Parcel

Newbie
Mar 27, 2017
31
137
I'm sort of baffled by the response to Vanessa.

MC is a literal slave owner. Sure, he has good reasons, at least if you're playing the love route with the sanctuary elves. But Vanessa doesn't know that, and an abolitionist being initially hostile to someone who owns slaves should be a given. I expect very few slave owners in the Harem Hotel setting would prove themselves better than Vanessa's initial assumptions; it just so happens that MC is one of them.

I can also say from personal experience that when you're getting insulted by people saying things that are objectively untrue, perhaps the most effective tactic is to not let it bother you (if you can manage that), and let them demonstrate and eventually realize their own foolishness. MC getting angry would have served to justify Vanessa's view of him, in her eyes. MC can't defend himself factually against most of the accusations she's leveling against him, because some of it is secret, and other elements rely on knowledge that MC has but Vanessa wouldn't believe. I'm sure most slave owners would claim they're not abusing their slaves, and some might even claim that their slaves like/love them, but how many is it true for? Probably almost none.

Vanessa is definitely aggressive initially, and makes a lot of assumptions, so I don't fault anyone for disliking her. But I feel like people who get mad that there's an angry "SJW" abolitionist in the game have been deluding themselves about what sort of game Harem Hotel is. Harem Hotel has always been political, and it's always had flawed characters.

As for anyone who thinks Vanessa is too close to real world politics... unless you're an 18th century slave owner, I don't see how that's the case. The tactics Vanessa employs are tactics that have been employed by a lot of people fighting for civil rights throughout history. They're not exclusive to any modern movement.
 

TheDevian

Svengali Productions
Game Developer
Mar 8, 2018
14,100
33,094
I'm sort of baffled by the response to Vanessa.

MC is a literal slave owner. Sure, he has good reasons, at least if you're playing the love route with the sanctuary elves. But Vanessa doesn't know that, and an abolitionist being initially hostile to someone who owns slaves should be a given. I expect very few slave owners in the Harem Hotel setting would prove themselves better than Vanessa's initial assumptions; it just so happens that MC is one of them.

I can also say from personal experience that when you're getting insulted by people saying things that are objectively untrue, perhaps the most effective tactic is to not let it bother you (if you can manage that), and let them demonstrate and eventually realize their own foolishness. MC getting angry would have served to justify Vanessa's view of him, in her eyes. MC can't defend himself factually against most of the accusations she's leveling against him, because some of it is secret, and other elements rely on knowledge that MC has but Vanessa wouldn't believe. I'm sure most slave owners would claim they're not abusing their slaves, and some might even claim that their slaves like/love them, but how many is it true for? Probably almost none.

Vanessa is definitely aggressive initially, and makes a lot of assumptions, so I don't fault anyone for disliking her. But I feel like people who get mad that there's an angry "SJW" abolitionist in the game have been deluding themselves about what sort of game Harem Hotel is. Harem Hotel has always been political, and it's always had flawed characters.

As for anyone who thinks Vanessa is too close to real world politics... unless you're an 18th century slave owner, I don't see how that's the case. The tactics Vanessa employs are tactics that have been employed by a lot of people fighting for civil rights throughout history. They're not exclusive to any modern movement.
Yeah, in the back of my mind while they are saying, well, you inherited yours, so it can't be helped, I a thinking, well, I DID also buy 4 others 5 now... :ROFLMAO: I mean, I did it for good reasons, but still, I did buy every one I could... XD Hell, in Nia's new story, I would have happily bought every one of them just to get them out of there, and I won't apologize for that! In this world, that seems like the best way to help the for now.
 

DrFree

Well-Known Member
Apr 23, 2019
1,253
1,632
I'm sort of baffled by the response to Vanessa.

MC is a literal slave owner. Sure, he has good reasons, at least if you're playing the love route with the sanctuary elves. But Vanessa doesn't know that, and an abolitionist being initially hostile to someone who owns slaves should be a given. I expect very few slave owners in the Harem Hotel setting would prove themselves better than Vanessa's initial assumptions; it just so happens that MC is one of them.

I can also say from personal experience that when you're getting insulted by people saying things that are objectively untrue, perhaps the most effective tactic is to not let it bother you (if you can manage that), and let them demonstrate and eventually realize their own foolishness. MC getting angry would have served to justify Vanessa's view of him, in her eyes. MC can't defend himself factually against most of the accusations she's leveling against him, because some of it is secret, and other elements rely on knowledge that MC has but Vanessa wouldn't believe. I'm sure most slave owners would claim they're not abusing their slaves, and some might even claim that their slaves like/love them, but how many is it true for? Probably almost none.

Vanessa is definitely aggressive initially, and makes a lot of assumptions, so I don't fault anyone for disliking her. But I feel like people who get mad that there's an angry "SJW" abolitionist in the game have been deluding themselves about what sort of game Harem Hotel is. Harem Hotel has always been political, and it's always had flawed characters.

As for anyone who thinks Vanessa is too close to real world politics... unless you're an 18th century slave owner, I don't see how that's the case. The tactics Vanessa employs are tactics that have been employed by a lot of people fighting for civil rights throughout history. They're not exclusive to any modern movement.
I just explained in detail the problem right above your post, and its beyond "I dislike her character"
And no, it hasn't always been political. The first few updates were far more simple. If anything, if anyone plays the game from the beginning now, they will notice the increasing change in tone through the events, which I always jokingly thought of Runey's increasing evolution as a writer. From writing simple scenarios to sleep with cute girls, to develop their personalities, pasts, flaws and needs, to develop the world with increasingly complex lore.

Btw, I gave a perfectly reasonable comeback, which didn't involve talking about stuff taht we found about from Nia or Sylvia. Just saying "I knew all of this, because I actually talk to Linm on a daily basis to know her" is enough. Now, if she bitches out and call sus liars it would've made the scene less one-sided, but that would make her look worse, and we can't have that, can we?
 
Feb 24, 2020
43
13
Finally got the game freshly downloaded and installed. I deleted the 10.2 I had, installed 11.1 with lains mod.
But why is it showing the saves from the prior version if it's a fresh install? :oops:
 

c3p0

Forum Fanatic
Respected User
Nov 20, 2017
5,192
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Cause games often save them also in the Appdata part of Windows (or similar on Mac, Linux, Android if avaiable). Make it more simple for daily use. Download and install new version, delete old version and load your latest save and continue.
 
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Parcel

Newbie
Mar 27, 2017
31
137
And no, it hasn't always been political. The first few updates were far more simple. If anything, if anyone plays the game from the beginning now, they will notice the increasing change in tone through the events, which I always jokingly thought of Runey's increasing evolution as a writer.
Any media other than perhaps the most abstract is at least somewhat political. In Harem Hotel's case, from the beginning it has featured themes of slavery, and abuse of slaves. I'll grant that those themes have become more pronounced and developed over the course of the game so far, but they were there from the start.

Very early on, Lin compares grandpa to other worse masters she's had, and tells MC she's lucky she wasn't raped by one of her other masters. She talks about the genocide of her people and culture.

That's already pretty intensely political.

I just explained in detail the problem right above your post, and its beyond "I dislike her character"
Btw, I gave a perfectly reasonable comeback, which didn't involve talking about stuff taht we found about from Nia or Sylvia. Just saying "I knew all of this, because I actually talk to Linm on a daily basis to know her" is enough.
Here's the entire part of the conversation that involves elven biology:

Harem Hotel said:
nala "His reports, while not completely accurate, were still ahead of his time. He studied elves in great depth!"
nala "Elves have an accelerated growth spurt at the early stages of life, slowing dramatically at roughly fifty cycles around the sun... and strangely, while all elves appear to outlive humans by at least 6 life times, each subspecies has a different biological clock entirely, with the 'common elf' to appear to live the longest."
nala "Now we know that common elves and desert elves live about the same length, both very long. While dark elves live shorter lives, and drow even shorter still."
kali "How is this history? This sounds more like biology..."
vanessa "It's in the book!"
kali "And...?"
vanessa "It's the oldest biological study on elves! Just listen..."
nala "You want history? Here's history..."
So, a grand total of eight lines, including some back-and-forth and some lines to transition into the lore dump, and then to another part of the lore dump. All told, by word count it makes up about 5% of the infodump.

Moreover, despite you saying that you already knew everything Nala was telling you, there's new information there. Desert elf lifespan is completely new information. The fact that elves have an accelerated growth spurt early on is new information, and in fact wasn't something that was even part of the planned lore for Harem Hotel until pretty recently.

Plus, Kali does push back on this part of the infodump, even if she doesn't do it in precisely the way you would prefer. If those eight lines are mainly what's bothering you, I don't feel like your dislike for the event is really warranted.

Now, if she bitches out and call sus liars it would've made the scene less one-sided, but that would make her look worse, and we can't have that, can we?
I'm still not sure why you're apparently still holding to the belief that Runey is presenting Vanessa as some perfect exemplar for good behavior. At the start of the event she literally yells at Kali in the middle of the lecture hall before getting quieted by Kim and then shut up by Kali. She makes repeated incorrect assumptions. She interjects tangential stuff into the conversation at bad times (the stuff about landlords). She lectures Kali about her relationship to MC without knowing almost anything about it. She thinks she's being profound when she's just being trite (talking about how "we're trading elves whether we like it or not" because the currency is called the Syl).

Insinuating that Runey "can't have" the scene be less one-sided demonstrates a misreading of the scene, in my opinion. Vanessa already makes herself look at least somewhat bad, multiple times throughout the scene. Contrast that to Nala, who holds the same underlying beliefs, but presents them more calmly, and is more informed. Vanessa's assumptions and belligerence are already shown to be a character flaw. MC doesn't need to actually argue back for the scene to be multi-sided, because other characters, the scene itself, and information the players have already serve to counter a number of Vanessa's points.
 
Feb 24, 2020
43
13
It's not letting me load any saves. I think i have that error others were having. The gray screen that gives the option to "rollback" pops up.
 

DrFree

Well-Known Member
Apr 23, 2019
1,253
1,632
Any media other than perhaps the most abstract is at least somewhat political. In Harem Hotel's case, from the beginning it has featured themes of slavery, and abuse of slaves. I'll grant that those themes have become more pronounced and developed over the course of the game so far, but they were there from the start.
Lets not go full "Everything is political" please. Just because a story's setting has x, doesn't mean everything around it is about x.
Right now about half of the plotlines revolve around slavery, but at its beginning stages, only Lin was related to the subject. Otherwise it was only a background issue.
Kali's story was all about her distant relationship with her family, and its only recently that the focus was set on the slavery issue.
So no, just because there was slavery in the beginnings doesn't mean that it was a political story. The politics came on much later, when Runey started to expand the lore, with Cornwall and Sylvia's story.

I already addressed the whole issue with the dialogue in that time period with Runey. My point stands.
Kim's existence is forgettable at best, and it won't even stop her at all: Vanessa fucking blackmails Kali into being lectured, otherwise she will ruin her chances of a social life in this college, and NOBODY tells her anything about this being wrong. Not Kim nor Nala (therefore approving of her behavior).
How the fuck did MC not intervene when his girlfriend is being threatened? Oh right, he is a "good guy" that will get blackmailed into being lectured.
I forgot the standards for "good guys" according to the author. Just sit down and get "eDuCaTeD"
She interjects tangential stuff into the conversation at bad times (the stuff about landlords). She lectures Kali about her relationship to MC without knowing almost anything about it. She thinks she's being profound when she's just being trite (talking about how "we're trading elves whether we like it or not" because the currency is called the Syl).
And she doesn't get called out for any of this. Its just tiresome to keep repeating this. I will address it yet again below.
Insinuating that Runey "can't have" the scene be less one-sided demonstrates a misreading of the scene, in my opinion. Vanessa already makes herself look at least somewhat bad, multiple times throughout the scene. Contrast that to Nala, who holds the same underlying beliefs, but presents them more calmly, and is more informed.
Then that lies on how the characters (or how they were written) don't react to the scene (her behavior) at all.
"She makes herself look bad" works only on a meta level. If nobody calls her out in the scene, it just looks like every character approves of her behavior, and therefore it just looks like the author wanted this character's behavior to be approved of.

This is my problem, not the character herself, but how the scene she is in was written.

Again, I didn't complain about her in the previous update.
Edit: Hey Runey, weren't you done with me? I guess you are still totally not salty over criticism. Take a chill pill, bro.
 
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kage1822

Member
Mar 21, 2020
221
84
does Ashley ever mellow out? granted I'm still early in the game, but she's been becoming way to yandere for my tastes...lol she went from my favorite girl to my least favorite after she went psycho on Maria pulling a knife on her, and she's supposed to be her best friend or something like that
 

c3p0

Forum Fanatic
Respected User
Nov 20, 2017
5,192
12,458
does Ashley ever mellow out? granted I'm still early in the game, but she's been becoming way to yandere for my tastes...lol she went from my favorite girl to my least favorite after she went psycho on Maria pulling a knife on her, and she's supposed to be her best friend or something like that
Keep playing.;)
She has a backstory that will explain some of it.
 

voyeurkind

Well-Known Member
Jan 26, 2018
1,195
1,703
does Ashley ever mellow out? granted I'm still early in the game, but she's been becoming way to yandere for my tastes...lol she went from my favorite girl to my least favorite after she went psycho on Maria pulling a knife on her, and she's supposed to be her best friend or something like that
Yes
 

DrFree

Well-Known Member
Apr 23, 2019
1,253
1,632
does Ashley ever mellow out? granted I'm still early in the game, but she's been becoming way to yandere for my tastes...lol she went from my favorite girl to my least favorite after she went psycho on Maria pulling a knife on her, and she's supposed to be her best friend or something like that
As others said, yes. And not just backstory, she actively tries to better herself and her relationships with others. Its really heartwarming, so keep going!
 
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kirsek

Member
Jun 27, 2017
115
25
hallo :D can some1 post a save from the previous patch? i got mine but i get only errors and i dont wanna start from the beginning :)
 
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