Zedire

Active Member
Jun 3, 2018
721
1,760
Feels like Alison as a character is intentionally trying to control the relationship and keep it within a certain "phase". It's clear she desperately wants to be with Ian, her reactions to pretty much anything he does make that clear, and even her intial convos with him vs Jeremy were different(Jeremy was as well.... a dick, but she was much more cautious with Ian), but she seems to put on this front in an effort to maintain control of things. Think if their relationship can evolve Ian needs to call her out, and the weekend trip in my opinion would have been perfect:

"Ian expects more but Alison still treats it as business as usual, so he calls her out and lets her know that he genuinely wants to be with "her", which throws her off but obviously gets her thinking "doki-doki"

something similar to Cindy when she started pulling away and putting up walls. Think it could have shifted things into something more wholesome, while also creating this new sense of intrigue with seeing her in her "natural" environment(so more organic, laid back convos, learning about her hobbies, her taking a more genuine interest in Ian). I wonder if Eva is starting to lose interest in the character or has a different plan than expected.
You make a good point. I can see how it may just be Allison wanting to keep on top of the relationship and have some control there, especially because the other major part of her life - her job - is an area where she's feeling a distinct lack of control and so much frustration (mostly in relation to people taking advantage of her and her reliability, so subconsciously she's 'proving herself' by taking control of her sex life).

That would have made sense, had the weekend or sex scene ended with Ian being clearly aware that 'something felt off' with Allison, or if he'd have thought it at any point during that time. But it didn't - they were both happy, and left happy without a single objection with anything that happened.

Ian is meant to be a very perceptive guy - we've seen a lot of it up until now. However, on this weekend he didn't give a stray thought to how uncharacteristically controlling Allison was being - which Ian up until now would have noticed, cos even if it wasn't completely obvious (to us), in the story so far he's caught on to far less obvious things. And on top of that, he certainly didn't give a second thought to anal without lube being a horrible idea, which is so far against his personality up until now it's kinda shocking - that's more in line with something Jeremy might do simply because he was driven by lust, wanted to be satisfied and assumed his partner would like it either way because 'big dick!', it's not in line with a thinker like Ian who's consistently considering his partner's needs and comfort, even at the expense of his own release.

To me that makes it seem more a case of 'dev under time pressure and rushed the scene' (which could well be, chapter 9 seemed like a bit of a rough time for Eva) rather then a carefully considered decision.

In line with what you said, if Ian would have noticed Allison's controlling behavior or felt bothered that something felt off, and either 1) talked to her about it after the act, as you suggested, or 2) finished the weekend and scene with Allison beaming about their little holiday and not even noticing that Ian is clearly troubled or not quite so enthused as she is - foreshadowing a potential change in their relationship for better or worse in the next part (depending on what the player wants to do at that time) - I feel that probably would have done more for the story AND for potentially breaking down barriers and growing closer and more compatible as a couple.

And yeah, that would include Ian telling Allison that it's fine for her to just 'be herself' and that she can relax around him, even if she's defensive when he first says it, but takes it to heart - as you said.

Not that all that can't or won't happen in future anyway, it just feels like a missed opportunity for it not to have happened during that weekend (as you insinuated), and won't be able to explain away the uncharacteristic behavior on Ian's end during the trip (his complete lack of perception).

On a final note, I hope that Ian stops being a passive listener and takes some initiative with Allison's complaining, helping her find ways to take control of her job situation and be more assertive on that front. After all, Ian has been doing much the same thing with his own work (well, for most of his paths), so he may be able to give her some good advice and support with that. If she can't get recognized at her existing job, maybe she needs to find the confidence and realization to start fresh and find a place that truly deserves her.
 

jamdan

Forum Fanatic
Sep 28, 2018
4,290
22,948
Some of the comments on the last couple pages show the main problems with games like this. And by games like this, I mean heavily branching games with multiple LI's. Then you add in 2 MC's and it becomes even more difficult.

Eventually, certain characters just don't have a place or a role to follow. First it was the café owners who if I recall aren't going to be LI's anymore (this was from a few updates ago), and now Stan the Man doesn't have a plan. You can tell EK has been toying around and trying to find him a place, but nothing fits. I think Stan is an interesting character who can be taken many ways, I'll list some below.

And the opposite can also happen, characters have places and roles but there is too much overlap between them. Do we really need 3-4 of Lena's LI's to be photographers? Not to mention the app Lena can post on, where she is basically her own photographer. At a certain point, it becomes redundant.

And the weekend event w/ Allison being underwhelming shows the other issues. With so many LI's and branches, it's practically impossible to cover all your bases. Allison's weekend was short in part because she's just 1 LI in a sea of many, and takes a fairly small portion of this update. So giving ample screen time and more rewarding buildup is really difficult to do. Which also leads to making, in hindsight, obvious errors. Like not giving Ian the option to back out of anal when Alison didn't have lube. And this issue could've been fixed if they went shopping. They could've purchased lube at the mall. Which didn't happen for the reasons I mentioned in this paragraph.

And now for Stan route ideas. I think some of these are fairly obvious.

* Stan is an awkward nerd. Who else is an awkward nerd? Holly. If Holly isn't with Ian or her, Lena can set her up with Stan. At the very least, the awkward will be funny.
* Stan is an awkward nerd. So, as Lena does, she talks to her friend ( I can't recall the name, the one who corrupts Holly). You know where I'm going with this.
* Stan is an awkward nerd and Lena does the same as above, but by herself. A more corruption based route.
* Stan is Lena's Perry, Lena tries to be his friend and get him out of his shell. A more romantic route.
* Stan is a nice guy, aka the friendzone. Lena notices him eventually and realizes that Stan is indeed, the man.
* Lena mends his relationship with Louise, and they become a 3-person (or two person) relationship. Stan is the opposite of Jeremy, and since Jeremy is a cheating player, Lena convinces her that he'd be good to her. Just look how he treats the cat!
 

Tarrang

Member
Oct 13, 2021
306
331
Fuck Stan not worth restarting. Lena or Ivy could do so with Perry as Emma already can. She should have stuck with what she wanted. Having to restart this far in would be a disaster. I bitched about it and they removed my patronship. Patreon not eva, guess they never asked what she thought. Maybe they pushed for this ish?
 
  • Like
Reactions: John-18 and vsd29

Vurg

Newbie
Sep 3, 2017
61
245
I mean if multiple people were not Stan fans, that's exactly why he needs to be rewritten. At worst he's forgettable and there isn't much that's interesting with his story. It'll be nice to see more more nuance.

I know people hate Lena's love interests but Robert really is a rather realistic portrayal of an insecure douchebag, and I kind of like that. He has a chance for redemption. Mike too has a chance to be more fleshed out as a character.

As for the Allison vs Robert comparison, Allison is also a realistic portrayal of someone who's insecure, just not quite as douchey and she's a woman, so she gets a bit more of a fan base from the male audience I guess (she has her annoying moments though).
 
  • Like
Reactions: GaRbS

CoalPhelps

Active Member
Aug 19, 2018
550
1,765
Fuck Stan not worth restarting. Lena or Ivy could do so with Perry as Emma already can. She should have stuck with what she wanted. Having to restart this far in would be a disaster. I bitched about it and they removed my patronship. Patreon not eva, guess they never asked what she thought. Maybe they pushed for this ish?
It's not so much about the fans. The post clearly states that she does not like the character in his current state, and accordingly she is not interested in working on him and it is difficult to come up with something interesting for him.
 

Echbert

Member
Jun 21, 2018
244
481
You make a good point. I can see how it may just be Allison wanting to keep on top of the relationship and have some control there, especially because the other major part of her life - her job - is an area where she's feeling a distinct lack of control and so much frustration (mostly in relation to people taking advantage of her and her reliability, so subconsciously she's 'proving herself' by taking control of her sex life).

That would have made sense, had the weekend or sex scene ended with Ian being clearly aware that 'something felt off' with Allison, or if he'd have thought it at any point during that time. But it didn't - they were both happy, and left happy without a single objection with anything that happened.

Ian is meant to be a very perceptive guy - we've seen a lot of it up until now. However, on this weekend he didn't give a stray thought to how uncharacteristically controlling Allison was being - which Ian up until now would have noticed, cos even if it wasn't completely obvious (to us), in the story so far he's caught on to far less obvious things. And on top of that, he certainly didn't give a second thought to anal without lube being a horrible idea, which is so far against his personality up until now it's kinda shocking - that's more in line with something Jeremy might do simply because he was driven by lust, wanted to be satisfied and assumed his partner would like it either way because 'big dick!', it's not in line with a thinker like Ian who's consistently considering his partner's needs and comfort, even at the expense of his own release.

To me that makes it seem more a case of 'dev under time pressure and rushed the scene' (which could well be, chapter 9 seemed like a bit of a rough time for Eva) rather then a carefully considered decision.

In line with what you said, if Ian would have noticed Allison's controlling behavior or felt bothered that something felt off, and either 1) talked to her about it after the act, as you suggested, or 2) finished the weekend and scene with Allison beaming about their little holiday and not even noticing that Ian is clearly troubled or not quite so enthused as she is - foreshadowing a potential change in their relationship for better or worse in the next part (depending on what the player wants to do at that time) - I feel that probably would have done more for the story AND for potentially breaking down barriers and growing closer and more compatible as a couple.

And yeah, that would include Ian telling Allison that it's fine for her to just 'be herself' and that she can relax around him, even if she's defensive when he first says it, but takes it to heart - as you said.

Not that all that can't or won't happen in future anyway, it just feels like a missed opportunity for it not to have happened during that weekend (as you insinuated), and won't be able to explain away the uncharacteristic behavior on Ian's end during the trip (his complete lack of perception).

On a final note, I hope that Ian stops being a passive listener and takes some initiative with Allison's complaining, helping her find ways to take control of her job situation and be more assertive on that front. After all, Ian has been doing much the same thing with his own work (well, for most of his paths), so he may be able to give her some good advice and support with that. If she can't get recognized at her existing job, maybe she needs to find the confidence and realization to start fresh and find a place that truly deserves her.
I agree it definetly felt like she rushed it due to time, and i think jamdam hit the nail on the head, with Eva being overwhelmed by too many LIs, in the long run Alison also doesn't really feel as relevant(nor do i think she's liked very much by the fandom) so that may be a small factor(though Eva doesn't seem the type to just drop because of fans but rather take it as a criticism of where she needs to improve, and well.....improve).

With Eva rewriting Stan's storyline, and redoing illustrations it's possible she might tweak the weekend as well to be more narrative driven, another possibility is that we might in fact see this come up later with Ian having a realization of how much of a pushover he was being. I do feel Alison's route is more of a low sodium fem dom thing, but think if their relationship does develop it can be more of a nurturing fem-dom thing(she's a assertive but focuses on Ian's needs).

I'm very much on board with Ian becoming a more active listener, their dynamic needs to change if their going to have a genuine relationship, and while i think Alison will be resistant to Ian telling her to take control(think she enjoys being a Martyr as it gives her some sense of validation), but that if she takes more of an interest in him and sees how similar their situations are she could be inspired to do more. Alison seems like she knows she's capable of being more, but has given up due to believing that she's destined for bad luck, so she's taken comfort in compalining about it and much like you said controlling her relationship, especially since her lasts relationship had her dealing with similar shit as work. Ian constantly moving forward despite the shit he has to deal with can show her that she needs to do the same, and probably realize that this is pretty much how it is for most ppl, but at the same time i think simply having somebody who is in the trenches with her will make her feel like she has the sense of support she desperately desires to the point that she doesn't even feel the need to complain about everything, she knows that her and Ian are on the same wavelength and kind of intuit what the other needs. There's so much potential for the relationship to really peel back the layers of her psyche, and i really hope Eva does just that, she seems to do well with Ian's other LIs(just did Cindy's myself, and while i wasn't interested in her intially i found myself emotionally invested like half way through her current story).
 

_Zebra_

Member
Jun 24, 2017
187
771
I'm not the biggest Stan fan out there but I'd say it is worth restarting just to see what Eva has changed. Let's not forget the new and improved illustrations as well.
If it's just a Stan rewrite - I would say it's not worth it. It might be worth it if I would loose only one save, but I have multiple ones (Ian&Lena, Ian&Allison, Ian&Cherry, Ian&Cindy, Lena&Mike, Lena&Robert ...) Even if I skip through the whole game, it will take a while to redo everything.

Hopefully we will get more than a Stan rewrite. I would like to see a Robert 3.0 - he almost doesn't exist anymore. He should ask Lena on a date or something.
 

FugginDamaged

Member
May 20, 2020
298
402
If it's just a Stan rewrite - I would say it's not worth it. It might be worth it if I would loose only one save, but I have multiple ones (Ian&Lena, Ian&Allison, Ian&Cherry, Ian&Cindy, Lena&Mike, Lena&Robert ...) Even if I skip through the whole game, it will take a while to redo everything.

Hopefully we will get more than a Stan rewrite. I would like to see a Robert 3.0 - he almost doesn't exist anymore. He should ask Lena on a date or something.
Robert I guess is gonna be a Mike replacement and vice versa.
 

HJRQ

New Member
Jun 8, 2018
12
6
Found a bug: when you are going to the sex-shop the second/third time and buy "advanced" sextoys, the interface at the bottom of the screen disappears (no more skip, save or load buttons). If you press escape, you are back to the sex-shop with no buttons at all.
 
4.60 star(s) 316 Votes