VN Ren'Py Eruption Imminent [v0.6.1] [MorriganRae]

[Ciaran8023]

At this point it’s almost impossible to not be Delilah. She’s obsessed with Ashe, she somehow found out and lied that Fiona told her, she was really squirrelly when Ashe saw her on her phone in the park, she freaked out when Fiona told her she couldn’t go to the party when we know the blackmailer has been watching Ashe and that would mean Dellie couldn’t watch Ashe if she wasn’t at the party, and then lied to Kate about being invited to the party by Ashe. Yes Morigan’s writing is very good, but pulling a red herring like this with no evidence to support anyone else being the blackmailer would be terrible writing

Counter-argument, subversion of expectations is one of the most commonly used tropes in storytelling, meaning that while everyone assumes that this is a red herring and is overly obvious, it can still very much be her due to that trope.
Delilah isn't exactly someone who's experienced, nor that intelligent it seems, so it would be entirely plausible that she just fucks up hard when trying to stay incognito as the blackmailer.

 

[BigOne24]

Hot fixes for the Chapter 5/0.5.0 update

Do you mean more scenes?

 

[Buletti]

Counter-argument, subversion of expectations is one of the most commonly used tropes in storytelling, meaning that while everyone assumes that this is a red herring and is overly obvious, it can still very much be her due to that trope.
Delilah isn't exactly someone who's experienced, nor that intelligent it seems, so it would be entirely plausible that she just fucks up hard when trying to stay incognito as the blackmailer.

I honestly don´t think the writer of this VN would be satisfied with that. Everything else, including the dev updates. sounds like a person with experience and a certain finesse in expressing themselves. It is very hard for me to think someone like this would set up the story this simple.

 

[Ciaran8023]

I honestly don´t think the writer of this VN would be satisfied with that. Everything else, including the dev updates. sounds like a person with experience and a certain finesse in expressing themselves. It is very hard for me to think someone like this would set up the story this simple.

It's a bit hard for me to fully say that aswell. The writing is good but there are parts that do feel very shallow at times so it's a bit of a rollercoaster, so I wouldn't put it past them to do something like this.
Mainly because it seems like the dev tends to aim for maximum detrimental impact on Ashe thus far, and what would hurt her more than the one lil' chick that has an 'innocent' crush on her to do something like this? Besides Rachel and Fiona I suppose, but they're both extremely unlikely.

 

[xeivous]

Delilah is the strongest suspect we have with the motive to do so in being a weirdo with issues who is obsessed with Ashe and opportunities to find out. The problem is that she doesn't seem to have the means to actually pull off the whole thing.

 

[BigOne24]

Out of all the characters we know who in your mind would be the most "holy shit!" for being the blackmailer? For me its Rachel.

 

[Ciaran8023]

Out of all the characters we know who in your mind would be the most "holy shit!" for being the blackmailer? For me its Rachel.

That would absolutely be the biggest 'holy shit' moment simply for how brutal that would be and how shitty of a human she'd have to be. Like goddamn, absolute nightmare scenario.

 

[Birdnman993]

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Hey everyone

So... I'm gonna talk a little about my plans for Episode 6 here, and this will touch on some mild Ep. 5 spoilers. If you don't want any of that, leave now!

I'm currently still in the writing phase, and probably will be for a little while longer too. At a guess, I'd say I have around 40% of that part done.

Looking at how much I've written so far and how much is still left to do, I'm already afraid that this episode is gonna be huge as well. I actually had the silly notion that this one could finally be a bit of a smaller one again, but currently it really doesn't look like it .

Episode 6 will be a very special one, for a bunch of reasons. Some of you might've already guessed it: The whole next episode will be taking place during just the one party night. There's a lot of things happening there, and a lot of important characters are visiting, so you can expect a wild night for sure.

So this unique setup for the episode brings some challenges with it. Both in the writing department and the technical side.

On the narrative side, I want to experiment a little as well, since this gives me some good opportunities for it. Mainly I want this episode to be a bit less linear than usual and have a lot of different ways on how this whole thing can play out. Since this is a bit more of an isolated event, there's a lot of room to play around with diverging paths and such, without making my life miserable in the future with too many loose ends . (But of course, there's still a bunch of things that will have consequences later on, so this is definitely not just some fun spin-off episode )

I even played around with the idea to make this episode kind of a sandbox-lite thing in some parts, but ultimately decided against it. The extra headaches with writing in regards to different world states and timelines and all that wasn't worth it in my opinion. At least not in the way I've imagined it. Especially since I can tell you already that this episode will be the most complex one yet with branching and such, even without the sandbox elements.

I'm of course not even halfway done yet, so things might still change if I see it not working out, or if the episode just gets way too big. This is another difficulty I'm facing right now, since usually I can just kind of push certain things back into another episode if it gets too big. But there's no way to do that here, since I'm not gonna spread this party over more than one episode. (I actually had kind of the same issue in the last episode, since I needed to fit all the pre-party stuff in there too)

There will also be some challenges with renders that I'm already aware of. In particular the fact that there's a lot of people attending the party. Big crowds are a tricky thing to do in DAZ, especially when you don't just want blurry shadow people or obvious cardboard cutouts in the background, while still wanting the place to feel lively and packed. I'll need some time to figure out what works best here... I have some ideas, but I just need to find a way to implement that in my workflow without slowing everything down too much. And also... I'll need to create a lot of background characters. Like... a lot .

This time I'll also need to pretty much finish all environments and new characters (or at least a big portion of background characters) before I even start doing renders. So it could take a while until I'll have some previews to show, unfortunately.

Honestly, I like the format as it is, adding a mini-sandbox would be too complicated, unless it doesn't pose a problem for the Dev, it would be better to continue as we are.

The party/club scene in Having a hard time was done pretty well imho. It has a similar big cast as EI. There were a lot of shots that showed the dynamic of a full Dancefloor while you could clearly make out the several known characters and random people.

Would be cool imho if the dev might consider collabs with other DAZ devs and have some of their characters as randoms dancing in the Background.

It would be a great gesture between the two games, but I wonder if it would mean transferring the style of the characters from one game to the other.

As for the party I'm hoping it'll be a crazy one where Ashe can let loose and meet more people, and it looks like there will be more differences between both paths than in the previous chapter, so I'm really excited about it, the sleepover is one of my favorite parts of the game so I can only imagine how great a full-blown party will be.

 

[Jafo]

Honestly, I like the format as it is, adding a mini-sandbox would be too complicated, unless it doesn't pose a problem for the Dev, it would be better to continue as we are.

I know. But think at a song by the Stones. You can't allways get what you want.

 

[HugoLivemoreSA]

That would absolutely be the biggest 'holy shit' moment simply for how brutal that would be and how shitty of a human she'd have to be. Like goddamn, absolute nightmare scenario.

oh hell nah she is too pure and good to do some horrible things

 

[Nemesis.]

oh hell nah she is too pure and good to do some horrible things

Pure? I don't know about that, man.

 

[Commander Booty]

Delilah is the strongest suspect we have with the motive to do so in being a weirdo with issues who is obsessed with Ashe and opportunities to find out. The problem is that she doesn't seem to have the means to actually pull off the whole thing.

I agree that Delilah is the most likely culprit at the moment but I also agree that she seems unlikely to be able to pull this off. It really feels like she - along with the wannabe influencer - are meant to distract us from knowing who the real blackmailer is.

Out of all the characters we know who in your mind would be the most "holy shit!" for being the blackmailer? For me its Rachel.

I have suspected this too but I find it just as unlikely as Delilah. Possible... but my bet is on someone else.

I keep thinking about how Ashe is careful about ever exposing herself and prior to telling Fiona, only her mom and sister knew. The sister could have confessed to her bestie Isabella, or perhaps told her drunkenly one night by accident. Either way, Isabella seems more the potentially vindictive type who might also think duplos are bad people, etc. I don't know that she's a stronger candidate for the blackmailer but at least another person to consider.

Moira, on the other hand, probably had Ashe investigated after being told she was Vanessa's new girlfriend. If someone was tailing Ashe and watching her from afar, her duplo identity could have been revealed. Moira would definitely be capable of pulling off the blackmailer act and have the resources to track Ashe & know about the people in her life.


There really aren't many others that would make sense, unless it is a character we haven't met yet. If I am not mistaken, the mystery woman at the very end of the latest update has different nails than the influencer so even if the influencer is out to get revenge on Vanessa, the person we saw might be the one focused on Ashe and we just haven't seen them in the story so far. I really think it is most likely that we simply don't know the character yet. Perhaps it turns out that Ashe accidentally screwed them over in the past or there was some kind of innocent mistake that had unfortunately terrible consequences - hence the revenge plot and blackmail.

Speaking of people we haven't met.... we met Kate but have we met Delilah & Fiona's other mom? (I don't remember. Maybe she is dead or out of the picture. /shrug) Either way, if she's still around, the other mom could have found out that Kate & Ashe were fooling around together and maybe decided blackmail was a worthy revenge path. On that note, I assume the blackmailer shows up in the story regardless of whether or not you chose to have Ashe do things with Kate. So this too may be off base.

 

[BigOne24]

I agree that Delilah is the most likely culprit at the moment but I also agree that she seems unlikely to be able to pull this off. It really feels like she - along with the wannabe influencer - are meant to distract us from knowing who the real blackmailer is.



I have suspected this too but I find it just as unlikely as Delilah. Possible... but my bet is on someone else.

I keep thinking about how Ashe is careful about ever exposing herself and prior to telling Fiona, only her mom and sister knew. The sister could have confessed to her bestie Isabella, or perhaps told her drunkenly one night by accident. Either way, Isabella seems more the potentially vindictive type who might also think duplos are bad people, etc. I don't know that she's a stronger candidate for the blackmailer but at least another person to consider.

Moira, on the other hand, probably had Ashe investigated after being told she was Vanessa's new girlfriend. If someone was tailing Ashe and watching her from afar, her duplo identity could have been revealed. Moira would definitely be capable of pulling off the blackmailer act and have the resources to track Ashe & know about the people in her life.


There really aren't many others that would make sense, unless it is a character we haven't met yet. If I am not mistaken, the mystery woman at the very end of the latest update has different nails than the influencer so even if the influencer is out to get revenge on Vanessa, the person we saw might be the one focused on Ashe and we just haven't seen them in the story so far. I really think it is most likely that we simply don't know the character yet. Perhaps it turns out that Ashe accidentally screwed them over in the past or there was some kind of innocent mistake that had unfortunately terrible consequences - hence the revenge plot and blackmail.

Speaking of people we haven't met.... we met Kate but have we met Delilah & Fiona's other mom? (I don't remember. Maybe she is dead or out of the picture. /shrug) Either way, if she's still around, the other mom could have found out that Kate & Ashe were fooling around together and maybe decided blackmail was a worthy revenge path. On that note, I assume the blackmailer shows up in the story regardless of whether or not you chose to have Ashe do things with Kate. So this too may be off base.

Yes Isabella is also on my list of potential suspects.
Delilah and Fiona's other parent is on a business trip.

 

[Buletti]

I agree that Delilah is the most likely culprit at the moment but I also agree that she seems unlikely to be able to pull this off. It really feels like she - along with the wannabe influencer - are meant to distract us from knowing who the real blackmailer is.



I have suspected this too but I find it just as unlikely as Delilah. Possible... but my bet is on someone else.

I keep thinking about how Ashe is careful about ever exposing herself and prior to telling Fiona, only her mom and sister knew. The sister could have confessed to her bestie Isabella, or perhaps told her drunkenly one night by accident. Either way, Isabella seems more the potentially vindictive type who might also think duplos are bad people, etc. I don't know that she's a stronger candidate for the blackmailer but at least another person to consider.

Moira, on the other hand, probably had Ashe investigated after being told she was Vanessa's new girlfriend. If someone was tailing Ashe and watching her from afar, her duplo identity could have been revealed. Moira would definitely be capable of pulling off the blackmailer act and have the resources to track Ashe & know about the people in her life.


There really aren't many others that would make sense, unless it is a character we haven't met yet. If I am not mistaken, the mystery woman at the very end of the latest update has different nails than the influencer so even if the influencer is out to get revenge on Vanessa, the person we saw might be the one focused on Ashe and we just haven't seen them in the story so far. I really think it is most likely that we simply don't know the character yet. Perhaps it turns out that Ashe accidentally screwed them over in the past or there was some kind of innocent mistake that had unfortunately terrible consequences - hence the revenge plot and blackmail.

Speaking of people we haven't met.... we met Kate but have we met Delilah & Fiona's other mom? (I don't remember. Maybe she is dead or out of the picture. /shrug) Either way, if she's still around, the other mom could have found out that Kate & Ashe were fooling around together and maybe decided blackmail was a worthy revenge path. On that note, I assume the blackmailer shows up in the story regardless of whether or not you chose to have Ashe do things with Kate. So this too may be off base.

A couple of pages back we also have discussed Victoria.

Oh yeah no worries, I enjoy bouncing ideas around.

Yeah I wouldn't dismiss it, I just don't think we've uncovered a good enough reason for Victoria to do what she's doing, hence why I also noted that there's a chance the blackmail is hinging on information that we don't have access to, perhaps a shared past event between Ashe and whomever the blackmailer is that lies as an unseen trigger for that character.
And yeah as you said, it's more like a game than conventional blackmail which makes it a bit difficult to pinpoint whom the blackmailer is and why they are blackmailing to begin with.

I did ponder the idea of Victoria potentially doing it to show that Ashe isn't a good fit for Delilah, I think out of all the reasons for Victoria to blackmail, that one makes the most kind of sense in a twisted way. Mainly because we don't really know Victoria or what she's like, so it's absolutely a possibility and gives an adequate reason for Delilah to be involved other than Victoria being a sociopath.


I think a character as wired and apparently into Ashe is a bit of a coinflip in terms of how they would react or do things in that they either take WAY too long to mentally build themselves up and think of plans, or they do things WAY too quickly and rashly. The current blackmail and Delilah's behaviour would fit into the latter where she might have jumped the gun and she isn't really sure where to go with things or what she's doing, and only really thinking that she wants Ashe to turn to her.

I think it's the strongest theory involving Delilah atleast since it would explain her erratic and almost unhinged behaviour a bit better than most I've seen thus far, and it would also fit in with how much she seemingly romanticizes Ashe.



Yeah, I think Fiona is a fairly weak possibility, but it's also one I have a hard time letting go of completely with all the media I've seen/read that involved a best friend blackmailing someone. But yeah it is basically the weakest out of all the 'possible' ones, but given that the blackmail started after Fiona potentially got a handjob, there's always a small possibility that it triggered something with Fiona.



Oh yeah, Moira has the means but that's about it, you pretty much perfectly pointed out why it's not feasible.
If it turns out to be Victoria then hot damn that situation will be complicated going forward.. you're potentially banging her wife, and her daughter is into you to an unhealthy degree and now you're getting blackmailed by that person. That's a LOT of potential drama and potential to blow up several peoples lives.

Rachel would be the worst case scenario, fully DEFCON 1 status and would probably cause me to drop the game.

 

[Birdnman993]

Why is there a debate about the blackmailer? It's obviously Delilah, it's out of character for her, sure. But all clues lead to her lmao

The only thing Delilah is guilty of is loving Ashe too much and being very beautiful, she looked spectacular going to the party.

 

[Rexermus]

Counter-argument, subversion of expectations is one of the most commonly used tropes in storytelling, meaning that while everyone assumes that this is a red herring and is overly obvious, it can still very much be her due to that trope.
Delilah isn't exactly someone who's experienced, nor that intelligent it seems, so it would be entirely plausible that she just fucks up hard when trying to stay incognito as the blackmailer.

Subverting expectations without any way for the reader/viewer to back track and find/pick up the clues is just sloppy writing. The thread has to be there otherwise the writer just pulled it out of their ass. If Dellie isn’t the blackmailer the only thread leads to Kate, she’s an exhibitionist and gets off on it, so “torturing” Ashe in public makes sense and there’s a very slim chance she saw Ashe’s vagina. The thread cannot lead to anyone else based on how Morrigan has written the story thus far.

 

[Ciaran8023]

Subverting expectations without any way for the reader/viewer to back track and find/pick up the clues is just sloppy writing. The thread has to be there otherwise the writer just pulled it out of their ass. If Dellie isn’t the blackmailer the only thread leads to Kate, she’s an exhibitionist and gets off on it, so “torturing” Ashe in public makes sense and there’s a very slim chance she saw Ashe’s vagina. The thread cannot lead to anyone else based on how Morrigan has written the story thus far.

I mean there is a thread though. There are a LOT of things pointing towards Delilah either being heavily involved or doing it herself, and the expectation you are subverting is the viewers expectation of it not being Delilah when it seems so obvious.

I don't really see Kate having a strong enough reason to blackmail Ashe given that they're already (if the player chooses so) intimately involved with eachother, so what would Kate actually gain from blackmailing Ashe?
She wouldn't really gain anything by making Ashe do any of this and on the other hand, she'd actually lose on it if she pushes Ashe to the point where she shuts herself in again given that she's an anxious mess. She's clearly known Ashe for many years and likely knows that Ashe is anxious and timid with mental health issues.

I genuinely think that the end result of the blackmail arc is that it's someone who we've never met or heard of that decides for some random reason to blackmail Ashe after finding out about her status through one of the few people that knows, likely Delilah or Rachel, and that Vanessa is the one to 'pop' the blackmail figure since she got caught in the crossfire and got spied on during their date, which I don't think someone like her would enjoy.
This would feel even worse than a subvertion honestly given that it wouldn't be a cathartic payoff for the amount of stress that the blackmail has put Ashe through, but it's what I think will happen since outside of Delilah, there aren't really any strong candidates and it gives Ashe a "win" while also losing which seems to be the devs MO with the storylines thus far. One small victory for several huge losses.

 

[Alley_Cat]

Looking forward to this a lot!

The party/club scene in Having a hard time was done pretty well imho. It has a similar big cast as EI. There were a lot of shots that showed the dynamic of a full Dancefloor while you could clearly make out the several known characters and random people.

Would be cool imho if the dev might consider collabs with other DAZ devs and have some of their characters as randoms dancing in the Background.

Considering there's already a reference to Futagenesis Unveiled in-game, I would not at all be surprised if there was a collab between the two. The only issue is being both devs being not willing to share the DAZ files

I mean there is a thread though. There are a LOT of things pointing towards Delilah either being heavily involved or doing it herself, and the expectation you are subverting is the viewers expectation of it not being Delilah when it seems so obvious.

I don't really see Kate having a strong enough reason to blackmail Ashe given that they're already (if the player chooses so) intimately involved with eachother, so what would Kate actually gain from blackmailing Ashe?
She wouldn't really gain anything by making Ashe do any of this and on the other hand, she'd actually lose on it if she pushes Ashe to the point where she shuts herself in again given that she's an anxious mess. She's clearly known Ashe for many years and likely knows that Ashe is anxious and timid with mental health issues.

I genuinely think that the end result of the blackmail arc is that it's someone who we've never met or heard of that decides for some random reason to blackmail Ashe after finding out about her status through one of the few people that knows, likely Delilah or Rachel, and that Vanessa is the one to 'pop' the blackmail figure since she got caught in the crossfire and got spied on during their date, which I don't think someone like her would enjoy.
This would feel even worse than a subvertion honestly given that it wouldn't be a cathartic payoff for the amount of stress that the blackmail has put Ashe through, but it's what I think will happen since outside of Delilah, there aren't really any strong candidates and it gives Ashe a "win" while also losing which seems to be the devs MO with the storylines thus far. One small victory for several huge losses.

As far as I'm concerned, all the evidence points not to Deli being the blackmailer, but being blackmailed/coerced to help the actual blackmailer herself. So maybe Kate or Victoria.

 

[BigOne24]

Considering there's already a reference to Futagenesis Unveiled in-game, I would not at all be surprised if there was a collab between the two. The only issue is being both devs being not willing to share the DAZ files

As far as I'm concerned, all the evidence points not to Deli being the blackmailer, but being blackmailed/coerced to help the actual blackmailer herself. So maybe Kate or Victoria.

Delilah being forced to help would make her dodgy behavior make sense. And if she is the blackmailer she's probably guilty about it but not guilty enough to stop.

 

[InkAndSaliva]

I would prefer it if Delilah were the blackmailer because I think it would take a character I find unappealing and make her far more interesting (and Fiona's constant foreshadowing of Del's behaviour and true nature sets certain expectations), but from a very meta perspective, I think we would've gotten the confrontation and confirmation in this latest update when Ashe realised Del was lying if she were actually the blackmailer. There's no reason to leave it as a cliffhanger for the next update if there's no complications and everything is exactly as it appears.

Delilah being an unwilling accomplice to the blackmailer while still having a more obssessive darker side to her personality would be a nice compromise between her being innocent vs guilty, I suppose. I wouldn't be thrilled by her lack of agency as a character in that scenario, but it would leave more room for those who already like her to find her sympathetic and forgive her.