Friendly reminder that Davis' body hasn't been found. If he was responsible for the boat sinking, he could've made sure he'd escape alive. Davis says that taking the ferry was her idea, but we have no proof that this is the truth or not.
Pushing people's buttons to elicit the reaction you want, is manipulation.
And that would be self-serving on her part, implying she didn't want to break through Valentine's walls out of the goodness of her heart.
Yep, I agree, that's possible. And she's smart, there's that too. But the questions she asked Vi in Mallorca prove that she has no real clue who the real Valentine is, underneath the trauma. So she might see that he's hiding the trauma, but she can't know if the person underneath is actually the one she imagines as her perfect partner. She thinks she sees the real Valentine when he's fighting, I don't think we can take her word on that.
"He (very) obviously has comittment issues", but that aside, yeah, we agree here.
I would argue that the word "manipulation" contains a lot of pejorative associations and therefore it requires a much higher threshold to be applied to someone's behaviour. For example, I wouldn't ask someone for the time of day, and then suggest that I had just manipulated them into replying by telling me it was half past noon. That's obviously a huge stretch. An interaction requires much more dishonesty and higher stakes than a simple question, even if it's an emotionally charged one, to be termed "manipulative". And at the mundane level that Els is operating so far, I would call what she is doing more at the stage of simply influencing matters (such as how she kissed the MC in front of the group after they spent the night together). In some cases her behaviour is indeed suspicious while in others it appears to be the opposite and almost openly helpful. But it's all been relatively mundane up to this point. I mean, it's not like Els has been using the Centre as an illegal international kitten-smuggling operation, and Sir Pounce-a-Bunch will turn out to be the key piece of evidence that eventually reveals her dastardly schemes.
Now that would definitely meet the standard for manipulation. But all the other stuff she's being doing? I don't see it being that serious yet.
I WANT MORE INES CONTENT... seriously
My theory is, it's about how self-reliant Vi is, or how protective the MC feels about her. I suspect there will be a big event for Vi where this variable determines the outcome, and Vi either becoming reliant on the MC or able to conquer her demons.
The protect variable could have to do with how far Ines is willing to go to keep Vi safe from what she perceives as an MC who is trying to advantage of innocent girls like Vi. With the addition of the inessubmission and inesselfreliance variables in Mallorca, I can potentially see a path where high inessubmission + high inesdesiretoprotect + low inesselfreliance scores could let the MC (literally) fuck with Ines in a very domineering manner.
I believe Kana herself more or less confirms this. Trin-trin was her trainer, in a more sensual form of wrestling.
Could be true, maybe he revised his opinion of that after she enlisted. In Els' flashback her parents talk about her pacifism before she enlisted.
Or that they're both in hell
Yeah, noticed that as well. It was one of the things that initially made me weary of her. At the garage with the motorcycle, she's also very coy with how she describes the "heir" thing.
I also suspect Davis' supposed death is a red herring. But what gave you the impression that Els is suspicious?
Yeah, this gets brought up a few times. How the MC had a chance to kill Davis for what he did, and both McNab and the MC had their weapons trained on him. And you're right, there's still a lot of nuance. I do suspect that Valentine was too late to save her, and caught up with Davis after the fact.
Elspeth convinces Viridiana to tell her about he main characters past, and learns that he used to enjoy getting into fights for fun. She also learns that those fights were what caused the main character and Viridiana's brother to become close friends. A short while later, Elspeth sees the main character trying to avoid a fight with two drunks at the beach.
He also says that Elspeth was always his favourite, that his son was not a good person, and that Elspeth always idolized her brother. All three of those things contradict what Elspeth was telling Viridiana during their first conversation. The same conversation where she motions you to eavesdrop on them and then tells Viridiana "I'll tell you a secret just between us girls."
I just did a replay of the entire VN to try and refresh my memory about everything that has happened so far. As is the case with these stories that get updates only a few times per year because of the incredible effort required to produce them, it's been a while since I read some of the earlier chapters. Plus, it's often a good idea to recontextualize previous events based on what what we now know. So here's a few thoughts that stood out to me (I don't think there was anything too important...just a few little things that might be hints at stuff to come, or things that were hinted at about stuff we now know):
- Amrit says that the MC is "barking up the wrong tree" (her exact words) when he expresses an interest in Kana, which really solidifies the idea that Kana and Trinity were lovers, and that Amrit thinks Kana is likely "batting for the other team" in some way.
- Els' Dad is confused when the MC calls Els a "pacifist", and was likely about to expose that as a lie if Els didn't immediately interrupt him and direct the conversation elsewhere. Of course we now know that violence is something Els enjoys a bit too much, so telling others she is a "pacifist" is likely just her way of hiding this (in her mind) embarrassing and discomfiting side of herself from the world. (Note: I say "discomfiting" only because it's uncomfortable for her in the sense that this part of her personality is related to things she doesn't want to talk about, but violence is obviously something that she still enjoys an awful lot.)
- The stuff about Els' close friendship with Anastasia while serving together in the military is only mentioned during a single interaction with the MC, so it's a facet of her life that is really easy to overlook and perhaps dismiss as unimportant. Not much about this relationship is really established, except that Anastasia "never made it home" (and so she can be presumed to have died during the war, though that is not confirmed), and that Els thinks enough of her to name the motorbike after her.
- When comforting Vi about her loss, Els says that her own brother is: "presumably in the same place as yours", which is a bizarre choice of words. This could be a very strong hint that Els suspects that Davis is still alive.
- What I'm seeing upon re-read is a pattern wherein Els answers almost every question she gets related to her friends/family – or that pertain to sensitive information – like a lawyer who cannot lie. She lets you believe what she wants you to believe, without ever giving a simple "yes" or "no" response that could later be used against her. Her Father confirms Els' brother is dead with the line: "And he paid for it with his life.". But Els in an earlier conversation can only say: "You already know." when asked about whether her brother is alive or not. She's slipperier than a wet breast covered in lube.
- There's a lot of stuff in the story that the reader assumes has happened, but when you look closely it's not explicitly made clear what really occurred. A lot of this happens with Els (as I mentioned), but the best example of this kind of misdirect is Davis' supposed death when the ferry sinks. Initially it seems certain that he's dead, and all that remains is for Vi to identify his body. However, we are later told that the authorities made a mistake and it wasn't him, but this fact is downplayed and barely mentioned in a quick cutaway scene. Meanwhile everyone in the story just goes on to assume that he is dead (which does make sense narratively "in universe", since no one has much reason to find his body being missing as suspicious...well, I do suspect Els may be wary of this turn of events, but we can only speculate as to why she might be suspicious).
- So much about how and why Zaina died still remains unclear to the reader. We know a lot about the preamble now, but we still haven't seen the event itself or the immediate aftermath. Did the MC witness her getting killed by Davis? Or did he find her dead and figure out that Davis killed her? Or did the MC suspect Davis, and get a confession from him? And if Davis confessed, was he telling the truth? Or did he lie about Zaina's murder to hide some other secret? The MC says that McNab stopped him from killing Davis, but that's the only reliable piece of information we've gotten so far about how it all went down. I suspect there's a lot more to this event that will later get revealed as the story progresses.
- It's a bit hard to read his expression, but McNab appears to smile for a moment when Els kisses the MC in Mallorca, which feels kind of nice I must admit...it looks like he's happy to see his two best friends finally get together. It does feel a little wholesome to think that their relationship has his support, considering how close he is to both Els and the MC.
- Holy perfect girlfriend of your dreams, but does Els ever lay it on thick the morning after she and the MC hook up. I remarked in a previous comment about how Els kissing the MC in front of the group was her throwing down the gauntlet to the rest of the girls in the battle to win the MC's heart, but I didn't really notice that she also makes sure to bring the MC a cup of coffee before drinking some herself (demonstrating what a supportive and considerate partner she'll be), and then she even makes a point of remarking that she is famished because of the previous evening's exertions (complimenting the MC's performance in bed). Maybe I just overlooked how dramatic everything was initially because of the understated and nonchalant way the entire scene plays out, but holy hell Batman! This is taking her naturally competitive nature a bit far. It honestly feels a bit like overkill. So much so that it's beginning to enter a level of over-the-top praise that worries me a little bit.
- The dev says in the game script that they have coded boolean variables as 1 for true and 2 for false (instead of using 0 for false which is the common standard). This is kind of weird for my programming brain to comprehend, though in the actual game code everything appears to have text saying "False" or "True" rather than numbers anyways, so I don't really get this distinction I guess. But that's not the important part. The real problem here is that there is a comment clearly indicating this convention in the game code! That is completely unacceptable. Real programmers don't comment their code. It was hard to write; it should be hard to read as well!
We talked about this a few pages back but when she leaves MC and her father alone, she accidently forgets her handbag which conveniently had her phone recording the conversation.
I FUCKING AGREE!The real problem here is that there is a comment clearly indicating this convention in the game code! That is completely unacceptable. Real programmers don't comment their code. It was hard to write; it should be hard to read as well!
These conversations fit together fine for me without anyone having to be dishonest in the serious way you are suggesting. There is the relatively minor matter of Els hiding the side of herself that hated her brother from her Father, but that is only a small white lie to maintain family cohesion. I think Els was honest to Vi about both loving and hating her brother, and she very deliberately noted that her brother was not just the sum of all of his bad actions in her mind (just like Davis should not be those things alone to Vi either). So she agreed with her Dad's assessment that her brother "was not a good person". She just went further and said that her brother was more than just those horrible mistakes to her. Her Father only witnessed her mourning the loss of her sibling, because she kept her anger at her brother in check when he passed to not destroy her Dad's memory of a loving, close knit family. And if we believe what she said to Vi, her own heart was indeed torn between experiencing the two conflicting emotions after he died, which would certainly be a difficult thing to manage.
I think it fits better that she did this because she wants you to understand how much trouble Vi is having in that moment with reconciling her contradictory emotions. Els's primary goal in that conversation seems to be trying to help Vi accept and move on from her loss. And Els's later actions match with this interpretation as well, in how she tell the MC that Vi really needs his support right now, and that she even needs a hug, when Els leaves the two of them alone.
So you think she was lying to her father? I was under the impression that she was lying to Viridiana and made up the story about hating her brother because she wanted to seem relatable to her. Either way, going from hating someone to idolizing someone is a pretty big swing. Perhaps it could be explained away later if she initially idolized him and then later hated him after he got worse over time.
My main objection there was not with her flirting with the main character, but rather with her assuring Viridiana that what they were saying was between the two of them when it very clearly wasn't. Elspeth is lying to Viri and that shows a level of disrespect for her, and makes her attempts to help her seem insincere. This then combines with her flirting with the main character to strongly suggest that she isn't trying to support Vi, but rather is using her as a way to get to the main character.
Why do I think Els has suspicions that Davis may be alive? Well, that is not a simple question to answer. But to try and keep it short, her deliberate use of the word "presumably" when she speaks of Davis's death is a clear hint of this. If she thought Davis was dead, she would just say: "My brother is gone too" or something like that. Her response to Vi would be simple. Instead she says: "[He's]...presumably in the same place as yours". That's too complex of wording to be taken at face value.
