alex2011

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Feb 28, 2017
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A key part of an abusive relationship is manipulation. I don't have the stats, but from experience, most of what is, well, abusive isn't the physical element. It tends to involve a lot of manipulation to have the abused party increasingly reliant on the abuser and to frame the relationship in a way where the abused feels they are responsible for their plight. What I am getting here is that the MC may not be fully abusive in the way that he is physically harming them, it comes across more like he is exploiting highschool girls. I guess he's more of an out and out sociopath, but not having played the game I can't really judge it. I figure its good writing, at the least, to get people to respond to it. Badly done MCs who are bad people leads to the dreaded "I don't care about this person or their story" which leads to people dropping it.
I get all that and, yeah, you basically hit the nail on the head with the sociopath part. He isn't stupid enough to rush things and endanger his objective, but he will do whatever he needs to to get the girls, all of them. However, I do need to point out that the comment you quoted was in reference to a point where even he was not in control, his body was forced to move on its own.

But again, that was a choice I made. The MC would have just said fuck it.
And he does if you let him, which would then result in what was the first content lockout to be implemented.
 

Skeltom

Engaged Member
Oct 9, 2017
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Selebus would you mind telling me what graidient you are using for Ami's (most girls actually) eyes, I realy like it and cant seem to find it in my koikatsu list. I'm using After School.
 
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Skeltom

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Oct 9, 2017
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"Pattern 2"
Second from the top for me.
All girls have the same gradient/highlights
Thanks, but i think I got confused. I think I,m talking about Eye Type actually. How they go from color to almost black from bottom to top. I don't mean to hound you or anything.
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buff

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May 29, 2017
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Don't get me wrong I like the story but it's not so much of a game and I disagree with almost all of the MCs discussions. I think he's a childish asshole.
It's more of a VN with an embedded puzzle than a real "game", I'd agree. And I'm personally *very* happy with that. There's no way that the developer would be able to progress like this if he was doing a bunch of branching story lines-- games where "your choices really matter!" are great to play when they are done, but it means month-to-month development is a terrible crawl since they might need to advance 3-10 tracks in parallel.

Besides, and more importantly, playing a really open game means I'm writing the story, and frankly Selebus is a much, much better writer than I am. I'd rather read his ideas than play my own.
 

buff

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May 29, 2017
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Disclaimer: I'm nowhere near done with the game, just made it past the reset.

Lots of lucid discussion here on how Sensei is a shit person. I think that's pretty clear and I don't actually disagree, but there are a few things I think need to be born in mind that mitigate the degree to which he is a shit person and why we think that.

1) We're listening to his inner monologue. Think about *your* thoughts when you're flirting with a girl, and imagine how they would sound to an observer. Actions matter more than the thought process that go into them, and while he's clearly a horndog who wants a lot from vulnerable girls, he also genuinely does make efforts to help the various girls in his life. I don't think he is so much *bad* as lacking in restraint.

Which brings us to my other point....
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Finally:
3) I think he is judged somewhat more harshly than other VN main characters because he appears to be deliberately tricky to identify with. Most H-games try to make it so that it's easy to identify with the protagonist; either they are way over the top alpha to the point where the game is not immersive and it's just fun to be "that guy" even if we would hate him in real life (ex: Lust & Power, the Tyrant, SuperPowered, Something Unlimited, Harem Collector) or he's very sympathetic and we genuinely like him (e.g. Now and Then, The Last Sovereign, Long Live the Princess, Harem Hotel, Innocent Witches). In this case the game is extremely immersive but the character earns just enough of our sympathy that we are pretty fucking surprised when he suddenly shows his horrible side. That puts us in the position of not just spectators (rather than roleplayers) but *betrayed* spectators, and that causes us to have stronger negative feelings than we otherwise might.

To illustrate the third point, consider most player's feelings toward a guy like the MC of the Tyrant (who actually drives his stepdad to suicide because he was a competitor to MC's incest efforts, but the guy is such a badass and the story is so absurd that we don't care.) To put it another way: By any objective standards Sensei is less of a bastard than the MC of the Tyrant, but I dislike him more because I care more about this story. I could be projecting here, but think thru the games that you play and see if this resonates at all.
 

Skeltom

Engaged Member
Oct 9, 2017
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Even after he has irrefutable evidence that the world is bullshit and nothing he does really matters, he is noticeably nicer *after* the reset than before (IMHO)
Sure, he puts on a nicer face but he still goes out of his way to manipulate every situation to his favor regardless of the consequences to anyone, at times even himself. All the while thinking to himself how much he hates helping people and still somehow claiming to make the best of his situation. I just don't like the guy, ALMOST to the point were I'm tempted to skip over all of his inner monologue because it's the same old story with him. I don't as to not miss anything vital to the actual story but to me him as a character has very little relevance to the events when its all said and done. He is just along for the ride with whatever is going on between HOPE and User2.
 

AsnSen

New Member
Donor
Jan 8, 2018
10
31
Just found out that the Chika scene reacts to different names. I put in different names like "Selebus", "Chika" and so on but I feel like there's something more easter egg-y things that I can put?
 

buff

Well-Known Member
May 29, 2017
1,017
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Just found out that the Chika scene reacts to different names. I put in different names like "Selebus", "Chika" and so on but I feel like there's something more easter egg-y things that I can put?
I didn't think to try Selebus, but I got some humorous responses with "Sensei", "Dad", "Chimami", "Rin", and "Yumi". I'm fighting the urge to unpack the RPA files and find out stuff like that, this game is too effing good to risk spoilers.

Also fun: Decoding the various ascii strings that crop up is entertaining.

If you have a linux box or a Mac (or a Windows machine with a perl interpreter), dump this script in a file, make it executable ("chmod +x <the file name>", or whatever the GUI equivalent is), and run the command from the terminal. Then just type the ascii strings (or paste them in after running a screencap thru a good online OCR).
Code:
#!/usr/bin/perl
while (<>)
{
    map { print chr(oct("0x$_")) } split(/ /,$_);
    print "\n"
}
 
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alex2011

Conversation Conqueror
Feb 28, 2017
7,716
4,454
Disclaimer: I'm nowhere near done with the game, just made it past the reset.

Lots of lucid discussion here on how Sensei is a shit person. I think that's pretty clear and I don't actually disagree, but there are a few things I think need to be born in mind that mitigate the degree to which he is a shit person and why we think that.

1) We're listening to his inner monologue. Think about *your* thoughts when you're flirting with a girl, and imagine how they would sound to an observer. Actions matter more than the thought process that go into them, and while he's clearly a horndog who wants a lot from vulnerable girls, he also genuinely does make efforts to help the various girls in his life. I don't think he is so much *bad* as lacking in restraint.

Which brings us to my other point....
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Finally:
3) I think he is judged somewhat more harshly than other VN main characters because he appears to be deliberately tricky to identify with. Most H-games try to make it so that it's easy to identify with the protagonist; either they are way over the top alpha to the point where the game is not immersive and it's just fun to be "that guy" even if we would hate him in real life (ex: Lust & Power, the Tyrant, SuperPowered, Something Unlimited, Harem Collector) or he's very sympathetic and we genuinely like him (e.g. Now and Then, The Last Sovereign, Long Live the Princess, Harem Hotel, Innocent Witches). In this case the game is extremely immersive but the character earns just enough of our sympathy that we are pretty fucking surprised when he suddenly shows his horrible side. That puts us in the position of not just spectators (rather than roleplayers) but *betrayed* spectators, and that causes us to have stronger negative feelings than we otherwise might.

To illustrate the third point, consider most player's feelings toward a guy like the MC of the Tyrant (who actually drives his stepdad to suicide because he was a competitor to MC's incest efforts, but the guy is such a badass and the story is so absurd that we don't care.) To put it another way: By any objective standards Sensei is less of a bastard than the MC of the Tyrant, but I dislike him more because I care more about this story. I could be projecting here, but think thru the games that you play and see if this resonates at all.
He is very much a shit person to a very large degree, what you are experiencing is actually a slow change brought on by his situation during the game, replacing this one teacher and having to be a mentor to all these girls. He IS becoming a better person through their presence, but he is still VERY much a shit person and he hasn't made all that much progress, but still a noticeable amount.

As for his actions or lack thereof, it seems more like biding his time to avoid shooting himself in the foot. Like with Rin, he could very easily push her into full on suicide with the wrong move, so he's waiting until she is more vulnerable to his advances than she is to her own mental state.

As for the outside influence theory, I do suspect you're right, maybe that's WHY he's a shit person, maybe the asshole we know isn't the real him.

As for your third point, I agree, Selebus deliberately made player Sensei difficult to identify with. He isn't us, he is himself as the girls are themselves. They are each an individual being within the game that, if they were truly sentient and capable of learning and adapting in real time, could pass as their own lifeforms given how well they are written. They have practically everything a real human has except the ability to think for themselves, to feel, to move, to any of the things we can do that fictional characters cannot. That's what makes them so incredible, because they seem VERY real.

Sure, he puts on a nicer face but he still goes out of his way to manipulate every situation to his favor regardless of the consequences to anyone, at times even himself. All the while thinking to himself how much he hates helping people and still somehow claiming to make the best of his situation. I just don't like the guy, ALMOST to the point were I'm tempted to skip over all of his inner monologue because it's the same old story with him. I don't as to not miss anything vital to the actual story but to me him as a character has very little relevance to the events when its all said and done. He is just along for the ride with whatever is going on between HOPE and User2.
Hence why he's the scum of the town.

Just found out that the Chika scene reacts to different names. I put in different names like "Selebus", "Chika" and so on but I feel like there's something more easter egg-y things that I can put?
Yes, different lust names have different reactions for all of the characters who have a lust event. There's a list somewhere in the thread.
 

Skeltom

Engaged Member
Oct 9, 2017
2,402
2,814
As for his actions or lack thereof, it seems more like biding his time to avoid shooting himself in the foot. Like with Rin, he could very easily push her into full on suicide with the wrong move, so he's waiting until she is more vulnerable to his advances than she is to her own mental state.
And I honestly wouldn't put it past him to do that after he has his way with her.
 
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