I grabbed the text for some evaluation.
Bit of a deep dive ..
Edward "Why didn't you call your boyfriend?"
Elsa "He's out of the country."
To be sure, I suspect there isn't actually a boyfriend. I think that's something she says as a layer of defense against guys trying to fuck her. I don't recall ever seeing any actual evidence other than her statements.
Edward "Oh, okay. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to help you and all that."
Edward "But why did you call me? I doubt that I’m the only guy in your phone besides your boyfriend."
Elsa "I...You're right. But those other guys... they might have asked for something in return."
Edward "What do you mean?"
Elsa "They would have thought that I might want… a closer relationship with them because when I needed help, I called them and not someone else."
Elsa isn't suggesting that she normally exchanges blowjobs for favors, she's saying she anticipates it, and is explicitly trying to avoid it. That is likely because her life involves many dudes constantly looking for any given opportunity to fuck her, as it does for many women.
Elsa "And then they would have asked me to go with them somewhere, and it would've been hard to refuse because they helped me. I don't need this."
Edward "And I am an asexual blob to you, so you thought it'd be safe to call me."
And Edward's immediate reaction, because of his own anxieties, is to reflexively nurse his own anxiety of sexual nonviability. He might have taken away the evidence that Elsa trusts him, that she has confidence in him -- but he is preoccupied with his personal demons.
Elsa "Ughhh no, it's not like that..."
Edward makes a relatively small choice here whether to continue nursing that grievance, or to put it aside for a moment and hear what she is actually saying.
[...]
Elsa "You... I... Remember those old fairy tales about princesses in lonely towers and knights in shining armour who try to save them?"
Edward "Sure. So I'm your knight in shining armour?"
Elsa "No, you're a princess. Sweet, naive and innocent. Sitting in a lonely tower and thinking that someday someone will come and save you from your misery."
Edward "I'm no..."
This could be the essential thesis of the whole story, right here in a couple of statements.
Elsa brings up the classic trope and Edward immediately demonstrates the influence of this trope on him, and how it clouds his perception of even his own circumstances. As many of us have, he internalized the trope, and imagines he must be the knight, and that his route to romantic fulfilment is through valorous deeds.
The deeds get you the princess, and the princess gives you the sex. That's the trope.
But as Elsa initially identifies, it is a fairy tail. It's not real. And anticipating sex in exchange for valorous deeds isn't actually valorous. Not dissimilarly to how expecting sex for friendship isn't actually friendship.
Elsa "That day when you called me in the middle of the night. If it had been anyone else from work, I would just have blocked them."
A reminder that Elsa has gone out of her way for him in turn. His favors to her are tallied on the Sexual Exchange Ledger, but hers in kind do not seem to possess as much value. Similarly, Elsa's ostensible 'use' of Edward draws a bunch of derision against her, but Edward's own 'using' seems to be ignored at best, celebrated at worst.
Elsa "But It's hard for me to be mean or use someone like you. I can't-. You're so naive and innocuous. It's...It's like hurting a child."
Edward "First I'm not a princess. And second, aren't you using me right now?"
Edward is offended by the identification of a princess, even as he had readily applied it to another person. Why should anyone have to be the princess?
Elsa "No, if I wanted to use you, I wouldn't be saying all of this, and I wouldn't help you with your project - it's irrelevant for me."
Elsa "I prefer to think of this as some kind of symbiosis..."
This is it. That's the key. Edward's preoccupation with the sexual element obfuscates his perception of their relationship outside of that particular transaction.
But she is direct and honest with him, in a way that someone trying to extort for favors, sexual or otherwise, generally would not be.
Edward "Don't you think that it's a little bit too harsh? I mean, calling me a princess."
He wants women to be his princesses, yet finds the notion that he might be one to be harsh. This demonstrates his an imbalanced value dynamic of women not as protagonists of their own stories, with their own motivations, wants, desires, but as props for his own self-fulfillment.
But in truth, he has only been waiting for his fairy tale to play out on his behalf, instead of attaining things that are well within his grasp.
Elsa "Maybe, but I'm trying to help you, not to please you."
Hoooooo, boy -- is that a line.
Edward's great problem is not that he's a simp, a sucker, a cuck. He doesn't need to become alpha, to develop a Durdenic mental disorder. Edward's struggle is that he's become so wounded by personal trauma and disillusionment, in large part because of the amount of emotion he's invested regarding his anxieties with women and the personal value he derives out of them, that he is incapable of accurately perceiving his own reality, and avoidant of the challenges which might bear some risk to his already wounded pride.
It's difficult to imagine anyone other than an Elsa could break him out of it.
It's a sharp disassembly of the Nice Guy Syndrome, and its inherent flaws -- mistaking ineffectuality with niceness, timidity with respect, self-gratifying preoccupation with genuine love ..
There are so many dropped hints that will be skipped over by Edward's distorted perception, but which the player can witness if they have the inclination.
For instance, if you're frustrated about him ignoring Zoe, think of how Zoe feels, while he mutters about how he is invisible to women.
It's actually a very finely, thoughtfully crafted story. It's not a fuckfest. It's an earnest introspection of genuinely mature themes.
