A general thread to discuss Khenbish's update, from serious talk to goofy shitposts and jokes. Have fun!
Well, it is too long if you pick every option yes, but you can skip through if you select the last options so that's nice. From my experience with VNs, i find that interactive sex scenes can be fun the first time but then become obnoxious to go through each time you want to try different interactions of the story, yours at least get the avert eyes option, but Asterion's kiss suffers from having too many subsequent options at once. If you want an example of how much interactivity and variations a sex scene should ideally have, i recommend checking out "Burrows" latest update on Mark's route, to spoil a bit if you don't have the time there's 4 big variants, one being a solo and 3 fantasizing about different characters. I do give big points for animating the scene, that's an extra step few VNs have started doing and is still very uncommon. I do, however, want to point out that i don't know the average reader preferences for these scenes, so my one opinion doesn't account for deciding if scenes should have more or less interactions going forward.
Thanks! Excellent points, I took note of them. And I do plan on playing Burrows soon, I've been meaning to for a while.
I actually can say we did that on purpose! We were smart enough for that. Doing something horny and thematically appropriate went hand in hand.
Not wanting to intrude or anything, but I felt the length of the scene was warranted. Put it in the context of Khenbish thinking back on a moment in time, a "missed opportunity", fantasizing about how his first sexual experience could have been, all the different things he wished he could try and all that. I specially like how the scene builds up, starting shy and exploratory slowly gaining confidence and gathering momentum for a satisfying climax.
>is everyone getting stuff like this before we see the next main chappy?
Nope! We're going to have a couple more updates like this one (albeit shorter, we went apeshit with Khenbish because he doesn't get much to do in the main story otherwise), but we'll definitely get chapter 19 out before everyone's hangout routes are finished. We've had enough time to rest after 0.5 and to plan where the last third of the main story is going.
I was low key worried it was something of a sex toy, his father would find out about Kenbish sexuality from that and cut connections because of it and the gods made hotel realm.
I got the impression that Altan's "I have a... friend... who has a gay son, and he's really hardworking and (list of qualities that could describe Khenbish) and he's worried about what his father will think if he finds out" speech to the MC was a "yes, I know, but I can't openly know until he decides to tell me."
That was the talk after, my alarms were going off before that. From his interaction with Robert to actually meeting with his son.
Probably not. I feel that we already gave enough hints for people to be able to piece it all together.
I haven't figured that out myself. Maybe because the curse is expected to not allow him that pleasurable experience? Though I want to say that maybe it's a "you totally won't go crazy for that musky man smelling mushroom, my straight alpha son of mine" implication.
Asterion showing up to help Khenbish with archery while dressed like this was a mistake.
Probably because it's not "manly," ie, it's sweet and fruit flavored. I don't know about the rest of the world, but in America the stereotype is that tops are masculine and bottoms are feminine, and that sweet drinks are feminine.
While I could imagine there being some kind of "drink code," meant for clandestine flirting and hookups, in which different drinks mean specific things similar to hanky code, I could find no evidence of this being the case.
So I just read Khenbish's content and I really like it! I find Khenbish to be really relatable and I like the development he gets in this update. I felt kind of weird about the erotic scene. On the one hand, I felt like the scene was really long on the other hand I wanted to select all the options and really invest myself into the text. I don't know what to think of it. I also feel like the CG provided should have been rotated because right now the text box covers Khenbish's face so you have to press the H key to look at him sucking Tuan's cock (I provided an edit to how I think the CG should have been presented). I also would have liked to have seen some cum. I do like Tuan though, he's a nice mentor to Khenbish and it was sweet reading the erotic scene between the two. I also liked Khenbish's father. At first I thought he was going to be really terrible but he turned out to be a decent guy. Overall great work!
Why didn't I think of this
In any case thanks for the response Chellay, we're taking all this feedback to heart for when we do make a sex scene between Asterion and the MC (oh it's happening), glad we had this opportunity as a test run to see what works and what doesn't
I feel the memes mostly refer to his reactions whenever anything sexual was mentioned, but mainly during the drinking game. People just exaggerate it a bit for comedic effect and, perhaps, because up untill now people didn't have much to go by about his character and why he acted like that.
Usually we prefer to either write about cultures we had contact with personally or about which we can consult with a native of said culture. Mongolia was the most challenging one because we didn't have any of these options. We have a friend who studied with a Mongolian exchange student (who's not a furry) and that was far from ideal.
To compensate we had to double down on the research. We read reports from NGOs and civil rights activists that outlined the issues LGBT Mongolians face in the job market, and that the population at large responds well to awareness raising campaigns because they just don't understand basic things like LGBT people being born this way. We mixed that with the mythological family history we came up for Khenbish. We also read a lot of Mongolian poetry to bake some of it's literary style into the narration, and watched movies about the country.
I don't know if our portrayal is fully accurate. Sadly I don't think accepting parents like Altan are as common as people would wish. But as you can see we weren't working in our ideal conditions and had to make do. Hopefully we were good enough and one day a young Mongolian LGBT will have a good time reading Khenbish's story.
Now, about the melancholy in Khenbish's route... It's worth keeping in mind the game's not over yet -- so who knows what's coming next? Regardless, Khenbish is a young man figuring himself out. He's doing it at his own time and speed. When you consider everything he's been through (including his self-discovery and helping his loving family) I'd say he's doing pretty great.
Oh it definitely is not the most likely outcome, unfortunately. I think it's somewhat justified considering his particular family history of being fucked over really hard by divine mandates, he's in a position where he's a little more open-minded than usual about breaking with orthodoxy.
To address your original post, Khenbish acts a little differently in the drinking game if you don't complete his route, which is where a lot of the memes come from (since he didn't have a lot of scenes aside from that one, his intro and some R&D/exploration interactions). There's a funny story about this: I had originally written the scene with the dialogue you now get after his route is finished, where he's more open about his experiences (we didn't have all the kinks of the character straightened out yet); but Minoanon did a couple rewrites to make him more reserved and critical of the other guests (which was a good call and is the version everyone read before this update). For the latest build I dug up that old version and put it back in if the right conditions are met.
I thought the implication that Khenbish's mother may not be as accepting of homosexuality since she's more religious (likely because she doesn't have to personally deal with the curse) was a nice touch to balance Altan's tolerance of it. I imagine his mom would still love him and "accept" him but in that uncomfortable way where she thought he was going to hell regardless. Which is one of the reasons why Altan wanted Khenbish to find himself away for something that would weigh on him like that.
I noticed some of the changes in the drinking game when I played it following Khenbish' route though looking at the script, there seems to be one thing that was added in that doesn't seem possible which is in regard to a change in Khenbish's responds to Robert's drinking question. It doesn't seem possible to have Robert recruited and Khenbish' path fully completed before the drinking game, I seem to be two days short to be able to do it.
Ah, this! This is very useful to look at available hang outs at a glance.
Post by TrinexxSlayer in More Manegement Days - itch.io
