what i wanted to know why didnt the mom get in contact the mom and MC were thick as thieves and the mom loved MC's ex gf so when the mom left why didnt she take MC with her? what did Damon say to make her stay away? as the NPCs in the game always say the MC is the trouble maker and always bringing Damon down to me its the other way around its Damon thats causing all of MC's problems
just saw that this got the abandoned tag again, kinda sucks, but i cant say im particularly surprised.
I think the writer wanted us to teach a lesson: "Don't trust gay people"
I mean, MC was betrayed and gaslighted by the 3 gay people he interacted. I can't see how Damon, Helena and Alexandra can repair their relationship with the MC at the end of the game.
- Jul 17, 2021
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I don't think that's what this is. This is just a story where it showcases the fact that even those closest to you can backstab/abandon you.I think the writer wanted us to teach a lesson: "Don't trust gay people"
I mean, MC was betrayed and gaslighted by the 3 gay people he interacted. I can't see how Damon, Helena and Alexandra can repair their relationship with the MC at the end of the game.
And they did it because they are gay, there was no other reason for their betrayal/abandonment.
I'm just joking about the funny trust gay people, but I think the Dev could've given them better motivations.
- Jul 17, 2021
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Well, technically he kind of did. Damon is jealous of the MC. So, he manipulated everyone to do different things. I mean look what he did with Mira and then, once Mira fell for the MC, he manipulated the ex to come back. Best friend ever!
your right about that once things are good with Mira the Ex came back Mira even stated that she wanted to tell MC so bad but fucking dickhead made her not too, and also the Ex even stated she didnt want to be there but (was forced) to
also the whole Dad moving to be close to his job over seas i bet that was Damon's doing as well
because the Mayor said that Mc's dad still wanted to be in touch and i believe even said wanted the MC to move there but thanks to Damon MC told the Mayor to tell his dad to fuck off
Totally agree, we need an update so some sense can be made of this. It all seems just crazy, you can understand melodrama with the young'uns but there absolutely no explanation why the mom would disappear and not get in contact once the dad had left the scene. Pretty much the worst thing a parent can do to a child barring serious SA.
- Sep 18, 2021
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Arguably not even that. To some extent it feels like 90% of Damon's bullshit boils down to "I have a huge crush on a straight dude and don't know how to process it."
For starters it's pretty obvious he's got a crush on the MC, and even his current boyfriend hints at it (but the MC is too dense to pick up even the most blatant of social cues from anyone, so it goes right over his head like everything else). There are multiple points in the story where it's kind of implied Damon is the one that hooked you up with your ex, and is very clearly trying to get you to hook up with someone else again, and there's an undercurrent of him trying to live vicariously through them.
A lot of Damon's manipulation comes across like "I want my beloved to be happy", with a lot of "I think with my heart and not my head" thrown in. Nearly everything that's going wrong boils down to Damon trying to do the "right thing" (as he sees it), without really understanding or foreseeing the catastrophic consequences of his piss-poor decisions. And then being completely crippled by guilt or massively overcompensating afterward.
Basically, he talked MC's mom into getting back with her crush because he was likely relating his own situation with hers, and was pushing a "you should do what your heart wants" mindset without thinking about how it was going to utterly destroy her family. Afterwards, knowing he was basically responsible, he's trying to "fix" things to help the MC recover from the losses, but because he's absolutely terrible at it he's really just making things worse.
He's trying to do the right thing, but in the worst possible ways. And because he's too afraid to ever admit the truth (about what he did, about his homosexuality, about stringing Danielle along as a convenient beard and hardcore fucking her over in the process, about trying to get the MC a new girlfriend to pull him out of his depression, etc), every single thing he does just makes everything worse.
He's not an evil person, he's just a destructive idiot.
It feels like the intention of the story is that we're supposed to sympathize with him because he's a gay man who can't talk about his real feeling for fear of persecution and rejection, but utimately we're left feeling disgusted by him because of how utterly toxic his influence winds up being.
It seems pretty obvious from his reactions that his plan was to hook MC up with Mira.
BUT - if he finds out you're getting friendly with Ada, he has a really happy reaction (because it means you're sort of doing what he wanted and finding someone new even if it isn't the one he picked for you). It's the same reason he arranges the meeting with your ex... he's clearly setting up a situation where you can either get back together with her or get closure, either of which helps heal the wound he's trying to fix.
With Danielle, it mostly starts out as him feeling too guilty to deal with her (because he knows just how much of a shit he's been to her), and when you start dealing with her he gets really happy about the idea of the two of you potentially hooking up because it solves two of his problems (ie, you get a girlfriend, she can stop chasing after him).
But again, the problem with Damon is that it doesn't really matter whether or not his intentions are good, he basically does the worst possible thing in every single situation, making everything worse, and effectively destroying the lives of nearly everyone he interacts with.
He's not a villain, he's a walking curse.
The implication I get is that she feels so terrible about leaving and abandoning her family (and how badly it messed up her son, which she almost certainly knows because Damon would have told her) that she feels too guilty to try and reconnect. With a bit of fear that he won't ever want to see her/talk to her again anyway because he hates her now.
(Not that that's actually a realistic fear, because the MC is constantly presented as a doormat who would probably forgive her 30 seconds after seeing her again and start blaming himself for her leaving.)
"Poor communication is the root of all sorrow" could probably be the underlying theme of this entire story. Nearly every problem, tragedy, and emotional wound could be completely avoided if people in this word were just willing to fucking talk about their issues for about 5 minutes. Instead everyone is keeping secrets, no one ever talks about their issues, and everything festers like an infection until everything explodes in a fiery mess.
Ex-gf did quite a few things wrong.
You could argue it wasn't her intention, and it was mostly the result of her own fucked up issues and broken psyche, but that excuse doesn't really justify it because it applies to nearly everyone else in the story. It doesn't really matter WHY you're being a shit, what matters is that you ARE being a shit.
If you look at the flashbacks it's pretty obvious that the MC and Naomi have almost nothing in common. They were hooked up by Damon (because of course they were), who knew Naomi because they were both athletes. MC seems to hate everything she likes (and vice-versa), and they've wound up in a co-dependent relationship where the only real connection they have is that they both like to have sex. They both idealized the relationship into something it wasn't.
Meanwhile Naomi is mostly in the relationship in the first place because she has HUGE abandonment issues, which are compounded by her own "abandon them before they can abandon you" tendencies (which we see in the story when she visits her foster parents). The moment she realizes your relationship is slightly less than perfect (when you have your first fight), she immediately self-destructs and flees. She makes zero effort to try and fix things, understand your postion, or even compromise - if we're going to pile on Damon for lacking awareness, we also have to judge Naomi for having what is essentially an incredibly self-centered and complete lack of empathy.
All of which might be justifiable if the MC was being a complete asshole or had no real basis for being upset, but when the root of the problem is "I feel really emotionally shattered because my mother just ran off and destroyed our family" and her reaction is "BOO HOO, what about my problems?", it might make her one of the worst people in the entire story (second only to Damon and your mom).
None of this is helped by the fact that we get a scene where she explicitly says "Something is up with your mom, you should talk to her about it", but then the moment you attempt to bring it up she immediately cock-blocks you from discussing it with your mom. And since your mom abandons the family pretty much the very next day, it means what was essentially your first, last, and only opportunity to actually discuss things with your mom and potentially figure out what was going on was ruined because Naomi didn't want to kill the mood. It's incredibly easy to be resentful about something like that.
The MC never stops seeing her as anything other than his magical princess who was his ONE TRUE LOVE that he'll never recover from (because of course he does), but from the context of the outside observer, their relationship was incredibly toxic, and she's as much part of that (if not more so) as he is.
In a realistic scenario, the only real hope the MC has of ever living a healthy life is to pretty much abandon all of these people for good, never talk to any of them ever again, and try to restart his life somewhere else, making new friends that actually respect him, and learning to stand up for himself rather than just letting every single person walk all over him and then blame himself for it.
It's kind of sad that the only person in the entire story you can really stand up to and criticize is your dad, and he's one of the most justifiable and understandable people in the entire story.
- Jul 17, 2021
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Possibly true. But then we're back to the point also that someone else brought up, kind of jokingly, that we can't trust gay people and I'm not goin to go down that rabbit hole.
Those flashbacks were choice based and I chose all the good choices, so, they had everything in common. Thing is, the MC could've gone with her when she invited him, before mom even left. But he didn't. Why? Because he was a self-centered asshole. Borderline narcissist. Then when he called to get her to comeback, she said she couldn't and he should come to her. But, no. As usual his problem was more important to him and that important sports meet of hers wasn't. So, he acted like a narcissistic child and blew up. Breakin up with her.
Anyway, this can be discussed ad nauseam, but it's not really worth it. Everyone has their own understandin when it comes to her. But it's a moot point. Only the dev can answer this and he's refrained discussin queried questions about anything.
- Sep 18, 2021
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Arguably the implied moral isn't "You can't trust gay people" as much as one specific gay person. We can argue that Damon is evil, an idiot, or a clueless vortex of destruction without saying ALL gay characters are the same. Ironically, Dion is presented in a far better light (in spite of being a bit of a hothead). I feel as bad for Dion as I feel for everyone else Damon is sabotaging.
Damon is 100% a user and a manipulator - the real question is whether or not he has good intentions but is too dense and too crippled by guilt to ever stop trying to "fix" things, or if he's actually a narcissist who only uses the "good intentions" justification as an excuse (possibly even to himself) so he can feel better about his own selfishness. I feel like the story is trying to imply the former, but I can see why some people might lean more towards the latter (especially if they know or have been hurt by people like Damon in real life). But there's nothing in his character that implies his terribleness is inherent to his homosexuality. Or that he's somehow representative of all homosexuals.
Even the mother (who is also a problem) only made one major mistake (leaving), while the rest of her problem behavior (being unwilling to communicate) is a trait shared by literally everyone else in the story. Which includes all the straight characters as well. So it's hard to say that her being gay (or possibly more accurately, bi) is the reason for her being a terrible person. If she'd abandoned her family for a dude everything else would functionally be the same and she'd still be terrible. If she'd divorced her husband to be with a female lover, but had actually tried to discuss that with her son, and hadn't effectively cut her son out of her life, she'd be far more sympathetic.
The problem is, in the story as presented, we're basically left either saying that Damon is evil or Damon is impulsive and stupid. If we generalize his behavior to all gay people (which we probably shouldn't) it's going to be an unfortunate theme no matter how we interpret him.
Though I suppose there's an argument to be made that if some of the gay protestors were humanized more and made more significant figures in the story they could be presented as being good people in contrast with Damon, but I still think generalizing Damon to represent all gay people is already a stretch as-is.
There were choices in the flashbacks, but they weren't choice-based. There was a lot of info being presented that the player had no control over or influence on. No matter what choices you make they're still presented as having almost nothing in common and seemingly being incapable of ever really relating to the other person's perspective (she's athletic and he hates going to the gym, she wants him to come to her games and he doesn't want to go, he shares multiple interests with Damon that she has no interest in and is somewhat dismissive of, she's idealizing him into her perfect guy and he seems relatively uninvested in the relationship, etc). Their relationship is incredibly shallow, and basically boils down to having sex. It's mentioned that they've never really had a fight (until the big one) - that's because neither of them ever really engage with the other deeply enough to have anything to fight over. They're BOTH narcissists.
You can't confuse the MC's inner monologue where he tells you how awesome and perfect their relationship was with what it was actually like. The flashbacks show you he's wrong, that he's idealized it into something it wasn't. They're Romeo and Juliet - a passionate relationship founded on impulse and lust and utterly doomed to fail, who believe they're soulmates because teenagers are stupid.
To go back to the "Damon is the root of all evil" perspective, Damon basically picked a girlfriend for the MC that matched with his personality, not the MC's. A really cynical person might suggest he did this specifically so that he didn't need to feel threatened by Naomi, because she'd never have as much in common with the MC (his secret crush) as he did. He got what he wanted - MC got a girlfriend Damon could live vicariously through, but Damon still gets to be as close to MC as he possibly can.
I've said this before in this thread - the MC is basically the Manic Pixie Dream Boy that all of these broken characters are drawn to like a moth to the flame. EVERY love interest (Naomi included) is a broken bird who want the MC more because of their own issues than because they want him. They're ALL using him (whether they realize it or not).
Naomi wants an idealized relationship because she's in love with the idea of being in love, has abandonment issues, and is desperate to find acceptance but with commitment issues that leads her to drive people away. Mira is looking for her romantic prince to come and rescue her from her life, so she can live happily ever after. Danielle has been used and manipulated and is desperate for affection and hurt by what she sees as Damon's unjustified rejection. Ada is trying to reconcile what she wants versus what she's been told she should want. Rose feels betrayed, jealous, and unloved (both from her mother AND her husband), and just wants someone to love her for who she is. And Damon... is Damon.
The MC invites this by being passive as hell and trying to conform to what he thinks the person he's with wants (and to some extent, by confusing sex and love - even in the current relationships). Arguably his path to maturity is learning to stand up for himself and establish who HE is and what HE wants rather than trying to be everything to everyone.
Which is why I've said I feel like the only happy ending possible for this story is if the MC rejects every possible love interest, leaves town, never speaks to his mother or Damon again, and just starts life over in a new town where he can work on fixing himself, and then meet someone who loves him for who he actually is, not for who they want him to be. Because any other choice is really just perpetuating the same old problems that caused all the pain and mess in the first place.
- Sep 12, 2018
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It's sad see a really great game like this being abbandoned. One of my favorite games ever. Hoep the dev comes back and get well with the game once again.