I dont think physical escalation being gradual is realistic - it depends on the personalities of the characters. You dont follow a fixed progression in real life. In some cases its slow and can be weeks before you kiss your partner, in other cases you get drunk and have sex within a few hours of knowing each other.
As for which lady will be our first - we have already banged Maat and Eva. Among main girls while it was cut short, there was penetration during the Nancy scene.
Personally for me sex scene progression is a bit of a mixed bag. I liked the Nancy scene - she is an adult and so its good she does not beat around the bush like some teenager and goes for what she wants and I liked Annie's scene where bottled up emotions made her go further than she normally would. But Nova, Alex and Dalia's scenes felt a bit too similar/repetitive for me. For Penny and Luna (and Calypso) I want the first scene to NOT end with a blowjob - its fine if its not full on sex but I want more variation in the scenes.
They're high schoolers tho, even if 18, high schoolers still. High schoolers who go to an elite school in an elite family area, don't party, don't do drugs, and don't mentkon drinking. Now I'm not saying you have to do those things to have sex, I'm just describing the culture they're in is more like a nice, clean American suburb where most high schoolers don't have sex. Annie is confirmed a virgin, Nova had never seen a penis, and possibly the others too. I didn't say fixed progression (Annie thighjob already disproves that), I said gradual.
Even Orion himself isn't really in a rush to lose his virginity. Ya he wants sex, but he's young and inexperienced enough to where he is quite satisfied with outercourse and non-penetration and didn't try to initiate penetration with any of the main love interests (including Nancy as she was the one who initiated)
And fitting that of the main love interests, the
only one who was ready to jump right to penetrative sex is the mature woman, and the only one
proven to be experienced.
we have already banged Maat and Eva
you can be fully on a harem route right now and fully a virgin as well.
I feel like the Eva choice is a very early divergence (narrative-wise, not mechanically of course) of whether or not you want to have casual sex or only become intimate with those you love. [Prepared to be] using all of Annie's gift money to buy sex definitely is a dramatic enough choice to be differentiating
But was he ever REALLY an antagonist?
I'd say so, yes. Just because he's an Act I antagonist doesn't make him any less so.
He harrasses Lauren (arguably the "main" love interest, and if not, then at the least, evidently Caribdis's personal favorite) multiple times. You flee from him and then fight him, which is no trifling event, especially as he even pulls a knife on you. You gamble against him, once again for Lauren's sake.
Arguably, Axel has directly opposed or been in a position of antagonism less at this point than Tom had. We never full on fought Axel, only stopped him once from harrassing someone we care about, and besides that and getting hit a couple times, just some idle trash talk
rafaelo4 same man. What's STS? Slay the Spire?
EDIT: multi-quoted instead of posting again