Hey, thanks for using your time to share your (lengthy) feedback.
Starting with the comments related to itch: We will (likely) turn on the ability to purchase the game at some point. I've neglected to do so because Pale Carnations is ultimately a free game and we plan on using itch as a platform for the public release. However, I recognize that some devs treat it like a tip jar of sorts.
As for the music, it's all under the creative common license, so I don't believe we can sell it, but I'll look into the itch server thing. I think I didn't bother last time since I had to manually contact itch to host a file larger than 1GB.
Moving onto the direct feedback:
Yep! My biggest weakness when it comes to the project has been game design, especially working in ways to evenly apply the different perks. Your suggestion is both thematic and interesting, and while not exactly what you suggested, it's got me thinking of maybe an alternative implementation of just using it to lower the difficulty of certain social checks.
Thanks again for the feedback; I've filed away that continuity error you pointed out.