Honestly I feel like we are arguing about things that are explained with pure common sense.
Forget about Mia, about contradictions, about Lacey's lies, everything.
Think about a simple undeniable fact. There is this woman, who over the span of a couple years, was an uber slut (no prostitution or forced sex involved to our knowledge), with hundreds of partners. From that simple fact, how could anyone arrive at the conclusion that she was not enjoying what she was doing? On top of that fact, it's the same woman who almost destroyed her already crumbling marriage, displaying a total lack of impulse control and eventually cheating in front of her husband's eyes. Do you see a pattern here? This is not "enjoying sex a bit more". That's the understatement of the century.
The conclusion can be made from the recount Lacey gives of the third phase, I don't want to keep on having to stress that I think she had more fun (at least physically) than she is willing to admit in phase 1 and 2.
The recount she gives is of this sort:
L "Partly to hurt myself, to punish myself for being alive."
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L "Sometimes it would feel nice when it started, but by the end it usually hurt."
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L "If I was lucky I might have an orgasm."
L "Maybe on some nights I had two."
L "But what I was, was in pain."
L "Almost every time it hurt."
L "Having sex fifteen times in a row is not the amazing adventure you seem to think it is."
L "Friction burns on the ol' vajayjay really fucking hurt."
L "Your girl went through enormous amounts of lube to try and keep up."
L "Choking on your tenth cock for the night is not sexy or erotic."
L "Having seven guys cum inside your ass is pretty goddamn gross."
L "A room full of sweaty ass boys who don't know where their fucking deodorant is,"
L "kind of sucks for a girl who has a sensitive sense of smell."
L "Having your hair pulled for the twentieth time in a row gives you a pretty serious headache, let me tell you."
L "The fifth drunk fratboy crowing about how great it must feel to have his half-flaccid dick up my pussy, isn't exactly romantic."
You completely omiss or discount the thirst for self hatred and self destruction.
I understand, it is a complex and weird topic, but even the pimp in her infinite stupidity got that somehow.
Mixing terminal college Lacey and newly married Lacey makes no sense, it is obvious that, while driven by a somewhat similar goal they are not the same person.
People change when their emotions and perception of self change, she still has hang ups about the past and it is shown time and time again.
And AGAIN, I am not saying that anything she has done is good or it should be forgiven, I think quite the opposite, I think she turned into human trash and acted up until recently like a deranged woman.
But as I mentioned in some previous post in a discussion with you, understanding and knowledge are the only way to actually use our empathy and truly get to the bottom of a person.
Yes it's very possible Mia doesn't have a full understanding of how Lacey operates. Doubt even Lacey has that. But you don't need to know why someone finds something gratifying, to acknowledge they do.
About her relationships, we've probably gone through that before. If someone does all the things a relationship entails, I don't care if they don't call it that. It is a relationship plain and simple.
Notice something common in this and the kitchen convo you mentioned? In both she claims they are wrong. But she never tells them why they are wrong. She says that she would have told Mia if she had asked, but what stops her exactly from doing it now? Even worse with MC because he is the offended party who deserves an explanation. At this point it's just expecting blind faith.
I do, and it is one thing the author is purposedly keeping from us, either because he wants the reader to try and get to the bottom of it or because he wants to have a BIG REVEAL at the end.
Every time I read something like this intead of jumping to conclusions, I stop and try to listen, the author is telling us something.
He is telling us what is hinted here and there, her self hatred, her spiral to self destruction, her self punishment.
I don't want to keep repeating it, but I really don't want anyone to miss the point, this is for phase 3, which is filled with desperation and addiction (+ shitty "friend").
I do not condone her actions, I also do not condone stopping at a surface level when the topic is of such significance to understand the character and the overall story.
Phase 1 and 2 I know what made them start, I know she was treated like shit (the pimp says it too, without even considering that she was putting her in that situation), I know what Lacey goal was, I don't know how much fun or her feelings during that period of time, aside from her crying and listening to MC cuck song while repeating she was doing it for him.
I think there is more to tell there, if the author didn't just drop the rave and the toothbrush randomly for shock value.
This is what grinds my gears with your takes about Mia. Not that you consider her a horrible person/friend (more like enemy). 100% with you on that. But I just can't see how in any reliability comparison between her and Lacey, anyone could think Lacey is not the one losing that. There is not a single other character in the game so far, who has lied, deceived, omitted truth more than Lacey. You've played this a shitload, you know that's undeniable. So just by that fact alone, in any contradicting subject between her and literally any other character in the game, it doesn't make sense to ever take her side as factual without proof. Especially if the other person at least provides some evidence (even if you think it's flimsy), while Lacey is just "trust me bro, it's not like that". Trust me bro doesn't cut it.
If MC did that at the start of the game, he would still be living with an imaginary version of a wife that never existed and would still be wondering why the hell she fucks like a pornstar. Whatever Mia's motives were, the reason he is not living like an ignorant fool in a fake marriage, is her.
Sure she is the reason the whole thing blew up, Lacey was not right in hiding things and I find it disgusting when she says that she would do it again because she wants to be with MC or she will be dead or whatever.
This puts us again on the "Lacey in survival mode" track which means her survival is more important than MC, some might agree, some won't, I don't, sorry.
The pimp intentions were to harm and gain pleasure in doing so, then she has her own "omg now I love you" moment and still tries to do as much damage as possible, for 2 acts.
But we already agree that she is a shit human being, now, considering her influence over Lacey, she could have worked with her or even stopped the marriage beforehand.
The problem I have with the whole "the pimp more truthful than the vamp" is that it lacks what I keep on droning about since the beginning: understanding.
Currently, no one understands Lacey, not even me with all my focus on the reading, there are always missing pieces or pieces that do not fit perfectly.
Sure that stems from her not being completely open and it also stems from her lying to herself, take for example the famous I KNEW dialogue that contradicts what she said before about not realizing or not thinking that Mc would be hurt:
The funny thing about this whole statement is that is true and it is not at the same time, at that specific moment she did it thinking it would bring her closer to her goal or even without thinking too much, to realize later, upon self reflection that her actions were obviously hurtful.
But for the pimp it is worse, she was close, she could have asked, she could have gained insight, but blinded by her own impiety (cruelty?) and selfishness she didn't.
So every time she speaks or tries to explain something to us, she is giving an outside look that has literally 0 value in understanding what is going on with Lacey, Z-E-R-O.
She can show us a picture and the only thing that it proves is that Lacey did that specific action, nothing else.
This is what makes her a monster by the way, not only her actions, but the fact that she took them while not understanding a lick of what was going through in front of her.
She doesn't even understand Lacey's "other side" as far as we know, yet she is the only one that could have witnessed it.
So the jist of this whole story is: no one cares about MC and no one understands Lacey.
Lacey being misunderstood (and is very hard to understand) is one of the main plot points, how could she do all of that when she supposedly care for MC? how could she do it if it was hurting her?
These are questions that the story tried to give us hints about but is never clear cut.
To end, there is a big difference between someone doing drugs because they are bored and someone that does the same because they are broken.
They might look the same from the outside, they might even laugh at the same jokes, but what is going on inside them is totally different.
This is why the pimp is completely unreliable, and while Lacey could only be speaking in half truths, that half is already more valuable than the "truth" coming from the pimp.