It's nothing I plan to address immediately, but I think your argument has a lot of merit. Ashe's first appearance in Chapter Two also featured my first time really using things like coded variables in the script. As a result, a lot of her relationship progression is.. Kind of clunky. I'd say the same is true of Gabby, who you can kiss, and then she basically brushes it off and never mentions it again. It's just because I didn't add nearly as many variables as I needed to, to track everything going on with them.
These are things I'd like to fix eventually. At present, Ashe kind of has a FWB path, which came from her recent dinner-date with Guy. If you just parted as friends in Chapter Two, then slept with her on her date, she leaves instead of staying over, and doesn't use much lovey-dovey language. Likewise, I plan to make her corruption path, where Guy coerces her into coming home with him in Chapter Two, have the option for an enemies-to-lovers sexual relationship. Again, there are some hints towards that in her date, if you manage to improve her opinion of you, and she asks you to fuck her. So, it'd be relatively trivial to move some things around and have the option where you see her as a hook-up. My intention with Ashe on the love path is basically that she, as someone who beleives in astrology, moon cycles, magnetic fields, etc. sees some kind of cosmic confluence in her romance with Guy. Meeting him, sleeping with him on the first date, and running into him in the park all make her think the winds of fate are blowing, so she jumps a little too readily into full-on romance.
As part of my remake of Chapter One, I'll be moving all the various chapter variables so they load before the game itself, with default values. This will be the end of the "XYZ not defined" error that's occasionally plagued me, while also allowing me to go back and tinker with things in the early chapters, adding content branches, without breaking the game. At that time, I'd like to clean up some stuff from Chapter Two and Three.
Well, like Tolkien said, "The tale grew in the telling."
I hadn't originally planned for Risa to occupy the spot in the story that she currently does. I'd planned for her to have a looser connection to events. But, ultimately I realized that having someone who was so closely acquainted with the main good-path antagonist would be useful.
As for her appearances over the last few updates, she was in a brief scene where she tried to make MC look good to Ashe, and then an optional scene where MC could visit her. Then she was in an optional scene where you woke up in the office with her present. Then the relatively brief scene where she baits you into visiting Lucien.
The same updates had scenes with Ashe, Viola, Nicki, Brittani, Cam-Pepper, and Carolina. So, I'd hardly say she's getting an outsized amount of shine. The only people we haven't seen much of lately are Gabby and Madison, but that's largely because their plot begins to take center stage with the release of Madison's husband, and his unraveling connection to the larger plot.
I'd still wager I finish it before George RR Martin gets the next SoIaF book out.
Look, I totally get that it's frustrating to wait for updates, or wait for content for a character you like. But, allow me to put this in perspective. The current script has 384,566 words in it, and nearly 3 million characters. Google tells me that the average 300 page novel stands around 90,000 words.
So, in less than two years, I've written 4.27 novels, while rendering something like 8,000 pieces of art, teaching myself how to do rudimentary coding, generating content for my subscription platforms, and interacting with four main communities/discussion hubs. And I work an average of 60 hours a week, make time to exercise every day, and saw four new countries last year.
There are games that have been around since 2019 that have put out less content than me, while having more supporters, multiple people working on them, and a frankly less challenging plot/branching storyline to write and render.
If anyone wants me to start putting out monthly updates where everything is POV, so I never have to render/pose more than one girl at a time, all the sex scenes are just a video of a dick sliding in and out of a pussy, and the location is the same mansion you've seen in a couple dozen games already, I can totally do that.
But, if you want me to keep making FiN, then it's going to take how long it takes.
