I'm just taking a bit of a piss to BTT. He knows that that is the content I am waiting for. LOL
Yes. a slow build up is exactly that, a way to build up a character and create more reasons to connect beyond the looks. To learn the whys and the whats, the dos and the don'ts. Writing a character that is only there to be a warm body to have sex with, like a positionable doll made of skin and meat, may work for an empty story. But if anyone wants to write anything with any more depth than that, the character needs to be more than the doll.
We, readers, don't really connect to the written character. Yes, I can ear you go, "What???" Yes, it is true, we don't connect to the character as it is written. We connect to the idea of that character that we create in our minds using IRL examples that we've known and we can relate with. When we say that a character is life-like (as Alex is) it's because it is extremely relatable, and we were able to create a very defined and multi dimensional image of it. In extreme cases, the written characters even gain a living space in our heads, and they will make part of the future relatable attributes we will assign to the written characters we encounter.
In this game, both Isa and Alex are in the life-like area, not only because BTT made a really good job in creating them, but, because he was able to give us a generous amount of connecting points to where we can "glue" our own attributes and bring them to life in our minds. Reading and writing are NOT the same thing, but both are a creative effort. You can't read without creating, because of the internal process that is what allows us to "grok"* a story.
So yeah, to be able to develop a connection, romantic or otherwise, you need material to build it inside of you. That's what a slow-burn story does for us, gives us connecting points.
There I go again, writing too much on a forum where reading is almost a lost art. :: sigh ::
Peace
* "grok" is a concept invented by Robert A. Heinlein on his book "A Stranger in a Strange Land", that you can read about here:
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