VN Ren'Py Our Red String [Ch.13.3.4] [Eva Kiss]

[M-shan]

Is there a chance Ian can meet Gillian as a love interest? Just like Axel.

 

[Lovely Dani]

Not allowing Lena to cheat on Ian with Jeremy would be a huge missed opportunity.
Look at Cindy's route. Cindy is the most popular female NPC, she's attractive and her scenes are hot. But her route wouldn't be as spicy if she wasn't Wade's girlfriend. This is part of what makes her so popular and tempting. She's Ian's forbidden fruit.
Cheating, corruption and BBC are popular kinks. Jeremy is Ian's friend and Louise's "boyfriend". He's also the most popular male NPC.
If we play as a seemingly good girl Lena who falls in love with a loyal loving Ian and commits to a relationship with him, but at the same time struggles to suppress her lustful fantasies, cheating with Jeremy behind Ian's back would be the ultimate sin

Perfect looking of the game, bravo

 

[Lovely Dani]

My 3-year anniversary with my camgirl gf is coming next week, sooooooo....

Lucky You !
(The girl in your avatar ??)

 

[dolfe67]

Ian pursuing Cindy is not much better than Lena pursuing Jeremy. Ian greatly suffered from his ex Gillian cheating on him, but he's doing the same to his buddy and doesn't even think about his history with Gillian. But since he doesn't think about it, he seems less hypocritical

 

[John Doe Jr.]

Ian pursuing Cindy is not much better than Lena pursuing Jeremy. Ian greatly suffered from his ex Gillian cheating on him, but he's doing the same to his buddy and doesn't even think about his history with Gillian. But since he doesn't think about it, he seems less hypocritical

In real life Ian doing that to a friend is just as bad as Lena and Jeremy as the situations are pretty similar. But, thankfully this isn't real life so I can go ahead and have Ian steal Cindy and Lena fuck around with Jeremy while still maintaining a clear conscience

 

[Kalenz123]

Unfortunately for you, but holly already takes the road of no return by became a friend with Ivy and Lena... lets see how far we can corrupt Holly in this game

I don't mind her friendship with Lena and Ivy at all. Holly is a little cute wallflower and if Ivy and Lena can help her to open up and blossom into her beautiful perfect self that's amazing. But I couldn't take it for her to turn into some kinda slut with a titjob. A timid girl who is financially and professionally successful but socially awkward and underdeveloped with a cute nubile body who only opens herself up for you and yourself alone...
That is THE fantasy. The girl next door, the raw diamond, the ugly duckling, the infamous unicorn, the 10 out of 10.
Holly is the perfect petite meek moe girl with all the potential.

Spoiler

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[Roderick2]

Yup, here's two screenshots with what he says if you back out...
View attachment 1813129

View attachment 1813130

Yikes! I didn't even thought about take this way. Would you give a spoiler of what come after this?

 

[lipe2410]

Yikes! I didn't even thought about take this way. Would you give a spoiler of what come after this?

They meet and Seymour show his true colors and offer Lena a deal that can solve her money issues if she accept. Depending how you play Lena, she can accept right out away, accept but put her own terms in the deal or refuse and send Seymour to fuck off.

 

[Deleted member 3064965]

That is true, however those feelings don't come across as genuine feelings of Lena, but rather a desperate attempt to convince herself that she's not a bad person so she must feel guilty (when she totally didn't when she was making a decision). But if she's guilty, why does she keep repeatedly doing the same thing over and over, thus feeling more guilty? If a person consciously keeps doing a bad thing (if she thinks about them, she's conscious of them and has agency to stop herself), even if they feel guilty, they kinda become a bad person because they change their actions shape their personality. Lena becomes a bad girlfriend to Ian, and a bad friend to Louise. I guess my question is, if Lena understands that she's doing those bad things behind Louise and Ian, can she really claim that she cares about them at this point? It's just in my experience, people who are not diagnosed with some kind of disorder or mental handicap, don't keep doing a really shitty thing if they really don't have a good excuse or are motivated by a strong emotion (lust is not that). You don't keep kicking your friend in the back, and then ask how they're doing if you intend to keep kicking them. That's behavior of a psychopath. Usually when you treat your loved ones badly, it's because something irritates you about them, and you want to act out, which means your relationship becomes worse with them. It made sense for Ashley to want to bully Eva if they weren't friends anymore. And at this point it would make sense for Lena to bully Louise or treat her like shit out of her resentment caused by her lust for Jeremy (she constantly refers that she was envious that Louise got to enjoy his dick all the time). But she does the opposite which makes Lena's actions seem like they happen in a bubble and have no consequence for her personal moral corruption. She's not only hypocritical in this sense, she's almost bipolar or borderline, because her actions and thoughts don't align. It's like Lena the "Louise's Friend" and Lena the "Jeremy's Slut" are completely different people that take control based on whether Lena feels horny at the moment or not.



You summarized it perfectly, but let's look at what you said. The context is that the players want to be naughty. "Those who like cheating and corruption" which Lena is none of those things. Nothing in Lena's personality would make her so weak to fall for some convenient black dick and betray her fairly close friend while somewhat remembering that she's actually supposed to be in love with Ian. There's a direct conflict between what the player wants Lena to do and who Lena is as a character (not a blank slate with a baggage). Players corrupting Lena results in such a mess where Lena can easily participate in all debauchery, then have obligatory guilty feelings that feel fake given what she's done, and then suddenly act surprised and outraged whenever someone does remotely similar but she ends up being on the receiving end of those actions. Blaming Ian for dishonesty but easily keeping secrets from him, blaming Ivy for doing business with Axel behind her back but then doing something way worse with Louise's boyfriend.

One path however avoids these problems. Let's look at Mike for example. It is a very controversial path due to Lena's background trauma from cheating, but one can sort of understand how not knowing Mike's girlfriend personally somehow makes it okay in Lena's mind to be the other girl, because she's not the one being hurt in this scenario and it's thrilling for her to be the seductress and be the one with power in a relationship for a change. The difference however, is that Lena in this path enjoys doing a bad thing, she barely even thinks about Mike's girlfriend, disrespects her during sex with him, so not having guilty thoughts about being naughty helps sell this path as believable. Lena is yet to face reality of her actions. While she might act like a thirsty bitch, in Lena's mind she's not responsible for Mike playing along.

Being involved with Jeremy on the other hand is a separate can of worms that the quotes you mentioned demonstrate very well. Most of them are spoken by Lena in conditions where she catches herself doing a bad thing, acknowledges that it's bad, and ends up doing even a worse thing just because... she's horny? Why does Jeremy in particular make her this stupid horny, and why is it so hard for her to fight that lust or deal with that in healthier ways? Such behavior makes Lena feel very shallow, except she's anything but shallow in the rest of the game, so, what person Lena really is? The traitorous cock-hungry bimbo or the intelligent and empathetic person who hates injustice? Perhaps the problem is that the game wants to sell the fantasy of Lena seducing Jeremy without actually considering that it goes against Lena's principles? In my opinion, it would make more sense if Jeremy was the one who initiated flirting with Lena, and Lena would feel rush of flirting back, acting on her desire even when she originally didn't plan for it. That would make it easier to swallow that she can both want to fuck Jeremy and feel sorry for Louise. But because she hunts for Jeremy, seduces him with clear intent, then it's really hard to swallow that Lena is really such a disgusting individual with absolutely zero self-awareness or defined moral standing.

In GGGB, player's influence on Ashley was tracked via Bad points. She could become a murderous psychopath, and somehow it would still be "logical", because a murderous psychopath wouldn't feel bad about cheating on her dear boyfriend or care that her ex-BFF committed suicide (Oh no! Anyway...). Tracking Ashley's morality helped justify Ashley's crazy actions and prevent her from contradicting herself with sudden Holier-Than-Thou mood swings. If the players expect a similar kind of agency and want to stretch Lena's character as far away from her starting point as possible, then the game should track that character development.

This game either needs to track player's impact on Lena's personality with something other than "posh" variable or sacrifice agency by not letting Lena act outside of her character, or actually writing that behavior in a more plausible way so it fits all Lenas at the same time. Even a hidden "bad" stat would be appropriate in this sense, because it would help differentiate between Good Lena (never compromised her morality or redeemed herself) and Bad Lena (backstabbing horny slut who is not jealous anymore). And the funny thing is, there is such hidden variable which is relationship with Lola. But it's never checked in the game for anything when it could have indicated Lena's moral corruption the lower relationship with Lola dropped (she becomes careless of Lola's needs because her mind is in the gutter all the time).

All that said, while it might sound like I'm shitting on Eva's storytelling, I understand that the scenes are written first, and the plot is added later to fit those scenes, and not every scene acknowledges every possible way for the player to control Ian or Lena (plot-holes and inconsistencies become regular), and unfortunately the game is so big that you can't dedicate enough time to each storyline and consider each variation of Ian/Lena because the players want to get the story going and see more sexy scenes.

I think it's more exciting to play as characters who aren't bad persons, but still end up acting immoral. The most extreme versions of Ashley in GGGB didn't really interest me, exactly because she had become a murderous psychopath completely devoid of conscience. There weren't any moral dilemmas behind her actions, because if she wanted to do something, she didn't have any contrasting emotions (neither before nor after) telling her it would be a bad idea because she could end up hurting others. She simply didn't care.

So far I think Lena’s feelings of guilt mostly come across as genuine. She doesn’t feel guilty when she’s making the decisions, or rather she’s suppressing those feelings in the moment, but I don’t think it means that the feelings afterwards aren’t genuine. (It’s probably a mix of that and wanting to convince herself that it’s not the way she really is, because she wants to see herself as a good person, as you say.)

I think most people to a varying degree sometimes end up making bad decisions in the heat of the moment, for reasons like poor impulse control, being bad at resisting temptations, or not wanting to or being able to evaluate the consequences. This weekend I went out for a few beers, and around midnight I realised I should get home because I had promised a friend to help him move early the next morning. Did I know it would be a bad idea to stay out longer? Yep. Did I still decide to stay out and have several more beers, because I within seconds managed to convince myself it wouldn’t affect my ability to get up the next morning and help carry heavy objects all day, no matter how unreasonable I knew that was? Absolutely. Did I feel really bad about it the next day when I showed up one hour late and in terrible shape? Also yes.

Maybe it makes me a slightly worse person than if I went home at midnight and showed up the next morning on time. If Lena does things with Jeremy behind Ian’s and Louise’s backs, it’s obviously worse than my small beer drinking slip up, but I don’t think she’s automatically a bad human being because of it, even if the actions in themselves give that impression. Or at least it doesn’t make it uncredible that her guilt afterwards is genuine, in my view. She could still be a mostly good person, with some character flaws that happen to lead her into doing some seriously stupid things.

If she’s in a relationship with Ian and continues in the same way, it will obviously be more difficult to make her guilt believable. There’s a limit to how many times she can just “stumble into it” before she’ll have to realise how those situations usually end—and if she doesn’t even stumble into it, but ends up planning meetings with Jeremy, Mike, Axel or others while she’s in a relationship, she would know exactly what she’s doing, and any guilt afterwards would lose its credibility. The same way my guilt would lose credibility if I—the next time I promise to help my friend move—make a rational choice to go out the night before with the intent of getting shitfaced, but still show up two hours late and pretend to feel bad about it.

 

[BloodyMares]

Ian pursuing Cindy is not much better than Lena pursuing Jeremy. Ian greatly suffered from his ex Gillian cheating on him, but he's doing the same to his buddy and doesn't even think about his history with Gillian. But since he doesn't think about it, he seems less hypocritical

Not to mention there's actual conflict with the feelings he has. Even if he tries to be a good friend to Wade and restrict his contact with Cindy, it ends up biting him in the ass because Wade feels like he doesn't value his relationship with Cindy and withholds advice that would be helpful. Wade constantly asks Ian to be more involved in their relationship, like keep an eye on Cindy from doing a stupid thing with Axel. It's not like Ian plans to seduce Cindy, he does it subconsciously simply because he has a strong attraction that he can't help but like Cindy's company which makes him do some unfriendly things like encouraging Cindy to send more nudes (he justifies it as helping Cindy with her modeling career). Ian totally acts like a bad friend to Wade, but he feels like he's almost a victim of circumstances, where he has to stay close to Cindy for the sake of his friendship with Wade and when he can see that Cindy also has this intense attraction for him, Wade is pushed back so far behind in his mind it's like he doesn't exist. And because he's also friends with Cindy, he feels like he CAN put her first, just like he can put Emma first over Perry for example. It's just a very complex and believable situation, where you try to do the right thing but fail to set up boundaries and end up caught in the middle of some drama that you didn't originally sign up for.

Considering that Lena has barely any interaction with Jeremy, her preference of him to Louise or Ian makes it a much more obvious betrayal that simply feels uncalled for and requires a significant character shift for Lena for that outcome to be believable. Actually, if I was Lena and wanted to bang Jeremy, I would flirt with LOUISE instead, and try to plant an idea of sharing in her mind, so then she proposes a threesome herself (for a chance to sample Lena's pussy). That way Lena still gets to play the part of a caring (if a bit manipulative) friend for Louise but eat her chocolate cake as well. And if she falls in love with Ian, simply test the waters about whether he might also have a thing for Louise, and if the idea of a foursome turns him on. That way Lena still gets to be the mastermind and seducer, but wouldn't feel like contradicting herself, because she wouldn't really be betraying anybody or herself, everyone would fall into Lena's trap with expressed consent, which would make Lena feel proud of being so smart and calculating that even Ivy would be impressed.

 

[Pharaum]

There is also a bug where some will points aren't being rewarded. You need 1 will to show up at the office that day Seymour is there, which is harder to achieve with the new points set-up and the bug.

You need to do that Seymour office scene to get the relationship option with Minerva, hence even more people missing the relationship.

Same problem, my will points are not awarded any news about this bug????

You must be registered to see the links

 

[BloodyMares]

I think most people to a varying degree sometimes end up making bad decisions in the heat of the moment, for reasons like poor impulse control, being bad at resisting temptations, or not wanting to or being able to evaluate the consequences.

This is the key thing in my opinion, the heat of the moment. I can understand and excuse both Ian and Lena's actions when they're done in the heat of the moment, in a moment of weakness. That's why I don't judge Lena for spying on Louise or blowing Jeremy during Ivy's game. Because it was fun in a group setting and she was very horny, it's hard to feel responsible for simply following the rules of the game (even if Ivy rigged the rules). It's a bit harder to excuse the hacking Louise's phone part because it wasn't done in the heat of the moment, she did it on purpose and with full realization of what she was doing. Same with the sexting, same with surprising Jeremy with a morning fuck. These decisions are not made on a whim as an "oopsie", those were carefully calculated moves. And if those moves were intentional, taking advantage of convenient opportunities, then it's hard to pretend that Lena didn't know that she'd be throwing Louise or Ian under the bus with her master-plan. And because she not only does it once, regrets it, and feels sorry about what happened, but keeps on excusing her bad behavior over and over again, then I feel like it should be more noticeable in Lena's personality overall. There should be an emerging pattern where she excuses more of her bad behavior, leading to a negative character development, a falling from grace as a result. A shift in perspective where she assumes "live and let live" attitude, free of moral judgment, perfectly aware of her negative undertones in her actions but being in peace with it. Because she could easily assume the attitude she has with Mike and simply hold Jeremy accountable for being an easily seduced horndog, but she does feel guilty and responsible which is confusing.

If she’s in a relationship with Ian and continues in the same way, it will obviously be more difficult to make her guilt believable. There’s a limit to how many times she can just “stumble into it” before she’ll have to realise how those situations usually end—and if she doesn’t even stumble into it, but ends up planning meetings with Jeremy, Mike, Axel or others while she’s in a relationship, she would know exactly what she’s doing, and any guilt afterwards would lose its credibility. The same way my guilt would lose credibility if I—the next time I promise to help my friend move—make a rational choice to go out the night before with the intent of getting shitfaced, but still show up two hours late and pretend to feel bad about it.

Exactly, and I feel like Lena is already at a planning stage with Jeremy though. She didn't "stumble" on sexting with him, she didn't "stumble" on his dick in Louise's bedroom (even if those opportunities were very convenient for her). She made conscious decisions to tease him when he actually texted to check up on how things were with his girlfriend. Even if she felt horny beforehand, him mentioning Louise should've spoiled her mood a bit and cause her to actually be respectful of Jeremy's feelings at that moment. And yet she decides to change topics to focus on how hot she felt during their little sex game, then make the situation worse by sending nudes to him and asking for a dick pic, all the while describing what she would do if they had more time together... It's not being in the heat of the moment, it's actually starting the fire when you're cold. Same with Jeremy peacefully sleeping in Louise's room; minding her business and letting him be is like the easiest and most obvious morally correct choice in that situation, but at that stage she thinks it'd be "fun" to wake him up, with clear intent to have sex with him behind Louise's back. At this stage I just think of her post-nut clarity as hypocritical. She never regrets her mistake seriously, it's like she acknowledges it, goes "Oh well", and because the experience was so pleasurable, she simply doesn't care that it was wrong. I'd say at this point she's hooked on that pleasure, and next time Jeremy appears in her sight, she'll make yet another elaborate plan to have a one-on-one time with him. And while all of that is happening, there's Holly who makes Lena act all protective and moral which feels very weird when it's happening in the same playthrough. It's like combining Good Path and Bad Path in the same playthrough as if Lena doesn't know who she is or who she wants to be. It'd be actually very interesting if the game acknowledged Lena acting very chaotic and compromising herself all the time, and I don't mean some throwaway lines, but a dedicated path where Lena feels very conflicted about herself and starts second-guessing her life choices, her connections, her actions etc. If her body couldn't handle such imbalance and it messed her up mentally.

 

[N0nsens3]

How do I unlock this decision?

 

[John Doe Jr.]

On the whole I really liked the revamp but there's still things I think weren't needed and probably would've sped up the revamp process if they had just been left as is. A couple are race swapping Billy (now Jeremy is the only black dude in the entire game) and removing Alison's piercing. Though maybe the piercing only occurs if you only choose the lust options and not the romantic and if that's the case then fair enough

EDIT: So apparently the piercing not showing up was just a bug. It would show up in one scene then disappear in the next

 

[John Doe Jr.]

How do I unlock this decision?
View attachment 1815075

You probably don't have enough charisma

 

[Pick_A_Name]

"Hi, my name is Eva Kiss.
And if you choose to do drugs I will teach you a lesson so you understand how bad I think your choice was"

discuss

 

[alexferno]

That is true, however those feelings don't come across as genuine feelings of Lena, but rather a desperate attempt to convince herself that she's not a bad person so she must feel guilty (when she totally didn't when she was making a decision). But if she's guilty, why does she keep repeatedly doing the same thing over and over, thus feeling more guilty? If a person consciously keeps doing a bad thing (if she thinks about them, she's conscious of them and has agency to stop herself), even if they feel guilty, they kinda become a bad person because they change their actions shape their personality. Lena becomes a bad girlfriend to Ian, and a bad friend to Louise. I guess my question is, if Lena understands that she's doing those bad things behind Louise and Ian, can she really claim that she cares about them at this point? It's just in my experience, people who are not diagnosed with some kind of disorder or mental handicap, don't keep doing a really shitty thing if they really don't have a good excuse or are motivated by a strong emotion (lust is not that). You don't keep kicking your friend in the back, and then ask how they're doing if you intend to keep kicking them. That's behavior of a psychopath. Usually when you treat your loved ones badly, it's because something irritates you about them, and you want to act out, which means your relationship becomes worse with them. It made sense for Ashley to want to bully Eva if they weren't friends anymore. And at this point it would make sense for Lena to bully Louise or treat her like shit out of her resentment caused by her lust for Jeremy (she constantly refers that she was envious that Louise got to enjoy his dick all the time). But she does the opposite which makes Lena's actions seem like they happen in a bubble and have no consequence for her personal moral corruption. She's not only hypocritical in this sense, she's almost bipolar or borderline, because her actions and thoughts don't align. It's like Lena the "Louise's Friend" and Lena the "Jeremy's Slut" are completely different people that take control based on whether Lena feels horny at the moment or not.



You summarized it perfectly, but let's look at what you said. The context is that the players want to be naughty. "Those who like cheating and corruption" which Lena is none of those things. Nothing in Lena's personality would make her so weak to fall for some convenient black dick and betray her fairly close friend while somewhat remembering that she's actually supposed to be in love with Ian. There's a direct conflict between what the player wants Lena to do and who Lena is as a character (not a blank slate with a baggage). Players corrupting Lena results in such a mess where Lena can easily participate in all debauchery, then have obligatory guilty feelings that feel fake given what she's done, and then suddenly act surprised and outraged whenever someone does remotely similar but she ends up being on the receiving end of those actions. Blaming Ian for dishonesty but easily keeping secrets from him, blaming Ivy for doing business with Axel behind her back but then doing something way worse with Louise's boyfriend.

One path however avoids these problems. Let's look at Mike for example. It is a very controversial path due to Lena's background trauma from cheating, but one can sort of understand how not knowing Mike's girlfriend personally somehow makes it okay in Lena's mind to be the other girl, because she's not the one being hurt in this scenario and it's thrilling for her to be the seductress and be the one with power in a relationship for a change. The difference however, is that Lena in this path enjoys doing a bad thing, she barely even thinks about Mike's girlfriend, disrespects her during sex with him, so not having guilty thoughts about being naughty helps sell this path as believable. Lena is yet to face reality of her actions. While she might act like a thirsty bitch, in Lena's mind she's not responsible for Mike playing along.

Being involved with Jeremy on the other hand is a separate can of worms that the quotes you mentioned demonstrate very well. Most of them are spoken by Lena in conditions where she catches herself doing a bad thing, acknowledges that it's bad, and ends up doing even a worse thing just because... she's horny? Why does Jeremy in particular make her this stupid horny, and why is it so hard for her to fight that lust or deal with that in healthier ways? Such behavior makes Lena feel very shallow, except she's anything but shallow in the rest of the game, so, what person Lena really is? The traitorous cock-hungry bimbo or the intelligent and empathetic person who hates injustice? Perhaps the problem is that the game wants to sell the fantasy of Lena seducing Jeremy without actually considering that it goes against Lena's principles? In my opinion, it would make more sense if Jeremy was the one who initiated flirting with Lena, and Lena would feel rush of flirting back, acting on her desire even when she originally didn't plan for it. That would make it easier to swallow that she can both want to fuck Jeremy and feel sorry for Louise. But because she hunts for Jeremy, seduces him with clear intent, then it's really hard to swallow that Lena is really such a disgusting individual with absolutely zero self-awareness or defined moral standing.

In GGGB, player's influence on Ashley was tracked via Bad points. She could become a murderous psychopath, and somehow it would still be "logical", because a murderous psychopath wouldn't feel bad about cheating on her dear boyfriend or care that her ex-BFF committed suicide (Oh no! Anyway...). Tracking Ashley's morality helped justify Ashley's crazy actions and prevent her from contradicting herself with sudden Holier-Than-Thou mood swings. If the players expect a similar kind of agency and want to stretch Lena's character as far away from her starting point as possible, then the game should track that character development.

This game either needs to track player's impact on Lena's personality with something other than "posh" variable or sacrifice agency by not letting Lena act outside of her character, or actually writing that behavior in a more plausible way so it fits all Lenas at the same time. Even a hidden "bad" stat would be appropriate in this sense, because it would help differentiate between Good Lena (never compromised her morality or redeemed herself) and Bad Lena (backstabbing horny slut who is not jealous anymore). And the funny thing is, there is such hidden variable which is relationship with Lola. But it's never checked in the game for anything when it could have indicated Lena's moral corruption the lower relationship with Lola dropped (she becomes careless of Lola's needs because her mind is in the gutter all the time).

All that said, while it might sound like I'm shitting on Eva's storytelling, I understand that the scenes are written first, and the plot is added later to fit those scenes, and not every scene acknowledges every possible way for the player to control Ian or Lena (plot-holes and inconsistencies become regular), and unfortunately the game is so big that you can't dedicate enough time to each storyline and consider each variation of Ian/Lena because the players want to get the story going and see more sexy scenes.

ORS characters are fairly complex and nuanced. Not everything is black or white and we can't always tell for sure what's going on inside their heads.
You might be right about Lena's feelings not being genuine, but the opposite can also be true. Lena seems to have some unresolved issues and is under a lot of stress (Axel, family, work and finances). On some routes, she's a messy person, makes plenty of bad decisions and is getting hooked on the adrenaline rush that goes with cheating/getting sexually involved with someone she shouldn't be with.
In many cases, people cheat on partners they love because they are selfish, unable to control their sexual urges and enjoy the thrill of cheating. But that doesn't mean they don't feel guilty about their actions or aren't capable of feeling empathy for others.
Hooking up with your friend's partner doesn't make you a psychopath, it just makes you a shitty friend. People like this exist in real life, and they usually try to hide it from their friend and act as if nothing happened.
From a storytelling standpoint, it makes sense for Lena to be hypocritical if she does morally questionable things. People who do shitty things to others wouldn't want the same thing done to them. Just like everyone else, liars don't like it when someone lies to them and cheaters don't like to be cheated on.
Stress, emotional trauma and getting stuck in a cycle of bad choices can influence how we perceive ourselves and the world around us. As you said, people's actions shape their personality. It's not unrealistic for someone to discover a new side of themselves and become "addicted" to it. For example, Breaking Bad is a very well-written show that revolves around this premise. Walter White is an average guy in his 50s who becomes a different person over the course of the show. He never stops caring for his family and friends, but his new-found thirst for power clouds his judgement and he ends up making horrible decisions and harming his loved ones.

 

[JenMistress]

Idk, I didn't think he looks anything like Curt Hennig. Shout out to the Old School Wrestling fans who get that reference.

 

[BloodyMares]

and we can't always tell for sure what's going on inside their heads

But we can, via narration. The characters explain their motivation every step of the way. "I was too horny to stop" / "I couldn't miss this once in a lifetime opportunity" / "I don't know if it was drugs or alcohol, but I felt compelled to go along with the situation". Granted, it's a bit after-the-fact explanation, given the unreliable narrator, and could not be representing of their true feelings at the moment, but I feel like usually the game does a very good job of explaining our protagonists' thought process describing why things happened the way they did. I just don't think those thoughts do a good job of explaining Lena's true motivation to pursue Jeremy and I hope that Eva eventually reveals that truth of Lena's actions like how she managed to reveal true reasons why Lena can't stop thinking about Axel. It's just those thought processes don't seem to morally impact the characters in a noticeable way, where you can clearly see the consequence of the corruption in other parts of Lena's life. It's easier to explain Lena's sexual exploration. Considering Lena's lifestyle and her sexual stalkfap content, it wouldn't be surprising if she decided to tip her toe in the world of porn, especially given all the money she could use to help her family or Molly and Ed with their cafe as well as buy all the fancy things for herself without having to rely on Seymour. All the set pieces have been carefully placed, the story would simply write itself at this point.

It's trickier to explain morally questionable decisions if the cons of those decisions for Lena's character outweigh the pros. She doesn't want to be Jeremy's girlfriend, she doesn't seem to like him as a person all that much either, so her motivation has to be intrinsic, something that goes beyond lust that she could satisfy with other human dildos. And so far, Lena's actions with Jeremy don't seem natural for her based on her thoughts, it's like she's trying to rewrite her own personality but we don't see what makes her want to do so, how her effort to seduce Jeremy is supposed to make her life better or happier, given how problematic and toxic it is. So she gets a taste of his BBC, then what? It's not like he's a God in bed (he seems to shoot his load rather fast). I could buy this set-up much easier if Lena admitted to having a twisted fantasy of either stealing Jeremy away from Louise or showing Louise the truth about him in the cruelest way possible (venting her shame from Axel's actions, thus wanting to punish herself via Louise's proxy and prove to her that Jeremy is a bad boyfriend who shouldn't be trusted), or if the fact of making Jeremy cheat on Louise would turn her on, then I'd have more understanding of Lena's actions and would probably predict that next time she'll try to make Louise watch while she's fucking him in front of her, and rub it in Louise's face how she begged her to jerk Jeremy off during Ivy's game, and try to convince Louise that she's just a cuckquean that enjoys watching Jeremy being pleasured by Lena, like "It takes a sub to know one, I hated that Axel cheated on me but I loved watching him with Cherry and this thought pisses me off so much that I want to give Louise what she craves but feels shameful about".

TL;DR - it's not like I believe it's impossible for Lena to behave this way, I just can't understand for now why she's doing it and therefore if it's hard for me to relate to her or like her. Even if I'm a player who picks those options, my motivation might be anything from corrupting Lena (and see how her character changes and be disappointed that it really doesn't) to morbid curiosity how the game explains Lena's motivation and then completionism and simply wanting to see a hot scene that Eva spent time crafting. None of those meta-thoughts would apply to Lena, so I'd like to see why she actually does it in the game. Hopefully Eva will address that in the future chapters though I can see the allure in leaving things ambiguous and letting the player fill in the blanks, to come up with explanations for Lena (like I just did in my several examples).

 

[BloodyMares]

How do I unlock this decision?
View attachment 1815075

You probably like Cindy a bit too much for such a selfless action. Did you comment on her Peoplegram photo? Or danced with her at the bar? Actions that increase Ian's desire for Cindy prevent Ian from being a loyal friend for Wade.