Big lightning-round response time. I'm still sick as a dog, so forgive me for not being more thorough.
Light spoilers, but I see Mason as
pansexual. I talked about Mason a bit on my Discord, but I write him with a few things in mind:
- He's pan and perhaps not fully settled into his preferred gender expression yet. He's still young and exploring.
- As part of that exploration, Mason's experiencing a bit of a second puberty, not physiologically, but mentally. He's basically having the formative sexual experiences as a male, that he never got to as a youth. That makes him a bit more willing to experiment and try things.
- Mason's on the higher-functioning end of the autism spectrum, which can cause him to misread social cues. Hence trying to give MC a BJ after a misunderstanding. He also tends to 'mask' and slip into different personas that allow him to more easily navigate society and relationships, which is why he can slide into his girl personality so easily.
- His traumatic brain injury left him with lowered impulse control and memory problems, so he tends to have poor decision-making skills.
- All in all, he's kind of situated to be easy prey for a manipulator, which is why it's important MC helps him. Or why he can easily control him and twist him into what he wants him to be.
I try to keep things very consistent across paths, so if Mason's telling MC one thing on one path, and something else on another, he's probably fibbing.
In this case, he's being a little guarded because he's not sure he can trust MC with all of his history yet. Last thing Mason needs is to have his deadname and family history pulled up and waved in front of him by a rich guy who's bent on treating him a bit poorly.
And sadly most TBIs cause chronic issues that don't fully resolve with time, so a hospital wouldn't do him much good at this point.
This has been addressed, but when I wrote this whole thing I kind of set out to show MC isn't perfect, and doesn't win all the time - even when he tries to do the right thing. He's a clever guy who's in good shape. His strengths lie in being canny and creative, not in being a great fighter. That said, he did exactly what you need to do if you're in a fight with someone holding a knife. He fought dirty and lived to see another day.
As for a bodyguard.. I mean, simple in some ways to add, yes. But that's an extra character in a lot of scenes. More time posing, more time rendering, less drama.. It'd be like giving Bruce Willis a SWAT team as back-up in Die Hard. The fun is in watching him solve the problem, not having someone else do it for him. Just my philosophy on it!
That said, if I keep drilling on the idea that MC isn't invulnerable, and isn't a great fighter, I'm probably doing it to make a point.
Hah! After the giant pain in the ass his suit jacket caused me, I'm reticent to put the dude in anymore jackets.. :'D
Actually, people who played the early Sneak Peek version of the chapter know that was originally an option.
Ultimately though, it just added an extra layer of work for very little pay-off. In the future I'll try to have some fem-Mason scenes with short hair, though.
Chapter 5 will be a
big chapter for Gabby. The way that the next installment will have content for all of Ashe's routes, Chapter 5 will be the same for Gabby.
I'm glad so many people took a liking to the Mason scene. It was kind of a big swing, but it seems to have landed for more people than not. I'm generally a little reticent to link to my real-life inspirations, but as they're both sex workers actively advertising their platforms, I think it's okay. The two main ones were
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and
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. Go give them some money, they're
gr8.
As for the photos, I'm a little surprised nobody's guessed it right yet.. <_<
I often joke that after FiN wraps up I'll do a Brittani management sim spin-off, and it seems like less and less of a joke as people continue to discover her.. :'D
Thanks for enjoying the game! In order to avoid any potentially unsettling content, I'd always advise people not to install the fan-made patch that adds taboo elements to the story.
You're reading my mind on a few of these..
Gabby's relationship is going to have a few more opportunities to change.. Still figuring out how it'll work exactly, but I'd like to give the player an opportunity to kind of go a dark-love route with her, where MC is spoiling her with
things more than attention and love. Maybe a friends --> sugarbaby path..
Hah! The Fin-Man play on words was a semi-intentional happy accident. I was sitting there like, "Okay, Alex likes horror movies.. What's some horror trivia she'd know that Nicki wouldn't? Oh, Gill-Man, the real name of the Creature from the Black Lagoon.. Can't use Gill-Man, though, so he'd be.. oh shit,
Fin-Man, perfect!" Glad someone else made that connection.
Thanks for the kind words! Glad that people are picking up on some of the themes I'm trying to get across, re: healthcare, labor, human rights, etc.
Man, thanks for that thoughtful analysis! Glad to see stuff resonate and provoke such a detailed response from people!
I fucked the link up, but it's back on the front page now. My bad!
I was really trying to sneak it up on people, with the eventual reveal she's super-stacked up top. :'D I also altered her model a tiny bit for next go-around, darkening her hair and eyebrows to more of a true black color, giving her more freckles, and elongating her eyelashes. Not a huge change, but you can see what the new and improved (IMO) version looks like
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.
