Interesting discussion. Also ty all for keeping it cordial with each other
I think in some cases, the tag 'side girls' makes it feel like a character is a 'wham bam thank you ma-am' one and nothing else. Or they'll have little to no screen time.
Although I've referred to a few girls as 'side girls' in the past, for me at least, they all have different levels. I'm sure there's a better tag for them and 'side girls' just sounds too generic. For example Tiur's post about the way Septcloud handles his tags (Great Dev btw. Even a lovely person to talk to.)
In my case, there are :
Main girls : These girls will have specific endings for each of them IF you decide you want to stay with one in the end. I want them to feel close enough to the MC to justify him even considering giving up a harem end. They'll also have harem endings which will hopefully make sense for their personalities. This is something that will need to be tackled closer to the end and honestly, I'm not worried about how to justify them being okay with the harem path.
Secondary girls (side girls?) : Some of them will be love interests but they wont have monogamous endings for them. Some will however be able to be part of the harem ending. The ones that get screen time for example. Because even though someone's a 'side girl', I want them to have screen time since I want them to be remembered. I've played VNs where these girls don't get much screen time and hours later, I've forgotten about them. So any secondary girls here will also have screen time.
And then there's the random hookups : These girls will either show up once or only a few times and will not be part of the ending.
I'm not even sure if this answers the question but since I typed all this down, I'm going to post it anyway