Your call of course, and neither of us are saying anything we haven't said before in this thread, but there are some intermediate steps possible between just assuming everything is probably fine and suspecting specifically and exactly what's going on. I'm not saying the MC should jump immediately to "Clippy is turning my mum into a slut", but from the first chapter onwards he steadfastly refuses to even notice anything odd or take minimal steps to find out what's going on around him. He gets mildly annoyed for five minutes just once when he sees Candace with Mol but then immediately proceeds to ignore the matter since hey, it's Friday, time to kick back and continue being an idiot.
This is difficult for me to counter without coming across as dismissive so try to be as charitable as possible with how you read this. And when I'm saying "you" throughout this post I'm not referring to the OP, I'm addressing whoever might be reading this.
I've had some other conversations about characters, particularly AVN MCs, player's attitudes towards them, and how they view some behavior as passive or submissive. There seems to be a somewhat widely shared attitude that not immediately and directly confronting something is a sign of weakness or submission. To some degree I will allow that yes, hesitating to directly confront every problem as soon as it arises might be caused by weakness or even fear, but there are also a million other reasons why we don't always immediately jump up and call bullshit every time we see or hear something we disagree with. (Discretion being the better part and all that) For the sake of not upsetting anyone I will even say that
you, whoever might be reading this, are the exception.
You're built different. Almost everyone else though, is not going to
immediately tell their friend to dump that toxic boyfriend/girlfriend, call out their boss for being rude to a coworker, or tell that random parent they are being too harsh when scolding their child.
We make excuses, we invent justification, and we hesitate until we have more information. Before you come to the conclusion that
I'm just some huge non-confrontational pussy and I'm incorrectly ascribing that behavior to everyone else, all I can really do is assure you that I am not. I've been pulled aside many times at work to address how overly direct and confrontational I can be. Most of my friends will somewhat lovingly/jokingly refer to me as a "blunt asshole". The people who know me in life generally acknowledge that I "don't put up with bullshit".
I'm not sure what reaction you expected from the MC in that scenario. Pull his mother aside and confront her about being friends with a sex worker while also suggesting that her new friend is only hanging out with her as part of some plot against the MC? That's tinfoil hat levels of crazy sounding. Go Nancy Drew on her, track her down and confront Candi in private? Again, that's a little fucking crazy. What if he got it wrong? What if it turned out that she just looked similar to the girl from the club and the MC was mixed up because he was stressed out and feeling a little paranoid? Now his mom's new friend thinks he's crazy, dangerous, and probably a little racist. Hindsight is 20/20 and while I basically directly confirmed her identity to you, the player, it would be reasonable for the MC to have doubts that might call for some pause.
Sure, maybe
you can think of some alternative action that would have been low risk/high reward. But
you're smarter than the MC.
I'm not going for hyperrealism (obviously) but I'm also not going for typical low stakes power fantasy.
Yes, I could've more often added some lines of narration representing the MC's inner thought process to justify why he *didn't* do the things some of you think he should've. I prefer not to do that to allow the player to justify it in whatever way they think best fits their idea of the MC. If you want it to be because he's a pussy, fine, he's a pussy. If you want it to be that he's an oblivious airhead, fine. If you want it to be that he's a shrewd calculator who waits until the optimal moment to make his move, fine. If you want it to be that's he's sort of just a normal guy who has a lot going on, finds it difficult to approach some of these things, and is doing the best he can, fine.
These types of games inherently lean toward escapist fantasies. Mine may be less so than others. There are flaws in my writing, I'm an amateur, and everything released so far has been a bit of an extended intro. However, from my perspective, the fact that the MC isn't completely on top of every situation is one of the more realistic aspects of this game's story. Marky Mark might have been able to stop that plane from going down, but this MC probably isn't built like that.
Part of it could boil down to preference. Maybe you want to play a game where the MC figures things out right away, stands up to evil no matter how small, and always knows just what to say. You won't really find that here.
Is this all just a game to you???
