I imagined something along the lines of the latter. If we assume that the story is set in 2019, then we can assume that Frank and Shannon were born around 1980. Without knowing the exact age of the parents, we can assume that they were born around the 1960s. Even if we know relatively little about Frank's parents, we can assume from the flashbacks that they are rather liberal or at least relatively "easy going". My assumption is that they took Jess in quite willingly when she was disowned by her family while pregnant. I would even assume that his mother accepted Jess as part of the family very early on, since if I recall correctly, her reaction when Jess told her that Frank had proposed was something along the lines of "It's about time!".
We don't know much about Shannon's parents, except that they abandoned their daughter when she was pregnant. I guess it's a "What are our neighbors going to think of this? Our 16-year-old daughter pregnant. Oh, the disgrace!"
I would put her parents in the moderately conservative corner, if my assumption is correct, whereas with Frank's parents I assume that they may have been influenced by the hippie era, or had rather conservative parents themselves and therefore wanted to do things differently with their children.
What you can definitely say is that Shannon's family has been rather toxic, which has then carried over to Shannon herself. And if it wasn't for Frank, Becca and Abby, Lilly would most likely be next in the cycle of toxicity.
As I recall, the story starts on "Thursday, March 30th" without specifying the year. The only years in the near past or future where March 30th lands on a Thursday are 2017, 2023, and 2028 (the next one after that is 2034, but I doubt it's
that far into the future).
I actually did some speculation around the Becca's parentage in
previous posts (links to all my previous posts in that particular post, actually), and all info below is based on this previous research. And yes, I plan to repeat myself a bit here (those previous posts have more details about my research and prior speculations).
Becca's character bio says that she's 23, and the time the story starts is said to be 15 days after her recent birthday. In a flashback to "July, 22nd. Twenty four years ago", MC/Frank is said to have been moping around in his room for a month after Shannon abrubtly left, so late June (in the flashback, Jessica tells MC/Frank "You've had a month to sit around and mope." - assuming one month exactly, Shannon moved away June 22nd).
Math would say that Becca was conceived on or around June 8th in the year of the flashback (assuming
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), or 2 weeks before Shannon left.
So if CNG (the dev) has made all of this intentional, and didn't mess things up, that leaves us with two options:
- MC/Frank is Becca's biological father
- Shannon cheated on MC/Frank, and that unknown person is Becca's biological father
We'll assume that the reason Shannon moved away was to hide her pregnancy.
And given CNG's most recent comment about Becca's parentage can become canon, now that Patreon might be going away, I'd say option 1 is even more likely.
I'd also speculate that Shannon's silence on the matter might be because she actually cheated on MC/Frank around that time anyway, and is herself unsure who Becca's true biological father is. I mean, she cheated on MC/Frank (which was the tipping point for their divorce), who's to say that she hasn't cheated on him before? And asking for a DNA test to prove it would just confirm that she's unsure.
As for MC/Frank himself not having noticed before, is that he's that oblivious to that matter, and hasn't thought to do the math himself. Becca probably has noticed, has done the math, and might've even done a DNA test in secret to confirm it, and even after all that, is still on board with her newfound relationship with her father, but that's even further speculation from my end.
All of this is basically trying to predict the story of a movie sequel before they've started production on it, though.
We'll just have to wait and see how the story actually unfolds.