You can't blame Deborah, Maria is not a child. She knows right from wrong
- Thread starter Miron HFG
- Start date
Maria only do what she says. If you choose the gentlest route you will see that she tries to be kind only to be scolded by Deborah. She is the bad influence that made Maria's mind. Maria is the weakest piece in this game. The real powers are the minister, the mayor, the police officer and Deborah is the money and Maria her pawn.
Again Maria is not a child. She knows right from wrong, Alright let me explain 'Hear Me Out'
What I'm trying to say is that. Maria went a decent enough age without knowing any of this, she went a good age without knowing Deborah, even if you want to make the case that she's weak minded which I agree with it's still not enough to Justify her.
She wasn't born in any violence at all, she lived a decent enough life to know what good and evil is, Weak minded or not.
Compare to someone who was born in the middle of Violence and doesn't know what the hell Good is a person like that is more understandable why they are so Violent and demonic, considering the fact they Born in the depts of it from day 1 so it's going to be Engraved in your head from a baby, but there's a difference when you know and do not know, weak minded or not.
(But anyways the way she was written towards the Plot is very understanding I Guess, anything can be written if you think about it OfCourse cause that's the main Point of the Story)
But from a 'Logical' point of view she knows good from evil.
Peer Pressure SUCKS I'll give her that though
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Most people know what is right and wrong but are easily influenced. It happens all the time on politics for instance and also among peers when the subject is dating. In the case of Maria, Deborah is an old roomate from her college days and they had a lesbian relationship that can be developed in the game by players choices. But Deborah is the one who influences Maria all the time. Her presence is in everything. She hires MC and tolerates him because Maria asked. She offered a position of power that Maria accepted. She demanded Maria fires her husband. She sends videos and texts about BDSM to Maria so that she slides to corruption gradually. She takes Maria to the clubs, reveals her the plot, suggests and encourages Maria to treat MC harshly. Deborah is the driving force and Maria her pupil all the time. The reason is that Deborah has a love interest for her and jealousy for her husband and destroying their relationship will keep Maria just for her. It sums all the motivations: A lesbian relationship where the dominant part is jealous of her husband and wants to crush him. Add to this that Deborah is into a radical form of BDSM and so MC is put under extremely harsh conditions.
- Mar 26, 2023
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I know right from wrong. Being under Maria's ass is right and anything else is wrong! Everyone should know this! 
Just go back to the very 1st page of this thread where all the download links are. I recommend the Mega link. Then you should be good to go.
- Mar 26, 2023
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Quite hard to do since different endings trigger depending on what you did or chose to do at different parts of the story. It's not like after a certain point you can choose any of the 8 endings lol.
Go back a few posts and all the endings and how to get them have been posted if you don't mind spoilers.
- Sep 21, 2023
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Replayed this game many times and it's always so amazing, really great job.
Looking forward to other ongoing projects from developer, when you can see such a good completed finished product.
Maria progression over time is so well done!
Looking forward to other ongoing projects from developer, when you can see such a good completed finished product.
Maria progression over time is so well done!
- Sep 21, 2023
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It all depends on what you enjoy i guess.
I exactly love this game so much due to so much humiliation and BDSM and going deeper and deeper with it.
I dislike when games are stale and just repeat same things over and over again. I want progression of characters and humiliation over time.
- Apr 15, 2020
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Might be too late to the party, but can anyone share a save before the "good" Maria ending? I think I played her as a sadist from the get-go and her "good" ending, as well as the Helga and brothel whore ones (because I loved Megan's character so I was her total bitch back at the office) are the only ones I didn't find. I am a bit... rattled from just seeing Maria's bad ending and several of the things that happened along the way, so I'd rather not replay the whole game to also see her good ending and would be grateful for a save file. (even with continuous skipping that'll probably take a long time) I've got nothing but compliments for MironY's dedication, consistency and entrancing writing, even though this amazing game can feel emotionally taxing at times, but I'd rather save my comments for when I see all the endings, as I have already have quite a few remarks.
Congratulations to MironY for finishing this masterpiece and best of luck with Vicious circle AND Renaissance! (which I just tried last night and love all the potential mistresses in - especially looking forward to Megan and Bianca slavery paths
and in general to the hateable MC in that game getting dommed to hell by the Matriarchists ) This game made me not only care for several of the characters, but parts of it literally made me feel bad/one could even say sinful (as in, feeling like I'm deriving pleasure from something that is deeply wrong and that I shouldn't) for enjoying it, and I'm an atheist who believes in moral relativism! This tells you how good and immersive the character development and especially the psychological exploration of themes like slavery, despair, fear and dehumanisation is in this game, but I'm getting ahead of myself - if anyone can post a save for the "good" Maria ending, I'll leave some more detailed impressions after I also see that ending! It can even be around the time of the slave school as I don't mind replaying a couple days - I just hope I could avoid replaying the whole game to see it.Can you reveal what types of scenes happen in the “brothel whore” ending, maybe in spoiler tags? I’m a little curious but like you I’d rather not replay the entire game if it’s something I’m not interested in. Thanks!Might be too late to the party, but can anyone share a save before the "good" Maria ending? I think I played her as a sadist from the get-go and her "good" ending, as well as the Helga and brothel whore ones (because I loved Megan's character so I was her total bitch back at the office) are the only ones I didn't find. I am a bit... rattled from just seeing Maria's bad ending and several of the things that happened along the way, so I'd rather not replay the whole game to also see her good ending and would be grateful for a save file. (even with continuous skipping that'll probably take a long time) I've got nothing but compliments for MironY's dedication, consistency and entrancing writing, even though this amazing game can feel emotionally taxing at times, but I'd rather save my comments for when I see all the endings, as I have already have quite a few remarks.
Congratulations to MironY for finishing this masterpiece and best of luck with Vicious circle AND Renaissance! (which I just tried last night and love all the potential mistresses in - especially looking forward to Megan and Bianca slavery paths
- Apr 15, 2020
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As I said, that's one of the three endings that I didn't play. I played all 8 endings except:
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So, I would help you out with that and either share a save or make a big spoiler post if I knew what scenes are on that path, but it's one of the ones I also didn't play, so I don't, and it would require me to go all the way back
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Meanwhile I still hope someone can share a save for the Maria good ending, and I wish you a nice evening!
- Mar 13, 2020
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It's interesting to see how people end up invested in the characters in this game, and how you see discussions going on about whether Maria is 'truly' evil or 'influenced by Deborah' or something. It is a tribute to MironY and the obvious love he put into this game -- when something is a work of love, it shows.
FWIW, here are my $.02.
One of the reviewers in the sequel game The Renaissance mentioned a 'Dostoievskian inevitability' to the story -- you can feel what is being set up (and the description of the game in the beginning of this thread, including the developer's note, also make everything crystal clear). I tend to agree: this is a game based on the inevitability of the result (now I think if I replay it I will call MC 'Raskolnikov'). If you're in just for the femdom scenes, it has lots of them -- and some players just want to get to them, which is why they ask for saves, etc. I say knock yourself out: MironY's art is great, the models are hot as hell (I'll say Helga is not exactly my type, but even in her case I can see the drawing was very well done), and the game is full, really full of extraordinarily hot scenes.
But MironY also makes the story just interesting enough to get us invested. So we end up discussing things (I enjoy the 'slowly changing world' theme, for instance, and have myself the intention of someday tackling it in what I hope will be a more realistic perspective... I almost did last year, but things didn't go my way). Maria comes up frequently, because we see her going from good girl with a good life (rich dad, loving husband who supports her, etc.) to a really naughty girl bent on world domination even in her 'good' ending.
It would be OK, I think, if Maria were from the beginning portrayed as someone who had a 'dark passenger' (to use Dexter Morgan's metaphor from the show 'Dexter') who she slowly becomes more and more aware of. Some scenes hint at that (when she has that guy who harassed her killed and has the mirror scene with MC, that's what's trying to be conveyed) -- but it is not something organic in her. She is painted as someone who has a good side that basically simply came tumbling down when she saw Deborah being mean to her husband at the office -- she enjoyed seeing him being disciplined, and, from then on, her development is somewhat 'hidden': she clearly accepts herself as a bitch already when he tries to make up with her by making diner and being all lovey-dovey, but she's already ready for that ('how long did it take him to come up with all that?' she says, as if she had some reason to be angry at him; and as she dictates the conditions for their further relationship, we're struck by the sense that she suddenly became different.
That's where I feel more work is necessary (perhaps in future projects, with similar characters?). It's OK for Maria to have a real bitch inside of herself waiting to come out, but usually that's not how it plays out for someone who had the kind of behavior Maria had up to this point. If you talk to sadists in real life (a man I once talked to for an entire afternoon comes to mind), that's not what goes on in their minds.
As a result, Maria ends up feeling like one of those 1D women that exist in the story only to please the reader's expectations -- a stereotype (the Bitchy Mistress), kind of like the Damsel in Distress or the Mary Sue. But since MironY's writing talent is enough to actually get you interested in the characters, you kinda feel ... frustrated. Surely it can't be so easy for Maria to shed her former way of thinking and feeling and replace it with a new one? She's not that robotic, is she? Many scenes hint at a gradual change -- the party scene where a male character tells her 'we'd be the bad guys in most normal stories' comes to mind -- but they aren't really elaborated on. They feel like the author saying, 'yeah, something happens here in her mind, but I'm not going to tell you what.'
The few occasions in which we hear Maria's inner dialogue, it's all kind of solved already. She may not know yet how far she will go, but she has clearly decided from the get go that this is her path. And in a story that had gone to such lengths to convince us that Maria was a real person, not just a canvas for us to project 'Bitchy Domme' onto... that feels undeserved.
That's where you get all the 'it was all Deborah's influence!' people. Yes, Maria had doubts and internal conflicts and whatnot, but Deborah just took care of that. But how? Deborah actually treats Maria with a lot of respect and does not force her in any way -- she even stops her sexual advances if Maria doesn't react well to them, despite their implied previous lesbian relationship. So other than saying "Maria, yield to the Dark Side!"... what exactly did Deborah do to assuage any internal conflicts Maria might have had? I can't think of anything. That's not how 'dark mentors' work... (think of Arcane's Silco influencing Powder to become Jinx, and think of all else that was necessary for the change besides Silco's influence).
So in the end... Maria's character is, to some extent, 'destroyed.' Why did she decide to embrace the dark side? Was it unavoidable? Was there even an argument? These questions are left unanswered. Maria changes because she does, Deborah flips a switch in her and it just happens, and the attempts and grounding this in steps -- making it go slowly -- seem to be more about making MC gradually accept the changes than about showing any real evolution in Maria's disposition after the switch was flipped. Maria, who could have given us an interesting vision of a character going bad... just turns bad because the plot dictates that she has to.
So in the end I think (just my opinion here) similar future endeavors, by MironY or anyone else, should give enough attention to the internal dialogue, to the internal conflicts of characters like Maria. It's OK to simply write about characters who, like Deborah, are Dr. Evil from day 1; but if you start out with something else, then it is a good idea to show how it changed, and why. If this nice character becomes aware of some naughty, maybe very naughty, tendencies in herself, what does she do about it, and why?... It enhances the experience. (One example of this being played well is, I think, MrSilverLust's Nothing Is Forever.)
FWIW, here are my $.02.
One of the reviewers in the sequel game The Renaissance mentioned a 'Dostoievskian inevitability' to the story -- you can feel what is being set up (and the description of the game in the beginning of this thread, including the developer's note, also make everything crystal clear). I tend to agree: this is a game based on the inevitability of the result (now I think if I replay it I will call MC 'Raskolnikov'
). If you're in just for the femdom scenes, it has lots of them -- and some players just want to get to them, which is why they ask for saves, etc. I say knock yourself out: MironY's art is great, the models are hot as hell (I'll say Helga is not exactly my type, but even in her case I can see the drawing was very well done), and the game is full, really full of extraordinarily hot scenes.But MironY also makes the story just interesting enough to get us invested. So we end up discussing things (I enjoy the 'slowly changing world' theme, for instance, and have myself the intention of someday tackling it in what I hope will be a more realistic perspective... I almost did last year, but things didn't go my way). Maria comes up frequently, because we see her going from good girl with a good life (rich dad, loving husband who supports her, etc.) to a really naughty girl bent on world domination even in her 'good' ending.
It would be OK, I think, if Maria were from the beginning portrayed as someone who had a 'dark passenger' (to use Dexter Morgan's metaphor from the show 'Dexter') who she slowly becomes more and more aware of. Some scenes hint at that (when she has that guy who harassed her killed and has the mirror scene with MC, that's what's trying to be conveyed) -- but it is not something organic in her. She is painted as someone who has a good side that basically simply came tumbling down when she saw Deborah being mean to her husband at the office -- she enjoyed seeing him being disciplined, and, from then on, her development is somewhat 'hidden': she clearly accepts herself as a bitch already when he tries to make up with her by making diner and being all lovey-dovey, but she's already ready for that ('how long did it take him to come up with all that?' she says, as if she had some reason to be angry at him; and as she dictates the conditions for their further relationship, we're struck by the sense that she suddenly became different.
That's where I feel more work is necessary (perhaps in future projects, with similar characters?). It's OK for Maria to have a real bitch inside of herself waiting to come out, but usually that's not how it plays out for someone who had the kind of behavior Maria had up to this point. If you talk to sadists in real life (a man I once talked to for an entire afternoon comes to mind), that's not what goes on in their minds.
As a result, Maria ends up feeling like one of those 1D women that exist in the story only to please the reader's expectations -- a stereotype (the Bitchy Mistress), kind of like the Damsel in Distress or the Mary Sue. But since MironY's writing talent is enough to actually get you interested in the characters, you kinda feel ... frustrated. Surely it can't be so easy for Maria to shed her former way of thinking and feeling and replace it with a new one? She's not that robotic, is she? Many scenes hint at a gradual change -- the party scene where a male character tells her 'we'd be the bad guys in most normal stories' comes to mind -- but they aren't really elaborated on. They feel like the author saying, 'yeah, something happens here in her mind, but I'm not going to tell you what.'
The few occasions in which we hear Maria's inner dialogue, it's all kind of solved already. She may not know yet how far she will go, but she has clearly decided from the get go that this is her path. And in a story that had gone to such lengths to convince us that Maria was a real person, not just a canvas for us to project 'Bitchy Domme' onto... that feels undeserved.
That's where you get all the 'it was all Deborah's influence!' people. Yes, Maria had doubts and internal conflicts and whatnot, but Deborah just took care of that. But how? Deborah actually treats Maria with a lot of respect and does not force her in any way -- she even stops her sexual advances if Maria doesn't react well to them, despite their implied previous lesbian relationship. So other than saying "Maria, yield to the Dark Side!"... what exactly did Deborah do to assuage any internal conflicts Maria might have had? I can't think of anything. That's not how 'dark mentors' work... (think of Arcane's Silco influencing Powder to become Jinx, and think of all else that was necessary for the change besides Silco's influence).
So in the end... Maria's character is, to some extent, 'destroyed.' Why did she decide to embrace the dark side? Was it unavoidable? Was there even an argument? These questions are left unanswered. Maria changes because she does, Deborah flips a switch in her and it just happens, and the attempts and grounding this in steps -- making it go slowly -- seem to be more about making MC gradually accept the changes than about showing any real evolution in Maria's disposition after the switch was flipped. Maria, who could have given us an interesting vision of a character going bad... just turns bad because the plot dictates that she has to.
So in the end I think (just my opinion here) similar future endeavors, by MironY or anyone else, should give enough attention to the internal dialogue, to the internal conflicts of characters like Maria. It's OK to simply write about characters who, like Deborah, are Dr. Evil from day 1; but if you start out with something else, then it is a good idea to show how it changed, and why. If this nice character becomes aware of some naughty, maybe very naughty, tendencies in herself, what does she do about it, and why?... It enhances the experience. (One example of this being played well is, I think, MrSilverLust's Nothing Is Forever.)
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Part of the problem is we'd like to think that everyone is introspective, self aware and capable of objective rational analysis of their own actions. The Stanford prison experiment, brain scans of decision making and far too many real life examples clearly shows this not to be the case. We shouldn't expect that Maria has a road to Damascus moment, but rather that she's simply responding in the present to changing circumstances. Those being, the MC being a pathetic weak willed simp that not only is a financial failure but also someone that no one actually respects (he is quite literally the antithesis of Mary Sue) ... couple that with the change in the power dynamic once Maria not only becomes the breadwinner but is also put into a position of power over the MC and there you have it. That's also not adding in the mums behaviour, which gives a clear insight into the childhood and moral upbringing of Maria, and then there's Deborah ... both of which are fully fledged evil demons whispering in Maria's ears. We'd all like to think that people are not only complex but also fully cognisant of their own complexity but the truth of the matter is that most people are simply unknowing 1d's that make up post hoc rationalisations for actions they had little to no control over. The lies we tell ourselves ... are just as often the things we keep quiet about.
Personally my problems with this game are more to do with the MC's inability to just check out of the relationship early on ... yes it goes counter to the whole point of the game, but it would have been nice to know that it was possible to just say fuck it and move on with his friend before it became impossible to do so, it would have provided a sense of MC's autonomy rather than being a mere puppet. Likewise, the fact that the MC couldn't get out of going into debt was absurd, but not quite as absurd as his later interaction with the police. Honestly I'm not even sure that the MC needed to meet and experience the 'organisation' that soon, aside from providing scenes for players to whack off to ... having corrupted Maria first and then her being made aware of it, before she then placed the MC into their 'care' would have in some ways made for a far better game trajectory. Honestly I think that there were many missed opportunities where natural progressions of the storyline were ignored. But I suspect that the evolution of the scenes had far more to do with keeping the subscribers happy than anything else, and after all where would we be without happy subscribers financing this talent.
Personally my problems with this game are more to do with the MC's inability to just check out of the relationship early on ... yes it goes counter to the whole point of the game, but it would have been nice to know that it was possible to just say fuck it and move on with his friend before it became impossible to do so, it would have provided a sense of MC's autonomy rather than being a mere puppet. Likewise, the fact that the MC couldn't get out of going into debt was absurd, but not quite as absurd as his later interaction with the police. Honestly I'm not even sure that the MC needed to meet and experience the 'organisation' that soon, aside from providing scenes for players to whack off to ... having corrupted Maria first and then her being made aware of it, before she then placed the MC into their 'care' would have in some ways made for a far better game trajectory. Honestly I think that there were many missed opportunities where natural progressions of the storyline were ignored. But I suspect that the evolution of the scenes had far more to do with keeping the subscribers happy than anything else, and after all where would we be without happy subscribers financing this talent.
- Apr 15, 2020
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Your perspectives are always appreciated, old friend! And speaking of "The Renaissance", I actually made recently a post, not a review, talking a bit about the inevitabily of the story. (although more as a secondary point, as the main point was why I believe the MC of the Renaissance is better suited than the MC of Moving down for both telling the story of that game, and also for galvanizing us as subs to expect, look forward to and enjoy his inevitable downfall) I'm actually curious to hear your thoughts about that if you have the time, so here's a link:It's interesting to see how people end up invested in the characters in this game, and how you see discussions going on about whether Maria is 'truly' evil or 'influenced by Deborah' or something. It is a tribute to MironY and the obvious love he put into this game -- when something is a work of love, it shows.
FWIW, here are my $.02.
One of the reviewers in the sequel game The Renaissance mentioned a 'Dostoievskian inevitability' to the story -- you can feel what is being set up (and the description of the game in the beginning of this thread, including the developer's note, also make everything crystal clear). I tend to agree: this is a game based on the inevitability of the result (now I think if I replay it I will call MC 'Raskolnikov'
Same with me working on that fantasy femdom VN if you remember. I still have the script and coding I have written thus far for it, made some progress since I told you about it and still hope to realease it one day, but stuff happened in my personal life that put the project on complete hiatus for more than a year now unfortunately. Anyway, I just wanted to say that if you want any feedback on any budding project you're working on I'm more than happy to help and give some honest opinions!
(as a self-identifying decent writer and femdom enjoyer) Anyway, now finally back to Moving Down!We actually agree to a large extent on this, and I think you have exposed a bit one of MironY's main writing flaws in Moving down that especially comes out due to his writing talent and qualities in other departments, mainly Maria's somewhat unrealistic personality inconsistencies and the story somewhat objectifying her as a character that only exists to please the reader's expectations. I would also say that while the gradual evolution of the relationship is very well-written by MironY and one of the best aspects of his writing is building atmosphere and exploring the emotional turmoil and slowly-breaking mental state of the protagonist with his various thought monologues as Maria (and arguably indirectly Deborah) keep pushing him further and further, Maria's character itself evolves in an irrational direction from the way it was originally set up, which makes it clear the author had a concept in mind for her, but didn't think from Marya's perspective and decided to keep her motivations hidden, at least in some parts of the story.
Others before me in the earlier arguments on this thread who were complaining that the game is too hardcore femdom for them pointed out that there is no way realistically for someone who lived together with you for over a year, was married to you and seemed to express genuine love for their partner (as Maria did towards MC in the first chapters of the game), to then have no feelings whatsoever towards the same partner and even see them as fully replaceable as a self-pleasing sex slave, and I do somewhat agree with them, (eg Maria could've evolved into being disappointed more and more in MC and seeing him as below her and with more disgust, or she could've gone in a direction of strongly/passionately hating MC, but she still would've realistically had to harbour some sort of strong feelings towards him, even if they were mostly negative feelings, as it's humanly impossible, in this short of a timespan especially, to go from loving someone to 100% seeing them as a disposable object you have no feelings for, even if you don't have much of a moral compass and are ok with the practice of slavery and all the stuff Deborah, Alex and the club introduced Maria to...) but I think the bigger issue with Maria's character than even her unlikely transformation is the inconsistency in how her character evolves and her motivations as a person not being considered only for the plot to evolve in a pre-planned direction.
Consider for a moment the Lisa escapee ending -
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All of this is not to criticize MironY as a writer - on the contrary, I loved Movind Down as an experience and I think he is a massively talented writer, but that the writing for Maria's character especially didn't live up to how good the rest of his writing is! Partly this is why I am most excited for the Renaissance now (even more than Vicious Circle), cause that game doesn't start with MC being in a relationship with a loving partner at all, and therefore none of the amazing potential mistresses in it (like Megan, Bianca or Stacy, but I especially like Megan and Bianca) start as purely innocent characters that could undergo an unlikely transformation like Maria did. There are other reasons I'm really excited for that game, mostly outlined in that post I linked on its thread, but this also sets up a better prelude and more realistic mistresses than Maria! (who start as less innocent and therefore more capable of doing the many hot and terrible things they are about to do to the protag...
)Again agreed with this, (in a way it feels discordant that Maria has no agency in standing up for herself when Deborah influences her, or doesn't even play out internal conflicts where the "darker side" wins, but then fully asserts herself to MC...) but I would also say that characters that are "doctor evil from day one" can also be made more interesting by exploring their thoughts, motivations and worldview. Comics are quite often immature and somewhat childish writing, as in reality nobody is "doctor evil" - every person, even the most objectively mostruos historical figures you can read up on, objectively thought of themselves as either good, or as people doing horrible/evil things for a good outcome/higher or desirable purpose.
And in general I think that's the way MironY wrote some of the other Gynarchists in his games - people like Alex, Luna or Megan seem to have essentialist views where they look upon all males as an inferior kind of being, not deserving of the same rights as females, and where they genuinely think the society they are trying to build will be better, not just for themselves but objectively better. It's clear some of them still have a sense of morality and extend courtesy and even treat other women nicely (Deborah towards Rita, or pretty much every character towards Maria come to mind), but, just like various people in history who thought, for example, certain races or cultures were subhuman and everything was doable to them, only extend their morality to those they see as equals. (in their case women) Basically I'd say the evil gynarchist characters in his games are still more multi-faceted and better than comic book villains, and I'm excited to see what else MironY will do with them going forward! (I hope for more foot fetish content as well as I can't wait to grovel at Megan or Bianca's feet in The Renaissance...
)Nice to hear from you again, and as always I found your recent posts on this thread most enlightening and thought-stimulating! (part of the reason why I rambled for so long
) Take care!
- Mar 13, 2020
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It's true that we aren't always introspective -- you mention good examples of supporting arguments. But we don't need this introspection to realize things have changed dramatically. If I never drink alcohol, and then suddenly I spend a day doing exactly that to the point that I wake up with a hangover the next day... then I will notice that "something changed", regardless of my lack of self-introspection. Maria certainly noticed people disrespecting her husband; but considering how much she liked him when they met, this should have made her angry at these people, not at him. Now, to its credit, the game does try to introduce the dynamic of her telling him to stand up for himself and him failing to do so to her satisfaction; but if this had been all, the expectation would be that there would be some serious fights between them, and that Maria would (in her internal monologue) start using angry words to refer to him. All we got here was her reaction to the gym thing... This should have become more intense as Maria becomes the breadwinner: she should be going through phases of doubts, uncertainty, and slowly changing her feelings. These things don't happen in the game: Maria never gets (really) angry at the people who demean her husband, nor does she start fighting with him, or wondering about him. It's as if she never really felt anything for him at all, which would go against the entire first part, leading up to their picnic by the sea... That's why her actions seem so puzzling to him -- and to me as well. I'm still left with the impression that the day she saw Deborah humiliate MC, some kind of switch flipped, and voilà -- we had Bitchy Maria fully ready to take on the task of enslaving him, only not sure about how far she could take it or what the steps would be, but certainly ready to start the journey.
The mother's influence is certainly a factor, but, again, it is not developed. In the scene in which MC first hits Helga, we're even shown that Maria actually disagrees with her mom and doesn't like her behavior (as daughters often do with their mothers). She looks like she's more on her father's side (again, a frequent phenomenon with daughters), to the point that she cried because of him -- but never because of her mother. So... how exactly did Helga's influence work?
All we're offered is the spa scene in which Maria decides to take control because MC is obviously not going to do anything -- and at that point she already completely disregards any input from him. We're again left with the impression that Maria either never liked him -- and that the entire first part was just acting, a lie -- or then that her "bitch switch" suddenly flipped, and she stopped caring about his feelings or taking any input from him.
If you will, this is like those stories in which a girl falls in love with MC just because she is "supposed to" -- he saved her life; or she's the princess who was always meant to marry him; etc. Maria suddenly discovers an interest in humiliating MC and taking it as far as possible because... ? the plot needs her to?
What you say here is also true to some extent, but a little less surprising. The MC going into debt can make sense if you see it as him trying to project masculinity by 'having more money' (which is what the game tries to do), but it does seem his attempt is half-hearted at best; I don't get the feeling it is important enough to him, he never does anything really 'masculine' or 'macho' with that. He just knows he borrowed money, but this has no effect on anyone because nobody ever sees that money... and he himself doesn't use it for anything much. Still... one could still accept it as the MC thinking, as a man I should have money, so let's stupidly borrow money I'll never be able to pay back so I can tell myself that I do?
I tend to agree with respect to the organization -- though you could still defend it as a way of scaring the MC about how things could get reeeaaally bad and how lucky he is that he has someone like Maria in his life (i.e., making him love her more, feel more dependent on her, so as to increase the main when she turns on him).
You may be right that some (many?) decisions may be just the result of wanting to keep subscribers happy -- which is why the whole 'patreon' model of content creation always seemed at best iffy to me. I feel that it stifles true creativity; I think 'writing by committee' is a recipe for disaster. But I've never tried it myself, and I'll defer to anyone who actually did and has more direct experience.
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Thanks, old friend!
Considering our shared love for long, rambling posts, I appreciate your answer very much. As for "The Renaissance", I have to say I haven't played it yet (I was kind of waiting for it to become bigger so the story would be more fleshed out before digging into it). Would you recommend it at this stage -- or is it the kind of piece that just leaves you frustrated because you want to know what happens next?...)That might be a good idea; I had written some parts of it (not much, but still) in full, and others were in the form of notes and suggestions for further developments. We may talk about that in a DM if you're willing to listen... But as in your case, RL fell on me like a ton of bricks (starting after Trump's election, and especially in the last year or so), so everything remains pretty much were it was the last time I talked about it. I even had found someone who was interested in helping me with pictures (I really suck at drawing, on paper or with a computer...)... and that is no longer the case. And now it doesn't look like I'll be able to return to it any time soon ... Still, I'm personally very interested in these "world-slowly-changing" kind of stories because I think, in a sense, they mirror the evolution inside us kinksters from when we first become aware that we're not exactly in the sexual mainstream through our evolution and doubts to our current final stages... but at the social level. Also, I've always had a passion for utopias and utopian fiction (one way to try social ideas as a kind of thought experiment), but I was sad that most works said more about the end stage, when the utopia was already established, than about how easy or hard it was for our world to change into it. I guess in the end it is my own personal curiosity about how social change, especially deep, radical social change, is possible at all, and whether it really improves anything or just dresses old evils in new clothes.Same with me working on that fantasy femdom VN if you remember. I still have the script and coding I have written thus far for it, made some progress since I told you about it and still hope to realease it one day, but stuff happened in my personal life that put the project on complete hiatus for more than a year now unfortunately. Anyway, I just wanted to say that if you want any feedback on any budding project you're working on I'm more than happy to help and give some honest opinions!
It suddenly occurs to me that my reaction to Maria the character may be seen as some kind of smug criticism of MironY's talent. I will say, he is a good writer of dialogues, he is great at creating interesting settings and ambiances, and his love for what he does is evident in every word! Now, I think, for instance, that the MC character is well-written, perhaps because he is deep down one of us, a subbie who is not at first aware of that and who hides his desires between the simple façade of vanilla romance. MironY captures him quite well, and I find it easy to both empathize and understand MC as a person, despite finding some of his decisions stupid (borrowing that money, for instance). I think MironY does great when showing how MC never actually gets angry at Maria for turning into a bitch, and how he half-accepts that he himself is at least partially to blame for it ('if only you had stood up for yourself and been better at selling contracts!...'): it's a mixture of not thinking much of himself and his own talents, plus his own hidden submissiveness, plus his love for Maria. That is very well done, with many good examples of him behaving exactly as he should, given this personality--nothing to complain about there.
Maria, I think, has the problems I mentioned. I think MironY had, as you say, a concept of her. That happens. Umberto Eco said, about The Name of the Rose, that it all started from him suddenly want to have a monk commit murder in the setting of an old, 15th-century abbey. Vince Gilligan said his Walter White (from Breaking Bad) came from him wanting to see 'Mr. Chips slowly turn into Scarface.' In this way, I think MironY wanted to see the transformation of a sweet wife into a Bitchy Femsupremacist Mistress. But where, say, Gilligan chronicled the changes in Walter White -- who already started out with the potential to 'break bad', given that he took the path of crystal meth despite there being other possibilities for solving his financial problems -- as they should be: with him believing most of the way through that he was a hero, that he was doing it 'for his family', and with him slowly indulging in bigger and bigger crimes until he himself had to admit he was being selfish, that it was all About Him, not his family. You can believe in everything he goes trough. If, OTOH, Walter White had been done the way Maria was, he would have become quickly interested in being the big king of crystal meth and dropping (at least in his internal monologue) the pretense of caring about his family by the end of Season 1, with his "I am the danger!" and "I am the one who knocks!" tirades delivered right there.
I agree. I don't find it impossible for genuine love and care to slowly fade and be replaced by its opposite, but it would have to include a lot of inner struggle (self-delusion, self-deceit, etc.). Maria fails because she doesn't go through that -- she is a bit 'stunned' by Deborah's propositions, by Alex and Megan and the others, but she never even has to lie to herself or anything: she is instinctively but consciously in for the ride from the beginning, and her hesitation never seems to have much to do with any moral considerations or any vision of herself as 'basically good' or anything; she's more in doubt about 'how others would see it' or 'how far she can go' than about that. As you say, it's as if Maria simply had to fit in a pre-existing plot than if she actually were a person confronted for the first time with something she didn't even know existed.
It's just not how people abandon previous moral frameworks. If it were that easy, that stress- and anxiety-free, Maria would probably have done it as a teenager already. Either her feelings for MC were never sincere (so she could easily shake them off -- but in this case, why even marry him? Pretty as she is, I'm sure there were other boys who were good for her before MC came along) or then she was just a 'fantasy girl' for readers to project their beloved mistresses onto.
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Hmm... That makes me curious. Maybe I shouldn't wait for more of the project to become ready... So these 'innocent' characters already start out less innocent that Maria was here?(like Megan, Bianca or Stacy, but I especially like Megan and Bianca) start as purely innocent characters that could undergo an unlikely transformation like Maria did.
There are other reasons I'm really excited for that game, mostly outlined in that post I linked on its thread, but this also sets up a better prelude and more realistic mistresses than Maria! (who start as less innocent and therefore more capable of doing the many hot and terrible things they are about to do to the protag...
Exactly! That's why I like to compare Maria to Gilligan's Walter White. Gilligan does a wonderful job of showing, in a believable way, how Walter manages to deceive himself into not seeing the darkness in himself -- he's doing it for his family, others are way worse than him, his 'blue meth' is better than anyone else because the others just don't care about chemistry the way he does! -- and chronicles in an almost cruel way the slow steps whereby Walter finally has to admit that he did it all... for himself. He did change ('chemistry is the science of change'), but he had a 'dark passenger' already: his pride. He thought his friend had cheated him; so now, even though he could solve his family's financial problems by working with them, he chooses not to, because... because he feels they were unfair to him, and he doesn't want to accept charity! Hmpf! Maria, on the other hand... doesn't seem to have a real motivation for what she does. MironY tries to make her doubt, I can see that he thought about this problem -- but the result feels not compelling, unearned.
I agree with respect to the 'classical' comic villains of the 50's to 70's, but I'd add they've become more complicated figures since then (beginning, I think, with Dr. Doom, and going on to more modern conceptualizations of characters like Two-Face and the Joker). But I do get your point, and I agree. Still, in Maria's case... she never professed any such belief, or even interest in it. And yet... and yet...Basically I'd say the evil gynarchist characters in his games are still more multi-faceted and better than comic book villains, and I'm excited to see what else MironY will do with them going forward! (I hope for more foot fetish content as well as I can't wait to grovel at Megan or Bianca's feet in The Renaissance...
And of course we all love to grovel! By all means, let them walk all over MC and use him for their devious scientific experiments and make his tongue longer so he can reach deeper into their asses! With the added bonus that he'll talk like a retard and they can tease him about that.
Take care, friend, and stay kinky!
I think my issue with this game is that it's not really a game as much as it's a visual novel telling a story with only a few rare choices interspersed within the text and pictures. I like the visuals and the scenes, they're very well done, but the reader is just along for the ride with very little input or choice. There's nothing wrong with that, in and of itself, but it's not actually a "game," is it?
I like femdom stories overall, so I have no issue with it on that basis, but here, I kept wondering, when are we going to get to the actual "game"?
I agree with your point about the MC's inability to check out of the relationship. But there were other things about the MC which made it difficult to identify with him or sympathize with him at all. We start off with a guy who is physically out of shape and an office slacker, barely putting in any effort at all, even to the point of getting multiple reprimands over his poor performance. He's apparently living beyond his means to support a stay-at-home wife, who came from a wealthy family, while he was just a poor schlep trying to get by in life. He gets a loan - not because he actually needs the money, but because he's so insecure about his wife's family wealth that he wants to impress her and come off like he's Mr. Moneybags, even though she knows already he's not that.
A lot of femdom games don't put all that much effort into a backstory. Oftentimes, the game just starts off with the MC in some bizarre, absurd situation that makes absolutely no sense in the real world - but it doesn't matter. Once the parameters are set, the suspension of disbelief sets in.
- Mar 13, 2020
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I hear a lot this 'this-isn't-a-game-it's-a-VN' viewpoint, and I end up siding with Wittgenstein on this issue: a game is whatever gives you the feeling of fun that you have when playing a game (yes, a self-referential definition, how neat!). Maybe traditional detective stories, in book format, are a game (more specifically a puzzle: who's the culprit?) -- wasn't that part of the frame for Umineko no Naku Koro Ni (the most fantastic game I've ever played, highly recommended)? But if they don't give you this feeling, then for you they aren't games, period. If you feel Moving Down is a VN and not a game because you don't react to it like a game, then to you it is not a game, period. It's not a question of getting the right answer (Is this iron? -- check atomic number: yes, it's 26, therefore it IS iron!), but of what definition works for you.
Ah, but see, a character isn't a well-written character simply because it makes us sympathize with him -- there are lots of good, well-written characters that annoy and irritate me because I just don't like the kind of people they are, but the fact that they do annoy and irritate me is good if that's what the author wanted: it means the author was successful. (Tony Soprano is an excellent example: I applaud him as a character, but boy does he annoy me!) In your case, your reaction to MC may be exactly what MironY wanted -- in which case, MC is a well-crafted character. Crafted to be disliked, that is.
Personally, I have more sympathy for him. I think he IS trying -- I don't really see him slacking in the beginning, he keeps calling clients (and he even makes the cut, albeit barely, that Deborah sets for him)... it's not like he spent his days playing games on the company computer instead. It's more that, again, MironY created a world in which his downfall is inevitable. No matter what he does, being a normal average guy without great ambition and not a superhero, he is Going Down.
He does get the loan (quite stupidly indeed), and it is because of his insecurities... but what did he ever do with the money? Just pay the bills? So no bragging, no "I'm being quite successful at work honey!" to Maria to try to create the image of himself he wants others to see? So I think he's confused here -- he takes the loan, but he doesn't really care about it; he forgets it, to the point that he ends up not realizing he missed the deadline -- which he could have made; he could have paid it all back if he had been more attentive. Sooo... was it really that important to him? I dunno.
Him trying to support his wife, and being there for her when she decides to take Deborah's job offer, I find sweet. It shows that it's not just him 'trying to take care of money problems,' but actually liking and supporting her as a person -- which makes her betrayal hurt all the more. The intention is obviously to show that he, despite Maria's later suggestions to him, never really did anything wrong to her, and in fact tried his best. All she could justifiably accuse him of is not having great ambitions (most people don't) and of not providing her with the rich lifestyle she was used to (which is unfair to ask, since her initial decision to stay with him was motivated by love rather than a desire to go up the social ladder -- or else she would have married some rich but weak-willed daddy's boy who would have showered her with money while doing her bidding).
I agree, and I think this is mostly because sex-related literature in general is still too fixated on creating sexual fantasies and allowing us to live them. Nothing wrong with that -- but stories can do more than just that. I'm still waiting for the Shakespeare of Kink (Shakeskink?
) to come along and take full advantage of the available potential. One obvious path would be to explore the personality of kinksters and relate them to the great aspects of human existence: life, death, love, feelings, purpose, meaning... Maybe someday...
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