It does appear to be heading in that direction. I might be reading too much into it but consider this:
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In his Discord channel he has told that he had previous knowledge of the VN scene so I do not know why the first sentence is cut short and the need to involve a moderator and then have the Q&A on Discord and say that Ava is based on his ex that cheated on him but Ava is not a cheater. Then when the whole shit hits the fan and the NTR crowd went crazy he posts this in his Discord.
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I
don't really care for the NTR part but I do like to point out the part that says
"just the middle of it has a few vocal incels who can't accept characters that act like human beings.".
We know that he already said that Ava and Annie are here to stay, the only choice we will get is if we want to end up with any of them at the end. So They will be shoved down our throats until the end. That's all fine and dandy, but my worry is that if Ava is based in his cheating ex and we have to stomach her all the VN, this will be like entering the dev's mind. Are we going to have to be bombarded with the dev's rationalization of why we should wag our tails to a cheating ex girlfriend? We have the first rationalization in the second update, she didn't cheat, she may or may not have been raped.
So what I gathered from that is that the dev has it all planned, he knows who Ava is and who Annie is, they are the women that for reasons unknown to us were chummy and even more with Leo/MC's bullies and never tried to stop them while using the MC as a therapy dog. There is a time jump and he just out of the blue accepts to go on a road trip with the "friend" that by his own words ghosted him and she is just using him because she has none to trust. I could keep on piling shit up but I think I made my point.
So you either like them or you are an incel. I get that they have flaws and all but the only one that does not "act like a human being" is the MC. I think that the only way to turn this around is if the MC turns out to be a massive asshole to be on leveled ground and then we can say that all of them act like real human beings.
Going by the few choices that are present in the game it is looking like we may have to simp our way into their panties.
If the dev reads this, dude there is a difference between been a friend and been a floormat.