Agreed, but for me it will be even more interesting with whom Edwin is in the end (no matter if in or out the club), whom he is friends/collegue with (Club leaders, Carnnations and Housegirls) and if he helped Ian and Mina to reconcile.
It will be great seeing how the various relationships will be and how much or few corruption influences/flavors this.
By the way, it is interesting to see how Ian´s and Hana´s relations (if on Hana path) are developing. Currently it is not well, but definitely less hostile than before.
Now some thoughts in spoiler, for if some players have not played so far:
Agreed, but for me it will be even more interesting with whom Edwin is in the end (no matter if in or out the club), whom he is friends/collegue with (Club leaders, Carnnations and Housegirls) and if he helped Ian and Mina to reconcile.
It will be great seeing how the various relationships will be and how much or few corruption influences/flavors this.
By the way, it is interesting to see how Ian´s and Hana´s relations (if on Hana path) are developing. Currently it is not well, but definitely less hostile than before.
Now some thoughts in spoiler, for if some players have not played so far:
I think MC with too much toughness would probably not be able to leave the club, as in that would be logical from a gameplay pov.
With regards to what you wrote on the spoiler, reading that td and gil's inspiration for this game came from Starless, I think if you're familiar with Starless (i didn't finish it), you can speculate or sorta imagine where that particular element is going to take the story to.
It's actually the one part of the game I like the least. That "enhancement" is really not an element I enjoy reading on a story (it's quite common on Japanese AVN), but then again, we gotta take what we find amazing and what we dislike as a package so, it is what it is. I'm here for the ride regardless of that.
It's great that the game has already going through 3 chapters without the enhancement element being on the forefront of the story so, I can accept if the next 2 chapters would have that "enhancement" storyline being more upfront, I'll always have the first 3 chapters.
If Monday punishment has something to do with "enhancement", having all 3 carnations being in a tie and equally punished, it would be a nightmare though.
I dont think we need to hide our discussion anymore, because first of all the end of Ch3Upd3 should be common knowledge by now, and since most of our scenarios are speculative there shouldnt be real spoilers.
So what do we know for sure?
The Game starts at the 7th of May and the last day of the current update is Saturday the 13th of June, the end of Ch3Upd3 is Friday the 12th.
Darius and his housegirlfriend are not present at the club in their former occupations anymore.
Edwin has taken over the job position of Darius, and also gets to use his former appartment. August insisted on this use.
Kathleen reacts to an attack, threat or insult with disproportionate force. I think there is plenty of proof to that claim.
The use of Abels aphrodisiac / stimulant is openly practised and the earlier versions of the drug arent met with opposition from Chuck or August.
The development of Abels aphrodisiac / stimulant is an ongoing project with a history of setbacks and side-effects but has a general progression towards later versions being more powerful.
Although at least Chuck knows about Kathleens cooperation with Abel concerning the drug, neither Chuck nor August are aware of the experiment conducted in the dungeon.
The victim is experiencing a later iteration of the drug for at least 7 days.
The victim in the basement is female.
Next are reasonable assumptions:
Any organization tries to fill a vacant needed job position as soon as possible, usually within four weeks after the departure of the former employee, preferably seamless. With the upcoming exhibition there is a certain pressure to staff Darius' position.
So we have five weeks since Edwin received the job offer (May 7th till June 12th/13th), lets say the club waited for something like two weeks after Darius' leave to assess their options for potential applicants and then reaching out to Edwin. This would mean those two (the housegirl and Darius) are missing for likely seven to perhaps twelve weeks at maximum. That is also a timeframe in which one can achieve an adequate progress while conducting a series of tests with different iterations of a drug.
The disappearance of any person raises questions about their whereabouts, this question has been answered for Darius and his girlfriend to a degree with "They eloped together to an unknown location." which is of course paperthin, but given the circumstances of an illegal business with a "Dont stick your nose where it doesnt belong and dont ask too many questions." policy it is obviously good enough. Neither Jacob, Dalia, Harper, Hana nor Killian seem to have to much trouble with this explanation.
There are sadly other members of society whose disappearance would go unnoticed for a prolonged period of time, namely the lonely elderly and the homeless. Those two subpopulations are however generally undesirable for medical tests, because you want to be able to properly assess the effects and side-effects without interference from possible medical pre-conditions, which are quite prevalent in the homeless and elderly. You want healthy test subjects.
Again abducting a healthy female specimen for medical testing will certainly raise questions among their friends and family and is not without a risk. You have to lure them in (perhaps she tells somebody where she is heading) or you have to catch her and transport her to the test facility with the danger of exposure during a random traffic control or being spotted while you carry her to the car or into the building, a building which is located in an urban area near a subway station. Even if there is an underground garage (i assume so, because i guess a lot of the clients arent too keen to be seen entering the building), it is a far riskier operation than just using someone who is already inside the building.
Generally there is also a considerable risk that a blackmailer will not stop blackmailing after the first successfull attempt, as long as he still holds on to the compromising material; and with the easy access of cloud services in the internet, a victim of blackmail can never be sure whether there arent any copies left.
We already established that Kathleen is resourceful and intelligent, but also very vindictive and rarely leaves a matter unresolved.
It is hard to believe she would not try to tie up this loose ends in one way or another, because, leaving the potential threat to herself and the Clubs' business aside, it shines through that she was personally offended by his behaviour.
Kathleen is a good liar. It is up to you what exactly or how much of her explanations and statements you believe, since there can be both truth and lie interwoven in one sentence.
Conclusion
Everything else is up for debate and speculation, but with my above reasoning i am still heavily inclined towards my scenario inside this Spoiler.
Im at chapter 2 , probably 1/3 or half way, the story is good, the concept is intruging , my only complain is... there's wayyyyyyyyyyy too much fore play and almost 0 actual "penetration" (or sex to be blunt) and it did piss me off a bit.
Im at chapter 2 , probably 1/3 or half way, the story is good, the concept is intruging , my only complain is... there's wayyyyyyyyyyy too much fore play and almost 0 actual "penetration" (or sex to be blunt) and it did piss me off a bit.
hehe means you still "didn't understand the essence of the wastelands".
for penetrations, it is up to you, oh young lad, to direct your steps towards the pornhub. visual novels are only the last thing about penetrations and, first of all, they are mind games ... about how angels gradually turn into .... into ... well, in general, these angels turn into someone, but these angels turn, (you grow up - you'll understand... as they say, "children under 18...") hehe...
visual novels are the same novels "but with a plus sign, often hidden between the lines" - as in any brain there are "cockroaches" that are sometimes not immediately visible and crawl out only occasionally. and penetration is also sometimes extremely rare. essence is the relationship between people. relationship development over time. in a way it's a book, but it's interactive.
My problem is that as u said "to be read as consensual"
Thats a rape in my eyes, no matter how it was attempted to be put. Exploiting someone that works for you by force is by definition rape.
The key word being 'by force', which is what matters for rape in all circumstances.
Having a power dynamic does not directly imply rape. Employing that power dynamic, much like physical power, to force yourself on someone is what constitutes rape. You're going off on a tangent.
If you start going down this loop, soon enough you'll find yourself concluding that anyone with a penis is just a rapist.
I read somewhere that even what was originally supposed to be rape, but ended in mutual pleasure, is no longer considered rape by the "victim" but goes along the line of unexpected love affairs, role-playing games - if I may say so ... the main thing is that the lady turned out to be satisfied (because, why pretend, we always try to make the lady happy, even if we have a deep offense against women - such is the law of life). if this is done then there is no violence. if the lady is not satisfied, then even ordinary family sex according to the schedule can turn into rape. Not everything in life is as simple as it seems. and starting to simplify - you come to a black and white perception of life. I don’t want to say big words, but this is a kind of Nazism, where "strangers are untermensch" and do not deserve the right to life. I believe that any case of "rape" should be considered in the most thorough way, taking into account even the way the "victim" herself behaved, since there are always two sides to any event that has occurred.
The key word being 'by force', which is what matters for rape in all circumstances.
Having a power dynamic does not directly imply rape. Employing that power dynamic, much like physical power, to force yourself on someone is what constitutes rape. You're going off on a tangent.
If you start going down this loop, soon enough you'll find yourself concluding that anyone with a penis is just a rapist.
I think the main thing is consent. Rape can occur without force with help of drugs for example. If there no consent on both sides its pretty much rape.
I think the main thing is consent. Rape can occur without force with help of drugs for example. If there no consent on both sides its pretty much rape.
Now this is a tough one.
Although almost all contemporary societies do have a criminal offense called "rape" and outlaw it as one of the most serious crimes, there is no uniform definition of this legal term.
Forced sexual intercourse within marriage (in Germany rape could not occur inside a marriage per legal definition until 1997) or with opponents in the course of war (pretty sure the special operators in Ukr will not be sued back home), or with minorities or slaves (widely practised by ISIS members against their yazidi slaves) has not been or is not universally recognized as a criminal offense.
Many societies also blame or blamed the victim (looking at you ramvivat), which is expressed, for example, in social exclusion (the yazidi women often faced this from their families after being freed) and even forced marriage with the rapist (like practised in Syria and the UAE).
While recent developments have certainly lowered the threshold of what is considered rape in some countries (as expressed in nevermorexx post) other cultures may set the bar much higher. There are fine and sometimes fluid lines between sexual harassment, sexual coercion and rape.
Lets play out some Weinstein scenarios:
(Disclaimer: i am not a lawyer, so take these with a grain of salt.)
Weinstein: "You know i have a tremendous influence on which actresses are considered for the cast. I heard you have special talents but i have yet to see them in action." Actress:"What do you mean? How can i convince you of my qualities?" Weinstein: "I dont know..." *looks at her mouth and makes a vague gesture just below his bellybutton. Actress catches up, makes a disgusted face, turns her head towards the door but drops finally to her knees, unbuttons his fly and blows him. Any prosecutor would have a very hard time to sue Weinstein for rape in this case. Perhaps sexual harassment
Weinstein: "You know i have a tremendous influence on which actresses are considered for the cast. I heard you have special talents but i have yet to see them in action." Actress:"What do you mean? How can i convince you of my qualities?" Weinstein: "I dont know..." *looks at her mouth and makes a vague gesture just below his bellybutton. Actress catches up, makes a disgusted face, turns her head towards the door and says: "I dont want to do this..." but drops finally to her knees unbuttons his fly, and blows him. A german prosecutor would now have the first step into a possible sexual coercion case, since she expressed her unwillingness for the act.
Weinstein: "You know i have a tremendous influence on which actresses are considered for the cast. I heard you have special talents but i have yet to see them in action." Actress:"What do you mean? How can i convince you of my qualities?" Weinstein: "Well, i can help you, if you help me, else... i dont know..." *looks at her mouth and points to his crotch. Actress catches up, makes a disgusted face, turns her head towards the door and says: "I dont want to do this..." but drops finally to her knees, unbuttons his fly and blows him. Now a german prosecutor would get into the range of a possible rape case, since Weinstein insinuated a harm to her career and made it somewhat clear what exactly he expects from her to avert this harm.
Weinstein: "You know i have a tremendous influence on which actresses are considered for the cast. I heard you have special talents but i have yet to see them in action." Actress:"What do you mean? How can i convince you of my qualities?" Weinstein: "Well, i can help you, if you help me, else... i dont know..." *looks at her mouth and points to his crotch. Actress catches up, makes a disgusted face, turns her head towards the door, says: "I dont want to do this..." and heads towards the door. Weinstein runs after her and blocks physically the door: "Dont be stupid, you are just gaining momentum in this industry!" the actress sighs "You bastard, very well then..." and drops finally to her knees, unbuttons his fly and blows him. A prosecutor is now probably again a step away from a rape case and would rather press charges for sexual coercion; if he is lazy or an coward perhaps even just sexual harassment.
Well, you see where these scenarios are going, and they were just from a german legal point of view. While in all those scenarios Weinstein acts detestable and leverages his power against a young aspiring actress and the result in all of them is the same, few of them are actually considered rape on a purely german legal basis.
So finding a common ground on that matter in a community like F95ZONE with such a multitude of cultural backgrounds, is practically impossible. Therefore i would advocate to accept TD1900s point of view, whenever you can align it with your conscience.
Because i strongly believe if TD1900 would have written a rape scene, there wouldnt be any ambiguity around it.
"Weinstein: "You know i have a tremendous influence on which actresses are considered for the cast. I heard you have special talents but i have yet to see them in action." Actress:"What do you mean? How can i convince you of my qualities?" Weinstein: "Well, i can help you, if you help me, else i make sure you will never get any jobs again" *looks at her mouth and points to his crotch. The Actress catches up, makes a disgusted face, turns her head towards the door, says: "I dont want to do this..." and heads towards the door. Weinstein runs after her and blocks physically the door: "Dont be stupid, you are just gaining momentum in this industry!" the actress pleads "No, please let me out!" Weinstein forces her with his strong right hand on her knees, while unzipping his fly with his left hand. "No, blow me you bitch, if you know whats good for you!" The actress struggles against his grip, and starts to cry out of desperation. Weinstein forces his dick into her mouth: "If i feel any teeth, i will strangle you right here!" Terrified the actress goes limp and Weinstein skullfucks her until release. "Now, get the fuck out of here you whore, and if you tell anyone, remember it is my word against yours." Smiling he watches her unsteady leave."
This is not a rape scene, i have written it, i should know.
I'm a believer of authorial intent being irrelevant, but in this case it was like a three sentence description of an event that occurred off screen - between a man and his former nanny I might add, which I think muddles things a bit if you're discussing the balance of power in their relationship.
That said, it's nice seeing discussions pop up from small details.
After running the game yesterday, I tried to start it today and got the audio channel exception in the trace log and the game is not starting. The LISC game solution from this forum is not working for me. Anyone can help, please?
