I feel like expanding Jeremy's role to be more broad in terms of characterisation and availability to Lena is almost too late at this point?
Like, the people that enjoy the BBC kink over anything else are probably already playing his route at this point, which arguably requires for Lena to become a pretty bad person, not just withholding his cheating but becoming Louise's "homewrecker" too.
Any additions would either have to mesh with these events, or be an entirely new Lena/Jeremy route exclusive to players who broke them up early. While I would personally find this option more interesting, I doubt it would go over well with the kink community that there'd be scenes unavailable depending on that kind of choice, so I don't think Eva would go that way.
I suppose there could be random romance added to the Jeremy route, but that sort of seems counter to the structure around it so far. Like, wouldn't it be kinda tacked on?
I don't see how having Jeremy show some personality would in any way get in the way of the BBC Kink, nor necessarily need to instigate a romance path? The content is only meant to flesh out his existing potential. That sort of characterization could quite easily fit into Ian's everyday path where he just happens to be hanging out with Jeremy - no need to change anything that
already exists.
There are ways to do it that could feel perfectly natural, you just have to be creative about it. The easiest way would be to have some sort of event that 'provokes' the deeply buried nerd in Jeremy to rear his head.
For example, there could be something like a movie franchise Ian's group (of guy friends?) loved as teens appearing at a convention or something. Ian and his friends all go there, including Jeremy. While Perry, Wade and [potentially a nerdy] Ian are all excited, Jeremy is unusually quiet, but when you all discover that one of the major stars of the last installment (that Jeremey happened to really like) is there signing autographs, something snaps and Jeremy is suddenly a teen again, nerding out about meeting one of his favorite actors and whatnot.
Or it could be something that challenges Jeremy's knowledge of a topic or topics he used to be a master in. So like, maybe something like a quiz night at that old bar or whatever, and Jeremy isn't big on going but eventually agrees when Ian insists, and Jeremy's group absolutely kills it because he knows the answer to every single question.
After either of those scenarios you could have Ian walking with Jeremy (just the two of them), and Ian comments on how he hasn't seen that side of Jeremy in ages. That could then be the point where it gives a bit of an insight into why Jeremy is the way he is now, because if this kind of deep-and-personal is gonna happen with anyone, it's with his best friend, Ian.
For example, in the case of the convention or getting too nerdy over that franchise, it could be that there was a girl who Jeremy really liked back in the day - like, a massive crush - and she rejected him and laughed in his face for being a nerd when he asked her to see a movie in that franchise, or IDK. Point is, he has low self-esteem and was weak willed, and her rejection in front of everyone was so humiliating he threw away all his memorabilia of that series and buried his love of it deep down, and then decided to get hot so he could laugh in her face.
In the case of the quiz, you could have Jeremy talk about how his parents always pushed him to be the best in school or whatever, and it put him under so much pressure that the moment he struck out on his own he completely turned his back on his parents expectations for him. In other words, Jeremy became a chad to rebel, but then found he liked the perks, like getting girls, and thinking too much or being too smart put them off, so he pushed down the nerd in him and tried to embrace the life of a chad. Or whatever.
Anyway, those ideas may be shite, but they serve the purpose of demonstrating how you can give a character a bit of depth even quite a way through - just make it he's pushed his true self down pretty deep, and something just happens to trigger it.
From there you could choose to make his old nerd self start to come out more as he finds people around him are cool with it (cos secretly being self-conscious about his
personality could be part of his personality), and by the end either he's a full-on nerd again, or he's buried it down deep, OR, he's managed to find a healthy balance between being a chad and enjoying his nerdy pleasures.
I mean, considering both Eva's games have such a focus on being able to transform characters, no reason it can't happen with Jeremy in the same way as certain other characters - providing players make certain choices.
When you think about it, Jeremy's potential transformation back to a nerd would be the reverse to Ian's potential journey into a chad. That could be kinda interesting too.
