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No, I understand what you mean. From his perspective Mizz isn't doing anything wrong - he already knew Bromm before you, probably intimately too, and he is genuinely putting you on a slow burn because he is actually interested in you, and he made you no promises of a closed relationship even as he admitted his interest. 

But the way things are right now - they ignore the player's perspective on this situation completely and treat him as if he is unequivocally in the wrong for having his own feelings and expectations of Mizz. Not Rael, the player.

Rael might be cool with this, he is not me, he was born and raised in the far-off future of a different world, he does not have my sensibilities and expectations of people.

But I am the one playing the game. I am the one whose feelings are real.

And I do realize the difficulties of creating a vast branching experience like you are creating, and I know you don't have endless resources to iron out every little thing... 

And, honestly, apart from this one particular experience, I've got nothing but praise for you, you're nailing it, truly. I am genuinely in awe at the scale of the story's branching. I tried to see all events for every character as the most obvious background paths, so I think I'm being objective when I say the game's been astonishingly amazing so far.

Which makes this particular event all the more disappointing because of how high the overall experience has been before it hit such a harrowing low. I feel like this is NOT one of those moments where you should just shrug it off and say that you only have two hands and can't cover all bases. I felt this way, and I'm hardly unique, so others will follow and be disappointed.

You must see that this needs at least a way for the player to make Rael be offended and not complicit in his own humiliation.

(+2)

First, I appreciate the response and the passion, and I'm very grateful for the complimentary words for the project. It really is a lot of work, and I'm glad that outside this one instance, you've been really enjoying it!

I will say this: there are several outcomes to that particular scene (including one that I think you'd be very happy with, actually), but the one you chose and are upset about just happens to be the one where Rael, through his (and your) actions, led to upsetting and embarrassing another character. Mizz isn't upset by anything else you've done here, but your actions have upset someone else and that's what he's irritated about. Rael does offer pushback, but in the end, the issue isn't what Mizz was doing. The issue is how Rael responded to it; how you, the reader, responded to it.

Choices have consequences, and this is a pretty consistent throughline for the whole project. You can make bad calls and you can suffer the consequences for them. This will inevitably colour your opinions of the cast, the story, the project, and possibly even me... but the choices are put in front of you to make. You sure made one, heh heh, and now the choice is to deal with the consequences or to go back and try to make a different one. The choice, as ever, is yours!

You don't have to thank me, I'm the one grateful for the experience and your reply is a display of gratitude in itself.

That said, my eloquence must be failing me, because I see that you misunderstand the issue I have with that scene. I'll try again if don't mind.

On day 2 the way Mizz speaks about his interest in Rael and his plans to go slow with him, it can be easily read as a declaration of a beginning of a relationship.

And those usually come with an expectation of being an exceptional arrangement, and not a "I'll tell you how special you are to me and then turn around and blow someone else".

So, the way the scene at the observation deck reads after that is that Mizz had consciously betrayed Rael's trust and Rael just did nothing about it. He even apologized about something that wasn't his fault like a lemon - the possibility of getting caught is a big part of having sex in a public place, it was Bromm's and Mizz's fault they got caught, not Rael's fault for catching them. Play stupid games - win stupid prizes. Batman couldn't beat an apology out of me there.

And regardless of that, what Mizz is angry about is irrelevant, because he just lost his right to be angry. He betrayed Rael's trust and he should not be allowed to make this about Bromm or himself. 

Again, I'm not daft, I realize that this is not your intended read, but it's a very possible and obvious read from where I'm standing. Other people will see things this way too.

And replying to your suggestion about playing things differently - no, even if I chose the option to stay quiet and spare Bromm's feelings at the expense of my own, I would NOT want sloppy seconds after him. And yes, the player can choose to not receive a blowjob there, to Mizz's  brief surprise, but you did not put it there for the reasons I would pick it for, so it's irrelevant in the context of our discussion - it's just Rael being shy, not Rael being angry.

So what am I suggesting?

The easiest(and also the worst) way to fix this is to avoid this read completely. Rewrite parts of Mizz's dialogue to make sure he beats the player over the head with the fact that there's no exclusive arrangement between them, and he will lift tail whenever he  wants for whomever he wants while they're flirting and he's telling Rael that he is so special. With a second chance for the player to block Mizz's romance by saying that is not acceptable to him.

The better option(though not for your free time) is to lean into this. You stumbled into this accidentally, but this is good drama, and drama sells - this could be everyone's favorite scene because conflict is memorable. 

(for example, Dawn Chorus fans love-love-LOVE the Axe Murder ending, even though it's a bad and non-canon ending, it's simply exciting and memorable BECAUSE it's a bad experience that's meant to be be a bad experience) 

What I'm saying is that even if it cuts off Mizz's romance option, you should allow the player an option to make Rael be hurt and angry, let him dig his heels in and tank his relationship with Mizz. This is a game about relationships, yet we haven't had any opportunities to lower our scores with anyone yet.

P.S. I'm retracting my notion that Rael is so different from a modern day person that he is allowed a special outlook on the situation - while talking about his Punk years, Rael mentioned people in his gang breaking each other's heart, so an expectation of an exclusive relationship is not something out of the ordinary for their world or him personally.

I'll keep the reply as brief as I can because I don't want to keep making a lengthening chain to debate the matter further and distract anyone who might be scrolling comments; the Void Dreaming Discord is a much better venue for debating character motivations, after all!

I might posit that it's less a question of your eloquence failing you as perhaps a misreading of the situation. Mizz at every point where sexual matters come up with Rael before this expresses his interest, but also his restraint. There's no notion of romantic interest discussed, and certainly after two days of knowing him that's a bit much to ask from anyone. Mizz doesn't propose any exceptional arrangements, and neither does Rael. There's interest stated, and borders posted.

That isn't to say that anyone's read of the situation is invalid, but I did quickly poll the discord to see if I'd made a mistake and accidentally put in something to give the wrong impression. The consensus seemed to be that there was nothing of the sort, which definitely eases my worries somewhat. I might suggest that the discord might be worth visiting to see, if you're so inclined!

Finally, and with apology, I can't see me making changes to the existing content in this case. As to the options presented to fix the issue, I'm not sure of their viability. Bludgeoning my readers isn't something I'm personally inclined toward, nor am I completely convinced it's necessary in this case. Alternatively, the scale of Void Dreaming is already massive, and if I set the precedent of bending to a single reader's desires in crafting things to their specification, it's opening the floodgates to an insurmountable amount of work added to an already insane workload. Also, there's definitely been opportunities to lower your scores with different crewmembers! You may not have noticed or chosen them, but I promise they're there, heh heh. Certainly Mizz wasn't happy about the events in this situation.

And with that, I'll leave the matter. I don't want to keep clogging the comments section with responses and debate. I've not hit the mark in this matter with you, and for that I'm truly sorry. I know I can't please everyone all the time, but that doesn't mean I'd not like to. Again, I recommend the discord channel as a viable alternative; there are many thoughts on many subjects there, and much better for such things than here!