The Why Of Dating

Why does dating suck? Well, let me tell you.

First of all, there's a lot of options for dating. A lot. I haven't added them up, but the total variations are 50+. Which is good for you, because it means that you don't have to get bored with doing the same date over and over again, but bad for me, because I have to actually write all that stuff.

And copy/paste, while it's available for some stuff, isn't really feasible for all the stuff that happens in dates. Even similar stuff, like shopping for clothes and shopping for underwear, has different interactions. And then there's all the variations in the actual dating action itself. Let's look at clothes shopping with Genevieve as an example.

You get to the mall. That's the first constant. What she does when you meet up, however, depends on what your relationship with her is. If you're just friends (i.e. you're not romantically involved), it's a simple greeting. If you're more than friends, she gives you a kiss hello (variation #1). You then head to the clothing store and browse the clothes. At this point, there's a 40% chance of Genevieve asking you which of three dresses would look better on her (variation #2), and the results of the choice you make in two cases depends on your relationship with her (variations #3, #4, and #5). If that doesn't happen, there's a 40% chance of her giving you a dress and asking you to try it on, to which you have 4 possible responses (variation #6). If that doesn't happen, then it's just a normal shopping trip.

After the trip is over, the two of you head back to the mall entrance and prepare to go home. If you're romantically involved with Genevieve and quite far along in terms of seducing her, then you automatically kiss her goodbye (or rather, she kisses you goodbye), otherwise, you have the option of kissing her goodbye (variation #7, and the only one I can actually copy/paste), and her reaction depends on your friendship (rejected, accepted but surprised, accepted). And then she heads home.

That's one dating option. In the shopping category, there's four possible activities, and only one of them has less variation than clothes. In the case of underwear, there's about half a dozen more variations (mostly because you can get an impromptu sex scene, which had variations for straight lesbian sex, small futa and large futa sex).

So it takes a while to get it all put in.

I've been cutting down the dating options (yes, there used to be more) in order to maintain my sanity. You can no longer go to the museum at all, which is fine, because none of the characters I have planned actually liked it anyway, and makeup shopping was dumb anyway. There were way too many options for restaurants for lunch and dinner dates (dinner in particular had eight variations, which I have cut down to a reasonably more manageable five). So hopefully it'll be less work on me in the future. But I still have to code all this stuff. And it takes a while.