I still don't see a character flaw in that, sometimes you decide not to pursue somebody anymore, in Jill's case it might have been the fact she tried to do a nice thing and it didn't work out.... So end of story for her, it's her right to decide to pursue anyone or not... The MC can make his choices too.... Stop the train of thought Jill has to follow a protocol to be available at all time... It's the players that say Jill blames us for taking care of Sage, that stupid rich girl has to wait till i decide...
Even if you did everything right, Jill will tell the MC she was always thinking of him but she still doesn't know if that's the same for him.... And be fair.... MC has probably been fooling around with all LI's and perhaps even basicly half the female population of the campus....
She most likely had a very good reason to drop the idea of getting together with MC...
And yet in the end it doesn't matter who the MC is sticking his dick in, Jill can evidently roll with his promiscuity. But if a straight CHICK MC who has had eyes only for Jill feels he must prioritize helping Sage ahead of getting into Jill's pants, that one "mistake" ends all of Jill's feelings for him, period (at least through Season 2). This doesn't strike you as concerning?
You say it's only the players who feel Jill blames us for taking care of Sage, but I feel that's precisely what the game shows us. Consider a hypothetical situation in which the MC had been in class when Jill came calling for the picnic and so she was never even able to ask him. Do you really think she would neither have shown nor reciprocated interest in him again?
I don't. I think she would have considered that one more obstacle that her storybook romance was destined to overcome. She'd have kept trying asking him over and over again... right up to the point that the MC himself said no. When that happens - when he doesn't synch up with her fantasy view of courtship - that's when Jill would start looking for any and every excuse to call the whole thing off.
I've never felt that Jill needs to conform to our whims. If she'd rejected the MC for sleeping around, or for doing drugs, or even for something like fighting Caleb, I probably wouldn't object. I'm even willing to go along with her rejecting DIKs, despite the Affinity system being a hot mess. But when she chooses to make a scarlet letter out of tending to Sage? Well, it's her prerogative, but I'm certainly going to judge her priorities accordingly.
Or, as I said, ignore this sequence and hope it never comes up again because I much prefer an interpretation of Jill that isn't hopelessly naive.
No idea if this helps you are not, but think of it as DPC having finite time to put ressources into the game. So when he writes it and determines wether there is a choice or not, it may simply be for reasons that the time allocated for a certain episode just doesnt allow for it. We also have to consider that we are halfway into the story, maybe the Quinn vs MC confrontation is a big part in a future season and it just didnt fit earlier.
Season 1 & 2 if you just look at the bare bones of it is the MC getting popular with all the girls, now imagine a huge conflict between the MC and Quinn right of the bat. Sarah, Melanie, Rio, Camila scenes would disappear because he wouldnt be the chill, easy to talk too MC anymore, he would threaten their buisness. Then their is Sage and the other HOTs, with the MC beeing new and all, I have no idea how they would react.
In the end DPC drives the bus and we're all in the backseats, we can bitch and moan and point out flaws and discuss cool or in our opinion better options, but certain things are harder to understand when you only have 50% of the story. So my advise would be to enjoy the parts you like and discuss improvements you would like to see here with us, but in a somewhat respectfull manner. I failed at that too sometimes, especially after the interlude and that speechbubble disaster, but in the end there is a reason why we're on page 9252, because wether one likes it or not, the game makes us engage as a community of fans.
I think that explanation works fine for Season 1, but it falls apart pretty hard in Season 2 when Sage is praising the MC up and down for his support and honesty.
By Episode 8 the MC knows more than enough to realize that a) Quinn's antics are at least as dangerous to the HOTs as the jock feud is to the DIKs, and b) Sage almost certainly doesn't know what Quinn is getting up to. There's really no excuse for him to keep that information a secret unless he himself has used the restaurant.
I do my best to turn a blind eye to the problem since it would obviously derail the story DPC is trying to tell. And as you said, we should strive to keep our criticism respectful. To that end, I feel that DPC should have been more careful about what an MC who isn't using the restaurant knows. That, or he should have made Quinn a sufficiently skilled manipulator that she could plausibly cover up her vice racket even if the MC narks on her.
