So, I finally had the time to play 0.29, and judging from the last few pages, I half-wondered whether I should expect Le Stag to have pulled a Benioff-and-Weiss-in-season-8 and completely lost the plot, and I'm happy to say that this is not the case. However, there are three things that decidedly felt odd/out of character for me (all at the start of chap 55), and I guess this may strongly have impacted the way some felt about this update, especially after reading some of the previous posts, so I'll list them here, in case this helps:
1) Oliver's initial message ("How is my slut?"). Last time Laura and MC spoke about Oliver, Laura told MC that he was actually quite a nice guy and was just playing a role during sex. My initial thought when reading was "Oh. So he's actually *even more* of an asshole than I thought, not less.", ie Oliver's second impression was actually worse than the first. Very minor, but this plays directly into the next, so I listed it anyway.
2) Laura's reaction to Oliver. This makes absolutely zero sense to me, tbh. From the get-go, she acts like she's his pet, and that after they made love exactly once (or was it twice?) before, and what's more, she does it when you're here, knowing that you could have told her to block him (I guess this has been retconned, but still). For a few messages here, I kind of felt as if I was missing the 5 or 6 chapters when Oliver had turned Laura into his personal slut and Laura had gotten MC's approval (on any route other than cuck) to basically put Oliver, a near-complete stranger, above MC (even super-giga-stag MC) in the pecking order, this automatically sending all routes to cuck. And I'm like, "Duh? I know my balanced route got scratched, but still. Does stag MC wear a chastity cage, now?"
Fortunately, this didn't last,but yeah, it felt a bit jarring.
3) The one that bothered a lot of people, ofc. Oliver not being comfortable with you in the room (which is actually kind of proof that he's play-acting, so I don't mind that) and Laura telling you "It's outside the room or not at all" (except you can't even choose not at all) (Can't find the exact quote to get a screenshot as my saves for 55 seem to be corrupted.) Yeah, no, girl. In a wholesome relationship, the least you could do is tone it down "I'm afraid you'll have to stay outside..." with a sad emoji and some added dialogue like "Would that be okay, babe? I'll make it up to you, I promise!" And should MC still insist on being in the room, I guess Edward could call him for an unplanned meeting. Anyway, seems like Le Stag fixed this, and that's a good thing, as it didn't work except for the cuck routes.
Anyway, after that, the chapter is perfectly fine, imho (and 56 is great from start to finish although way too short, gotta love some light femdom on poor Hugo--I mean, if Oliver can cum three times in a row, a younger, pent-up Hugo can probably cum more than once--also, here's hoping Laura can tease both Hugo and some of his friends at the same time, one of these days; more teenagers for her to have fun with, yeaaaaah).
