I’ve played Ghost Simulator a few times & I’m not sure if I like Laura that much, seems that she’s aware of Amber’s attraction towards her but still invites Rita who is also attracted to her, barely says anything about Rita’s constant jabs at Amber & the “Laura X Rita” ending of the party feels unnecessarily cruel on Laura’s part.
The “Laura X Amber” choice doesn’t feel great either tbh since she essentially uses Rita as a jealousy prop then ditches her, but Rita can get another partner at least compared to Amber who ends up crying alone after running to the bathroom as Laura & Rita feel the need to make out in front of her.
Idk, the whole thing kinda feels manipulative either way on Laura’s part.
Becky is kinda annoying too, would think her boyfriend was injecting heroin or snorting cocaine with how badly she freaks out over some pot use, feels weird since the game is set in 2022 & its not as big as a deal to use it anymore.
If you stick around for some more books, the climate around her changes a lot from sunny and rainbows (for better or for worse, depending on your preferences).
In an unexpected twist for this thread, I’d like to put forth your own MC from When Life Gives You Lemons as an RO I hate.
C.C. just dropped a new update that features, among other things, several paths for an MC who had their kid by way of a father who is no longer in the picture, and a couple of the already established ROs (Green and Barlow) and one random, unnamed parents are your options.
To a person, all three of those “secret father paths,” as I call them, make your MC out to be an atrocious human being:
You run out on Green after a drunken one night stand at a motel and don’t even bother to leave a number to call you back with, which emotionally traumatizes Green because he seriously hoped he was a better partner than he apparently turned out to be, and desperately tries to find any lead on you that he can follow up on to try and talk to you, only to eventually give up when nothing ever comes of it for five years straight.
The big breakup with Barlow is finally revealed, or rather the aftermath, where Barlow had just finally worked up the courage to try and apologize to you for the breakup, only to find that you’ve already moved away and disconnected your phone, which leaves Barlow in tears on the phone with Brenda while sitting on the sidewalk in front of what used to be your house - and as I suspected, several of the breakup options outside of the cheating one are treated, even by Barlow, as, “Why in the world did the MC get so pissed off? Seems a bit extreme to me.”
The random father sneaks out of the house in the dead of night, in tears, not really wanting to go, but feeling he has no choice but to go and start a new life with his side fling, because Dell actually loves and respects him, whereas your MC never loved him in the first place, the marriage was simply for the sake of your kid having both parents to raise them, and in spite of random father putting his all into the relationship in the hopes that something would blossom between the two of you, you never gave him the time of day, to the point where the both of you had separate rooms. Later on (chronologically) in the current WIP, random father reappears to give kiddo a present for their birthday, and your MC has several options of how to respond, but most of them are with anger and outrage, which, itself, is kind of outrageous on the MC’s part, considering. Hell, random father isn’t even a prick about it, he’s genuinely heartbroken.
(UPDATE: After much discussion and debate between both this and the Lemons thread, I’ve come to reevaluate my stance on the other parent path - yes, MC wasn’t as loving as they perhaps could have been, but given that the relationship wasn’t exactly terrible in spite of that, and my own hard stance on cheating being unforgivable, I’ve gone back to seeing other parent as just a prick who bailed on their family for crap reasons to start a new romance with their side fling, only to come limping back when said side fling dumped them later on in life. I’m leaving this post otherwise unedited because I don’t want to delete what I initially wrote and then have people end up wondering what we were all talking about later.)
Like I said in the Lemons thread, I’m probably never playing those routes. I only know about them via code-diving, because I was curious if there was a way to get Fox to screw off without acting like she still had any kind of a chance with me (oh yeah, Fox shows up again, by the way).
I was so frustrated that my MC was such an asshole to the other parent. All reaction options were harsh but I would like to give her a chance because I think the kid should know her mother.
Finally an atrocious MC.
Really like how you broke down each path, but on a serious note, though the story starts with the kid being in MC’s custody, so it was hard to find a way to make the parent route work without having MC lose contact with those ROs. I agree that those paths are full of drama and angst, so they will not be for all readers.
You’ll get the chance to forgive them.
You do… lol but I might steal your Shane encounter idea for a Patreon side story.
Well done! Don’t think I can take playing it, though!
Yeah. Honestly, I would’ve loved to see a path where Shane was the dad, but through no fault of anyone’s that they lost touch with each other. Like an encounter at a BDSM club in a big city one night (perhaps the MC’s first try at a place like this and they may never have gone again) where they got seriously and passionately carried away, thinking it was a one-night thing, then the MC ends up pregnant, but doesn’t even know Shane’s last name (something they both regretted was never getting each other’s info), then bam! They end up in the same town. I’d kinda love to see Shane’s face, given that they’re already such a good parent to the kid. Only problem is explaining how the MC ended up with a f!S’s kid… unless S was just too young at the time and didn’t think parents would take well to a teacher who had had a kid by some unknown person, so they gave them up and the MC’s dad magically adopted them. Talk about fate…
I need to go through the code and see how that goes for a female RO.
At least this way the MC could have the kid as their own and not be horrible!
Plus, I may have a Shane fixation…
Please do!!! That reminds me I need to join your patreon…
Unfortunately I haven’t gotten around to read the new update but from what I can see from the summaries you wrote, I can agree with the first two routes with MC being atrocious, but the third one justifies MC’s reaction doesn’t it? Instead of manning up and acting like a rational and responsible human being, he decided that cheating on MC (it’s another matter if they agreed to an open marriage) and abandoning them for his side fling without so much as having a proper conversation was the best way to end the relationship. He chose the easy way out like a coward.
I don’t think anyone would be content to see or be amiable to this kind of spouse who left their kid to start a new life with their mistress/side fling. There are plenty of married couples who stay married just for the sake of their kid and even sleep on separate rooms, but they have the decency of not cheating on their partners while legally married.
What MC did wasn’t right, but neither is what the father did.
Certainly not, and I continue to maintain that cheating is an unforgivable offense. I’m definitely not giving random father the pass on that, no matter how tragic the rest of the story.
It’s just that the rest of the context hit me like a train, is all. I didn’t expect the MC to suddenly start sucking like they did in the secret father paths, and I had already read the first two by the time I got to random father’s, so I admit I was becoming a bit jaded.
(To that end, I’m also still not giving Barlow the pass on cheating, even if it was a single kiss that they did on a moronic dare that ended up getting relayed back to the MC by a concerned third party. Fact is, it should never have happened at all, no matter the excuse.)
(in the random father case) Why not just divorce instead of choosing to cheat? It’s not like divorce is illegal in modern times lol. So no kind of cheating is justifiable or ok in my opinion.
Yeah, or even just tell you’re leaving. There’s a significant difference between behaving like an adult and going “this isn’t working, but I’ll keep in touch with my kid” and going “this isn’t working so I’ll just disappear without a trace for four years”. I don’t think the MC is necessarily angry about the cheating but rather the disappearing act.
I mean, sometimes running without looking back is the best strategy to deal with abuse, and the shitshow that was happening on the secret father route… It does look like emotional abuse was having place, I don’t know, it’s all so messy, I don’t think I’m going to touch those routs with a barge pole. I did not expect the Lemon MC to accompany the Ronin in the “get out of the romance for the LI’s sake” club, but here we are.
Have you ever seen unhealthy relationships? They don’t work logically. Plus the dad tries to be there for the kid. I would have felt like shit if I had left a kid with an emotionally abusive parent while running for the hills and my sanity’s sake.
People in the Philippines going to get an annulment
I mean is there really a point? Why put so much value on it? Besides if you’re upset despite not caring then all you’re doing is being possessive for the sake of it. And divorce can be complicated anyways. Or crazy/spiteful/desperate partners.
Also like pretty low end on the justifiable cheating to me. Like revenge cheating (in an eye for an eyes sense), abuse etc.
Um… isn’t loyalty or not cheating supposed to be the most basic of things that come with accepting to getting married to someone? Even if you don’t hold affectionate feelings for the other, being upset about it is pretty normal. It’s not called being possessive, it’s called self-respect.
And in this case the divorce would be the easiest solution since both MC and the father were just staying married for the sake of the kid anyway. MC wouldn’t cause any problem in the divorce process.
Also like pretty low end on the justifiable cheating to me. Like revenge cheating (in an eye for an eyes sense), abuse etc.
Revenge cheating is the most childish and dumb thing someone can do.
Not with that specific configuration, no. Obviously people aren’t always logical, doesn’t mean one can’t wonder why. In any event, I can’t see where the MC was emotionally abusive in the past - all I can see them doing that could have hurt the other parent is not falling in love with them, and that’s not a conscious choice. The narration specifically said, at one point, that things were good between the parents.
They’re also locked to female mc, which is perspective I never play. My mc just raises his kid half-brother. The main drama there seems to be that mc’s dad was not a very good father for mc but did a lot better with their much younger half-brother before he died, which, honestly is not that much drama at all. Love that for once gay male mc gets a relatively chill route background wise compared to the straight people.
Apparently he wasn’t (see the Lemons thread); he was with his affair partner (and ghosted the kid during that period) and is only getting back to MC and the kid after the affair partner dumped him.
Don’t think I can take playing it, though!
