For the questions, yes, I did find out who outed my mc…a pity we weren’t able to hurt them more actually. But what is even worse is that the whole outing the mc in a particularly truamatic fashion happens again, as second time, courtesy of the grandparents.
After all the mc was sent to live with them because of a traumatic outing, not because he wants to experiment with his sexuality on a fun GAP year. If that was the goal there are numerous options these days to broadcast your orientation to the world through social media like Instagram TikTok or for the really bold, Grindr.
I mean my mc wanted to go to college…not start a minimum wage “career” in fast-food, particularly since he had an athletic scholarship that is probably gone now, even if he could re-apply next year the scholarship will be gone and that is if he even has his highschool diploma now.
I don’t hold this against the story too much because this is necessary to get the mc to the plot, but I will note that in this regard an athletic scholarship is not equal to an academic or performing arts one. Missing out on a year in the prime of his life would hurt an athlete far more than an actor or a scholar, even if by some minor miracle the mc could get another full-ride scholarship to a decent university again.
Plot-wise I particularly hated that my mc was dragged to that cafe with Mila’s girlfriend to get an impromptu sex talk he neither wants nor needs and a forced second and publicly humiliating outing to the ro’s. Sure makes my mc re-live the trauma of the first outing all over again.
The talk is unnecessary and patronizing to the mc. My mc already knows what gay means and how sex is done, he does not need the gay version of the birds and bees talk and certainly not from a complete stranger he just met at that.
I really wanted my mc to go at his own pace with the ro’s and tell them, at least officially, when he’s ready to tell them himself at a point a bit later in the relationship. Right now Nathen is just a fun surfing buddy to my mc…even if he does find the boy super attractive. But that does not mean that, coming from the place, literally and figuratively where the mc comes from my mc is ready to go and act like a couple in public, for all the world to see (odds are a guy like Nathen is quite active on social media and my mc is not ready to show up in his feed as boyfriend just quite yet) or say the :L word after one or two get-togethers that don’t even really qualify as proper dates.
Here, again, the forced second outing robs the already vulnerable mc of the agency to let the guy he might fancy know at a time of his choosing and gives the relationship a sexual dimension way too soon for my poor traumatized mc.
Pardon the pun but my mc would have wanted to actually befriend the guys first before it was strongly implied that he’s an available piece of ass in a way that encourages the guys to pursue him in ways other than friendship now. If my mc wanted to be Grindr sex buddies he could have just gone ahead and made a profile for that, except that his mental state is obviously very much not ready to go there yet.
Lastly, and this is probably advice for the future when you are closer to publishing, this game could benefit from an overhaul by an editor in the future. I would hate to see a potentially good coming out story, minus the one really problematic scene be diminished by a raft of grammar and spelling issues.