on a different level storywise, dramatically, thematically, and maturity than the other stuff, and I'm having trouble seeing how the two games will be merged at some point because some elements seem mutually incompatible. Maybe Luxee can make it work, or maybe it ends up with things just kind of unsatisfactorily coming together because they have to. I think Luxee would have preferred a solo Nea game if he thought he could have done it without losing supporters. His followers before he switched to A69 were made up of incest and loli fans mainly, so he needed to have that in his next game, even if his next game was his chance to tell Nea's story. At this point though, he could probably turn A69 into two different games, and just alternate between them like some other devs do. Then each game gets its own forum here, which may help quite a bit. Of course, there's people that won't be happy with that. But I don't see Luxee and possibly a good number of fans being happy with how these two disparate games finally combine because it's likely to be awkward. We'll just have to see though. He made some weird stuff and what seemed like clumsy storytelling ultimately come together in PL, so there's a good chance he'll do the same here.
I can see the dissonance between the two stories for sure, they don't blend well. Nea is unlikely to want to share largely because of the trauma and potentially fearing abandonment should Nea realize the MC won't be exclusive. Meanwhile every other character is willing to share as far as we know. The other characters blend well into the same story together because of that while Nea just feels like an outsider.
Why - yes I do - her surviving/thriving on that route may also be the part of the story with you ending up with her. Also I might say surviving for all I know ... for now.
As for traveling with one girl ... part of the "take it for what it is worth" meant. Anything else unless specifically stated by the dev/team or in the game .. is just conjecture.
Just a note ... here are the current tags: 3DCG, Big Tits, Corruption, Creampie, Groping, Handjob, Incest, Interracial, Loli, Male Protagonist, Masturbation, MILF, Urination, Sandbox, School Setting, Virgin, Trans
Zero mention of Harem or Poly.
There have been signs of setup for harem since day one, they were especially prevalent before Nea took the spotlight. Also, not every thread maker puts every tag in the first post, both active ones and future ones.