Ren'Py Lessons in Love [v0.47.0] [Selebus]

[DeSkel15]

If one day Selebus were replaced by a ghostwriter who also assumed control of the story's artistic vision, would anyone notice a difference? Is the direction LiL is heading in so unique that it couldn't be replicated by anyone else without readers noticing any deviation from its original direction?

With the way LiL is developed, there are no secrets that "happy accidents" occur, blending and weaving the interruptions and personal experiences of Selebus' life alongside the story of LiL. But how far could these diversions go before any of us notice a difference or deviation from "what Lessons in Love should be/should have been," assuming it had any vague direction or objective to begin with?

Too little flexibility yields a rigid narrative that doesn't blend well with passing times, but too much flexibility and there may not be a narrative backbone at all—no true story to tell, just whatever comes to mind at a given moment, and mindsets change by the hour. That is the sort of feeling I get with how haywire recent chapters have been, and I'm interested to see if anyone else catches a glimpse of that or if I am just reading into it too much. Maybe it's progressing as intended, or maybe there's too much improvisation, as we know.

From what I could tell, though, Selebus seems to be vague about everything regarding the narrative direction of Lessons in Love, making it impossible to decipher between character development or character deviation—apart from the financial objectives; only there are his goals made abundantly clear.

Sel has seemed rather straightforward on the plans. Harem Route -> Dark Route -> Purity Routes -> True End. In a 10 year development (according to the wiki). We're on year 4 (Chapter 4). Considering the game has also been reworked and will probably be reworked again eventually, it's likely the game will reach it's intended outcome no matter the deviation. (Unless Sel dies)

There's also still the Prequel 'Nothing Is Beautiful' and perhaps a Sequel(?) 'Grow Old. Then Die', that seem to still be in mind, and both were referenced through cameos, in the recent 'Rain King' Happy Event.

Of course, it's all a work in progress, but Sel doesn't strike me as the kind of person who'd alter the core of their vision, otherwise this would probably still be on patreon and the wizards wouldn't exist.

I'm also of the opinion that when someone tries to replicate another's work, it's usually not too hard to tell. People can't seem to help introducing part of themselves into their work, and into the work of others, hence stuff like Headcanon and Fan Fiction. There's plenty of people who'd be hoodwinked, though. (This is coming from someone who's read an obnoxious amount of comics, which tend to have so many writers, retcons, and inconsistencies, it's painful to be a fan.)

Still, no recent development in LiL has been that surprising, imo. Even New Maya has been predictable. Especially considering that Sensei likely missed her bday, which might come up soon.

 

[Bingoogus]

If I may provide an option...

I laughed so hard at that final bit i coughed my smokers lungs up... and again reading it as i type this... fuck me... Schrokovam's gunblade... epic... got tears in my eyes...

 

[Marie IV]

If I may provide an option...

Basically that, aye

Of course, it's all a work in progress, but Sel doesn't strike me as the kind of person who'd alter the core of their vision, otherwise this would probably still be on patreon and the wizards wouldn't exist.

Yeah, you're right, definitely not. Still, I worry too much of LiL is left to chance, making aspects of the story more immune to critique then it deserves to be. Needless to say, we won't be able to tell for sure until the story is updated for the last time. When/if that day comes, I'm sure everyone here will be feeling a bit more hollow than usual, regrettably.

 

[fdsasdf_p]

I feel like a question like this could be infinitely revisited since LiL is stated to be a continuously progressing narrative with no end in sight. To illustrate this, we know so little about what the foundational state of LiL is supposed to be, specifically because one of the main points of LiL is that we are not supposed to understand it. Since we cannot objectively understand many aspects of it, theoretically anything can happen to change constants we presume to understand already, and we would be none the wiser if it is intentional, a retcon, a revision, or normal progression. The fantastical nature of LiL means literally anything can occur, and it could seamlessly flow through the story or be explained away as some expected anomaly necessary to fulfill a point of the narrative we might not know about. Is that good writing or a weakness? It may be impossible to tell.

I am in complete agreement with you on this. Selly designs his world this way so that whatever card he plays he can claim it's a wild card and the way he plays definitely goes by the rules. But sometimes I do feel like he is taking this a little too much, making things extra incomprehensible not because some necessities due to story reason, but because he can just do that. The truth is if you do it often enough people will drop some aspects of the game and focus on what they are "allowed to understand" (seen folks here giving up god stuff completely and only looking forward to teenager dramas, and it's completely understandable).


Despite this, however, I am mostly fine with this because I subjectively want to believe that somewhere in a plain of existence there is a LiL story with its main structure already done, all its milestones already set, and its final destination already scheduled to perfection or at least to our hearts' content so that every piece of clue one day will fall into place. For this he has to do his part in doing great articulations, and not just by using the phrase everything is connected as some sort of almighty spell when that should be your goal and not your method. As long as he nails the important elements, a few dents in the story which result from making pit stops that I personally deemed unnecessary are acceptable. You might only get a 9/10 because of it but it's ok since stuff out there that barely meets 8/10 is so far few and between already.

And by "nailing the important elements", I really hope his vision on LiL is firmly set after that massive rework. For example, I suspect his idea of how LiL should play out shifted ever so slightly after the revamp solely by judging the difference between the old and the new The Room with Clocks, where the new one introduces Maya variants sentient about how weird the world surrounding Sensei is, a second god, and Himawari a lot earlier; all relevant components with proper explanations still lacking.

So I guess what I meant by I am mostly fine, I am probably just patiently withholding judgement on a work in progress. Keep working on the project and be as convoluted as you want to. You can confuse us and we will confuse ourselves from time to time by reading too hard into an unfinished work. But there will be one day where we are able to look at this whole presentation as a hopefully cohesively weaved piece of art, and question the content in every single slide that he made a choice to include.

Anyway just a little rant; I am mostly positive for what the future holds but going into rabbit holes just happens sometimes.

 

[LoveRedHairedGirl]

By the way, I never encountered the room with the cocks clocks during my playthrough. I only noticed it when checked the event list.
How is that possible...

 

[JelF547]

By the way, I never encountered the room with the cocks clocks during my playthrough. I only noticed it when checking the event list.
How is that possible...

There are two bugs:

Firstly, room with clocks marked as completed if you havent done "Not Even Me" at day 21. It wasn't fixed yet, and probably exists due to event system rework in early updates. Idk why Sel haven't fixed it with second one

Secondly, "Not Even Me" used to silently complete if you havent done it in first 24 days, and you would not get room with clocks access in this case. It was fixed in 0.38, so now you would trigger room with clocks eventualy even if it marked as completed due to first bug

 

[crustlord12]

Anyway just a little rant; I am mostly positive for what the future holds but going into rabbit holes just happens sometimes.

Meta-rant here but you know what really frustrates me about this site sometimes? The quality of discussion is so damn good in this thread that it has ruined every other thread for me. Eternum updated recently and I can't even attempt to wade into that brain-dead thread where every 9 out of 10 comments are "hurr durr my waifu is better than urs" "u take that back!!1 our cult is best!!1"

Like for fucks sakes why can't there be a discussion thread for people who want to discuss the story and a parallel one for those with room temperature IQs to tug their dicks over and over into? In this thread it's usually around 70% interesting discussion, 20% lamenting the creator's attitudes (which is still an interesting topic to me), and 10% brain-dead "give save" posts.

/rant

 

[DeSkel15]

I am in complete agreement with you on this. Selly designs his world this way so that whatever card he plays he can claim it's a wild card and the way he plays definitely goes by the rules. But sometimes I do feel like he is taking this a little too much, making things extra incomprehensible not because some necessities due to story reason, but because he can just do that. The truth is if you do it often enough people will drop some aspects of the game and focus on what they are "allowed to understand" (seen folks here giving up god stuff completely and only looking forward to teenager dramas, and it's completely understandable).
View attachment 3488094

Despite this, however, I am mostly fine with this because I subjectively want to believe that somewhere in a plain of existence there is a LiL story with its main structure already done, all its milestones already set, and its final destination already scheduled to perfection or at least to our hearts' content so that every piece of clue one day will fall into place. For this he has to do his part in doing great articulations, and not just by using the phrase everything is connected as some sort of almighty spell when that should be your goal and not your method. As long as he nails the important elements, a few dents in the story which result from making pit stops that I personally deemed unnecessary are acceptable. You might only get a 9/10 because of it but it's ok since stuff out there that barely meets 8/10 is so far few and between already.

And by "nailing the important elements", I really hope his vision on LiL is firmly set after that massive rework. For example, I suspect his idea of how LiL should play out shifted ever so slightly after the revamp solely by judging the difference between the old and the new The Room with Clocks, where the new one introduces Maya variants sentient about how weird the world surrounding Sensei is, a second god, and Himawari a lot earlier; all relevant components with proper explanations still lacking.

So I guess what I meant by I am mostly fine, I am probably just patiently withholding judgement on a work in progress. Keep working on the project and be as convoluted as you want to. You can confuse us and we will confuse ourselves from time to time by reading too hard into an unfinished work. But there will be one day where we are able to look at this whole presentation as a hopefully cohesively weaved piece of art, and question the content in every single slide that he made a choice to include.

Anyway just a little rant; I am mostly positive for what the future holds but going into rabbit holes just happens sometimes.

Speaking of rabbit holes...
This reminded me of something I found... interesting:

Spoiler

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TLDR: Concerned god has likely been trying to make things confusing to control the narrative.

Although, this may not be the first time Pareidolia has done this, and that might be why Kumon-mi didn't have Spring before Chapter 4. With the reintroduction of the Calm god, there's probably a reason that Sensei, connected to Pareidolia, pissed himself last update.

Or I just missed/misinterpreted something.

 

[goonslagoon]

Off-topic, but why does the latest updates page say it's been 4 years since the last update?

 

[barglenarglezous]

Off-topic, but why does the latest updates page say it's been 4 years since the last update?

Dev angered the mods so the game is no longer promoted by this site.

 

[corsair101]

Dev angered the mods so the game is no longer promoted by this site.

Is that why this thread is apparently hidden, too? I don't see it in the forums. Been a bit puzzled, there's basically no mention of it anywhere on Reddit, rarely on 4chan, but upwards of 30k posts in this thread.

 

[Riolol]

Is that why this thread is apparently hidden, too? I don't see it in the forums. Been a bit puzzled, there's basically no mention of it anywhere on Reddit, rarely on 4chan, but upwards of 30k posts in this thread.

Crazy that this is probably one of the most active threads on this site despite no longer being promoted by it.

 

[goonslagoon]

Dev angered the mods so the game is no longer promoted by this site.

I didn't know that happened here, I thought this site was mostly impartial... well, there are the issues with Loli stuff, which this is, so I guess it fits the narrative. I'm assuming asking what other games have received the same treatment is a no go.

 

[ccxvidonaferens]

I didn't know that happened here, I thought this site was mostly impartial... well, there are the issues with Loli stuff, which this is, so I guess it fits the narrative. I'm assuming asking what other games have received the same treatment is a no go.

You've got the wrong end of the stick I think. The content had no bearing on the conflict between this site and the dev. The incidents basically revolved around piracy and the dev implementing DRM that could delete save games, amongst a few other things, but I will reiterate that the content of the game/story had no bearing on it not featuring in the latest updates page. If it did it would've most likely been booted from the site completely.

 

[corsair101]

I didn't know that happened here, I thought this site was mostly impartial... well, there are the issues with Loli stuff, which this is, so I guess it fits the narrative. I'm assuming asking what other games have received the same treatment is a no go.

I think that's why all the VN subreddits banned it, and let's be real here, actually putting ages in the care package character outlines was a stupid, stupid thing to do. Especially in a game where the whole plot is based around time loops and reality-warping. Arguing about the age of fictional characters has always struck me as idiotic anyways, but just stick the standard "all characters are 18+" disclaimer on it, not like a billion other VNs do that and get away with it or anything. Shit, the assets for LiL are made with Koikatsu Party and that's on Steam. And this might be showing my age and lack of VN knowledge a bit, but I don't ever remember hearing complaints over Katawa Shoujo like this.

 

[crustlord12]

Crazy that this is probably one of the most active threads on this site despite no longer being promoted by it.

I know that there's a dedicated group of us that constantly post here, lots of very recognizable names that keep the thread alive. What I think is more surprising is new people finding this thread since the game is un-promoted

 

[Fire Lord Zuko]

I know that there's a dedicated group of us that constantly post here, lots of very recognizable names that keep the thread alive. What I think is more surprising is new people finding this thread since the game is un-promoted

I found out about this game only because it was mentioned on the Adventure Trainer thread and how the dev was inspired by LiL. Curiosity led me here and now it’s one of my most anticipated games as far as awaiting each update.

 

[barglenarglezous]

I didn't know that happened here, I thought this site was mostly impartial... well, there are the issues with Loli stuff, which this is, so I guess it fits the narrative. I'm assuming asking what other games have received the same treatment is a no go.

To be clear -- it's not the game itself that prompted this, it's specifically the behavior of the dev and others acting on his behalf. There are rules devs are expected to follow here, and continuing to violate them and making it clear that they intend to keep doing so gets a game de-promoted.

The other game I'm aware of that ran into this is Champion of Realms, which continued to use sock puppet accounts to post fake reviews after being told to stop, I believe.

If a game violates content rules, it gets deleted outright. There's been quite a few of those.

 

[Pedro4545454]

One question, as I remember Selly said there would be no update in June or July, I don't remember which one it is but what if the last update before the break has a reset that will end with something important happening just to make us anxious and suffering with the 2 month wait?

Would he do this or is there already a schedule of events up to the month of this break and I'm just thinking about it too much?

 

[JelF547]

One question, as I remember Selly said there would be no update in June or July, I don't remember which one it is but what if the last update before the break has a reset that will end with something important happening just to make us anxious and suffering with the 2 month wait?

May update would contain no main events, so it is unlikely to have reset there. Also, mid-chapter resets not used to be that important and never were a cliffhanger before