I'm really lazy, so I'm not going to read 700 pages of thread to see if anyone else has had these ideas before me. But I do want to ask: Has anyone else been hit by what I am going to call, for lack of a better phrase, the literary merit of this game?
That's a whole lot of questions. I'm a new member, seen some of these products (games? novels? stories?) throughout the years but it's first that I look into it more and check forums, so while some of these may have been discussed a lot in the past, it's interesting to me at least.
Overall I'm loving the writing for sure. On occasion some of the lines may feel weird, out of place, or just foreign to me, but the story flow and characters are remarkably consistent. Certainly a lot more entertaining, and engaging than I expected, (in my limited experience), one of the very best. I don't mind a quick fap once in a while but that's what short porn videos are for, this is quite different, longer form of entertainment for me.
I have a measure of quality of the story that is not objective at all. How emotionally invested I become with the characters, if I think of them afterwards, fantasize about them or not. It's something interesting as it's both discomfortable and good at the same time - I don't want to feel melancholic or sad for no good reason (knowing what I long for and fantasize about does not exist at all), but also can't help it. I guess in that respect this story was very good. I find that the images, while by themselves meaningless, help selling the fantasy.
About the rest... I think in an ideal world we are equals and there's mutual respect, but I feel wherever sex work is involved there's always some exploitation, basically what MC says to Hana. I don't think such an establishment could really work completely fairly, and a lot of that is due to the nature of the patrons - there's a lot of assholes out there, way too many, and even if it's all saints in management if you're a business you can't just do business with respectful, nice guys and people will regularly get hurt. People are individuals, there's various motivations and I'm sure there's all kinds of ways people justify selling their bodies (literally or figuratively) and some of those are more sound than others. However I believe equality and mutual respect can only really happen when there's no valuable money (or favour) exchanged, otherwise it's hard to avoid some level of subordination.
About misogyny, the most unrealistic, and unfair part for me is the one that makes these things work - there's this big dick individual that performs outstanding in everything basically, and literally all women fall for him. There's a progression just to make it feel more natural but it's just more or less a linear and predictable progression. It does kind of portrey women as pretty simple individuals, you do what you do and they will fall for you
there's often some level of resistance but it basically always is superficial and/or temporary, just a mask you need to get through and it doesn't feel hard, maybe somewhat time consuming (well.. realistically.. a week or two, that's very little?).
Secondly I'm not sure and I would be curious what women think - the seemingly logical motivations and explanations these women have to explain why they are there willingly seem very convenient, feels like to soothe our conscience. Can't help but think in RL a lot of prostitues have similar motivations (povery, and/or manipulated by some asshole) and that can be kind of off-putting to me. Staying at the RL example, looking just at the ethnicities seems to confirm this largely nd there's a lot that you don't see at first sight.
These stories are made for men, probably by men. Was just thinking the other day how one-sided this point of view is and I'm fairly sure it's VERY. I would genuinely be curious if some teams would include a considerable woman influence in writing (50% or more), how different the story would be. Sure if guys are target audience we have to get our gratification, but how different the stories, characters, dialogues, reactions, the whole path to it would be?
There's indeed a respectable amount of effort going into giving the women in this story dignity, which I absolutely appreciate, it makes them feel a lot more real to me. If I'm cynical I can also wonder whether this is what sells to the majority, a reflection of the writers' own views, or a mix of the two?
