Holly isn't closest to Lena, that would be Stan, Louise and Ivy. Just how Ians best pals are Perry, Wade and Jeremy. Holly is Ian and Lenas newest friend and she quickly becomes a better friend, because the six initial are fairly terrible.
Lena barely knows Stan at all. Literally her first interaction we as the players see of Stan is basic getting to know you questions. "You work with computers right?" "What's it like living with two girls?" Stan is Lena's roommate, and by the sounds of it very recent roommates at that. Calling Stan Lena's friend let alone one of her closest is crazy to me. Also, in my original post I said very explicitly closest female friend.
Ivy parallelling Perry is ridicolous. She is pretty much the counterpart of Jeremy in regard that the two of them are the mentors and corruptors who encourage Ian and Lena to go wild and discourage romance and serious relationships.
Where did you get Ivy and Perry being Parallels? Louise and Perry should have been the immediate parallels made. Wade is the Ivy parallel in my explanation, and it isn't a a one to one comparison, hence why I went on to explain Wade and not Perry. Jeremy is also very cool with Ian regardless of his romance choice. Ian wants to remain faithful to Lena, he's good. Ian wants to bang every pussy he sees, Jeremy is cool with that too. Jeremy is only encouraging Ian to see other people again to move past Gillian. Ivy is the one that pushes Lena to remain single and not settle down.
Jeremy also only asks Ian once if he wants to see pictures of his sexcapades, which is Jeremy's primary corruption mechanic if that's what we want to attribute to him. Unlike Ivy, that asks about drugs twice, smoking, StalkFap, tattoos and piercings, and insists at every step that Lena and Holly should not settle for monogamy.
While Holly is constantly guided/manipulated and can change over the course of the game, Jeremys confidence isn't changed at all. Ian and Lena can supply him girls if they like him, but nothing more. Jeremy doesn't develop, he doesn't improve, mostly because he isn't designed to be someone with character development. Once again, this lines up with being Ivys counterpart. Ivy doesn't change her stance either, the only thing that changes is if Lena/Ian get her involved with several partners, like giving her Holly, Jeremy, Ian and Lena themselves and so on.
Again, I'm not saying that they are 1 to 1 parallels, but that they align better than Stan does with Holly. Those two aren't even good parallels, because Stan has been changed so drastically from how he was initially portrayed, before he rework. I, again, explicitly mention that part of Jeremy's glow up happened before we as the players meet him. When we meet Jeremy, he is trying to be a player, and he's not particularly good at it. It's Ian encouraging Jeremy that gets him to pursue Allison and Emma. He already has Louise at the start of the game, sure, but that isn't much different than Holly falling for Clark later in the game.
Jeremy, also obviously has doubts. He questions his relationship with Louise, he doesn't really see them as dating, but he doesn't want to hurt her either. He brings that up to both Lena and Ian. He also needs to ask Ian and Lena for help with Ivy. Not to dissimilar to Holly needing help to bag Mark, or be "given" Robert by Lena.
I like pairing up and distributing partners in games in general, I loathe monopolizing everything through a riskfree harem (unless you play as a godlike power fantasy), so its good that Jeremy isn't the usual retarded fake rival that only fails and is only there so that girls leave him for the MC. It is clear though, that he is designed to be upstaged by Ian, hence he is never allowed to be a real threat and if it comes down to it, the girls would always prefer Ian over him. Part of the course if you are writing for the usual audience thats insanely insecure and wants everything lined up for them.
That's fine that you don't like a relationship monopoly. I don't personally particularly care one way or the other, as far as my personal preferences go. But I just thought that I would note that Jeremy has tapped almost as much of the female cast as Ian has, and that while they would prefer Ian (as the main character) they all seem to be OK with going back to Jeremy regularly as well.
