If Interlude required, I wish it could have been about Lana and her downfall instead of surfing mini games and Zoey sucking d on the beach for tattoo and burrito money. Or as a compromise, make the Interlude about the back stories of several different characters, not just Zoey. Show a little bit of Lana, flash over to Bella or perhaps Jade/Cathy B&R origins, or whomever, etc. Give us a few backstories and clear up some mysteries that have been longstanding. That I would be quite interested in seeing even if it were mostly lewd free. Interlude is the perfect time to turn back the hands of time and get a better understanding of the ladies who have been so secretive about their pasts.
Hmmm. I could get behind that. It would certainly mitigate the problem of crashing the story to a complete halt to introduce a character I don't care about. It would be a much smoother way to integrate Zoey into the existing cast and would make me less nervous about what her role in Season 3 will be.
She comes with a birthday surprise, not some major request. And she doesn't take it as a personal affront. She's a bit disappointed. It's just that without that special moment together they would have at that picnic the spark isn't lit for her. So when he tries to have sex with her, she feels like they aren't as close as she wishes they were because they never had that special moment together that made her feel like it was right, the moment he convinced her to give him a chance. Without that key moment she kept feeling insecure about the whole thing.
Should she ignore her own feelings and just go with it so not to hurt MC's feelings, because that's basically what you're saying. That she was out of line to feel the way she did and to tell him how she felt. So, she should have just pretended everything was OK and ignored her gut feeling and not been honest with him?
Also, she doesn't know he was with a sick friend (and you make it sound like Sage was terminally ill or something, she had a cold). She's not upset about him helping a friend who got a cold, she just feels like they aren't connecting the way she expected them to because they never had that key moment together.
I'm sorry, but I can't agree. Jill was borderline obsessed with the MC if he kissed her during their date, to the point she briefly considered going farther with him at Bella's house in Episode 5. But then in Episode 6 she completely cuts off contact with him because she wants to protect him from Tybalt. She changes her mind again when she learns it's his birthday. But she expects him to be up for a surprise party at the drop of a hat: bear in mind she didn't even know he had no classes that day!
If the MC complies, Jill explains the Tybalt situation and is right back to obsessing over the MC. But if the MC isn't free, there's no discussion of rescheduling; Jill simply writes the guy off
forever. During their Episode 7 conversation on Monday (3 days later), she'll still explain the Tybalt situation but stonewalls the MC when he attempts to pick up where they left off.
Again, the reason the MC hasn't seen her much is that she's been avoiding him! When he goes on to climb the balcony to see her after tennis, she can't accept it because "something about this feels off." When he reveals he's been practicing her song for weeks and helps her at the concert, then runs across the city to get her out of the mess she put herself in, she just shoots him down.
Clearly, she does take the rejection personally. Yes, she will blame destiny, but I don't see how that makes it any better. As others mentioned, she balls her eyes out if the MC photobombs Tybalt's presentation, but it's all water under the bridge (even if he was boning Sage!)... as long as he did whatever she wants whenever she wanted to. It's a really, really bad look for Jill. And it could easily have been avoided if DPC didn't get lazy and inflate the importance of that one choice beyond any reasonable sense of proportion.
I can't take Jill seriously as a LI if I accept that scene as presented. So I prefer to chalk it up to a bout of bad writing and ignore the larger implications. But if I have to parse my way though, it just can't work. I don't care how romantic the picnic was, if Jill's that spooked by the MC inadvertently failing to live up to her unspoken expectations, then their relationship is a disaster waiting to happen.
People who have argued that caring for Sage is a "Chick" thing to do, and therefore Jill should reward you for such a thing rather than it be the catalyst for the end of the relationship, are taking the Chick/DIK concept too far.
While this is indeed a computer program, if done right, it shouldn't feel like a computer program. There shouldn't be a formula to follow that is always right, because life isn't like that, and the game endeavours to emulate life (to an entertaining degree, we don't actually need to see every time the mc needs to take a dump).
So even though we know that Jill goes for "Chick" guys, that doesn't mean all "Chick" actions will get her juices flowing.
So when a potential girlfriend wants to go out and you've made plans with a different girl, don't say, "Sorry, I'm actually off to see another girl, she's sick and needs me to massage her tits". My advice, tell her you need to help your father deal with the bittersweet emotions of it being your birthday but your mom died giving you birth. That shit is gold.
Yes, people overstate the importance of the DIK/CHICK system. Jill is within her rights to take umbrage at the MC giving chest massages to his sick, busty friend. Then again, I'm also within my rights to stop being friends with a woman so emotionally insecure that she relies on her own horoscope to judge my worth. If DPC is going to deny me the latter, Jill gets no pass on the former.
Mind you, I'm not trying to tear the game apart. Like you, I enjoy the characters and appreciate that there's a lot of excellent material here. But there are a few problems that really annoy me, and Jill's arc has a couple of them.
