I also haven't said anything about M&J being the main relationship. When I talked about DPC possibly "not allowing for there to be an endgame relationship for the main pursuable love/romantic interests", I meant that in a broad term encompassing all main LIs (Maya, Josy, Jill, Sage, Bella) and that if there were no way to end up with any of these characters, I would view that as a failure of game design because a major aspect, if not
the major aspect, is for there to be achievable paths for all main LIs.
This is where I feel the issue with AL lies. It subverted this unwritten rule and is perhaps the primary reason why that game is so controversial. DPC, it would seem, wanted this subversion and it certainly got them noticed as a result and gave them a lot of notoriety, but now that they've done that and have all this support, there's no reason to do it again. There's also a big difference here between M&J and M&M which is that, with M&M, that relationship with both of them was just about to start, whereas with M&J, the expectation would be that it will go quite far with both of them together, so you'd be much deeper in to that relationship if the rug were pulled out from under you, and that's much worse.
But even if it's not them, what about Bella? Some people would argue, and have often said, that that relationship could be doomed to fail depending on what exactly is going on with her and James and if he were to re-enter the picture at some point. If that were to happen with Bella, or indeed with anyone else (Sage or Jill), where you invest so much time in the relationship and want to end with them but you can't, people would understandably rage at that, and it's no different for fans of the M&J relationship if that didn't work out no matter what.
Well, I don't reply to everything, if I did I really would be on here all day.
But with lockdowns, working from home (although not much work at the moment), and there being nowhere to go, it is how I spend some of my time.
Being DIK or CHICK doesn't change the core of the MC, it just makes one side more inclined to be more of a "bro" than the other, but the MC's selflessness remains. Whatever side you're on, he's still the same guy who would want to help his Dad, who doesn't put much stock in being wealthy, and who helps out his friends wherever possible. The different affinities simply lock you in to what lewd scenes you'll get, but if a DIK or CHICK MC were to face a choice of giving their inheritance money to Maya or Quinn, that would be a choice that befits the nature of the MC's selflessness and isn't necessarily going to "the opposite side" as it's a universal moral quandry for them as to who deserves it more.