VN Ren'Py Our Red String [Ch.13.2 Full] [Eva Kiss]

[thedude]

You'd have a point if said revisions were done because of someone's influence, but that's not the case here.

I'm not so sure about this in regards to Stan's revamp. Eva herself said she didn't like Stan and found him boring - and she acknowledged that people were complaining about the lack of "good" male options for Lena, outside of Ian.

In the Q&A, she stated that Lena's path was supposed to be more similar to GGGB - after all, that's what makes her "Eva Kiss". I took it to mean more on the corruption aspect.

I'm generally not so sure if the Stan's revamp isn't being done because of the "lack of good male options for Lena" that people were complaining about. In my opinion, Eva never planned Stan to be such an option and is going to adapt him because of other people's opinions (+ him being more popular than characters she seems to like writing).

 

[bauman]

Who said that revisiting past content isn't part of Eva writing the story the way she wants to write and taking the time to polish it? You'd have a point if said revisions were done because of someone's influence, but that's not the case here.

Eva is revamping Stan's character because she didn't like him but can't ignore him story-wise because he's one of the fan favorites. And it's not like it hasn't happened before because it has with Arthur and Jasmine in GGGB. Cindy also got an expanded storyline after winning the Patreon poll in late 2020. Saying Eva Kiss isn't influenced to a certain degree by her community during the writing process would be a disingenuous statement to make.

I know many of you really like the character and are hoping to see more scenes with him, since his role in the game has been really minor. The truth is, I don't like him. And I don't really know what to do with him in the narrative.

 

[BloodyMares]

I'm not so sure about this in regards to Stan's revamp. Eva herself said she didn't like Stan and found him boring - and she acknowledged that people were complaining about the lack of "good" male options for Lena, outside of Ian.

In the Q&A, she stated that Lena's path was supposed to be more similar to GGGB - after all, that's what makes her "Eva Kiss". I took it to mean more on the corruption aspect.

I'm generally not so sure if the Stan's revamp isn't being done because of the "lack of good male options for Lena" that people were complaining about. In my opinion, Eva never planned Stan to be such an option and is going to adapt him because of other people's opinions (+ him being more popular than characters she seems to like writing).

You're too focused on the fact that he will be another decent option for Lena. The major problem was his rather inconsistent character development. In earlier chapters, he was shown as a simp character, harmless and well-meaning, but very awkward. The one you could easily sympathize with and root for him anytime Louise pushes him around. Then, Eva made him creep on Lena and everything changed. He was reduced to an incel caricature when judging by his bio, he was meant to be a bit more complex. A shy, awkward guy, but still horny for Lena and maybe a bit of a perv, but of harmless type. Eva probably realized that the final result wasn't at all what she was aiming for originally and decided to correct that. Making him a good option for Lena is just a side-quest. He already had the potential to be a good friend for Lena (interactions in Chapters 1 - 3), but it wasn't developed further for the sake of corruption.

 

[BloodyMares]

Eva is revamping Stan's character because she didn't like him but can't ignore him story-wise because he's one of the fan favorites.

A strange opinion. How can you write a character and not like them? They're your creations, you know why you wrote each one of them which means they appealed to you enough to include them in the game in the first place. If you don't like the character you're writing, then why write him in the first place? Eva meant that she didn't like the way Stan turned out to be, meaning that she didn't mean for him to become a shallow stereotype and he ended up this way by mistake.

 

[thedude]

A strange opinion. How can you write a character and not like them? They're your creations, you know why you wrote each one of them which means they appealed to you enough to include them in the game in the first place. If you don't like the character you're writing, then why write him in the first place? Eva meant that she didn't like the way Stan turned out to be, meaning that she didn't mean for him to become a shallow stereotype and he ended up this way by mistake.

With this, I have to disagree completely. Eva stated herself: "I don't like him".

I don't believe she wrote him because he appealed to her at first (in her own words: "when I created him, I thought it would be interesting to add this character trope into the game, since GGGB didn't have anyone like him, and I wanted to try to explore new character dynamics"). She really created him to play a specific trope in the game and she ended up not liking the trope itself and is now changing his role, imo.

 

[bauman]

Eva meant that she didn't like the way Stan turned out to be, meaning that she didn't mean for him to become a shallow stereotype and he ended up this way by mistake.

It's not that uncommon at all for writers to hate their creations. David Chase, Charles Bukowski, George Martin are some names of the top of my head who said they loathed some of their characters.

As for Stan - Eva Kiss straight up says she dislikes him in the post I quoted from her Patreon. Whether he turned out that way by mistake on her part or not is irrelevant. She found him intolerable to write additional scenes for, hence the re-write. And it looks like the character was a big issue for her overall writing progress because she has been thinking of revamping him since last summer, at the very least.

 

[Lndlordd]

In regards to the whole stan argument....with the exception of 2 instances he's a pretty decent character.
The biggest x mark against him is when he spies on Lena & Ian. Now considering Lena has a similar scene with Louise & Jermy, this could still be ok, but dropping the pants & masturbating right there made it creepy...this could have been changed such that how he reacts depends on the relationship points he has with Lena, if they are friendly he feels guilty and walks away, but if their relationship is not great he views her as an object & hence watches (still wouldn't have him drop his pants though, I feel that goes against the character built up to that point)...
The other incident which portrays him badly, although to a lesser degree is when he is caught masturbating. Now again the images he is masturbating to, can depend on his relationship with lena. If they are friends he could be watching generic porn (something with a GGGB character), but if he and lena are not close, him masturbating to her pics would make sense as he would not feel guilty fantasizing about her.

 

[Deleted member 3064965]

Regular re-writes can kill the potential of a story-oriented game like ORS, especially if they are significant enough to alter the story as a whole. Players have already established their headcanon since we're roughly halfway through the game's development, and if you suddenly go back and change large chunks of the game, it will mess up with their perception. Simply put, the players are familiar with the established characters, and changing them too much is never a good idea.

Yes, I agree that this can be a problem, at least to some extent. I’m sometimes struggling to remember whether Wade’s unemployed or not, and exactly what Robert did and didn’t do to make him an idiot — because of the changes that have been made. But to be fair the changes have been minor up until now, and I get the feeling that will be true for the rework as well, except Stan.

Also, I don't think it's fair to compare the ORS re-writes to games, books, movies, tv-series because the re-writes there remain in the writer's room. The consumer can only judge the final product, unlike ORS and other VNs in active development. IMO, Eva's best course of action is to take the time she needs to write the story as she wants instead of revisiting past content every couple of updates.

It’s not comparable when it comes to how we as viewers/readers/players experience it, but for the writing process I think it’s very comparable. I'd say that "tak[ing] the time she needs to write the story as she wants" involves — for more or less all writers — exactly going back and adjusting things during the writing process. And I doubt the changes are made only for the first 9 chapters' sake; it's probably also to adjust the story to work better with scenes she's got planned for the upcoming chapters.

I'm generally not so sure if the Stan's revamp isn't being done because of the "lack of good male options for Lena" that people were complaining about. In my opinion, Eva never planned Stan to be such an option and is going to adapt him because of other people's opinions (+ him being more popular than characters she seems to like writing).

Eva is revamping Stan's character because she didn't like him but can't ignore him story-wise because he's one of the fan favorites. And it's not like it hasn't happened before because it has with Arthur and Jasmine in GGGB. Cindy also got an expanded storyline after winning the Patreon poll in late 2020. Saying Eva Kiss isn't influenced to a certain degree by her community during the writing process would be a disingenuous statement to make.

To me it seems like Eva's got a pragmatic attitude to changing the story because of other people's opinions. She keeps giving Robert new scenes in every chapter even though he's among the least popular characters, so it's not like she's changing things when she doesn't agree with the feedback.

If you're writing a novel or a movie script, you have editors and others who give feedback during the process — something Eva doesn't have, obviously. But she's got the Discord and Patreon followers — a more cacophonic and less competent variant of an editor, but nevertheless a source of a lot of good feedback. If she agrees that it would suit the game to give Lena another good guy love interest, and also thinks Stan needs a rewrite, I don't see a problem in listening to feedback in those cases. She did it with Ian's new outfits before chapter 9 as well — and his new outfits definitely look better than the original versions.

 

[feikkinen]

And here I thought I was on a forum dedicated to porn games

 

[Overfoxed]

Wait...liking Stan isn't just a meme at this point?

 

[Tallyhoe]

inb4 Stan rework is better for Lena than Ian

 

[DavDR]

They are 3rd and 4th out of seven. They got 18% and 13% of the votes, and beat Axel, Mark, Wade and Robert, not exactly the most sympathetic characters in the game. So I can't really see any foul play.

That's the whole point, there are no sympathetic male characters in the game. In GGGB at least we had Dave

 

[DavDR]

Who said that revisiting past content isn't part of Eva writing the story the way she wants to write and taking the time to polish it? You'd have a point if said revisions were done because of someone's influence, but that's not the case here.

Just how many times do you expect the average player to play thru the friggin game? AVN Dev's are making ever longer, ever more massive stories. I know that some people are obsessed with finding every scene and playing every path but I don't think the average player is that into it, at least not with every game.

When chapter 9 was released I started my third playthru and to be perfectly honest I found it a bit tedious to get thru. Then the Dev announced that they're re-writing the game and I haven't really decided if it's worth any more of my time, especially if there are more re-writes in the future.

 

[joacoccc]

Avoiding it is already in the chapter. I was able to refuse Seymour.

how did you do it?

 

[lipe2410]

how did you do it?

Refuse work with him right in the beginnig or don't make Lena like work with him if she accepted do the photoshoots

 

[Ragnar]

That poll got screwed up because people could vote multiple times, so I suspect hardcore trolling. The top four is baiscly crowded with the least attractive men in the game.

Maybe because most players are into corruption and degradation and want to see Lena with ugly bastards. Not that strange if you think about Evakiss previous game.
1st Blacked
2nd Old dude
3rd Creep
Taking a look at the poll you can see the normal and chad stereotypes not liked that much.

 

[CoalPhelps]

Bright Past has lots of grind, a mess of bugs, some cringe in the writing and zero non-scuzzy male love interests, but as bad as I'm making it sound, it's worth checking out. The amount of ambition and depth of the game so far is like nothing I've seen in a porn game. I just hope the dev hires a native language English speaker with some writing talent to smooth out some of the rough patches once the game is complete, plus redesigns some of the cringier male character models. Lots of lesbian options, if you're into that. It needs A LOT of work. But it has the potential to be very good if the dev smooths things out. Warning: You're basically going down a deep corruption path to move the story forward, no matter what. The level of choice in that regard is lacking as well.

Other VN suggestions I've posted 100+ times here: Heal Slut (best non-EvaKiss F-protag VN out there), Jessica O'Neil's Hard News. I won't mention Eva's other game due to the "no shit Sherlock" factor.
Non VN: Last Evil (fantastic from a gameplay aspect. Warning: Monster rape).

Nothing else I've come across for female protag is any good. (Though TBF, there aren't many good male protag adult vns either. Most of the content in this genre as a whole is pretty terrible, which is why decent games like this one have such a dedicated following).

Let me know if you are open to Male Protag vns though and I'll list a few more.

Hey, I've been trying new things for a while now.
1) Bright Past — certainly interesting and with great potential, but too grindy, and I hate grinding with all my heart. I will wait for the development of the game, because this kind of gameplay tires very quickly.
2) Heal Slut — honestly, I didn't really like the crumpled plot and somewhat unpleasant male partners, but the game is worthy and deserves attention.
3) Jessica O'Neil's Hard News — yes, I've been following her since I appeared on this site. Only very slow development is depressing.
4) Last Evil — I love RPGs, but I don't like rogue-likes.
My recommendations:
1) Claire's Quest is an RPGM game with a minimum of grind (it is practically non-existent, except for money) and concentrated on the plot, quests and lore. The scenes are mostly rapey and submission and bestiality, but the game's main selling point is its storyline, ext. quests and elaborate Pseudo-Renaissance dark-fantasy setting and developing lore. I strongly recommend it to fans of RPG and fantasy.
2) Defenestration — the developers, unfortunately, have been milking lately and the game has stalled in development, but what is already present, I think, can attract attention. The setting of the USSR in the future and a very interesting "spy" plot. The game is full of satire and black humor. The scenes are mostly rapey, harassing and submission.
3) Desert Stalker — discovered this male protag VN a couple of days ago. Post-apocalyptic setting inspired by Fallout and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Very entertaining and despite the early stage of development, it already has a lot of scenes. After Eva games, I usually play fem protag, but this game impressed me a lot. The only thing is that she is a little harem-like and about the macho MC that all the girls want, but in the game itself it is not as bad as I describe and does not spoil the impression.

Yes, I don't mind, after the last game I became more interested in it.

 

[CoalPhelps]

I couldn't agree with you more about BP. So much potential I hope it can live up to it's promise.

The only game that I can add to your list is Wands & Witches, a Harry Potter parody game where you can play as male or female protagonist. The art style may not be for everyone though.

Also agree with you about Heal Slut. Sparkle is easily my favorite MC in games.

Yeah, Wands and Witches is one of my favorites.

 

[Mesmerizet]

From what Eva's said earlier we're probably halfway through the story, at most. The next chapter after 0.9 won't be 1.0, but 0.10. A lot of chapters to go.

Wouldn't 0.10 effectively be 0.1 in a literal sense lol

She should proceed like 1.0, and then keep releasing it as 1.1, 1.2 (like GGGB) and end it at a full number whenever it's done, eg. Our Red String v3.0 Complete

 

[bleachedturtle]

Wouldn't 0.10 effectively be 0.1 in a literal sense lol

She should proceed like 1.0, and then keep releasing it as 1.1, 1.2 (like GGGB) and end it at a full number whenever it's done, eg. Our Red String v3.0 Complete

In software development, 0.10 is not a decimal. So 0.1 is the first version, and 0.10 is the tenth version. Version 1.0 is usually reserved for the first "complete" version of the product.