We WILL find a way no matter what!
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Well I thought the romances in part one partly happend too fast (nothing against the ROs but my MCs had with some of them only one real conversations and even while I assume that some socialising happened off screen, them confessing feelings for MC just felt somewhat…weird? Not organic or something? Maybe I’m playing the game wrong or so 
?)…
So, that the Stoic romance would be a slow burn is actually one of the reasons why I want it.
I like challenges. 
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@Sammysam, I agree with you. My pacing was pretty lacking with the dating stuff. Perhaps because in real life I’ve been with the same woman since 1998? I’m sooooo rusty even thinking about it. Also because writing Part 1 just plain overwhelmed me.
But the pacing with romantic options will slow down a LOT in Part 2, thanks in part to the “soft restart” where all the students had time to think and decompress over Break. More intimate scenes, and by that I don’t mean sex, I mean more conversations, sharing, doing fun things, bonding, etc. I actually think the new DG and Crook “lunch date” scenes are pretty funny, but it’s hard to judge your own writing.
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Since I can’t vote for both - I’d be fine with Crook (assuming full romance) and intrigued by the possibility of a relationship with the Hedonist. Mainly because I feel like that would need (or at least for me to be significantly interested enough to pursue it, it may differ for other people) to address the Hedonist’s downright sleazy actions in Part 1 - I know it’s been hinted it might just be the persona he’s been given, but seriously, I like him as a character and would almost certainly romance him if it was an option, but I find it hard to believe a potential Hedonist romancing MC wouldn’t want to at least understand his entire logic, so they’d have an idea of what they’re getting into with regards to a relationship with him.
And with regards to Stoic’s romance - I’d be fine just with emotional intimate scenes (later on, her initiating them as well), as that in itself would show there’s development going on between them. Not necessarily romantically intimate, but just her being a bit more open with the MC than she is with most people.
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personally, a slow romance with stoic is exactly how I’d want it to happen. we got a couple of tiny moments where stoic ‘breaks character’ and I liked what I saw. if it takes having to chisel down the (forcefield) wall she built around herself I’d gladly do that.
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As I see it , Stoic being emotionally distant is due to her powers (not being able to have physical contact for example) and her severe upbringing (believe me I know what I’m talking about).
Solution n°1: the most evident. The relationship stays platonic and purely romantic.
Solution n°2: teach her how to turn off her powers. That would go well with the “I came here to learn how to control my powers” and potentially the Tactician route (although it would just allow the romance to be faster, as a way to not give it an unfair advantage).
Solution n°3: If you choose the nullifying power for the Zenith route it could also be a solution like the Tactician. Although I would use her lack of experience considering human contact to slow down the romance (she never held hands with anyone, might not be a good idea to start a physical relationship right of the bat).
I must say that while the n°3 seems like a shortcut, it’s my favorite because of the special bond that might form. As I said before, I think a lot of her emotional problems are coming from the fact she’s physically distant from everyone. This solution might allow a deep relationship because of the uniqueness.
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You make a very good point. That said, the moment that power nullification was suggested as the MC’s Zenith ability, one of the potential advantages (or disadvantages #sensoryoverload) that occurred to me was that it could potentially remove the obstacle of Stoic not being able to directly touch things.
Then again, that would give the Zenith route a huge pull for those wanting to romance Stoic and you’ve said you want the three routes to be equal. Work-arounds could probably be found for the other two routes, but it sounds like you’ve already got enough on your plate as-is, so… I dunno. 
I’m just one of the players who was immediately drawn to Stoic and was disappointed she wasn’t an RO in Part I and hoping that would change in Part II. Whether or not it does is up to you, though. Slow burn is fine by me. Anything worth achieving or obtaining is worth waiting to have.
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I think, I would picture Stoic expressing her emotions in non verbal ways. I think she would express romantic emotions through actions.
I think you should establish something about Stoic at the beginning of her romance path, and then give a payoff later.
For example, let’s imagine that Stoic has a notebook, you see her often writing in it or drawing, but she would never let anyone see it. The MC starts the romantic path and eventually, Stoic passes the notebook to them, allowing the Mc to see it, she doesn’t say anything but she shares something personal either way.
Ok, I know that’s a very cheesy idea and I just made it up now. It’s just an example but my point is that I don’t really think that Stoic would be very open about her emotions and her romantic scenes should be a lot more subtle. Otherwise, I think it just seems out of character.
It kinda worked in the Christmas story, so I think you’ll figure it out eventually.
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100% Agreed with you in how Stoic romance should be a slow build up with her and showing her tiny moments were she breaks her stoic personality.
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This is where the nullifer power can come into play I could totally see like what the MC is going to become like seeing about becoming Z-powered, the new Doc Stench, or a tactician (or like my detective MC Mini-Batman) for becoming Z-powered you’d would be able to take away her barrier to do so “romance things”. Being the new Doc Stench would coordinate with DG powers and kinda make her laugh her ass off. Then with Tactician its more of a general choice for ROs since the MC would learn more and more about there RO and such.
I second everything said by @MockTurtle – the Christmas story was a good Stoic POV thing, and she does really well as a quiet character, which doesn’t have to go against an intimate relationship. Wordless gestures can be just as meaningful as spoken ones, if not moreso, and having a Stoic romance where she’s still softspoken and quiet with her affection throughout would be really nice, and work as a really good contrast against the other romances (or, at least Tress and DG as the ones I’ve played) that are with more outspoken characters. There could be a lot of little gestures that within the narration has text like “you can tell by [little piece of body language] that she’s being affectionate,” where a lot of the reward of the relationship comes from being better able to see through Stoic’s … stoicness.
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Don’t underestimate the importance of
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Good feedback on FB thus far; Tress and Crook are much more popular on Facebook than they are here. And on both sites, lots of readers would like a Stoic romance. Hmmm
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And maybe a booksmart romance?
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I think i want the exact opposite of a romance scene with tress at some point in part 2. I want a confrontation scene. I want the whole leadership thing to come to a head and for me to have the option to be able crush her. She never really bothered me in part 1 but for some reason she’s really been grating on my nerves in part 2. I think its that fact that she seems to keeps ignoring my MC’s leadership decisions, like like not listening when i say i want crook to get dr.hover down and apologizing to cap cal even though i said i think it would be best for everybody to lay low or how she tried to hijack the group meeting. At this point iv forgotten about the dozen and my only goal is to destroy tress as swiftly as possible
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I think I heard the alpha twin be mentioned no? Since the good children (mob and stunner) and awkward parent teacher conference aren’t my thing. "Why Senpai " crook and “i have sinned” streetsmart are my mains right now
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A while back the artist for the series posted some Streetsmart sketches and the general consensus was “oh no he’s hot”
I think my ideal hope for future romances would be the addition of both the Smarts as options–but @Wire is right that there could accidentally be a skew towards lady ROs, especially if Stoic gets added and Crook stays sort of on the cusp of actual romance material. Maybe adding in a rep for Prestige (Stunner bringing back a buddy or something?) who’s a male character would both even out the gender options and add some rep for Prestige/Mega Cat, who right now have Stunner, Nil-ish, and not really anybody else?
This is just vague brainstorming though, especially given I don’t know what route the story is going to go on to take with regards to the school factions
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Oh no, that was my sorry sense of humor 
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(Lurker for at least two years, first time posting. Figured that I might as well start here.)
I’m going with Option 3–Tress. My MC might have some later issues with regards to butting heads with her either as a leader (being okay with some early insubordination, but having to draw a line somewhere) or her as leader (he’d be okay with being second-in-command, but he’d also like to be on the same page as her). He also knows about the photos, but never printed them out.
As for Stoic, I’m okay with her being an RO. It doesn’t have to be included, but I won’t object. From the perspective of my MC, however, my headcanon is that, if Origami was like the little sister he never had seeing how he wouldn’t have known about how young she really was until the most current scene at the hospital, this would be even more of a shock to him, Stoic is the not-so-younger sister.
About the Request For Feedback: I support the One Strike rule and feel that Issue 6 sounds like a good cut-off point for RO’s, and have no comments about anything else on that subject.
Honestly, I like Stoic because she sort of vaguely reminds me of myself at that age 
(Not sure what that says about late-teen, early 20s me…) I’d love to have a slow romance with her, but working on a friendship would be cool too. I kind of think if you do implement something with her, maybe it would extend into Part 3…? I.e., Part 2 has lots of scenes where Stoic slowly opens up; anything else would come in Part 3 maybe? Either way, I’m glad to be getting moar Stoic scenes in Part 2!
Also, glad to see your framework for the romance portion, I like the on-ramps - I didn’t pursue Tress because I tend to play characters as essentially “me, but if I were X”, and I wouldn’t have initiated anything that fast, so… I picked “into her, but not time to make a move”.
Do you think you’ll bring Uni back from the South in Part 3?
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