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heya :)

[Spoilers]

I can see kinda see why you had the strong reactions that you stated but I guess I'll throw out that not really any of those reactions were intended from this particular chapter. It's kinda hard for me to quickly summarize a response here because you interpreted things in a completely different direction that I felt that I intended to write them. In the case of Cody "kneeling," that part seems legit to me, I picture myself sliding down towards the floor onto my knees in a crouch to pick up the towel before standing back up. That just seems like a natural flow of motion to me. In the respect route, Braden specifically states why Cody was apologizing for his reaction. Cody, who noticeable gets pretty nervous around stuff (as we saw in the coffee shop) knew that Braden had mixed feelings about telling him stuff against Zack's perceived wishes so it was more a surprise when Zack walked in. Zack's staring probably just caught Cody off guard even though Zack was spacing out. Braden talks about this at the pond and sorta fills in the blanks.

The pervy line was very different, Zack's argument and blow up at Braden sounds very similar to where you are and you sound like you didn't really buy into anything that Braden said during the gym talk. I guess I did. I know people sometimes step out of line or become passive in relationships and hope that things will smooth themselves over when they don't. We're talking about two guys here who really have no experience in relationships and neither of them are used to dating another guy. They even talk about how they felt that the perception should be easier for two guys than it would be for opposite sexes to be in a relationship. There's a lot of mistakes that are made here from them and I think that's the beauty of it. To me, the design here is to illustrate two people who, regardless of their choices, are both sorry about what's happened between them and still care deeply for each other. Things just got out of hand and each of them sorta was hoping the other one would pull things back into alignment. I wanted to illustrate the importance of honesty and communication in relationships that are meaningful but to illustrate how difficult that is, i wanted a really uncomfortable subject to show how hard it was for each of them to talk about it. In the end, they found common ground and I like that. I dont really see either of them as the villain in this story.

You can also check out our discord if you want and jump in there to help process feelings. Lot of people do that after the updates. it's an easier way to unpack stuff. I certainly didn't see either ending as tragic as you did tho