Ya, I know some will probably think I'm being mean, but when it comes to Maya...she's just...dumb. And I actually like Maya platonically - in my playthrough my character is legit friends with her - enjoy studying with her and hanging out with her and she's obviously MC's best buddy's sis and I am appreciative toward her character for letting MC stay with her, that's a key reason I try to maintain the friendship with her and just be all-around nice to her - she's not a bad person, she's just desperate and dumb, and that leads to really bad decisions - part of this is the people around her should have helped her more - Josy should have done more digging and told her this is bullshit, they're not going to give you free tuition and talked her out of it.
The whole issue with Quinn and the HOTs...even though I do hold Quinn responsible for certain things, of all the exchanges regarding the "free tuition", even the way Quinn delivered her sides of those exchanges, the vast majority of folks with common sense would get the feeling that there was a catch or something fishy going on with it (I mean...no shit, right? Who just gives anybody $50-100k just for being in a sorority? I mean grants and scholarships are the only thing that comes to mind for me and those wouldn't be down-low under the table rumors that are whispered about, they would be very public.)
Don't mean offense to any Maya fans here, but I just have a hard time having much sympathy for Maya in this situation - she walked into oncoming traffic in broad daylight and is playing the victim when she got hit by a car. In my playthrough I'll continue being nice to her and trying to be supportive emotionally to her and I legitimately hope things work out in a positive way in the end for her character, but I won't be going out of my way to give her $ or anything like that.
Believe it or not I'm sympathetic to charges that Maya was foolish and naive. Granted, this is a fictional universe with some strange norms (looking at you, cosigning loans!), but enough characters have underscored how expensive tuition is that Maya (and the MC/Josy, for that matter) really should have been more curious about the details.
I suspect this mostly comes down to plot mandates: if Maya had gone back to Sage when Quinn wasn't around, or thought to ask Mona about the tuition before joining the plot would have come off the rails. So ultimately I think this is a case of either poor writing or willful suspension of disbelief (if you feel the Rule of Funny is justified in a zany comedy). Still, the events happened and I don't blame anyone who gauges a character on what actually happens.
So is there a valid in game explanation for why Maya (and the others) were so gullible? Probably not.
Maya at least has the excuse that she was apparently forced to live a very sheltered life. Her father forbid her from working, after all, so it's possible she just doesn't have a good grasp of economics. Then again, she found a way to inform herself on feminism, so I think this speaks more to her priorities than it does the restrictions. Now it is fair to say that Maya was desperate for the money, and desperate people are often disinclined to look gift horses in the mouth. But while that might make her foolishness more understandable, in the end she was still behaving foolishly.
For the MC, it's even worse. Yes, he grew up poor, but that usually gives one plenty of appreciation for the value of money. This is particularly funny because Sage gave the MC a big speech about how sororities are supposed to be financed by their members. He took that speech to heart enough to rebuild the DIKs, but apparently never thought to ask how it squares with the HOTs paying tuition. Far from making it look like the MC is enabling Maya , it actually makes the MC look disinterested in Maya's plight: he assumes she has everything in hand and he can get back to banging every woman in the prep house.
For Josy, I don't see any excuse at all. She's generally a very level-headed girl who's clearly spent plenty of time in the real world and is quite capable of looking after herself. She's even an economics buff, so there's no way she should have bought the free tuition rumor based on real world standards.
So either we accept that this is a quirk of the BaDIK universe or we just chalk it up to the characters being stupid. I'll go with the former. YMMV.
Maya believing the rumor or not believing the rumor is irrelevant. The issue is Maya's habit of using other people to get what she wants, and she uses the HOT's. The Hot's aren't looking for a dependent, they're looking for a Sister. Maya's just looking for a free ride
Look, I'm never going to tell you that you need to like or respect Maya. I'm just trying to point out that you're using circular reasoning.
You dislike Maya intensely because of how she routinely asks people for help. You assume that any character in the story should dislike her just as intensely if they knew she was just looking for their help. If such a character winds up helping Maya (or even liking her) you therefore assume they must not realize how much Maya wants to take advantage of them. You then leap to the assumption that this ignorance must be the result of Maya deliberately concealing her exploitative nature - which just proves that Maya is even more exploitative than previously thought! Rinse and repeat.
That is indeed a
possible chain of events, but there are a lot of other possible explanations for the way people interact with Maya that you dismiss out of hand. You need to consider those possibilities as well before you hammer down on Maya for something that has never been shown on screen.
All I'm saying in this case is that it is entirely possible that the first thing Maya asked when she went to see the HOTs was if they really give free tuition. We know Quinn was aware that Maya had heard the rumors during the pool scene, and we know that Quinn had told Maya she might have "an offer" for her but refused to give details. I don't think we should dismiss that idea out of hand.
Now we know that Maya cannot have discussed the tuition with most of the other HOTs (unless we're very wrong about how Quinn has been operating). But we also know Quinn was her main point of contact with the HOTs, and we know that Quinn was actively trying to scam Maya. So if Maya DID ask Quinn, Quinn would absolutely have encouraged Maya to see the HOTs as nothing more than a source of free money: it simultaneously maximized the chance Maya would play along and minimized the chance she would ask other HOTs bad questions.
So I think there are valid reasons to withhold judgement on just how much Maya was using the HOTs until we learn just what she was told
by them. And I don't think it's 'enabling' Maya to make that distinction.
EDIT:
Sheesh, you spend forever writing your wall of text and finally finish only to find the great war had ended and everyone is dancing to the jazz. Grumble grumble.
tl;dr I think it's unconscionable that the Riona special render has no tattoos on her robotic arm! Anyone with me?
