Because Jeremy is her Plan B to get laid, it's that simple. Like seriously, is everyone here a one-woman kind of man and would reject all the slutty girls if they have a crush on someone? If you have a crush on a girl and you don't know if she's also interested in you, and you're trying to gently probe her feelings but she's playing dumb, would you not bang the hot girl that has been hitting on you and is clear that all she wants is just sex and wouldn't demand relationship from you?
How is Jeremy a bull if he can't seduce any girl that isn't already interested in him? Louise is a desperate clingy easily-manipulated girl that seeks affection from anyone she picks as her "favorite person", be it Lena, Jeremy or whoever else. Alison, Lena, and Ivy are sll just using Jeremy for easy lay and see no value in him beside his dick. When he's trying to shoot his shot with Jessica, he gets rejected HARD because she had hundreds of Jeremys in her life and can see right through him for the self-centered desperate boy that he is, while Ian is charming enough to get her number by simply paying attention to her mood.
Women are people with agency, not a property of men that can be "stolen". Jeremy didn't give dating advice to Ian so he can be with her, Jeremy wanted Ian to fuck Alison so they could both share her, because having a threesome with another dude is his real goal. He's not a selfless wingman that would help Ian get settled for life, but he's wingman enough to get Ian laid. His advice DOES work if Ian LISTENS. Alison likes straightforward approach, so if you show her your interest, she forgets about Jeremy really fast, that is as long as you prove that you see her as something more than a convenient fuck-buddy.
Finally! Thank you for talking some sense to these people. It's incredibly frustrating to see people get so neurotic and bent out of shape hearing about or seeing women they find attractive fucking people who aren't them.
Is the story realistic? Perhaps not entirely- it's like a funhouse mirror that shows a lot of things about people for storytelling and dramatic flair. That's a creative liberty the author took to keep things engaging and interesting. But all of the guys and girls we meet in this story reflect real kinds of people in one way or another. It's actually refreshing playing a VN written by a girl that can be enjoyed by guys because it gives you a taste of how women actually think and behave and if you really pay attention and listen you'll realize that just like men a lot of women fuck around and they don't assign any special meaning to the sex they have. The fact is when we're teens to 20 somethings a lot of us are just getting started sexually and sex, kissing etc is a huge deal. Later you realize a lot of people don't assign any special meaning to these things and will mutually and consensually use eachother for pleasure without necessarily putting them on a pedestal or treating them like someone they truly love.
Think about it, how many guys who have crushes or even girlfriends and wives go on pornhub to jerk off once in a while? Some people do the same thing with sex and casual partners. It's a thing people do, and doesn't define their romantic aspirations or personality beyond that they're more open to sex with people who they aren't serious about.
I actually feel sorry for Stan, because while I never got out of shape the way he was, I used to be him. I put in the work and changed because I wanted more from life. If you really do the work on yourself, engage in the right kind of introspection (and perhaps get therapy for any pysch issues that bother you) you can become a fully fledged chad in your own right. In my game, my Lena treats Stan like a project. She lets him jerk off to her and watch her fuck, but also tries to encourage him to get out of his comfort zone and really work on himself to overcome his self doubt. Stan's appearance and behavior reflects his own opinion of himself and if he could just break the spell and start believing in himself and aspiring for better, then he'll take the necessary steps to become a more attractive, sociable and confident person. Holly is the same way.
The most important life lesson I've learned is YOU need to decide if you have value as a human being or not. Doesn't matter if you're fat, muscular, nerdy or mainstream if you don't start with a foundation where you unconditionally love yourself and essentially carry that metaphysical little boy/girl inside your psyche on your shoulders and treat him like a loved and cool kid then nobody else will. You just end up like another Stan, Wade, Louise, Molly, Jeremy or even Axel where your value gets decided by someone else instead of you.
They're all deeply flawed people who cope with their self-esteem issues in different ways.
Louise uses people as a crutch to boost her self esteem. She can't function unless she's paired with someone. Her entire foundation is based on another person and that's not only unfair, it's also not a healthy way to live your life because it'll turn into an emotional roller coaster of extreme ups and downs.
Alison is promiscuous and will fuck people who show her attention but given enough reason wants more than sex very quickly. She likes attention, but she also likes checking boxes like having a bf, a career etc in accordance with expectations and the checklist she gives herself. That checklist is how she values herself and is again based on external factors.
Jeremy sits somewhere in between the two above and his self worth is based entirely around his natural gifts. But without having done the work necessary to become a better person he's just coasting and fucking anyone he can because it satisfies his sexual desires but also his need for validation since he's unable to source it internally. He only looks happy and cool because he's able to constantly get hits of external validation like some kinda drug. In that sense, Jeremy, Alison and Louise are made for each other. They're more alike than they care to admit.
Wade shields his fragile ego because lacks the self confidence to confront himself in an honest and gentle way. Just because he's unemployed, overweight and has a stagnating future doesn't mean he's not good enough to turn it around and improve himself. But he can't face the difficult and painful work required to adapt. He peaked in high school and he's stuck living in that world and it's acting as an albatross hanging on Cindy's neck holding her back. He's Jeremy, but the consequences of complacency hit him much faster and now he's in withdrawal from the above aforementioned "drug". So he copes by withdrawing and becoming emotionally unavailable, attacking others so he doesn't take responsibility for himself.
Cindy has natural character flaws she needs to work on, like selfishness. But also unrealized potential she really wants to meet. She realizes wade is an albatross hanging off her neck so she (with some help from Ian) can take the steps necessary to break out of that cycle. In the story you have a choice here - you can either help wade fight for her and break out of his funk. Or you can break her out of her dead-end life and grow together as a couple or as friends with benefits. Can do it in a healthy way or a more perverse and cheaty way.
Ian and Lena are more blank slates as they are player characters and you can make them whatever you want them to be. My Ian and Lena strike me as balanced characters getting through life but doing their best to be in alignment with their true selves. The way I played them comes across as healthy and natural. The ups and downs are less extreme.
The thing about Lena though is if you really lean into her model lifestyle and you take shortcuts to get money you will rapidly find yourself getting exploited and getting stuck in bad situations (Seymour especially). Her life is a whirlwind and it can be worse if you start fucking Robert, Mike, Louse etc.
I dated a girl like Lena who was much worse in that she had shitty personal boundaries and couldn't control her life. She was a "model" in that she worked with photographers and appeared in various publications and I think she did agency work but was also a DJ and musician. I'll end this story by saying we fooled around a little bit and it was extremely thrilling at first but she also had a jealous ex who broke down her back door off it's frame to get into her home and one time I woke up to a Jeremy type dude walking into the bedroom through the open back door and chatting with us while I was naked with her in bed. For all I knew they could've been fucking too. Lots of guys in her life. I didn't care about that, but I did notice there was shitloads of weird drama and other shit I didn't wanna deal with. So I peaced out. Maybe I just got lucky but the truth is often stranger than fiction and a lot of what's happening in this story is pretty damn real.
Even the Seymour shit is real shit, especially for women who are extremely visible and attractive. That's what #MeToo is all about. Depending on how you play you can either willingly sleep your way to the top or be reluctant and basically blackmailed into losing your livelihood if you don't do what the powerful person said. Seymour is just another Harvey Weinstein and people like him continue to get away with this shit even with all the recent news about people in power sexually harassing women. Not everyone is gonna get canceled. It's how power works unfortunately.
Anyway long story short- lots of people projecting their neurosis on the characters. Whereas I see a pretty realistic portrayal of what its like living in a trendy city with all the kinds of people you're likely to run into. The game gives you the freedom to be who you really want to be and likewise lets you do some embarrassing things (like jerking off to your friend fucking another girl) while simultaneously leading a seemingly decent life. Nothing you do here needs to define you unless you want it to define you. There's enough literary ambiguity here that you can see the story the way you want to see it according to your personal values and author has done a good job in that regard.
