Fairly argued points even if I disagree, or perhaps more accurately think that certain aspects of my argument were misunderstood.
As for this, a couple of responses. First, on the comparison of the Quinn/lack of M&J scenes, the problem there is that the game made the latter a central storyline. I can't repeat this enough, but if the cliffhanger wasn't about Maya's homophobic father. Because of that decision, their storyline is just a part of the larger storyline than the Quinn stuff. It is what drives Maya's need to secure her tuition costs is because of her father's threat because of her sexuality. Maya's whole character arc, stakes and all that are tied to her being gay, at which point it does become a glaring omission in the game that she never shows absolutely no interest in women and only expresses desire to have sex with a guy. That is what created the narrative dissonance and it why I'm baffled that there is litereally no attempt to address that with the progression of the game. If the story was just about how Maya was broke and needed money, I don't personally think that there would be that much room for criticism, even if it was still about turning the lesbian, as it wouldn't so inherently with the foundational struggle. Similarly if that cliffhanger only happened if the MC was in that relationship, then again I don't there's as much as criticism as at least had the bare effort with that one scene.
This kind of connects to the wish fulfillment thing, as I do agree that is what these games are. I'm not expecting real life. Rather my criticism is that within the story the game chooses to tell, it is doing a really bad foundational work with it. It is actually kind of odd, and I haven't been able to figure it out, but there was no other LI the game forced on the player like it did with M&J, yet it is the most lazy with their storyline that it also made a central storyline that you can't avoid. Just utterly baffling.
This isn't by the way the only narrative misstep as I do think in Episode 6 things are really spinning out of control. For example having the cliffhanger be about Mona losing her grant was so random that I just started laughing there. Again for similar reasons as my complaint about M&J as it was this grand moment where the game really hadn't done the work to justify it.
